Month: September 2008

Kung Fu Panda

Being a great of kung fu movies, I aboslutely had to see “Kung Fu Panda“.  Even though it is an animation, it still features Jackie Chan and lots of kung fu training and fights.  I don’t know what it is about kung fu movies that drags me in and occupies my attention, but it’s always the same.  And “Kung Fu Panda” was no exception.

And it wasn’t a disappointment.  Great animation, good humor, and the best of kung fu – it’s all there.  The last dumpling fight is up there with the rest of the best kung fu fights.  And an extra point for choosing the animals for characters and kung fu styles.  Lots of fun.

Overall, a 7 out of 10.  Recommended for any fans of animation, Jack Black, or kung fu movies.

On Perfect Knowledge

The Next Web Boris has a thought provoking blog post titled “Achieving (and living with) Perfect Knowledge“.

One day, we will have Perfect Knowledge. Although we won’t know everything there is to know, our knowledge of the world will approach a perfect state. It will be ‘lacking nothing essential to the whole’

Recommended reading.

New phone : Sony Ericsson G900

A couple of weeks ago my beloved Sony Ericsson P910 died.  It got dropped one too many times.  A rather large semi-lequid patch appeared in its left bottom corner and touch screen stopped working.  Since the keyboard died a long time ago, I was left with no way to input or navigate the phone.  Being an exceptionally smart individual I decided that a reboot might cure this, and, obviously, that left me at the “Enter your PIN” prompt with no hope what so ever.

Next morning I rushed to the mobile shop.  The first two on my way were closed, since that was too early in the morning, but gladly I remembered that there is a Germanos branch in Debenhams, which opens pretty early.  Like 8 or 9 o’clock in the morning.  And indeed it was open.

Continue reading New phone : Sony Ericsson G900

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Yesterday I went to see “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor“.  I thought that the previous two movies (“The Mummy” and “The Mummy Returns“) were entertaining, so I was looking forward to this one.  However, there were quite a few reviews that mentioned that this sequel sucked.  That got me into doubts whether I should see it at all or not, but finally I decided to go.

The flick wasn’t bad at all.  It was somewhat crowded with characters, and the plot was sort of weak, but the important stuff was still there – mummy, Brendan Fraser, and tonnes of special effects.  Shooting, fighting, car chases, airplanes, zombie battles, exposions – these were all in excess.

But the critics were somewhat right.  This wasn’t as good the previous mummy movies.  First of all, the mummy itself wasn’t strong or scary.  In the previous films, the Egyptian mummy was so powerful that it was making warriors out of sand dunes, commanding millions of flash eating beatles, and moving stormy clouds in formations.  A hero had to fight that mummy, because it was too devastating before it was even getting into its full powers.  In this film though, the mummy was more like a pissed off guy getting his life back.  Whoever gets on his way was getting his butt kicked.  There was some potential for evil afterwords, but it’s just not the same.  Secondly,  Rachel Weisz wasn’t in this movie, and she couldn’t have been substitute by anyone.  Not in a million years.  Thirdly, there was something obviously dogdy about the storyline itself.  It felt like the good guys has become the bad guys, and the bad guys has become the good guys.  And since it wasn’t going very well on its own, some really bad dialogues and mottos were added to the mix.  And that didn’t mix that well.

Overall, I’d give it a 6 out of 10.  Not a bad entertainment flick if you are to see it in the movies, but don’t be expecting much out of it, and I doubt that it’s worth a DVD purchase.

P.S.: There is no way Brandon Fraser could win a fight against Jet Li.  No way!

Google Chrome – a new punch in the browser fight

For the last few days, the biggest thing in the technical news is Google Chrome browser (check the comics book, introducing the browser, download beta).  Sure, we had our share of browser wars, and we still do, but this is something completely different.  Most of today’s browsers started back in the days when the Web was totally different.  Since then, some browsers changed more than others.  Some new ones appeared.  But there was no a big break through.  It was mostly an evolutionary approach.

I’m glad to see these big news from Google, that they decided to create a new browser from scratch.  They built it with solutions to many of the today’s problems.  They’ve put some flexbility for the future.  And it seems like they’ve thought a lot about it.

I absolutely support their choice of open source in this matter.  Nobody, not even Google can build a browser that will satisfy everyone and everything, and then keep developing and maintaining it.  That’s not possible with the current state of the Web affairs.  The only way to pull it off is to open source it, so that the Web itself could help them with this mega task.  Also, it’s nice to see that they don’t want to reinvent the wheel either – taking both WebKit (open source web rendering engine) and V8 (open source JavaScript implementation) is smart decision.

It’s nice to see some real competition in the browser world.  Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has changed a lot in the last few years, and the biggest reason for those changes was Mozilla’s Firefox.  Firefox changed a lot too, but it sure could use a push from another open source product.  Google’s Chrome could be exactly that product.

Also, for once it would be nice to see a browser built by someone who knows the Web, and not how to build software.  Yes, browser is a software, but it’s not on its own.  You need to know more and have access to a lot more data to build a good browser.  In particular, what, who, and how uses the Web.  Neither Microsoft, nor Mozilla, nor Opera Software have these information.  Or at least not on the scale that Google has.

And, of course, there always will be downsides to any good initiative.  In the case with Google Chrome, my biggest concern is the situation with themes and extensions.  Firefox has an excellent community in this regard.  This community has built all possible and impossible thems and extensions for practically anyone anywhere.  And it still continues to do so.  Google Chrome starts from scratch, so there won’t be anything for some time.  And since the whole browser thing is new, it’ll need to start with a new set of developers, testers, users, and so on.  And so it will take them some time build that all up.

As with anything, there are a billion of other ways to look at Google Chrome, the way the Web is going, the way Google is going, the way software development in general and IT as a whole is going.  But I’ll leave that up to you.  Here are, however, a few links to get you started.