The Tracey Fragments

The Tracey Fragments

Today was likely my last of many films I caught at TIFF, The Tracey Fragments starring Ellen Page. The film tells the tale of Tracey Berkowitz, played by Page, a disturbed 15 year-old that goes through hell and back. The way in which it’s presented to audience is the real brilliant part of this film. It’s a technical masterpiece, with each scene shown broken many pieces, showing different perspectives, characters, and moments in time that really has to be seen to be believed (see sample above).

Think 24’s split-screen action/narrative sequences “on acid”, as director McDonald was fond of mentioning before and after the screening during the Q&A. What’s even better? McDonald announced after the film that they’d be releasing the entire film on The Tracey Fragments site as part of a Creative Commons re-mixing initiative to see if you can do a better job of mixing and mashing the movie’s sequences together than its very talented editors.

The filmmakers will be announcing a contest soon to encourage people to start remixing, but in the mean time, you can grab the video yourself in four 4-5GB torrents and get started.

The Avocado Project - Day 1


I have a bit of a thing for undertaking oddball gardening/DIY projects, and after engorging on the deliciousness that was this avocado, I stumbled across the unexpectedly large pit.

It looked as though it had growth potential, and through a bit of research (well, one Google search and picking the first result) I came across GardenWeb’s instructions, which seem to be written for children. Perfect!

The first phase of the growth involves pushing three toothpicks into the pit and suspending it in a glass of water. Mine is clearly mutated since it spun around with three, so I had to use four.

In "about three to six weeks" the top of the avocado is supposed to split, and sprout from the top. The countdown is on!