How do you get a bunch of students to attend a lecture on weblogs on a Friday morning? Well, when posters and word-of-mouth isn't enough you can always break out the old bullhorn. Turned out it wasn't really necessary as quite a few people had decided to show up to hear me bang on for 90 minutes in English on weblogs and why they're cool.

I did about 75 minutes on what weblogs are and how you can use them for a variety of different things touching on everything from project management and moblogs to personal and themebased weblogs. Then I took questions for the last 15 minutes where we talked about the research I'd done for my thesis and The Internet Archive and also a bit about the history of Blogger.

The whole thing went really well and the powerpoint presentation was a good idea as it allowed me to give examples and show how you can create your own weblog without having to rely on an internet connection. I had written a fairly thorough script, but the presentation helped me so that I could go off script several times without getting lost. After the presentation I hung around for a bit and talked to several of the teachers, which was fun. It's always interesting to see how people respond when you've presented them with something they didn't know anything about. They all seemed to think it had been very interesting which was cool and hopefully one or two of them will find a way of using some of the things I talked about.

I must admit I was pretty knackered afterwards, though. It's a long time where you have to be at the top of your game and try to make a subject interesting and at the same time make sure you're not just up there cracking jokes. But now that the lecture is out of the way I can focus on getting ready for our trip to London. There are a couple of things I need to get ready, but basically we're not going to plan a lot before we leave. So all I need to do is get my gear in order and make sure I have something clean to wear and Robert's your father's brother. That also means I probably won't post anything here until we get back on Thursday. But I'm bringing my camera, so in about a week this place should be packed with visual goodies and fascinating tales from the fair city of London.

We went out to one of our favourite hang-outs, Billabong, yesterday (it being Tuesday and all) to participate in their weekly Pub Quiz. We were supposed to have been a whole bunch of people, but suddenly people had other plans and it ended up being my brother, Anders, and myself, who made up Team IMTDSINVU.

I've been to a Pub Quiz event once before so based on that I knew that you always have to go with your gut feeling when they start asking questions. That gave us the correct answers to Tiger Woods' real first name (Eldrich) and which animal is on the California state flag (a bear). Unfortunately, I overruled my brother's gut feeling on who directed A Bronx Tale (De Niro, but I said Palminteri for some reason), so that was stupid. Ultimately though the questions were either ones we knew almost instantaneously or ones where we had no idea what the answer could be. So we didn't do too well, but lived up to our expectations of at least not finishing dead last. We won't be there for next week's game as we'll be in London, but I think we'll try to get a few more people together (some of these teams had ten players) and try to do better in a couple of weeks.

Recently, Jacob asked me about what I thought of the latest Beulah record and I said that it wasn't fantastic, but that there are some good songs on it. This is basically true, but since then I've listened to it a lot and it's actually far better than I originally thought. It's definitely different from the Heartstrings album in the sense that it's more of a rock album, but once you get used to that it's actually quite good. So it has really grown on me the last week and if you've been hesitant about buying it I think you should check it out. And if you have no idea who Beulah are you really should do yourself a favour and give them a chance.

I'm now hoping that the new Clem Snide album will start growing as much on me as the Beulah one did, but I'm still not really feeling it. It's actually closer to Your Favourite Music (which is my favourite one) than The Ghost of Fashion, but for some reason it just doesn't do it for me to the extent the others have. Don't get me wrong - All Green is a great track and there are several other good tracks on it, but just hasn't blown me away yet. And I was a little disappointed to learn that the line didn't go "Summer will come/With Al Green and Sweden/iced tea", but there you go.

I started rereading Catcher in the Rye the other day and I'm really enjoying it. I read my Dad's copy ages ago, but didn't buy it for myself until recently. So now I'm reading my own copy and it's pretty much like reading it for the first time as I can barely remember the story. I don't read as much as I'd like to, so when I do crack open a book I prefer to read something new instead of revisiting old books. But there are a couple I've read twice and I'm glad I decided to read this one again as it's great. I know it has a reputation as a book read by the disenfranchised youth, but I don't think that should take anything away from the quality of the book. So if you haven't read it because it's a book read by killers and depressed teenagers I think that's a shame and that you should give it a go.

I've seen a lot of movies this week which varied very much in quality. The best was probably the Jim Jarmusch movie Ghost Dog, which was fairly interesting. On previous occasions I've bitched about boring movie violence, but the violence in this movie (and there's quite a bit of it) was done a lot differently from say a movie like Kill Bill. Also, the characters were far more developed in this movie, which means the violence makes sense and an actual impact when it occurs in the movie instead of just being random bloodshed. I also saw Amores Perros, which was really brutal and definitely interesting, but it was just too long and nasty to really keep me captured the whole way through.

I also saw a couple of mediocre flix like The Cat's Meow, which I rented solely to see Eddie Izzard as Charlie Chaplin, but that's not nearly as interesting writing about as the movie which was so horrible I actually got angry and shouted obscenities at my TV. I'm talking about the Brian De Palma movie Femme Fatale, which is one of the dumbest movies I've seen in a long time.

De Palma's career is not going well when he follows wastes of celluloid like Snake Eyes and Mission to Mars with an even crappier venture like Femme Fatale. The movie is filled with nobodies and somebodies who can't act (Mrs. Uncle Jesse might be hot, but no Meryl Streep she ain't), but the main problem is the script, which is beyond ludicrous. I think it was supposed to be an intelligent, psychological thriller with a twist, but instead it's a nonsensical pile of clichées with an ending which made me want to go postal on Hollywood. Why anyone green lighted this garbage is beyond me. But I guess the promise of Rebecca Romijn making out with a Danish model made everyone forget that unless that scene had lasted two hours they'd better add a little more substance to fill out the rest of the movie. Which they didn't making this the most longwinded piece of drivel I've seen so far this year.

Speaking of careers which have been going to Hell in a handbasket I thought I'd mention I read the latest Douglas Coupland book this Christmas. It's called Hey Nostradamus! and deals with a 1988 high school shooting and the effect it has one the survivors and their families. Now, this might not sound like the most appropriate book to be reading around Christmas. But seeing as I'm always fairly depressed around Christmas anyway I figured it couldn't really get any worse, and I'm glad I finally got around to reading it. I've read all of Coupland's other books, but since Microserfs I think the quality of his books have decreased significantly and his latest, All Families Are Psychotic, was absolutely horrible.

But thankfully Hey Nostradamus! is really good and except for a couple of minor flaws it's a return to the quality of his earliest books. All his books are based on really good ideas and I love the language in his books. But for some reason otherwise interesting premises have been fumbled ultimately making the books dissapointments. But for some reason the simple premise of Hey Nostradamus! and the decision to have the story unfold in four chapters told by four different people works really well. I'm still not too crazy about his shift from saying that we're the first generation, who has grown up without God (in Generation X) to suddenly dealing with God and spirituality in all his books. But it's not as heavy-handedly done in this book and therefore not as annoying as in some of the others. So reading it was a pleasant surprise and if you've enjoyed his previous books I thoroughly recommend you read this one as well even if you given up on him a little.

Is there anything more obnoxious than having to pay for something where you don't have an alternative? If your apartment is too expensive you can move. If you don't want to pay a fortune for Von Dutch jeans you can buy something else. But if don't want to pay $100 to have your passport renewed you can just go suck it and then never be able to leave the country again. So obviously I coughed up the green and cursed the police department and pretty much everyone else to heck all the way home.

I can't believe it costs that much to make a new passport. Why is there a 1000% percent mark up on something everyone needs and you can't get anywhere else? The obvious answer is - because they can!, which is like if they suddenly created a gravity tax and you'd either have to pay up or float off to Mars. It bites and the only good thing about it is that I no longer have a passport with a picture of me looking like an 18 year old dork (insert your own joke about my looks here).

Yesterday, we combined watching José "Gypsy King" Reyes beat Chelsea with planning our trip to London, which is definitely on now. We got different plane tickets than first expected, so we'll be arriving Monday before noon and leaving Thursday night giving us four days of London fun. The only planned activity so far is Fountains of Wayne at Astoria, but I think we'll pick up a Time Out when we arrive and try to find a concert or two to go see. So if you live in the London area and have any recommendations feel free to shoot me a holla.

I didn't see these valentine's cards until today, so I guess I'll have to wait a year before I can send them to people [via Catherine].

A new show premiered on MTV here yesterday called This is our Music, and it was surprisingly good. In the first episode they visited Fife, Scotland and Fence Records and interviewed a lot of the musicians, who release their records on the label. The bands all had that acoustic neo-folk thing going on, so they sounded a bit like Badly Drawn Boy and what I heard was actually pretty good. If you live around here there's a rerun tomorrow night at 22:00 and the next episode, which is on New York, is aired on Sunday at 22:00. And if you don't live around here there are a bunch of clips at the website, which should be worth checking out.

So, the weblog speech I mentioned recently will be on the last Friday of the month for a group of students at a local technical school. My friend works there as a multi media teacher and sets up these hyper media lectures and my job will be to give an introductory lecture in English (apparently they have a lot of exchange/foreign students there) about what weblogs are and what they're good for. I've done it once before, so it should be fun. And this time I'm preparing a powerpoint presentation, so I don't have to rely on a dodgy internet connection like the last time.

I also mentioned recently wanting to go to London this Spring and it looks like it might happen. I talked about it with my brother and over drinks last week Kristian and his girlfriend took over the project and have found plane tickets and a cheap hotel, so unless something goes terribly wrong I think the four of us will be going to London on the 1st of March. We're going for four days where I think we'll just hang out and do a spot of shopping and maybe I'll visit the people at the company I've done some freelance work for. But the main reason we're going is to see Fountains of Wayne at Astoria, which will be huge. I've been a huge fan of FoW since I picked up their first record and I've never seen them live, so I'm really looking forward to this show.

I'm running out of shelf space for my CDs, so I had to take about 50 CDs and stick them in a box to make room for the ones I've bought lately. I've sold a lot of crap CDs over the years, but there are still a few in my collection. Some of them I've kept for sentimental reason (like if I interviewed the band) and some because I knew nobody would buy them off me. But now they're under my bed in a box, which means the one CD that people always pull out at parties and make fun off (it's always the same one and I'm not saying which one it is) is gone. And going through my CDs I realized I have way too many CDs with American college rock one-hit-wonder bands and also probably more Ben Lee CDs than I need.

My brother listed how many of the top 100 movies at IMDb he'd seen, so I figured I'd do the same. However, I've placed them in the More section at the bottom of this post, so they don't take up as much space.
I've seen 66 of the movies on the list and I might have seen Dr. Strangelove, The Great Escape, Ran, The General, City Lights, and Notorious, but I'm not sure. Sunset Blvd. has been at the top of my Recommendations list at the DVD rental place I use, so I'll have to check it out at some point (and I've already seen Heat, so I have an idea as to what the movie is about). Going through the list I realized that the first time I watched any of the movies from before 1980 was probably more than fifteen years ago. Meaning that I was a lot of classics back then and I've not seen a lot since I moved out of my parents' place.

When I was a kid I used to watch a lot of old movies, so I watched movies like The Maltese Falcon and High Noon before I was even a teenager. I watched a lot of Marx Brothers, Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, Westerns, Screwball Comedies, and Woody Allen back then, so that's why I've seen so many of the movies on the list.
If I have to make a few objections to the list I think it's bizarre that Toy Story 2 is on there instead of Toy Story, but having not seen the sequel I won't complain about it. However, there are a lot of movies I'd add to a Top 100 before LoTR, The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, and Kill Bill.

It's Valentine's Day today, so I was wondering if there are any good songs about Valentine's Day. There's a Willie Nelson song called Valentine, which is really sweet and there's an Old 97's song called Valentine, which is a lot more bitter. But those are the only ones I know. Doesn't matter really though as I bought Dylan's Blood on the Tracks recently, so I'll be listening to that tonight instead.

More...

So, you'd think with me being unemployed I'd have all the time in the world to update my weblog. But for some reason the days are just flying by. Obviously, this weekend we went to the new indie club thing at Sway, which was cool. Mainly because there was a whole bunch of us, who kinda took over the backroom and got to sing along to old favourites while drinking Hoegardens. But in general it was a fun event, but as the thing was held at a bar with no dancefloor it was less like a club event and more like being at a regular bar with decent music.

But not surprisingly I was sufficiently hungover for next day's Super Bowl event, which turned out to be spectacular. Our host had acquired a screen, a projector, huge speakers, several couches, PS2, beer, food, snacks, and a barbeque for our food, which meant that for 14 hours all we did was eat, drink, play PS2, and watch one of the best football games I've ever seen. It didn't hurt either that I had some money riding on The Patriots, so I didn't mind them winning at all. This also meant that Monday was pretty much out of the window and besides watching the Arsenal game and a few movies the rest of the week is a bit of a blur right now.

The only other big thing to happen this week (besides maybe getting a gig with our imaginary band The Cracker Ass Crackers) was that I was asked to give a lecture on weblogs at a local school. I've pretty much agreed to do it (there are a few things which need to be sorted out), so one of these days I'm going to have to get back into the weblog game. Ever since I handed in my thesis I've suffered from weblog overload, which means I've not kept up with recent developments and I haven't visited a lot of the weblogs I used to follow on a daily basis for weeks or even months. So now I have to reread my thesis and do a bit of research before I can stand up in front of these people and try to exclain to them the wonder that is weblogs. But I like giving lectures, so it'll probably be fun and hopefully this time there'll be time to have the students ask questions unlike at my recent Warhol lecture.

The last thing I'll mention is how much I hate it when people in shops don't know anything about what they're selling and how great it is to talk to someone who knows what they're doing. Yesterday, I went out to buy two bottles of whiskey, which were owed to me by someone. So I went to my favourite shop downtown and looked around and found a bottle of Laphroaig, which I decided would do nicely. So I asked the guy behind the counter if he could tell me a little about this whiskey and not only did he go into a long story about the company and a former owner who'd drowned in a vat of whiskey. He also offered me a complimentary glass of whiskey to make sure I bought something I would enjoy.
Later, I went to another shop to buy a bottle of Green Spot and again the guy had all kinds of knowledge about the distillery and the whiskey I was buying. Surely, that's the way it should be, but for me it always comes as a pleasant surprise when I run into people, who have a lot of knowledge about and a general interest in the items they're selling. Maybe it's because the only other places I go and ask for 'expert opinion' is in record stores and I'm always sorely disappointed by the lack of interest these people have in music.

I'm also getting a bit more serious about applying for jobs, so tomorrow I'll have to write a few applications to go along with the ones who are already out there. But right now I have to get some sleep.