Hey, it’s a noir film with a plotline you can follow and a soundtrack that’s only mildly bombastic! I enjoyed this solid piece, though it irritated me a little that it sounded off like Hemingway wrote it, when really the screenplay just took a scene with a little dialogue from a Hemingway short story, then dumped it for a totally different “background” story. I think I can forgive it, though.
Referred by Nehring
I can’t remember much about my first one, but at this one lots of tots got to compete for the good toys while the bigger, slower folks stuffed their faces with extra-garlicy hummus, fruit & veggies, and carrot cupcakes. The boy of honor, Dyson, seemed a little indifferent toward his presents, but his parents were groovin’ on em!
It’s overcast with rain in the forecast, but we’re so in the mood to climb, we pick up Sean and head for Boulder Canyon anyway. Alas, it’s raining hard when we arrive. Rather than turn right around, we continue up to Nederland and over to the South St. Vrain Canyon to descend. Surprisingly it’s dry there, if a little cold. We stop to check out the first crag we pass, Piz Badille, which I translate as “Piz Badiddle”. We can’t resist hauling some gear to the granite slabs, and find a nice long 5.6 friction route. This is accompanied by a good 5.6 flake. There’s some misty rain but nothing serious, so I get on a funky looking 5.9- with a bunch of overhangs. It turns out to be the perfect level of hairiness for the day. I enjoy the lead immensely. One of the overhang moves is too tall for Ann, but she moves over and battles her way up the steeper neighboring 5.9+ with aplomb. I toprope this one also, and determine it would be an exciting lead. We’re happy to discover this canyon, which seems every bit as good as Boulder Canyon but without the crowds. Of course, it might just be that the rain kept them away…
The hobomap is here, and in the pages menu. Try it out!
I’m very excited about this. For a long time I’ve wanted a good way to map my outings and adventures. The WordPress Geo Plugin provides a way to map a single post, which I’ve made use of for some time, but I always wanted to be able to see the post locations all together. When Google Maps released their mapping engine to the non-profit-seeking public, the door opened. I still have to go back to and put coordinates in for my Pacific Crest Trail hike, but almost all my other travels are there together on one map at last! It starts by default at the most recent geocoded post.
I’ve created a Geo Mashup Wordpress Plugin that enables the creation of a similar map on any WordPress site.
I gather that this kind of thing is called a Google Maps Mashup. The key piece is the Google Maps API. I had to supply to post locations, which I did by writing a small PHP server to query posts by their geo metadata and return the results in XML. The hobomap calls this to create the markers at the post locations within the current map view. When a marker is clicked, it calls the WordPress RSS server (wp-rss2.php) to get XML for each post at that location, combines them, and displays the combination in an info window above the marker.
I had to brush up on my JavaScript and learn about AJAX, the XML DOM, and XSLT.
I’m glad we caught this opportunity. Andreas Klein is certainly the highest caliber pianist I’ve seen in a venue as small as CSU’s Edna Rizley Griffin concert hall. His theme for the night was ‘visions’ - short, intense, visually inspired pieces. I was in awe of most them. The Prokofiev series was the only one he used sheet music for, to prevent him from making a fool of himself he announced, then proceeded to play a dizzying series of pieces that I can’t believe could possibly be written down, much less sight-read. The program:
Frederic Chopin - Baracarole
Calude Debussy - Le fille aux cheveux de lin & La cathedrale engloutie
Sergei Prokofiev - Vision Fugitives, opus 22
Modest Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition
I find it painful to watch a movie that aims high and falls short, probably because it reminds me of my own failings. This film had the potential to be a somber but graceful expression of existential angst, making use of Cassandra-esque characters to illustrate the pain that can be caused by revelations of truth, for both the revealer and the witness. Unfortunately some things just didn’t work for me. The strict separation of women as the brokers of fate and men as blind executors of it took too much humanity away from the characters. Strong characters were victims of their strengths, and weak characters victims of their weakness, but none of them seemed to change or learn much from their trials. Kind of a bummer.
Referred by Nehring
None of us are feeling too motivated today, but Sean, Ann, and I rally ourselves to take advantage of one more sunny Saturday at Vedauwoo. There’s a ripping Wyoming wind on the drive up, but the Nautilus formation provides a pleasant sheltered spot at Friday’s Recess. I enjoy leading a couple of 5.8 trad pitches (Tuesday Afternoon, Deception pitch 1), but I think we all feel a little weak, and take more pleasure watching people climb the nearby classics like Friday the 13th 5.11a and Hesitation Blues 5.11b.
As a movie this pretty much stinks, but as a documentary of one the Australian radio telescopes used in the Apollo 11 mission it’s good. The dramatizations are stiff and stereotypical, but the footage of the TV coverage of the first moon walk is given room to breathe. This is really the only place I’ve seen some extended bits of that footage, and it’s facinating.
Refererred by Nehring the Edge
David Duchovny writes and directs his first film, a coming of age story set in 1973 Manhattan. It’s a well-made movie on nearly all levels. It captures a 70’s feel without going overboard, uses symbolism well without being pretentious about it, features strong performances, and tells a very human story. Don’t look for any X-filesqueness here though, this definitely falls soundly in the feelgood movie genre.
Referred by Dad
In an unusual format, the new director of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Jeffrey Kahane, dedicated the entire first half of the evening to an introduction to the 5th symphony, with excerpts and examples played by himself and the orchestra. While I wouldn’t want to do this every time, it was a great change, like having an entire orchestra in music appreciation class. Kahane brings a lot of energy to his performances, a real desire to inform and entertain the audience, and a great deal of knowledge. He had the orchestra play Happy Birthday with a deceptive cadence at the end, for example, to illustrate how powerful the cadence is for building and resolving tension (after a very good explanation of what a cadence is, of course). He illustrated the role of certain themes and keys throughout Beethoven’s works. With some readings, including a famous letter from Beethoven himself, we started the second half with very nice frame for the orchestra to fill in, which they did wonderfully.
All recorded:
