Fake Label - December Installment

It seems that any shack near a vineyard in France is a Chateau.  I thought I'd whip up a little tongue-in-cheek parody here.  This is a fake label.  If'n there ever is a real label, it will most likely have pirate ships, islands, parrots, cannons and probably be rendered in glorious paintmash style.

Tron Legacy

Viewed the movie Tron Legacy yesterday.  It's a visually impressive movie, which was fun to see in an Imax theatre. The plot was actually kind of interesting philosophically.  I was slightly surprised by what is essentially post-modern philosophy as part of the resolution of the movie.

I just finished reading George Washington's Diaries (abridged) edited by Dorothy Twohig.  The book was interesting at times for some backstory on who George Washington was, but not very explicit or generally interesting.  It was fun to learn that he fell in a frozen river, while running away from indians.

I've been reading The Wines of California, the Pacific Northwest and New York by Roy Andries De Groot.  This is an interesting book, as it contains much information (about North American wines) gleaned from years and years of being a food expert for various magazines and publications.

Aerial Photos

Here are some aerial photos of the island vineyard project. 

You can see the cabin, and it's proximity to the edge of the river.

Sagebrush Burning

My brothers and I went down to the Island last weekend to inspect the cabin.  The riverbank has encroached in the last sixty years, and it's probably a good time to think about moving the cabin, before it floats away.  We also cleared some sagebrush.  My dad had chain sawed much of it, and we just needed to burn it.

Minecraft

I've been playing alot of Minecraft lately.  It's creator has described the game as a mix between Roller Coaster Tycoon and Dwarf Fortress.  Dwarf Fortress having an immense learning curve but an super impressive dungeon crawler, and the iso-metric ease of approach of a Roller Coaster Tycoon type game.  The game is still in Alpha development, but has already sold an amazing 600,000 copies.  With my love of rogue-like games, this is a fun dungeon crawler, and it has cool physics and mechanics.  And it's still in Alpha development, so it should eventually be a barn-storming smash (if it isn't already).

Loading the boat

I loaded a few poles onto the boat.  Next weekend, I am planning on going down to the island to survey the cabin.  Over the last sixty years, the edge of the island has slowly been moving towards the cabin.  As a result, we need to move the edge of the island away from the cabin.  This will probably mean jacking up the cabin and rolling it inland.

Mobile Reading Experiment - Nov 2010

Just finished reading Chicot the Jester, by Alexandre Dumas.  A fun book, but with a bit of a quick ending.  I read the entire book on my phone, which was an interesting experiment for me.  I heard about a person who reads 2-3 books a year (on his phone) while waiting.  It was handy to have a book to read at the ready when I was waiting for things, but could be a little cumbersome when I was wanting to relax and read (which is easier with paper).