Eclipse
Today I finally got interested in actually doing
something to Eclipse. I started adding some code to
the cvs perspective so that Eclipse will know about
the standard free software repositories and make it
easy to check out your favorite projects.
I find it is easier to engage if I think about how
I can change Eclipse to make it more useful for free
software hackers. This isn't a surprise; I've known
my agenda for a long time.
Another thought I had was to have a way for a project
to specify its coding standard in some top-level file.
Then the Eclipse editor would automatically adjust.
Implementing this is probably tricky. I wonder why
Emacs doesn't already know how to do this.
I'm generally interested in ways to make Eclipse fit
with the free software community better. If you have
a cool idea, send it my way. Well, send it my way
knowing that I can't promise to implement it.
Movies
Bowling for Columbine. I think Michael Moore is
pretty funny. Plus, once I briefly met him while
standing in line at a film festival (the personal
event makes someone more likeable). This movie was
darker than I expected, and turned a pretty ordinary
afternoon into an emotional event. However, I was also
disappointed by some of Moore's inaccuracies, and also
a few cheap shots he took. Sometimes that can be funny,
but it was out of place in this film.
Femme Fatale. I saw this since Roger Ebert liked it.
Ordinarily I don't do that, but his essay swayed me.
I've seen him speak a couple times here, and that gave
me more appreciation for what he does and how he thinks.
Nevertheless, I hated this movie. In fact, I think
the plot device De Palma uses (I'm not going to spoil
it here) should be banned henceforth from film. And
books and poetry, too. This trick (if you've seen it,
it is the scene where the main character wakes up in
the bath tub) overshadowed whatever other
enjoyment I got from the film (there was some, I
grudgingly admit). In fact I ranted about it all week
to my friends and was quite a bore on the subject.
On the subject of movies, from time to time I
look into movie editing for Linux. The field is pretty
empty. I've considered writing my own editor, which
would be pretty fun, but unfortunately time is scarce.
It will be more pressing once I've got something to
edit, I suppose.