Monthly Archive for September, 2009

Google Chrome for Linux: an impartial analysis of Chromium’s user interface, and why… why… aw, fuck it. IT’S AWESOME!

Published at 8:18 pm on September 12, 2009 in Geeky Stuff and Life.

It is awesome, truly. Now I know what those Chrome-lovers are going on about. It’s pretty, it’s smooth, it minimal but functionable… Right now, the only thing I miss from firefox is Live Bookmarks. And spellchecking, which seems to be broken. However, a quick google search indicates that it’s probably just me, so it should be pretty easy to fix. In fact, I just fixed it — had to install the hunspell library (it’s in Ubuntu’s repositories). However, it does seem to kinda suck. Maybe it’s an attempt at making me a better speller? PERHAPS!

Anyway, I’m loving it so far.

In a slice of my life, yesterday I traveled to an abandoned radar dome. The dome itself was missing — all that was left was two concrete staircases and a ring of concrete — but there were four outbuildings that were intact. And by “intact” I mean that almost everything non-concrete had been stripped out of them, every square foot was covered in graffiti or paintball splatters, and there were holes in the walls. I have pictures, and they will be uploaded.

I can’t wait to play paintball there — it’s the kind of place that would fit right into Halo, it’s that awesome.

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It was a dark and stormy night…

Published at 8:23 pm on September 8, 2009 in Life and writing.

I just found a folder on an ancient hard drive containing the beginings of a couple of stories. It kinda depresses me, because I haven’t tried writing anything in, like, forever, man.

This one is date-stamped November of 2006. I don’t know what I was smoking at that time, but I should get some more.

The spider queen Lilath stood tall, surveying the ruins of the overrun human settlement. Here and there, small skirmishes still raged between her fearsome warriors of the Tarantula caste and what was left of the town’s guard. She chewed a leg (the only remaining part of a luckless farmer) and wondered which of the three insect kingdoms would respond first to her intrusion their territory. She suspected it would be the bees, as they had just recently cemented a deal with the flies (a species that claimed no place as their home, choosing instead to wander as mercenaries) that would effectively double their air, and consequently scouting, superiority. Lilath finished the leg and smacked her lips appreciatively. Fresh meat had always been a delicacy in the underground caverns she, and most other spiders, grew up in.

But that time was coming to an end…

Half an hour later, the spider queens’ guess proved correct as a fly scout dropped from above and bounced to halt a respectful distance away from Lilath.

“Wait here,” it buzzed, in a very bad imitation of the common language. “More come soon!” Then it launched itself back into the sky and soon disappeared from sight.

Lilath briefly wondered whom the queen would send, and then dismissed the thought as unimportant. No matter who it was, the outcome would be the same – they would either bend to her will, or be destroyed.

aaaaand that’s all. I’ll post the other stories soon.

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Movie mini-reviews: round two

Published at 2:46 pm on September 4, 2009 in movies and reviews.

As promised, here’s another batch of my world famous movie reviews.

Kill Bill (Volume 1): Awesome. The cinematography is excellent, the music and sound effects fit perfectly, the action is well choreographed… if there’s one thing I don’t like about it, it would be that the final scene drags on just a bit too long. I’d give it a 8 or 9 out of 10.

Sphere: Rotten Tomatoes gives it 11%. Ouch. Nevertheless, I quite enjoyed it. The basic premise is that The US Navy finds an alien ship on the bottom of the ocean, and they send a team to investigate. Bad things happen. Very eerie, good acting, and a surprisingly plausible scenario. And I’m not referring to the whole “alien ship on the bottom of the ocean” thing when I say plausible — I mean the reactions of the characters, and the progression of the plot. I hate it when movies just don’t make sense. Like Stargate. That movie sucked. Anyway, this scores a 7 or 8.

American Psycho: Not all that great. Christian Bale is a good actor, but the movie was just kind of plodding. Which is rather surprising in a movie about a serial killer.

Borat: The disc was scratched, so I couldn’t see the whole thing, but off what I did see there were only a few really funny bits. He’s just a bit to much of an asshole for me to really enjoy it.

Team America: Somehow, this movie is serious while at the same time being ludicrous. I can’t really explain it. It’s pretty good. It’s pretty good — 7 out of 10, methinks.

8 Mile: Yes, Eminem can actually act. Amazing. What’s more amazing is that this movie is awesome. And while yes, there is a fair amount of rapping in it, even if you’re a rap hating foo’ I think you can appreciate it. I especially liked the ending, which was upbeat while at the same time down to earth.

The Cable Guy: Pretty funny indeed. 8 or 9, definitely.

Hot Fuzz: Shawn of the Dead, but with cops. Not as good as Shawn, but still pretty decent.

Live Free or Die Hard: Ridiculous amounts of explosions. Immortal hero. Horrendously bad representation of all things technical. Leaving out the computer bits, I’d give it a 6 out of 10. With the computer bits, it’s over 9000. In the other direction. Fucking Hollywood…

District 9: Saw the pirated version (with Russian subtitles) and I’m certainly going to see it in theaters now, because it was amazing. Three thumbs up.

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