Digest of movie reviews

It’s been a while since I did a movie review here, and I have seen many in the past few weeks that I want to share. Mamma Mia! Not to take away from the stage version but the movie did not quite live up to my expectations. The transitions from spoken to song was very abrupt and did not flow very well. Rating: 2.5/5 The Dark Night I really quite enjoyed this movie that a movie can keep you on the edge of your seat for over 2 hours then make you laugh, cry, and keep wondering what is going to happen. Rating: 4/5 Wanted This movie is very unique. I really love Morgan Freeman in movies. He has got to be one of the greatest voices on film. Rating: 3.5/5 Journey to the Centre of the Earth 3D This is the fist RealD movie I have seen, this movie was very interesting. The only issue I had was with the 3d there were so many bad edits just to show off the 3D that just was unnecessary. If you are calling it RealD keep it real, don’t fake it. CEFM Rating: 4/5 Love Guru CEFM Rating: 1.5/5 Get Smart…

Maria Theresa (Cormier) Morin- May 13, 1935 – Jun 28, 2008

Maria Theresa (Cormier) Morin- May 13, 1935 – Jun 28, 2008

This morning I woke up and found the obituary for my grandmother in the paper. Here it is: Maria Theresa Morin MORIN, Maria Theresa – It is with great sadness that the family announce the peaceful passing of Maria Theresa Morin at the Saint John Regional Hospital on Sunday June 29, 2008. Born 1935 in Saint John to the late Andrew and Olive (Babineau) Cormier. Maria worked in Housekeeping at The Saint John Regional Hospital for many years. She will be sadly missed by all who knew her. Maria is survived by sons David Morin (Angela) of Black River, Michael Morin, Rev. Lawrence Morin (Heather) both of Saint John, Kenneth Morin (Arnett) of Murriett, CA and Trevor Morin (Marlene) of Black River; daughters Sharon Morin of Montreal, QC, Cathy Melvin (Norman) of Saint John and Debbie Morin (Frank) of Black river; brothers Arthur (Audrey) of Saint John and Ronald (Donna) of Bowmanville, ON; sister Rena Belliveau of Saint John; 14 grandchildren; 10 great-grandchildren; several nieces, nephews and many friends. Besides her parents, Maria was predeceased by her husband Lawrence; sons Mark and Eric; brothers Joseph, Frederick, Lawrence and Ralph; sisters Frieda, Bella and Eva and companion Wes Moore. Resting at…

I knew this would happen.

I decided to sit and watch the new council, and once again I am truly appalled how the new council is directing itself back into the dark ages. If any group of people could burst Saint John’s economic bubble it would be this group. Item 10.2 was the request to start the progress by approving a letter of understanding from the City about the proposed Irving Oil offices on Long Wharf. This is a project that has a time line that in reality by the time the Port Act procedures (3-4 months with public consultation), assessment and land negotiations (2-3 months), design and planning (3-4 months), and the city’s rezoning procedures (1-2 months). This delay to delay for a period of almost two months, with persistent criticism from groups like the ILA is just a repeat of the KC Irving Statue fiasco of early 90’s. In the end it will probably not happen. Then if that was not appalling enough the disregard by the Mayor himself for the rules of procedure just to grandstand is going to make this session of council one of the least productive in this city’s entire 223 year history. The fact that the last meeting of council took…

Again, RTFM

I just was pumped and bought a 2GB stick of RAM, pulled open the the MacBook. Placed the RAM in and what happend as I turned it on… Nothing… Now that I read online about this there are many cases where this is caused by not putting the RAM in far enough. But then I find the real reason and from none other that Apple support site. The max amout of RAM is 2GB (2x1GB) now after being pumped I need to return it. It was a great deal too ($59.99) if only I could use it.

Back again :-(

I just returned from Toronto. This time i went up with Tony, and it was a good trip. The best part of it was playing with my new camera. If you haven’t seen it yet the link is http://pics.cefm.ca/v/toronto2008/ to my gallery. I was having interesting situations where I had not read the manual enough in low light areas and cage situations where the shutter speeds, ISO settings and focusing on the cage rather than the animals. A lot of the pictures are at a full 12x zoom without a tripod. In some cases it took 5-6 pictures to get a good one.

I got a new toy.

I got a new toy.

I know the pic has caught your attention, and you are wondering what my new toy is. Well without further ado here it comes… Well maybe now… okay it is the Canon PowerShot S5 IS. This thing is the most amazing piece of technology I have ever owned. I’m sorry MacBook, but can you do panoramas, change colours of items in pictures and HD videos? Okay maybe you can but still, the camera is truly cool.

Post-Election Post

So we all know how the election turned out. As every one that knows me knows I enjoy relating the statistics. This year 23,977 voted for a mayor candidate, 24,078  voted in total. Therefore, 101 voters did not vote a mayor. In 2004, 25,489 voted for a mayor, 448 voted for me. Between 2004-2008 Saint John has 1,618 (source: Statistics Canada) less people. Between 2004-2008, 1512 less people voted for a Mayor. Conclusion, most of the people who used to care are the people that are leaving.

My Post-Birthday Post

My Post-Birthday Post

Yesterday was a very interesting day for my birthday. For a change people seemed nicer. It seems like it was no time ago, let alone four years ago today that (in 2004) today (May 11th) I was working at Client Logic, done after a hectic month and a half of campaigning and just waiting for election day to be over, wait a minute, that didn’t happen as a recall at that time I was ditching Sunday shifts to go to Empire Theatres probably to see Mean Girls, New York Minute, or 13 Going On 30 (I seen all of them in the theatre and cant remember which.) Then off to go do Too Close to Call, back in the days when it was only a half hour long show. Then off the day after the election to the great city of Toronto, ON for the first time ever, and my first time on a train too. It is too bad that a lot of my blog here didn’t survive from that time. So yesterday… after doing some overtime and fighting with the Royal Bank, I went to Boston Pizza and had an appetizer of Thai chicken bites, Caesar Salad, Chicken…

Third Election Update

So, at this point I can’t be persuaded on a candidate because I already voted. I do believe in open transparency in politics, and since lynch mobs are so 1800’s I’m going to revile my votes. Mayor of Saint John: Michael Richardson At-Large: Danny Jardine and Chris Titus Ward 4: Kevin Goggan and Ralph Landers

Jumper

Guest post by Tony Tompkins: After seeing the trailer once again since seeing the movie, I feel as if the trailer displayed more action then what was in the final cut. I can appreciate the storyline as well as the action sequences in this motion picture; however, I believe the movie could have had better quality acting. Newcomer, Hayden Christensen, definitely portrayed the look of the character but his acting ability for the leading role as David Rice needed a more rigid aggression. Overall, this film is good and can hold a potential for a sequel, which we can only hope will have more fundamentals touched upon. Furthermore, we all can value the story; however, let’s hope the sequel does not disappoint. Tony Tompkins Critic

Okay, a second look at the election.

So now that I have looked into the election a little harder, I am changing some of the options. Mayor:Mike Richardson- I’m not quite sure what it is but Mike seems to have a well thought out plan, no dirt and the just has a personality that one would pay attention to as mayor. Councillor At Large: Danny Jardine- I remember Danny from the last election he was one of those people that are deeply rooted in the social aspects of the community, like Donny Snook, that understands the poverty aspect of the city but is that enough, I’m adding this name to my shortlist because the list of candidates that I get to choose from is so pathetic, I think ward 4 might just have the worst turnout than any other part of this city. Mark LeBlanc- A maybe Rick Mantle- I think this one could make the council a little interesting. Chris Titus- This one is a definite vote, many of my favourite memories of council involve this fellow, especially back in the Shirley days. I like that Chris is involved in the community not afraid to express new ideas, and knows the when a horse is being…

It’s election time again!

As the signs start rising again leads to another dilemma again of who to vote for. Here are my options with names I’m not even considering crossed off: Mayor: Ivan Court John P. Ferguson Michelle Hooton Norm McFarlane Mike Richardson Councillor At Large: Stephen Chase Susan E. Huestis-Toner Danny Jardine Mark LeBlanc Rick Mantle Anne-Marie Mullin Chris Titus Albert Vincen Councillor Ward 4: Bruce Court Teresa Debly Kevin Goggan Carole Keddy Ralph Landers Joe Mott James Whelly District Education Council District 1 Sub District 9: No one is running District Education Council District 8 Zone A: Acclaimed

Just some updates

I’ve worked hard on editing a lot of the content on this site. I’m even just found most of my old university essays, and am going to get around to posting them soon in the writings section. I even have a few pieces of my poetry that I wrote to add here. As you noticed there have not been many posts with pictures in them, that is because my site is running a RC version of WordPress and that functionality is not quite working for me yet. You can also see now that these posts are cross posted to Twitter and Facebook. I don’t really like the idea of dividing my audiences so I’m working on further deep integration as we speak.

Keeping up with the times.

With the recent water bans an the lack of news coverage in the wee hours of the evening I was pondering if there was a better way for the City of Saint John to post urgent notices. And I had thought of using the technology of today, and an approach of making it easier to opt-in to these methods. Part 1: Electronic Internet Provide an RSS feed with no longer than a text message sized message detailing the urgent message. This would allow people the opportunity to place a box on the most common web portals that 60% of people use as home pages. Secondly allow people to register their e-mail addresses to an urgent message list. This would allow people to get it by e-mail or text message as people can put in cellnumber@pcs.rogers.com or cellnumber@txt.aliant.net and have it sent to your cell (great for parking bans.) Step 2: Phone Have an Advisory line like the parking one and have a cheep automated text to voice system to read the RSS feed messages.

I still need a new phone

Why do the cell phone companies make it so hard on you to find a phone that suits “you.” I have been on the hunt now for the predecessor to my Nokia 6620 that is now cloning in on a four-year old design of a phone. I wasn’t even lucky enough to have a battery covered by the recall since that is the main issue I am having with it. My phone runs off of the S60 second generation Symbian OS, and I really like it, now if I could just find a GSM phone with the 3rd Gen. But nobody seems to offer the thing, sure some people play music on their phones but I have an iPod Nano so that is not really important to me, neither is cell phone gaming, but I like the option to install whatever programs I want as the Symbian OS has loads of programming that in most cases is higher quality than a lot of what you can get from the Java that most phones offer. I also like that GSM is more secure as it never goes back to analog mode, and the ability to move my contacts from phone to…

I now got my Mac :-)

Because I want to make a post but did not have a topic, so I am going to make this post about my new MacBook. I really am now wishing my main computer was a mac but this is really one of the best computers I have used. (Leave comments with your recommendations). I’ve still been looking for places to get free software for it. I’m having issues at the moment networking with my PC but I thing the problem it is because I can’t even network my Windows XP with it ATM. I’ve also been working on new patches for WordPress 2.5 that is due to come out March 10th. It wasn’t working in IE7 (back-end) so that was also one of the reasons I never made a post lately, that and starting a Full-time job that I haven’t really done since July 2005. It is really tough getting used to a FT job if you’ve been away from it for a while. Although I am glad that now that I have more experience it seems better suited than the last time I have done call-centre work. Finally, since it is getting late (2:12AM), I am working on re-structuring…

Untraceable

Studio: Cohen / Pearl Productions / Lakeshore Entertainment Released: January 2008 CEFM Rating: 3.5/5 I was unsure as to how this feature would work for my taste; however, I found this film to have an unbelieveable storyline. Also, I was shakened by the disturbing context of the murders. Despite the great story and un-nerving content, I was disapponted that they reveiled the Untraceable killer early on in the feature, which to me pulled the hidden mystery behind the title. Furthermore, this film will make your stomach turn in many directions as it finishes.