Fri, 29 Sep 2006
Clerks 2 - Short Review
I'm a big Kevin Smith fan and Clerks 2 more than met my
expectations. Great dialogue, some top-notch one liners, inside jokes (for
both comic and View Askew fans) and more story than he's usually given
credit for. A couple of things stood out in a bad way though, the choice
of music seemed very slapdash, some of it really hit but a lot of it
seemed to detract from the scenes. I was also a little surprised by
the big dance number. Although watching Rosario Dawson get her grove on
wasn't exactly hard to sit through.
Score: 7/10 if you've seen Clerks, 5/10 if not - the less than dynamic duo of Randall and Dante make a return, leave a mark and end on a high. Well written and great fun.
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Posted: 2006/09/29 08:42 | /movies | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Fight or Flee: TO THS HILLS!
When you meet someone you click with things are good. As things start
to progress you learn about each other, become more involved in each
others life and you discover what makes you both tick. In some cases
this is a wonderful thing and can bring you closer, in other cases this
is the last exit ramp off the road that leads to the boiling of cute
bunnies (no one ever boiled an ugly bunny - there's no point).
What I recently discovered (I'm not very quick when it comes to things like this - I have a domain name with the word Unix in it so no one should be surprised with this confession) is that sometimes you discover something else, that the person, no matter how much you like them, isn't going to work out and that if you keep getting closer they will be able to seriously rip you apart. And that they will because they have a streak they may not even consciously realise. This leaves you with a couple of options, either go along for the ride and then engage in some mutually assumed destruction or get the hell out, go to the cinema a lot and post a lot of short reviews on your sadly named blog ;)
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Posted: 2006/09/29 08:40 | /nottech | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Children of Men - Short Review
I ended my sudden bout of cinema going with Children of Men, a very
British Sci-fi films about a world that has no children. No screaming on
buses, running riot in restaurants or being herded along the street in
an annoying and impossible to pass snake of tiny, whiny voices. But the
film paints it as more of a bad thing.
Includes Spoilers: As you'd expect this changes during the course of the film and it turns in to a woman (and unborn baby) hunt through a Britain that's known terrorism, treats immigrants a scant few steps above how the Nazis treated Jewish people and has some freedom fighters / terrorists that don't know where their line is anymore.
The story's good, the cast all turn in solid performances (including a great appearance by Michael Caine) and the film is incredibly well shot. It feels gritty and I really enjoyed watching it, but I didn't come away with much once I got away from the slick visuals and editing. I was also disappointed with the end, it was tied up a little too neatly and wasted a chance to screw with peoples heads.
Score: 6/10. A good 90(ish) minutes but I won't be buying it on DVD.
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Posted: 2006/09/29 08:24 | /movies | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
ps Problems
ps is an incredibly flexible command but it also has a
checkered maintenance history in the Linux world. Yesterday I needed to
output just the username, the command and any arguments passed to it. And
it was hell. After reading through the man page a couple of times I settled
on the following: ps -e -o user,args. But this doesn't
work.
It shows the command and the full arguments but it trunks the username
at 8 characters (which doesn't help with things like exim on Debian - which
has a username of Debian-exim). I then tried switching the order around to
see what happens, and was surprised when ps decided to
truncate the command and argument details at a seemingly arbitrary (but
consistant) point. GAH!
In the end I was pointed at a more correct, but ugly and not obvious
from the man page, answer; supply a width to the arguments. So to show
multiple fields in ps and not have one of them truncated you need a command
like this: ps -e -o user:20,args. And a smart friend like
Paul.
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Posted: 2006/09/29 08:03 | /tools/commandline | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Copyright © 2000-2005 Dean Wilson
