Linkstew

I handed Hayward a check for $810 dollars, and Hayward handed me my PowerBook. I opened him and pushed his button and he made that sound he so distinctly wasn't making when I left him in Hayward's [adjective deleted] hands. And I smile crossed my face (but I made sure to not let Hayward see it) and I put my laptop in my backpack (and immediately wished I hadn't also have books in there today) and I went to a cafe and I just used my PowerBook for awhile.

I'm writing this from bed right now. God it feels so good. This is the way it's supposed to be. Aww yeah.

I'm sorry I hurt you. I won't do it again. I'll pay for the posh treatment next time.

After only two nights of coding, the shiny and new (but not very different) Linkstew not only has all the features of the old Linkstew, but it's got many new features as well.

So what are these shiny new features of Linkstew? Well...

• Comments. My main use for comments is actually for personal annotation of entries (and to occasionally complain about bad posts), but it's an open system, and everyone is free to contribute. Just hit the "++" link in the corner to join the fray.
• More immediate access to The Stew. A few items of The Stew are now available on the front page, with a link to see other related entries. This is to make it easier to quickly browse around related ideas on the site.
• Related Topics. On the front page, for example, the topics which are most related to the recent entries are displayed in the navigation bar. On a topic page, the topics most related to the displayed topic are displayed. And on an entry page, the entry's topics are displayed. Once again, this hopefully allows a reader to jump around related ideas, much like a person thinks.

And of course, all the features that have always been available are still here. Read Random Entries, or Search for key words from an entry you remember reading months ago, or read by date or by topic. The one feature I know I still need to implement is comment previews, but other than that, I'm really happy with the way the shiny new Linkstew+The Stew is shaping up.

And in honor of all this, I've got a new email address: bsii@thestew.net. And if you don't want to leave a comment about it, that's how you should contact me.

That I was going to see this movie was a given. The thought of not seeing this movie never crossed my mind. My agenda for the week looked roughly like this: 1. See Final Fantasy. 2. Do some other stuff.

I've been mulling over my opinion of the movie for several hours now, and I've only come to one real conclusion: I do not want to go see it again any time soon, which means that my roommate's on his own, since I ditched him to see it with some co-workers tonight.

But that I don't want to see it again any time soon is not the damning statement that it might sound like. I just don't want to see it again because the story is pretty generic, and the pacing drags like crazy. Many many scenes seemed to be shouting to me. They were shouting "Hey! Look at these pretty pictures! Here, I'll give you a good long time to really appreciate them. Go on, don't be shy. You can stare."

"Get on with it!" I found myself frequently wanting to shout. "Yes, I can see that you make pretty pictures. Can you make a pretty story?"

Crafting this story must have been a nightmare for the filmmakers -- they were simultaneously trying to create a movie that could be marketed and received equally well in both the US and Japan. I'm not Japanese, so I can't comment on their success over there... But in the US, I think that audiences will be able to put two and 2 together and find parallels to all that "environmentalist stuff." And considering the narrow line the movie makers were walking, I think the story was "good enough," though I recommend in the future they choose one side of the pacific or the other and run with it.

While the story itself was good enough, the telling of that story was, much like A.I., poorly paced. And the editing was just choppy, especially near the end of the movie. And choppy editing, combined with a predictable (if disappointing) ending and the feeling that time was slowing to a crawl just tends to make me cranky. A good enough story, but not-so good telling of the story. Okay, fair enough.

But who cares about that? It's all about the graphics. Trust me. If the story starts to make your left eye twitch (a sure sign of a bad story if there ever was one), you can just shut off your thinking part and drool at what Square dared to do. You know the characters aren't real, and they never pretend to be real, but as long as you don't let that get in the way, they're more than good enough; If you just check your disbelief at the door you'll do fine. I did find it amusing that the best looking characters were the more minor characters. The two main characters just felt far less real than some of those more minor characters did, and the face of the villain was a ridiculous caricature of pure sinisterness. There were a few other animations that felt out of place, like the random steam dials near the end of the movie, but I tried not to let things like that distract me. The visuals were great, and worth the price of admission alone, in my opinion.

Two other quick points: The story sure reminded me an awful lot of Final Fantasy IX at the broadest level, and it was completely ridiculous how the villain died. Now that I think about it, the villain was completely ridiculous in general, and probably the most stupid and inept villain I've ever seen. In fact I think I'd claim: Worst villain, ever. Wow, what a moron. At least Kuja (in FFIX) had some depth.

Wait, I'm not making myself clear. The more I think about the villain, the more angry I get at how ridiculous he was. But I can't actually explain why publically without giving away the end of the movie. Seriously, the movie would have been written without that character, and it would have been better for it. He was just there because movies need bad guys, and so here's the guy you should hate. He's the one with the sinister face and the black leather coat wanting to shoot a giant laser at the earth, so it's easy to tell which one he is. Only I'm hating him for all the wrong reasons.

Anyway, see it, stare wide at pretty pictures. I give it a 3.5/5, and if I were forced to use whole numbers I'd round up to a 4.

AI looked interesting, and so I saw it. I would have paid to see it, but I happened to see it for free, and that made it's flaws much easier for me to overlook. But for me to write this, I'm going to have spoil a few things -- so if you're planning on seeing the movie and don't want anything spoiled, then go see it: it's worth it, as long as you want a thoughtful movie.

The movie clocked in over two hours, but thanks to some really strange pacing, it actually seemed much longer. The movie has three distinct pieces, but the transitions between the pieces were a little weak, and the final piece felt really tacked on -- almost like an afterthought. The movie was a futuristic Pinnochio -- In fact, AI admits up front that it's carved from the same block of wood as Pinnochio, and it's almost too easy to map everything in AI to Pinnochio. But though it effectively told the story of Pinnochio, AI managed to offer a new perspective on what it is to be human just because the idea of David hits close to what your average viewer thinks is possible.

The dialogue was stilted in places, but the actors did their best with what they had. But for me, the dialogue was more than made up for by the amazing images and ideas that were the focus of the movie. Even now, thinking about David exploring a submerged Coney Island brings me a sense of wonder.

So what is it that I thought was so ridiculous about the movie right at the end? That David is (more or less) granted his wish because a mechanical Teddy Bear had picked up a lock of hair from the ground. This turned a glaring spotlight on many little bubbles that I'd overlooked earlier in the movie, and which generally left me irritated. Oh well.

I don't feel satisfied with what I've said here about this movie, because it's a complicated movie, and I haven't really talked about what the movie said, just how the movie said it... But I enjoyed the movie, and I wouldn't have minded paying to see it. For the last third of the movie, in that final sequence, the whole audience was fidgety, and some people were outright laughing at it. And when the last light went out, people burst into words -- "Worst movie I've seen in a long time" -- "Who wrote this thing?" -- "I wish I hadn't wasted my money on this" (Heh, if only he knew) -- and so on. And all of those negative opinions made me double check, to make sure that I actually had enjoyed it. And I had. It made me think. It certainly wasn't perfect, but it made me think. I wish more movies did that. 4/5.

A month ago I bitched about Mozilla switching from using Alt to Control for command keys in Linux. Well, I was talking to one of the SysAdmins at work the other day about phasing out Netscape 4.77 in favor of Mozilla, and I told him I wouldn't use it, because of their choice of command key. And he pointed me at this page about customizing Mozilla, which tells you exactly how to change the command key. I almost hugged him. Now I'm going to switch very soon, I believe. Well, as soon as I figure out how to change the highlight color from white...

Well, I mentioned The Magnetic Fields last night, and then Peter mentioned them, and suggested that Rabi liked them, and then Kevin jumped in and suggested that now he was going to have to look into them, which prompted me to walk down the street to Amoeba and pick up a copy of their box set -- 69 Love Songs. 3 CD's with 23 songs each.

And I've been listening to the album for the last 12 hours, since I picked it up at about 2 this afternoon. And I'd be lying if I claimed I felt qualified to do this album justice in a review at this point, so I'm just going to attempt to channel my gibbering happiness with this album into a quick and dirty endorsement. As if Pratchett and Gaiman (and Peter and Rabi) endorsing The Magnetic Fields wasn't enough, now you've got my endorsement too (and probably Kevin's soon as well).

The first song, all by itself, brought a huge smile to my face, and I listened to it three or four times before moving on. And then, at Peter's recommendation, I listened to the first disc twice, and then the second disc twice, and then the third disc twice. And now I need to go back and listen to the whole thing again reading all the words, because I'm already hooked on the music, and I already love the words I catch (there are a few tricky spots).

The album obviously has a theme, and it executes that theme with incredible skill. And the interesting thing about packing that many love songs into an album is that everyone will find something that speaks to them in the set. Be it the feeling that "I don't want to get over you," or the sentiment that "No one will ever love you," or loving "The Way You Say Good-Night." And the reason I grabbed those sentiments and not others is because those are the titles of songs, and ones that popped out at me as I scanned the list. It seems like it's got everything there, and you'll find something for you. Really.

As far as their style goes, it runs the whole range. When I was about halfway through, I felt like I couldn't actually identify The Magnetic Fields' own style, and instead I was confused by all of the misdirection. It seemed to my like every song was parodying some other style. But I'm pretty familiar with bands who flirt with every style under the sun, and so now I think I can more or less pick out the unifying elements between the songs. But even unable to detect those unifying aspects, I was still enjoying every new song as it came along.

Except for "Abigail, Belle of Kilronan" (disc 2, track 22). The way that one bounced back and forth between the two speakers of my headphones built a standing wave inside my head and made it explode. Really. It was one of the most obnoxious things I've ever experienced, which is a shame because without headphones on it's another nice song.

It's worth mentioning that the set comes in two forms: Either the whole box set can be bought at once, or the three discs of the set can be bought individually. I highly recommend you dig up the change to get the box set (or all three discs), but if you can only afford two, go for discs 1 and 3, I guess, but I can barely recommend that -- it's like breaking up a family. But it's really an amazing album, and I only regret two things about it: 1. That I didn't look into it right after Pratchett recommended it to me, and 2. That I can't fit the whole thing on my Rio -- only 2/3 of it -- and I don't want only part of it there.

My family recently bought a couple of used jet-skis, and today we hauled them the half a mile down to the lake (yes, my parents live about half a mile from a lake) and took them out for the first time.

There are two, but one is significantly more powerful than the other. Naturally, the red one is more powerful one, because "red goes faster." Unfortunately, the powerful one seems to have a bad habit where it's engine dies if you let go of the throttle -- so it made it really hard to idle out of the dock area. The less powerful one is yellow and idles beautifully, and in general is more responsive on the throttle because there's less of a range of speeds to deal with.

Rmmm BrmmmmmmmMMM wap wap wape wake hopping splashing slow and turn turn turning splashing into the wind, hair blowing back and 55! the water stings my face and my cheeks are filled with wind wap wap smack! smack stop.

It was very exhilarating, to say the least. With it's extra power, the red one handled better with the wind and wakes, so it was easy to get up on top of the water. The yellow one could get going as well, but it just wasn't quite the same. For taking tight turns, the yellow one was much nicer, because you could let the throttle completely off for a second without the engine dying. With the red one, I had to take wider turns for two reasons -- I was going faster in the straightaway, and with no breaks, I can't actually decelerate, so I had to take an easier turn. And I couldn't just idle the engine in a turn with the red one, forcing me to keep at least a little gas going.

The yellow one doesn't have a speedometer, but I got the red one up to 55 mph -- I was hanging on for dear life, because it felt like if I let go, I would fly off and hit the water and die. And if I let go, I certainly would fly off, and it would probably hurt like hell when I hit the water, but hopefully I wouldn't be permanently injured... Thankfully, I didn't actually fall off, and for sanity, I kept it between 30 and 40 most of the time. It's a heck of lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to going out again later this summer.

Earlier today, we saw Shrek (flash warning), and it was very good. But before I dig in, there are a few pre-show details that were interesting.

Upon entering the lobby of Berkeley's United Artists Theater, I noticed a display for Myst 3: Exile (flash warning). The thing is, it wasn't your typical movie theater display -- it was a display filled with what appeared to be game boxes on sale. Only, upon closer examination -- it was a display filled with empty boxes. And then, in the theater, the first "preview" we were greeted with was for Myst 3, and it was very beautiful and cinematic. In fact, when it ended, there were many questioning murmurs, and I overheard one person ask "it's not a movie?" If I had more time, I'd be interested in playing it, but I think I'll wait until it's price drops, as the prices of all computer games do months after they're released. The question is, with such a breathtaking preview in such high profile movies as Shrek, why did they bother with such a cheesy, wasteful, unattractive display as the one that was in the lobby? Ah well, I've never understood marketing...

So anyway, Shrek... It was very good, and we enjoyed it immensely. The animation fit the movie perfectly. There were fantastic dragons, magical transformations, and whimsical executioners... Perhaps the most notable aspect of the animation were the beautiful textures, which can be seen in some of still shots, and especially in this picture of the beautiful Princess Fiona. The motion in the movie was also very well done, from the lumbering, occasionally limping Shrek, to the various fairy tale creatures.

My biggest complaint, and one that I'm hardly justified in complaining about, is that, at times the Ogre's personal habits were completely disgusting. But Shrek's an Ogre, and Ogre's have disgusting personal habits, because that's what Ogre's are -- and his personal habits are part of the story, so that's why I don't really get to complain about it. If you see it, just be prepared for some disgusting bits -- they're well worth it, though, because the rest of the tale is tons of fun.

Definitely worthy of a 5/5, and the first movie I've seen in awhile that I already want to see again.

There was ample Disney bashing, including a whole Disneyland parody which was brilliant. The soundtrack was perhaps a little too hip for a fairy tale, but I can forgive that. And of course, the world will never be free of Matrix references, which is, to me, a bad thing. Admittedly, the movie was filled with references, but even with a clever new twist, a matrix reference is hardly original these days.

Last night, after a slight annoyance with no video store having the movies we wanted to rent until we finally made it to Reel and picked up two movies, including Ever After. I expect that this one was out at Blockbuster on Shattuck because it features Drew Barrymore, star of Charlie's Angels.

So movies in hand, we watched this tale of romance and so on. It was good and enjoyable. There are only two real reasons I can think of that someone wouldn't like this movie: One is that if you're anal about things like historical accuracy, the anachronisms in this movie will probably drive you batty. The other is that this movie makes the story of Cinderella quite a bit more complicated, though not nearly as complicated as Pratchett made the tale of Ember-ella in Witches Abroad.

Oh, and don't let the French peasants (and courtiers, for that matter) speaking with proper English accents bother you. That's really how it was. Honest.

This morning, as I rushed to class to turn in my Philosophy Paper, I saw something very funny. A bird was flying into the chrome hubcap on a car, over and over. As I stopped and sat there and watched it, it flew over and over into the hubcap. Finally, it flew away, caught site of another bird, and flew into the other hubcap.

Which reminds me of two years ago in foothill, when I passed a trash can from which a definite scurrying noise was errupting. I looked down and saw a squirrel with attempting to get out of the trash can with an ice cream cone, but the cone was the cause of his failure. The squirrel then noticed me, looked embarressed for a moment, dropped the cone and struggled from the trash and into the bushes. Things like that leave me laughing for days.

So there I was, innocently stalking back from turning in my Japanese homework late, when my ears picked up a familiar tune. But something seemed out of place. John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads"... On Sproul Plaza. Being played by a pair of shirtless, very tanned, bleached blonde guys. It was unexpected, to say the least, but the absurdity of the situation combined with the pretty good cover made me smile, despite being pretty irritated about turning in my homework late.

So I got my last English paper back today.

I got an A+. Katie, the teacher of the class, who has been teaching English 1A and 1B for 4 or 5 years (she's a sixth year graduate student), said that this is the first A+ she's ever given on a paper.

This scares me. This makes me nervous. I honestly didn't think the paper was that good. Maybe her judgment was impaired when she was grading it? I don't know. I didn't think it was an A+ paper.

But do I look like I'm about to complain? For starters, this means that I don't have to rewrite that paper this weekend, and can instead devote the whole time to studying. I don't know how much it will pull my grade up, if any, because I didn't get A's on any of the other big papers. Maybe it'll get my grade up to a B+, though. I don't know. I'm still expecting about a B, though before I wasn't positive of a B. Now I'm pretty sure I'll get at least a B. I guess I could get motivated and take out the syllabus and all my papers and calculate what I should get, but I'm not that motivated. In fact, I'm downright lazy.

An A+! What's going on here? Something's fishy. But I'm not complaining. I'm just worried.