Saw

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Rick brought over Saw last night for me to watch. It’s a film that aspires to be a psychological/horror film along the lines of Seven…and fails miserably.

The premise starts interestingly enough: two men wake up chained on opposite sides of a room, prisoners of a psychopath who manages never to actually kill his victims. Instead, he puts them into situations where they have to kill themselves or others in their attempts to stay alive.

Unfortunately, Saw is burdened by two major flaws: a script that has a number of goofs, from plot holes to unrealistically stupid actions by the characters; and Cary Elwes, who continues to completely unimpress me as an actor. By the end of the film, the violence had gotten to the point where I nearly turned it off, and neither of the final two surprises surrounding the identity of the psychopath were surprising in the least.

I think the premise had promise, but the execution was so flawed that I ended up finding the entire film a waste of my time.

iTunes “Two Telephone Calls and an Air Raid” by Imrei, Shaun from the album Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997, 4:43).

Reconsidering

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I did something this morning that I’ve only done a couple times in the past, and have removed a post that had been published a few hours before. The conversation is still progressing (or, that is, it will be when I get home to check my e-mail again), I just came to think that it was a conversation better held less publicly.

So if you saw a post pop up and then disappear on this page or in your newsreader, that’s why. No glitch, just a reconsideration.

That’s it?!?

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John pointed out The Commonly Confused Words Test, so I gave it a shot. My results:

Advanced
You scored 100% Beginner, 93% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 61% Expert!

You have an extremely good understanding of beginner, intermediate, and advanced level commonly confused English words, getting at least 75% of each of these three levels’ questions correct. This is an exceptional score. Remember, these are commonly confused English words, which means most people don’t use them properly. You got an extremely respectable score.

Exceptional or not, I have to admit, I’m a little chagrined by that 61% on the Expert section. I’m generally rather proud of my command of the language, so getting a ‘D’ on that section of the test really makes me curious as to where I goofed up. Unfortunately, the only answer key available is for the Beginner section, which I scored 100% on.

“

iTunes “Today” by Ride from the album Just Say Anything (1991, 6:27).

TechNewsWorld commentary mention

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Just adding another link to the ever-expanding 15 Minutes category here. Romm pointed out a mention of me in a commentary piece on TechNewsWorld that was published a couple of weeks ago. It’s a nice mention, too, as in addition to the standard “another fired blogger” mention, the author also follows up with my reaction to the incident, and contrasts it to Ellen “Queen of Sky” Simonetti’s Bloggers’ Bill of Rights campaign (which I think is goofy at best).

Contrast Simonetti’s response with that of Michael Hanscom. He was on a temporary assignment with Microsoft when he posted a picture to his blog that he took on the Microsoft campus. Microsoft essentially fired Hanscom, telling his temp agency he wasn’t welcome on campus anymore, thus ending his assignment.

The picture showed a pallet of Apple Macintosh G5’s being delivered to Microsoft. Hanscom said he took care not to show anything in the background that would give away Microsoft secrets, security systems or even building locations. But since the picture was taken on its campus, it made public an activity that Microsoft has a right to keep low-profile if it chooses to.

Unlike Simonetti, Hanscom concedes that Microsoft had a right to toss him out. Although he is a blogger, he realized that the normal legal rules apply to his situation. He started blogging back when blogs were just called “personal Web pages,” so maybe he has enough history to see blogging in its proper context — it’s just publishing. It is not private communications among friends.

I just dropped a note to Philip Albert, the author of the piece, thanking him for that.

Another interview

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I just got done with a lunchtime phone interview with Nick Jesdanun, a reporter for the AP. He’s still finalizing his article, and as this is going to be a wire story, there’s no telling where it might show up, but there’s at least a chance that my name will start popping up again over the next day or so (possibly as early as this evening) in the midst of another story about blogging, jobs, and the occasionally unfortunate intersection of the two.

I’ll toss a link up when I see it, but if one of you kind folks happens to catch it before I do, feel free to let me know!

Update: Prairie wins! She found the story first: Blog-related firings focus on policy. Just a small mention, but I’m in there…

In 2003, a Microsoft Corp. contractor was fired after posting photographs of computers from rival Apple Computer Inc. at a loading dock. Because Michael Hanscom had described a building in his posting, Microsoft said he had violated security, he said.

[…]

Microsoft refused to comment on Hanscom’s case, but pointed out that it encourages blogging and has more than 1,500 unofficial bloggers – the bulk on Microsoft’s official Web sites.

Update: And here’s a CNN version of the same story, courtesy of Tim.

Anybody hungry?

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Every Tuesday night, I have about the same routine. I get home from work a little after 5pm, Prairie and I chat via iChat until about 7pm, and I browse through NetNewsWire while we’re chatting. At 7pm, I close down NetNewsWire, order some pizza, and pop in a DVD.

Tonight went as normal, but by 8pm, my food hadn’t shown up. This is rather unusual — I live just a few blocks away from the pizza place, so their quoted 45 minute delivery time is usually closer to 25-30 minutes — so I gave them a call to check up. The girl that answered the phone checked my number, and told me that there was no order in the system for my number. Obviously, someone had screwed up when I placed my order, so she re-placed my order, giving me my dinner for free.

About twenty minutes later, my buzzer rang, and the pizza guy showed up. He handed me the pizza, and then handed me my bill as he apologized for running late. Late? A bill? Interesting — apparently my first order did get placed after all. I signed (since this was the order I’d placed in the first place) and sat back to munch and see if the second free order was also on its way.

Sure enough, twenty minutes after that, there was another buzz at the door.

So now I’ve got lots of pizza. Guess I’m good for a few days of munching.

Hm.

Anybody hungry? :)

iTunes “Pussy (We Want Some)” by Lords of Acid from the album Pussy (1998, 5:39).

Keeping New Readers

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Problogger has a short series of posts with tips on how to keep readers who have stumbled across your site via a search engine hit or some other method. Interesting stuff, though nothing groundbreaking, and as it turns out, I do most of what he recommends already.

In Part One:

(Anybody surprised by those last two? I know I’m not…)

In Part Two:

  • Good individual page design: I think I’m pretty solid here. My individual pages match my main page, with some slight tweaks here and there to better fit their status as more focused pages than the main page is.
  • Make your message clear: I’m not so strong here, but then, I don’t really have a single focus for the site.
  • Provide pathways into your blog: Suggestions here include obvious links to the home page, an about page, and archives, all of which I have prominently displayed at the top of each page.

In Part Three:

  • Links to other relevant entries: Another one I think I’m pretty solid with, thanks to the category links beneath the title and the ‘Related Entries’ section of the sidebar.
  • E-mail this entry to a friend: This one I don’t have set up. I’ve seen it other places, but never figured it would have that much use. Maybe I should re-think that one.
  • Promote via newsletter: This one I’m not even interested in trying to maintain. I’m bad enough about keeping up with things (including, at times, this site), trying to maintain a newsletter of any sort would die a quick death. Again, though, as I don’t have a specific focus for the site, that’s probably less of a concern for me.

In Part Four:

  • Promote your RSS feed: Sometimes I wonder if I should do more here — while I have the ‘Feeds’ link in the site menubar, there may be people who don’t recognize the significance of that. Perhaps renaming that to (the dull but obvious term) RSS would be a good idea. I’m not sure if there’s much need or demand for me to start enabling RSS feeds for every post on my site, though I consider it from time to time.
  • Search this site: Again, we’re good here — the search box is nice, obvious, and ‘above the fold’ on every page.
  • Break up longer posts into multiple posts: My only difficulty with this one is that I never plan long posts, they just sort of happen…and then they tend to be stream-of-consciousness enough that it would be difficult to break them apart. I don’t think I’ll concern myself with this one too much.
  • Be interactive: While I don’t always respond to every comment left, I do keep track of any comments left here, and do my best to respond as much as possible (time, energy, and available brainpower dependent, of course).

Not a bad set of tips, all in all. Maybe I’ll tinker with a couple more things here and there.

(via Neuvo)

iTunes “Acperiance 1” by Hardfloor from the album Harthouse: The Point of No Return Chapter 1 (1993, 8:58).

Battlestar Galactica Season 1…done!

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Up until this week, I never got the whole thing with people downloading and watching shows on their computer. I’ve got such a low opinion of the majority of TV shows that I just couldn’t see spending the time and resources on such a project.

Then I got bit by the Battlestar bug.

Suddenly, I can see the appeal. Three days ago, I got curious enough about the currently-running Battlestar Galactica series to ask for help on finding the episodes so that I could watch them. Now, as of just a few minutes ago, I’ve watched all that there is — and, amusingly enough, I’ve actually watched more than has been broadcast here in the US. All thirteen episodes were broadcast in Britain a few months ago, and those are the copies available on the ‘net. So, while the broadcasts on the Sci-Fi Network are only up through episode eight, I’ve just finished off the entire season.

End result? This is really good stuff. They’ve done an incredible job of re-imagining the show, and even better, have managed to keep up an extremely high level of quality throughout the show. Since the broadcasts here in the US still have another five weeks to go before they hit the season finale, I won’t go into any details or spoilers, but those of you who might be watching the show as its broadcast are in for quite a treat.

The DVD of the miniseries is now very high on my “to buy” list, and I’ll be picking up the DVD set for the miniseries as soon as it comes out — while I’ll admit that the quality of the shows I downloaded was far better than I expected, it still won’t compare to full DVD resolution and (I hope) full 5.1 surround. Battlestar may not be getting any ratings points from me during its broadcast run (though they wouldn’t in any case, as I don’t subscribe to cable), but they’ll definitely be getting my money for the DVDs. Hopefully they’re gathering enough eyeballs during their broadcast run to keep the show on the air and at its current level of excellence for a good long time to come.

(Yes, I know that this is a sticky situation legally, and in all honesty, if I did subscribe to cable, I probably would have been quite content watching the episodes as they broadcast and contributing to the ratings. However, I continue to hold fast to my belief that cable television is, on the whole, an incredible waste of money. As stated above, though, once the DVD sets are available, they’re going into my collection.)

iTunes “Track 06” by Grover from the album One With the Universe (1998, 7:00).

Halle Berry wins Razzie…and respect

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Kudos to Halle Berry for actually showing up to accept her Razzie award for Catwoman!

Halle Berry staged an Oscar-worthy parody of her Academy Awards meltdown at last night’s 25th annual Razzie awards in Los Angeles. Breaking with tradition, the Catwoman star showed up in person to collect her award as the worst actress of 2004.

Explaining her decision to attend the event, Berry said: “My mother told me that if you couldn’t be a good loser then there’s no way you could be a good winner.”

Berry famously broke down at the podium upon winning the 2002 best actress Oscar for her role in Monster’s Ball. She mimicked that moment again last night, faking sobs on stage for a full minute while clutching her Academy Award in one hand and her Razzie (actually a spray-painted golf ball) in the other.

But her speech, when it finally came, went out of its way to spread the blame for Catwoman’s failure. “I want to thank Warner Brothers for casting me in this piece of shit,” she announced to tumultuous laughter. She added: “I’d like to thank the rest of the cast. To give a really bad performance like mine you need to have really bad actors.”

I’m impressed. Good for her!

iTunes “Feel the Fury” by Merlin from the album Just Say Anything (1991, 4:44).

Just stop talking

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Many years ago, I went to a summer camp in which one of the activities was horseback riding. This ended up being a less-than-successful experience for me, though, as as soon as I got up in the saddle the horse reared up, dumping me rather unceremoniously on the ground as I slid off the saddle and over the horse’s rear end.

Last night, as I was talking to Alicia, Laurie and Robert outside the Vogue as I was preparing to leave, I started to try to relate this story after Alicia mentioned that she has four horses at her place out in Snohomish.

So what words actually managed to fall out of my mouth?

“I was on a horse once…it got me off. (pause) It threw me off…aw, dammit….”

And much laughter ensued, along with Laurie’s observation that, “So this must have been bareback, I suppose?”

Some days, I really should just keep my mouth shut.

iTunes “Smear Body” by Nitzer Ebb from the album That Total Age (1987, 5:49).