Pretty often, in the mailing lists, people ask why should they use one solution instead of another. There is a similar discussion on mod_perl mailing list. While there are, as usual, a number of reasons to use Perl over Java, it gets interesting when it comes to examples and references. Particularly, these lines from reply by Perrin Harkins:
Amazon runs on Perl. Yahoo runs a lot of Perl. Ticketmaster is all
mod_perl. IMDB is Perl. All of these get tons more traffic than Slashdot.
Lev, Hazard, Olga and I went to see the Perseid meteor shower today. I even took my camera and a tripod hoping to make a couple of wonderful pictures. Unfortunately, the skies were not very clear = there were some really ugly moving clouds. And we didn’t manage to get far enough from the city. Plenty of lights were still on at Kurium beach, so the star visibility was rather poor.
We have seen few very nice meteor drops, but it was really impossible to photograph those. I had the camera constantly on 30 second exposure shots, but all that was coming out were black skies with no stars or meteors.
The activity of the rain was poor too. We have seen only about 5 or so very bright and long-tailed meteors. Another 20 or so were spontaneous, random and in different regions of the sky. Finally we got bored and went home. So, no supershower for us, eh.
For the last three days, Olga and I were watching the trology of Three Colors – “Blue“, “White“, and “Red” on DVDs. It is a somewhat popular French masterpiece by Krzysztof Kieslowski. Neither Olga, nor I liked it.
When I got all three DVDs in one pack, I was a bit puzzled as to in which order should I see them. Logic suggested that blue, white, and red are colors of the French flag and that I should use the order. IMDB confirmed the suspesion.
Blue” is the first movie of the trilogy. It started of nice, with a car crash a some dead people, but it stayed there. The film was too long for what was being told, or I completely misunderstood it. It is not some American action entertainment, so I am not very good with this kind of films. It is supposed to be all serious and phylosophycal. But it was way too shallow. Reminded me of Phylosophy 101 course in the college. There were not too much dialogs and there was nothing to act upon. There was a surprising lack of music, considering the fact that story of the film was built around the death of the composer. The same piece was played over and over again. Barely I held myself from falling asleep.
The lack of happenings and simplicity was understood by the director and the second part – “White” – was more interesting. It wasn’t a huge brain mover, but there was some originality. There was this man who was all in love and married, but rejected and devorced. And he was displayed from the side which is usually reserved for women. Though there was still a lot of man in him. Interesting. The link with the first part was very weak and that left hope.
Red” – the third part, is by far the most active, but still way too melodramatic and soap operish for my likings. In the beginning it suggets another thin connection to the previous two parts, but in the end everything turns around and there is indeed some kind of point delivered.
These films all do with human sufferrings, mostly because of love, rejection, trust and it’s braking. There is also an idea of some kind of natural balance or, maybe, relativity suggested. Overall, it is not enough for almost 6 hours of total time spent on the films.
The reason I could push myself to finish watching all three of them was the increasing tempo from part to part. If it was in reverse or other order, I would have fell asleep and forgot the whole thing during the first 30 minutes.
Rating these films is a bit difficult. Each one deserves a 5 out of 10, but the synergy of all of them together brings it up to 6. I’ll give them 5s on IMDB anyway, since they are way overrated there anyway.
In the early 1700s, Russian tzar Peter The Great introduced a measure of distance, called “arshin”. He standardized the arshin at exactly 28 English inches. But instead of inches, Russians used a different measure, which was called “vershok”. One arshin contained 16 of those. Nowadays, the height of most computer, audio, and video equipment is measured in units called “U”. 1 U is equal to 1.75 inchines. The funny thing is that 1.75 inches is exactly 1 vershok. So, traditional Russian units are more convenient for measuring today’s equipment, although noone uses those units anymore. For example, a 3.5 inch floppy disk is 2 vershoks and 5.25 inch floppy disk is 3 vershoks.
You can use “A Dictionary of Units of Measurement” website to check if this story is correct. Maybe you can even discover a new one…
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This website features a nice collection of book covers from the 50s and 60s. Sci-fi, horror, erotic, crimes, and whatever else. It is always interesting to see such severe cultural changes in such a short period of time. I guess, we have to thank the 70s. :)