Wow, what great fun this movie is. Paul Verhoeven’s Zwartboek (Black Book) is a great little spy thriller of a type you so rarely see these days. The plot follows the mostly unfortunate but always thrilling escapades of a young jewish singer in the Netherlands during the latter days of WWII. The pacing is fantastic, the plot has enough twists and turns to keep you guessing right up to the end, the heroine is beautiful, knows it, and shows it, and the acting and directing are both above average. Definitely check this out if you like spy thrillers. It’s subtitled though there is occasional english dialog, but look past that because if you don’t you’re missing out on a real treat.
Archive for June, 2007
A breadcrumb trail just in case - I’m headed here, to a trailhead just south of Persnns road on route 8, to hike back in along the Sacandaga and eventually to the Siamese Ponds.
Just in case no one hears from me by monday, that’s where I was headed, after a blind date in Lenox MA mid-morning on Saturday.
In case you didn’t notice, google added a new feature to google maps this week, and it’s excellent. If you use the driving directions feature, you can now drag the route line around to rearrange your route, and can add new waypoints to the map to help with the printed output and to highlight important road/highway changes. It’s superb. Here’s a sample to illustrate: my handcrafted route for part of this weekend’s plans. I have a match.com blind date on saturday in Lenox, MA, and this route is how I’m getting from there to the rest of my weekend’s plans. I’ll post about those after they’ve actually happened, since I’m going to play part of it by ear based on the weather.
I agree with tigsource.com: fraxy is indeed awesome. You can get your own copy over on the developer’s page for the game. This is fast paced arcade action at its finest, basically a series of boss battles strung together with not much purpose beyond getting your blastem on. A couple of things to be aware of: first, don’t neglect the use of speed boost, it’s critical to success against many of the bosses. Second, be sure to grab both the .exe and the english text translation file, and read the readme on how to install the language file. The download links are right at the top of the screen on an otherwise completely asian language website. Also check out places like this, and this (you’ll have to dig around a bit) for more enemies to install.
This is free, windows only, and a pure adrenaline blast of arcade fun.
So I decided this spring I would try and make it through the year with no AC, the idea being I would try and be a responsible citizen and not use energy I don’t really need to be using. I lived my entire life without AC until I moved to Saratoga Springs some years ago and the place I lived in came with it, and somehow I made it through super muggy summers in OH and NY when I was younger without too much trouble.
I’d made it through several hot spells already this spring without too much trouble, simply by sealing down the house in the mornings and then opening the windows after sundown and using fans to draw in the cooler air. All was well until now. We hit 98 and humid Tuesday and A) I discovered my computer couldn’t handle the heat - even regular web browsing was causing heat warnings, and forget about games - they would kick off the heat protection and dump me out of the games. I also got no sleep Tuesday night, Soolin and I both tossing and turning my my muggy bedroom, leaving me grouchy and dull witted at work on Wednesday.
So…so much for that experiment. A little work on the PC and an AC unit in the window above it with a cardboard duct to bring the cool air to the PC and I can use it again, and an AC set to low in my bedroom and I can sleep again.
I don’t know how to explain how I handled this so much better when I was younger but certainly I can’t handle it now. I could sleep in the basement but my basement is dirt floored and disgusting so that’s out. I could sleep outside under a mosquito net but I live on a busy and noisy road so that’s out too. Instead I’ll live on a lightly used AC system and remain a bit of a hypocrite.
…and it wasn’t about money. So I made a mistake and forgot to turn in a timecard for a student who works for me. It was due a little over a month ago and she sent me a reminder about it via email. I head over to the treasurer’s office to turn the card in and they have to consult on the issue because the student has graduated and there is a problem with the way payroll works. A different accountant comes out to discuss the issue with me and says ’so, you’ve graduated and this is causing a problem…’
She thought I was the student!
Never mind made my day, it made my whole week. Me, recently turned 40, passing for a 21 year old. I must be doing something right.
First let me get the bad out of the way. I lost my digital camera, a waterproof Pentax Optio W20, that I liked and more importantly that had pictures of my last two hikes plus a bunch of other stuff on it. That’s the less than perfect angle to my otherwise excellent weekend. My best guess is I must have left it on the roof of my car as I pulled away from a trail head.
We had great weather. Saturday I took back roads and the cobbled together state highway system in MA up to Watatic Mountain, ~1800 feet, where Soolin and I made a roughly 3 mile hike. The views from the summit were great, encompassing a clear view of about 220 degrees of the surrounding area and with exposed granite rock to clamber around on. The trail itself was a decent cardio buster for a stretch and most of it worked its way through beautiful old pine forest. It was a bit shorter than I had expected and there were a lot of folks around, which surprised me since it’s in a relatively remote area. I guess it’s easier to get to from Worcester than I imagined when I was scoping it out on the map.
Anyway I decided to take a leisurely back roads cruise home, starting with 119 which wends its way through several small New Hampshire towns. I cut south on 10 and from there back onto 91. All in all this took most of the day - I left home around 10 and got home around 5. Had a nice dinner, watched the mediocre The Killers (I’d read that it was one of the movies that inspired pulp fiction and that Hemingway had written it. As to the former, I guess I can see the connection, as to the latter….the script didn’t really impress) and an even more mediocre boxing match which I fell asleep to.
Sunday I mowed, ran errands, and took Soolin for a swim. Nothing exciting really but a pleasant end cap to a great weekend.
If you’re on a pc and grew up on a healthy diet of quarter-fueled arcade games in the 80’s, fire up your steam account, or go to steampowered.com, make an account, and download the steam client if you don’t already have it. Once you’re logged in, buy Geometry Wars for a measly $2.50. There has never, in the history of videogames, been a deal this good. I’ve talked endlessly about Geometry Wars and the various clones of it that have come out over the last couple of years, and the original is better than any of them. It’s an 8-way shooter, a genre of action arcade game inspired by Robotron, one of the seminal arcade games from the height of arcade era.
The $2.50 price only lasts until June 22nd, after which you’ll have to lay down a whopping $3.99 to acquire your copy, so hop on this now.
I took a 3 day weekend and spent friday on a hike and drive in north central MA, then headed down to Long Island for my friend Pat’s 40th birthday.
I’ll post a few pictures from the hike later. I went to a trail system near Long Pond, which is sort of near Athol and Royalston, MA. These are the kinds of areas I like in MA - they’re only lightly populated and generally aren’t afflicted with the sort of run down strip mall retail blight you find is so much of the more populated areas of MA. Plus you occasionally run into one of the quaint old towns with a public square and grand old houses.
The hike itself was decent. I found what would have been a spectacular waterfall had I gone in the early spring. It was still running enough for it to look cool, and Soolin had a blast clambering all over the place. We also made our way to a rock ledge that sat about 1100 ft above long pond and looked out over the surrounding area. All told it was about 4-5 miles round trip over generally really easy terrain - the only hard stuff was near the steep sections of the creek that fed the waterfall. The bugs were annoying but not overwhelming and the weather was excellent.
I also took a leisurely drive home in the afternoon, choosing to try and hug the east side of the Quabbin reservoir since I had not yet seen that side of it, but I managed to miss a turn and ended up sort of lost. It was funny in that I ended up in South Barre, a town my friend Andrew used to live in where I visited him occasionally, so suddenly I had this ‘aha! I know where I am!’ moment after a half hour of feeling like I was heading in the wrong direction.
Saturday I headed down to LI and went to Pat’s supposedly surprise 40th birthday. I showed up first and ended up being the only surprise for Pat because he showed up second. All in all we had a blast, with tons of kids running around, lots of beer, and a ton of jumping in the pool.
Sunday I went to a Father’s Day party at my sister’s inlaws place. They had a pool too and Soolin had a blast jumping in after toys. Kir’s inlaws are great cooks and the food was fantastic.
I’ve grown to love the ferries - that’s how I got home. Despite only booking a reservation Sunday morning, I managed to get on the 7:30 ferry and I was home in bed by 10:30. All in all a great summer weekend. I had so much fun I want to go back again next weekend.
While I don’t comment on it much here, I was in a very raucous co-ed fraternity in college. We threw the best parties by far, for at least a couple of years we had the largest membership of any of the social groups on campus, and for 2 of the years my house was ground zero for party central. My friend’s Dad bought a house that was adjacent to campus as an investment property and we lived there, host to more keg parties than I can possibly recall. We were the generation who grew up thinking Animal House defined what college life was like, cartoonish as it was, and on several levels we strove to live up to the standards set in the movie.
We had our fraternity pledge party at the house for several years, and one of those years it was an absolutely brutally cold night, as in you could spit and it would freeze almost immediately. We had the kegs out on the back porch, and there was a balcony up above it that connected to my bedroom. At one point several of us were standing out on the porch braving the cold, smoking cigarettes and shooting the breeze. A friend of our, so drunk he could barely walk, came out of the house and made his way down the steps. There was a sheet of plywood at the foot of the stairs that we had put there because in the preceding week it had become so muddy that it sucked trying to get into the house. None of us knew it, but a thin veneer of ice had formed on the plywood, and when his foot hit that his legs went out from under him. He ened up sprawled on his back at the foot of the stairs, all of us including him laughing.
As he collapsed, what appeared to be snow started to fall over the plywood. Our friend stuck out his tongue and started to try and catch flakes with his mouth, rolling on the plywood, a huge grin on, giggling like a little kid. ‘It’s snowing, it’s snowing!’ he was saying.
I noticed the snow mysteriously seemed to be falling in a very localized area around the plywood, so I poked my head over the edge of the porch to figure out what was happening. I looked up and saw another friend on the balcony above relieving himself over the railing. Barely able to stop laughing I turned to the guy on the plywood and said ‘umm, that’s not snow dude…’
Fortunately for him he was too drunk to realize, and as the snowfall ceased he gathered himself up and wandered off into the night. I’ll never forget the look of childlike delight on his face as the ’snow’ came down though and I still laugh to think of it.
One of the tips Andrew posted links to in the comments on that story ended up working really well - I boiled cloves and cinnamon sticks on the stove and it drove the overcooked mexican cheeseburger odor right out of the house. My house smelled like a Djarum for a while but that’s already mostly faded. This is a good household tip if you need to rid your place of foul odors. The only downside is it’s a little spendy - a tiny little packet of cloves was like $10 and the cinnamon sticks weren’t cheap either. Still, I’m pleased.
Red Orchestra is a fantastic fps that simulates combat in WWII on the eastern front. I’ve written about it a couple of times before. Though I don’t play much anymore it’s still my current fave fps. They recently released a major engine and content update (more players per match, new maps, etc) and to celebrate they gave all players 2 free passes they can give to friends so their friends can try the game. First 2 folks to say the word get a free pass from me. Not sure how long it lasts, probably at least a couple of days, certainly long enough to get a feel for the game, and it’s cheap enough to buy if you end up liking it. Post in the comments to get your pass.
…great. Don’t read any further if you haven’t seen it and don’t want to spoil it for yourself.
There’s lots of sturm and drang and angry fans bitching on the net about how unhappy they are with the ending. I thought it was great - it left things open to the viewer’s interpretation, with lots of possibilities to consider, and it fit perfectly with the ambiguity that was a central theme of the show over the years. Honestly, what did people want, that Tony should get whacked and be done with it? We’ve seen that ending in any number of mafia movies and personally I would have been a lot less satisfied with that ending, whereas what we have instead is an ending that lets you imagine Tony being whacked as one possibility amongst many. I can’t imagine a better ending, and it’s left everyone talking about it. What more could you ask for?
I was a huge fan of the original Tomb Raider Playstation 1 game. I spent a couple of months working my way through that game in the davecave in Yarmouth ME, with my buddy Kevin as a frequent adviser. It’s one of the few games I’ve solved over the years - in fact, I solved the first 2 Tomb Raiders. The third was ridiculously difficult and I tired of it quickly. I’ve never bought another one, though I came close with the recent Tomb Raider: Legend, which was the publisher’s attempt to reboot the series. I grabbed the demo and it was decent but didn’t grab me. Enter Anniversary, which is a remake of the original using the Legend engine and redesigned maps based on the original game’s but enhanced. In a word, it’s fantastic. Gone is the plodding, meticulous caution required in the original games - Lara is now a lithe, speedy little acrobat. The gameplay retains the same wonder of exploration and puzzle solving but wraps it in a new faster-paced shell. I love it.
It also rethinks much of the original content. The levels are all clearly inspired by the originals but nicely updated to incorporate Lara’s new skills. My only complaint is the combat is weak. It was in the original, too, but if they had the time to upgrade Lara’s acrobatics, I would have preferred they also spent some time on how combat works. It’s clunky by comparison and the button timing/mashing minigame they’ve added to spice it up isn’t that compelling.
The game is only $20 for PS2 at Best Buy this week, and is definitely worth checking out whether you liked the original or not. I hope it sells well and they release subsequent remakes, or at least one for Tomb Raider 2. I’d pay twice as much just to run through the submerged ship level from Tomb Raider 2 again.
I’ve lost partitions more than once due to failed linux installs, my own error, and data integrity issues, and over the years I’ve used many tools to recover. Almost all of them have been commercial solutions. Enter Testdisk, a free, open source, cross platform data recovery software. There are binaries and a recovery disk image there, as well as Photorec, a tool designed to help recover files from digital camera memory cards, which is another category of tool I’ve purchased in the past. Testdisk has the broadest format support I’ve seen in a tool and you can’t beat the price.
I lost two friends in college to a house fire and I’ve been nervous about them ever since. Last night I got the shit scared out of me by a keening smoke alarm. I went to bed around 12 after watching the Sopranos and Tudors finales. I fell asleep and woke some time later to the smoke alarm going off. I woke up pretty quickly, popped the light on and noticed smoke seeping under the door. Shit! I did just like they taught you in elementary school and felt the door for heat. There was none so I grabbed a fire extinguisher (I keep one in my closet) and popped open the door. The house was thick with smoke. I started running through the house popping on lights to try and find the source of it. It had a very funny smell and at first I thought it was electrical, but eventually I found that a burner in the kitchen was on and had started a fire in the pan I cooked my dinner in. The lid was on it and it had been simmering away for over an hour. I had a tex mex burger with jalapeños and the funny smell to the smoke was some toxic combination of burned spices and jalapeño juice. It actually burned my lungs as I got close to the pot. I also did a pretty stupid thing - I approached the pot, grabbed a pot holder, and pulled of the lid to see what was going on inside. A huge cloud of smoke emerged, and it startled me so I dropped the lid back on the pot. Somehow this triggered a weird chemical reaction (maybe oxygen getting into a very hot environment?) - there was a loud noise then a muffled whump and the lid popped open and flame started shooting out of the sides of the pan! I grabbed it and dumped it into the sink and turned on the tap.
Now all is well aside from the fact that my entire house reeks badly of burned mexican food. Not sure how I’m going to deal with that. I also need to put the battery back into the downstairs smoke detector - I have it out because there is no hood over the stove and it goes off if I so much as turn the stove on, but man last night put the fear of fire back into me.
As to how the fire started… the best I can guess is that when I went through the house turning off the lights before I went to bed, I must have brushed against the stove and flipped on the burner. The only other possibility is that Soolin hopped up on the stove because the pan smelled so enticing and flipped it on, but that seems really unlikely because she never does stuff like that. I can leave a steak on a coffee table and leave the room and she’ll sit there looking at it licking her chops, but she never takes it. I can also leave her home all day with dishes and leftovers on the kitchen counters and she doesn’t hop up for those, so the likely culprit is me.
So I noticed this great quote in a discussion over on metafilter.com by Benny Andajetze which cracked me up:
If Dumbya causes the collapse of the Republican party, can we say they were hoist with their own retard?
Cracked me up and should be at least worth a smile to anyone with sensibilities similar to mine.
Sorry for the lack of posting. I went to NY for a long holiday weekend and had a great time for half of it, then came down with a cold which I caught from Mike and I’m still not recovered from it. Spent the worst night in recent memory due to this at the Lord’s house, with glands that felt like they had swollen to the size of baseballs and a throat so constricted I could not swallow. Sucked, basically. I feel like I’m on the mend but it’s been slow so far. Hopefully things will return to normal by next week.
Gametap released their version 3.0 client yesterday and revealed a host of new services, including a free client which gives access to a set number of games each month for free to anyone. It’s all accessible via their website and is definitely worth checking out if you’re a PC gamer. I subscribed several months ago and while I wish they would provide better access to the .ini files of the games they install, and come up with a way to allow the installation of mods and patches, overall it’s a fantastic bargain. For about $80 a year I get access to over 1000 games ranging from classic arcade games from the 80’s to stuff released within a few months of retail release. There’s a lot of chaff in their collection but there are more than enough gems to make it all worthwhile.
As an added incentive to check out the service, they provided access to the remake of the original tomb raider game which has been getting great reviews. If you’re on a PC definitely check it out, free is free after all.
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