37. Bike to work 40 work days in a row

Re: 101 things in 1001 days (2013-2015)

Between Monday, May 27th (start of Bike to Work Week) and Friday, July 26th, I biked to work every day that I worked, which included a few Saturdays, and even one Sunday, for a grand total of 49 days!

• May 27-31 (5)
• June 3-6 (4)
• June 8 (1)
• June 10-15 (6)
• June 17-21 (5)
• June 24-29 (6)
• July 2-5 (4)
• July 8-13 (6)
• July 15-26 (12)

It's not a long ride, but it does a desk jockey like me good to get out and about, even if it's just for 25 minutes a day.

This period of time included lots of good weather, but some terrible weather - one day it was so rainy, my shoes got soaked even though I had on those protective boot cover things, because one of the puddles I rode through was so deep that my feet dragged through the water as I rode. There were also a few late nights, biking home in the dark.

It also encompassed a stretch of time where the handlebars on my bike were coming loose, and I had to arrange a quick, same-day tune-up and stem replacement.

For good measure, it even included a handful of Mondays where I came straight from playing hockey for an hour, and then got to bike to work in a worn out state.

In other words... Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night nor hockey-induced exhaustion shall keep me from my bike route! (At least for a month or two...)

Oh, and the streak was ended when I had to come straight to work from Sooke (had to get up at 3:30am for the car/ferry/bus/skytrain/bus commute), so there was no time to go home first and then bike in to work. That's okay, that leaves the "50 day" mark as a good goal for next time.

40. Do the Grouse Grind with Ellie

Re: 101 things in 1001 days (2013-2015)

Five or six years ago, I took Soph up the Grouse Grind in the backpack, and since Ellie was born, I've been meaning to do the same with her, before she gets too big to carry up that torturous staircase. Luckily, Ellie has been growing slower than Sophie, so I've had a bit of leeway in finally going for it. However, I figured I couldn't wait forever, so I seized the opportunity, which consisted of a free Sunday morning and a relatively good sleep the night before, and away we went. Here are some photos from the outing.


Ellie went bonkers for the backpack, laughing giddily when I first put her in it and hoisted her up. Just look at that grin!


The novelty wore off pretty quickly, and as Daddy turned out not to be a sparkling conversationalist while fighting for breath and concentrating on not tripping and falling on his face, Ellie quickly went to sleep. Ellie sleeping meant several things... (a) She seemingly gained 10 pounds. (b) The motion of climbing made her freely-dangling feet kick me in the butt over and over. (c) Her head was lolling around every time I bent slightly to get up a step, throwing our balance all over the place.


Halfway up! Ellie was still asleep by this point, and we sat down for a brief rest. You can tell from the picture quality how untired I was, and how steady my hands were.


Ellie woke up maybe 10 minutes before the top, and was excited to come out into the ... well, not sunshine, but at least the very bright inside of a cloud. Here we are at the top, with a time of just under an hour and a half.


While we were up there, I thought we'd go look at the grizzly bears - Ellie has been so into bears lately. She loved them.


And finally, here's a quick shot of the weather - like I said, we were inside a cloud while we were at the top. No views, but that's okay. We still had a great time.

24. Read Winnie the Pooh to Ellie

Re: 101 things in 1001 days (2013-2015)



Winnie the Pooh was Ellie's first chapter book, and granted, she was squirmy for big parts of it, but when quizzed, she did seem to have picked up on several of the big plot points, and can identify many of the characters. Winnie the Pooh is "Pee Poo", Piglet is "Pliget" or "Pigalet", Kanga and Roo are both "Roo", Rabbit is "Bunny", Eeyore is "Ee-oh Tail", and Owl is "Whoo Whoo".

I'm excited, because this is the start of a golden age of bedtime reading, where both girls are enjoying chapter books. I look forward to at least a handful of good years of reading to them both, and have the book list stretching out in front of me, in my mind...

99. Have all theatrical release movies on my IMDB page's "known for" section

Re: 101 things in 1001 days (2013-2015)



There, done.

I thought it would take until Ender's Game came out, but I got a surprise credit in The Watch, which meant that Jack the Giant Slayer turned into my fourth "known for" movie, nudging the TV shows and direct-to-video features off the list. Looks like Ender's Game will just be gravy at this point.

101 things in 1001 days (2013-2015)

Okay, here we go again! The first time I tried the 101 things in 1001 days, I really enjoyed it. I didn't finish it, but I got more than halfway through, and I had fun doing it. I think I learned a bit about what kind of things work on a list like this, and what kind of things don't. Armed with that knowledge, and eager to get back to having a structured list of interesting things to do as a fallback plan for when I've got free time, I'm plunging into the 101 things world once more.

For those who are just tuning in, this is like a bucket list, but with less focus on "before I die" and more focus on "in the next few years". (Hopefully, but not assuredly, quite different things.) It's a big list of stuff you want to do. The deal is, you make a list of 101 things you want to do, and then you have 1001 days (roughly 2.75 years) to complete as many items on your list as possible. For my money, they should be a good combination of fun and necessary (leaning more towards fun), and easy and difficult (leaning more towards being a bit of a stretch). Also, it's nice if they can span various aspects of your life, although mine leans noticeably towards entertainment, health, and technology.

My calculations inform me that, starting today, I have until October 14th, 2015 to try to complete these tasks. Wish me luck. Without further ado, here's the list...

Total: 8/101

Creative - 0/10
1. Design and create a board game
2. Draw five episodes of a webcomic
3. Enter a photo contest
4. Plan (but don't execute) an elaborate heist
5. Plan, film, and produce a short film
6. Quilt something
7. Set up a kickstarter project
8. Sketch or paint an interesting outdoor scene
9. Write a novel
10. Write a short story including snippets of overheard conversations
    
    Entertainment - 4/20
11. Ask five friends/family members what their favourite books are, and read them
12. Beat 10 video games
13. Beat Diablo III
14. Beat Skyrim
15. Get to level 50 in n0tpr0n, documenting steps to get there
16. Go to Bard on the Beach
17. Lose $27.50 (or thereabouts) at a casino
18. Make a (YouTube?) playlist of 100 favourite songs
19. Make another Christmas mix (CD or digital/web)
20. Organize YouTube playlists
21. Play 5 new board games
22. Read 100 books
23. Read the first Harry Potter book to Sophie
24. Read Winnie the Pooh to Ellie
25. Send something unexpected/stupid to Trish in the mail
26. Take Holly to an eat-in-the-dark restaurant
27. Take Holly to the ballet or some dance performance
28. Take Holly to the symphony or opera
29. Try karaoke
30. Watch 10 fun movies with Sophie
    
    Family - 0/6
31. Arrange a monthly date night with Holly, and do at least 6 months in a row
32. Arrange a weekly Sophie/Dad time, and do at least 20 weeks in a row
33. Clean out bedroom closet at Heartwood
34. Make Ellie a Hallowe'en costume
35. Make Sophie a Hallowe'en costume
36. Write a birthday email to the girls every year
    
    Health/Exercise/Outdoors - 2/20
37. Bike to work 40 work days in a row
38. Bike to work at least three times every month for a whole calendar year
39. Bike up to SFU and back
40. Do the Grouse Grind with Ellie
41. Do the Grouse Grind without Ellie
42. Do three local hikes with one or more family members
43. Drink just water for a month
44. Get 4 assists in a hockey game
45. Get a hat trick in a hockey game
46. Go 20 hockey games in a row with no penalties
47. Go car camping every year
48. Go for a bike ride that involves three different bridges
49. Go for a hike in Mount Seymour Provincial Park
50. Go overnight backpack camping with at least one of Holly, Sophie, or Ellie
51. Hike/jog around Burnaby Lake
52. Hike/jog around Deer Lake
53. Run a 5k run in under 30 min
54. Run a 10k run in under an hour
55. Run a half marathon
56. Try indoor rock climbing
    
    Home - 0/6
57. Buy/rent a 3+ bedroom place
58. Clean out walk-in closet
59. Make 3 new recipes
60. Make 3 types of pie
61. Put up bookshelf extenders
62. Update emergency kit food/water
    
    Self - 0/7
63. Accomplish at least 70/101 things
64. Accomplish something awesome, where awesomeness is to be determined after-the-fact
65. Enter a contest
66. Fast (food and water?) for an entire day (24 hrs?) (sunrise-sunset?)
67. Make a list of 5 experiments (thought or physical), carry them out
68. Take a course
69. Write a fan letter to a favourite author or TV star or something
    
    Social/Volunteer - 0/4
70. Clean up the garbage in a park/on a street/along a beach
71. Give blood three (or more) times
72. Volunteer for a charity or non-profit organization
73. Write a letter to my MP about the electoral system
    
    Tech - 0/12
74. Digitize VHS tapes and get rid of them
75. Have an offsite backup system
76. Make/buy a remote shutter release
77. Properly organize bookmarks and bookmark synchronizing
78. Set up a home webserver
79. Write Remindomatic V2
80. Write Remindomatic V2 app
81. Write a non-Remindomatic app
82. Write a program to organize, launch, rate, and make notes on computer games
83. Write a Rubic's Cube-solving program
84. Write a text-based adventure game
85. Write/expand media player (music and video) to the point where Holly will use it
    
    Travel - 0/5
86. Go to the top of Mt. Prevost
87. Go to Tofino
88. Travel by train
89. Travel somewhere significant by myself
90. Visit the San Juan Islands
    
    Vancouver - 0/8
91. Organize scavenger hunt / amazing race
92. See a Canadians game
93. See a Giants game
94. See a horserace
95. See a Lions game
96. See a Whitecaps game
97. Take one/both girls to a book event at bookstore or library
98. Try a new vegetarian restaurant in Vancouver
    
    Work - 2/3
99. Have all theatrical release movies on my IMDB page's "known for" section
100. Update resume
101. Write recommendation for someone on LinkedIn

Movie review: Alien

Alien

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Great sci-fi movie. They don't make them like this anymore, sadly. Alien tells the story of a mining ship in space that responds to a distress call on a remote world, finds an species of alien, and wacky hijinks ensue. Okay, not hijinks, but some pretty interesting stuff does go down.

I love that there are many angles from which this movie works. The suspense is masterfully done, with just the right pacing; there were points where I was completely startled, even though I knew what was coming. It didn't show too much of the alien, for the most part, which just makes it scarier. (For an example of how to do this completely wrong, see Splice.) The characters are interesting and colourful, in an early 80s way (even though the film came out in 1979, it was ahead of its time). The plot has the alien thing, interwoven with some mysterious and vague military/political agenda, interwoven with ongoing revelations about the aliens and the ship's personnel. Plus, this movie has crazy neat scenes, with the industrial space ship and the stylized alien environments.



My only complaint - there are a few seconds of seeing the full alien that maybe haven't aged that well, where maybe it kind of looks like a guy in a suit...

Modifiers: none

Rating: 9.0 out of 10

Movie review: Melancholia

Melancholia

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Melancholia was painful to watch. I'm not saying it was badly made, because it had very high production value, strong acting, and a story idea that would usually have me chomping at the bit to watch. (The plot revolves around the appearance of a rogue planet on an apparent collision course with Earth, and the apparently linked melancholy/depression of the lead character.) Melancholia, you pulled me in close with "rogue planet", but then quickly catapulted me several football fields away with your excrutiating viewer experience, and even used that same catapult to fling small rocks at me with your slow motion camera work.

I get that the whole thrust of the movie relied on getting across a sense of depression, of futility, of dragging, weighted-down inability to carry on... And the film definitely made the viewer feel this way, but at some point, you have to stop and ask yourself - does anyone want to feel this way? I certainly didn't, and still don't.



Part of the reason I didn't like this movie was that it set itself up poorly, at least in my mind. The intro is all extreme slow motion, which feels like it will never end, and when it finally does end, it cuts to a scene of such frustrating inanity that I got put in a lousy mood for the rest of the show.

On the plus side, I was so annoyed that I stayed awake for the whole thing.

Ooh! I just found my second scrap of paper with notes on it, so I'm adding a few thoughts as an addendum.

1. I was impressed that Jack Bauer managed to keep his cool. I thought for sure he'd lose it and start blowing people away.

2. It struck me as odd that no one seemed to consider or talk about getting Justine some professional help.

3. I found it inexcusable that any parent would fail to wake their child up to witness something so momentous. It made me want to punch this movie in the face.

Man, that planet could not get there soon enough.

Modifiers: none

Rating: 4.0 out of 10

Movie review: Hop

Hop

---

This was my second viewing of Hop (both times with my daughter Sophia), and I enjoyed it even more the second time around. As far as family friendly, seasonal holiday movies go, this one is up there close to Elf, although not quite as high up as Groundhog Day.

It's a story of living up to (or breaking free from) the expectations of one's father, be he jerkish human or the one-and-only Easter Bunny. It's told in a mostly live action film, with heavy use of integrated CG for the Easter Island inhabitants (bunnies and chicks) and the wonderful candy factory.



All the reasons that this sort of movie usually annoy the heck out of me were happily absent. The main actor (James Marsden, aka Cyclops, aka Liz Lemon's boyfriend) was goofy and charming, and pulled off the grown-up kid bit in a way that at no point made me want to punch him. The main CG character was funny, non-insane, and well-voiced. The CG in general was solid. Not flawless, but solid.

Not much else to report - good story, a few fun cameos, a nice job by all supporting actors. No major black marks.

About half an hour after finishing Hop, Soph had given herself a pom-pom tail (taped to her pants), some paper buck teeth, a paper carrot, a paper Easter basket (strangely enough, no paper ears), and was leading us through a paper Easter egg hunt around the apartment. She also wanted to start playing the drums. It's hard not to let this kind of enthusiasm affect the movie's score, so she probably bumped it up a half or a whole star.

Fun movie fact: I plan on leveraging Sophie's interest in E.B.'s drumming into a perfectly valid reason to buy Rock Band.

Modifiers: none

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Movie review: Splice

Splice

---

Splice attempts to tell the tale of genetic manipulation gone wrong, in an escalating series of events which force two geneticists to make tough moral decisions in a changing landscape of greed, discovery, family, and love.

The tale it actually succeeds in telling is that of the disjointed coming of age of a small, creepy, hyperactive frozen turkey. It runs around, has a dress slapped on it by some lunatics, grows some eyebrows and Wolverine-style retractable wings (because that's a thing), gets a makeover (I kid you not), learns to dance (still not kidding), and then starts seducing/killing stuff.



The rough premise of this movie had some great potential. I think that one place where they fell completely off the rails was in deciding to actually show their creature in plain view, fully lit, for long portions of the movie. This thing was the uncanny valley personified. (Near-personified?) It made me recoil from so much of what was going on, and made sitting through the full length of the movie painful.

I'm trying to think how this movie would have worked if they had kept the CG to a minimum, hidden the creature in the shadows for most of the time, and spent the extra budget on fixing up the flow of the story a bit, maybe giving the scientists some reasonable motivation for their decisions. It could have been decent, when in fact, well... did I mention that there were giant French-kissing slugs?

All that said, there is some fascination to be had in watching such a confused movie. It kept making less and less sense right up until the end, but for some reason, I couldn't take my eyes off it. The fascination of a train wreck, perhaps? Or maybe the underlying premise was interesting enough that the execution of it was secondary to seeing how it ended? Speaking of which, near the end, I thought I had spotted the plot twist they were going to spring on us, and rolled my eyes, as I figured that it was fairly obvious, and it turns out they didn't even take that - they went with an even more obvious, plain vanilla "twist", which was even more disappointing.

Fun movie fact: I couldn't get this out of my head for a good half hour during this movie...

Modifiers: Bad stupidness, and I almost gave Adrien Brody the nod for "actors who annoy me", but it was just one movie, so I'll give him another shot.



Rating: 4.5 out of 10