Another Opinion Among Many

Rose cannot accept the knowledge that her daughter Sharon is dying of a fatal disease. Over the protests of her husband, she flees with her child, intending to take the girl to a faith healer. On the way, she ends up driving through a portal in reality, which takes her to the eerie and deserted town of Silent Hill. Sharon disappears in Silent Hill, and Rose follows what she thinks is her daughter’s silhouette all over town. It’s soon clear the town is not like any place she’s ever been. It’s inhabited by a variety of creatures and a living darkness that descends and literally transforms everything it touches. The human inhabitants - the ones who are left - are trapped and fighting a losing battle against the Darkness. Joined by a cop named Cybil, who has been sent to bring her and Sharon back, Rose searches for her little girl while learning the history of Silent Hill and that Sharon is just a pawn in a larger game. To save her daughter, Rose makes a deal with a demon in the form of a little girl…..

I watched this movie tonight. It was interesting, considering that I’ve not played the video game that it was adapted from. I can’t say that this is the best made movie that I’ve seen, as the beginning left a bit too much for the imagination, in my opinion. It caused a jerkiness of storyline, leaving me wondering how the movie got to the point it was at. i think that I needed a tiny bit more background. As you can read in the synopsis above, I didn’t get that the daughter was dying. I did get that she was going to get her daughter some help, but the turnoff to Silent Hill was totally unexpected and it felt thrust upon the viewer. From that point on, the movie became watchable and was a bit of a suspenseful gore-fest after all.

If you have a bit of patience, and especially if you’ve played the game, you should enjoy this movie. I don’t get how its #1 in the box office, but then again, I watched it didn’t I.

I figured that I should throw one of these up, to be fair and accessible. Here’s the dirt:

This site collects your email address. Why? Its so that I don’t get tons of blog spam comments without some form of moderation. I used to moderate first time comments but I have found that a combination of Akismet and Simple Spam Filter are enough to keep the humans on the blog and the robots away. That’s all I use your email for.  If you can’t be bothered to provide a valid contact email address, then your comment is not important here, either.  My email address is posted on every page, so contact me if you have issues with my site.  If you’re a human (or a really cool alien), I will be happy to converse with you.  I use Simple Spam Filter and Akismet to moderate SPAM. If you get trapped, you’re considered a spammer and you’ll have to deal with it. What did you do? Spam me?

If you get stopped by Simple Spam Filter’s “you’re comment was moderated because it contained “…”, please prove that you are actually a human being and click the button to allow the comment through.  I add keywords that I find in my Akismet que to a “block” list.  Some may seem common, but spammers use them, too.  Just click the button.  If you don’t, I guess that you’re a spammer and you got caught.  I don’t moderate your comments beyond that (which means that YOU moderate your own comment).

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This is my site and I will decide what content is appropriate. Keep your comments on topic, or I will delete them. I do not tolerate sexism, racism, or any form of demeaning other commenters on my site.  Be respectful.  Anything you say can be said in a mature manner.  Do it.  I will respect your opinion.  I expect that you will respect the opinion of any other commenter on the site.    If you persist, I will ban your email address and IP from my site, if necessary. Try not to break your country’s or my country’s laws when you post comments on my website. I don’t appreciate it and neither will my web host, Friendlier.com, whose Terms of Service is here.

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So, have you ever been behind a transport truck doing 85mph on a wet road hovering near the freezing mark? I was (and, perhaps keeping up, but I’ll never really admit it, or will I?). Its a slightly scary thing to witness, since you’re the one behind which will plough into it if it jacknifes. Its not the easiest feeling that you’ll have as you watch the trailer weave back and forth on the road.

So, I am borrowing a book from a co-worker who just can’t get into reading it right now. Its the new John Grisham book, “The Broker“. I must say, that after 31 pages, I’m already hooked. This book is shaping up to be a great read. I’ve noticed that as the books get written, Grisham is taking a tack away from the “lawyer” stuff and going more towards the “international intrigue” direction. Perhaps I’m daft, but that’s what I see.

In his final hours in the Oval Office, the outgoing President grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious Washington power broker who has spent the last six years hidden away in a federal prison. What no one knows is that the President issues the pardon only after receiving enormous pressure from the CIA. It seems Backman, in his power broker heyday, may have obtained secrets that compromise the world’s most sophisticated satellite surveillance system.
Backman is quietly smuggled out of the country in a military cargo plane, given a new name, a new identity, and a new home in Italy. Eventually, after he has settled into his new life, the CIA will leak his whereabouts to the Israelis, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Saudis. Then the CIA will do what it does best: sit back and watch. The question is not whether Backman will survive—there is no chance of that. The question the CIA needs answered is, who will kill him?

The above synopsis was taken from the back cover (or the website). Its still early, but I’m going to recommend this read so far, based on only 31 pages.

Yes, John, I’ve borrowed a book at work…to read at work! And, I picked up the book late in my shift…

What can I say? Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek? Beautiful, sassy, and goofy. Throw in a western theme and a few bank robberies and you’ve got a good recipe for an entertaining movie. I agree with this commenter at the internet movie database:

I have seen this movie today and i must say it cheered my day.It was funny(many laugh out loud moments), the action was very very good for its genre (Western), a good plot to go by and it accomplishes to give you that old Western feeling.Penelope and Salma were magnificent and a perfect on-screen couple.For what it is (Action Western),it deserves an applause…I don’t know why some people didn’t like it, Considering it is PG-13, Genre Action Western Comedy (and not a drama or social movie that goes for an Oscar) it’s top in its genre.It’s got what it promises and even more.It is a very fun movie and unlike what another poster said , it does deserve the money to buy a ticket and go see it.

You know, I’ve been waiting for this partnership to emerge. I’ve always thought that these two would have good chemistry and I was right. For sure, there are two leads in this movie. Steve Zahn plays an excellent supporting role in this movie as Quentin Cook, a scientific lawman that sees the justice in the women’s actions. He’s an excellent foil for Cruz and Hayek to play off of. if you watch, you will laugh out loud, you will see people get shot, and you will see lots of action. This film is a great start for 2006. Go see it. Official Website link for the lazy.

This page is where you’re going to be dazzled by how awesome it can be to have Gentoo with Reiser4 and Nitro-sources from the beginning, instead of that messy “after” stuff.

Stay tuned. I’m still figuring out how to say what I want to. I’m going to leave this part up top until I get enough written that it actually looks like a helpful page.

Starting Point and Preparation

There are some things that one needs to know to do this:

• you can browse the web and your cd with links2
• establishing networking up front is good
• lxnay’s RR4 Live-CD is needed
• RTFM - I can’t stress this enough (you will fail if you don’t)
• Reiser4 is still not considered stable so you have to get it yourself
• You’ll need the Reiser4 patch in your kernel (so get one with it in unless you think that’s too sissy)
• You will encounter roadblocks (normal Gentoo install x2 difficulty)
• You need a weekend
• Beer helps (at least the first part of the box)

I started my install by getting the right system/CD to install from. I headed over to the Gentoo Wiki to get the cd image because lxnay only makes DVDs now and I have no DVD burner. I downloaded the ISO for the 2.30 Live CD, which is the latest version on cd. It does have a fairly recent 2.6 kernel (from around last March) with Reiser4 patches, so you can create the Reiser4 filesystem with it. Otherwise, there’s no point to this whole exercise, right?

For those who have a DVD burner, you can get a more recent incarnation of this neat idea by downloading the Live DVD, which can be had through links from lxnay’s website and the Gentoo Wiki. You’ll have the advantage of being able to install a lot from the DVD itself. I’m never really interested in that, so I won’t be discussing it.

I got the file from within a Microsoft Windows environment, so I grabbed the md5sum and compared it to the one generated from the output of winmd5sum, a free graphical md5sum checker for Windows from Nullriver. Always do an md5sum check on images that you wish to boot from. If they don’t match, download the file again - its been corrupted some way.

I then burned the cd image using Burnatonce, I think. Its been two weeks, and, frankly, I had too many beers at that point to remember which software I used for the job. It may have been Nero (a little hint - with Burnatonce, you’re getting a free cdrdao front end with no bloat. You can burn a CD image with a double-click and two clicks - no coasters) but not likely. I then booted the computer with the CD in the drive and the installer started loading. If you don’t do this much, be sure that you BIOS is set to boot from CD before your hard drive.

Once the installer was finished loading, I had a full Live-CD environment within which to do with whatever I want. No, folks, this is not a pretty graphical installer like Anaconda. With this Live-CD, you’re greeted with a command prompt (which is not a bad thing). If I knew how to make a screenshot from that point, I would, as its got more info there than anyone seems to have reported. There is a short blurb (kind of like the MOTD) explaining that you can use links2 to browse the install instructions from the CD and/or from the internet at http://www.gentoo.org. The instruction to set up networking is stated as well. You’ll be prompted to type “net-setup” at the prompt. I did this, as I got my install fresh off the internet. There’s a dialogue box that pops up showing the device representing your network interface (I only have one, so there is no choice - although I did install a dialup modem afterwords to interface with faxing software later). You would then either choose to get on the net via PPP (if you’re insane enough to install over dialup), DHCP, or manually. I chose manually, as my piece of crap Linksys BEFSR41 router doesn’t broadcast and assign addresses via DHCP, although the server is on.

The rules for the IP setup are generally the same. You’re going to set it up with a private IP range, either 192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x, or 172.x.x.x. I always choose what the router’s default range is. The Linksys uses 192.168.1.x. I understand that dLinks use 192.168.0.x. Whichever. The subnet is 255.255.255.0 (if you have a complex network, then it’ll be something different, but you’ll also be ignoring this part of the instructions if so, right? Don’t forget to add the router’s IP address as the gateway address. Then, if nameservers are asked for, I use my router, as it finds the nameservers from my ISP and uses them. This keeps the setup simple, effective, and easy to troubleshoot.

At this point, I must disclaim that much of what is to follow is a combination of knowledge from the Gentoo Handbook, the Wiki article, and stuff that I’ve picked up along the way.

The next step is to test the success of your network configuration. Typing ifconfig eth0 gives you the status of the first ethernet card (the only one for me). You should see an IP address and some stats for rx and tx transfers. If all’s well, you should, then, be able to go to the internet with links. I do, at this point, and go straight to the Gentoo Handbook to get the most up to date instructions. At this point, using the Handbook is the simplest way to get going. All instructions really remain the same, except for the Reiser4 specific instructions. I’ll concentrate on that part next.

I was reading the Langaletter, as I often do (ok, as I’ve been doing every week for years) and came across this site in the “they loaded the code” section (where you can get your website listed if you link to Fred’s site).  Perhaps John needs could partner with the site owner…

Well, I got a chance to take a vacation day this week, so its today That means 3-day weekend! Woo! So, I’m going to find an inexpensive computer desk and some tractor-feed paper, so I can organize my computer area and get my dot-matrix printer online (yes, dot matrix! I like to read and printing out on an ink jet is waaaaaay too expensive!). That’s the plan, anyhow.

I was putting it off, but I think that I’ll mow the grass one more time, as its a bit shaggy and the kids are slogging around in it. Maybe with a trim, it’ll be the dream play area that they’re looking for. LOL.

My friend, John, has been working on a new website for The Dip to reflect their new renovations and menu. Its a big job and he’s doing it for a reasonable price. If you want any web designing work done, he’s good. Give him a shout.

I finally got the payment from the government that I was waiting on for the last 3 months, so I was able to pay off the power and cable/internet/long distance bill (finally! They were getting antsy!). While I was in the video store paying the bill, I got sucked over to the clearance bin. I couldn’t leave without buying a few DVD’s. There were a few good ones there. I picked up Brokedown Palace for $5.99 and a 2-pack of Die Hard and True Lies for $14.99, so I thought that was a good deal, since I like all three and will watch them again at least twice each before I go to the next mission, so to speak. And, hey. Rogers gave a “free rental” coupon with the 2-pack. How sweet!

That’s enough to chew on for now.