Year: 2009

System of a Down – Chop Suey

There are some songs which never get old, even if “never” is for one generation. I think System of a Down – Chop Suey is one of such songs for my generation.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1D7Fw_JTgY]

If you are not that much into heavy music, here is a “light” version for you by Richard Cheese.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb6W-h5j3jM]

And if you can only handle cute babies on video, then switch off your sound and watch this little fellow:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nojrb4sBH20]

I just watched “Rob Roy” a truly classic film, which I somehow missed when it came out back in 1995. This is something! I can’t remember the film which would have been so packed with moral, and which would be as engaging to watch. Really.

The film has it all – honour, love, friendship, and more. It shows how hard simple things can be sometimes. And how place, time, age, gender and social status have nothing to do with who you really are, how much of a human being you are. It also touches upon marriage, and the places of both husband and wife in the family. Compared to this film, most of the other modern film seem to be quite empty. Yes, there is plenty of action and special effects these days, but so little of what people are made of and how they are supposed to be. I think that we need more films like this, and this film in particular should be a part of formal education and character development. If it influence me so much, I suspect it’ll have a quite an effect (and a positive one at that) on the teenagers’ understanding of the world. However, it’s been a while since I was a teenager, so I might be wrong there…

There is plenty of good in this film beside moral. The story itself is quite interesting, even if not new. There is lots of good acting by talented cast. The directing and the visuals are also nice. I also remember positively noticing the music score a few times during the film.

One thing I wanted to mention separately are the sword fights. There are a few and they are awesome. The final fight deserves a film on its own. It’s original, dynamic, and powerful. One of the best ones I’ve seen ever.

Overall rating – 5 stars. Highly recommended.

Barefoot running, anyone?

Daniel Lieberman, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, says:

People have been running barefoot for millions of years and it has only been since 1972 that people have been wearing shoes with thick, synthetic heels.

Well, they weren’t running on asphalt for million years. And they weren’t running for the pleasure or the healthy effect of it either, I guess.

There are a few other things I disagree with in the article, but it makes an interesting read non-the-less.

Pineapple Express

I just watched one of the worst films of the year, maybe even two – “Pineapple Express“. It’s one of those films which is not funny enough to be a comedy and not serious enough to be an action movie. All the main characters are stoned during the whole film, but being an average actors and not being actually stoned while shooting the film, that looks pretty bad. I mean, I’m all for people to do silly things, but people who badly pretend doing silly things, it’s just silly.

There were a couple of good scenes, but they were very short and far apart. There were some special effects, with explosions and such, but definitely not enough to save the film.

And on top of that, the film is rated 7.3 on IMDB, with more than 50,000 voters. I don’t know who all of those people are, but them being all in one place is actually scary.

My rating – 2 stars. Barely.

Building a classified ads directory with WordPress

When talking about what else WordPress could be used for except blogs, classified ads directories come up high on the list. It’s one of those examples which illustrate the scenario nicely and doesn’t require a lot of work.

So, how can WordPress be used to build a classified ads directory? Here is a list of a few ways you might go:

Buy and install ClassiPress – a theme and plugin to do just that – build a classified ads directory. This is probably the fastest, cheapest, and simplest option. If you want one of those directories up and running within a few minutes, that’s the way to go.
Install wp-classified plugin and tweak it until you are happy. You’ll pay with your time, not your money. And you won’t have to start from scratch.
Build your own, from scratch. This is suitable for those who want to have 100% understanding of how their directory works, and for those who want learn how WordPress can be customized beyond blogging.

In this post, I’ll focus only on the third option.

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