musings

This past Wednesday I went to the game developer track at Microsoft X05 (basically a “what’s coming” with regards to Microsoft and game development) event. The event was held at the Paramount theatre on Richmond Street. This is just a couple of blocks away from my favourite music store, Penguin Music. So I, of course, arranged to be in town for the event just a little early, giving me time to drop in. And, of course, I didn’t leave empty handed. I grabbed three new albums – The Campfire Headphase by Boards of Canada, Corymb by Boom Bip, and Yesterday Was Dramatic – Today Is OK by Múm.

I’d scored a leaked copy of The Campfire Headphase ages ago, and it’s utterly brilliant. I’ve not yet had a chance to spin the Boom Bip album (it’s some new original material, remixes by Four Tet, Mogwai, Lali Puna, Clouddead, Venetian Snares and Boards of Canada, and Peel Sessions ; how can it be anything BUT great?) and I’m listening to the Múm even as I type this. So far, it’s fantastic. It’s a reissue of their first album, which was never released in North America, so I was thrilled to find it.

I’ll post more on the Boom Bip and Múm albums once I’ve listened to them properly.

(The Microsoft event, by the way, was pretty good – Denis Dyack of Silicon Knights and David Wu of Pseudo Interactive both gave talks that were informative and entertaining. After the event we got a chance to check out the XBox360 and play some of the forthcoming games, which was also a lot of fun.)

Haunted Paper Toys showed up on boingboing today. I was drawn in by the little Necronomicon notebooks, but further inspection of the site revealed a treasure trove of papercraft. Creepy dice, gift boxes, board games and more!

Great Caesar’s Ghost, has it really been more than three weeks since my last post? What have I been doing? I don’t know why I’ve left this fallow for so long ; just didn’t feel like writing anything. One of the things I like so much about blogging is that it’s something I can just do when the urge strikes ; I never feel obligated to keep writing.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago Neil Gaiman came through Toronto as part of the Anansi Boys promotional tour, and Stephen and I went to the reading and signing. Neil’s a captivating speaker – we had a great time. Because he was signing for all 750 attendees, there wasn’t time for photo opportunities, but there was a draw for five photo ops, and I was one of the lucky five. I’ve put the photo up on my flickr site. Neil Gaiman’s one of my favourite authors, so the whole evening was quite a thrill for me. After the show we met up with Kourosh (who has finally started a blog – see the links section) and Coralie, who were in town for (Canadian) Thanksgiving, and we went to the 7 West Cafe, where we had great coffee, great cake, and great conversation. Always fun to hang out with those guys.

This past Saturday, Stephen and I made our way up to Caledon to take advantage of autumn colours for some photography. We first went to the Cheltenham Badlands where we spent way too much time (and I spent way too much battery). The badlands are just stunning – I found it hard to pry myself away from the place. After that we visited the Bellfountain Conservation Area which was also beautiful. I got some great photos on Saturday – hopefully I’ll have some time to go through them and put the highlights up on my flickr site.

Well, those comment spamming bastards manage to get past the damn registered users only restriction. I guess it’s ‘cuz they comment through the comment-post.php file directly. So, I’ve removed the registered user restriction (which appears to have screwed things to the point where nobody could comment at all, anyway). Instead, I’ve installed a captcha plugin that (I hope) will end this crap once and for all.

I went to see Dead Can Dance tonight at Massey Hall. I’d never seen them live before, and honestly never expected to get the opportunity, so I’m really glad I went. The show was pretty good – Massey Hall has amazing sound, and DCD sounded really great – exactly like their albums, in fact. And that, in a nutshell, was where the show felt weak. They seemed to be on autopilot – just going through the motions. I know that at least some of this impression is because I saw DCD on the heels of the most intense, raw, and amazing concert I’ve ever seen (Sigur Rós, last week in Ottawa), but it’s no less valid for that. I love Dead Can Dance, and if they ever tour again I’ll see them again, but I wasn’t blown away the way I’d hoped to be.

Oh, and though Massey Hall has amazing sound, it was built during an era when the average human was 3′6″ tall. The seats are an abomination. There’s no leg room, and the seats are tiny. It would take a lot to get me to want to see a show there again. I mean, if Tom Waits were to play there I’d go, because Tom Waits virtually never plays Toronto any more, but it would have to be something that enticing to convince me to pay to torture myself in those horrid seats again. My back and legs are going to hurt ’til 2011.

I loved Serenity. A lot of people seem to have done so. In fact, I haven’t seen a better movie this year. ‘Nuff said.