January 22, 2019

So, I took my kids to see Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse a couple weeks ago.

The movie was actually quite good. Both kids liked it. There was a fair amount of drama, comedy and action. The animation was a little different at times, but that’s okay. I’m from the generation that watched The Hobbit and Heavy Metal, so different styles of animation usually don’t shock me.

From Beauty and the Beast, to Wall-E, to Studio Ghibli…differences in styles can often enhance the story telling process.

Disney tends to have very similar styles from film to film. Consider Mauna versus Frozen…and then compare them to more traditional Disney animation. The shapes of characters, whether in 2-D or CGI are very similar in their disproportionate builds and movements. There are songs. The only real Disney films that I think stand out as different in style are Wall-E and some of the Phantasia offerings. Even then, Wall-E only stands out because most of the characters are robots and the people have evolved into semi-walking marshmallows – if you haven’t seen it yet then you really should!
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December 16, 2018

It’s been a busy several weeks for me so I’m just getting to this update now, but here goes.

So, I was wondering what to write about here and my lovely daughter suggested I do a piece on how I come up with my ideas for a story. I’ve thought about it for a few days while busy with other things and I think I’m now ready to describe the process.

In the beginning, an idea simply pops into my head. Recently I was driving the family into Toronto and I had the thought that 3D printers were a cool invention. Well, what will they be eventually applied to? Could a person be rendered into digital code and then printed off? We are just a collection of chemicals after all.

I asked my wife to remind me of the idea once we returned home – not having any place to jot that notion down – and we continued on our day.
A few days later I’ve thought about it some more and come up with some extrapolations.

The plot idea is obviously a science fiction plot. The story could take place in the present, near-future or far future. The present wouldn’t really allow me to explore some of the more outlandish ideas connected to this plot, whereas a story set in the far future would.
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November 3, 2018

There are a lot of crazy ideas out there in the world, and let’s face it: we’re a generally crazy species.

Why do we even have money? Why do we need money? Sure, there are practical reasons for money, but why can’t our species just accept trade and only take just what we need? Does this seem all ‘pie in the sky’ to you? Yes, some people lie, cheat, steal, and try to take and acquire as much as they can in a vain quest to possess and control as much of the universe as they can. Some call this greedy while others say it’s just being practical.

In this crazy world there are a lot of crazy ideas and one of them is that the world is flat. A few videos on Youtube caught my eye and I had about an hour to spare so I watched them. Hilarious!

Now, I know it seems an easy task to shoot down flat earthers and show their idealogy exactly for what it is. However, how do you know the world isn’t flat? For that matter, can you prove the world is round? Many people are afraid of science and are content to accept the world is round, but how do they really know? This question extends to other areas of pseudoscience and conspiracies. What about climate change? What about spending money preparing to destroy asteroids that might collide with the Earth?
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October 19, 2018

So, I have a pre-teen daughter and she is just beginning to get into comic books. And, that was somewhat predictable as I collected comic books from around 1975 until about 1984, and I continued reading them for several years after that and just recently got back into it.

Let me tell you, comic books are quite different now than they were a few decades ago. X-men was huge when I first started reading and collecting. Wolverine was the mysterious Canadian superhero. Hulk and Captain America were super boring. DC was a joke, and their stories tended to be quite predictable.

Things are very different now. There is swearing in comic books. There is blood and guts in comic books. There are a lot of mature comics out there right now, and there were very few while I was collecting. In fact, it seems as if the ratio of mature to child-friendly comic books has reversed.
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