It's not spring yet, but the bush near my dryer vent doesn't care:
posted by Kyle Beatty at 9:59 AM
Took a bit of a hike again today and saw cats.
A cat on a bench:
A cat crossing the street:
A cat in the trees:
A cat on a piling:
A cat hunting ducks:
Where is the cat?
posted by Kyle Beatty at 1:59 PM
Took a walk today down the nearby Burke-Gilman trail, a former railroad right-of-way.
Saw a boat from a ways away:
It came closer:
Saw a cat and some ducks:
But nothing very interesting happened:
There were actually two pairs of ducks. One pair in the water:
The other pair was wandering around the trail:
posted by Kyle Beatty at 6:54 PM
Here's something basic that I learned today. A Windows computer configured for DHCP, if it cannot contact a DHCP server assigns itself an ip in the 169.254.x.x range. If it is set to share private IPs it can still contact machines on the DHCP-denied network. Hooray. The proximate reason that this became of interest to me is because my DSL machine suddenly can't see the DHCP server for some reason. AAAAAAAARGH!
During my previous Qwest-caused outages, this IP self-assignment did not occur, so there must be some other conditions holding now. Although I'll be phoning up Qwest any minute now just to cover all my ducks. My first guess is that there is something wrong with the DHCP server itself at w-link. We'll see.
posted by Kyle Beatty at 10:02 PM
Ray asks, "What did you think of Lord of the Rings?"
LotR was great.
An amazing feat of condensing. The visuals were pretty much as good as could be expected. Sure, a couple of long shots of hobbits looked like kids in costume, but no biggie. I have a minor issue with the rather cheap-looking effects during Frodo's vision of the Evil Galadriel: strictly Buffy the Vampire Slayer grade. I expect that to be upgraded for the DVD. Did not miss Tom Bombadil, nor his wife the river's daughter. Liv Tyler has found her function in life. Sean Bean fulfilled the character perfectly: he was annoying and then he was a dead hero. Exactly my impression from the book.
I'm not completely happy that it's a bunch of white guys opening their can of whup-ass on uppity colored folks, but there ya go. (Saruman the White indeed) The realization of the wizard's duel was interesting but a tad anticlimactic. Christopher Lee was completely convincing. Completely convincing as in "Let's not go to Chris's party because I am afraid that I may be imprisoned in a high tower by artes magickal."
The characterization of Sam was an actual improvement from the original and was put to good use in the very slight deviation that ocurred at the end. The principals were given the chance to accede to Frodo's wish to go alone instead of Frodo merely running off. He did try to run away from Sam, of course.
I love Howard Shore's score (not to be confused with Howard Shore's score to The Score, d'accord) both in the movie and on CD, yet I'm not _in_ love with it. It's like a woman that you know is beautiful, but just not quite cute enough. It's confounding. The CD is perfectly satisfying, but does not create a mindscape that is more amazing than the movie itself. That is a conundrum that I haven't solved yet.
posted by Kyle Beatty at 4:29 PM
