November 2005 Archives
This is one of the photos I liked more from my 200 photos taken durin London Perl Workshop, last weekend.
Yesterday went to the cinema to see Harry Potter. Saw the first movie, read the first two books, and now went to see this one. I was not alone. A friend went with me. She is a professional regarding Harry Potter. Saw all the movies, read all the books.
The movie has nice effects, well acted, but has a problem: a big problem. It can't be seen independently of the books and/or previous movies. Of course, you can say that the idea is make people see the movies, and read the books. But in that case, don't call it a movie. Call it a serie, a trilogy (with three or more O:-)) but not a single movie.
Of course, my luck to understand better the story was the professional at my side.
Last night went on to see Lord of War, a recent movie with Nicholas Cage. Although it is an Drama movie, it can be seen as well as a documentary. It introduces some ideas about weapons traffic, which justifies a lot of the cruelty of this world. It has a few girls, but not enough to make me recall them again. It ends with a few sentences that shows why wars continue to exist (no more detail, go see the movie).
Resuming, the movie has an interesting story, the story is told in a nice way, and Nicholas Cage is a good actor. Also, as somebody commented in IMDB, "A Surprising Morality Tale" is a good description for this movie.
And I really need to get my English better....
Another photo I think is nice enough to have an entry in the blog.
This is the sunset in the roof of the Computer Science building, from Minho's University, where I study/work. I know that the photo is nice because Nature is beautiful, not because I know how to take photos...
The second movie of the day and so people can't say I am a manyac for teens and girls, here goes an entry about a documentary or biography: American Splendor.
It tell us the story of Harvey Pekar, a comic book writter, how his life began, how he met his wife, problems regarding money and finally how he got cured from a cancer. The story is interesting, and they way it is presented make it more interesting. Not only because of the comic book alike portions of the film but also some scenes about the movie recording, where we can see the author playing for Pekar, and the real one side a side. This also tell you right at the beginning that Pekar would survive the cancer, so you don't expect him to die during the film (thus, this is not a suspense movie but rather a documentary).
If you like different movies, if you ever dreamed of drawing cartoons, and if you are up to think about what's life, see this movie.
With the new camera I've been taking photos of almost everything I find minimally interesting. And while I don't have a model (a girl, I mean O:-)) to take photos of, this is the photo I liked more so far:
This weekend movie was 100 Girls, another teen based movie. These movies have two big advantages: girls and sex. This movie has both, and specially, lot of girls. Ok, not 100 but a lot of them. Most of them nice as well. Includes a few boys and the main character is a lucky stupid boy.
Not to tell you the story, the plotline as in IMDB tell you all: He met the girl of his dreams. If only he can meet her again. . So, the full movie story is the main character searching for his greams girl.
While the movie story is quite usual, and the jokes, and all that, it includes some interesting thoughts about man/woman relationship. I'll give it 9/10 mostly for these thoughts, and, of course, for the girls.
Yep, the third release candidate is out. Unfortunately the bug (well, I call it a bug, although accordingly with some entries on bugzilla people was complaining about the way this was working before) is still alive. I hope they change the way this behaves, really. I hate having windows always popping up...
This movie reminds me of Harry Potter: somebody with powers that doesn't know that have them, and goes for a school and finds them. So, the story is kind the same: a super-hero, child of two super-heroes goes for the super-heroes school but, poor boy, he doesn't have any super powers. Oh well, he has but he didn't know.
Regarding the movie itself, nice special effects, nice girls, nice jokes, super heroes. So, 8 in 10.
Sapo (or Sapo.pt) is my ISP for some time (more than one year).
It started with an ADSL connection at 512Kb/s. It all worked alright during that period. Meanwhile, they upgraded connections, and I got a 2Mb/s connection without changing the contract. During the first weeks it worked alright (sometimes with doenloads higher than the 2Mb/s) but that ended. Now, my Internet connection is slow and shaky. Almost everyday I get an IP change. Today, that happened three times during 5 minutes.
Of course I contacted the support guys. First answer: you have trojans or worms. Try to install an anti-virus. In any case, download Messenger (a MSN from sapo, basically) and contact the online support.
My answer was: I'm using MacOS/X. I don't have trojans, I don't have worms, and I can't install the Messenger because there isn't MacOS version for it.
Their answer? They say I have trojans or worms... I wonder if they know what MacOS is.
As you might (I hope you did) have notice, I love lego. Normally I read posts on the Portuguese Lego User Group (PLUG) about what's happening.
Today, got this link to brickshelf about a new set, out in next year. Although you might look and say, nice, it is a very nice plane, easy to open to play with, and with an almost real door, and would add some remarks: it has too big pieces. Notice the airplane front: you can get a similar look with standard bricks, without the need for that one special, that you will just use when building an airplane.
Going this way, Lego is not creating a toy to help kids imagination, but sets of objects to build, and rebuild, but always the same object. This set reminds me Playmobil... not sure why.
Today I'm abusing mySQL. Last week created a three table database, each table with about 8 000 000 rows, with lots of indexes.
Today, I'm creating two indirect indexes to, from words, find the sentences where they occurr. This will create an enourmous table, and I don't know if mySQL will like it. Then, I need to compare the efficiency of queries using 'LIKE' and queries using this auxiliary table.
Let us wait, and see....
Didn't have the time for quality photos, just take these four before going to bed (so, with flash, and without patience to show all the details). Have fun with these images, and I'll probably add more later.
These first two show also the Backhoe loader, so you can compare sizes.
These two show some detail on the crane.
Firefox updated again itself to a newer version, 1.5 Release Candidate 2. Unfortunately it includes a bug previous versions didn't include. I'm preparing to add it to bugzilla: if you ask for popup windows to open in new tabs, they will not do that.
I hope they correct this before the official release. This was the main feature I was looking for on Firefox 1.5.
My new camera just arrived. Meanwhile, I've been adding photos to my Flickr account. Not all the recent ones are with the new camera (just three at the moment I am writting this), because I've added some old photos I had stored.
This is probably one of the best technic lego set I ever saw. Probably because the backhoe loader is another great set. While the backhoe loader is all pneumatic (10 pneumatics!!) the crane is pneumatic (2 pneumatics), electric (includes a motor), manual (for roation, for instance) and mechanical.
Talking about the lego crane, it is awesome. First, it is enourmous. Then, it includes a lot of bricks (I tend to call them pieces, as few are the usual lego brick). Also, it tooks a lot of time to build. In my case, I took more than 8 hours of full work.
It is very interesting the way the motor works to make two different actions accordingly with a level. Regarding the pneumatic, it is used to raise the crane arm. While it raises smoothless, to lower it... you must take it with your harm, not to let it drop too quickly.
I'll prepare some photos to let you see this set more closely.
Got this set, took more than 8 hours to build. Now I need to play... erm.. to test it.
Just need to buy some AA bateries somewhere. Later a bigger report and critic to this set.
