Author: Greg
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Nationalism in the Scottish Parliament?
The Scottish National Party have the biggest single number of MSPs in the new Scottish parliament. The SNP won 47, Labour came in second with 46; the Conservatives have 17; the Liberal Democrats secured 16; and others came in with three. This is going to be interesting…
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Battle of the Surfaces
Rafael Nadal edged arch-rival Roger Federer in a thrilling decider in the “battle of the surfaces” in Mallorca. The world’s top two players slugged it out in an exhibition match on a half-clay, half-grass court before the Spaniard prevailed 7-5 4-6 7-6 (12-10).
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Map of Online Communities
Map of online communities. I’m waiting for the day when, if you tell someone “I’m from the internet,” instead of laughing they just ask “oh, what part?”
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Delta Emerge From Bankrupcy
Delta emerge from bankrupcy. Following a 19 month restructuring plan and one attempted takeover by US Airways, Delta exit Chapter 11 and come out kicking with a brand new look.
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The Braves Tie Up John Smoltz
The Atlanta Braves have reached an agreement on a contract extension with pitcher John Smoltz. This extends his contract through 2008 with options for 2009 and 2010 which surely means Smoltz will end his playing days with the Braves.
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Stranger Than Fiction
Another belated review, this is becoming somewhat of a habit isn’t it? Regardless, another DVD review, this time of a movie that Robyn wanted to see from last year when she saw a trailer for it on TV.
Stranger Than Fiction is the story of Harold Crick (played by a very un-Will Ferrell Will Ferrell) who’s rather boring life of a tax auditor turns out to be the next novel of celebrated author Karen Eiffel (played by a fantastic Emma Thompson), complete with narrative voice over who “warns” him about his upcoming death. Thinking he’s going crazy, he ends up at the door of Professor Jules Hilbert (an equally fantastic Dustin Hoffman) who tells Harold he needs to find out if his life story will be a comedy or a tragedy, as that will determine the outcome…
This was a seriously good movie, an brilliant cast and a great story. There were so many nice little touches to it, like on screen graphics showing Harold’s obsessive counting during his day, the voice over semi breaking down the fourth wall as Harold interrupts it, one of the best visual puns in the history of cinema (you’ll know it when you see it), just a great, great movie. I’m not sure who was better, Will Ferrell playing a straight character, Emma Thompson’s author dealing with writers block or Dustin Hoffman’s bizarre professor who takes Harold’s situation quite literally.
Highly recommended, especially as it’s a rental now…
Next up: I have the choice of 300 or Casino Royale… Shame it looks like I’ve missed my chance to see Grindhouse, but there is always Spider-Man 3 to look forward to.
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Thunder Dan
An awesome video of former Phoenix Suns player Dan Majerle draining some crazy shots from half court while wearing a suit before the Suns/Lakers game a few nights ago. Back in the day, Dan could the shoot lights out from anywhere!
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Is Our Food Contaminated?
US health officials are now looking at whether humans may have consumed food containing a chemical linked to a recall of pet foods and livestock feed. FDA officials said they would inspect imports of six grain products used in foods ranging from bread to baby formula for traces of melamine, a chemical thought to have killed and sickened cats and dogs.
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I Took It!
I took it! And if you’re in web design, so should you. The first A List Apart web design survey.
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Life Streamed
Yes, I bitch a lot about somethings, like last week I was complaining about Dreamhost disabling “allow_url_fopen” in PHP so I’d have use cURL instead to get a little tumblelog kind of site. Instead I cheated and used a basic WordPress install and Chris J Davis’ Lifestream plugin (of sorts) to create my own lifestream/tumblelog on the gregorsmith.com domain that was just sitting vacant since I got it in late December/early January. Quick and dirty, well dirty and not so quick, but it does the job.
Basically it does everything that my tumblr tumblelog does except archive information, it’s just the most recent information from the feeds, usually the last 15 to 20 entries. Currently it pulls in the main blog here, the links I post, uploaded Flickr images and my many twitter tweets. Completely automated, 100% meta and easy to expand, my kind of site.
