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This post is a slight detour from the previous ‘we’re building a house’ stories, but I figured last weekend’s activities merited documentation.

We decided that we needed some kind of semi-permanent structure on the property to house our big ol’ truck and possibly store other possessions. Plus, we figured the builders could use it once the official construction process got underway.

Then somebody came up with the bright idea of camping on the property over night, which sounded rather uncomfortable (Hello? Four star resort on South Pender) but I was game.

We recruited a work party of James, Monique and Lesley and went to work. There’s a sizable hardware store on the island, so we were able to order a kind of portable car port from them, and just pick it up when we arrived. The assemble went quite smoothly, and much fun was had when the instructions repeatedly referred to “elastic ball straps”.

The instructions made a classic technical writing blunder. We followed them carefully, first assembling the roof and then raising it up on the legs. Unfortunately, we reached step #8, which told us to be sure to attach the end covers before step #4, when you add the legs. That made for some precarious standing on shoulders.

All in all, though, the process was pretty painless. It definitely wasn’t a two-person job, so we were glad of all the help. The truck fits snugly inside the car port, with a little room for other stuff.

As you may have noticed in my previous post, we camped inside the car port. We deployed the actual tents to protect us from the mosquitoes. I’m not entirely sure why we put them inside the car port, though there isn’t that much flat terrain on that section of the property.

This was the most heavily documented car port assembly in history. Julie took a bunch of photos, and so did Monique. James has photos pending as well.

I’ve got a longer post pending on last weekend’s activities, but in the meantime I wanted to share this photo with you. It depicts the first time in twenty years (excepting a couple of guided experiences in Morocco and Costa Rica) that I’ve gone camping. You really need to view the large version to appreciate the expression on my face:

Yesterday I saw The Dark Knight. And I’ve gotta tell you, I was disappointed. Maybe I’d believed the hype (note to self: always heed the advice of Flavor Flav), maybe it was the creepy promise of Heath Ledger’s penultimate film, or maybe it was my affection for Christian Bale and director Christopher Nolan’s previous films (in particular, The Prestige). Regardless, the film didn’t deliver.

It’s a murky, manic movie with a cast of thousands. It’s at least twenty minutes too long, and yet never spends enough time with the right scenes. This is partially due to its remarkable roster of characters. Among the supporting roles with speaking parts are a ridiculous hierarchy of bureaucrats–assistant district attorney, district attorney, Jim Gordon, police commissioner and mayor–and a precinct’s worth of cops. It’s also because of a needless sub-plot involving D.A. Harvey Dent, which only distracts from the film’s central inertia.

Heath Ledger is extraordinary as The Joker, and you should see the movie to see his performance. He’s a jangly-limbed rag doll, capable of anything and slave to his own mad whims. He makes Jack Nicholson’s Joker from the 1986 Batman look, well, like Alfred.

Unfortunately, we don’t see enough of Ledger. And that’s where I was most disappointed. I’d hoped that the film would be a much more intimate examination of the conflicted relationship between these two outcasts who live beyond the law. That is, more like Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke (though clearly that was an influence).

Instead, we got a big-ass superhero movie. The stunts were impressive, though totally muddled. Nolan could take lessons on directing action scenes from, say, Doug Lyman or Martin Scorsese. David Edelstein puts it well in his New York Magazine review:

Nolan appears to have no clue how to stage or shoot action. He got away with the chopped-up fights in Batman Begins because his hero was a barely glimpsed ninja, coming at villains from all angles in stroboscopic flashes. There are more variables here, which means more opportunities to say “What the f— just happened?” I defy you to make spatial sense of the early scene in which Batman battles faux Batmen, gangsters, and the Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy in a cameo that comes to nothing). If you can, move on to Level 2, diagramming the “Bat-tank versus Joker-truck versus cop car” chase. Then, finally, take the Ultimate Challenge: following the climax with Batman, the Joker, more faux Batmen, decoy hostages dressed as clowns, a SWAT team, and Morgan Freeman’s Lucius with some kind of sonar monitoring gizmo that tracks all the parties on video screens.

Speaking of Scorsese, compare The Dark Knight to The Departed. Both are crime epics full of violence and betrayal, yet Nolan’s work pales in comparison. Not only does Scorsese handle the large cast effortlessly, but you always have a clear grip on what’s going on in the action sequences.

In short, The Dark Knight is an average superhero movie with one extraordinary performance. It wasn’t awful, but it sure wasn’t the masterpiece I hoped for.

On an unrelated note, the movie was preceded by a teaser trailer for Terminator 4. Christian Bale is perfectly cast as an adult, robot-slaying John Connor. I really hope this film redeems the franchise after the dreck that was Terminator 3.

Barry at Search Engine Land reports a new discovery in Google Maps today: walking directions.

Earlier this month, I reported that Google Maps was testing walking directions on a small subset of users. This morning, I noticed that Google Maps now is offering walking directions for all Google Maps users.

For example, conduct a search for 200 Madison Ave to 200 Lexington Ave and you will see the option to take “Walking” directions, as opposed to driving directions.

Hmm…I’m underwhelmed. Compare the route from my old Vancouver apartment to Science World. Here are the driving directions, and here are the walking instructions. The only difference seems to be that the walking directions ignore one-way streets. In truth, shouldn’t the walking directions ought to run along the waterfront? Of course, that route would be longer than the prescribed one, but walkers (more than drivers, I suspect) don’t necessarily want the most direct route from point A to B.

Maybe Google needs to crowd-source this problem to optimize the walking routes?

On a CBC podcast last week, I heard about Solar Taxi. This Swiss dude named Louis Palmer is, with the help of academics and experts, driving a solar-powered vehicle around the world:

On 3 July 2007 I set off on my first journey around the world with a solar powered vehicle. Admittedly, as a regular citizen I cannot change the world but I can demonstrate to the world just how dire the global climate situation has become and how many sophisticated solutions to lower the greenhouse gases already exist, which bring with them many other advantages. So that we can have a better world and a more secure future. The solar taxi should rekindle hope and a zest for life, set an example to counteract resignation and stimulate reflection. And show that every single one of us can take a step towards preserving our planet.

Check out his route. Thus far he’s gone 34,644 km, with a goal of over 50,000.

He sounded really charming on the CBC, and his great videos bear that charm out:

AdHack is running a new assignment on Rogers and the iPhone:

Rogers has been criticized for its underwhelming advertising. When the iPhone was announced they had nothing on their website until a teaser appeared. AdHack member Brendan Wilson though the teaser was “lame.” Doesn’t a great device deserve better? We think we can do better. Yeah — we know you can do better!

We call this challenge Assignment #9: Create the iPhone ad that Rogers should have used to launch and promote the iPhone in Canada. You can praise it, you can hate on it. The choice is yours. Remember to tag your submission with “Assignment #9″ when you upload!

Here’s what I came up with:

It references the fact that Rogers promised an early bird breakfast to those standing in line. But Travis says “the only food was granola bars at about 10 or 11 a.m., but only enough for about one bar for every three people”.

Thus far, I’m quite happy with my iPhone. I’ve never had a GPS-enabled device before, and I find identifying my location kind of existentially thrilling. The UI is everything people say it is, and I can certainly type on it way faster than I could text on my old phone. I haven’t really discovered any must-have apps yet. I just read about AirMe, which may become my Flickr uploader of choice.

Complaints? I want a one-tap (the iPhone term for ‘click’) means of returning to the audio I was playing from elsewhere in the UI, or from when the device is in sleep mode. More importantly, the battery life is kind of pitiful. If you’re using data functions on the phone, you pretty much have to plug it in every day. I can live with that, but it’s not really satisfactory.

UPDATE: Rob from Techvibes asked me to pimp his Ad Hack commission.

A couple of Winnipegers are visiting us this weekend. We discussed going for Slurpees, and they unveiled their vast knowledge base of all things Slurpable. Apparently Slurpees are very popular, because it has been the Slurpee Capital of the World for nine years running:

“It’s nostalgic at this point,” said regional market manager of 7-Eleven Canada, Inc., Dale Shaw. “This is probably the only place in the world where it’s a four-season beverage.” Slurpees have been a Winnipeg staple for generations, he said.

Shaw said the best-performing store in the city is at Pembina Highway and Killarney Avenue. “For the province, it’s Steinbach,” he said. The best-selling Slurpee flavours are G-Shock Gatorade and Slurpaccino.

Really? Gatorade and Slurpaccino? That feels like new-flavour marketing to me–those are the flavours I avoid like a the semi-solid plague.

Apparently Alex Perez made a documentary about the phenomenon back in 2006. You can watch a couple of video clips on the film’s site.

I’ve been meaning to write a few posts about my new hometown of Victoria, but other more worldly things keep coming up. There’s a bizarre retail phenomenon in downtown Victoria that deserves mention. On Johnston Street, a busy shopping street in the centre of town, there are three comic book shops within a block of each other. In fact, two of them are next door to each other. Check it out:

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I was reminded of this unlikely confluence while in Legends Comics and Books buying the final issue of Y: The Last Man (a truly superb series). I should have asked the guy behind the counter what the deal was (maybe somebody owns more than one of the shops?). I’ll do so the next time I’m down on Johnson Street.

I know there’s some retail theory about assembling a group of similar shops, and a tide that raises all boats. But this doesn’t feel sustainable. Still, if I remember correctly, there have been three shops on Johnson for years. Weird, eh?

LoJo: Really, You’re Going With That?

Incidentally, there’s a City of Victoria-backed effort to rebrand a few blocks of Johnson Street with the heinous epithet ‘LoJo’. It feels like an awful, desperate attempt to associate that area with the SoHo’s of New York and London.

Informal neighbourhood names shouldn’t come from City Hall–they should be devised by the people in the neighbourhood. Maybe that’s what happened here, but I’d never heard the term before I saw it on a silly banner on a lamppost.

Down the street from our apartment in Victoria, there’s a hilariously dangerous rope swing rigged up in the front yard of a house:

It seems like an invitation for disaster, doesn’t it?

This, incidentally, is the first photo I took with the camera on my new iPhone.

I don’t drink. I did when I was a teenager, but that was mostly for show. I never really acquired a taste for alcohol. Plus, I’m kind of anhedonic. I’m not a teetotaller–go forth and drink up–it’s just not for me.

At various people’s urgings, I have, on occasion, tasted an alcoholic beverage. They mostly taste bad, but nothing tastes more foul to my virgin tongue than wine.

Of course, nearly everybody else loves wine. And that’s fine. I do find the snobby celebration of all things vino quite farcical. The frequent bollocks from wine producers, sellers and consumers gets kind of grating. Plus, I find that anybody who takes a single wine appreciation course becomes a confident assessor of the grape juice, and can hold forth at length about its ‘oaken, fruity frankness’ or whatever.

I’ve always imagined that it was just a twist of fate that made wine the most examined beverage in our society. Why not, say, orange juice? “My, the pulpy tang of this Valencia 2002 really sneaks up on you, doesn’t it?”

I can’t remember where, but I recently read a fantastic article about the moral superiority that now accompanies discussions of food and wine. Like, we’re better people because we eat organic chicken.

That’s a long, ranty introduction to this blog post entitled “How To Be A Snob: Drinking Alcohol” (thanks to Waxy):

Do not speak. Scent is pretty easy to verify, so if you guess wrong then everyone will know what a yutz you are. If someone ventures their own review as to what it smells like, frown as though you’re too busy concentrating on this intense bouquet to interrupt it with stupid words. This automatically gives you the edge, since as a conneisseur you know enough not to discuss anything until the full tasting is over.

I could follow these instructions, and just skip the drinking step.

UPDATE: Boris rightfully points up that this would be the perfect opportunity to pimp VinoCamp at UBC Botanical Gardens. He assures me that “it’s like wine tasting minus the snobbery…or something.”