Some non-denominational holiday imagery from my family unit to yours. Photos from Masako's sexy new Contax U4R, and more to come.

I spend a lot of time messing with this site, playing with this, adjusting that. Purely cosmetic mind you, the content is always the same old dribble, just different wrapper. I also understand many readers don't care about how a website looks, and that it can be inconvenient to open the site in a browser every-time to read comments that are not included in my regular full post feed.

Enter the whole enchilada feed. That comes with a hungry-man helping of full post with two new side dishes, comments and trackback. All in one convenient RSS feed the whole family can enjoy. (template from fortysomething.ca)

Update: It has come to my attention that I have neither eaten an enchilada nor would I know what one would look like. If anyone in the enchilada community was offended by my use of the word enchilada in a posting that had absolutely nothing to do with enchiladas or the enchilada consuming public, then please accept my sincere apologies. If it's any consolation enchilada does sound tastier than a 'ball of wax'.

I'm a little late to the game discovering Modest Mouse, somehow I figured it was DJ Modest Mouse. You have to admit, the name doesn't do them any favours. Good News For People Who Love Bad News has been on heavy iPod rotation for weeks now. They have quite a unique sound mixing the standard guitar, drums and bass with accordion, banjo, organs, fiddle, upright bass, ukulele, and an entire horn section.

Isaac Brock (vocalist/guitarist) apparently taped an interview with MTV but something mysterious happened to the tape. So Isaac (with legal counsel present) put together this informative question and answer session. This album surely warrants exploring their extensive back catalogue.

The two of us decorated our pygmy douglas fir last night. The other, well she was content in taking it down at about half the rate we were putting it up, and tossing baubles into the kitchen. Charlie Brown would have been proud.

If you're interested in Japanese skateboarding then I highly recommend finding a copy of a quarterly magazine called Skateboard Journal. I wish I could point you to their website but they don't have one, or at least I haven't been able to find it.

Quality designed, fifty-plus full page and spread photos on thick glossy paper for 500 yen is an absolute steal considering the price of photo books. The last photo book I purchased was Masataka Nakano's Tokyo Nobody (recommended as well) but also five times the price. Of course photo books aren't packed with advertisements but I'm not complaining, as some of the best photography is found in the ads. And I wouldn't find cool websites like this, makers of the Full Metal Jacket.

The autumn/winter 04 issue highlights local talent Koichi Kitamura, Hiroki Saegusa, Jin Takayama, Hirotaka Akaguma, Shin Okada, Junnosuke Yonesaka, Shintaro Maruyama, Tadashi Muroi, Tatsuya Nogami, Daisuke Tanaka, Hisashi Nakamura, Daiki Hosoda, and Ryujin. And yes, they've been doing that well before the iPod ads.

You simply haven't lived until you've been Christmas shopping with a 18 month old who just learned how to run, and wants to grab everything in sight. You simply have not lived.

I've been working on this redesign bits at a time for a few weeks, and would probably be doing it for a few more if I didn't force myself to just go with it and publish. I've tried to strip all non-essential text, graphic clutter and what not off the pages. I've also switched to justified text alignment, which gives it that chunky newspaper look and is bound to generate some odd looking spaced out lines. Both the about and links page need more time, but I wanted to get something up before we went away on holidays. Feel free to let me know about any broken links or odd behavior. Next up, validation. I think I found my New Year's resolution.

The above relics were leftovers (overlooked in the rush *wink*) from when our new employer moved the IT operations department to a different floor of our building. When I first started working at this office almost three years ago, we spent the better part of a month hauling this god awful equipment around during floor layout changes. Oh the horrible memories of figuring out what goes where, and what connects to what, and what the hell is this.

What could be stranger than a typhoon in December? How about a beautiful sunny day with a temperature of 25 degrees. Shorts and sandals optional, but surely doable.

Oh [enter your chosen divine entity here], why can't I dance like Jay Kay? You know -- that guy from Jamiroquai. If life was a Bollywood movie, where conflict was settled over big dance numbers, and I could bust-a-move like Jay, no one would ever mess with me. But no big hats. If the deal is you give me funky Jay Kay dancing powers but I have to wear those ridicules Dr. Seuss hats then forget the whole thing.