…now home and feeling tan. ...
Full Post • Posted December 19, 2014
A marvellous photo of the Mount Sharp in the Gale Crater on Mars has changed the tenor of my day....
Full Post • Posted December 7, 2014
The exaggerated color of secrecy clinging to politics confirmed its resemblance to the business of romance; politics and love affairs...
Full Post • Posted December 4, 2014
An awkward but not terrible movie that, like Maleficent, sets out to humanize an iconic villain. Dracula here is both...
Full Post • Posted December 3, 2014
Two hours of being cool and solitary, artistic and messy. I could watch Tilda Swinton read for hours. Really great...
Full Post • Posted December 3, 2014
As per convention, I grabbed the next season of this show on a rainy day in the Fall at the end...
Full Post • Posted December 2, 2014
I woke up insanely early this morning, mind racing. Couldn't get back to sleep. I hate it when that happens....
Full Post • Posted December 2, 2014
I love Survivor and have been watching (without logging) past seasons that I haven’t seen before. At this point, I’ve...
Full Post • Posted December 1, 2014
When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would...
Full Post • Posted November 29, 2014
The first books I read by Yukio Mishima—Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion—were dense and...
Full Post • Posted November 29, 2014
In my admin file, I want to keep track of where information in a note came from: at what meeting,...
Full Post • Posted November 28, 2014
… they all passed the butter to each other too politely. — Agatha Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia...
Full Post • Posted November 27, 2014
Blizzard advertised and pushed their new expansion for nearly a year. Blog posts, videos series about backstory, a major pre-launch...
Full Post • Posted November 13, 2014
So I’m rereading Steven Brust‘s Vlad series and this novel’s ambition threw me for a loop. On one level, I was happy to...
Full Post • Posted November 9, 2014
I was shocked by how dark Steven Brust’s Yendi is. I had forgotten. Reading it now, I wish I could remember...
Full Post • Posted November 8, 2014
The beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. — Kate Chopin, The...
Full Post • Posted November 7, 2014
Right off the bat I should say that I’m still learning how to use attributes. Outlines, map views, links, these...
Full Post • Posted November 7, 2014
Years and years ago, I read all of Steven Brust’s Vlad novels (or at least those that were available at...
Full Post • Posted November 7, 2014
Because I’d already reread Jhereg, I started rereading the Vlad novels with Yendi. The characters are trying to solve a...
Full Post • Posted November 6, 2014
The merit of a work derives from its usefulness or from the pleasure it gives, or even from both when...
Full Post • Posted November 4, 2014
I read this years ago, but a couple months back, saw it on my shelf and decided to flip through...
Full Post • Posted November 4, 2014
Outlines and maps are where I do most of my work in Tinderbox, but they function very differently from each...
Full Post • Posted November 4, 2014
Prototypes are easy to make and manage. So much so that in my early projects I tried to use them...
Full Post • Posted November 3, 2014
I’ve just finished recording four Tinderbox screencap videos and plan to present them as a series over the next week. The videos start out with...
Full Post • Posted November 2, 2014
Sometimes at the end of a long hard day, you just need time in Azeroth with the fraternal unit. Sometimes,...
Full Post • Posted October 31, 2014
Maleficent is a character I was fascinated with as a child and who I remember today with glee because she...
Full Post • Posted October 31, 2014
A pumpkin headed scarecrow. ...
Full Post • Posted October 26, 2014
So after weeks, the move to my new web host is complete, and I'm glad I did it. Because mynew...
Full Post • Posted October 26, 2014
Xavier Dolan’s new film is formally daring, beautiful and moving. It’s Stella Dallas with a son rather than a daughter and...
Full Post • Posted October 17, 2014
House of Cards began as a study of amorality that took power and marriage as its subjects.[1] Season one offered up a...
Full Post • Posted October 15, 2014
A birch tree in the Parc des Voltigers in St-Charles-de-Drummond. It seems some trees throw fire and not nets into...
Full Post • Posted October 14, 2014
Computing isn't digestion. You got to know things to make it work. I know nothing about server stuff. (I say...
Full Post • Posted October 14, 2014
The elms stretched delicate branches high into the blue, and the clustered twigs had the sharp clarity of countless cast...
Full Post • Posted October 14, 2014
Finally switching web hosts. It's gonna take a couple days. Silence until it's done probably. Fingers crossed that all goes...
Full Post • Posted October 9, 2014
Ma vie est monotone. Je chasse les poules, les hommes me chassent. Toutes les poules se ressemblent, et tous les...
Full Post • Posted October 7, 2014
Once, long long ago, I convinced my parents to take me to a Godzilla double-feature at the drive-in. They satthrough...
Full Post • Posted October 5, 2014
I upgraded to Tinderbox 6 when it was released in late summer. There was a lot to love about the...
Full Post • Posted October 4, 2014
The Beav—who never watches TV—wanted to watch this show. So we started it last year, working through season one and two...
Full Post • Posted October 3, 2014
This is a follow-up to my post about front-of-the-manual tools in Eastgate’s Tinderbox. It explains how I make the in-text links I discussed there. Because...
Full Post • Posted September 21, 2014
A Tinderbox file is like sculpture. You chip away at your project—first here, then there—slowly digging to find the shape of your specific...
Full Post • Posted September 20, 2014
This novel reminded me of an epic fantasy insofar as it is fascinated with large-scale historical change, the political consequences of religion,...
Full Post • Posted September 17, 2014
So many people raved about this film to me that I was actually looking forward to it, and it was...
Full Post • Posted September 16, 2014
The announcement of the new iPhone has sent me wandering down memory lane and has me thinking about how my...
Full Post • Posted September 14, 2014
But it didn't work out and I went to bed: iPhone 6 fail This morning I learned that I actually...
Full Post • Posted September 13, 2014
The Wonder Boys is one of my favourite books. It’s fun and true without being cruel or overly sentimental. Mysteries is a...
Full Post • Posted September 9, 2014
Oh, anyone can know what I know–my heart belongs to me. — Goethe, The Sufferings of Young Werther...
Full Post • Posted September 6, 2014
So. A chain of links and at the end, Scott Rosenberg explaining that blogging is becoming a thing again. He's...
Full Post • Posted September 6, 2014
As the movie opens, the Hero watches his mother die. Overcome, he runs away from his extended family. The Hero,...
Full Post • Posted September 2, 2014
The first two weeks of the semester are nearly done, and yet again, I'm caught surprised by the raw change...
Full Post • Posted August 28, 2014
The purpose of art is not to release a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is rather, the gradual, lifelong construction...
Full Post • Posted August 23, 2014
Marky Mark and The Rock. Together. I’m going to credit them with inspiring Michael Bay to make a film that Tony...
Full Post • Posted August 22, 2014
This film managed to hit both of my biggest sci-fi movie peeves: 1 the hero “saves” the world by destroying everything...
Full Post • Posted August 20, 2014
As the movie opens, the Hero watches his mother die. Overcome, he runs away from his extended family. The Hero,...
Full Post • Posted August 14, 2014
As the movie opens, the Hero watches his mother die. Overcome, he runs away from his extended family. The Hero,...
Full Post • Posted August 10, 2014
Over the next few days I'll be posting a series of variations on The Guardians of the Galaxy. There's a...
Full Post • Posted August 10, 2014
Le nécessaire avait produit le grand, le véritable effet. — Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses...
Full Post • Posted August 10, 2014
Word list made while reading Quiet. * unambitious * quiet * too influenced by the people around you * pleaser...
Full Post • Posted August 6, 2014
For the last few weeks, I’ve been working on the hypertext I took on as a summer project. It’s been...
Full Post • Posted August 4, 2014
The Beav wasn’t as impressed by this film as I felt he should be. He liked the concept and was...
Full Post • Posted August 3, 2014
I watched the first season of Game of Thrones because it’s everywhere and I figured I’d give it a go....
Full Post • Posted August 1, 2014
Like this year’s other great summer blockbuster The Edge of Tomorrow, Lucy organizes its narrative according to the logic of a...
Full Post • Posted July 31, 2014
I just read Excession, the fourth of Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels, and really enjoyed it. It’s different from the others I’ve...
Full Post • Posted July 29, 2014
I made no haste in my work, but rather made the most of it. –Henry David Thoreau...
Full Post • Posted July 23, 2014
In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better...
Full Post • Posted July 19, 2014
I really liked this movie. It was well-made and engaging, and its mix of action and mystery had a familiar,...
Full Post • Posted July 18, 2014
I blew this movie off when it came out for all the obvious reasons, but I kept being told randomly...
Full Post • Posted July 18, 2014
I expect this will turn out to have been the best movie of the summer. I’m stunned by how well-told...
Full Post • Posted July 18, 2014
I enjoyed this movie. It was predictable and self-important, but a nice distraction. Set against the other films logged right...
Full Post • Posted July 18, 2014
Mark Bernstein asks some basic questions of craft as he tries to write a hypertext page turner. Now, I don’t know Bernstein so...
Full Post • Posted July 16, 2014
A kid talking to his friend: “My mom said we could do whatever we want…. As long as we're good.”...
Full Post • Posted July 14, 2014
Archaic Torso of Apollo We cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso is...
Full Post • Posted July 9, 2014
The Beav and I are heading out for a couple weeks of vacation. We're making a road trip and the...
Full Post • Posted June 21, 2014
This entirely competent and entirely boring film manages to surpass its source in not a single way. It has less narrative,...
Full Post • Posted June 18, 2014
Xavier Dolan‘s first stab at a popular genre is a domestic thriller with gestures (often musical) toward Hitchcock. The Beav...
Full Post • Posted June 17, 2014
…I breath again; Trances of thought and mountings of the mind Come fast upon me: it is shaken off,...
Full Post • Posted June 15, 2014
…in the being right there was nothing of consolation nor of peace. — William Faulkner, If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem...
Full Post • Posted June 11, 2014
Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country is one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in a long time. The blurb and...
Full Post • Posted June 10, 2014
This is the second book I’ve read by Mishima and it’s as dense and complex as the first. It’s also just...
Full Post • Posted June 9, 2014
It was skill alone that made it possible. Beauty was skill. — Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion...
Full Post • Posted June 8, 2014
My big project this summer is to create a non-fiction hypertext. I have a subject. I have the material. I...
Full Post • Posted June 7, 2014
An adaptation of Franz Kafka‘s story. The Beav and I saw it at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto. The...
Full Post • Posted May 31, 2014
Written by Anton Chekhov, this play is about familiar themes: city and country life, the paths available to an artist,...
Full Post • Posted May 29, 2014
Written by Victor Hugo and directed by Claude Poissant for the Théâtre Denise-Pelletier. The theatre summarizes the play as: À...
Full Post • Posted May 27, 2014
A few weeks ago the Beav and I went down to Rochester to see what we could see. Our first...
Full Post • Posted May 25, 2014
The new Wes Anderson film. I have as little to say about it as I do about most of his...
Full Post • Posted May 24, 2014
A book written by Peter Knegt. He’s a friend of a friend and I heard about his book that way....
Full Post • Posted May 24, 2014
The labour into which a heart has poured it’s whole love–where will it have its say, to excite and inspire,...
Full Post • Posted May 10, 2014
A few months ago I wrote a series of posts about revising my Tinderbox course planning file. (The sidebar links to a...
Full Post • Posted May 5, 2014
Five or six months ago I turned comments on for posts on this site. I was curious what would come...
Full Post • Posted May 4, 2014
A few months ago, the Beav and I went to Toronto and saw The Great Upheaval, a show of works...
Full Post • Posted April 11, 2014
A key movie of the New Queer Cinema that, somehow, I’d never seen. And it’s quite good, especially now that...
Full Post • Posted April 10, 2014
Why is there so much genre film logged here? I've asked this question before and thrown out a tentative answer....
Full Post • Posted April 9, 2014
I read Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget a while back. His latest book, despite appearances, moves him to new...
Full Post • Posted April 8, 2014
Is HTML like handwriting or like book printing? I can’t decide. If it’s like book printing, then writers complete their...
Full Post • Posted April 7, 2014
An old-fashioned movie that gives us nothing of what we expect from a war movie post-Saving Private Ryan. The tone...
Full Post • Posted April 6, 2014
An old-fashioned movie that gives us nothing of what we expect from a war movie post-Saving Private Ryan. The tone...
Full Post • Posted April 6, 2014
I picked this book to replace Swimming in the Monsoon Sea on a course reading list and expected the difference to be minimal....
Full Post • Posted April 6, 2014
Things began allegorically: Carpets. The only way to fly. Then settled down: A secret spot in the mountains. A good...
Full Post • Posted April 4, 2014
This is the first book I’ve read by Yukio Mishima. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but what I...
Full Post • Posted April 2, 2014
^include(/Blog Videos/2014-vids/Spring-Woods-St-Cyrille-de-Wendover.m4v)^...
Full Post • Posted March 24, 2014
I went into this film eager to like it. I worked to be on its side well beyond the halfway...
Full Post • Posted March 22, 2014
Sometimes there’s the movie and there’s the movie. Here, the movie doesn’t seem to know Seinfeld’s old joke about fit single...
Full Post • Posted March 20, 2014
The Golden Temple cast a perfect shadow on the surface of the pond, where the duckweed and the leaves from...
Full Post • Posted March 19, 2014
This film was fine, and I suppose I liked it well enough, but I honestly can’t account for its popularity....
Full Post • Posted March 18, 2014
Thor A remake more-or-less of the first movie (which I saw but apparently didn’t log) but done as a mash...
Full Post • Posted March 17, 2014
It is a common failing of childhood to think that if one makes a hero out of a demon the...
Full Post • Posted March 16, 2014
We can understand a work only if we have understood that to which it responds. — Paul Ricoeur, Temps et Récit...
Full Post • Posted March 16, 2014
A film that begins with the worst, most stilted dialogue I’ve heard in a long time. It becomes an efficient...
Full Post • Posted March 15, 2014
^include(/Blog Videos/2014-vids/GullsTheLakeThenDucks.m4v)^...
Full Post • Posted March 14, 2014
Alexander Payne makes movies that I like. I wait for them, watch them, remember them, but without ever mistaking them...
Full Post • Posted March 13, 2014
Two women walking. One says to the other: “You never remember the good things.” ...
Full Post • Posted March 12, 2014
Ender's Game and Aeon Flux are surprisingly similar films and stumble over nearly identical narrative problems: both want to be...
Full Post • Posted March 12, 2014
Meanwhile, the cherry trees had blossomed. But no one seemed to have time for flower-viewing. — Yukio Mishima, Confessions of...
Full Post • Posted March 11, 2014
I love sci-fi but so much of it is just terrible or silly kid stuff. This movie is proof it...
Full Post • Posted March 11, 2014
Steve McQueen’s latest is the best movie I’ve seen in a long time. Beautifully photographed and constructed. I especially like...
Full Post • Posted March 10, 2014
Again this year, me and my friend Caitlin tried to watch all of the best picture nominees prior to the...
Full Post • Posted March 6, 2014
I decided to rewatch Verhoeven‘s Robocop because I will surely see the remake, especially given how interesting I found the remake of...
Full Post • Posted March 6, 2014
A documentary about nuclear power, and the environmentalists who have decided that, despite our fears, it is the safest way...
Full Post • Posted March 5, 2014
These are late in coming, but over the holidays I watched the third season of Deadwood. It was a season where the...
Full Post • Posted February 24, 2014
Really, universally, relations stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally but to draw, by a geometry...
Full Post • Posted February 22, 2014
I was given Greenblatt’s book by a friend who thought I’d be interested in the way Lucretius’s On the Nature...
Full Post • Posted February 22, 2014
For most of us, most of the time, banning books or burning them isn't real. Not really. These acts exist...
Full Post • Posted February 15, 2014
Maternal wisdom: “Sit there and eat. No, eat. We have to learn to like different things in a different country...
Full Post • Posted February 12, 2014
In my original template, dates and deadlines, kinds of material and their topics, and everything else I needed to know...
Full Post • Posted February 9, 2014
The roots of my course plan revision reach back to the classroom wiki project I began creating last May. As...
Full Post • Posted January 31, 2014
My second stab at using a classroom wiki has launched. It’s going well so far: everyone has posted a profile...
Full Post • Posted January 28, 2014
In response to my posts about my annoyance with the move toward responsive web design and my layman's sense that...
Full Post • Posted January 26, 2014
What a beautiful world it was once. — Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It...
Full Post • Posted January 25, 2014
One of life’s quite excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of...
Full Post • Posted January 25, 2014
All there is to thinking…is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren’t noticing which makes you see...
Full Post • Posted January 25, 2014
I suppose I should say something about agents before I start talking about my new course file. Basic Agents...
Full Post • Posted January 25, 2014
Looming purple spider. ...
Full Post • Posted January 23, 2014
As I explained in my previous post, I scheduled class time in my Tinderbox template by dropping notes (or aliases)...
Full Post • Posted January 22, 2014
Although I’ve written about my original course plan a bit in earlier posts, I need to review a few points...
Full Post • Posted January 20, 2014
A little over a year ago, I bought Mark Bernstein’s Tinderbox and began using it to plan my literature courses....
Full Post • Posted January 18, 2014
Turns out I have nothing to say about wine and writing these posts isn’t helping me learn what I’m drinking....
Full Post • Posted January 14, 2014
As far as heros go, it’s hard to find one more retiring than Reeves’s character here. Yet, the film moves....
Full Post • Posted January 13, 2014
Keanu Reeves directed this film, but what exactly was his role? (Call this a note to self: the answer will...
Full Post • Posted January 13, 2014
The Beav heard about an exhibit of engraving and paintings by Maurice Le Bel at the Bibliothèque du Boisé in...
Full Post • Posted January 12, 2014
“My mom sat down with me and had a very serious conversation and explained things to me. She wants to...
Full Post • Posted January 11, 2014
The following is a quotation fromFor PC Makers, the Good News on 2013 Is That It Is Over on The...
Full Post • Posted January 9, 2014
The story space of this film came alive for me as I watched because of the actors (not the subject,...
Full Post • Posted January 9, 2014
Seen. Logged. Will wait to speak until the third is out. Yes, that’s me stalling....
Full Post • Posted January 9, 2014
I remember watching horror films when I was young and enjoying them. Sharing a Lazy-Boy with my sisters, hiding behind...
Full Post • Posted January 8, 2014
The Long Tomorrow is a sci-fi novel from 1955 by Leigh Brackett. After a nuclear holocaust, Americans decide high population...
Full Post • Posted January 3, 2014
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