And on we go

I will admit to a certain dislike of Mondays. Nothing specific. And only a little of the cliché. But a small amount it's true. Although Monday evenings tend to be rather enjoyable. We get together with the letter 'r' for game/movie night. Tonight we pushed a little closer to the end of Lost season one and played a round of Rummikub. I then spent several frustrating minutes trying to get out of not zombie jail in Resident Evil 4. Alas, I'm still stuck there as there are far too many not zombie villagers and not nearly enough bullets... Hmm. I need a plan.

But the week marches on and the wheel goes round and <insert platitude here>. Good ol' platitudes. Whatever would we do without pithy, if meaningless, statements? I suppose we could choose to find meaning in them, but that can really only carry you so far before you become something resembling an optimist...

Too tired to title

Got the projector and surround sound getup hooked up over at the letter 'r's. Pretty sweet system I must admit. Soul Calibur 2 in near life size is pretty cool. Finding Nemo was pretty amazing looking as well. I tried to talk him into Akira but no joy. Heh...

Library volunteering has been going well. Got to do some interesting things yesterday. No amusing stories, but it was time well spent. Put covers on some of the new hardbacks and did some more shelving and a bit of book cleaning.

Managed to find a deal on a new copy of Resident Evil 4 so expect some thoughts on not zombie horror games in the future. One of the few 2 disc games on the cube. Sounds like it should take a while to play through. That's both good and bad. Good in that it will last a while, bad in that it's hard to find time to play a game that long - especially a survival horror game. But it will be played through! Oh yes, it will be played through.

And I think that's enough for now.

Roundhouse kick!

Humor at its finest.

Shelving books is an interesting process in the children's department. Shelf scanning is a mind-numbing one... And that's really about all I learned at the library last night.

Bones was enjoyable (as was NCIS the night previous). Still have to catch up on a couple other shows.

The Paint by Numbers puzzles are a hit. I must admit they're rather addictive little devils. It's interesting to see where lines can go and try and work out what sort of picture is going to emerge. If you can track down a puzzle or two to work through I recommend it. There are some tricks to working them out, so try and find a bit of an explanation as well. ^_^

Have listened to the last couple Escape Pod podcasts. Sci fi short stories are enjoyable. I subscribed because they had Cory Doctorow's Craphound on there (a delightful story in its own right) and have listened to the last couple as they've come out. And if I haven't mentioned it the Celtic Music News podcast is great. Assuming you like Celtic music. Which I do, so there.

Noise pollution

Well, Graeme has decided that it's about time he's heard around the house. While normally quite pleasant to be around, I suspect at the moment he's teething. Not the most joyful of experiences to be sure.

About to head out to the library, so, not really much of import to pass along. The girls will be making cookies while I'm out so hopefully there will be a couple still warm chocolate chip cookies upon my return. Mmmm, warm chocolate chip cookies.

The letter 'r' has started his grand quest to set up a home theater room. Currently the projector and the big box-o-audio are patiently waiting to be set up. I suspect a region free DVD player will be adding itself to the mix soon and then much watching of large scale entertainment will begin. I'll probably drag the Gamecube over on occasion for some larger than life Soul Calibur and Mario Kart madness. Until I can sort out some specific TV needs and procure the necessary funds my own home theater is more dream than reality. But some day!

Blurb

Working at the library was fun. Could see doing that. The question is will it pay enough. It needs to.

Best question of the evening, "So what did you do?" Apparently real volunteers at the library are few and far between. Most are of the community service flavor... It was an amusing moment to say the least.

At any rate, TV to catch up on so off with you.

Begin again

And Monday strikes like a trip to the dentist. Actually I went to the dentist today and it was fine. Miranda kept trying to locate someone who could look at her teeth. No fear of the dentist whatsoever in our children... Of course, the teenage years may change that.

I start volunteering at the library tomorrow, so expect the previously mentioned gaps in coverage to start up. Will attempt to do what I can to keep it minimal, but absolutely no promises.

Ran across a podcast by Penn Jillette. Somewhat amusing. It's mostly a capture of the radio show he does for XM FreeFM. Neil Gamain's podcast is up over at Author's on Tour. Will check it out over the next couple days. I've actually got quite a few I need to get through.

And the latest candidate for games as art is Electroplankton on the DS. Actually the better question is whether it's a game. If nothing else it lets you play around with music, so that's a bonus.

And I just need to point out that I managed 20k points on the quest mode of Zoo Keeper. Mostly because it will annoy the heck out of my wife. Hi honey. ^_^

Daily bits

My wife got hooked on Sudoku puzzles a few months back. So to encourage the puzzle muscle in her body I picked her up a book of the Games Magazine Paint by Number puzzles. (Also known as picross or griddlers) I expect some swearing and a few grateful looks over the next few months.

Let the scouts play around on the DDR game at pack meeting tonight. It was pretty popular. Not that that's any sort of surprise. It is DDR after all - how could it be anything other than popular? ^_^ Also got to hear the bagpipes again (Ah Scotland...). I like the pipes. Although it has left me singing snippets of Loch Lomond...

Well, I think that about covers things of any interest. And even a few things of none.

Repeating Signal

Well, updates around here may start to get sparse. Starting next week I'll be doing volunteer work at the local library. A couple hours a couple nights a week and a block of time on Saturday. Should prove to be an interesting experience if nothing else. I'm looking forward to it though. I've been thinking about getting an MLS again and this may help make that decision.

So, you'll have to learn to live without me. I think you'll be fine. If nothing else that may make the random bits that end up here more interesting. I'll probably start to have fun librarian type stories and all the other random bits that get spread out will make their appearances in condensed form.

I would also like to point out that my wife only narrowly avoided losing at Harry Potter Scene It to the girls. Heh heh...

Blah blah blah blah

State of the State address this evening. Only caught part of it as I was waiting for NCIS. Sounds like they want to lose sales tax on food. That could be nice.

And my wife is now watching Ed 2.0 Love Monkey. Hmmm. I may have to intervene. Especially as there's a commercial for the Match.com/Dr. Phil team-up. Wow. That's pretty scary stuff.

Pei Wei is a tasty, tasty restaurant.

As you can see, I don't seem to have a lot to ramble on about. Which is a little on the odd side as I've run across a fair amount of new things lately. I mentioned digg.com the other day. The Diggnation podcast is a thing of joy. I enjoy listening to the banter more than the actual content of the show. Reminds me of far too many of the conversations I had back in High School. But in a good way.

The VGDJ podcast for OC Remix is also nice. Mostly for the music bits and some of the banter.

4cr and Go Nintendo provide some nice Nintendo commentary.

Celtic Music News, Authors on Tour, The Signal, the Audio Edition of the Movie Blog... Yeah, lots of podcasts. Keeps me entertained at work if nothing else. It's funny, I've spent more time listening to podcasts than music lately. But I'm not convinced that's a terribly strange thing.

So there you go. A bit of rambling commentary on absolutely nothing. But its your own fault for wandering into this little backwater in the first place. At least I haven't started cat blogging yet. Of course, since I don't have a cat, that might actually be more interesting. Photos of hijacked cats... Hmm....

And again

So, saw Cry_Wolf over the weekend. I found it a fun little diversion while my wife found it predictable. I'm not saying there wasn't some predictability involved, just that it was fun to watch. And I think my wife would agree...

I also watched Oldboy, but I think the less said about that the better.

We're slowly working our way through the first season of Lost on DVD. DVD is really just about the only way to watch TV. Gotta love the lack of commercials and the ability to watch as many episodes as you want. And really, that makes Lost quite watchable. I'm not sure I could watch this as it airs on TV. Although we're not really trying to catch all the little nods and winks the creators of the show threw in. I leave that for people with far too much time on their hands fans.

Books

You may have noticed the new little bit there on the right. If not, Library Thing looks to be an interesting little site where you can catalog your books and post reviews and what not. Books are good. I sort of miss not shooting for 50 again this year, but I still plan on reading lots.

Seems there was something that meant to be here, but I certainly have no idea what it was. I am disturbed by the news that Hostel will most likely get a sequel. If you haven't heard of this movie consider yourself lucky. I like horror movies, but this one crosses the line into pure waste of celluloid territory. You can look at past entries to find my thoughts on violence and the horror genre, but this movie certainly doesn't seem to extol any sort of virtue. Pure excess and gore for shock value. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about it.

Hmm, that's kind of a downer, but at the moment I can't quite come up with anything else to end on. Go check out digg...

Delayed

Yeah, yeah, Tuesday is good TV night, so there.

House and Supernatural were their brilliant selves while NCIS was only ok. Oh well.

Apple makes me cry. I'm going to have to pick up the iLife suite when I grab the OS upgrade come tax refund time. There's simply too much goodness in that package to pass up. Podcast capabilities in Garage Band? Photocasting with iPhoto? The ability to push photos to people is going to make sending pictures of the kids so much simpler...

At some point I should probably ramble on about a couple of the podcasts that have caught my fancy, but today is not that day. Suffice it to say that I have indeed become hooked on the little devils.

On the DS

I can't recall (and am too lazy to look) if I've said much about the DS. So I've decided to rectify that some. I must admit, I've caught a bit of a bug where the system is concerned. Part of that is the fact that it's new, but a lot of the credit goes to the quality of the software.

Meteos has woven quite the spell around me. I find myself playing it quite a bit. It has its roots in the Tetris puzzle genre, but only to the extent that there are falling pieces. And boy do they fall fast. The twist is that you get to launch the pieces back where they came from. But in order to do so you have to overcome the gravity of the world you're playing on. Line up three blocks of the same color and they'll ignite sending anything on top of them skyward, but you'd better hope you have enough oomph to get them into orbit...

Feel the Magic XX/XY was, if not a launch title, darn close. To some extent it's a series of mini-games built to show off the various aspects of the system. But my wife and I both find it charmingly fun. A hopelessly silly story woven around a set of odd mini games. What's not to like?

My wife finds it hard to put Zoo Keeper down. Basically Bejeweled for the DS the stylus makes it much easier to play.

Polarium is another puzzle game that we find time to give each other grief over. Flip the black and white tiles so that the rows are all the same color. Good brain-stretching fun.

And Mario Kart. Very little needs to be said about Mario Kart. Play people all over the world. 32 tracks, half of which are completely new. Lots of play modes and lots of unlockable players/karts. You do the math.

So as you can see, far too much fun is being had with the system. But can you blame me?

Catch up

As I missed yesterday, I'll take a couple moments today...

The Island was ok if you can forgive the fact that it ripped off material from every sci-fi movie for the last 30 years. I will admit to really enjoying the chase sequence with the railroad car wheels. That was pretty spectacular.

Fantastic Four was less than ok. I suspect if you like that series, you might enjoy the movie (although I'm pretty sure they did some tweaking to Doctor Doom...), but if you're not a fan this won't make you one. It was a way to spend some time together with the kids, but that's about all it had going for it. McKenna of course loved it, so I suspect they have a target audience in young kids for any sequels they try to make.

Let's hear it for good bacteria. Sore throat is finally starting to wear off. Silly antibiotics killing off everything. Must remember to reintroduce good bacteria sooner. And Coke helps quite a bit with the sore throat as well.

Enjoy your weekend.

Riptide

Finished off the second of the three books by Preston and Child I snagged. Riptide was a fun little action novel. It was nice in that it didn't feature any characters (I think) from their other books. But it did feature some pirates and hidden treasure. I thought it started a touch slow, but it certainly kept my interest. Again, not exactly enriching literature, but certainly fun...

Now if I could just shake this sore throat.

CES is going on and most of the major tech/geek sites are following it pretty closely. It remains to be seen if there's anything of real interest coming from there. Apple may make a few interesting announcements.

Picked up Serenity yesterday. Still such a great movie. And not quite as shocking the second time through. Here's to hoping there are no double dips on that title.

Made some of those DIY paper bookmarks I linked to several posts back. Pretty fun little activity. Even managed to slap my own little saying on them.

The Grindstone

The year has turned, bringing us back to the routine that makes up our daily grind. Time for me to get back in the habit of jotting a few thoughts down here and passing along random links of varying interest.

Caught Matt briefly on 60 Minutes the other night when they did a piece on Burt Rutan. That was fun.

Enjoyed Where's My Cow?, Pratchett's companion children's book to Thud! Although I find it terribly strange that the cow is never found in the story. I'm pretty sure Thud! contained that particular event...

I'm becoming quite the fan of podcasts. The Audio Edition over at the Movie Blog is a favorite. I'm growing enamored of Diggnation. And there are a few others that are getting a trial run.

I meant to jot down a list of directors to look out for over the coming years. Let's see if I can remember who they are.

The Pang Brothers - The Eye sums them up. Wonderful horror tale I've covered here before. I believe they've got a new one coming out this year...

Doug Liman - Bourne Identity and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Possibly the new king of the action movie genre. Equal parts wit and style.

Stephen Chow - Kung Fu Hustle. If there's a movie that crosses more genre boundaries than this one I don't know what it is. I look forward to Chow's next effort.

Makoto Shinkai - Voices of a Distant Star and The Place Promised in Our Early Days. His first film was a testament to what one man can do with enough drive and determination. His second film showed that the beauty and emotion captured in Voices was no fluke.

Joss Whedon - Firefly. I'm not sure Wonder Woman will draw me to the theater, but there are few directors/writers that can nail dialogue and cast interaction like Whedon.

So there you go, a brief anticipatory list that even managed to look back a little. Welcome to 2006...

A couple quick and tasty links

Joss Whedon on the future of TV.

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett fill in a few New Year's Resolutions.

Now go, read, laugh.