The Ontario government has been giving out coupons for discounts on energy-saving products, and I decided to try replacing some of the incandescent bulbs in my apartment with compact fluorescents. Here are my thoughts on the two products I've tried. [494 words...] (27 May 2007)
Visitors left so many comments on my Don't buy from DVDsoon.com! page that they were starting to make the page slow to load. I've moved the older comments to this archive page; to read the more recent ones, or leave a comment of your own, see the main page. (10 September 2006)
DVDsoon.com is a mail-order retailer of DVDs and related products, based in Quebec. I, and many other customers, have had money stolen by this company, and this page exists to warn potential customers and provide some support and information. "DVD Import" appears to be another component of the same business, run by the same people. [3467 words...] (10 September 2006)
Visitors left so many comments on my Don't buy from DVDsoon.com! page that they were starting to make the page slow to load. I've moved the older comments to this archive page; to read the more recent ones, or leave a comment of your own, see the main page. (1 August 2006)
Visitors left so many comments on my Don't buy from DVDsoon.com! page that they were starting to make the page slow to load. I've moved the older comments to this archive page; to read the more recent ones, or leave a comment of your own, see the main page. (1 August 2006)
At first glance, Nanami seems to exist just for comic relief. My opinion is that she's actually much more important to the plot of Revolutionary Girl Utena than that. Just consider that she gets eight whole episodes devoted to her (as well as appearing at least briefly in most of the others)! Nobody else gets that, and the "Nanami episodes," even if they often seem outside the continuity of the main series, always seem to be relevant to and reflective of what's going on in the surrounding episodes. In a whole lot of ways, Nanami is either exactly like, or exactly opposite, Himemiya Anthy. She's like a mirror image, and we see part of the story reflected in that mirror that the storytellers couldn't show us directly with Himemiya. Her function is a lot like that of the shadow girls. Here's a summary of ways Nanami and Himemiya reflect each other, with many spoilers. (19 May 2006)
Akio tempts Utena with a fairy-tale ending, and she successfully resists him only to be betrayed, stabbed in the back at the last minute. [603 words...] (14 May 2006)
Utena nearly loses her resolve, but makes the decision to go to the arena and claim the revolutionary power in order to save Himemiya. [504 words...] (14 May 2006)
Utena falls deeper in love with Akio, and starts to forget her silly dreams of being a prince; but her memories will not give up without a fight. [510 words...] (5 May 2006)
At the moment, reloading the Terms of Use page randomly gives either the old terms or the revised ones; I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that's due to propagation delay between servers in their cluster. [1136 words...] (23 March 2004)
I've been keeping an eye on announcements of new pay-for-download music services, looking for one that I could actually endorse. Audiolunchbox isn't quite perfect, but it's a whole lot closer than any others I've seen to date. Overall, I would grade it at "C+", which is pretty darn good considering that all the others I've seen have rated "F". This is the first one I've been willing to actually buy music from with my own money, and also the first one on which I'd be pleased to accept a gift certificate. Note added April 4: they have since cleared up the global-availability issue and I'm revising their mark to "B-"; see this update. [1583 words...] (22 March 2004)
The main link here is to a ZDnet article about a patent dispute involving the Friendster dating/personal networking site. It's somewhat interesting, but linking to it is mostly an excuse for me to talk about my own impressions as a Friendster user. [1964 words...] (12 November 2003)
While I was in Boston I stopped at Borders and picked up a copy of the above-mentioned CD. If you've been following my career there should be warning bells going off now - why is Matt breaking his RIAA boycott, and for that matter, what the heck is Matt doing in Boston, the city where a Federal Court declared his writings to be a menace to children, at all? [1717 words...] (31 July 2002)
![[Ad box removed; this image serves to flag pages that need to be updated in my log file.]](/i/boxremoved.png)
![[RSS syndication file]](/i/rss.png){kind=small}
![[OPML file]](/i/opml.png){kind=small}