Uploading photos from my trekking in Nepal

November 29, 2006 at 10:44 pm · Filed under Photos

I’m doing a bit of experiment. I’m scanning my photos from trekking in Nepal and uploading them to my zooomr photo sharing account. Each of these photos will have a “portal” in it. A portal is a “picture within a picture” concept. When you hover your mouse over a photo a small box will appear with photo inside it. Clicking on this box will take you to the next photo, and so on. So far I’ve only scanned maybe 1/4 or 1/10 of the photos I’ll upload. But if you want to see the start, go here:

In case I get lucky and one of my companions from this trip google their own names, I’ll list them here and maybe they’ll contact me. As best as I can recall, I trekked with: Scott Haddad, John McKone, Mark McPhail, John Taylor, Michael Lansten, Chris Arts, Tomer Peled, and Beto.

Comments

The Best Bond

November 26, 2006 at 9:10 pm · Filed under Just Stuff

Who is the best bond ever: Connery? Moore? Martin Scott?

Of course I’m entitled to comment on this because I’ve actually read all of Ian Fleming’s Bond books. So I’m talking about the actor that best plays Bond. It’s actually pretty easy to answer. If you were to ask who is the best Bond for entertainment/movie value then that question would vary from person to person a hell of a lot more.

At last count there have been 6 Bonds. Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig. I think David Niven played bond in an old version of Casino Royale, but I’ve never seen that movie. Check out wikipedia for more info on this stuff.

There are three main character traits that I picked up from the Fleming books. Bond was tough, sophisticated and a stud. In my mind, Sean Connery is the only one that fills all of these traits. Lazenby wasn’t near tough enough, and neither was Moore. Brosnan comes pretty close, but still errs on the side of being a softy. Dalton comes the closest to Connery. Unlike the others, Craig’s Bond wasn’t sophisticated enough.

Obviously the movie directors were often not trying to match their lead actor to Fleming’s Bond. This is all too clear with Craig. In Casino Royale, the movie actually plays off of the fact that Bond is rough around the edges. They treat it as the beginning of James Bond so there is a lot of potential for subsequent Bond movies with Craig to progress into the more traditional role.

One choice for Bond was clearly a mistake, that being Lazenby. This is unfortunate because On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is maybe the best Bond script. Lazenby was an okay character for this movie, but he wasn’t Bond. If you catch my drift.

Moore was an entertaining Bond. He added a comedic dimension to the movie and certainly was a womanizer. He was probably tough enough too, but the comedy aspect played against this. He was also the recipient of some pretty bad scripts. But that’s what you get for being an entertainer in the 80’s.

Dalton played the role of Bond very well. He also had some pretty bad scripts to work with. I think his biggest problem was his charisma. It’s hard to imagine that he would be swooning the ladies wherever he went. Overall he would be Bond #2.

From an entertainment point of view, Craig is one of the best bonds. The fact that his movie didn’t have a car chase adds to this greatly. A 10 minute car chase is a sure-fire way to lose an audience in my opinion. He sure the hell wasn’t sophisticated though and that doesn’t match up with Bond at all.

There’s just one outstanding question in my mind. Has anyone ever successfully watched A View To A Kill twice? That movie is shite.

Now please, someone shoot me for being dorky enough to write this post in my blog.

Comments (2)

Beer Review #1

November 24, 2006 at 10:59 pm · Filed under Just Stuff

I decided a few weeks ago to try out some new (to me) import beer. I staggered to our local liquor store where I bravely ran the gauntlet of guitar players, door holders, violinists and the standard issue drunks and beggars. Even at this medium sized store there was a wide variety of beer available and I settled on three from Europe.
Edit: I just found out that Démon earned 93 points from some beer tasting group.

First up: the Démon. This is a Vienna brewed in the Czech Republic by Lobkowicz. The hell if I know what a Vienna beer is supposed to be, I learned about it from this webpage with beer reviews. I thought it was kind of like a typical Czech lager. I was more closely reminded of all the Czech beer I drank in 1993 by this beer than Pilsner Urquell, which is a fairly popular Czech beer found in Canada. BTW, Pilsner Urquell doesn’t really remind me of Czech beer although it is still good. Anyways, I thought the Démon was refreshing with a bit of malt taste to it. I really liked this beer and I’ll definitely buy it again.

Next was the Christoffel Robertus. This is also a Vienna which is brewed in Limburg, Netherlands. You can slap me silly but I would never have thought that this beer was of the same type as Démon. But it is. At least, that’s what the ratebeer website says about Christoffel Robertus. I thought this beer was very malty and not refreshing. It was like someone took the heaviness of Guiness and stuffed it with Extra Old Stock. No thanks, but at least it has a cool bottle. Those Dutch are crazy.

Finally I tried the Edelweiss Hefetrüb Weissbier. This beer is a Hefeweizen brewed in Hallein, Austria. I couldn’t actually figure from the German label what the beer name was as opposed to the town or brewery where it was made. Again, I relied on the ratebeer page on Edelweiss. This was a pretty good Hefeweizen. It was immeasurably better than many of the domestic brewed “hefeweizens” which in fact don’t taste like hefeweizen at all. I would buy it again, but only after trying some other Hefeweizens.

Comments

Rapport

November 23, 2006 at 9:00 pm · Filed under Just Stuff

George W. Bush is a unique president for several reasons. I could outline most of these reasons, but I can’t. However, I would like to say that as far as I can tell, GWB is the first president who is the raison d’être for two tv network comedy shows.

Oh, the shows are Late Night with Jon Stewert and The Colbert Report. I love how Colbert pronounces the name of his show “coal-bear re-poor”.

Comments