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Better and worse horror movies

Friday night we watched Final Destination from tv. It's very basic teen slasher: there's a group of kids, who start dying one by one. Will the survivors figure it out before they all die?

It was quite a horrible movie, and not in any good sense. It's not I like picking out mistakes, but here the plot was real Swiss cheese, just too much holes and movie character stupidity. It was bad, but scored some points from surprising splatter scenes.

Saturday's movie was much better: Ju-On: The Grudge 2. Now there's a movie I can recommend to everyone who's seen and enjoyed the Japanese Ju-On (the American version won't do, even if it's pretty good). The theme of the movie is similar and the chronologically broken structure is also quite familiar. However, there are some new ideas, too.

What's best, it's really, really terrifying. Especially the sounds: director Takashi Shimizu masters the art of horrifying noise. The home theater amplifier we bought yesterday got really good use. The better speakers and improved space effect (even if we're still using just two speakers) really made a difference. Even without the soundtrack the movie scared us real bad, Shimizu's subtle (and less subtle) touch worked really well.

29.05.2005 klo 20:11 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Tip for Mac Firefox users

I've found Firefox's behaviour on Mac very annoying: by default, pressing tab jumps only between text fields. It doesn't move the focus to links or what's worse, dropdown menus or checkboxes. That's rather annoying, when you're trying to fill a form.

It seems it's not a bug, but intended Mac behaviour. It's bloody annoying, nevertheless, but fortunately there's a solution. Right now the Mozilla folks are debating whether to add this as something users can change themselves (I vote YES YES YES), meanwhile there's a cryptic solution.

Go to Firefox config by typing "about:config" on the address bar. Find "accessibility.tabfocus" (should be near the top). It's value should be 1. Change that to 3, and the tab key starts to work the way you expect.

It still won't move the focus to links (which is fine with me); if you want that enabled, setting the value to 5 causes tab to move to text fields and links and setting it to 7 causes it to move to everything.

See Bugzilla for more details.

25.05.2005 klo 09:26 | Comments 2 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

Audition

Takashi Miike's sensational Audition wasn't a great sensation when we saw it last weekend. Perhaps we had too high expectations; I'm sure the movie would've been better if we didn't know a thing about it. Now it was, frankly, quite boring most of the time and when the shocker came in the end, we didn't get shocked. For a movie that boasts extreme violence, it was quite tame.

24.05.2005 klo 08:19 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails is an amazing framework for developing web apps. I don't know what it can do, but I know making a todo list app with it was mind-bogglingly simple.

While I like doing web apps, I absolutely hate doing the routine chores that are involved each and every time: handling forms, doing the very basic MySQL operations... It's always the same, and it was interesting on the first time. Ruby on Rails makes all that deceptively simple.

Unfortunately my great idea to start learning Ruby on Rails will probably die a sad death, since my ISP doesn't support even Ruby. Too bad. I can't install it myself (it's all fine until the dreaded "make install" step, which I can't perform) and I'm fairly sure they won't install it, either; of course it never hurts to ask, but they've been somewhat disinterested in installing new modules or anything.

That's sad, but perhaps I'll keep on practising on our PowerBook. I have MySQL, Ruby has a webserver (and if I want more, OS X comes with Apache), so I can do whatever I want. Perhaps I can't do anything public, but at least I can practise Ruby, as it seems to be quite an interesting language.

20.05.2005 klo 09:10 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Neat software: Instiki

In an attempt to keep notes and organise stuff, I installed a Wiki on our laptop. I bumped into Instiki (Monday's Download of the Day at Lifehacker), which is a very neat Wiki server.

It's a very tight package, containing a web server and thus it's very easy to install. On OS X, all you need to do is download the disk image and that's it, you've got a Wiki running. On other systems it's pretty much as easy, but you probably need to get Ruby. Still, installing it should be a breeze.

So, if you're looking for a Wiki system for personal use, Instiki is the best thing I've seen so far.

What comes to Ruby, if I feel like I need to learn a new programming language, it seems to be a good choice. It's either Ruby or Python. But not now, some other day... And I know I need some good task to do, to get me working with the language. Fortunately programming languages are easier to learn than real-world languages, at least to me (I've so much wanted to learn German, but that just didn't work out and I know I'll regret that in October, when I'm going to Essen and it would be really cool to be able to understand German).

19.05.2005 klo 14:32 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

PowerBook experiences

We've been using our PowerBook for about two weeks now and it's been very nice. A computer kind of thought to be the secondary computer has made our desktop computer almost obsolete. It's just so much more fun to use!

Mac OS X is great. The user interface is quite intuitive and easy to use, we both like it immensely. There are great ideas like the Exposé - move the mouse pointer to one of the corners of the screen to see every open program at the same time so you can choose which one you'd like to see. That's very useful and natural feature, which I'm already missing in Windows.

I've also already learned to push the apple key, so when using the other computer, I keep using alt (which is where the apple key is on Mac keyboard) instead of control.

One Mac thing we didn't accept: the one-button mouse. Instead we got a Logitech MX510 with eight buttons (we have MX500 for the other computer). It's simply the best mouse I've ever used, either version. The red MX510 looks nice.

OS X isn't perfect: programs crash (especially Camino), but generally the system hasn't minded. Once Finder crashed (or didn't start properly) and we had to close the computer to get it working; at the same time (and much less use) Windows has had several fits, presenting us with the Blue Screen immediately after the Windows started.

One thing I'd recommend to anyone using a Mac is QuickSilver, which makes starting programs and accessing files very easy. It's a must for people who like using keyboard a lot, as it can eliminate lots of mouse pointing. Also some people have complained about Dock, saying it has usability problems; I wouldn't know about that, as QuickSilver has made Dock almost completely unnecessary.

We've also enjoyed the iTunes Music Store. It could have a better selection, but despite that, we've made some purchases already. It's just too easy... The AAC files can't be listened with our MP3 players, which dampened our spirits earlier, but then I figured out we can burn our purchases on cd's and then rip the cd's to get proper MP3's of them, so no problems there.

Listening to music is quite handy with Airport Express, so we can hear the music from decent speakers without having to worry about wires.

If we had the money, we would probably buy a 20-inch iMac right away and toss away the Windows machines completely.

16.05.2005 klo 14:12 | Comments 1 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

Hide and Seek

We saw Hide and Seek Saturday. My expectations weren't high, which turned out to be a wise move. Hide and Seek is about psychological horror: a psychologist and his daughter move to countryside after his wife and her mother dies. She comes up with this imaginary friend, who turns out to be a rather nasty person.

Much horror ensues, typically in the form of sudden scares, which is always a bit boring. There's a twist, and it is a pretty good one, too, but it's not enough to rescue the movie from boring mediocrity. Robert de Niro makes a very tired lead role, while Dakota Fanning shines as the daughter.

(Edit: No comments allowed on this entry; I had to close them, because for some reason, this entry draws in spammers like nothing else.)

16.05.2005 klo 14:10 | TrackBack (0)

Pregnant horror

Yesterday's movie choice was The Eye 2, which turned out nice. I enjoyed the first Eye and so did Johanna, if to a lesser extent than I. We both thought the sequel was better than the first movie.

Somebody whined in IMDB how the sequel had nothing to do with the original movie and thus it's a spin-off, not a sequel. Who cares? And besides, since when a sequel must've continued from where the first movie ended? While the stories aren't connected, they certainly develop the same theme of seeing spirits.

The second theme of the movie was pregnancy. It reminded us of Rosemary's Baby, but I guess that's because of the scarcity of horror movies about pregnancy. The setting here is quite different, but quite scary. I wouldn't necessarily recommend The Eye 2 to pregnant women. Fans of Asian horror should find this one enjoyable, however.

5.05.2005 klo 08:13 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

A new computer

Today I'll march in and place an order for our new computer; with good luck, I'll get it today, but I'm trying to constrain my expectations. This time it'll be slightly different, as I'm going to get my first Apple computer.

Back in the days of DOS and older versions of Windows, things were tolerable. My biggest grief with DOS was the imbecile 640 kilobyte memory. I mean, if I have a computer with whopping eight megabytes of memory, why I must struggle with the 640 kB limitation? That was way stupid.

Windows's 95 and 98 have been a bigger struggle. Well, not struggle, but a constant source of annoyance. Computer that goes down when you're not actually doing anything is just too unstable. These days Johanna mostly laughs at the computer when Opera crashes after she has closed it.

I've tried Linux and found the base solid, but the user interface lacking. Xwindows might be great, but it's not for me. Too patchy, there's too much trouble just to get it work the right way. I've long felt drawn towards Mac OS X, with it's solid Unix base and well-designed GUI.

Our new computer will be a PowerBook. It's a secondary computer, in a way, and thus needs to be small when it's not in use. We don't expect to carry it around much, but just like small things in our small apartment. If it turns out well, I'm quite sure our desktop computer will be one day replaced by an iMac.

I'm trying my best not to became a raving Apple cultist. I don't like that. All the iPod hype, for example, when iPod clearly isn't the only or necessarily even the best MP3 player in the world. I know I'm not switching from my Pontis player.

Anyway, Mac OS people: hit me with the software I must have. As we are library types, Delicious Library is a must, but what else? I know I'll be needing an editor with syntax highlighting for Java (and perl and PHP).

3.05.2005 klo 08:52 | Comments 1 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

Bridget Jones and the National Treasure

Saturday entertainment was provided by Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, which was a rather terrible sequel to a decent movie. The plot was silly and the characters had very little development from the previous movie. It wasn't a disaster, but pretty bad nonetheless.

Today we watched National Treasure. I expected very little, but it was a surprisingly good and action-packed adventure movie. It was, indeed, quite stupid and proved once again that Nicolas Cage is absolutely terrible actor, but hey - it was pretty good entertainment despite these flaws.

1.05.2005 klo 16:17 | Comments 1 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)