Miyazaki's latest film came out in the US last weekend: Ponyo. I went to see it last night with Maggie and Jessica S (formerly known as Other Jessica). I was happy to see about 20 other people in the relatively small theater our multiplex had it in. I was afraid, especially since it was Sunday evening, it might be one of those screenings with only ( Read more... )

On last Wednesday I went to see "Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind" play at a local arthouse theater. I was thrilled when I found out that it was playing... it seems likely that at some point in my life -- assuming I live several more decades -- I will get a second chance to see this movie projected from film instead of on a TV screen, but I didn't ( Read more... )

I've upgraded my desktop computer. It's been about five years, I guess. I mainly wanted a bigger hard drive, but I figured I could use a new processor, too. My old processor was an Athlon XP for Socket A, which is obsolete, and my old motherboard only had the old "parallel" ATA connections for drives anyway, so I basically went all-out. New ( Read more... )

Here I am with my two-week beard:


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Last night we went to see "Superbad", which I figured I would enjoy, but it exceeded my expectations. Really, really funny ( Read more... )

After David and I got back to Maggie's place in Berkeley, I met her roommates, grad students in physics and math. They showed me their dangerously-strong magnets and we talked about teaching. It was cool ( Read more... )

Comic Con is so great! Today I got autographs from Dan Slott and found out from him that he wrote an upcoming episode of the "Fantastic Four" cartoon, which features She-Hulk, and also has cameos from Squirrel Girl and another GLA member. Raina Telgemeier totally recognized me this year. I met David Hahn, the second artist on "Spider-Man Loves ( Read more... )

Early this morning David and I headed to the airport to fly out to Oakland. I took too long to get moving, though, and we just barely missed the "you must check in at least 30 minutes before your flight" deadline which I didn't know existed but which David says has been in place since 9/11. Oh. So... we rebooked and got here a couple hours later ( Read more... )

I've been remiss in posting here lately, even though I've been doing an unsually large amount of stuff that I could write about. As I mentioned a couple posts back, there were a lot of events recently. Just since the beginning of May I heard Jorge Cham of PhD Comics speak on campus, saw a screening of the documentary Helvetica, judged at the ( Read more... )

Last weekend we saw Hot Fuzz and Grindhouse, both of which were really great. We went to Hot Fuzz on Friday night at a theater right by campus that I hadn't been to yet. It was pretty nice. It was more fun than I expected being out around campus on Friday night. In the couple hours we walked around to get dinner, ice cream, and see the movie, I ( Read more... )