guttervomit

33

Neal Stephenson, Super Geek

17 Nov 2005

Why Neal Stephenson is my sci-fi novelist/uber-geek hero:

The manuscript of The Baroque Cycle was written by hand on 100% cotton paper using three different fountain pens: a Waterman Gentleman, a Rotring, and a Jorg Hysek. It was then transcribed, edited, formatted and printed using emacs and TeX. When it was totally finished, the TeX version of the ms. was converted to Quark XPress format using an emacs LISP program written by the author.

Fuckin’ rad. I’m planning to write my obra maestra by opening a GMail account and creating a story through mock email conversations. Then I’m going to make the username/password public, and people can view my inbox Nick Bantock-style.

Free idea, do with it as you will.

Posted in Books | 33 Comments »
1

Random Celebrity Quotes

16 Nov 2005

"So, where’s the Cannes Film Festival being held this year?"
Christina Aguilera

"I love being in America."
Charlotte Church, on stage in Toronto

"Twenty-three is old. It’s almost twenty-five, which is, like, almost mid-twenties."
Jessica Simpson

More wonderful samples here. (via wwtdd)

Posted in Randomness | 1 Comment »
13

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

16 Nov 2005

I’m not what you would call a hardcore Harry Potter fan. I read the books and I’ve watched the movies, but I don’t own any official merchandise nor can I answer much of the serious fan trivia. But I do appreciate how the Potter films have vastly improved since Chris Columbus got kicked off the project. 2003’s Prisoner of Azkaban, directed by Alfonso Cuaron (whose past movies included the immensely entertaining Y Tu Mama Tambien), was so impressive that I thought it was a fluke. I expected that Goblet of Fire would see the series returning to the dismal levels set by the first two Columbus-helmed movies, simply because Cuaron had set the bar so high.

But veteran director Mike Newell (Donnie Brasco, Four Weddings and a Funeral) apparently knows a thing or two about making fun movies, and Goblet is Prisoner’s equal in every way. Because of the amount of story material, Newell has to gloss over quite a few of the minor storylines, but the core plot is wonderfully realized and the whole movie is a tightly-paced machine. Some of the hardcore fans will be displeased by the way he condenses such things as the Quidditch World Cup, or sub-plots like Harry and Ron getting into a tiff. A lot of the first two movies’ patented gimmicks (the animating paintings, the roaming ghosts or the morphing architecture) are in short supply here as well, with Newell choosing to focus on the characters and stories more than the scenery. At about 2 and a half hours though, you couldn’t find a more satisfying mainstream movie experience anywhere this season.

Just a few gripes here and there: I am still really put off by Michael Gambon’s Dumbledore. The quiet authority that Richard Harris brought to the role is apparently beyond Gambon’s abilities to replicate, and poor Albus comes off as an excited old geezer in practically every scene he’s in.

Meanwhile, Harry, Ron and Hermione are slowly expanding their acting vocabulary. They’ll never win Oscars (I doubt they’ll even qualify for an MTV movie award anytime soon) but their performances are way more bearable than in Sorceror’s Stone, or Chamber of Secrets. Ron in particular, only pulls his absolutely atrocious "oh-no" face once during the whole movie — a huge step forward, imho, and worthy of celebration.

Posted in Movies | 13 Comments »
2

Going Legit: Software Licenses

16 Nov 2005

I’m super-proud of myself today; I actually purchased the license for Zend Studio Professional, which is my PHP development environment of choice. I signed up for their Version 5 Beta-tester program months and months ago because they were offering 20% off for all contributors, so I managed to save a bit of money. It still cost me almost PhP15,000 though, which makes it my single largest online purchase ever.

Which brings me to the point of this little rant, i.e., how the cost of software licenses are just brutally prohibitive in a third-world setting. The only reason I could even afford to buy Zend 5.0 is because I was "charging it to the company" (which is my way of justifying legitimate expenses that I don’t particularly like; it’s still my own bank account I’m dipping into though). Eventually I’ll have to buy licenses for the Adobe’s Creative Studio, which should run a further 60-70k … and maybe Flash as well, although I’ll put that one off for as long as possible. Because I hate Flash. I hate it.

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to a Lawrence Lessig interview on TWiT, where he was relating how the folks behind the Creative Commons idea have come up with what they call a "developing countries" license. This is basically an intellectual-property-rights license that you can apply to anything from product concepts to software to whatever. One of his key samples was this group of architects that had come up with a modular housing design, which they offered in said developing-countries for a fraction of the cost that they would in the first-world. The point is that the designs were "worth" a different amount depending on where they were applied, which makes a lot of sense to me.

Here’s a simplistic example, going back to my software rant:

Consider that in the US, a programmer of my level of experience would be worth about $50 per hour, while in the good ol’ Philippines, it takes me a full day to make that much. A first-world developer could shell out US$300 for an IDE without batting an eyelash; you make back that money in a matter of hours. Here, it’s an investment that needs to be planned and financed and thought about, and we’re not even talking about the really expensive applications yet.

I’m not expecting any free rides here, but I do think that software companies need to be more realistic about what they are expecting to charge for their tools. Because third-world programmers charge so much less than first-world programmers do, it is unlikely they will have the resources to invest in legitimate licenses. Sure you don’t make a lot of money this way, but considering that people are just pirating your software, it’s not as if you’re making that much money in the first place.

Posted in Goin' Legit | 2 Comments »
0

Foldershare.com

14 Nov 2005

I think I may have found a killer app for me: Foldershare lets you remotely access your entire hard drive at home, from anywhere in the world. I’ve found myself spending less and less time at home over the past couple of months and more and more time hopping on to wi-fi networks at cafes, and this is close to being a near-perfect solution to my particular situation.

There are a number of reasons why Foldershare is superior to other remote-access applications like Serv-U FTP, the most obvious being that Foldershare operates completely over HTTP. Since lots of local networks close off their FTP ports, and few PCs have installed FTP support anyway, Serv-U assumes too many factors in order to work properly (not to mention that it’s a touch more complicated to get working).

Here’s how Foldershare works: basically you install the small Foldershare satellite application on the PC that you want to be able to access, then create a user account at the Foldershare website. That’s pretty much all there is to it. You can logon to the Foldershare site from anywhere, and immediately have access to your entire hard-drive over the net.

There are some caveats, of course, which is why I said it was a killer app for my particular situation, because it might not work for everyone. The most significant caveat is that the computer with all your files has to be connected to the Internet whenever you want to access stuff from it. Foldershare isn’t a remote storage site like StreamLoad, and doesn’t host any of the files itself. All it does is provide a medium through which you can manipulate the files through your machine. In other words: the speed of your download will be entirely dependent on how fast your home machine can upload files via HTTP, so if you’re on a dialup at your house, don’t expect very good performance.

The best part about Foldershare is that it’s completely free, owing to a recent acquisition by Microsoft (how about that, getting purchased by Microsoft actually made a product cheaper). It has other features as well, including folder synchronization and friend-sharing, neither of which I’ve tried yet. (I attempted to setup folder synchronization today, but decided against it when I realized that I was trying to synchronize a 5gb folder over HTTP. In most cases, you will probably want to restrict your synchronization tasks to documents and handfuls of images.)

Give it a whirl here.

Posted in Software | No Comments »
2

Capsule Reviews, November 2005

13 Nov 2005

Four Brothers
There’s something about John Singleton’s "Four Brothers" that doesn’t ring true with me. Perhaps it’s the loose way it sort of caricatures its main characters: they’re bad guys, but not bad enough that they can’t cry about their mother’s death, or help each other out when the going gets tough. They horse around like high school kids in some scenes, then shoot people execution-style in others. And sandwiched in between those two extremes are tender flashbacks of their beloved foster mother and all the little lessons she taught them when they were kids. It tries to make the case, several times, that first-degree murder is ok as long as you love your brothers and you’re doing it for your mom.

If you step back a bit, the movie blurs into a kind of tongue-in-cheek, inner-city, gang-flavored Western – impossible to take seriously. How Mark Wahlberg keeps his face in a permanent Clint Eastwood-style crunch throughout the entire 2 hours is beyond me though.

Legend of Zorro
I’m not a huge Antonio Banderas fan, but I did mildly enjoy the first Mask of Zorro back in ‘98. This sequel is kind of peculiar in that the filmmakers saw fit to add a mini-Zorro into the mix, in the form of the second most annoying child actor I’ve ever seen (the first being Star Wars’ Jake Lloyd). Yes, Mr and Mrs Zorro have a 10-year-old son, and because gymnastics and martial arts are passed on in the genes and not through training (apparently), he is every bit as skillful and confident as his parents.

This is not a good thing, trust me.

There’s a whole bunch of running cliches in this movie and, of all of them, the "workaholic Zorro" is the most ridiculous. In a scene straight out of a made-for-TV movie, Catherine Zeta Jones accuses Zorro of not having enough time for his son, because he spends all his time you know, doing heroic things. Soon the two are filing for divorce, and within a few months, Zorro has degenerated into a clumsy alcoholic. Of course, they reluctantly join forces to overcome a common enemy toward the end, and quickly realize that they are meant for each other.

The one thing this movie has going for it are its skillfully-shot action sequences; some of them are a bit over-the-top, but it’s certainly more believable than say, Transporter 2. It’s not horrible, but it’s certainly not what I would call a worthy successor to the first Zorro.

Flightplan
This was the only film of the last half-dozen I saw that I really enjoyed; far better than Jodie Foster’s other recent mother-daughter-thriller Panic Room. What I really appreciated about the whole thing was that, like the unbelieving cabin crew, you can’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, Foster’s character is a total nutball. Only Foster herself, with her steely, proverbially blue-eyed, determination never stops believing. After all, the whole phantom-child ploy, that’s how a lesser screenplay would have resolved this impossibly-convoluted situation, wouldn’t it? Thankfully though, Flightplan actually has a real ending, although the final act was a bit bumpy in its revelations.

I probably don’t even need to say this, but this movie mostly works because of Foster’s virtuoso acting; alot of the suspense on the screen is generated simply with the camera searching her face for answers. In that respect, Flightplan is unmatched as a thriller, and probably one of the best I’ve seen this year.

Posted in Movies | 2 Comments »
0

The Black Dahlia

11 Nov 2005

I stayed up until 5am this morning finishing off the last 10 chapters of James Ellroy’s "The Black Dahlia". It’s a wonderfully-written crime noir about the case of Betty Short, who as some of you may know was killed in 1947 and is widely-regarded as our century’s biggest murder mystery.

I started reading the book with a number of assumptions (I already knew a little about the case simply by its reputation), one being that the mystery was never solved and the other being that Betty Short was a moviestar-wannabe with a preference for militarymen. And of course, there was the way her body was found, i.e., severed in half, emptied of internal organs, drained of blood and washed clean.

Ellroy’s book has significant similarities to Alan Moore’s "From Hell," which is a densely-plotted graphic novel about Jack the Ripper and the two detectives who try to catch him. In "From Hell" Moore points to a reknowned physician as the culprit, rendering his case in painstakingly extensive detail. "The Black Dahlia" similarly tells the story of a pair of detectives who become more and more entrenched in the Short investigation that it begins to consume them. In it, Ellroy introduces a fictional set of characters and points to them as the killers

It’s a great read and had me riveted to my proverbial seat for most of its length. It’s a bit ultra-violent in some parts although it’s not gratuitous and used pretty sparingly.

I suppose what bugs me the most about the book though is that it turns out that The Black Dahlia case had suppposedly been solved, nearly 4 decades after the murder occurred. Naturally, the real-life conclusion is nowhere near as fulfilling as Ellroy’s fantasy, but I have to say that it becomes difficult to fully appreciate the latter when I’m aware of the former.

"The Black Dahlia" is, by the way, currently being adapted for the silverscreen by noir director extraordinnaire Brian de Palma, and stars Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johanson and Hilary Swank.

Posted in Books | No Comments »
4

Closeup Choco Loco

10 Nov 2005

So I’ve been having to brush my teeth with Closeup’s Choco Loco toothpaste over the past week. We actually had two tubes of toothpaste beside the sink recently: one regular green-colored Closeup, and one shit-colored Choco Loco. Everybody’s been avoiding using the brownie, so the regular Closeup became more and more emaciated until it was finally put to rest a couple of nights ago in the bathroom trash. Which left Mr. Chocolate himself as our only recourse.

Luis’ Capsule Review: I’d rather use Bactidol.

The very first thing that hits you when you brush your teeth with this is the medicinal quality of the preservatives. I don’t have much of an oral memory but I could’ve sworn they mixed my childhood cough syrup into its ingredients somewhere. Choco Loco tastes like chocolate at that very brief moment before you actually start moving your toothbrush around. Then it starts to froth and you’ve got this awkward feeling in your mouth like the toothpaste has gone bad.

I don’t think I’ve ever dreaded brushing my teeth quite as much as with this new concoction. Because the tubes are so large it’ll take us at least another month before we can get back to the normal crap. I’ve seriously been thinking about just throwing it out, but that seems like such a waste. Choco Loco is still a normal, cleansing toothpaste; it just tastes like shit.

Posted in Randomness | 4 Comments »
2

Sony Bravia

7 Nov 2005

Still image from Sony’s recent Bravia TVC, directed by Danish filmmaker Nicolai Fuglsig. The commercial involved bouncing a quarter-million multi-colored rubber balls down a street in San Francisco which according to the writeup, delivered "a really simple, visual celebration of colour." It’s beautifully done, and I love the fact that it’s completely untouched by CGI, like that painstakingly-created Honda Rube Goldberg TVC from two years ago. You can watch the full-length 3-minute spot here, although I should probably warn you that it’s a 55mb Quicktime file. (The low-quality version isn’t worth seeing — it destroys the whole point of the ad.)

Posted in Movies | 2 Comments »
0

20 GOTO 10

7 Nov 2005

20-GOTO-10’s simulated DOS screen is a super cool use of AJAX, imho. Too bad the guy behind it is an MS programmer and not *nix; otherwise we’d really be cookin’.

Posted in Randomness | No Comments »