January 2, film 2: Avatar (3D)

What?
After his scientist twin dies, a marine in a wheelchair called Jake Sulley gets shipped to another planet called Pandora, where some kind of corporate outfit is trying to strip mine the planet for a material called Unobtianium (srsly, I’m not kidding ya). Unfortunately there are also big blue natives, called Na’vi on the planet, who are having none of it. This is where Jake comes in. They created some sort of hybrid between human DNA and Na’vi DNA that can be remote controlled through some kind of gizmo that looks like a hybrid between a coffin and an MRI scanner, and those remote controlled puppets are, of course, called avatar. Jake is supposed to infiltrate the Na’vi, meets a girl, falls in love, and then hell breaks loose with conflicting interests, feelings of betrayal and everything.

Where?
Cinemajestic in Zutphen

With?
My little sister

Why?
Dude! It’s the return of James Cameron! It has aliens, strange planets, stunning CGI and everyone who saw it believed that movies would never look the same from now on.

Worth it?
Of course the story is no Shakespeare, but rather Pocahontas meets Dances with Smurfs, but despite the weak story, it’s definitely worth it. It absolutely looks amazing. I liked the performances by Sigourney Weaver and Michelle Rodriguez. Despite the fact that every event was announced like Checkov’s gun on the mantlepiece, the movie never grew boring because there was so much to look at, and the movie was expertly timed. I have a feeling that the 3rd dimension didn’t add much value, and esp. in fast moving scenes caused me to lose focus, so I have a feeling that I might actually enjoy it more in ole-fashioned 2D, and I’m definitely planning to put that theory to the test, because I do think it is worth seeing twice.

8/10

Geolocation

Just started reading in Spook Country from Gibson. Must say it’s pretty nice, but not the easiest read. Quite interesting how he spotted the upcoming obsession with geolocation, that is indeed coming true these days. I’d almost suspect someone in the apple design department read this book.

The big black blogging hole

I’m sorry folks, haven’t blogged for ages, but I will post something longer soon, I promise. Up to then I’ll show you one thing that I’ve been investigating recently: reading blogs through google reader. There are so many interesting, beautiful things I’m following, it’s really awesome. Want to see what I see? Go to this page where I share all things I find really interesting and subscribe to my feed, or even better, start using google reader and friend me, so I can follow you back.

Thedailywtf posts a non-WTF story

Like many other IT people I’m an avid reader of thedailywtf, a site about all kinds of things that go wrong in and around IT in companies, and where the only right response is: WTF!

Today I read a post that was not WTF at all, and something that I can really buy. Long story short: Law and accounting have been using the Cravath System from the beginning of the 1900′s

“Here’s how the “Cravath System” works. Bring lots of new employees in, team them up with mentors, provide real work to do, and give them a choice: either get lots of great experience and get out, or work hard for a higher-up position. Whenever you hear someone aspire to “make partner”, he’s undoubtedly working at a firm that’s adopted this model.”

When employees leave an employer, because they have reached their value apex, the point where they aren’t bringing anything new anymore, they don’t become ex-employees, but instead they become alumni, who will gladly refer their friends to their previous employer, if they think that that they need the same kind of experience as they have had. I can relate to this story, and for what it’s worth, I’m an OGD alumnus myself, so at least they did it right.

On work (as far as I’m concerned non-WTF), Joost really wants to hire more people, and they have a whole list up somewhere on the website somewhere, but around me some people are hiring too: We really need someone who can do more or less the same work as I am doing currently, which is making sure content gets online. So what do we need? Computer skills like any college student has, good communication skills, accurate style of working, autonomy, and a drive to get things done right, even with imperfect systems.

Also, a colleague dropped by my desk, and asked if I know someone who has basic scripting, basic database (SELECT and UPDATE), and basic linux knowledge (ls counts) who wants to learn a lot about scripting and converting values to information, to do scripting and business information work. I haven’t worked under her, but from what I’ve heard she is a nice boss to work under, and when you’re done you’ll have gained invaluable knowledge about information processing that will change your resume forever. :-)

So, if you are in need of cool work, ping me, and I’ll set you up :-).

Silverlight

I am sure at least a part of my faithful blog readers hasn’t ever heard of Silverlight, so I’ll give it a small introduction. Drumroll please

*drumroll sounds*

Once upon a time there was Flash, it was owned by Adobe and all was fine. Some people at Redmond, who love to create their own standards, decided to join the game with their own standard, and it probably has it’s merits, but I haven’t immersed myself deeply enough in the material to make any conclusive conclusions.

Anyhow, last week Microsoft had a spot free where the Mono people could show how far they had gotten with implementing the new standard, I they only learned that a few weeks in advance (with hardly anything done yet). In his blog post, Miguel de Icaza, a, or rather the, Mono hacker describes the three week hackathon, and I must say I find it rather inspiring. This just rocks

Safari (part 2)

Safari on Windows is still terrible, even after the last few patches, but I didn’t start an entry just to bitch a little. After Safari:Windows was released, a lot of people were bitching about the fact that it’s font’s looked blurry, while I hadn’t noticed that at all. It turns out that Windows and Apple approached font handling radically different. This blog entry tells exactly what and where (and why).

As someone who had done a bit of DTP himself, I tend to prefer the mac way of font handling. I want things to look the way the creator had intended it (within limits). To help things, my eyes have grown used to the mac way of font smoothing, so I actually didn’t see the problem until it was pointed out to me.

One more thing on browsers: lately I was multi-browsering on my iBook, because Safari used native widgets that were easier on the eye, and I needed Firefox for sites that Safari couldn’t handle. Opera just isn’t an option for me, I don’t like it’s interface, too many bells and whistles, and still not native. But, at last, I have found the browser I was looking for: Camino. There are still a few things that bug me, but it is the best browser for mac I have seen yet. It Just Works™

New (and barely stable)

In a perhaps daring and awe-inspiring, or foolish move, Apple has decided to leverage it’s iPod advantage in the desktop computing market. Last monday apple announced that they are bringing Safari to windows. For now it is a separate beta download, but I’m pretty sure that once it is finalized, it will be bundled with iTunes, just as Quicktime already is. A technology geek like me has to try new stuff, so I have tried Safari Beta for windows. The first site I tried (that rendered badly in Safari under OSX), crashed Safari for Windows. Let’s leave it at the observation that there’s a lot of room for improvement.

iRack

On the OGD forum they pointed out the latest product from Apple Computers, the iRack. It is genious.

Intuitive interfaces

While browsing comments on slashdot I saw a little clip of a 22 months old child that played Wii tennis. While I don’t really care about game consoles an sich, and won’t consider buying a Wii any time soon, I find it rather remarkable that the folks from Nintendo have succeeded in creating an interface that is that intuitive. I can’t help but find it inspiring, and am very curious what the future will bring.

I did some shopping yesterday and it was clear that the effort has paid off, the verious shops I was browsing all had PS3′s in stock, but the Wii’s were all sold out, even though they have been introduced some time in December.

Refresher

It’s been ages since I’ve paid attention to statistics, and I’ve had little education in it because I followed the other math course in Hight School. That might explain why I liked this article that was linked on slashdot. It is a piece about statistics in game design, but it also was a refresher of many things I know in the back of my head, but had quite forgotten. If statistics is old hat for you it probably won’t have much to over, but if it had sunken away a little, or if you want to test how it can help in your design of a game, go read it, it is good and a fun read (and written by a former mechanical engineer who has style if you don’t mind the cheesy pictures).

*edit* The first part of the series is an interesting read as well.