Top grossing films of 2011

Yeah, I’m a bit late with this.

Here are the top-grossing movies domestically for 2011 (domestically refers to Canada and the U.S. As you’ll see, worldwide grosses paint a somewhat different picture):

1 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 $381,011,219
2 Transformers: Dark of the Moon              $352,390,543
3 The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1     $281,287,133
4 The Hangover Part II                        $254,464,305
5 Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides $241,071,802
6 Fast Five                                   $209,837,675
7 Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol        $209,278,301
8 Cars 2                                      $191,452,396
9 Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows          $186,842,737
10 Thor                                       $181,030,624

This list can be summed up thusly: YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO COMPLAIN ABOUT TOO MANY SEQUELS. EVER. Exactly one of the top 10 movies is not a sequel and it — Thor — is based on a licensed property and is in a genre (superhero films) that has had titles cranked out regularly over the past decade.

Let’s have a look at each film and figure out why they made buckets of money (apart from exorbitant ticket prices).

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. If you include ‘in 3D’ this becomes one of the longest movie titles ever but no one can keep an accurate count of how many Harry Potter movies there are (7? 8?) so it never got called Harry Potter 7 (or 8), typically being referred to as simply ‘the new Harry Potter’. The success of this is no surprise because it wraps up the saga and all of the HP movies have done well. Most of them have been looked kindly upon by critics, too, which never hurts.

2. Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Regarded as better than #2 (the very definition of damning with faint praise) the third installment proves the least popular of the trilogy (when taking into account ticket sales and not inflated ticket prices) — not a good sign for Michael “BLOW IT UP” Bay but $352 million even in 2011 dollars isn’t chump change, so this series seems safe for awhile or until it’s run into the ground (with Bay directing, this will probably literally happen).

3. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1. Another popular series, the sparkly vampires continue to draw in its loyal audience with the penultimate film (at least until Twilight: The New Generation or something comes along). Like Harry Potter, they are squeezing out a few more bucks by splitting the last book into a two-part movie. While I can see this for HP, given that the first book was about 300 pages long and the last was about 10,000, it seems more of a money grab for Twilight. But hey, I have not read the books nor seen the movies, so who am I to judge? As a bonus, even the critics seem to be warming up to this saga of pasty white teenage/werewolf/undead love.

4. The Hangover Part II. Hey, another sequel. Weird! This one seems to have coasted a bit on the success of the first movie. A third is all but inevitable and probably won’t do as well. This will not stop a fourth or fifth from being made. This is the only live action comedy to make the top 10, proving again that for whatever reason people do not like to go to movies to laugh. Maybe the ticket prices put filmgoers more in the mind frame for tragedies.

5. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. In North America the wind seems to no longer be in the sails much for this, although overseas it’s still incredibly popular (over $802 million), so Johnny Depp can probably continue to wear eye makeup (and get paid for it) into the foreseeable future.

6. Fast Five. I am surprised at the resiliency of this series. The April release would suggest it was viewed as not cut out to be a summer movie yet it did boffo box office. People really like Vin Diesel and fast cars, it seems. Don’t blame me if Diesel uses this to leverage a new Chronicles of Riddick movie, I never saw it!

7. Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol. Another sequel, another surprise. After a tepid reaction to #3 people returned in greater numbers to watch Tom Cruise running again. He can probably crank out a few more before shifting into the inevitable character (‘I’m too old to be a leading man anymore’) parts.

8. Cars 2. The second worst-performing Pixar movie ever and after adjusting for inflation the worst. While you can’t really call a movie that makes close to $200 million a flop, it clearly underperformed. This is what happens when merchandising is a primary consideration and the audience can sense it. This won’t stop them from making Cars 3 before The Incredibles 2, though. There is no justice. This was the only animated film to crack the top 10, a bit unusual in itself.

9. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Exemplifying both ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ and ‘more of the same’ the sequel to Sherlock Holmes managed to do almost as well as the first, which means it’s probably considered a failure of sorts. Expect more explosions or zombies or exploding zombies in the third one.

10. Thor. Wait, this isn’t a sequel. How did this get here? Thor is, of course, based on the Marvel comic character and under the direction of Kenneth Branagh (!) it proved a solid hit. But before they can stamp out Thor 2, Thor 3 and Thor 4: I Adore there’s The Avengers movie this summer. I find it hard to imagine a sequel to this but on the other hand, do we really want them to remake The Incredible Hulk again?

The itty bitty black slug run

Location: Burnaby Lake, CCW < NEW
Distance: 10.02 km
Weather: Cloud and sun
Temp: 9ºC
Wind: light
Calories burned: 701
Average pace: 5:36/km
Total distance to date: 1140 km

It felt rather cool this afternoon under a cloudy but non-threatening sky. I opted to wear my jacket and initially it was a wise choice. About midway through the run the sun came out and by the 6K mark I was warm enough that I doffed it but it was nice not to be all chilly for the first stretch of the run.

I opted for a CCW router today and set a deliberate pace. After Monday’s slog I was merely hoping to improve. If you look at my initial km below it may look like I backslid even more, coming in at a poky 5:17/km, a full 14 seconds slower than on Monday. However, if you look at the next km you’ll see I only dropped by two seconds to 5:19/km. This was the difference. I maintained a much steadier overall pace today and ended up with an average time of 5:36/km, 17 seconds better than the 5:53 on my previous run. I am quite pleased by this.

I did experience some light cramps but elected to just keep going steady and let them subside instead of breaking.

As for conditions, it was entirely pleasant once the sun came out and crews were out again spreading fresh gravel along the northern stretch. And in a sure sign of spring I spotted the first black slug of the season on the trail, a little baby one maybe 1/4 the size of a mommy or daddy slug. It was about as cute as something that leaves a trail of slime behind it can be.

Unlike the last two runs the left pad of my foot did not feel sore after the run. I’m not sure if I had been favoring it or if something else was happening but it felt fine today, so that’s also a bit of good news.

Chart:

Apr 4 Apr 2 Mar 23 Mar 19 Mar 16 Mar 7 Mar 5 Feb 6 Feb 3
1 km 5:17 5:03 5:13 5:10 5:08 5:06 5:02 5:06 5:06
2 km 5:19 5:17 5:22 5:20 5:22 5:22 5:17 5:15 5:21
3 km 5:24 5:25 5:28 5:26 5:32 5:30 5:24 5:21 5:31
4 km 5:26 5:30 5:34 5:31 5:37 5:33 5:30 5:25 5:37
5 km 5:27 5:33 5:37 5:34 5:42 5:35 5:33 5:28 5:39
6 km 5:29 5:37 5:40 5:36 5:47 5:38 — — —
7 km 5:31 5:41 5:43 5:38 5:49 5:40 — — —
8 km 5:33 5:46 5:46 5:41 5:51 5:42 — — —
9 km 5:35 5:50 5:49 5:43 5:52 5:45 — — —
10 km 5:36 5:53 5:50 5:44 5:53 5:47 — — —

Burnaby Lake runs: A pictorial guide

Reading about my runs is pretty dry for everyone but me and sometimes even I find it a bit dry. There’s only so many ways to wax poetic about exercise you do multiple times a week.

On August 18, 2011 my partner and I went for a stroll around Burnaby Lake. A full circuit around the lake takes about two hours when walking and covers a little over 10 km. I chronicled our walk in pictures that day and have (8 months later!) sorted them out for perusal.

Burnaby Lake is the largest urban lake in the Lower Mainland/Metro Vancouver area and has more lilypads than any other place on Earth. Or at least it seems that way. There are always plenty of birds splashing about, sunning, eating and doing generally bird-like things, copious numbers of black slugs in the warmer months and apparently turtles and fish, though I have yet to see a single turtle or fish and regard their presence at the lake as the stuff of myth and legend.

This is a modified copy of the lake map where I’ve superimposed my running route (the original is available here as a PDF). Click on it to see the detail better. My route is in red with a red dot marking the parking lot that serves as the starting point. I generally run the traditional counter-clockwise though I sometimes mix it up and run clockwise because I can be crazy like that.

Here are a few random highlights from the gallery. Click to embiggen each image.
[singlepic id=436 w=400 h=300 float=none] Cariboo Dam.
[singlepic id=460 w=400 h=300 float=none] View of the lake from one of the bridges.
[singlepic id=453 w=400 h=300 float=none] If you want to touch trees, you’ve come to the right place.

Full gallery of Burnaby Lake which guides you around the lake counter-clockwise. It’s like going for a jog without any of the effort or sweating.

The skunk cabbage is in bloom run

Distance: 10.02 km
Weather: Sun and cloud
Temp: 9ºC
Wind: light
Calories burned: 700
Average pace: 5:53/km
Total distance to date: 1130 km

Despite a weather forecast calling for rain it turned out to be pleasantly sunny and mild for the run today. I chose to run Burnaby Lake clockwise or the ‘easy’ way (the north side of the trail slopes in a more downwardly direction if you go clockwise) but the week off took its toll and I found the first half of the run especially hard to manage. The second half was easier as I fell into a slow, steady pace that insured I would not be fighting cramps (or for my own breath).

Various observations:

  • no, you silly bug, my nose is not a secret shortcut; please stay out
  • a goose was sitting dead center on the trail. It moved as a I approached but ruefully. I could tell it was comfy.
  • despite the nice weather I did not see anyone for over the first 4 km
  • the titular skunk cabbage is indeed starting to bloom again and certain patches are beginning to live up to its name. Without prevailing winds it’s not so bad — yet!

With an average pace of 5:53/km I have backslid again. That’s the bad news. The good news is it’s no worse than my previous low so I’m at least treading water, so to speak. My first km reversed the trend of slower starts by being quite a bit quicker — 5:03/km vs. the last run’s 5:13/km. This was not planned so it’s nice to see.

Chart:

Apr 2 Mar 23 Mar 19 Mar 16 Mar 7 Mar 5 Feb 6 Feb 3
1 km 5:03 5:13 5:10 5:08 5:06 5:02 5:06 5:06
2 km 5:17 5:22 5:20 5:22 5:22 5:17 5:15 5:21
3 km 5:25 5:28 5:26 5:32 5:30 5:24 5:21 5:31
4 km 5:30 5:34 5:31 5:37 5:33 5:30 5:25 5:37
5 km 5:33 5:37 5:34 5:42 5:35 5:33 5:28 5:39
6 km 5:37 5:40 5:36 5:47 5:38 — — —
7 km 5:41 5:43 5:38 5:49 5:40 — — —
8 km 5:46 5:46 5:41 5:51 5:42 — — —
9 km 5:50 5:49 5:43 5:52 5:45 — — —
10 km 5:53 5:50 5:44 5:53 5:47 — — —

 

Book review: Poe’s Children: The New Horror

Poe’s Children: The New Horror (Kobo link)

The two genres I read the most are science fiction and horror and with horror I especially like anthologies and collections because horror stories work well in short form where it’s easier to suspend your disbelief because the shambling monsters have to caper for only a few dozen pages or so and not hundreds.

A few years ago I started a thread on Quarter to Three asking for horror story recommendations (the first reply is still classic — I specifically said I was not interested in series or vampire stories and the initial suggestion is for a vampire series) and one of those recommendations was for the then-new anthology Poe’s Children: The New Horror (2008). It featured a good mix of famous and lesser-known authors and hey, how could you go wrong with Peter Straub as editor? Even if it seemed a bit odd that he would include one of his own stories. Editor’s privilege, I guess.

My first creeping doubt came as I read Straub’s introduction, in which he frames the collected stories as part of a new wave of literary horror while at the same time almost apologizing for them being labeled horror at all because horror stories are apparently the domain of hormone-fueled teenage boys or something and this presumably makes them worthy of nothing more than scorn. I get the impression that the best way to read these stories is with pinky extended. So I extend my pinky and start in.

The opener is “The Bees” by Don Chaon and it’s fairly conventional, a ghost revenge story that comes together neatly and for the protagonist, horribly in the end. Its worst flaw is it didn’t take me long to start poking away at the plot holes but hey, it’s a short story, so time to move on.

Elizabeth Hand’s “Cleopatra Brimstone” features a young American woman house-sitting in England. She has a fascination with moths that extends to being able to transform her sexual conquests into them. It’s a quirky premise and is handled well. My only real complaint with the story is that it went on too long. The various conquests did not distinguish themselves enough to warrant having as many as there were detailed. A snappy ending concludes the story on a high note.

And then we get to a funny thing, a ‘story’ called “The Man on the Ceiling”. I put that in quotes because it’s not a conventional story as such, more a meditation or mood piece, with repeating imagery, shifting viewpoints and no specific focus, just overlapping feelings of dread or wanting and such. Sound interesting? The author notes at the end of the book inform me that husband and wife authors Steve and Melanie Tem’s effort is ‘the only work ever to win the International Horror Guild, Bram Stoker and World Fantasy awards in the same year’. And I found it boring, pretentious and pointless. I cannot recall the last time I read a short story that actively annoyed me as much as this one. If this vapid, indulgent piece of nonsense is what passes for ‘literary horror’ I think I may stick to lurid tales for oversexed boys. I suppose this is a case of different strokes. I am left so dissatisfied that at this point I actually set the book down for some weeks before pressing on.

The next few stories are decent enough but the overall theme of the anthology is becoming clearer, as many of stories are more mood pieces, veering away from the concrete to the ethereal, using words to create images that are fuzzy around the edges, leaving out details deliberately to confuse or beguile. I’m okay with this. I freely admit I prefer my fiction more straight-up because I’m more interested in being entertained than challenged but a change-up on occasion is like cleansing the palette. And my palette is about to get cleansed with the literary equivalent of bleach.

“Louise’s Ghost” is a story that shows off its cleverness with broad strokes. A little girl loves the color green, so everything must be green. The two adult protagonists are both named Louise so at times it’s difficult to distinguish who is saying what. But it’s clever because it blurs their identities and makes a statement about how interchangeable we all are or whatever the hell point author Kelly Link was trying to make. Maybe it was to simply give the reader a headache, in which case she succeeded with me. The story is further addled with dialog that is twee as all get-out. I will give Link credit, though — there are moments when all of these elements actually pull together and it really is clever and witty. I also give her points for offering something that isn’t Very Serious.

“Plot Twist” is a self-referential piece that does its shtick very well — three people stranded in a desert, running out of supplies and wondering why no one ever comes along the road they walk along. As is often the case with these kinds of high-concept pieces,  David J. Schow’s ending seems gratuitously ‘shocking’ and isn’t really satisfying. Still, the journey to get there is worth the trip.

Along similar lines is Thomas Ligotti’s “Notes on the Writing of Horror”, although the gruesome ending is to be expected with Ligotti. His darkly comedic prose may not be to everyone’s taste but I find the more of his work I read the more I want to read, so it is apparently a taste I like.

Neil Gaiman’s entry “October in the Chair” is vintage Gaiman, a warm tale of a young ghost in a forgotten town.

I skipped Stephen King’s “The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet” because I read it nearly 30 freaking years ago.

Peter Straub’s “Little Red Tango” produced a weird effect for me right from the title. I jokingly referred to a short guy I thought was one hot tamale in college as Little Red and after doing that for two years it’s difficult to see the phrase and not think specifically of him. In Straub’s story the titular character is a kind of idiot savant who lives in a hoarders-style apartment and does weird and magical things for musicians and music lovers with his vast collection of vinyl records. The story is quirky and magical but grounded in the everyday, the grit and discomfort of ordinary living mixed with extraordinary events. In the case of “Little Red Tango” Straub was correct to invoke editor’s privilege and include it.

The collection ends with “Insect Dreams” by Rosalind Palermo Stevenson. Set in the 17th century, it tells of a trip a young woman named Maria Sibylla makes from her native Netherlands to the lush jungles of Surinam in South America, there to study the insect life both as a researcher and artist. The prose is written with a languid and poetic style, with a formal and sometimes melodramatic flair. Although slow to get going, the story drew me in as it progressed and I became more interested in Maria’s experiences in this strange and dangerous land. The closest the story comes to horror, however, is when a ‘monster’ turns out to be a plantation owner who treats slaves sadistically (one scene has him literally pull the arms off a girl who resists his advances) but this  — as terrible as it sounds — is treated more an incidental to the main story. Were it not there the story would not really fit in a horror anthology at all, literary or otherwise.

In the end I came away from Poe’s Children disappointed. There are some very good stories here and there is decent variety despite the classification as ‘new horror’ so if you like gore, you’ll get some of that and if you like explicit sex, you’re covered there, too (so to speak). I found the collection very uneven, though and can’t recall the last time multiple stories in a collection actually annoyed me. Finishing the book was more a relief than anything.

Thumbs down for me but it is quite possible that I’m just too dang juvenile to appreciate art when I see it.

An audacious April 1st promise

And it’s not even an April Fool’s joke! (I am fond of the 8-bit Google Maps, myself)

After several false starts in March I am boldly planning on posting something to the blog every day for the rest of the year. That would be nine months in all or 274 posts, assuming I meet the bare minimum.

Some of the posts will be fluff but I shall endeavor to say something worthwhile as much as possible.

Excelsior!

The ‘I have a bad feeling about this’ run

Distance: 10.05 km
Weather: Sunny!
Temp: 7-8ºC
Wind: light
Calories burned: 702
Average pace: 5:50/km
Total distance to date: 1120 km

I again ran clockwise today but I had a feeling this was not going to be a great run, despite the weather being absolutely perfect. I opted to not wear a jacket and that was wise, as I would have overheated, especially with the sun out.

The day started out with me oversleeping. I had a late breakfast and set off to run a few hours later. Despite the excess sleep, I actually felt a little tired just doing the 4K walk to the lake. Hence the whole ‘I have a bad feeling’ thing. I started off and my initial 1 km was off by a full three seconds — 5:13/km. There’s pacing yourself and then there’s just plain slow. I pressed on and finished with an overall pace of 5:50/km, six seconds off my previous run. I’m not too happy with that but I’ll chalk it up to mitigating factors (excuses!):

  • the sun was out; the sun also tuckers me out a little when I’m not used to it
  • I was over-rested and felt ‘off’ because of it
  • I missed Wednesday’s run due to hail (!), making it harder to build off of Monday’s run
  • I experienced some cramps

I stopped briefly to pause two times. The first was when I came upon a truck on the path that had two men shoveling out gravel to fill in potholes (I had already passed the woman running a small tractor that was smoothing down the gravel). It seemed safer to carefully walk by than continue running. And it was a convenient way to catch my breath. I next paused at about the 6K mark and that was because I was plain pooped. I pressed on after that till the end, though. The whole run felt hard.

Still, I am obviously far off peak condition so I accept this as just another step to getting there. Excelsior!

Chart:

Mar 23 Mar 19 Mar 16 Mar 7 Mar 5 Feb 6 Feb 3
1 km 5:13 5:10 5:08 5:06 5:02 5:06 5:06
2 km 5:22 5:20 5:22 5:22 5:17 5:15 5:21
3 km 5:28 5:26 5:32 5:30 5:24 5:21 5:31
4 km 5:34 5:31 5:37 5:33 5:30 5:25 5:37
5 km 5:37 5:34 5:42 5:35 5:33 5:28 5:39
6 km 5:40 5:36 5:47 5:38 — — —
7 km 5:43 5:38 5:49 5:40 — — —
8 km 5:46 5:41 5:51 5:42 — — —
9 km 5:49 5:43 5:52 5:45 — — —
10 km 5:50 5:44 5:53 5:47 — — —

 

Avoiding the goose-stepping run

Distance: 10.02 km
Weather: Sun and cloud mix
Temp: 5ºC
Wind: calm
Calories burned: 700
Average pace: 5:44/km
Total distance to date: 1110 km

Today’s run was much the same as Friday’s but with one change — I ran counter-clockwise. I was interested to compare this to my last few runs because CCW around the lake requires a smidgen more effort as it is has a fair bit more uphill parts.

This turned out to have no impact, as I easily beat my previous average pace by 9-10 seconds (iPod =10, Nike+ site= 9, me=wishing Nike would fix this nonsense so the two would agree with each other).

Animal-wise, the geese were back. No hissing incidents though a (likely mated) pair crossed in front of me when the trail intersected a path leading to a viewpoint on the lake. There was enough space between them to charge forward but I moved around instead because I wasn’t in the mood to test how quickly a goose can snap its head forward and pack me in the leg. The clouds of bugs were back in the usual spots and I swear they have mutated to giant size. Yuck. I’d say I hope the cold kills them off but that’s mean and spring starts tomorrow so also quite unlikely.

Not that it felt overly spring-like. A mix of mostly cloud and a little sun and hovering around 5-6ºC, still unseasonably cold for this time of year. The last few km of the run were hard but I worked to maintain pace and managed to stave off cramps though I felt a little bloaty because I foolishly drank a little Coke Zero before heading out.

Chart:

Mar 19 Mar 16 Mar 7 Mar 5 Feb 6 Feb 3
1 km 5:10 5:08 5:06 5:02 5:06 5:06
2 km 5:20 5:22 5:22 5:17 5:15 5:21
3 km 5:26 5:32 5:30 5:24 5:21 5:31
4 km 5:31 5:37 5:33 5:30 5:25 5:37
5 km 5:34 5:42 5:35 5:33 5:28 5:39
6 km 5:36 5:47 5:38 — — —
7 km 5:38 5:49 5:40 — — —
8 km 5:41 5:51 5:42 — — —
9 km 5:43 5:52 5:45 — — —
10 km 5:44 5:53 5:47 — — —

Bonus chart! It seems the Nike+ site now shows split times for your runs. Neat. No idea how accurate the data is but here it is, anyway. I have used a new plugin to generate the table called Websimon tables in the vain hope that it would make table creation a bit easier. What would be nice is if the Nike+ site allowed you to export your data to…anything. Maybe in the summer.

[ws_table id=”1″]

The Goosed Run

Yes, I have been bad. I fell off not one wagon but two of them. The first was posting something every day to the blog. My fear of spamming nonsense and/or haikus in an effort to get something, anything up froze me not unlike the proverbial deer in the headlights and I ended up posting not a thing. In fact, that will be my next topic — drafts of posts that have never seen the light of day and why they were kept shuttered away.

The second wagon I fell off of smells of sweat — running. I had one day with a good excuse when having the blood samples taken left me seriously woozy for the better part of the afternoon. But the next two days I had no such excuse, I simply didn’t run. I have made amends and am back on schedule.

Like my previous run I did the approximate 19 km route:

  • briskl walk 4 km to Burnaby Lake
  • run 10K around the lake
  • briskl walk 5 km back home

This is good for about 1200 or so calories burned, which if I keep to my schedule, should help in keeping me slim ‘n trim. That and declaring Doritos an enemy of the state.

First the usual stats:

Distance: 10.02 km
Weather: Sun and cloud mix
Temp: 7ºC
Wind: initially brisk then light
Calories burned: 700
Average pace: 5:53/km
Total distance to date: 1100 km

Overall the run went well. I was again primarily concerned with cramping up and moderated my pace to prevent that from happening. This resulted in my average pace being six seconds slower than the previous run, which is disappointing but understandable. And it certainly beats having to deal with cramps. Plus this was with a week and a half between runs and that’s just enough time to start losing the edge again. Given that I was still planning on doing 5Ks at this time I’m not going to beat myself up over a few seconds.

And man, I really start feeling it on the uphill parts of the walk back home. It brings to mind that R.E.M. song, ‘Feeling Gravity’s Pull’.

I have noticed that the black slugs I encountered in the past are missing, either gone for the season or wiped out in some great black slug extinction event I never heard about. I suspect the former. We’ll see as the days get warmer. In their place, however, is an abundance of geese. One pair were standing on the edge of the trail as I rounded a corner and the closest took umbrage at my presence, hissing and fluffing out his wings as I strode by. I captured this moment as best I could, Internet meme-style:

 

Temperature-wise I again didn’t need the gloves I took and the jacket could have been shed. It was a touch warmer than the last run but still not warm.

Chart as usual below (and a lusty boo to the Nike+ website, which currently is producing a Firefox-crashing script bug, forcing me to use Chrome to view or edit my running stats. To Nike’s credit they are promising a revamped site come the summer, one of the bullet points for which is ‘No more Flash’. I’m going to guess they are not heavily invested in Adobe stock).

Mar 16 Mar 7 Mar 5 Feb 6 Feb 3
1 km 5:08 5:06 5:02 5:06 5:06
2 km 5:22 5:22 5:17 5:15 5:21
3 km 5:32 5:30 5:24 5:21 5:31
4 km 5:37 5:33 5:30 5:25 5:37
5 km 5:42 5:35 5:33 5:28 5:39
6 km 5:47 5:38 — — —
7 km 5:49 5:40 — — —
8 km 5:51 5:42 — — —
9 km 5:52 5:45 — — —
10 km 5:53 5:47 — — —

A haiku to bloodletting

Today I had some blood drawn for some standard tests prior to my check-up. It could have gone worse, it could have gone better. I’ll edit in the summary I write on Broken Forum. For now a haiku:

Draw some blood for tests
Fasting first leaves me woozy
Some pain then float home

Review: Bejeweled for iPhone

Yes, Bejeweled is 10 years old and has been out for the iPhone (and iOS) for ages, so why review it now? Because I can!

And also because I have a scary number of hours invested in it, as it’s my go-to game when I tuck myself into bed but am too tired to read. Yes, Bejeweled is the equivalent of a warm glass of milk or sleeping pill for me, something PopCap probably won’t use as a bullet point in their features list.

In terms of presentation there’s nothing to really complain about here — the screen is bright and clear, controls work well and I’ve never noticed any performance issues. It’s a match-3 game and they are generally pretty hard to screw up. The one graphical failing is that the yellow gems, when they are turned into fire gems, look too much like orange gems.

The worst thing about the gameplay is the randomness. There’s no way to see what gems are coming up so you can only plan based on what is on the board at the moment and unless you’re in Zen mode the game will eventually give you nothing to match at some arbitrary point. You can delay the inevitable by keeping a hypercube in your pocket (made by matching five gems) because that matches with any gem adjacent to it and usually opens up enough of the board to present new combinations.

Compared to the now-pulled Bejeweled 2, this version (based on the PC Bejeweled 3) lacks the standard timed mode, which I enjoyed as a change of pace and replaces it with Diamond Mine, which would be more intriguing if the difficulty didn’t ramp up almost immediately. In Diamond mine you must dig down and uncover artifacts to keep the game going but because the random mechanics are still in place and you have a timer, it’s all too easy to quickly have no viable moves. This mode more than any seems to rely on sheer luck and the added depth of the gameplay is short-circuited by randomness.

Butterfly mode was added recently and it’s always nice to see new content show up in a game you already own. The idea is interesting — random colored butterflies appear at the bottom and move one row up each time you make a move. If a butterfly reaches the top it is eaten by a spider and the game ends. So far so good. But there are two problems affecting this mode. The first is the same randomness. Too much of the game is simply out of your control. Making matters worse, the number of butterflies increases very quickly, making it even more difficult to find viable means to clear them. On the plus side, it may actually make you better at the base game because you need to use all the strategies in Butterfly mode to simply keep advancing. It’s not enough to match three, you must also work out ways to get butterflies to collapse back down instead of reaching the top, create chain reactions to take out multiple butterflies and so on. It’s a shame there is no difficulty setting because the games are ultimately too short to be satisfying.

In the base game the addition of glowing gems, created by intersecting two groups of three, is a nice addition. Match a glowing gem to two others of the same color and you get a satisfying cross-shaped explosion. It’s even better when one triggers another. In fact, explosions may be the best thing about Bejeweled. Matching two hypercubes ‘fries’ the entire board and gives you the hypercubes back, too. This is part of a major improvement over 2. In previous versions it was very easy to accidentally blow up stuff you were laying out. In this edition explosions have been restricted to adjacent gems only, so you can be a lot more precise and if you create a special gem in an explosion it will still be there after. Who knew improving explosions would be the best thing in a Bejeweled game?

Profiles, stats, achievements and leaderboards (local only) round out the presentation and all are presented well. There is also the Blitz mode that ties in with Facebook but I do not play Facebook games because they make my teeth itch, so I can’t offer any opinion there.

Overall, this is ultimately a slickly-presented but shallow match-3 game. At some point the game will decide it’s time for you to lose. Sometimes it’s on the second level, sometimes it’s on the 14th. But as a ‘I’m in bed and kind of sleepy but would like to engage my brain in some small way’ Bejeweled is A-OK. It’s available on the App Store for 99 cents.

P.S. WHY DID I WRITE SO MANY WORDS ABOUT BEJEWELED? I DO NOT KNOW!

The back to the bugs run

Distance: 10.02 km
Weather: Sun and cloud mix
Temp: 6ºC
Wind: light
Calories burned: 700
Average pace: 5:47/km
Total distance to date: 1090 km

With conditions about as good as you can get for the first week of March, I set off on my second return run today and I had a nutty plan.

I was originally planning on running 5Ks this week to work on getting my stamina back up but I felt surprisingly good after Monday’s run so I devised a plan that would encourage me to run a full 10K.

First, I set the actual Nike+ sensor to track a 10K run instead of 5K. I’ve done this before and nothing bad happens if you don’t run the full length, you just don’t get the countdown in the last km if you quit early and your run report shows it was set for 10K when you only did 5K, you wimp.

Next, I plotted my route. Unlike Monday I did not take the SkyTrain to Burnaby Lake. Instead I walked there, a distance of about 4K. Once there I chose to start out on the south side of the lake and would quickly reach a point of decision: I could either run 2.5 km, turn around and get the 5K that way or I could keep running to get the 5K and if I was too tired to continue could walk the rest. But that would put me halfway around the lake and mean I’d have about a 10 km walk back home (and no transit tickets or money to cheat my way out of it). So this would encourage me to keep running to…avoid walking.

And it worked!

As the chart below indicates, my pace was slower even from the start vs. my 5K on Monday but that was deliberate. I wanted to avoid cramps if possible and the more measure pace did just that. You can also see after the initial few km of ‘oh god this is what it feels like to be running again’ my pace moderated and settled down.

In comparison to my first-ever 10K on December 30, 2009, I was actually three seconds faster — not bad for not running one in six months (and considering that first 10K was just the capper on regular runs that had me going up to 8K).

Temperature-wise I didn’t need the gloves I took and the jacket was probably optional, though I wasn’t overly warm wearing it. The air still had that last kick of winter in it. As the title of this post suggests, though, it is now warm enough for the bugs to be back. I had to wave them out of my face a few times but had no intake incidents.

Chart:

Mar 7 Mar 5 Feb 6 Feb 3
1 km 5:06 5:02 5:06 5:06
2 km 5:22 5:17 5:15 5:21
3 km 5:30 5:24 5:21 5:31
4 km 5:33 5:30 5:25 5:37
5 km 5:35 5:33 5:28 5:39
6 km 5:38 — — —
7 km 5:40 — — —
8 km 5:42 — — —
9 km 5:45 — — —
10 km 5:47 — — —