Mr. Rogers dies of cancer. I remember watching the show growing up, although I think I was a bigger fan of Mr. Dressup (pic). Rogers was responsible for bringing Mr. Dressup to the air in Canada. The era of children’s television I grew up with is drawing to a close.
Daytona 500 by Ghostface Killah is hands down one of the best driving songs out there. However, I’ve really never been able to make sense of it. There are parts that are understandable, it’s fast and it sounds cool. I guess it’s just rhyming. It’s not like people actually have to understand what you’re saying.
Came across the website for the Office of the Iraq Programme Oil for Food tonight. You can learn how much oil Iraq exports to the UN every week and read the items on the Goods Review List that cannot be imported into the country.
The search for more bookz has brought me to Project Gutenberg, one of those things I had come across awhile ago, but failed to remember. It’s pretty much exactly what it says it is, a project to bring printed works to the masses (for free). The only real problem I’m having with these books on computer is the lack of good reading utilities. I may have to pick up a palm of some sort or write the type of text-reader I’m looking for.
Back in Brockville for a few days over this reading week break, nothing too exciting going on. Before I left the other night, I watched The Pianist, one of the films up for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. I thought it was a really good movie, a little bit long but it’s to be expected from the type of movie. There are similarities and comparison that can be made to Schindler’s List, I think I liked this one better (although I guess it could also be compared to Life is Beautiful, another good one). Black and white is nice and artistic but I find that the visual part of my brain likes looking at . The Pianist has that. It also comes from the perspective of one man, rather than a more sweeping look at was going on. And the dark comedy elements, the things you think probably shouldn’t be laughed at, but do anyway because that’s what it was intended for. Adrien Brody did an excellent job as the lead character and is deserved of his Oscar nom.
Boner of U2 gets himself nominated for a peace prize.
Some German authors are trying to set a record to create the fastest book to go from concept to shelves. Forty authors will each write two pages and a foreward, beginning at 7:45am and they will have copies of the book on store shelves in Germany within 12 hours.
I watched About A Boy and One Hour Photo last night. About A Boy was pretty good, a romantic comedy with a happy ending. But a weird romantic comedy and a weird happy ending. I’m tempted to read the book, it’s by Nick Hornby, who wrote High Fidelity (the book and film are gold). The soundtrack for the movie was written by Badly Drawn Boy. One Hour Photo was Robing Williams galloping along the Death to Smoochy/Insomnia trail of creepy bad guys. So it wasn’t all that shocking for me, there are good parts and there are bad parts and Robin Williams plays a good bad guy. Overall, it seemed a bit rushed.
No paper to help put together tonight, that means The Simpsons. And lots of it. There’s three episodes on tonight, the first one of the season (which I think that I missed) and two new ones.
Even better than controlling itunes through the terminal, is the software to place three control buttons on your menu bar and global hotkeys for play/pause/skip.
Dave also say: Me likee The Libertines.
Rita spent two days carefully arranging all of her worldly possessions, so she could take a photograph to remember what things were like before the terrorists got her.
Like any other published material, it seems that books are relatively easy to find on the internet. Sci-fi easier than most. Although, it can be a bit of a bitch to try and read through a text file on your computer. I need to find some sort of decent text reader for mac or pick up a cheap pda.
Midterm number one in less than an hour, courtesy Database Management. Midterm number 2, this evening courtesy Operating Systems. And there was the Advanced UI project due this afternoon. It ended up looking pretty cool. The assignment was to provide an advanced visualization of a social network. We did this p2p visualization, although we ran into some problems trying to obtain real data. Waaaazzzooo was one of the names that could be easily seen.
The good, the bad and the ugly. The last musical to win best picture was Oliver! in 1968. Another film released in 1968 was 2001: A Space Odyssey. Hmm.
Cool 2B Real, funded by America’s Beef Producers and targeted at pre-teen girls. And Pork4Kids, courtesy the National Pork Board.
Los Golden Words, scourge of the proletariat.
There are times when you look at a calendar and say to yourself, “I should really be doing something to make that ominous cloud of marker scribbles in the middle of next week less ominousing.” And then you think, “Why?” Your brain replies, “It’s important to do well.” And you think, “Well, what am I going to remember 5, 10 or 25 years from now; studying really hard for those midterms about databases and operating systems or hanging out with a friend.” Then you’re thinking, “Gold.” But you also know that you will have to study at some point and as a result may not be getting as much sleep as you would have liked.
ABC article offering some details about the 13 root servers that control the internet.
Looking to control iTunes via the command line? I found a good script for it. There might be better, but this one seems to do the trick.
