Archive for March, 2009


canada2

The last day at Niagara Falls went quickly. Leaving the tourist town for a bit, we drove out to Niagara-on-the-Lake, a little village sitting in the middle of the Niagara Vineyard District. Sadly, we passed on the ice wine.

We walked around Fort George,

Fort George

spied on Fort Niagara a country away,

Fort Niagara,

and visited the Casino again.

Casino.

That night we got our supplies together for the trip back. Canada was a lot of fun and it turned out everything was 10-20% off. Gotta love the exchange rate!

The next morning we drove home…=(, but it’s okay. It all ended with cake!

Cake

canada1

After traveling and only a preliminary exploration on Day One, we awoke the next morning (at about noon), ready to take on the great Niagara Falls. After breakfast…at Dennys.

The rest of the day of rather event-filled. We…

walked the town,

Town

saw the falls,

Niagara Falls

found my future house,

My House

saw the falls,

Icy Falls

explored history,

History!

saw the falls,

img_1889

ate at the hilariously named but most excellent, ‘The Keg’,

The Keg

saw the falls,

Falls

visited the casino,

The Casino

and finally, after being dragged from food to gambling to thousands of tons of crushing water…we went to bed.

Bed

Canada!

Canada, the great white north, the land of maple syrup, hockey players, and the word ‘eh’. Also the home of mounties, mountains, moose, and the show Due South. It’s the land above our land, a wide expanse of socialized healthcare and syrupy sweet maple flags. I recently traveled to our quiet, diligent neighbor in search of the majestic Niagara Falls. After three days living like a polar bear I’ve returned with tales of the land above the border.

The Niagara falls are located above the bustling plains of theres-nothing-here upstate between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.


View Larger Map

Day one took me from the comparative civilization of Ulster County through a few hours of farms and factory towns. It was late in the day we managed to sneak through the border and setup shelter.

Our basecamp? A little nook called Radisson…

Radisson

Seeking sustenance e slipped into the local Outback Steakhouse. A shoddy little affair with a half-lit sign forgotten by the rest of the town in leiu of larger signed establishments.

BigSign3
Big Sign
Big Sign

The food was good after a long travel.

Afterwards, as night descended, we sought to catch glipse of the falls! Unfortunately, it turns out Canada’s cold, eh.

Canada...it's cold in March.

Stumbling around the dark we caught only a few glimpses of civilization.

Coka

Falls

The cold overwelming us, we scuttled back to camp and rested up for Day 2!

A world where sword-wielding hackers deliver pizza for the mob, vengeful inuit throw glass-tipped harpoons and drive motorcycles with hydrogen bomb sidecars, extraterritorial franchises have their own consolates scattered across the country, or what remains of it. It’s safe to say life in Snow Crash is usually pretty interesting.

I heard about Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, back in college. Amongst an innumerable number of computer types: programmers, admins, hackers, web designers etc, the hyper-stylzed life of a computer nerd-ninja had a wide-ranging appeal. I’m still not sure how I managed to avoid reading the book that so thoroughly defined my culture. Still, it remained on my list as a book I wanted to at least peek into.

And I happened to do just that last week. If I had to give a one-liner review it’d be, Neuromancer with healthy side of irreverance. It has all the dismal imagery of a cyberpunk novel: dystopian america, oligarchic tyranny, technology with a slavish tyranny over mankind, but it escapes the gloom with an endless cycle of just-on-the-edge of plausible absurdities. Couriers, called Kouriers, riding computerized skateboards pulled by tow cables, a main character named Hiro Protagonist, robotic dog guards, it hits them all and then some.

It’s a brilliant book and if I didn’t think so I wouldn’t waste my time here. For any science fiction junkies out there it’s definitely worth picking up. Snow Crash is the sort of novel that can’t help but inspire even more stories and makes for a hell of a read from beginning to end.

Playing Empire Total War has got me interesting in Napoleonic Warfare. For those similarly inclined this website has been entertaining me…

Turns out it’s my birthday. Also turns out lots of other people were born today. Cheers fellow Vernal Equinoxers!

Watchmen, for those who have some managed to ignore the reviews or trailers, is the recently released movie adaption of Alan Moore’s (Of V for Vendetta fame among other things) graphic novel. It’s been heralded as one of the first, best, and most sophistcated graphic novels, which brought the medium, intellectually, into the adult world and the literary world.

My own review: It’s good. It’s really good. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It’s as faithful to the source material as it could be. Fair warning, it’s a violent and graphic film, perhaps even a bit excessive at times, but its logical. I wish it could have been shorter, but it was no overlong and I eagerly await the director’s cut which restores a lot of the filmed, but edited scenes. It’s intelligent for a super hero film and, despite a number of the reviews, its a worthy recreation of the book, not just in its accuracy, (the ending changes being a bit more believable by my consideration), but also in its tone and method of delivery. Watchmen the novel is almost entirely flashbacks. The movies own judicious use of flashbacks (the credit title sequence in particular) was a nearly perfect adaptation.

For anyone looking for something a bit more, here are what some other people thought.

Movie Reviews:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090304/REVIEWS/903049997

http://blog.spout.com/2009/03/04/watchmen-review/

http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/movies/06Watc.html

http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/03/12/kevin-smith-and-the-filmcast-review-watchmen-filmcast-ep-41/

http://movies.ign.com/articles/959/959494p1.html

Graphic Novel Reviews:

http://comics.ign.com/articles/666/666025p1.html

http://januarymagazine.com/artcult/watchmen.html

Word games are pretty great. Here are some to keep you entertained this week.

Ask Oxford: Some really tough games. Kangaroo Words is pretty great.

WordPlays.com: It hasa version of scrabble.

East of the Web: I’ve spent hours on ‘Eight Letters’.

Some day I want to be on this list.

Heinlein’s power suits, shiny knight armor, star wars storm trooper uniforms. Uniform’s and armor make the man, at least some of the time. I recently came across two articles on armor, old and new, which might fill in some research gap for anyone writing about combat.

Ever wondered how many pieces of gold it takes to suit up a modern soldier? Here you go.

For those people with more historical inclinations, a page of photographs of medieval armor and a diagram outlining what each piece is called might just be useful, eh?

Enjoy!