Steel White Table

Excellent work everybody! The calibre of your contributions to the Add a Sentence story is beyond my expectations. Let’s keep it up, if that’s possible. To make it more interesting, or challenging, I’ve chosen a series of somewhat random words. How about we continue to add one sentence at a time to the story, but incorporate one of the random words into each sentence? (While maintaining a story that makes some sort of sense. It hasn’t strayed much so far.) When writing your sentence, just highlight the word you’ve chosen by writing it in all caps. Here’s the story so far and the list of somewhat random words:
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Whenever I put on just about any Krzysztof Kieslowski DVD, it becomes apparent, usually within the first 60 seconds, that I’m watching an exceptional film. The way it looks, the rhythm of the shots, the way it sounds, the natural look in the actors eyes — the attention to the details of every facet of the filmmaking process creates a feeling like a symphony of 50 different instruments playing a melody in perfect pitch and perfect time. It moves you. And you know that wherever the journey takes you, you’re in good hands. It doesn’t happen often because Sturgeon’s Law holds true in movies too. But when it does happen, you sit up and take notice because you don’t want to miss anything. You’re no longer a passive viewer. You’re engaged. You’re paying attention. Vera Drake is that kind of film. It tells the story of a woman in England after World War II who performs illegal abortions for poor people who can’t afford the medical procedure themselves. It’s not a pro-choice or anti-abortion film. It presents the situation, draws you into the thoughts and feelings of all the people involved (Vera’s close-knit family) and allows you to make your own judgements. None of it is black and white, though. When the end credits start rolling, you’re left with a lot of feelings to sort through and plenty to think about. It’s not an overly-serious downer film, though. Yes, there is drama, but it’s a pleasure to be with these characters because they’re so genuine and kind. It’s just solid filmmaking all around. At any rate, I’ll keep an eye out for anything directed by Mike Leigh for now on. He definitely got my attention with Vera Drake. I recommend it to anyone who just wants to see a good movie.

Comments about the Add a Sentence story can go here.

It’s that time of year again, everybody. It’s time for us to put aside our differences and write a story together. Instead of writing 5 words each like we did last time, everyone gets to add a full sentence. There are no restrictions to the length of the sentence. Do whatever works. Just keep it clean and friendly. The story begins like this:

Comments about the story can go here.

I’ve had a new PC running on Vista for the past couple months. I meant to keep a list of all the problems I’ve had with Vista and how I solved them. But I forgot. So here are the first two that I can remember off the top of my head.

1) Vista will drive you nuts by prompting you for permission to do just about any damn thing. Here’s how I disabled that silly feature: In the Control Panel search box, enter “user account.” A list shows up. One of the last items on the list should be: “User Account Control (UAC) on or off.” Click it and uncheck it. Done.

2) Vista won’t delete large files, at least not on my system. I’m talking multiple-gigabyte-sized files (common with video editing). You can hit delete, but Vista will just hang there all day long calculating the estimated time it will take to delete the file. Silly Vista. Deleting under the command prompt doesn’t work either. Here’s how I got around that annoying little bug: Reboot the system in SAFE MODE by pressing the F8 key during the reboot. Now go in and delete the large file. Reboot in regular mode. Done.

90% of the big programs I used on a regular basis — including WordPerfect and all my audio- and video-editing software — became instantly incompatible after I switched to Vista. That was fun. My Logitech wireless music system doesn’t work anymore either. That blows. But overall, I like the way Vista operates. Mostly it’s the little things I like. For instance, when I rename a file, only the file name, not the extension, is highlighted. I change the file name and the extension is left untouched. That may not seem like a big deal, but I change file names all the time and this little function saves me a lot of time. Once in a while when a program freezes (it’s a given that large, CPU-hungry video-editing programs will stall from time to time), Vista allows me to shut it down and save my data without crashing the system and having to reboot. That’s nice. So, though there is room for improvement, Vista doesn’t seem all bad.

For the past two weeks I’ve been cooking fish about every other day on my gas BBQ using a cedar plank to smoke the fish. (See my previous post: Homemade Smoked Salmon.) You heat up the BBQ, place the plank on the grill, give it 5 minutes to heat up, put the fish on the plank, turn the heat down a bit and keep the cover closed for 15 minutes. It cooks the fish perfectly every time, the best fish I’ve ever had. Having done it about 10 times so far, here’s what I’ve learned:

— Salmon, trout, halibut and scallops are perfect for the plank. Cod is most definitely not.
— You don’t have to marinate the fish (the smoke is fine on its own), but it doesn’t hurt.
— Maple planks are inferior to cedar planks. No contest. Don’t even bother with them.
— Avoid the thin planks because they catch fire too easily. The good ones are 3/4-inch thick.
— Soak the plank overnight if you can. The only plank that smoked well and didn’t burn up too much had soaked overnight. The more soaking, the better. 2 to 4 hours should be the minimum.
— Remember to turn the heat down to medium once you place the fish on the plank. You may need to tweak it for the first few minutes, trying to find a low heat that doesn’t burn up the plank, but hot enough that smoke leaks out the side of the BBQ. 550-650 F is a good range.
— Once you put the fish on, don’t open the BBQ unless you have to (or just peak under the cover). Keeping the smoke inside the BBQ is key.
— You should get at least 2 uses out of each plank if you’re doing everything right.

Anyone else having fun with cedar planks on their BBQ? Any recipes? Suggestions? Different types of fish? What about hickory?

J-Walk posted an item about an 8 Dollar Fruit. It reminded me of the watermelon in Labrador with the $55 price tag. Apparently it was a pricing error.

The [store] manager said that despite the price tag, the melon’s actual price should have been $38.

Would you pay $38 for this watermelon?

Photo by Sarah Erickson.

Our Newfoundland dog, Wally, is five months old and weighs 60 pounds, which is average for the breed. He’s not fat nor skinny. We feed him about six cups of dry food (Canidae) a day, which is mixed with a little water and canned food. He’s forever hungry.

His jowls are developing now, such that he drools occasionally. His eyes are beginning to have that bagged look, too; more fluid is beginning to collect around them, but nothing excessive or gross.

He still stumbles at times, still getting used to his fast growth. He’s loosing his baby teeth with some adult teeth coming in.

He doesn’t shed, but we brush him a few times every week. His coat is soft - he gets complimented on it a lot.

He’s sociable around people and dogs - very friendly.

He shits about 10 shovel-fulls a day.

Hey everybody. I’m goofing off today. So naturally I decided to re-design my Mud Songs web site. There isn’t much to see, but come on over when you get bored. It’s a work in progress.

I’ve been too busy working and settling into a new house to watch many movies this summer. Here’s what I’ve seen, though, in order of enjoyment.

The Dark Knight — A dark and twisted Batman movie made for adults, finally.

WALL-E — Proof that Pixar could make an excellent adult science fiction film someday.

The Savages — Philip Seymour Hoffman doing a version of William Wharton’s Dad.

X-Files: I Want To Believe — A made-for-TV special given a theatrical release.

Hellboy II — Ron Pearlman wasting his talent in a lifeless pay-cheque comic book movie.

Journey to the Center of the Earth (3-D) — A theme park ride for kids.

Wanted — It could have been a fun action movie, but it’s just boring and bad.

Tropic Thunder — Any 3 minutes of Flight of the Conchords has 10 times more laughs.

Daniel Lanois is coming to Moncton, New Brunswick in October!

He’s going to St. John’s, Newfoundland, too.

This will be my first concert in 15+ years.

Jenny picked up a cedar plank from the grocery store today. (Yup, it’s just a piece of wood.) We were supposed to soak it for 4 hours, but we didn’t have time. We soaked it in boiling water for about 2 hours instead. We heated up our $89 Canadian Tire gas BBQ to — well, we put it up on bust. It cooled down to about 500 F once we opened the lid (and turned it down to a medium flame). I put the plank on the grill and closed the lid. Once we could hear the wood crackling and popping, we placed 3 salmon steaks right on the plank and let them cook for about 15 minutes with the lid closed. (Fillets would have been better but the store was sold out.) Smoke leaked out all over the place, especially near the end. It was alright and well worth the minimal effort I put in it. Here’s a slide show of the whole affair. It was the best salmon I’ve ever tasted. I recommend it to all my friends. And my enemies.

I recently got a new PC pre-installed with Vista. It seems like a half decent operating system so far. My main complaint is: things that used to work don’t work anymore because they’re incompatible with Vista. My older version of WordPerfect isn’t compatible with Vista (so I’m switching to OpenOffice). Neither is my older version of Nero, my old video editor and a few other applications I use on a regular basis.

The latest to show signs of incompatibility is my CD-ripper: AudioGrabber. So I’ve switched to CDex instead. The help feature doesn’t work. Besides that, no major problems — yet. (I’m testing my first CD as I write this.)

Anyone have any problems using CDex on their Vista PC? Any recommendations? Anyone on vacation? How’s your vacation going?

I saw a silly 3-D movie tonight and afterwards took a bunch of pictures of myself wearing the glasses in various poses. These are the banjo poses. Most of them are blurry. Not much to see really.

I did some other poses that are funny. I might post them later. No much time for blogging when I’m on vacation.

Anyone notice the new blurb in this site’s header image? Quit reading this through Google Reader or Bloglines and visit the site for a change to see it.