KarmaTickle

What's the opposite of a Karma Slap? Good things happen to people who tip well. I took a cab today to pick up my car and left the cabby a $4 tip for a $19 ride, for no particular reason. I'd consider that a decent tip. As I was waiting for my car, the cabbie came back and dropped off a small brown bag I'd forgotten in the backseat. The weird thing is I thought I had checked that I had everything because I was also carrying my camera case and a chequebook. The package (which didn't look like much more than a work snack, honestly) actually contained some naturopathy pills, which I had just paid $50 for. So there you go.

The cabbie was obviously a good guy, but I'm guessing he's not turning the car around if I give him a twenty note on the nineteen dollar fare.

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Less Briefly, in 3D

I'm astounded that entertainment media has found a valid, artistic reason for presenting movies in 3D. Apparently the movie industry is going to cut costs by attempting to produce movies that don't require barf bags.

Hollywood in general should take note. At one point this industry shifted gears and became hyper-capitalized, like the publicly-owned companies, and producers couldn't judge a film beyond the merits of its opening weekend take. The Watchmen is being painted as a box office bust, but I'd wait for the DVD sales before drawing any conclusions. Though the reviews have been mixed, I'm starting to feel that the movies that receive love-it-or-hate-it reviews are the only ones really worth seeing. If too many people have the same opinion, then it's probably worth a skip.

Blade Runner was a bust in the theatres as well, but it has since been hailed as one of the best movies of all time, and one of the most visionary. Not bad for a film that cost $30 million to make; they'll be re-issuing that one for years to come.

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Follow the Moose!

So for all you peeps who have Google accounts - GMail included - you should check out Google Reader. Why? Well for one, it's a pretty neat universal feed aggregator that lets you follow a variety of frequently updated sites. And two, it's an easy way to follow this blog!

For those of you who are a little sick of the suck on the Internet - otherwise known as Facebook ennuie - and are looking to follow publications that provide a little insight, then this can be a very useful tool. And hey, if you think this blog doesn't suck, then feel free to try it out by Following my blog. Just click on the button in the Follow the Moose panel to your left, and this fine publication will be added to your Reader reading list. Go ahead and try it. Do it. DO IT. Or you know, subscribe to the RSS feed. I guess you could do that too.

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Trent Reznor Interview

Variety.com is hosting this excellent interview with Trent Reznor, headman of Nine Inch Nails. It's really interesting to see him discuss the business side of music and how he perceives the reality of the music industry these days. He has been ahead of the curve in terms of mainstream bands and how they distribute their music. He no longer has a label, but rather self releases now, and he discusses the success of their latest album The Slip, which emulated the release strategy of In Rainbows (which, for some reason, is no longer available for download) except they were more honest about the release and took a price-point strategy. Basically, the music is free, but if you want the album, DVD, limited edition stuff that fans might be interested in, then they are available at a modest price. This lowers manufacturing costs, since they know exactly how many units to produce.

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A Note About This Page

I have a reasonably wide variety of interests, among them music, movies, politics, photography, tango, and sports (mostly hockey.) I might use this space to talk about any of those things, but my profession is software design and programming. I was trained as a Software Engineer at Concordia University at the turn of the millennium, and have been working at Autodesk Canada for the past five years in Montreal, Canada. It would be fantastic if people other than programmers read these humble words, but I'm guessing that if anyone stumbles on this page, it'll be a programmer googling some inane or arcane detail concerning WPF or .NET or something (what I currently work with at my job.) Hopefully some of those programmers will have other interests and will stick around for the other things I have to say.

So here goes...

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