glibberish.

Foo Fighters reference, which has nothing to do with the Foo Fighters.

Haven’t done anything photography in a while, but here’s some taken around my friend’s flat (and where I am temporarily bunked in) one relatively idle night. Post-processing just done earlier today. Everything used with digiKam on my Linux. I’m surprised I got the black and white photos look almost like film texture-wise, a process I couldn’t do before with conventional Levels, Curves and Saturation adjustments in Photoshop or GIMP. I am getting more and more impressed with the power digiKam’s editing tools have! I don’t think I would be needing GIMP for photos anymore.

When I first saw Primer a couple of years ago, it left me dumbstruck for two reasons: it provided an amazingly technical premise to time-travel, giving strict conditions as to how it could work (and giving the most convincing depiction of the concept in a movie ever); that, and it had a profoundly confusing unfolding of events. And it isn’t surprising now, having learned that filmmaker Shane Carruth has had a degree in mathematics and is a total nerd. I could only imagine that guys like these tend to think and conceptualize in nonlinear ways – one of the main reasons I look up to them – and to apply that methodology in an artistic medium such as film… it’s just awesome!

Tonight I watched the movie a second time, and while I cannot claim I finally understood everything, my feeble mind was able to reach a bit further into the story than the last time. It already had that “taste in my mouth”, the reverse-engineered version of “tip of my tongue”. And, having grown a little, knowing a bit more about things (I mean, anything, in general) – I do like to think that I am learning more as I go along in life, otherwise what’s the point right? – the movie came out more entertaining as I saw in the characters a more realistic impression of what it is like to be an engineer (or a PhD student :P).

A couple more viewings and I would nail it. But, not matter, a very helpful timeline of events have already been created, and I am most convinced of its accuracy.

A Village Voice interview also mentions a new film by Shane Carruth. I am particularly interested in his next science fiction concept, which I think resembles works of my favorite author of all time, Stanislaw Lem. I hope he ends up making it.

It is also worth noting that Carruth, with the help of only a couple of friends and family, has almost singlehandedly created the film by himself: script, production, direction, even music. And the movie does not look bad… not bad at all. A nerd indie geek artist. I wish I were friends with him.

Earlier, I made my first ever Chili Con Carne. I mainly followed the instructions from here (part 1) and here (part 2). As is, it tastes awesome!

I will try to modify the recipe next time, aiming for the chili soup taste from may favorite Soup Kitchen back home.

[mr. burns] Excellent… [/mr. burns]

The release of the newest KDE iteration has sparked my interest in this very functional desktop environment. I stayed away from it for a long time, ignoring even Kubuntu due to my being turned off by the overample and confusing interface. But now it seems that the guys have got UI design very right with KDE 4.

The literature says that version 4.0.0 still has full of bugs, but I downloaded the Kubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) Alpha 4 release to try and see if the bugs are significant enough to hinder a satisfactory desktop experience. In any case, I am keeping my eye on this one.

DISCLAIMER: I am no literary expert; my opinions only cover as much as my reading experience.

It seems that the further I got with the Harry Potter series, the less and less I like it. By the time I got through Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I did not like it to the point that I didn’t care anymore about the big plot points in the end. Sad, really, because I started reading the books thinking that there was more to Harry Potter than what the movies had to offer – an opinioned formed, ironically, after seeing the Order of the Phoenix film.

And for a while it did hold. The Prisoner of Azkaban and The Goblet of Fire were very good, fun reads. (I read book one many years ago and skipped book two.) Then it started falling apart on Order of the Phoenix – ironic, again, as it was the movie among the franchise that I thought had the real grit and meat.

I wouldn’t blame the disappointment so much on the storyline, which has become clunky and had questionable character motivations, as the method of writing itself. What I liked at first about the series – that the books were so damn easy to read, taking no effort at all – has turned into a repetetive grind. J.K. Rowling has no flare for flowing and inspired prose, I think, and that shows especially at the critical, action-filled moments, when I could see that, if they were worded better, would probably leave my heart racing in excitement.

I would say my biggest complaint about the whole thing is that, as the author did not have the writing chops to begin with, 99% of the narrative revolves around Harry Potter’s perspective. This reduces the books – and this includes each book I’ve read so far – to boring conversation-fests among the characters toward every end (like every other Hardy Boys story), or James Bond villain-type confessions and revelations – in the Goblet of Fire climax, for instance, where Voldemort divulges everthing to Harry before trying to kill him, only to let him escape later on. Plus it gets tiring after a while always reading about what Harry feels and thinks. If only the story was flexible enough to narrate from different angles… (And we might even gleam insights from different key characters, and from different sides of the battle.)

Therein lies the curse: J.K. Rowling has a great imagination, definitely, as she has already gotten me invested in her world and her characters (less so the emo Harry and the first-zenlike-but-later-turned-patronizing Dumbledore) through the movies and the books, that I am now semi-obligated, semi-compelled to see the damn thing through to the end, if only for the characters I came to like (e.g. The Weasleys, Snape, Luna Lovegood, Sirius Black). I’m hoping the payoff would all be worth it, but I’m saving myself some reservations.