justinhj

Ocean Waves

2012-02-06T20:20:00.005-08:00

A while ago I set myself a goal to watch and review all of the Studio Ghibli movies, since I enjoy them a lot, and I wanted a way to remember what each one was about. (I am losing my marbles you see.) Here's my eighth one.

Ocean Waves was made for Japanese television, directed by Anime producer Tomomi Mochizuki, his only Ghibli title. Despite being made for TV it ran over budget and over time (when does anything good not?).

Set in a rural city of Kōchi on the Japanese island Shikoku, it's a high school "love story" of sorts. The main characters are friends Taku Morisaki and Yutaka Matsuno. Strong willed they make a stand alone against the school authorities when a school trip is cancelled due to poor academic performance. (The kids instead get to go to Hawaii, my heart bleeds!) Japanese school children being much more deferential to authority and elders, their behaviour is quite something to the other kids. Taku in particular seems an independent and strong willed fellow.

Meanwhile, following a marital break up Rikako Muto must attend the high school in Kochi having previously lived in Tokyo. She quickly moves up the schools academic league table, and feeling more sophisticated than the other students in Kochi she doesn't make friends. Instead she is defiant and doesn't take part in school activities.

Needless to say the boys are attracted to Rikako. Yutaka expresses this openly to his friend Taku. As the story unfolds Taku connects with Rikako. Initially they mock each other, but Taku helps Rikako and she quickly decides that she can both trust him and exploit him to enact her plan to visit her father in Tokyo.

Taku has to do all the work in this story, both to maintain his friendship with Yutaka and Rikako, but he never seems to be bummed by it, and his personality is refreshingly strong and positive.

This movie won't appeal to kids as the story line is too mature to be interesting (not that there is anything inappropriate though). I really enjoyed it however, it's typical Ghibli. Beautifully drawn and animated in the usual style. The characters and the world itself feel fully real.

Occupy Vancouver

2011-10-25T22:31:00.000-07:00

Took some shots at the Occupy Vancouver protest taking place at the Art Gallery on Monday. Nothing particularly exciting going on. There are more people smoking dope there on a normal day. In fact it was remarkable how clean and tidy the camp was. Very Canada.

Austin Trip

2011-10-23T22:09:00.000-07:00

Austin trip

I've never been to Texas before so I was excited to head down to Austin for this years GDC Online conference. Arriving in the evening we headed straight for 6th street which was very lively, with rock and blues bars blaring out music.

On the first night I watched blues at a live jam session. The music was awesome. At one point a local middle-aged Dell employee in a boring blue business shirt and grey pants and very little hair took the stage. Turned out he was an awesome drummer.

Next night we went to movie theatre, also on 6th, called the Alamo Draft House where you can order beer and food from your seat which is then brought to you while you watch the movie. (We watched Drive, which is kick ass by the way).

Finally on the last night I went to a coyote ugly style bar. It seemed quite normal at first, but after a few minutes the waitress climbed on the bar and danced along it, pouring shots into the mouths of anyone she decided seemed to need one.

Last day before I flew back to Vancouver I took a quick walk around Austin. I went up to see the Capital building, and then down to the river, where over 1 million bats live under a bridge there. Even though it was day light you can still hear them all fidgeting and gossiping to each other in my video.

A day at Harrison Hot Springs

2011-10-23T22:00:00.000-07:00

Harrison Hot Springs

Saturday was a bit of a wash out, so I wanted to do something on Sunday that would be fun even if it was still raining. Harrison Hot Springs has a public indoor pool, sourced from two hot springs at the end of Harrison Lake.

Amazingly the sun came out and it was beautiful drive along route 7. We had burritos at Muddy Waters Cafe before heading to the pool. Lunch was pretty good, but priced for tourists. The hot springs were fun. The public pool is in an old building, but is clean enough and the water temperature was somewhere between a pool and a hot tub. There were about 10 people in the pool at any one time and there are loungers around the side so you can cool off and look out the window at the lake, which was stunning.

The drive out from Port Moody was about 2 hours including stopping for snacks and gas. A great day.

Vietnamese chicken stir fry

2011-06-18T19:09:00.001-07:00

For some random reason I decided to have a go at some Vietnamese style cooking. Starting off nice and easy I made this chicken stir fry. Actually this is the second time I made it, having made it last week too, and this week incorporated some of the suggestions of my food critic family.

Ingredients

Lemon grass. (Sliced lengthways then finely chopped, about 2 tbsp)

Garlic (2-3 bulbs chopped and crushed)

Fish sauce (2 tbsp)

Chilli sauce (1 or 2 tsps)

Bean shoots (2 handfulls)

Chicken breasts (2 large ones, no skins)

Cilantro (small handful, chopped)

Snow peas

Carrots

What you do

Although I didn't do it due to lack of time, you're supposed to combine the lemon grass, chilli and fish sauce with the chicken and marinate it in the fridge for an hour.

Also due to lack of time I cooked the carrots by slicing them and sticking them in the microwave for 3 minutes, so I could throw them in with the snow peas and not have to wait for them to cook through.

Then fry the chicken for a few minutes until all white then put it on a plate, fry the onions, garlic and lemongrass. Once they're soft add the chicken. Once that lot is cooked through and you're a few minutes from done, throw the snow peas and carrots in. Finally throw in the bean shoots and cook for a couple of minutes.

I served it on steamed rice as you can see.

Family reaction

With just a tsp of chilli this is not too spicy for kids or adults afraid of spice. It's quite a dry dish so I added a little chicken stock. It's filled with tastes. The lemongrass in particular makes the dish very fragrant. Last week I made this with yellow and red peppers instead of carrots, and they had a flavour that did not compliment the dish.

In general the family liked this meal a lot. I'm looking forward to trying something more advanced.

Princess Mononoke

2011-03-30T20:26:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to watch and review all of the Studio Ghibli movies... here's my 7th one:

Princess Mononoke (1997) is written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It has a similar theme to a lot of other Studio Ghibli movies (Castle in the Sky and Naussica as examples), the battles between humans and nature. The story follows the adventures of Ashitaka, who is a brave young warrior who battles a giant cursed Boar in the opening scenes of the movie. Mononoke means monster or spirit.

(This is the Japanese movie poster. I think you can see why they changed it for the US audience. A girl with a bloody mouth and a knife would not sit well on the walls of the local theatre)

The village elders convene and determine that he must journey to the West in order to find out what is happening there to drive evil their way, and possibly find a cure to his curse, which otherwise will kill him.

Arriving in the fortified mining colony of Tatara, he quickly wins the trust of the people there with his fighting skills. The town is battling the creatures of the forest, and San (a girl raised by a giant White wolf god) who are trying to stop the humans from chopping down all the trees to mine iron ore. Lady Eboshi (voiced beautifully by Minnie Driver in the English version), is leading the fight against the forest with her army and with guns. It turns out a pellet from one of these guns is what turned the giant Boar evil in the beginning.

Ashitaka meets and gains the trust of San which leads to animosity when he returns the town. There is conflict between the creatures live in the forest and don't want the trees to be chopped down and the humans want to destroy the forest in order to mine and build their town into a powerful and rich city. Even the humans are conflicted and complex characters.

Much of the movie is action packed battle with packs of giant creatures swarming through the forest. Ashitaka rides an Elk which is beautifully drawn and animated. The giant Wolf gods, Boars and the spirit of the forest are all believable yet extraordinary.

This is a new favourite of mine, a deep and sophisticated story, but quite light and filled with humour. I'm surprised I didn't come across it earlier, because according to the wikipedia page it was a huge hit in Japan; the highest grossing movie until Titanic in fact.

The Housekeeper and the Professor

2011-03-20T20:08:00.000-07:00

I love when a tip for a good book comes from such a random source as this one did. I was reading the website Quora, and the book "The Housekeeper and the Professor" was recommended in the comments to the answer to a question.

This is the story of a Japanese housekeeper and single mother who starts to take care of a 64 year old mathematics professor who was long ago injured in a car accident. As a result his memory lasts only 80 minutes, and although he can remember his past up to then, he can no longer form new memories.

The agency our housekeeper narrator works for has already sent 8 people before her to care for him, so no doubt there are difficulties. She is hard working and adaptable however, and receptive to him as he communicates in the only way he knows; via the timeless language of mathematics. When meeting someone for the first time (which may not really be the first time at all for them), he will ask for their birthday and find interesting properties of that number. For example the housekeepers birthday is 2nd Feb, 222, which forms an amicable number with 284, the serial number of his watch.

Maintaining some rudimentary form of long term memory via post-it notes on his suit, he remembers the housekeeper by a simple doodle, and that she has a son. He has a note prominently located to remind him "you have only 80 minutes of memory".

Soon he discovers that her son is a latch key kid, and tells her to bring him with her in future, and so she does. The professor loves children and his relationship with her son, who he calls root because his head looks like the square root symbol, is very warm and endearing.

The book reminds me of a sort of mathematics imbued version of Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch, because the characters connect through the sport of Baseball, just as in the latter they connect over soccer. This all starts when the housekeeper finds a box of baseball cards in the professors cupboard.

Yoko Ogawa, the author, is knowledgable and able pass on her knowledge and passion for mathematics and numbers to the reade. The whole book is about finding ways to connect with people, about the joy and timelessness of numbers and their properties. Despite being a translation from Japanese to English, there's no mistaking the truth and warmth of this story.

In case it's not clear, highly recommended.

Only Yesterday

2011-02-06T20:16:00.001-08:00

This is my sixth review of Studio Ghibli movies. I watched "Only Yesterday", which is by the same director as Grave of the Fireflies (Isao Takahata). Disney own the US rights to this movie, and have not distributed it yet [ahem]. The main character, Taeko, appears in the story both as her grown up (27) self, and as a 5th grade schoolgirl.

This is a movie that accurately captures feelings of unachieved dreams, of living a life that your 5th grade self would not feel comfortable with. Bored with her city life in Tokyo, Taeko takes a trip to the country (Yamagata) to visit her sister inlaw. She meets Toshio, and works with him in the countryside where he is a farmer. Toshio is passionate about nature, organic farming, and this captivates Taeko.

The film keeps switching back and forth between our present day Taeko, and her 5th grade self. Her schooldays reflect the day to day ordeal of school social life, and her alienation from her parents. Her two sisters simply study and do well at school. But Taeko seeks a deeper understanding of the material, and finds it more difficult to learn what she needs to by passive acceptance and rote. This is interesting as I was exactly the same at school. She instead prefers to put effort into her own interests, and in going the extra mile in her minor part in a school play she is noticed by a town theatre company and asked to star in thir own production. Sadly her father does not see this as something good for her and prevents her from attending. Her relationship with her father is particularly difficult, as he is a stern and rough man.

The animation is realistic, especially in the facial expressions, although the 5th grade scenes are drawn in a simpler style, perhaps to contrast the simplicity of childhood against modern life. Only Yesterday portrays nicely not just falling in love with another person, but falling in love with another life, as one often does on vacation or when visiting another place. At times Taeko's 5th grade self is right there with adult Taeko in the same scenes, and perhaps this is the theme of the movie: your childhood self is always with you, and always you can judge yourself from those early innocent days, when the realities of adult life were not upon you, and the sky was the limit.

Book mini-reviews from 2010

2011-01-01T11:39:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting to mini-review the books I read in 2010 and New Years Day is a great time for that so here goes. I hope I don't forget too many of them, and they are in no particular order.

Life of Pi, Yann Martell

I started reading this years ago and wasn't at all interested in the first few pages, but a friend of mine urged me to try it again so I did. The quality of the writing is truly breathtaking; I sometimes take notes of my favourite parts, but there were so . I can't say much about the story without spoiling it, but I can say that although the story has a mundane start (a schoolboy talks about his life as the son of a zookeeper in India) it soon spins off into a dizzying adventure.

Very readable, full of vivid detail and exciting.

Beatrice and Virgil, Yann Martell

I was excited to read Martell's latest book, as it is a long awaited sequel to his prize winning Life of Pi. Surprisingly, this is a very different kind of book. The narrator is a succesful author, who has written a prize winning book and is trying to write a worthy sequel. Hm, sound familiar? The protagonist finds an interesting looking taxidermist store and befriends the owner. In fact, befriend is not quite the word since the store owner has very poor people skills to say the least. Nevertheless, recognizing his customer is a famous author, asks him for help writing his book "Beatrice and Virgil" which is an allegorical tail alluding to the Hollocaust.

Just like Life of Pi the writing is beautiful, but this is a very different kind of book to the adventure novel that Life of Pi is. This is more of a pondering and thoughtful story, where you're never quite sure whether you are hearing the words of the real life author, the books narrator, or the characters within the book. Can we say it's like the movie Inception, without the action and the girl?

Worth a read for sure.

The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

Beautifully written tale of a shepherd who leaves home to find his fortune. The core philosophy of the book is that if you really want something, the Universe will help you get it. Presumably you have to take the risks and put the effort in also.

Thanks to a friend for lending me this (she had 10 of them on her for a book club), and I read it in a day. Partly because it's short, and partly because I didn't want to stop reading.

Blink, Malcolm Gladwell

Having read "The Tipping Point" a while back I was keen to check out anything by Gladwell. Blink is about the subconscious and very rapid abilities of the human mind. There are examples of how succesful professionals working in Marriage Guidance, law enforcement, art valuation and medical diagnosis, use very short periods of experience to make succesful judgements. This being contrary to our expectations that a slow rigorous analysis should yield better solutions. It appears that in many cases, our gut feel is right.

Just like his previous books he talks with authority and depth on the subject, spinning his research into fascinating yarns that makes it a very enjoyable and informative read.

Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell

Just as in Blink, the anecdotes are richly detailed and compelling. This book is about the people that succeeded in life in a big way, and why. Comparing them with others around them that had the same level of intelligence or diligence, yet not the right environment. We like to think that hard work and talent can get you to the top, but this book explores the uncomfortable truth that the right school, the right neighborhood, the right race can make all the difference. Would Bill Gates have been the man he was if he hadn't had access to one of the very few time sharing computers in the US? If he hadn't had family connections to get his first programming work?

In addition to exploring the successes and how they may have been aided by their situation in life, he explores the failures. Christopher Langan, an extremely bright man with an IQ of 196 who now works on a horse farm. Born into an environment with nobody to help him, he had to find his own way. According to Gladwell the lack of an appropriate environment prevented Langan from achieving the academic and worldly success he could have had.

I can't help feeling that his examples of success are extreme "lottery win" kind of life stories not that applicable to 99.99% of most of the population. The same goes for Langan's story. How many people with exceptional minds would fail to get a scholarship and into a good college today? Only a very few outliers I would expect.

Summer Blonde, Adrian Tomine

This is one of many graphic novels I picked up in Vancouver Public Library, where they have an excellent selection. Summer Blonde is a collection of four short stories. They are pretty dark and gritty exposes of the lives of regular people. Both the characters and the artwork have a fine detail that makes it believable. The stories are of peoples difficulties relating to each other.

A Drifting Life, Yoshihiro Tatsumi

This is a beautiful looking book that I've seen in local bookstores a few times but didn't think it looked worth the $50 Canadian coverprice. Having picked it up at Vancouver Public Library I think I was right, but it was definitely a good read. In this manga work, Tatsumi writes the story of his late teens and early professional life. Full of detail and fascinating insights into the hard work and thought processes that go into becoming a huge success at what you do. Also you can enjoy it as a coming of age story, as Tatsumi and his peers emerge from their teens and become men in the real world. Even if you're not particularly interested in the technical and philosophical ideas of manga as Tatsumi discovers and relates them in the book, it's a very entertaining read.

Thirteen Tale, Diane Setterfield

One of the few I reviewed right after reading it. See here

Real World Haskell, O'Sullivan

A nice, fat, accessible book on Haskell. Just as the title promises it's filled with real world applicable code. For example a functioning bar code reader is developed, as well as examples of GUI, DB and web programming.

The beginning is well paced and I advanced quickly, but the mid-section of the book becomes a bit harder to follow and you find the code jumping through abstract looking hoops in order to complete the most basic of imperative tasks. I don't know if that's just the way Haskell is, or whether the authors just think that way.

Definitely worth using this book to kickstart your Haskell learning if you want to use the language.

The World According to Garp, John Fielding

Thanks to a twitter friend, I discovered this excellent John Fielding 1978 book. Something like a cross between Henry James and the UK's Tom Sharpe, this is funny, sexually explicit tale following the weird and exciting life of Garp, the illegitimate son of a large than life, rebellious and independent nurse. Like the author, who also spent time in Vienna, Garp and his mother also spend time in that city, but most of the story takes place in the up-market boarding school where Garp's mother takes care of the students.

Highly enjoyable, I look forward to reading more by Fielding.

Inu Yasha and Fruits Basket

Two of the biggest selling manga series, and I checked them out due to their ubiquity. Neither of them compelled me to read past the second book. They are probably aimed at teenage girls, but regardless I wasn't entertained in the least.

Genshiken, Shimoku Kio

This story of a group of Otaku college students who join and run a club called "The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture" is now my favourite manga series (although I have not read many), and I truly wish it were longer.

It follows the group through their college lives as they hang out, play video games, create and sell their own fan fiction and deal with the school administrators. Highly nerdy, it even includes reviews of characters from an imaginary video game at the end of each chapter. The characters are great, the story is epic in its lack of excitement, and yet compelling as hell. I love it.

Darwins Radio, Greg Bear

This scifi tale reads more like a Tom Clancy thriller, as scientists try to find a solution to a virus that is causing women to miscarry. It's about the characters conflicts with government agencies and corporate politics rather than futuristic science, and I didn't enjoy it that much. It was interesting to read up on some of the science behind the book though...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_retrovirus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer

Effective Java, Joshua Bloch

I read this book as I'm currently working a Java server that is designed to handle 10 to 50 thousand users at one time, so efficiency and concurrency is vital. Bloch is a fantastic communicator, and the book is very to the point, organised in highly effective (sorry) way.

That's all for now, there's another few I've forgotten that will appear in a later post.

Redeeming my family cook-cred with chicken in leek sauce

2010-12-04T13:29:00.000-08:00

COOKING FACTS

Time: 25 minutes

Score: 9/10

Jamie ate it: Yeah

The last couple of efforts I've made to wow Corbey and Jamie with my slow cooker stews and bean soups have not been wildly ecstatic. So, because we're going to be out this evening I decided to cook a nice lunch, with whatever we had around.

What we did have was half a packet of leek soup mix, which I used for one of my slow cooking recipes, some chicken, a lot of onions, peppers and potatoes. Oh, and some fresh parsley.

The result as you can see was sauteed chicken and vegetables with leek sauce. I added mostly milk and water to the sauce, but also some cooking white wine.

Potatoes were boiled then mashed with chopped fresh parsley, black pepper and butter.

Not an impressive or difficult meal by any means, but was a real hit with wife and kiddo! So I'm giving this one 9/10, since Jamie ate his plate clean. Most rare.

Not that this needs much explanation but the procedure was to soften the onions and peppers on low in a frying pan, with some salt and pepper and olive oil. Then I put those to the side and fried the chicken on medium high until brown. Then in a jug I added 1/2 cup of water and milk, and about 1/3 cup of cooking white wine and added that to the chicken with the leek soup mix.

After simmering for about 10 minutes it was good to go.

Slow cooking update

2010-11-23T09:29:00.001-08:00

So we just ate the meal I mentioned earlier . Although I had it cooking for 8 hours the potato's were still firm and not soft like I like them, but passable. Again I found the recipe kind of bland, I think I'd probably quadruple the amount of garlic and paprika next time, and this time it was saved by a lot of ground black pepper.

Still the recipe itself was good, the chicken and leeks were cooked perfectly. I added milk to the leek soup mix instead of just water, and I may try some light cream next time and some white wine.

Crockpot cooking

2010-11-20T17:45:00.000-08:00

From First snow 2010

I was rather disappointed with my cooking efforts last weekend. I made a stew in the slow cooker following this recipe:

http://family.go.com/food/recipe-cp-629856-chicken-and-sweet-potato-stew-t/

Copied from that site in case it moves:

Hands-On Time: 15 minutes

Ready In: 6 to 8 hours (LOW) or 3 to 4 hours (HIGH)

Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces

2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed

2 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cubed

2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1⁄2-inch slices

1 can (28 ounces) whole stewed tomatoes

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon celery seeds

1⁄2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1⁄8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1⁄8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 cup nonfat, low-sodium chicken broth

1⁄4 cup fresh basil, chopped

Directions

Combine the chicken, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, salt, paprika, celery seeds, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg and broth in the 4 1⁄2-quart CROCK-POT® slow cooker.

Cover; cook on LOW for 6 to 8 hours or on HIGH for 3 to 4 hours.

Since we didn't have a sweet potato I used some salad potatoes instead; the sweet potato seemed to be missed by the rest of the ingredients. Although it had potential it was a bit too watery (probably too much water), and a bit lacking in flavour. Also despite being on for 8 hours the potato's were not quite as soft as I'd have liked.

Although my wife Corbey said she liked it, and it was good enough for left overs the next day, Jamie wasn't keen, and I thought it was about a 6/10.

The only thing I improved upon from my earlier attempt at slow cooker stew was that I put the chicken at the top and the potatoes at the bottom. Carrots and tomatoes were in the middle. My instinct was to stir the whole concoction to get the flavours nicely mixed up, but that stopped the potatoes cooking properly, as they need to be in the hottest part of the pot at the bottom.

Anyway, I love stew and we have some leeks that need using so I'm trying this one tomorrow:

http://www.food.com/recipe/slow-cooker-potato-leek-chicken-192771

Copied:

Ingredients:

2 1/2-3 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs, can use any combo of boneless pieces

5 medium white potatoes, cut into small chunks

2 large coarsely chopped leeks, white and light green parts, washed well

1 (1 7/8 ounce) envelope leek soup mix

1 cup water

2 minced garlic cloves

1/4 teaspoon paprika

1/4 teaspoon pepper

salt, if needed to taste

Change Measurements: US | Metric

Directions:Prep Time: 10 minsTotal Time: 6 1/4 hrs

1place potatoes in slow cooker. Arrange chicken pieces on top of potato slices. Place leeks on top of chicken pieces.2In small bowl, whisk together leek soup mix, water, garlic, paprika and pepper until well-combined. Pour over top of everything in the crock pot.3Cover and cook on Low 5 to 6 hours or until chicken is no longer pink.4Add salt, if needed, to taste.

This time I've ensured we follow the recipe exactly, I went out and bought some white potato's and some leek soup mix, so I have my fingers crossed for something more in the 8/10 range.

Vacation day 7 : Valemount to Vancouver

2010-09-16T22:19:00.000-07:00

Date of trip 27/08

Distance travelled 746km

Valemount to Vancouver

This last day would be our longest drive so far, but by now we were confident veterans. We stopped halfway at Kamloops again, this time by accident we found the hotel we stayed in our honeymoon in 1999! Deciding to stop and check it out, we were hungry enough that a fried Breakfast at Denny's seemed like a good idea, and it certainly was. While we ate we got to listen in on a bunch of tweens comparing different pain killers in terms of the high, and the side effects. I remembered being in the hotel room back in 99 watching out the window as Friday night revellers stopped by Denny's, fighting and laughing with each other in the car park.

From Valemount to Vancouver

The drive from Kamloops to Mission went quick and soon we were in Langley but it seemed to take forever to get from there to Port Moody, even using the new toll bridge. I guess you get used to just hitting 120km along the highway, just slowing down for the occasional semi or RV as they struggle up the steep mountain roads.

From Valemount to Vancouver

We arrived home and back to summer, as it was still bright and sunny in the late afternoon when we got to our apartment. That was it, then end of the trip. In a week we'd covered over 3000km, and discovered a new Canadian city. Despite previously not being keen on the car part of the trip, I actually found it way more enjoyable than I expected, and it's so convenient on vacation to have your own vehicle with you. Now I'm wondering when we will next be able to spend the day at Waterworld, and at the same time planning a new road trip, this time south of the border, possibly to California!

Vacation day 6 : Edmonton to Valemount

2010-09-16T21:58:00.000-07:00

Date of trip Thu 26/08

Distance travelled 488km

Edmonton to Valemount

We got up early and spent an hour in the hotel pool, which we had to ourselves, then had cereal before starting the long drive home, which we would do in two parts. The first leg was to Valemount, which we'd already passed through, but today we would be spending the night at the Motel 7

From Edmonton to Valemount

It was the second last day of the vacation and my turn to drive, so Corbey directed me out of Edmonton, and it was her turn to make a mistake with navigation so we ended up driving around random suburbs, not for the first time, before we made our way back to the highway. On the way I noticed some cool place names like Camp He Ha Ho and a big Ranch called Mokoyoko (or something similar).

We stopped at Hinton for lunch which is about a third of the way to Valemount, and is a small town with some big stores and lots of chain restaurants. Sadly it would be our last fill up at Albertian gas prices.

From Edmonton to Valemount

Arriving at Jasper National Park gates we told the cashier we took the option to not pay the park fee, which means you're not allowed to stop in the park at all, but that was fine with us. It takes 40 minutes or so to drive through it and we had no time to visit Jasper again anyway. Although you're not allowed to stop in the rest areas, so this option means emptying your bladder before you enter.

The day was a little overcast, and Valemount was very quiet when we arrived in the early evening. The Super 8 motel was run by a young woman who seemed to do everything there; when she wasn't at the front desk greeting guests she was doing a tour of the rooms with towels, light bulbs and solving other problems. Despite her efforts there wasn't much that went smoothly with our stay. The room had only one bed instead of two, there weren't enough towels, and there was no lightbulb in our bedside lamp. So I took quite a few trips to the front desk. Jamie and I checked out the spa, which was one very old hot tub, a sauna that was marked closed with yellow tape and a steam room that was locked with a "staff only" sign on the door. Bizarrely it was one of the most expensive hotels on our trip, and she congratulated us on getting such a great rate.

From Edmonton to Valemount

Regardless we were comfortable in the hotel, and after a few minutes research I decided we were going to the Caribou Grill for dinner. The restaurant is a giant log cabin a couple of km off the highway, filled with authentic looking Cowboy and Indian knick knacks, including moose heads, saddles, bow and arrows and guns. I had a really good feeling about the place which increased when the waitress was super speedy and friendly. The food was fantastic, probably the best I've had in BC; I had Pork Tenderloin. In fact it was so good I had my arm twisted into having dessert. The NY Cheesecake was also excellent. It was about 9:30pm and dark when we left, happy, rosy faced and barrel shaped.

Caribou Grill

Happily we drove back to the hotel and went to bed. Next door to the hotel was a tiny greyhound depot, and a couple of times in the night a large bus arrived and backed up right past my window. Being a light sleeper I was wide awake for quite a bit of the night. Waking up about 6am I opened the curtains to find a large old bare chested man looking up at me from the patio, and disturbed I went back to bed for another hour.

From Edmonton to Valemount

Vacation day 5 : West Edmonton Mall - Galaxyland

2010-09-16T20:03:00.000-07:00

Edmonton day 2

After we ran around at Waterworld on Tuesday until we were exhausted we slept in a bit later today, but Corbey managed to get Jamie and I out of bed before the maids arrived, just. We had breakfast cereal in the hotel (yes I'm thrifty and I plan ahead) and went to the mall again for one more day.

From Edmonton day 2

First we went to Galaxyland, which like most of the mall is somewhat dated, and a few of the rides were closed for maintenance. The most exciting looking ride, a roller coaster, I couldn't quite bring myself to go on, because Jamie wasn't tall enough and would have been way to jealous. We did go on a medium sized roller coaster instead, and made up for the lack of extremity by screaming and laughing all the way around. Honestly, I didn't think Galaxyland was that great; and by the time I'd spent $50 on ride tickets and lost a few tokens in crappy broken arcade machines I was ready to check out the rest of the mall.

From Edmonton day 2

We had lunch in the food court, then checked out the ship in the centre of the mall, which is nicely maintained. It's a replica of the Santa Maria, the ship Columbus sailed to America. We paid a couple of bucks to go in it, and were apparently the only people inclined to do so. Funnily enough the ship was built in Vancouver and had made the same journey that we just had, also by road, to it's home in the WEM. One striking thing was how small the ship felt, when you considered that the crew of 30 lived below deck together for the 70 day long voyage.

From Edmonton day 2

Santa Maria

Also interesting, although we didn't go inside, was the Sealife Caverns. They have a giant tank right in the mall where sea lions and other large creatures do shows throuhgout the day. Without paying for the attraction you can watch the shows from behind a glass wall, just 15 feet or so back, which was fine for us. Throughout the day we did a bit of shopping, almost entirely window shopping. We took advantage of Alberta's low sales tax to buy clothes for Jamie, and he spent his saved up pocket money on an awesome Star Wars lego kit.

From Edmonton day 2

Next we played adventure golf, which was a little crowded so we spent more time waiting than playing shots, but pleasant enough for an hour of fun. Later in the evening we watched a handful of local kids, who could skate like NHL stars, whiz about on the ice rink in the centre of the mall, while we drank coffee in Tim Hortons and tried to ignore the staff mopping our feet to encourage us to leave.

From Edmonton day 2

Here's a handy page with the facts you need for WEM

Vacation day 4: World Waterpark

2010-09-12T18:14:00.000-07:00

On our first day at the West Edmonton Mall we went to the giant indoor World Waterpark.

I was excited about the waterpark, having spent many blissful hours in them in Majorca and Portugal as a kid. Jamie has been to some aquatic centres with wave pools and slides but nothing on this scale, so I was looking forward to his reaction too. In my research about the mall before the vacation I read that there may be a line up just to get in, and then lines on all the popular slides. So I bought tickets in the hotel on the way at a decent discount (they sell a ticket at a fixed price which you can use at the water park or as an unlimited ride ticket at Galaxyland), and we made sure we got there just before 10am when the pool opens.

As it turned out the line up was about 20 minutes if you don't have tickets, and only a minute or two if you did. There was plenty of family changing rooms, and it wasn't long before we'd put our belongings in the lockers (which are about $8 on top of admission). Shortly after that Jamie and I were heading to the very top of the park up a maze of staircases. Jamie and I came down a ride marked 'Extreme' first, which was a long and fast ride with lots of turns that whapped you into the side.

After that we went on all the slides, except I didn't let Jamie go on the big red ones that plummet straight down, almost vertically. I went on them and it was amazingly fast. My shorts were around my armpits as I plopped into the pool at the end, which was surprisingly deep. All the slides were fun, and in the morning there were no waits at all. As it got nearer to lunchtime the lines got a bit longer, and by the afternoon there was a 15-20 minute wait at the popular slides.

The wave pool is brilliant fun, with 5-6 foot waves coming in groups of 3 or 4. Each one would bring dozens of people on big yellow tubes (that you can rent) coasting right over our heads, and after each wave we'd try to find Jamie, who always managed to paddle off on his own just as the big wave was about to hit. None of us got hurt, but it's pretty wild with feet and legs flying everywhere as the waves roll by.

Also worth doing is a slide where you sit on a plastic float and then shoot down a 60 foot water slide and then skip along on top of the water at the bottom for another 60 feet. There's also a giant blue bowl which you slide into, then spin around before dropping through a hole in the bottom in the pool below.

For lunch we had hot dogs and chips at one of the cute little cafes dotted around the pool, and were quickly back in the water. We watched someone do a bungee jump, which is done over the end of the wave pool. Looked pretty wild, and I would have done it too, but my shoulder is not quite in one piece again yet since breaking it in a bike riding accident.

Although there's not much to write, it was the most fun day of the holiday. We were in the water park for from about 10am to 4pm in the afternoon. Once we were thoroughly exhausted from all the sliding, we went back to get changed. I vaguely remembered hanging my shirt up in the change room, but not putting it in my bag, so it turned out I'd lost it. It wasn't in the lost and found, so someday I may go back to Edmonton and see someone wearing the free shirt they got that day. Slipping back into my towel we slipped out the back door and went back to the hotel to get another one.

We returned the mall for further exploration, in particular the restaurant section which had a reasonable selection of different style restaurants. We decided on Mr Mikes, since Jamie and I were both in the mood for steak.

Feeling pretty tired after that we went back to the hotel and bought a movie on the hotel TV (Furry Vengeance).

West Edmonton World Waterpark

(The pictures from are from this Flickr stream, as we didn't want to take cameras in with us.)

Edmonton blog day 3

2010-09-11T02:29:00.000-07:00

Jasper to Edmonton

Date of trip Mon 23/08

Distance travelled 355km

Edmonton day 1

Since we'd already been to Jasper, albeit 11 years ago on our honeymoon, it was exciting to be heading for the first time into new territory. The last leg of our journey would take us from Jasper to Edmonton, and is about 4 hours along the Yellowhead Highway (AB-16). First though we decided to retread some old ground, and take a short drive to Pyramid Lake, just 10 minutes from the guest house in Jasper.

From Edmonton day 1

I wanted to go for a horse ride, but it turned out the stables near the lake were closed, but luckily the canoe rentals were not. While we considered whether to try it or not, another family with two young boys hopped into boats and paddled into the distance with little effort. Next to the lake is an up-market hotel and restaurant, which takes care of the boat and bike rentals. We rented a big canoe, put on life jackets and paddled into the lake.

From Edmonton day 1

There were some scary moments as the canoe was very sensitive to tipping, and Jamie, wanting to help, kept leaning right over the boat to stick his oar in (literally). So it was that the Heyes-Jones family made it's way, neither effortlessly or quietly, into the centre of the lake. Making pretty good progress we paddled around corner out of view of the hotel (and any chance of a rapid rescue) and towards a small island. Despite the sun, the morning was cold, and once around the corner there was a strong breeze trying to turn the canoe. So it was, that after an hour we arrived back at the boat rental with dirty hands and bright red faces with the effort of paddling.

From Edmonton day 1

Leaving Jasper, we stopped in the Petro Canada and spent a small fortune on chips, gas and coffee, realising by now that you can't eat too much on a road trip (you somehow burn calories just sat there in the driving seat). Although we were now in Alberta so gas was about $0.86 per litre, compared with about 30c more back in Vancouver.

From Edmonton day 1

Not long after leaving Jasper, the mountains suddenly fall behind you, and in their place is a giant blue sky. There's not much between Edmonton and Jasper, as far as I could tell, except for farm land; wery much like the England green hedge lined countryside I grew up in fact, except scaled up to fill this vast flat area.

From Edmonton day 1

There are a couple of small towns you can stop in along the highway but we had plenty of supplies so stopped only in a rest area. On the way I was delighted to see what looked like a large grey fox running along the median. Jamie and Corbey were less delighted as they didn't see it time.

We arrived in Edmonton in the early evening, and I used my smartphone with GPS and google maps to drive us to the wrong part of the city in rush hour (I guess it's not smart enough to know when the user doesn't type the post code in correctly), so we spent 30 minutes touring the road works on Whitemud Drive. We also incidentally drove to the campus of the University of Alberta, instead of the West Edmonton Days Inn Hotel.

On reaching the right area for the Days Inn, we couldn't see it anywhere, and I, not trusting my smartphone any more, decided to use it as a dumb phone and call the hotel for directions. Unfortunately I'd used up the battery almost completely, and the hotel put me on hold. Still they came back on the line just in time, and were friendly and helpful despite the fact that we were getting tired and our brains were mush.

After checking in to our hotel room, which was really nice and a 5 minute drive from the West Edmonton Mall (WEM), Jamie and I hit the pool which we had to ourselves. It was deep and pretty big for a hotel pool, with a hot spa on the side. After that we showered and went for dinner. It was about this point I just gave up on navigating in Edmonton and let Corbey take care of it. The maze of one way streets were a puzzle I was not quite in the mood to solve. We had dinner at the Olive Garden which is a family favourite; the service was good and friendly which was a distinct pattern we were noticing with Edmonton folk.

That evening we were itching to check out WEM, so even though it was due to close any minute we drove over there to investigate. Looking through the windows at a giant rollercoaster got Jamie super excited. We were able to wander through the mall, even though the stores were closing, and plan out our next couple of days. Jamie was blown away by Galaxy Land, Water World, and the fact that there is a full size ship right in the mall.

From Edmonton day 1

Finally we went back to the hotel and settled into the giant comfortable beds.

Road trip to Edmonton day 2

2010-09-04T11:17:00.000-07:00

Clearwater to Jasper

Date of trip Sun 22/08

Distance travelled 317km

Clearwater to Jasper

We woke up to the sound of light rain, and Jamie enjoyed riding his bike around the big car park while we packed. Then we crossed the street to the restaurant attached to the Motel, the Dutch Lake Village Restaurant. In the evenings this is a Chinese buffet, but in the mornings they make great fried breakfasts. In fact in the evening before I had been dreaming of bacon and egg, so I was delighted. The food was good quality, not obscenely greasy, and the waitress super efficient.

From Clearwater to Jasper

Hitting the road again, this time Corbey as the wheel, we drove about 200km before stopping in Valemount for lunch. When we arrived we'd reached that critical level of hunger where you don't want to spend a lot of time looking for food, so we decided to go to a gas station and buy sandwiches. Corbey couldn't find anything she liked in the two we tried, so as a little black cloud grew over my head we got creative. Seeing a little cafe with a sign for sandwiches, I went inside. Turned out the store was actually a launderette, busy with hikers and campers and the air thick with steam and soap smells. As we were about to turn around a little lady came out of a side door, and showed us that she had a little kitchen and dining area (with exactly one table) set up in the other side of the store. So there we sat, the three of us, as she brought out a pretty nice selection of sandwiches and some great coffee. Even better while we ate she entertained all of us with stories of bear encounters with campers in the night. Her eyes even looked a little bit bear-like and I couldn't help entertaining the idea that maybe she turns into a bear at night! Turned out to be a lot more interesting than eating Petro Canada sandwiches in a minivan.

From Clearwater to Jasper

Just outside Valemount we stopped at the majestic Rearguard Falls, recommended to us by the bear-lady, who told us we may see salmon jumping up-stream. We didn't see any, and it looked virtually impossible against the sheer power of the water. But I know from the fact that Salmon are not extinct that they must be able to do it, which is incredible.

Shortly after that we arrived at the Jasper park gates and I paid the $20 for a 24 hour park pass. You only need this if you intend to stop in the park, which also includes pulling off the highway for any kind of break. In our case we were intending to stay the night.

From Clearwater to Jasper

Arriving in the town of Jasper late afternoon we were pleased to find a warm welcome from the lady that runs the Miette Guest House, and even thought it was slightly older and smaller than the other grand houses on the street, it was very clean and nice inside. Built on a slight slope, most of the house was at the back at basement level and hidden from the street. There are about six rooms, and the one we had was big enough to run around in, and Jamie set about doing that right away, possibly to the annoyance of the more grown up and sedate other guests.

Once our baggage was dumped in the room we returned to the main street, which was just a few minutes walk from the guest house. Accidentally I was seperated from my smartphone for the first time since I bought it a week prior, and made more of a fuss about it then I ought to have. Meanwhile Jamie found a toy shop and several desirable purchases there. I told him that since we were going to be in the West Edmonton Mall in just a couple of days, he would have to wait until then for a better selection (and non-tourist priced toys).

For dinner I had a fairly reasonable Lasagne at a Greek Restaurant called Something Else. The service was quick and friendly.

From Clearwater to Jasper

Despite Vancouver still being lit with warm summer sunlight, Jasper was pretty cold, and somehow I'd managed to arrive with no rain coat or even a sweater of any kind. I got cold enough we checked out the local gift shops, but the cheap "Jasper" sweaters were so crappy I didn't think it was worth it and decided to risk dying of cold instead.

There's not a lot to see in the town really, once you've eaten and done any shopping, there's just the bars and movie theatre left. It's strange, but because the town of Jasper is built facing a railway, and the view is obstructed by goods trains, it has a very beach front feel to it. There's a pretty cool train and tourist centre, so we checked those out before returning to the guest house.

Road trip to Edmonton day 1

2010-08-31T20:12:00.001-07:00

Port Moody to Clearwater

Date of trip Sat 21/08

Distance travelled 465km

Edmonton trip day 1 picasa album

We set off about 10am and made a stop in Abbotsford to refuel the car at Petro Canada and ourselves at Tim Hortons. In about 2 hours we got to Hope, about 145km and stopped at Othello Road to check out the Othello Tunnels; a series of railway tunnels (date). Quite beautiful scenery as the railway ran alongside a crystal clear river threading it's way through the Coquihalla Valley. The tunnels are 5 minutes drive from the highway, and the walk took about an hour including stopping for a quick picnic lunch on the way. Jamie had a great time climbing the rock walls and looking into caves.

From Edmonton trip day 1

We continued up the BC-5 for another hour or so, and our next stop was for drinks and snacks at Merrit, BC. All we knew about that city was that there is a music festival there every year. The highway looks down at the city which is about 10 minutes from the exit, and spreads out across the bottom of the valley. Driving into the city was a sparse and dated looking light industrial area which did not look very active, and when we reached the downtown area we saw this amazing looking hotel and bar. Pulling over to take a shot of it we parked outside a store and intended to look for a little cafe to grab a drink. Some interesting looking characters came out of the place which turned out to be a liquor store, and after 15 minutes of walking around we figured out that nearly every body in that part of town was pretty drunk or otherwise messed up. On that basis we decided not to carry on looking for a quaint local coffee shop and instead hit up a Petro Candada/7 Eleven instead.

From Edmonton trip day 1

Seems like Merrit, which was a booming town at one time due to the railway stopping there, at least the old downtown area is somewhat down on its luck. The Hotel we photographed, which has an ornate copper turret, was closed due to fire damage, yet was once the best hotel in the interior. The Southern end of the town, which we passed only on the way out, seems to be sprouting up brand new condos, fast food and the big box stores you see anywhere else in the country.

As we left Merrit and continued North the air started to darken with smoke from forest fires burning in the Cariboo. We drove through literally hundred kms of mountain road where the trees were sparse and had been burned to black sticks by previous fires, which gave this part of the journey a somewhat post-apocalyptic feel.

From Edmonton trip day 1

By late afternoon we arrived at Kamloops, which was also smokey enough there was a dark haze across the sky, and you could both smell the smoke and fell it as a dryness on your tongue. We drove down to the waterfront park, where, despite the smoke, plenty of kids were playing in the water park, and mine soon joined them. Exploring the beach we found a dead fish that had been stripped of its insides, presumably by hungry creatures, and we decided it was time to eat. Without the energy or the time to try a local restaurant we decided to head out of town to a large commercial area just off the highway. After having Wendy's for dinner where the staff were notably pleasant, we continued on our way.

From Edmonton trip day 1

It's 124km to our first hotel, the Dutch Lake Motel in Clearwater. This is a pretty old place, but set on a lake front just off the highway. They offer canoe hire and free wifi. The rooms were large and clean with everything we needed, and we took advantage of the large property to take a walk to the lake shore as the sun set. Jamie also enjoyed riding his bike around the big quiet car park.

Laputa: Castle in the Sky

2010-08-07T20:06:00.000-07:00

In this, my fifth Studio Ghibli movie review, I look at the 1986 work Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Based in a world where people once lived in the sky, some disaster had brought everybody down to earth again. The Castle in the Sky is the last city still airborne, lost to the modern world and hidden amongst storm clouds.

As with virtually all the movies from SG, the story is told from the point of view of children. Sheeta, a girl who seems to have some connection with Laputa, and a magical pendant, teams up with Pazu (who's adventurer father had taken a picture of the Castle in the Sky).

Sheeta and Pazu are pursued by sinister government agents and a gang of pirates lead by an old woman called Dola (who looks very like Yubaba, the witch from Spirited Away).

The movie was somewhat disappointing as it is an epic tale, but compared with more recent SG movies it looks rather dull. Although it has plenty of action and some hilarious slap stick comedy moments, it doesn't have a lot of character and life, and I didn't feel that emotionally involved with the characters.

The sound track is lively and simplistic 80's music, which sounds somewhat retro now (in a good way).

Laputa's story has a slightly environmentally friendly feel to it which I liked, at one point Sheeta recites:

Put down roots in the Earth;

Let's live with the wind;

With seeds, make fat the winter;

With the birds, let's sing of spring.

Grave of the Fireflies

2010-07-26T21:33:00.000-07:00

Fourth in my reviews of Studio Ghibli movies, is Grave of the Fireflies. Made in 1988 this is the only Studio Ghibli movie which Walt Disney does not have the US distribution rights for, as it was made with Shinchosha, the company which published the book by the same name. (All the movies are funded by a parent company called Tokuma Shoten).

That the story is semi-autobiographical makes it all the more heart breaking, yet that is also probably the reason the movie is so human, and so authentic.

The city of Kobe in Japan was fire bombed on March 17th, 1945. Over 300 US bombers took part in the attack which targeted the wooden homes of civilians, and in the resulting fire storms over 8000 people lost their lives. This tale begins at the end, in Tarantino style, with the death of a pre-teen boy, Seita, and his younger sister Setsuko. He dies of exhaustion and starvation in a busy train station, where his dead body is treated as an annoyance by callous cleaners. His spirit rises from the body and he walks out to meet his little sister who is waiting for him. They are lit by the rosy glow of fireflies fluttering in the night.

Then we return the real beginning, as sirens wail and they make preparations to head for the bomb shelters before the bombers arrive. Their mother rushes off, leaving Seita and Setsuko and telling them to meet her their quickly. Caught in the fire bombing, yet escaping injury they flee to a river bank where they wait in relative safety.

Injured in the firestorm, their mother can no longer take care of them, their father is in the Navy at war, and Seita and his younger sister go to live with their extended family. The woman treats them cruelly and eventually they decide to leave, and find an abandonded bomb shelter by a lake. Things get much worse as their rice supplies dwindle and Seita turns to more extreme measures to support them.

Things continue much like that, and it sounds like a very grim tale, and not at all entertaining. But as with movies like Schindlers List, what makes the story worth telling is not the terror and the stalk reality of adult war meeting the innocent world of child, but the humanity and hope, that can prevail, even if only ephemerally.

Seita is the perfect big brother, doing everything he possibly can to mitigate their terrible circumstances; even braving air raids to steal from empty homes. Setsuko is a bubbly and happy girl, always playing and shouting for her sibling with a cute little voice. Firelies being a theme of the movie, she collects together a handful that have died, their fire extinguished, and makes them a little grave by their lake.

What stands out in the movie is the active cruelty towards the children, or at best callous disregard for their plight, and in contrast is the hope and dogged determination that Seita instills.

Although it's a very grim story, it is never overtly graphic or horrific. Probably not recommended for young children, but I wouldn't be over-squeemish about showing this to older children.

As you can see in these screen shots, the orange glow of fireflies is used to great effect to emphasize the warmth of the relationship between Seita and his little sister. A cute little box of candy lasts the duration of the movie, and mirrors the gradual decay and eventual resurrection in the after life of the two children.

Finally an amusing fact; this grim anti-war movie was released as a double-feature in Japan with the much more light hearted My Neighbour Totoro! Quite a contrast. Although not a great success financially at the box office in Japan, the sale of Totoro toys (Cat Bus and Totoru) soon made up for that, and firmly established Studio Ghibli for it's future movies.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

2010-07-10T11:01:00.000-07:00

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind was made before Studio Ghibli existed but is often included in their list of works, and is really the beginning of the studio. I watched a pretty decent dubbed version with voices from the likes of Alison Lohman and Uma Thurman. Alison's voice is really perfect for the main characters voice; the princess of the valley known as Nausicaa.

The movie was made in 1984, and the music is very 80's; sounding somewhere between a sleazy porn movie and an 8-bit video game. The movie looks very surreal, being set in a post-apocalyptic world where most of the planet is covered by a toxic jungle. Humans cannot enter the jungle without masks to prevent them being poisoned by spores. It is filled with dangerous creatures, including giant Ohm's, which are huge caterpillar like things, covered in eyes which glow red with fury when they are provoked.

Nausicaa is a princess loved by her people; who is able to communicate with and calm the creatures of the jungle, as well as people. She's a genuine hero, she flies a jet glider skillfully, she always does the right thing, she's an environmentalist and animal lover. Needless to say when her world is threatened, we feel bad for her and want to save it.

It's definitely one of the best SG movies so far, and my son who is 8 loved it too; one that we will watch again and again.

My Neighbors the Yamadas

2010-07-03T19:36:00.000-07:00

My Neighbors the Yamadas is the 12th movie put out by Studio Ghibli. Based on a Yonkoma manga (Yonkoma manga consists of funny comic strips with 4 panels) called Nono-chan, the movie brings to life the Yamada family; a typical Japanese working family.

It's a totally different style to the other movies. Instead of anime the movie looks like the original manga and is brought to life. The backgrounds are mostly left black and white, while the characters are coloured as if painted. Despite the simplicity of the drawings the animation and attention to real world detail makes it all come to life convincingly.

Rather than one long story, the movie is split into a series of individial events in the Yamada's family, most ending with a haiku in calligraphy by a famous Japanese poet. Examples would be losing your child in the mall, or trying to get your son to study. I can also relate to the scene where the father wants his family to come and have their picture taken in the first snow of the year, but they are watching TV, so he puts the camera on the TV and takes the picture anyway.

There is a real warmth in the humour; the characters love each other and that shows through even when they are tired and irritable. This is something like a Japanese version of the Simpsons, where families are not always looking out for each other, children do not want to study, and the father does not love his job.

This is now one of my favourites SG movies; it's not only very funny and full of observations on life that cross over from Japanese culture to Western, it is also deep on occasion, and explores what it really means to be a family.

You can read more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Neighbors_the_Yamadas

Whisper of the Heart

2010-06-27T11:33:00.000-07:00

I'm on a mission to watch and review all 19 movies from Studio Ghibli. This weekend I watched 'Whisper of the Heart', their 10th movie.

This is probably the SG movie with the least actual magic in it; the animals don't talk (but they do ride trains!). But it is a really nice coming of age or first love story about a school girl called Shizuki. The theme song of the movie is John Denver's "Country Roads", which Shizuki translates into Japanese for a school project, and also writes her own lyrics for based on her own life in a Tokyo suburb.

A sad fact about the movie I found on the wikipedia page, linked below, is that the director of this movie died just a few years later from an aneurism. He was expected to be a successor to the directors Miyazaki and Takahata.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper_of_the_Heart_(film)

Like most of the other movies the children are the main characters of the story, and are left to roam the streets of a Tokyo suburb late at night. The parents expect the kids to take care of themselves and also make the dinner and do a lot of house work; I hope my son takes notes on how lucky he is!

One thing that struck me about this movie is how beautiful and detailed the interiors are; for example this scene in Shizuki's kitchen.

The city scenes are also incredibly rich, with subtle details bringing everything to life. The animation of cars, trains and especially the bike riding of Shizuki's friend Seiji is extremely convincing.

Whilst there is no actual magic in this movie, there are some really beautiful moments. It's not just a story of high school sweet hearts; it's about ambition, artistic endeavour and whether to risk it all for your dreams or take the safer path.

Chili soup

2010-06-20T23:02:00.000-07:00

Didn't have a lot of time or ingredients, but this turned out quite well since we made some fresh bread to go with it.

Ingredients

6 cups water

1 tsp ground cumin

4 tbsp chilli powder

salt and black pepper

12 oz can of crushed tomatoes

3 bulbs of garlic, thickly slice and crushed

12 oz can of red kidney beans

1 cup of white long grain rice

1 cup frozen peas or corn

Splash of cooking white wine

Method

Pretty much stick it all in the pot; bring it to the boil and simmer for 40 minutes.

Except the rice is best cooked separately then added near the end to stop it getting too soggy.

I made this in the morning with the bread, so that it could be just reheated when we got home after our day out.

Jamie (age 8) wasn't too keen but my wife, Corbey loved it, at least after I had dumped a fistful of shredded cheddar cheese on the top.

Making ginger beer

2010-06-18T17:02:00.000-07:00

Having never made ginger beer, and casually mentioning to my friend that I was going to "make ginger beer" at the weekend, last Saturday I decided to give a go. The first google hit for "making ginger beer" is here:

http://thehowzone.com/how/making_ginger_beer

Well the website is awesome; it had all the info I needed. I did intend to read the web page, then go out shopping for the ingredients and any equipment I didn't have. In fact I was able to put everything together that I needed with a couple of modifications.

I've also changed the ingredient measurements to be metric, since I'm up in Canada. eh.

What on Earth is Ginger Beer?

It's a drink made from ginger; yeast is added to make it fizzy. It's about 1% alcoholic; so not at all really.

How long does it take?

Only a couple of days, you can do it one day if you get up early.

What are the ingredients?

2 cups of white granulated sugar
1 piece of ginger size of an apple core (probably needed twice as much really, I added a tbsp of powdered ginger)
1/2 tbsp Bread machine yeast
4 litres of water
Few drops of lemon juice
1/2 tsp of cream of tarar (this is a powder you'll find in the spices section in the grocery store)

What equipment do you need?

Large pan
Plastic drink bottles (enough to hold 4 liters. In my case I used two 2l bottles, but I think 6 330ml would be better)

Method:

Fill your bottles to the top then pour them into the pan, add an extra cup of two of water to allow for what gets boiled away.
Chop the ginger up into 1mm thick slices, including the skin, then mash it up with a fork and stick it in the pot to boil
Add the cream of tartar and lemon juice, and the sugar

Put the yeast in a 1/4 cup of lukewarm water. Sprinkle it on the top and let it fizz happily. Added a few grains of sugar too.

Boil it for about 15 minutes to get all the flavour out of the ginger root.

Then I took the pot and stuck it in my kitchen sink filled with cold water and big ice packs, so it cooled down quick.

Once the water is just warm again, throw the yeast in there and stir it around. I put a loose fitting lid on the pot.

Come back in about 2-3 hours. You should have the start of 'activity' on the top. Froth basically. Now you can pour the liquid from the pot into another pot through a sieve to get the big bits of root ginger and so on out.

Then pour the liquid into the bottles. Don't fill them all the way, you need 6-7 cm at the top.

The ginger beer can now brew overnight. In the morning stick it in the fridge. Once chilled you can drink it!

In my case it turned out really tasty and fizzy. Apparently the bottles can explode, so when brewing I would make sure they are somewhere you will find easy to clean up. Also check the pressure every 20 minutes or so by squeezing the bottles.

Save the Green Planet

2010-05-15T02:15:00.000-07:00

I always love watching Japanese movies because the stories are so utterly bizarre. Well 'Save the Green Planet' is not at all Japanese, it's Korean, but it is a pretty weird story!

You're never quite sure whether this is an horrific psycho torture movie, a sci-fi movie, or a psychological thriller. In fact it's a bit of all these genres and perhaps a cop drama too.

To do the movie a great injustice by trying to capture it in a nut shell, this is about a young couple who kidnap the executive of a large corporation, because they believe he is a member of an alien race. Keeping him locked up and subjecting him to various horrible tortures (which are not shown in any kind of graphic detail, but are still unpleasant), they try to determine if he really is who they think he is.

In the meantime borderline-cliche rookie cop and disgraced veteran cop duo, team up and try to track down and rescue the executive.

Never boring; fast paced but quite long, and filled with that brilliant Korean mix of warm humour and shocking violence.

Conclusion: Another brilliant Korean movie, definitely enjoyed this one a lot.

JSA

2010-05-15T01:46:00.000-07:00

Brief movie review. Just watched Korean movie "Joint Security Area". From the box art I was expecting an action movie for some reason, but although this does contain short scenes of graphic violence and gun fighting, the story is told with a lot of humour and the characters share some very warm and touching scenes.

Set on the border of the two Korea's, the story is based on a true story where two North Korean border guards were killed. Investigating what happened is a member of the verbosely titled "Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission" , who is a woman, and very cute (Lee Young Ae).

The characters are utterly convincing, the cinematography is quite arty in places, but never indulgent. The story is told in a typical Tarantino (start at the end and then flashback to figure it out) style, and unsurprisingly is supposed to be one of his favourite movies.

Definitely worth watching, although I did find it a little hard to follow in places. You can probably blame that on my inattention, or the subtitle quality of the version I watched.

My Sassy Girl

2010-05-04T20:16:00.001-07:00

I don't think I've reviewed a movie before but I really enjoyed this movie from Korea called My Sassy Girl (trailer).

Apparently in Korean it means That Bizarre Girl, and there is a hollywood remake of the same name which I will touch on briefly also (and a Japanese one which I haven't seen yet),

In order to avoid repeating the wikipedia page I'll simply link to it now so you will know if I do.

The movie is about a guy (called Gyeon-woo) who sees a drunk girl swaying about on a train platform and saves her from possibly falling into the track a train comes. Following that he ends up taking care of her all night, including helping her into a hotel bed. In somewhat conservative Seoul you can't just drag a drunk girl into a motel at night, and soon the police show up and Gyeon-woo is arrested. Soon after she calls him, and arranges to meet him to find out what happened. They end up in a relationship where the girl is clearly in charge, bossing him about, yet he is soon head over heals in love with her.

There's no need for me to rehash the plot or the wikipedia page, but personally I can't recommend this movie highly enough. The music is fantastic (ok I like jazz) and the production standards are very high. The movie is very moving but also very funny. Even watching the movie with poorly translated English subtitles you can see it's a very well written script.

In Asian this movie was huge in the early 2000's, comparable to Titanic in the West, but I only came across it recently when a buddy recommended it, so hopefully if anyone reads this blog I will get a few more people to watch it.

It's a 10/10, you have to see it!

On the Hollywood remake of the same name... well it's the same story, the script is similar, the casting is, well, it's not bad. But really the movie is a pale imitation of a work of art. Probably not worth watching at all. In fact I was physically cringing at some of the most beautiful moments of the story, as the lines from the original were replayed without any of the life and truth.

Stir fry of some kind

2010-05-04T20:05:00.000-07:00

No family at home tonight so I was free to cook whatever I want. I had some deep fried Tofu and Bruised Garlic Chilli sauce from T&T so I decided to make a stir fry using those. Seeing as I worked until 6pm and didn't get home until 7pm this a great meal to do in a hurry.

In addition to the Tofu I fried some freshly chopped garlic, ginger and green (or spring) onions, lightly in peanut oil.

After a few minutes I added three baby bok choy and a couple of dessert spoons of the chilli sauce.

The end result was delicious, the sauce is not super spicy, but for kids or people not of a spicy persuasion maybe half a dessert spoon of the sauce would be fine. I served this over steamed rice.

Justin's first Korean BBQ

2010-04-18T20:18:00.000-07:00

I've been planning on having a go at making Korean BBQ since going to Seoul on a business trip in November, and today I finally got around to it.

We went to H-Mart off Lougheed Highway in Burnaby, which is a Korean grocery store and picked up a pot of Kimchi, some Beef ribs and Pork belly cuts (both already sliced for BBQ) and a couple of marinades.

So I barbecued the pork first out on the deck on a small butane grill, half of it in the spicy marinade and half without. The pork belly was quite fatty, and as it cooked the BBQ was pretty wild, I was in a fireball at one point wondering whether to pull the plug, but eventually the meat looked ready and once off the grill everything calmed down.

I served the meat as it was ready, with bowls of Kimchi, sea salt, sliced fresh garlic and chopped spring onions. As I suspected it was a bit too spicy for Jamie, but he loved the non-marinated meat. He liked the Kimchi though, and even drank the juice from the bottom of the pot.

Next up the Beef ribs. This was a lot better behaved on the BBQ as it was a lot more lean. The marinade I had for the beef was dark and sweet flavour, with no spice, so Jamie loved that and probably ate almost a pound of the grilled meat.

My verdict ... it's pretty easy to make Korean BBQ and Jamie quite happily will eat spicy Kimchiand raw garlic when there is grilled meat involved.

From Justin's first Korean BBQ

Easter Cooking

2010-04-03T13:15:00.000-07:00

Having watched the first couple of episodes of Jamie Olivers' new TV show, Food Revolution, it's a good job I cooked a couple of healthy meals yesterday and planned to do the same today. That makes me wonder if perhaps most of the people watching this show will already be interested in healthy cooking and that the person that eats mostly fat and frozen food will be watching the other channel.

Anyway, this Italian tomato pasta dish I made yesterday turned out really good so I wanted to write it down.

From Easter weekend cooking

Ingredients

Can of chopped tomatoes

About 1tsp of fresh basil

Handful of Cilantro

3-4 cloves of garlic thinly sliced and chopped

Whole white onion coarsely chopped

1/2 cup of red wine

Oregano

Ground black pepper

One tin Tuna broken up

1/2 tsp of chilli powder

1oz cooked pasta (fusili or whatever)

Method

I chopped the onion quite thickly then fry it on medium eat in large lumps, which seems to leave more of the flavour in. After 5-6 minutes I added the garlic and cook that through without browning. At about ten minutes add the wine, maybe a bit of water too, and stir in the onions and the rest of the ingredients. Cook through and serve with the pasta.

From Easter weekend cooking

On Friday evening we had a selection of cooked meats, blue cheese and crackers, and a quick salad with Asian Sesame seed dressing. Does that count as cooking? Not really but it was good.

On Saturday morning Jamie insisted on Macaroni and cheese for lunch, so I made him some from a recipe I found on the internet (see link at the bottom of the post).

From Easter weekend cooking

This is pretty much the same as packet mac and cheese which he loves so much, but it's a lot lower in sodium man-made chemical nonsense. It's also got fresh vegetables in it and almonds also add a lot of good nutrients. According to the recipe it's a good source of vitamin A and D, as well as calcium.

Unfortunately, he didn't like it. In the end we had to stir hot dog in it to get him to eat any at all, which is a shame, but I tried.

http://healthycooking.suite101.com/article.cfm/healthy_macaroni_and_cheese

The 13th Tale

2010-03-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

This is the first book by Diane Setterfield, but after finishing it I will immediately check out whatever she puts out next. The story starts of slowly, but it quickly builds up momentum until it becomes an unrelenting compulsive read.

Her writing is quite brilliant. There are passages I'm tempted to copy out in this blog post, but really it's far better to discover them in context.

It's hard to get people to read a new author, and even harder to get them to read a book that's hard to classify in a certain genre... is this horror, mystery, crime, psychological drama? Yes, it's kind of all of those. But just ignore my ability to enthuse and check it out!

Pea Soup

2010-01-29T20:55:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I made a pea soup from this recipe :

16 oz green split peas, dried
10 cups water
1 onion, chopped
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1 bay leaf
2 large carrots, chopped
3 medium potatoes, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped

source: http://vegetarian.about.com/od/soupsstewsandchili/r/splitpeasoup.htm

So the method, like with any soup, is super simple. Just put it all in the pot. You can blend it a bit to make it thicker, and I did blend only about 1 cup, but that was enough to make this soup super gloppy! I really liked it, but it was a little bland, if you don't like peas. To liven it up a bit you can sprinkle cracked black pepper or paprika on the top. I added a drizzle of olive oil but that wasn't to my taste, and when I had seconds it was better without it. I also doubled the amount of spices here, and used organic roasted garlic from a jar.

You need to serve it with decent bread. I got a large block of white bread from Cobbs which is a good bakery here, although if I wasn't making this for Corbey too, I would have bought something wholegrain, preferably covered in seeds.

This made enough to feed us all for one lunch and store two quart pots of it the freezer for another time. In order to get Jamie to eat this I added some shredded ham, although I think hot dog sausages would work really well too.

Korean lunch

2010-01-23T18:44:00.001-08:00

Last week I bought some Kimchi from H-Mart, one of the local Asian food stores, and some Spam and today I thought I'd go Korean for lunch. I made something I found online called Kim-chi Bo-kum-bop (Kimchi Fried Rice)

From Cooking Jan 10

So I simply made some plain rice, fried some onion, garlic, (low sodium) soy sauce and spam in a pan. Then I threw in half a cup of Kimchi and the rice and that was it. Actually since Jamie (7) was going to have this too, I put his out before stirring the Kimchi in, so he could try it seperately first. (His conclusion, it's spicy but I like it).

From Cooking Jan 10

Then I stuck fried eggs on top. This is a delicious lunch!

From Cooking Jan 10

Possibly could be improved with some sesame seeds or I could have fried in a nutty oil instead of olive oil.

Sweet potato and chicken stew

2010-01-22T15:00:00.000-08:00

From korea penultimate day

I decided to bring out my slow cooker at the weekend and make something tasty. I found this recipe on the crock-pot website that sounded perfect.

http://www.crock-pot.ca/recipe/chicken-and-sweet-potato-stew.aspx

There was a problem though; the cooking time was way off for my cooker. I start it at 10am so it should have been ready 6 to 8 hours later. Unfortunately by 4pm, 6 hours in, the potatoes were nowhere near done. So I put the cooker onto high and hoped for the best. It was until 7pm that the potatoes were even starting to soften, so we ate it at that point.

Since then I've learned that you need to put vegetables that take longer to cook at the bottom of the pot where it is hotter. In the case of this recipe the potatoes should be at the bottom, followed by carrots, then sweet potatoes. Surprisingly the chicken would be at the top. I would have thought that the meat would need more heat.

Regardless, the stew was really tasty; I used a little tube of basil because the store had run out of fresh basil, so hopefully I can fix that next time.

Recipe reproduced here:

Chicken and Sweet Potato Stew

Ingredients:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces

2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed

2 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cubed

2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch slices

1 28-oz can whole stewed tomatoes

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/8 tsp ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp celery seed

1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped

1 cup nonfat, low sodium chicken broth

Directions:

Combine all ingredients in the slow cooker. Cover; cook on Low for 6 to 8 hours or on High for 3 to 4 hours.

This recipe is from www.crock-pot.ca.

Eden and the Fall of Man. Part 2, Take it or Leave it?

2010-01-12T21:59:00.000-08:00

In a previous blog entry I was talking about John Milton's retelling of the Garden of Eden. To begin this second part I'd like to recount briefly the original source for the story, which is told in the first chapters of the Book of Genesis, which appears not only in the Christian Old Testament but also in the Hebrew Bible and the first five books of the Torah, and is most likely a collection of stories, passed on orally, a millenium or more BC, in the Middle East.

In Genesis God makes the Earth and makes Adam out of a handful of dust from the ground, and delivers him to the Garden of Eden where He has caused to "grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil." In other words Adam has everything he needs to eat, he doesn't need to grow anything or hunt. God also provides him with a companion, Eve. What is explicit in this story is that the Garden of Eden is made for humans: "God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.". So God is a human, and further, everything on Earth is for humans.

As discussed in the last post, the tree of knowledge of good and evil is placed in the garden as some kind of obedience test. The two humans are told that they will die if they eat from it, and satan shows up to tempt Eve, saying "in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Eve eats the fruit and shares it with Adam. God arrives finding them hiding themselves with fig leaves, suddenly ashamed of their nakedness. They are cast from the Garden of Eden out into the world.

Once outside of Eden, Adam and Eve can no longer just pluck fruit the trees, and pull vegetables from the ground. Only with "the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground". Thus rather than actual death, they suffer the end of their lives in Eden, and the beginning of growing their own food by hard work.

Ishmael

"Ishmael", by Daniel Quinn, is a philosphical novel written in Socratic dialog style. Ishmael is a gorilla which is able to communicate telepathically with the narrator, who has answered an intriguing newspaper advertisement: "Teacher seeks pupil, must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person." The book is primarily about how human beings lived for the last 2 million years prior to the agricultural revolution, and how they live after it (to present day).

The book procedes as a number of conversations between the narrator and the gorrilla, developing ideas and then expanding on them; the book is very well paced and enjoyable to read so you can go do that before reading the rest of this if don't want any spoilers.

Ishmael describes a culture as being the enactment of a story. The story being the beliefs, ideas and principles that the people of a culture originated from. As mentioned above, our story, as takers, is that we own the Earth, that God made it for us, and that everything in the Earth is for us to dominate and use. As a culture, we are enacting that story. This has unfortunate consequences for us as a species, and for the Earth in general.

For non-religious people the story is still the same. You don't have to believe that God made the Earth or that he made it just for humans to enact the story. As a culture we believe that human beings evolved to be the perfect creatures, the most intelligent on the planet, and that we have every right to take what we want. The takers story is so old now, we don't step outside of it to consider the leavers version.

Our Gorilla explains that the Fall of Man, the eating from the tree of knowledge, represents this great change in the way humans lived. The secret knowledge Adam and Eve gained from the forbidden fruit, was the "knowledge of who shall live and who shall die". Now without getting to this idea slowly and carefully the way it is done in the book, it may sound quite far removed from changing from hunter gatherer, or simple herder lifestyles to lifestyles that practice organised farming. But the crucial difference between the takers and the leavers is sustainability. In all of nature except taker humans, there is a natural balance between species based on availability of food. When a pack of lions go out to hunt they bring down an animal, and that is their food. If they run out of prey in an area then the pack starves. If they eat to many of their prey, they will cause their prey to go extinct and will starve. Populations in nature are kept in balance by this simple rule that all of nature follows. Kill what you need to eat, and no more.

What happened when we moved to organised agriculture is we declared war on nature. We no longer take what we need, we kill all animals that enroach on our farms or wander into our cities and towns. Hunger is not something that affects us once we have the food surpluses that agriculture enabled us to create. We are no longer sustainable, taking only what we need. We decimate other species if they don't fit in with our farming activities.

According to Quinn, more food means more people. So agriculture leads to increased population, which means that as people practised farming they would also have needed to expand. That expansion of the first farmers has almost filled the world, and nearly every group of people living in a sustainable way has been wiped out or integrated with our culture. Now if people live in an area where there is not enough food to support them, We now have the knowledge of the Gods. Perhaps that is the knowledge referered to in the Garden of Eden?

The story of Adam and Eve seems to be the story of how some Leavers became the first Takers. The tree of knowledge is the 'knowledge of who shall live and who shall die'.

Population increase would cause the takers to expand out from their initial farms, and in doing so would encounter the Leavers, who not being compatible with the Takers lifestyle would have been integrated or wiped out. So who told the story of Adam and Eve? In Ishmael, Quinn says that the teller of the story are the Leavers. They are describing the evil people that came and took over their lands.

Also of relevance is the story of Cain and Abel, children of Adam and Eve, who's story is also told in the Qur'an and Torah. Cain is an arable farmer and his younger brother Abel is a shepherd. They both present offerings to God; Abel presents a lamb whilst Cain presents some food he has grown in his fields. God is happy with the lamb but not with the crops, and in anger Cain kills Abel, becoming the first murderer in history. God tells Cain, "If you work the land, it will never again give you its yield. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth." This story again sounds like it is being told by early leavers, about the takers, as agriculture began to replace the traditional hunter-gatherer life.

Story of B

As a sequel to Ishmael, the Story of B is also worth reading. Expanding on and retelling the same points as Ishmael. Set in Europe, the narrator this time is a Catholic Priest who is sent to determine whether a colleague of Ishmael, known only as B, is the anti-christ. In investigating, the narrator goes to the secret meetings of B and is adopted by him as a student.

During the novel, Quinn goes into more detail on how hunter-gatherers lived, and how everyone in our culture is in a period after the 'Great Forgetting', when we have all forgotten how humans lived for most of our history. It is humbling to think that we have been farmers for only eight thousand years of a million year history as modern humans.

Both of these books tell the same story, in slightly different yet novel ways, and I really enjoyed reading them both. The ideas are both solid and revolutionary. When I think about how this affects other ideoligies like socialism and capitalism, or religions like Christianity and Buddhism, this is really something that goes off on a tangent of its own. It's really hard to imagine how we could live, if we were to turn back the clock and live as our pre-agriculture ancestors lived, in ways that were adapted to each local region, and each totally isolated from one another, it would be a very different world to the modern one we live in.

Rapidly increasing population and the side effects such as pollution, war and disease are clearly problems that will only get worse if we continue with a global system that is run purely by the greed of individuals and the businesses they run. Perhaps the democratization that the internet is bringing will enable us to start living a more global version of the villages of old?

What I find odd about my reaction to this book, is that I feel like I understood the facts as they were presented, and followed the theories and conclusions drawn by Ishmael, B and their followers. And yet I should have found it life changing and set off on a path determined to help us reverse the great forgetting. Maybe because to change the story of a culture is not possible in one persons head, at least this persons head. Or perhaps the story of the takers was too strong, too hard to fight as a leaver, and therefore, if we want to enact another story, it must be a new one. One that is strong enough to destroy the story of the takers?

What will be the next Adam and Eve story? Has it already been told? I don't know.

One final part of this set of blog posts to come, where I will look at where the story of Adam and Eve shows up in our culture, both explicitly and by analogy.

Technology fail

2010-01-11T13:26:00.000-08:00

I was looking for a book on Vancouver Public Library's online search, and it wouldn't find it by title, so it popped up a window saying do you want to use online help. I've seen it before, so I figured I'd try it out. Since this was a brave thing to do I have highlighted what I say in bold. The online librarian book finding expert is in regular text... (I've changed the name to protect the innocent).

Hi, I'm looking for the greatest show on earth by richard dawkins

Librarian 'Caroline @ AskAway' has joined the session.

Hello and welcome to AskAway. I'm just reading your question...

the book?

Yeah

Is Vancouver your closest library?

Yeah central branch

Just call them or go in.

Anything else I can help you with?

(thinks: what do you mean else?)

Life without Dog

2010-01-09T12:39:00.000-08:00

From Barney

Barney was a Black lab cross, born in 1999. That makes him the same age as my marriage. We bought him and his sister Laurel from a pet store in Metrotown, Burnaby. Just before Christmas we had Barney put to sleep due to a serious illness, and I thought I'd write about some of the ways I suddenly remember him recently.

Walks

From Barney

I used to walk him in the morning and the evening every day. He used to wake me up about 6:30am and get more and more impatient until I get up and take him. Grunting and groaning like an old man.

Having a dog makes you go for a walk, you don't have any choice. Now I still walk at the weekends occasionally. When I put my coat on, I check the pockets instinctively for plastic bags. You always have to be prepared for poop as a dog owner. All my coats still have a bunch of bags in the pockets.

Moving about the apartment

Barney was terrible at getting out of the way, and usually used to lie in the place that you were most likely to walk next. Partly because he always wanted to check on us and see what we were doing. Often he'd raise his head just as I was stepping over him, so I'd kick him in the face by accident, and he'd look at me like "how could you do that?" and I'd look at him like "how on earth did I do that?"

At night he'd often be lying there in the shadows, and he'd see me coming at him in the dark. He'd panic and leap up, just as I'd see him and go to step over him. He'd often try to jump out of my way, but I'd try to move my foot to the same spot, and then I'd have to try to backtrack, and we'd end up both nearly tripping over.

Meals

We always fed Barney after us; an important discipline thing. But I'd always save him a bit of my meat. So he'd sit there at my feet as we all ate, occasionally sitting up and looking at me expectantly. As soon as I stand up he'd barrel into the kitchen, skittering about on the kitchen floor, his hard claws having no purchase at all on the polished wooden floor.

Poops

Barney had a devious streak. For some reason he wanted to poop in the place that would be most embarrassing for me. If we passed a dozen yards for example, he would want to poop in the one that was most impressively maintained, and ideally would have people in it, or at least watching out of their window.

We were once in a nice little town called Horseshoe Bay on a sunny day, and he'd done a few poops and exhausted our bag collection. Then, as we passed a patio filled with happy diners, he squirted out a big stream of wet poop, which they all looked at in disgust and shock. Then they looked expectantly at us, the dog owners, and we looked desperately around for some source of plastic bags. Luckily right next door a woman watched us from her deck, and she came out with some.

As a puppy he also once ate some glow in the dark toys, which he then pooped out as I walked along the street. He waited, of course, until there was a large audience, a group of teenage boys. They were all shocked and disturbed, as he pooped out turds with little bright green glowing lights in them.

Another time on that same street he pooped and then half a plastic bag hung from his anus. Again he waited until there was a group approaching, and they watched with morbid curiosity as I bent down behind him and slowly pulled the bag out.

Play

From Barney

Barney loved playing. His favourite game was "try to get the toy off me". And there was no way to win. He was just immensely strong. You could literally lift him off the ground and hang him by the toy. Eventually you'd get bored and walk off, but he'd drop it then and let you just nearly get it, but then he'd grab it with his 100 tonne bite again, and expect you fruitlessly tug at it. He wanted to play that for hours and hours.

He was a pretty well disciplined dog; you could get him to sit, lie down, shake a paw. But he never quite figured out fetch. To him the game was, you throw the stick, and he liked to find it, but he didn't like bringing it back. If he did, he certainly wouldn't give it to you.

Pride

He was a very proud dog. He didn't like to look stupid, which is a shame because of the kind of owners we were.

From Barney

Snow

From Barney

Barney loved the snow. As soon as there was snow outside he'd go running outside and play in it like an excited kid.

Guard dog

From Barney

We very rarely heard Barney bark. But one day we arrived back home and he didn't hear that it was us at the door, or he didn't smell us, and we heard for the first time a really deep loud bark come from inside. For a moment we didn't believe it was him but it was.

Another time we had a real estate agent enter our home without us, and he said that Barney followed him around the house, three feet away from him the whole time, barking loudly. We couldn't even imagine him doing that, but apparently he was a real guard dog!

He always used to pick the member of the family that needed watching and go and lie with them. If Jamie was in a room on his own he'd go and lie in there. If Corbey was watching TV late and I was in bed he'd come and lie with me, but then when she came to bed, he'd go and watch Jamie.

If we came home and there was only one of us missing, he'd not be happy until we (his pack) were all together again. One day I arrived home alone, and he was looking past me for Corbey. He saw a woman half way down the corridor and decided that was her and went sprinting down there as fast he could, too fast to stop before bounding into her doorway to give her a big welcome. Luckily she was a dog person, and petted him instead of calling the police.

I guess that's all for now but I'll try to post a few more memories as they come to me.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

2009-11-13T12:38:00.000-08:00

Once a philosophical problem, with the emergence (no pun intended) of evolutionary biology, the issue of whether there was first a chicken or an egg is more easily explained.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/05/26/chicken.egg/

Now a team made up of a geneticist, philosopher and chicken farmer claim to have found an answer. It was the egg.
Put simply, the reason is down to the fact that genetic material does not change during an animal's life.

So at some point in time, two creatures which we'd probably say were chickens, and yet were not quite exactly chickens, got together one evening for some cross-species chicken sex, and the result of that happy union was the egg of a chicken.

That's not quite the whole story though. What was required for chickens to become chickens, rather than just mutants of some species they evolved or diverged from, was a 'speciation' event. A bunch of our newly created chickens would wander off from the crowd one day, only be to separated from them, forever by some drastic event. Perhaps they just got lost, or there was a rock fall, volcanic eruption or flood. Whatever happened, a bunch of 'chickens' which were possibly half red junglefowl and half grey junglefowl, did split up and become chickens.

So science says it was the egg!

While scientists had to go the trouble of figuring this all out, biblical scholars merely have to read the bible for the answer. And fortunately their God does deliver on this occasion, almost...

The Bible: Genesis 1:20-22

Then God said, “Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens.” 21 So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”

So it sounds like, from the text, like he didn't just put a bunch of bird eggs on the Earth and wait for them to hatch. That would have been, well, boring. Far more God-like is it not, for them to just suddenly appear, mid-flight? Hopefully these newly created birds knew how to fly already. It would have been an unhappy day if they all plummeted to the ground and died.

But actually, if I did look to the bible to confirm anything, I'd be a bit disappointed by this, since it doesn't explicitly state that he didn't just leave the chicken eggs lying around and wait for them to hatch. It just makes it seem likely. Oh well.

Eden and the Fall of Man. Part 1, Milton and Paradise Lost

2009-10-24T23:31:00.000-07:00

Part 2 is here

This last year (2009) in my fairly random reading, I came across a the story of the Garden of Eden a number of times, and for the first time became interested in the story. To be more exact I became more interest in the telling of the story; where did it come from, what does it mean to different people. As an atheist brought up in a Church of England family and school, I'd not had any real interest in it before. In these blog posts I'll review all the places the story showed up this year, and discuss some fascinating insights people have had about the origin and meaning of the story of Adam and Eve.

One caveat; I'm writing this for fun because I enjoyed it. I am not an expert on English literature or the Bible, and most of this is probably wrong. But it is a collection of personal thoughts that I didn't want to forget.

In the beginning I was looking for something interesting to listen to on my commute to work, and found that Yale University have online course material that any idiot can download. So I did. Pretty much at random I chose a course on the English poet John Milton and really enjoyed the lectures by John Rogers [here]. From there I began also reading Paradise Lost as well as some of Milton's less epic poetry.

John Milton

Milton was the son of a wealthy man (a respected professsional who would have been a combination of todays money lender, notary public, and contract lawyer). Sent to a private school, St. Pauls, and then to Cambridge, University, it would have been expected that he would go enter the clergy, where he would have lived a comfortable and privileged life. He had other ideas however, and from early on his life he decided he would be the greatest English poet, and devoted himself to that task. In much of his early work he seems to defending this decision, as perhaps he had to defend it to his father, who supported him financially.

Before Paradise lost was written, in the middle of the 17th century, King Charles was becoming somewhat of a tyrant. In addition by marrying a Catholic he was bring the Church of England close to the Catholic Church than the general population of England would like. This lead to the Civil War and the eventual execution of Charles. Milton played his part in this, both before and after the revolution and eventual rexicide, which he implicitly supported in his publications.

Though the civil war was a success and England became a republic, Oliver Cromwell died of illness in 1958. England became unstable again, and by 1960 the monarchy was reinstated. Milton was imprisoned and could well have been executed for his part in the civil war, but was released due to his influential friends.

As he wrote Paradise Lost, Milton had become blind and had married a woman from Wistaston in Cheshire (which incidentally was the town I first lived in).

Paradise Lost

Milton had planned to write the story of King Arthur in his bid to become England's greatest poet, but chose instead to tell the story of Adam and Eve. The story begins with Satan, who is a powerful, charismatic and vivid character in the poem. He is with the fallen angels who have had a civil war of their own against God, and lay broken and bruised in the depths of hell. A debate ensues, about how best to react... to lay in Hell, hoping for eventual forgiveness, or to try and fight back. Satan comes up with the idea of finding, and corrupting, Adam and Eve. This, they all agree, is the way to get revenge on God for their humiliating defeat. "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in heav'n" Satans journey out of Hell as he seeks Eden is arduous and horrific, some of things that happen on the way out would be perfectly at home in a Clive Barker book.

The Biblical Adam and Eve, as you probably know, lived a simple and immortal life of abundence. They were innocent of all evil and had nothing to fear, so long as they obeyed God's law not to eat from the Forbidden Tree of Knowledge, which would mean death.

Satan arrives in Eden and, disguised as a Serpent, is able to convince Eve to eat from the from the tree. Appealing to her pride and vanity, he also tells her that the tree of knowledge will boost her intellect. After all if it can give a simple snake the ability to speak, imagine how much wiser she could become.

She goes to Adam and tells him what she's done. He is initially angry but decides that if she is going to die then he will too, so he also eats from the tree. They both now know shame and fear, and walk hand in hand out of the garden of Eden to begin their new lives. There's an oddly hopeful feeling to the end of the book.

Milton and freedom

Milton was against the tyranny of Charles I because he believed in freedom, and in elected officials. I like to think that in Paradise Lost Milton was rooting for the bad guys, the oppressed. Satan is not portrayed as character devoted to causing harm and evil for no purpose. He's an intelligent and complex creature, driven by pride and vanity. Eve is not stupid or week minded, but instead is driven by the desire for knowledge. Is it better to be happy and ignorant, or to pursue all the knowledge you can, no matter what the cost?

God in this story is the bad guy. He places the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden for no good reason other than for man to fall. Whether he is all-knowing and knew they would take the apple, or whether man actually has free will and chose to take it, it still seems like a cruel game to play.

The story seems to mirror Milton's own experience with the civil war. His hope as the King was over thrown and replaced with a peoples government. Perhaps he expected a Utopia as his dreams of a monarchy free country were realized. Then the few years of freedom from monarchy that the English people enjoyed, followed by the restoration and the disappointment he must have felt.

Some of Milton's opponents, and perhaps he himself, thought this his blindness was a punishment from God for supporting the regicide and being on the eventual losing side fo the civil war. There are references to darkness and blindness in the hell of Paradise Lost.

That's all for this post, there will be a few more to follow all on the same theme.

Godel, Escher, Bach and Incompleteness

2009-10-24T23:25:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year I came across a book called "Proust and the Squid" which I reviewed a few posts ago. That book started me on the thread of Gödel and his incompleteness theorem, and I read a book on that "Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel", which lead me to "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid".

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in mathematics and AI. Hofstadter covers a wide range of topics, and he's very good at explaining things, using diagrams, Socratic dialogue, and exercises for the reader. He describes in great detail, and from first principles, a number theory he calls Typographical Number Theory, and with that and other devices he explains Incompleteness theorem. In addition there are great swathes of information about how genetics works at the cell level, knowledge representation, in particular hierarchical. Also, of course, there's plenty of information about Bach (and Fugues) and Escher from the title. In regards to the rest of the post, this book is interesting because it's really about the mind. About how it emerges from simple low level processes, and how at the highest level (our own stream of consciousness), we don't need to know about neurons firing and so on because we're essentially the software running on the hardware.

As an aside I found it both fascinating and sad that Bach's last composition included his name as possibly the last four notes he wrote: BACH (I know there's no H in the musical scale, but in German there is).

This is a book you could spend a lot of your life obsessing over, as it is filled with mystery's and difficult exercises for the reader. But even if you just rush through it like I did, enjoying some parts and being utterly baffled by others, you will find much to enjoy I am sure.

Overheard on the West Coast Express

2009-10-22T21:29:00.000-07:00

Announcer: "Could you please make sure you stay behind the yellow line. Especially the woman in a red dress, about 1 carriage down from the front. You were in the danger zone lady"

Jamie's Food Revolution

2009-09-21T19:33:00.000-07:00

Got this neat book for my birthday. I've made my first meal from it, as seen below. Pretty terrible photograph as I couldn't wait to eat it but it was good.

Classic Tomato Pasta

From 2009_09_21

The recipe is from the pasta section. Jamie's revolution is to teach more people to cook proper meals, so you're supposed to make a few recipes from the book and teach them to someone else. I wonder if a blog post counts? Well I guess not since I probably can't reproduce it here anyway or I'll get sued, but it's well worth buying the book.

I made a couple of changes; I increased the amount of garlic from 2 cloves to 8, since the garlic we get here in Vancouver is pretty mild. Also I put a lot less chile pepper in (the recipe says 1 fresh red chile) because the pepper I had was a very hot green fellow!

Jamie's massive amount of enthusiasm, for not just cooking and food, but also for inspiring people to cook and to eat better, comes through loud and clear in the recipes. I love this book and I'm looking forward to the next recipe I try!

District 9

2009-09-08T23:03:00.000-07:00

Pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed District 9. I knew it was going to be a somewhat unique sci-fi movie just from the trailers and viral ads, but I was so pleased about how different it was.

Charismatic, noble, intelligent, and paternal. These aren't typical qualities you're confronted with when watching a typical hollywood bug hunt. Not since ET have I really cared about the Aliens in the story.

The combination of the low fidelity camera work, the lack of music, the gritty portrayal of Joburg and the documentary style first person made the story real for me.

9/10

Last Chance to See, the TV version

2009-09-07T19:45:00.000-07:00

Couple of nice pictures from my weekend trip to Victoria, BC's capital city.

From VancouverIsland2009

I must get around to watching the TV programme based on the Douglas Adam's book "Last Chance to See". The book is one of my favourite, and sadly since it came out two decades ago the Yangtse river dolphin, one of the endangered creatures in the book, has indeed gone extinct.

Stephen Fry stars in the made for TV version, and as such is going to be fantastic.

http://www.stephenfry.com/2009/09/06/last-chance-to-see/

Just made Indian Dahl Soup as my mother is visiting from England. So nice when a guest asks for seconds, especially when it's one of my favourite things to cook. I made a big pot of it and it's all gone. I should really post a picture of it sometime; in the meantime enjoy this version of the recipe that someone lifted from the book I found it in.

http://www.recipezaar.com/Indian-Spiced-Lentil-Soup-195021

And the original book:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=DX8oB9QWUSAC&dq=vegan+planet+robertson&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=yulY284vSu&sig=Y2yb4vVVKm2m4SJw2A2Ah6LMd0E&hl=en&ei=6calSuTcM4qKsgP53omNDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

A Tale of Two Curries

2009-08-23T21:14:00.000-07:00

Two (very similar) curries I made this week.

Chicken Curry With Green Peas And Yellow Peppers

From Tale of two curries

This recipe makes a medium spiced curry, so use less Madras if you don't like it hot, or more if you do. The yellow peppers are sweet and add juiciness to the dish, whilst the green peas add some texture and, well, greenness. The coconut milk makes it slightly creamy and the coconut flavour really adds something (in fact may be nice to add some grated coconut to this!)

What you need

3-4 chicken breasts, skinned and washed

1 Yellow pepper

Fistful of frozen peas

1 Medium onion

3 Cloves of garlic

4 tsp Hot Madras curry powder

2 tsp ginger powder or sliced fresh ginger

1 cup Vegetable stock (or a sodium free stock cube and a cup of water)

1 cup of basmati rice

2 tbsp Olive oil

1/2 can of Coconut milk

salt and pepper

What you do

Make some rice at the same time (see the end of the post if you don't know how to do that).

Get a frying pan, add some of the oil and heat it until it's steaming and the chicken would sizzle if you put it in. Use a pair of scissors or sharp knife to cut the Chicken into generous sized chunks, then dump them in there. Make sure it doesn't burn, by turning it and turning the heat down if need be, but you want the chicken to be seered so it keeps it's juices. After a few minutes, the chicken should be white all over, and possibly a bit brown in places, now you can turn the pan down and let it cook for 3-4 minutes.

Meanwhile you coarsely chop the onion, wash and chop the yellow pepper, peel and chop the garlic and slice as thinly as possible.

Now remove the chicken from the pan, and remove excess fat, and put the pan back on the heat. Add the onions and peppers and cook until soft. Just before they're ready add the garlic, but careful not to brown it.

Add the chicken again.

Now mix the Madras powder and ginger with the stock in a jug, stir it up really well and add it to the frying pan. Turn the heat up to nearly high, let it al l boil and then turn it down so it simmers. Add the frozen peas and do the same again, boil it, then turn it down so it's happily simmering.

Stir it now and then to make sure everything is mixed up and getting the same amount of heat. Leave it cooking for about 5 minutes then pour in the Coconut milk and stir that around, leave it cooking for another 4-5 minutes. Should be pretty much done! Serve with Basmati rice.

Super-fast Vegetable Curry (15 minutes, 10 if you have microwave rice and you're super fast)

From Tale of two curries

Vegetable curries are lower fat than meaty ones, the washing up is easier, and they're healthier for your heart. I liven this one up with a dollop of fresh yoghurt on the side.

What you need

Pretty much any vegetables, but in this case:

3 medium carrots

1/3 of a cauliflower

1 medium broccoli

Frozen sweet corn

1 medium onion

3 cloves of garlic

Small bunch of of fresh Coriander, chopped (Cilantro)

2 tsp Hot Madras curry powder

1 tsp ginger powder or sliced fresh ginger

1 cup Vegetable stock (or a sodium stock cube and a cup of water)

1 cup of basmati rice (if you're really in a hurry get some microwavable rice)

2 tbsp Olive oil

1 tin salt free chopped tomatoes

Optionally: splash lemon juice, red wine

salt and pepper

What you do

OK I said it was super fast; I made this when I came home from work one day and wanted to eat very soon. I usually boil vegetables, the carrots take a good 15-18 minutes, so to get the time down I sliced the carrots and steamed them in the microwave (3 minutes, 3 tbsp of water, wrap in cling film tight).

Stick a frying pan on between medium and high and coarsly chop the onion and stick it in there with 2 tbsp olive oil, and sea salt and fresh ground black pepper. Stir it so it doesn't burn and fry until soft. Meanwhile peel the garlic and slice it thinly as possible. Turn the onions down when they're almost done and add the garlic, turn the hear down to medium, you don't want to over cook the garlic.

Add the carrots to the frying pan, then wash the broccoli and cauliflower and cut into mini florettes. Put these under cling film like the carrots and microwave those for 3 minutes too).

Mix the curry powder and vegetable stock in a jug then pour over the vegetables in the pan, then add the tin of tomatoes. Bring it to the boil, wait a bit. When it's nearly done a few minutes later chop and add the fresh coriander and stir in. Serve with plain yoghurt and basmati rice.

Cooking rice in super easy, works every time, kinda way... (we hope)

From Tale of two curries

Put some water in a large pan for the rice, you'll need one with a lid. You want exactly 1 1/2 cups of water. Bring it to the boil, add 1 cup of rice and bring it to the boil again, then turn down to about medium, stick the lid on it, and forget about it for about 16 minutes. Then it will be done.

Microwave rice - The packet has instructions. Duh!

Funny white men with big noses, Blankets and Belly Buttons

2009-08-11T22:11:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a few graphic novels this year, and I'll cover a few briefly here.

Bottomless Belly Button

This is a lovely fat comic book, over 700 pages, but much of the story is portrayed eloquently with pictures, and there is little dialogue, so this is a quick read. The main story is of a married couple breaking up after decades of marriage, which to them seems natural if sad, but to their oldest son seems traumatic and affects him deeply. Inviting the family to join them for perhaps one last family reunion, they announce the divorce.

My favourite character is the youngest son, Peter. An awkward geeky kid, portrayed with a frogs head, literally, emphasising perhaps that he feels different and exposed in a world where everyone else seems to be confident and cool. He has his first sexual relationship with a young woman he meets on the beach near his parents house, and comes of age belatedly.

It's an engaging and charmingly told story and definitely worth reading.

9/10

Blankets

Blankets is in a very similar vein to Bottomless Belly Button, covering coming of age and first love in much the same way, but capturing and conveying the emotions of that time extremely well. Craig Thompson wrote this autobiographical account of growing up in an Evangelical Christian family, making it a very person and vivid story.

He has certainly captured the joy and magic of first love, and of finding a special person to sneak away from the world with, which they do quite literally in the story. The Blanket from the title, a gift from his girl, is like a symbol of the warmth and comfort they give each other.

Sometimes the art itself tells the story, as the size of the panels grows to emphasise the emotions of the characters. For example, when he is driving away from her after a long visit, knowing his heart will be breaking in two, there's a beautiful full page image showing the world as if rent in two, with the family car plummeting off the edge into the void. Great stuff.

9/10

Bone (Parts 1 - 9)

I picked book one of Bone up on a recommendation by a friend, and read it to my son at bedtimes. We soon got hooked and bought the whole series. It's a fun adventure, originally drawn in black and white, but coloured and printed in great glossy pages.

Bone and his cousins, the only funny looking Smurf characters in the story, had to flee their home, Boneville, due to the illegal antics of his cousin. Arriving in a mysterious valley they wind up in an unravelling adventure.

This story is filled with slap stick humour, the bad guys rarely hurt anything but their own pride. There are a few scenes I had to read over and over to my son as he hooted with laughter, much as I often play the same Road Runner cartoons to him twenty or thirty times.

There's plenty of depth to the story however, and it gets dark in places. Never really straying far from the Asterix the Gaul comic violence, yet always thoughtful and and with an authentic vibe.

Although I bought this to read to my seven year old son, it's certainly something I'd have read to myself.

8/10

Zombies to Milton

2009-08-10T22:23:00.000-07:00

So far this year, in what I've been reading, story of creation in Genesis, human freedom, Zombies, Milton, Revolution and Godels incompleteness theorem, have all woven themselves into a colourful tapestry of ideas and themes which I'd love to be able to express.

This blog entry will be the start of trying to do that, beginning with a quick review of a book on Godel's theory by Margerat Goldstein.

"Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel"

Kurt Godel is the kind of guy you think of when you think of a mad mathematician. He's reclusive, uncomfortable in public and not at all patient when dealing with people with less intelligence, which is almost everybody. One of his best friends in life was Einstein, who he often walked with while at Princeton. Indeed, Einstein was one of his few intellectual equals, and he once surprised the physicist on his birthday with a reformulation of his relativity theory that allowed for time travel. Einstein also drove Godel to his citizenship test in the US, where Godel worried him by pointing out he had found a flaw in the constitution of that country that could make the whole government illegal. Despite Einstein's warning not to, Godel illucidated this theory of his to the examiner in his test. Luckily it did not count against him and he became a US citizen.

This book explores the beginning of his intellectual life in an elitist intellectual club known as the Vienna Circle. The story then discuess his move to Princeton before the second world war. Although not Jewish, he was eligible for conscription to the German army, and through being stubborn and difficult he very nearly did not make it to the US to work there.

An amusing part of the story is when Godel presented his paper at a European conference and it was almost completely ignored. Only a single person there understood the great significance of the theory; John von Neumann.

Although a book like this can't hope to teach all the mathematics you need to understand a complex paper like the two proofs of incompleteness, from my layman view it certainly seemed to present a tangible feel for how Godel developed the proof, and what it consisted of.

People looking for a deeper understanding may want to check out "Godel, Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" which I will talk about in another post.

The Vienna Circle represented the philosophy that experience is the only valid source of knowledge, and that only formal logic can be used to manipulate this knowledge to study philisophy. Although a member of the group, Godel did not share their views. Although his proof is a magnificent piece of work in formal logic, what he achieved was to show that not everything we can know can be produced in such a system. His later life was spent studying Liebniz, looking for clues in the work of that great genius, for how human knowledge differed from knowledge that was entirely empirical or generated mechanically from a formal system.

Sadly he became very paranoid in later life and shut out everybody, eventually starving himself to avoid being poisoned by his imagined enemies. This paranoia was no doubt caused by some mental illness, but seemed to reflect the the intellectual loneliness he suffered both in Vienna and in Princeton.

To summarise Goldstein takes us on a tour that explores Godel's life in a way that is very accessible and highly interesting, yet still apparently with plenty of depth.

8/10

Review: Proust and the Squid. Processing: A guide for designers.

2009-08-03T21:03:00.001-07:00

"Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists"

In the words of the website

"Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions."

http://processing.org/

This is a great book about Processing. Written for non-programmers, it explores the things you can do with Processing. Each section starts with a selection of cool things that artists or designers have made, including many colour pictures of them, then shows you how to use some part of Processing. This is a nice format for practical books on programming environments. It gives you something to be inspired or excited about, then gives you the tools to do it.

Processing is a brilliantly simple programming environment for creating interactive artwork, and this book is a fun and authorative.

8/10

"Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain", Maryanne Wolf

I can't remember if it was the intriguing title, or the promised topics of this book that made me pick it up. Unfortunately, I found the book dissapointing. I was hoping to learn, as an aside, about Proust, or the neurology of the squid, in a Steven Pinker style exploration of the science of reading.

The book felt somewhat aimless, and doesn't have a compelling pace. Those interested in the reading difficulties of dyslexics may find it all more interesting. There were of course some areas she explored that I enjoyed, for example, that Socrates was against the written word. Preferring instead the intelectual effort required to remember everything in your head, and be able to deliver it verbally to students. Perhaps for a genius of the ancient world that makes a lot of sense. There wasn't a lot of knowledge to remember back then, at least compared to the mass available today. But Maryanne extends this argument to modern day technology. Kids growing up today are surely exposed to an unimaginably huge quantity of information, and in many different forms. So it's certainly not imbecilic to stop and ask if we are losing something as we move from pen and paper to digital communication.

Personally I don't see the same ground shaking shift in human culture that must have happened as we went from oral to written communication. Shifting to a way to write down facts and information was huge. Changing from ink to digital media is not as huge. In fact, what modern technology really brings to communication of ideas is outside the books remit, since it is all about learning to read.

Still, some interesting ideas in the book, and one to look up if you're interested in this kind of thing.

5/10

Overheard on West Coast Express

2009-03-23T15:12:00.000-07:00

Couple discussing their 4 year old child, who's already playing T-Ball and learning the guitar, and in day care.

"How soon can he start piano lessons?"
- "Next year I think."
"Ooh. So there's 10 grades, he'll be 15 by the time he's grade 10!"
- "Well maybe he could do 2 grades a year!"
"Yes, yes. Or 3 even. Do you think he could do 3?"
- "Yeah"
"Awesome"

Mixed bean soup with orange, carrot and coriander

2008-12-06T13:18:00.000-08:00

I made the worst soup ever last week. It sounded great, but unfortunately I put too much Pesto in it, and it was gross. So this weekend, to redeem myself, I've made a soup that I really liked.

This is a nice combination of fruity flavours and semi-spicy vegetables. The beans provide a large dose of protein and make the soup rich and hearty. Perfect for when you're about to head out into the cold.

Mixed bean soup

Ingredients

3 Satsumas or Mandarin oranges, coarsely chopped
Splash of orange juice, splash of sherry or cooking sherry
2 tbsp fresh ginger or ginger purée
1 cup of mixed soup beans (split peas, lentils, barley etc)
4 large carrots
2 medium onions
1/2 bulb of garlic
1 small red chilli
sea salt and ground black pepper
Fistful of fresh coriander

Directions

The bean mix needs to be soaked overnight in a large bowl with about 3 inches of water covering them. (If you're using canned beans you can reduce the cooking time to about 20 minutes, and you don't need to soak).

Cook the beans in a pot with 6 cups of water, vegetable or chicken stock for about 40 minutes until tender.
Meanwhile fry the onions, garlic, chilli in a pan until soft, then stir in the ginger and leave to one side.

Put the carrots on to boil separately for 10-15 minutes until starting to soften, then put them to one side too.

Once the beans are soft, sieve out about half of them and put them in a blender with half the carrots and the fried onions, garlic and chilli. Blend for a few seconds.

Pour everything into the pot with the beans. Add the oranges and half the coriander.

Simmer for another 10 minutes until flavours are combined.

Serve hot with some fresh coriander on the top.

Overheard on the train

2008-12-04T09:51:00.001-08:00

Snippets of conversations on the train recently:

Some girls talking

girl1: He's taking advantage of you.

girl2: I'm only lending him the $800

girl1: But he only needs it to pay the cops, then he's going to dump you!

girl2: But...

girl1: And he's sleeping with his ex-girlfriend!

girl2: He's only sleeping on her floor while he's looking for a new place.

girl1: [actually slaps girl2 due to exasperation]

Some girls who work at Shaw technical support...

girl1:"I had a customer complaining that everyone was short and fat. And I thought he was a nut job. But it turned out he was watching everything set in widescreen on a normal TV."

girl2: "I spent an hour today trying to teach a guy how to turn his tv off. He said it was grey and not black. We figured out he was only turning his cable box off, not his tv."

A guy and a girl chatting

guy: I may be going to see Slipknot

girl: With your millionaire girlfriend?

guy: She's not my girlfriend.

girl: You should make her your girlfriend

guy: Well, she's kinda tall, and proportionally wide. Still, she'd pay my debts off for me.

girl: ...

guy: She told me she had a dream where she'd had sex with me. I said "How was it?". She said "I woke up happy."

girl: That's not ambiguous is it. You have to date her.

Nice chicken curry

2008-11-18T22:32:00.000-08:00

This chicken curry turned out so nice I took pictures of it, and even took the time to write this blog post...

From Chicken Curry

The ingredients were somewhat made up on the spot. I started with Pataks Mild Curry paste, which is tasty, but unfortunately it is mostly oil and salt. Still, I was hungry, and it has a good bunch of spices and herbs in it too.

Then I added some left over tomato sauce from Saturday, which was home made and salt free. This was cherry tomatoes (canned, but no added salt), onions, garlic and some Italian herbs.

The curry paste went into a pint jug with the tomato sauce, 1/2 a pint of chicken stock, some red wine, salt and pepper.

I fried up chicken breasts, and at the same time put some diced potatoes on to boil, and started up the rice.

After about 8 mins, the chicken was cooked and I threw some broccoli florets in with the potatoes.

Then I drained the broccoli and the potatoes and threw them in with the chicken, and poured the pint jug of good stuff over it all and stirred it all up.

Simmered for about 10 minutes, and then ate.

It would have been nice with some nan bread, but you can't have everything.

Science world

2008-11-11T20:32:00.001-08:00

Corbey, Jamie and I went to Science World on Sunday to check out the new Fossils, Fins and Fangs exhibit. Really we just went to see the full size cast of a t-rex and genuine fossilised triceratops head.

Science World Fall 2008

We also checked out a movie at the Omnimax theatre there, called Journey into Amazing Caves. Really it's about a couple of amazing women, that climb and raft to the most inaccessible caves in the world to take biological samples.

See a clip here. Omnimax Theatre

Justin's Pumpkin Soup

2008-11-03T09:23:00.000-08:00

Making pumpkin soup has become a tradition for me over the years. This is how I made it this year. It was a good year!

There are some rules for making Justin's Pumpkin Soup.

It has to have pumpkin in it
No salt, no sugar, no modified or processed crap
Everything has to be fresh (ground spices are okay)

From Pumpkin soup 2008

Ingredients

1lb Pumpkin, diced
2-3 Medium Onions
3 Large Carrots
6-8 Medium Potatoes, peeled and quartered
1/2 a red pepper in questionable condition
1/2 a garlic thinly sliced
1/2 large ginger root, shaven into ribbons then chopped a bit
Few drops of lemon juice
1pt Chicken stock
1/2 cup white wine (cooking)
1/2 a green chilli (chopped finely) (more next year, this wasn't enough)
Glob of honey (a fairly generous glob)
Freshly ground Black pepper

From Pumpkin soup 2008

Method

Half fill a large pot (at least a quart pot) with hot water, and add a pint or more of chicken/ vegetable stock. If you don't have real chicken stock then OXO or something is allowed. This breaks one of my rules doesn't it? But that's okay.

Bring the water to a boil then you chop everything up, and put it in the pot.

I usually simmer it for about 35-45 minutes. It's probably better to start with the stuff that wants to be cooked longer, like potatoes and carrots, but this year I didn't bother doing that and it was fine.

Erm. Well that's really it!

We eat it with a french baguette or something similar. Corbey, my wife, has cheese in it. Processed cheese at that. This is tolerated.

Henry James - Washington Square

2008-07-03T03:29:00.001-07:00

I thought I should read something by Henry James, since I never have. His name often comes up in a short list of great novelists, or masters of the English language.

It's a very quiet novel. The main character being a young woman, Catherine, of apparently little character, who is suddenly courted by a charming handsome young man.

Set in the late 19th century, in 'Washington Square', an upper class elegant collection of homes, the book focuses on the relationships of Catherine with her father, and between Morris and Catherine.

I enjoyed, if that's the right word, the subtle intensity of these relationships. So much goes unsaid between father and daughter, and yet all her life she suspects he doesn't love her, and all his life he tries to hide that that he doesn't.

In steering her away from Morris, who turns out to have squandered a fortune already, he is protecting her from possiblly being taken for a ride and left penniless, but at the same time he is taking from her perhaps the one hope of happiness she ever had. Brought up to expect nothing, to sit in her parlour with her Aunt and listen to the gossip, I can't help thinking a marriage to Morris, however brief and eventually disastrous, would be at least some kind of life.

Catherine's father, who has suffered the death of his beautiful wife, has everything on the surface; wealth, success, a life in the fashionable upper class circles of New York. Yet he comes across as a bitter tragic and vindictive figure.

This novel, which he himself was apparently not fond of, is an enjoyable enough if somewhat depressing story. The characters and the sheer quality of the writing make it worthwhile.

Book reviews

2007-11-19T22:27:00.000-08:00

I've just finished a bunch of books, I better write down my thoughts on them before I've completely forgotten:

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

It took me a long time to get around to reading this, and I know almost everybody else has done already. It didn't take me long to finish the book, which is very beautifully written, lucid and very full of life. The theme of guilt is very interesting; how long do you punish yourself for something you did as a mere child? What does it take for you to forgive yourself? Does good come from guilt?

The book is the story of someone who did something he feels deep shameful of for most of his life, and also the story of what it is like to have grown up in and fled from turbulent Afghanistan.

The author has a somewhat similar background to the narrator, as he also came from a privileged background, and left his home country with his parents before the Russian invasion. It's no surprise then that the characters and settings feel authentic and are rich with illuminating detail.

I found the story very moving. About 2/3 in it seemed like the book was about to meander to a dull and predictable ending, yet the opposite was the case. In the final third much is revealed and loose ends are wrapped up neatly and thrillingly.

Tending to avoid books that invoke mass hysteria and dominate book clubs, I nearly missed this one. I'm so glad I didn't ultimately.

I saw what I thought was a new book by Guns Germs and Steal author, Jared Diamond. "The Third Chimpanzee" is actually a much earlier work from 1993. My mistake, yet I felt somewhat cheated to read a lot of the same material again that is present in GG&S. Yet still there was plenty or interesting new material.

My favourite idea in the book, was that of how peoples view of the past is profoundly shaped by their own history and professional interests. He describes this as 'paleopoetry' or looking at relics from the past as a Rorschach ink blot test, telling you more about yourself than about the people you are studying. I liked that analogy. People do seem to become very dogmatic, and view everything from their own corner, imprinting their own priorities and philosophies on everything they see.

I'd say GG&S is a must read, simply because it's filled with great ideas and is beautifully written. This book however is a lot more preachy, and a lot less important, at least in my humble opinion.

There are some more recently read books that I will cover shortly.

Book reviews: Double post combo

2007-10-03T16:01:00.000-07:00

I recently finished two interesting books which I will now chat about...

The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil

This book is a somewhat breathless and optimistic view of the future of technology. In particular Ray focuses on AI, since he's an AI expert and entrepreneur this is hardly surprising.

In addition he looks at Nanotechnology and Genetic Engineering.

I spent a lot of time thinking about immortality; and the author shares my view that death is kind of a loss of information... the loss of you, your consciousness and memories. I've always wanted to have my brain set up in a jar and hooked up a computer and the internet when I die.

So I was intrigued and optimistic to read about the potential tech revolution that may be with the next couple of decades, that could enable just that kind of insanity.

The key point of the book is that technology is developed at an exponential rate, rather than linear. And at the same time we are approaching some kind of singularity where we will merge with our technology in a way that is probably not even conceivable to us.

I have to take it all with a pinch of salt. There's not a lot of support for the ideas in the book. Peter Norvig, AI researcher and google director of research, commented on the singularity in the recent conference, and was not exactly optimistic.

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9774501-7.html

Still, an interesting read, I learned a lot of stuff I didn't know about current technology. On particular that researchers have been able to integrate artificial neurons with mice, and that there is an artificial model of the ear that is modeled at neuron level and yet exhibits many of the features of a human ear.

I'd recommend this to anyone interested in AI and the possible dramatic future of technology and humanity.

Shakespeare: The Biography, Peter Ackroyd.

Ironically, I picked this up in the book shop, and I was thinking it would be quite a chore to read. Peter Ackroyd's books tend to be packed full of knowledge, and I've found some of them a little dry in places.

I did want to read about Shakespeare though since I am English after all, and I don't know much about him, so I really wanted to make the effort to read it.

In the end I was really glad I did, since his life and times were really quite a lot more colourful and eventful than I quite expected. Being a biography, the book brings his plays to life somewhat, since for each one we know a little of what was happening in Shakespeare's life, the actors working with him and the political climate of the day.

It covers unexpected and interesting topics such as the multiple occurrences of different words for 'vagina', and what sex was life in those days of little sanitation and personal hygiene.

Shakespeare's friends get locked in the Tower of London, killed in duels and beheaded, whilst he manages to somehow keep in favour with Royalty and not annoy his enemies enough to end up in a deadly duel himself.

William is portrayed as the genius he no doubt was, and often the book speaks warmly of him. Not only as a great writer, but as a man with many friends, with a good head for business, a fascination with royalty and social status and finally a responsibility for his extended family.

Peter Ackroyd has also written London's biography, and many other books on London's history. It is no surprise to find the city playing a large part of Shakespeare's story, and he often speaks affectionately about that old town as he does about the great writer himself.

I would heartily recommend this to anyone with half an ounce of interest in Shakespeare, London, and the Elizabethan era in general, and I greatly enjoyed it.

Other books by Peter Ackroyd I've enjoyed include is fictional stories based in London "Chatterton" and "Hawksmoor". Both of which follow the fortunes (or lack of) of a couple of historic Londoners.

Longitude

2007-08-08T10:53:00.001-07:00

I just finished reading Longitude, by David Sobel. This is the story of the man who invented the first clocks capable of telling accurate time whilst enduring the rough conditions of the open seas. This being vital for establishing ones longitude when navigating. Before this was possible many ships and lives were lost due to not knowing the accurate position of the ship.

The story follows John Harrison, a self educated passionate clock maker from England, who built his clocks at a time it was considered impossible.

Along the way there's lots of interesting history, and some familiar figures from history show up including Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke, King George III and Captain Cooke.

Saratoga Automobile Museum

2007-04-21T09:53:00.000-07:00

Last week we went to the Saratoga Automobile Museum. This racing car is pretty cool. It was made at the local Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which funnily enough is where a lot of my co-workers at Vicarious Visions got their Computer Science degrees.

Jamie and Barney in the woods

2007-04-07T08:02:00.000-07:00

One thing that's nice about this area (North Eastern USA) is you get proper cold winters with snow and that. Here you can see Jamie and Barney after a viscous snow ball fight, which Barney lost, on account of not having hands.

Faster emails to yourself in gmail

2007-03-04T06:54:00.001-08:00

I send a lot of emails to myself via gmail, since it's so easy to search and find it again, tagging the subject line with 'music to buy', 'books to read' etc.

In doing this I have to type the first few letters of my name when doing this, and I thought it would be handy if I could just type 'me'.

Well today I figured out a way of doing this...

1) On gmail's main page click contacts
2) Find or add yourself
3) Click "edit contact information"
4) Set your name to 'me'

Now when you compose and email you can just type me and bing, your name appears.

Happy Welly CD

2007-02-26T18:38:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine Matt Howlett http://www.mathowlett.com/ has made an album of very unusual and brilliant music.

Thanks to the miracles of the internet you can now buy the CD online, and he hasn't even been on Top of the Pops!

It's amazing to think that a few weeks ago Matt and I were the only ones to have ever listened to it, and now, I have a CD, and erm, well, that's all that has changed really. But horay!

Oh, and since Matt is the only reader of this blog, that's all kind of irrelevant.

Check out this link for more music:

http://www.hauntedhouserecords.co.uk/

From happy welly

A good start to Friday

2007-02-23T06:42:00.000-08:00

Winter arrives

2007-02-22T06:40:00.000-08:00

Despite the fact that upstate New York has months of snow and cold weather every year, the two years I've been here there's been very little snow. We got one decent snow fall last week.

Here are some pictures.