Mark's Blog

Just got back from spending a little time at a local bar and grill with the badminton crew, which was fun. It's one of those immutable laws of nature that a few "tasty beverages" brings out a certain risqué sense of humor in people. Unfortunately I had read el nanO's post on poutine recently and had to order one for old times' sake. I should have bought some heart attack insurance with it, and to make matters worse it wasn't even that good. Oh well, can't win them all.

Saw the Narnia movie last weekend. I hadn't read the book, but I probably walked by it in the library a thousand times as a kid (probably not even an exaggeration). Not sure why I always dismissed it (I'm not much into fantasy, I guess that is probably the reason) but I very much enjoyed the movie regardless. I gave it an 8 on IMDB (-1 for talking beavers). From what I've heard it's fairly faithful to the book and overall the effects were terrific and the story moved along at a good pace even though it was longish at 2 hours 20 minutes. Tilda Swinton did a great job as the, uh, titular witch (that would be a good name for a punk band).

Have been working on the Sonic Normal and have pretty much gotten it down pat. I'm not at near-100% success rate yet but it is getting more consistent and I can probably do it 7 or 8 times out of 10. The trick still feels a bit forced, even when it's successful, but that will improve with time.

I've definitely been a delinquent blogger lately. I don't know why, I guess there's just not much to report.

I have been doing some editing on Chefmoz.org, a restaurant review site. I'm one of the volunteer editors for Ottawa. We maintain a list of restuarants and associated reviews. I used to log in fairly irregularly, like once every few months, but recently there has been a flurry of reviews, perhaps close to one a day, which is really nice to see. Some of the "reviews" are a bit too brief, but hopefully over time more people will use the site and contribute. According to Alexa, the site is around the 11,000th most popular site on the Internet, which is not bad.

I've been playing some Civ 3 Conquests recently. This is a good expansion pack, unlike "Play the World", which had precious little in the way of new features and extremely laggy multiplayer action. I've played through the three introductory scenarios and the first two real ones, "Mesopotamia" and "Rise of Rome". I usually play on Regent level and had ended up losing "Rise of Rome" the first time I tried it as the Romans, but winning the second time through as the Persians, who start out with significantly more land. It's definitely important to read through the rules for each scenario, since they are often changed from the base game. For instance, I was getting annoyed, while playing as the Persians, because I thought the best defender that was available was the spearman, who defends with strength 2. Then about 2/3 of the way through the game, I suddenly have the option to build Numidian Mercenaries, who have defense 3, which is obviously a significant improvement. In the regular game, the Numidian Mercenary is a Unique Unit, only available to the Carthaginians, however in this scenario the NM is available to anyone who has the Ivory resource (which I would have gotten a lot earlier if I had known that it would have been useful). Anyway, the scenarios are a great way to have a satisfying game in a night or so, unlike a regular game which can take a number of sessions on a larger map.

I've seen a few movies on DVD recently: Full Metal Jacket (endlessly quotable and reasonably entertaining but somewhat disjointed, I gave it an 8), The Recruit (slightly formulaic CIA thriller, I gave it a 7) and Out of Sight (overrated and somewhat implausible movie about a romance between a bank robber and FBI agent, I gave it a 7).

I just came back from seeing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. If you haven't read the book (like me) or haven't seen the movie (unlike me, now), a Phoenix plays a small but crucial role in the movie.

This is probably another one of those movies that I'm sure most people had decided to see or not to see long before it came out. It's not a sleeper hit that you get swayed into seeing after reading or hearing great reviews. HP2 follows the same outline as the previous one. Obviously there is a new plot but so many of the scenes seem like retreads: the Quidditch game (why does anybody except the seeker even bother playing, when the seeker can win the game all by himself?), the visit to Hagrid's, the trip to the Dark Forest, the hiding in the Invisible Cloak, something about Voldemort but it's not really Voldemort that I didn't really get, Harry's uncle and aunt being all bitter, a few spell-casting lessons, and so on.

I'm the last person to be an "art snob" (seeing as I don't believe in "art", but I'll save that rant for another blog entry) but the real problem with Harry Potter is it's just so darn derivative. It's like an unholy amalgamation of Enid Blyton's books and The Lord of the Rings. It seems like J.K. Rowling has taken every fantasy element: basilisks, potions, mandrakes, invisibility, spiders (if that wasn't Shelob in the Forest then what was it?), spells, serpents, skeletons, petrification (don't tell the Slashdot crowd about that one), et cetera, and merged it into a standard children's school story.

Now, this is not meant to be a criticism, other than to say I don't find HP all that interesting, for the simple fact that it feels like I've seen it all before, when I haven't. I can see that it's popular, that it draws in kids and adults alike, and that is fine by me.

It's easy to pick nits in this movie because they abound, but it held a pretty decent entertainment value for me. The special effects are really quite amazing, and it didn't seem as long as its 2:41 length. My IMDB rating for the movie was a 7 -- right around average, towards the high end of my "7" ratings, but really not a movie that I'd need to see again. It's roughly comparable to the first Harry Potter (which I gave an 8), but we are not seeing anything new.

And a brief cooking note: I made my first stir-fry, which turned out surprisingly well. I followed the instructions on the back of some Teriyaki sauce I bought on Saturday and everything worked according to plan. It took about 35 minutes all told.

This may seem like a small triumph but last night I cooked rice successfully, unlike the previous couple of times which resulted in a blackened mass adhering to the bottom of my saucepan. I had solicited advice on the topic from several people and was informed that my simmering temperature was too high. I think this was due to the fact that I did not know the definition of "simmer", which refers to a slow cooking right around the boiling point. I had also turned to the trusty Internet for advice on cooking rice, which included one thorough page which informs us that one must wash the rice using a clockwise motion. So that's what I was doing wrong! Counter-clockwise'll get ya every time.

In other bachelor "cooking" (i.e. heating food) news, the President's Choice rising-crust pizzas are extremely tasty (and reasonably priced, costing six dollars, but half a pizza is easily enough for a meal).