Older blog entries for AlanHorkan (starting at number 110)

Resident Evil: Apocalypse
Up front I'll admit it is as a bad as most reviews say it is. However I really enjoyed the first one and if you did too you might enjoy this one but the first was definately better. I mean this movie was rubbish but I went to it in the full knowledge that it was rubbish and did my best to turn off my brain and enjoy it for what it was. Shaun of the Dead had better zombies, more gore and better in almost every way than this film, with the exception of big explosions and big action set pieces.
Resident Evil Apocalypse has more zombies, more characters, more action more explosions and it has turned out expensive and overblown. With zombie movies less usually more (cheap but effective). The first Resident Evil had a much simpler premise and smaller central cast, and original and interesting looking locations. The contrast of the claustraphobic tunnels crammed full of zombies slowly groping against the harsh sterile cleanliness of the laboratory worked well. The wide open locations of a city make it much harder to convincingly make things look crowded. Toronto, err I mean Racoon City is nice and all but although a few of the locations looked interesting but they should have done more with it. Despite lifting many scenes from the first film they cut early failed to show the spectacular overhead shot that finished the first film. So much could have been done with the contrast of a clean modern city turned to a rotting barren wasteland.
The zombies were not very scary or gruesome. What makes them scary is their relentlessmess and sheer force of numbers but lots of gore and hideous make up would have helped. The Nemisis however does look impressive but is not scary either.
There is no subtext in this film. There is not very much text either, this film is severly lacking in plot and characterisation but even so more could certainly have been made of the material. The potential to make an interesting comment about corporate America was wasted by casting a German (European at least) as the villian. The Robocop films had the villians in the form of the OCP (Omni Consumer Products) executives which were all the more sinster by their being superficially slick and clean-cut but incredibly ruthless and greedy businessmen underneath. Other movies have also used zombies to make interesting commentaries on consumerism but both yet another opportunity wasted. The zombie children could have been truly terrifying, but only appeared very briefly. After one fight scene is over some of the characters break out of their bonds, but if instead they had been shown to have freed themselves at the start of the fight then there could have been some hint of tension, a suggestion that something enexpected could happen. For a brief moment during the fight there was a shot of the girl Angelica and I hoped that she might do something unexpected but no such luck. There were so many scenes that blatantly telegraphed what was about to happen - particularly the appearance of the zombie dogs - alternatively surprises came out of nowhere with no real build up. The flashbacks Alice had were often too late and only worked as additional explanation after fact instead of heightening the situation.
There was something very sexy about the red dress and black boots Alice (Milla Jovovich) wore in the first film. Very much aware of her own appeal Milla Jovovich jokingly finished an interview with the words "me in wet red dress, what more could you want!" but this film again fails to provide a costume to recapture this glamour. She does look rather cold throughout the film and there is a brief flash of nudity but this time around she is less sexy and more a grimier action heroine. Thankfully Jill Valentine (a character from the original video games) provided some additional glamour. She was wearing

her turquoise corset, black shorts and gunbelt and looked a whole lot like Tomb Raider to me, which is not necessarily a bad thing. With a complete lack of subtlety in keeping with the rest of the movie we are informed that she is a some sort of a disgraced cop by a series of news paper cuttings conveniently left lying around. In the rare cases they even try, the characterisation in this film is really poor.
Despite all the criticisms I have written I could probably write more but it is best not to give this film too much thought. I enjoyed the first Resident Evil and I went into it with low expectations and managed to enjoy it and I will probably see the sequel too and maybe even buy it up when it is available in the bargain basement bin at the video store. I still wouldn't recommend it and I'd rate it about 2/5.

(I'm probably going to rewrite this later and add some links and stuff, so consider this a rough draft.)

Pants Off
Aardman Animation, the people who brought use Wallace and Gromit have a new project called, Big Jeff the Aussie with no cossie [1]. Cannot help wondering if they have ever met the (in)famous Jeff Pants Off Waugh.

[1] Requires flash and possibly quicktime too.

9 Oct 2004 (updated 9 Oct 2004 at 22:02 UTC) »
High Street Honey
I've met some well known people in my time and been dissappointed by the reality not even remotely resembling the fantasy. If anything Kayleigh Pearson is even more cute in person. Kayleigh was voted as FHM's High Street Hottie of 2003. She was the invited guest of the Dublin University Philosophical Society and acted as chairwoman of the Freshers Debate, a light hearted event to encourage new students to give public speaking a try. In contrast I was left speechless by the gorgeous blonde - who is even more beautiful when she laughs - but I managed to mumble enough words to get her to sign an autograph after the event.
I didn't used to be so inarticulate but of late I've been tripping over my words, not just when I am confronted by a vision of loveliness that helps reduce my intelligence to less than that of a thirteen year old boy. A while back I was tripping over my words so often I thought I was developing a stutter, and I suppose it is a reflection of how badly things are going for me at the moment and that my confidences is in tatters once more.
Freshers week has passed by and for the first time in many years I finally stepped back and didn't try to get involved. Student life has been great but I think I am almost ready to move on now.

Cruel Intentions
Cruel Intentions was a good movie, it was suprisingly successful in repurposing Les Liasons Dangereux to a teenage drama. The strong source material added depth, it is remarkable that a tale that hinges so much on reputation is still so relevant. I watched it again as it was on television last week and even if you have seen the previous adaptation featuring the John Malcovich and Glenn Close, it still works well in it's own right. In fact Ryan Philippe does little more than attempt to impersonate John Malcovich.
My reason for writing is not to praise the first movie but rather to warn others not to be tempted to watch the sequel Cruel Intentions 2, that it is a prequel should almost be warning enough but I watched it anyway. I have tried to write more but I cannot write about this pointless rubbish that never even should have been made and should be forgotten lest it tarnish the other version by association. (The quality was poor and it lacked a cinematic feeling and it is no coincidence as it was made for TV). I cannot believe they went on to make a third one.
Watch the original again instead.

6 Oct 2004 (updated 9 Oct 2004 at 19:44 UTC) »
RTFM
Irrespective of the the profanity RTFM is simply rude and ignorant. Even if you had to put up with it when you were getting started is certainly no excuse to perpetuate the condescending behaviour of the past.
It is ignorant because beginners may not even know what it stands for, it is rude because if you dont know the answer it takes less effort to say nothing at all and if you do know the answer it is far more productive to provide the answer (RTFM implies you dont know either). Every time you say RTFM you make the community look bad and turn people off using your software, and you do want people to use your software don't you? You do want more people to use, support, and develop Open Source and Free Software and help make it better for you, me, and everyone else?
Software is supposed to make life easier for users and it is unforgivable to blame the users instead of trying to identify and solve the problem problems that prompted the user to ask the question in the first place. RTFM, is a cop out. Documentation is better than it used to be but it is still in a variety of inconsistant formats and it is not easily searchable. In most cases (if you have an internet connection) you are better off to use google to find information than trying to navigate through the documentation on your local machine. If users are asking questions often enough for you to want to say RTFM is your application really all that well designed and is the documentation understandable?
Although the manual pages included with BSD are usually of high quality, informative and well organised man pages in Linux are rarely as good. Then comes the question which Manual? Do you mean application --help or man application or even info application and that just covers command line applications, graphical applications do not necessarily have man pages (Debian has not done a good job of encouraging projects to maintain their own man page upstream at source which would save both Debian and the project itself some work. Even though a man page unless you are using Debian you are shit out of luck). Users may well have looked at and tried to understand the available information but found it to be sprawling and unclear. It takes some getting used to be able to efficiently get the information you need out of a man page without needing to read the whole sprawling epic history of every command line option or quirk the application has ever had.
Appreciate the effort it takes to provide feedback and make use of it!

Do not tolerate such behaviour
If someone is rude to you, then as calmly as possible you should express your disspointment at their their rude answer.
If you are a project leader or in any way an active contributor you should not allow rude behaviour to go unchallenged and tarnish the reputation of your project by assocation.
I am assuming that if you are an active contributor you are wise enough to be aware of the limitations of your own software and to be humble enough to accept all feedback as an opportunity to regocnise areas that might be improved so that questions need not be asked in the first place.
It may be patronising but if you must tell people that on mailing lists and irc channells of the project they represent the project by their actions and if they have nothing nice to say should say nothing at all. It often takes less time to be polite that it does to be rude

Yes but...
There are usually different ways to convey the same information, sure you could ask "When are you leaving?" but it would more polite and more sublte and get you the information you want if you instead asked "How long will you be staying?". A subtle but important difference.
It is always better to answer a question positively rather than negatively: "Will you implement this feature?". The most obvious answer may be "No" but you can make yourself and your project look a lot better by saying "Yes but..." and then continue by saying "...not at the moment. Please add a request to bugizlla. If you can provide patches we will accept them." This little extra effort is more likely to get users cooperation and feedback and help and the user may go on to become a developer.

Getting good answers
Getting good answers requires asking good questions. It also helps who and where you ask the questions. The IRC channel #debian is notoriously hostile. Debian list are best used for Debian specific information but often best to ask the orginal application developers. (For a very long time the abiword developers knew well that the Debian packages had spellchecking poorly setup because of build option and packing issues, it didn't seem like anyone beyond the Debian packager had made it clear that special options had been used.) For general systems adminstartion and simple task (particularly command line orientated) you are usually better off if you ask your local Linux User Group (LUG).

Shlomi Fish started this whole discussion.

Update: Redi I get what you are saying and you sound like a helpful maintainer but given the social and marketing skills of many geeks the distinction you were able to make between RTFM and calmly and politely pointing the users to the right part of the relevant documentation is is not clear enough. People must be left in no doubt that RTFM is the wrong way and is distinctly different from the kind of helpful advice you are willing to call summarize as "Read the manual" (RTM) even though the two attitudes are as different as night and day. It must be made absolutely clear that even if a question has been asked for the millionth time the users should be treated with the same politeness as the first person who asked.


I watched some of the Vice Presidential debate, mostly found it boring and I didn't much like the rigidly structured questions and answers format but tried to watch it because I had skipped right past the Presidential debate.
Funny that Dick Cheney directed viewers to an anti-Bush site factcheck.com instead of factcheck.org.
I want Bush to lose but I still dont think it will happen. Maybe America deserves another four years of Bush.

Not OK computer:///
The computer:/// protocol doesn't look like it is going away anytime soon. It seems to be a relatively easy fix to a mess of complicated problems. I still hope there is not a solution. Got a compliment about the eye-catching Subject line but unfortunately I don't think I've done anything to discourage developers from creating new protocols. There is a glimmer of hope that this mess might at least be changed to be more consistant with KDE.
I wish I had more time to look at it but I have my own problems to sort out.
4 Oct 2004 (updated 4 Oct 2004 at 22:13 UTC) »
Freshers Week
Many many beautiful people than usual wandering around the city centre and I think it must be due to it being Freshers week and the new students are arriving in. Dont know yet if I will be returning, need to sort out some details and get my overdraft extended.

Don't judge me
Don't judge me by my video collection. My limited collection includes only Science Fiction (Resident Evil), Animation (Family Guy), and Comedy (Dare Devil). I am sure I will eventually pick up some classics like Casablanca or Citizen Kane but for now if you were to try and figure out my character based on my video collection you would think I was incredibly juvenile. Which is is not too far from the truth but I'm not as one dimensional as the characters in my movie collection. Today I bought a boxed set of all the American Pie series, the sale price seemed reasonable enough and I liked it enough that I inevitably would have picked up at least one of the series sooner or later anyway and in my head I always put off buying one of a series until the boxed set is available and then avoiding the boxed set until the price comes down to something reasonable.

Python Progress
I've been playing with the Python Plug-ins included in the gimp and made some small improvements to the Python PDB (Procedural Database) Browser. Unfortunately some of the extra functionality I've exposed has made it uglier. It way more important to make something that works than to make it work beautifully. I might release it soon but I am almost embarrassed to release something with a user interface I know is horribly flawed but to completely redesign the user interface the way I want it will require a lot of work and learning PyGTK or at least getting a setup to generate PyGTK code using Glade (which I think I read how to do in a recent issue of Linux Journal). If I had good information I'd even be tempted to use Glade files directly but for what I'm doing it seems more convenient to keep it all in one file.
When I am finished chaning the PDB Browser there will still be a lot of work needed to improve the Gimp PDB documentation for it to be really useful. In far too many causes documentation is absent and in other cases is inconsistant or unhelpful. I had hoped that developers would make more effort to write and maintain the documention because it is built right in with the code but that is simply not the case.

Home directory as Desktop Directory
A discussion on the Gnome Desktop Developer mailing list about having standard folders like ~/Documents and ~/Pictures split off into a discussion about using the Home directory as the Desktop. It is a nice option to have but I don't want it as the default and the idea had been already been thrashed out in great detail and rejected so I don't think there is much chance of it ever becoming the default.

2 Oct 2004 (updated 23 Oct 2004 at 23:01 UTC) »
Wimbledon
I'm going to describe this movie using awfully bad tennis puns:
Not Ace, more like Love, actually.
The Tennis wasn't very exiting to watch or action packed and it didn't have enough tension in it. It is difficult to do sport on screen and I'm not a tennis fan so maybe I'm being overly harsh. The Romance was understated and unconvincing. The comedy was forgettable, barely there at all. The whole movies is fairly inoffensive and insubstantial. Not as good as Love Actually, nowhere near Four Weddings and a Funeral. I might go to see this movie as payback for dragging a girlfriend to see something some Science Fiction or Comic Book movie she was unlikely to enjoy (like Hellboy which was great admittedly but not everyones cup of tea).
I'm tempted to give it only 1/5 but I'm probably disappointed because I expected it to be a lot better. I was dissappointed that better use was not made of cast members like Kirsten Dunst, Bernard Hill, Jon Favreau and John McEnroe. If you are really like romantic comedies or are female or are going to watch it on video you might add +1 and rate Wimbledon a little higher but if you are considering watching it on video it would be a much better bet to make sure to see Four Weddings and a Funeral or Love Actually before this. I would rate it as 2/5, not worth the effort.

Update
Redi thanks for your comments, it is great that people sometimes read my journal. Wimbledon makes excuses to visit all sorts of tourist spots and I cannot tell if they showed the main street of Wimbledon town and it did not feature the kind of gritty realism you described just slushy romantic comedy. Nor did it feature any Wombles unfortunately. Spoiler
The ending was rubbish and completely unrealistic, I mean an English man actually winnning Wimbledon? Ha! Ridiculous!

Friday Night
Ewan Mc Gregor and Charlie Boorman were on television talking about their motorcycle trek during which a high tech. 'air crash jacket' was brought out. The jacket is supposed to inflate in a crash and Jonathan Ross suggested they test it. After a few hands of rock-paper-scissors Ewan Mc Gregor lost and got ready to try out the jacket

Ewan Mc Gregor : Will this hurt?

Jonathan Ross: I think it will!
I'm paying you back for those last two Star Wars movies.

Doesn't seem as funny when you have to explain it, but hey I laughed
The show: Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, BBC1, 2004 10 01 UTC (repeated 1:4 am on Sunday)
The host: Jonathan Ross, Lisping Comedian turned Television Presenter, and Film Critic.

I love Python. High level interpreted langauges are great, especially when you know there is a way to get binaries if you really need it so you can just get on with development and not get bogged down in implementation details. Hopefully I can turn my experiments into something useful, I will of course mention here if come up with anything useful.

was supposed to do a Cinema Check this evening but various things were conspiring against me, but hopefully by doing it on Saturday I'll be able to see more films in between checking the trailers and advertisements.

29 Sep 2004 (updated 29 Sep 2004 at 20:15 UTC) »

Summoned
I got a letter from the Courts and typically my parents assumed I was the defendant (thanks a lot Mum!). No one else in my family has ever been summoned for jury duty before although some of them are in the legal and medical proffesions and would be ineligable. Can't help thinking I should be trying to avoid it because of a joke I heard

When you go into court you are putting yourself in the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty

Shot
Shot in the arm with an influenza vaccine and it stung quite a lot, I didn't remember my tetnus injection hurting that much. It was really gross, I could feel the liquid going in and all. The University sent out a message recommending people get vacinnated and I figured it would be one less thing to complain about come winter time. (Gun control is fairly strict in Ireland so I the odds of me ever taking a gunshot are extremely slim, thank God.)

Burned
Burned a Live CD version of Ubuntu and played around with it for a while, having been duly warned in advanced that it was unstable. I was pleased to learn the Ubuntu Live CD is based on Morphix. Did not work with my hardware at first (a fairly ordinary beige box from Dell with a second hand monitor of an unknown brand) and because of the graphical login hiding all the error messages it just kept failing and rebooting over and over. When I tried failsafe mode it worked exactly how I expected things to work, which makes me wonder why the system did not automatically try failsafe mode when the defaults fail.

Playing with a new distribution or new version of Gnome always gives me lots of new ideas for feature requests and bugs to reput and reminds me of more than few bugs that I never quite got around to filing.
Top of my hitlist is computer:///. I thought we had successfully gotten rid of start-here:/// and that control-panel:/// was on the way out but some developers do not seem to have gotten the message: No New URIs. I wonder if maybe some joker suggested adding c:/ to make it like in Windows for laughs and someone else took them seriously but added the unabbreviated computer:///
Creating new protocols breaks existing software in lots of small annoying ways and goes against fundamental Unix philosophy that everything is a file. The concept itself of providing a user friendly view of "the computer" is a good idea, and the normal root directory at / is to complicated for most users. It works well in Nautilus spatial mode but as soon as you switch to anything else including Browser mode Nautilus the idea is let down by the implementation.
If instead of creating the protocol computer:/// the implementation could have created a false root at /home/username/Computer/ ie ~/Computer/ and mounted folders there the system would be useful to all kinds of different applictions instead of just the Nautilus File Manager.

Compressed
I was recently asked why Nautilus only includes the option "Extract Here" instead of including more options. (For reference purposes here is the relevant file roller bug report) The answer is simple, if you want more options it makes sense to open File Roller and the context menu in the File Manager should only be used for the simplest fastest most common action: Extract Here.

Google Browser
Rumours of google browser were mentioned to me by an unreliable aquaintance as if it was already inevitable. It is interesting that they have already registered the domain gbrowser.com but it seems unlikely to me that google would go from currently having no officially supported plug-ins for Mozilla to a fully fledged browser based on Mozilla.

Python to put the squeeze on Gnome?
There have been discussions on the Gnome (desktop-devel) mailing list about officially including Python as part of Gnome. I do hope it happens as it will make it significantly easier for me to contribute to Gnome but I definately must learn more Python.

Gutenprint
The gimp-print project will be changing name to gutenprint. Good choice of name, it evokes both the historical Gutenberg printing press and can more litteraly be taken to mean 'good print'.

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