Last night I saw Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses and it rocks! Having said that I don’t know how much appeal 1000 Corpses would have to people that aren’t fans of Mr Zombie.
I’ve never been a horror fan, but this film is original. Great soundtrack, well acted, and it looks great. 1000 Corpses was made on a very low budget, but you wouldn’t really know it. Just goes to show that talent goes a long way.
Last night I watched ‘Abigail’s Party’ . I could tell that it was by the same guy who did ‘Secrets and Lies’. The awkward moments (which constitute the majority of Abigail’s Party) had clearly been choreographed by the same person. I felt that I should have received a certificate at the end of the film for having actually sat through the whole thing. I can’t say that I liked the film, but it has invaded my thoughts constantly since last night. Brilliant acting, and surely the most harrowing film (that wasn’t a horror movie) I have ever seen.
I am using Firebird as my main browser, even more than Moz. It seems to me much the same as Phoenix but with an improved interface. It feels more like a finished product, unlike the last version of Phoenix I used which felt like a work in progress.
While having a break from rebuilding this site as well as learning PHP/MySQL by building a news application with it, I decided to have a look at the new Mozilla Firebird browser (as the branding document tells me it is called). I can’t write my thoughts on it yet, as it will be another hour at least until it downloads (I think I’ll be in a position to get broadband shortly). I was glad that I read the branding document, as the plethora of different Moz offerings had formed a turbulent cloud of confusingness for me.
As for php/MySQL? It is too early for me to make a comparison yet. When you know one way of doing something it is hard to start over again and enjoy it as much as a complete beginner. PHP seems like a lot more work to me, but I’ll reserve judgement in the meantime.
And the plumber came to fix the drains. Hopefully unspeakable things won’t happen in the shower drain when we flush the toilet now.
Yeah, it’s a great idea – I wonder if the UK govt will agree to a deal exempting me from prosecution….? Article 98 exempts:
“…US personnel from prosecution in the court, set up to try war crimes and acts of genocide.
The Bush administration objects to the court on the grounds it could launch politically motivated prosecutions of US civilian and military leaders. But other countries see it as a powerful tool for enforcing the rules of war.
Under the American Service Members Protection Act of 2002, many countries that recognise the International Criminal Court will not be eligible for US military assistance, unless the president issues a waiver on grounds of national security.”
I’m sure that the world has gone mad.
Chris Clark details his pant configuration . I have had a pant and suit jacket pocket configuration for years and didn’t even know it! Wallet and cell phone in the left back pocket (or left leg pocket on cargo/army pants), keys and change in the right back pocket, sundries in the right front or leg pocket. In my suit jacket when I’m working I have my wallet and cell phone on the left side (so my heart gets maximum exposure to the nasty radiation off the cell phone), and keys and change in the right side pockets. Yee haa.
‘Kiwi’s and Aussies are the most laid back white guys in the world’. A little wisdom from our Jamaican cab driver at 4am this morning. We were returning from the Greek islands which are fabulous. I don’t think I have felt this relaxed for three years. I just hope that I can maintain that feeling. While I’ve had plenty of time off and been to some lovely places, sitting by a pool in Thira (Santorini) doing sweet FA was the best thing I’ve done for some time. I have made a pledge: to take a proper, do nothing holiday every year. I’m sure that this simple action will add years to my life.
Looking at some photos I just realised the most amazing thing about Thira was the colour. I really miss the colour blue which I was so accustomed to growing up in Wellington with a great view of the harbour. As an office slave in London you really don’t see a lot of blue….
Gravis Shoes – they rock. Unfortunately the same thing can’t be said for the web site. I guess what happened is that a designer without much knowledge of designing for the web had been in charge of the site. This morning when I tried accessing the site it took AGES to load (this is over a 56k connection). The whole site is done in flash, which is not necessarily a bad thing (although I’m not a huge fan of Flash). Many (although not all) of the features on the site could have been achieved without the use of Flash. I’m sure we’ve all used Flash sites that may initially take a little while to load, but once loaded presents a catalogue which is then usable without a long delay between pages. I think that this constitutes reasonable performance.
The worst thing about the site that there is not always a ‘loading’ graphic. The upshot was that at first I thought that site was dead and wasn’t rendering pages. I tried again and figured out that the page was still loading. It must have taken about seven minutes to view the page for one shoe! That page consisted of a fancy menu and a picture of a shoe. That was it. When I clicked the ‘details’ link I again waited for nearly five minutes. I gave up in the end as I couldn’t be arsed waiting. It was the same story with the ‘dealers’ link. It would be easily solved with a link to a non-flash version of the site.
When I tried again later it loaded a lot faster, still a couple of minutes for each page to come up but this time a loading indicator appeared nearly as soon as the link to the page was clicked. Hmmm. I will forgive them but I still think that there should be a non-flash site.
This is what I’m thinking of doing with the redesign. Andy commented that he quite likes the current design. Alright! I like it too, but it is time for a change. I will definitely keep a copy on the server for old times sake after I redecorate.
A few months ago I noticed that my coffee plunger was producing rancid cups of foulness instead of coffee. I put this down to having not cleaned the plunger one day, and then leaving it for about three weeks. In due course the contents went mouldy and smelt bad. One day I cleaned the plunger, made some coffee, drank a sip and nearly threw up. It was the worst tasting coffee I had ever had. Rather than clean the plunger thoroughly, I rinsed it out and gave up making my own coffee.
This morning I had to have a cup of coffee and used the plunger again. The first cup was fine, but the second resembled in flavour the very urine of satan himself. The plunger must still be tainted. I decided to search the net to see if this was a common phenomenon. Coffee makers can become tainted, but in my case it might be the jug I use to boil the water, or the plunger, or is it my lucky cup, which also goes mouldy periodically?
I got caught in a rain shower yesterday and took shelter in a bookshop. I ended up buying one of those “Teach Yourself in 24 hours” books on PHP, MySQL and Apache.
Hour 1, install MySQL. Easy.
Hour 2, install Apache. No sweat.
Hour 3, install PHP and get it to play with Apache. Hmmm.
After about 4 hours of trying all sorts of things I discovered that the version of Apache (2.0.43) and PHP (4.2.3) provided on the CD that comes with the book are incompatible. AY? php.net finally provided me with the answer:
Apache 2.0 SAPI-support started with PHP 4.2.0. PHP 4.2.3 works with Apache 2.0.39, don’t use any other version of Apache with PHP 4.2.3.
I downloaded and installed a different version of PHP and it worked first time and with no problems. I wrote to the publisher and told them it was a ‘poor show’. It would have sucked even more if I’d been a real newbie and never done any kind of development.
But it all works now and I’m happy. Now hopefully I’m gonna get to the bottom of this coffee conundrum.
