Another Pulpmovies update, this time for Shed which is an eight minute horror film. The film sails dangerously close to being torture porn, but saves itself by providing a backstory that pushes you to re-evaluate the characters, and your own assumptions.
Shed is quite painful to watch on occasion but it is also a very powerful film that seeks (successfully) to be a thought provoking, tense short film with horrific ethical and moral overtones.
You can read the full review of the film over here.
Those were angry clouds I drove through to get home tonight.
I have, over the past few months, noticed a bit of an oddity in my IT-related behaviour (I already knew about the rest of my behaviour). I work as an IBM i developer and, over the years, I have jumped on an started using pretty much every graphical tool I can find. Then I go home, boot up my Linux powered laptop, and spend half my evening in the terminal.
So why the disconnect?
I think it comes down to the fact that modernisation has become a hot topic within the IBM i community over the past few years, and it’s a bandwagon that many people jump into without pausing to define what they mean by ‘modern’. The result is that a great deal of emphasis is placed on the application front end with nowhere near enough thought being given to what overheads these tools incur.
Obviously, graphical tools have many advantages. A well designed GUI is intuitive, easy to use and can put a great deal of information onto a screen in an easily digestible form. There is, however, a performance overhead to be taken into account – both in terms of network traffic and the load on the local user’s CPU. For many applications, especially applications aimed at the business end-user, this performance cost is well worth paying.
For the technical user, though, it’s not quite so clear cut.
Once you know your way around an operating system, and the text-based tools that come with it, it is often the case that the command line is a quicker and more effective method of completing a task. In these cases, the GUI approach gets in the way of achieving stuff and becomes a source of noisy frustration (as the unfortunates who share an office with me can attest).
GUI based applications do have their uses, of course, and there are plenty of tasks for which a graphical approach is the most appropriate. But sometimes it isn’t.
The challenge, therefore, when faced with a shiny new tool is to ask yourself this: How will this tool make my life easier?
It was in the middle of last year that I implemented what I rather ambitiously referred to as a wallpaper switcher for Gnome 2. What Macsen’s Transitioning Background does is generate an XML file based on the images in a selected folder and then let the Gnome background switcher handle the rest.
With the switch to Gnome 3 this functionality is no longer supported. At least, not as far as I can tell.
I do still like the idea of using an XML file to control the background and have been toying with the idea of knocking together myself. As a first step towards this, I have tidied up some of the code.
The latest version of the source can be found on GitHub. The generated XML can be used to power a transitioning background in Gnome 2 and – if I ever find the time – I will start knocking together something that will work under Gnome 3.
I have often said that I don’t really see the point of the tablet form factor. Android tablets and iPads alike strike me as being devices that are a collection of compromises – less portable than a phone and less powerful that a laptop – and, as such, not particularly useful. However, here’s one that might make me change my mind.
According to El Reg, Inspiration Works are preparing to unleash a tablet specifically targeted towards kids.
The Kurio is an Android-based slate, spruced up with a kid-friendly UI and behind-the-scenes parental controls. While adults can still use the Kurio as a fully-fledged fondleslab, the tablet is clearly aimed at children and it’s the security measures that really matter here.
It’s due to hit shelves in July and there are three models on the way. I will be keeping an eye on this one.
But even if some people are offended, offence is not a sufficient reason for certain artistic and satirical forms of expression to be prohibited. A university should hold no idea sacred and be open to the critiquing of all ideas and ideologies.
- The London School of Economics Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society, as quoted by New Humanist, responding to demands by the LSE student union that they remove a Jesus & Mo cartoon from their Facebook page.
I was going to post some expanded thoughts on this, but it turns out that the National Secular Society has said it so much better: LSE Students Union “being manipulated by determined activists” over Mohammed cartoon
Now is probably a good time to mention that a demonstration in defence of free expression, prompted by the student controversies and organised One Law For All, is set to take place in London on 11 February.
Linux distributions already make it easy to try them out without comitting yourself beyond your comfort zone. Most will guide you through partitioning your disk so that you don’t lose what is already installed, and may provide live media which allow you to boot from a CD, DVD or USB stick and try out the distro without any risk whatsoever.
Canonical, the folks behind Ubuntu, have now made it even easier to try out their distro with a virtual desktop online (which I found via +rich scadding).
While Unity is not for me (Gnome Shell FTW) I do think that this is a great idea, and one that has been very well implemented.
It’s been a long weekend over which we have enjoyed one of the smellier parts of parenting, and one of those parts that no-one reeally talks about. But we’ve made it and I am now heading to work where I can enjoy the comparative peace of only having to deal with three simultaneous disasters.
So here’s a video tribute to the greatest drug ever discovered. I have the feeling that I may be getting through quite a lot of this today.
According to The Pin-Up Files, Florida based photographer and artist, Al Abbazia, creates pin-ups with a unique twist.
I have always been in love with art. I traded in my charcoal and brushes for a camera and computer five years ago and haven’t looked back.
Here’s looking forward to the summer.
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