Cyprus referendum

'NO'Today cypriots were asked on the referendum if they support Kofi Annan’s plan of Cyprus reunification. It was has been obvious for few days now that most of Greek cypriots will say “no”, and most of Turkish cypriots will say “yes”. “No” (“Oxi” in Greek) compain has been rather active recently, but on the day of the referendum any promotional political activities are illegal. I’ve made few pictures of how Limassol city looks in places.

Cyprus will become a member of European Union on the 1st of May 2004 (in one week) no matter the result of the referendum. The only difference will be weather the Nothern part of the island, currently occupied by Turkey, will join also or not.

I personally think that it is better for Cyprus to get united now than wait for a better plan. It has been separated for 30 years, and it was never closer to reunification than it is now. If it will not happen now, it will not happen for the next 5-10 years. Maybe more.

Something’s Gotta Give

I ‘ve just watched “Something’s Gotta Give” in the movies. Was it good? I can not say that. Was it bad? Well, not entirely. There were some really good moments, but overall it lacked a lot. There was no point in the movie at all. And it was going in such waves that you could actually stop it anywhere after the first 30 minutes without loosing anything. With the same success you could chop of the real ending and put it anywhere in the movie after the same first 30 minutes and it would look natural. Yuck!

There was some great acting done to save the film. If I would to break 4 pounds that I paid for the ticket, I would give all 4 just to actors. 2 pounds would go Jack Nicholson, 1 pound to Amanda Peet, and 1 pound to Frances McDormand. Both Diane Keaton and Keanu Reeves were terrible. Keanu was an emotionless brick wall as always. Diane was simply horrible. Especially her crying after breaking up. Production was also below average. There were virtually no scenery in the movie. It seemed like all the actors are straight in front of the camera and that nothing else exists. There were so many opportunities though – the house on the sea beach, Hawaii, hospitals. None of it is important to the filmmaker. Not even for 3 seconds. But all that crap that goes on for two hours without going anywhere is. That’s sad. There is a very strong feeling that there is a woman in charge behind all these. And in fact it is so – Nancy Meyers (writer of the screenplay for “What Women Want“). She is both the director and the writer of the screenplay for this movie. I don’t think that I will see any more of her movies anytime soon. In fact, I’ll try to avoid them as much as possible.

After I’ve almost finished this post, I thought that I am getting too negative about the movie. So I went around and tried to find opinions of some other people. Just to compare, you know. And what was my surprise when I came across the revision by Alex Exler, who wrote almost exactly what I did, but in Russian, longer, and better. If you can read Russian, read his revision here.

Cyprus police upgrade

Usual gadgets of traffic police around here are the radar, the pen, and the fine form. And the radio. You drive, they measure your speed with the radar, and if it is more then 20 km/h above the speed limit, they stop you and then use a pen to fill in the fine form. If you don’t stop, then they will use radio to complain about you and a whole bunch of cars, bikes, and helicopters will force you to stop and surrender.

Today, Hazard was the unfortunate one to discover that traffic police now has few more gadgets. Apparently, government recognized the century we are living in and decided that computerization is the way to go. So, now instead of using an old-fashioned pen and a fine form, policemen are using a handheld device (visually similar to Compaq Ipaq) to fill in digital form. They than proceed with printing it out using a handheld (or neckstrapped) BlueTooth&tm; printer. The printout looks like a receipt from Woolworth for Chirstmas shopping printed out on a hard paper.

New gadgets must have been introduced very recently, because the policement are extremely slowed down. I haven’t been able to locate any news announcements regarding this issue, so this might as well be a pilot project.

P.S.: Those of you worried about Hazard – he just got the fine of 21 CYP (driving 86 km/h in a 65 km/h zone) and two points to his driving license. Nothing terrible. :)

A couple of multimedia links

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Today I’ve seen and heard a couple of interesting pieces.

  • Plance crash movie – NASA controlled experiment. This was originally found at College Humour.
  • Skating dog – this is one of the coolest videos I’ve seen ever! Again, originally posted at College Humour.
  • Windows sounds mix – this is a must see and listen Flash with a mix done with native Windows sounds only. It also tries to convince you that everything was done in Sounds Recorder that comes with MS Windows, but I find that hard to believe. :)

College Humour has a tonne of other clips that are less impressive, but are also recommended.

P.S.: If you have problems playing these video clips on your Linux machine, then walk down to the MPlayer website and download all the codecs from there. It worked like a charm for my Fedora Linux Core 1 box. Cheers. ;)

The Third Wheel

Feeling the need for entertainment, I’ve watched “The Third Wheel” on DVD. Apparetenly, I’ve already seen this film, but totally forgot about it. And I was right. There is nothing so special to remember about it. This is the typical attempt of a comedy about the guy who has problems with his social skills, but who wants to have a date with the most pretty woman in the office. The whole thing is rather regular. Collegues make bets, there is another third guy (wheel) who helps with the date, and a totally happy ending in the, well, end. This is one of the thousands similar movies. Get something else.

There are few celebrities in this movie though, so if you a collector, then you should check it out. Main characters are played by Luke Wilson, Ben Affleck, and Denise Richards. There is also a small part played by Matt Damon, who is by the way the executive producer of this “masterpiece”. There are few more familiar faces, but I don’t bother to remember or to look them up. :)