Hawk’s Babble-Log

No CG (Computer Graphics), no stunt doubles, no strings attached. Starring Tony Jaa.

Holy moley! I was very impressed with this guy, Tony Jaa. The guy can move his body like I can in my dreams. He’s got such control, such precision, amazing speed… he’s just amazing. And they’ve got him doing some incredible acrobatics such as jumping over restaurant tables (two in a row), jumping over cars, sliding under trucks, jumping over dudes with knives while doing double flips in the air… the guy is AMAZING. And they usually catch these stunts from several angles.

All the fight scenes are very well done; the way they play out, the multiple camera angles, the way that the intensity builds: all good, man! Really, really good stuff! Just watching this movie made me sweat!

“Deep”, or “Love Story” are NOT phrases I would use to describe the movie. It’s just a whole lotta fun, one long romp through action scene after action scene. I’ve been waiting a long time for a movie like this to come along.

For the ladies: Tony Jaa does a few forms near the beginning of the film with his shirt off. The rest of the time he’s usually in a tank-top.

Now, when they say “No Computer Graphics”, what they really mean is, “No Computer Graphics to enhance Tony Jaa whooping ass”. There are a few CG effects such as sparks falling from the ceiling and bullet holes in the sides of vehicles. But when Tony Jaa is moping the floor with bad guys (who are always in greater numbers than the good guys), it’s all good and non-CG-enhanced.

I highly recommend this movie, and I’m definitely going to buy it when it comes out on DVD.

I was very impressed with the intro scene of this movie. It’s a camera fly-through of a gigantic spacecraft, and it plays out as if it were one long shot. The entire movie is all CG (Computer Generated), so it’s a long “virtual shot”. Usually, one can get a feel for how a movie is going to be by watching the first few minutes of it. This movie is the exception. Let me explain:

I can’t say enough about the look of the film. It is very well done, from the lighting, to the textures, to the liquid effects–very nice stuff. But it’s the story that is lacking.

Don’t get me wrong… I like watching young Kaena jump around in her underwear ‘n stuff, but the story has to be good. After the movie was over, I was left kinda wondering, “Is that all she had to do?” And, “But what about the original inhabitants?” The story has some holes the Titanic could sail through.

It was originally recorded in French (I think). The English version is great with talent from Kirsten Dunst, Richard Harris, and Anjelica Huston.

It’s worth a rental, but I’m certainly not going to buy it because I have no desire to watch it again.

With my old phone, my little Motorola T720, it’s memory management was not so great. Even a moderately sized program would consume virtually all of the available memory in the phone. Back then, I tried out a chess program called ChessBuddy. It was $4 or $5, but I sure did want my money back. I kicked it’s ass on level Easy. I kicked it’s ass on level Medium. I kicked it’s ass on level Hard (even though it took five minutes / move). It made dumb moves even on the highest difficulty level; and I do NOT recommend it, but they may have updated it since then. This was a few years ago.

Now, with my little Motorola V220, I snagged a chess program called ChessMate, endorsed by Kasparov (the current World Champion, as far as I know).

It cost $5 or $6, and I’m having a blast getting my ass whupped but good on level ‘Very Easy’! I’ve played three games so far and I haven’t won a single game (but I will!). I thought to myself today, “It’s somewhat sad that my phone can kick my ass at chess.”

I love modern technology!

Kasparov ChessMate is highly recommended. I only have two issues: 1) the board is really tiny. The menu along the bottom of the screen takes up waaay to much space, in my opinion. It looks thicker than two rows on the board. And 2) occasionally, the board does not update after the computer has made it’s move. It will usually update if I move my cursor around, or if I hit the menu button, then hit it again (to go back to the board). The board always fully updates if I do that. But I think it should update by itself without intervention on my part.

NOTE to developers: The phone already has networking capability, so why not let me play chess against other human players with the same chess program (them on their phone, me on mine)? It would be like AIM (already in my phone), but instead of sending “Hey, wazzup?” messages back and forth, it would send chess moves. I am a programmer; I develop web apps primarily. Am I the only one who thinks this would be easily accomplished? I ask because I would buy such a networked chess program for my phone. I would buy it in a heartbeat even though I’m not sure I could convince any of my chess-playing friends to do the same.

Well, it’s official. I’ve been hired as the WebMonster–I mean WebMaster–for Sammy’s Camera.

This is the site I’m responsible for:

http://samys.com/

So now I’ve got even more work, less time, and twice the distance to travel! Yay for me!

Now I’ve gotta hurry up and get outta here so I can go sit in traffic.

I’m making a list of DVD annoyances.

So far, I only have a vague list in my mind. But last night I decided to make a list and post it here.

The top of my “annoying” list is Paramount. I was watching the South Park Season Four Paramount DVDs. Every time I put in the disc, or every time I turn on the player, I have to sit through (not sure of the exact number) 6 screens. These screens are fixed and timed. I cannot hit Stop, Fast Forward, Chapter Skip Forward, Pause, or anything. I just have to sit there for about 2 minutes waiting for these screens to go by. It’s my DVD player, and it’s my DVD disc (or it’s a rental), and I should be able to at the least skip over these screens!

On the bottom of my list is Fox. Fox is pretty cool. I was just watching Futurama Season Four (or something), and I can Chapter-Skip Forward past all of the intro screens and reach the main menu within about 6 seconds.

Fox is okay. Paramount can suck my ass.

Details to come.

If you watch the previews, you’d probably be expecting a scary movie. But M. Night Shyamalan, once again, has a twist waiting for you. I’m not going to give any of it away, however about half-way through, the focus of the story shifts to an unexpected character.

The movie is not a horror movie, but the guy really knows how to build tension and keep you interested. Also note that the scenes are long between takes and camera angle shifts, like Unbreakable. I’m not bothered by this, in fact I’m glad someone has the guts to do this. But if you are, or if you need the scene to change every 1 – 2 seconds like on MTV or something, then you’ll probably get bored or fall asleep during this film.

I think it was very well done, the acting was excellent, and the story was very good. I probably won’t be buying it because I’m not hot to see it again like Unbreakable, but it is definitely worth the rental.

I got a great deal from Cingular: I extend my contract for two years and they give me a free phone, plus $20 credit towards my bill!

Recently Cingular merged networks with AT&T, so now I’m just about always in a good area. It’s great now, because before I couldn’t even use my cell phone at home! Now I can, and it works well with the new phone.

So… I was going to stick with Cingular anyway.

Lemme tell ya… My new phone is great! This little sucker is a big improvement over my last one, which was a Motorola T720. It’s about the same size so it fits in my existing holster. It is improved in just about every area over my last one. It came with a SmartChip which was twice the capacity of my old one, but I didn’t want to enter in all my phone numbers again, so I just swapped out my old one. The phone knew who I was and had all my numbers! I love modern technology.

It’s got a little camera built-in, and seems to take decent pics so far, but I have not transferred any of them over to a big screen so we’ll see about that later on. To transfer the pics, I can either get a cable (looks like it would be a USB), or I can subscribe to some kind of networking service (such as Email), which is probably what I’ll do because this little phone has AIM built-in! I’m kinda eager to try that out.

I’ve been customizing it over the last day or so, and it is VERY customizable. It came with a demo game from Jamdat, but it’s tough to play on such a tiny screen, and it wasn’t all that fun anyway.

There are lots of opportunities to buy something. I can buy ringtones, music, pics, etc. The phone puts the Buy option on top of the menu, which is kinda annoying.

The charger is not compatible with my old one, but I can use my existing headset with it, so that’s good. Plus, it’s got a speakerphone built-in! Nice for conferencing or playing recorded messages.

So far, the little guy passes with flying colors! I can’t remark on anything bad about it as yet. I’ll update this blog with additional info as I make more discoveries.

UPDATE 2005-02-20:

I’ve got a nice package deal from Cingular for all my multimedia needs. I can email pics that I take to any email address. I took these today:

640 x 480

320 x 240

160 x 120

It’s interesting that the interface for the camera has a zoom symbol for the UP key, and an unzoom symbol for the DOWN key. When looking at the image displayed by the camera, this appears to zoom the camera. But, in fact, all it really does is reduce the size of the image. Attention Motorola developers: That’s not a “zoom”.

The three images above were taken in each of the three fake-zoom modes.

I don’t know what the megapixel rating is, but I think the first one is pretty darn good for a phone.

Dang, I love modern technology!

Yup, it’s official: I’m a workin’ stiff again. I took on another contractor job to help out a friend and make some extra money at the same time. This one looks like it’s going to be about four times longer.

I’ve gotta go to bed early, like 10pm, and I’ve gotta get up early, like 6:30am or so. Dang, I had forgotten how much I hate that!

After waking up, getting ready, making myself presentable, eating something, and petting the cat goodbye, I slowly plow through stop-and-go traffic for about 35 – 40 minutes to get down to Fairfax & 3rd. Dang, I had forgotten how much I really hate that!

It’s even better going back the other way, but at least I’m not in a hurry.

Oh well, at least it’s only for a few weeks.

Just found a good site for Red Hat / Fedora RPM packages:

http://dag.wieers.com/packages/

Contains well over 1400 projects.

Hope this helps.

Ever since I first upgraded my main linux machine to Fedora Core 3, I noticed a 5 second delay (per DNS server) for every lookup. Well, almost every DNS lookup. If I ran ‘host jedihawk.com’ on the command line, it was instant. But for all other programs, there was a very annoying 5-second delay / DNS server.

During my search for a solution, I found this site:

http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc3.shtml#ipv6

And therein lies the problem and solution: IPv6. By default, FC3 tries to use IPv6 for all DNS lookups. When that timed out, then it would use regular. IPv4.

So I disabled IPv6 using the command from the guide linked above:

(as root)   echo "alias net-pf-10 off" >> /etc/modprobe.conf

And then (believe it or not) you need to reboot.

Hope this helps.

The Ninth Gate starring Johnny Depp is not a bad movie… until you reach the end. The end is weak. No, that’s not quite the right word. The end sucks. Yeah, that’s it. Or, one might even say that the end blows.

Anyway… Nothing wrong with the acting, and I like the Green Eyes character; she’s way cool. But it really seems to me like they didn’t know how to end the movie.

I won’t be buying this one. It’s good for a rental if you don’t care about endings and just want to watch Johnny Depp.

My friend has set up a blog to help us coordinate our efforts at building electronics:

http://blog.studioufo.com/atmoic/

I’ll mostly be posting info about electronics there.

This is why I dislike RPMs:

[root@jedihawk work]# rpm -Uhv w32codec-0.90pre7-3.i386.rpm
warning: w32codec-0.90pre7-3.i386.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID e01260f1
error: Failed dependencies:
        rpm-build-tools is needed by w32codec-0.90pre7-3.i386

[root@jedihawk work]# rpm -Uhv rpm-build-tools-4.0.2-109.i386.rpm
warning: rpm-build-tools-4.0.2-109.i386.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID e01260f1
error: Failed dependencies:
        rpm-build = 4.0.2 is needed by rpm-build-tools-4.0.2-109.i386

[root@jedihawk work]# rpm -Uhv rpm-build-4.3.3-8.i386.rpm
error: Failed dependencies:
        rpm = 4.3.3-8 is needed by rpm-build-4.3.3-8.i386

[root@jedihawk work]# rpm -Uhv rpm-4.3.2-21.i386.rpm
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
        package rpm-4.3.2-21 is already installed

[root@jedihawk work]# rpm -Uhv rpm-build-4.3.3-8.i386.rpm
error: Failed dependencies:
        rpm = 4.3.3-8 is needed by rpm-build-4.3.3-8.i386

[root@jedihawk work]# rpm -Uhv rpm-4.3.3-8.i386.rpm
error: Failed dependencies:
        rpm = 4.3.2-21 is needed by (installed) rpm-python-4.3.2-21.i386
        rpm = 4.3.2-21 is needed by (installed) rpm-build-4.3.2-21.i386
        rpm = 4.3.2-21 is needed by (installed) rpm-devel-4.3.2-21.i386

[root@jedihawk work]# rpm -Uhv --force rpm-4.3.3-8.i386.rpm
error: Failed dependencies:
        rpm = 4.3.2-21 is needed by (installed) rpm-python-4.3.2-21.i386
        rpm = 4.3.2-21 is needed by (installed) rpm-build-4.3.2-21.i386
        rpm = 4.3.2-21 is needed by (installed) rpm-devel-4.3.2-21.i386

[root@jedihawk work]# rpm -Uhv --nodeps rpm-4.3.3-8.i386.rpm
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:rpm                    ########################################### [100%]

[root@jedihawk work]# rpm -Uhv rpm-build-4.3.3-8.i386.rpm
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:rpm-build              ########################################### [100%]

[root@jedihawk work]# rpm -Uhv rpm-build-tools-4.0.2-109.i386.rpm
warning: rpm-build-tools-4.0.2-109.i386.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID e01260f1
error: Failed dependencies:
        rpm-build = 4.0.2 is needed by rpm-build-tools-4.0.2-109.i386

[root@jedihawk work]# rpm -Uhv rpm-build-4.0.2-6x.i386.rpm
error: Failed dependencies:
        rpm = 4.0.2 is needed by rpm-build-4.0.2-6x.i386
        libbz2.so.0 is needed by rpm-build-4.0.2-6x.i386
        libdb-3.1.so is needed by rpm-build-4.0.2-6x.i386
        libdb.so.2 is needed by rpm-build-4.0.2-6x.i386
        librpm.so.0 is needed by rpm-build-4.0.2-6x.i386
        librpmbuild.so.0 is needed by rpm-build-4.0.2-6x.i386
        librpmio.so.0 is needed by rpm-build-4.0.2-6x.i386

It was here, at this point, that I gave up. If a lowly programmer/sysadmin like me, who likes to play with linux, decides that it’s just not worth it, what do you think the average mouse-pusher is going to do? Pursue this endless course? No, I don’t think so.

I’ll just compile from source, it’s easier.

I should also point out that it’s fairly obvious why Windoze is the dominent desktop platform.

Not a bad adventure/horror film by Stephen King. It is very graphical in it’s gore, but there isn’t a lot of it. It is a very professional production all the way from start to finish. The scenes play out at a good steady pace and you are let in on the whole story gradually via dialog and flashbacks.

The acting is excellent, and it stars many of my favorite actors: Morgan Freeman, Jason Lee, Thomas Jane, Timothy Olyphant, Tom Sizemore, Damian Lewis and Donnie Wahlberg.

I won’t be buying it (because I don’t really want to see it again), but it’s good for a rental.

I keep forgetting! The recent Appleseed movie rocks!

I knew from the first few shots that I was going to like it. As usual, I was weary that the ending would suck (ala House of Flying Daggers / Hero), but I was not disappointed! Even the ending was great!

It’s entirely CG (computer-generated) with cell-shading for the characters so that they look somewhat hand-drawn, only shinyer. Shinier. Shiny-er. The characters are more shiney than most other things.

Appleseed starts off in a city wasteland in the middle of a war. During this scene we are introduced to the main hero character, her fighting abilities, tanks, mechs and other war machines. I must have been grinning like an idiot throughout the whole movie. If I were to make a movie, it would be Appleseed.

I’m definately recommending it and I’m definately going to buy it as soon as I can. It’s now my favorite CG movie.

This movie rocks! It’s all animated adventure (with lots of comedy thrown in) and it’s all good! I loved every minute of it. INCLUDING the ending! If you know me, you know that the ending is very important for me. This movie’s ending is great!

Directed by Tim Johnson & Patrick Gilmore, with the voices of Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michelle Pfieffer, Joseph Fiennes, and Dennis Haysbert.

It’s a top-notch production all the way with excellent 2D animation, excellent 3D animation and fantastic special effects. Also, they do an excellent job of blending the two together.

The DVD has some extras: Cyclops Island is a short little animation where you can hit the Enter key when you see a character’s head pop up in the lower left corner. The story then forks and you get to watch the advanture from that character’s viewpoint. There were about four different viewpoints here.

All in all, it’s a lot of fun and I’m definately going to buy it.

Dang, what an awsome movie!

I love this movie. I love it a lot. I love it so much that I saw it twice in the theater, then two or three more times at home, and just last week saw it again at the El Capitan in Hollywood. It looked even better up on the big screen with their digital projector! The picture was rock-solid, clear, and the colors were vibrant.

The writing is excellent, the acting is excellent, the story is great… oh yeah… it’s all good! From one end to the other, it was a top-notch production all the way.

Highly recommended.