FLOSS and misc

blog has moved

2010-06-02T12:21:00.001+02:00

Blogger's composer window has often caused so much pain that I decided to move elsewhere.

quoting Paul Graham

2010-05-19T10:10:00.002+02:00

So I've bestowed the great honour upon Paul Graham as the best writer on software development, and I've revisited two of his essays and found this one gem:

It's not when people notice you're there that they pay attention; it's when they notice you're still there.

The idea is most likely unoriginal, but he really puts it well. He proceeds to make another interesting observation:

Problems can be improved as well as solutions. In software, an intractable problem can usually be replaced by an equivalent one that's easy to solve. Physics progressed faster as the problem became predicting observable behavior, instead of reconciling it with scripture.

implementing history using GTK+

2010-05-18T02:03:00.004+02:00

There has been feature that has been missing ever since Tracker's dedicated GUI search tool was written and I have now implemented it. The one major brickwall I had to overcome was understading the concepts of GUI design, specifically GtkComboBoxEntry and it's close relationship with GtkEntry, as well as GtkTreeModel and relatives.

Implementing this feature had me slouch through the docs for hours, and even led me to consult source code from a few sources and ended up implementing something similar to xfrun4, XFCE4's run dialogue. An extra nice thing I got from that dialogue is entry completion, which I implemented as well.

[update] The patch, on third try, has been committed!

recent movies

2010-05-17T12:07:00.002+02:00

Set in paradise, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a masterful work of art filled with wonderful works of art (paintings, music), and has an added bonus of having Penelope Cruz playing a character that's never been portrayed on film if memory serves me well.

Of the highest-rated of Akira Kirosawa's movies, Rashomon is given the stature of Seven Samurai, if not more, but for me it's just a dumb storyline with bad acting. In fact I found its ridiculousness unbearable in this revisit. Regardless, Toshiro Mifune is really an interesting actor, but happened to be given a shitty role, where he practically is a madman.

Far better is Mike Nichol's Wit which chronicles the suffering and thoughts of an intellectual giant during an intense months-long cancer treatment.

[sidenote] I once said that the three guys playing characters who are sheltering selves from pouring rain in Rashomon were good, but on second look only one of them, the inquisitive one who wasn't a witness, was any good, but I maintain he overdoes it still (silly grins, forced laughter). The monk just sucks and the other guy is a good actor (he really shined in Seven Samurai), only his good skill doesn't show up here, due to the shitty role.

how to access Oracle DB using Python in Debian

2010-05-13T17:04:00.018+02:00

environment

Debian Squeeze (which should be released in a few months).
Python 3.1, but I suspect that this should work well with Python 2.6.

installation

get registered on Oracle website (pain)
download oracle-instantclient11.2-basic*.rpm from Oracle's website (around 40MB worth)
convert the rpm to a deb ($ sudo alien oracle-instantclient11.2-basic*.rpm)
install the deb to your system ($ sudo dpkg -i oracle-instantclient11.2-basic*.deb)
get cx-Oracle rpm for python 3.1, convert it to a deb and install it

setup

$ sudo apt-get install libpython3.1 libaio1
$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/python3.1/site-packages/cx_Oracle.so /usr/lib/python3.1/lib-dynload/
$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client/lib/libnnz11.so /usr/lib
$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client/lib/libclntsh.so.11.1 /usr/lib
$ echo export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client/lib >> ~/.bashrc
$ source ~/.bashrc

test
If the following executes without printing a message to the screen, the install is most likely successful.

$ python3.1 -c "import cx_Oracle"

my favourite FLOSS

2010-05-12T13:52:00.016+02:00

backup
rdiff-backup

desktop
GNOME

development
Geany, Python

misc utilities
grep, Sudo, debmirror, Lsof, less, Meld, Uptimed, top, Tracker, Ex Falso, wajig, GNOME system monitor applet, xfrun4, coreutils (wc, tail)

spreadsheet
gnumeric

terminal emulator
GNOME Terminal

text editor
Geany

anything unreleased and highly anticipated
HURD, APT2

anything dying/dead
Coyotos

non-free
GMail
Blogger (@blogspot.com)

xfrun4 rocks

2010-05-10T11:26:00.002+02:00

The one desktop environment I live in is GNOME, which also happens to be my favourite too. It's got quite a lot of things that can be better of course and one of them is it's run dialogue. I once bumped into XFCE4's run dialogue and have used it since I've discovered years ago. What I like about it is, unlike GNOME's, it doesn't auto-complete using a large list of possible commands (presumably on the shell's path) but rather a smaller list consisting of commands I have actually run previously. What's more is that it makes those commands persistently available as history (which GNOME's does as well by the way). As if that's not enough, it will store only commands that were successfully launched to avoid storing typos and failed commands in history. These features makes for a superb, fit-for-purpose piece of software.

[update] I found this mail that I once sent to GNOME's list which proves that my opinion hasn't changed since 2007.

best of the web

2010-05-06T17:03:00.002+02:00

These are the best resources on the web that I've found so far:

atheism blog - Common Sense Atheism (praise)
software development - Stack Overflow (praise)
software development writing - Paul Graham (praise)

Site design:

blog - about:cmlenz

recent movies

2010-05-05T22:45:00.007+02:00

There is not a single performance (and I mean that) in An Education that isn't top-class, but favourites are the girl's silent mom and the glamorous blonde (such beauty!). The director also excels, but all this hides the fact that the characters don't have real depth, especially the girl's mom (door mat!), while the dad is not much more than a caricature.

The fate of the man who got strapped with bombs got me bursting out in tears in the not-so-typical war movie, The Hurt Locker. We also get a whole lot of detail deliberately left out. I'm left without knowing whether to herald such soldiers as heroic or not.

There's a gem here and there in Clash of the Titans but the visual effects are of inconsistent quality (battle with scorpions really sucks; all attacks by Hades are done well) and so is the character design (Hades and the monster, Kraken, are magnificent; the scorpions and it's riders suck). Also, the movie really leaves a bad taste in one's mouth, such that one is compelled to proclaim it bad, and that's not helped by the script.

Nothing this year so far was as exciting as Iron Man 2, which was impressive not only due to great visual effects but also good directing, script, and acting, and there's a nice cameo by Samuel L. Jackson, a normally uninteresting guy whose only other work I appreciate is Pull Fiction. The villain is a pleasure to watch.

I love the Debian supermarket

2010-05-04T16:50:00.005+02:00

I love the fact that whenever someone mentions a piece of software, I can quickly do a aptitude search piece-of-software knowing that there's a good chance that it's somewhere in the Debian repository. That means I won't have to get to the website looking for a download link, which, other than saving time, means I just have to deal with just one interface as well as the confidence that piece-of-software is well-integrated with Debian itself, given Debian's exacting quality standards. Debian really is a gem!

[sidenote]
The term, supermarket, as used in this context, was coined by a Debian Developer, although I mean it in a different and more positive manner.

Python people vs. Java people

2010-05-03T16:51:00.001+02:00

Now this is one heck of a controversial quote by the best computer programming blogger in my memory:

...when you choose a language, you're also choosing a community. The programmers you'll be able to hire to work on a Java project won't be as smart as the ones you could get to work on a project written in Python.

FLOSS pipedreams

2010-05-01T01:58:00.021+02:00

3D content creation
Blender (should be mainstream - used in blockbusters)

desktop
GNOME (should replace Mac as THE desktop experience, and then steal the market)

enhanced C Lib
GLib (should be a dependency of most C apps)

CRM/ERP
no favourite candidate (steal SAP's market share)

image manipulation
GIMP (should acquire feature-parity with Photoshop, and then steal the market)

DBMS
PostgreSQL (should acquire feature-parity with Oracle, and then steal the market)

programming language
Python (it's already comprehensive standard lib should rival all in terms of features; its popularity should exceed that of Java on the enterprise and PHP on the web)

OS
Debian (should be THE reference platform for various fields: large corporations, audio/video professionals, software developers, etc)

OS - future
pure GNU, with HURD as kernel (to make Richard Stallman smile)

packaging system
dpkg & APT (should replace RPM)

scientific computing
NumPy, SciPy (feature-parity with R and MATLAB, and steal the market)

sound server
PulseAudio (should be THE implementation of audio API, rivalling Mac's CoreAudio)

VCS
Mercurial (it's written in Python, and will be used by the Python project itself; should steal Git's market)

~~~

[sidenote]
My religious intensity isn't really strong for Mercurial and GTK+, but GNOME acceptance does mean Qt marginalisation.

the importance of a thorough grounding

2010-04-26T19:36:00.001+02:00

One can't get away from actually understanding the foreign concepts explained in Python language reference if one's intention was to write anything of significance. Sure one can play with the examples and exercises, but to write a real app, the brick wall ain't that far, and I think it's at this moment when a heck of a lot of people get burned and leave that project of wanting to master this (or that) subject. One often ends up hammering away at the code until something magically works, but that's after a heck of a lot of wasted time (and I've done a lot of that, whereby someone deemed it unimportant to learn the basics first).

As an aside, following is some of the stuff I've dabbled with without going far, which may well be due to this hit-a-brickwall/lose-interest problem:

Perl (hard to understand, given I was more familiar with Python)
regular expressions (Perl & Java implementations; am working on Python's implementation)
Python (am working on it, again)
Tracker code, written in C, Vala, and Python (but there's trickling progress)
GTK+ toolkit (although I've recently re-visited it through Tracker code, which uses the toolkit)

Stack Overflow rocks hard!

2010-04-22T13:32:00.000+02:00

So I can't believe that I only now discovered Stack Overflow. It's a programming Q&A (and much more!). It also has the best user interface and design I've ever seen on the web (if memory serves well).

sidenote

Within minutes of asking one specific question, I quite a number of high-quality answers. It's amazing!

me loving the world of Python

2010-04-20T23:40:00.000+02:00

Not only does the language itself impress, but so does its world:

When major changes are planned, they are thoroughly described in so-called PEP's. I was particularly impressed by the one detailing the choice of a DVCS to replace subversion, and the one detailing the release process.
The documentation is impeccable (and beyond comprehensive). It keeps me awake, leaving me drooling over it's excellent quality of writing (try find a grammatical error or misspelling!), and magnificent explanations. One shining example is the the optparse module -- we are taken gently through the idea behind concept of command-line handling, and even a mini-tutorial on how to use the module itself. My love also goes to Python's "What's New" page. This is not to mention the nice-look of the web pages themselves (and the feature to see the source from which the pages are generated from). It looks better than any official software documentation I've seen yet (disclaimer: I have frequent memory leaks) and a serious improvement from what it used to be.
I love the search interface for the bug tracking system (click on search) and its clean interface (though I must admit wasn't too intuitive to me in the few minutes I played around with it).

Java gripes

2010-04-16T18:02:00.021+02:00

Okay, so Java sucks 'a bit', but the following surprised me:

I struggled to find a way to count the number of elements in an array. In a string it's done thus: "four".length(). Given that, I expected that {'f', 'o', 'u', 'r'}.length() would gimme the same result. Nah! I found I had to do new char [] {'f', 'o', 'u', 'r'}.length, and yes, without the brackets after length. WTF! There might be a good reason for such (seeming) inconsistency of course, but I've been spoilt by Python's elegant equivalents: len("four") and len(['f','o', 'u', 'r']) which all give the same result. (sidenote: len() is a Python built-in function, which explains why there's no dot notation there).
The standard library doesn't have CSV handling! I had to find an external library for that!

am bad in context-switching

2010-04-16T12:50:00.001+02:00

A very vocal guy wrote an interesting post explaining the problem with context-switching (and more) in a job that requires as much focus as software development. In my case, I tend to easily get distracted, by things such as:

desktop notifications
receiving a phone call or an sms
chatting online
people in the office talking so loud I can't ignore them
listening to a song I'm not in the mood of hearing or if it's got listen-to-me lyrics (EG, much of hip-hop)
losing interest in the task at hand (probably the biggest problem of them all)

sidenotes

I think context-switching is a better name than multi-tasking.
I often wonder how Tracker developers tend to be so responsive on IRC, while developing the code. I honour them for that.

DD of the moment: Michael Biebl

2010-04-14T14:03:00.006+02:00

So I really do honour all Debian Developers (DD's) especially when they are named Michael Biebl. This guy is the lone maintainer of Tracker and rsyslog in Debian (among others). Not just that but he is also a co-maintainer of a large number of GNOME technologies (gnome-session, dbus, avahi, gnome-power-manager, gvfs, hal, network-manager...).

I love especially his role as some sorta QA for Tracker (he's done a terrific job of it -- most recently offering a bunch of patches to fix some linking problems in the code). Oh, and I'm not the only one who noticed -- the great Josselin Mouette, did offer accolades too for Michael's other work.

[index] developer of the moment

a visit to Botswana

2010-04-12T17:38:00.010+02:00

This past weekend, I finally went to this neighbouring country of ours, Botswana. It which was the first time I ever left South Africa. I was welcomed by wonderful people, and the visit was limited to its largest city -- Gaborone -- which is beautiful, sparse, and vast, when compared to my country's own cities.

One of its residents got shocked when I argued that South Africa doesn't have a unifying identity, arguing that the country is too diverse to have such. Instead she argued that such is country's very strength which led to her pointing out the following wins:

diverse (and therefore strong) economy; she stated Botswana is over-reliant on diamonds
diverse tourist attractions; Botswana's tourism is nearly non-existent in comparison
diverse export market; Botswana is all diamonds, again
press freedom - my input, which she agreed with
high foreign investment
diverse cultures
high media production standards; Botswana has only one tv channel and the little exposure I got of it expresses amateurish levels of production
passionate people (highlighting freedom fighters that enabled black rule; highlighting the toyi-toyi culture)

The conversation opened my eyes a little bit, that there's a lot to appreciate about South Africa. As I talked to more Botswana residents, and read one critical piece of journalistic writing, Botswana, despite being far more peaceful and having superior living standards (minimal crime, kindly people, minimal poverty, far-reaching welfare), has some serious warts smelly bits: abortion and homosexuality are illegal. I was shocked by these two, and most especially about the second one. What the fuck! And that the residents voted for such (the country is apparently very democratic) proves there's still a lot of work to be done.

Vox Day's 'omniderigence'

2010-04-06T16:17:00.002+02:00

I really enjoyed reading the section titled Omniderigence in Vox Day's book, 'The Irrational Atheist'. The term, which he coined, means the use of one's infinite powers (IE, God practicing his super-powers), which by the way he disagrees with. As far as I've read, his appears the most sensical of Christian religious believes I've heard and is a radical departure from what your typical Christian would state.

sidenotes

This guy is a real good writer and I enjoyed his analogy of his religious believes and game-design, in another section named Gods of the Machine.
He explains the term elsewhere too.
Check out his debate with atheist blogger, Luke Muehlhauser, of Common Sense Atheism fame. That's the debate that led me to the Vox's book.

my patches committed!

2010-04-05T18:36:00.001+02:00

So, two of the patches I created for Tracker have been committed (commit 1, 2)!

I consumed much info (and time) during the process, which entailed looking at Git usage (branch, checkout, commit, format-patch, ...) through Philip van Hoof's guidance -- my patches, though correct, weren't formatted right.

sidenote

Philip van Hoof also fixed a hard-to-reproduce bug which was a pain for me. The fix is a workaround for a GTK+ bug.

so much learned via Tracker bugfixing

2010-04-01T23:24:00.005+02:00

It's been maybe over a year since I've submitted a patch to any FLOSS project and have done so three times today, all for Tracker, perhaps my most favourite of all pieces of code.

This started with me nagging Martyn Russell, Release Manager for Tracker, about the suckage which was exposed by my usage of Tracker's preferences GUI. He proceeded to encourage me to write a patch, which I did. Later on Michael Natterer of GIMP fame guided me on some UI polish work.

I consumed much info (and time) during the process, which entailed looking at the following:

GTK+ API
Tracker's configuration internals.
1st look at Vala, the language with which the preferences GUI is written.
Tinkering with Glade, a RAD tool for quick GUI development, which makes things so much easier, especially considering that GTK+ isn't so straightforward.

certainty in the sciences?

2010-03-25T14:22:00.004+02:00

Mike Licona asked some professors at MIT about what criteria they use to determine truth in physics; me paraphrasing:

Typically we just form a hypothesis and try to fit the data, unsuccessfully at times; we are certain about very little in physics.

To support this, I once spoke to one post-graduate mathematics student who stated that even in mathematics there's some conflicts, specifically using geometry and its competing axioms as one example. Of course I lack serious training in any scientific field, so I can't really comment one way or another, but it's finding worth researching.

sidenote

The audio I linked is an unbearably boring and overlong interview/debate between Mike and Luke Muehlhauser taken from here; Mike keeps re-iterating through the same thing and comes across as a bit arrogant, not allowing Luke to finish his arguments/comments. Of course I could be biased.

debate: Mike Licona vs Richard Carrier

2010-03-23T02:29:00.005+02:00

I recently listened to a 2.5 hour-long debate between two scholars, Richard Carrier and Mike Licona, which alerted me to the fact that Jesus' Resurrection is regarded, at least to Christian apologists, to be very central to the Christian faith (here's an unsatisfactory review). I became far more impressed with Richard's performance than Mike's:

Mike was the only one who displayed some arrogance (a silly joke here and a chuckle there, unsuccessfully forcing his opponent to use the word delusion instead of hallucination, etc.).
Richard was more convincing (and the knowledge he displayed of this topic is mind-numbing).
He was more clear with his arguments.
He was seemingly more prepared (his opponent probably thought he was going to be a walkover).
Mike was a bit embarassing at times when mentioning The Passion of Christ, especially the time when he was praising Jesus (I cringed a bit there), and Richard, by the way, ignored references to that movie.

Based on these points, I vote for Richard as the winner, with the disclaimer that the latter part of the debate was getting too technical for me to follow thoroughly, but the whole thing was such an eye-opener.

sidenotes

See Luke Muehlhauser's well-argued take on the issue of the Resurrection.
Luke's blog, Common Sense Atheism, apparently has the largest collection of links to atheist vs theist debates and is therefore a great resource.

index: poll results of debian-user's favourite FLOSS

2010-03-17T23:01:00.002+02:00

Here's an index of the poll results where I asked on debian-user mailing list what their favourite FLOSS is. It's a yearly poll which has been running for a few years now:

recent movies

2010-03-12T23:58:00.003+02:00

Climaxed by the very last scene which is damn too hard to swallow, The Magdalene Sisters is a horrid portrayal of young women forced into slavery, in laundry facilities. I was praying while watching that the entire thing is fictional, but it appears it's a true story, as evidenced by the who-ended-up-where that is typical of such.

Hunted's cinematography and production design make it look like some made-for-tv fare; The first scene really sucks and the hand-to-hand battling isn't as impressive as on 1st look.

There's a painful mini-twist in Up In the Air; Vera Farmiga, playing a fuck buddy, is desirable while at the same time exuding maturity and wisdom; the opening credits sequence is pretty good, and so is the sound.

picks from Alonzo Fyfe's work

2010-03-10T01:30:00.007+02:00

Alonzo Fyfe, an atheist ethicist, addresses so many interesting issues that I decided to write a collection here. Note that this is just my understanding of what the guy writes, and nothing more (IE, I probably misunderstand him at times).

A superb post that shows the dangers of adopting beliefs without properly considering if they truly are beneficial to society. On top of that, Alonzo shows how some specific moral theories fail and, as if that wasn't enough, he proceeds to point out how well desirism fares in a form of a reply to a comment.
A well-written post revealing the elegance and simplicity of desirism. It's done with the aid of an exciting analogy of alien life forms. Alonzo is quite solid!
In scientific discoveries where some specific brain structure/chemistry is linked to some specific evil desire, there tends to be those proposing that those possessing such a brain are blameless, while Alonzo disagrees, so long as such a desire is malleable. In cases where such a desire isn't malleable (fixed), then such a person should be considered ill, not evil (which is an obvious conclusion I think). What he ultimately argues is that biology is no good basis for a moral system.

2012's effects were that bad?

2010-03-09T21:38:00.000+02:00

As I feared, Avatar has won best visual effects Oscar, but what's worse is that 2012, my favourite, didn't even get nominated! WTF!

Avatar's effects were that good?

2010-03-05T16:51:00.002+02:00

I got displeased that Avatar's visual effects were deemed superior to those of my personal favourite, 2012. Am I alone? [update]

religion is a hypothesis...

2010-03-05T01:22:00.001+02:00

Here's a powerful quote by Greta Christina, an atheist blogger respected by the mighty Luke Muehlhauser:

Religion is a hypothesis about the world: the hypothesis that things are the way they are, at least in part, because of supernatural entities or forces acting on the natural world. And there's no good reason to treat it any differently from any other hypothesis. Which includes pointing out its flaws and inconsistencies, asking its adherents to back it up with solid evidence, making jokes about it when it's just being silly, offering arguments and evidence for our own competing hypotheses...and trying to persuade people out of it if we think it's mistaken. It's persuasion. It's the marketplace of ideas. Why should religion get a free ride?

index: developer of the moment

2010-03-03T09:14:00.007+02:00

Here's an index of a series on developers I respect (at least at the time I wrote the post).

developer of the moment: Jürg Billeter

2010-03-03T09:01:00.005+02:00

I've been having Tracker memory problems and slow start-up times which Jürg recently fixed (commits 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). The developer, famous for his work on Vala, was applauded by Philip van Hoof on Tracker' IRC channel for that specific problem. Philip has praised the guy elsewhere quite a few times. Of course there have been praises from other developers too.

[index] developer of the moment

revisiting 'Kinsey'

2010-02-24T15:03:00.001+02:00

Prof Kinsey must be my favourite human character in my movie memory (stern, professional, unflinchingly unapologetic about the scientific value of his work, intelligent, brave, adventurous, and brutally honest). I won't risk my integrity by saying he's the best-developed character in that admittedly weak memory, but when thinking of such a guy (based on a real-life character), who went against the status quo by doing controversial research in American's sexual deeds, a tear nearly fills the eye.

Leeson's performance, excellent as it is, isn't award-worthy, but I'm too shallow to imagine anyone who can better him in this role.

recent movies

2010-02-15T11:56:00.000+02:00

Though the storyline of Hancock is screwed-up (unnecessary brawl that should have taken place elsewhere other than the city, underdeveloped explanation of super-ability, annoying plot-holes), especially the events after the twist, all casting is spot-on (check the 1st corporate meeting, the PR guy and his wife, inmates, the kids) and some of the action is pretty good (train smash). This a really fresh kinda superhero and it makes one salivate for (superior) sequels. (earlier review)

There haven't been many characters as unpleasant and bitter as Marlon Brando's asshole in Last Tango in Paris; I could not bear watching this movie at one go because it really is depressing and sleep-inducing, and happens to be way too eccentric (the subplot about the relationship the documentrary director and the beloved gal).I checked out the buzz and discovered that Pauline Kael, praised by many as the greatest ever movie critic, did fall for it. I just gotta go find time to read that piece.

This is way overdue but I finally watched Memento. It happens to be a very solid story and concept with superb handling. The acting is top-standard and that's from everyone, but notably Guy Pearce, and even better, Carrie-Anne Moss. The twist sucks a bit unfortunately.

recent movies

2010-02-10T14:03:00.000+02:00

I had intense anticipation for Ninja Assassin, and its intro lived up to the expectation while the rest failed (the momentum is lost even before halfway through); the brutality against the kids is hard to swallow; also the supernatural powers are left unexplained & martial choreography could be better; what I liked though is they helped wake up the appealing mystery of Ninja lore, which will hopefully pave the way for superior works.

Kung Fu Panda's initial allure didn't survive a revisit -- feels real shallow and the martial arts look aren't as impressive.

I can't dig deep enough in my memory to find a movie as lame as Skin, a real-life drama set in apartheid South Africa; the editing disgusts, leaving one suspecting that it was a rushed job.

preventing aversion to homosexuality?

2010-02-09T10:46:00.003+02:00

I shed a tear today when reminded again of the pain brought forth by oppression against homosexuals, and was wondering what was I to do to help avoid it. Speaking to one person who has aversion to that form of sexuality, it appeared that Christianity was the cause, which implies I must help deconvert Christians (or at least the dogmatic bible-literalists). I was also thinking that I must join the 'gay & lesbian pride' marches to show support, or even fight to be rich in order to help support organisations that help increase awareness and acceptance of such peoples. All I've been doing so far is speak against aversion to such peoples, while hypocritically abusing their nature when it suits the joke (fuck me!). Let's see how I fare...

sidenote 1
It always pains whenever I hear of a case of oppression against homosexuals, and this post was inspired by some TV program I saw recently showing a girl raped purely based on her being lesbian.

sidenote 2
This is perhaps the least-developed of my posts, and I was too lazy to search the more effective ways of preventing such aversion.

hip-hop greats

2010-02-01T14:22:00.003+02:00

landmarks

MC's Act Like They Don't Know (KRS-One and DJ Premier)
My Downfall (Notorious B.I.G.)
Nas is Like (Nas)

masterpieces

Animal in Man (Dead Prez)
Bad Dreams (Busta Rhymes)
Doggy Dogg World (Snoop Dogg)
G Funk Intro (Snoop Dogg)
Gz & Hustlas (Snoop Dogg)
Hip-Hop (Dead Prez)
In the Music (The Roots)
Serial Killa (Snoop Dogg)

excellent

Beware (Big Pun)
Cowboys (Fugees)
Distortion to Static (The Roots)
Don't Feel Right (The Roots)
8 Mile (Eminem)
Elevators (Outkast)
For All My Niggaz && Bitches (Snoop Dogg)
Fu-Gee-La (Fugees)
Gin And Juice (Snoop Dogg)
Hard Knock Life (Jay-Z)
Hold (KRS-One)
How Many MC's (KRS-ONE)
How Many Mics (Fugees)
I'm A African (Dead Prez)
It's A Party (Busta Rhymes feat. Zhane)
Kick in the Door (Notorious B.I.G.)
Mask, The (Fugees)
Mathematics (DJ Premier, Mos Def)
Mind Sex (Dead Prez)
Miss Jackson (Outkast)
Micranots? (Micranots)
Murder Was the Case (Snoop Dogg)
Next Movement (The Roots)
Old School (Tupac)
Ooh! (De la Soul ft. RedMan)
Track 15, album: Slum (Slum Village)
Pump Pump (Snoop Dogg)
Ready Or Not (Fugees)
Respiration (Blackstar feat. Common)
Respond/React (The Roots)
Score, The (Fugees)
Section (The Roots)
Shook Ones Pt. II (Mobb Deep)
6th Sense (Common and DJ Premier)
Still (Dr Dre feat. Snoop Dogg)
Tell Me Something (Arrested Development)
Ten Crack Commandments (Notorious B.I.G.)
They Schools (Dead Prez)
Thirty Three Threes (Canibus)
Throw Yo Hands in the Air (Cypress Hill)
Tradin' War Stories (Tupac)
Travellin' Man (DJ Honda and Mos Def)
Way I Am, The (Eminem)
Woo-Ha (Busta Rhymes)
Wot The Do (The Roots)
You Came Up (Big Pun)
You'll Find A Way (Dead Prez)

special mentions

Life Goes On (Tupac) - chiefly for being an ex-landmark; am not really enjoying no more
Quiet Storm (Mobb Deep feat. Lil' Kim) - chiefly for having a really favourite chorus by the Kim lady
Shove This Jay-Oh-Bee (Canibus) - me loving the so-alive beat

desirism

2010-01-27T16:11:00.004+02:00

Luke Muehlhauser has exposed me to one morality theory, desirism, created by Alonzo Fyfe. Now I've spent hours skimming through Alonzo's massive blog (1000+ posts) and am still trying to get my head around his theory.

However, while reading through Luke's FAQ on the theory, I came across faithlessgod's superb summary, a very clear and concise intro.

recent movies

2010-01-25T22:00:00.002+02:00

I don't know what to make of the experimental Waking Life, which got a helluva lot of seemingly needless philosophical babble, about a guy failing to wake up; the twist is real fun.

I wasn't gonna mention the formulaic and stale Confessions of A Shopaholic, but loved the funny scene where a group of shopaholics come together to help cure their obsession; I also loved the flawless dummy visual effects.

Fracture's story proved a bit sketchy and not so brilliant on second look, while Rosamund Pike remains a goddess (not to forget the gorgeous Ryan Gosling), and the overly playful Anthony Hopkins pulling a great and effortless one.

simple point system for rating music

2010-01-18T14:53:00.000+02:00

I use a simplistic point system to rate top music tracks:

landmark = 3 points
masterpiece = 2 points
excellent work = 1 point

I wonder what others use and am too lazy to search.

Letta Mbulu vs. Miriam Makeba

2010-01-18T14:37:00.006+02:00

I've been wondering for years which was superior between these two divas, possibly the greatest South African musicians ever.

Miriam Makeba:

3 masterpieces (Gauteng; A Luta Continua; Welela)
3 excellent works (Mam Ndiyalila; Meet Me At the River; Goodbye Poverty)

Letta Mbulu:

1 landmark (Jikijela)
3 masterpiece (Not Yet Uhuru; Nomathemba; Zimkile)
6 excellent works (Music In the Air; Ndi-Phendule; Buza; I Need Your Love; Maru a pula; Kube)

My simple point system gives Makeba 9 points and Mbuli gets a whooping 15. That's a scary number since it would mean she's superior to Salif Keita and just a point below Burning Spear! This I should revisit!

sidenote
Oh, and I'm sure there's a lot of Miriam's work that I haven't trawled through. Either that or Miriam Makeba is, though excellent, is overrated, since I suspect she becomes a common answer to the question "who's the greatest female South African musician?". That's the answer that I also once had until I savoured much of Letta Mbulu's work and walked away amazed.

'Common Sense Atheism' rocks!

2010-01-08T12:23:00.009+02:00

I've read dozens of posts by Luke Muehlhauser at his Common Sense Atheism site, among the best blogs I've read ever, which also happens to be the first and only atheism blog I regularly read [update]. The guy regularly manages to enthrall me with his thorough and very broad outlook on the topic, managing to put words where I'd fail (or even sub-topics I wouldn't expect anyone would write about), his intelligence (EG when debating some real smart theists), the courage of promoting some off-beat ideas, not to mention the quality of much of the commentary he receives from readers. Even more impressive is that the the guy is in the 1st half of his twenties.

sidenote

My favourite posts are too many, so here's his own links to what he deems most useful.
The guy has received serious praise from his other readers (check the comments here).

best-of-career performances

2010-01-06T00:39:00.006+02:00

Anjelina Jolie (Changeling)
Carrie-Anne Moss (Memento)
Clive Owen (Closer)
Cuba Gooding, jnr. (Dirty)
Denzel Washington (Malcolm X)
Guy Pearce (Memento)
John Malkovich (Changeling)
Kerry Washington (I Think I Love My Wife)
Kirsten Dunst (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)
Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby)
Nicole Kidman (Birth)
Rosario Dawson (Seven Pounds)
Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction)
Will Smith (Ali)
Woody Harrelson (Seven Pounds)

2009 movie review

2010-01-05T22:24:00.008+02:00

The year started with a whole lot of stellar performers but slowed down later on since I did things other than watch movies. Regardless, that early period represented some of the best movie years in recent memory, a period that exposed a masterpiece, the first time in years.

movie of the year
Zatoichi rocked hard -- it's telling of a classic quite hero is on-spot -- and so did it's runner-up, the super-fresh District 9, the best movie to ever come out of South Africa.

best movie
The year's best movie and only masterpiece is Baise-moi whose unflinching and scary and uncomfortable treatment of violence has rare intensity, the raw intensity of Bamboozled's climax and the harshness of Natural Born Killers, without the humour. Changeling, 1st runner-up would easily have been another masterpiece had it not been spoilt by the serial killer story on it's 2nd half. There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson's best movie so far, is 2nd runner-up, and is held back by the apparent lack of purpose -- what's the story actually about.

best direction
I can't decide which got superior handling between Changeling and There Will Be Blood.

Changeling, which gets more accolades than any other movie this year, gets the best production design, costume design, and cast (runner-up is Shoot 'Em Up, which itself scoops best cinematography award).

performances
The year's performances are a tie and all go to one movie, Watchmen -- Jeffrey Dean Morgan as The Comedian Jackie Earle Haley when face is unmasked.

There was quite a number of superb male performances, the best being Daniel-Day Lewis' near-flawless oil miner in There Will Be Blood, followed by John Malkovich's activist in Changeling, followed by the ever-magnificent Jack Nicholson's grumpy tycoon in Bucket List, while 3rd runner-up is a tie between Woody Harrelson's blind man in Seven Pounds and Robert Duvall's unscrupulous media man in Network.

The year's best female performance came from Anjelina Jolie's grieving victim in Changeling followed by a tie between Rosario Dawson's love interest in Seven Pounds, Faye Dunaway's fast-talking media lady in Network, and Tilda Swinton's fleeting lover in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

characters
Compared to last year, this year is lacklustre, except for desirable gals where Golshifteh Farahani (Body of Lies) and husky voice (likely Brenda Vaccaro) in Midnight Cowboy take the crown. 1st runner-up is leading lady, Zhao Tao, in Still Life followed by (cheat) the warrior girl in Avatar, who/which also happens to be year's best creature.

Character design goes to the talking toys of Toy Soldiers.

Due to a lack of a worthy villain, I'll crown Changeling's police force as the year's best for their unbearable acts of cruelty.

visuals
2012 has some seriously explosive visual effects, among the best ever so far. The runner-up is Transformers 2, and then Avatar, then District 9. The best visual effects artefact is the robo-bikes in Terminator 4 and runner-up is the exo-suit in District 9.

misc elements
The year's greatest spectacles are 2012 and Avatar; best thriller is Law-Abiding Citizen; most original movie, or one that feels so, is District 9; best comedy is You Don't Mess With the Zohan; the most enchanting/delightful is Wall-E, followed up by Sponge Bob.

The year's best action movie is Quantum of Solace, followed by Avatar; the most bizarre is Ghost Dog, followed by Watchmen; the funniest is You Don't Mess With the Zohan, followed by Yes Man, then Monsters vs. Aliens.

misc small things
best opening credits sequence is in Rock 'n Rolla; worst humiliation in There Will Be Blood; the most touching moment(s) is the relationship between the Chinese and Russian lady in The World, followed by a childish romance between silly tent constructor and sweet servant in Monsoon Wedding.

bad things
The most overrated movie is Tokyo Story. What the fuss is it about this sub-standard and unbearably-eventless sob story? Rashomon, though more bearable, left me even more disappointed since it was heavily punted a landmark. Slumdog Millionaire, though really good, was treated to far more fanfare than it deserved. Here's listing of the year's worst shit:

Max Payne
The Invisible
Death Race

others
Angels & Demons; Awake; Babylon A.D.; Bee Movie; Day the Earth Stood Still, The; Duplicity; Eagle Eye; Fan Boys; Frailty; Frost-Nixon; Gran Torino; Happening, The; Ice Age; In the Realm of the Senses; Inglourious Basterds; International, The; Karol - A Man Who Became Pope; Leatherheads; Marie Antoinette; Max & Mona; Nashville; Notorious; Obsessed; Once Upon A Time in America; Once Upon A Time In The West; Orphanage, The; Pride; Promise, The; Psycho; Push; Ran; Saw V; Speed Racer; Sponge Bob; Star Trek; Star Wars: The Clone Wars; Still Life; Superhero Movie; Taste of Cherry; Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down; Traitor; Valkyrie; Wind Will Carry Us, The; Wrestler, The; X-Men Origins: Wolverine; Xiao Wu; Zack & Miri Make A Porno

'Law-Abiding Citizen'

2010-01-05T12:33:00.001+02:00

It got Se7en's theme of super-smart villain who got everything figured; difference here is that the villain's deeds aren't so well-justified, and its creators ignored what made Se7en's ending great, which spoils what is an otherwise superbly-made and -acted movie.

Teddy Pendergrass vs. Barry White, again

2010-01-05T12:03:00.008+02:00

Realising Pendergrass only got one shining piece, Barry wins easily, but I guess I need listen to a whole lot more to have a fairer judgement.

Teddy Pendergrass:

1 masterpiece (Turn Off the Lights)

Barry White:

1 landmark (Bring Back My Yesterday)
1 masterpiece (Let Me Live My Life Loving' You Babe)
1 excellent work (Just the Way You Are)

So, that's 2 points for Teddy (I once considered that track a landmark) and 6 points for Barry.

food for thought

2010-01-04T16:06:00.005+02:00

An interesting critique of the use(lessness) of intellectual atheist arguments -- I do somehow agree with the conclusions for I've noticed that whenever I debate with a theist and defeat an argument, I often find that another arises. That is, my opponent has already made-up his mind, and whatever I say won't change his primary position, which is 'God exists', whatever God is.

top musicians

2010-01-04T14:26:00.009+02:00

So, who are the best musicians in history (in my ears)? Let's make an attempt.

Burning Spear:

1 landmark (Old Marcus Garvey)
4 masterpieces (Tradition; Invasion aka Black Wa-da-da; Marcus Garvey; Give Me)
5 excellent works (Creation Rebel; Lion; The Wilderness; Slavery Days; Civilise Reggae)

Bob Marley:

1 landmark (No Woman, No Cry)
2 masterpieces (Stir It Up; One Love)
5 excellent works (Waiting in Vain; Kaya; Sun is Shining; Satisfy My Soul; Redemption Song; Rastaman Chant)

Salif Keta:

5 masterpieces (Inigiche; Souareba; Yamore; Mandjou; Cono)
4 excellent works (Nyanafin; Tekere; Seydou; Madan; Sina aka Soumbouya)

And now just for interest's sake, just to check how the god of song pits against these grandmasters.

Fela Kuti:

3 landmarks (Lady; Confusion; Igbe)
3 masterpieces (No Agreement; Shakara; Gentleman)
9 excellent works (Egbe Mi O; Fefe Naa Efe; Who No Know Go Know; Just Like That; Pansa Pansa; Eko Ile aka Black Man's Cry; Water No Get Enemy; Zombie; Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense)

My simple point system easily reveals who greatest is:

Fela Kuti, 24
Burning Spear, 16
[update] Letta Mbulu, 15
Salif Keita, 14
Bob Marley, 13

sidenote 1
This post was initially to be a comparison between Burning Spear and Bob Marley, who I considered a tie, behind mighty Fela Kuti.

sidenote 2
For quite a while, this list of grandmasters consisted of just three musicians (sidenote 1), making Salif Keita the latest entrant, and am surprised that he beat mighty Bob.

sidenote 3
This rating considers all music genres except classical, hip-hop, and house music. They are kinda incomparable.

'Avatar'

2009-12-23T00:09:00.009+02:00

Avatar is quite a pleasure even though its overall look is distasteful (it feels too artificial). One however develops affinity to the tall creatures, helped much by Pocahontas girl (she is beloved) as well as the spiritual leader (she got a great presence). The action set-pieces are also tops but the human enemies aren't convincing. The whole thing is standard, predictable fare, yet manages to escape being cheesy, and there's nothing quite like it ever done before, and that leaves a feeling of freshness.

It was supposed to be a visual feast, and it is to an extent, but does not even come close to the glory King Kong is. Perhaps the visuals are technically superior, but taste matters, so I'll take even those of Lord of the Rings in preference.

others' notes

I liked this short analysis of the movie.
One commenter correctly noted stylistic similarities to the much-deplored Jar Jar Binks of Star Trek fame.
I also enjoyed a disapproving review by a famous inventor and futurist, Ray Kurzweil.

anticipated gaming experiences

2009-12-22T13:54:00.003+02:00

Reading GameSpy's 2009 gaming review makes me salivate, again. Here's the games it reminded me of, that I gotta play before death (time and money allowing):

God of War 1 & 2
Gears of War 1 & 2
Assassin's Creed 1 & 2
the selections from their 2006 review

my deconversion

2009-12-22T11:29:00.005+02:00

One of the top atheism bloggers today, Luke Muehlhauser, posted a gorgeous snippet by a Christian who happens to be unhappy with the contents of the Bible, a story which is scarily similar to mine.

Often people ask when I became atheist, and I can't answer them with a date since it was more of a process, and reading the Bible (the entire thing) was among the earliest steps towards that end -- the God I imagined couldn't allow things as horrendous as portrayed in the Old Testament. I proceeded to praying hard since I saw I was losing faith, a scary thing when you are so indoctrinated, and then noticed that I was trying to convince self of non-existent junk.

more of Jia

2009-12-22T10:52:00.001+02:00

Jia Xhag-ke's Xiao Wu is nearly as dull as his Platform, but rescued by it's shorter running time and sprinkled with some joy in a form of the romance that transpires, a romance that helps one sympathize with the otherwise annoyingly-boring and cold title character. A more observant critic saw far more than I did.

The World is quite a gem: the romance is heartfelt (Jia is real good on that subject, as he proved in Xiao Wu), and the friendship between the Chinese and Russian sweet. Jia is also capable of having me cringe at the ridiculousness/mediocrity of humanity since the title of the movie actually refers to the theme park of various world landmarks, EG a smaller replica of The Eiffel Tower, and, worse even, people taking themselves photos in front of the fakes.

undo underused

2009-12-21T11:57:00.005+02:00

I bumped across a great post on the advantages of undo vs. warning dialogues. I'm still dying of having such functionality in Nautilus file manager.

recent movies

2009-12-05T00:26:00.004+02:00

I don't remember a movie whose visual effects are of the scale of 2012, and only King Kong's are superior; The early scenes are much fun, with nice superficial touches reminiscent of Transformers; The whole thing is dragged by some family drama as well as an uninteresting John Cusack; Me loves the designs of the arks, and the 'chase' scenes, all an excuse to showcase the extravaganza that is the effects, are pure fun. I nearly forgot to mention how much I like the large Russian billionaire, an otherwise unconvincing buffoon that offers much comic relief.

The first scene of Inglourious Basterds is top-class, for the performance of the weary farmer when forced to make an unpleasant choice, the sort where I feel self-death is better; Brad Pitt is quite limited in terms of talent but not charisma; Quentin Tarantino is a weirdo who possesses the freedom (perhaps too much) to paint whatever he pleases on screen, and luckily got the talent.

FLOSS and football

2009-10-23T20:12:00.003+02:00

I just read an interesting analogy between FLOSS projects and soccer clubs with emphasis on what the former can learn from the latter. This is the sort of thing that isn't so obvious, and therefore eye-opening, alerting one that there's so much out there that FLOSS communities can learn from.

recent movies

2009-10-23T14:04:00.003+02:00

Before Daniel-Day Lewis' oil driller in There Will Be Blood, I don't remember any other character in movie history as ruthless as Al Pacino's in Scarface; Lewis' however is tougher, darker, and even better-developed, rendering Pacino's seem a mere maniac. None of the other performances has any noticeable flaw either and the movie starts like a masterpiece (the first few moments of silence showcases class-act direction, the characters are amazing, etc.) and, though it never surfaces to the level of common fare, doesn't quite reach the pinnacle. The end leaves one wishing there could be more to the story, perhaps a bit of colour to an otherwise painful movie IE there's not a single ray of light, bar the barely-explored romance of the lead's son.

Interestingly, the entire work isn't as depressing as the story suggests, but rather more of an adventure, as well as a unique and powerful exploration of mining life, not to mention a graphical depiction of the dangers it entails.

On a much lighter note, I found Sponge Bob surprisingly good, given its bad taste crude animation style. Its humour and wit is top-class, but it's forgettable at the same time, especially since I find myself not remembering a thing -- unless I try harder -- a day after seeing it. It's unfortunately spoilt by mixing it with some live-action.

Ice Age 3 failed to live to the stellar expectations suggested by its immediate predecessor, although I liked the otherwise overdone one-eyed guide.

Chen Kaige's The Promise is nearly as annoyingly bad as his other overly-depressing piece of shit, The Emperor & the Assassin. Strange for a guy who excelled with Yellow Earth.

revisiting 'Breakfast Club'

2009-10-20T12:37:00.000+02:00

I remember with great fondness what an impact Breakfast Club had on me over 10 years ago. The characters are interesting, the dialogue decent, and storyline still got a punch. It's about schoolkids in detention, each interestingly an all too common movie cliche -- sportsman, prom queen, punk, brainy, weirdo -- and the movie is a good attempt at exposing the problems each goes through as they get more than enough of a chance to confide into each other. Oh, and Claire, prom queen character, is a babe really.

Firefox > Epiphany

2009-10-05T00:09:00.004+02:00

I've ditched Epiphany in favour of Firefox (Iceweasel in Debian) for quite a number of months due to Epiphany's lack of entry completion. On top of that, what Epiphany also lacks is downloads-resuming feature, although I haven't checked lately. The version I'm using, 3.0, is a serious memory hog though and some flash activity eats some serious CPU cycles too (though I wonder if there's any browser that handles that one more peacefully).

recent movies

2009-09-30T09:20:00.001+02:00

Jia Zhank-ke's Still Life is surprisingly-good, one because it's far better than his tremendously-overrated Platform, one because of beautiful camerawork. The story is handled with great skill, allowing one to lost in it, as if experiencing the pain of both poverty and lost parental love with the characters. It's also blessed with a beloved leading lady.

The documentary style has been employed elsewhere but there's nothing quite like District 9 in all movie history. Its weird and wonderful story starts off with nice comic touches and transitions into a harrowing tale of human torture, and ends as some sorta action-adventure of sorts, complete with superb visual effects (with some nice creature ideas -- check everything about the 'wearable' robot). Sure there's warts here and there, especially the (puzzlingly) underdeveloped storyline, and some formula here and there, but to have a gem like this emerge from South Africa is quite something. I nearly forgot to applaud the lead performance.

On a much lighter note is Monsters vs. Aliens which starts off like sub-standard fare until the US president shows up, the prison warder, and a whole bunch of other characters, adding serious comic punch. It's however way quirky, like no one wanted any awards.

tainted Teresa

2009-09-24T05:33:00.005+02:00

While I was thinking of the topic I covered in noble dreams, Mother Teresa appeared in my mind due the imagery of nobility that she possesses. I decided to go check out her story for inspiration, for the first time ever, and came back disappointed and even shocked at much of her (alleged) shortcomings.

Nevertheless, I was captivated by her words:

[our mission is to take care of] the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.

Cherry rocks

2009-09-22T17:46:00.004+02:00

This morning I read "Cherry Does the Time Warp", part of the funny and politically satirical adult comic series, Cherry. It's not the first time I've read a Cherry installment, but this specific one parodies some characters in history and popular media in a fun manner, but it's highlight is Cherry's encounter with her teenage, sexually-inept mom (and you can imagine what transpires).

recent movies

2009-09-22T16:48:00.002+02:00

Although nobody cares to explain why the obsessed is obsessed in Obsessed, we get quite a treat with a seriously-gorgeous, not-too-incompetent Beyonce and a perfect gentleman of a husband as well a decent cast and direction. Someone worked real hard to get that guy as perfect as it gets by the way, and in way I don't remember in movie history.

I figured the popularity of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho was way overblown after watching it for the first time, but there's one superb scene where the private detective (a real good performance) questions the suspect, whose tense emotions are well-enhanced by the camera angle (which would be a bit of a spoiler for one who hasn't seen it). Rest of the stuff is just banal and the end-scene (the explanation), though well-acted, doesn't help.

You can imagine what I thought All That Jazz was about especially since I had no idea what the story was, and yeah it's not about jazz at all. It's luckily sprinkled here and there with good dance sequences, but since it was done in the US 80's (okay, that's 1979, but it's close enough), there's bad costumes, hair styles, and music all over the place, and is nearly unbearable with its eccentricity and the depressing ailment moments. The music-infused delusions the protagonist goes through don't help either, regardless of how innovative the whole treatise may be. Highlights: the sex dance sequence, and the daughter & lover sequence, and even some decent comic touches, EG some of the hospital scenes.

there had better not be life out there!

2009-09-17T11:45:00.002+02:00

I thoroughly enjoyed re-reading an essay on why we better hope we don't discover extra-terrestrial life. It's 8 pages of superb writing and is pretty thorough (check how he explains the myriad possibilities, and how he challenges even those), and nearly as exciting as the 1st time I read Richard Feynman's "There's Plenty of Room At the Bottom". I consider this essential reading for any enquiring mind.

unrealized dreams

2009-09-17T11:27:00.003+02:00

My biggest dream for a long while was becoming a DD (Debian Developer), but why am I not pursuing that? Let me just say laziness and lack of motivation, or even lack of focus. There's so many things I want to be technically proficient at and it's tough to choose one (Python coding, Debian system admin, GTK+, Tracker, Xorg). And there's distractions all over the place.

Whether I'm going ahead with this is still unresolved so the dream ain't nearly dead, but the dead dream is that of becoming an academic in some field. As with FLOSS there's many interesting fields to choose from (mathematics, electronics, computer science, physics) but I ain't going any of these routes, most likely because I don't enjoy formal education, disliking the pressures involved. Me hating stress would rather pursue these on my own as I'm doing with FLOSS. Or maybe I'm just a chicken, afraid of committing! I mean I didn't even finish my university degree due to similar excuses I mention above. Ah well...

noble dreams

2009-09-17T11:05:00.004+02:00

I was having a discussion with a colleague over chat software, asking her about her major dreams. After some deliberations, and after revealing my own dream of helping a million people, I was touched when she stated she wanted to open a clinic offering free services as well as a place to help unemployed mothers. I immediately wished I was rich enough to grant her the dream.

One reason I asked this question is I'm actually interested in what's in other people's minds and am often looking for inspiration. Her dream reminds of a fantasy I once had, like if I had a billion Rands (divide by ~8 to get US$), what I'd do is build a hospital and fund it for years on end. That's largely because SA public hospitals generally stink, both literally and figuratively. And while on that topic, I was recently discussing with a friend that there were other issues that escalated the problem before we even talk of insufficient funding: efficiency and corruption.

While still on the dreaming side of things, someone mentioned that a dream that truly drives a person is normally ego-driven. Reminds me of a great dream of becoming a DD (Debian Developer) which kinda died -- I am instead looking to contracting existing DD's to put more time on the work that pleases me on that most favourite of OSes. An acquaintance also has an ego-driven dream of owning a private medical lab. He did however admitted that it was a negotiable dream, and that qualifies it as a fantasy.

While still on medical things, there's yet another acquaintance whose dream it is to build a clinic of some sort, but I actually forgot the details. What's interesting however is that when I asked specific questions like how big it is and some such, she couldn't answer, stating not having visualised it that far. I have learnt the importance of visualising a dream thoroughly because that solidifies it pretty well, helping it get further away from the fantasy category.

Another friend also touched me when he mentioned one dream of setting up a soup kitchen for homeless people. Noble stuff that.

Dreams are great because focusing on them help reduce the pain of hardship and they can be as simple as "the salary will help me pay that debt, and maintain my lifestyle too", and that's a worthwhile dream too, at least enough to have millions of displeased workers wake up every morning to get to work, and on that point, I've met quite a number of people whose main dream is retirement. It used to be my driving passion and motivator in building my business, but I'm now more driven by what I'll do with the ample time I'll have at my disposal after that moment, and even more than that, am driven my the million lives dream (helping a million people), most especially the ways in which I'll put that into place, EG starting co-operatives, free IT training, FLOSS (Free/Libre an Open Source Software) development funding...

Actually noble dreams, the "I want to help improve the world" sort, are my favourites and I always get excited when someone mentions such, not those of "I want to have this house and that car". I probably am dishonest with myself, but as much as I drool at the sight and thought of Bentley Continental GT (is there any car with superior aesthetics?), pumping the retail cost of that beauty into feeding a 100 hungry kids for a month is more my thing. I do of course have non-noble dreams: travelling Africa and the world for fun, acquiring a decent entertainment system and a serious gaming PC (am I a sucker for hardware-pushing high-end games!), visit international film festivals (am I a sucker for movies!), and even produce some short movies, preferably animated, preferably with FLOSS (I am a politically-charged wannabe!).

A business partner of mine, a sports sucker, wants to sponsor one kid to go professional in that field. Having loved to have had such an opportunity as a kid, he wants to ensure some deserving kid doesn't meet the same fate (and end up in career s/he dislikes). I know at least two other highly-gifted people who didn't further their sporting careers due to lack of support (likely financial). That's painful actually and shouldn't happen to anyone. Another business partner of mine wants to open a dancing facility to help get kids off the streets. I'm not sure if that's a negotiable dream or not (it didn't sound like a priority item, neither did the sports sponsorship thing by the way) but we are to find out in due time...

A brother of mine, a gifted and multi-talented (composer, producer, arranger, mixer, vocalist, sound engineer, writer) musician, wants to help groom and promote a number of small-time artists. That would really help in an industry where talent isn't enough to propel one further, and even worse, where too many lacking that talent are propelled forward regardless, leaving one wondering (and often puzzled!).

sidenote
This must be the longest post I've written so far (if I don't count movie posts)! It was sparked by that discussion on the first paragraph, and it went on and on...

'Up With Donald Byrd'

2009-09-09T13:30:00.002+02:00

I thoroughly enjoyed Donarl Byrd's superb album, "Up With Donald Byrd", most especially the masterpiece House of the Rising Sun and My Babe. I have listened to a few the guy's albums and nothing quite comes close, in fact some are so bad that it's strange it's the same artist.

Anyways, I went onto the interwebs looking for like-minded people and found one who disagreed, calling it forgettable. Either that's a critic with a more sophisticated taste and much more listening experience, or she's got twisted taste. I was actually surprised since I'm even tempted to call this the best Jazz album yet!

DD of the moment: Josselin Mouette

2009-08-17T11:40:00.008+02:00

I've been neglecting to mention Josselin Mouette as a great developer until now due to his amazing efforts in maintaining Debian's GNOME, probably investing as much as anyone in that team-maintained part of Debian. He also portrays deep knowledge of GNOME's inconsistent and oft-complex internals. What sparked this post is his great summary of its current release status.

[index] developer of the moment

Debian praises

2009-08-08T01:58:00.007+02:00

One does at times take for granted some great societal achievements until a reminder comes forth:

Debian deserves respect; how many other distros can be so massive without a profit-seeking company behind them?

And there's a more extensive write-up that could make any unexposed person reconsider a bit.

Nautilus and ssh

2009-08-07T18:38:00.003+02:00

Nautilus file browser's capability to access remote machines with ssh excited me today, especially because it was ever a pain to transfer files since I was prompted for a password everytime when using the command line. And what made the experience even better is the browser's feature of having tabs which helped to avoid populating my whole desktop with windows, since I was tranferring between multiple folders.

Sure a script would have been better since I was working with same files, but for a novice in bash scripting, this solution pretty much rocks.

AwesomeBar is awesome

2009-07-28T13:40:00.006+02:00

Am currently enjoying Firefox 3's address bar, known as AwesomeBar, whose behaviour ~~totally~~ nearly alienates the need to have bookmarks for me. I haven't tried Epiphany's to see how it compares, whose superb bookmark handling was nearly a killer feature.

sidenote
I've been enjoying this feature for several months but never quite got down to appreciating it publicly.

'Body Bags' comic rocks

2009-07-27T16:02:00.003+02:00

I was reading Body Bags comic early this morning and it's devastatingly unique and fresh, with some seriously interesting characters. Nice stuff. Am not big on comics, but if they tend to come like this, I'll definitely get hooked.

'Illadelph Halflife' rocks

2009-07-27T15:22:00.003+02:00

This is undoubtedly The Roots' best album, with timeless acts like Section, Wot They Do, Respond/React, Push Up Ya Lighter, No Alibi, and Ital (The Universal Side). Listening to Section is actually what prompted me to write this post, for I loved it so much that I wondered if Next Movement deserves it's position at the top of the group's work, and therefore removing it from the list of hip-hop landmarks.

'Batman vs. Hulk'

2009-07-24T07:11:00.000+02:00

Just finished reading the comic, Batman vs. Hulk, which is real exciting and filled with clever plot-points, most electrifying of which is The Joker's near-omnipotence when granted such powers by ailing Shaper of Worlds. Such a title can sound silly, especially that it's hard to imagine how could mere man ever battle a near-invisble being like Hulk. But some clever story manipulation does lead to some semblance of sense, and the result is beautiful.

'Watchmen'

2009-07-23T15:47:00.002+02:00

Watchmen is bizarre in a delightful manner, and am even tempted to proclaim it superior to 300 among Zack Snyder's movies. It also has annoying black spots all over the place, one major one is everything about the super-tough shining guy, and another is the bad make-up done on the lady who once was raped. The bright spots make up for this: the performance of The Comedian, especially the moment when he kills a pregnant lady and the equally affective one where the disguised face is exposed.

And the visual effects are really bad (and inconsistently so) likely as a matter of taste, and the heroes' costumes are even worse. Interesting route by someone who treated us to great visual mastery in 300.

'Transformers 2'

2009-07-22T12:03:00.003+02:00

Of course Transformers 2 is gon' have superior visual effects to its predecessor but nothing more groundbreaking. You oughta love the destruction of the aircraft carrier though. And the same complaint I had with the first one is that there's way too much going on as regards the action such that I can't keep up.

It appears I wasn't the only one who loved the human hero's parents as evidenced by their far greater screen presence, and they don't misstep here too. But they don't help advance the story, which is non-existent anyways. It's all an excuse to showcase the visual prowess, with quite a mouthful of humor all over the place.

I don't remember anything believable, and at the end of it ya feel like 'what a waste!'. And then ya say, 'a waste of what?', since the entire concept of the Transformers is pre-juvenile anyways!

Fincher's most pointless yet?

2009-07-17T12:34:00.006+02:00

David Fincher decided to go all Forrest Gump on us with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It would have been greater fun if someone actually went to investigate the mystery of title character's unique endowment, but I was left wanting. Here's a good review.

On a more positive note, Tilda Swinton is tremendously elegant and provides a real accomplished appearance. Cate Blanchett is a pleasure to watch as always as the main love interest, but nothing is as striking as the visual effects done on Brad Pitt's twenty-something face.

sidenote
Interestingly I later found that both movies were written by the same person.

recent movies

2009-07-13T12:49:00.002+02:00

For a strong satire like Network, complete with powerful appearances by Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall, one tends to which that the entire thing was shot and edited at least as well as it's mightier counterpart, Dr. Strangelove. It's got quite heavy-handed dialogue that must have inspired the superior and much younger Good Night & Good Luck. What's also commendable is that the one voice of sane reason actually is offered by a man who is likely more cruel than all others in the story (bar those in the last meeting of course, a moment which would be a spoiler if revealed).

In Midnight Cowboy, Dustin Hoffman plays a character so broken that he depresses all the time, and better off dead. John Voigt plays the only friend he could ever have, and is even dumber. Luckily we find a ray of light in the husky-voiced gal who does rock proper... and I wonder what the main point of the movie is.

One could easily get fooled into thinking Once Upon A Time in America is good judging by the beautiful openng sequence, but it ends up a pompous and disorganised mess by Sergio Leone. There's a few good performances here and there and Robert De Niro, whose cruel and underdeveloped character, doesn't provide anything above the usual. Once Upon A Time in the West, by the same director, is far better and full of rather interesting characters but unfortunately eclipsed by his The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.

Akira Kirosawa's Ran is the worst of his works I've seen so far, even worse than Once Upon A Time in America, made worse by its preposterous acting especially by that of the conqueror whose retirement is less than comfortable. Of some note is his close aide, the mocking entertainer whose utterances are often of good wisdom. One that caught my attention is "Enduring ridicule, I seek to entertain".

Antonio Banderras has a good turn as a simple yet ambitious thug in the eccentric Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, where he got his way of achieving his dream. Victoria is a pleasure to watch as usual and is equally broken, though maybe a bit worse since she doesn't know what she wants.

recent ex-anticipated movies

2009-07-01T09:37:00.004+02:00

Farewell My Concubine was the most memorable of those Chen Kaige/Zhang Yimou movies that I had for so long wanted to watch (until this year) and therefore was supposed to be luminous, but turns out to be an overlong, boring and pointless piece of shit. It does however partly exposes the unsettling horrors of China's Cultural Revolution. I strongly suspect that the exposure it got was to due to the then-brave touch of homosexuality.

Even worse and less interesting is what the best movie critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum, felt to be the best mainland Chinese movie ever, Platform. It turned out to lack any interesting characters and story. It's a fucking mystery that anyone liked (or made) it.

sidenote
It so happens that Chen Kaige has even worse on offer.

nice Git tutorial

2009-06-12T16:21:00.002+02:00

I've been going through an easy and humorous Git tutorial, Git Magic. I love the video game analogy the author uses and also the concept of the boss key, plus some.

Mozilla and GNOME

2009-05-29T15:30:00.004+02:00

A had a light laugh stumbling across the following quote, taken from a discussion about Webkit vs. Mozilla, specifically regarding the 'ease' of integration of Mozilla in GNOME:

Firefox feels like an alien trying to pretend to be human by wearing a human corpse...

tough tale of poverty

2009-05-18T08:01:00.004+02:00

Backdrop is Chinese rural poor and the story is of a strong-willed and simple-minded woman fighting with the law to get a man who harmed her husband to apologize, nothing more and nothing less ( **SPOILER** and she gets both). Gong Li as the title character in this The Story of Qiu Ju is at her best, and the direction is simple and raw. Oh, and the poverty and suffering displayed is unsettling.

sidenote
This story is more powerful than even Yellow Earth, and with many more strong actors, while the winter weather looks even more harsh.

Git and Giggle

2009-05-15T12:06:00.004+02:00

Many have had overlong discussions regarding the merits of Git, most possibly the most popular distributed versioning control systems (DVCS), which also happens to have been chosen as the sole VCS supported by GNOME, replacing the venerable Subversion.

One bad thing about it is it's not too easy to use, but one good thing is I get to have all history locally, which isn't the case with Subversion. That feature is exploited very well by the user-friendly GUI Git tool, Giggle, which allows me to see diffs between commits.

2009-05-07T10:12:00.004+02:00

Some short review on the book 'Perl Best Practices' brought this beautiful bite:

I always punctuate its disclosure with an outraged "preposterous!". Around mid-section, the initial refutation unavoidly morphs into a "hmmm, I can see his point.. but it ain't for me. It just doesn't jive with my vibes". By the time I've made it to the end, however, it is rare indeed that I haven't seen the light, donned the ritual sackcloth and ashes, sworn to atone for my sins and to walk the straight and narrow [path] from now on.

I'm a big fan of religious allusions since they evoke emotions of grand adherence, and that's exotic. Besides that, I also love the sentence starting with "Around mid-section". Fun stuff this.

GLibC sucks?

2009-05-07T08:34:00.006+02:00

There's been some noise regarding Debian's decision to skip mighty GLibC in favour of its friendlier near-fork, EGLIBC. Arising from that is a rather inaccurate post, but I liked this bite:

...sometimes the GPL not only allows to create free community around a project, but allows to free the project from its “community”.

Python, Perl, and now Java

2009-05-05T13:16:00.007+02:00

I'm grateful that there's so much I'm learning at my new job, stuff I wouldn't really learn on my own, like Perl (this one out of curiosity, especially because it's a major competitor of my favourite, Python).

I write this post in response to the fact that now I will be learning Java, what I secretly swore I'd stay away from, not because it's bad, but because it's hard to find anyone favouring it in my world (Debian, GNOME, Python), a world that proclaim it to be a disgusting pile of shit. Anyways let's see how the ride will pan out.

As for Perl, I found its string-handling capabilities exceedingly powerful but its syntax ugly and over-varied -- too much of a free-form language. That's bad for someone used to the gracious elegance of mighty Python. If I could stay away from it, I would!

recent movies

2009-05-04T11:06:00.000+02:00

The best performer in Raise the Red Lantern is the lady who gave up her career as an opera singer to get married to an uncaring rich man to whom women are disposable mere objects, and even more painful is the life-long servitude that many take, where they accept to be treated as lesser humans. I do wonder what message the movie attempts to portray though and aren't I lucky I wasn't born in old China!

Even more painful is the harrowing tale of a woman denied love in poor China in Yellow Earth. It's a very meditative work, more powerful than Raise the Lantern, and full of raw emotion (check especialy the guy who plays the father, the movie's strongest actor) and simple in terms of storytelling. It also showcases the side of China I never really saw so vividly displayed, the musical side.

Wanted is nice, flashy, and unaccomplished as I expected, but has the most beautiful suicide scene in memory. At least it was far more bearable than the supposedly excellent Breaking the Waves (which got a superb performance by the close nurse friend of the lady protagonist), and I wonder why people punish themselves by constructing such boring and painful flicks.

'Once Upon A Time In China' series

2009-05-04T11:04:00.006+02:00

Once Upon A Time in China 2 has some of the greatest martial arts stunts ever committed to screen and is overall far superior to its unbearably-bad predecessor. I also wish the whole series was based on something other than the Chinese's conflict with Western influence, especially given that Caucasians within are mere lifeless sticks with acting worse than Keanu Reeve's.

Interesting that things actually get better with the 3rd in the Once Upon A Time In China series which is much better fun and therefore feels much shorter than the previous two. The romance between the protagonist and his relative (such awesome beauty) is touching and sweet; the comic touches are a real delight but the dragon fights are boring and too complex; martial arts choreography is lesser than the 2nd movie even though none of the characters of the previous movies quite matches the attractiveness of Clubfoot, whose kick can paralyse even masters.

I can't tell if the 4th in the series sucks worse than the 1st but it lost Jet Li and the humor and is damn cheap while offering jack that's new. But the 5th at least is a revival of the series' former glory, and the movie must have provided some inspiration for Pirates of the Caribbean, most especially the age-old pirate who nearly is a Davey Jones. I didn't even miss Jet Li, and the large-eyed student has his best moment when his dream of being praised comes true.

My previous dislike for the 6th and last in the series, which must be at least a decade ago, leaves me surprised since I enjoyed it so much this time around, and another plus is that the Caucasians aren't sticks no more, and even with decent acting in places (the town's mayor and its sheriff). Oh, and it takes place in the Wild West, albeit with an uninteresting wolf-killer villain. There's one praiseworthy moment - the touching and heroic efforts of Clubfoot when attempting to bring back his master's memory, touching when mentioning the commendable acts of the master, heroic when battling the far superior master as self-sacrifice.

recent movies

2009-04-14T14:57:00.001+02:00

Me don't quite know what to make of the well-made Seven Pounds, giving one no clue what the whole thing is about 'till the end, while having Woody Harrelson (perhaps) and Rosario Dawson giving their career best appearances. And that suspense simply wasn't acceptable too, and I also wonder what the story advocates... be good? And it's a very good movie too.

I was not going to post a comment, but the gal in Body of Lies is tremendously gorgeous and desirable, a central attraction in a real good movie spoilt by an untalented lead.

Sean Penn is admirable for managing to transform self so well, away from typical macho types he often plays, to a homosexual radical in Milk. Among the finest actors surely, though he's done better before.

This Bond we find in Quantum of Solace must be the most intense yet, and partakes in equally-intense thrills, and in what is perhaps the best Bond movie yet. Actually the movie's first half (and its action) is so good that it reminds of the (of course) far superior Taken, even though it got spoilt by the revenging beauty (incompetent performance, stale character and subplot) and an even worse finale.

I had fun with Clint Eastwood's mild humour in an otherwise average Gran Torino, while the much worse Role Models had a surprisely-enjoyable 'final battle'. Even funnier is Yes Man which got a fresh concept but is fucked by common romantic comedy pitfalls.

recent movies

2009-03-06T10:13:00.002+02:00

Me wonders why The Watchowski Brothers decided to ignore the path of decency (Bound, The Matrix) by doing an over-stylized (with bad taste visual design) and childish Speed Racer. Almost neglected to mention an annoying cast and bad directing.

An insanely violent pleasure of a ride with amazing cinematography and cast, and some fresh ideas, can be found in Shoot 'Em Up. There's a nice play on the concept found in Children of Men, but as opposed to that near-masterpiece, this movie don't really have purpose, other than being a display of the director's stylish prowess.

The Changeling had great signs of a masterpiece, armed with impeccable production and costume design as well as a powerful cast, superb direction of a harrowing story, a story which unfortunately ran amok (even if it may be a true story, I would have done without the child-killer thingy which added an unnecessary hour to the running time).
Interestingly, we see Anjelina Jolie going back to the mental institution (remember Girl, Interrupted) though in a different guise, and in what is easily a superior performance; Watching John Malkovich sparked a believe that this must be among the finest actors alive.

Although Guy Ritchie's Rock 'n Rolla is quite a delight, it's not quite up there with his Snatch; Although there's no match for Brad Pitt, we got a nice title character player and actually a lot more other players than its superior (Russian mafia head, his 2 tough guys, movie lover, Gerard Butler, English lord's right-hand-man, ...)

many recent movies

2009-02-27T10:43:00.004+02:00

I don't remember any movie based in India quite as rich and vivid as Slumdog Millionaire, a painful and seemingly pointless exercise which happens to be India's answer to the far superior City of God.

It was a pleasant surprise to find Darren Aronofsky helming The Wrestler, a small but solid, yet-another-fallen-sportsman-story with an amazing cast and a very strong Mickey Rourke, whose character is in such pain that death ought to be better. And this movie appears the most conventional of Aronofsky's (think of the mesmerising Pi or the heart-wrenching Requiem for A Dream).

The French answer to Natural Born Killers is the low-key and less cartoonish Baise-moi which got affecting and believable performances and a horrific, painful, and powerful story which also feels as random and undirected as its two leads.

On a lighter note, we got the most enchanting Wall-E, a touching story of undefeatable love which got a strange quality of very quick story-telling, and not a dull moment. It's superior even to its awesome predecessor, Robots. It's on the league of Monsters, Inc., The Incredibles, and Ratatouille on their heydey.

I was delighted by the light-hearted Zack & Miri Make A Porno until it insulted me with shitty-ass, formulaic, romantic comedy bullshit towards the end.

Numerous Adam Sandler comedies have showcased him as a laid-back and tough guy, but none with the flair of You Don't Mess With the Zohan, a weird and exciting fantasy/satire regarding middle-Eastern peoples. The only comparably-excellent movie Adam has been in is Punch-Drunk Love.

recent movies

2009-02-13T14:53:00.006+02:00

I saw two highly-admired movies, Tokyo Story and Rashomon, which happen to be overly overrated, especially the unbearable Tokyo Story.

Rashomon is at least a bit more interesting with at least 3 good, albeit overdone, performances (the 3 guys sheltering selves from heavy rain) [update]. Tokyo Story is a rather touching though, especially the story surrounding the super-kind widow.

Actually more enjoyable than the two is Toy Soldiers which got at least one superb one-liner ("not artificial intelligence; actual intelligence!"), and wonderful character design. I just wish it could have been more scathing (and less childish), it being a war satire and all.

the mighty Mitch Sala

2009-02-13T13:12:00.003+02:00

If ever you admire someone excessively to a point of nearly letting out a tear, you tend to get worried, perhaps due to pride, that you may be too obsessed. This was a case when Mitch Sala, an impossibly-successful Australian businessman, who undertook a job to inspire more people to be successful in Amway. He came through to South Africa and made a powerful presentation, "and I even got to shake his hand!"

discarding Scribes for Geany

2009-01-23T13:28:00.007+02:00

The version of Scribes in development didn't prove too satisfactory after a while (black background which I didn't care to investigate how to revert to normal, among whatever other trouble I don't remember) and there was me also unloving the idea of switching text editors, so decided to get stuck with Geany, and am not complaining much. It's been a year-and-a-half of pleasure and pain and it was well worth it.

'Ghost Dog'

2009-01-09T07:06:00.003+02:00

It has the common basic story of a contract killer forced to target own clients, but considering that you got Jim Jarmusch at the helm, you bet Ghost Dog won't be your typical ride. It's unlike anything I've seen before and is totally devoid of Hollywood gloss and seemingly on a shoestring budget. It's armed with quite an exotic story (modern-day Black Samurai who consumes copious amounts of literature and uses pigeons to communicate with his employers) and got nice comic touches. The sub-plot involving the kid and the ice-cream man is nice too, and helps lighten the mood, while serving the main story in other useful ways.

'Zatoichi'

2009-01-04T12:31:00.006+02:00

Multiple satisfying lead performances, favourites being the blind man and the cross-dresser; highly engaging and oft-touching story with good humour; beautiful fight scenes, albeit not as romanticised as your Yuen Woo-Ping sort; comic usage of musical beats (and check out the last dance); excellent twist(s).

There's an obvious Kirosawa inspiration, only the gangsters aren't as silly as Kirosawa often portray them. Another worthy element is that such movies transports one to a very foreign culture, which is a real nice break from Hollywood.

How lucky was I to experience this 'inaccessible' movie!

yearly movie reviews

2009-01-01T23:39:00.002+02:00

this is a meta-post, used to organise links to my yearly movie reviews

2008 movie review

2009-01-01T23:10:00.013+02:00

quite a coulourful year at the movies, although there's still a lack of a masterpiece, just like last year

movie of the year
Cloverfield, the year's greatest spectacle, with the beaufiful style invented by The Blair Witch Project, and sweetened with the year's best visual effects and superb sound. An honourable mention goes to Taken while the most innovative concept is The Lake House's unique time-travel story.

best movie
Children of Men easily takes this one with the runner-up being the intoxicating Perfume. Following this are the intelligent Persona, the politically important Syriana which ties with the satirical Buffalo Soldier, and then, finally, another superb satire, The Matador.

direction
Nothing was done better than Children of Men as well as No Country for Old Men (runner-up).

misc elements
The best story belongs to Buffalo Soldier, best comedy is Knocked Up, best romantic drama is Friends With Money, while nothing was quite as enchanting as the feel-good socio-political Hairspray (runner-up is the formulaic, yet effective, Robots).

Nothing made me cry in my history of movie-watching as did the drama, Kinsey, and there wasn't a movie as bizarre as Persona, which happens to also possess the year's best dialogue, followed by The Squid & the Whale.

As for production design, nothing beat No Country for Old Men, while TMNT is a runner-up, animated as it is. No Country for Old Men also got the year's best sound, followed by tie between 30 Days of Night and Cloverfield. Perfume ties with The New World as regards costume design but is its runner-up as regards make-up. The New World's editing is also the year's most accomplished.

The best dancing can be found in Step Up 2: The Streets, there's no better action-thriller than Taken (followed by Shooter), while no horror is better than the chilling Vacancy. The best action is Final Fantasy VI (perhaps the best ever action), Kung Fu Panda, and then Appleseed. But the best fight is in The Hunted (hand-combat as never seen before) and martial artistry between Jet Li and Jacky Chan in the otherwise shitty and silly The Forbidden Kingdom.

misc small things
The year's best escape was the villain's in Kung Fu Panda followed by that from the 'safe house' in Children of Men, which also happens to have the best battle scene. The best confrontation was Craig Bierko's and Russel Crowe's in a party scene in The Cinderella Man. The best end-credits sequence finds a tie between Cloverfield's VHS-style and The Mummy's which uses a concept copied from 300's end-credits sequence.

The Condemned had the my favourite sexual interaction (very brief but complete with beautiful comic touches) and I don't remember a car crash in movie history as great as that in Death Proof.

performances
The year's performance is easily Heath Ledger's in The Dark Knight, and he happens to be the movie's sole redeemer, almost. Other outstanding male performers were Cuba Gooding, jnr's dirty cop in Dirty, John Carrol Lynch's bit appearance in Confidence, and then Stanley Tucci's fashion lover in The Devil Wears Prada. My favourite comic performance is William H. Macy's in Wild Hogs.

The best female perfomance was by Cate Blanchett's title character as a daring journalist in Veronica Guerin, followed by the surprisingly excellent Kerry Washington as a slutty girl in I Think I Love My Wife. Ger Ryan (2nd runner-up) really touched me as a loving mother in interMission followed by Ellen Barkin (3rd runner-up) in Someone Like You. That Ger Ryan also ties with Ellen Page's appearance in the horrifying Hard Candy as my favourite female performance. They are followed by Clare-Hope Ashitey's key role in Children of Men and then a tie (2nd runner-up) between Katie Holmes' thief in Mad Money and Q'Orianka Kilcher's Pocahontas in The New World. The best bit-female performance is Alexandra Silber's book lover in Room 1408 which is the best thing in the movie even though she appears in just one short scene.

The best cast is a tie between interMission (a bunch of memorable and eccentric characters) and No Country for Old Men (a few solid set of rural American characters). The runner-ups is a tie between Friends With Money (very honest and fresh performances) and The Lookout. The best characterisations was in The New World for the colourful portrayal of the American Indians.

characters
The year's villain is Heath Ledger's The Joker, who is also my most favourite ever in memory. He's followed by Sid Haig's homorous clown in House of A Thousand Corpses.

The most desirable gal is Emelia Burns, the black girl in The Condemned. She's followed by Cate Blanchett in Veronica Guerin and then Shirley Henderson as the emotionally-hurt girl in interMission.

The one cute character are the young penguins in Surf's Up.

The year's greatest creature is Cloverfield's superlarge monster followed by Silent Hill's horrifying Pyramid head, and then (2nd runner-up) The Mummy's hyperrealistic mountain creatures. The best character design however goes to the villainous Maltazard in Arthur & the Invisibles, followed by the three suits in Iron Man.

visuals
The year's most beautiful imagery can be found in Surf's Up (the waves and the hidden beach), with an honourable mention going to The Bank Job, especially its opening scene. The breathtaking Appleseed has the year's best visuals while the innovative Silent Hill follows.

bad things
As for overrated stuff, how does one manage to snatch any award while inducing such extreme boredom as Brokeback Mountain does? Children of A Lesser God (runner-up) is also boring and childish, even preachy. There also hasn't been a movie as spoilt like Hancock, halfway through its running length. Here's listing of the year's worst shit:

Barnyard
Big Trouble in Little China
Epic Movie
Journey To the Center of the Earth
Kings's Ransom
Love & Basketball
Pink Panther
Prince & Me, The
Reaping, The
Why Did I Get Married?

others
10,000 BC; 2 Fast 2 Furious; 3:10 To Yuma; 50 First Dates; Akeelah and the Bee; Animal Farm; Apollo 13; Around the Bend; Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The; Babe; Babe: Pig in the City; Bad Education; Batman vs. Dracula, The; Big Fat Liar; Black Dahlia; Black Mask; Blast From the Past; Bourne Identity, The; Brave One, The; Cleaner, The; Closer; Crimson Rivers; Descent, The; Dirty Deeds; Dukes of Hazzard; Dead Presidents; Drop Dead Sexy; Edison; Evan Almighty; Event Horizon; Fan, The; Fast & the Furious, The: Tokyo Drift; Funny Money; Good German, The; Good Sheperd, The; Great Debaters, The; Grosse Pointe Blank; Happy Feet; Hellboy 2; Highlander - The Search for Vengeance; Hit Man; Hitch; Hitcher, The; Horton Hears A Who; Hostel 2; House of Sand & Fog; Human Stain, The; In Good Company; Jerusalema; Jumper; Kaena: The Prophecy; Kika; Kingdom of Heaven; Lords of Dogtown; Love & Basketball; Machinist, The; Magnificent Seven, The; Mars Attacks!; Matador, The; Mirrors; Morvern Callar; National Treasure; Norbit; Notebook, The; One Last Thing; One Missed Call; Open Season; Planet Terror; Prestige, The; Pulse; Possession; Queen, The; Resident Evil: Extinction; Rambo 4; Runaway Jury; Running Scared; Rush Hour 3; Save the Last Dance; Saw IV; Secretary; Sentinel, The; Simpsons Movie, The; Someone Like You; Speed; Street Kings; Swordsman; Talk To Me; Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning; Things We Lost in the Fire; Three Colours Red; Three Colours White; Torque; Trapped; Truth About Love, The; Unfaithful; War; We Are Marshall; Weather Man; Zoom

recent movies

2009-01-01T21:03:00.002+02:00

I don't remember Cate Blanchett as lovely as she appears in Veronica Guerin, nor her performance so energetic and charming. Also impressive is Ger Ryan who plays mother of the two girls who are going through personal crises in interMission, a sweet and touching portrayal, and very natural.

sidenote
both these were revisits

recent movies

2008-12-26T22:41:00.006+02:00

When I saw the poster of Taken, I did expect a top-notch thriller, and it proved true, complete with enthralling action and a very strong lead from Leam Neeson. It's 2008's answer to the Bourne Identity trilogy (more so than The Hunted and Shooter before it).

A second look at The Dark Knight wasn't favourable, all but the year's performance, Heath Ledger's The Joker and the bank robbery. Not even the action saves the movie, which was mostly wasted cash since it ain't really good. And the last scene really is unbearable. And who gives a shit about the cheap philosophical blah I so previously cherished. So much for a movie that I raved about so much :-(

As for The Incredible Hulk, I found William Hurt unbearable, while Liv Tyler and Tim Roth didn't help much. Not even the battle of monsters, which itself did lose its appeal, saves the movie.

No Country For Old Men also suffers a revisit even though the previous honours remains intact, bar the comment that the cinematography is unbeatable; and the suspense of a movie is going to go away when the experience isn't brand new.

controlling weather?

2008-12-26T14:17:00.008+02:00

I have previously been exposed to the exotic concept of Kardashev civilisations but have never seen a possible path towards those explained (through the usage of a Weather Machine). The possibilities, as much as they make one drool, are tremendously scary too, especially when it's mentioned that it got enough oomph to blast the moons of Mars!