[BJJ] Mat Burn
On friday I had someone in a tight armbar and he tried to roll out of it, so I rolled with him as I held on. For a while I had all my weight distributed between his elbow and my forehead, which was on the mat, and now I look like someone pummeled me repeatedly to the side of the head. I’m getting strange looks.
DevDays & Care Bears
.: Microsoft DevDays ’09
Yesterday, I went to the Microsoft Developer Days, held this year in The Hague. While I couldn’t really find any work-related presentations that I wanted to go to, I made my selection on the fly. My choices were pretty good with the exception of the Win7 introduction by two obviously carefully picked Microsoft pre-sales consultants, who obviously did drink the KoolAid.
I had been a little concerned with the possible level of experience needed for the talks, but that turned out to be no problem…until I got to the last presentation of the day titled “Threading, Tasks and Parallel Processing.” While the subject wasn’t something I had any experience with, but I did know most of the concepts and terminology. Or so I thought. The guy who gave the presentation was so fast, so sharp and so intelligent that I had a hard time keeping up with him. My understanding kept lagging behind about fifteen minutes (which also meant that I only figured out the last fifteen minutes of his presentation when I was already on my way home.) Interesting stuff, though.
I think that of all the presentations given, for me, the Visual Studio 2008 IDE Tips and Tricks talk held by Sara Ford was the most directly beneficial. I liked her presentation because it wasn’t so self satisfied. She was obviously a bit uncomfortable on stage, which gave her a nervous energy which boosted her outward enthusiasm, which, in turn, was very contagious. She had been on the VS2008 testing team and really knew everything inside and out and she was obviously very genuinely passionate about the IDE, however disturbing that might sound.
All in all pretty good stuff, and I was very proud of myself when I walked out without any useless shwag.
.: Evil Care Bears
Were there ever any evil care bears? OR should they be called Neglect Bears? Anyway, the smurfs had evil, green smurfs, and I’m certain the snorks had some evil-doers among them, but I can’t remember the care bears. On my way to work I worked out which “stare” the neglect bears would have if they were followers of one of the four chaos gods of Warhammer 40K. Nurgle’s followers would obviously vomit pestilence and disease in a stream of bile from their little bellies, while I could see followers of Khorne shooting red hot magma. Tzeentch’s followers would shoot a ray that would warp everything it touches, causing painful and cancerous mutations. Obviously, followers of Slaanesh would just have a devastating laser beam.
Cthulhu
Cthulhu [2007]
Director: Dan Gildark
Actor: Jason Cottle, Scott Patrick Green, Tori Spelling
Writer: Dan Gildark, H.P. Lovecraft
This film is not going to be for everyone. Let me just throw it out there before I start this review. Considering that the film has a spell-check defiant name and will be, for most people who are unfamiliar with the works of H.P. Lovecraft, on which the story is based, even harder to pronounce than to spell, it got a cult-status even before the film had its premiere at the Seattle Film Festival in 2007. That cult status was cemented when about half the people who saw it came out the theatre scratching their heads in puzzlement. First time director Dan Gildark, who helped write the screenplay, did a very good job of transporting Lovecraft’s vision to the silver screen without alienating everyone. Just half the audience, it seems.
Russel Marsh (Cottle) is the chair of the history department of a university in Seattle. One morning he gets a call to inform him that his mother has passed away. Reluctantly he goes back to Rivermouth, Oregon, where he grew up. It’s a place he desperately tried to get away from due to his unaccepted homosexuality as well the discord between him and his bizarre, eccentric family. During his drive over to Rivermouth you can make out snippets of the news on the radio, which hints at a slowly degrading civilisation and environment, with reports of Eskimo terrorists trying to block the U.S.A. from opening up strategic, polar sea ports. It paints a rather bleak picture of the world, which gets even bleaker when Russel gets to Rivermouth, where, on the drive in, he is confronted with some local thugs in a souped up truck who harass him, obviously recognising him from years ago. Even stranger is that when they are done, speed up and disappear around the bend, Russel stumbles upon their crashed truck and helps out the injured. As a result he misses his mother’s funeral when he finally arrives. He is greeted by his sister, whom he seems to have a fairly normal bond with, and his eccentric father, a man in an odd, purple suit, and the head of a secretive doomsday cult called the Esoteric Order of Dagon, which has the locals terrified and are suspected to be involved in the disappearance of many Rivermouth residents. The followers are also reported to follow an strange creature known as Cthulhu.
While Russel is trying to keep his stay in the village as short as possible and tries to avoid his family as much as he can, he does get back in touch with Mike (Green), a boyhood friend with whom he always shared a special bond. He also gets in touch with a wino who makes claims about strange rituals being performed in the area. Not just that, but an odd young woman who works as a clerk at the night store begs him to find her missing young brother. Through his sister he meets Susan, an aggressively seductive babe who wants him to impregnate her. He also visits his aunt, who resides in an asylum and tells him his mother has hidden a gift for him in his grandmother’s house, which is up for auction as part of his mother’s estate. His aunt is obviously a loon, as she sometimes speaks in tongues and spends her days eating the crayons she uses to draw disturbing images. All the while, he is assailed by strange dreams, horrific encounters and he slowly starts to find out more about his family and their role in the Esoteric Order of Dagon.
All in all, it’s a way better film than it sounds when you sum it up like that. It’s scary, and creepy, and very well shot. The isolated village along the Oregon coastline is a beautiful setting for one of Lovecraft’s stories, even though it’s not set in the traditional New England setting of his stories, it works very well. The acting can be a little forced and wooden at times, but the overall quality of the film makes up for a lot. Have a look at the trailer below and check it out for yourself.
20090526
.: Dragonflies
I have had some time to go driving the last few days and I was forced to several conclusions. In no particular order; being outdoors on a beautiful day is healthy and cathartic. I am prone to sunburns, and when driving around with the top down, wearing glasses will turn me into a raccoon. I don’t care if it makes the car impractical, a convertible is where it’s at. The Netherlands are beautiful, with many, many undiscovered gems. Dragonflies have returned, and I am happier with that than I thought I would be. I want to be independently wealthy, or be paid to do this for a living. I want to know a little bit more about the several noble families of the Netherlands’ last five or six hundred years or so. Modern windmills, of which the Netherlands has many, are cool in a slightly creepy way. I am a decent, though not great driver and with more hours logged, I will improve. Grass can look like it’s thick, lush and bountiful, but looks can be deceiving. Frogs are very, very weird, yet amazingly cool. While I still don’t know why anyone would live in the eastern part of the Netherlands, I totally get why they’d want a second home there. There is so much out there to discover!
.: Two Years
It’s hard to believe it’s already been two years since my father died. It’s been pretty busy since he died, and so I haven’t really had the chance to take some time to process it. I think about him every day — literally — but it’s different than really taking the time. My sister and I went to the park on the water where we scattered his ashes, and spent some time reminiscing, having a few drinks and shedding some tears.
At about 1 am the park was completely empty, which was a bit strange since it had been a really warm day, which usually means that a bunch of winos hang out in the park after dark. The weather was crystal clear, and it was completely windstill, and the lake looked like the polished surface of a mirror. Not a cloud in the sky, the heavens were awash with a tremendous amount of stars, most of which are usually not visible on an average night, due to the light pollution. You could even say the stain of the milky way across the sky.
Now that I think about it, we’ve had the most amazing weather recently. Beautiful, warm weather, crystal clear evenings, and one of the most violent thunderstorm the Netherlands has seen in the last decade. I love it.