I saw For Your Consideration, Christopher Guest's latest improv movie, over the weekend. I think I'm one of the few people who saw (and liked) Waiting for Guffmanbefore Best in Showand A Mighty Windcreated some buzz around what he was doing but his latest is probably the weakest of the four films. It has the same low key style, combination of slightly off and very strange characters and improv feel but it never quite jells. This one adds a lot of TV satire set pieces, playing off shows like Entertainment Tonight, and I think those pieces are too crudely done to fit in with the light touch of the rest of the film.

I also finished The Relicby Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston. It's a pretty standard thriller/horror book with some an interesting background - the Museum of Natural History in New York. I'm not sure how they divvied up the work on this one but they do create a decent "page turner". Preston also wrote a non-fiction history of the Museum called Dinosaurs in the Atticthat looks interesting.

I finished two books today. The first is iWoz - Steve Wozniak's autobiography. I owned an Apple II clone when I was in junior high but I never thought very much about the man behind it until last year when I heard him speak at a conference. His speech was about his childhood and inventing the personal computer and was inspiring. I didn't know how central his role had been and how much of an amazing engineer he was until that speech. After that, I heard his autobiography was coming out and couldn't wait to read it.

Of course, it's not quite as good as my expectations. Like many autobiographies, it's based on conversations/interview he had with the real author, Gina Smith in this case. Some of the stories are the same ones he told in his speech and some are ones that are available on the web. If you're interesting in the history of computers, Apple or want to be inspired about the pursuit of engineering, I'd recommend it.

The other book is Clive Barker's The Thief of Always. I haven't read a lot of Clive Barker's work, but this doesn't seem to be as much of a horror novel as his others. It's more of a modern fantasy/horror work for older children/young adults. It's an OK read but nothing surprising.

On the drive home today, I realized that I had overlooked one of my favourite authors when I claimed there were no American authors writing in a similar style/genre to Superchick. Po Bronson's first two books, Bombardiersand The First $20 Million is Always the Hardestare both great books in a similar style. Bronson has gone on to right some very good non-fiction booksbut I hope he returns to fiction some day.

Latest book read: Superchickby Stephen J. Martin. This one was sent to me by a friend and is easily the best thing I've read in a while. It fits in a genre that seems to be entirely defined by British/Irish authors, in particular Nick Hornbyand early Roddy Doyle. For some reason, American and continental European authors haven't produced anything in this working class, humourous, naturalistic style. The most similar things I can think of by US authors are the lighter works of Elmore Leonard, Donald Westlake, or Carl Hiassenbut these are all in the mystery genre.

If you like any of the authors I listed above, check this one out. It actually had me laughing out loud a few times.

I just finished Gen-e-sis by Robert M. Hazen, a non-fiction book about the scientific research into the origins of life on Earth. I read a fair amount of non-fiction popular science books but this one was a little different. First, it was written by one of the researchers in the field instead of a journalist. Second, it was written about a problem that hasn't been solved yet. Because they are written in hingsight, many of these books pick up a stronger narrative feeling -- the scientists face certain adversities, perservere and eventually they are vindicated. For example, see The Double Helix, which tells the story of Watson and Crick discovering the structure of DNA.

In contrast, Hazen's book provides a slightly different window into the world of working science. There are multiple competing approaches with controversies, false starts and personality clashes with no ultimate winner yet. If you want to get an idea how actual scientists work together, compete or think in general, I highly recommend this book.

I was lucky enough to hear one of the researchers featured speak at Wonderfest, a series of dialogues/lectures that is held at Stanford/UC Berkeley every year. The topic of the debate was "Was the Origin of Life Inevitable". Both of the researchers who spoke actually agreed with the thesis but for the sake of having a debate, one of them took the other side and did a very good job of using his expertise in the field to highlight the missing pieces and problems in the current theories. If you're in the Bay Area, you should check it out next November.

Just finished Saga of the Jomsvikings. Quite short and not very lively compared to most modern fiction. If you like the works of Homer or Herodotus like I do, you might enjoy this one as well. Just don't expect a modern story with a Viking setting.

I just finished Adventures from the Technology Underground by William Gurstelle, an interesting non-fiction book about projects being accomplished by a slew of DIY technology geeks. If you are a fan of Robot Wars, Junkyard Wards/Scrapheap Challenge, Make or even Mythbusters, you will probably enjoy this book. It's a bit short and is more of a collection of vignettes than a deep study of the topic but the people he meets are all interesting and the book could serve as a resource for someone trying to research modern DIY.

The ABC Family Channel was showing the first three Harry Potter movies this weekend. I've seen the first two a number of times on TV over the years but this is the first time I've seen Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on TV. As I thought at the time, it's clearly the best of the movie versions. And it's more than just a result of the book being meatier than the previous ones. Even a cursory examination shows that Alfonso Cuarón created an actual world that Harry and the other characters seemed to live in, compared to the shallow, un-imaginative backdrop that Chris Columbus created. I only saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire one time in the theaters but it was clear the Mike Newall was trying to be more in the Cuarón rather than Columbus mode. Good for him.

Arthur & George is Julian Barnes latest book and the first I have read by him. The two main characters are real people - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji - and their lives are compared/contrasted throughout the first part of the book. The later part is more focused on Doyle's involvement in the real life miscarriage of justice that put Edalji in prison for 3 years based on part raciscm, part police incompetence. After his release, Doyle got involved and eventually got Edalji pardoned. Some of the other major themse in the book are Doyle's involvement in the spiritualism movement and his relationships with his first and second wives.

Barnes does a better job portraying Doyle than Edalji. Even though Doyle had some odd beliefs - he believed in spirits and the afterlife and even argued for the existence of fairies at one point - Barnes creates a convincing character based on the Sherlock Holmes author. On the other hand, Edalji remains a mystery. Many other characters respond strangely to him and it is never made clear if this is because of his mixed race or if it is something odd about Edalji's manner. Edalji's relationship with his father is also never fully explained - his father insisted on sleeping in the same locked room as him until he went to prison but the reasons behind this are never comfortably established.

Overall, I would highly recommend it, particularly for fans of Sherlock Holmes or of the Victorian/Edwardian period in general.

OK, I haven't managed to actually post here in years. I'm going to try something new - just post quick notes about what I'm reading, shows I've been to, etc. and see how that goes. For example, I just recently finished Arthur & George by Julian Barnes. Maybe tomorrow, I'll post a review.

Wow. That last break was short, compared with this one. I got busy or something (who remembers after almost 2 years) and stopped posting. I might start posting again, but I really shouldn't promise anything.

The latest performances I've seen that I can comment on are Chris Thile/Edgar Meyer at the Herbst Theater in SF and The James King Band at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley.

Chris Thile was, as always, amazing. The seemingly effortless way he produces idea after idea, sometimes playing at breakneck speed, other times at a more normal human speed, is a joy to watch. I've seen him play with his band Nickel Creek and with Mike Marshall before and loved all three shows. This time he played with the bassist Edgar Meyer, who was also very fun to watch. They made an interesting pair - the middle aged, sedate looking bass player beside the very young, sometimes hyperactive mandolinist.

This was the second time I've been to the Herbst Theater. It is a very nice venue for acoustic music. The music at this show could have been a little louder since we were in the very last row of the balcony, but the audience got into the atmosphere every note could be heard. Some of the between songs banter was harder to hear but the music was un-diminished.

The other show, James King, was also a pleasure. I've seen James King 3 times now and I will continue to seek his shows out anytime he is in the Bay Area. He plays the kind of intense, old time bluegrass that is my favourite and seems to love to play as well. 2 of the 3 times I've seen him have been at venues less than a third full and both times it didn't seem to result in him holding back at all.

Other recent shows include The Barefoot Nellies and Grizzly Peak at the Blarney Stone in SF. I know people in both bands so it was fun to see them play in public. We were running a little late and ran into parking problems so we missed about half of the Nellies set but they sounded really good, particularly for a band that hasn't been playing together that long.

This was my first time seeing Grizzly Peak since they changed guitar and banjo players. The new guys fit into the band really well and the whole band is well worth seeing.

Ok, so the break turned out to be a little longer than I intended. As I mentioned in my last post, things were on hold until DSL got set up. That happened quite some time ago but right around that time I badly hurt my left middle finger while climbing. That made typing a chore and I've only recently got the OK from the doctor to start using it in a normal fashion. It's still not back to normal, and may never get 100% back, but typing now is no problem. On the other hand, my two main hobbies - climbing and playing guitar - are still hampered. Climbing is completely out for the foreseeable future. I've started playing guitar again, but in a limited fashion.

Since I took my hiatus, the war started and then ended again. If you blinked, you might have missed it.

Anyways, hopefully I will be posting more as things come to me.

Sadly, posting will probably get even scarcer here for the next little while. We've mostly completed the move to our new house but there is no internet connection set up there till the DSL gets set up in 2 weeks. I'm not posting from work, so that means there won't be the possibility of posting.

Last night we took advantage of being in Oakland and made our way over to world class jazz house Yoshi's to see the virtuoso gypsy guitarist Bireli Lagrene. Of course, almost any professional gypsy jazz guitarist is going to be a virtuoso, but I'm told Bireli stands out from the crowd. Gypsy jazz, modeled after the Django Reinhardt's Hot Club Quintet, has it's own sub-culture, smaller even than that of bluegrass. I understand it is bigger in Europe, where most of the modern practioners hail from. In fact, a lot of the top players are Gypsy's like Django. It seems after Django gained his fame in the jazz world, his musical style took over among Gypsy's, in many cases even supplanting the Gypsy's traditional music. This led to a large crop of Gypsy youths who were raised to play guitar a la Django, and since they've been doing it since they were 3, they tend to be pretty good at it.
Bireli is an interesting case because after he made a mark at 13 as sounding more like Django than Django, he went on to become a well regarded jazz fusion player, playing electric guitar with fusion stalwarts like bassist Jaco Pastorius. Just recently he decided to return to his roots and record and tour with a Gypsy jazz band. He looks like he's having a ton of fun playing this style of music and I liked it enough that I'm thinking of breaking this month's concert budget and going to see him again Sunday afternoon.

Last night was a concert we bought tickets too way before we started the latest housing adventure. The band was the Waybacks. They are doing a three night stand at their home venue, San Jose's Espresso Garden which they are taping for a live CD release. I've seen the Waybacks play a couple of times, the first being in San Francisco at the Plough and Stars. Seeing them was what inspired me to get back into playing guitar and to be serious enough about it that I took lessons and really spent some time on acoustic guitar. Coincidentally I ended up taking lessons from Bay Area bluegrass guru Jack Tuttle at the store where one of the Waybacks worked before they gave up their day jobs for touring.

As always, the show was excellent. They did 3 or 4 songs from their first album and 7 song from the second mixed in with some new pieces. Stevie Coyle (fingerpicked guitar) does an excellent job of MC'ing their shows with a wry, dry wit that makes even jokes repeated from show to show go over. Wayne "Chojo" Jacques (mandolin, fiddle, nose harp) and James Nash (flatpicked guitar, mandolin) hold down the lion's share of the soloing and are amazing to watch, particularly Nash. I've seen some of the best guitarists in this type of music and he stands out as being one of the tastiest players, while being one of the fastest at the same time! They've changed the rhythm section around over the years but I think the current one (Joe Kyle, Jr. on bass and Chuck Hamilton on drums) is their best. They've got a little more flair than some of the previous band members and work well with the other three.

As you might be able to tell from the line-up, this isn't a bluegrass band. They do some bluegrass like playing, but their music is a mixture of country, jazz, folk, bluegrass and celtic influences that they have pulled together very well.

I highly recommend seeing them if you have the chance. These days they are touring most of the time, so check out their website and see if they are coming to your town sometime soon.

Sorry about the extended absence. I'm in the process of buying a house with my girlfriend and it has taken most of my spare time and all my spare energy, so no posting here. On top of that, we're trying to keep to a budget to go with the house, so the number of concerts and other things I could report on that I go to is diminished.

So over the next few weeks you might get some posts on how the Oakland/Berkeley part of the East Bay is different from the Sunnyvale part of Silicon Valley.

On Sunday, I was lucky enough to attend a great jam locally. I've been taking a Tuesday night western swing jam class that clashes with the Tuesday night "garage" bluegrass jam I've been going to. One of the fiddle players in that class also regularly goes to the Tuesday night jam and he felt like he was missing the bluegrass experience so he invited all the regulars he knew to his house on Sunday. There was some good food, beer and 4+ hours of solid jamming. We had at least 3 of every instrument but fiddle and dobro, but the acoustics were still OK and there were lots of great amateurs to listen two. A couple of the people I know from the Tuesday jam have even gone far enough to start a band of their own. We got to hear them signing together on Sunday and they sounded great so I'm really looking forward to when they start gigging.

In other news, it looks like I made a blogroll even though I've only posted a few times and probably don't have a lot of general interest stuff. The link is from Sarah, who you might notice on my small list of links to the left. She is an old friend from back in Edmonton, which goes to explain why she linked here, I guess.

Of course the big news today is the Columbia accident. Like most, I got up this morning and was blindsided by what I heard on the TV. As the day went on a few more details came to light, but nothing really substantial. I'm sure the news will stay in this mode for this incident until something else happens, like a realy juicy murder or the coalition forces invading Iraq.

My friend Colby makes a point about takeoff vs. landing that I don't quite agree with. While takeoff is amazingly scary, due to the tonnage of explosives strapped to the vehicle, landing is no cakewalk or "poetic serenity" as he calls it. At the moment of disintegration, the shuttle was moving through the atmosphere at Mach 18. The temperature of the wing surfaces can top 1500 degree Celsius. And let's not forget that the re-entry before the accident was visible from the surface 40 miles down due to the fireball created between the lander and the atmosphere. Not exactly serene in my books.

In less horrible news, the Garry Kasparov vs. Deep Junior match continues. Garry took an early lead by winning game 1, took a draw on game 2 but went down to defeat on game three to tie up the series. To my eye, it looks like he got greedy. Junior got into some trouble early but recovered and Garry didn't want to settle for a draw. This lead to time pressure and a mistake that ended up costing him the game. The next game is live tomorrow at 12:30 PST. There are a number of live feeds, but I recommend the US Chess one. The commentary seems a little stronger and the flash interface works pretty well and is fairly stable.

This will probaby be the last post of the weekend.

Yesterday was my girlfriend's and my anniversary. We went to our favourite restaurant to celebrate, a little place in San Francisco called Clementine. If you are ever in the neighbourhood, I highly recommend it. It's not at the top end of expensive places in SF, more in the middle, but has very good food for the price,and a nice atmosphere. If you go, try the pain perdu au caramel, glace noisette (caramelized french toast with hazelnut ice cream) for desert. It's the one constant when we go there and is never disapointing.

Today was all about the Super Bowl! Of course, I've never actually watched a Super Bowl before, or any other American football game, but it was still fun. One of good things about football is the that the basic game is easy to understand and it keeps your attention. Like hockey, it seems to have a reasonable amount of scoring in a game. (In contrast to the other popular American sport, basketball, which has so much scoring that I find it unwatchable, or soccer, which has so I feel the same.) As you probably know by now, the Raiders got crushed 48-21. Depending on how you look at it, this seems either better or worse than their performance in the actual game. The first half was all Buccaneers, with the Raider held to 3 points and only a couple complete first downs. They opened it up a little in the second half, and the end of the third quarter and start of the fourth were actually quite exciting football. But then they went back to throwing interceptions, resulting in 2 quick touchdowns for the Buccaneers and that was that.

Weather update: Here in Sunnyvale, CA the high today will be 64F/18C on Jan. 26th/Super Bowl Sunday. In contrast, in Edmonton, Alberta (where I originally hail from), it will be an un-seasonably warm 31F/-1C.

One of the things that I still haven't gotten used to in my 5 years in the Bay Area is the almost complete lack of weather here. There is less yearly variation in weather here than Alberta might get in a spring long weekend. The forecast for every day between early March and late October could be exactly the same : "light cloud overhead, burning off by noon. Sunny the rest of the day". And when they say "sunny", they don't mean "enough breaks in the clouds that the sun is visible most of the time", they mean "not a cloud in the sky". In the 5 years I've been hear, I've experienced exactly 2 thunderstorms - coincidentally the same as the number of earthquakes I've felt.

From growing up in Alberta, I developed an extreme dislike of the cold. Standing out every morning for 15-30 minutes during the winter in -4F/-20C weather can do that to you. I also don't miss weather forecasts where they give you useful information like the number of minutes it will take for exposed skin to freeze. But oddly enough, I do miss the weather in general. The un-relenting day to day sameness hear can be quite mind-numbing. And there is nothing like spring in Alberta. After the crushing weight of winter is lifted, it truly does feel like a brand new wonderful world.

In California, spring is just another day.

I caught part of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring on TV last night. I know there are some who liked the books better, some who liked the The Two Towers better, and some who didn't appreciate it at all. I don't understand any of them. Like a lot of people, I read the books as a kid. I don't remember my first reaction to them, but I know they didn't hold up well over time. At one point in my life I read a lot of fantasy and the LOTR trilogy (and related books) were never amongst my favourites. I can clearly remember skipping whole sections of the books one of the times I re-read them and when I re-read Fellowship again recently I couldn't bring myself to read all the poems and songs cluttering up the book.

As for the second movie, it is a good movie, but that's about all. In starting in the middle of the action, something was definitely lost. By the time the action started in the first movie, the audience had gotten to know the characters enough to care about them somewhat. This is lost in the The Two Towers to some extent. It had to depend on people remembering that they cared for these characters, and the intensity is reduced thereby. It also suffered somewhat from more external shots, spectacular as they were. The variety in the first film as the characters entered the mines and spent time underground, was missing. Also, the exteriors seemed more of a single piece, focusing as it did on a single kingdom, versus having the mix of the Shire, Rivendell and mountains from Fellowship.

As for not liking the movie at all, I think you can tell by know that I wouldn't agree with that opinion. As I mentioned above, at one point in my life I read a fair amount of fantasy and up until the release of LOTR, the record of fantasy movies has been pretty dismal. Cases in point include Krull, The Sword and The Sorcerer, Conan and The Dark Crystal. Dreck, all. Off the top of my head, I can only think of one excellent fantasy related movie, The Princess Bride. On the other hand. Fellowship does almost everything right. The story has been streamlined for the screen, but not over-simplified, with emphasis added in all the right places. The writing is clean and clear, with enough done to establish and develop the large cast of characters without bogging down -- a cardinal virtue when there is this much plot to get through. The acting and direction both serve the story, rather than the other way around and the production values are astounding. Howard Shore's score adds emphasis at all the right moments and was one of the best scores I have heard in years.

I think that if the third movie follows in the footsteps of the first two, this trilogy will be seen in years to come as one of the best pieces of cinema of the new century,as well as the best fantasy movies ever made. And unless The Return of The King surpasses my expectations, The Fellowship of the Ring will be seen as the crown jewel of the trilogy.

Well, it looks like I'm not going to be posting too often to this page. The problem right now is that I don't want to be doing a lot of posting from work and in the evening during the week I've usually got enough other stuff to do (i.e. read, practice my guitar, guitar classes) that I don't have time for it. Also, since I spend most of my day sitting in front of a computer, I'm not usually interested in using my computer at home. I'll try to make it a bit more frequent, just in case there is anyone at all reading this, but no promises.

Last night was another concert. This one was jazz/ R & B. We went to see Diane Reeves at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley. Since I live/work in the south bay area, this is quite a trek - particularly on a work day when you have to fight the commute traffic. And of course it turned out there was a Cal (that's University of California at Berkeley in case you were wondering) basketball game going on, which means the already scarce parking near the campus will be basically non-existant. We ended up parking about 10 blocks away and walking in.

The show was quite good. I'm not really a fan of the kind of vocal work Dianne Reeves does, but given that, I enjoyed the show. Her backing band was excellent and most of the songs had plenty of room for them to stretch out and show their chops, whether it was on piano, bass or drums The first half had some nice standards in it and Dianne Reeves does have an excellent voice when she is sticking to the melody. Her vocal acrobatics are in style but as I said above, not quite to my taste. For some reason I have a lot more tolerance for an instrumentalist indulging that way than I do for the same activity in a vocalist. For example, scat-singing usually just sound silly to me, even when done by those usually judged as expert at it.

The second half of the show was more R&B oriented and I liked it a little less. Again, the backing music by her band was the saving grace. They had some very nice funk grooves going with interesting improvisations mixed in.

In other news, a scary article on Opinion Journal today about the percentage of black students that graduate high school/pass basic testing. I'm originally from Canada and I always thought our schools were lousy, but when I compare them to things like this or to the stories my girlfriend tells about going to school in Pinole, they come out looking a lot better. I had to deal with dull teachers, incompetent staff and misguided curriculums, but I not only learned to read, I also learned the basics of math and science. That's not saying much given what schools should be teaching, but I guess in the education lottery, I came out OK.

That's it for tonight. Tomorrow I have to choose between climbing and guitar workshop during the day. Paul Mehling of the Hot Club of San Francisco is giving a clinic at Gryphon Stringed Instruments where I take a lot of my other classes. But going to that means no climbing, since I can't play worth a damn for about 8 hours after I climb. Decisions, decisions.