At this time in his life, Maxim just loves anything that makes sound. Plastic bags and present wrapping paper are two of his most favourite toys. It’s fun watching him concentrate so hard on them that he forgets what he is and where he is.
Album location: /photos/2005/2005-07-19_POTD/
On behalf of our family I’d like to congratulate Alex and Katia Georgiades. Today they became the parents of their second daughter – Sofia Georgiades. Sofia was naturally born at 4:30am, weighting 3250 grams.
Olga and I were among those chosen few who were allowed to see the baby on her first day of life. Both of us were deeply touched. We also brought Maxim with us who really looked like a giant near Sofia, despite his almost 5 monthes of age.
I made a few pictures, but I will not release them to the general public for the next 40 days as per request of the young father. :)
Martin has one of his crazy special offers running. I usually try to avoid his shop during such times, but today I had to come in. The result is, as always, I bought a few DVDs for my home collection. His special offer is a very generous one – 7 CYP per DVD or 5 for 30 CYP or 10 for 5o CYP (if I am not mistaken). So I went though the disks that he had for sale and selected 4 DVDs. He pointed out to me that I am buying four for 7 CYP each, while I can find one more DVD that I like and get all of them for 6 CYP a piece. And, of couse, I couldn’t resist.
Here is what I got:
“Be Cool” is ought to be one of the less promoted celebrity full movies of all times. I haven’t heard anything about this film until today – no posters, no trailers, no rumors – nothing.
Directed by: F. Gary Gray
Genres: Comedy, Crime, Music
Cast: John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Vince Vaughn, Cedric the Entertainer, André 3000, Steven Tyler, Robert Pastorelli, Christina Milian, Paul Adelstein, Debi Mazar, Gregory Alan Williams, Harvey Keitel, The Rock, Danny DeVito, James Woods
IMDB raintg: 5.5
My rating: 7.5 [rate 7.5]
John Travolta is dancing with Uma Thurman in the movie with Harvey Keitel and it’s not “Pulp Fiction”? Yes. Danny DeVito is in and the film is both a comedy and a crime movie? Yes. The Rock is playing a gay guy and he’s got more screen time than Aerosmith voice Steven Tyler who is also in the movie? Yes. Vince Vaughn is in too and he’s trying to make out for more than himself. See, he thinks that he’s black and he sounds like Samuel Jackson half the time and like Snoop Dog the other half. And I haven’t even named half of the people yet.
The story is rather cliche, but it’s done well. In a nutshell – lots of criminals and show businessmen are trying to get over each other over money and power. But it has lots of charm and humor to it. Cedric the Entertainer plays a leader of a crime gang. But he lives in a good neighborhood himself and has Harward education behind his back. The monologou on racism was outstanding! Oh, and his gang is great too. Especially his first assistant.
There are lots and lots of things happening on the background. They are those nice touches that make up a movie. A Russian mafia guy with two black eyes and a rig, floored armchairs in Uma’s house, her wearing a “Widow” t-shirt after her husband was killed in the first two minutes of the movie – these and lots more is what made the film so good.
Character development and dialogues were outstanding.
Additionally, it was perfect technically. Camera work was great. Soundtrack – excellent. Costume and decor designs – fantastic. Especially costumes. Some of them were changing like for every scene of the movie (Uma’s), and other’s stayed the same during all the time (Travolta’s).
Now, all of that was perfect. The only thing that is offsetting this film is the story. An original plot would have made this one into a perfect movie. As it is, it’ll stay on my “Very good” shelf.
I’ve praised the RSS for a long time now, but I haven’t said anything about Atom along the road. In fact, I used RSS collectively to speak about both RSS and Atom. That’s not very right and here I am, correcting myself.
I was always aware that Atom and RSS are different. I knew that both of these formats were used for feeding information off the websites, but I never took the time to learn the precise differences. When subscribing to a feed, if the choice was given, I always selected RSS over Atom. I’ve heard several times that I should do otherwise, but no suffecient argumentation was given, so I continued as is.
Finally, this post at Slashdot linked to this wiki page that clearly explain the differences and why everyone should select Atom 1.0 feeds over RSS 2.0.
If you intend to use the web for at least the next few years, then take the time and read it!