Author: Darcy Casselman

Not that I’m fishing for well-wishes, I just thought I needed an excuse to dash off a quick post about little things. Like my birthday. Which was Friday, so you’re late anyway.

I am now 35. This seems like a large number. But considering I have vague recollections of the 70s, I suppose it shouldn’t be too surprising.

I had a party on Saturday during which we watched the series finale of Doctor Who. Which was awesome, by the way. I cannot express how happy I am with this season. While I enjoyed Russel T Davies’ Doctor Who and thought David Tennant was awesome, the writing really doesn’t hold up on reflection. And in the gap year especially, it was becoming increasingly clear that RTD had run out of ideas. The new series is fresh and new and excellent. Stephen Moffat’s writing is a lot tighter, even though he isn’t straying too far from RTD’s playbook. I love Matt Smith’s zany and alien portayal of the Doctor and I hope they’re able to develop it further through the series.

In short: awesome. If you’ve fallen off the Doctor Who bandwagon or have put off getting on, season 5 is an excellent point to jump on. And you totally should.

Unrelatedly, I’m giving a presentation at [[Kwartzlab]] tomorrow for our [5+5 lightning talk event](http://www.kwartzlab.ca/events/2010-06-29/55-v2). I’ll be talking about [Clutter](http://www.clutter-project.org/).

I’m debating tonight whether I should go to dodgeball or [Devhouse Waterloo](http://devwaterloo.pbworks.com/). I’m leaning towards dodgeball, because while I was hoping to preview my Clutter presentation at Devhouse, after spending the last couple days couped up inside, I think I need to run around for a bit.

You can just see the terror in this man’s eyes.

(hat tip, @[hypatiadotca](http://twitter.com/hypatiadotca/status/15733278805))

I was expecting [AN](http://animenorth.com) to be kind of sad this year, what with [Bill](http://thesidekick.ca/) off on his honeymoon. And, I mean, it’s not like I actually watch anime much anymore.

But it was fun, for the most part. I got to see a few old friends I don’t get to see very often. I got to hang out with people I see quite a lot, but never tire of. And I got to buy an awesome set of Long Cat pins. I mean seriously, check them out!

I also got to see Rin (who was too busy dealing with real life to bother with nonsense like Anime North this year) and watch [this week’s installment of Doctor Who](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Cold_Blood). She wasn’t entirely pleased with the ending, but I thought it was pretty brilliant.

Back at Anime North, score one for Kwartzlab, as [Alex’s commissioned Bowser costume](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7NAJUCy5MM) (aka the KwartzMonster, so named because he’s been living in the ‘Lab for many weeks) won Best in Class in the Master division. Go Alex!

Continue reading Anime North 2010 recap

I can’t eat out too much these days, which is too bad, since there seems to be a resurgence in interest in finding decent places to eat in the area.

[The 100, episode 4](http://ideastransform.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-100-episode-4) had a great discussion about the local restaurant scene. Although I took some exception to the Kitchenerite panel disparaging the selection in Waterloo. Come on, Kitchener is more than twice the size of Waterloo, people! Of course it has more restaurants!

The main argument was that while Waterloo had some nice, upscale eateries, it didn’t have any of the great, family-owned, hole-in-the-wall ethnic places where you could get a decent lunch for cheap. Which isn’t true at all. Just off the top of my head, there’s Classic Indian, Home Garden, Jia Jia Lok, Al Madina (expensive, but they use local, unofficially organic meat and produce, even if they don’t advertise the fact), Brady’s Deli, Masala Bay, Kismet… and then there’s a few new places that have opened up that I’d like to try if I was able to eat out.

I can eat out vicariously through others, though. The [Food in Waterloo Region Facebook group](http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&ref=nf&gid=106445362726415) just started up this week and may end up being more useful than the venerable [kw.eats newsgroup](http://groups.google.ca/group/kw.eats/topics), which can be a little crotchety at times. [Loudlunch](http://loudlunch.com) is a brand new blog dedicated to finding decent lunch spots in the area, mostly around downtown Kitchener. Well worth keeping an eye on. [Sapphire Martini](http://sapphiremartini.blogspot.com/) posts fairly infrequently, but has been around for ages and has a decent catalogue of reviews.