Just a heads up to all interested parties that the annual August Perseid meteor shower will be reaching its peak *this* weekend on Sunday night going into early Monday morning. Best viewing will be in the northeastern skies, towards Mars, at around 11 p.m. PST on Sunday Aug. 12. There will be a New Moon, and therefore we should have great visibility with the absence of moonlight. Some of you may remember that the Perseids have been shooting through the sky for over a week now building up to this, and even last Thursday we were seeing sizable shooters plainly visible over English Bay. This year should prove a good show, as there is expected to be at least one meteor visible every minute, to a maximum of 90-100 meteors per hour granted a clear sky and good viewing conditions. It is recommended that you view the shower with the unaided eye to get the widest possible field of view, and have a comfy blanket or a reclining chair in which to sit and look skyward (from personal experience, looking up that long can put a real crick in your neck!).

For more information:
http://news.sympatico.msn.cbc.ca/
Meteor+shower+to+light+up+weekend+skies/
ScienceandTech/ContentPosting.aspx?isfa=1&
newsitemid=meteor-shower&feedname=
CBC-TECH-SCIENCE&show=False&number=
0&showbyline=True&subtitle=&detect=&abc=abc

Learn even more about the Perseids at:
http://www.space.com/spacewatch/070810_ns_perseids.html

==The More You Know™*.'`~==>

Let me know if you're interested in a little skywatching on Sunday night .

Feel free to forward this to anyone you think would benefit by the information!

Vince

As time passed, the people's crops and the plants they foraged upon began to die and wither away.  The animals they once hunted no longer had anywhere to drink and migrated away from the village's lands.  The wells from which the people drank began to dry up, as the river had supplied the underground aquifers from which the wells drew their water.  People died from thirst and their dying breaths cried out their sorrow for destroying the source of their region's life.  Eventually, the rocks at the cave mouth could no longer hold back the mounting pressure of the river water.  A torrent of water and boulders burst forth in a tidal wave, washing away the village and all of its remaining inhabitants.

A wandering historian would later tell of a people who mistook a river for a demon, and who were washed away by their folly of imagination.

Had a great weekend. My writing had ground to a halt out of attrition, and I badly needed a recharge.

Drove everyone home, got home about 1:15am, I think.

Saturday: Worked all day. Got home, did some writing, went to bed.

Sunday July 1st, 2007. Happy Canada Day all!

Had a little bit of an adventure today. I was at work all day at Science World, somewhat slow day since nothing special was going on there. Curtis came by early in the day to visit and buy a new diabolo for his upcoming competition. Good luck, Curtis! After work, I went and wandered around the Chinatown Night Market... bought a few things like a jade Qilin pendant, some coins, and a $1 cheapo chinese lantern, but I was feeling like catching some of the Canada Day festivities around town. I didn't know where anything was taking place, so I drove home and checked online on news1130.com... and found out that there were fireworks at Canada Place that didn't start until 10:30pm. I madly wolfed down my dinner between 9:00pm and 9:20pm, decided on a whim to skytrain out madly to catch the show.

I drove down to lougheed station - only to realise that although they have huge parking lots, they're all owned by the mall and by Sears and these huge empty lots by the station don't allow park-and-ride! ...So, I had to drive to Production, arriving by 9:40, where I found out they had street parking for park-and-ride...in the dark and poorly lit roads behind the station. I parked, ran in, checked how long it would take to skytrain to waterfront, whether I had enough time (the guy at the convenience counter said 24 minutes... I thought it would be longer), took the skytrain which said "Waterfront via Commercial"....only to realise looking at my compass that it was going the wrong way (which would have gone to Waterfront too...only it's a longer route)! I got off at the next station, jumped on the opposite train....and...got to Waterfront just in time - racing with all the others getting off the skytrain - to see the first blasts peeking above the Canada Place tower.

There were a heckavalot of people. I found a great spot with everyone else; watched from right across the street from Canada Place. I got lots of shots, and a bunch of it on video on my digicam. It was great. Quite an adventure, glad I did it.

Here are some more of the photos.
(http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=33199&l=36f82&id=718845462)

Just finished watching Ghost Rider.  Rented it last night, but I was too tired to watch the whole thing, so I finished watching it tonight.  Unfortunately, that means I won't be able to watch Children of Men before it's due.  Oh well, I'll just re-rent it then.

There are films that you hear are awful, and even when you see them with rock-bottom lowered expectations, they're atrocious to watch.

The Musketeer was one such film.  I couldn't even get through that one.  There are very few films I find so thoroughly unwatchable that I can't get through them at all.

Thankfully, Ghost Rider wasn't.  Sure, it was cheesy.  Sure, the acting was awful.  But y'know what?  I still found it fun and refreshing.  The visuals were cool.  The music was also cool.  The costumes were interesting and striking.  The bikes were fun.  The Western element was enjoyable campiness.

One thing before I forget:  watching the special features, I was actually surprised that a few things I thought were CGI weren't.  Like Ghost Rider's hand (that was some impressive animatronics).

Damn.  I just pressed "Ctrl +Z" to undo something and it deleted half my post.  Grrr...
Anyway, I'll try to reconstruct it.

The Bad (the worst of it):
-Cheese:  Yes, it was cheesy.  There's no denying it.  Like gouda.  Or havarti if you're a little kid.
-Acting:   Sorry, Eva Mendes, but the whole first half of the movie you were in, I thought you were stoned.  Especially the restaurant scene.  Other sillyiness: "iiiIIIIiieeeeee AaaammmMMMMmmmm lLlllLLLleeEeeeeEEEEeeeegggiiiioooonnnnnNNNNNn!".  Hahahaha.  Jellybeans.  And the whole Nicholas Cage watching the monkey video bit.  Ok, that scene was pretty bad and forced.  The Jellybeans, well, just weird.  I understand what they were trying to get at, after watching Nick Cage's explanations in the special features, but watching it was just bizare.
-Some of the directing/photography.  Especially that whole first highway-flirting scene.  *so* cheesy.  So cheesy I had to repeat myself.  Although impressive watching the stunt guy do the tricks in the special features.  However, once they put Nicholas Cage in there and shot the close-up shots, it just got too much.
-The plot, and a lot of the premises.... like the very end.  Throughout much of the film, particularly near the beginning, things
just happen without much rhyme or reason.  There's no explanation, it
just happens.  To say more, though, would be to spoil.  The premise was
flimsier than lace on a Spice Girl.  Most of the plot twists are pretty transparent.  The pacing was a little odd in the middle of the film.  Things happen too quickly and, like the beginning, without explanation.  For one thing, it feels like Nick Cage develops his powers a little too quickly for having only been Ghost Rider for the first time the night before.  I also thought Ghost Rider whipped the secondary baddies all a little too easily.  But, like I keep saying, don't expect anything, and you'll be pleasantly surprised.

The Good:

Maybe it helped that I watched it in two sittings, with the cheesiest stuff from the beginning in one sitting and the graphics-intensive darker comic book stuff in the second sitting.
-What I mentioned above.  Visuals, flames, burning tarmac, cowboy western fun.  The weirdness sort-of worked.  Don't expect anything intellectually.  I think I came out with a similar feeling as I did when I was a kid seeing Dick Tracy in the theatre, or seeing The Shadow.  Won't be winning any awards for writing, but on the whole I still had some good, brainless fun because the filmmakers had fun making it.  The special features really hit home how much of a work of passion for the filmakers, producers, and also for Nicholas Cage, and it shows in each over-the-top bit that they were willing to experiment with (from Nicholas Cage's overacting, the overacting of the villains, to the over-the-top gags, to the visuals, to the weird jellybean thing)... and ending off with the song "Ghost Riders in the Sky".... hahaha.  The new version of the song had Muse's "Knights of Cydonia" running through my head afterwards.

At least I didn't come out of it with the feeling my brain had been sucked into a pit of bad taste, like I did watching The Musketeer.  Or a film that tried to be intelligent but ended up lost in a plot hole big enough to have its own gravitational field as in Deja Vu.  Or a million other bad movies.  Everything else I've watched lately that's tried to be intelligent has just failed so miserably, and other films that tried to be visual failed just as badly.

Overall, enjoyed.

I hate you ITP.  I hate constantly worrying what my levels are.  I hate it affecting what I can or cannot do with my life, my hobbies, my activities, my interests.  I hate when it makes me look really pale.  I hate wondering whether it's going to cause some secondary problem.  I hate not being able to pull all-nighters and meet things head-on because it could cause my levels to drop.  I hate not being able to pull out 130% of myself.  I hate wondering if I exercise too strenuously, whether it might make something bad happen, constantly having to worry about that.  I having to be careful if I have a headache, wondering if it's because I pushed myself too much.  I hate wondering if it's going to get worse, or change.  I hate being constantly perched on the brink.  I hate having to be so careful about getting sick because it could cause my levels to drop.  I hate people who don't care, who are callous, who can't or choose not to understand.  I hate having to be careful about what I do, where I go, in case I catch a cold or get a flu.  I hate that it's affected me before I've had a chance to go and make a difference in the world, to do something important, to enrich myself with the world, and make the most of myself.  I hate having it drag down any attempt I make to become stronger, be healthier, be happier.  I hate having to be concerned about me and not focusing on helping others.  I hate that there's no cure, and that it's not even understood well (hence, the idiopathic) in favour of more "popular", less seemingly "benign" conditions.  I hate worrying about my parents worrying.  I hate having to be careful even about stress, when I think I'm already predisposed to stress by genetics; I hate worrying about worrying.

I'm okay, though. 
Just a tad frustrated. 
Back to attempting to meet everything as head-on as possible.

?

Talk about Weird.

First, there was Chow Yun Fat as a pirate in the currently-in-theatres Pirates 3.

Then, I heard news about Jet Li being in the next Mummy movie (The Mummy 3), as the next Mummy no less (one from ancient China), and about Jet Li starring with Jackie Chan as the Monkey King in another film titled The Forbidden Kingdom, possibly directed by Peter Jackson.

Now, I hear that the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender will be made into a live-action film, planned as the first of a trilogy, and that the director at the helm will be M. Knight Shyamalan. While I am a fan of Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense and The Village, this seems an incredibly odd choice for Avatar, straight out of left field. Now, if they don't get Yuen Woo Ping to do the choreography, or at least someone in the know about good traditional chinese martial arts choreography, it could turn out a monumentally wasted bit of potential. "What a Twist!"

What next, Gore Verbinski directs Naruto: The Live Action Movie? Or Sam Raimi directs Bleach: The Live Action Movie (oh wait, that might actually be kinda neat)?

Arrrrrr, ye mateys!

WTF?! OMG! HAHahahaha

Messed.

Oddly enough, there's no mention anywhere nor on Rob Paulsen's official site of the Mini Wheats commercials, so it's looking likely that it might not be him, but a rip-off.......

Sorry, I've moved on.  Simply put, you no longer matter to me.

odd... I thought I'd mentioned it on my xanga when I watched "Schultze Gets the Blues" with the spyo'ers (the Jansens & Lucy) at Patti & Quinton's apartment.  I think it was in February?  We rented it after having dinner at Insadong.  Great little film about a retired mine worker who hears new orleans music on the radio one day and travels accross the world with his polka accordion to find that music.