I'm Old.

That's right, I'm officially old. I can now tell stories about "the good old days" and say, "When *I* was a boy..."

We all went out to the King's Head Pub to celebrate the fact that I've managed to go another year without killing myself with some kind of malfunctioning death ray that I'm building in my basement.

I also happen to have the same birthday as Lanna. She wore a hat to cover up her gray hair.

And now...PICTURES!

http://offtopicproductions.com/Pictures/KingsHead20th/

Spiffy New Threads

Okay, maybe it's lame to write about getting a bunch of new clothes. It's really the way in which they were obtained that makes it interesting.

Appalled by the shortage of clothes in a friend of mines closet, it came about that a bunch of our mutual fashion conscious friends (of the female variety) decided to take him shopping. And of course I demanded to be let in on this little venture into the dark interior of the local mall.

My wardrobe consists almost entirely of various t-shirts. Most of which, through a series of odd coincidences currently contain come from various universities around the world. That being the case, I definitely have no problem letting a bunch of girls dress me. Obviously it would be much better to be able to pick out my own stylish clothes, but clearly that section of my brain is being used to store Simpson quotes. In any case, the goal of stylish clothes basically boils down to impressing females, so why not just skip the middle man (ie: me) and have them pick out clothes they like?

After a couple hours at the mall which felt distinctly like What Not to Wear (...not that I watch that...ya) I came out of the ordeal with a minor slew of new stuff. Apparently I now have pants that can be dressed "up or down". Of course, it wasn't explain to me how this mystical transition is conducted, so I'll just assume they go with everything. I've also discovered that the colour brown is not as evil as I had previously assumed.

I'll be heading off to Kelowna, British Columbia early Sunday morning to visit my grandparents for a week. Hopefully I can make good use of my new digital camera and take some decent photos of mountains or something. More likely they'll end up being uninteresting, blurry photos of the inside of the camera case...but whatever :-p

Cheers.

More Pixels Than You!

I've just gone out and bought a BenQ DC E53 digital camera, which I'm quite excited about. 5 megapixels, a huge LCD display and rather more money than I intended to spend should keep me busy for a while!

Of course, compared to Scott I'm just some kind of a lame photography poser...but I intend to try my hand at it. I'm not serious enough to go out and buy a digital SLR (like a sexy Rebel XT) but I figure I can get in some good practice with this camera. In honour of this occasion I decided to test out the macro and took a picture of random flower in my back yard. (Photoshopped it a bit.)

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

The rest of this post shall be smattered with spoilers, so anyone who hasn't seen this movie should go out and do so...right now.

I should start by saying that I haven't read the book; a crime, I know. I've always been a huge fan of the previous translation to the tv screen, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, so that's mostly what I'm basing my opinions on. I found this new version to be more than a match for the 1971 version. The basic storyboard is the same, but they've used a lot of computer generated effects and sets to make the whole thing bigger and with more grandeur. The chocolate factory has been transformed into something that you can *believe* is the size of a small city.

They also did a rather nice job with the characters, who I think managed to be much more interesting and animated than in the old movie. Grandpa Joe was particularly good and perfect for the part. The one bit that I wasn't really on board with were the Umpa Lumpas. They had a single small spanish man Umpa Lumpa which they then cloned dozens of times using cg. It was a bit odd.

I'd heard that this version was going to be darker than the original, but overall I found it to be lighter and more based in (semi) reality. The background provided about Wonka's life was excellent, and of course Depp did an excellent job.

And now of course I have to provide a completely misleading rating of of 5, which probably means nothing unless you have the exact same taste in movies. Here goes:

3.5/5

Hmm, I don't think I'll rate things in stars...maybe I can do a rating in some kind of tasty dessert. 3.5/5 pies?