Perfect Circles

My friend Kevin, who taught me how to properly (mountain and road) bike last summer, has a term he likes to use when talking about what it is we do with our legs while pushing pedals and turning wheels in service of truly badass forward momentum.

Here's my understanding:

It's not just about rotating tires, round and round, to propel you onward across the straights and up and down those hills. You're also working to make your heel revolve on its ankle fulcrum. There is a subtle, gentle pull up, and a smooth, undulating roll down, that together complete the gesture. You don't want to jab and kick at the bike with a series of movements that taken as one, form a right-angled rectangle. What you're trying to do is describe hemispheres with the machinery of your feet.

You're aspiring to perfect circles.

As some of you already know, this summer I'm going to ride the Tour of Courage in support of my former colleague Rich Wilkins and his current battle with cancer. The aforementioned Kevin will be kicking my ass in this race. As will the several other friends and colleagues who comprise our team. For this combined effort, we hope to raise money to aid cancer research and prevention.

If you're able, folks, I'm asking you to please chip in with a donation to help me reach (and surpass) my personal fundraising goal of a thousand clams. Any bit helps. Me, I aim to paint some perfect circles for Rich. Let's see what we can do together.

This is the link to my donations page: Reese Rides For Rich

And if you haven't seen the source site yet, here's Go Rich.

Clymonistra

If you're like me, your life was changed by an ambitious trilogy of fantasy books written by Philip Pullman and entitled The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass (together known as His Dark Materials). I fetched the first one from a shelf at my local small-town bookstore way back in 1996, then purchased it solely based on Terry Brooks's foreword promise that "You are going to love the Golden Compass."

It was a bold claim. And the chap was right, too.



A while ago, New Line Cinema optioned the rights to make His Dark Materials as their second big-screen fantasy adaptation (to follow Lord of the Rings, of course); and I say without irony, His Dark Materials is (while not a work without flaw - whose is, really?) the only modern fantasy epic worthy of succeeding Tolkien in a fictional milieu still cluttered with elves, orcs and evil Dark Lords.



Now. Less folk know about His Dark Materials, though the books sold very well and won multiple awards. Pullman's is also...weirder...and riskier...material than what Tolkien produced. Ergo, New Line's marketing department are going to have an uphill battle filling seats for opening weekend of The Golden Compass. And I wager there won't be a second or third film made if the first one doesn't turn a profit. These fantastical shenanigans always cost a pretty penny to visualize, as you well know.



For this reason, I want to show you one of the early advertising ploys they've cooked up to generate awareness of the property and also reveal a bit of Pullman's interesting cosmology. In his story, a given character's soul is externalized (and personified) through an animal totem who represents that individual's unique traits. For children, these "daemons" change shape and species to reflect the unanchored identity-wandering and soul-searching of youth. When we become adults, our daemons solidify into one animal form and remain as such until our deaths. It's a neat idea.



What New Line's done on the Golden Compass website is set up a personality quiz that results in a daemon being assigned you based on your answers. I think it's a brilliant gimmick to communicate one of the books' more memorable concepts and stoke excitement for the film. So, I invite you to take a look and meet your daemon (find the functionality under the DAEMONS menu).

Mine's a wolf, and her name's Clymonistra.

(Thanks to Bill for the link.)

Where's Mini?

Hereabouts.

I'll be back in the Sandbowl presently.

Rock Bottom

Two weeks late, but no less heartfelt.

I've reached the bottom of my rock remix to-do list and to be honest, I'm a little guitared-out. For the balance of April, I think I'll stick with the pansy synth ditties. In the meantime, here's AC/DC for Chad, as promised. Sorry you couldn't make it to Vegas, buddy. Hope this tides you over:

AC/DC, Chad - Dirt Cheap

The Interweb Rools

I've been all gaga and frothing at the mouth about Facebook for the last couple weeks, madly telling everyone it's the best implementation of the internet yet.

And it is. Truly.

But this is even better: Kiva

Thanks to Drew for the link.

Genre Jumper

I'll be honest.

I have no idea how to eulogize Bob Clark, a fine director responsible for the most successful sex comedy franchise of the 80s (started by the most profitable Canadian film ever), an equally influential horror flick that's been recently (and crappily) remade, and what is, in my opinion, the best holiday film of any generation.



Those would be Porky's, Black Christmas and A Christmas Story, respectively. Taken alone, they represent a subject range most filmmakers wouldn't even attempt. Clark did it anyway. I'd argue his command of film language jumps genres so easily because it's less about cinema and more about humanity. Witness characters in any of the above films and you'll see real people, not contrivances. I don't care if his late-career projects were sub-par or uninspired. It doesn't tarnish these early achievements.



Bob Clark was struck on the PCH around 2:20 in the morning while in a car with his 22-year-old son. The drunk guy in the SUV that did the striking - only two years older than Clark's boy - got off with minor injuries. There's no point commenting on the circumstances of these deaths, but I will anyway.

They piss me off. They're sad.



What gets me most, though, is that I only skimmed the recent interview with Bob Clark in the Globe & Mail. My act, sadly, represents a common view (even a Canuck view) of the man: we have an awareness of him, even an appreciation for what he did...

But he was too often overlooked.

True Romance

Get this.

An extraordinary ex of mine is throwing all caution to the wind, uprooting from her current reality, and beginning a trek cross-country to reunite with the one true love she's carried a torch for nigh on 15 years (and right through our four-year relationship, which of course complicated matters back then). Turns out the intended soulmate has finally admitted to carrying a torch himself, so the timing is perfect.

I think this is the most romantic thing I've ever seen in the real world and I wish them both the best of luck. B's a practicing chaos magician herself, so she knows exactly what she's doing. See you guys in Montreal this summer, on the other side.

Nerd Summit

Site's been quiet, but the weekend was anything but.

Mini Nerd co-founder and Chief Technology Officer David Roberts was here visiting from Ontari-ario. We managed to cram in a business meeting and two family visits between excessive geeking-out, watching lots of Deadwood, cheering obnoxiously for the Leafs AND the Flames, playing multiple chess games (all of which I lost), reuniting with old friends on Facebook, checking in on Dave's wife (and the upcoming spawn in her belly that was responsible for Dave's quick visit here and now before it's born and prevents our hanging out for 20 years), plus the conspicuous consumption of fine scotch, beer and wine. I also drug Dave around Cowtown on foot while grabbing groceries, seeing the doctor, applying for a passport, and getting my rear bike wheel switched from Tacx-compatibility to road-readiness (of course, it's winter here again and snow now drapes the streets afresh).

Last but most notably, Dave (never a cook in the past) taught me his wife's pad thai recipe (which was delicious), got my wireless internet working (FINALLY), and helped me celebrate the first birthday of Mini Nerd (30 March, dontcha know). We've revamped the site's look for spring and introduced two new functionalities: a slideshow of Mini Nerdchandise available at Cafe Press (find it at the bottom of the sidebar), and the Monstermasher (up top).



The latter is a realization of randomized exquisite corpses for Mini Nerd readers courtesy of a classic illustration toy dear to dork chilluns of the 80s (including myself): the Mighty Men and Monster Maker. I bought a scanner specifically for the purpose of getting the wicked interchangeable art plates from the Maker into digital format for the Masher. Then Dave laid down some sweet code to build Vampire Ape Mad Scientist Superhero Mummies for us all.

Awwwwwwww jazzy.

Please enjoy the fruits of our labor, and if you're able, help support Mini Nerd in its second year online by picking up a Blorthos Cap, a Vampyric Horse Saddlebag, or a Mini Thong. We've also got t-shirts, bumper stickers, buttons, mugs and steins aplenty!

Here are photos from what was a great (if short) visit with my lifelong friend. I thank his wife, nascent kid, and cats for letting me borrow him a few days. Let's make it an annual tradition!


He cooks.




He codes.




He's a keeper.