Older blog entries for AlanHorkan (starting at number 67)

6 Aug 2004 (updated 6 Aug 2004 at 17:54 UTC) »
Politics

People look at me funny when I suggest it but I would love to have Compulsory Turnout for elections as they have in Australia as Jeff has mentioned. Ever since the Irish Government reran a Referendum less than a year after failing to get the result they wanted because of low turn out among their supporters I have firmly believed that low turnout should never again be used as an excuse. I believe in the protest vote (or spoiled vote) as form of polical expression, in fact Zig and Zag and Dustin the Turkey Vulture have done very well in past Irish elections. I do not however accept not voting at all as a form of expression, it is described best by the Latin phrase

Qui tacet consentit
which means "He who is silent, agrees". For a Democratic state to function properly taxes must be paid, and I do not think political awareness is any less important. The price of civilisation is reponsability.
There was a brilliant cartoon ad. campaign on British Television during the past few years, where one character keeps cutting off the other. The characater complains about the weather, the price of alcohol and so on but every time his friend cuts him off. The slogon was
If you dont do politics, theres not much you do do

Inkscape and OpenClipart.org

The Inkscape developers really don't like the new GTK File Chooser and have been working through various ideas, expect their version to have a Thumbnail Preview, a Text Box to enter the location (accessing a hidden box with Ctrl+L is not good enough). There will also probably be a control that allows you to collapse the Preview and or the Shortcuts which I hope is something that will be incorporated back upstream in the GTK File Chooser and having the Preview collapsed by default (but still available) for applications that do not need it.
I skim another review of Inkscape in this months Linux Format Magazine (published in the UK). They reviewed a selection of vector graphics applications, Inkscape got 8/10, as did OpenOffice.org Draw. Sodipodi got 7/10. Inkscape might be able to improve that increase that result to 9/10 if there were binaries with Gnome-Print (for PDF) support enabled (needs testing) but the article very generously points out that Scribus can be used to generate high quality PDF from Inkscape SVG Documents.
OpenClipart.org aims to be to clipart what Wikipedia is to encyclopedias. A while back I submitted over 100 SVG Gradients and I am now submitting 95 SVG Patterns (30 of which are unique patterns, the others are colour variations but in some cases the colour changes make a big difference bringing out differnt elements of the designs and forming patterns of their own). I am proud that my work is forming a significant part of OpenClipart.org which already has over 700 files after just a few months but I will be even more proud when it becomes a tiny almost insignificant proportion of a much larger collection. I don't expect to have time to indulge these artistic and design interests again anytime soon, so many other things to do.

Not Gnome

I really should make an effort to comment about Gnome more often.

Google bombing is even easier than I thought. I wonder if John Fleck will come to regret being associated with the words sufficiently obscure.

Does anyone else find it worrying when developers are encouraging people to fork their project?
For future reference quotes from developer Sven Neuman:

GIMP is not meant to be Photoshop
...
If however you want to make GIMP a duplicate of Photoshop, then please fork it

 

Abiword

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The Abiword Developers Rule! Abiword Rocks. Ryan Pavlik just provided another example of how they have earned so much respect.

The Thunderbirds have gone live action but according to the Drudge Report Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame have gone for some old style super marionation in a film called Team America.

I have the strange feeling some of my diary posts have gone missing. I distinctly recall mentioning how pleased I was when Sven Neuman recently added SVG Gradient Support to the Gimp. This is great for Inkscape and for OpenClipart.org and great for me because now I can keep all my gradients in one standardised file format. Maybe I never hit Post and only hit Preview? It would be much more reliable if the last Preview was stored and that Post just made it public.

With a bit of tweaking I should also be able to use SVG Patterns with the GIMP since Dave Neary used GDKPixbuf to allow the Gimp to use standard file formats as Patterns and there happens to be an SVG backend to GDKPixbuf powered by librsvg.

3 Aug 2004 (updated 3 Aug 2004 at 18:33 UTC) »
Usability

Started reading a chunk of that Usability book I bought at bargain basement prices a while back called Web Usability and Navigation by Merlyn Holmes. It doesn't inspire confidence when someone claiming to be an expert in usability fails to spell the word usable correctly but hopefully I'll still be able to learn something from the book. In the Acknowledgements section, usable mispelt as useable and it is not a matter of style because it is already correctly spelt as usable several time in the same paragraph. She also uses a phrase point of origination rather than point of origin but I'm willing to put that down as either an Americanizatoin or her writing style.
If I ever get to the point where I consider myself an expert in Usability I will definately have written the word often enough to know how to always spell it correctly. That said I'm sure there are few glaring spelling mistakes in this journal, so feel free to correct me.

Overlooked Films

This list was pointed out on Planet Gnome by Christopher Blizzard. I can undestand why many of the films were overlooked, I do not think I have not seen any of them in the cinema but I have seen many of them on television.
Shakespearean adaptations like Richard III and Titus are worthwhile but painfully long. I've seen Titus once and Richard III twice already and have a signed copy of the screenplay by Ian Mc Kellen (you might remember him from such films as Lord of the Rings, and X-men) and although they were good they are not a films I'm likely to watch again.
Searching for Bobby Fischer is about a Chess prodigy, the mention of chess is enough to dissuade most people from watching it. Although I sometimes like to play chess I forget why I watched this, there is a possibility I mistook it for Little Mant Tate and kept watching but more likely I just watched it because it happened to be on. Ben Kingsley is in it too which is always a good sign. Sneakers is also on the list and also has Ben Kingsley playing the villian. Generally by virtue of having Ben Kingsley in it a film is almost prevented from being terrible, but then I have not seen Thunderbirds yet although I have read he is the best thing in it. The exact opposite can be said of movies featuring John Trovolta, the one talent the man has is picking terrible films. The major exception to the John Travolta rule is Pulp Fiction but he has admitted he didn't like the script and almost didn't do it. Saturday Night Fever was not terrible but I dont care for it and do not even mention Grease to me.
I loathe musicals - with a few rare exceptions - but I think of Cannibal the Musical as a comedy. I immediately noticed that it sounded a little bit like SouthPark and when the first break came up the name seemed familar and I stuck with it.
Beautiful Girls is one of films on the list that I really enjoyed, I've seen at least twice and will likely watch it again. It has Natalie Portman in it. Uma Thurman is also in it but unfortunately so too is Rosie O'Donnell.
Strange Days is a good piece of science fiction. Bound is a bit of guilty pleasure, beyond the titillation there is actually a story though. Living in Oblivion was great but definately small and obscure. If I recall correctly it was in black and white too. There is something annoying about movies about movies, actors love to pretend to be an actor being an actor
I'm a little surprised to see Glengarry Glen Ross on the list, if I ever had any doubts that movie confirms that I never want to be a salesman or telemarketer. I thought Glengarry Glen Ross was recognised as a classic, particularly Jack Lemmons performance, but then maybe it is just because of the constant reminders from the Simpsons and poor old Gil. As with many adaptations of plays it does suffer from the monotoney of the same backdrop the whole way through but in some ways that only serves to draw more attention to the actors.
I'm not in the least bit surprised that Mystery Men is on the list, Ben Stiller is just not that funny. The movie is not all that bad and appreciate the comic book references but it deserves to be overlooked at least until you have seen a lot of other movies on the list first.

I want to be a film critic!

1 Aug 2004 (updated 1 Aug 2004 at 23:59 UTC) »
Preparing for Emergencies not to be confused with Preparing for Emergencies.


That catchy tune Lets get it started by the Black Eyed Peas was originally called Lets get retarded. Political Correctness strikes again.

Anonymous Coward (me) got a story posted on Slashdot.org today, which is not something I've ever done before.

30 Jul 2004 (updated 30 Aug 2004 at 11:51 UTC) »
Thursday

After much waiting finally it has been released in Ireland, you'd think more effort would be made for a synchronous release considering much of it was filmed in Ireland. King Arthur was missing something, depth, blood and gore, a dash of humour, an epic quality, or about an hour of additional footage and plot perhaps? I cannot help wondering how much the director sacrificed to please the producers and get the PG-13 rating needed to maximise American audiences. It has been described as 'not as good as Gladiator' because of screenwriter David Franzoni shared by both films but I think that is a fair description and useful useful way to know if this film might be for you. From all the posters feature a computer enanched Keira Knightley you might think the film was about Guinevere but a different review warned that she is not in the movie as much as you might expect. Despite the reviews I was determined to enjoy the film and I did, laughing at some of the unintentionally funny bits but generally enjoying the battle scenes. Pride comes before a fall, and this film really started off looking for trouble. Although the introduction served to make it clear that this was not the Legend of King Arthur we know, it was a really bad idead to claim to be true to history in a Jerry Bruckheimer. Narration too was a bad sign as it so often added on as an afterthought in attempt to smooth and fix parts of the film. The opening sequence where young Lancelot was conscripted was laughable. The historically out of place trebuchet (french catapults developed centuries later) were amusing but not something I'd hold against the movie if it had not made foolish claims about historical accuracy. Neither the beards nor the shaven heads struck me as particularly Roman, the distinctive costume and look of each Knight was no substitute for better characterisation. The accents were all over the place but I suppose the filmakers would claim that was intentional. Christianity - always an easy target - got a bit of a bashing, and I was dissappointed that King Arthurs Christian beliefs didn't provide a better contrast to the dangerous religous extremism atlhough there was some effort to talk up his faith and belief in freedom for all.
I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the beautiful Ms. Knightley was a large part of why I wanted to watch this film in the first place, it being filmed in Ireland was a minor bonus. I was interested to note the dialog was different from the trailer where Guinevere offers to protect Lancelot from being touched, instead she says "dont worry I wont let them rape you". Seeing Keira Knightley in battle was awesome, elegant yet savage. The 'wolf pack' references she made in interviews were entirely appropriate as she and her maidens in arms viciously took down a Saxon invader. When I say I'd like to have seen more of Keira Knightly in the film the silly leather bondage costume was not what I meant. The reviewer in the Irish Times commented that the "bikini top must have pinched something rotten". The same review also made me laugh when it caught on an idea I'd been thinking during the film: the film managed "the not inconsiderable feat fo making the actress who play hers (Guinevere), Keira Knighly, seem even paler and thinner than usual."
There was something very impressive about Stellan Skarsgard, as the Saxon leader who usually gets geekier roles like the character he played in Ronin with Robert De Niro. Clive Owen was alright, he gave a fairly straightforward performance but because of the various little things wrong with the film I couldn't quite get beyond the actors and buy into the characters and really care about them.
I wanted to like King Arthur more but it was seriously flawed in various ways and although I liked it quite a lot I could only give it an adequate 3/5. (In retrospect I was being overly generous and it only really deserves 2/5.)

Friday

Signed up for a Gmail account, thanks Colm.
Off to the Cinema again, not sure if I'll see King Arthur again or see Garfield instead for the laugh (and for Jennifer Love Hewitt).
Oh no! That was my initial reaction to seeing the Garfield trailer for the first time. The Computer Generated version of the lasagne loving fat cat looked bizarre. Gradually I started to accept this strange puppetry and was willing to suspend my disbelief and wanted to see the movie.

Saw Garfield, enjoyable fluff (pun intended).
When I was younger I borrowed the books and read hundreds of the Garfield books, I appreciated the cynicism even then and I think for me Odie represented the annoying younger brother. wonder know if this was This movie was exactly how I felt it should be, it is a straight forward fun childrens movie with a few jokes thrown in for the adults. The children laughing and baby gurgling in the background added to the atmosphere. Bill Murray does the business providing the voice of Garfield, I'm glad they didn't try and do it without him. The film moves along at a good pace, the actor playing Jon was likeable and Liz the Vet and love interest played by Jennifer Love Hewitt was definately lovely ;) and it represents the character of Garfield in a fairly satifying way.
If you have seen Shrek 2 already then give Garfield a chance.

Coincidentally I own a ginger cat called Rusty with a white belly and an appetite for Spaghetti Bolognese. Although unfortunately he is getting old, has kidney problems, and has lost a lot of weight and the vet doesn't think he'll last another winter if event that long. :( He is still smiting the occassional small animal and springs to life whenever scraps of meat are to be had so I'm hoping he will stay with us for a while longer.

The Daystar, it burns me!

In case all this Cinema going makes it seems like I'm a heliophobiac geek that rarely gets any exercise (which is not too far from the truth but) the journey to the cinema was a half hour cycle, slighly uphill, part of which was along the coast road which provided pleasant sunshine, a nice sea breeze and a great view.

28 Jul 2004 (updated 13 Aug 2005 at 16:26 UTC) »
Saturday Saw Shrek 2 again. Classic.

Sunday, Monday

Spent some awkward time with my ex-girlfriend who paid me a surprise visit. Learnt about James Joyce and saw Spider-man 2 again.

Tuesday

Gone Me. I was very skeptical of this at first, I still am skeptical but in theory it would be great to have web browser so well engineered that different backends could easily be swapped in. There is always a trade off though. Best case scenario the trade off is just developer time and energy but in the worst case the backend could not be cleanly seperated out and there would performance penalties and massive maintainance overheads.
It took some getting used to but I like the button order in Gnome 2 and it makes a lot of sense to me. Again I'd like if we could have it both ways, but quickly patching the source is a long way from have a clean maintainable solution.
Sometimes it helps to state the obvious. The Gnome desktop is not GTK. GTK is at the core of Gnome and is written in C. Gnome is not and should not be written only in C. Gnome is not a toolkit, it is a desktop platform and should be making it easier to develop applications. I am surprised that Python has not been made a part of Gnome already. If anything Gnome should be using more languages and tools that allow Rapid Application Developement (RAD) because high level languages mean more developers. Developers! Developers! Developers!. The underlying purpose of the recent discussions about Java and Mono was the need for Gnome to make use of higher level langauges and how best to go about it. New technologies and better standardisation will make the choice of tools increasingly irrelevant and Gnome and KDE will be able to concentrate on serving differernt user bases instead of different developers and toolkits.

Opinion

Gnome is not an acronym. Some say it stands for GNU Network Object Model Enviroment which is terribly contrived and was cleary retrofitted to fit the word gnome. If it ever even made sense to begin with, it does not anymore. How GNU is Gnome really? I'm sure sure Richard Stallman (another creator of abhorrant acronyms) has some interesting opinions on that one. Bonobo was to fulfill the promise of the Network Object Model but that has not happened. When source code is freely available and developers are willing to cooperate it is more practical and effective to share functionality at the library level (some KDE developers cleverly reuse these same libraries and make higher level KPart Object from them). For most cases Bobono is overkill, embedding an application inside another application does not often produce a particularly friendly user interface. In most cases what is needed is a preview and a some sort of a callback so that the embedded object can still be edited and the preview be updated automatically. (A good example of this is the all that is abigimp plugin).
Words like scuba and radar have long since dropped the convoluted explanations for their acronyms and it is time for Gnome to drop its contrived acronym too.
Acronyms are not clever, they are not cute, it does nothing but add another complication so lets keep it simple, please call it Gnome, okay?

Saturday Saw Shrek 2 again, enjoyed it just as much.

Sunday My brother had rented the Hulk and I watched it again before he returned it. Brilliant Cinematography, but there was something lacking about the action. The killer poodle was a really bad idea.

21 Jul 2004 (updated 23 Jul 2004 at 14:16 UTC) »

Having problems connecting to Advogato quite often - no idea why - so I've decided to write my journal entries as email and add them later so the dates may be wildly off from now on.

Tuesday

I have been writing more Scheme again, continuing the move of all the Pattern scripts to not only work on the current image but to also work with the current selection if there is one.
Some of the scripts have almost been completely rewritten. I have added, I have removed, I have restructured, I have commented extensively (hopefully it will be useful to people trying to learn Scheme), I have changed the indentation to use four spaces, I have renamed all the variable-names to look like how they should in Scheme but I have shamelessly ignored the usual scheme convention and instead of jamming all the parenthesis together ))))) I have spaced them out so I can visually check they match without needing a fancy editing program.

I cannot help wondering at what point code ceases to be covered by the GPL?
How much use is fair use? How much must you rewrite before you can reasonably call the work your own?

Projects and study to do for University, a little Flash and a lot of Database work.

Wednesday

Created a project page for OpenClipart.org on freshmeat

18 Jul 2004 (updated 25 Jul 2004 at 19:39 UTC) »

Started a new irregular job yesterday and today, which involves going to cinemas and checking that all the onscreen advertising, trailers, and banners posters are in order. I also have to try and take note of any audience reactions. Difficult to get that damned "loving it" jingle out of my head. Watching trailers is enjoyable, there are plenty of different trailers to see and sometimes there are subtle variations. Writing in the dark can be surprisingly difficult. After having had an odd job working a Snooker Hall it is great to have another job that I can really enjoy doing even if it will only be once every few weeks.

Shrek 2 was laugh out loud hilarious. Some of the review thought the constant movie references were a bit much but I enjoyed them and they provided a different level you could enjoy the movie on. The Mission Impossible bit, and the Gingerbread Giant were great too. Jonathan Ross, BBC movie critic and comedian was deeply disturbing as the Ugly Sister, barkeep of the Poison Apple Tavern. (Apparently it was revoiced for the UK and Americans get to hear Larry King instead).
There was a nice sequence in the middle of the closing credits where Donkey is reunited with the Dragon, so if you have not already seen Shrek 2 be sure to wait long enough at the end to see it.

Spider-man 2 opened with the painted Comic Book Art of Alex Ross, which recapped the previous film and with style. Although I had been dissapointed because of the hype and obligatory exposition of the first Spider-man film file that was quickly forgotten and I really enjoyed this film. Bruce Campbell, as the usher, the true villian of Spider-man 2, yay! It was an interesting decision to have Spider-man unmasked quite so much but I think they got away with it. I expected that Peter Parker was admitting going to admit to Aunt May that he was spider-man but I guess they are saving that for the sequels.
JK Simmons got a much bigger chance to bark as J. Jonah Jameson editor of the Daily Bugle, but is a litte disturbing having seen him for so long as Neo-Nazi Schillinger in HBO television prison drama OZ.
Kirsten Dunst is beautiful but I dont understand how Spider-man manages to make her look so awful, bad clothes, lifeless hair. Tobey Maguire seems to have a scar on his cheek that is shaped like an S turned on its side. Can you tell I watched it more than once?!
The ending sets things up for the Spider-Man 3:Return of the Green Goblin but I hope that Sam Raimi will resist the temptation to bring him back so soon. The appearance of Dr Conners as Peters lecturer suggests we might get to see the Lizard instead, although I'm hoping the franchise will last long enough for us to get to see spider-mans arch-nemeisis Venom.

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