Get Smart New Domestic Trailer

There is a new domestic trailer for Get Smart, upcoming movie adaptation of the 1960's TV series of the same name.

Here it is:

Did you notice the cone of silence? This great invention was already in the original Get Smart. Check by yourself: Get Smart Cone Of Silence

Well the new cone of silence is more high tech but the 1960's cone was kind of trendy kitsch.
;-p

It's almost over!

So I haven't been blogging much lately. And when I have, it hasn't been that good. Since I notice that the entire creative sector of the Internet seems to have taken a downturn lately, I'm going to blame it on February - after all, there have been studies that 'proved' February has much greater rates of depression than other months, why shouldn't that extend to creative output? Even worse, it's a leap year - meaning an extra 3.57% of February dreariness compared to most years.

Why am I rambling about this? I guess it's to say that my lack of decent blogging hasn't been due to lack of ideas, or lack of time, just lack of motivation. At least there's only two days left, right?

In the meantime, let's beat those winter doldrums with some games.

I might have linked Funny Farm here before, not entirely sure on that one. It's a word puzzle - a mind map of sorts. You start by listing things found on a farm, then you realize that the puzzle's a lot bigger than you thought it was. Warning: this may consume you for days on end.

ClickRed is nowhere near as life-consuming, but it's a fun little distraction for a few minutes. It's also really simple to explain - your goal is to click the red.

Hopefully I'll get to some other stuff on the weekend. Hopefully.

--Ryan

The real Super Tuesday

Tomorrow is the NHL's trading deadline. Originally the important question here was whether the Leafs would trade Mats Sundin - since the mid-90s, their most talented and most popular player - to a team that might actually stand half a chance at winning the Stanley Cup this year, getting in return a package of young players who could help the Leafs to the same goal once Sundin is long retired.

However, Sundin announced last night that he will not waive his no-trade clause, and thus will remain a Leaf for the rest of the season.

Many Leaf fans are outraged over this, believing that if Sundin really wanted to do what's best for his team, he would allow himself to be traded.

What these fans don't understand, though, is this - Mats has no obligation to do what's best for the Toronto Maple Leafs. It was Leaf management that gave him the no-trade clause, they're in no position to complain because Mats is using something they put into his contract.

Beyond that, Mats has done so much for the Leafs over his career - do you think they'd have got as far in the playoffs as they did in the early part of this decade without him? - that he should be allowed to retire a Leaf if he wishes. Players who would rather play for a losing team then win a Cup as a "rent-a-superstar" (like Ray Bourque) are few and far between...and while I don't really understand the thought process that went into his decision, I'm sure not going to get mad at him for it.

On a related note, all the Canadian sports networks are starting coverage of the trade deadline at 8 AM tomorrow. That's a good two hours earlier than last year, when they still had trouble filling all that time until the 3 PM deadline. So I'll be watching, if only out of a perverse curiosity as to what they can talk about for that long. Of course, my watching will be interrupted a few times - twice for classes, and then once CTV's coverage of the federal budget starts, I'll be flipping back and forth between the two (my sports geekery is surpassed only by my recently-discovered political geekery, is it any wonder I don't have a girlfriend?).

--Ryan

Clearing the air

If you look to the right, you will see the following:

"What am I?
Not quite a bobcat..."

Please remember that those links are posted in reverse-chronological order. Although much like certain bobcats, I do live in Southern Canada, and have on occasion eaten deer, that is where the similarities end. I apologize for any inconvenience.

--Ryan

What am I?

First came the Baby Boomers. And that made sense - after World War II, there was a 'boom' of births. Then, around 1960, the boom was over, and there was a new period - a 'baby bust'. The busters would go on to be labelled Generation X, possibly because Ghostbusters had yet to be inflicted upon the world. Generation X was followed, aptly enough, by Generation Y. I can only assume that this name came from the "machoism" of the disco era leading to the decision that its generation should be named after the chromosome present in the macho-est gender. Or maybe not.

But then things got complicated.

More scholars believe that Generation Y ended sometime between 1995 and 2000. But that doesn't seem right to me. Surely people like me, who grew up at least knowing what the Internet was, in some cases having Internet access from five or six years old, should be somehow separated from those who didn't even hear of it until high school?

And the other question - even if I do have to reluctantly be a part of Generation Y, what do we call the current generation? Among the names I have heard thrown about, Generation Z is the most logical, but also the laziest. Generation C makes no sense whatsoever (and is probably used for that reason alone). Internet Generation is too clunky. eGeneration and iGeneration are both tolerable, but lack a certain je ne sais quoi.

The worst of all, however, is Youtube Generation.

I understand the allure, especially if you are using a later start date for this generation. Generation Y would be able to remember a world without Youtube, and have at least a vague understanding of how it works. Generation X and above will not know much more than "it's that website where you can watch videos", and will have likely never used it. The Youtube Generation will be the first for whom it has always been there, always been prevalent, always been mainstream. So on that level, it makes sense.

My gripe with the Youtube Generation label is from another perspective. If an entire generation is branded as such, surely some would assume that all comments left on Youtube videos are at least somewhat representative of that generation?

And what's the harm with that, you ask? Well, among Internet-savvy types, Youtube comment boards are generally regarded as the lowest-intellect form of Internet debate.

Don't believe me? Have some examples. I searched youtube for "September 11", clicked on the first result, and these were among the first ten comments I saw:

"If a fire can bring down a building in a gracefull demolition style, I'm going to start up my own demolition company called "Demolition By Fire". Why waste money on charges and explosives if all I need is jet fuel and a book of matches. Wake up America. What part of two planes bringing down three buildings don't you understand? It just can't fucking happen!"

"hahahaha!! thats what america deservs for being so racist and stupid!! osama bin laden for life!!!!"

"hahahaha so funny i love this i fought it was a movie the first time i saw this omfg!! so funny!!!! :P:P:P::P:P is this real cos if it was i would love to be there :) so happy i wasnt there :( all i can say if it is real all thoses people got owned :DDDD gf? BEN 10 BEN 10??"

Okay, so maybe September 11 was a little extreme of an example. How about something a little more peaceful, like Canada?

Well, the first result for 'Canada' was a video called 'Canada vs. America'. In the interest of getting my point across, I'll stay away from that one. Farther down the page, I see a video of O Canada being sung at a hockey game. Among the comments to come out of THAT...

"this song is almost as boring as canada itself"

"Hey, you dumb Puerto Rican.….I know a good place for you…..The middle East (LOL), this way, when Bush gets enough guts, he can drop his “nuc” and level the whole entire middle east………..HA HA HA HA HA……………. And all of us Canadians wouldn’t have to deal with you terrorists ever EVER again………HA!!!!!!!!!!!"

"next time whyte ave riots, i hope you get water cannoned."

"Canada rules my fiend, the previous comment goes to that Lastdotcomunist idiot, theres nothing better than being a patriot, listening "O Canada" made me feel like in a soccer game, but this was better, a hockey game. By the way, Nuke USA!!"

"Canada is dumb and boring. It rains and snows a lot there. The people say "ey." They sound like there's a rock in their mouth every time they open it. They are pale. They are sickly. Their taxes are too high. They stink at basketball. They are tubby. They are racist. Canada deserves to be nuked for being a wuss country. Those fans should feel ASHAMED for singing that song. "

...then I gave up. I was maybe a tenth of the way down the page.

So, yeah. Media types - before saying "Youtube Generation" again, maybe you want to think about what sort of message that could be sending.

--Ryan

Not quite a bobcat...

...but a cougar has been spotted in Brantford.

First off, I'm glad I don't live in that part of town (actually, I'm not in Brantford at all for a few days).

Secondly...I've gone through this before. In summer 2006, Kitchener was terrorized by a bear. This was a little scarier, as the bear was spotted at least once in a forest five minutes away from my house. It was also a little funnier, as the bear tried to get into a Domino's Pizza.

That said, I think I'd rather run into a bear then a cougar. I think they're slower.

--Ryan

My regret

Last spring, Stephane Dion came to Laurier Brantford to give a brief speech to a gathering of students and staff. This speech was followed by a Q+A period. This being a school without any real political science program to speak of, most of the questions asked of the Liberal leader were about the environment, the minimum wage, tutition costs - things that the average non-political student would care about.

My one regret is that I had, but chose not to take advantage of, the chance to ask Stephane Dion how easy he thinks it is to make priorities.

--Ryan

Tout le monde aime Marineland !

Anybody who has grown up in this area - and possibly people from further out - in the past twenty years will recognize the following clips, and be able to sing along with every single one of them.

Now, I've read that Marineland runs these commercials in Ontario, New York, Pennsylvania, and Quebec. The problem with the last one - many Quebecers don't speak English. As easy as it would have been to simply paste French lyrics over the same tune - as I did in the title - the fine folks at Marineland went a different route.

Remember that walrus-looking thing in some of those English commercials? Apparently his name is Roi Waldorf (King Waldorf), and he features far more prominently in the French commercial. Enjoy!

--Ryan

Head in the clouds

When I made my New Year's resolution to watch CBC more often, there was something I was forgetting. Namely, TVO. Ontario's public broadcaster airs a show called 'The Agenda' weeknights at 8:00 (commercial-free), during which host Steve Paikin and various guests talk about political, cultural, or informational issues of the day.

Today was the first I had ever seen the show, and they were discussing Microsoft's attempted purchase of Yahoo!, 'Web 3.0', and the future of the Internet in general.

The main piece of practical knowledge I got out of this show was the revelation that the Internet (as in where all the Internet's data is stored) is now referred to by cutting-edge scholars as the 'cloud' (and if this post's title now seems groan-inducingly bad, you should have seen some of the TVO subtitles). This has prompted me to start referring to the Internet as 'the Intercloud'. I suggest you do the same; maybe we can get this to take off.

The main piece of practical knowledge Dan got out of this show was that goatees are awesome. I'm worried about him.

There was something else I got out of the show, though. One of the points reinforced most often was that this 'cloud' is essentially replacing personal computers - ten or so years ago, PCs were thought of as the new way to store personal data (and in the case of e-mail, correspondence). As it turned out, the 'armchair IT guys' using PCs at home didn't have either the knowledge or the time to keep that data safe, and viruses were constantly posing a serious threat to that data. Now, the data is stored in the 'cloud', which is maintained by people who work for Google or Amazon - in other words, people who know what they're doing, and know how to keep the data safe.

If you don't understand how this applies to you, think of it this way. If you use a web-based e-mail provider, such as Hotmail or Gmail, your e-mails are in the cloud. If you work for a business which uses Amazon's S3 platform, your work is in the cloud. If you use online banking, your financial information is in the cloud.

Or if you're willing to stretch the definition of 'cloud' a little further, most businesses, institutions, and organizations today have all their information stored on a central server. Although the person maintaining said server is generally part of the group in question, it could still be considered part of the cloud.

So as the TVO panel kept talking about this cloud, and how so much of our information is moving towards it, I was struck with a realization - information is the new food.

As ludicrous as that comparison may sound, at least hear me out on it. Once upon a time, humans were responsible for their own food - hunter-gatherer societies who would fend for themselves. Then somebody invented agriculture - and while these small-scale farmers were still forced to maintain their own sources of food, it was far more reliable than the troubadorian hunter-gatherers. Then came the invention of cities, and that leaves us with today's situation - while there are still some hunters and some farmers, the majority of people simply purchase their food from a grocery store, which has in turn purchased it from a manufacturer. The actually cycle of events is a little more complicated than that, to the point where the average person likely could not tell you exactly how food gets from its original source to their pantry.

Something similar seems to be happening with information. At one point, bills, letters, records, and the like were all kept in desk drawers and filing cabinets. The advent of personal computers changed all that - in fact, one of the major original selling points for home-use PCs was their capability of storing information. While people with PCs still had to look after their own information storage, it was now easier than it had been (the agriculture parallel). Now, the experts are predicting (and all evidence certainly suggests that they are right) that all information will move to this 'cloud', the inner workings of which people will understand no more than the food industry. Already, most people who use the Internet have trouble explaining to their parents (or grand-parents) exactly what it is, how it works from a functional perspective.

Another idea which was suggested on the show was that the 'cloud' will make personal computers irrelevant, and a 'computer' will simply be an interface which one can use to access and interact with the cloud. Blackberries and the newest iPods were cited as examples of computers already following a model similar to these 'cloud computers'.

There's a lot more that I could say on this subject (there are parts of the world where the food supply isn't as much of a guarantee as it is here, what would happen if the Western world suddenly experienced a severe shortage of, say, eggs? What if something similar happened to the cloud?), but I'll leave that for another time.

Just remember - and I don't think the person who coined this usage of 'cloud' ever thought of this - people don't like clouds. Clouds bring storms.

That said, there are a lot of really, really good things about the Intercloud.

--Ryan

Writing a Bicycle

It's that time of year again! (Actually, it's well past that time of year...) Time to write your grandparents to express how much you love them for the nifty stuff they got you for Christmas!

What's that? You say you can't remember what they got you?

Don't worry; in their senility they probably forgot too!

Fortunately, I do remember one of the gifts my grandparents put in my gift basket. Socks! Overlooking the obvious joke about Christmas stockings, I must inform you that these socks were clad-iron tested on mountaineers climbing Mount Everest. They're hand-knit, and made from kid-hair! (I'm told there were no children shaved for the protection of my feet against the cold) But seriously though, these socks are legitimately of the warmest and best-quality I have ever, nay, will ever wear. I would go so far as to say they are worthy socks for the common man to dry clean.

But back to the point: We are writing a letter to our grandparents. I know we haven't done this in about a year, but once you get started I promise it will come back to you. To get you started, here's mine:

Dear Grammie and Granddad,

Thanks for those socks you gave me for Christmas! I finally got the opportunity to properly test-drive them, and I've got to say: These are hands down the best socks I've ever worn.

I'm tempted to say they rocked my socks, but I suppose the socks rocked me!

I can only hope you found your fancy for France is well fostered. This is peak-time for my assignments and mid-terms, so I'm especially jealous right now. I'll be expecting some kind of cheese from the trip! (Or a snail... that is what they eat there, isn't it?)

Your favorite grandson,


Dan Phillips

Note, in actuality I have no idea when the trip to France is (or was). I know it's probably around now-ish, but I could be off a month in either direction. To throw them off of my confusion, I overwhelmed that sentence with alliteration. Ambiguous? I think so!

So, get to it! Write your grandparents!

Your letter-writing skills will return, I promise!


--
D. Phillips

...and then I ate the bowl!

(You see, 'soup' and 'super' are phonetically similar, and Tim Horton's used to offer soup in a bread bowl, the commercials for which would...oh, never mind.)

So like five million other Canadians, I watched the Super Bowl. And even that was a close call, it nearly lost out to a Wii golf game. (On a tangential note, how is it that I am surrounded by Wiis in nearly every facet of my life yet have only played them twice, with more than a year inbetween?)

Obviously it was a great game, destined to go down as one of the greatest Super Bowls of all time, easily the most exciting I've ever seen - and while we got a great game, the NFL got exactly what they wanted (a record-setting audience while keeping the 19-0 mystique alive). So overall, everybody won (well, except the Patriots).

Nobody will ever forget that play. You know, THAT play. The "there's less than a minute left and the Giants still need to get further down the field. Oh no, Eli's gonna get sacked, they've got his jersey...HEY WHAT'S HE DOING OVER THERE? He got the throw away, good for him! AND THAT GUY CAUGHT IT!!!!" play. Other memorable Super Bowl moments have names like "The Catch" or "The Drive"...it would be a disservice to give this one anything less than "The Most Unbelivably Unbelievable Thing To Ever Happen In A Super Bowl".

Also, the referees frantically trying to get everybody off the field before the last play was funny in a surrealist sense.

One problem I had, though - back when it was first announced that Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers would be performing at the halftime show, I was ecstatic. I made a post on this blog saying so. But to be honest, I was kinda disappointed by his show. Not so much the performance levels, or the song selection (as much as I was hoping for "Refugee", I realize they have about a million different hits to choose from), but the form. Every single song seemed to follow the same pattern - first verse, chorus, guitar solo, chorus again, another guitar solo, done. It was a good way to squeeze in an extra song, but surely there had to be some way they could have mixed it up?

Anyhow, at least we didn't see a Tom Petty wardrobe malfunction.

In closing, "no, the cone is MADE of chocolate!". I mean, "...and then I ate the bowl!".

--Ryan

I can't do restaurant reviews

At some point in your life, you will find yourself in Brantford. This is an unpleasant yet unavoidable fact. While there, you may be tempted by hunger, and start looking for a restaurant to satisfy that temptation. Now, many people will be content with a Kelsey's, Boston Pizza, Swiss Chalet, or something else of that ilk - all of which Brantford has - but others will be more adventurous, looking for something they've never had before.

If you're willing to venture downtown, there are many good choices - however, they all have their own drawbacks. Kel's Diner is never open past 3 PM, Pizza Spot has, as far as I am aware, never gotten an order right, and anything more than a milkshake from Admiral's will significantly shorten your life span. Besides, you might not even be downtown. If this is true, I would humbly like to suggest the Oxford Circus.

From the picturs above, you might not think that the Oxford Circus looks particularly glamourous - and if so, you'd be right. In fact, if anything, I would say the restaurant looks less impressive in person - maybe because it hides behind The Keg, I'm not sure.

But what the Oxford Circus lacks in exterior visual appeal, it makes up for in culinary delight. I have now been there on three or four separate occasions, and enjoyed each one immensely. The menu is both huge and diverse, containing everything from standard British pup fare (Yorkshire pudding stuffed with roast beef!) to a decent selection of steaks.

On my visits, I have had 'bangers and mash' (sausages and mashed potatoes with a LOT of baked beans, which I enjoyed immensely), fish and chips (very good fish, above-average fries), and a variety of appetizers which I can no longer remember (but they were good, too). If there was a fourth visit, I had a hamburger (anyone want to help me out on this one?).

Never had dessert, and can't comment on their alcohol selection, but it's great food, more-or-less reasonable prices, and a solid atmosphere. Proximity to Lynden Mall makes it a prime destination via bus. Highly recommended.

--Ryan