Month: April 2008

Black Snake Moan

I just watched a really powerful movie – “Black Snake Moan“.  High quality, and I’m not talking about the DVD copy.

I liked this film from the first seconds.  Before it even started, it positioned itself as a blues movie.  And I love blues.  Gladly, the blues vibe, the atmosphere, and the soundtrack lasted through the whole film.  Some great stuff there, with the “Black Snake Moan” song scene being one of the best music scenes I’ve seen in the movies.

I liked the story and the way it was told.  It was very worked through.  Sometimes predictable, sometimes unexpected, but really followed through.  Probably the fact that the director Craig Brewer was also the one who wrote the script has something to do with it.

Also, there was really good acting.  Samuel Jackson played a character who was (or at least looked) much older than he is.  He did a really good job at that.  Christina Ricci, that little girl from the “Adams Family” … well, she’s not little anymore.  And she’s steaming hot. But not only that, she is a good actress too.  Her character in this movie was rather complicated, but she managed it just fine. Justin Timberlake pleasantly surprised too.  I just recently watched a film with him, and he is so different here that I didn’t even recognize him until the closing titles.  This guy too can act. And he seems to be picking up quite a lot of practice recently.  Also, there were quite a few good supporting actors in the film, so that the whole thing felt like real, like they are indeed inhabitants of a small rural town.

This film, although entertaining, is not purely entertainment.  It feels like it was done, because the filmmaker had something to say, something to show. There are a few things to think about during and after the movie…

Overall, a really nice film.  Strongly recommended for any fans of good acting, drama, and or blues music. 8 out of 10.

The Marksman

Another attempt to match the mood for war and destruction with an appropriate movie, and another failure.  This time it was a Wesley Snipes’ flick – “The Marksman“.  The funny thing here is that I actually saw this movie before, at least twice, and I couldn’t remember it at all.  There are only a couple of moments that fire flashbacks, but both of them are towards the end of the movie. Hopefully next time I will remember it.

This film had some budget, but it ended up seriously boring.  There isn’t much happening at any moment, and there isn’t much going to happen at any next moment.  On top of that, there is a lot of idiocy about military intelligence and Russian-American relationship.

Rating: 4 out of 10.  Save your time and money for something else.

The Hunt for Eagle One

Picking random movies of the DVD rentals shelves has its consequences.  One of those consequences is an ever increasing chance of picking up a really terrible movie.  And that’s precisely what happened to me the other day.  I was in the mood for a war movie, something with US Marines, helicopters, one of those extremely poor Asian countries hidden under the cover of jungles… The DVD cover of “The Hunt for Eagle One” looked promising, even though I was a little bit suspicious about the title.

It turned out to be a really bad movie.  The surprising fact about it was that I actually recognized a few actors in it.  But it was still really really bad.  The sound was bad.  The acting was terrible.  Special effects sucked real bad.  And the dialogs were  disgusting.   Sometimes, bad things can be so bad that they actually end up good.  But this movie is not one of those cases.  It’s just terrible bad.

And even having the principle of watching every movie from start to end uninterrupted didn’t help me this time.  After about watching it for two minutes I started fast-forwarding.  After watching a few random scenes for roughly another minute, I gave up and switched it off.

Rating: 1 out of 10.  Avoid at all costs.

Lenovo ThinkPad T61

As I mentioned a few days ago, I was looking for a new laptop. Well, I got one last week, and it’s an amazing Lenovo ThinkPad T61 machine. I am still playing with, learning it, and tweaking it, but I think I’m ready for the post now.

The red button

First things first. There weren’t much of an argument for or against each specific model that I found or that was suggested in the comments to my last post. I needed a machine pretty fast, and I was trying to arrange it in such a way so that I won’t pay for it out of my own pocket (my new employer is kind of cool for this sort of things).

Here are the specs for the tech savvy among you:

  • 15.4″ widescreen form factor
  • 2.1 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU
  • 2 GB RAM
  • 150 GB HDD
  • 3 USB ports
  • some sort of DVD drive
  • 1 Ethernet card, 1 WiFi card, and a whole bunch of other inputs and outputs

Installation process : I did a minimum installation of Fedora 8 from DVD, then copied over my home directory and other important files from my previous laptop, and then installed and upgraded all missing and outdated software. Most of the stuff worked like a charm and didn’t need any sweat.

Issues that I needed time to solve or haven’t solved yet:

  • WiFi switch was off and it took me almost half an hour to figure out. That was probably due to a total lack of sleep though.
  • Fedora 8 has this new pulse audio system, which takes a few steps to setup properly. I had to do this a few times before already, and every time this excellent guide was to the rescue.
  • I still haven’t managed to configure suspend and hibernate functionality. It goes to sleep nicely, but either doesn’t wake up at all, or wakes up with some crucial functionality missing, such as network being totally lost. This is as well the most annoying thing that I miss right now. However, the whole of the Internet suggests that I am doing something wrong and that this stuff should just work.

Impressions:

  • Very fast. This is my first multi-core machine, so I have to get used to it a bit. One thing that I am particularly glad is that it runs Quake 3 at 125 FPS easily. This is the first machine that I have that can do this.
  • Widescreen is the way to go. (And here is the recent Slashdot story to confirm that.) It’s amazing how much difference that little extra space on the side makes. Watching a movie is more pleasurable. Working with images in Gimp is way more convenient. And now I can have a full window browser with a sidebar open, following my Twitter friends. Or an instant messenger window open nearby. Or I can have a really wide console window with plenty of code to scroll through (priceless for vimdiff mode).
  • A little bit heavier than my previous machine. It’s a bit bigger too. But I don’t mind much.
  • A little bit noisier than my previous machine. It feels like the fans are never off. However I suspect there is some great utility software out there to configure and control this.

Overall, it feels like a really nice piece of technology – well built and thoroughly thought out. I need to solve these few remaining issues and it will be a total pleasure to work with.

It is NOT the end of the world, as we know it

Web Worker Daily links to the article titled “AT&T: Internet to hit full capacity by 2010“. Here is a summary:

Speaking at a Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 this week in London, Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T, warned that the current systems that constitute the Internet will not be able to cope with the increasing amounts of video and user-generated content being uploaded.

Well, thank you for pointing out the obvious, Mr. Jim.  The current systems that constitute the Internet will not be able to cope indeed.  That’s why they will be upgraded, updated, redesigned, and multiplied to cope with the increasing amounts of video and user-generated content.  That’s how it was before and that’s how it will be in the future.

There is this nice concept that I’ve learned about back in the college days.  I don’t remember how it’s called, but it is very related to three terms: “supply”, “demand”, and “equilibrium”.  I’m sure that current economics aren’t as simple, and that there are many better concepts to explain things, but I liked the simplicity of it.  I am also a big believer in the ultimate power – natural balance.  Things can be pulled a little bit left and right, and that’s possible, but in the long term, everything will balance out.

Looking through that prism on the problem of ever increasing Internet traffic, that seems to be like a lot of demand.  If big companies, such as AT&T won’t be able to supply enough, it doesn’t mean that the Earth will stop revolving and wait for them to catch up.  This has been proved before and will be proved again, if needed.  If it will come to the worst, ISPs can be decentralized by self-managing network units (individual or small networks) that interconnect with each other.  That’s actually what happens in areas which are not covered by major Internet Service Providers.  People install their own wireless networks, connect to each other, and between those who can connect them further.  If there will be too much demand for solutions like this, they can be rather easily automated with hardware units and simple software packages.

As to the claims of how fast the traffic will rise, I don’t quite agree.  It will continue to rise at dramatic rates, but not as dramatic as:

“In three years’ time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today.”

That’s just insane.

Cicconi added that more demand for high-definition video will put an increasing strain on the Internet infrastructure. “Eight hours of video is loaded onto YouTube every minute. Everything will become HD very soon, and HD is 7 to 10 times more bandwidth-hungry than typical video today. Video will be 80 percent of all traffic by 2010, up from 30 percent today,” he said.

HD is a promising technology, and it has its niche, but saying that everything is will go HD very soon, well… It reminds me of all those claims about radio disappearing when TV came along, and TV disappearing when Internet appeared.  HD will be pretty popular, but there are many areas where it is not applicable.  For example, it will take a long time before mobile phones will learn how to create HD content.

And not to forget the money issue, people are prepared to pay today than they used to before. And they are paying more.  Think about it.  Ten years ago not a lot of people had a dial-up account.  Which was a really crappy way to connect to the Internet.  And it was priced at about $20 USD a month.  Today I pay about $60 USD a month to my ISP, which brings me Internet, television, and telephony through a single cable.  And guess what – I am prepared to pay more.  And guess what – I am by far not alone.  I know more people today who pay $60 USD for their Internet connectivity than I knew before paying for their dial-up connection.

The Internet is changing.  If before it was mostly good for checking email and reading an occasional web site, today it is a powerful tool that solve a whole range of communication and entertainment problems.  Make it better and we’ll pay more.

Oh, and you’ll get paid from the other side too – web services, and the rest of the crowd who make a lot of money on the Internet.  10 years ago a service such as Flickr would be possible.  Or it would have been rather useless.  Today I now more people paying for a Pro account to Flickr than I knew before paying for their dial-up connection.  How’s that?  I’m sure Flickr is ready to pay more for better connectivity.

So, Mr. Jim, stop whining.  It’s not the end of the world.  It doesn’t even look like it. Quite the opposite.  It’s the golden time for the people who work in technology.  Let’s get back to work and make the world a better place.