In addition to updating the software that runs both my blogs, I also took the opportunity to further consolidate the feeds. Which means that everyone who’s currently subscribed via pages like rss.php or atom.php will be redirected to the primary feed URIs, https://intepid.com/feed/ and

A while back I decided I didn’t want multiple feeds because a) it meant that tracking subscriber numbers¹ was harder, and b) I don’t see the point in providing multiple flavours of feeds. All readers support all major formats, so why should a subscriber or publisher have to care? If it turns out that RSS is a bad format to use, I’ll just change my feed to Atom (or whatever) and no one need ever know.

Also today I went and saw Transamerica, and I’m very glad I did. It reminded me that I do sometimes enjoy a film which didn’t cost 50M+ to make. Unfortunately the "official site" makes it look like a crappy comedy, which it is not… And HOLY SHIT I can’t believe that the lead was not actually male or transexual— I just looked up IMDB to see what else Felicity Huffman has done and realized that she is a Genuine Girl and one of the four principals from Desperate Housewives. Seriously I am now awestruck!

__________

1. As of now intepid has 50 subscribers via Bloglines and I’ve no idea how many via other sources (probably between 50 and 100). After the new redirections have kicked in (usually takes a few days) I expect to have around 8-10 via Bloglines. UPDATE: Crap, I knew it was bad luck to mention any numbers! My subscribers count just dropped to 49 after being at 50 for months— Where did I go wrong…?

I’ve upgraded both this site and the to Wordpress 2.0.2 today, and I have to say I am liking the new admin interface. No major problems so far, and the only changes I had to make were the same ones I did last time; basically some customization for permalinks, spam avoidance and a fix to the xml-rpc code. The latter fix may be a problem with Wordpress, or it may be just my own misinterpretation of the MetaWeblog API, but I think the following comment which appears in xmlrpc.php says it all:

/* MetaWeblog API functions
* specs on wherever Dave Winer wants them to be
*/

It really is a vague spec for something so relevant to blogging. My problem seems to be with the way creation dates are passed— I send a standardized string but the Wordpress interpretation of the MetaWeblog API seems to expect an object— so I change the code to accept what I send.

This site is worth a post, even if it is implemented as a Java applet.

In a nutshell We Feel Fine tracks blog entries (and pictures) where people mention their feelings, and presents them in various interactive forms…

My description does it no justice, you have to try it yourself.

Update: Like most very cool things, it’s not quite as cool as you want it to be, eg it doesn’t seem to be tracking as many entries as the dots imply (or somehow I keep coincidentally clicking on the same ones). Also, it only seems to track LiveJournal entries. I would really like to see this same thing implemented using Flash (less CPU intensive than Java) and accessing entries from any blog with an RSS feed.

Unless it’s a spoiler to say that I found X-Men: The Last Stand rather disappointing.

Five titles which would have been more appropriate:

1. X-Men: Suspend Your Disbelief
2. X-Men: Fulfilling Contractual Obligations
3. X-Men— All of them, Including the Crap Ones
4. X-Men: Bride of Lawnmower Man
5. X for eXecrable

Hey look, it’s my first ever five :)

This entry was going to be about how depressing the world seems right now, what with Iraq, Guantánamo Bay, hard-line anti-immigration politics in both the US and Australia, sectarian violence happening all over the place, nuclear power being pushed as the only solution to global warning after so many years of denial that there was really a problem, etc. It’s depressing to realize that, simply for being an atheist, in many parts of the world I would be considered deserving of death, while in other "more civilized" places I might be considered merely undesirable (or possibly unfit for citizenship?).

But instead of wasting your time and mine whining about things I can’t change, I will talk instead about the Da Vinci Code movie, which was actually not as bad as I expected. I just couldn’t not see it after so long complaining about the book. Yes, as critics are noting, it’s a pretty crap movie, with ponderous exposition and constipated acting, but it’s no worse than a lot of other films I’ve sat through. It did get me thinking more about the far-fetchedness of the plot itself though, and I’m not the first to note:

*** SPOILER WARNING ***

• Saunière didn’t really need to strip off all his clothes, draw a pentagram on his chest in his own blood, and arrange himself as Vitruvian Man. His anagrams and message would have surely sufficed to lead to his next clue. He also took an enormous and unnecessary risk by adding an extra step with his second clue, since he very well could have died before completing the sequence.
• Most of the treasure hunt was also unnecessary; there was no need to look for the clue to open the cryptex, since it could have just been opened by sticking it in the freezer for a few hours and then cutting the end off. Also, had they bothered trying an exhaustive list of five letter English words then they would have opened it in less than an hour (assuming 10 seconds per attempt; roughly 330 5-letter words precede apple). To try all 5-letter English words at this rate would have taken about 24 hours of twiddling, which would have been frustrating but not out of the question for something so important. To try all 5-letter words that appear in the King James Version of the Bible would take less than 6 hours [interestingly, the word apple only occurs only 11 times in the KJV, and almost always figuratively, as in: the apple of thine eye].
• Langdon’s "sleight of hand" towards the end of the film must be the least subtle in all movie history— about equivalent to the protoganist in a spy thriller pulling a briefcase switcheroo by asking the arms dealer to look out the window for a few minutes.

And on an extremely petty note, like Langdon in the book, in the opening scene Tom Hanks’ Langdon displays an inexplicable ability to instantly engage a young audience, who enthusiastically shout out all the obvious [wrong] answers so that he can make his points, with not a single pre-empting smartarse among them. He is the embodiment of a middle aged man’s ego. In the book he is once described as "Harrison Ford in tweed"— which seems like a particularly lazy/redundant description for anyone who has seen Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Well, that’s enough carping for one day, so I’ll leave it there with a quote from the film:

The only thing that matters is what YOU believe!

Hard to believe I’ve been in NZ for more than half a year now… Work has been pretty busy for me the last few months, but having now completed the bulk of the project I was working on I am looking forward to blowing the cobwebs off a few of my own projects— all of which have been in a state of limbo since I moved here, especially since I was in the middle of converting from VC6 to VC7 when I started my new job. I’m now doing some test builds in VC7 and it’s looking like I’ll be able to post a new version of soon, with a more standard installer (*.msi) built within the Visual Studio environment, so it’s easier for me to manage as a package.

I’d also like to get a new Drivey demo up, but I need to be a bit more creative about that, since I don’t want to just post the same thing with minor tweaks. Really I should get back onto C++ version, which has the potential to be much more flexible/powerful, and simply resist the temptation to add too many graphic features which take away from the "original" style—

Speaking of Drivey, I’m thinking of assembling a "best of" Drivey feedback entry, since I really have gotten some fantastic responses since the slashdotting last year, which gives me the impression that it really reaches some people on a surprisingly emotional level. I’d like to share a bit of that so I might just edit out the names/identifying details and publish a big page… actually I might as well compile all responses into one ginormous page for posterity (as external page, not inline).

1. Don’t do it!

Seriously, you will regret it when it comes to the part where you have to take pictures of the back of your head for visual reference, and then you realize that the amazingly cheap electric clippers you bought were cheap for a reason, so you adjust the blades as far forward as they will go, and then next thing you know you’ve got blood all over your fingers and you’re like, What the…? and then you think, Oh yeah, I did have a mole on the back of my neck…

Anyhow, what’s done is done, and overall it’s still a big improvement over what it was before (long, straight and floppy, rather similar to the male Eloi in the original Time Machine movie). I don’t know about you, but I always know it’s time for a haircut when anonymous motorists call me a faggot — Thanks, self-regulating society!

Bonus one step guide to coloring your own hair:

1. Pick a color that isn’t the same as your bedroom wall.

******************************************************
*                                                    *
*               MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 3                 *
*                TEXT ADVENTURE v1.0                 *
*              (c)2006 Hollywood, Inc                *
*                                                    *
******************************************************

You wake up, nauseous and disoriented. The last
thing you remember is drinking from the tiny flask.
The room is grimy and dimly lit, and from the
distant sound of Chinese voices you conclude you
must still be in Shanghai.

You are in a grimy, dimly lit room handcuffed to a
chair. You are handcuffed.
You see:
    The gun.
    The rabbit's foot.
Davian is here.
Julia is here.

> GET GUN
You cannot get the gun. You are handcuffed.

> GET FOOT
You cannot get the rabbit's foot. You are handcuffed.
Davian takes the rabbit's foot.
Davian says "Where is the rabbit's foot?"

> TAKE OFF HANDCUFFS
I see no off here. You are handcuffed.

> REMOVE HANDCUFFS
You remove, time passes. You are handcuffed.
Davian drops the rabbit's foot.

> GET GUN
You cannot get the gun. You are handcuffed.

> BREAK HANDCUFFS
You try, but are not strong enough. You are
handcuffed.
Julia says "Please help me."

> UNLOCK HANDCUFFS
With what? You are handcuffed.
Davian says "Where is the rabbit's foot?"

> INV
You are carrying:
    Sunglasses.
    The microdot.
    Your phone.
    The defibrillator.
You are handcuffed. 

> UNLOCK HANDCUFFS WITH SUNGLASSES
You unlock the handcuffs using sunglasses.
Davian takes the gun.
Davian takes the rabbit's foot.

> KILL DAVIAN WITH SUNGLASSES
You lunge toward Davian, swinging sunglasses through
a wide arc and connecting with Davian's temple,
cleaving his skull. He falls lifeless to the floor.
Davian says "Where is the rabbit's foot?"

> LOOK
You are in a grimy, dimly lit room.
You see:
    The gun.
    The rabbit's foot.
    Dead Davian.
Julia is here.
Julia says "Hello."

• Stephen Colbert’s is an amazing thing to see (much of the content will be familiar to Daily Show fans, but the fact that that his captive audience actually includes POTUS himself, sitting just a short distance away wearing a steely half-smile, adds mightily to the effect). After watching it I recommend picking up your jaw from floor and reading Ben’s sobering commentary (see also Jim Hanas in a similar vein).
• If you haven’t seen the I love eggs! flash video, watch it right now, it will make you happy.
• Wikipedia — Everyone should be using it, almost as much for its simple and practical presentation as its content. Generally one search will take you to an article, with no screwing around. Ugly old web sites like IMDB should take a leaf out of Wikipedia’s book. My favourite article: Xenu.

Was going to be a cartoon but I sort of lost focus…