Happy Birthday, Naomi!
You are 13 months old today, and you got it goin’ on, girl!
Open Question: Recommendations
Here’s the Open Question for November:
“What kinds of things to do you recommend to others? Do you recommend products, services, movies, courses, or something else? To whom do you make recommendations: friends, family, or strangers on the street? Is there anyone you wouldn’t make a recommendation to, or anything that you would never recommend? Have you ever had a recommendation miss the mark?”
Leave your answers or links in the comments below. I’ll post my answers tomorrow.
Shoulder to the Mouse Wheel
We’re finally hitting the freezing weather in Montreal.
How do I know this? Because my front steps are covered with ice.
How do I know that? Because I slipped down the steps this morning. Fortunately, there was nothing in my arms except Ben’s schoolbag, so no one was hurt except for me. Ben looked at me and asked “Okay, Daddy?” which I thought was sweet.
I over-extended my right shoulder holding on to the railing as I fell, so I feel a little bruised. Every time I put on my coat, lift Naomi, turn the steering wheel, type this blog entry or even butter my toast, I can feel the strain on my shoulder.
Here’s hoping a couple of acetaminophen tablets will be enough to get me through.
Learn my mistakes, dear readers, and watch out for ice. And put down some rock salt if you have the chance.
(Oh no, now I have to click Publish. Time for a deep breath…[grin])
When I’m Not Levelling Up, I’m Lighting Up…
…the bedroom with Lumines for PSP.
(I bet you thought I was talking about something else, didn’t you?)
I’ve been playing this fun musical puzzle game in the evenings, just before going to bed. The gameplay is a simple Tetris variant – blocks drop from the top of the screen, and you have to build 4×4 blocks of the same colour. The catch is that the 4×4 blocks are only removed from the grid when a sweep arm crosses the screen, so you can line up a huge collapsing chain reaction and still lose the game if the sweep arm doesn’t start the reaction in time.
All this gameplay is set against a colourful background and set to some trancey electronica, which has a calming effect. The game’s creator spoke a the Montreal International Game Summit and said he was inspired by skyscraper skylines at night, and he certainly created that brilliant, eerie, dream-like atmosphere in the game. It really is like watching the Tokyo skylines sequences from Lost in Translation.
As in Tetris and similar puzzlers, the rewards of play lie in beating your high score, and in finding just the right block at the right moment to get yourself out of a jam. As you progress, you unlock new backgrounds that you can use in other game modes.
There’s also a two-player mode, a vs. computer mode, and a puzzle mode where you’re given a shape to create within a set time limit. I haven’t delved too deeply into those other modes. I’m too busy trying to beat my best time and high score. If I don’t beat the high score though, I don’t mind. This game doesn’t provoke the same competitive urges that other games do. I find it soothing.
Maybe it’s the music. Dina finds the music soothing, too. She can drift off to the sleep while I play.
So Many Animated Movies. So Little Time.
Monster House
I worked on three videogames based on this movie, so I saw early scripts and cuts well before the theatrical release of this animated coming-of-age adventure. The darker and more subversive edges have been filed off, but the Rob Schrab-designed Monster House must be seen to be believed. Think Goonies-lite.
Over the Hedge
What do you get when you mix suburban sprawl, a variety of gentle woodland critters, and a raccoon grifter with a huge debt to an angry bear? Nothing much, until you add a hyperactive squirrel, a high-tech exterminator and a high-strung suburban co-op president. Then you get your amusing movie.
Rounding Up the Weekend
Last weekend was fairly streamlined and focused: Everything revolved around helping Ben get over his fever and his stomach flu.
Friday was an evening of rest. Dina and I were both pretty haggard from the stress of our four-hour excursion through the emergency room at the Montreal Children’s Hospital.
Now, in my mind, a four-hour emergency trip means they saw us pretty darn quickly. When I was a kid in the emergency room, I always through time slowed to a crawl, but, as an adult, the four hours pretty much flew by. Perhaps that’s because we were watching our two children instead of our watches.
My day had started early, with a two-hour drive to a garage near Sherbrooke to pick up winter tires. I don’t know the first thing about buying winter tires, so I asked my father-in-law to find me a set at the garage he used. So, Naomi and I met up with Lou and Tilly at the garage, had the tires changed, had lunch at a nearby restaurant, and then I headed back down the highway for another two hours.
We decided to take Ben to the hospital pretty much as soon as I arrived home. In all the excitement, I had forgotten to phone Lou and Tilly to let them know that we had arrived safely! Oops!
They were worried, but we straightened everything out.
Needless to say, Dina and I had no strength for anything that evening. We wandered about, and then conked out.
Saturday was a stay-at-home day. We cleaned, meandered, and I set Ben up with his playdough haircut set for the better part of two hours. The set used scented playdough, and Ben had a fixation on the blue cotton candy playdough. It’s possible for something to smell too sweet, let me tell you.
In the evening, the kids went down relatively early, and Dina headed over to Terence’s for the annual extravaganza that is his birthday party. While she partied and relaxed, I fired up the PS2 and played through a few levels of X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse. I really started to get into the game, which is a first for this year.
2006 has been a year of collecting videogames rather than playing them. The only game I managed to complete was Ratchet & Clank II: Going Commando, and that was only to test the funky new TV set of ours.
My quick impressions of the game are these: it’s much easier than the first game, but the story casts a wider net over X-Men comics history and characters (I was pleased to see Guardian and Vindicator from Alpha Flight in the third act); I’m glad character advancement is automated, because I don’t have the time to customize four charactes simultaneously, much less those other characters that I never use; there’s really no point in using anyone other than the default characters to play – you need a bridge-builder, a brawler, a ranged attacker and a flier – any other combination leaves you unable to complete some of the missions.
I like this style of game, because it suits my pick-up-and-play schedule.
But you know what’s weird? I feel a little less stressed after playing. I need the break.
On Sunday, Mom and Scott came down for a visit. Ben didn’t have a fever, but he was clearly too tired for swimming (no surprise there), so he and Naomi hung out with Scott and I while Mom and Dina went to a cool Fair Trade Fair with Maggie.
Scott and I hung out, played with the kids, had lunch, and chatted about work, games, movies, and Christmas plans. It was a good way to spend the day.
At one point, we decided to take the children out for a breath of fresh air. We packed them in the stroller and headed down to Quantum Cards so Scott could check out their new 50%-off spinnerrack. I also glanced at the shelves, making plans for Boxing Day.
We returned home, and waited for Mom and Dina to arrive and show us what they’d bought. We didn’t have to wait for long.
They arrived with huge grocery bags. Most of them were full of groceries, but some of them were full of fair trade goodies. As I moved to help relieve Dina of some of her bags, a pair slipped from between my fingers.
Was it a bag of eggs that I dropped?
No.
It was a bag of pottery. Yikes!
Only one lovely ceramic bowl was cracked, but that was one too many. I felt really, really guilty…and clumsy!
(A little ‘Net research turned up the contact information of the organizer of the event, and she very kindly put me in contact with potential vendors of the bowl. This story is going to have a happy ending, I think.)
Scott and Mom headed home before dinner, becaye they both had busy weeks ahead of them. Dina and I went through our usual Sunday routine of dinner, baths, bedtime stories, TV and bed.
Ben slept right through the night and was ready for his regular schedule the next morning. Hooray!
Growing Teeth Faster Than I Can Name Them
Naomi has been on a real flurry of dental activity recently. At last count, she has seven teeth, and she’s working on the eighth.
From the sound of it, the eighth tooth (an upper eyetooth) is rough going. Nothing a frozen teether and some Orajel can’t fix, though.
Congratulations, Scott!
Not only is my brilliant brother an engineer, but he’s also a chartered accountant.
He just got the news that he passed his exam!
Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!
An Odd Pair of DVD Reviews
The Batman vs. Dracula
The latest animated version of Batman moves away from the classic stylings of the older series and moves to a chunkier, big-footed Teen Titans style. In costume, everyone looks great. In civvies, everyone looks pretty implausible. Peter Stormare chews the scenery as Dracula, which made for fun viewing. Decent effort.
Curious George
The best child-oriented cartoon movie I’ve seen…and I watch a lot of child-oriented cartoons. Watching the Man in the Yellow Hat get used to the charming, exasperasting inexhaustible energy of George is amusing. Ben and Naomi would watch this movie three times a day if they could. I would too.
The Return of DVD Reviews (TV Edition)!
Battlestar Galactica: Season 2
This season collects five story arcs, that each push the limits of purely military or political approaches to a crisis: the military coup, Pegasus, the resistance fighters, the election, and the colony that combine to reveal Cylons’ breathtakingly comprehensive plan – I hope the writers are up to their promise.
Foyle’s War: Season 1
A British detective series set just before the start of WWII. The murders themselves are interesting, but the strength of the series is the effects of the war on the homefront, from rationing to air raids to Fifth Columnists to official secrets acts. Even in war, murder is still criminal.