It's Oh So Quiet
It's been a strange no-work day for my RSS aggregator. I don't know if everyone has been out doing non-bloggy things today, or what, but it's a little disconcerting.
* * *
The Capitol 6 cinema finally gave its death rattle this week. It's sad to me to see a movie theater die.
I still haven't gotten over the death of the Cinema West in my hometown. It's the last single-theater movie establishment I've ever been to, and it was, while not exactly beautiful, at least striking. 650 seats, a huge screen, and a certain unity of purpose unmatched by all the multiplexes since ("You're here to see the Muppet Movie? Me too! This is so cool!")
The Capitol 6 here in Vancouver doesn't have quite the same significance to me, having only lived here about six months, but I've spent the last several days watching as workers carted load after load of trash, unsold food, wall signage, and other materials out of it, and it feels so profane to see such a large and cheerful edifice being gutted in such a way. The theater's replacement, the Paramount on Burrard St, is already open, but with all its neon outside and scrolling LED signs inside, it feels very soulless.
* * *
I started playing with a Wiki today (and no, this isn't an activity related to "May is Masturbation Month," but it could be. For someone geeky enough. I suppose.). I sort of have a minor obsession with taking notes and building references about the world around me. Unfortunately I'm only one person, without much time to update all the references material I could possibly be interested in, but the concept of using a Wiki to hold this kind of stuff, instead of standard web content, so that other people could help and contribute to the record-keeping, started to intrigue me a bit.
There are some standard things I'd like to put on there, notably:
Restaurant guides and personal reviews for Vancouver and for Dallas (since I have a lot of info in my head for both, and have friends whom I'm sure could find the information useful, as well as contributing their own goodies). A wine or beer list maybe? Not sure about this one, but it could be kind of fun.
As I was thinking through this, I started to think of some ideas I'd had several years back, but was never sure how to implement without undertaking a fairly sizeable programming project without much guarantee of whether it would work or not. The core of the idea is to create a set of collaborative fiction, kind of Exquisite Corpse-style exercise extended to a whole short story (or who knows what else), and being not so strict about the obscuring the existing writing. The Wiki would be a good way to try it out. Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe not.
I'm open to suggestions here.
Anyway, I started the site with a template for Restaurant Guide content, and we'll see where it goes from there.
http://wiki.onomatopoeia.org
Feel free to jump in there and play.
* * *
The Capitol 6 cinema finally gave its death rattle this week. It's sad to me to see a movie theater die.
I still haven't gotten over the death of the Cinema West in my hometown. It's the last single-theater movie establishment I've ever been to, and it was, while not exactly beautiful, at least striking. 650 seats, a huge screen, and a certain unity of purpose unmatched by all the multiplexes since ("You're here to see the Muppet Movie? Me too! This is so cool!")
The Capitol 6 here in Vancouver doesn't have quite the same significance to me, having only lived here about six months, but I've spent the last several days watching as workers carted load after load of trash, unsold food, wall signage, and other materials out of it, and it feels so profane to see such a large and cheerful edifice being gutted in such a way. The theater's replacement, the Paramount on Burrard St, is already open, but with all its neon outside and scrolling LED signs inside, it feels very soulless.
* * *
I started playing with a Wiki today (and no, this isn't an activity related to "May is Masturbation Month," but it could be. For someone geeky enough. I suppose.). I sort of have a minor obsession with taking notes and building references about the world around me. Unfortunately I'm only one person, without much time to update all the references material I could possibly be interested in, but the concept of using a Wiki to hold this kind of stuff, instead of standard web content, so that other people could help and contribute to the record-keeping, started to intrigue me a bit.
There are some standard things I'd like to put on there, notably:
As I was thinking through this, I started to think of some ideas I'd had several years back, but was never sure how to implement without undertaking a fairly sizeable programming project without much guarantee of whether it would work or not. The core of the idea is to create a set of collaborative fiction, kind of Exquisite Corpse-style exercise extended to a whole short story (or who knows what else), and being not so strict about the obscuring the existing writing. The Wiki would be a good way to try it out. Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe not.
I'm open to suggestions here.
Anyway, I started the site with a template for Restaurant Guide content, and we'll see where it goes from there.
http://wiki.onomatopoeia.org
Feel free to jump in there and play.