A time travel flick

I saw Primer today on cable. Holy smokes, this movie was good. And it cost only $7000 to produce!! A personal favorite now. I'm watching it again this weekend and currently trying to find out more* about the film. I give Primer four super shiny stars: ****

* Shane Carruth is the writer, director, editor and composer of the movie. He also plays one of the two main characters. Talk about a really small budget! I found his change in career from engineer to filmmaking inspiring.

Bike like Ned

I'm inspired to climb.

Being a bit of a fan of cycling great Tyler Hamilton,--drug related drama & two-year suspension all aside--I read last week he had won the Mt. Washington Hillclimb in New Hampshire. It's a 7.6 mile all uphill race with an average 12% grade. And that's only the average. I think the steepness goes up to 22% in the last hundred yards. Lynne Tolman writes an engulfing description of the climb that makes me want to sign up.

As for the inspiration, it comes from another rider in the race results: 2nd place finisher Ned Overend, age 51. Excuse me, come again? Yes friggin frodo, he's fifty-one! He finished just two minutes behind Tyler. What a dude!

Reminds me of triathlete legend Dave Scott who did an amazing comeback at age 40 to finish 2nd in the 1994 Hawai Ironman Triathlon, and then 5th in '96 at age 42!

Can't wait to be 51 now. Greatness awaits! :-)

Our New Solar System

I'm a little sad that Pluto is officially no longer a planet. Neither is UB313--nicknamed "Xena", which is actually larger than Pluto. However, it does up the status of Ceres--formerly an asteroid--that lies between Mars and Jupiter. These heavenly bodies are now officially "dwarf planets."

Whether or not this decision holds up as well as the "planet" definition, I'm not sure. The vote was done at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Prague. And although 424 astronomers voted, that's only less than 5% of the world's astronomers.

So now you can be the know-it-all of your nephews and nieces. Go ahead and ask 'em: What are the EIGHT planets of our Solar System? Oh, and the THREE dwarf planets?

SNAP!

I got 'em! I got 'em! I got dat wascally wittle wodent! :-)

A wascally wittle wodent

I have a little mouse to catch tonight. Saw a few of its little doo-doo droppings in the kitchen floor cabinets yesterday. Grosses me out that he/she was crawling around the canned foods taking a dump here and there.

I set two traps by the stove. Mwuuu-hahhh-hahhh!!

Here, little mousy mousy...

The Perseids are here!

I saw two shooting stars tonight!

It's the annual Perseid Meteor Shower every August. The peak of the shower is actually occurring right now as I type this. (Sorry that I forgot to mention this news earlier.) And so at 2:15 am this morning (jetlag still?), I walked out onto our backyard deck and looked up for only a few minutes. And lo and behold, in the first two minutes, I saw two bright streaks.

Quite unfortunately for this year, the moon is close to full and is polluting the skies with excess light and limiting the number of shooting stars to be seen. Nevertheless, the brightest of the Perseids are still visible and shouldn't disappoint with their long streaks. Technically, you should be able to see about one every minute, more or less. (Note, stay very well tuned for next year: it's a new moon (i.e., no moon) and the skies will be dark dark dark for a great show!)

So go on. Tomorrow night, get out there. Bring a blanket, bring a beer, lay back and be very patient.

Space is soooo beautiful.

***

More info:
http://www.jackstargazer.com/scripts0SG0632.html
http://www.jupiterscientific.org/sciinfo/perseid.html

Floyd Landis

I feel backlogged from my vacation. I have tons of stuff to catch up on and many blog thoughts that need to be expressed.

Right now I'm trying to get caught up on the Tour de France. Thankfully, I have recordings of the stages, which I'll try to watch this weekend.

The Floyd Landis drama (I just saw him on Leno on YouTube.com) made me rethink about having real life heros to look up to. Certainly it seems natural to want to put someone up on a pedestal as a reference for success. But then they'd be susceptible to fallout from scandals and other vices the media would turn up. What then happens to their hero status?

So for now, I'm going the "Batman Begins" route:

"But if you make yourself more than just a man...
If you devote yourself to an ideal...
and if they can't stop you,
then you become something else entirely."

I'll be putting up my Buffy The Vampire Slayer posters all over my workout area now. Beware, all you forces of evil!

Back from the Philippines

It's been a week now that the family and I are back from our overseas trip. And yet still we're very well jetlagged. Yesterday, we all slept at 3 pm and awoke at 2 am! We've been awake since, and now it's noon and I feel my brain is starting to turn off.

Anyway, this blog deserves a long awaited entry. So just off the top of my head:

1. Still jet lagged. It's a 12 hr difference between New Jersey and Manila.
2. It's taken me almost 7 days now to sort and retouch our digital pics for posting.
3. I've already posted most of the pics on my flickr.com account, although I'd recommend you wait just a few more days for me to get them reordered, labeled and more cohesively presented.
4. I have an awakened view of life, as a visit to the Phil. Islands never ceases to culture shock me.
5. What the hell happened in The Tour de France!??? Pre-race drug accusations? Amazing stage comebacks? Post-victory scandals? WTF?!
6. I think I've lost my addiction to my bike workouts. Yesterday, I did my 1st workout in almost a month on the trainer. Didn't workout a bit on vacation and ate like a pig. Well actually, I ate pig. Lots of it! Yummy, yummy. But what a belly I've acquired.