American Dreamz

Low on budget but high on star quality, low on eye candy but high on story, low on effects but great on entertainment value.

This is what I think of American Dreamz, and when you’ve watched it, you’ll hopefully agree that it’s the type that’s best appreciated the way it is.

It’s been awhile since we’ve gotten a good satire, and Dreamz delivers like a Fedex truck. It makes fun of everything and everyone – politics, popular talent shows, people behind those talent shows, terrorists, celebrities, basically everyone who’s ever though a little too highly of themselves. This movie just brings it on.

Plot

The plot is simple. American Dreamz is a wildly popular talent show hosted by Martin Tweed (Hugh Grant), (do I need to indicate what show it criticizes?), and the movie follows the stories of its latest discoveries Sally Kendoo (Mandy Moore) and Omar Obeidi (Sam Golzari).

Continue reading American Dreamz

(cough)losers(/cough)

From here:

An iPod and two mobile phones are the latest must-have accessories for status-conscious British office workers,… according to a survey released on Wednesday.

(The people who surveyed) branded the people in the survey as GOSSIPS (Gadget Obsessed Status Symbol Infatuated Professionals), a contemporary version of yuppies–the acquisitive young urban professionals of the 1980s.

Ok.

Number 1. When I was in my late 20s (and 30 lbs. lighter), I was corporate, dressed it, went out a lot, and earned well into ‘yuppie’ territory. However, I’d hate anyone calling me one. Why in heavens name would anyone want to be called that? Everyone knows the moment someone niches you, you’re obsolete.

Continue reading (cough)losers(/cough)

How To Update Drupal 4.7.2 to 4.7.3 (aka a Drupal HowTo for the rest of us)

I figured it was time to make one of my howtos. The Drupal UPGRADE.TXT file is fairly straightforward:

  1. Backup your database and Drupal directory – especially your configuration file in ‘sites/default/settings.php’.
  2. Log on as the user with user ID 1.
  3. Remove all the old Drupal files then unpack the new Drupal files into the directory that you run Drupal from.
  4. Modify the new configuration file to make sure it has the latest and correct information.
  5. Run update.php by visiting http://www.example.com/update.php.

But everyone knows things aren’t usually as they seem, so I went ahead and made a whole drupal howto on my own with pictures and everything. Here goes:

Continue reading How To Update Drupal 4.7.2 to 4.7.3 (aka a Drupal HowTo for the rest of us)

3rd German Silent Film Festival

What: 3rd German Silent Film Festival
Where: Greenbelt 1 Cinema 1
When: Tuesdays from August 15 to September 5, 2006.
Lineup:

August 15 – The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, music by Radioactive Sago Project
Dr Caligari exhibits clairvoyant sleepwalker Cesare at a fair and challenges his audience to ask him anything about the future. When Alan inquires after the date of his own death, he learns that he only has until dawn to live. That very night Alan is murdered. In the meantime, Cesare becomes infatuated with Jane, the daughter of the town doctor, and kidnaps her but is hunted down by the townspeople. Jane’s fiance Francis follows Caligari and discovers his real identity…or does he?

August 22 – Tabu, music by Bo Razon
Filmed entirely in Tahiti, “Tabu” represented an unusual collaboration
between legendary directors F. W. Murnau and Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North). Two lovers are doomed by a tribal edict decreeing that the girl is “tabu” to all men. While the lovers’ flight from judgement and the ultimate power of the tabu are reminiscent of Murnau’s expressionist films, the film is all open air and sunlight. “Tabu” was the 1931 Academy Award winner for Best Cinematography.

Continue reading 3rd German Silent Film Festival

Whenever I go to Mercury Drug, I think of Native Command Queuing

Hey cool, my article about SATA came out on the PCMag.ph site.

I wrote this very technical article for the January 2006 issue, and I really enjoyed writing it as I learned a lot about Serial ATA (SATA) and consequently, Parallel ATA (PATA), the technology it’s supposed to have replaced. It’s basically a geek’s dream.

The most interesting factoid is the ATA naming schema used by the technical committees in charge of creating standards for hard disks over the years, vis a vis how the manufacturers named them, which is completely different and ultimately made to confuse the market, making it appear their products had improvements where there wasn’t any. Also another revelation: if it wasn’t for SATA II, hard disk technology would be pretty much the same as 5 or 8 years ago, the main difference being only in capacity, but certainly not speed.

Continue reading Whenever I go to Mercury Drug, I think of Native Command Queuing

What is wrong with teens these days?

Lone Mage posted this today, where he finds something wrong about this link:

Teenagers who listen to music with explicitly sexual lyrics start having sex sooner than those who prefer other songs, a study found.

Whether it is hip-hop, rap, pop or rock, much of popular music aimed at teens contains sexual overtones. Its influence on their behavior appears to depend on how the sex is portrayed, researchers found.

Songs depicting men as “sex-driven studs” and women as sex objects, and with explicit references to sex acts, are more likely to trigger early sexual behavior than those where sexual references are more veiled and relationships appear more committed, the study found.

Continue reading What is wrong with teens these days?

Thoughts on: “People seen as the Achilles’ heel of computer security”

From here:

LAS VEGAS–The most vexing weakness in computer security is not in the hardware or the software, it is in the people who use the machines, according to top hackers and cyber safety specialists.

“It really is more of a human problem than a technical problem,” Dan Kaminisky of Dox Para Research said at the world’s premier hacker conference, DefCon, which ended in Las Vegas on Sunday.

Some things come to mind here:

  1. Knowing that people are the main risks, shouldn’t technology then adapt itself to avoid such pitfalls?
  2. What is technology’s purpose anyway? A lot of people have forgotten the forest that the trees make up. The main purpose of technology is to help people, and if their security is jeopardized while using it, then technology is failing.

    3. Continue reading Thoughts on: “People seen as the Achilles’ heel of computer security”