7 - 2004 | ***Dave Does the Blog

Manchurian

I’ve been following Denzel Washington since his St. Elsewhere days, and I honestly can’t think off the top of my head of a bad film he’s been in. That said,…

I’ve been following Denzel Washington since his St. Elsewhere days, and I honestly can’t think off the top of my head of a bad film he’s been in.

That said, The Manchurian Candidate worries me.

Not that I think it will be a bad film, mind you — it’s got a great cast, and the trailer looks like a great action/suspense/conspiracy flick.

It’s just that I have a great deal of admiration for the original 1962 flick, and it looks like the new one is less of a remake than a reimagining of the whole premise, with Marco as a lone conspiracy nut (rather than someone eventually working within the system), Shaw as the VP candidate (rather than his stepson), Manchurian referring to a conglomerate (rather than, well, a part of China).

And, frankly, any Manchurian Candidate that’s missing the Queen of Diamonds is sort of like a Star Wars remake without the Wookiee.

I’m sure it will be a good movie, and there may be some plot twists that aren’t yet clear (I can think of a couple offhand). Meryl Streep will be hard-pressed to match Angela Lansbury‘s Oscar-nominated performance, but I have faith in her. And, like I said, Denzel Washington basically rocks. I just sort of wish they’d decided to make a “new” movie that some folks accused of “ripping off” the original, than make something that purports to be a remake of the original while taking such liberties with it.

Though, of course, then you’d have to wonder why they’d remake it at all. 🙂

Aha! It was the Bulgarians!

My detective work for the day. Looking through my MT Blacklist log, I can see that a lot of the bad guy hits are coming from IP 213.91.*.* Querying the…

My detective work for the day.

Looking through my MT Blacklist log, I can see that a lot of the bad guy hits are coming from IP 213.91.*.*

Querying the most recent IP address through ARIN, I find that the 213.0.0.0 – 213.255.255.255 block is controlled by the RIPE Network Coordination Centre in beautiful Amsterdam. RIPE is a Regional Internet Registry (Réseaux IP Européens), and they have their own database of folks routing through them.

Querying the RIPE database shows me that range 213.91.128.0 – 213.91.255.255 belongs to Bulgarian Telecommunications Company Plc., located in beautiful downtown Sofia, the honorable Bisser Tzonev, Ilia Koukov, and Lyubomir Georgiev presiding (or at least as technical contacts).

Going to their site is pretty much of a Cyrillic dead end for me. Or is it?

So I’ve sent them a nice little note, asking for their assistance in blocking this sort of stuff. I’ll let you know what, if any, response I receive.

Old PCs never die …

… they just stack up in closets and back rooms because people don’t know how to dispose of them properly. Which makes this welcome news: Office Depot and Hewlett-Packard yesterday…

… they just stack up in closets and back rooms because people don’t know how to dispose of them properly.

Which makes this welcome news:

Office Depot and Hewlett-Packard yesterday launched the country’s first free, nationwide, in-store electronics recycling program.
Under the Office Depot-HP program, which runs through Sept. 6, customers can drop off any brand of unwanted electronics at any of Office Depot’s more than 850 U.S. stores. Office Depot will collect and recycle computer-related and electronic entertainment goods, including desktops, TVs, and cell phones. All products collected from Office Depot stores will be recycled at HP facilities in Roseville, Calif., and near Nashville, Tenn.

Sounds like a good opportunity to get rid of some cruft in the upstairs office …

Picasa

Note for self once PC is back in operation: check out the Picasa photo imaging software available free from Google (which acquired it earlier this month). Looks pretty cool, and…

Note for self once PC is back in operation: check out the Picasa photo imaging software available free from Google (which acquired it earlier this month). Looks pretty cool, and has some good press.

(Amusingly, if you search for “picassa,” Google recognizes it as a possible misspelling — and asks if you were searching for “Picasso.” Heh.)

Siding along

The Good: Margie (who, in case anyone didn’t know this, rocks) talked to the siding people to schedule our siding installation. Woo-hoo! At last, relief from the godawful peeling paint…

The Good: Margie (who, in case anyone didn’t know this, rocks) talked to the siding people to schedule our siding installation. Woo-hoo! At last, relief from the godawful peeling paint and cracked clapboards and all that!

The Bad: They can fit us in … in September.

The Ugly: Looking at the house between now and then. Though we’ll know it’s going to change. We will still have to make decisions about the paint trim on the soffet and fascia, the downspouts, and, most importantly, the garage door.

It’s the latter that’s the biggest eyesore at the moment, as large patches of the burgandy paint have flaked off under sun and (most importantly) moisture over the last several months, leaving tan beneath. Ick. I wish I had a quick answer, aside from doing a quick pre-paint job ourselves (not necessarily a bad idea).

The question will be (a) what color do we paint it (leaving it the current “accent color” is No Longer Acceptible to the Paint Police), and (b) do we replace it first. Lots of folks are beginning to do that around the neighborhood, twenty years or so being about where garage doors start to get replaced, and ther’s no doubt that it’s creaking and groaning beyond the ability to simply tighten the screws.

On the other hand, I hate to shell out a grand more to do it.

And that would raise issues about whether we get a door as-is, or get one with little windows (which would let in light into the darkness, but pose a security issue, perhaps).

On a related note, I’ve been seriously considering an exhaust fan for the garage, because, damn, it stays hot late into the night. And since it sits right under our bedroom …

Nicest thing anyone’s said about me today

If one were to go solely on what I’ve posted to SEB it would be understandable if you thought I didn’t feel there were any believers out there worth talking…

If one were to go solely on what I’ve posted to SEB it would be understandable if you thought I didn’t feel there were any believers out there worth talking to outside of ***Dave and JethricOne ….

While always willing to talk about relgion, either in general or mine in particular, the funny thing here is that I don’t define myself as “a believer.” I don’t wear a big “I’m a believer” badge on my lapel, I don’t flag down people to tell them how to be “saved” (hell, I’m still figuring that one out, so how would I have the audacity to chart someone else’s path?), and I don’t approach every conversation from that, or any other, ideological starting point. While my personal faith is very important to me, it’s not me per se, any more than my hobbies or family or residency or hair color. Some might consider that to be not a good Christian, but I think God made me to be more than a sentient prayer wheel (or, rather, God’s intent was for my life to be prayer, not prayer to be my life).

So I don’t approach things all the time as a “believer.” And, perhaps, that’s what makes me “worth talking to” (if I can fit those words past my blush), since I find that ideologues — whether I agree with their ideologies or not — tend to be dull conversationalists. To paraphrase Maslow, when the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to pound your points in too hard.

Indeed, to toss the compliment back, one thing that makes SEB and Les so readable himself is that it’s not all or fundamentally about — let alone starting-every-sentence with — being a non-believer. If it were, it would probably be pretty dull, and it’s usually anything but.

Which is not to say that blogs (for example) on a certain theme can’t be informative or interesting or enjoyable. But the best tend to focus either on information (which is then either interesting or not in its own right) or about being a person (in which case the theme is coloring, not substance). Blogs that want to Teach You the Truth, Dammit, No Matter How Many Posts It Takes don’t stick around for long in my own blogroll.

It’s easy to get along with, and find (and enjoy) common ground with, a person. It’s a lot more difficult to do so with an ideology or an ideologue.

Warning labels seem indicated

If a particular type of baby food were found to be substantially more toxic than other types, you’d expect Swift Government Action — warning labels at the very least, outright…

If a particular type of baby food were found to be substantially more toxic than other types, you’d expect Swift Government Action — warning labels at the very least, outright recalls and bans and possible criminal actions quite possibly as well.

Well, unless we’re talking about organic baby food. At least in the UK.

In all, four of the top 10 foods with the highest levels of toxins [dioxins and PCBs] carried the organic label. Meanwhile, none of the 10 most toxin-free products was organic. In one example, an organic shepherd’s pie had 90 times the level of the chemicals of its non-organic equivalent.
In addition, while fish products have recently been the focus of considerable criticism over their levels of PCBs and dioxins, the only non-organic fish product tested had the lowest level of toxins, while the organic fish products were among the most affected by the chemicals.
Even within the same brands, organic products fared no better than ordinary foods. Although two organic products from Cow & Gate had high concentrations of toxins, two of their conventional baby foods were among the top 10 cleanest.

Okay, so the levels were all safe. But, still, it’s kind of amusing. And it makes you wonder what similar testing would show over here …

Damn it to hell …

My PC crapped out again — same BSoD, etc., undocumented online (and we’re looking for the WinNT DDK to see if it gives us any clues), same endless cycle of…

My PC crapped out again — same BSoD, etc., undocumented online (and we’re looking for the WinNT DDK to see if it gives us any clues), same endless cycle of reboots.

On the up side, my PC’s data is fully backed up.

On the bad side, you can’t back up aps, only image the whole frelling thing.

So while I could be handed a loaner whilst my still-under-warranty notebook went back to IBM, there to disappear for several weeks of diagnostics, I’d still be the equivalent of living in a rented motel while my house was being rebuilt. And then having to rebuild it.

So … they’re imaging the HDD, then they’ll see if they can push the image to a different model notebook, to serve as a loaner in the interim. And a few other glitches have delayed that until … well, it’s been 5 hrs, and nothing yet, so I finally asked them to hand me a notebook loaner and (mutter mutter mutter mutter …)

Looks like Margie and I will be sharing a machine at home tonight. (And, again, mutter …)

P.S. I miss tabbed browsing. I miss password managers. I miss ad blocking. Damn it …

P.P.S. I miss my RSS feeds. I miss my link bar. I miss …

P.P.P.S. I miss my popup blockers, dammit!

Performance review

In the interest of trying to improve the inexplicably dismal performance on Margie’s PC (a long-term problem that I’ve spent many hours tweaking settings regarding), I spent the weekend yanking out the Outlook monolith, replacing it with a reinstalled Palm Desktop (for her calendar and contacts and PDA sync) and Thunderbird (for her e-mail).

On the down side, the performance still sucks.

On the up side, it got rid of Outlook.

I have another cunning plan to address the performance, but I think it’d better be a success before I start talking about replacing her IE with Firefox …

Touched

Audience numbers aren’t the the only thing King Arthur Promotion” href=”http://www.defamer.com/topic/keira-knightley-bazoomed-for-king-arthur-promotion-017426.php”>Hollywood loves to inflate. Some face work, too, it looks like. (via the Flea)…

Audience numbers aren’t the the only thing Flea)

Comics Movie news roundup

Some news from the world of movie/comics cross-overs … Brian Singer has jumped ship from the X-Movie franchise, to direct (the latest among many) the new Superman flick — with…

Some news from the world of movie/comics cross-overs …

Brian Singer has jumped ship from the X-Movie franchise, to direct (the latest among many) the new Superman flick — with yet another script, too (tossing the one by Alias‘ J.J. Abrams). Bad news on the X-front, since Singer’s done an amazing job with the first two movies, but it might actually be what’s needed to get the Supes movie off the ground (heh).
An Avengers direct-to-DVD animated flick (one more more)? Ah, but based (to some degree) on The Ultimates. How PG-13/R are they going to let it be? How edgy/teen/tween are they going to target it?

Vulture Food

Growing up, tacos were “Vulture Food” in my house. Unlke the usually sedate eating of meals, in which dishes appeared before us with entree and vegetable and occasional starch neatly…

Growing up, tacos were “Vulture Food” in my house. Unlke the usually sedate eating of meals, in which dishes appeared before us with entree and vegetable and occasional starch neatly arranged, and a bowl of salad off to the side (courtesy of my mom, natch), when it was taco night, all we had were plates empty but for taco shells, and bowls of fixin’s in front of us.

And Dad didn’t get picky — on those nights — about folks grabbing stuff.

“Piranha Food” might have been a more apt name. Hilarity (and yummy taconess) would then ensue.

So tonight? Vulture Food at the Consortium.

Katherine was greatly amused. And the tacos were good, too.

Hey, Kids! Graphic Novels!

Some GNs I’ve picked up of late. Review code format: [writing (3-1, faboo to mediocre) / art (3-1) / suitability for jumping on as a new reader (3-1) / and…

Some GNs I’ve picked up of late.

Review code format: [writing (3-1, faboo to mediocre) / art (3-1) / suitability for jumping on as a new reader (3-1) / and suitability for hooking a non-comics reader (3-1)]

Continue reading “Hey, Kids! Graphic Novels!”

Bad news … or good news?

Why The Lord of the Rings Will – and Must – Be Remade. Hmmmm. I’m sure the author, Doug Kern, is correct. Indeed, I’m not convninced that we won’t someday…

Why The Lord of the Rings Will – and Must – Be Remade.

Hmmmm.

I’m sure the author, Doug Kern, is correct. Indeed, I’m not convninced that we won’t someday see remakes of The Godfather or Gone with the Wind, or Star Wars — except for the artificial constraints of ego and hyper-extended copyright protection (Lucas will never allow SW to be remade, and will discover some way to prevent it in perpetuity, I guarantee).

And, heck, given all the other films that have been remade, LotR isn’t even in the upper half of the list of faboo films that someone’s decided to tinker with.

And, in fact, I would actually be willing to see a flick that did justice to Tom Bombadil, or the Scouring of the Shire, or …

So, yeah, I can see it.

But I’ll probably grouse about it. And for the moment, I’m only waiting for the (ultra-mega-length) Return of the King to make my LotR viewing complete.

(via GeekPress)

Sunday Funny

May I recommend to you Rich Burlew’s The Order of the Stick, a drop-dead funny D&D web cartoon? Yes? Well, consider it recommended. The most current one is only okay-funny,…

May I recommend to you Rich Burlew’s The Order of the Stick, a drop-dead funny D&D web cartoon? Yes? Well, consider it recommended.

The most current one is only okay-funny, but going back to the first one … well, I was hooked.

I’m now proceeding to go through each one. Heh..

Frankenstein’s #ERROR

US geneticists are having big problems with data stored in Excel. The problem, which can cause medically important genes to be hidden from view, is widespread, and has affected some…

US geneticists are having big problems with data stored in Excel.

The problem, which can cause medically important genes to be hidden from view, is widespread, and has affected some public databases, including the gene expression data on the NCBI LocusLink database in the US, the researchers say.
Excel is widely used in genetic research to process microarray data. A microarray chip detects amounts of protein produced from thousands of different genes, enabling researchers to see which particular gene is being expressed in a sample of diseased tissue, for example.
The errors are introduced because some genetic identifiers look very like dates to Excel. If the spreadsheet is not properly set up, it will convert an identifier, such as SEPT2 to a date: 2-Sep. The conversion, the researchers say, is irreversible: once the error has been introduced, the original data is gone.
[…] “A little detective work traced the problem to default date format conversions and floating-point format conversions in the very useful Excel program package,” they write. “The date conversions affect at least 30 gene names; the floating-point conversions affect at least 2,000 if Riken identifiers are included.”

While BoingBoing points to this as an example of the craziness-which-is-Excel’s-Autocorrect, fact is that’s only part of it. Is using the wrong tool the responsibilty of the tool or of tool-user? Using a spreadsheet as a database is always a sketchy proposition, and I daresay that most people find it convenient that they can just type in a partial date and have Excel recognize it as such.

That folk have been storing info in Excel and haven’t noticed these kinds of problems before doesn’t speak well of the care with which they’re keeping their data.

Use a real database, folks.

(via The Register)

Thunderbird notes

Not exactly intuitive, and not trivial to find in the current 0.7 “documentation,” but … … if you are set by default to send plaintext messages in Thunderbird (which some…

Not exactly intuitive, and not trivial to find in the current 0.7 “documentation,” but …

… if you are set by default to send plaintext messages in Thunderbird (which some folks feel very strongly is the Right Thing to Do, both the “plaintext” and “Thunderbird” parts), you can override the option to send HTML mail by doing a Shift-Click on the “Write” button in the Toolbar. (Yes, that option should be availabl e from the menu, but isn’t).

Conversely, if you’re set to do all e-mail in HTML format (evil non-security-oriented person that you are), you can send a plaintext message by … the same Shift-Click on the “Write” button.

This is all documented here.

Dirt and rain

Spent four hours in the morning and ealry afternoon finishing up the little wood slat edging by the front sidewalk. The additional ones I got covered both the edges of…

Spent four hours in the morning and ealry afternoon finishing up the little wood slat edging by the front sidewalk. The additional ones I got covered both the edges of the east bed and the bed by the driveway (up the driveway four or five feet). Looks nice.

Put out some mulch to replace that which was washed away over time.

And then, this afternoon, we’re getting some nice thunderstorm rain, so no need to run the sprinklers. Huzzah!

Bowled over

I am a Bowler Hat. I’m very proper, often politically correct, precise and dapper. I generally look down on the masses, but I usually try not to let it…

I am a Bowler Hat.

I’m very proper, often politically correct, precise and dapper. I generally look down on the masses, but I usually try not to let it show. What Sort of Hat Are You?

Green Lantern for yoks?

Just as the Flea reported on news that the upcoming Fantastic Four could be (intended as) a laugh riot, comes further word (I may have to stop reading his site…

Just as the Flea reported on news that the upcoming Fantastic Four could be (intended as) a laugh riot, comes further word (I may have to stop reading his site if he continues this) of the Dreaded Fate of Green Lantern:

Jack Black has closed his deal. He will be playing Green Lantern in a film that has been described as a “zany comedy version a la THE MASK.” All rights to the DC comic have been worked out as well, so you can expect to start hearing more about this project in the months ahead.

Oh, joy. The mind reels.

As I understand it, DC Comics tried desperately to dodge this bullet, but ultimately, they don’t have the right to veto something if Warner Bros. really wants to make it happen. This is the problem with the way DC’s deal with their corporate overlords is structured. Their hands are tied. As much as they are aware of the problem with this approach to the material, they just have to sit back and watch it happen along with fans of the character and the rich mythology that has been established over the long run of the various GREEN LANTERN titles.

The various branches of WB are infamous (at least back to the B5 days) for doing the oddest thing with each others’ material.

I like Jack Black. I really do. I’m dying to see what he does in KING KONG because I trust the director and the rest of the creative team, and I have a feeling they’ll find the right way to harness his energy. But this GREEN LANTERN gives me gas right away.

A-yup.

To be fair, Ain’t It Cool News isn’t almost the most reliable of sources (or, rather, their sources aren’t). And I can see — a la The Mask or any number of Will Smith movies how you add comedic zaniness to some serious dramatic stuff.

On the other hand, there’s making Batman campy as a counter-example. Mildly successful in the short run, perniciously influential in the long run.

Green Lantern — in whatever iteration — is about a human faced with the responsibility of awesome power, whether that responsibility is via unexpected recruitment into an interstellar police force (Hal Jordan) or just sort of stumbled through (Kyle Raynor). Funny moments possible? Sure. But — as with the FF — making the funny moments what the movie’s about?

Next up: The Bridges of Madison County as screwball comedy, and The Bourne Supremacy as a camp romp road picture.