Ramanan Sivaranjan presents
1 January 2009, the wee hours
Another year, another party. We made Turkey this time. And by we I mean Patrick. The wine from the wedding is finally all gone. It only took us half a year to finish. As with last year, I finished the night playing Settlers. It was a close game. Shima is in Barrie. This is the first New Years we haven’t been together in quite some time. Hopefully 2009 begins with a new member of the Renolison clan.
29 December 2008, terribly early in the morning
My friends and I watched JCVD on Saturday night. The film is a fictional look at the life of Jean Claude Van Damme, and stars the actor playing himself. The story line jumps around a little bit, but the bulk of the film takes place during a hostage situation in which the cops think Van Damme has snapped and is robbing a post office. Van Damme is amazing in the film: I didn’t realize he could act. The film is really good and lived up to all the hype I had heard about it. It’s surprisingly avant-garde for a Van Damme flick, and a very interesting bit of cinema. I can’t say I’ve seen a film like it before. You should definitely watch this movie.
(This weekend was all about movies. I don’t remember the last time I watched so many in such a short period of time. I also watched Bottle Rockets and the first half of Chungking Express.)
29 December 2008, terribly early in the morning
I watched Taken with my brother and his friends late Friday night. Taken was ridiculous in both good and bad ways, but mostly good. The film stars Liam Nielson as a bad-ass retired special-ops type guy — this is good. His daughter who runs really funny goes to Paris with her friend and the two of them are kidnapped. His daughter is played by Shanon from Lost, who can’t play a 17 year old to save her life — this is bad. Famke Janssen plays his ex-wife — oh hells yes. Nielson needs to go track his daughter down, killing and maiming all the human traffickers, their accomplices, and really anyone else who is slightly uncooperative — all kinds of good. So while the general plot line is a bit silly, Taken is well worth watching for all the ass kicking.
29 December 2008, terribly early in the morning
Wall-E was great. I’m sure you have all read review telling you as much. I think it is by far Pixar’s best movie. The movie is about a robot cleaning up waste in a post-garbage-driven-apocalypse. He meets (and falls in love with) a robot sent in a probe who is looking for signs of life on the planet. The film was surprisingly human and touching for a (computer) animated movie. The fact that they manage to convey so much emotion with so little dialogue is really quite amazing. I could gush about this film for ages.
22 December 2008, evening time
Who’d have thought I’d manage to maintain my 3-year-old weight for all these years. 1983 was the first and last time I have been in Sri Lanka. My cousin Chithuroobi is the girl in the photograph. This is one of my favourite photographs.
19 December 2008, terribly early in the morning
My wedding ring is so tight I never take it off. I’ve probably taken it off a handful of times since getting married. Yesterday was one of those days. And now i’m at work, typing, and I realize I don’t have a ring on my hand. Without the ring i’m just a skinny brown dude. With the ring, there is that mystery, “what exactly makes this guy attractive?” How am I supposed to hit on women now?
17 December 2008, terribly early in the morning
I finished reading Anathem yesterday. I think i’m done with that cruel mistress that is Neal Stephensen. Cryptonomicon was so great. I can’t recommend the book enough, it’s so interesting and entertaining. The Baroque Cycle pissed me off to no end, but I feel strangely nostalgic for it now. I think it is one of those series that grows on you after you’ve finished reading it — mostly because you forget a lot of the tedium. Anathem just wasn’t that good.
To start with, all the made-up words get distracting and seem a bit silly. (If you are going to make up words for cars and cell phones, but not for shoes, what’s the point?) Eventually you figure out what everything means, and you can get back to enjoying the book. Or trying to anyway. The world the story takes place in is interesting. You could write a really good book set in this world: Anathem wasn’t that book. There are lots of interesting ideas in the book, but as is often the case with the Baroque Cycle, their presentation borders on tedious. And, I can’t believe i’m typing this, but the ending feels rushed. The book is 1000 pages long! All of this I could forgive if not for the most glaring issue with the book: it reads like teen fiction. Stephensen is writing for the audience he knows he already has in the bag. The book is all nerdy science geek guy gets the hot but also nerdy science girl chick, and is helped by his good at everything friend, his nerdy martial arts friend, his super nerd friend who obviously has Aspenger’s, his hot engineer sister, his nerdy… well you get the idea. If Twilight is Vampire fiction for Emo kids, then Anathem is a science fiction romp for the Slashdot crowd. (Actually, god damn, the book was panned by at least one dude at Slashdot. The comments are a bit of a mixed bag.) If you are looking for something to read this winter, pick up Cryptonomicon.
15 December 2008, mid-afternoon
7:23 PM: Over the last little while, I would see the occasional message on my twitter feed informing me so-and-so would be attending #hohoto at the Mod Club. I didn’t bother getting tickets, because I couldn’t even image the thing would sell out. Nerds at a club: how does that sell out? Of course, it does. #hohoto seems to have become some sort of nerdapolooza here in Toronto. I don’t know what the tech community equivalent of a scenester is, but I suspect I’m going to meet a whole bunch tonight.
I’m off to meet Laurence now. It’ll be interesting to see how the night plays out. If it’s anything like any other tech event I’ve been too, it’ll be a lot of dudes and awkward conversation.
8:51 AM: #hohoto was definitely a big success. The organizers managed to raise over $25,000 for the food bank. According to Mayor Miller, this makes the group one of the top 5 donors to the food bank. (This is all the more impressive when you factor in the fact that they did this all in 2 weeks.) As a party I think it also worked well. I underestimated just how many PR and Marketing people would show up. So, to my surprise, it wasn’t just a bunch of dudes and awkward conversation. People were drinking, a few people were dancing, and a lot of people were schmoozing. I saw a lot of my friends, and they played Stevie Wonder, so I had a great time.
15 December 2008, mid-afternoon
I watched Cloverfield Saturday morning. The movie is a sort of modern day Godzilla flick, but set in New York. It’s filmed in a style similar to the Blair Witch Project. The premise is that you are watching a tape obtained in the aftermath of this event. The movie starts at a fellows going away party, and quickly picks up pace as the alien attacks and a small group of friends race off to try and rescue a friend (and love interest). I though it was a pretty good film, though reviews for the movie were very mixed The production values are high and it’s very well choreographed. Some people will probably complain about how little about the monster is fleshed out. I don’t think this detracts from the movie. I actually want to watch it again to see what I missed the first time through, the film is so hectic at times.
10 December 2008, terribly early in the morning
I’ve been putting off buying a scanner for some time now, which has been frustrating because i’ve been developing black and white film at home these past few weeks. Not being able to see what my photos look like kind of defeats the purpose of taking photographs. The problem with buying a scanner now of course is that in a few weeks they may go on sale. On the other hand buying one now means that I get to help the economy, and could tell my children that my purchase helped change the course of Canadian history. I opted to buy one now, intrepid consumer that I am.
I bought an Epson V500. They actually had a ‘used’ one at Henry’s for $200, which is what I bought. (I lucked out, in that it was probably some sort of over stock or customer return: nothing had been unpacked.) This is Epson’s entry level flatbed film scanner. I had thought about paying for the next model up, but I think that for looking at photos on a computer you really don’t need something spectacular. I don’t think I’d print from scans when I have negatives readily available. A dedicated film scanner, which is what I originally wanted, are upwards of a grand: that’s just stupid expensive. Epson has a model down from this, the discontinued 4490 that the V500 replaced. This might be a good option as well, though the V500 has an LED light source, so there are no warm up times to worry about: scanning is faster. The V500 seems to do a good job of things, based on the scans I’ve seen by people on Flickr.
Scanning seems like a voodoo art. Do you scan the negative as a positive, B&W as colour, etc? The next step is figuring out how to scan stuff properly. My first attempts worked out well enough for now.
Comment [4] Life | Photography
8 December 2008, terribly early in the morning
Ignatieff is apparently going to take over as head of the Liberal party some time this week, if not today. I can tell you that picking Ignatieff as leader isn’t going to steal any votes from the Left, though it may pull some old school Progressive Conservatives from the Right. Ignatieff creeps me out, which is why I think the Right may like him — they seem to enjoy creepy-ass leaders. If he does get the leadership nod, I think this highlights a big problem with the Liberal party: it’s run with back room deals by the party old-school. At least, it certainly seems that way, and has since Paul Martin and Chretien started fighting. Dion won the last race fair and square, but it was clear to most everyone that he wasn’t the person the party actually wanted to lead: and they have provided him with little to no support. I dislike the Liberal party for a lot of reasons, and that would be one of them.
If Ignatieff does end up leader, I suspect the coalition between the NDP and the Liberals isn’t going to last. The Liberals, with a leader firmly in place, will be in a much better position to handle an election. They may feel confident they can reclaim leadership of the House of Commons. The Conservatives have burnt plenty of bridges these past couple weeks and have also probably pissed off some chunk of their core supporters. I think they will be hard pressed to keep any seats they have won in Quebec; you can’t win an election in Canada without winning a good chunk of Quebec. The Conservatives are still the best funded party right now, but for all their money, they just don’t appeal to enough people. Canada isn’t America: trying to copy the Republicans is a doomed strategy. This country is very much a Liberal country. For the past few years the Liberals have been on a timeout while people wait to see if they can get it together.
Comment [10] Politics | Current Events
4 December 2008, terribly early in the morning
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you should be aware that Canadian politics suddenly got surprisingly interesting. Harper and the Conservatives tabled a budget that the other three parties found so distasteful that he managed to unite them all against him. The NDP and the Liberals playing nice is one thing, but getting the Liberals and the Bloc to make amends is just incredible. And now a week on we are getting to the point where the Governor General has to make some tough choices.
Harper wants to suspend parliament to avoid a confidence vote. Clearly this should be seen as undemocratic — much like the budget he originally proposed. The usual reason a Prime Minister might ask to suspend parliament is because MPs have been particularly busy, and now want to return to their constituencies. Allowing the PM to hold power in this way is a bad precedent to set. The PM is answerable to the voters and their representatives. The Conservatives overplayed their hand, and now need to face what they’ve reaped head on.
The Governor General also has to decide whether to allow the Liberal and NDP to form a minority coalition government. In a parlimentary system this sort of thing is reasonable, for many voters it will leave a bad taste in their mouths. Had the Liberals and the NDP brought the government down after the throne speech I think it would be harder to spin things the way the Conservatives have. Still, at the end of the day, it is all spin. The Conservatives are talking a lot of smack, which is basically par for the course for them.
At this point I think the opposition has won, regardless of what happens in the next few days and weeks. The Conservatives have been playing defense for what feels like the first time in ages. The Conservatives have already backed down from their original budget. Anything they present now is going to be quite palatable to the other parties; going forward, I would expect that any motions they bring forward will be equally palatable. The opposition has finally stood up and started doing their job. Harper has been shown to be ineffectual as a leader, and I suspect he won’t last long as head of the Conservatives. The Conservatives have had their wings clipped. It’s about damn time.
3 December 2008, early morning
A few weeks back I was in Barrie. The radio, which I rarely listen to, was tuned to Barrie’s version of Z103.5, which was actually playing some very enjoyable music. One track they played sounded like an Ivana Santilli song I had never heard before. We heard the track again the next day. Thanks to the Internet I disovered that she had actually put a new album out some time ago, and I had managed to remain totally unaware of this. I bought the album on iTunes, on my phone, in Ali’s living room. We’re living in the future people. (This was my second purchase from the site, now that you can get DRM free music.)
The new album TO.NY is good, but I still find myself missing the sound from her earlier efforts. There are a few songs that really stand out, Whatever You Want, Been Thru This Before (the single I heard on the radio) and Hollywood (Nothing Over U). The rest of the album, while enjoyable, isn’t that memorable. I’ll probably need to listen to the album several more times before I get a real sense of what it’s like. My general sense so far is that there are a bit too many retro R&B ballads for my liking. I think my problem is that I like her first album Brown too much.
I’ve actually been listening to a lot of Bass is Base since buying the album. It’s a shame that Chin Injeti or Mystic never show up on Santilli’s solo efforts. Injeti can play the hell out of a bass.
27 November 2008, terribly early in the morning
I watched James Bond last night with Dave, Sarah, and Limin. It was a thoroughly enjoyable film, so I really have no idea what all the mixed reviews are about. If you enjoyed the first film, I don’t see why you wouldn’t enjoy the second. The movie takes place more or less immediately after the first film. In this movie, Bond is trying to figure out what shadowy organization his former lover was indebted to, and trying to track down her killers. Bond kills a crap load of people, has some sex, and blows a bunch of shit up. If that’s wrong, I don’t want to be right. Seriously, this movie was good. Ignore all the haterade.
The cost to the United States of helping defeat Adolf Hitler, liberate Europe from fascist rule and halt the holocaust came to roughly $3.6 trillion, adjusted for inflation. The cost of the bailout, to date, comes to about $4.6 trillion. World War II was a steal — and with the $1 trillion difference there’s still enough left over to cover the past costs of the Marshall Plan and the The New Deal.
— Ken Silverstein, for Harpers.
26 November 2008, terribly early in the morning
I sold my Color-Skopar 35mm f/2.5 lens last night. I bought the lens new shortly after I bought my Bessa. I was impatient, and didn’t want to wait for a used M mount lens to show up on Craigslist. (I still think your best bet with camera gear is to find the stuff you want used.) The Color-Skopar is a solid lens. I found the pictures it would produce to be almost too sharp and high-contrast. If you want something very punchy, it’s a great lens. Personally, I wanted something a bit more subdue and a little bit faster, so when an Ultron 35mm f/1.7 showed up on Craigslist, I picked it up right away. I find the Ultron to be a nicer lens, though it’s build quality leaves something to be desired. I also miss the compact size of the Color-Skopar, which was tiny. Many camera enthusiasts will own multiple lenses in the same focal length, because each will have its own character. In my case, the Ultron and the Color-Skopar are so different it probably would have been reasonable to keep both. Maybe next time.
18 November 2008, terribly early in the morning
You may recall Shima bought me a set of B&W film for my birthday, along with some darkroom time at ImageWorks. The film I went through fast enough, but I was lazy about actually developing it at ImageWorks. And then last week I learned that you can’t actually use the ImageWorks darkrooms to develop film — they have a fancy machine that develops film for you. Their darkrooms are meant for printing alone. You can get your film developed at ImageWorks, but it costs $7 a roll. Besides being a bit expensive, this seemed counter to the idea of Shima’s gift. So over the weekend I staked out supplies, and last night I picked up everything I needed to develop film at home.
Meterials in hand, I got to work. The only tricky part in the process is getting your exposed film from the canister onto the reels that go into the development tank. You need to do all of this complete darkness, or in my case, with your hands inside a darkroom change bag. I didn’t want to waste any film, so I didn’t practice doing any of this before hand. I picked a roll of HP5+ I shot recently, which I decided I’d be willing to sacrifice if I messed up: thankfully, I didn’t.
Developer, stop, fix and a bunch of water in between, and I was all done. The developer I bought, Ilfosol 3, is meant for processing slow to medium speed film. I was trying to develop HP5+ which I had pushed 2 stops. My choice of developer could have been better. The negatives I ended up with look underexposed. I’m going to try this all again, but will leave the developer in much longer.
The whole process went much smoother than I had thought. Now I just need a scanner.
Comment [2] Photography
The wild getups, the in-yourface bumper-stickers, the foul language at the restaurant, the snarky tone in the weekly newsmagazines, the loud bass thumping from the thousand-dollar woofers, the Lee Atwater approach to public discourse—what are these if not the mating calls of a neutered body politic, of people who can allow the full-scale invasion of a country that never attacked them but who will come to blows over a parking space? Or, if you want to push it all the way: what are these displays if not the cultural patrimony of ancestors who could tolerate chattel slavery and be incensed to the point of open revolt by a tax on tea?
— Garret Keizer, Of Mohawks and Mavericks
17 November 2008, terribly early in the morning
Shima and I were in Barrie over the weekend. I feel like we traveled into the future to witness what the winter will bring. While Toronto remains quite dry, Barrie was pelted with a ton of snow. (And I mean high-quality packing snow.)
11 November 2008, early morning
Canada is basically the greatest country in the world. And the best part about Canada is, we aren’t all up in peoples faces about it. Lest we forget.
10 November 2008, terribly early in the morning
During the last election the LTTE asked — is that the right word? — the residents of Jaffna to boycott the election. And, in doing so cemented a win for Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was quite clear about his intentions when it came to dealing with the LTTE within Sri Lanka. The day before the election I had agreed with the LTTE boycott, because the political system in Sri Lanka has clearly failed its Tamil people. My thinking here was one of abstract politics: people shouldn’t take part in a broken system. For the LTTE, I suspect it had more to do with their belief that a solution for the Tamil people’s problems lay solely with them. And now 3 years later, the Sri Lankan government rejected a ceasefire with the LTTE. On any given day TamilNet reports on various murders and kidnappings in Jaffna and the East, on bombings, disappearances, etc. Sri Lanka sounds like it is the worse it has been in years.
6 November 2008, early evening
The Paul Bright Gallery opened up down the road from me today. This is gallery number three to open up on the Bloor and Lansdowne corner. Richard Mercer is across the street, and Toronto Free Gallery is a few doors down. I still live next to a strip club, but I feel like the neighbourhood has lost a little bit of its edge. Mind you, i’m not sure that’s a bad thing.
You can see a reflection of a pawn shop in the window. I wonder how long that shop will be there.
5 November 2008, early morning
Last night was amazing. I haven’t been so emotionally invested in an election my entire life. And this was an election I played no part in.
I met Tyler at his office, and along with my brother, the three of us made our way to the Gladstone. We were joined by a big posse of people, all interested in the election. The Gladstone was a great place to be last night. People were genuinely excited about what was going on — and you could get beer. The Gladstone was electric, and I’m glad I stayed their long enough to see Obama be declared the winner, and listen to John McCain give his concession speech. You’d have think the leafs had won.
If history is unfolding around you, don’t go to Dundas Square. Dundas Square is a great place to be if you want to look at ads, but that is about it. What a failure of a public space. My cousin sums things up great:
What a self hating city this is. Last night really made me hate Dundas square even more. It truly exists only to sell you things. You cant be a citizen there, you can’t be a person. You can only be a consumer. It is a totally inflexible space and those omnipresent screens can only be used for evil.
So essentially, Toronto has no city centre or town hall that exists as a genuinely civic space. It has a big mall and it has a place to go if you want to be bombarded by ads.
… A black man was elected president of the United States and they couldnt stop selling us useless fucking shit for like an hour?
If you build a city or community on the creation and accumulation of wealth, that is all you are going to have in the end. It is cheap and crass and meaningless and often totally innapropriate. It is antithetical to everything that residents of the city actually need.
But, at the end of the day, who cares about Dundas Square. I listened to Obama give his victory speech at the Elephant and Castle with my cousin, brother, and Haran. The room was quite somber — except for myself, who was pretty loud and drunk at this point. There is a Black Dude heading to the White House, and he is awesome. This is awesome.
Comment [14] Current Events | Toronto
4 November 2008, terribly early in the morning
Americans will start voting today. I will sit and watch. I’m hoping there is going to be record turn out, that young people and minorities actually get off their asses and vote, and that at the end of the day a black dude who grew up in Kenya is the new President of the United States of America. I won’t lie: I’ll probably still think America is a piece of shit evil-ass country. That won’t change the fact that Americans electing a black dude to run their country is anything short of amazing.
Then they all gathered around Sonny and Sonny played. Every now and again one of them seemed to say, amen. Sonny’s fingers filled the air with life, his life. But that life contained so many others. And Sonny went all the way back, he really began with the spare, flat statement of the opening phrase of the song. Then he began to make it his. It was very beautiful because it wasn’t hurried and it was no longer a lament. I seemed to hear with what burning he had made it his, and what burning we had yet to make it ours, how we could cease lamenting. Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did. Yet, there was no battle in his face now, I heard what he had gone through, and would continue to go through until he came to rest in earth. He had made it his: that long line, of which we knew only Mama and Daddy. And he was giving it back, as everything must be given back, so that, passing through death, it can live forever. I saw my mother’s face again, and felt, for the first time, how the stones of the road she had walked on must have bruised her feet. I saw the moonlit road where my father’s brother died. And it brought something else back to me, and carried me past it, I saw my little girl again and felt Isabel’s tears again, and I felt my own tears begin to rise. And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky. — James Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues.
Any Americans reading this: vote. For the love of god, vote.
Comment [1] Current Events | Quotes
31 October 2008, terribly early in the morning
It’s Halloween, and tonight I plan to dress like a hipster. This costume works for a couple reasons: I already have enough junk to dress like a hipster: skinny jeans, crazy shoes, thick plastic glasses, vintage t-shirts, etc. I recently purchased this strange vest from PreLoved which may round out the costume. (If you have any other ideas for what a hipster outfit should entail, I’m all ears. Sadly, I still can’t grow an ironic mustache. I may in fact be the only South Indian man unable to grow mustache.) Since my friends already think i’m a hipster, the costume would also be ironic, thereby cementing it as a solid hipster costume. If only I had a fixed gear bike.