Online video survey

I've only recently started exploring YouTube more closely and I quickly discovered that my hesitation was well-founded: HOLY TOLEDO, is this place a time-sink.

Not just for instructional videos for every kind of discipline and hobby you could possibly imagine, but fascinating documentaries, music videos (pro and amateur), and adorable animations like the following Simon's Cat videos:





Both videos are by an English animator called Simon Tofield who works for an animation company called Tandem Films. Thanks to Jeff for pointing me to these videos.

What about the rest of you? Do you tend to regular check online videos? If so, what type? And where?

Babylon Five Virgin Updates

SPOILER WARNING: The blog posts below focuses on my reports while watching Babylon Five for the first time. An LJ feed is also available. If you haven't seen B5 yet and don't want spoilers, please DO NOT click the links below.

Cover spoiler, JMS poster, and a song

Pilot: The Gathering




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Music and dim sum

Had a great practice with Urban Tapestry yesterday, prepping for our concert at FilKONtario in a couple of weeks. Allison brought over some delicious homemade poppy seed bread as well as strawberries w/chocolate sauce, and Jodi provided other mouthwatering snacks including Lesser Evil Caramel Corn. Yum. Walter joined us later in the evening, and gave us each a gift in celebration of our 15th anniversary as a group. Here's what he got me. :-)

I haven't posted any food pics for a while, so here are some I took at Cha Liu recently.



The staff at the restaurant are pretty used to my photo-taking by now. I don't do restaurant reviews for blogTO anymore, so take photos purely for the fun of it. Here's my favourite dim sum dish at Cha Liu (Supreme Shrimp Dumplings):



Have a great weekend, everyone!









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Will Write For Chocolate updated

Will Write For Chocolate has been updated.

I don't think I've mentioned lately how much I love Scrivener so here I go: I LOVE SCRIVENER. Scriptwriting (for my graphic novel project) is super-easy, and you can customize the formatting. Sadly, it's only available for Mac only right now. I don't feel at ALL guilty, though, because SO often I come across cool-sounding apps that I get all excited about but then find out aren't available for Mac people.

Here are the answers to yesterday's Game Identification Challenge:

Battleship:




Scan:



Password:



Outburst:



Funny Bones:



Poleconomy: The Game Of Canada:



Dominoes:



Labyrinth:



Diamant:



Bananagrams:



I think I must have played at least half a dozen games of Bananagrams this past weekend. It's short and quick, plus can be played by two people. Some luck, some skill, and can be played by kids as well as adults.

Musicstuff / cookingstuff:

Finished writing two songs this past weekend. Time was of the essence since Urban Tapestry is singing both of them in concert at FilKONtario early next month! Allison and Jodi are coming over tomorrow for an all-day practice. We're also hoping to put together a homemade CD of songs for donation to the Interfilk auction, but it will depend on how it all comes together during the session.

I'm making Beef and Chickpea Curry With Spinach from the The Healthy Slow Cooker by Judith Finlayson. Slow cooker meals are great for this sort of get-together; I can just dump the ingredients in during the morning, focus on the music practice in the afternoon, and everything will be ready by dinnertime!

Tonight I'm making Thai-Style Coconut Fish Curry from the same cookbook above. I use Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook by Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann more frequently but Finalyson's gourmet recipes lean toward unusual combinations of ingredients and that appeals to me sometimes, making the additional prep worth it.

And now I'm hungry.



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Game Piece Identification Challenge

Game #1

Jeff's aunt and uncle were kind enough to let us use their ski cabin on the weekend, and I came across a number of old games ... some familiar, some not. We also brought along some games of our own.

So a quiz, for everyone out there. Which of the game pieces pictured in today's Blathering do you recognize? Which have you played? I'll identify the games later this week.

Jeff and I have finished watching the first season of Babylon Five; I'm definitely hooked. See my most recent episode reports in Babylon Five Virgin (Babylon Squared, The Quality of Mercy, Chrysalis). From my stats, it looks as if my B5 Virgin blog has an audience of about 1200 so far (based on number of unique users).


Game #2



Game #3


Game #4


Game #5


Game #6


Game #7


Game #8


Game #9


Game #10

Video O' The Day

Happy birthday to Ryan Couldrey today! Ryan is one-third of the creative team behind DearToronto.com, a new video podcast I mentioned recently.

Here's their latest video podcast:

Toronto Ice Race




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