May 31st, 2007 at 10:17 am
(Cinema)
I’ve really grown to hate most movie reviews as I’ve noted below. I guess I really miss the days when you’d get to hear about the good things in a movie in addition to the things the critic may have had issues with.
Given that I’ll be brief about my impressions about the third Pirates movie: if you liked the first two you’ll like the third. They carry on with the supernatural elements of the story nicely, and all said things mesh together pretty well. Long before the big events of the end of the story you have a pretty good idea what is going to happen, but getting to see how things pan out is quite enjoyable.
No, like the other movies in the series it isn’t a deeply cognitive cinematic event designed to bring you to a higher level of consciousness. But it is fun, exciting, and a bunch of laughs. But then who the fuck always wants to watch heavy stuff? I enjoy all sorts of movies for what they are, and given that Pirates 3 definitely fills its role wonderfully.
For such a fast movie coming up with my favorite moments may be a bit difficult, but here are a few:
- ”Then to battle we shall go!” Sumbhajee was fucking hilarious.
- Giant Tia Dalma. Pity the movie was done by Disney. You know what I’m talking about.
- “Do you think he plans it all out or makes it up as he goes along.”
- The spyglass penis jokes.
- “You’re mad!” “Well thank god for that, ’cause if I wasn’t this would probably have never worked.”
All said I’d say it is worth seeing in the theater. And coming from me that means a lot since I get out to the theaters only once or twice a year most of the time. 
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May 30th, 2007 at 5:55 am
(Literature)
I finally got to finishing Crash by J.G. Ballard this morning. Whether or not you’re a fan of Cronenberg (though I certainly am) I highly reading it. All said I think it is a marvelous work and definitely recommend reading it. Ballard spins a wonderful tale about the transformation of humankind, both mind and body, at the hands of some of our most prevalent technology: the automobile. At the end I now see his point, how we have been transformed not by the majesty of our creations but by mutilation…mentally, sexually, and physically. Our new beings have healed together to fit a new way, new possibilities, new fantasies. Looking at the Internet I find myself thinking of how it hasn’t benefited our world in the way anyone had thought. Well, to be fair in many ways it has, but it is the unforeseen side effects that have ultimately truly changed us and given us a view inside the guts of humanity that we couldn’t see before accelerating our birth into something else.
For all the beautiful information the Internet has to provide, for all of the wonders I have seen because of it I realize that such things as Goatse and 4chan have truly had the most impact. They are horrors played upon the mind causing me adjust around them so my mind can work within the mangled cabin of modern human thought: revolution in its highest form.
I’m also reminded of my knee, functioning as it is - a collection of scar tissue, relocated connective tissue, manually carved cartilage, and metal. Destroyed from what it once was, but reborn into something else at the hands of a skilled surgeon through the violent transformation of an accident on the gym room floor. It is a knee in much the same sense that we are all still human: in function perhaps, but not entirely in form.
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May 24th, 2007 at 10:44 am
(Web Comics)
What to say about Least I Could Do. Well, first off Rayne, the lead character, is a pig, plain and simple. But he’s a lovable pig. Some would even be so nice as to call him a dog. But that’s the charm of the comic. Rayne and his circle of friends are quite different from most comic characters. You know that guy who is constantly hooking up with just about any woman he can get his hands on and once done he’s on to his next conquest? This is him.
I know, it is easy to have a character like this who doesn’t really have any charm to him, but in this case he does. All said he reminds me of a friend from high school…perhaps that is some of the reason I enjoy reading it so much. Much like my old friend, though, deep inside Rayne means well even though what he is up to most of the time is questionable.
LICD also has the added charm of having a group of friends that on the surface seems quite dysfunctional, but in the end works out well, once again reminding me of my friends. We’re awful to each other most of the time, but it is all in good fun.
I almost stopped reading when the author, Ryan Sohmer, switched artists from Trevor Adams to Lar Desouza. I’m not quite sure what the reason behind it was, but it took a little getting used to. All said it worked out so I’m happy. As with many comics that split up the writing and artwork we get to see some pretty complex storylines and recurring characters. No small feat for a standard 4 panel comic.
LICD is published six days a week like clockwork (they take Sundays off) and has a properly working RSS through Feedburner.
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May 24th, 2007 at 8:44 am
(Miscellaneous)
This week has demonstrated for me exactly why I hate TV so much.
On Monday we had the finale of Heroes, and man was it nice. I like how they ended it like a good comic book story. The story is finished…there is no real cliff hanger or anything like that, but they still leave enough open and foreshadowed for the next season to keep your interest. Similarly, last night we had the season finale of Lost, and FUCK was that good. I didn’t get into Lost when it first started…it wasn’t until my friend NamantH let me borrow his season 1 DVDs that I got hooked. But now…damn!
So here’s the first point of why I hate TV - if it is a good serialized series they punish you by making you wait for the next season. At one point the little woman (and for those who don’t get the reference I call her that because of one of my favorite Daffy cartoons) didn’t let us watch the finale for Las Vegas until just before the start of the next season. I should have done that with both Heroes and Lost.
So what’s the other thing? Well, there are a lot of shows I start to like but get yanked for who knows what reason. Hell…I can’t express how happy we were when they announced that Studio 60 was coming back. I don’t know why but I really like the show. Shit…I know one of the reasons…I like the nice contest of faith v/ faithlessness between Matt and Harriet (if I remember the names correctly). Why? Well, it’s kind of my thing I guess.
So anyway, if you haven’t been watching either Heroes or Lost I’d recommend it. Ignore what most of the fucknauts have been saying about them since as we all know that a lot of negative criticism on the net is written by attention seeking dorks, and not by people who actually try to enjoy their entertainment. We can of course reference the fine article by my illustrious office-mate, Mike about that one (that and I want to give him a trackback to see what happens).
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May 17th, 2007 at 10:40 am
(Science)
Call me a freak, but I’ve always been fascinated by complex natural ice formations. I think I got my start on it as a child watching the frost form on the storm windows of my house. There’s just something cool about how ice freezes forming complex crystal lattice structures. Even today I marvel at the ice found in my home town, Buffalo NY, during the winter. Watching how the water travels and the shapes change during the spring thaw is far more interesting to me than the hope that things will warm up.
But that’s just me, I guess.
I was reminded of this while poking through CNN.com this morning. They have a cool story about the antarctic ice melt during 2005:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Vast areas of snow in Antarctica melted in 2005 when temperatures warmed up for a week in the summer in a process that may accelerate invisible melting deep beneath the surface, NASA said on Tuesday.
A new analysis of satellite data showed that an area the size of California melted and then re-froze — the most significant thawing in 30 years, the U.S. space agency said.
Unlike the Arctic, Antarctica has shown little to no warming in the recent past with the exception of the Antarctic Peninsula, where ice sheets have been breaking apart.
Son Nghiem of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and Konrad Steffen of the University of Colorado in Boulder measured snowfall accumulation and melt in Antarctica from July 1999 through July 2005.
They found evidence of melting in several areas, including high elevations and far inland in January of 2005, when temperatures got as high as 41 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius).
“Increases in snowmelt, such as this in 2005, definitely could have an impact on larger scale melting of Antarctica’s ice sheets if they were severe or sustained over time,” Steffen said in a statement.
“Water from melted snow can penetrate into ice sheets through cracks and narrow, tubular glacial shafts called moulins,” Steffen added.
“If sufficient melt water is available, it may reach the bottom of the ice sheet. This water can lubricate the underside of the ice sheet at the bedrock, causing the ice mass to move toward the ocean faster, increasing sea level.”
I’ve never really seen much on the structures that lie beneath the poles, but I can just imagine how amazing they must look. I haven’t taken any serious study of it, but doing a quick check on moulins on wikipedia is pretty cool. After all, it makes sense that a glacier would have some way of transporting the water formed on top by the sunlight and warm air to the structures underneath since it usually isn’t a cohesive solid block of ice. I guess you’d get a similar effect by dripping water on a regular block of ice…eventually it would melt downward into a hole in the bottom.
Hmmm…I’ll have to try that. 
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May 17th, 2007 at 9:18 am
(Miscellaneous)
Checking on some of my recent web comics I ran across a LOTD from User Friendly pointing to Shorpy, one of the best photo blogs I’ve seen to date. It consists of nothing but old photos. The oldest are from the Civil War, but the most recent ones are from the 50’s. All said, just some cool stuff
The funny part is that today’s entry has a photo with a woman (the one on the left) who looks a hell of a lot like someone I knew back in high school. I wonder what she’s up to these days.
I’ll have to remember to add it to my Gregarious list. I have to clean it up anyway…lots of re-arranging to do.
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May 15th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
(Web Comics)
I started reading Rob and Elliot by Clay and Hampton Yount around the same time I got into Bigger than Cheeses. Much like it and many other comics it deals mostly with two friends living together causing all manner of mayhem. So what makes Rob and Elliot different?
First of all there’s a certain air of maliciousness you usually don’t see in the others. Yeah, you do get some overall nastiness in the others, but the shear ill temper of Rob and Elliot is a marvel to behold.
The humor is quite unique. Some of the buddy comics, for lack of a better term, show a definite derivative bend, but Rob and Elliot hits new chords and finds different angles of attack, much like most of the similar comics I read. I tend to get bored with the crap out there rather quickly.
The quality of the artwork is also quite nice. You do get to see some improvement over time, but honestly the work started off strong so it didn’t have incredible room for improvement without skipping out of style.
Fans of Sluggy Freelance may recognize Clay’s artwork from the Bikini Suicide Frisbee Days comics. If you’re familiar with that I think the level of humor and quality of the drawing will be quite familiar to you.
Oh yeah, and we can’t forget blah blah blah RSS blah, usually updated Monday and Friday blah.
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May 15th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
(Computing)
You’d expect when you spend hundreds of thousands or even millions including consulting costs for a piece of software that not only would it work, but it would be well written. Our previous experience at work proved quite otherwise. Our current, on the other hand, has panned out much better. Unfortunately I ran in to something that really ticks me off today.
In your typical database you have three logical states: true, false, and null. Null represents the unknown and undefined. Null is used for any data field that has no data in it. In other words a value that you do not know. Database logic is built around the idea that a null isn’t simply not a value, but an unknown. For instance if I ask for all rows where a certain field does not equal ‘X’, null columns aren’t supposed to be counted. Likewise in numerical values selecting less than a number won’t count nulls, they aren’t zeros after all.
Thus when you mean to use True/False (T/F) or Yes/No (Y/N) values you shouldn’t substitute F with null, nor should you substitute N with null because it ceases to work properly if you are using negative logic. Granted, negative logic isn’t processor friendly in the least, but none the less this does not account for allowing an obvious flaw in your data.
Now then, back to the topic. Today I was working in our the impressively expensive software suite we have purchased only to find a table with an indicator column that switched on Y/null instead of Y/N. My SQL and the logic of my programs that make reference to the table won’t be effected by it, but none the less such a glaring flaw in the data modeling makes me ill at ease. For the money you’d hope they would have corrected for such issues to make sure the entire structure of the database is rock solid and beyond any such little issues.
Of course anyone who enjoys video games knows that quality is far from being job #1 for much of anyone these days.
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May 8th, 2007 at 10:21 am
(Computing)
Last night I finally decided to bite the bullet and get to upgrading my one computer at home. The issue with it was that the old motherboard, an Abit AI7, was that something died in the CMOS or whatnot that prevented it from starting normally. It would start POSTing, but after a moment it would give an error code on the board and start up again. Thus the fans would just start spinning, then it would die, then they would start spinning, but then they’d die again. I replaced the CMOS battery, I replaced the motherboard with another AI7, but with the same results. To fix it I would just never fully power down the system. It was fine rebooting, but starting it was a chore. I’d have to clear the CMOS via the jumper, swear at it a few times, and it would eventually start up.
I’m sure there was an actual good solution to the problem, but it worked.
To finally take care of the issue I decided to do an upgrade, and by upgrade I mean everything outside of the case and DVD drives. The little woman and I gave the case a good cleaning, put the new parts in (correct the first try no less!), plugged everything in and started it up. The XP install was going along well enough until the audio drivers for the motherboard wouldn’t load. I didn’t think much of it since the network drivers came in fine allowing me to continue my initial install path: AVG, firefox, video drivers, windows patches. The problem was that the video drivers told me that there was no space available on the C: drive.
“By golly that can’t be right,” I said, more or less, to myself, “that’s a gosh darned 500 gig drive in there. Of course there’s some fine space left on that good drive. I wonder what the renowned programmers have done this time?” I hit Window-E and saw something that made me throw up into my mouth a little: the C: drive had somehow ceased being the partition I had just created during the install that told me it would be the C partition and was now the card reader on my printer. Of course D: was the DVD burner, and E: was the hard drive. Of course the audio drivers were assuming they would be on the C drive where the other ones were using the system root logical. So when I told the Nvidia drivers to go on to the C: drive it balked since there are no cards in the reader.
Just to repeat. Windows assigned drive E: to my primary system hard drive and C: to my freaking printer’s card reader that I have never EVER used.
Brilliant!
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May 8th, 2007 at 9:53 am
(Music)
Watching Ghost in the Shell: Stand Along Complex some time ago I fell in love with the theme song, Inner Universe by Yoko Kanno and Origa. I was familiar with Yoko Kanno from her work on Macross Plus among others and really enjoyed her work, but Origa’s voice was simply enchanting.
At some point thereafter I managed to score The Best of Origa. I’m still a little bitter that it costs over 40 bux to get any of her CDs, but that’s what you get for listening to anything thats different. Most of my David Sylvian collection cost an arm and a leg for much the same reason and that’s only coming from England. Anywho, the album is quite fantastic and Origa is an incredible singer. One of the songs bothers me, though, since I swear I’ve heard it somewhere before, but I can’t place it at all.
Now a little background on Origa. She’s Russian but became popular in Japan, so her albums are published through a Japanese company (at least as far as I can tell). Like any good vocalist she sings in several languages: Russian, Japanese, English, and even a little touch of Greek (at least that’s what aeria gloris is if the memory serves (which, by the way, means “heavenly glory”) from Inner Universe). The song listed as Waga Kokoro no Maria is thankfully sung in English, and reminds me of something, but I don’t know what. Here’s the lyrics:
Maria, I call your name in to the air every moment.
You’ll never know how much I wanted just one tender touch.
Maria, you ask me why, but I don’t know why I’m in love with you.
Something inside your heart called out to my loneliness.
I can’t go on without you, but I know you have to go.
Maria, I call your name in to the air.
Maria, I know I can’t see you again no matter what I do.
Maria, I call your name in to the air every moment.
You’ll never know how much I wanted just one tender touch.
Maria.
As you can see it appeals to my - uh - sentimental side. The thing that’s driving me craz, as I said, is I freaking swear I’ve heard it in something else, but I don’t know what. Either that or I’m experiencing some sort of ELIZA effect from the lyrics. I’m not sure which.
Perhaps the best part of the song for me is her accent in singing Englinsh. It seems to me that she learned English through someone that natively speaks Japanese, or made her English sound like it would as though spoken by a native Japanese speaker. Her R’s are very soft, but not quite the non-R sound you’ll get from good Japanese singers singing English, but that makes sense since Russian has the same type of R sound (well…sort of), but the thing that really tips me off is first how she pronounces Maria as though it were three flat Japanese syllables enunciated by pitch, not stress, and second how she pronounces matter as though it was “mata”. All said it sounds very nice.
Contrast it with Celine Dion’s R’s. She sounds like a hungry basset hound when she hits one of those. Anywho, nice song, great singer. And if ANYONE knows where the fuck this song came from I’d greatly appreciate hearing about it.
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