Hacker's Diary

A rough account of what I did with Emacs recently.

June 26: As war movies go, I can't say there's anything particularly wrong with The Hurt Locker, but I really can't see why it would get a Best Picture award.
June 23: After some digging around, it would appear that the issue is possibly to do with whether or not your carrier file is signed. It might also have something to do with jailbroken phones, or it might not.
June 22: Some unhappiness with the iOS4 update: it nuked all my 3G settings. The currently suggested solutions that don't involve a full wipe only gets me back to having a 3G network; MMS is still disabled. Of course, I don't actually use MMS, but still, eh?
June 21: 2012: it's like Gamer, only Gamer wasn't trying to be "serious". Pretty awful stuff. I think there's an equivalent of the Uncanny Valley theory which applies to action movies: a zone between silly and realistic where suspension of disbelief is impossible and you're just scoffing at the screen. This movie is firmly in that zone.

Whee, iOS4 update for my iPhone - guess I'll need to update my review page in a few months...

June 18: Monsters vs. Aliens: even better with alcohol!
June 15: Oh, Shiny. MacOS 10.6.4 "security release".

Somewhere along the line the problems I've been having with Fink vs. MacOS 10.6 appear to be evaporating. This is good!

And to make my evening, at about 22:30 UPC decided that I didn't actually need Internet access and (as best I can tell) put my cable modem on their internal network instead. NICE ONE, YOU TOOLS. I can't say I'm particularly worried about ever being cut off for some sort of misuse of the service, because how would I tell it from one of their arbitrary disconnections?
June 13: Irony, thy name is Apple: the iPhone developer docs contain the following paragraph, trimmed and highlighted for maximum amusement:
Important: Like C, Objective-C is case-sensitive. [...] This tutorial deliberately uses MyViewController and MyViewController to encourage you to look at the name carefully.
As they didn't say on Sesame Street, ♩ one of these things is exactly like the other ♩

June 12: Tried out Logitech's TouchMouse app for the iPhone. The idea is interesting: it turns your iPhone/iPod Touch into a touchpad mouse for your computer. Of course, if you already have a touchpad it's a bit useless, but I thought I'd try it anyway. No points for displaying my laptop's address as "127.0.0.1", and the default inertial settings are awful enough to make it pretty much unusable.

On a more positive note, the Kindle app has been updated to support Search Inside The Book, which suddenly makes it a good deal more useful to me since the only Kindle content I own is a technical reference that's effectively useless if you can't search. On a whim I also grabbed a few freebie books (such as Alice's Adventures In Wonderland); we shall see if I actually read them!

Brazil is weird, but I knew that, and I'm ok with it.
June 11: The Usual Suspects: as good as the first time I saw it. Even knowing the twist, it's still fun.
June 8: Installed shiny new Safari 5. Attempted to open the above IMDb link. CPU fan currently running at maximum RPM and the processor-chewing appears to be coming from "WebKitPlugin" stuff, which makes me wonder if Our Steve has pulled a fast one and made Flash perform even worse than usual just to, you know, underline his point about how terribly oppressive it is...

On the other hand, the fact that my modem appears to have spontaneously reset might have something to do with it. Never attribute to Macintosh that which can be explained by UPC, or something.
June 7: Watched The Blues Brothers again. I can't tell you how many times I've watched this, and I still love it.
June 6: Where The Wild Things Are is very firmly in the territory of unapologetic kids' movie; unlike some recent fare in the animation world, there's pretty much nothing in this for adults. Nothing actually wrong with the movie, just don't expect the sort of nostalgic touchstones or subtle adult humour of the Pixar or Dreamworks Animation stuff.

I Hate Valentine's Day is a fairly predictable but thoroughly enjoyable rom-com; some scenes are literally laugh-out-loud, and even though you know how it'll all work out it's an enjoyable ride anyway. Definitely one to watch, and watch again.

June 5: Watched Death At A Funeral (the original) again, and found myself how the remake would deal with the un-PC references...

Gamer: quite possibly the worst movie I've ever seen. And it had multiple moments of sheer awfulness: Tillman's reason for getting drunk. The song/dance sequence. The Designated Ethnic Characters. The denoument. Don't bother watching this even as a joke. Gerald Butler, you owe me.

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June! Sun! (with outbreaks of rain)