Ok, my screen at home just started smelling funny - like burned - while in sleepy mode. When I hit the mouse to get the thing to wake up again the screen stretched to the left and to the right, turning the whole desktop into some weird rounded rectangular floppy shape. In short : it's fucked. I know where my money will go to. I was hoping for a small surround set for the computer (don't want one for the TV yet - livingroom too small), a new scanner (XP compliant), a new digital reflex-camera (separate lenses and more zoom than you can handle) or the big Lego Star Wars "Star Destroyer" set (humongeous - one meter in length) or whatever ... Too bad, first the screen ...
Annoying part is I don't have enough time to check it before the weekend. And I really need to keep track of my eBay stuff - sold 18 things which is really cool.
Song of the week : -----
Oldie of the week : -----
Last seen movie : "Eastern Condors" : comments are being written.
Doing this week : Fix the damn computer. Check payments. Ship eBay stuff.

Editorial - 25 August 2004

Well, busy again. Don't know how else to describe it. Don't have the time to update this sucker and I'm sifting through old junk to sell in the coming weeks. Some shit is already online at eBay.
Song of the week : -----
Oldie of the week : -----
Last seen movie : "I, Robot" : comments are being written.
Doing this week : Gotta start going more often to the movies again or I'll never make my yearly quota (which is around 40 movies a year). But since I no longer have free tickets that's probably a good thing. Or should that be an economical thing ? A budget thing ?

Editorial - 19 August 2004

The guys in Athens (Greece) who control the servers with the olympic website on it think they can push other websites to use a certain form to ask permission to put a link up on your own website towards the official 2004 games website. Well guess what ... fuck that. I'm not going to do that and I'm not even going to use the official words in this little editorial. No, I'm just going to place a link here and leave them in their own little regulated small corner of reality.

Editorial - 16 August 2004

It's a quarter to six - almost time to go home - and my work is done. Well, not quite, but I'm stuck and will have to wait for the UK team to set some things in motion. Until then I'm stuck. Unfortunately my three usual contacts are all on holiday. Let's see how fast the new kid works.
Song of the week : "Horsemen" The Bees
Oldie of the week : "Velvet Waltz" Built To Spill
Last seen movie : "Battlefield Earth" : Based on a book from the Scientology headhoncho (a bestseller if you believe what the DVD extra's say, which probably means his cult-followers all bought copies and no one else has - did the book even come out in europe ?) and adapted by one of his eagerest followers John Travolta. This movie has everything and therefor nothing. You get a storyline based on the series "V", villains who look like Klingons, teletransportation-devices, spaceships which are a crossing between those in "V" and those in "Battlestar Galactica", the "man is inferior" theme from "Planet Of The Apes", the "lone warrior who will bring freedom to us all" theme from Star Wars and so many other good versus evil stories ... see where I'm going at ? This movie is just a rehash of everything that has been done before. It looks and sounds good, but is flawed in every other way.
Doing this week : Get more sleep, stand on the balcony in the rain, watch videos.

Editorial - 12 August 2004

Is this the way Apple does business these days ? The statements with which they want to convert "the rest of the computer users" that their experience is a better one ? That the products are technologically superiour and not just way too pricey. By giving us error-messages saying nothing special (see below) and by babbling total nonsense about new products (to the right) ? No really ? Don't you think this is utter tosh ? Sticky fingers from unwrapping a CD ? Which marketing moron thought that one up ? And the errormessage was just too funny to let it slide.

Editorial - 9 August 2004

How 'bout them sunshine ? This called a heatwave yet ? I hope so 'cause I got pretty fscking tired yesterday after eating the family dinner. Fell asleep in the sofa due to the heat and lotsa food. Almost missed desert. Would've been a first for me.
Last weekend actress Fay Wray - famous for portraying the first woman kidnapped by King Kong - died. As the sole survivor of the cast, it's a crying shame no one ever bothered to let her tell her story of those days. Could've made a good commentary track.
Song of the week : -----
Oldie of the week : "How I Miss You" Foo Fighters
Last seen movie : "A Night At The Opera" : A Marx Brothers classic. Groucho pretends to be the manager of an operasinger in order to get to New York with him. The rest of the gang play stowaways until everything explodes in a chaotic mess. From some angles it looks dated, from other angles a fresh as it was in the early thirties. And no one delivers one-liners quicker and funnier than Groucho. Think of him as a combination of Robin Williams' quick and witty remarks, combined with the brilliance of Bruce Willis' one-liners ... but in a suit. After all those years still great comedy.
Doing this week : Not thinking about what happens in exactly four weeks.

Editorial - 5 August 2004

When I first saw Halo on the Xbox (december 2002 if I recall correctly) I wasn't impressed with the gameplay. Sure, everything looked fine, fancy and mindblowingly detailed, but some of the controls were just stupid. Driving the warthog was a pain in the ass and while driving you had to shoot things too ? Skipped the game after half an hour of playing.
Last week I started playing it again with Ben, my girlfriend's brother who has experience playing it on the PC, and I totally changed my mind. Working together advincing through the levels is not only much more fun, it also allows you to do different things backing your teammate up (providing coverfire) and concentrate on one task (driving the warthog on icy rivers and other skillful things). In a mere three nights of three to four hours of playing we rushed through the game, only to get stuck right before the end of the last chapter last night around one o'clock in the morning. With only 1 minute and 14 seconds to go, we were told to go back to the ship we set to blow up a few minutes earlier. Obviously ... we were toast.
Song of the week : -----
Oldie of the week : -----
Last seen movie : "Shrek 2" : Okay, I confess, I never really liked the first one. Sure, I laughed a bit and thought it was all nicely done, but it didn't stick. The second watch was even kinda boring. So when the same people who found that one "gutwrenchingly hilarious" and "even better" I wasn't impressed. But we still took our asses out of the couch and went to see it. And yeah sure, it is better. It's less of a spin on fairytales and more making fun of other movies - always a plus in my book. And although it still has the quite annoying Cameron "hear my whine" Diaz, the oter voices are much more suited for the roles : John Cleese and Julie Christie as "mom and dad" and Jennifer Saunders as the singing evil witch !Recommended ? Yes, because everyone seems to like it. Will I buy it ? Nope, just like the first one.
"Spider-man 2" : Woohoo excellent ! Peter Parker's troubled side, getting late for classes, failing superpowers and all that, is in this one. The one thing missing from part 1 (compared to the comics) is now heavily in the center of the story. It could've done with slightly better balancing (lotsa whining in the first half, lotsa fighting in the second), but as that's usually the case with this genre and it's buildup, it's nothing we can blame Sam "the man" Raimi for. Acting is great again (baddie Alfred Molina is a joy to watch - even in the overacting big pathos scenes), settings delicious and fightscenes just brutal enough ... however, there's one minor complaint : the CGI unfortunately looks a bit more unreal than in the first one. This has been mentioned all over the web and some say it's to make it look more like a comic book. In my opinion that's bull. If that's the case they should've done an animated movie.
"Roman Holiday" : Overly protected princess on tour in Europe decides to take a holiday in Rome and sneaks out the hotel. American journalist smells a scoop, pretends not to recognize her and they hang out. What follows is a classic sixties lovestory from a great team (director, costumes, setdressers and actors). Stunning debut from Audrey Hepburn which immediately earned her an Oscar.
Doing this week : The rest of the week will be filled with birthdays (Ellen's is today, congrats) and parties. If there's cake and chocolate, I'm in.

darkman says sleep tight

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