Alex just dropped off my new Renderman teapot that Mike got for me at Siggraph this summer. Awesome!!! Now I have one from each of the past three years sitting on my desk at work. Plus I got the cool Maya/Max/Motion builder long sleeve shirt that they gave out a Siggraph. Swag rules!
I'm just posting a photo I took after the concert a couple weeks back. I did it while we were waiting for the ferry to take us back. We had an awesome view of the city all lit up and sparkling. It was neat because I've never seen the city from that far south before. Also, the water was so calm which made for some awesome reflections.
Last week was fun. We had a big kick-off week for development on the next version of Maya and I got to meet and talk to lots of people I haven't had a chance to interact with before. And this weekend I managed to go climbing twice and swimming once so I'm feeling healthy. Plus I made really good pasta last night and Matt made apple crisp so I've eaten well.
But the really big news is...I finished the France Journal!!!! I made the big push this afternoon and transcribed the huge amount of stuff I wrote on the second last day of my trip. I'm glad to be done this, so I can stop thinking about how I haven't finished it yet.
The last note for this evening is that I also recently finished reading a really good trilogy of books, Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. This includes the book, "The Golden Compass" which is being released as a movie sometime this year. The series is to some extent comparable to Harry Potter in that the main characters are children and that is has a distinct bent towards fantasy, however it also has a lot more depth than those books. Not to say there's anything bad with Harry Potter (I stayed up late many nights finishing off those books), but I found this series to be meatier and much more engaging. I definitely recommend them.
In the interest of maintaining this blog I thought I would blog tonight given that I have a bunch of stuff to blog about. Blog!
On the weekend my brother and two of his friends came up to Toronto to go to the Virgin Music Festival with me. Really all any of us cared about was seeing the Smashing Pumpkins (OMG!) on Sunday, but it was fun to see other bands too. In addition to the Pumpkins (OMG!) we also saw Tokyo Police Club, Stars, Metric, and the Killers. The bands were good, although in the end it was all about the Smashing Pumpkins (OMG!) for me.
Anyway, I'm going to slow down a bit here and try not to get ahead of myself. On Saturday, I just did some errands and cleaning until the evening when my brother showed up with his friends. We hung out for a bit and then hit up Grace O'Malley's for some food. It was good times and I think Anthony is already enjoying Toronto.
Sunday, I was ready in good time to get to the festival in the early afternoon. Anthony and his friends were going to come meet me at my place and we'd go over together. Unfortunately, they stayed out until 4am the night before so they were a bit...slower getting up. It was OK though since I wasn't interested in any of the earlier bands. We eventually got over to the Toronto Island and had a great time at the festival. We met up with Wilson and Jonny and Rob and Rob's sister and we all used a picnic table by a tree near the main stage. Rob had arrived early, dragged the table to a prime position and viciously guarded it until our arrival when we turned it into more of a shared task. It got quite difficult as the day went on. Lots of pushy people.
So the Smashing Pumpkins had a great set (check out the set list on the Smashing Pumpkins Fan Collaborative). It was about two hours long and they touched on a whole bunch of their old stuff in addition to the new stuff. This concert was something I've been waiting for since I started listening to music. The Pumpkins are basically my favourite band of all time and I never had the chance to see them in concert before they stopped touring and broke up. I thought the chance would never come again, but it did! And it was awesome!
We stayed right to the end of the concert, so it took forever to get on a ferry off the island, but there was no way I was leaving early. The next day I had to go to work, which was rough, but instead of resting in the evening I went and saw a film at the Toronto Film Festival. The movie was called "Normal" and starred Carrie-Anne Moss among others. It was a Canadian movie and was very well done and superbly acted. Film Fest is awesome.
Tonight for wing night we went to Sushi On Bloor for some yummy yummy sushi. It was a difficult evening though. First everyone but me was at least 20 minutes late. Second, the restaurant was crazy and it took and additional 35-40 minutes to get a table. Then it took forever to get food, and halfway through our meal a waiter spilled hot tea all over Toni!!! It was pretty scary but I think she's OK now. The only good thing that came of all this was that the food was great as usual, and it was completely free due to the tea-spillage. I've never dealt with something like that before and it felt super weird to leave without paying. Overall it was a crazy night.
Hi everybody! It's been a while since my last blog, but I'm attempting to fix that now. I don't have much to say here this evening, but I did update my France blog to include a bunch of stuff from the film festival in Annecy and some of the pictures Mike has sent me.
