Daily Grind Wonderings, wanderings and waffle

Almost choked on red wine at this image. Very similar style to Larson, who is a genius in my book.

Films

Seen quite a few DVDs recently, so thought I’d summarise them here:

- Cronos: got a three DVD set of Guillermo del Toro’s films. Insects and needles seem to be a common theme for him. This one and El Laberinto del fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth (superb)) both have closeup-scenes of somebody sewing up a wound. As a bonus I’m also picking up quite a few Spanish words. Ron Perlman is an enigma to me. He’s not the most attractive of actors (watch in the Name of the Rose, or La Cité des Enfants Perdus), but has such a cool persona and has also been in a LOT of films!

- La Gloire De Mon Pere: charming French film about a boy and family on holiday. Ah, for those days of apparent innocence to be returned to. Real Life sucks big time.

- La Nina Santa: couldn’t really get into this Spanish film, sadly returned back without watching all of it - usually the sign of a poor film for me.

- Warrior King: hmmm, some really cool fight scenes, however rest of film was pretty poor.

I’m pretty fed up with commercial American films, where they have to pander to the film financiers by having to use headlining actors. There are so many superb actors out there, but unless you watch the non big release films - you’ll never be exposed to their skills.

Currently listening to Imogen Heap’s album Speak for Yourself.

Walking around an obstacle course, with different levels of difficulty having different signs. Was doing a level 10 course and got lost at one gate. I had to walk through some bushes and had to place my feet into the footprints of the person who was ahead of me.

Go figure.

Nice to see Samsung use a dictionary - found whilst running update for mobile phone software:

After getting the updates, the spelling has been fixed.

A picture from last weekend, watching the footy in the pub:

Collection of ailments so far this week:

- split thumb nail, from bowling
- aching hip, from squash
- bruised knee, from badminton
- tooth ache
- IBS.

Might as well just top myself now, rather than wait for “old age”.

After much tweaking and scratching of head… KDE running really nicely now, until I edit a .conf file next time and wonder what I’ve done to stop everything from working.

Here’s a screenshot. Emerald is funky - lots of wobbly windows and rotating task-manager windows that Vista keeps touting. I’ve got it all - for free. Muhaha. Everything runs really quickly as well.

This is kind of cool as well, you can drag on the title bar to peel back what’s behind it:

Why are there so many different types of sneezes, when essentially we’re trying to achieve the same result? Observe five people sneezing and ponder, though don’t get too close to your subjects!

Mate came down for the weekend and we went bowling. He hasn’t played for five or more years, since we both lived in Worcester. He scores 140 on the first game - git!

I mean - who in their right mind clicks on a link to citalis, amatril, penis-enlargements, buy these great shares, make your girlfriend scream and all the rest? Now and again you get a funny one, with no links or no share offers that is just “hello Mr IT….”.

Can’t stop laughing.

Managed to get FreeBSD running on new computer, after a bit of kernel patching, only to find that 64bit graphics drivers for nVidia haven’t been written yet. Argh. Now on to Mepis 64, that seems to be quite good at the moment. KDE won’t shutdown properly yet, which is annoying.

Reading this article on the BBC website makes me even more depressed about the state of the UK. I really don’t think a change in government will help either - the NHS was pretty bad under the Conservatives; it’s bad now; I don’t know what the long term future for it is. Like most things - I think we’ll end up like America, where you have to have health insurance or you don’t get looked after.