Shadowlessness

I just found out that the current season (4th) of the massively entertaining TV series House M. D. which I follow diligently, (and I’m not ashamed at all!) has been cut down to 16 episodes (instead of 22-24.)
This was because of the “Writer’s Guild of America” strike that was resolved earlier this year, but nonetheless halted the production of many TV shows and movies and gods know what.
The next season is due to start in September, 2008. In the meantime, go watch BSG!

I bought a 1 TB external hard disk the other day (oh, yeah!) As I was strolling along, I was listening to (using the good-quality earphones that I had finally got to replace my broken (in a car accident) ones!) Camel’s Stationary Traveller [sic] (among others) and were thinking about the few projects that I have at hand and a couple of them that I actually like and care for.
Then it hit me that I was actually cheerful! That was such a big shock that I instantly suspected the smog and fumes in Tehran air! I figured that they had finally added those Cannabis-derived substances to the gas we pump into our cars.
But I was cheerful on my own. I realized that a pair of good headphones, a new and attractive programming project, a couple of new friends, a terabyte of free disk space and a handful of rock masterpieces can make me really happy. I can live in this self-made castle of dreams for some time.

But the next track was “King Nothing.”

Firefox 3 release candidate 1 has recently been released (Download it here, if you didn’t know already.)
If you don’t use Firefox, then you have no excuse. Get it and start using it. Please let go of that mind-numbingly useless Internet Exploiter. Did you know that IE has been condemned by the UN?!
If you use Firefox 2, then you should probably upgrade too, since Firefox 3 is faster and lighter and it shows, even in normal usage. The only two problems I could imagine with this upgrade would be A, that some of your extensions don’t work with 3, or B, that you don’t like a dual Firefox system (which is what you’ll get if you install a beta 3 over a stable 2.) But that won’t bother you if you completely switch to FF3.
As an assurance, I’ve been using FF3 for some time now, and the betas have been becoming stable enough for me (even more so than “stable” FF2s.)

Firefox rules!

The hunger has returned to Mr. Brooks’ brain.
…
It never really left.

With these lines starts a great movie: Mr. Brooks. It’s a black thriller (I believe) that entertained me a lot. While it has a fluid story and intelligent plot which are strong points for any movie, the relationship between Earl (played by Kevin Costner) and Marshal (played by William Hurt) was the astonishing feature that makes me like this film very much.

I generally don’t like Costner’s acting and I don’t like his roles (no, not even Dunbar in “Dances with Wolves“, while I did like the movie and his direction,) but this film does away with all that. His performance as Earl Brooks is nothing short of spectacular. William Hurt is great as always, and in a role somewhat reminiscent of his character in “A History of Violence” (but only somewhat.)

If your stomach is disturbed by a handful of people shot in the head, shovel kills, blood splattered on walls or scissors in necks, then you should probably sit this one out. But don’t get me wrong; this is not a film full of mindless and pointless violence. The violence is intertwined with the plot. There can be no PG-13 version of Mr. Brooks!

I was being pestered for a long time by my blog software to upgrade to the latest version. If it’s not obvious, I use Wordpress and I’m happy with it. It’s pretty, fast enough, power-user-friendly (but only to some extent, probably more luser-friendly) and developer-friendly too (I guess!)
Anyway, I was being told by my software at every opportunity that I needed to upgrade from 2.3.1 (?) to the new 2.5.0 version. But I had already done the upgrade once (from 2.3.0 to 2.3.1) and since it disabled my theme and plugins and the custom edits to the template, I was resisting the upgrade (as I had resisted the upgrade to 2.3.2 before that.)
But then 2.5.1 came out and I was reviewing the list of security fixes and was quite concerned, since some of the fixed vulnerabilities were quite relevant to me.
To make a long story short (well… not much longer than I’ve already told!) I took the plunge and upgraded a while ago.
And I was pleasantly surprised! No problem at all. None of the redoing of the customizations this time. I’m told that Serendipity (or as that ilk like to write: s9y) is nice too, but for the time being I’m staying happily with Wordpress (despite s9y’s cooler name!)

Donnie Darko is a very good movie. If nothing else, it’s moving and personal for me.
Some of those impressions is summed up in the ending soundtrack, just before the titles, called Mad World. It’s a cover, but the original does not even compare to this.
The music is slow, just a solo piano, and the lyrics don’t tell a story. The song just paints a picture, different aspects of the same picture from different viewpoints.
By the way, this same version of the song (by Gary Jules) was used in a Gears of War teaser (called “Mad World”. Do’h!)

If you happen to watch this movie, you’ll know why rabbits are the most terrifying animals! They are basically white (or gray) fluffy alligators! (Of course, no one needs any more proof after Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but that’s a whole other story.)

I got home (from Tehran) two days ago, only to find that my Internet connection was gone (this time for a justifiable cause; I forgot to pay the bill!) I rectified that yesterday, and was supposed to get back on track with my life. When I’m on the road (figuratively) I can’t keep up with my online life (email, blogs, news, software, etc.) which is pretty much all my social life (at least 64% without any exaggeration.)
Now that my connectivity is restored, I’m left with several notes for posts I meant to write here. They are scattered in my mailbox, post drafts, all my “dead tree” notebooks (because I take a different one with me every time I don’t have access to Mike, Rincewind or PoP (which is my PC at work),) even in my cellphone.
The one on my cellphone is specially interesting. It reads: “cont”! I assume I meant to write “const” or something (actually, I hope that! Otherwise, I have no clue what it means!) I’ll try and do those posts in the coming hours or days. I owe them to history!

Anyways, I was out of town or “signal”less for about 12 days, so I figured I’m about 12 days behind my life.
But sadly, anyone who know me at all knows that that’s not true. And I’d like to think I know myself best. If I think about it a little bit more, I’d realize that I’m about 12 years behind my life (and that’s without any in-depth scrutiny.)

But I’m not going to think about it now, am I?