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Review in short: American Dreamz
Sat, 29 Apr 2006

Cutting straight to the goods, this film is a scorcher .. entertaining though not balls-out, disturbing yet tasteful, and great fun as they literally roast (I need extra-extra-italics!) American Idol and U.S. foreign policy. The premise is simple -- the just re-elected US president wakes up one morning and decides to read the paper (something he hasn't done in years) and is surprised to find it full of criticism and alternative viewpoints to what he's been spoonfed, which all throws him for a personal crisis. To help restore the public's faith in Presidential image the Chief of Staff signs him up as a judge for the wildly popular 'American Dreamz' (obviously a spoof on American Idol.) Now, this is not Scary Movie so there are few true 'gag' moments -- the characters are parodies of real life folks and the fun is in the plot that disembowels the hollow celebrity lifestyle and deconstructs the American Dream. Really, I found the film fairly tasteful -- no name-calling swipes at the George Bush or white-trashing the American People per se. Instead you're in a state of amazement at the sheer vacuousness of the characters and giggling all the way through at the dialog and awful thoughts the characters put forth. Sure, they have to attack the President and whatnot, but its not descending to insults.. just suggesting that everyone involved are good folks just in an organization gone wild.

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IT: Coding is Creating, Or, On the 7th Day He Created TRON
Thu, 27 Apr 2006

<Ramble> As an infotech grunt, I like to think that what I do is - at its dank primeval murky core - an act of creation. As with any job, a certain amount of work is repetition but it is the gusto and spirit of the work that defines it. Software development is an act of creative violence, of man against the problem, machine and mind and Shanghai noodles banging rocks together until something useful falls out. Software engineering is a symphony.

Years ago I was discussing with my father what coding is. He's an intelligent strong ingenious hard working man (all the things I am not ;) who self-taught a certain amount of engineering for his work as a machine designer. I told him that development at its best follows the same forms - the act of peeling away the layers until a very refined idea can be drafted and designed and aggregated into something useful, and I gave him the age-old developer idea that as with carpentry a good developer can use tools, and make tools, and make tools that make tools - like a hammer. I was careful to also note that this is development at its best, and that most of the time it's more like throwing 10 people at a problem until they've mashed screws into walls using their foreheads.

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BBS: Missing BBS ANSI artwork, and, Yes! I still remember how to blog (I think.)
Thu, 20 Apr 2006

Gripe warning!

The local telco in their infinite wisdom knocked me 'more or less' off the air for a week or so; this was pretty annoying in and of itself as it torments the automated systems I've assembled to run the site, but we can all use a break from the net once in awhile... the trouble comes with the subsequent jokulhaups of angry email in my support box. The last few weeks have left me a little drained as I try to survive the assault of angry folks spamming their questions over and over until they get a response, Easter, many birthdays, house searching and other chits of chaos. But hey, our old friend Anita hacked away on the upcoming Wiki so something has gotten done (thanks Anita!)

So heres to let you know -- I'm still alive, just whiplashed :) If you're wondering where my 2-3 usual blog entries per week went, well, I've stored up a few ideas for a rainy day. Still, I must post something so here goes.. I stumbled across this file on my drive, an ANSI screen grab of a BBS loader screen. Its hard to see nowadays so I had to fire up an ancient copy of TheDraw ANSI editor, and in the end swiped someone elses screenshot so you all could see it. I just know that Phronq is wetting himself right now.

More later.

Is the Matrix full? Is that why Retro has gone so strong that its duration is greater than the music it features?

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