Month: October 2004

What file extension are you?

SWF I came across yet another one useless and irrelevant quiz. It asks you about 20 questions and by the answers provided it determines which file extension reflects your personality in the best way. Take it – it is fun. My result is SWF (which is the file extension of Macromedia Flash files). The description of the result is:

You are .swf. You are flashy, but lack substance. You like playing, but often you are annoying. Grow up.

The two questions I have now are: am I happy with the result and should I beleive the results. :)

The Pledge

Olga and I watched “The Pledge” on DVD. The cover got all my attention with names like Jack Nicholson, Benicio Del Toro, and Mickey Rourke all over it. I immidiately wanted to watch it.

When the film started I had a strong feeling of deja vu. I knew every scene, but I never could say what will happen next or what else is there in the movie. It’s deep into the second half of it when I realized that I’ve seen it. It is one of my favourites from the passive memory flicks. No matter what IMDB says about this film – it is a very strong drama. I also very much enjoy how symbolical the whole film is. Every frame can be watched separately, kind of like a photograph, and each frame will have a story just within it. Great work there!

Basically, Nicholson plays the main role in the movie and he has most of the screen time. He is excellent as usual, although his make-up is kind of original. He looks very casual. Kind of like everyone else. There is no focus on him what-so-ever. Actually, sometimes in the beginning of the movie it is even difficult to say if it is him or not. As story unfolds, it is, of course, impossible to make a mistake.

Another great acting part was done by Del Toro. His part is kind of short, but it looks very realistic and, well… dramatic.

The film is a little long and slow paced at 123 minutes (just over 2 hours), but if you enjoy compressed and defragmented camera work and composition – that’s you film. Overall, I would rate as a strong 8 out of 10. It does lean towards the 9 a lot.

Picture of the day

Today’s assignment was to use a different camera. Something that doesn’t have all the bells and whistles. In fact, the less control – the better. The only other camera except my Digital Rebel that I have is the small and weak thingy on SonyEricsson P800.

I’ve made a total of 5 images and 3 are more-or-less OK. One is outstanding – my self portrait. It just has all there is to the snapshot with a crapy camera. I love it.

The album for today is here.

MIT OpenCourseWare

There is a saying that goes something like: all new is just forgotten old. Sometimes it is very useful to go through old news and refresh your memory. There are things which were not important before but are now. There are things that you skipped accidentally. There are things that passed the edge of your memory.

I’ve mentioned MIT OpenCourseWare, I think, to everyone I know. Moreover, I did it several times. For those who still don’t what I am talking about – MIT OpenCourseWare is an effort of Massachusetts Institute of Technology to make all its study materials available for the general public free of charge and in open formats. They have started with this program several years ago and they are following the plan until now.

Here is a quote for you from their recent mailing.

How Big is the MIT OCW Web Site?

The MIT OCW Web site now offers free and open access to 914 courses, ranging from 33 academic disciplines and all five of MIT schools — Architecture and Planning,Engineering, Science, Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and the Sloan School of Management. With more than 900 courses available, users frequently ask, “Just how much educational content is really available on the MIT OCW Web site?”

MIT OCW is a content-rich Web site that is 48 gigabytes in size; offering courses that contain 14,717 HTML pages, 15,640 unique PDF documents, and 16,078 images — overall 55,171 total files for use by MIT’s global audience. All of this is made available through the generosity of 536 MIT faculty, with many more signed on for future publication cycles.

Worth checking out – don’t you think?

Programming Assignment Guide For CS Students

Today’s article – “Programming Assignment Guide For CS Students” – at Slashdot started an interesting discussion. There are comments with links to other common mistakes, guides to programming in general and different programming languages in particular. People share their experiences, tricks and tips. There are even talks on the subject of programming while intoxicated by alcohol (or anything else for that matter).