Happy Birthday, Naomi!
You are eighteen months old today! Your brother is teaching you all his playground secrets!
You have a few tricks of your own up your long, long sleeves.
No, Really, They’re for the Kids…
(left to right: Eco, Rover (in crane), Lunar Jim (seated), T.E.D., Ripple)
One of Ben and Naomi’s favourite shows is Lunar Jim, a stop-motion animation series about an outpost on the last moon in the Milky Way. We were delighted to discover a line of official action figures were available.
In theory, at least. Almost every time we looked in stores, the only things we could find was a crane toy (with robot dog) and a talking wristwatch bundled with a DVD. Boring and expensive.
Then we found Lunar Jim and Ripple figures bundled with their matching red and blue rocket scooters! They became favourite toys for a while. We saw that Eco the space gardener and T.E.D. robot figures were available, but I only ever found them for sale on eBay at ridiculous prices…
…until now! During a shopping mall trip, I decided to pop into the Bay to see if they had restocked their shelves…and they had!
I’m pretty sure the kids were as excited as I was.
So far, the children have managed to share the toys between them. Ben loves the crane, and Naomi likes to take the Rover the robot dog and Eco the gardener for walks around the house.
I’m only allowed to reattach various detachable bits on the vehicle and the character accessories.
No fair!
Radio Song
Here’s my answer to the Open Question about radio:
Like the trio of commenters on the question post, I too am a big fan of CBC Radio One radio (that’s the local broadcast, with mostly talk, versus CBC Radio Two, which is the national, mostly musical, station), but this wasn’t always the case. I never used to enjoy this kind of talky news/lifestyle/documentary radio until Dina introduced me to it.
Before then, I preferred all-music radio: Top 40 during high school, quasi-classic rock during CEGEP (mostly The Doors and Procul Harem…ooh, check out how cool I was!), and guitar-heavy skateboard rock during late night paper-writing sessions in university. This isn’t to say that there was no room for CBC even then: After Hours (Ross Porter’s late night jazz show), Jazz Beat with Katie Malloch, and Brave New Waves, which played strange and attention-grabbing Canadian tunes that I’d never hear on local Montreal radio or see on MusiquePlus.
Early on in my high school days, I used to sit next to my radio/casette deck on Sunday mornings and record the singles from American Top 40 to have a variety of music to feed into my Walkman for the bus rides to school. Dad had gotten me started on the habit, because he did the same thing on Saturdays with a Golden Oldies station. Then, as now, recording the broadcasts was much cheaper than assembling a library of original recordings – so what if the DJ spoke over the intro or the ending? Cutting that extraneous stuff out of the recording was part of the fun.
Still, CBC is the stuff for home listening. In the car, I need something a little more alarmingly peppy and cheery, so I turn once again to the nearest Top 40 station. I am not ashamed to say that I’ve sung along to my fair share of Avril Lavigne tunes…it’s my singing voice itself that’s the shame.
I’ve given podcasts a try in this modern Internet Age, but I really don’t have the attention span (or the disk space) to listen to anything lengthy. However, CBC Radio Three (the all internet edition of the public broadcaster) has a fine set of 5-9 minute Song of the Day podcasts. Every weekday, one of the hosts introduces a single from an independent Canadian band. Sometimes the song doesn’t live up to the praise in the intro, but, once again, I’m discovering new music, which is cool.
Autism Awareness March
April is Autism Awareness month (which I just learned about last week…go me!) and ATEDM (Autism and Pervasive Development Disorders Montreal) organized an hour-long march through the quiet parts of the Plateau.
This was Ben’s second march, and he was a real trouper. He kept looking at Dina and I and saying “We’re walking with people!”
The turnout was smaller than expected due to the weather, but everyone was lively, and the passers-by enjoyed the spectacle. There were a few reporters about, and I gained fifteen syllables of celebrity on the Radio-Canada supper-hour newscast.
Dina took lots of pictures, of course. Click here to view the whole photoset.
Open Question: Radio Dial
Here’s the Open Question for April:
“What do you listen to on the radio? Do you have any favourite genres (all-music, all-talk, etc.), stations or hosts? Do you listen to traditional radio, have you tried satellite radio, or have podcasts taken over? Have you owned any especially neat radio receivers, or tried to build your own. Are there some topics and approaches that radio handles best?”
Leave your answers or links in the comments below. I’ll post my answers tomorrow.
Boom! It’s Cthulhu!
Fall of Cthulhu #0
After two anthology outings, Boom Studios attempts an ongoing series of Lovecraftian horror. Thisrelude to the main story is a promising start, with striking dark artwork: Abdul Alhazred, the author of the incomplete Necronomicon, recalled to life to conclude his interrupted work. Given the title of the series, that’s dangerous.
Fall of Cthulhu #1
A young man’s lunch with his girlfriend his interrupted by a visit from his crazy uncle Walt…who shoots himself at their table. Cy’s investigation into his uncle’s research leads him to troubling papers on primitive cults, visitations to the Dreamlands, and a creepy unwillingness to part with a ceremonial knife.
The Freelancing Game
I’m heading out to tonight’s IGDA-Montreal roundtable discussion on The Future of Work to talk about such things as career paths, studio practices and the directions of the game industry as a whole.
I look forward to these sessions because it gives me a chance to catch up with my friends and former co-workers in the industry, and to get a sense of what’s going on in Montreal (plus, it gets me out of the house!). These meetings help normalize what has been so far an unorthodox career path.
How unorthodox? Well, take a look at this April Fool’s Day IGDA column about foolish career advice: that’s pretty much my career path. Well, not every point – just the ones about freelancing and telecommuting. I don’t have an industry degree (they didn’t readily exist back when I started), and my only contacts in the industry were people who knew people who knew people in the industry (really!), but I do live in a gaming hub and I know how to conduct myself professionally in the increasingly rigorous office setting (no Nerf gun fights where I work any more).
In a way, I’m following the “wrong” path, but it’s working well…maybe because nobody else is doing it! Still, it’ll be interesting to see what people present as the “right” path, and then figure out how to incorporate the strengths of what’s currently done into my own working habits.
Zombies Make for Good Reading
Zombie Tales
There are no bad zombie stories in this anthology, but some are more surprising than others. The best title of the bunch is “Daddy Smells Different,” by John Rogers, but I think my favourite story is “If You’re So Smart” by Mark Waid. Not every zombie story is about survival.
Zombie Tales Oblivion
A sequel to the first Zombie Tales anthology, with two continuing stories and four one-shots. The single stories are the best, with John Rogers (“Memento Mori”) and Mark Waid (“Luther”) again stealing the show. Most of the tales are about memories and memorials. You never stop mourning the restless dead.
Zombie Tales The Dead
The third installment concludes the running Giffen and Nelson stories (without any improvement), and presents some amusing twists on the zombie apocalypse. The best are “Zoombies” by Johanna Stokes, about zoo animals escaping their zombified keepers, and “Four out of Five” by John Rogers, about the unanticipated cause of zombification.
Zombie Tales Death Valley #1-2
Recipe for a zombie teen blockbuster: Take L.A. teens (a disaffected daughter with a surprising amount of military training, two nerds, two doofuses and a bimbo), add a solar flare and mass zombification, and have the kids holed up in the Playboy Mansion. A fun romp, well worth two issues.
Monday Miscellany
Random thoughts, events, observations, etc., in convenient bullet-point form:
- Naomi has no fear of playground equipment.
- Our 20-year-old microwave broke first thing this morning. The plastic latch that shuts off the light broke, and now the machine won’t start. Fortunately, microwaves are much cheaper nowadays.
- Ben loves the Wallace and Gromit movies. He asks to watch “Robot Pants” (a.k.a. The Wrong Trousers) every day. He also walks around pretending to wear the robot pants. Dina is so proud.
- I’m having the best run of luck collecting a set of the last expansion for the Battlestar Galactica CCG: out of one booster box, I didn’t find any doubles, and I’ve been able to trade the foils for all but two of the rares that I need. What a way to bow out of a hobby!
- The next round of hobby consolidation involves my RPG books. If you’re looking for Spycraft, or odds and ends from Dawnforge, Lord of the Rings or Alternity, I’m your guy.
- Ben and Naomi love wearing their new sunglasses.
- It’s 26C this afternoon! Where are my sandals?
- Municipal crews are tearing down the larger playground across the street. Here’s hoping the rain lets up this summer and they finish the project before September.
- I’m also hoping that the work doesn’t disrupt the wading pool this summer. That would be disappointing.
- Heroes is back on tonight. Hooray!
- Work is has been pretty busy of late. That’s good, but tiring, news.
- Not only do I kill CCGs, comics and TV shows by my interest, but I’ve expanded my powers to include magazines. As soon as I ask Quantum Cards to set aside a copy of Dragon magazine every month, I learn that the magazines are being discontinued and converted to online-only sources in September. Thirty years of publication history comes to a halt. At least I have the CD-ROM with the first 250 issues in PDF.
- I’ve become a complete Boom! Studios junkie: I have six or seven of their titles on my resserve list. They’re even publishing a book by my favourite weird monster mystery writer, John Rozum! I have to like them.
- I’m thinking of doing the 2007 Blogathon in July to raise money for the autism programs at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, but I have to work out the details.
Two Movies, Watched Over Several Lunch Breaks
The Island
Remember when science-fiction stories dealt with the “big questions” with humour and rip-roarin’ action instead of dystopic angst? There’s no discussion on the ethics of cloning, free-market capitalism and the nature of humanity that cannot be improved by motorcycle chases and jokes with the word “Dude.” The Island is summertime fun.
V for Vendetta
As with the graphic novel, I discover something new in the film on every viewing. This go-round, I concentrated on the Stephens Fry and Rea; far from merely advancing the plot, they represent the mirth and the honourable determination of V, yet both characters present the same kinds of bitterness.