No one rerally takes me seriously but I really do want some ordinance one day for Christmas. Like these two small field pieces in the Amsterdam City Museum, setting up for a bit of artillery can be a wholesome family activity on a bracing winter morning. What more do you need to give you a spring in yus step than the deep chest feeling of a dissapating shockwave? What gift could more say “titings of comfort and joy” than a canon no longer used in bellicose employ? Naught, says I.

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An interesting vid . This is based on a series of advertisements from apple based on “I switch” (from PC to MAC). This presenter switched to Canada.

Pardon me while I roll on the floor laughing.

Within moments after the online tech-news portals began publishing the news that Google had inaugurated an online patent search tool, Briana emailed me with the news and I started searching. The first thing I noticed was that my boss now thinks I am a genius! I come up with wierdly detaied solutions to technical and mechanical problems, find hard to source parts and anwser arcane science and physics questions with my use of google, wikipedia, and the internet generally. Now I can add drawings and measurements from the last two centuries of innovative advancement to my catagories of known genius. Sweet!

It is very entertaining to peruse the ages of patents presently parked on the google service and I would bet it will be very useful for many as well.

Not to much longer than four years ago, my dad embarked on a process designed to fulfil a long held desire. He would apply his talent at drawing and art to training and practice with the result that he would become an artist. Even his earliest paintings were stunning and the obvious talent displayed in his work carried through into his paintings even before he had developed his more technical skills.

I have one of his more recent works here. As usual, I have no idea what the title is so I am calling it “Shelter Bay from Behind the Snowy Evergreen” by Richard Tomkinson Dec 2006.

Untitled Forest Floor / Richard Tomkinson

Preseted for you here are paintings from the Skagit Valley Washington painter Richard Tomkinson. Le lives in La Connor WA and I have featured his work on this website before (look under topic section “Cultural Interlude” in the sidebar.

This Painting was recently gifted to us for display in our home and pictures a forest floor scene.

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A Forest Scene / Richard Tomkinson

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“Shakespeare is buried
in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church in his hometown of Stratford,
Warwickshire. His gravestone bears an epitaph which Shakespeare himself
supposedly wrote. It warns:”

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Whe the experience dealing with the ad heavy uber corporatised theater sysyem really gets me down, I have had yet another pleasant content experence.

Stranger Than Fiction is an hilarious and thoughtful movie. The actors obviously enjoyed playing the roles. Maggie Gyllenhaal was articularly scrumptious as a baker of confections. I suggest this movie for a group of friends or family or perhaps as a date movie.

I have just been to see Casino Royale, the newest film in the James Bond franchise staring Daniel Craig and IMHO, it is perhaps the best ever. It is more real, gritty and well, credible than almost all other James Bond movies and for the first time in the series, the film has moved away from mindless mass market plonk and back towards character driven action with a story line that is not insulting to the little grey cells.



I read all of the Ian Fleming Bond books when I was 15 and even then I knew they were pulpy action books for exactly my demographic. Shortly after this I watched each Bond with passion, ignoring the occasional stupidity and getting into the spirit of things. I know I watched the Tim Dalton movie but I don’t remember it and after watching the first Pierce Brosnan flic, I knew the franchise was no longer for me. It had been 100% Americanised, and not in a good way.



On a plane from Brisbane to Los Angeles in Aug 2005 I saw Daniel Craig in Layercake. In this movie a reluctant drug trafficker gets in over his head and used his natural skill and aplomb to kick ass and look great in a suit. I knew that after blowing $200.00 in new clothes I had a new man crush. Move over Jeromy Irons. I saw Graig again as a steely WWI English Sergeant in The Trench. Again, blown away. He had me at “(silently look stern and enigmatic with a side of gravitas).”



This James Bond is cast just in this same mold as the heroes of these other movies. Stern, strong, reasoned and deadly. Exactly what a secret agent should be. Goodbye to the ineffectual, inaccessible snarky puff boys. This Bond can take a punch.

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