Hacker's Diary

A rough account of what I did with Emacs recently.

September 22: The Lives of Others: Stasi agent meets conscience, movie ensues. This is an excellent piece of work, dealing with what turned out to be some of the last days of the East German secret police. It's well written, well shot, and thoroughly enjoyable despite the grim subject matter. And the last line of the movie is just perfect. Must-see stuff.
September 21: Superbad is, well, exactly what it says on the tin - super bad. It makes the entire American Pie series look like high-brow film for intellectuals. Not worth seeking out, and probably worth changing channels if you happen across it on TV.

Have reverted the RVP fix so it should be working again, unless you're one of the people who encountered the timeout bug I've been seeing, i.e. it's at least no worse than it was before.

September 19: CondorMan is one of a handful of movies I recall seeing at the cinema while staying with my cousins in Dublin, not far from where I now live. It's not aged particularly well: the acting is hammy and the way everyone overemphasises the second syllable in the eponymous hero's name is just plain weird, but I'm sure if I were still 8 years old I'd enjoy it every bit as much as I remember...
September 18: Apparently the librvp tweak breaks it horribly. But I did warn you...
September 17: Poked at the RSS Toy somewhat, which I've been meaning to do for ages. It's actually about time I ditched it entirely and redid it from scratch, but I should probably plan what I'm doing with it before I go that far.

And yes, I realise that's several updates in a row of this diary. I figure if I'm actually hacking on something I should include it here.
September 16: A number of people have reported problems with Microsoft Exchange Messenger Server vs. librvp recently; as best I can tell, the problem appears to be that the server is sending back a response that the client is for some reason ignoring. If you've got access to a real live Exchange Messenger Server I'd appreciate hearing from you - I do have at least one tester for this stuff, but more data is better. There's a CVS-based tarball on the RVP page right now which will remain there for the foreseeable future, although I can't guarantee that it's always going to be actually functional. Welcome to open source: if it breaks, you get to keep both pieces.
September 15: From the outset, I watched Sicko with a skeptical eye; the usual slick editing, concentrated filming on people crying or otherwise distressed, accompanied by Moore's patronising voiceover. But I must admit I found the Cuba visit at the end very moving; frankly, I couldn't give a toss if the whole thing was rigged by Moore and Castro as a publicity stunt, the obvious emotions of those being given proper medical care without preconditions were just fantastic. The movie's worth a look, but I suspect it's pretty much in the same boat as any other Moore documentary: those who already agree with him don't need to watch it, those who disagree with him won't watch it, and those without a foot in either camp probably won't care much either way.
September 14: Back from two weeks of Seattle - work rather than play. Currently running on approximately 30 minutes sleep in a 24+-hour day. More later.

[Later] read some books, watched some movies... let's see. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was actually a lot more fun than I'd expected, if a bit daft in places (survives nuclear explosion with a fridge? check...); I wouldn't say it's a must-see, but it's certainly a pretty harmless piece of fun. Caught the final race in Speed Racer, which means I can't say much about it other than, wow. Wacky visuals. Iron Man totally rocked - in some places quite literally, thank you AC/DC - and is something I'll have to watch again, preferably not on an itty-bitty airplane screen. Finally, padded out the last flight with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which I'm pretty sure I've seen before but couldn't recall much of. I certainly didn't remember the recurring "who are those guys?" gag. This is a classic, you really have to see it. Ages well, too - it's almost 30 years old and still a hoot.

And finally: .45 is utter trash. It tries to be a clever movie, but fails, and on top of that the script is rubbish. Whoever thought it'd be a good idea to pull some ancient witticisms on the subject of sex and put them in the character dialogue should've been fired on his first day. Even the well-worn phrase "looking after number one" is haplessly used: the character who utters it then explains - for, presumably, the dumber focus groups - that "number one" is "me". FACEPALM. Do not watch this movie, even on a dare.