Archive for May, 2007

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Third time unlucky

Monday, May 14th, 2007

A movie is doomed when half-way through you are thinking to yourself “Is this any good?” That the movie is a good 140 minutes long can only make the verdict worse. Spider Man 3 is uneven, unfocused and unconvincing. There is an excellent movie in there, I just wish they hadn’t thrown in the other three movies.

On a brighter note we tried out the Dungarvan cinemas for the first time and they are grand, far nicer than the death trap that the Waterford cinema is. Big, clean stadium seating with great sound and picture. Very friendly staff too, not something you can often say for a cineplex.

Posted in Movie, Post, dungarvan, spider man, spider man 3 | Comments

The Last King Of Scotland

Friday, May 11th, 2007

A powerful movie. Coming from South Africa and having lived in Zimbabwe, a country being ruled by Robert Mugabe, a modern day Idi Amin, I found it difficult to watch. It spirals into tragedy in such a familiar pattern. It struck me that what the naive Dr. Nicholas Garrigan experienced was something like the Mafia. He was given a Mercedes by Amin but didn’t realise it wasn’t a gift but a debt, a payment for his loyalty. He thought he could just walk away when it became unpleasant.

Some real truth though in what Idi Amin says to the Dr. at one point. He says that the Dr. is mistaken if he thinks he can come in as a white man to Africa and understand it, to play in it. He says nothing has been real in the Dr’s life before then but that this, Uganda, is real life.

A powerful movie.

Posted in Movie, Post, idi amin, the last king of scotland | Comments

When experts go up their own arses

Friday, May 11th, 2007

Here is a case where experts are totally out of touch with the people who pay their bills.

Kottke linked to a story headlined Skywalkers in Korea cross Han solo. I snorted chocolate milk out my nose in glee when I read that headline.

But then a bunch of copy editors got hold of the headline on a forum and ripped it apart.

Yes, it is contrived. Yes, you have to have watched Star Wars to find it funny. But the headline still works as a normal, unfunny headline without Star Wars knowledge. The river is called the Han, tightrope walkers can easily be referred to as skywalkers and they are crossing the river on their own.

In this case I’d say being an expert only makes you an anal old fart. Pulling apart a headline like that is missing out on all the fun people get from it.

Experts need to know when to let go, when to laugh with the rest of the world.

Happy weekend all.

Posted in Post, experts, han solo, headline, skywalker | Comments

Viddler’s timed tags

Friday, May 11th, 2007

Viddler

Viddler has this neat way of showing you tags and comments in a timeline along the bottom of the video. So if 3 minutes and 21 seconds into the video the video mentions flying spaghetti monster then you can tag that point in time. That tag is text and therefore searchable as well as being linkable. Comments work pretty much the same way. Neat idea.

Posted in Post, tags, timed tags, viddler, video | Comments

Bought a Nokia N95 recently?

Friday, May 11th, 2007

Nokia N81 and Nokia N82

Recently bought a Nokia N95? Apart from its apparently sluggish interface and poor battery life you can now add “miffed about N81 and N82″ to your list of woes.

The Nokia N81 and Nokia N82 look great. All of the features of the N95 but in a much nicer form factor. 8gb memory, Wi-Fi, GPS, XEON flash, quad-band GSM and HSDPA, BlueTooth 2.0, TV-out, FM Radio, MicroSD, 30 fps VGA video recording and a 5MP camera with Carl Zeiss lens and auto-focus.

I hope they get better battery life out of them though I am not hopeful of the interface being any faster.

Posted in Post, mobile, n81, n82, nokia, phone | Comments

Veerlvibes

Thursday, May 10th, 2007

I’m not a fan of “Start Pages” like Netvibes* but I am a fan of Veerle. So when I saw Netvibes had been Veerlized I had to go check it out. The theme is gorgeous.

I wonder how much Veerle charges for Veerlization? Wouldn’t mind getting our app. done.

* I am a classic geek who has about:blank as their browser start page. Anything else is too slow. Not to say it doesn’t work for other people, Netvibes and co. are useful for many people. Just not me and my strange brethren.

Posted in Netvibes, Post, veerle | Comments

Got OPML?

Thursday, May 10th, 2007

I am working on an RSS project called FeedHenry (but launching soonish as Millifeed) and would appreciate your help. If you have an OPML file from your current aggregator please send it on to me. We want to have as many relevant feeds as possible when we launch. Anyone sending in their OPML file will get onto the beta access queue and I’ll buy you a pint should we ever meet in a pub. Thanks.

Posted in FeedHenry, OPML, Post | Comments

Flickr comments

Thursday, May 10th, 2007

I wish the Comments You’ve Made page and feed on Flickr had a Friends And Family Only filter. I have had to unsubscribe from it because at present I get a zillion comments a day on photos I once left a comment on and, to be honest, no longer really care to hear about.

I’d like to get comment notifications back for photos from friends and family only.

Posted in Flickr, Post | Comments

The human virus

Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

I’d just like to remind anyone about to flame me for wanting to murder their children that I am not in fact, or fiction, Captain Paul Watson. I am not the same Paul Watson who is calling for the decimation of the human population to under 1billion.

I don’t know his email address so I can’t forward your bile filled emails on but I am sure if you club a seal and write your email in the seal’s blood on the nearest snow drift that he will see it.

p.s he has a point though….

Posted in Post | Comments

Structure 101 and Spring

Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

Everytime the Headway guys send me something I hope it is an announcement that their Structure 101 tool is going to analyse Ruby code. A tough challenge compared to Java for sure but a tool I’d still love to have.

Sadly that day hasn’t come but I was surprised, and pleased, to see that Structure 101 is being used by the Interface 21 chaps. Interface 21 does Spring.

Tools like Structure 101 should be part of your development system. It just makes sense that a well tested code base is also a well structured one and that as you add code you don’t unnecessarily complicate it.

Posted in Headway, Post | Comments

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