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One reason I keep this journal, however infrequently, is to avoid re-reading. However, sometimes the act is deliberate.

The boy poured through the three volumes of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, and returns to them often. So, to keep up, I re-read The Golden Compass. Now when quizzed about my favorite parts or characters, I’ll have one less excuse for a faulty memory. I don’t have the free time of a seven-year-old, but this story never drags, and the interesting language never loses the reader. I do wonder how the boy interprets all the religious (and anti-religion) themes. From what he’s said before, he skipped it. Fine by me.

The dark comedy In Bruges brightened my mood a few weeks ago. Previews highlighted comedy and Colin Farrell as a foul-mouthed lout of a gunman. Both are true, but the comedy is balanced with a sad strain that was unexpected. The balance helped the story.

Regarding the language: I was more bothered by the moments when I couldn’t understand the English language in all its (ahem) variety of accent and phrasing. Never descends to the incomprehensibility of Trainspotting, but I missed a few lines.

Metacritic: 67 is at least 5 points too low. You can wait for the DVD, but In Bruges is a satisfying movie.

A note on the title: while it’s quite possible that Bruges as metaphor for too-cute tourist town is common in Europe, those references felt forced to this American.

Nothing like a good satire to cleanse the palate. I enjoyed the title sequence almost two years ago. Friday night, I watched Thank You For Smoking. Full bore fun, riding the commercial and political system we have to the (almost logical) extent…this movie doesn’t have a (cough) filter (cough). Metacritic: 71

Engineering positions in San Francisco, available now. Even if you’re not an engineer, if you refer someone we hire, there’s a cash reward in it for you ($1K).

(Just in case good karma wasn’t enough.)

I’ve never heard of Alex Reisner before today. My gratitude to Adam Kalsey for the link. I just now realized that Reisner’s post is from March of 2006, almost 2 years ago. But this is timeless, not timely.

What a marvelous, brief examination of history and its forces: Baseball Geography and Transportation. Effectively annotated with dated maps, in an almost schematic method, this article demonstrates the changes wrought on baseball by the move from trains to planes and automobiles. Both the distribution of teams and the shapes of stadiums were disrupted by travel methods. Obvious when you think about it…but I never have.

This is one article I would like to see expanded and fleshed out a bit more. Compare Reisner’s effort to this two-page spread in The Atlantic. Reisner did the hard work of making connections, and forcefully making his point with his illustrations. A touch more work and this goes from remarkable to simply outstanding.

Rather than spend time trying to buy an airline ticket I don’t want, I’ll clean out the inbox with a few links gathering dust.

This weekend, I saw the $1 image stabilizer in action, and Rich got some great pictures of the kids. Pretty sharp!

Last year, I saw the Windows Vista packaging in person (not since, oddly). Yes, you need instructions, which says so much, in all the wrong ways. Moving on…

Yes, I too read and enjoyed Kevin Kelly’s essay on better than free.

A good friend in high school had an Apple IIc, and he even kept it going through college. Rare to see an unboxing of a now-ancient computer.

I’ve used DabbleDB and Wufoo, and I like them both. But they better keep running quickly when Google starts offering a subset of their feature set in Google Docs & Spreadsheets. I haven’t used the Google stuff, but…

Haven’t read The Economics of Online Backup yet, but I will.

In the same vein, I haven’t watched this video about marketing yet, but I will.

I did watch this visualization/compilation about nuclear arsenals. (~3 minutes, via) These days, we worry about other things more often. I think that’s a good thing?

Oh, if you’ve wondered about the domain name Pencoyd, here’s some of the story.

The most important thing to understand about new products and startups

What is the humble approach to product design? Pay attention. Notice which things are working and which aren’t. Experiment and iterate. Question your assumptions. Remember that you are wrong about a lot of things. Watch for the signals. Lose your technical and design snobbery. Whatever works, works.

Most spam I receive is of the usual variety of supplements, etc.. Only occasionally do I get a 419 scam, but I did enjoy last week’s subject line from the “Compensation Head Office”

Dear Prominent User of the Internet

Hey, we’re all famous somewhere.

The domain is already parked, and that tells you a lot about a movie that’s less than 2 years old. Metacritic gave Catch a Fire a 62, for “generally favorable” reviews. My feelings about the movie…mildly favorable, at best. Not bad, but not worth your time. Based on a true story, this apartheid-era chronicle does give Tim Robbins a chance to play an evil character, though not very well.

When the boy tears through book after book, I sometimes follow after him. Treasure Island is such a well-known tale, but I’m not sure I’d ever read it before. Maybe it’s not the original buried treasure story, but this is rightly the best known. Action throughout, clear language without being childish, and the hero (and narrator, mostly) is an adolescent boy: Robert Louis Stevenson’s first novel set a high bar, and it’s a lightning read as an adult. (I’d forgotten Stevenson was the author of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, too.)

…the wife who gives you grief for blogging mentions that your blog is getting stale. Hmmm… maybe I can clean out the inbox later tonight.