I have yet to review

Aurora, a life in the theatre
I have yet to see Hitchhikers guide, or Ong Bok

PROGRAMMING : new place to work

Check this out, programming on the high seas
http://www.sea-code.com/
good way of getting around visa problems, and you get to have a cruise too!!

PROGRAMMING : All into scripting

I should check out BeanShell, which looks like a simple Java scripting language. Got it from this review of the book "Rapid J2EE Development: An Adaptive Foundation for Enterprise Applications" by Alan Monnox, which looks pretty good - will look into it

MOVIES : The Edukators

Some german youths break into houses of rich people and rearrange their furniture as a protest against capitalism. Something goes wrong and suddenly they're in a deep hole full of shit - what do they do?
This film had some nice bits to it, and certainly some nice acting and direction. Very simple, it was almost Dogma, except it had a soundtrack. It combined the inconceivable (corporate globalisation) with the too familiar (a love triangle).
But one of the pillars of the film was just not strong enough - there is a battle of wills in one part of the film between a rich guy and these kids, in which the kids win. But their arguments suck and are easily rebuffed, it seems that the writer/developer of the film hasn't opened themselves up to criticism or investigated all the ideas he is regurgitating.
This is especially frustrating because there _are_ good arguments for what they are rebelling against; having just read 'Collapse' I feel that I am quite aware of the environmental ones even if my macro-economics isn't up to scratch. You can't beat 'the rich' with flowery idealism, only by showing that they will benefit in some way from changing their attitudes/actions - and even more importatntly this requires _us_ to do it first.
(BTW I think that the next successful political system/civilization will harness selfishness in such a way that somehow by being selfish I help everyone else out... co-operatives a al mondragon for example)

BOOKS : ShowStopper!

This is an old book (94) about the creation fo the first version of Windows NT.
Wow. The guy isnt' a very good writer, killing the flow by introducing another character along with their page length bio, and he has a number of analogies for the computer illiterate that are plain wrong.
It does still manage to give you an idea of how badly put together the whole thing was, even though it was being produced by fantastically capable people who were working insane hours. It's just amazing to think how shit the process ended up and, goodness, what the product was like (they did get it right with Windows 2000 - 6 years after the fact?)
There are also some nice references to 'Cairo', a project that STILL hasn't made it into the OS (just been cut from the next release _again_).
For me I have to wonder what was happening. While not really comparable to an open source model, I do wonder what makes it different. There was an excellent example of a few (more than one) guys who were working on the new NTFS file system for the hard disk. Now they did have to maintain the existing implementations (OS/2 and DOS), but they almost didn't get it written in the 2 or so years they had. Now there is a linux file system called 'reiser' that is more advanced than NTFS and was originally written by one guy (Hans Reiser), part time, over the course of 2 years (from what I can tell. Looking more closely it seems that this is wrong, but I can't actually find any concrete information)
Ah well, all software sux is the moral of the story.

MOVIES : Downfall

This is the german film about the fall of the Third Reich. As such it tries to skirt controversy by trying to tell the story of some people who are in charge of this huge organisation which is collapsing, but they can hardly believe it. While there are some nods at things like the jewish extermination and so on, they have tried to keep it to merely nods so people don't have too much to complain about (though I don't think the russians will like it too much)
Consequently you are watching a quite human film about watching the work of your life fall apart, and simply not believing it. You are reminded that, no matter how evil these people were, they did acheive amazing (not great) things. You were also shown how self-deluded they were; while 'integrety' is important to me, 'honor' to the point of self-destruction has never really mad sense (especially when that self-sacrifice involved the self-sacrificing of your children...)
It was quite educational about the last few days as well, and certainly no glorification of war; kids of 12 maning artillery is not glorious. And certainly the old adage 'old soldiers never die, only young ones' holds true if you ignore the suicides...
Anyway, I am going to have to find some critiqing of this because, while I am sure it is quite accurate, it is important with this sort of thing to make sure you don't have only the one viewpoint.

BOOKS : Collapse by Jarred Diamond

This is the latest book about how fucked the world is, from a sort of environmental economics point of view. The basic structure is to analyse how and why past civilizations have collapsed, and then compare that to the modern world and try to learn from those collapses.
The book starts with my favorite poem ever; Ozymandias. Which is a theme at the moment, what with me visiting the Ramasseum whcih inspired the poem.
A quick summary

1. Montana, author's favorite state. No snow. lots of mining. pretty fucked.
2. Easter Island. Chopped down trees. It's fucked. We're fucked.
3. Pitcairn and Henderson islands. Relied upon a strong trading partner which collapsed, then they were fucked.
4. Anasazi. somehow survived in the desert, didn't notice subtle changes (largely self-wrought) that meant they were fucked.
5. Maya. Complex example largely brought about by self-induced droughts and over population. Basically they were fucked. As are we
6. Vikings expansion toward america
7. Vikings in greenland
8. Vikings not in greenland, survived 400 years, then they were fucked. But the Inuit survived very nicely thank you. maybe there's some hope? Nah, we're fucked.
9. Some places that made it; japan and it's 70% forest coverage (with a 130 million person population!), Pupua New Guinea, Tikopia (a tiny pacific island which gave up their prize pigs because they were too damaging.)
10. Rawanda's Genocide. Mainly from over-population, evidence being the 5% death toll in _entirely_ hutu provinces - sons killing fathers 'cos they know they can get away with it, and want more than the 1/4 acre to raise their entire family on.
11. Dominican REpublic vs Haiti - border between these two countries is forest on DR side, desert on Haiti, purely by human 'design'. Basically ER is pretty fucked, but Haiti is as fucked as you can be.
12. China doing some things right, but largely fucked (environmentally etc - fish collapse, water pollution etc)
13. Mining Australia. Proposes that we not only mine iron, but also the raw materials that plants require because we don't put them back inthe soil and there is no natural process (like volcanism) to do it for us. Basically we're fucked.
    Then the analysis of the analysis starts.
14. Why do we make bad descisions; prisoner's dilemma, tragedy of the commons. We're fucked.
15. Big business and the environment. Points out some businesses that aren't so bad, lots that are. They're mainly pretty fucked though, especially fisheris and solid mines (gold etc)
16. Polder (dutch term for fucked if the water rises). Talks about what we can do and how 'optimistic' Jarred is that we can. But really, the timeframe he's talking, we're all fucked

So if you would believe him you'd have to say we have more than just peak oil to worry about, and certainly 25 years seems to be a 'mean' time to failure of the 12 or so critical systems he talks about. But maybe it's not that bad? I think I'll go stick my head in the sand.

Golden Bay (NZ) here I come!

MOVIES : The Machinist

Ouch!
For this film the main actor lost a LOT of weight - you could see he ribs through his pecks (if you know Judd who I used to live with from Brisbane, like him at his worst). He plays the role of a guy who, for some reason or other, hasn't slept in a year, and hasn't eaten much either.
It's as though something was eating at him...
He's somehow keeping down a job as a machinist at a factory making stuff with metal, stuff with big presses and lathes, a place you don't really want to be if you are sleepy...
oooh running out of time. Um. This was a warped movie, some good suspensful stuff, and managed to keep you from know exactly how things are going to turn out as everything is viewed through the fevered/enfeebled brain of the lead character. I guessed the 'twist' fairly early on, which dissapointed me, but didn't stop me from enjoying the sheer strangeness and suspense this film is brimming with.
I guess I'd compare it to the horror flick set in the tube I saw a month ago, but it was much better and didn't have the advantage taking of women stuff

MOVIES : Constantine

This is the latest Keanu 'boy did I luck out with that Matrix role' Reeves action flick, another based upon a comic, in this case a particular hero called 'Constantine'.
While a lot of comics have been, and are being, made into films most of them are just trying to ride the success of Spiderman. It just so happens that the characters and story that inspired this film are decent, fleshed out, and somewhat three dimensional. Constantine himself is your average untalkative hero who is condemned to hell when he dies, smokes, and happens to have emphasema. The heroine has a dark secret, the angel is sly, and the devil is fun.
Did I mention that this is all set in a Milton style hell/heaven war? Constantine is trying to buy his way into heaven by exorcising demons, but you can't buy yourself in because that's a selfish act...
Anyway, good production quality, good script decent acting from most. If it weren't for Keanu himself this would have been a darn good romp; with Keanu you suddenly find that all his dialogue is monotonic, soulless and so viscous the film almost jams in the projector it all slows so much.
I think it's worth seeing on video if you are into that sort of thing, there's a lot worse out there, and if you ignore KR you should have a good evening.

MOVIES : RAN

Saw this last monday on DVD. HMV are currently selling a bunch of 'World Movies' for a reasonable price, I saw this and got it. I have wanted to see it for a while, I seem to remember my Dad seeing it when I was a kid, and I am a big Akira Kurosawa fan. Mind you, Mark informs me that he tried to get me to see it and I refused, so maybe I'm just bluffing...
Anyway, it's supposed to by Kurosawa's take on King Lear, and this can not be denied. The first third or so is a literal transfer of the original play; princes substituted for princesses, but little else different. I actually preferred Kurosawa's rendition of "Cordelia's" rejection of his father's will; it's braisen youth would have pissed off a weary, stubborn man but did show a strong affection by the son for his father.
After Lear is rejected by his second son everything starts to change, rapidly, from the original inspiration. It loses the human quality that Shakespeare had; the gentle loving of all those around the king for a man who continues to reject them, the loss and gain of sanity as different characters are variously loved and rejected, the investigation of age and aging (actually it did have a bit of this).
Instead it turns into a 'Macbeth' of sorts, with power hungry men being manipulated into horrendous acts by vengeful women, justaposed with the ever more frail Lear running around the landscape losing all contact with humanity and humans. Because of this inhumanity, this death of Lear's soul, I found it very hard to connect with his character, and just wanted to get back to the backstabbing brothers and their rivalries.
There were some nice bits charting the destruction of Lear, stumbling upon the hut of a victim of his was nice (especially the fantastic flute piece), and then wandering madly around a castle he had destroyed. Of course he rediscovers his love of 'Cordelia' only to have that stripped away.
So, all in all, I didn't mind it. Maybe somewhat long at 2.5 hours, somewhat epic as Mark said, though I think he meant it in a different way :) It just didn't have the emotional or human aspect I was looking for; it was largely about backstabbing brothers and an old man going insane cos of the naughty stuff he did when he was a young-un.

MOVIES : RAN

Saw this last monday on DVD. HMV are currently selling a bunch of 'World Movies' for a reasonable price, I saw this and got it. I have wanted to see it for a while, I seem to remember my Dad seeing it when I was a kid, and I am a big Akira Kurosawa fan. Mind you, Mark informs me that he tried to get me to see it and I refused, so maybe I'm just bluffing...
Anyway, it's supposed to by Kurosawa's take on King Lear, and this can not be denied. The first third or so is a literal transfer of the original play; princes substituted for princesses, but little else different. I actually preferred Kurosawa's rendition of "Cordelia's" rejection of his father's will; it's braisen youth would have pissed off a weary, stubborn man but did show a strong affection by the son for his father.
After Lear is rejected by his second son everything starts to change, rapidly, from the original inspiration. It loses the human quality that Shakespeare had; the gentle loving of all those around the king for a man who continues to reject them, the loss and gain of sanity as different characters are variously loved and rejected, the investigation of age and aging (actually it did have a bit of this).
Instead it turns into a 'Macbeth' of sorts, with power hungry men being manipulated into horrendous acts by vengeful women, justaposed with the ever more frail Lear running around the landscape losing all contact with humanity and humans. Because of this inhumanity, this death of Lear's soul, I found it very hard to connect with his character, and just wanted to get back to the backstabbing brothers and their rivalries.
There were some nice bits charting the destruction of Lear, stumbling upon the hut of a victim of his was nice (especially the fantastic flute piece), and then wandering madly around a castle he had destroyed. Of course he rediscovers his love of 'Cordelia' only to have that stripped away.
So, all in all, I didn't mind it. Maybe somewhat long at 2.5 hours, somewhat epic as Mark said, though I think he meant it in a different way :) It just didn't have the emotional or human aspect I was looking for; it was largely about backstabbing brothers and an old man going insane cos of the naughty stuff he did when he was a young-un.

PROGRAMMING : slogans wot I like

Just reading through an interview with a Mac Hacker called Jonathan Rentzsvch in which he reiterates the following 'slogan'

Each line of code is a liability

I like that, it's very in line with DRY and the ruby way...

Don't Repeat Yourself

Another Pragmatic Programmer slogan is

Keep it DRY, shy and tell the other guy

But I don't really like that one much - a bit smarmy for some reason.
Finally, one the slogans I've been banging around a lot lately (because it is fundamental, and is ultimately the base of all the above slogans) comes from that book I didn't like by Glass

25% increase in problem complexity results in a 100% increase in solution complexity

BOOKS : Coalescence by Baxter

This was a sci-fi novel I bought for my holiday (wanted light reading - all my other books at the moment are hard cover 'real' novels).
It is a well written story about a woman during the collapse of roman britain who decides to make sure her family survive forever. She does this by creating a system, much like the famous naked mole rats, where the family becomes very closely related (only three breeding mothers for all 10,000 children) and so far more loyal and 'insect society like' than normal humans.
He touches on some nice ideas, and explores the central theme well. He has a nice closing gambit where he theorises about the possibilities of other insect societies on earth and how they would react to finding out about other groups.
BUT
It felt like I was reading a history text book. The majority of the book was either about ancient britain (we followed a roman road to londinium), ancient rome (there was a constant flow of wheat into Rome due to the vast numbers of people there and the dole, a social security system where the weakest people would get free bread) and modern rome (Mussolini created this road from the colleseum to his palace so he could gaze upon it when he woke in the morning).
Great, so you can research, and you've done it well, but god it's dry! Not a lot really happened iun the book, but he managed to fill a lot of pages with that historical stuff (Not that I don't like historical stuff, but if it gets in the way of the story, get rid of it!)
By the end of the book it all pissed me off a bit, but if you think that's something you would like, then I would thorougly recommend it as the writing, characters, themes and premise of the book are great. (That means you, Mark and Ash)

MOVIES : Monty Python's Life of Brian

Now this one I liked!
The story is great, many of the jokes are good, and relevant to what is going on, and all in all is a wonderful movie; very like the Jesus Christ Superstar movie in its drawing parallels between hippiedom and Christ's jeruselum, but also drawing on common traits of the human condition.
And remember....
....always look on the bright side of life