Roughly 20 years ago, Ojhri went up in smoke following a very loud bang. Shells rained down on the International School of Islamabad, totaling—if memory serves—13½ hits, including one to the auditorium we had gathered in. This was followed by several days off, while folks from the U.S. Carrier docked in Karachi dug out ordnance from people's driveways. Others did not fare so well.
Of Akira Kurosawa’s works that I have watched (20 of 31 available on NetFlix by last count)—and by far overall enjoyed—a few warnings and pointers:
Ikiru - Slow. No folks getting chopped up, no car chases.
Donzoko - Like the play it is based on, characters >> plot.
The Bad Sleep Well - difficult to follow opening. Excellent after that, with hints of Le Comte de Monte-Cristo.
Dreams - selection of very artistic short stories. I liked some, but not others—perhaps dreams are too raw for direct translation to film?
VP Cheney makes strong pitch for telecom immunity. Why? What have the telecoms done to deserve this immunity? What has the government done to deserve this immunity? What prevents rampant abuse of these powers? I smell rats in Washington.
Boo! Hiss! Copyright Alliance asks presidential candidates for more restrictive copyright laws. That that chilling travesty—the DMCA—doesn’t go far enough represents a frankly alien thought process. I favor weaker—much weaker—copyright, and the least possible legal entanglement for creative work. Standing on the shoulders of Giants is not possible whilst begging permission from a faceless entity.
Technorati Tags: copyright
“You can’t get here from there” — unnamed Diplomat on travel to Moldova. Connecting from Seattle difficult, as either expensive, or necessary to make an Eastern seaboard hop then European hop then finally Chişinău.
Random fun facts!
Not too many photos, due to the aforementioned flu (or something. Not a Doctor). Will delve through them later.
Nothing beats a workday like a failure in your computer!
The world would be a better place if Outlook was denied all network access. Other random thoughts about Windows: Business Ugly. Inevitably Busy Multitasking.
And, to conclude, Understanding Geeky References & Related Source Material.
ゲド戦記 “Tales from Earthsea” now available on DVD (region locked to Japan). A loose interpretation of events from The Farthest Shore and Tehanu. Overall an average film: good characterization and setting, poor overall plot and putting everything together. Lacked the inspiration of Le Guin, and the magic of Miyazaki. Maybe tried to tackle too much by combining topics from two books?
And, to commemorate one year of blogging, six lines taken at random from /usr/share/dict/words.
fibromyomectomy polemize typotelegraph nonratifying molestation Celticist
Winning Chess Tactics (revised) is a good introduction to Chess tactics, though a few diagrams have mistakes, which makes learning difficult.
乱 [Ran] sets King Lear (more or less) in Feudal Japan: incredibly well done. Been working through works by Akira Kurosawa via Netflix. Netflix very handy, with the nearest movie store being of limited selection, and the rest a fair ways away (and uphill) from me.
Mstislav Rostropovich: Cello Concertos collects concerto and encore recordings from the 1950s. Some tracks suffer from a slight background hiss, though nonetheless excellent and enjoyable music throughout.
Technorati Tags: cello
New Copyright Alliance hopes to strengthen copyright law. Copyright extensions on demand from Congress aren’t good enough already? More sprawling laws that no consumer will understand? Continued automated lawsuits against anything that smells like infringement? Ugh!
Technorati Tags: copyright
Cliff Stoll (author, The Cuckoo's Egg) sells Klein Bottles online. And now you know!
<style> allows remote CSS inclusion via @import and thus (in theory) workaround RSS missing the otherwise <link> included stylesheet information set in the HTML header section RSS lacks, being XML infested.
<description> <style type="text/css"><!-- @import url(…); --></style><$MTEntryBody encode_xml="1"$> </description>
Technorati Tags: CSS
Saw Renaissance: mixed feelings, as movie ranges between wooden acting (English voices, not French) and the cliché versus excellent backgrounds, lighting, and vision of a future Paris (where the present day Metro still runs, judging by the rail car noises). Not as captivating as cyberpunk work by Masamune Shirow; would have to watch more film noir to compare in that direction.
Magic Mouse Toys in Pioneer Square. Easy to bike past, except for Lego and other toy signs buried in otherwise dour building. Huge eclectic selection, must spend more time browsing through it.
StarDrop - new webcomic by Mark Oakley, creator of the most excellent Thieves & Kings series.
Technorati Tags: comics