In Search of Clear Focus

I’m sick of seeing the last post prominently displayed on the site.  Maybe I shouldn’t have even written it, as depressing a topic as it is.  On the other hand, it is major news and a frequent topic of conversation in my house (my wife blogged about Jessie Davis, as well).  Either way, I wanted to write something lighter and not at all important.  With that in mind, I turn to my iPod.

I won an iPod shuffle in a raffle at a conference I was at.  I have imported a few CDs we own into iTunes and uploaded them for listening at work.  I had not spent any money on individual tracks at the iTunes store, however.  All that changed around Fathers’ Day, when my goddaughter gave me a $15 gift card.  I haven’t yet maxed out the card, but the songs I purchased and am listening to now are:

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My favorite board game site on the Internet, Little Golem, has been down for several days.  It’s too bad, because I enjoy being able to go and play a move or two a few times a day in a variety of games.  It keeps me mentally sharp (at least that’s what I tell myself) and it’s a nice distraction every once in a while. Unfortunately, their forums and messaging system were wide open to javascript injection attacks, among others.  One of these attacks actually cost me a game that I was playing, as my opponent used and injected script to force my resignation.

So, after almost a week (it seems, though I really don’t remember when last week this occurred), it looks like the site might be back up today.  That’s good, I could use a little distraction to start my week.

My wife is not a big fan of Kanye West. I liked his first album, but he’s been tanking in my eyes ever since. If this isn’t just the icing on the cake…

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com LONDON — If Kanye West were to walk into the British Raj’s dining room and order dinner, it would cost the rapper about $17.50. But since the restaurant is delivering _ from Wales to New York _ it’s going to cost a bit more. For a feast of onion bhajees, chapati breads, biryanis, pappadums, a specially prepared fish dish and vegetables on the side, the bill will top $3,900, plus travel and accommodation for the restaurant’s head chef. The meal will be prepared, cooled, shrink-wrapped and packed in dry ice in the British Raj’s kitchens and _ along with head chef Kaysor Ahmed _ will be helicoptered from Wales to London’s Heathrow Airport on Tuesday. From there, the chef is to hop a flight to New York _ monitoring the food’s temperature all the way _ clear customs, and head for Manhattan, where the meal is to be served during a meeting Wednesday. The fee was arrived at by estimating the restaurant’s takings for two evenings, the time Ahmed will be away, Mohammed said.

I ran across this site today. It’s a travel Wiki that allows people to share their experiences in world travel. I haven’t registered or played around much, but you can create a map of your own world travel, which would be pretty cool. Of course, then you have to travel more so your map isn’t too pathetic…

clipped from www.world66.com We like to travel. We think travelers are your best source for travel information. That’s really what World66 is about. Writing the best travel guide possible together. You can edit any page you find here and share your experiences; in return anybody can use the collection of travel information here for whatever purpose he or she wants. More… Partnership with Wikitravel.org World66.com and Wikitravel.org are now sister sites. The two wiki travel guides will be working more closely, and together will provide people with the most complete and objective travel information available anywhere.

So, I’m already falling behind on some of my tasks for the year… Photo-a-week, rosary once a week, and my daily readings. Behind on all of them. On the plus side, my wife and I have gotten better organized at home and my office desk at least isn’t holding me back from keeping up on our finances, etc.

So, in the spirit of being behind on my tasks, I stumbled across what may turn out to be my web find of the year… Too early to tell, but it looks promising. In 2006, my great find was DPChallenge.com, which re-ignited my interest in photography. Just recently, I stumbled across a site for playing online board games, called Little Golem. It’s sure to be another time-waster for me, but it looks great.

Basically, they coordinate and host correspondence board games between folks, including setting up mini tournaments. If you’re not familiar with correspondence games, they are board games that are played via a comminucation system like postal mail, e-mail, or Internet servers. It works well for turn-based games where moves are easy to annotate. The classic example is correspondence chess. The advantage of playing over time is that you can mull over your moves for a little while and you play when you have time and be forced to set aside a largeblock of time to play the game(s).

The way I stumbled across this site was looking for information on the game Twixt. I don’t know what made me think of it the other day, but it’s a board game that I used to play with my dad, mostly on family vacations. It’s a fun strategy game, so when I found Little Golem and saw that it hosted online Twixt games, I had to try. They have a number of other familiar games there, including Chess, Go, Hex, Reversi, Dots, and many others. I’m currently involved in a couple games of Twixt, Dots, and a new game to me: StreetSoccer. Anyway, I’ll see how it is, but it seems like a decent site so far…

Now, I just need to catch up on everything else.

My wife and I got a little break from parenting and snuck out to catch a movie. We went to see the new Bond film, Casino Royale. I grew up watching Bond films, but have avoided the last few because they took the series waaay to far over the top and became completely unenjoyable for me.

Before I get to the my actual thoughts on the film, I first have to complain about the cost of movies these days. I’m only 28, so I shouldn’t sound like a 70-year-old grandfather complaining about the prices when I was growing up. Unfortunately, that’s exactly how I sound. The matinee price for the movie was an outrageous $7.50. If I was 70, I could have saved $0.25 of my ticket, so there’s a lot of respect for senior citizens there. Of course, our daughter would only cost $7.00, so there’s another great savings…

I have a feeling that we won’t be seeing many more films in the theaters. Pay-per-view is now so affordable when you consider that it’s a whopping $3.99. I can purchase the movie for 24 hours, a box of popcorn, and soda for the family for less than a single full-price ticket to the movies now ($9.25).

Back to the movie… I liked this film quite a bit. It wasn’t as spectacular as I was hoping, but I blame that partially on my dad. He told me how much he loved it, which raised my expectations above what the reviews had already done. It was a little disorienting that the movie about Bond’s start as 007 was set in modern times with such back catalog of films, but once you get past that, it was quite decent.

I really appreciated that the focus of the film wasn’t on the special effects (though there were some nice ones), but rather on Bond himself. The plot was strong enough to not be distracting from the story of Bond’s genesis as a double-oh agent. The villains were also written and portrayed well enough to set up Bond’s flaws and strengths without detracting from his star power. I think Daniel Craig did a nice job of pulling the good and leaving the bad from previous Bond actors. The way I see it he is a nice mix of Connery’s arogance and Daulton’s darker portrayal, without the silliness of Moore or the aloofness of Brosnan.

If you think I left out George Lazenby, don’t. I choose not to acknowledge that movie was ever made. It is as much of a blight on the franchise as some of the more recent films. All the other actors were in at least one acceptable film in the series.

I had heard comparisons to Batman Begins when Casino Royale first came out. I think that also drove some of my interest in this film. I don’t think CR turned my interest in the Bond movies around as much as Bale’s performance in BB did for that franchise, but it was pretty close. The fact that I’m actually interested in seeing how Craig does in the next installment says a lot.