I’m a real glutton for punishment, and because I felt like relaxing this afternoon, I decided to teach myself how to administrate Apache’s mod_rewrite. What the module does isn’t really relevant to this post — let’s just say it has no bearing on you or any other end-user’s online experience whatsoever, and leave it at that.

Anyway, I spent two hours writing one line of code this afternoon, which I will summarily cut and paste here, in all its arcane glory:

RewriteRule ^blogs/(.)([^/]+)/?(.*)  blogs/$1/$1$2/$3 [R]

Wahoo! It’s black magic, baby! My voodoo > your voodoo!!!111

Man, I should really stop typing now … I’m starting to salivate all over my keyboard.

(NOTE: Although it looks like a bunch of over-enthusiastic Korean chat glyphs strung together at random, that Unix incantation above actually does something: it’s a text-substitution command that rewrites URLs as they’re requested by site visitors. Farkin’ amazing, that is.)

Here’s a bit of tech-related weirdness, which I originally wrote up last Friday, but ended up losing because I forgot to submit the entry:

Local telecoms powerhouse Smart Communications unveiled their newest service two weeks ago, called SMART WI-FI. Now, if you’re like me (or actually, any other normal, mildly-informed consumer), you’d be thinking this was something along the lines of airborne access or rival network Globe Telecoms’ WIZ service.

And of course, you’d be wrong. Because apparently, Smart has been taking liberties with its use of buzzwords and "Smart Wi-Fi" isn’t Wi-Fi at all. "What’s this?" you say. "’Wi-Fi’ that isn’t Wi-Fi? Have those Smart executives been chewing on their collective undergarments again?"

Yes, I’m afraid so. My first clue that this was going to be a "different" kind of service was the fact that it didn’t require your computer to have any kind of wireless connectivity. Instead, you needed a (wired) Ethernet port, which certainly sounded pretty unWi-Fi-like to me.

So how does this wonderful, wired service work? Apparently, Smart leases you a small antenna, which will receive its signal from the nearest Smart cellsite. The antenna essentially serves as your modem, and is connected (with a wire) to your computer. So basically it’s wired internet access over a remote, wireless connection.

Sounds a lot like Meridian doesn’t it? Well it does have some key differences, the first being that Meridian uses a combination of microwaves and satellites to get the signal to its end-users. Smart uses … well, actually I have no idea what it uses. The fact that the antenna they give you requires a line-of-sight to the nearest cellsite leaves me fairly certain that this service is not satellite-supported though. (My best guess is that it involves radio waves of some sort.)

The absence of satellites in the equation partially explains why Smart is able to offer the service at its current introductory price of PhP788 per month (the real price is PhP988). Now, 800 bucks a month is a good deal for a-little-better-than-dialup (Smart claims it achieves speeds up about 128kbps), especially when you consider that most entry-level DSL or Cable connections start at PhP2000/month. On the other hand, you can get unlimited dialup access for about PhP600-700 per month these days, and having to have an available Ethernet port on your computer is a bit restrictive. Also, the service is only available in selected areas, which I assume means that that "line-of-sight" requirement is Rather Important for this antenna to function properly.

I’m not a big fan of the tiny digital audio player market, but the new iRiver T20 (and its bigger-capacity brother, the 1gb T30) is a real cutie. They’re not as cheap as the iPod Shuffle — at 100GBP for the half-gig model, they actually cost almost double – but they do have a nice LCD, line-in recording and are good friends with OGG and WMA.

The fact that they aren’t flat-white are a big plus too I think.

It’s painful to talk about, but my lengthy musical relationship with Chris Martin and Coldplay has, over the years, gotten fairly sour. They make great pop, no question about it, but the sheer magnitude of their celebrity created a weird rift between us in the time between Parachutes and the tail-end of the Rush of Blood singles. It’s regretful, but it was this self-same rift which prevented me from truly enjoying Rush of Blood (apart from the erudite "Clocks" of course), at a time when everyone and their cousin were queueing up to bear Chris Martin’s twitchy, paparazzi-beating Brit children.

In any case, it’s been 5 years since Parachutes and I think it may be time to finally put the whole issue to rest. X & Y* is a wonderful, wonderful album, and is their most consistent release to date. Crowd-pleasers like Rush of Blood’s "In My Place" have taken a backseat to more mature tracks like "The Hardest Part", "A Message" and "What If" (which you can download right here). The extended version of "Talk" is another standout. (It feels a bit wrong to call it one of the album’s strongest tracks because of the fact that its main riff is lifted from a Kraftwerk original, but it’s definitely one of the better songs they’ve released.)

*There’s a weird snippet over at Coldplay.com regarding that album title (and the bausdots cover), which I will dutifully copy and paste here:

"In mathematics, X and Y were always the answers, but in life, no one knows," Chris says. "To me the album is about those unanswerable questions, and what you should do about the fact that you can’t explain all the unknown variables."

Actually Chris, in mathematics, X and Y aren’t the answers, they’re the questions. But yeah, we get where you’re coming from.

What rabblerousers these Veda people are. The first track off their debut EP knocks politely on your door like most indie emo, catchy and seemingly harmless. "Innocence is seen as weakness/laughter is naive", Kristen May sings, with a voice like a beacon in a churning sea of guitars. You quickly realize that this is bigger, sharper than a lot of stuff you’ve heard in the past year.

I think I may have listened to their This Broken City EP 6 times this afternoon. Musically they’re a lot like another bunch of rabblerousers, the brilliant Alexisonfire, but it’s May’s diamondoid vocals that really drive this band. The song I’m posting, "Safe," is a mach truck on a highway. Try not to duck.

I’ve been passing by the South of Market condo billboard 2 or 3 times a week since May, and it only recently sunk in how weird a name that actually is. Now usually, when we have names that are essentially directions, we base it off of a well-known, paradaisical-type of location, like for example: North of Babylon or East of Eden. But "South of Market"? Doesn’t that just mean you’d be living close to a palengke? (This is of course, coming from the same developers who chose the equally offbeat name Essensa, which should be a line of beauty products, but is instead a high-rise residential building.)

The SoMa site is an interesting example of just-shy-of-perfect design. I won’t mince words here: it’s actually fairly good. But like the name of the condo it’s promoting, it exhibits certain peculiarities upon closer inspection. For one thing, the flash intro is a direct ripoff of the Ocean’s Eleven/Twelve trailers (the music isn’t a direct lift, but it’s similar enough that you’d have to be pretty daft not to notice). And the choice of photo for the front page leaves a lot to be desired.

Lastly, the tagline "The Exceptional, Logical Choice" really bugs me: their entire campaign is geared toward visual appeal and a subtle kind of sexuality, both of which are meant to illicit a very emotional, almost irrational desire from its viewers. So why call it a "logical choice"? There’s no logic in eye candy.

Luis’ capsule review: So that’s what a two-and-a-half hour orgasm feels like.

I’ve been waiting all my life for a superhero movie that fully measures up to the mythology of the comic on which it is based, and I finally found it last night with Chris Nolan’s Batman Begins. Here is a Batman that works on both a fantasy/pulp-comic level, as well as a rational, "realistic" level — an impossible balancing act for anyone but the most careful of filmmakers. Consider how Tim Burton’s original two Batman films (here and here) were these stylish, atmospheric production masterpieces: Burton had the Batman feel down pat with his two contributions, but they were ultimately hollow and unimaginative story-wise. (I don’t consider the Joel Schumacher-directed sequels real movies, let alone genuine contributions to the Batman franchise. To my mind, they were little more than 2 hour commercials for the resulting line of merchandise.)

Chris Nolan’s film (Memento, Insomnia), on the other hand, is a superbly wholistic rendition of the Batman legend, and excels in nearly every aspect: the wonderfully-paced origin, the inspired production design (the bridge-jumping Batmobile is a geek dream), the brilliant supporting cast (Liam Neeson’s mentoring has never been better), and of course, the most effective Batman the silverscreen has ever seen (Christian Bale kicks the shit out of all the previous Batmans combined).

This film is a journey, in much the same way as Sam Raimi’s Spiderman followed Peter Parker’s clumsy early days as the young wall-crawler. The whole origin takes up nearly half of the movie, but the pacing is so expert that you don’t mind at all. In fact, you welcome it. It’s very likely the first time you’ve seen an origin story this enthralling. 

Without giving away too much of the plot, I should mention that there is a very important conversation at the end of the film between Rachel Dawes and Bruce Wayne that, in a few sentences, captures the very essence of the Batman persona. It’s an amazingly insightful bit of dialogue and it gives you an idea of just how … well, "screwed up" I guess is the word for it, Bruce Wayne really is. It’s the first time I’ve seen any depiction of Batman outside of the comics talk about his psyche thus, and is what makes this movie so special for me; it treats the Batman character with a mature kind of reverence that foregoes all the glossy special effects and gothic fethishist designs of the past four entries.

Some additional notes:
Although the previous Batman features left a lot to be desired, the animated movies have been serving up some of the finest depictions of Batman since the mid 90’s. Batman and the Mask of the Phantasm and Batman Beyond: The Return of the Joker are really must-see movies for anyone who is interested in the Dark Knight. They are compelling in the way that Messrs. Burton and Schumacher could only dream about (but fortunately not Messr. Nolan). 

And now, the real game begins.

I am such a fucking geek.

SE introduced a whole gaggle of new phones recently in practically every form-factor available, from candybars to clamshells to sliders. The K750i, a 2MP cameraphone, caught my eye because it’s the first mid-range phone I’ve seen with an actual USB port on the body of the device. (Connecting it to your PC finally finally allows you to treat the phone as a removable drive, without having to install any extra software.)

The K750 microsite is surprisingly well-done; it has a guided tour and photo album by an actual professional photographer (!). The picture quality is startling — except for a small bit of noise around darker areas, it’s really impressive. Now if only they had thought to throw in some Windows Mobile luvvin’.

I’ve been neglecting my MP3 sidebar the past couple of weeks, and it’s not because I haven’t been discovering some really kick-ass music either (yeah, that’s a roundabout way of saying I’m a lazy layabout). Anyway, so here’s something different, from Kiss Me Deadly’s Amoreaux Cosmiques album. I know next to nothing about this guys so don’t ask — in fact, I can’t even remember where I pulled the track off of. It’s a bit like the gloom-pop that Interpol and The Bravery have been ripping up the airwaves with these past few years, but it’s different enough that I can’t easily classify it. Check it out!