On English language

It is amazing how typing mistakes can sometimes result in words with a totally opposite meaning. On one occasion I came across the combination of “hire” and “fire”. Just one letter makes a difference between getting a job and losing one. A couple of days ago I have also learned that “friend” and “fiend” can bare oppsite meanings. Today I saw “Therapist” and “The rapist”. Again, one letter makes all the difference…

If you came across examples of one letter changing meaning to opposite, let me know through the comments.

Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over

Watched “Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over” with Olga on DVD. Both she and I really enjoyed the first two movies, and both she and I didn’t like this one. Let me explain a bit…

First of all, the expectations. Both the first and the second parts were entertaining, active and in general fantastic. So our expectations were a bit boosted up. Especially mine. And it is always a pity when a movie doesn’t live up to expectations.

Misuse of the resources. This film is full of stars. First and totally undoubtful is the directory himself –
Robert Rodriguez. He proved many times that he knows a lot about how movies should be done, and that he can do movies the right way. Here something went wrong. It felt very empty, lifeless, boring and commercial. Cast for this film has such a long list of well known names that I cannot even remember another movie like this. Among the ones who don’t need no introduction: Antonio Banderas, Sylvester Stallone, Mike Judge, Salma Hayek, Cheech Marin, Steve Buscemi, and others. I mean there are probably more people you can name without IMDB than in any other movie. And they all have nothing to do there.

The story sucked. It was so pure and transparent that it was very boring. I bet that even kids were falling asleep while watching it. All coolness was gone. Noone was cool anymore. Superheros running towards their grandpa in case of any minor danger. No gadgets. No spy talk. Nothing.

There were plenty of annimation. Actually the whole film is one huge animation with real people in it (supposedly inside a video game). But even this was boring. It wasn’t anything like a computer game. Take for example a scene where they are racing some strange vehicles at magnificent speeds – no thrill and no turns. They drive in a straight line. In which video game was that? :)

Anyway, I have a bunch of complains about this film. I expected it to be in line with the previous two, but it was way off. I will write it off as something Rodriguez wanted to do for his own reasons and I will forget about this film. I’ll rate as 4 out of 10. Save you money and spend them on something else. Watch this on TV when it’ll come… it will help you fall asleep. With your kids.

Picture of the day

There will be no picture of the day today. My cardreader stopped reading cards. At all. And it gave this stinky burning smell when it did so. I guess it went down to hell and got fried. I’ll get another one tomorrow, if I am lucky.

Meanwhile I did shot a few pictures. I tried the driving through the night and shooting to get those ray images again. This time I washed my window and put the camera on the tripod on the front seat. It was always trying to fall down, so I had to hold it a bit. But it was more flexible than on the panel.

Anyway, I will get myself a new reader, and upload the images if anything turns out OK. Stay tuned.

Picture of the day

Ray tracesBetween fighting a hangover and preparing for the night shift, I didn’t get any time to hold a camera. Actually, I didn’t even feel any urge to do so anyway. It was just on my way to work I started thinking what will photograph today. Somehow the road looked nice with some cars on it and lots of street lights. Than I noticed that I don’t have to hold the camera to make pictures while driving – it can rest on the front panel of the car. So I set it up, switched to manual focus, set the exposure and shutter, pushed the button and started driving. I made about 10 shots along the way, out of which I liked these four.

Note to myself: make sure to wash the front windscreen even if it looks OK to the eye and try to have someone in the car, who will point the camera lower to the road and not to the dark skies.