Yep, since I stopped posting to my old blog, and started this new blog on July 5, 2014, every single “comment” has been spam.
That’s why I never had comments open on my old blog on an aging software architecture.
So what the heck is the purpose of comments, if they are ALL spam?
UPDATE: August 25, 2014. I have turned off comments on all previous posts on this blog.
Lauren and Boggie. That’s what most of us remember. But recollections of them together are framed by where we saw them on the big screen. And that brings back memories. . .
I think the first place I saw this movie aside from small-screen TV may have been an old theater In Takadanobaba, Tokyo.
Back in the 1980s Takadanobaba was a haven for students, local and foreign. Cheap dorms, cheap cafes, cheap bars and a dingy, cheap movie theater that ran amazing series of foreign films. The theater is likely long gone by now.
Oh, gosh, my mind is tickling at the answer, but it’s not quite there.
“Waseda Shochiku”? Something like that. Anyway…
I’d walk by the theater every few weeks and sign up for series of Bunuel and other Euro masters. Saw a lot of stuff in many languages that I didn’t understand, but the lighting, the photography, the acting remains in my mind to this day.
it was a perfect place to watch Sam play it again.
Hot damn, a Google search says it’s still alive? Hard to comprehend, but wonderful.
Occasionally I like to skim through the subject lines in my email spam folder, and construct silly stories from them. It’s like being a kid and playing with those spiral-bound books in which you could individually flip sections to rewrite stories, often with funny results.
Here’s a mashup from my spam folder today:
“Explore Russian Dating Online” it’s OK because there is a “Frenzy Over Herpes Cure (Latest Discovery)” If things go bad, “Do THIS When a Gun is Pointed at Your Head” and if things go really bad “Many Threw Their Glasses Away After Seeing This”
🙂
On a foray into Richmond, BC, to visit several Asian supermarkets, Yumi and I ran into a display of huge, animated bugs at the Aberdeen Centre. It was great fun, enchanting kids and parents alike.
We had to take our picture by these “kabuto mushi” as they are known in Japan. They are very popular “pets” there.
“History suggests humans, in contrast to ants and slime molds, rarely optimize growth, particularly when multiple objectives such as profit, equity, and ecological integrity come into conflict.” And since we aren’t quite as good at this as slime molds are, there is the distinct possibility that we should plan for the worst rather than assume we’ll fix the problem ahead of time. – Dave Levitan | August 5 2014
Thanks to Pamela Zevit for posting this quotation, and the article it came from, on FaceBook. Pam posts links to a steady stream of articles that make one sit up and think.
We always enjoy the annual Powell Street Festival in what is left of Vancouver’s original Japantown. What was once a vibrant community was dismantled in 1942 with the Canadian government’s internment of Japanese Canadians — many of them Canadian citizens. The festival never dwells on that part of the past, it’s a super celebration of Japanese culture, art, music, food, martial arts, and more.
Got my first double-Warhol moment yesterday, when the Burnaby NewsLeader published a photo of me in relation to a story about Byrne Creek, on which I volunteer as a streamkeeper, and also published several of my photos from the recent Edmonds City Fair, at which I was the event photographer.
Fun to be there  on both sides of the camera : -).
I began noticing a few months ago that the battery in my Samsung SIII smartphone was not lasting nearly as long as it did when new. I was getting barely a few hours out of a charge.
I was in Toronto in early June for several conferences, and was using my phone more than I usually do to keep in touch with local relatives and friends, read my email, check Twitter and Facebook, etc. At home I do many of these things from my office computer, so hadn’t noticed as much how weak the phone battery was getting.
I had an hour to kill over lunch one day, and tried four or five cell phone retail outlets in downtown Toronto, and none of them had a battery for the SIII. It’s not that old, but old enough in the rapid model turnover of the cell phone world that none of them could be bothered to stock batteries for it.
I returned home, and put up with the shorter and shorter battery time, until the last day or two the battery wouldn’t take hardly any charge at all. I could leave the phone plugged in overnight, and have less than a quarter bar of battery power in the morning.
About a week ago I ordered a new battery from an online battery shop, but yesterday and today, I could not get more than a minute or two out of a charge. So I searched for battery specialty shops in Burnaby, and came up with Battery World on Boundary Road. I called them, and they had four SIII batteries on hand.
So I drove over this afternoon and bought one. Staff encouraged me to pop the non-Samsung branded battery into my phone and make sure it fitted properly and powered up. It’s nice to see a full bar of power on the screen again, and it’ll also be nice to have a backup battery when the one I ordered online arrives.
The new generic battery also has a tish more  capacity than a stock Samsung battery at 2,300 vs 2,100 MaH, but I haven’t had the opportunity yet to see if that realizes more uptime per charge. That’s only around a 10% increase, so I doubt if I’ll notice a difference.
It’s amazing how one becomes addicted to technology. If I leave the house without the cell phone, or if I’m out of juice, I feel naked. And I’m not a power user by any means. I might make and receive half a dozen to a dozen calls on my cell per week, and about the same number of texts. I am using it more for email and GPS location finding than I used to.
Oh, yes, I’d also like to thank Samsung for making batteries easy to change. Just pop the back cover off the phone by sticking a fingernail in the slot, and there you go — easy access to the battery, SIM, and microSD memory.
I was asked to be the event photographer for yesterday’s Edmonds City Fair & Car Show in SE Burnaby. It was a great event, with lots of activities for all ages. While it drizzled intermittently, with a real soaking for the last half hour or so, people had lots of fun, and stuck it out to the end with great spirit.
I focused on people and not so much the vehicles on display. You can view my Flickr album here.
