I have finally added back the ability to view some of my photo galleries in the right sidebar (currently a few birding galleries, one of planes, and a trio from hiking in the days of yore). I am going to redo this shortly because the current design will quickly become unwieldy, but worry not, the new design will be both more compact and expansive. I will defy the laws of physics!
I also added back the Angry Carrot vs. Quirky Bastards comic. The bonus material page has been tweaked a bit with some better shots. Check it out for your early 2000s web comic/game mashup needs.
I find this kind of message depressing (it’s from Mastodon, the site mentioned is focused on Mac and Apple stuff):
The implied message, of course, “If you PAID me money, you could be watching this video from the future RIGHT NOW.” Instead of waiting a single day.
I don’t begrudge anyone asking for money for videos or writing they produce–if they think their work has value, go ahead and charge for it. But releasing the paid members version a day early is nothing more than a tribute to the vanishing attention spans prevalent in a social media-addled society where everything must be NOW and also, QUICK CUTS and SHORT and MORE, MORE!
View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run. A bit misty but very mild.
I am still soft and flabby, but at least the snow is gone. In fact, not only was the snow gone from the trail, it was up to 5 degrees above normal–and this is in the morning, hours before the high temperature for the day. It’s kind of weird running in January and having it feel more like early April.
I opted to wear my summer running clothes: shirts and a t-shirt. And it was fine! Even a long-sleeved shirt would have felt overdressed.
I did a short loop counter-clockwise and got to see the latest havoc the rains have wreaked on the trail, with several areas washed out and traffic cones in place.
A couple of trees were down, though they had already been cleared. We have gone from unusually warm to unusually cold and back to unusually warm all in the space of weeks, so it’s probably playing quite the number on the soil and vegetation.
As for the actual run, no issues encountered, and I felt OK–less tired than the previous run. My pace was a bit slower, as expected, on the more technical lake trail, sitting a little over 6:00/km. I managed 5:48/km for the last km, which brought my overall pace to 6:00/km even, the same as my last run (total times between the runs separated by only one second, which is a little freaky).
My training status has also jumped back up to Productive. My Garmin watch is happy again.
There were more people than usual out waling, probably due to the mild and, for the moment, dry conditions, but the extra bodies resulted in no issues.
Overall, it was good to be back on the trail, to run without dressing in multiple layers, and to not get soaked to my butt. I probably won’t escape getting damp on the next run, but for now I am content.
The lake, post-run. Glassy water, mist and light cloud.
Stats:
Run 845
Average pace: 6:00/km
Training status: Productive
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW, short loop)
Start: 9:55 a.m.
Distance: 5:03 km
Time: 30:10
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 12-13ºC
Humidity: 89%
Wind: light
BPM: 154
Weight: 175.3
Total distance to date: 6115 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: HOKA Speedgoat 5 (250/462/712 km)
On Saturday, our birding took us to the northern end of Richmond, which meant we were near the airport, with planes and jets were regularly taking off and landing nearby. This meant I took many photos of planes and jets taking off. Enough to fill an entire gallery. And here it is!
Air Canada jet approaching YVR
Chopper against a bright sky
Yellow whirlybird
Seaplane against a dull and cloudy sky
Air Canada Express
A jet directly above Richmond Nature House
WestJet prop plane
WestJet airliner with red light glowing along the engine and undercarriage
When I was a wee lad, I semi-regularly had two types of bad dreams:
Ferry disasters (possibly because I didn’t swim well and any rocking on a ferry kind of terrified me. Because I grew up on Vancouver Island, almost all of our holiday trips required taking the ferry.)
Getting chased down by various things and entities, including but not restricted to:
Vehicles of all types. They typically were missing the front bumper, because this made them more terrifying to me.
Vampires
Robots
Mummies
Assorted monsters
The chase dreams would usually end just as the thing was catching up to me, or in the case of a vehicle, just as I was about to be run down. I’d wake up, all frazzled, then eventually fall back asleep. Good times all around.
As an adult I very rarely have bad dreams and when I do, I typically wake up, think, “That was weird” and promptly doze off again.
Last night I dreamed I was either at the UBC campus or one that was subbing for it. It was vast and sprawling, and I must have been attending classes there, because I remember marvelling over how I was enjoying the science classes more than the arts, which was the opposite of my dream self (my awake self is the same, but not as strongly as the dream version of me). As I made my way across campus, it became time for me to leave. I was walking along one of those quiet campus roads that you see an occasional service vehicle trundling down, and as I approached the edge of the campus this road widened out into the start of a (I believe four-lane) highway. This was almost certainly my subconscious drawing in the Southwest Marine Drive entrance to UBC, which is indeed very highway-like.
Because this was where the highway started (or ended), it was very quiet. I needed to cross, and rather than going back to the quiet campus road, I opted to cross the highway.
You can see where this is heading.
I began to cross and almost at the same moment noticed a car approaching from the campus side, heading toward me. It was a low, dusty gold colour. It made me think of a 70s Dodge Charger. I looked it up and if this isn’t the car I saw in the dream, it is extremely close to it:
In the dream, I did a quick mental calculation and realized that the speed of the car meant I wouldn’t have time to get out of the way. Would the driver swerve around me? Plow into me? Was there even a driver at all? (The childhood versions of these dreams almost always featured driverless vehicles).
With no other options left, I did the only thing I could think of: I jumped straight into the air as the car approached. And it zipped harmlessly under me.
I woke up shortly after that.
Maybe the takeaway is that as an adult I have more control over things that frighten me, or make me uneasy. Or maybe my subconscious finally realized that three dimensions exist in dreams, too.
Where: Iona Beach, Richmond Nature House, Terra Nova (Richmond)
Weather: Cloudy, 7-10°C
The Outing
We opted for a rare weekday outing this week because the weather otherwise looked to be more of The Rains (which turned out to be accurate). We seized our window of opportunity and actually had pretty decent light for much of the day and zero precipitation, woo.
It was an all-Richmond outing today, and that meant planes. And helicopters. And then more planes. I shot more planes than chickadees. To be fair, planes travel in nice, predictable paths, which makes them a lot easier to shoot.
Iona Beach had an unusually dense population of herons nestled in the reeds around the main pond, all of them sleeping or looking stabby. A few flew off, and I managed to capture one pooping in flight. Herons are fairly large birds, so the volume they dispense is…impressive.
Elsewhere, we saw song sparrows, a finch and various waterfowl, including a merganser that was a little too far away to get good shots of. We also fell yet again into the Iona Beach trap of “walk back along the beach, run out of beach, then figure out how to keep going without getting your feet wet.” We got our feet wet.
Along the way, we saw a lot of gulls diving for goodies and got some good action shots there.
Next up was the Richmond Nature House, where we actually found parking. Yay. The feeders were doing good business, with approximately one million juncos dominating. At least until the towhees wanted some seed. We were pleasantly surprised by the appearance of a female and male downy woodpecker, both of whom went for the suet. We watched the fame stuff the suet into little holes in a nearby tree. That woodpecker is probably more organized than I am.
One squirrel was present and managed to squeeze itself into a feeder where it gorged on and off. It would sometimes come out and wade around in the water (most of the area around the feeders was a bit flooded from the recent snowmelt) to find soggy but easy-to-access seeds there.
We ended at Terra Nova, where we saw more planes than birds. I was happy, Nic less so. But we did get a nice treat, as the pond where we usually see a grebe or two not only had a grebe, it was much closer than usual, allowing for our best, grebiest shots yet.
I experienced some issues with my camera after swapping batteries, which may have been a coincidence, or it could be the camera just needed to be cleaned. Or both. It wasn’t due to the cold, though, as it got up to a downright mild 10C, a sharp contrast to recent outings. I’ll be thinking of spring now, which means more snow is on the way, probably.
Terra Nova is also where we saw this weirdly yellowish looking bank of cloud along the horizon, out on the strait, the kind you’d see in a horror movie, with ships full of undead pirates sailing out if. We just saw the cloud, though.
Overall, a fine outing, despite said glitches, with better than expected weather and light that was largely better than expected.
I recently watched the original Star Wars trilogy again and while I’ve seen all three movies multiple times before, I’ve never watched them back-to-back. How do they hold up to the grumpy, world-weary version of me in 2024 vs. the kid who marvelled to Star Wars in 1977? Let’s find out!
NOTE: I watched on Disney+, so these are the special editions. I’ll have more on that aspect of the movies in each review.
First, here’s how I rank the movies, in order and on a scale of 1 to 5 Ewoks shouting “Yub yub!”:
The Empire Strikes Back (4.5 Ewoks)
A New Hope (4 Ewoks)
Return of the Jedi (3.75 Ewoks)
And in chronological order:
Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)
This is a bit of a weird movie, because it feels like Lucas was still deciding how the characters should behave, so Luke starts out super whiny, then seems to settle down. Leia has a British accent that slowly goes away, maybe after Lucas decided all the bad guys should be British. Also, the light saber duel between Kenobi and Vader (spoiler!) is stiff and perfunctory. A light saber duel should never be perfunctory. This is corrected in all other Star Wars movies.
Still, there’s so much to like here. John Williams’ score, right from the opening fanfare, lifts so much of the movie beyond what Lucas shot. There’s a moment where Luke walks out to watch the twin suns of Tatooine setting. He stands with a hand propped on one knee, a gentle breeze riffling his hair, the glow of the suns washing over his face and the score swells, then fades, perfectly capturing Luke contemplating his life and if there’s anything more for him (hint: there is).
The lived-in look of everything here–the homes, bars, the ships, grounds the more fantastic elements. And those fantastic elements are at turns creepy (sand people), delightful (the jawas) and just weird (the cantina scene). There’s humour, derring-do, plenty of action and the good guys win. Really, what more could you want?
I am raising my own hand here. I know, I know! What you could want is a remastered version of the original print, because almost everything Lucas added or changed for the special edition is unnecessary or actively terrible. The worst list:
Greedo shooting first. The fact they that have tweaked this multiple times since shows how dumb a change it was.
Adding back the Jabba the Hutt scene with a crappy-looking CGI Jabba. Because the scene was cut, some of its dialogue was moved to the scene between Han and Greedo. So you end up with literal dialogue duplication. So bad.
Every bit of business added in the Mos Eisley street scenes, most of which seem to be designed to delight five-year-olds and annoy anyone else.
Adding the scene between Biggs and Luke was a nice touch, but I’d still have nixed it if it meant getting rid of all the other junk Lucas put in.
Overall, though, this is a terrific popcorn movie, elevated by effects that hold up surprisingly well, a rousing score and an appealing cast.
Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
This is a better film than Star Wars for a couple of reasons:
The script is smarter.
The actors are more comfortable in their roles.
The story is pretty good–being the middle part, there’s lots of drama as the rebels get pushed back by the Empire.
The effects and action scenes are well-executed and mostly still hold up.
Taun tauns!
Imperial walkers are cool. Don’t think about them logically. They are COOL.
Irvin Kershner is a better director than Lucas.
The light saber duel between Luke and Vader (spoilers!) is great and far more dynamic than the “wave sticks around while standing still” battle in the first movie.
Also notable is the special edition of Empire only tweaks a few things, the most notable being an additional shot of the snow beast eating before it decides to go chow down on Luke, suspended upside-down in its ice lair. I can see the argument that showing more of the monster lessens its menace and agree, but overall I am neutral to the addition. Kershner died in 2010 at the age of 87, so unlike Richard Marquand (director of Return of the Jedi), he was still very much alive when the special editions came out. I suspect Lucas used a lighter touch in deference to him.
While the nature of Empire is such that you can’t really recommend it for “if you’re only going to watch just one Star Wars movie”, it is definitely a great choice if you get the urge to revisit any of the original trilogy.
Return of the Jedi (1983)
Luke’s hair is shorter and neater, as befits a Jedi.
This is often placed third in rankings of the original trilogy and it’s easy to see why. But it’s still a good movie!
First, let me say this up front: The Ewoks are fine. Yes, they are cute, but they’re also weird, with their creepy big eyes and desire to eat our heroes when they first meet them. And yes, it’s hokey that they use literal sticks and stones against Imperial troops, but watch the battle scenes, and it’s made clear that a lot of their tactics are ineffective, while some work really well. They’re fine.
In retrospect, it’s a bit odd, perhaps, that they devoted the first act entirely to the rescue of Han Solo. It’s kind of a prologue for the rest of the movie. I don’t think this is a bad thing, as it gives the writers a chance to show off the characters in a different kind of action–all stealthy and sneaky. It’s also the kind of thing none of the new movies would have ever done. Characters over action? Never!
And while the third act is largely devoted to a retread of the original–take out the Death Star–it makes sense that the Empire would build another one, this time with better defenses. So I’m good with that. And having it be a) under construction makes for neat scenes inside its superstructure and b) allows for the surprise twist of “Oh yeah, we totes have the cannon ready to go, rebels!”
The speeder bike scenes on Endor remain highly entertaining.
The scenes between Vader, the Emperor and Luke are great. The duels between Vader and Luke (spoiler!) nicely demonstrate the growth of Luke into a full Jedi.
My biggest nitpick, apart from the special edition changes (see below), is that Han Solo’s character is just…off. Ford gives a weird, hammy performance, and I’m not sure if it’s him, the director, the script (which is not as sharp as Empire’s) or some combination of the three. He’s not terrible, but he was far better in Empire. A strange regression.
Overall, it’s a fun and satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. The good guys win. Again!
But those special edition changes…
The reworked number in Jabba’s palace is terrible. The song is worse, the new character is a stupid-looking Muppet-like1I’m not dissing on Muppets. I love Muppets, but this one literally looked like it belonged on The Muppet Show, not in a Star Wars movie. thing that looks totally out of place and mugs, bafflingly, to the camera. Absolute garbage. Again, it seems like Lucas was aiming this directly at pre-school children for some reason.
Having Vader shout “No!” (twice!) while watching the Emperor zap Luke actually takes away from the moment, making it ham-fisted in typical Lucas style. We can see what’s happening. Vader literally turns his head back and forth between Luke and the Emperor before deciding to toss Ol’ Wrinkly Face down the tube. It doesn’t need to be further telegraphed. Unless you’re George Lucas.
The infamous “Yub yub” Ewok number at the end is also changed to something more prim and proper, and scenes of people celebrating on Naboo, Coruscant and Bespin are added (if you haven’t seen the prequel trilogy, these shots will be somewhat baffling as Naboo and Coruscant are not seen or mentioned in the original trilogy). Also, the old song had a choir that reached a crescendo just as the camera focuses on the gang posing for a group photo, leading directly into the credits, and it just kind of gives you goose bumps. The new song doesn’t really do this.
Lucas’ meddling can’t ruin the film, though, so it remains a somewhat flawed but still satisfying conclusion to the original saga.
I mean, the only thing that would be worse is if the presentation were photorealistic. Because legless torsos are terrifying.
Really, examine the shot. It looks like all these engaged, happy cartoon people had their legs cut off and their upper body stumps were cauterized and plopped down onto the furniture. Except for the ones that just magically float like ghosts. I mean, only the furniture is casting shadows, so maybe they’re all ghosts–ghosts of workers who got chopped up while on a team-building exercise in the woods, and now they exist in this perpetual otherworldly realm, unaware that their mortal days are done, and that they no longer have to pretend to be interested in slide decks and Excel spreadsheets.
It’s 2024. Why is this Mesh1You know I was going to do this at some point the best a company recently valued at $3 trillion U.S. can do?
Kids, ask your parents about floppy drives. Photo by Sidde on Pexels.com
Because everyone else on the internet is doing it.
I did not use a Macintosh in 1984, My home computer at the time was a Commodore 64, which, at $200 U.S., was somewhat more affordable than the $2495 Macintosh.
But I did use a Macintosh in 1985, when, as part of a job entry program, I was placed into a small advertising firm that was outfitted with Macs and a LaserWriter. The LaserWriter fascinated me as a child of dot matrix printers that were slow, loud and mangled paper as soon as you turned your back to them. The LaserWriter was silent1OK, silent-ish and sexy.
I remember three things from my time in that early Macintosh office:
I didn’t have a lot to actually do, so I spent time writing a parody screenplay for a Friday the 13th movie I called “Friday the 13th, Part VII: Orville Finds a Meat Cleaver.” I printed out a copy on that sleek LaserWriter and still have it today.
I am left-handed but learned to use a mouse right-handed because the mouse cord was not long enough to place the mouse on the left side of the Macintosh. I still use mice right-handed today.
The owner of the company, a serious young man named Arnold Brown, got mad at me for adding helpful directions into a database of local businesses. I remain as adept with databases today. I could have easily fixed the entries, but he insisted on doing it himself, perhaps as penance for having agreed to bring me on.
My own Mac journey is thus:
2013: I got my first Mac, a MacBook Air. This was just after they got bumped to 8 GB of ram. They still come with 8 GB of ram, more than 10 years later. I didn’t really like macOS back then and traded the Air for a Microsoft Surface Pro 3. There are people out there who are probably wondering what kind of madman I was, but the SP3 had a better display, pen support (I used it for doodling at times) and I was able to crank out an entire novel on it.
2018: I got a Mac mini. It had the flakiest Wi-Fi and Bluetooth I have ever encountered in a computer. I got rid of this, too.
2020: MacBook Air M1. Finally, a Mac I genuinely liked! The one-monitor limitation was stupid, but I used a USB adapter to work around it. I used it exclusively at home, so eventually sold it, as it seemed silly to have a laptop that sat on the desk 100% of the time.
2022: We arrive at my fourth Mac. We’ll see how long this one lasts. It’s a Mac Studio with the M1 Max SoC. It generally runs everything very well. It is silent. The design is surprisingly ugly (a stretched up mini is not much to look at). Bluetooth is better, but also still flaky. It’s like Apple keeps the secret sauce to how it works for their own peripherals. The worst thing, though, is the way software will randomly crash out with no warning. This happens across all apps, including Apple’s own. I reboot the Mac every once in a while and just hope for the best. It’s a fine machine, otherwise, and while macOS has regressed in some ways recently, it’s better than it was in 2013.
Bonus story with me and a Mac in it: Four days before Christmas 1998, someone broke into my apartment while I was at work and stole my PC (a Celeron something or other, whose processor I had upgraded just a few weeks earlier) and my roommate’s strawberry G3 iMac. I think my roommie eventually got another Mac, though I have no recollection of what it was. The strawberry iMac was much prettier than my PC.
Between the snow and other stuff, it has been 22 days since I last ran outside (I did do a 5K treadmill run last week). With the snow finally melted enough, I took to the river trail (along with about three other guys) to get in a 5K run.
And even though my BPM was a perfectly fine 151, it felt a lot harder than it looked. My training status, per my Garmin watch, has been Strained for a week or so now, and today’s run did not change that, though it should hopefully shift to Recovery soon™.
Although most of the snow is gone, there’s enough slush along the trail to still require threading the slush at times, and one spot in particular it was still mysteriously forming a pancake-like patch to slip on. I figure it should finally be completely gone in the next few days. It made today’s run more challenging, but mostly more annoying.
The first km started fine, then on the second km, something happened. I’m not sure what, exactly, but my pace cratered. Observe:
Every km before and after was in the 5:52-5:55 range. Maybe I was having trouble navigating the slush? Maybe I just wanted to curl up in a ball?
Overdressed alert: At the 2K mark, I came to the conclusion that I had overdressed. I saw another guy wearing shorts and a long-sleeved short and thought that was the right way to do it (though he was also wearing gloves, and 7C is way too warm for gloves unless wind chill is like -10C or something). I wore my Nike shirt, OR jacket and running pants. When I reached 2K, I paused the run to tie my jacket around my waist, and it made me feel lighter and faster. I mean, I was faster than the second km, so maybe it worked! I will keep this in mind for the next run. The light rain was inconsequential in terms of how I dressed.
As I was nearing the 1 km mark, I encountered a group of people that had spread themselves across the entire width of the trail. Three of them were in my “lane” and I wasn’t going to move. The first two moved aside as I neared. The last one, a guy holding an umbrella, actually exclaimed (a loud sound of being startled) and literally leapt out of the way. It was the kind of thing you normally only see in a sitcom. It amused me. Maybe it threw me off and affected my pace. Maybe comedy and running don’t mix.
Anyway, it was good to finally get out again, even if conditions were kind of bleah. Hopefully the trails will at least be free of snow the next time.
Stay in your slushy lane
Run 844
Average pace: 6:00/km
Training status: Strained
Location: Brunette River Trail
Start: 12:02 p.m.
Distance: 5:03 km
Time: 30:09
Weather: Light rain
Temp: 7ºC
Humidity: 93%
Wind: light
BPM: 151
Weight: 173.4
Total distance to date: 6110 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: HOKA Speedgoat 5 (245/454/699 km)
Shot yesterday (Jan. 23) on my iPhone 12, on a gray, wet winter day.
The Brunette River, misty and rising. The tent on the far bank is now gone.View from the bridge on North Road. The construction on the left is for the new Millennium Line maintenance yard, set to open in 2027.Ducks in the field at Lower Hume Park. The crows and gulls got very twitchy when I stopped to take photos. The ducks just kept sticking their heads in the muck.
