I just got my bill in from my web host which means that in exactly 1 month it’ll be a year since I got this site up and running. Just while I’m on the subject, if you’re looking for a cheap, reliable web host then I highly recommend Big Wet Fish. They’re not flawless and I have minor issue from time to time but they’re customer support is superb and I’ve never had to wait more than 1 hour for a reply from their support team. Usually the reply comes with the problem fixed. And problems are few and far between. They’re about 15 quid a year (including domain) and they’re based in good old NI so you’re supporting good, local produce.
So, as I was perusing my site it’s become obvious that it’s time for a change. I’ve learned a whole heap of web design stuff in the last year so there’s loads of new little tricks that I’m dying to put into practice, not to mention I’m getting tired of this design now. Probably the most drastic change I’m going to make is I will add a CMS to the site to allow me to easily manage the entire site’s content without FTP access and an HTML editor. I’ve been reading a few books and I’m fairly certain I’ll use Wordpress as the CMS. Believe it or not, it’s not only possible to use Wordpress as a CMS - it’s actually highly robust and does a far better job than loads of other open source alternatives.
Don’t get too excited (like you would…), because change takes time. I have the whole development process to go through followed by new content to write and then the actually design implementation. Ideally, I’d like to get it done for around Christmas time but given that I work about 60 hours per week and have loads of other things to occupy my time outside of that, it could take longer. But I can assure you the new site will be awesome.
Ah my first Thanksgiving. What a pointless holiday.
On Wednesday I did as I planned and spent the whole day in the AMC Theatre on Van Ness, having lunch at Mel’s Drive-In first, of course (steak and eggs plus all you can eat toast…all for the bargain price of $7.95? Beat that Nobel Cafe!). I wasn’t nearly as tired at the end of it as I thought I’d be. Either way, here’s my brief movie reviews for each movie. For my UK readers, I’m not sure about release dates overseas (I don’t think the gap is as big as it used to be) but if these movies aren’t out yet over there then take my advice.
American Gangster was probably not the best movie to start with. It’s horribly gory in parts and pretty serious. I have a tendency to fall asleep during movies but this one kept me awake. It’s pretty good, good acting and lots of violence. Not really my favourite type of movie but enjoyable all the same if you like the Sopranos and that sort of thing. I missed the ending though in order to keep up with my movie schedule. A modest 7/10.
Beowulf on the other hand was the most boring, dismal display of absolute trousers that I’ve ever seen. Why such a movie was ever commissioned is beyond me. What saddens me most is that it was directed by Robert Zemeckis, who directed one of my favourite trilogies, namely Back to the Future. How he could direct something so crap warrants investigation. What’s even worse is that Angeline Jolie, my Angie, would sign up to do this movie as well. After her…mediocre…performance in Alexander I hoped she would give up on historical epics, but I guess there was a big paycheck for her. What’s probably worst about this movie is that it’s animated. I didn’t know that before I went to see it. Ok, to be fair, the animation is phenomenal and I actually didn’t notice it was animated for the first few minutes, but there really was no need for it and for animation this superb, a better script should have been chosen. So, I suppose technically Angelina Jolie never appeared in this movie…so that saves her reputation. Thin ice though, Angie. Thin ice. An extremely poor 2/10, based purely on the animation. Avoid at all costs.
Enchanted was great because I only made it through the previews then left to go see another movie. The previews were the usual Disney tripe, so that in itself was almost too much for me. I was assured by my friend that it was fantastic, and the best movie of the day. I’m a little harsh on Disney so I think I’ll leave this one unrated.
Into the Wild was my favourite movie of the day. I’ve been wanting to see it for a few weeks after reading stuff about the book it’s based on. The book is an account of the life of Chris McCandless, a college graduate who left home to travel solo across America on foot and ended up living in an abandoned bus in Alaska for several months, eating only wild berries and animals that he shot and cooked himself. It’s a really inspiring story, but definitely not uplifting as you’d expect it to be. It’s quite tragic really but the movie does a good job of staying faithful to Chris’ adventure and Emile Hirsch is excellent as the lead in a movie where he’s the only person for long periods of time. It’s certainly worth checking out but I don’t think this movie is for everyone. My friend only caught the last 30 minutes of it and hated it (too depressing apparently). In spite of that, it’s a well deserved 8/10.
Leaving my Barry Norman shoes behind, on to Thanksgiving. It was a pretty quiet affair; most people go home to see their families so there wasn’t that much to do in the city. I went to Berkeley with Arturo and Lisandro and we walked around the university campus for a while. There were no bars open in the city though so in the end we just came home and chilled out. Around 10pm, Michael (one of the French guys) had finished cooking Thanksgiving dinner so about 30 of us all sat down and had some awesome turkey and spuds. My Korean friend Sue also made some noodles and pork so I had some of that too. Not bad.
Tonight, I’m going to see Journey and KISS. Tribute bands, but still. I messed up, I thought it was last night so me and Valerie headed over to Slim’s only to find that it was tonight instead. And Valerie is going to Lake Tahoe this weekend so she can’t go. Her ticket’s on Craigslist if you’re interested.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day, and I have to work. The excuse given is that Thanksgiving is a time to see family, and since I have no family to see I’m the unfortunate candidate for working. At least I only have to answer my cell phone, I won’t be coming into the office.
I have no big plans for Thanksgiving so far. I think some people where I live will be cooking a turkey and we’ll just have a small-ish party but not sure what else will be happening. It’s the day that Americans consume the most food in the year, it even outdoes Christmas. In fact, the second highest consumption of food occurs on Superbowl day.
Today is my day off work. I’ve finally finished my 6 day week pattern and will be getting two days off again. I’m planning on wasting my day today by going to the cinema with a friend and abusing the system by seeing as many movies as possible. I want to see American Gangster, Into the Wild, Beowulf and she wants to see Enchanted. So I reckon we’ll get our money’s worth. It’s extremely easy to see more than one movie, especially if you go to this one theatre on Van Ness. They check your ticket at the bottom of the stairs and all the screens are on the top floor. It’s so understaffed that they don’t have enough people to look after the candy and drinks counter on the top floor, so people just nip behind the counter and steal what they want. Stupidity.
Oh, and Friday night will be awesome. I will be going to see California’s best tribute band - Evolution - playing the music of Journey, supported by a KISS tribute band! Can’t wait!
I can’t remember if I mentioned it before, but I only get one day off a week. If it were Saturday, or Sunday, that would be fine and I could enjoy it. Last week it was Tuesday, and this week - the same.
Last week I knew I’d be bored as my friends are either working or at school every day, so I went on my company’s wine country tour. It was fine, a good way to waste a day. Yesterday I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but instead I decided to go to Yosemite National Park…again.
This time wasn’t so bad though. It was a small group so there was plenty of room on the van. Plus Valerie went with me - she skipped class for a day telling her teacher she had a gynecologist appointment…(it’s a common thing in France, apparently) . She’d never been so she blended in well with the rest of the tourists. It’s a long, long day - pickup at 6.20am and back again at 8pm. Our driver for the day was Charles, one of our newer guides. I never seem to get Gavin or Roman, they seem to be the most popular.
Anyway, I took some photos. I don’t have them online yet but I’ll add them to my Flickr. Those more observant will have noticed the little Flickr plugin I added to the sidebar on this here blog, hi (oops, slipped into a little Ballymena talk there). This seems a lot handier than uploading to my blog. I’ll still add the better pictures to the posts, but when theres a whole set I’ll stick them on there and you can click through if you’re interested. RSS is a wonderful thing.
At Yosemite, Bridalveil Falls was closed. Disappointing. The guy sitting in front of me was frustratingly unimpressed by almost everything and he spent the entire day sitting in silence in the van. He didn’t even make the effort to walk to the giant sequoias. Guarantee he leaves bad feedback on the customer survey.
At lunchtime I decided that I would go for a swim, just like I did the last time I took the tour. The sun was out, it wasn’t particularly warm but I at least figured the water would be pleasant. In summer, the water was pretty baltic was after a few minutes it was bearable. This time was much different. I waded in about 50 yards up the Merced River from where I left my stuff. Pain shot through my feet after 5 seconds and I lost all feeling in my toes. Valerie got in and almost immediately freaked out. It’s the coldest water I’ve ever been in (except Portstewart Strand, obviously). It took a couple of minutes of mental preparation but eventually we both went right in and swam down the little stretch of river. It never heated up, my body was in complete shock the whole time and my breathing was erratic. Fair play to the French bird, she did it too. We didn’t stay much more than 3 minutes in the water, it was just too cold so we got out. My body was totally red all over. It burned for a while afterwards but eventually everything went back to normal. My advice: don’t go swimming in Yosemite around winter time. It’s not big and it’s not clever.
The rest of the tour went ok, we got back a little earlier than expected at 7.30pm. I got an invitation to go out to the Salsa club we go to every Tuesday but I was shattered so I gave it a miss and was in bed at 10:30 for the first time since I was about 14. Slept right through to 10:30am and felt worse than the day before. Sleep is a difficult thing to control.
Oh, on a totally random and off-topic note, I saw the trailer for the Veggie Tales movie at the movies the other night. I had no idea they were making this, it looks pretty good. Check out the trailer on YouTube.
I’m going to go into something now that I usuall stay far away from. Politics. The only reason I bring this is up is because our mayor, the baby-faced Gavin Newsom, has successfully won a second term in office as mayor of San Francisco.
This is the offender:
Rodrigo met him once. He said he was slick, polished and a real crowd pleaser. This is what’s wrong with America. He’s in his forties I think but he looks good for his age so he gets the votes. During his first term he promised radical changes to dealing with the perpetual homelessness issue that dogs San Francisco, but little seems to have been done despite a high population of homeless people ‘moving in’ to his front yard at city hall.
In saying all that, the competition wasn’t exactly promising either:
The other candidates were Chicken John Rinaldi, a professional “showman”; Grasshopper Alec Kaplan, a homeless taxicab driver; George Davis, a nudist; Michael Powers, a sex club owner; H. Brown, a blogger and former teacher; Harold Hoogasian, a florist; Lonnie Holmes, a Juvenile Probation Department manager; Wilma Pang, a music professor at City College of San Francisco; Ahimsa Porter Sumchai, a physician and personal trainer; and Josh Wolf, a journalist and blogger who was imprisoned this year for refusing to surrender to authorities video he shot of a violent San Francisco protest.
San Francisco Chronicle
Michael Powers actually owns and operates the Power Exchange, which is the world’s largest sex club. I read some of campaign manifesto and quite frankly I’m relieved that he wasn’t elected. Newsom is no saint either though. Last year he got caught up in a sex scandal, where he cheated on his wife with his secretary (who just happened to be the wife of his campaign manager). Still, the silky smooth mayor managed to talk his way out of it and was generally popular again with the city in a matter of days. Unbelieveable.
I hope this year he makes an effort to actually help the homeless. Glide Church does alot and it wouldn’t take much to give them a helping hand financially instead of just handing out cash to the homeless, most of whom have drug dependancies or mental illness and need care.
It’s been a week since I got back from my roadtrip, so I guess I should share some photos. In fact, I took so many that I had to open a Flickr account. Here’s a slideshow of some pictures:
Controls for the slideshow are at the top. Photo index is at the bottom. Click an image to see caption.
The whole trip was basically awesome. Far, far too much driving but worth it in the end. The first day was by far the worst with the running-out-of-gas incident, but the rest of the trip more than made up for it. So here goes, 3 states in 5 days…
Las Vegas
Probably the most surprising thing for me was how much fun Vegas was. I was expecting a really seedy place with a lot of gambling and extravagance, and that’s essentially what it is. But our group wasn’t there to gamble, we were only there to have a good time so I think in total I only put $50 in the slot machines. And it was a complimentary $50 from the casino for getting a free casino card. Also, 2 beers for $1 - can’t complain! The weather was perfect, it was around a pleasant 28ยบ so warm without being too warm. The place was crowded all over but it was cool to see all the different areas of the city. It’s much bigger than I thought it would be. Pretty much every business that exists in Vegas is related to entertainment, be it casinos, hotels, eating, drinking or shopping. In many ways it’s the epitome of consumerism but for the sheer amount of dazzling lights and ridiculously over-the-top fancy hotels it just has to be admired.
Our hostel in Vegas was superb. For $17/night I wasn’t expecting much but it had a swimming pool and a hot tub! I tried the hot tub first and it was warm and very relaxing. After a while it got too hot so I cannonballed into the swimming pool and never saw certain parts of my anatomy again. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a colder swimming pool in my life! It’s essentially water straight from a hose. I survived 10 agonizing minutes while trying to look like a hard man, but I’m no David Blaine so I was glad to see the hot tub again!
The free show we went out to see was the Sirens of Treasure Island. It was a bit crappy, but it sufficed for a nights entertainment.
Grand Canyon
Next day we got up bright and early and headed out to the Grand Canyon. It’s about 4.5 hours from Vegas to get to the South Rim and a fairly straight forward drive down the highway. About 30 miles down the highway you actually drive over Hoover Dam, which for me was just awesome but for everyone else was merely a waste of photos. They’re building a monster of a freeway over the top of the gorge that the dam is built in. The dam itself is 220ft from the bottom, and the gorge is at least double that height so the freeway is going to be huge! We actually didn’t realise that once you cross Hoover Dam, you enter Arizona and they’re on Mountain Time as opposed to Pacific Time, so we pretty much spent an entire day in the wrong time zone.
Grand Canyon is cool. You enter the park and drive to an area where there’s parking and a few tourists hanging out over a rail. When you go over to the rail, this is the first sight you see:
Obviously without me though. It’s just phenomenal. It’s over a mile down and over 250 miles in length. In fact, you can just barely see the Colorado River running through the valley floor. They recently opened the Skywalk at the Grand Canyon which allows you to walk on a glass-bottomed pathway out over the canyon. We planned to go there but then found out it’s like 4 hours east of where we were, and it’s like $80 to step onto it.
Shame we only got to spend about 6 hours at the Grand Canyon. I could easily spend 4-5 days there and I reckon I’ll go back and do the trail that takes you down to the canyon floor and kayak down the river. It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to.
Worst part of the day was we got back quite late, went out for dinner and got back to the hostel to find they had no room left. There were 9 of us on the trip, 2 cars so two separate groups. Our group didn’t make advance reservations but we had been told that 2 nights wouldn’t be a problem so we got back a more than a little bummed out to hear that we were homeless for the night. A few desperate phone calls proved useless so in the end we prepared for a night sleeping in the car. Anthony, a French guy who’s in San Francisco for 3 weeks visiting his girlfriend, was super nice and helped us to sort something out. Basically, he gave up his bed and shared with his girlfriend and I shared with Valerie, so Sue got a bed for the night, as did I and the other two guys in our group slept in the car. Wasn’t ideal and I felt extremely bad and selfish all night for leaving the two guys in the car, but in the morning they were fine and managed to get to sleep ok. Just as a treat, we got washed in the morning at the Bellagio hotel - it’s probably the most luxurious hotel in Vegas.
Los Angeles
Next morning we got up early and drove to LA. We drove much faster than we probably should have and made it there in 4 hours despite it being 360 miles away. The other group went to Death Valley instead - we figured that’d be boring. Our first stop in LA was in Pasadena as we got off the freeway. It’s such a beautiful little place. It’s essentially what you’d expect from American suburbia. It’s got quaint houses, young families, we saw a kid’s birthday party, nice little neighbourhoods…just really, really nice.
Next stop was Six Flags Magic Mountain. Home of Superman The Escape - the huge rollercoaster that goes to 100mph in just a few seconds. I think it’s like 400 feet high as well. It was closed when we got there. Crap. We waited in line for all the rollercoasters and I got soaked on the first one so I walked around with soaking jeans all day. Some awesome coasters though, was fun.
We checked into our hostel in Santa Monica later on and went for a walk down the 3rd St Promenade. There was a group of hilarious guys doing a rather poorly produced show but was fun anyway.
Next day we hit Venice Beach and Hollywood. Venice Beach was beautiful, very Baywatch. I asked a lifeguard to borrow his orange float thing so we could shoot our own version of Baywatch but he got confused and I ended up getting my photo taken with him instead. The weather for October was surprisingly warm, but no good looking girls in bikinis unfortunately. Plus the water is actually warm enough to swim in without a wetsuit, unlike SF where the water is possible even more baltic than Portstewart strand.
In the afternoon we went out to Hollywood. I had done some research beforehand and was aware of the sad news that Angelina Jolie as yet doesn’t have a star on the Walk of Fame. Disgraceful that even Britney Spears has a star for crimes to music and parenting but genuine beauty and talent like Angelina is ignored. I rectified the situation somewhat:
Afterwards we headed to Universal Studios. It’s a rip-off $65 for a studio tour so we passed on that and just went to the free shopping area which was cool. After the shopping we had just enough time to get to Mann’s Chinese Theatre and the Kodak Theatre, where there was some movie premiere going on, and finally a quick stop before sunset at the Hollywood sign.
The drive back to LA was pretty tiring, it’s not long - only about 7 hours but we had issues getting gas at the gas station and we made a rather lengthy stop over for dinner so it was after 3am when we got back to San Francisco and got the car returned. I basically went to bed at 4am and started work at 6am. It was painful. Thus concludes my trip.
I’m very pissed off that I got stuck at work until 9pm on Friday night, thus missing Nightwish’s only SF show. They have their new singer now and I manged to score free tickets on Craigslist, but didn’t get left the office early enough. So unbelievably pissed off. But I do have tickets to see a Journey tribute band in a few weeks. Valerie is now a huge Journey fan and is learning all the lyrics for the show.
Obviously without me though. It’s just phenomenal. It’s over a mile down and over 250 miles in length. In fact, you can just barely see the Colorado River running through the valley floor. They recently opened the Skywalk at the Grand Canyon which allows you to walk on a glass-bottomed pathway out over the canyon. We planned to go there but then found out it’s like 4 hours east of where we were, and it’s like $80 to step onto it.
