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Once upon a time on another blog I wrote about Lost in Translation (link, Directed by Sofia Coppola 1993). I didn’t name it and added a cryptic quip about that fitting The Theme. I’m no film critic, but I needed to say more than “I like this film.”

Looking back, I think I’d write about it a little differently.

Insert spoiler warning here!

The Virgin Suicides, though critically acclaimed was a very stylish flop in my living room. With Lost in Translation, Sofia harnessed star power and good writing to make a very clever film.

Lost in Translation is a film loved and hated with passion by equal numbers of my friends. I guess it comes down to whether you like being immersed in the content or the form of films. The form of this film is thought-provoking. The content is quite thin, though there are many moments of pure magic.

The Theme is painstakingly crafted in every scene. In all but one scene people communicate yet misunderstand. People seem to converse normally, but they misinterpret, or talk past each other. The movie shows a world of emotional emptiness where everyone talks and nobody understands.

Oh yeah, the name of the film, in case you missed it, is Lost in Translation. It’s like High Fidelity in that the theme is given away in the title.

In the final scene Bob and Charlotte finally manage to connect and understand each other before happily parting company. For this scene the director deliberately doesn’t let the audience hear what they are saying to each other that is such a revelation. This intriguing gesture at once applies The Theme with a sledgehammer and shows that the content is simply the writer/director’s device for communicating The Theme.

Do see it if you haven’t already.

If you’re going to play World of Warcraft and there are things about the user interface or game environment you don’t like then you might as well break out your favourite editor and throw together some LUA. LUA is the macro/extension language that powers the World of Warcraft AddOn creation community. LUA and XML.

I have two three four five six computers at home, so I can play WoW with my main character on one, and when the going gets tough I can drag around a communal healer character on another computer to throw a heal in occasionally and play target dummy.

Playing two characters at once is variously called two-boxing, 2boxing, two-fisting, a waste of money, antisocial behaviour or cheating.

Anyway, my little healer has been following me around (on auto-follow) for some time. His problem is that he gets lost by getting stuck on walls, rogue polygons and eaten by giants!

While upgrading Wordpress to 1.5, I wrote the necessary two lines of LUA to make my healer-bot scream at my main character whenever he goes off auto-follow. The WoW API isn’t quite rich enough to provide NavigateAroundObstacle() function calls so automatically screaming for help when he finds himself left behind is all he’s going to get. For now.

Introducing my first WoW AddOn: Snodgrass’ Follower.

Please stand by while I mess with WordPress as I upgrade to 1.5.

Update: I have decided to try out Conestoga Street which seems to be a nice, minimalist theme. I’ll see how it goes.

Update: I’ve installed Spam Karma. If you are reading this, please leave an entertaining comment so I can figure out if it’s working for users who aren’t me!

So I notice, today, that there are a whole bunch of search engine hits here on on BS for Star Wars spoilers. I took a look at some of the referrals and it seems to have something to do with ranking 2nd on Google for a particular search phrase.

This is all based on linkpimpin’ something I found funny on another site.

There’s no shame in being mistaken for a Star Wars fan site.

Ok, there’s shame. It’s not a revealed-secret-non-Platonic-love-of-robots kind of shame, but it’s up there.

So here is my attempt to give people who find themselves here looking for Star Wars EP3 enlightenment.

What follows is pure conjecture based on 5 minutes of research and 20 minutes of pure flow-of-unconsciousness conjecture. I have seen the Bantam Menace, but not the second movie that had something to do with clones and unrequited, poorly-acted, teenage lurve. I am familiar with the canon of George Lucas before he seperated from his editor. Namely, Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi and a select few of the Ewok movies. Ewok movies… It’s a shame Endor didn’t cop it in the neck, really.

Come here glass of red wine. There’s typing to be done.

STAR WARS EPISODE III SPOILER AS TOLD TO BRAINSNORKEL.COM BY ELVES, YES ELVES, THAT SWEAR THEY HAVE COME FROM A FUTURE WHERE STAR WARS MOVIES ARE GOOD AGAIN

SCENE ONE

Anakin crash lands on an imperial battle cruiser inadvertantly slaughtering 20,000 battle droids and setting the empire back weeks in its evil plans. He flees to Padme.

SCENE TWO

Padme and Anakin snuggle and stare longingly into each others’ eyes.

In a brief experiment to reintroduce the magic of Jar Jar Binks from Episode 1 George Lucas cameos Spongebob Squarepants in the role of Padme’s wardrobe-droid. Other curious space-critters decorate the screen. An Ewok/Jar Jar Binks fusion lounge theremin reggae band erupts inappropriately as Annikin performs ritual Jedi loin-girding in preparation for a trip to Coruscant.

Padme’s gown flutters in the air conditioning as she watches Anakin sideswipe other spacecraft when he leaves the space dock. Destination: Coruscant.

SCENE THREE

Obi Wan Kenobi and Frank Oz team up to do lightsaber battle with battle droids, somewhere near Coruscant.

About 35 minutes into the ritual disemboweling of computer animated target dummies, the special effects and stunt coordinators get their act together and realise that lightsaber battles are better when they cut through stuff like butter, rather than the RotJ lightsabers-bouncing-off-furniture rubbish.

Annikin crash lands on Coruscant inadvertantly killing the remaining 20,000 battle droids.

Annikin, Obi Wan and Frank Oz find three very uncomfortable seats and talk in the stilted, pensive truisms of Jedi tradition. The Force is invoked. Chins are held. Beards are stroked. Brows are furrowed. Infinitives are split.

SCENE FOUR

Anakin crash lands on Padme, inadvertantly fathering Luke Skywalker.

SCENE FIVE

Anakin, Obi-Wan, Palpatine and Frank Oz go Jedi-on-Jedi in a tediously dizzying, epic, spiraling, space combat, martial arts, operatic, gangbusters, orgy of swordplay, droid-slaughterin’ and, inevitably futile, bridging to the original Star Wars movie.

SCENE SIX

Anakin experiences a nasty work-related accident and the cosmetic surgeon confuses him with a cape-fetish goth in the next aisle.

SCENE SEVEN

Anakin spends his years training his Jedi skills to wreak revenge on his butcher, realises the error of his ways, and joins up with the Imperial Storm Troopers for the pay and conditions, and their cool uniforms.

In selfless and visionary act, Darth (Anakin) Vader hunts down and captures Jar Jar Binks after a freak accident upon landing. He freezes him in carbonite and propels him into the nearest black hole.

What a happy ending. I wonder what happens to Luke.

* Updated title because Bloglines can’t display “C3PO <3 R2D2″

Don’t these people get it?

Swiss glacier to get heat shield: Swiss technicians are to use a special insulating foam to wrap up a glacier that has been shrinking under the summer sun.

Carlo Danioth, in charge of the slopes at the Andermatt resort in central Switzerland, says the Gurschen glacier is to be partially covered with 3,000 square metres of PVC foam from the beginning of May.

Mr Danioth says the aim is to halt the melting of the glacier, a phenomenon that has been attributed to global warming.

“If the trial is a success, we’ll wrap the other part of the glacier too,” he said.

He added that the ice-field was receding by about five metres a year.

A study published last year by Zurich University estimated that the country’s glaciers had lost about a fifth of their surface area over the past 15 years.

The study, carried out using satellite data, also found that the rate of ice-loss was accelerating.

A number of other Swiss ski resorts are reported to be considering similar measures.

I can see it now. Protect the polar ice caps by manufacturing enough PVC to coat them. Protect the Gulf Stream by wrapping it in Thinsulate(tm) tubing. Cool the Earth by manufacturing a galactic refrigerator to put it in each night…

I was thinking about what shenanigans houseguests could possibly engage in that would cause me the most angst for the least effort. Having identified my vulnerabilities I planned some defenses.

My problem is that I have no idea how effective my planned defense against these types of denial of comfort zone attacks would be. Quickly misinterpreting best security practices I’m publishing my vulnerabilities and proposed security measures for critical assessment for my own good.

Don’t try this at my home: proposed defense

1. Swap around the location of my knives, forks and spoons : Convert 100% to chopsticks or implement decoy cutlery drawer
2. Change the painstakingly optimal setting on my toaster : Superglue brownness dial or measure potentiometer reading and hard-wire
3. Tune my clock radio to 2UE : See 2, or somehow send 2UE out of business

I know this may give the impression that I’m obsessive compulsive; I’m not. You can tell from the number of punctuation, grammar and spelling mistakes in my blog entries.

I would, however, like to take this opportunity to suggest that you only view this blog if you have washed your hands first.

Any other ideas?

Is the extent of tool use.

Highly developed civilizations have a thriving market for useless aesthetic accoutrements that change the colour or shape of tools to the extent where their utility is affected. A civilization that cares that it can change the colour of a cigarette lighter “to match your lifestyle” or make a plastic sheath for your mobile telephone that “lets people know who you really are” is obviously a highly developed civilization on the verge of inventing interpretive dance.

Another measure of a highly developed civilization is whether or not it cares that every now and then haxorz stealorz its high-colour icons from its so-called productivity applications, and then put them back later.

I have no idea how this happens (or, indeed, why I should care). It’s annoying enough that I’ve gone to Microsoft support and tried, hard, to describe my problem to the army of Microsoft Bobs and interpretive dancing paperclips that lurk behind the knowledge base search interface.

No luck.

Civilization is in decline.

Brad DeLong wants to know what might happen at Microsoft in a parallel universe where investment in R&D did not increase at the same rate as sales growth.

What will users have to show for R&D expenditures that may crack $9 billion this fiscal year? What will shareholders have to show for this $9 billion. I know, they say “10% sales growth.” But what would sales growth be if R&D were cut back to, say, $1 billion?

So, how do you decide how much investment in R&D is enough? It’s not through looking at all the amazing new products and features that have hit the streets in the last few years that’s for sure.

Microsoft spent $4.4 billion on research and development in the year ending June 30, 2001. $6.3 billion on R&D in the year ending June 30, 2002, $6.6 billion on R&D in the year ending June 30, 2003, and $7.8 billion on R&D in the year ending June 30, 2004.

Just what, exactly, is it doing? By and large, Word and Excel are the same programs they were when Wordperfect, Lotus, and Borland went down in the middle of the 1990s. Explorer is the same program it was when Navigator went down in the late 1990s. The mail and presentation programs are nice (perhaps), but. And there have been a lot of improvements to Windows: it doesn’t crash any hour anymore, and the flaws that now have the Berkeley sysadmins on a search-and-destroy mission looking for installations of Windows 3.1, 95, and 98 by and large no longer exist.

Maybe they’re stocking up on APIs? Or developing new ways to infuriate users with new and interesting input focus problems added to aging applications.

Undoubtedly something is coming of those ever increasing R&D bucks, but I’d like to know what effect a budget cut might have on an organization like Microsoft. Being forced into some budgetary navel-gaving might be good for them and humanity.

When was the last time they had to kill a project to save the company?

Authimage verification is gone for now.

It wasn’t working (in a variety of ways) for human commenters and seems to have been worked around by link spammer zombie robot warrior armies.

Until I upgrade WordPress and decide on an alternative I’ll be moderating all comments.

Email me at crgentle at gmail if you have further problems.

A fascinating story which really requires no comment. The criminal allegations sound like a stretch, but showcasing the relationships, the trips, the money, and the interests must be making for some very uncomfortable moments Canberra and WA.

It’s way better than the novel I’m reading so I catalogued some choice moments below.

But John Howard confessed to a feeling of wonderment experienced by almost everyone in Parliament yesterday when the news emerged. After watching television accounts of the story at 6am, the Prime Minister revealed: “I must say I held my cup of tea at my lips as I saw the news; I did not immediately consume it … I thought, ‘this is going to be an interesting day’.”

– Louise Dodson SMH Maverick Liberal had the PM spluttering March 18, 2005

…more below the fold.

Via Cesspit, Vivendi disclose how just many WoW subscribers they have in their reporting of 2004 financials.

[...]World of Warcraft, released in late November 2004 in North America, became the region’s fastest growing and largest subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game in history, with more than 750,000 active subscribers and nearly 825,000 units sold at retail.

In Korea, the game launched in mid-January and has broken the record for the highest number of concurrent players in its first 100 days. In Europe, World of Warcraft was released in mid-February and sold 380,000 copies at retail in its first weekend; the game currently has more than 500,000 subscribers. Most of World of Warcraft’s financial impact will be felt in 2005 and years beyond.

Roughly 1.25 million active subscribers at ~$US15/month is approximately one metric shedload.

Firewall (Aries): Time to be on your best behaviour. That web traffic that passed you by last week turned out to be from a mysterious stranger. Look for an opportunity for some deeper inspection.

Application Server (Leo): Sprurned by lovers? With the eclipse of Sun and the ascent of Betelguese it’s time to open up a little more. Try on something that’s a little more Finnish and fashionable.

Backbone Router (Capricorn): Feeling flabby? Stop putting off that upgrade to the latest firmware. Sure your friends loved it that you gave them your best effort, but they’ll love you more when you’re a regular warren of per hop behaviours.

…it’s a niche that needs filling. Probably with fewer puns.