- Feudal Crime Lords of Japan. #
- The Giant Pool of Money. This American Life teams up with NPR News to explain the Housing Crisis. #
- The Angle Bracket Tax. #
Adventures on the 191.
12 May 2008, early morning
I hop on the 191. It’s 8:45, so I ask the driver if he stops at Atwell, just to be safe. He replies, “yes.” I sit down and start reading my book. When I look up again the guy across from me looks to be hopping off the bus on the highway. I think it’s a bit strange, get back to reading my book, then look up again to realize I have no idea where we are. I get up to talk to the driver.
— Where are we? Do you stop at Atwell?
— Where do you want to go?
— Dixon and Atwell.
— We’re at Bellfield and Highway 27.
— Where is that? Where is Dixon and Atwell.
— It’s 5 minutes South. pause I missed the stop.
— OK. Well, I’ll get out here then. pause Thanks.
— Sorry.
And so I started walking South on Highway 27. Now, I wouldn’t have been too bothered about the whole affair had the driver bothered to announce that he’d missed the damn stop. Seriously, WTF TTC?
- Jane-Finch dot-com. Two links to the Sun in a row? #
- Teens gone wild? Chop down trees! #
Ironman
12 May 2008, early morning
I watched Ironman over the weekend with a few of my friends. The film was brilliant, easily one of the best comic book films done to date. (In my mind it ranks up there with X-Men 2 and Batman Begins.) The film goes through the origin story of Ironman, changing the story somewhat to make it more contemporary: instead of being injured in Vietnam, Stark is injured in Afghanistan; he is saved by an Afghan scientist instead of a Vietnamese one; instead of fighting the commies he is fighting Islamic Jihadists. (I think there are a few other differences between the comic and the movie, but nothing too drastic.) Robert Downy Jr. is a perfect Tony Stark. I can’t imagine anyone else playing the part now. Ironman is a fun comic book film; it doesn’t try to take itself too seriously. It is at times very funny. Ironman is well worth seeing.
- Take More Photos. Lots of photos from Toronto. #
- How to make a music video. Hype! #
- OGC unveils new logo to red faces. That's awesome. #
- "There are no signs that RIM has the engineering chops on either side of the ball — hardware or software — to compete with where the iPhone is now, let alone where it’s going to be." I doubt that statement is true, but RIM certainly hasn't done anything exceptional or revolutionary in ages and ages. I wonder if I know anyone working at RIM now. # [1]
- When Obama wins ... unicorns will crap ice cream and pastries. #
- Little Missed Sunshine. That's a smart way to run an anonymous Craigslist missed connections meetup. #
- Here's How America Looks to the World. #
- Penguin's new editions of the James Bond books look pretty nice. (via Daring Fireball) #
- John Resig has ported Processing to Javascript. He's the fellow behind jQuery. #
Ruby & Python
9 May 2008, terribly early in the morning
Tyler mentioned on his blog, in passing, that one reason he likes jQuery more than Prototype is that the formers syntax is a bit object-oriented.
prototype has syntax which strikes me as antithetical to OO principals. for example, Element.hide(‘comments’) instead of $(’#comments’).hide().
I was thinking about the above while writing some Python code at work. I now prefer Ruby to Python, but it took a little while for me to warm up to Ruby. Ruby has a very terse syntax, and there is a lot of room in the language to write programs that look like that are composed of magic and pixie dust. (This is especially true when you look at Rails code.) Once you have written a few programs in Ruby it is a bit easier to see what’s up: where people have decided to leave brackets off, etc. Ultimately I prefer Ruby because if I want to know how long a list is, I can do so as follows: [1,2,3].length(). In Python, the same task is accomplished as follows: len([1,2,3]). The later just seems ass-backwards to me now.
(Python’s object-oriented programming support seems pretty half-assed, but I’m no expert in the language so my opinions of it may stem from my ignorance more than anything else. Still, what’s with all the self parameters. And __init__? Come on, you can do better than that.)
- This sounds like an interesting play: Sexual Practices of the Japanese. #
- "What kills me the most is that the biggest hipsters I've ever met, actually grew up in the 'burbs." It's so true. Though, that doesn't bother me as much as people who move to the city from Small Town Ontario who start griping about how lame Scarborough is. #
- The Unicomp Customizer keyboard sounds pretty sweet. (via Daring Fireball) #
- Aids cuts life expectancy in Botswana to 27, #
- Why I Like Hillary: She’s a bloodthirsty monster. # [8]
- Angry Robot reviews Echochrome. This game looks hype. # [2]
- Tourists, Not Terrorists. America looks to be winning its War on Tourism. #
Leon (The Professional)
8 May 2008, terribly early in the morning
Shima and I watched Leon (known in the US as The Professional) last night. The movie is about the relationship between a very young Natalie Portman, whose family is killed by in a drug dispute, and Jean Reno, who plays a hitman. Reno ends up taking care of Portman after her parents are killed. This is the second time I’ve seen the film, and it was just as good as I remember it. The gun fights are crazy. The stars all are wonderful playing their respective parts. I think it’s one of Luc Besson’s best movies. (It is certainly a cult classic.) If you watch the film, be sure to watch the international version. The original version cuts out 22 minutes of the film. Apparently some of the sexual tension between Portman and Reno was a bit too much for viewers. The film also stars Gary Oldman. Who doesn’t like Gary Oldman? I love the film.