Good Writing: Who Is Cletis Tout?

I stumbled over Who Is Cletis Tout?[imdb] yesterday, while watching TV. I've never heard about this movie before, but I think that it is worthy to be bought on DVD and to be part of my permanent collection.
I really like the setup, especially Tim Allen Critical Jim, a hitman/movie-buff. My favorite quote is The new movies start with a good first act, but then the story lacks and everybody goes 'let's blow something up' to cover up the faulty story-line. I won't go into more detail, because it would spoil the story for you. Chris Ver Wiel did an excellent job as writer/director, in my (humble) opinion.
If movies like Lock, Stock and two smoking Barrels, Pulp Fiction, or Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang are examples of your taste, have a look, really.

Stories that stand the test of time

Fun Joel wrote an article called Good vs. Great?. Spot on! IMHO, Big Fish and Pulp Fiction already stood their test of time, though. But that's just me.
;-)

OS X: Logging Mail.app's Activities on a Port

Another one for the command-line geeks. If you want to log what Mail.app is doing on a specific port, launch it from a terminal like so:

/Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail -LogActivityOnPort 25

Mail.app will start as usual, but all activities regarding port 25 (smtp) will be logged into the terminal window. Another port of interest would be 110 (pop).

I found this in one of my one-liner-docs. As I wrote in the "Unix/Linux Survival Guide" (link on the right), always keep a text file with one-liners you stumble over handy. I forgot to take note where I found this hint, though. Whoever wrote about this somewhere in the Internet, thanks a million.

OS X: Mac without GUI

While rummaging in the (developer-)documentation of my Mac, I found an interesting technique to get rid of the GUI without resorting to single user mode. If the sheer thought of a Mac without mouse-control scares you, take a deep breath and read on, if you think that this is a cool idea – the box is running BSD anyway – don't forget to breathe.
:-)

The following implies, that your Mac is asking you for a username and a password after booting or after you logged out of your account. When the Username and Password window appears, type

>console

as username and press Enter. The bigger than sign is needed. The system switches to command-line mode, mind, not single user mode, but command-line mode. Means everything is running except the window-system. If you should read this on one computer and already tried it on another, how to get the windows back will be the subject of a post next week.
:-)
Just kidding, if you are done with the *NIX command-line stuff, just type

exit

and the system will revert to the usual behavior. (No surprise if you know your way around a *NIX based system.)

Knowing how to switch off the GUI will come handy, if e.g. your "Finder" starts acting up on you and you have a clear idea what needs to be done to rectify the problem.

Learning about Film without going to school?

The article A Film School Education Without Film School should stir up some controversy in the business. I'm not sure about my take on this, actually. Means, I'll make up my mind and comment later.
:-)

TV: Doing the obvious is left to Apple

The article Apple TV: wait and sue is an excellent rundown why the TV-networks have no-one else to blame but themselves. Nothing to add, really.
Oh wait, maybe one thing: We are told ad nauseam that we are living in a globalized economy, why can't we buy everything in every iTMS worldwide again?

Blogs: Footnotes

There is an article over at Darwinian Web called Nativetext: Delivering RSS feeds to the rest of the world which refers to an idea outlined at Nativetext, translating RSS-Feeds.
I like the idea, but, being a part-time translator myself, I have to admit, that I'm somewhat skeptical. Doing a quality translation not only takes time, but a good understanding about the cultural differences to create a meaningful result. The need of understanding the differences may vary in regard to books, but the more successful blogs usually use all kinds of puns and wordplays that don't translate that easy. Means, a five word punch-line might require a two paragraph explanation for readers not familiar with the underlying assumption and might bore another set of readers into switching websites, because they are familiar with the underpinnings that make the pun work. When doing translations myself, I take the easy, some might call it cheesy, way out: footnotes.
No flames please, I'm aware that the use of footnotes divides the writing community into two factions, fighting over the feasibility of the use of them. I might be influenced by books like Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus Trilogy or Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, granted, but they work for me. Here comes the problem, there is no blogging software with a decent way to create footnotes, I could not find one, at least. On the other hand, how could footnotes be incorporated into RSS? RSS is supposed to be kind of a streamlined way of distributing information, and this implies no footnotes, just the facts.
Time will tell if there is a way to overcome this dilemma. If you should know about any approaches to incorporate footnotes in blogs in a feasible way, the e-mail is at the bottom of the blog, thanks in advance.