Month: July 2009

Sex Drive

Just watched “Sex Drive“. The ruder, cruder, nuder, unrated version of it. While I’m not a big fan of teenager movies – I guess I am a bit out of that age now – I still had a blast watching this one. It has everything a teenager should have and then some more – lots of hot naked chicks and parties, jokes, a bit of romance, a road trip and adventures.

I have to separately compliment this film on the humor part. While there were plenty of little silly things spread across the film, a few things were quite funny. I mean, I had to control my out loud laugh at three o’clock in the morning. That was something.

Also, an extra bonus for not having any drugs in this movie. Actually, it’s quite surprising for a teenager movie these days not to have any at all. I mean there was a drunk girl in there, but not more than that. I think that’s cool – there’s enough crap out there already to keep promoting it. (And yes, with drugs in kids movies – that’s promotion).

Overall rating – 4 stars. Pretty good stuff.

Natural Born Killers

I just finished watching “Natural Born Killers“. I’ve seen it before, but it was a really long time ago, and it was with a horrible Russian translation. Plus, I don’t think it was a director’s cut version that I got my hands on today.

The film was shot back in 1994. That’s 15 years ago. And it still looks quite well, despite all the advances in the moving pictures industry. I guess that’s because the true values are hardly ageing – interesting story with drama, true love and romance as well as humor; and tonnes of good acting and directing. Of course, some special effects are outdated, but that doesn’t spoil the experience even a tiny bit.

Overall, a highly recommended movie if you haven’t seen it yet. And still recommended if you saw it a long time ago. 5 stars.

Trailer : Office 2010

There are only three things that I can say about this trailer:

It is hilarious.
It probably did more to promote Microsoft Office 2010 than anything else. Combined.
Well done!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUawhjxLS2I]

If that was a real movie, I would by it on DVD.

Pink Floyd – Shine On You Crazy Diamond

Here is something for a little Friday smile – a Russian comedy remix of Pink Floyd – Shine On You Crazy Diamond:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTw5-Ww7v04]

Apologies to all those of you who don’t understand Russian. But I guess it’s funny even if lyrics are in a foreign (to you) language.

Learning WordPress : files and database

There are a numerous blog posts and forum discussion about WordPress. However you can read all of them back and forward and still not know how the system works. If you seek the real understanding of WordPress, there are two and two things only that you need to go through : its database scheme and its source code files. And it’s not as hard as it might seem.

While you can download WordPress source code and go through each file using your preferred text editor or programming IDE, that might not be the best of fastest way to learn it. Instead, I’d recommend a web-based interface available at PHPXref.com . It might not necessarily have the latest version of WordPress, but usually it’s not that far behind. For example, it currently features WordPress 2.7, with WordPress 2.8.1 being the latest version available for download.

The coolest things about such an interface are syntax highlighting and cross-reference within WordPress source code, as well as links to PHP manual for native functions.

As for the database, you have three things going for you here. Firstly, WordPress database scheme is very small, simple and straightforward. It’s only 10 tables with just a few fields each. Secondly, it’s very well documented. And thirdly, when you do a fresh installation of WordPress, you have some sample data in your database, which helps to understand what goes where. You’ll find one post and one page (to see the difference), one comment (to see how those are linked to posts), one category, one user, and a few links in the blogroll. Just inspecting that fresh database will clear up your head and sort things out.

Spending a few minutes going through the source code and understanding the database scheme is very worth it. Firstly, you’ll better understand what WordPress can and cannot do. Secondly, you’ll get inspired (that I can pretty much guarantee you). Thirdly, you will automatically get the understanding of how almost each and every WordPress plugin works. Not in details, but you’ll be able to reverse engineer them in your head easily. And fourthly, you’ll become much more efficient with WordPress customizations – you’ll just know where to put things and how to better change stuff.