I’m not very musically inclined, so I know I don’t listen carefully. I’m afraid I would have been one of the 1,000 people who walked right by one of the world’s best violinists playing in the Washington DC metro during rush hour without hesitating. Fascinating story, enlivened by video of some of the telling moments.…

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Shooter was exactly what I expected last night. Nothing more, nothing less…so I was entertained. Metacritic shows a 53. I suppose your standard “lone hero against the conspiracy” movie doesn’t excite anyone any more. But telling a genre tale well isn’t a terrible thing. Shooter felt like a mix of a Tom Clancy movie (pretty…

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My mother suggested I would enjoy Harry Turtledove, so when I was wandering an airport bookstore and came across In High Places, I bit. I finished this slim novel on the brief flight to Phoenix. This was a reasonable tale, though nothing special. Certainly an imaginative premise, though. I learned just now that the Crosstime…

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Writing of comics, I finally got to see 300 last Tuesday. Another Frank Miller comic book made into a movie, 300 feels like a great graphic novel. Not having read the graphic novel, I don’t know if it’s great or not, but Frank Miller is a sign of quality. The movie’s story isn’t fantastic, but…

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I have no artistic talent, and no plans to start drawing or writing comics — even if I were to call them graphic novels. So, why did I just read Making Comics? This broad how-to about how to, yes, make comics caught my eye because the more I do in business, the more I realize…

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I picked up The Fallen because it was sitting out at Cody’s Books (Stockton Street), on a table near the front. I wanted something I could dive into immediately on the bus ride home. Don’t ever let someone say that awards don’t matter, because the big “two-time winner of the Edgar award for best novel”…

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I’ve made ginger beer three times now, with the most recent time being earlier this week. I’ve made two adjustments to my process, and the results are slightly improved. First, I use nine cups of water instead of ten. The resulting brew is a tad bit sharper, which I like, and I don’t lose any…

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Update: I was burned by the April Fool’s Joke. If you can’t pull it on April 1, I don’t know if it counts… but oh well. The acquisition of F**ckedCompany.com by TechCrunch makes some sense. Still, Mike Arrington might want to reconsider this quote. That does not bode well for the future – there just…

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On Tuesday, when David announced 100 billion DNS queries for OpenDNS, the chart was enhanced with a dancing banana. Go ahead, click through and see. Back yet? Good. Now compare the dancing banana to Snappy, the dancing logo of the original Snap.com, shared here. (Thanks to David, Snappy loops continually now.) This is before Snap…

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And another year has passed. Kids happily re-gifted some of their presents to me, and cupcakes were enjoyed by all. I started the day in darkness with a mile run on the Kezar track, as I’ve done occasionally in past years. 5:23 left me convinced that I haven’t slowed down too much, although I can’t…

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