Being Bit(ten) and Byting Back: March 2005

Oh Well,

Here goes another weekend... Hope everyone had a good Easter weekend.

Oops...

I accidently uninstalled FireFox from my Windows PC...

Moving away from Windows

Last year I bought an iPod. Hooking it up with a Windows machine just did'nt cut it. So my next purchase was an iMac. It was just before Apple released the G5 iMac. So far I've regretted the decision to buy the iMac. I should have bought the G5 PowerMac.

Anyway, since I finished grad school, I've been thinking of moving away from Windows, and start living the Linux and Mac digital lifestyle. With the impending release of the next generation of Microsoft tools, I think it would be a good to try something new. My iMac just sits there glaring at me to do something much more worthwhile than playing with iTunes, browsing the internet and writing my blog. As far as Linux is concerned, I've wanted to do that properly for sometime. Unfortunately, its not easy to do so in a Windows-centric world. I frequently talk to my family over the internet and VoIP is'nt quite available in Yahoo for Linux (someone, please correct me if they know better).

I guess at some point I will have to start. I'e decided I want to go with Suse Linux. Once I get all my backup, and there is a lot of backing up to do.

On another note, I went to the Apple Store at the Carousel Center. The store was very minimalist, and I saw the new PowerBooks and G5 iMacs. Very impressive!!.

In Other News...

I finally finished the Python bindings to the C++ MPEG-2 Library and the Python extension that I've been developing in my spare time. I think its pretty cool and gives it a real Python-feel to the MPEG-2 Library I got from Oakland University. Some testing still remains, but I think its feature complete. I still need to figure out how I'm going to publish it because I don't own the source code for the MPEG-2 Library. What I'll do is publish the headers, and the static library and the Visual Studio solution project, and the wrapper source code and the SWIG source. I've used plain vanilla C++ so I think it should be easier to make a Linux and Mac version, but that will be probably have to wait since once I get this tested I'll be moving to a new project that I want to work on. Stay tuned for the link that will go up any time soon.

Will AJAX help Google clean up? | CNET News.com

Will AJAX help Google clean up? | CNET News.com This is an interesting article about using mature technologies like DHTML and Javacript. I think this might actually be more dentrimental to new technology from Microsoft (.Net) and Sun (Java) since it will allow developers to focus on most common denominator rather than hoping that net users will finally upgrade to a newer versions of technologies. The good news is that Microsoft is finally coming wiht IE7. Thank goodness Firefox knocked some sense into Microsoft.

Through My Life, Being Bit(ten) and Byting Back: ActiveState - Komodo IDE Perl Python Tcl PHP XSLT - Dynamic Tools for Dynamic Languages

Through My Life, Being Bit(ten) and Byting Back: ActiveState - Komodo IDE Perl Python Tcl PHP XSLT - Dynamic Tools for Dynamic Languages To those of you who read my rant about Firefox, Komodo, and Visual Studio.Net 2003, I use a Pentium IV 1.5 GHz, with 512 MB of RAM for Windows and Linux for development and programming :-(, and an iMac for more interesting stuff :-).

Time for some movie reviews

I have'nt written movie reviews lately, so in the absence of a more interesting topic I thought this would be a good topic to start blogging.

As some of the readers who might have noticed that I get all my movies and music from Netflix and iTunes. Being a "consientious and law-abiding" digital citizen, I don't depend on the likes of Kazaa, Bittorrent, and other file-sharing programs to steal my entertainment although, given the state of my bank account and credit cards, I'm sorely tempted.

Anyway, the last movie I saw today was a movie called "Caracara". The only good thing about the movie was Natasha Henstridge. Henstridge's acting leaves a lot to be desired but she is super sweet eye-candy to look at and that kind of made it worth it. I got into renting Natasha's Henstridge's movies after I saw the Species movies again. Species I was an okay movie. There was'nt a lot of good acting in it by today's standards, but I guess that back in 1995, when genetic engineering was coming of age, with all the hype about computers and technology, and big name actors like Alfred Molina and Ben Kingsley, must have attracted a number of movie goers. Not to mention gratuitous amounts of Natasha Henstridge's Nudity :-).

I kind of miss the 1990's. Sometimes I think it was my generation's 1960's and the 2000's are a repeat of 1970's. (This will probably be a topic of a future post).

Then I saw Species II where Natasha Henstridge reprised her role of a hot, sexy half-human half-alien female. This as sequals go was'nt too interesting. It basically sent a bunch of humans to Mars and they come back infected by some alien virus that mutates them into aliens whose prime concern is to procreate.

A lot of things were wrong about the movie. One, it was partly inspired by the discovery of a meteor in the Antartic which possibly had fossils of Martian bacteria. That was later found to be incorrect. (This what I remember but if someone reads this and thinks otherwise drop me a comment). The other is that even with some real-time mutation of cells in a human body, I dont think its possible to become another species. Human beings are configured to be the way they are. In any other form, they probably would'nt survive. In any case more bad acting especially with the guy who was supposed to be the main hero. There was considerably a lot more steamy sex scenes, but I think the magic was gone by the time Species II came out in 1998.

Species III was a straight to video movie. Natasha Henstridge has a cameo in it. The makers gave it a more younger feel to it and it involves Eve's (Sil's clone from the second movie; Sil was Henstridge's role in Species I) daughter, Sara who was concieved in the climatic scene when the alien male finally has sex with the alien female. Species III starts off where Species II left off when they are driving off in the ambulance with Eve's body. During that act, Eve gives birth to Sara and then is killed by another alien half-breed when the human side of Eve realizes that Sara is also an alien and attempts to kill her. Sara quickly matures and then as usual starts hunting an appropriate mate. Unfortunately for her, since Sara is the purest alien (genetically) she can only mate with some one who is like her. Her parents, in contrast, were combinations of alien and human genetics. And so begins her quest to find a mate or alternatively convince a bunch of scientists who can clone one for her. Avoid this one if you can.

Once I finished, the Species movies, I got the "The Other Limits: The New Series: Sex & Science Fiction". While the intention there was getting more of Natasha Henstridge, they had some interesting episodes. Watch it if you want to watch some science fiction with a spicy twist. Except for the one about the plant species, they were pretty interesting to watch.

Recently, I also "Fat Albert" the movie. That brought some good memories. I remember I used to watch that cartoon back in the early '8o's. The movie was good light fun. The produces did a good job in juxtaposing the 1970's world into the 21st century rather than retooling the characters to fit in 2004/2005 world.

Skip the following movies I saw "Surviving Christmas" , "Jason and the Argonauts", "Second Skin" , "I Heart Huckabees" (I could'nt understand the premise of this one, What was the point? ).

"Max" has an interesting theory of historical what-if's.

"Pulp Fiction". Quentin Tarantino really outdid himself in this one. I thought it was a hilarious movie. I really don't know how to describe the movie. His way of story telling in this one, was strange, and you need to watch it atleast two times to make sure you understand how all the plot-lines in the movie come together. He tried to do it again in "Kill Bill vol. 1" and "Kill Bill vol. 2", but I don't think he will make another movie that will quite match "Pulp Fiction". Uma Thurman rocks in all three movies.

Mozilla - Home of the Firefox web browser and Thunderbird e-mail client

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ActiveState - Komodo IDE Perl Python Tcl PHP XSLT - Dynamic Tools for Dynamic Languages

ActiveState - Komodo IDE Perl Python Tcl PHP XSLT - Dynamic Tools for Dynamic Languages I've been using this tool for my Python Development, and so far its been a disappointment. So far most of my developement has been on Windows, and Komodo is really slow. Combined with FireFox and Visual Studio 2003, making a simple script change takes forever. I'm concerned as to what exactly is eating up all the CPU cycles. I think for now I'm heading back to the PythonWin IDE that comes with the Python Win32 extensions by Mark Hammond Time for a sandwich...