Moving Books in the Store

This is from the Things you learn about eventually, while reading other writers blogs department. The post Confessions of a book mover made me aware of something I did not know. Really, I had no idea.
Bang, there goes my believe in another myth. I thought the placement is about being new and/or good. All-right, I suspected it. Somewhere deep inside.
;-)
Don't pity me, read the post!

What Logic?

Kevin Levine's post It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a logic problem about the original (?) Superman series got me into a reminiscing state. I'm too young to have watched them when they first aired, but I really loved them when I was old enough to watch the re-runs.
Sure, from a logical point of view some of the super-hero's powers would fail for environmental reasons, but this is supposed to be fiction, right? BTW: one thing that Kevin missed was the fact that, using tele-vision (was that the term?), would require the hero to look through parts of the earth's core, e.g. when watching something in India from the office in Metropolis.
Anyway, let's see what comes up when the new movie comes out. To put it bluntly, I prefer the old King Kong from 1933 over every other incarnation it went through, though.
[Is it just me or do the last two words look funny when just separated by a comma and a blank?]

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.

Where are the Comedies?

We watched a couple of older movies this weekend and stumbled over a question: Why this lack of comedies requiring the viewer to think?
Don't get me wrong here, I really loved "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang[imdb.com]" last year and… Bingo, there is my problem. If I go (way) back in time, there was "Life of Brian(1979)[imdb.com]", "Young Frankenstein(1974)[imdb.com]", "The Blues Brothers(1980)[imdb.com]", "Airplane!(1980)[imdb.com]", you get my idea, don't you? (Provided you are old enough to have seen these movies, of course.)
Sure there are movies using humor like "State and Main(2000)", but again, five years ago. To be frank, I don't enjoy "humor" as in "American Pie" that much, I've seen it, I laughed, but that was basically it. Watched it once, wondered if I would watch it again and came to the conclusion "not really."
I wasn't aware about missing the kind of humor in the aforementioned movies until I watched "Love at Stake(1988)[imdb.com]" last weekend. Granted, not a real masterpiece, but it used a kind of humor that made my girlfriend say, "We should watch this again some time."
We tried to figure out why theses movies still are that much fun to watch. They are politically incorrect, the don't slap the humor in your face as in "let's explain why this joke is funny, shall we?" They expect the viewer to think along, draw conclusions based on miss-pronounced words and sometimes even stereotypes (without trying to explain them!). In short, they force you to think while watching and the complete lack of political correctness seems to help, a lot. Fast forward to now. Where are the "politically incorrect" movies, it's like no-one dares to make them anymore. Where are the producers (I really don't think that the writers are to blame here) bold enough to produce movies where not every joke is explained until nobody is laughing any more? It seems that being politically correct implies to explain a lot – to make sure everybody "gets it".
Is trying to be that politically correct in every aspect spoiling the fun out of watching movies? I'm not sure, but my gut-feeling tells me, it might be the case. Trying not to explain every funny situation, could be a start. The viewers are not stupid, they want to be entertained while using their brains.
My 2 cents.

Dave Winer about RSS

We all know what these little orange icons on the different blog-sites mean. I hope, at least.
Here are some words from the inventor what happens money-wise in this area, the piece is called How much has been invested in RSS? on his blog. A very interesting read.

TV: Good Writing

I had a chance – due to re-runs – to watch Crossing Jordan[imdb.com] in the different stages the series went through. The story-lines are an example for exceptionally good screen-writing, in my opinion, of course.
Is it just me, or were the dialogs toned down a bit in the later seasons? Anyway, really fun to watch. Too bad there are no season-boxes on DVD, yet (?).
Kudos to the cast as well. Every member is well-casted, they just work. I wonder if there is a Nigel-fanclub somewhere in the world. (He is part of my dream-team of investigators, but that is another story to be told …)
;-)

regex in Perl

While looking over code I created some time ago, I stumbled over a Perl-script to plot some vital data of a machine. I used Tobias Oetiker's excellent RRDtool to store the data and create the graphs.

BTW: The "Round Robin Database" is something you should definitely investigate if you need to store any kind of numerical value, graph the stored values, and especially if you don't want to make sure that only the current values are stored in the database. Believe you me!

The Perl-script contains a construct I'd like to share with you. The COMMENT modifier in RRDtool 1.2 and later does not like un-escaped ':' in the string to be printed. Here is the Perl code to do so:

$graphtime = localtime(time());
$graphtime =~ s/\:/\\\:/g;

That's regex in Perl, I really like it. Just don't forget to use Time::Local if you want to deploy this code.
;-)

Interesting "Astronomy Picture of the Day"

There was one sentence that came to my mind while watching this Astronomy Picture of the Day:
You guys watched Aliens, right?
:-)

Caffeine-Addicts unite: We are not alone!

There is a website called CoffeeGeek with every information one needs to make a really good cup of coffee. Sometimes they are going to extremes, but hey, so do I!

Movies: Even more of the same?

The last year sported a healthy dose of part twos or remakes and not so much new, original material in regard of the movies shown in theaters. The year we just entered looks pretty much the same. At first I thought I might get picky or that I was just cranky, but most of my friends agreed with me. John August, he wrote the screenplay for "Big Fish", by the way, has a good article on the subject called What’s with all the remakes?.
The fact that I got a clearer picture now, does not change my resolve that I will watch many of the new releases this year on video or DVD instead of going to the cinema. There is not too much in the pipeline that convinces me to shell out the money at the ticket-booth.

PodCasts: Three I can't do without

My list of PodCasts I listen to on a regular basis is much longer, but here are my favorites:

1. NIGHT PASSAGE JAZZ PODCAST
   A great PodCast from Rome, Italy featuring all types of fantastic jazz music. I really like Renato's taste.


2. Daily Sourcecode
   The PodFather[wikipedia] himself. Nothing to add.


3. From our own correspondent (BBC)
   A very interesting and very personal look of the BBC's correspondents on the regions of the world they are in.

Web: I knew 'slashdotted', 'boingboinged' next?

One of my favorite sites, Boing Boing, seems to have raised its power to the likes of slashdot. A website its pointing to loads really sloooooooooooooow. The bad thing about Boing Boing is, so much to see, so little time. The site in question is Pictures of Pennies. OK, that's not the homepage of the site, but this is where Boing Boing points to.
Your site might have been boingboinged has a nice ring to it, don't you think?
Come to think of it, it could be the cache-policy of my ISP as well, but I don't think so.

TWM: "Brothers Grimm", "Big Fish", and "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

TWM (This weekends movies), in order of appearance:

1. Brothers Grimm[imdb].
   Based on what I've been told by others about this film: Did we watch the same movie? I really liked it. I have to think really hard to find a Terry Gilliam movie I didn't like, though. Nope, couldn't find one. The story progresses just in the right pace to enjoy the scenery of the movie, never boring and always amazing to watch the sets. It just works. The story goes, that the parts of Heath Ledger and Matt Damon were planned the other way round, but I think the way it ended up is one of the reasons this movie is so much fun to watch. Interestingly a comment on imdb links this film somewhat to the next and I kind of see the point here.


2. Big Fish[imdb]
   Awesome. If you haven't seen this movie, try to watch it ASAP, you won't regret it. This is how movies should be done. A fascinating story, wonderful sets and great acting. Seriously, read the rest of this post and try to see this movie. Tim Burton did it again. I liked the story so much, that I'm inclined to get the book, just to see if John August had a hard time adapting it to the screen.


3. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[imdb]
   My girlfriend didn't catch it in the theater and I don't mind watching it over and over again. Just a question: What about part two?

Before someone starts to blame me not to criticize, but to simply hype things here. I usually don't comment on movies I didn't like for a simple reason: maybe they weren't made for me. Means, either I didn't get it or my mindset is just not compatible with the film and/or the story. This stance might change occasionally, but not today.

Telling convincing Stories

I happened to catch the movie "The Woman in the Window" [imdb] yesterday. I think it is brilliant. It is a thriller, it is shot extremely well (sadly it was the colored version, though), and it gripped me right from the beginning. Colored version? I hear you say. The movie was shot in 1944/45. It was colored in 1996, as far as I know. Not that the company did not an excellent job in painting over the grayscale, but some movies should be left as they are shot and not altered later on. (Do not get me started about the color-version of "Casablanca"!)
The Woman in the Window does not need splashy special-effects or too much blood. OK, someone dies, but this murder is not the fifteen minute blood-fest we are so used to from current films; the murder happens and that's it. This movie is about what happens after it.
If you should have the chance to catch it somewhere, take a look. I don't want to tell anything else about the story, it would spoil the fun.