Shrek 2 (2004)

Ok, that was not fair! I was expecting something in the lines of Shrek – a cutesy animated movie with a lot of good humor and some great voice acting along the way. I was expecting Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, and Eddie Murphy. Sorta hoping it wouldn’t degrade from what it had been. Whaddayaknow? Instead of doing the obvious, the troupe bested itself! That’s not fair! I was dazzled by a host of new brand name actors throwing themselves in a very recognizable manner into the mix. Continue reading

NEC MobilePro 900

There was a time when I wouldn’t walk out of the house without my MobilePro 770. An instant-on Windows CE device, it had the right form factor to allow me to type as fast as I could think. That’s something no other device has ever given to me, an uncramped keyboard, light weight (under 2 pounds), immediate startup. I was even willing to live with the quite quirky operating system. Continue reading

The Magdalene Sisters (2002)

In beautiful Catholic Ireland, women with illegitimate children are coerced into concentration camps run by monastic orders (of nuns). The children, actually, are taken away and given up for adoption, while the women are interned, locked up, and forgotten. They will be coerced to work in a commercial laundry facility all day to atone for their sins. There is no term limit, they will spend their whole life in the camp if nobody remembers them and gets them out. Continue reading

As Good as it Gets (1997)

I mean, do you realize this movie got both Oscars for Best Actor and Best Actress in 1997? I mean, what kind of horrible year that must have been for Hollywood? Jack Nicholson plays an obsessive-compulsive writer (who oddly barely ever writes) that becomes a grouchy hermit. As such, the role seems to have been written for Mr. Nicholson, who has a history of playing slightly crazy, solitary characters. Helen Hunt, who in turn has a history of playing the romantic interest of much older and much uglier guys, plays a waitress who has trouble making ends meet. Continue reading

MosTeX

Who would have thought math would came back to haunt me in the most delectable way??? I found a mosbot (mostex) that renders TeX formulas in the simplest of ways. You just add the mostag “tex” in your content, and you get a formula that ‘looks’ right. Say you want to have ‘x square plus y square’ in your content. You enter { tex } x^2 + y^2 { /tex } and that renders as {tex} x^2 + y^2 {/tex}. Continue reading

Upgrading to Mambo 4.5.2

Amazing! The install file and the web site said it would be painless – and indeed it was painless! I downloaded 4.5.2, looked at it, and it seemed to touch EVERYTHING in the system. That got me quite scared, of course, and frankly I quite didn’t buy the fact that every file needed to be changed because of ‘copyright notices’ and such. But in the end I trusted the ease of getting my old site back, if needed, and I risked it. Continue reading

Naked Lunch (1991)

Amazing when you watch two movies one shortly after the other, and although they really have nothing similar about them, they have an odd link that bridges the gap, maybe just for you. That’s what happened with me in the case of {moscontentlink:The Texas Chainsaw Massacre%} and Naked Lunch. In the former, the 1960es came to life. Astrology, psychedely, mushrooms, drugs, love (not much rock’n’roll, though) all conspired into forcing the protagonists into fright. Continue reading

Bronchitis

It started out just as the common (but severe flu). Then I decided to take some nice medication – it made me feel super-healthy! So far so good. When I then went on to go back to work and to spinning class, that little bug turned into a major bronchitis that has been killing me for the last week. Never had anything as bad as this! Even my angina when I was 12 was nothing compared. Continue reading

Adding RSS awareness to your site

I just figured out how to make my site have the neat [RSS] box that Firefox displays to indicate your site has an RSS feed available. It’s actually very simple: you just have to go to the Administrator screen. There, in Modules, select Syndicate. In Syndicate, look to the right and click on Parameters. Where it says text, I entered: <LINK REL=“alternate” TITLE=“Diva RSS Feed” HREF="http://diva.homelinux.org/mambo/index2.php?option=com_rss&feed=RSS2.0&no_html=1" TYPE=“application/rss+xml”> Replace your own title and href (actually, just the server and leading URL part of the href), and you are ready to go! Continue reading

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

So I thought I was going to get a classic of the genre, and got ready for a night of gore and terror, afraid I might not sleep. The first twenty minutes alone, though, made it clear this was one of those movies that terrifies only the culture that begat them. Thirty years later, we are terrified of terrorists, maybe of AIDS, but psychedelic terror just doesn’t cut it any more. Continue reading