The results of the best british sitcom according to viewers and voters of the BBC, have left me - and a whole lot of other people - baffled. Sure, Fawlty Towers was a huge favorite but not an assured win. Other contestants were at least equally strong, which led 2 of them to the top two places. "Only Fools And Horses" was voted best british comedy ever and "Blackadder" got second place. But there can be no justice in the fact that "Vicar Of Dibley" took third place, leaving Fawlty Towers stranded on fifth. "Only Fools And Horses" had strong writers and actors, appealed to a lot of people and had varied themes. And "Blackadder" has the brilliant Rowan Atkinson at it's best. Those two deserve a high place. Still think that "Fawlty Towers" should've taken the other spot in the top 3. Even if that kind of humour is not for all sorts of tastes, at least it's funnier than a series about a female vicar. Sorry, but that's just a lame joke. Fawlty was and is brilliant, influenced a lot of sitcoms and had repeated re-runs during the last 25 years. Don't think that'll be happing with the less funnier half of French & Saunders. Jennifer Saunders' is much more influential with the sometimes hilarious "Ab Fab".

Editorial - 30 March 2004

Saw some old collegues yesterday-evening on a conference about online enterpreneurship. It was not only nice to see some of them again, but also to hear that some of the server-problems they were having over there finally seem to be located in the database-connections. Something which was always assumed (at least we assumed it had something to do with opening and closing the conns), but never confirmed by outside consultants. Glad to have been at least a bit right.
Song of the week : "Megalomaniac" Incubus
Oldie of the week : "Layla (unplugged)" Eric Clapton
Last seen movie : "The Crow 3 : Salvation" : comments are being written.
"Good Neighbour Sam" : comments are being written.
Doing this week : I'm enjoying the sun as much as I can.

Editorial - 23 March 2004

I'm at week five at my new job and it's been busy, renewing and even quite revigorating thanks to the trips, the new people and experiences. Change can be good. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.
Song of the week : "Shit On The City" Red Zebra
Oldie of the week : "Radio" Ozark Henry
Last seen movie : "Big Momma's House" : What better way to hold a stake-out then by having a skinny black man, impersonate an obese black elderly woman ? Funny idea from an actor who's usually only funny as a duo. For once here, I laughed a few times very loudly and looking back I liked the movie. But it's not worth a purchase as it's a one time viewing movie at best.
Doing this week : My grandfather just had another birthday so we'll be having a party for him friday.

Editorial - 16 March 2004

The domainswitch is done. I moved two dotnet's just to see how fast it would go, keeping the dotcom for the final stage. Didn't wanna wait to long with that one. Ran into some problems with the secundary dns-server who - at first - didn't seem to reoute the site to the new server. Bypassing the much further away primary dns-server I kept getting directed to the old webserver. Finally after some tweaking, someone agreed to push the update button a little earlier and the rerouting was completed. Ah well, the final straws of a big corporate hosting plan backed up by different companies ... From now on it's all hosted by dreamhost - graciously donated by Vendetta.
Song of the week : -----
Oldie of the week : -----
Last seen movie : "Something's Gotta Give" : hilarious, well acted, romantic drama-comedy about an ageing record-producer (Jack Nicholson) and his latest "girl of the week" half his age (Amanda Peet) and their weekend away from home. When the mother (Diane Keaton) - who's more Jack's age than the daughter - decides to check into the house at the beach for the weekend as well, things turn akward. Especially when Jack gets a mild heart-attack and has to stay at the beach-house, looked after by Diane.
"Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo" : Childhood memories. A white VW beetle with black racing stripes and the number 53. The car had an attitude which is demonstrated to great lengths in this third film of the Herbie series. Herbie and his owner decide to enter the Monte Carlo race, stumble upon a diamant heist (Pink Panther style), Herbie falls in love with another car (a sleak italian Lancia) and the Disney-friendly mayhem begins ... aged a bit, but great for kids or for the grown-ups to feel like one again.
"Gangs Of New York" : What a load of ****. Big name director, big name actors, big sets, big story, big news in the media ... tedious, not at all engaging and not worth the tagline "america was built in the streets". Pfff, that part of New York may have been ... glad it was just a borrowed disc.
Doing this week : Short trip to Paris on thursday. Visit the office and webmaster over there, pick up some tricks to use in the corporate network maintaining the sites. In some ways it's quite different from my old job. There I had full control over the server, which was nice 'cause I could do anything I wanted. On the other hand I got all the crap when anything went wrong too - which was obviously less amusing. Now I have no control over the servers whatsoever, freeing me from all the servercrap, but some things can take ages to get altered ...

Editorial - 8 March 2004

Moving a domain can be a pain in the you know where. I've got no problems with my dotcom's and dotnet's, but the one country-specific .be is bugging me. For some reason I can't have the nameservers pointing to another ip-address than the ones used right now. Which is no good since I'm switching those together with the hosting. So now I have to seek another registration provider who will let me do this. Believe you me ... more hassle than it should be.
Song of the week : "Oh My Love" Sophia
Oldie of the week : -----
Last seen movie : "Paycheck" : the newest John Woo "Hollywood style" featuring Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman. In true Woo style it's a stylish film (lots of blue colours and shades) with his known trademarks (the flying white dove, the close range standoff at gunpoint ...) how seem more and more troublesome to get into each movie. Maybe he should consider giving up trying to include them all each and every time ?
Ben is a reverse engineer who delivers a new and better product based on new product releases from the competition. After each job he has that specific period in time wiped from his memory. After one big job (three years nonetheless) he expects a big paycheck (stocks in the amount of 90 million dollars), but only receives an envelop with every day objects (lighter, stamps, a key ...). Before he's well aware of this he's being chased by both the governement and his former employer. Uma on the other hand runs around frantically as his love interest.
Don't get me wrong, any "bad" John Woo film is still a lot better than any other action movie made by director X with actors Y and Z. Same here, both Ben and Uma are adequate if a little silly sometimes (Uma giggling like a lovesick girl ? Yeah right), but given the material they have to work with (average writer makes story based upon yet another Philip K. Dick short story) you really can't blame them. The writers could've turned this into a remarkable classic but didn't get beyond "slightly intriguing whodunit". Good enough for a night out, not a required DVD purchase.
"Ringu" : It's not easy to pinpoint this movie since it's a remake itself from an earlier japanse version, both of which spawned sequels and prequels. Let's just state that this is the much heard about "original" film which was responsible for the american "the ring" remake. It made for an interesting comparison between the two. Seems the american remake starts exactly the same (sometimes even copying whole sets), but halfway through the focus shifts. The american version tries to keep it down to earth while the japanse original lifts off in cuckoo atmospheres ... the male main character has psychic powers, some really big leaps are made in the story. This is actually quite normal when comparing asian and western movies. As is the slower pace naturally.
Doing this week : Shoveling through another box underneath my desk. Trying and hoping to get rid of junk and collectables and more junk and teenage memories that I actually never look at.

Editorial - 2 March 2004

Work's been busy - trying to do all the stuff I have to do without some of the much needed tools and the necessary access can be a pain. You have to call lots of people who have to find the time in their schedules to do things for you. Not always a good way to start working together. Anyway, a lot of it is done and/or fixed, so I can get cracking. Site-updates might be slowish.
Song of the week : -----
Oldie of the week : "Enjoy The Silence" Depeche Mode
Last seen movie : "The Wizard Of Oz" : Oscar-winning version with Judy Garland. The whole day before the Oscars was filled with those great old Oscar-winners. One of the first, early in the morning, was this classic. Enourmous sets, lots and lots of morality and some songs which everyone will recognise when they're being played. One of them is even used as an intro for a song by Metallica. Go figure. As usual with these kind of movies they're harmless, perfect for a sunday-morning or rainy afternoon with tea and cookies. Just don't expect too much.
"Around The World In Eighty Days" : the Oscar-winning version with David Niven from the sixties. Around noon, the Oscar-marathon continued with this often imitated, yet never equalled Jules Verne story. It's up for another remake with Jackie Chan which could be interesting. Yet this one will always be better due to it's simplicity and british elegance. Of which David Niven is the epithomy. What to think of a british gentleman who will blow a lot of his own money to get around the world in 80 days to win a wager between him and his fellow club-members ? A wager which will never get him all the money spent during the trip back. Only a brit can pull that off straightfaced.
Doing this week : A lot of work.

darkman says sleep tight

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