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I think the secret to keeping one’s New Year’s resolutions is making the right resolutions. Yesterday Laura and I marched down to Whole Foods and dropped somewhere around $120 in groceries, but I’m willing to bet that we bought enough stuff to keep us in chow for a week or two. Tonight I finally got to try out a recipe I’d had my eye on for months in Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s Dinners – his recipe for really good hamburgers.
In true chef fashion we futzed with it a bit, cutting the coriander and cumin and upping the amount of egg (he calls for one egg for eight burgers, and we used one egg for four), topped it with jalapeño jack cheese and some really amazing maple rub bacon, and served it up on toasted buns with buttered green beans and rosemary-and-olive-oil red potato wedges. Beer on the side – Killian’s red for her and Samuel Adams for me. We just finished dinner and I’m absolutely stuffed, but if we get the munchies later we still have lemon crumble pie for dessert.
Living that well can not be good for you. I estimate that meal would’ve run us $40-$50 easy someplace like Applebee’s… And it was so much better. Screw eating out – home cooking is so the way to go!
Also of note: for those of you who read this blog through RSS feeds, I’ve updated the collection of Flickr selections on the side of this page to get a little green back onto these parts. Nothing like the brown, dreary days after the holidays to send a man yearning for the next three months to go flying by… These pics were all grabbed at the Winston Flowers & Garden in Newton, Massachusetts the last time my folks were in town, which was back in September. Someday it’ll be green around here again, right?
This is one of my favorite times of the year – the two-week period that contains both the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and MacWorld. As a future-loving son of a gun, I’ve been restlessly refreshing the newsfeeds at Electronista, Gizmodo and Engadget to stay on top of all the new announcements. So far, here are my favorite picks:
- The PS3 is rapidly going from zero to hero (Hercules!) and Sony’s long-term household media system strategy is beginning to coalesce into something potentially brilliant. Stuff magazine is reporting a rumored PS3-compatible AIBO robot dog, Sony is apparently bringing Skype to the PS3, and given Warner Bros.’ recent Blu-Ray switch, things may finally be turning around for the beleaguered PS3 (especially if New Line’s Blu-Ray commitment means Lord of the Rings in HD).
- Two words: Stargate Worlds. Assuming Cheyenne Mountain doesn’t drop the ball on this one, an SG-1/Atlantis MMO might be something I could really get behind.
- From the what’s-next-in-your-cellphone department: apparently 3M’s mobile mini-projector is finally ready for prime time. Half an inch thick, able to project a 40-inch or larger image at VGA resolution… My main concern would be the power draw on something like this, but the option of whipping out my iPhone and projecting a movie onto the nearest wall is pretty thrilling.
- Ever since first seeing frogdesign’s redesigned concept Mac for Macworld magazine back in the 90s, I’ve been fascinated by concept machines – and Fujitsu is apparently showing off one of my new favorites. Imagine a “soft, pliable” fabric laptop. Also of note, an electronic card viewer, a salesclerk browser, and a customer browser. All of these are pretty dang sharp.
- People are slowly coming around to the thing that I’ve been harping on for years: the LG watch phone is just a prototype for now, but it’s a sign that hopefully the wrist-bound interface for calls is finally becoming more widespread. Couple this with improved, more ubiquitous wireless headphones and my proposed personal communications network (PCN) is almost here…
On the Mac side of things, the rumors are flying fast and furious now, with just enough actual news included in the froth to keep things interesting:
- Erector, of all people, seems to be gunning for the LEGO Mindstorms market (kinda) with their Spykee Skype-enabled robots. Three new models include iPod and iPhone docks in their crotches, which is a little pervy but still an awesome idea. Imagine programming a ‘bot to bring your phone to you when it rings…
- ShowTime’s demonstration of video recording on the iPhone demonstrates that this functionality is at least possible, if somewhat suboptimal; 6FPS is a long, long way from broadcast quality. Still, as a proof of concept it’s encouraging that this might be one of the features Apple could unlock on the iPhone with a firmware upgrade.
- One of the perks of being an Apple aficionado is the collective Photoshop prowess of the tribe – every year before Steve Jobs’ big talk teh Intarwebs are flooded with mockups of possible new devices, and this year’s no different – behold the shoulda-woulda-coulda wündercomps of the Apple MacBook Touch. There’s all kinds of these rumors going around now, largely based off of recently-unveiled Apple patents for an iMac-like laptop dock and a dynamically-lit keyboard. The keyboard sounds an awful lot like Art. Lebedev’s Optimus Maximus keyboard, although what has me really excited is Lebedev’s Tactus concept. While 2008 might not be the year of the touchscreen, is sure looks like 2009 or 2010 will be.
- If there’s one thing that looks like a sure thing for the Stevenote, it’s the addition of video rentals to the iTunes store. This has been in the wings for a while now, but a barrage of recent reports on the rumor sites sure seems to suggest that where there’s smoke, there’s fire: Variety says so, The New York Times says so, even The Financial Times says so.
- This leads me to what I myself am personally hoping for, although I don’t know if it’ll happen: HD-quality video downloads from the Apple store. There’s been talk that the Apple TV will be getting a shot in the arm at Macworld, and I’d say this would be the easiest way to do it – the Apple TV can support 720p playback but the Apple Store currently only offers videos at NTSC TV resolution, which is 640×480 or lower. 1080p would be ideal, but the files required for that sort of thing would be mammoth, so I suspect 720p will be the way to go. If Apple does rentals without the inclusion of HD, I suspect they’ll be just as poorly received as the Apple TV has been so far because of an astonishingly uncharacteristic oversight on Apple’s part – the massive chunk of the Venn diagram between Apple TV owners and HDTV owners. SD content looks like crap on an HDTV and the early-adopters who are the target market for devices like the Apple TV have said so loudly and repeatedly. Jobs previously referred to the Apple TV as a “hobby” for the company rather than an actual product line, which also didn’t do the device any favors, but like my folks always taught me, anything worth doing is worth doing right. I suspect the Apple TV line will either get an upgrade to HD at Macworld or get dropped altogether in favor of something else, but I could be wrong.
- New towers are also probably going to make an appearance, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they were accompanied by the long-overdue Cinema Displays with built-in iSight cameras. The standalone iSight was discontinued, what, a year and a half ago? For some reason the new displays with that included still haven’t appeared, which I suspect may have to do with the company’s reluctance to offer new displays without the HDCP required for eventual HD movie playback – and HDCP inclusion would require (I think) new hardware on the tower side as well, so I suspect we’ll see this whole package show up at the Stevenote. And, I suspect, that will include a Blu-Ray drive as a BTO option, especially given the Warner defection. Yeah, yeah, I know – it sure looks like I backed the wrong horse on that race. Oh, well – mea culpa.
- The two big buzzwords at CES this year are wireless and GPS, so I’m hoping we’ll see similar trends at Macworld as well. Wireless TruHD speaker systems! Improved wireless headphones! True GPS functionality in the iPhone! Bring it on!
There have been a large number of times during my stint at MIT when I’ve found myself grinning from ear to ear and remarking at how much I love living in the future. It’s true. The future is awesome. It’s exceptionally gratifying to see things that I’d hoped for two or three years ago finally come to market, which means that if my predictions and mental sketches continue to stay accurate, the next 5-10-20 years are going to be amazing. Let’s hope we don’t wind up getting thrown into another Dark Age by war or climate collapse before we can get there, okay?
Last night my friends Matt and Clara and I went out after work to catch Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film, There Will Be Blood. Matt’s a huge Anderson fan, and when he found out the film was opening up in Harvard Square, we rocketed down there to catch the 6PM showing. I myself am a fair-to-middling Anderson fan, having enjoyed Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love, but not a big enough Anderson fan to have ever dedicated too many brain cells to the actual analysis of one of his films.
Until now.
First, let me say that it’s a darn good thing we went to the 6 o’clock showing, because at two hours and thirty-eight minutes it’s a long, grueling ride – especially considering that the entire thing is pretty much the tragic life story of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis). I will defer to the IMDB for the further synopsis (warning, potential spoilers ahead):
There Will Be Blood is a movie ” loosely ” adapted by Paul Thomas Anderson from the 1927 novel OIL! by Upton Sinclair. The movie centers on a character Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, who starts out as a simple silver miner, that happens upon oil in his silver efforts. Fast forward a few years and he’s made himself a pretty rich man, a wise and shrewd business/oil man, that gets to the point to where he’ll step over anyone to get what he wants. You see, Daniel Plainview is not a very decent person, who constantly wrestles with his demons. He is a borderline nihilist, who doesn’t like people and thinks most humans are lazy and ignorant. You understand the only reason that he has people in his life is because he couldn’t benefit financially if he didn’t. Otherwise he could care less. It’s all about finding new oil spots with him, and nothing will get in his way and derail his goals. He may not be a good man, but you cannot deny his desire and work ethic. He risks his life more than once setting up oil derricks. But, he almost meets his match in the form of a young man of the word of God in Eli Sunday, played by Paul Dano. This is not a good relationship. You see, Plainview wants to drill for oil on the Sunday’s property. And he wants to do so in a not so honest way, by chiseling them out of their share of money. He thinks the Sunday family are hicks. Ignorant with absolutely no business sense, which is somewhat true. But Eli knows they are in for more than Plainview tells them. Essentially, Plainview will be ripping off the Sunday family. Things start to happen that aren’t good. Plainview seeths for Eli. You get the idea that if he could kill Eli, and get away with it then he would. Eli, for his own merit, is a blow hard, and Plainview knows this. But for all of the hard work Daniel has done over the years, little things begin to perculate mentally with him. The demons begin to really get to him as he tries to hide and ignore them. Though he becomes rich beyond his imagination, there is a price to pay. Nobody ends up the true winner. Almost every human emotion is displayed in TWBB. Love, hate, passion, greed, jealousy, pettiness, paranoia, trust and sadness. Morality really becomes the true issues in this story. As for the script, there is much material for the thesp Day Lewis to sink his teeth into as Plainview. In reading, you can relate to why he accepted the role. Any actor would have. It’s a impressive script that should adapt well to the movie screen.
At the point the credits rolled, I honestly didn’t know if I liked the film or not. Anderson and Day-Lewis created a character that is so completely and utterly dark that he’s almost completely irredeemable; rather than sympathizing with his character, the audience is subjected to a sense of watching a predator at work. Robin Williams’ character in One Hour Photo is a sad, lonely man driven over the edge when his fragile world is tipped on its ear, and Williams’ portrayal of him is one that is almost completely sympathetic. Not here – Day-Lewis’ Plainview is, to rip off a phrase, “more human than human.” There is certainly something about him that reminds viewers of the starring critters from the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, but at the same time he’s an evolved monstrosity, his sharpest teeth and claws coming as a result of purely human sins.
If you think about the majority of the Ten Commandments, a growing theme begins to emerge: thou shalt be human, by not engaging in animalistic behavior. “Thou shalt not covet they neighbor’s wife” can be read as “thou shalt engage in social contract theory to maintain an exclusive mating relationship with only one other, previously uncommitted, individual”. While there are other animals that maintain monogamous, lifelong relationships, the overwhelming attitude in the animal kingdom is to get what thou canst, as often as thou canst. Plainview is, in some ways, a saint of sinners – by the end of the movie, we’ve never once seen him engage in any mating relationships at all. He acquires his son by essentially adopting the offspring of one of his employees when the workman is killed in an on-site accident, and in a later scene we see him waiting in a brothel while another character does his business (on Plainview’s nickel, no less), a distasteful look on his face. Plainview’s sins are mostly “higher” sins – while he does lie to construct his empire, Plainview elevates this to the art form of manipulation. Greed is elevated to a frighteningly concentrated level of drive, a work ethic overgrown into full poisonous bloom. Murders are committed, yes – the title is certainly an appropriate one – but they are almost exclusively acts of revenge, and even these acts of vengeance are done not out of envy, greed or lust but out of deeply, deeply wounded pride.
Plainview’s one sympathetic trait emerges in his dealings with family, although even this is twisted and tainted. When others question his parenting style, Plainview is reduced to a snarling, snapping feral creature, an artful blend of pride and chilling malice. At one point Plainview threatens another character who has dared to offer parenting advice that he will find where the offender lives, steal into his house in the middle of the night and murder him. Plainview is a deeply lonely man, and knows that he has truly screwed up relations with his adopted son, but God help the man who points this out to him. There is one scene where Plainview subjects to being brought low by the holier-than-thou preacher Eli Sunday in order to gain the land rights he needs to secure his empire, and Sunday proceeds to rub Plainview’s nose in his failures as a parent in front of the entire congregation. There is a brief flicker of genuine repentance and true pain on Plainview’s face as he makes the confessions that Sunday demands, but then Plainview’s facade slams shut again and the audience knows that Sunday has just crossed the wrong man, if you’ll pardon the pun.
In a rogue’s gallery of psychopaths, Plainview rubs shoulders with Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter and Matt Damon’s talented Mr. Ripley. Each of these characters achieves true monstrosity while also demonstrating mastery of traits that our culture typically glorifies – Plainview’s rough-edged industriousness serves as a sort of protoform for the intellectual artisanship of Lecter and Ripley. Yet while Lecter and Ripley emerge as antiheroes of their own, anyone would be hard-pressed to create a franchise of films around Plainview. His character is a tragic one, compelling to watch but nowhere near sympathetic enough to leave viewers clamoring for more. But, of course, that’s not the point of There Will Be Blood; this is art, to be sure, and Anderson succeeds brilliantly in creating a single standalone piece that serves as a conversation piece among critics and laypeople alike.
For example, I can easily imagine using this film in future comparative media classes to show what film can do that books can’t. Anderson uses composition, contrasting color, and perhaps most stunningly, sound to create an artifact that really demonstrates what this media form has to offer. The opening scene of the film finds a young Plainview digging alone in a deep shaft for the silver that he will use to fund his eventual oil enterprises. The majority of these shots are tight close-ups of Day-Lweis’ profile, sweat dripping from his filthy face, the cinematography almost as perfectly claustrophobic as the shaft itself. The shaft is bleak, cast in dark, cold blacks and blues, and when Plainview strikes a match the tiny flicker of red light against that backdrop is beautiful. The sound effects are equally stunning – the film is often punctuated by the sounds of Plainview breathing, a ragged rasp that stands in stark contrast to the smooth butterscotch tones of his speaking voice, which Day-Lewis delivers in an utterly mesmerizing smooth, rolling cantor that sounds like he’s channelling Hugo Weaving. The score for the film is another bizarrely compelling piece of work, often consisting of dissonant swells and lulls with an odd, techno-industrial bent to it – which makes perfect sense when the composer is revealed to be none other than Radiohead’s lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood.
There is one scene in particular that stands out as a textbook case of the art of cinema – when Plainview’s son comes home after having been unwillingly sent away by Plainview for an unspecified amount of time, the reunion is captured in an extremely long shot. The camera keeps a huge amount of distance between us and Plainview, establishing a sense of disconnection in what would otherwise be a very intimate moment – which is exactly what’s happening between Plainview and his son – but this is complicated by the sound at this point in the film, which was, I’m pretty sure, captured by a clip-on mic; the theater is filled with the rustling sound of the two embracing, with Plainview’s breath, with the oilman’s whispers of what would normally be love falling upon (literally) deaf ears, resulting in an overwhelming sense of false reunion, showing their connection to be both torn and probably an illusion, which may be what it was all along.
Overall, There Will Be Blood is an ultimately rewarding experience. In the hands of a lesser actor Plainview might have easily descended into melodramatic moustache-twirling, but Day-Lewis and Anderson shove the character right up to the precipice of stereotypical villainy while still staying just barely in the realm of art. (It was Matt’s idea to imagine the role as played by William Shatner, which I hesitate to suggest here at the risk of having the film completely corrupted, but the mental image is howlingly funny.) It’s a display of skill by both the actor and the director to keep the film teetering on that brink without falling off, and when coupled with brilliant cinematography and sound design the complete package is definitely something to see. Far, far from the feel-good movie of the year, but a must-see for the literature, film and media scholars in the crowd.
I’m trying not to get all worked up about next year’s election, since the last time I was thoroughly excited about an election – ahem – things didn’t go as I’d hoped. However, I’ve still got enough political interest left to have me keeping an eye on the Iowa caucuses tonight, which, for those of you who don’t follow politics that much, often serve as a sort of canary in the coal mine for who’s going to land the nomination for each party. Consider the previous winners of this particular contest:
| Democrats |
Republicans |
| 2004 John Kerry |
2000 George W. Bush |
| 2000 Al Gore |
1996 Bob Dole |
| 1992 Tom Harkin |
1988 Bob Dole |
| 1988 Richard A. Gephardt |
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| 1984 Walter F. Mondale |
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At this moment, ~9:20 PM EST, the Dems are reporting an Obama-Edwards-Clinton neck-and-neck-and-neck race, with results at 33.7%, 31.9% and 31.6% respectively. Total, that’s 97.4%; Bill Richardson’s weighing in with 1.7% and Biden’s at 0.9%, leaving Dodd, Gravel, Ohio’s local loon Kucinich and all others at 0.0%. I hadn’t honestly expected Edwards to be making such a strong showing, but good for him!
What interests me even more than the Dems at the moment is the Republican race. Mike Huckabee’s been declared the winner already with 35% of the votes, followed by Romney with 24, Thompson with 14.2, McCain with 11.8, Ron Paul with 10.9 and – this is where I cackle with glee – Giuliani with a paltry 3.7%. Why does this warm my heart? Because I’ve found Giuliani’s campaign technique so far to be utterly deplorable, a despicable attempt to capitalize on the loss of American lives during 9/11. Up until I stopped keeping track, for the majority of his campaign every single one of his speeches included some sort of reference to 9/11. And, by God, I sure hope to high heaven that the next 4-8 years aren’t going to be dictated by the events of 9/11 as the last 4-8 years.
God, I miss The West Wing. I loved Charlie Wilson’s War – Aaron, buddy, where are you now that we need you? We’re sorry we turned up our noses at Studio 60! Please tell us you got your snarking at the TV industry out of your system and are working on a new political series! We’re dying out here in an arid wasteland of I Love New York and other reality dreck! Save us! Please!
Following up on last night’s post about Bob Rehak’s movie-a-day project, one of my longstanding goals has been to watch the entirety of the AFI’s Top 100 Movies list. Putting two and two together, it only makes sense that this would be a great place to start my own movie-a-day project (right after I finish Lost, I think).
This is complicated by the publication in 2007 of a “10th Anniversary 100 Greatest List”, which is, of course, different from the one I’d been using. I’ve only seen an embarrassing 39% of the original list, and an even more embarrassing 33% of the new list. How many have you seen? The list is up on Wikipedia; check it out for yourself.
What surprises me, though, is how few of these classics are currently available in HD. Of the 100+ titles (of both lists combined), I think the only ones available on HD-DVD are as follows:
- The Deer Hunter
- Unforgiven
- Spartacus
- 2001
- A Clockwork Orange
- Mutiny on the Bounty
- Goodfellas
- Casablanca
- Blade Runner
I just picked up the majority of these due to two whopping after-Christmas sales currently running at Amazon and Best Buy, and I’ll even stake the following claim: when studios release these films in a high-definition format that I have access to (which is HD-DVD, until I invest in a PS3 sometime this summer), I’ll plunk down the cash. I want to up those percentages I listed above, and I want to build up the ‘classics’ section of my film library – but I want to do it in a way that I won’t wind up replacing the discs again in another two years. (Yeah, yeah, I know – if HD-DVD loses the HD war, yadda yadda yadda, but it’s the hardware I already have, so I’m not too worried about it.)
Hopefully these discs will show up by the weekend, along with the speakers I ordered. Since Laura’s working on Saturday (the drawbacks of working retail), I may have to take some time off my Lost-watching schedule to gorge myself on some classics.
After yesterday’s lengthy status report, I was just going to make a quick “Auld Lang Syne” type of post here today, but I’ve decided instead to outsource the expressing of my sentiments to others.
“I am never sad to see a year go because, if I’ve done my job living wisely and well, it will have prepared me for the year to come and I have no regrets… I believe we are in fact offered this every day if we choose to take advantage of it. New Year’s Eve is just the global reminder that such redemption exists, and belongs to each of us.”
“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”
Sentiments in the form of beautiful visuals are provided by both Craig Thompson (of Blankets fame) and John Allison (of Scary Go Round fame). I love the idea of 2008 as “International Year of Mysteries”, by the by.
Also of note, I’m currently utterly infatuated with my friend Bob Rehak’s idea of a movie a day; I think this might be a resolution I could totally get behind. I’ve spent the last couple of days chewing through Lost, at long last; I’m through Season One and several discs into Season Two. I can now finally (finally!) speak with Ivan and Sam and Henry about the Others and the hatch and other such things, although I’m skeptical I’ll be able to get all the way through the end of Season Three before the premiere on January 31st. Should be fun trying, though!
In any case, may all your new years be joyous, full of love and fun. May 2008 be the year that you rediscover something you’ve always loved, and discover something new that you’ll always treasure. Happy New Year!
December 31, 2007
11:02 am
Things are nice and quiet in our Belmont apartment at the moment. There is a jet passing somewhere overhead, the cats are playing outside my office door so the bells on their collars are going jingle-jangle-jingle in a muffled sort of way, my computer tower is whirring softly on the floor beside me and the only other sound is my fingers punching away at the keyboard. It’s a pleasantly tranquil feeling to be rounding out what was a largely hectic year.
If you take a look at my personal timeline, you’ll see that 2007 was a big year for me. I completed my Master’s degree from MIT and promptly began working there as a Communications Director for CMS and the fledgeling Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, as well as worked as a TA for the Interactive Narrative course at MIT in the fall, gave presentations at multiple conferences (SCMS in Chicago, MIT5 in Boston, FuturePlay in Toronto), guest-lectured in multiple classes… All in all, it was a great way to ramp up the academic part of my career. Other personal highlights included Laura and I getting an apartment of our own (woo-hoo!), adopting two rambunctious kittens, attending the Austin Game Developer’s Conference and the 2007 Festival for Cartoon Art at OSU, seeing Beowulf in 3-D with Espen Aarseth (a somewhat famous media scholar, for those of you unfamiliar with the name), and being in the wedding party of one of my bestest friends on the planet.
The sum total of this is the constant replaying of two songs in my head, both by Tori Amos: “The Closing of the Year” from the Toys soundtrack and “Pretty Good Year” from Under the Pink. Right now iTunes has a close third up as a free download, “My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year)” by Regina Spektor, who I’d rank right up there with Vienna Teng as the true inheritors of Tori’s vibe.
Mercifully, MIT shut down from Dec. 24th through New Year’s Day, so I’ve had a little end-of-the-year time to get my affairs in order before wading back into the mire that is the day-to-day business there. I never would have thought that it would be more challenging to work at MIT than to be a student there, but that is most definitely the case. I’m still looking at PhD programs, but it looks like I won’t start that until 2009 – I have this wonderful once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be doing amazing work at the game lab, and a shortage of time to spend examining doctorate programs, so I’ve deferred that project for at least another year. This may well mean that I’ll wind up going to Ohio State for my PhD, but we’ll see what happens.
Christmastime was fantastic this year; I managed to get both of the big things that Laura wanted for Christmas, which was awesome, plus I found this fantastic Rudolph-style Gloomy Bear for her stocking that is probably now my favorite Christmas decoration evar, right up there with the Santa hat on my dragon skull (which, alas, did not happen this year due to the Santa hat going AWOL during the move). For myself, it was a very HD Christmas, which makes me extremely happy; when we moved into the new place I had to buy a TV for myself for the first time ever, so I ponied up the extra scratch and picked up a Vizio 42″ 1080p LCD HDTV from Costco. It’s not the greatest TV in the world (we hung it over the fireplace in our living room, which looks awesome but doesn’t have the greatest viewing range, turning the blacks to grays if you go too far left or right of it) but it definitely had the most bang for the buck at the time. Coupled with the HD-DVD add-on drive for my Xbox 360, I’ve been getting into the HD scene pretty passionately. When the smoke had cleared after the holiday, Laura and I had been gifted with The Ocean’s Trilogy, The Bourne Ultimatum, Stardust, Shrek the Third, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Fountain, and all five of the Harry Potter movies. Granted, some of these were presents from me to us, but still… I also picked up on the after-Christmas sales a surround-sound system for my Xbox for $100, which has pretty solid customer reviews, given its bargain-basement price. We don’t currently have a surround sound system at all, so I saw this as a great entry level point. I also have a little Christmas money now to put towards something else, although I’m deliberating between a GPS, a PS3 (to keep the HD theme going) and this utterly amazing leather bag that my friend Ariel recommended to me earlier. I keep coming back to the bag, but we’ll see what they unveil at MacWorld; I keep hoping that there will be some kind of iPhone GPS system announced, but, like I said, we’ll see.
As far as New Year’s resolutions are concerned, all the standard ones still apply: lose weight, be better with money, publish that novel, publish more in general, earn that PhD, etc., etc. I’m making progress on at least some of these fronts; one of my favorite Christmas gifts was a copy of Jamie Oliver’s new Cook with Jamie, a ‘cooking for dummies’ style of text from one of my favorite celebrity chefs. If I can get better in the kitchen, I figure that would do wonders for both my waistline and my budget, but I’ve been trying to get up to speed there for about five years with little progress. Hope conquers all, I suppose. I have a couple of other irons in the fire that may become realities this year, but, as always, we’ll see. I don’t like to talk too publicly about these projects, assuming they may never come to fruition, but maybe there will be some more conferences and other things showing up on my calendar soon.
Have a very happy New Year, everyone! Be safe, and I’ll post more soon!
December 23, 2007
10:23 am
Not particularly holiday-related, but I’d like to share a recent short piece nevertheless.
Embers alight, tiny bulbs flickering on
Smoke smoulders and crackling chars the scents and sounds of home
Comfortably warm in blistering heat, cool and relaxed in licks of blue flame
I stretch out and snuggle deeper beneath a quilt of ash
My parlor the fireplace, my bedroom the bonfire
Home and hearth, hearth and home.
December 21, 2007
5:08 pm
A couple of little notes before leaving the office for the rest of 2007…
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