Month: December 2004

The Mothman Prophecies

Just watched “The Mothman Prophecies” on DVD. This was one scary movie I must say. Although take that with a grain of salt, because I get scared easily by the movies.

The story was interesting and all visual and audio effects were just right. Enough to make me scared, but not overdone at any place. Really good.

The film was going to be pretty high in my ranking table, but… the ending spoiled it totally and completely. In more than one way. That was a bad ending for the story. Effects of the collapsing bridge were way below average. And the whole thing generally went out of control.

Down from heavens to 6 out of 10. And they needed more romance between Richard Gere and that cop lady.

Gosford Park

Watched “Gosford Park” on DVD. It is a very nice film. I liked it for several reasons.

Firstly, it had the biggest number of characters that I can remember seeing in one movie. Despite of that, character development was excellent. And it was totally not intrusive. I didn’t notice how all of them were introduced to me, but I was pretty comfortable with that amount of new faces. There must have been about 30 or 40 people. Or at least that is my impression.

Secondly, I liked the way human relationships were pictured. No matter what bars you raise to separate people of one social group from the other, they will blend and bend if they are to interract, not to mention depend on each other. Like, say, lords and servants.

Thirdly, this film had an excellent atmosphere. It felt a lot like 1930s, but it wasn’t too distant. Everyone was smoking a lot, dialogues were modernized a bit, and few other small touches here and there. Excellent soundtrack helped to create and maintain the atmosphere.

I wish there was a tiny bit of suspense in there though. I am all for dialogue-only films, but suspense is what keeps me interested. Like the “Reserviour Dogs“, for example.

I would rate this movie as a 7 out of 10. Watch it if you are not folling a sleep and need something slow with many people in one house, lots of talk, relationships, and intrigues.

Bird effect

It seems that my office windows provide for a lot of unexplored photo opportunities. There are many subjects around and each of them stands out in different time of the day. Today I focused on the industrial area around my office buildings. Gray and rusty walls of winery stores, pigeons, and metal stairways caught my attention today.

7 images were uploaded.

Album location: /photos/2004/2004-12-05_POTD

Trackbacks

I am currently very interested in trackbacks. I have read a few of documents about them here, here, and here. I am starting to get an idea, but until I will send one and receive one, I will not be sure.

NucleusCMS has a plugin for trackbacks, but it has no user guide. I have set up a small form for sending trackbacks to me an linked it to all posts in my blog. Can anyone try to send me a trackback ping and let me know if it works? Or if I get it right at all… Meanwhile, I’ll find someone to ping myself.

It takes me more than 30 minutes to completely understand the technology and that can mean only one of two things: either the technology is overdesigned and complicated, or I am getting old. Feel free to suggest a third option.

Update (05 Dec 2004 16:31): I have figured it out and reconfigured everything the right way. Minor usability enhancements might follow, but nothing major is expected from where I stand.

RFC 3875 – The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) Version 1.1

It seems that until very recently (October 2004) there was no RFC covering CGI. Now there is – RFC 3875 – The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) Version 1.1. It explains how CGI scripts should be called and executed, what they should be given and what they should return. There is nothing new or anything we didn’t know before, but it is good to have it formalized and compiled into RFC.