Sickness Sucks

I've been sick lately. Charity got it first, and then passed it on to me. The major symptoms are a fever and a hellishly sore throat. When she had it, I basically discredited the whole sore throat thing. I mean, how bad can it be? Trust me, it ain't pretty.

For the past few days I haven't been able to speak properly. I can swallow, as long as it's a liquid or close to it, and even then it hurts. Coughing is just a study in pain. I know my throat's getting better because I no longer wake up as often at night because I need to swallow and it hurts too much. How's that for a sign of how painful it is -- that even your subconscious doesn't want to deal with it and forces you to? (That's my theory anyway.)

Anyway, the fever's no big deal, I've dealt with fevers before, but this sore throat is just kicking my ass. About the only thing interesting I can say about it is I now know what it feels like to cough up blood, and what it tastes like as well.

Artemis Fowl

Over Christmas, I got Artemis Fowl: The Criminal Mastermind Collection by Eion Colfer (which contains the first three books in the Artemis Fowl series) from a white elephant gift exchange. I hadn't heard anything about it before, but it sounded promising, and I have not been disappointed.

It basically follows the adventures of Artemis Fowl, a thirteen year old criminal mastermind who has discovered the underground world fairies that relies on advanced technology. If that doesn't make any sense, trust me, it will.

These books are fast, fun reads. The closest comparison I can make is probably to Harry Potter, minus all the high school drama. The writing is certainly better.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!

The Curse of the Golden Flower

We went to see The Curse of the Golden Flower tonight. I had high hopes for the movie, since it comes from Zhang Yimou, the same director who made Hero and The House of Flying Daggers.

The short version is: I liked the story, I liked the characters (they were all unique and very well defined), and I loved Gong Li and Chow Yun Fat. That said, I also have to say that it does not hold up to the high standard set by Hero. I can't pinpoint the problem, but I did leave the theater feeling like something was missing.

The one thing that really surprised me was the colors. Instead of the strong color theming I've come to associate with Zhang Yimou, Curse of the Golden Flower had this lollipop rainbow swirl thing going on which I found rather distracting.

Two final points: I liked the pomp and circumstance and the sheer spectacle of it, and I found the underlying message of the movie rather novel, cynical as it may be -- power is everything.

It's just too darn bad that watching this movie is like eating a great meal where you're still hungry when you're done. 3/5 - worth renting.

SecurityManager Woes

*grrr*

Charity and I decided to set up a website for our wedding that our guests could use to RSVP. It's all very basic stuff and I pretty much had it up and running without too much problems... Until I tried to deploy it.

That's when I ran right into Java's SecurityManager. The web hosting provider we're using runs Tomcat with security enabled, which makes sense, but it's something I've never had to deal with in the past.

I've been banging my head against the wall for a few days now and it looks like I finally have everything working. My three biggest problems were/are:

• Figuring out how to grant the webapp permission to read files that are inside a JAR (e.g. with a URI of "jar:file:/path/to/jar.jar!/file"). Nothing I do seems to work, and my current solution is to just expand the jar file.
• Apparently OGNL implements its own security checks if you're running with a SecurityManager, and you need to grant special OGNL-specific permissions if you want it to work. Since my provider is loath to grant new permissions, my solution was to just fool OGNL into thinking that there is no SecurityManager by implementing a ServletContextListener that calls OgnlRuntime.setSecurityManager(null).
• Figuring out how to use Log4J with the SMTPAppender. Haven't had time to dig through the source, so I decided not to use it instead.

These aren't solutions so much as dirty hacks to side step the SecurityManager. It just shouldn't be this hard...

The Producers

Flew from NYC to Boston today to join Charity since her family had decided to spend Christmas at her brother's place.

Of course I couldn't leave NY without watching something on Broadway, so I went to see The Producers last night, with Tony Danza playing Bialystock. I'd seen the movie first, so I was constantly comparing Tony Danza to Nathan Lane. I prefer Nathan Lane; Tony just didn't seem all that comfortable on the stage, looking a little too rehearsed. That aside however, I did enjoy the production. I especially liked the actors playing Ulla (her accent was perfect!) and Carmen Ghia (totally hilarious exits).

As an added bonus, I got to meet Liza Minelli. My mom recognized her first in the lobby, and we went up and shook her hand. She was nice!

Made Out Like a Bandit!

Woo-hoo!

Had lunchner (there really needs to be a word for a combination of lunch that goes into dinner) with the extended Woon gang and had a blast. I'd brought my Wii with me and I think it's safe to say that we had a ton of fun playing with it. Benjamin and Kingsley were both complaining of sore muscles afterwards...

I made out like a bandit when it came time to open the presents: two more Wii remotes and nun-chucks, along with Rayman: Raving Rabbids and Metal Slug Anthology.

We ended the night with a Scrabble match with my mom, Jeanne and George, and wonder of wonders, both George and I finally beat my mom! My win was mainly due to an early seven-letter word (hothead). George took second place, a mere two points behind me.

It's been a good day.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!

I'm back in NY/NJ with my family this year. I'm in complete disarray as far as my gift giving plans go since not all my gifts have arrived (one of the perils of buying online) and of those that have arrived, I seem to have managed to leave them back home in CA. *sigh*

Quote of the Day

Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
 - Charles McCabe

Wii Games

Emily threw a gaming party last Sunday and I brought along my Wii. Because I'd only bought single player games, I decided to sign up with Gamefly so that I could rent a couple multiplayer games. So far, the service has been pretty good - I received Rayman Raving Rabbids and Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz within two days.

I know Super Monkey Ball has been pretty popular on the GameCube, but I really didn't have much fun with it on the Wii. Most of the games just lasted too long and didn't necessarily use the controllers optimally.

Raving Rabbids, on the other hand, was a blast! All the games were pretty fun, and even the few weak ones were at least amusing to watch. For example, there really isn't much to jumping rope (you just shake the nunchuck to jump), but when you have rabbids popping up and screaming in an effort to distract you, you just have to laugh.

I sent Super Monkey Ball back to Gamefly on Monday. Let's see what their turn around time is. With luck, I should have a new game to try out by Friday.

In the mean time, I'll be playing Twilight Princess whenever I get a chance. I've always liked the Zelda games, and this one is proving to be pretty fun as well.

The other game I have is Trauma Center: Second Opinion, which is... interesting. The surgery bits are a little campy and the storyline is "very Japanese" (to quote Scott), but I've only played it for a little bit at the party and haven't made up my mind about it yet.

New Toys

In addition to the new TV, I've acquired a couple new toys as well: a Wii and a DS Lite. I'm hoping that the new gameplay options on the Wii will be fun enough to tempt non-gamers like Charity into playing...

Now all I need are some games! I only picked up The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Wii, but the options are limited at the moment. I'm considering signing up with GameFly (a Netflix for games) so that I can try out a bunch of different games.

Samsung A900M

I've been thinking about getting a new cell phone ever since Charity got her Treo a year ago but never really bothered since, well, my existing one worked just fine. When her parents decided they wanted to join the cell phone revolution, I took the opportunity of getting a new one (a Samsung A900M) and passing on my old one to them.

The good: this thing is svelte! No more bulging pockets, yay! Double yay for being able to surf the web with a decent browser (Opera Mini) and running Java apps in general (the GMail app is fantastic). But the best feature I've seen so far is its support for GPS navigation. Didn't know it was available until I was fooling around with it last week while driving, and it works wonders. No more getting lost!

The bad: why don't new cell phones have distinct keys? Flushed buttons may look good and all, but they're impossible to use without looking at them.

The ugly: getting nickel and dimed for every little feature. New theme? $2/month. New ring tone? $1/month. If it was a one time fee, I might at least consider it, but a monthly fee? No way. And worse of all, I just learned today that my trial use of the GPS navigation app about to expire. I didn't even know I was in some trial period. If I want to keep using it, it'll cost me $5/month. Are you kidding me? I can just use Google Maps for free, assuming I can figure out where I am, and that's more of a hassle than a problem.

Thanksgiving

A belated Happy Thanksgiving to all!

I'm not quite sure what happened, but it was Wednesday night one minute and Monday morning the next. I spent Thanksgiving with Charity's parents in Sacramento, that much I know.

I'm also fairly sure I did the whole Black Friday wait-in-line thing for the first time ever. Proof is in the shiny new 42" plasma TV that just arrived this morning (a Panasonic TH-42PX60U). I've been watching the price of these things for a while now, and Best Buy finally had an offer I just couldn't refuse.

Now I need to upgrade all my other components to match this one... ;)

TV Online

It looks like almost all the major networks now offer a video archive off their website. The exception is the new CW, but then it's not exactly a "major" network now, is it?

Off them all, I like CBS the best. It has the nicest interface, and appears to have at least the last 4 episodes archived. ABC and Fox are pretty good as well, but I have issues with both. ABC because I usually have problems with the video (hiccups, etc.), and Fox because they don't archive any of the shows I'd be interested in.

As for NBC, they have an absolutely horrible interface. It's almost impossible to figure out which shows have complete episodes available, and from what I can tell, they only have the last episode available. Unless you've missed something, it's really not worth visiting their site at all.

Even with all the problems though, it's nice to see progress on this front. I can only that the networks will improve their services and really expand their archives. It's quite nice to be able to join a show mid-season and and catch all the previous episodes.

Slapstick

Slapstick explained.

*rofl*

Too Slow!

Unbelievable... Charity and I were thinking of grabbing the domain name markandcharity.com and discovered that it has already been taken!

*grumble*

Bond, James Bond

I can't remember the last time I've gone to see a movie on its opening night, but I'm glad I did for Casino Royale. In a word: spectacular! Daniel Craig is totally believable as the new Bond, very much in the style of Connery's Bond -- ruthless and physical -- but updated for today's world. And it gets even better: the script is actually quite good. For once the silly one-liners were kept to a minimum. My favorite quote:

Bartender: Shaken or stirred, sir?
Bond: Do I look like I care?

I don't think I can say much more without giving anything away, so I won't. It's a great movie that I would have enjoyed watching again. Easily a 5/5 - go watch it now!

P/S - There's a great parkour chase sequence at the beginning of the movie!

New Shows

Who says there's nothing good on TV? Last season may have sucked in terms of new shows, but they seem to have figured out what they've been doing wrong. I've been very pleasantly surprised by a few new shows this season.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is a reasonably good West Wing replacement, but my top pick so far is definitely Heroes, also on NBC. I watched the first 5 episodes back to back and just did not want to stop.

I also like Jericho, on CBS, but I'm wondering if they can keep up the momentum of the first few shows. There hasn't been much progress/revelations in the last couple episodes, but it's still holding my attention for the moment.

Finally, Day Break just premiered this week on Fox, and it's looking pretty good as well. The premise is interesting enough -- like Groundhog Day except for the fact that the guy who's repeating the same day actually carries over his physical injuries through each cycle. What I want to know is whether this is supposed to be a one season show, or if they really think they can prolong it indefinitely. I'm hoping for the former.

Get Out and Vote!

Tomorrow is election day. Are you ready to vote? Have you done your homework?

If so, you might be interested in watching HBO's Special on Hacking Democracy, which is available on Google Video.

This year I decided to vote by absentee ballot, and it was so convenient that I think I'll be voting like this from now on.

Books

Books are usually the first leisure activity that gets dropped by the wayside when things get hectic at work, but I've managed to continue reading after getting back from vacation despite the work that's piled up. Partly from procrastination, partly from a refusal to get my nose back to the grindstone, but I've managed to finish a couple more that's been sitting on the shelves for a while now.

I haven't read any good books based on the Arthurian legend for a while now, and I'm glad I stumbled over Jack Whyte's The Skystone: The Forging of Arthur's Britain. Believe it or not, it's historical fiction, and it's the first of six in the Camulod Chronicles. It's also absolutely captivating, and I'd recommend it to anyone. Now I've just got to get my hands on the rest.

Also finished Anne Bishop's The Invisible Ring, which I picked up because I've seen good things about her The Black Jewels: Trilogy. I couldn't find the latter, but decided to give the former a shot since it was set in the same world. Any interesting read, but it hasn't really made me want to run out and grab the trilogy either.