An annoucement went to the Subversion mailing list yesterday that the new book in the Pragmatic Programmer Series, Pragmatic Version Control Using Subversion is now available.
I’ll definitely be picking this one up, as I am a big fan of the “pragmatic” series of books. Once I receive it and read it, I will post my impressions of the book.
More information is available at pragmaticprogrammer.com. As an FYI Amazon has this available, currently, for preorder only.
Probably one of the coolest companies around from a “pushing technology” perspective, Google has two new web sites that I am really impressed with. The first, Google Maps is a really cool competitor to Mapquest.
The second is Google Suggest. This one is way cool and makes searching a hell of a lot easier than normal.
This is one company that has their “innovation” strategy together, even having an official policy that their employees work 20% of their time on any project they choose in order to foster innovation.
Now, the trick is to figure out how to initiate a policy like this that isn’t effected by the day to day work of a “non innovation” driven company, which I would guess is the environment that most IT people work in.
For a month after the senseless murder of DamagePlan and former Pantera guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott, former Pantera frontman Phil Anselmos’ web site was dark.
As I was browsing around this morning I found that he has updated his web site with “Part One” of a statement in which he tries to address his feelings regarding the murder and the breakup of Pantera.
This was actually updated around January 21, but I haven’t been paying much attention.
There’s an article I found this morning about how the Recording Industry Association of America had filed a suit against an 83 year old woman who hated computers for illegal filesharing. The woman had allegedly made available some 700 rap, rock, and pop songs available for download from the computer she didn’t have. She apparently went by the screen name smittenedkitten.
One problem. The woman, aside from being completely computer illiterate – is dead. The womans daughter apparently sent the executives a death certificate, but the suit was filed anyway.
These guys are really out to make examples out of people. They’ll sue anyone, children, the elderly, and now even corpses.
I never understood what the big deal regarding file sharing was. I used to pull files down from Napster every now and again to find out if I liked them before I would actually go out and buy the album the song appeared on. I always thought it was a brilliant way to promote new albums in order to hook people and get them to buy the actual CD’s. Then again, I always had a thing about owning the official CD’s anyway and would always view a burned CD from home as “being cheap” which was something I never wanted to be. I figured that if I really liked the music, it was my obligation to buy it to at least support the musician who invested the time in creating it.
Apparently I’m one of the few who think that way. I had no idea that the problem of peer to peer music sharing was as widespread as it was, including such a wide range of people in all age groups and stages of decomposition.
Now that I know the true breadth of the problem, I can completely understand why the RIAA are so persistant in finding these hellions and bringing them to justice.
All you smittenedkittens out there better be watching your back. The RIAA is on the case!
We rented The Grudge yesterday. What a waste of time.
The movie is apparently a remake of a Japanese movie called Ju-on: The Grudge. Once we finished the movie, I watched some of the extras so that I could maybe get a clue as to what the hell they were thinking when they put this thing together.
Apparently Sam Raimi had seen this movie and thought it would be cool to have the original director come over and direct an Americanized version of the film starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. While his intent was admirable, what we wind up with is this completely random, unscary, movie in which flashbacks seize you like an epileptic fit and you cannot figure out where you are until your not there anymore.
There was nothing scary about the movie, because you could not figure out where you were long enough to get invested in the scene. From the documentary, the film basically assumes you know the concepts that the film is built around so they do not really explain it, aside from one scene where the main cop character blazes through some dialog that explains that when people die they stick around for some reason.
From what I have read and viewed in the documentary, there is supposed to be some deep meaning to all of this to make this movie something worth watching. I must be really shallow, because I don’t get it.
It’s just a really bad haunted house movie. As a matter of fact, this is the first movie we rented from Hollywood Video where I want my dollar credit for bringing it back early!
Jonna picked up Metallica – Some Kind of Monster last Wednesday and we watched it that night. Boy, did I like this movie.
More than anything else, the movie gave me a different perspective on the St. Anger album. I mentioned previously that this wasn’t one of my favorite albums but after seeing the movie I think its time to revisit it. Actually, more than anything else, it gave me a completely different view of the band than I had previously.
The band was pretty dysfunctional, with a lot of pent up anger towards each other and Hetfields major control issues certainly didn’t help. This dysfunction caused bassist Jason Newsted to eventually leave the band. The movie chronicles the time just after Jason left, when the band decided to hire a therapist to help them through the issues they were having in order to keep the band together.
The movie was rather surreal, as its very weird to see the band formerly called ‘Alchoholica’ by friends sober, serious, and dealing with real human issues. At times, it’s quite uncomfortable to watch, as its like eavesdropping on someones therapy session. Actually, it is eavesdropping on a therapy session.
The thing I liked most about the movie was being able to watch the creative process happening. Its kind of cool to watch what goes into creating an album like St. Anger. It was also kind of cool to watch the band go through the different phases of their relationship, and the human aspects of being in a band the size of Metallica.
I think the movie is worth the time spent watching it. Then again, being in management, I tend to read a lot about team building and things like that.
Seems to me that rather than paying $40,000 a month for Dr. Phil, the band could have just started with The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, as the issues outlined in this book were many of the things that the band was dealing with.
Bottom line is, if you work with teams, this might be a good movie for you to pick up at the rental store. I give it 5 stars.
I found an article this morning on CNN about the latest in TV censorship.
Apparently, the American public is so depraved that the site of a cartoon ass could send us into a sexual frenzy and therefore must be blurred out when shown on TV. The decision, of course, was made by network executives after the incredible year television and radio have had with the FCC after the Janet Jackson Nipple Incident last year at the super bowl.
The article tries to explain some of the logic with this statement:
The FCC doesn’t fine feature filmmakers for nudity or violence in movies because people make conscious decisions whether or not to buy a ticket and see them, he said. The same logic holds for cable networks like HBO or Showtime that a viewer must pay for. For the most part, if you have a TV, you’ll get the broadcast networks — no choice is involved.
My personal opinion – choice is always involved. Whether you are watching TV or listening to the radio, you always have the option to change the station or turn the thing off. Excercise that right rather than penalizing people who do not share your views of what is “proper” or “improper”.
I hate the show Fear Factor. The last thing I want to see is someone eating cow brains. So I turn it off if I don’t want to watch it, or leave the room if my family does. It’s that simple.
Here’s my recommendation. Dissolve the FCC and let TV put on what it wants to put on. For those who are offended by cartoon butts, have them pay the additonal subscription fees to have the animated cracks blurred.
Why should I pay extra to get around someone elses opinion of what should be seen or heard?
I’m completely tired of the antiquated censorship that goes on in all mediums. I don’t want television to turn into porn, however we have to have some sense brought to the system. The FCC is completely out of control.
In closing, I want to set the record straight with any members of the FCC that might be reading this. I came across this article by accident — not as a result of typing “cartoon ass fetish” into Google.
I have seen quite a few stories about how the Christian community is “outraged” or “feeling snubbed” by Hollywood that Mel Gibsons The Passion of the Christ did not get a film nomination for best picture this year. As a matter of fact, many people have started web sites such as Passion for Fairness to call for a boycott of — get this, Hollywood AND the Oscars.
I found this quote in an article on beliefnet.com:
I don’t know how exactly you prove discrimination based on religion or the Christian faith exactly except to say that it’s well known that the Hollywood community has been anti-Christian for many years. Mel Gibson, even with all this star power, could not find anyone to help him pay to produce the movie. Here you have the greatest story of all time, one of the most influential people in history — that is Jesus Christ — with Mel Gibson involved, and he has to do it out of his own pocketbook.
Or how about this one?
Hollywood is so repulsed by people of faith it can’t even bring itself to consider a powerful, provocative film about the most influential person in the history of mankind.
Even better, how about this one, from a recent CNN article:
Hollywood has spoken. ‘Don’t mess with us,’ is what they’re saying. ‘Don’t mess with us because we will not consider your talent if you do anything that is Christian,’ is the message that’s coming out.
Here’s the thing that is really interesting to me. Hollywood and others have done a lot with the story. Lets look at some of the renditions of the story that have come out over the years:
As mentioned in each of the descriptions, these movies are considered by both Hollywood and everyone I know as “classics”. A very high designation for a film in any right.
And these are only a sampling of movies based on the life of Christ. We also have movies like The Ten Commandments – (1956) which are based on old testament doctrine.
So it seems to me that Hollywood is more than willing to “consider talent if you do anything that is Christian”.
I would also like to point out that all of these movies are built around the writers interpretation of the story. Anyone who has talked to more than one person about the meaning of a particular bible passage knows that the meaning can change drastically depending on who you are talking to. So the main thing to keep in mind in all of this is that each of the artistic pieces listed above were based on the writers interpretation and received very high marks from both Hollywood and the Christian community. Lets also keep in mind that The Passion of the Christ was also based on Mel Gibsons interpretation of the events and do not necessarily reflect reality, because I don’t think he was there at the time and as I’ve said earlier, the Christian community is rife with different interpretations of the events (even the four gospels IN the bible have different perspectives).
Now lets look at other movies that Hollywood and others have put together, also based on the artists interpretation of the subject matter that caused some interesting reactions in the Christian community.
Anyone remember a movie called The Last Temptation of Christ? While The Passion of the Christ highlighted the physical torture that Jesus went through during the last 12 hours of his life, The Last Temptation of Christ attempted to focus more on the possible mental and emotional aspects of Jesus, and the temptation that he could live as a normal man and not go through the crucifixion. In other words, it tried to address the possible human aspects of Jesus as he went through this ordeal.
I thought it was a very good movie, and a good interpretation or “what if” scenario on the story that, at least from an artistic perspective, was worth telling. However, most of the Christian community did not feel that it was a “proper” story to tell, and spent a lot of time protesting the movie rather than judging it for what it was: an artistic interpretation of another perspective on a really good story.
And by the way, many of these people protested, rediculously enough, without having seen the film.
How about The Exorcist, which at the very least could be interpreted as a story about the overall triumph of God over Satan. This movie was protested as being anti-christian, even though the actual hero in the movie was a Catholic Priest who saved a young girl from the clutches of Satan. This story was actually written by its author, if I remember correctly, in conjunction with a Catholic Priest in order to keep the level of authenticity up.
The funniest thing to me recently has been the backlash against the book The Da Vinci Code (which, by the way, I haven’t read due to the amount of hype around it). The amount of unrest this book has caused, and the volume of material that has been written to disprove it is just amazing to me, because its a novel.
Its a work of fiction based, from what I have read and seen in documentaries, on ideas presented in The Gnostic Gospels, texts that offer a different view on Christianity that were “denounced as heretical by the early church”. Even with this basis though, its only a work of fiction and should be nothing to get up in arms about.
So to me, it doesn’t seem that there is any “discrimination” towards the Christian faith at all in Hollywood. We have movies that have been highly acclaimed in the history of movies that have been based on biblical “truth”. It does seem to me however, that every time someone tries to take a different look at the story, people get up in arms about it.
So here is the bottom line for me. The Christian community would like the “secular” community to be more tolerant of their beliefs. I think that’s fair. However, it is a lot easier to be tolerated if you exhibit tolerance yourself first. It’s a basic leadership principle. One that even Jesus himself used.
What did Jesus do? He modelled the behavior he wanted to instill in others. Was he intolerant? Not that I can recollect from my reading. Did he become angry with people who did not share his beliefs? No (I won’t count the “throwing the money changers out of the temple” incident — since that was the only time I can recollect that he actually showed anger, and one could argue it was warranted). He convinced them his beliefs were true by living them, not by forcing himself on anyone. He made people believe by the way he behaved in every day life. He didn’t discriminate.
He taught through how he lived his life.
I think that’s the coolest part of the story. The sad part of this whole thing for me is that I’m not a Christian — and I think I actually get the point more than many Christians I’ve met.
What is highly unfortunate for those Christians claiming “discrimination” is that from the outside looking in, the Christian community is viewed as one of the most discriminatory of all communities, whether the issue be rock and roll, gay marriage, or a womans right to choose. These are three of many issues to which the christian community insists on forcing its views on the rest of society.
It seem to me that in order to be able to blame others for discrimination, you must be willing to not engage in it yourself. That’s the big challenge.
It reminds me of another quote from JC: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”.
Pretty smart guy.
And just for the record, in all the versions of the story I do not remember reading that he actually picked up a rock. Do you?
When I was in 7th or 8th grade I came across a book called The Silver Sun by Nancy Springer. I read the book multiple times and it wound up being one of my favorites of all time. I don’t think there was one day through 7th and 8th grade that I wasn’t carrying it around with me and engrossed in it in study hall.
The Silver Sun is a fantasy novel set in the land of Isle, ruled by the tyrannical King Iscovar. The main characters are Hal, the son of the king, and Alan, his half brother.
Throughout his childhood, Hal was hated by his father and physically tortured and kept in dungeons. He escaped and has a quest to take the throne from his father and rule the land peacefully.
At the beginning of the book, Hal finds Alan, who has been robbed and beaten in the forest. Hal nurses him back to health and they soon become blood brothers and partners in the quest to take the kingdom from the evil King, building alliances with local outlaws and building an army in order to do so.
The book is filled with, and basically built around, a whole mythology. In the land in which the book is set, there are many gods. Hal worships the god called “The One”, which is, in his belief system, the true god. There is a lot of mythology built around The One– and elves, the original peaceful rulers of the earth, who are immortal until they marry or are killed. Elves are not univerally believed to exist, however within the mythology surrounding The One, elves were once believed to rule the earth until humans took over and corrupted it. The elves are peaceful beings and are believed to live in a land without corruption – a perfect world that they created when the humans took over the earth – that is sheltered from the evil of the human blight.
The One also has an appointed “messiah”, who is referrred to as “The Very King”. Throughout the book the prophecies surrounding the coming of “The Very King” and the return of the elves begin to come true and piece by piece you begin to realize that “The One” truly exists and The Very King is soon to appear, as the prophecies laid out in the “Book of Suns” are slowly fulfilled one by one.
The Silver Sun captivated me as a young 13 year old with the detailed world it created and the mythology of hope and peace that slowly builds throughout the book. It is truly my favorite book of all time. While it has been out of print for a while, I have actually bought second copies (used) through amazon in order to make sure I always had a copy that wasn’t falling apart.
Apparently it is back in print, as I have found it again on Amazon (this is the only book that I actually periodically check Amazon for to see if copies are available). So I recommend that you grab it while there are still copies available. The world that Nancy Springer builds is very engaging and inspiring and her stories are just a pure joy to read.
There are four books in the “Book of Isle” series. The White Hart, The Silver Sun, The Sable Moon, and the Black Beast. The Silver Sun makes many references to the White Hart, as it is the story of the first “Very King” to come to the land before evil took over the land. The Sable Moon continues where the Silver Sun left off, which I cannot explain further without giving away the final pieces of the Silver Sun.
I really hope this write up does this book justice and gets people to read it. I know I have tried to get Kelsi to read it a bazillion times to no avail. She’s not a big fantasy book reader.
I’ll definitely keep trying to convince her to take one of my copies though.
While reading slashdot this morning I came across an article about Sun opening OpenSolaris.org.
Yes folks, Solaris is finally going open source. Currently the only source code available is for dtrace, but according to the site, Sun is looking to have “buildable Solaris code” available sometime in Q2 of 2005.
I’m not sure whether this means the whole operating system or not. The statement is a little vague. I am curious to see what effect this will have on the Solaris install base (related to Linux installations) once the full software is available. I guess we’ll have to wait and see …
Bieber Labs 