Sunday, December 31, 2006

Reviewed Superman II - the Richard Donner cut

Just posted my review of Superman II - the Richard Donner cut, a new DVD release that restores the original vision of the creators. Now if only something could be done about Superman 3. Bleh.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Got sore from doing 10 push-ups

Boy, am I ever out of shape. I hate making New Year's Resolutions, but I really need to make the coming year about getting myself healthier. I don't want to live forever, but I don't want to get old before my time, either. Got to lay off the fast food and get off my duff occasionally. I used to love doing Yoga, what happened to that? Haven't done any all year.

Started Documenting the Resurrection

Finally started my series of articles on Resurrecting a Dead Site over at the Webmaster's Journal on Control-Escape, with an article on web analytics. I hope to follow this up with articles on CSS layout, server-side includes, Adsense, and search. Possibly one on blogging, too, but I am hardly an expert at that.


Composed the article while re-watching Xena Warrior Princess - Season Three on DVD. (Have I ever mentioned that all my computers are named for characters from Xena?) I love these languid, low-pressure days in front of my Mac! Alas, tomorrow it is back to work at the day job.

Excavated Superman Returns Review

I dug up my Netflix review of Superman Returns that I wrote a couple of weeks ago and posted it at Media Brothers. It was harder than it should have been to track it down. From now on all my reviews go to Media Brothers first.

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Moved the Media Brothers blog

Just relocated the Media Brothers blog to blogger. I canned the old design based on the "Connections" theme from Vanilla Mist, which pains me because I love that look. But I don't have that much time to work on my blogs as it is, I don't want to spend half of it dinking with HTML trying to make Blogger play nice with my custom template. So I kissed it goodbye and picked one of the default Blogger themes.


I cross-posted my Eragon review to get the new Media Brothers bootstrapped. I'll try not to make that a habit. The review really belonged on Media Brothers anyway, but I was in transition and didn't want to wait, impatience being one of the cardinal virtues.

Saw HD Trailer for "300", drooled

I caught the latest HD trailer for the movie 300.


Based on the epic graphic novel by Frank Miller, 300 is a ferocious retelling of the ancient Battle of Thermopylae in which King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and 300 Spartans fought to the death against Xerxes and his massive Persian army. Facing insurmountable odds, their valor and sacrifice inspire all of Greece to unite.

I love Frank Miller's work, both in graphic novels and in movies. If the trailers are any indication, this is going to be one awesome action flick. A friend of mine saw an early preview at Butt-numb-a-thon and tells me I am not wrong. Lucky bugger. The rest of us have to wait until March.


Guess I should start saving now for the movie tickets. Prices are out of control. They charge three bucks to sneak in for free now. They better show this one on a digital screen, because I'll flip if the projection is bad.


300 has something in common with Frank Miller's Sin City besides Frank Miller himself. Most of the sets are digitally generated. This heavy use of digital sets is becoming quite popular for movies that are going for a certain stylized look, and such a look is definitely appropriate to Miller's work. I hope we see more like this in the near future.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Wasted Endless Hours Playing Pangea Arcade

Spent most of the day Sunday playing Pangea Arcade, which I picked up via Mac Heist. My fingers are sore from blasting asteroids.

Monday, December 18, 2006

Saw "Eragon" (for free)

A company related to my job sponsored a preview of the movie "Eragon", based on the book Eragon (Inheritance, Book 1).



The experience (at AMC Phipps Plaza 14): mediocre film projection, absolutely horrible sound. It went from no sound at all for the first two minutes, to mono only, to breaking from mono into surround and back every few seconds. Theater owners want to know why attendance is down? This is why.


The movie: not great. I have not read the book, but those who have tell me that the richest parts of the story were cut from the movie. I believe them, because the story as it stands in the picture is formulaic and not especially well executed. I have nothing against formula movies, in fact I think a good story can always stand a good retelling, but there simply was not enough character development to support it. The characters were more caricatures or stereotypes than living things. You could just about map every character directly onto that ultimate of (good) formula movies, Star Wars. Eragon is Luke Skywalker, Brom is Obi-wan, Arya is Leia, etc. But there is so little depth to the characters that we might not recognize them if we didn't know them from countless other stories on the same formula. Screenwriter Peter Buchman's only previous writing credit is Jurassic Park 3, not itself a stellar example of screenwriting.


On the other hand, the visual effects are quite good, as near as I could tell on the typically underlit projection. There were only a couple of shots where I thought "that looks fake". And the final battle scene is thrilling despite being poorly motivated by previous action. Costumes, sets, and cinematography were also excellent. Overall the production value was very high. Too bad the screenplay didn't put it to use.


Younger viewers and those with a less critical eye will enjoy this fantasy adventure, but at the price of theatrical admission I would recommend finding something better.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Went to the doctor

Paid another visit to the doctor yesterday, who gave me a stack of meds to try and get rid of this tonsillitis. Gave me this liquid gunk, the dosage is 1/2 teaspoon?! That's 2.5ml. More fluid sticks to the spoon than goes down my gullet. Not sure how that's supposed to help.

Published "Configuring Apache 2 on Debian, Ubuntu"

This was a couple of days ago, but I'm a slacker you know. I published a new article on Control-Escape.com: Configuring Apache 2 on Debian, Ubuntu. I read an article, sorry I don't have the link anymore, where an apache developer was saying how hard it is for them to provide support downstream because distributions like to create non-standard configurations. So I thought it might be helpful to create a quick primer on how Debian (and by extension Ubuntu) lays out its apache 2 configuration.