Tuesday, May 31. 2005
Linux ISO Downloads via BitTorrent
Thursday, May 26. 2005
Linux Development Team Losing BitKeeper
Wednesday, May 25. 2005
Mambo CMS
| Thanks to one of my co-workers, I am now playing around with the Mambo Content Managment System. He happened to find Mambo off of the opensourceCMS website, which has a pretty cool purpose. From the site: This site was created with one goal in mind. To give you the opportunity to "try out" some of the best php/mysql based free and open source software systems in the world. You are welcome to be the administrator of any site here, allowing you to decide which system best suits your needs.The only product dependancies that the Mambo CMS has is PHP and MySQL. More to follow..... |  |
(Overly) Simple Directions?
Wednesday, May 18. 2005
Movie: Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
| With probably half the population of the US, I saw "Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith" today. Prior to seeing the movie, I did read several reviews (Ebert and Berardinelli amoung others). Many of the reviews seemed to range from "Absolutely Aweseome" to "Good special effects, dialog needs a lot to be desired". My personal view of the movie is that while the special effects were spectacular, the dialog was very stilted, and as a result the overall character development sufferered somewhat. For me, character development is the glue the attaches me to the characters and makes me care about what happens to them. However, that being said, the movie does do a good job of closing the circle between Episode II and Episode IV. It seems that the Star Wars movies, in general, always affect me much more on a visual level (the special effects are always spectacular), as contrasted to the LOTR series, which affected me both visually and emotionally. {As an aside, there is a funny trailer bit poking fun at the hard-core Star Wars fans here.} |  |
Friday, May 13. 2005
Movie : Enron - The Smartest Guys in the Room - Part 2
| I did finally see "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" a couple of weeks ago. Even though I was fairly familar with the main parts of the scandel, the documentary was quite illuminating as well as disturbing. It was illuminating (and disturbing) to see how close the Skilling and Lay were to the Bush family (both presidents). Two power utilities that were hardest hit by the Enron-created California Energy Crisis were PG&E and Southern Cal-Edison. PG&E neared bankruptcy, which forced the State of California to bail them out (but having the consequence of essentially bankrupting the state). Of course, this does not even begin to take into account the thousands of employees who lost their entire savings and pensions. It is made even more heart-wrenching when you hear (recently uncovered) tapes of the Enron West Coast traders laughing (callously) about screwing the California power grid. In some of the segments, you hear the traders telling the plant operators to "get creative" with the excuses for shutting down the power plants, thereby causing a shortage and driving the prices up. (I did give in and buy one of the Enron T-Shirts that the Uptown Theatre was selling with the "Ask Why" on the front. Of course it would have been funnier to acquire a T-Shirt with the "Ask Why -- **shole" on the front -- a play off of Jeff Skilling's response to a stock analyst asking why Enron never could seem to produce a balance sheet; of course there is always Ebay....  ). |  |
Thursday, May 12. 2005
Firefox: Latest version (1.04) fixes Javascript Exploit(s)
Wednesday, May 11. 2005
How to Completely Blow A Computer Budget - Lesson 2
Tuesday, May 10. 2005
DVD: "Hoop Dreams" Finally Released.
| Finally, one of my all-time favorite movies has come out on DVD: Hoop Dreams. Originally released in 1994, it still resonates with me to this day (no matter how many times I watch it). This documentary took five years to make and follows two basketball players from the Chicago Cabrini-Green neighborhood as they go through high school and pursue their dream about making it to the NBA. There are some good reviews of the movie from both Ebert and Berardinalli. It certainly makes one think about the emphasis our society puts on sports, even well below the professional level. Needless to say, I recommend it highly. An interesting side note to this documentary is that despite winning major accolades, as well as the Sundance Festival's Audience Award, it was not even nominated in the category for Best Documentary (due to the public outcry over the slight, the Academy required all of the voting Documentary members to watch it, and also changed the rules over how documentaries are nominated). |  |
Firefox Security Hole
| The latest buzz on the internet seems to be the security hole that was found in Firefox this past Sunday by the Greyhats Security Group, who gives a nice technical breakdown of the exploit. |  |
Saturday, May 7. 2005
How to Completely Blow A Computer Budget - Lesson 1
| Since my Gateway Solo 5300 is starting to go through slow death syndrome (CDRom flaky, sound card flaky, power charger sometimes charging), I ended up buying a new Dell Inspiron 6000 from a new co-worker who convienently had 3 extra models that he purchased during the Dell sale a couple of weeks back. The specs on this new machine are:
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Friday, May 6. 2005
Movie Trailer: Hauru No Ugoku Shiro (Howl's Moving Castle)
| For all fans of Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke), he has a new movie that is coming out: Hauru No Ugoku Shiro (Howl's Moving Castle). It is slated for a limited release in the US starting on June 10th, 2005 (read in Mpls_speak: "it will be at the Lagoon Theater for a week"). I immensely liked both "Princess Mononoke" and "Spirited Away", even though I am not a big fan of the Animation genre in general. Part of the draw is both the character developement as well as the complex storyline(s) that Miyazaki seems to create with great skill. You can find some trailers for the movie here. |  |
