Category: Entertainment / Arts
The Lives of Others
July 4th, 2011, 18 Comments
It’s not very often that I watch a movie anymore. It’s been a few years since I’ve actually purchased one (normally I see them from Netflix). But yesterday I saw one that may change that. The Lives of Others is an incredible film set in the former East Germany (GDR/DDR) mostly in 1984. The authenticity [...]
Music Powerful and Fun
June 18th, 2011, 6 Comments
Sometimes there’s nothing quite so heartwarming as hearing a 4-year-old that doesn’t think anybody is listening. When Jacob is all alone in his room, sometimes he will sing. Maybe it’s a song he knows, or fragments of a song he knows. Or maybe it’s something he just made up on the fly. It might be [...]
Sing to Me, Muse
January 11th, 2010, 8 Comments
(a review of Homer’s Iliad) Here, therefore, huge and mighty warrior though you be, here shall you die. – Homer (The Iliad) And with that formidable quote, I begin my review of The Iliad. I shall not exhaust you with a rehashing of the plot; that you can find on Wikipedia. Nor shall I be [...]
My Reading List for 2010
December 31st, 2009, 15 Comments
I can hear the question now: “What kind of guy puts The Iliad and War and Peace on a list of things to read for fun?” Well, me. I think that reading things by authors I’ve never read before, people that take positions I haven’t heard of before or don’t agree with, or works that [...]
Review: The Happiest Days of Our Lives (by Wil Wheaton)
December 29th, 2009, No Comments
I started to write this review last night, and went looking for Wil Wheaton’s blog, where many of the stories came from, so I can link to it from my review. It was getting late, I was tired, and so I was a bit disoriented for a few seconds when I saw my own words [...]
MoinMoin as a Personal Wiki, Zen To Done, And A Bit of Ikiwiki
September 30th, 2009, 9 Comments
Since I last evaluated and complained about wikis last year, I’ve been using moinmoin for two sites: a public one and a personal one. The personal site has notes on various projects, and my task lists. I’ve been starting out with the Zen To Done (ebook, PDF, paper) idea. It sounds great, by the way; [...]
How To Record High-Definition MythTV Files to DVD or Blu-Ray
September 27th, 2009, 4 Comments
I’ve long had a problem. Back on January 20, I took the day off work to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama. I saved the HD video recordings MythTV made of the day (off the ATSC broadcast), intending to eventually save them somehow. I hadn’t quite figured out how until recently, so there they sat: [...]
Resurrecting Old VHS Videos (and Panasonic DMR-EZ38VK Review)
August 26th, 2009, No Comments
I have a problem that I’m sure is pretty common. My parents used to rent a VHS camcorder from time to time. Not only that, but various school plays, musicals, etc. are on VHS tapes. As a result, they and I have a library of family memories on VHS. And it appears those tapes go [...]
An Update on the Music Player Quest
July 6th, 2009, 3 Comments
I’ve written a few times (parts 1, 2, 3) about my annoyance at music players. I’d come down to two finalists to consider: Rhythmbox and Banshee. I’ve used both for awhile now, and as of today, am also trying Songbird (after finally managing to make it run; see part 3 above). In addition to my [...]
Songbird: How To Make Great Software Unpopular
July 6th, 2009, 9 Comments
As part of my ongoing quest for working media players, I’ve more than once tried Songbird. But it never wanted to work in Linux, always crashing before it even fired up the GUI with errors like this: (songbird-bin:17595): libgnomevfs-WARNING **: Cannot load module `/usr/lib/gnome-vfs-2.0/modules/libmapping.so’ (/usr/lib/gnome-vfs-2.0/modules/libmapping.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory) [...]
