Drive (2011).. what the hell was I thinking going to see this? i feel like someone played a joke on me reviewing this..

District 9 (2009).. bad

Synecdoche (2008).. Love Kaufman but let’s not pretend this is watchable

The Hurt Locker (2008).. come on this won what? there were much better real films with 1/100th the budget much better than this like The War Tapes (2006)

The Dark Knight (2008)… so much ruined potential I wish I could rewrite the thing from about half way through

Last Samurai (2003).. I love older Tom Cruise movies as much as the next guy but it’s okay to say this movie sucks, not sure what got over people

Heat (1995).. stop saying this is a classic please

Toronto Public Library has a good obituary with some links to his works.

His last piece in Vanity Fair:

I feel my personality and identity dissolving as I contemplate dead hands and the loss of the transmission belts that connect me to writing and thinking.

Bleak!

It goes without saying that this man could write and speak like very few others. There’s lots being posted upon his death, but I like to think back to how he always had the balls to say outrageous things, like Why Women Still Aren’t Funny. This man made me think, and laugh.

It’s a bit of a time hog to get everything set up and one of the snags I hit was what to do with podcasts…

I’m huge on google reader so the idea of Google Listen with GR integration was really appealing, but looking in to it Listen seems like a big disappointment right now. BUT installing it allows me to get the “Listen Subscriptions” folder in GR.. and that’s where I started to find a good solution..

Then came Acast (the site seems to have been down for a long time now.. weird but this app works pretty good). It’s a bit heavy on confusing setup options and it’s missing a working playback speed adjustment (it’s experimental and buggy), but I like that it’s focused on awesome podcast features and leaves out any crazy music GUI. Oh, and the point is it syncs beautifully with Listen Subscriptions in GR. So now I can subscribe to any podcast, throw in that GR folder, and it syncs in to Acast. AND whenever I’m on another computer I can log in to GR and straight download / mark read whatever I want and it fits in to the workflow.

So I was a fairly happy camper, but still some awkwardness remaining a full iTunes transition. I don’t really know what to do with my music access from my phone. Motorola has a bunch of apps that I’m not to keen on. Motocast actually looks pretty cool but I started getting a weird crash error that hopefully gets addressed.. cuz that would allow me to just stream or download albums on to my phone’s native Music app, and I’d be happy to just keep that separate from podcasting. Work to be done there.

Now let me just recap a super annoying hurdle to my audio workflow for a long time.. How do you easily incorporate one(or two)-off mp3s that you find, you want to queue them to be listened to, but you don’t want to subscribe to the podcast necessarily. In iTunes I had to either:
(a) subscribe to the whole podcast, poach and listen to the episode, delete podcast when done;
(b) save mp3 file to computer where iTunes is installed, manually add file to collection, then manipulate the file type to get it to show up as a podcast;
(c) use some kind of hack like iTunes folder watch to pull them in to your collection.. good luck getting it show up as a podcast and I just never liked this option

So here’s where I got a bit excited, having found a solution to this problem. Using Dropbox and Dropsync, I synchronized a “podcast one-offs” folder locally on my phone. So from any environment (work, home, my phone).. I can save an audio file in to this folder and it will sync to my Dropbox and phone. Acast has a feature where you can create a feed out of a local folder, so everything I drop in there shows up as a feed in Acast, where I can see new files and queue them up on my podcast playlist. Friggin awesome.

I’m stoked to have this in place, and I’m thinking of just using separate folders for other content (music, lectures, audiobooks, etc.)… but I’m still on the fence about what to use for music, and a minor detail is you’d have to buy the full version of Dropsync.

Also, a potential improvement to this that I tried and failed, was to create an actual podcast feed from your Dropbox folder, which would improve things because right now the feed is appearing only on my phone and not with the rest of my podcast list on GR. If it was just a personal feed I don’t think this would violate Dropbox’s terms of use, so it’s just a matter of figuring it out technically. You could take the folder xml feeds and run it through Yahoo Pipes, or a program like Dropcaster.. but both of these options were a bit beyond me right now.. so if someone where to figure out the pipes option that would be sweet.

UPDATE: BeyondPod, if you download the beta apk, seems to be better than Acast in that it has the GR integration but also has great variable playback speed support.

20 Tips for Optimal Health & Fitness

No excerpts cuz it’s all spot on.. although I don’t think it’s in any particular order but #10 would be the place to start..

If inequality is our concern, I suggest we’d do better to look in the other direction. The gap that ought to trouble us is not between the top one per cent and the other 99 per cent, but between the bottom 10 per cent and the rest of us. Whatever harm may be imagined to arise from people being too rich, there is ample research on the harm that comes from being too poor, especially to children: poor, not only as a matter of absolute privation, but of relative inequality.

The whole thing draws out some great points that are hard to have conversations about.. I don’t agree with people who have a problem with others making a ridiculous amount of money, rather would be more inclined to judge people based on what they actually do with that money.

Sorry Tim Hudak, I know close to nothing about you, but the 2-3 sound bytes I’ve picked up over the last few years make me want to vomit thinking that this is the best a conservative movement in the place that has always been my home can drum up. Thanks for wasting the small portion of my life that went to hearing you speak on repealing the HST or the hyperbole of targeting foreign workers.

And Dalton McGuinty, thanks for doing a whole lot of nothing over the last 8 years that I can think of, aside from marring the landscape of south western Ontario with useless wind energy projects over your tenure (please let the word subsidy die, it’s never a good idea).

How bout someone grow a pair and start talking (in Ontario and beyond) about agricultural reform (think subsidies and the industrialized grain fed disaster), invent a real environmental program (land and park conservation), strike down religious privilege in our tax and school systems, do something to start bringing down the growth of health care costs, get rid of EVERY subsidy and lower income tax, lobby for the elimination of supply-side drug enforcement, and kill the ridiculous Cuban embargo (ok this last one is pretty specific to US feds, but hey come on this makes no sense).

It’s not that real candidates never come around (i.e. Republican Gary Johnson for 2012 US election). I think the problem really might be the majority of people subscribe to such a poor journalistic standard and lack any sort of personal leadership in their lives, that when a spark of originality shows itself in any political sphere, there just isn’t sufficient kindling around these parts.

I haven’t checked out the book yet did also listen to an interview with Dr. William Davis on Robb Wolf’s (excellent) podcast.

I tried out a “paleo” diet 6-7 years ago and it’s been something that makes a lot of sense to me. Tweaks recently to lean more towards what is captured pretty well in The Perfect Health Diet, focusing mostly on limiting PUFAs, fructose, and wheat.

UPDATE
Some good critiques of this book have come out that underscore the importance of properly articulating why wheat is bad, but don’t so much dispute the premise:
Slam-dunked and Wheat Belly
One Size Does Not Fit All

Desktop wallpaper

Now if only it was easier to set unique backgrounds on multiple displays in Windows 7 (without a utility to do so for computers you don’t have system admin privileges on)..

Breville BCG450XL Barista Control Conical Burr Coffee Grinder.

Scooped it at Electronics for Less (Canada) for under 100 bucks (sale I think).

(and I know this grinder sucks relative to the real goods out there.. maybe someone can buy me a Rancilio Rocky grinder…)

Cruciferous Vegetables

(bulb and stem) kohlrabi

(green/leafy) arugula (rocket) brussels sprout cabbage Chinese cabbage (bok choy) collard greens kale mustard (greens and seeds) rapini turnip (greens) watercress

(root and tuber) daikon radish turnip (root) rutabaga

(fruiting/flowering) broccoli cauliflower

Non-Cruciferous, non-root vegetables

(bulb and stem) asparagus celeriac garlic leek onion anise fennel

(fruiting/flowering) artichoke celery cucumber eggplant* peppers* pumpkin squashes tomato* zucchini

(green/leafy) beet greens chard dandelion greens endive lettuces radicchio spinach

(sea vegetables) dulse kombu laver wakame

Root and tuber vegetables

carrot beetroot ginger parsnip sweet potato water chestnut yam

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* = nightshade