procrastination diagram - February 2005

But since I'm here, and I felt the need to say that, I will point out Preshrunk, a blog devoted entirely to T-shirts, and one of the first things they mentioned, found item clothing, which among other things has a replica I ♥ Toxic Waste shirt from Real Genius that I seem to remember once coveting before I gave up on clothing that wasn't black.

It turns out that I have a bookmark folder of links that I am planning to mention here at some point, but have been two lazy to since I have to cut and paste things. I know what I have to write to fix that, I just haven't gotten around to it.

I also have a middling entry about organization and productivity that I (warning: heavy irony ahead) haven't found the time to sit down and write. And another one about that tags craze that's so last week.

Mostly I've been spending the last week learning how to monitor APC UPSs with Nagios, which isn't the most exciting thing in the world.

Anyway. Enjoy yourselves.

I seem to be on something of a roll when it comes to movie watching- I went and saw Constantine last night. I enjoyed it, but I'm not going to claim that it was, well, good or anything. It was decent eye-candy when it wasn't being icky (as movies with demons, exorcists, etc. are wont). There was no car chase, at least that I can recall (the fact that I'm not sure is perhaps not a great sign). Only one obviously unjustified plot thread, and it was ignorable. Constantine's office/apartment continued the trend of living spaces and architecture portrayed in movies being too cool to actually exist in real life (I want those blinds). One of the people I saw the movie with said that it was one of the most predictable movies he'd ever seen, and I'd be hard pressed to disagree. All in all, a deeply ok movie well within Keanu Reeves' range.

I suspect this one would make the best date movie so far. Not as distracting as The Incredibles, only the barest possible hint of romance, and there were plenty of startling moments suitable for clutching at a companion.

I am not familiar enough with the comic book it was based on say how faithful it was in the details (other than to point out that the comic book is about a blonde Brit that lives in London) but it seemed to get the feel consistent with the issues I have read.

On a slightly different topic, I also seem to be on a roll with writing here. This is probably at least somehow linked to the movies I've been watching; whether it's just that they give me something to talk about or that I've hit some level of organization that gives me enough free time to watch movies again and write blog entries remains to be seen: Nothing next week at LSC looks like it will entice me out of my cave. It's also worth noting that I still haven't beaten the posting run I had from December 2003 to January 2004. We'll see, I guess.

As you've probably noticed, I've been posting a lot recently. I've recently finished a big chunk (from a UI perspective) of making posting to my blog as painless as possible from my perspective.

Basically, I go into my NOTES buffer in the emacs that's already running, create a new "note", write an entry (in something vaguely resembling simplified wikimarkup) and hit a key sequence that formats the entry and shows it to me in a web browser. If it passes a proofreading, I click a link that causes it to be posted to my blog and mirrored at livejournal.

It's really quite convenient, even if it is a horrifying lashup under the hood.

(Honestly, I've just made this post to test a modified code path for the renderer.)

I finally saw The Incredibles last night.

Wow.

I know that I'm not actually the last person (around here) to see it, because sadly one of my housemates hasn't, didn't realize it was at LSC this weekend, and will be out of town on Sunday. If you happen to be near Boston Sunday afternoon/evening, and haven't seen the movie, GO.

It's certainly one of the best movies I've seen recently, although I suppose I haven't really seen that many. Certainly better than National Treasure, it didn't have any plot holes immediately obvious to me, and the attention to detail was fantastic. I want to watch it again and see what I missed. I'm even tempted to do so on Sunday, but I doubt that I'll have time. Also, the good guys weren't annoying, and you cared what happened to them. The voice-acting was excellent, and the animation meshed with it beautifully. (I was slightly disappointed that Wallace Shawn's character didn't reappear as a bad guy, but you can't have everything. Maybe in the sequel.)

I'm now not so sure it would be as good a date movie as National Treasure would have been, because it was actually gripping enough that I would have been hard-pressed to pay the minimum necessary attention to my companion. I'm a sucker for things that reward attention, and this movie definitely does. (I suppose it depends on the companion; people also tend to be things that reward attention.)

Also, I don't think the phrase "Zero Point Energy" has ever made me giggle before.

Invitation:

Today (Tuesday) is Karl's birthday. There'll be cake provided at hotass, at 11:30pm or thereabouts.

Come help him mope.

Result:

(a couple more pictures)

Thanks, Camilla.

I just (well, a few hours ago), saw National Treasure at LSC. It was entertaining, but an otherwise not great movie; Characters that weren't particularly believable did poorly justified things with little justification; various significant plot points were poorly (or not at all) explained. Still, it had all the running across rooftops and collapsing rickety underground structures you'd want. I think it probably would have made a good date movie (not enough romance to be threatening, consistency problems to talk about later, and enough excitement to keep people from getting bored).

Next week I will probably finally get to see The Incredibles, which I suspect would be an even better date movie, <rant>although these days why I even bother to think in those terms is beyond me. I don't usually think I actually get more cynical this time of year, I like to say that I just don't bother trying to hide it, but I'm starting to wonder. Would I find Valentine's day so annoying if it wasn't next to my birthday? Would my birthday be quite so depressing if it wasn't next to Valentine's day? If I had been born in March as originally scheduled, I would at least have been able to have a birthday dinner without having to fight my way through a dewy eyed mob of happy couples most years (the next few years might actually be better since my birthday is falling midweek, I don't know if I'm going to bother experimenting much this year though) although I suppose they do make a very satisfying squishing noise when you stomp on them... but I think I'm going overboard.</rant>

So, should I do anything for my 100000th birthday? I was thinking of calling a mob sometime comfortably next week. People have been mentioning that "we" haven't been to Maggiano's recently, but it's likely too late to get a reservation for Tuesday.

Staying at home (or at work!) and sulking seems like it would get boring.

I've spent a good chunk of my free time recently working on stuff related to my blogging software, my picture-handling infrastructure, and various other glue. This post should test maybe three-quarters of the code needed to make my posts here completely painless.

Anyway, here are some pictures I took on the way to work a few days after the blizzard, as promised last week to some of you:

More pictures here. I actually think this is a better set of pictures, with more interesting (and generally better) lighting, clearer air, etc.

You'll notice that they're in something more resembling a gallery than the last one, and have actually been filtered for similar pictures, oopses, etc. Eventually I want to have a seperate photoblog that semi-automatically puts up the pictures I take. But, at best, that's sometime off in the future.