Entries from November 2008 ↓

This one is for Gonty

From over at Kottke…..

The Criterion Collection:
” The Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection just launched their new web site, complete with the option to watch several movies online. It’s $5 for a week rental and that’s applied toward the cost of the film on DVD or Blu-ray. Not sure about the quality…the excellent intro movie on the home page says ‘high quality’…not sure if that means HD or what. There are only 17 movies online — including Au Revoir Les Enfants, Solaris, and Lord of the Flies — but they’ll be adding more as time goes on. (thx, jason, who did the illustration for the intro clip) This entry was published on November 25, 2008 at 10:01 am. Tags for this entry:  criterioncollection  movies  jasonpolan  kottke.org is a weblog about the liberal arts 2.0 edited by Jason Kottke since March 1998. You can read about me and kottke.org here. If you’ve got questions, concerns, or an interesting link for me, send them along. Here’s the kottke.org RSS feed . Rackspace: If it’s Mission Critical, you need the h”

This is a quick link for Crumpet

Update: Another one for Crumpet

If I was superstitious, I would surely think this house was haunted. Not a day goes by where I don’t spy something out of the corner of my eye, and feel like I am being watched when I know I am alone. I’ve never experienced this outside of this house.

It just happened again….

For those who are about to knit, and those who are about to fry-up.

I give you - Bacon & Egg scarf

Bike Hero. My goodness.

The Hardman has recently become quite a fan of Shaun the Sheep, and the Wallace & Gromit experience. So much so that he has a framed picture of Wallace & Gromit that he carries around the house with him.

Tonight, Kym found an old W&G address book hiding in the kitchen, and gave it to the Hardman. He loved it.

While he was flicking through it over dinner, Kym remarked that she hoped they’d better do a new Wallace & Gromit film soon, as Peter Sallis is getting quite long in the tooth.

Only moments later, as I was making pikelets and catching up on some RSS mojo, I spied this piece of information:

Wallace & Gromit - A Matter of Loaf and Death Comes to BBC One This Christmas:

I think I’ll be watching The Box closely for this one.

Buy Wallace & Gromit box set from Amazon

Lola ain’t been well today.

I’ve been off work since Wednesday (there is another post brewing about that, so hold tight), and am scheduled to be back at work in 5 and a half hours. So why am I here, whipping up a quick blog entry? Because of Lola. Sweet, sleepless Lola.

She’s gotten progressively worse over the past few days - she appears to be getting her colic back, and is upping her Scream Time :: Sleep Time ratio. I spent a good portion of yesterday (around 60%) being nothing more than a human cot, as this was the only way she would sleep.

Anywho, not here to whine, just to say hi. I know it’s been quiet around the old Stacking Theory Campfire, but I’ll be back for more Kumbaya soon.

Gots to run now, because I have 3 hours of sleeping to do, and 5 days of beard to shave before I head of to work.

Meeting our new CIO tomorrow too, hmmmm…..

Update: Of course, that ‘3 hours of sleeping’ was based on the assumption that Lola would go back to sleep for more than the 2 minutes it took me to get into bed. On reassessment, I’ll say that I’ve got 2h45m before I have to start shaving…

I just updated the WordWar to include Jerry from Muddled Ramblings.

Just there as a hint at what can be done with a bit of dedication (and a lack of young children).

By the way, it’s well worth popping over the Jerry’s NaNo page and reading his synopsis.

I was almost going to quit today.

Same old excuses - family, time constraints, lack of connection with my story. I was ready to pack it in - I had justified this quitting as ‘not a failure’, but rather ‘an acceptance of the reality of my situation’.

But somehow I didn’t. Sooner or later I have to stop quitting, and start following through. And why not now, eh? Why not try to catch up with Gonty’s amazing 10k?

So instead I cooked up a quick plan with Kymbo. She went out into the garden with the Hardman. She is working, he is blowing bubbles, they are happy (hopefully). I packed up Lola in the pram and headed up to the local cafe. No internet, no distractions (except for the cyclists out the window).

I sat down with a coffee, Jer’s Novel Writer open in full screen, one foot gently rocking the pram, and began to write.

I didn’t feel the story, or at least the section I was working on. It was dead, lifeless, and lost. But I persisted. One word at a time, just like Neil Gaiman said. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right.

Soon I was back in the swing of it, watching the scene unfold, discovering the characters, and smiling stupidly as the story opened up in front of me.

Sure, I only added about 1000 words, and have to head home again now, but I’m back on the wagon, for now. Let’s hope I can keep it going…..