There’s this project of mine. Absolutely ridiculous toy, even by toy project standards. I’m having fun though pretending (poorly) I’m a software developer. I almost installed Github Mylyn connector today.

Then I realised that slowly this project is turning into a yak.

I looked at the Android client I’ve made, and realized that I probably should use some smarter way than flatfiles for storing the data. True, I usually won’t get that much data (home instance’s full list of URLs is ~64kB), but it just seems like a waste to rewrite two full files every time. SQLite it is then, after all my data structure already has unique keys.

But wait, it actually makes no sense to download all of that data in json format every time, does it? It’d make sense to add proper RESTful interface, at least for the part whose data I’m interested in.

But hold on, there’s a new version of bottle.py. I’ll sure as hell use it, last time it saved me some time recalling how did that thing work.

Right, how do I update a Python package this time of year…?

….oooh, python3, should I use it?

Wait.

You, yak. Out!

Drats, it’s stuck in the doorframe. I’ll start shaving, but hopefully I’ll concentrate on the parts that are actually funny.

Wicklow, road-side parking. Some rustling, bushes part, a woman steps out. Sher looks around, turns back, and shouts:

“Toby?”

Instant flashback. And I can’t get rid of the song now.

(via invaluable humour source, Kevin Lyda and Automaciej)

• Apple: The yaks are mostly bald and are arranged exactly as Steve Jobs like them. You can only shave them with an expensive but very beautiful razor.

• RedHat: The yaks are very furry and don’t always get along. Shaving certain yaks can cause others to grow fur back.

• Debian: There are thousands of furry, older yaks. They all generally get along. Still the same issue as RedHat - shaving certain yaks causes many others to grow fur.

• FreeBSD: The yaks are both very furry and very old. Shaving pretty much any yak will cause other yaks to grow fur. Including the one you’re shaving. Sometimes they’ll kick you.

• OpenBSD: The yaks are very furry, very old and very paranoid. They will randomly grow fur. They will regularly kick you.

• Windows: The yaks appear bald but the moment you do something they will all sprout fur. You have to be licensed to shave them. If you use a razor from an untrusted source it’s possible other yaks will grow annoying fur. Or possibly you.

• Solaris: The yaks take pride in being direct descendants of the first real YAK(tm). You can’t shave them yourself, but you can send a Yak Support Request to their owner. After a while you decide to invite the Debian yaks.

Today was the second time we’ve watched Tron:Legacy - it’s really really cool.

If you haven’t seen original Tron, you are probably not going to like this one. Whatever for? Shiny visuals are shiny, but that’s about it.

If you have seen the original movie, if you carry around a set of sentiments related to that, then most likely you’ll end up in one of those two groups:

1. People that resonated well with the movie, accepted it as it was and had a lot of fun, smiling to the little bits and pieces, bows and takes at the original. People simply extending their sentiments to new arrival, as they deemed it quite good, and matching.
2. People that hate Tron:Legacy. Why? Because the first part was SO MUCH BETTER! And they had 28 years to come up with better plot! The cheesy dialogue lines! Identity discs DO NOT WORK THIS WAY! Why are they eating food?! (insert more angry fanboy rant…)

As you can probably guess, I’m from the former group. I loved the visuals, and my expectations with regard to the story and its presentation were matched very precisely. I don’t really care about the plot in this movie; the first one had plot ludicrous enough, why on earth would I expect anything profound and sophisticated?

From the “random factoids and answers to nitpickers” bucket:

• Why, do you ask, were programs spending their time in the bar? Well, simple thing: the hardware they are running on sits idle most of the time. What would any other anthropomorphized program do? Of course, go to the pub!
• I’ve noticed Elevator Action running on one of the Flynn’s Arcade machines. What about you?
• Every time Kevin refers to zen foo shmoo, I get an instant flashback to this movie.
• ISOs - as the name suggests, they’re just images of CDs and DVDs. Poor old Flynn was never that good at security; someone hacked his precious basement box, and uploaded a lot of warez. Given the Dude was high most of the time, when he spotted the files, he saw… a sign!

Oh, and don’t bother with 3D version. You’ll gain nothing, and glasses make shiny visuals darker and dull.

I’ve rewatched Scott Pilgrim - and I must say, that I’ve noticed just now how well this movie was made.

Let’s put poor acting, lack of plot and gratuitous violence aside¹. Yes, we can also strip the culture references and winks and nudges. This is a well made movie, in terms of editing and shots. The flow of action is fluent², and the added visual cues play nicely with story-telling. And the fourth wall can be punctured at will, because the whole thing isn’t serious.

I’d really like to see this approach applied to some other kind of movies.

¹ I’m a person who likes games, yet I can say this. But that’s perhaps a topic for whole entry here…

² even if a bit MTVish :)