I’m one of those guys always trying to figure out how technology can make my life better. I keep abreast of what tech is out there now, what is coming out currently, so I know when I should incorporate something into my life. I’m not an early adopter by any means. I like to keep my life simple, e.g. I don’t maintain eight different email accounts. Often times, I take time to understand how something works long before I try it. Case in point: I heard about CMS systems like WordPress from friends LONG before I switched over to it.

Twitter has been on my radar since it came out a few years ago, but I couldn’t figure out how it would make my life better. I’m on Facebook and that’s where I do my status updates for friends’ perusal. Twitter seemed to be an unnecessary overlap. I’m not a celebrity, nor do I want to follow the Kardashians and their breakfast adventures. I didn’t know many people on Twitter either.

So what was my rationale to finally sign up? I think I see a potential use for micro-blogging. There are funny little thoughts & ideas that run through my head that are too insignificant for blogging, and don’t need to be posted every few minutes to Facebook. I use to use Flickr for posting dumb-but-funny mobile pictures, but now it won’t show every picture. I can use Twitter for posting pics instead.

To bring my micro-blogging and blogging together, I’ve added a Twitter widget to my WordPress page. I will continue to try out Twitter, explore it, and find out if I like it. So far, it’s certainly interesting.

Two weeks later, we sat down Saturday night to watch Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a 2010 comedy starring Micheal Cera and directed by Edgar Wright. Besides Cera, it features lesser known actors & actresses, such as Kieran Culkin (yes, of the Culkin family), Anna Kendrick, Alison Pill, Ellen Wong, Aubrey Plaza, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. All of them are young, and most of them are Canadian. Regarding the evil ex-boyfriends (and one ex-girlfriend!), they’re a little more well-known — Chris Evans, Brandon Routh, Jason Schwartzman, and Mae Whitman.

Wow, this was a strange, trippy movie. The premise for this film, which takes place in Toronto, Canada, is that Scott Pilgrim is a dorky 22-year old guy in a band. He initially dates this 17-year old girl, Knives Chau, but later starts dreaming (then meets) Ramona Victoria Flowers (she of the colorful hair seen in the movie trailers.) Ramona is more of Scott’s type, but he finds out that to win Ramona, he must battle her seven exes. The film is trippy, because there is a lot of pop-up videogame-themed “stuff’ that shows up on the screen during scenes. The fight scenes are highly reminiscent of the old Street Fighter game, and overall it gets artsy with all the cuts.

From what I’ve read, the film itself didn’t do well last year, and is considered a flop. I liked the film though. It’s not the plot or themes that won me over, but the creativity and uniqueness of the film that I found entertaining.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

I’ve already mentioned that this is a very busy month for the kids. In addition to all the birthday parties and soccer games, the kids have end-of-year school events. On Friday June 12th, it was a busy day of concerts, parties, and errands. I took a 1/2 vacation day so I could attend. In the evening, we had Lily’s 7pm “Spring Sing” concert. What a day!

Apart from the concert photos available in the June 2011 gallery, I’m publishing a few home videos of the performances. Below is the performance where Lily’s preshool prep class did a little song. I got most of the song. Midway through the video, watch what Lily does to the classmate that gets in her way.

Lily’s Spring Sing 2011 Group Song from Joel Ipe on Vimeo.

This is a very busy month for the kids. In addition to all the birthday parties and soccer games, the kids have end-of-year school events. On Friday June 12th, the kindergarten classes at Joshua’s elementary school had an afternoon concert performed by the kids for the parents and families. I took a 1/2 vacation day so I could attend. After the afternoon concert, we had to take care of a few errands, take Josh to a  birthday party, then meet up for Lily’s 7pm “Spring Sing” concert. What a day!

Apart from the concert photos available in the June 2011 gallery, I’m publishing a few home videos of the performances. Below is the performance where Joshua did some additional performing.

Joshua’s “Kindergarten Smiles” group sing performance from Joel Ipe on Vimeo.

Okay, it’s been two weeks now, and I haven’t been on the bike since the Bike MS ride in late May. It weighs on me, but I should explain what’s going on.

1. My wife is on the search committee for church as we (as a church) evaluate candidates for the permanent rector. As a result, she’s been gone entire weekends travelling and visiting. I’m home with the kids, so that doesn’t leave any time to go out for a few hours of pedaling. Such is life. Sometimes I have to cover for her, sometimes she has to cover for me. It’s teamwork!
2. Our weekends have been packed with soccer games, parties, and general running around.
3. In the interests of full disclosure, my left knee has been a bit achy since May 21st. I never truly let it recover in May, so I think I’m paying for that now. I’ve been to the gym twice now, as that is my primary mechanism for getting in shape.
4. My bicycle was a little banged up while it was loaded and transported back from the Pinelands school after the ride, and I never had a chance to have it checked out after the ride was over. A turnaround time of a few days is to be expected, but I wouldn’t want to go out again until I knew my bike was in good shape.

Two new water bottles

Thursday evening, I dropped off my bicycle to one of the two bike shops I use for a quick tuneup to ensure everything is in working order, and it will cost me about $34. I got the bike back Friday evening, and it’s in pretty decent shape, including the tires. I also purchased an additional bottle cage and two 20-oz. insulated bottles for my bike. They had to move the bike lock to the back, but now I have two cages to hold two large bottles. Hydration is important, and apparently, I was told that I really need to have two bottles. I can also use a bottle when at the gym, which would cut down on the use of plastic water bottles. When in Rome….

So when am I going to go riding again? Yeah, I don’t know. This past weekend was packed, and next weekend isn’t looking too good either. Sigh. Around the 18th and 19th, I think I get some free time. Also, that would give me the four weeks of time off from the bike that my general physician recommended to me in April, which I ignored. Maybe it’s all working out in my best interests anyway.

On Friday night after everyone went to bed, I was still a bit wired, and stayed up to watch Bowling for Columbine. This is Michael Moore’s 2002 documentary on American’s gun culture. In the three years after the wake of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, Michael Moore uses his gonzo documentary style to interview various people, including Charleston Heston (once-president of the NRA), South Park co-creator Matt Stone, alt-rocker (and “family values” target) Marilyn Manson. He also goes after K-Mart for selling guns and ammo, questions why America has such a high death-by-gun murder rate compared to other countries, and also why we have such a fascination with guns. He also bizarrely went after Littleton, Colorado-based Lockheed Martin.

Two interesting facts from IMDB to note:

1. Bowling for Columbine was the highest-grossing documentary until 2004 when Fahrenheit 9/11 made more in its opening weekend than this movie did in its entire run.
2. This documentary won the Best Documentary Award at the 2003 Academy Awards.

This is my fourth Michael Moore documentary — I’d previously seen Fahrenheit 9/11 in theaters back in 2004, then watched Sicko, Roger & Me, and now Bowling for Columbine (in that order) through home rental. So what did I think of this documentary? I thought it was just okay. So far, I’ve liked his later works (Fahrenheit, Sicko) better than his earlier works (Roger, Columbine.) This documentary had some interesting aspects, but I found Moore to be heavy-handed on blaming K-Mart, Lockheed Martin, and so on. I found the portion on the “Climate of Fear” that permeates the newscycles to be interesting, but I felt that one needs to take a large grain of salt with some of Moore’s other viewpoints. This is certainly worth a rental, but not of my favorites. BTW, I know there was a potential connection between the bowling thing and the Columbine massacre, but I still don’t get why he titled this film Bowling for Columbine.

Bowling for Columbine (2002)

190 lbs? Really?

Last week, I realized that I’m driving myself myself a little bonkers by weighing myself every other day. It was supposed to be weekly, but I started to obsesses and checky myself too often. I didn’t take into the fact that body weight will fluctuate 2-4 lbs even within the same day. When I last weighed myself, I was 192 lbs. I swore that I wouldn’t check again until June 1st. I forgot June 1st, but remembered around lunch time today. I was rather worried that my weight had stayed constant or increased during the past seven days. I have only worked out once (last Wed May 25th) since the MS Bike event, and that is the usual recipe for me to gain weight, even with dieting.

It isn’t that I lost interest in working out after the ride was over. I’ve been busy at work, my knee has been hurting since running on the treadmill last Wednesday, and my body has been feel pretty tired overall. I was motivated, but my body needed rest. Knowing all of these factors, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself two hairs north of 190 lbs.

Wow, 190 lbs. That’s net loss of 16 lbs since February. Cool. Maybe by August, I can lose another 10 lbs, and be down to my circa-2005 weight. Wouldn’t that be something?

In my personal opinion, HBO has some great programming, so we’ve subscribed to HBO on and off for years. we’ve never kept it long-term, due to family cost-cutting. I always like to have more, but we don’t watch too many movies, and when we do, we use Netflix. Sorry, HBO. The problem is that we then miss out on HBO’s great television series. In the intervening years, I believe I’m mostly caught up on The Sopranos, but I’ve missed major portions of Entourage and Rome, and missed the entirety of Band of Brothers and The Pacific. These have all been added to our Netflix queue, so rest assured, I’m taking steps to remediate!

First step was start watching Band of Brothers. I watched the first two episodes of Band of Brothers on Blu-ray. The video quality is very good. Although the picture is washed out in that wartime sepia color, the detail is certainly there. The audio quality is excellent, featuring DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround, and an extremely active surround sound atmosphere. When the bullets are coming in from the left during an intense firefight during the Normandy invasion, or when a tank drives by on the right and it shakes the the room. Excellent, excellent audio soundstage.

Band of Brothers (2001)

The story of Easy Company of the US Army 101st Airborne division and their mission in WWII Europe from Operation Overlord through V-J Day. The cast is large, and there are some interesting favorites in terms of character actors — Ron Livingston, Michael Cudlitz, Kirk Acevedo, David Schwimmer, Simon Pegg, Donnie Wahlberg (yes, NKOTB), Neal McDonough, Michael Fassbender, to name a few. Since there is a large cast, the story basically follows Lt. Dick Winters (Damien Lewis) as the commander of Easy Company.

The first two episodes are “Currahee” and “Day of Days.” The first episode takes place initially in the few days before the Normandy invasion of June 1944, but features flashbacks to basic training back in the States. The drama arises from the reign of terror of sadistic Herbet Sobel (David Schwimmer) who pushes them to excel, but also punishes them with capricious punishment. The episode ends with Easy Company loading up and taking off for the invasion.

In “Day of Days,” the story takes Easy Company into their less-than-ideal drop into the northwest French countryside, scattered and far from the expected drop zone. In the chaos, Easy Company’s paratroopers attempt to regroup and take out a German artillery bunker that are firing on the Normandy beaches. I found the acting and storyline to be good. While I like the large cast, the downside is that it’s a little difficult for me to tell the difference between the soldiers in the heat of battle.

There are a total of 10 episodes in this mini-series, so I’m 20% into this. Next up? “Carentan” and “Replacements.”