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Stardust is a / (5/5)

Stardust is superb. It's a fairy tale, but unlike most fairy tales, it's not written by some old hack who has died half a century ago, but written in modern times (1998) by the famed writer Neil Gaiman. I admit I'm not much of a novel reader, and I've never read the novel itself, but the movie really is excellent.

It has all the good things you expect from a fairy tale, without the pitfalls of a fairy tale created in olden times. Old fairy tales were made for people of that time. The way its told, the kinds of magic and stuff that are in it, the story elements, all are conceived by by old day mentality and experiences. That's why though some of those stories are good, they never really "clicked" perfectly (for me, at least). You have to condition your mindset to the way the story's needs it to be. But with Stardust, there's no need for that. There aren't any of those little quirky things in the story that you never really "get" just because "that's what people back then used to do". It flows effortlessly without interrupting your enjoyment of the movie.

This Neil Gaiman guy must be really good. I look up for more of his work on IMDB, and found out that he is one the the screenplay writers for Beowulf. I wasn't really interested Beowulf when it came out, but after seeing Stardust, I'll surely make an effort to download it when a DVDRip of it emerges.

The Strike Is In Full Swing.

The WGA strike is in full swing. A lot of tv shows have stopped production. Shows that matter:

24: Production shut down with 8 episodes taped. Show on hiatus. Premiere has been delayed until such a time that the Day 7 season can air continuously with no or few interruptions.
Lost: 8 episodes out of 16 ordered taped. In event of protracted dispute, the 8 in the can could run as a mini-season starting in the New Year with remaining shows held back for 2008-09.
House: 12 episodes have been completed. Repeats to air after American Idol in January.
The Simpsons: 22 of this season's 23 episodes will be completed.
Heroes: Heroes: Origins spinoff suspended. December 3 episode to serve as finale of volume two.

And all the talk shows have stopped production and airing reruns. The surprising thing is that they are actually ending Heroes early. Not that this season has much to shout about, but still. The conclusion I have come up with about all this is, "this sucks".

Just give the writers their damn money. At first I was somewhat against the writers and their strike. But after watching this video, I think it's fair game for them to have this strike. Whether they actually get what they want is another matter. Just give me back my tv shows.

Dimmented is Live!

My latest app, Dimmented is live. It's still in beta, but all of the functions work, I hope. Only the UI stuff needs to be fine-tuned. It's my first Flex app, haven't got around to reading about transitions and effects yet, so there are no fancy animations yet in Dimmented.

Dimmented is an app that shows your Digg comments or any other Digg user's comments. I used to keep track of my Digg comments by using their API and reading the raw xml. But the problem with that is it doesn't show the replies to my comments. With Dimmented, I made it show replies, and not just the first level of replies, but all the replies, plus, it can also show the first level of "reply to".

I also included the "remember me" function so that I don't have to type in my username each time. At first, I tried to do this using cookies and php, but for some reason, it didn't work. Then I found out about Flex's shared objects, and it was so much easier, and boom, it was like the feature made itself available.

It is a good learning experience for me. At first I thought Flex was very different to what I already know about scripting/programming, but it turns out it's very similar to the xml-script structure that I'm used to making Konfabulator/Yahoo widgets. So, it wasn't that difficult. And the next version of Flex will have better support for making AIR apps, I don't know whether I'll ever go back to Konfabulator. I already have plans for my next Flex app.

Amazing Race 12

The Teams

The best reality show on tv, The Amazing Race, will be starting it's 12th season on November 4th. I went throught the teams compteting this time, and the only team worth following is the "sisters" team of Marianna & Julia. A double dose of hotness. I hope they win the 1 mil prize just because they're hot.

The Sisters

There's also another hot chick from the "dating for almost one year" team, Rachel and some guy with 2 letters as a name. Who gives a shit who the guy is.

The Hot Chick and Nobody

The other teams are just extras. They replaced the obligatory gay team with a goth couple. The "minority" team is now an Asian father/daughter team. I know the term "Asian" can be vague and I hate to use it, but where in Asia wasn't mentioned in the article. They're the sepet kind of Asian if I have to further drill down. Just look at the damn picture on the site.

E4X in Flex

I've just started working on an Adobe Flex project, and I've messing around with E4X. I'm familiar with Xpath 1.0 from working with Konfabulator widgets, but it took me a while to get to grips with E4X. Most of what I learned, I got from this website. So, I'll just go ahead and use some of the material from the site. Here's what I've learned so far. I'll be using the below XML as an example.


   <?xml version="1.0"?>
<rdf>
  <channel>
      <title><![CDATA[Test file]]></title>
      <link>http://www.sephiroth.it</link>
      <description><![CDATA[A custom description of this document]]></description>
      <language>en-us</language>
      <items>
          <item id="001">
              <resource url="http://www.sephiroth.it/tutorials.php" />
              <channel>FLASH-PHP</channel>
              <author email="alex@alex.com">
                  <name>Alessandro</name>
              </author>
          </item>
          <item id="002">
              <resource url="http://www.sephiroth.it/tutorials/flashPHP/E4X" />
              <channel>Flash 9</channel>
              <author email="mich@alex.com">
                  <name>Michael</name>
              </author>
          </item>
          <item id="003">
              <resource url="http://www.sephiroth.it/tutorials/flashPHP/scrollRect" />
              <channel>Flash 8</channel>
              <author email="fk@alex.com">
                  <name>Frank</name>
              </author>
          </item>
      </items>
  </channel>     
</rdf>

httpResult.lastResult..item will give all the items in XML fromat:


<item id="001">
  <resource url="http://www.sephiroth.it/tutorials.php" />
  <channel>FLASH-PHP</channel>
  <author email="alex@alex.com">
      <name>Alessandro</name>
  </author>
</item>
<item id="002">
  <resource url="http://www.sephiroth.it/tutorials/flashPHP/E4X" />
  <channel>Flash 9</channel>
  <author email="mich@alex.com">
      <name>Michael</name>
  </author>
</item>
<item id="003">
  <resource url="http://www.sephiroth.it/tutorials/flashPHP/scrollRect" />
  <channel>Flash 8</channel>
  <author email="fk@alex.com">
      <name>Frank</name>
  </author>
</item>

httpResult.lastResult..name.text() will give all names in normal text, without the XML formatting. That's what the .text() is for.

AlessandroMichaelFrank

httpResult.lastResult..item.@id will give the ids of every item:

001002003

httpResult.lastResult..item[1].@id will give the id of the second item. But there's a warning that popped up in the debugger that discourages from using square bracket operator. It recommends using the ArrayCollection.getItemAt() instead.

002

After knowing all that, I can virtually get any value I want. But there's still along way to go in mastering Flex.

Grindhouse

Grindhouse is a mixed bag. Death Proof, the Tarantino half of the movie is one of the most boring movies I've ever seen. You can literally fall asleep watching the movie. The dialog is filled so much with "inside" reference, if you're not into the "Tarantino" state of mind, you wouldn't give a shit about what they're talking about. By "Tarantino" state of mind, I mean you're into old vintage cars, and 70s pop culture, and stunts and stuff. I'm not into that stuff, so the only good part of the movie was the lap dance scene by Vanessa Ferlito. Other than that, it just stretches itself with pointless rambling about car stunts. Even the violence isn't that heavy compared to the other half. I'll save you the hassle of watching the whole movie by embedding the only good part of the movie, the lap dance scene, here. Enjoy.

The other half of Grindhouse, Planet Terror by Robert Rodriguez, on the other hand, is one of the best movies I've ever seen. It's one of those over-the-top ultra violent zombie movies that is fun to watch, and at the same time, it doesn't feel old. They've put new ideas into it to make it feel different from the other similar movies that have been made. I can't even begin to tell how much I enjoyed this movie. A must watch.

If you're going to catch this one on DVD or download it, I recommend Planet Terror and give Death Proof a pass.

New Season

Well, it's time again where good tv shows start their new season. And there're a few new ones too. The new shows that people are saying is good is Pushing Daisies, Journeyman, and Chuck. Of the three, I've only watched the first episode of Journeyman. I'm not sure about Journeyman after reading that the creators are going to focus more on the weekly time travel escapades rather than unraveling the mystery of why he's traveling through time. What got me interested is the mystery, not the lame weekly outings. I just haven't got around to watching the other two shows.

What I'm actually downloading and watching is House, Heroes and Smallville. I know, Smallville is kinda lame, but I'll watch it until 24 or Lost returns, or until one of the new shows really makes a breakthrough. Kristin Kreuk makes it worth the download. If you don't know how hot she is, then you're really missing something. And there's a new set of pictures that show that she is one of those girls who get more beautiful when they're upset. These pics prove it. There hasn't really been any "breakthrough" shows yet this season. Last season's "breakthrough" was Heroes. I don't think there'll be one this season.

Of the three shows I'm currently following, House is easily the best. This season's House is hilarious. I find the chemistry between House and James (James is the friend, not one of those docs who works for him) just perfect this season. The banter between them just hits the right spot for me. And Heroes, the first season wasn't great, it was just good. And this season looks like its going to continue being good, not great. I've figured out a way to heighten my enjoyment of Heroes. The trick is not to take the show as seriously as 24 or Lost. If you do that, you'll just get disappointed. You need to see it as a show like Smallville with a slight touch of mystery like Lost, but not as deep. If you can manage that, you will surely increase your enjoyment of the series.

What I'm really looking forward to is Lost, but it ain't coming until next year. Other shows to look forward to 24 where rumors say there'll be no CTU, and Battlestar Galactica. And the fact that the coming season being the last season of Battlestar, it is surely going to be EPIC. But there are rumors that say that the final episode of the season will be pushed to 2009. It'll really suck if it's true.

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