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A few weeks ago, I was lamenting the sad state of the downtown riverfront. I took it as a sign of decline in St. Louis. Other signs have been the apparent loss of momentum in revitalizing areas like the Washington Avenue district, midtown, and Cherokee Street. Today, I went for a ride up in North […]
The thing that the Daniel Craig series of James Bond movies did, apart from casting an actor who is not naturally suave, was to make James Bond a tragic figure. It was long overdue, really. Prior to the 2006 “Casino Royale“, 007 movies have defied the standard storytelling ingredients of character flaws and character growth […]
It seems I have become a rice snob, or at least as much as one can be in America. I now keep a supply of Jasmine rice, broken Jasmine rice, and Basmati rice, and I can’t bring myself to mismatch them with the wrong dish. At the moment, I also have some Sona Masoori rice […]
I almost abandoned Pride and Prejudice early in the book. There was a scene where the “adults” were arguing about meaningless things like a bunch of middle-schoolers, but in formal early 19th century English. I reminded me of the banter my school friends had in fake English accents and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” […]
The world needs a Micro Four Thirds webcam. Someone could make a killing by manufacturing one. Why? Shallow depth of field in a web cam. What I mean is a USB webcam with a MFT mount and image sensor, with no display, no controls, battery, no additional power requirements, no HDMI, and no display artifacts. […]
I finally found some time to make progress in my Programming AWS Lambda book. Lambda’s support for different languages sent me down a rabbit hole of popular languages, and I landed on the TIOBE Index (as of December 2023). I’m a bit surprised about the current popularity rankings. Along with the possibilities of Lambda, it […]
I love “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” for many reasons, but it occurs to me to consider the story structure. There’s a lot going on, actually. The premise, of course, is that Scott must fight Ramona’s seven evil exes (in a live action portrayal of video game combat). The inciting incident doesn’t reveal that immediately, […]
The recent Hamas/Israel events, and the world’s reaction to them, really perplex me. I have more than a basic understanding of the ages long Israel/Palestinian conflict, so I don’t think it’s my ignorance of the complexity surrounding it. I think it’s just that people are behaving in ways that don’t make sense. Beginning with the […]
I read Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy last year. It was published in 1974, and there have been at least two films based on it. I watched the 2011 film “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy“, the one with Gary Oldman, a few years ago. Both versions tell essentially the same story, but the two are very different. […]
I haven’t updated in a while regarding television I’ve watched (apart from Miami Vice). That’s partly because I’m still in a relative lull for television. I did watch some stuff, and most of it was ho-hum. Let’s start with what was not ho-hum: the twelve episode series “Andor“. This is by far the best Star […]
