Weblog and Playground of Gord Fynes

Holy shit! Did you see Hodgman on the Daily Show this week?The fuckin’ funniest five minutes of TV in a long, long time. Get those lighters ready.

The month of May in Toronto brings about the usual seasonal elements; one of the most interesting being the Contact Photography Festival. This year, my friend, and one of my favourite photographers, Stephen Burnie, is taking part in a small group show, Triofoto.

Happy Birthday, m’babe!

For a couple of years now, I’ve been studying photography/art/dharma in the style known as Miksang. My wife had first told me about it a few years ago, though, at the time, I didn’t really have an interest in things Buddhist. After seeing a CBC piece on Michael Wood, the gentleman that co-founded this approach, I nearly leapt out of my chair, pointing at the TV exclaiming “I wanna take pictures like that!”

The overall concept is to synchronize the eye and the mind. Some have called it “meditation with a camera”. I’ve jokingly commented to my teacher that Miksang was my gateway to sitting meditation in the Shambhala tradition.

Although years late to the table with this one, I’ve recently launched a daily photoblog-styled site, Fynesight.com, to showcase previous, current and future photographs of mine taken in the Miksang spirit.

Do stop by and have a look around.

A’ight.

If you’ve got yourself one of the new Intel Core Macs and are having no luck with the Flash plug-in, go get the latest version, complete with a how-to for the install.

Odeo users can now receive voice messages. Too cool for school! (hint, hint: shift your eyes just a little bit to the right)

Early this morning, in a grumpy haze over a bowl of apple-cinnamon Cheerios, I decided to fire off a snarky pre-Juno show question to the Globe and Mail’s music critic, Robert Everett-Green. I didn’t expect him to actually answer it, let alone on their site. Some other snarkiness I put to him:

Q: How many singer/songwriters does it take to cover Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”?

A: Apparently all of ’em.

Lastly, Jose Saramago’s new book, Seeing, is due out April 10. I understand that it’s supposed to be a sort-of sequel to Blindness. If you haven’t yet read it, I strongly advise you to do so. Never mind the DaVinci Code in paperback (although I’m yet to read it in any format); this’ll knock you on your ass.

Don McKellar, if you ever happen to read this, can I be in your movie adaptation? I could audition for the part of “blind man #163”, or something.

As you were.

Thanks to the excellent back-end work of Neil Lee, the Greater Toronto Area Bloggers mail list is up and running again.

Muchos gracias, Mr. Lee.

Muchos gracias.