New Movies

Aside from Munich, I haven't been to a movie theatre in a while. There are few interesting-sounding movies coming out soon though: V for Vendetta, Thank You for Smoking, Tsotsi, Night Watch.

Funny Links

• Real-Life Recreation of The Simpsons Intro (via Funkaoshi).



• Calvin & Hobbes: Writer's Block



• $39-Dollar Experiment (via Metafilter): I was sitting around one day, skimming through a pile of bills that I needed to pay. I looked over at a new, unopened roll of stamps that I had sitting in front of me, and I thought to myself, "$39... for a roll of stamps? Geez... You can't get much for $39 nowadays. Or can you...?" ... I decided I was going to try something — I was going to take my roll of stamps and send 100 letters to 100 different companies, asking for free stuff.
  
  For example,
  
  Dear Sir or Madam:
  I have to tell you – I love your chicken. It's the best fried chicken around. The breading... I could eat a bucket full of just the breading. Breading and skin. That's the ticket! Anyway, your chicken is outstanding. If I weren't afraid of being arrested, I'd go to KFC to lick other people's fingers – that's how much I like your chicken. Please send me a coupon for a free chicken, so that I do not have to resort to licking strangers' fingers. Thank you in advance,
  Tom Locke, fried chicken enthusiast

Programming Languages

Programming languages and their relationship styles (via Funkaoshi) .

Ice Cream

Last week when I was on-call I had a craving for ice cream, but I didn't have any in my freezer. When I was at the grocery store yesterday I found a flavour called Moose Tracks. It's vanilla with chocolate streaks as well as chunks of chocolate too. Watching Grey's Anatomy and eating ice cream is a good way to end the week.

Great Design

Joel on Software has started a series of articles on Great Design.

Skiing

Yesterday, I went skiing at Summit with Suor (who was snowboarding). It was my first time skiing. Well, that's not quite true. Went I was in grade 6 they took us skiing at Chicopee Ski Hill. But that was like 15 years ago, so I don't remember anything. And Chicopee is a rather desperate foray at downhill skiing. (If you're Waterloo you know what I mean. If you're from Seattle, it's smaller than the hill I live on. Otherwise, note that the emphasis is strongly on hill).

I spend the first two-and-half hours in lessons. They didn't give me poles either. The instructor (Stan) talked about balance, pressure, rotating, and edging for a bit. (Skiing is more complicated that it looks). Then we tried balancing with only one ski on and going down a slight incline. Then with two skis. After that, we made it up the easier slope (Holiday) and went down a few times and that was it for the first lesson. (There are a total of three lessons over three days).

Afterward, I went down Holiday several more times with Suor, which was fun. The chair lift is a bit crazy - I don't like heights, and it took a few tries before I could figure out how get off it without falling. Overall, I had a goodtime, but skiing is hard on your lower legs. Everything from my knees down was quite sore yesterday. And I can't walk too well today - my left-calf muscle is not very happy.

I'll probably go again at the start of March.