I went to see Matrix Revolutions last night, and I have to say that I liked it a lot. I don’t know what all of the criticism is about. Put together (because they are really a single movie just cut it half) Reloaded and Revolutions worked quite well. I liked the “mythology” and I actually enjoyed the fact that many things were still left unexplained – I thought it added to the mystique of the world. In point of fact, I suspect that things are supposed to be left unexplained. That’s what the theme of the series of movies is all about – that things are never what they seem to be, and that there’s always something else going on. (I find this way of thinking more natural than just assuming that the Wachowski brothers didn’t know how to wrap things up.) We’re able to “voyeuristically” catch glimpses of the lives of the people in the world, but I don’t think that we’re supposed to have the plot hit us on the head so that everything happens in a straight-forward and unquestioned manner.

So, rather than being disappointed with either of the sequels, I’m actually impressed. While the first in the trilogy is still the best, the second and third are still worthy follow-ups and, as a whole, make the franchise better for having them.

After several years of using an older version of McAfee Virus Scan (4.5) I’ve switched my virus scanner program over to avast!.

I was always fond of McAfee, and I still think that that older version is a good product. But, recently, I’ve experienced nothing but trouble from various clients who’ve installed more recent offerings from both McAfee and Norton. In my opinion, all of the bells and whistles of the new versions have managed to impede the software’s functionality. Too often, the systems end up crashing or the install routine fails to install properly. In most cases, installing the older version of Virus Scan worked just fine, and things would run properly after that.

However, McAfee has now dropped updated engine support from the old 4.5 version of Virus Scan. While the latest definitions will still work under the last available engine version, I’d rather use something that’s the most up to date in both areas.

Where McAfee and/or Norton may have caused problems on various computers I’ve worked on, avast! has never failed to install or function properly. I find its interface to be clean and simple – plus the “spinning ball” thing is sort of fun. Also, you can’t beat the fact that, for home use, it’s a free product requiring only an email to register for a product key.

It doesn’t offer a scheduler in the free Home version (only in the Professional version) but it does check for updates on its own automatically. (Although I have yet to determine on what kind of schedule this takes place – every time it finds itself online and/or if a certain time has elapsed?) After installing it on my own computer, I was delighted to be told that I’d had an update received and installed. (Like “You’ve got mail!” only for the virus definitions.)

It took me a bit of fiddling to get it to work with my installation of Pegasus and STunnel – mainly because I’d previously set things up in a somewhat non-standard way – and I think I bugged my friend Glen more than I should feel proud to admit to – but now all is well. (Plus I understand some things more than if I’d had no problem at all.)

I’ve just created a Web site for Michelle. Now she’ll get to put her own information, along with journal (blog) entries, up somewhere too. The blog portion still needs some work (I effectively copied my blog’s formatting over to hers, now need to tweak things to fit it into her theme) and she still needs to supply me with actual content so that there’s more than just “under construction” text.

I’ll admit I had some fun with the layout. I almost like it better than what I have on my page, but both vertical and horizontal layouts (columns/rows) have their advantages and their disadvantages – and any yearnings I might have for the other at this point are just a combination of “the grass is greener” syndrome and having stared at mine for so long that it’s no longer new.

(If anybody can come up with a page design that incorporates static personal information with dynamic journal updates and that isn’t somehow based on a column or row layout (that, when shrunk to fit a lower screen resolution, doesn’t look bad) I’d be interested in hearing about it. I don’t think it’s possible.

This particular entry has a dual purpose. First the obvious.

It’s Halloween today. Apparently, this is the time of the year when the veil between the land of the living and the spirit world is at its lowest, and when the souls of the dearly departed are the most likely to make contact with us (or vice-versa I’d assume). All of this comes from the Celtic festival of “Samhain” which took place on November 1st. October 31st was the end of the previous “season of the sun”, with the next day being the first of the new year. (I’ll leap to an assumption here that some of the festivities and ceremonies were originally intended as a way of warding off the possession of evil spirits – as much as some may have been a way of celebrating the good ones.)

Mixed into that, was at least one other celebration – the Roman Catholics “Pamona Day” festivities (notice the similarity betwen the Celtic and Roman names, obviously the latter drawing on the former, changing a few letters, and claiming it for their own). The Romans called November “All Saints Day” and October 31st became “All Hallows Eve” – which is now just “Halloween”.

(In all of this, the celebration of November 1st itself seems to have oddly disappeared, leaving us with just the “night before” festivities.)

The second part of this entry has to do with our cat, who’s named “Boo”, and who we’ve just found out has diabetes. She’s back from the vet now and we’re giving her low doses of insulin once a day. She’s already noticeably more energetic than she has been recently. Hopefully we can wean her off of the drug and control her blood sugar levels via diet only after a few weeks. (The fact that she only seems to need such a small level of insulin is a good sign.) We take her back to the vet next week to see how things have been going.

One strange thing about diabetes in cats is that they develop a funny way of walking on their back toes. This is due to some muscular degeneration in that area that makes it difficult for them to maintain hind leg control. Some cats recover from this after proper diagnosis and treatment, others don’t. (If I knew before what I know now, I would have made sure she got to a vet immediately after noticing her funny walk rather than waiting a while to see if things improved or not.) Obviously, we’re hoping to see some improvement in our cat in the next couple of months where that’s concerned, but if it doesn’t happen I doubt that it will make her any less happy, which is the main thing.

Our only real problem at this point is trying to figure out how to dispose of the needles, which aren’t supposed to go out in the regular trash. (A consideration somewhat along the same lines of trying to figure out how to dispose of all of those AOL CDs that always show up in your mailbox…)

I’m 36 today. If I actually had a job I might have considered taking the day off work to celebrate…

This is a copy of an email I sent to Global News about some recent coverage they did on the disappearance of Cecilia Zhang, the 9 year old girl who was abducted from her Toronto home over a week ago:

Subject:

Outraged at irresponsible journalism on Cecilia Zhang story.

Message:

I just saw your lead story on Tuesday’s 5:30 Global News. I was shocked and dismayed that you made a big deal about how police suspect that Cecilia is alive and “hope” that she will be returned before the weekend. You made it sound as if the police actually have some definitive evidence as to her situation, and are working on solid leads that they expect will ensure her safe return.

When nothing could be further from the truth. Even in your newscast itself, you specifically stated that the police have no evidence to support that she isn’t safe or that she isn’t in the area – but no evidence to support the contrary either.

But constantly repeating that the police “hope” she’ll be returned shortly, gives a false impression that something more is known than what actually is. I’m sure that the police also “hope” that she’s not dead, that she’ll be returned within the next 24 hours, within the next 48 hours, and within the next month. But “hope”, as perhaps relayed by the police, does NOT equate to having any kind of solid evidence one way or the other. (I kept waiting for a statement from the police that wasn’t open to anything other than personal, subjective interpretation and never saw it.) Of course they “hope” she’s safe and will be returned – we all do – but your story makes it sound as if we shouldn’t be as concerned about everything as we are, because things are working out in a positive fashion.

In all the of the years that I’ve followed Global News, I’ve never known this kind of “sensationalism” to play any kind of part in a fair and impartial report. All of your commentary on “we don’t know what kind of evidence may have been discovered” is nothing more than saying you don’t have any idea what’s going on. How dare you slant the story into something that assumes a positive, when there’s no reason to suspect that at all? To me, it smacks of nothing more than a rating grab.

You haven’t said anything that, technically or literally, could be considered wrong – but that’s not the point. We’re not talking about a court case here. Whoever approved this news story needs to have their priorities and journalistic integrity re-evalutated. You have a duty to report everything impartially. I’m very disppointed.

For the past several months now, I’ve been using an extension to Mozilla (and Firebird) called “Flash Click To View”. What this does is replace any Flash animation with a box that has a link saying “flash [[Click to play]]”. If you click on it then the animation starts – otherwise it stays as it is.

Why is this useful? Because a lot of sites use Flash animation to display annoying ads mixed in with text that you’re viewing. While having a box in the middle of what you’re reading is still annoying – it’s a lot less annoying than seeing the actual animated ad.

However. This extension, as put out by the author, has a bug in it. In theory, once you install it it’s supposed to keep on working despite any upgrades you might make to your browser (like installing a newer version) – but it doesn’t actually work that way. When a new version of the browser is released (personally, I normally upgrade to the latest “nightly” build every day or two), and you install it, this extension stops working. Now, when you visit a site that has Flash animation on it, you just get an empty box without anything to click on to play the animation. (If the site happens to have nothing on it but animation, then you’ll end up with a completely blank page.)

There is, however, an easy fix.

• Don’t install the extension but download it instead. The filename is “flashblock.xpi”.
• Rename the file to “flashblock.zip”.
• Unzip this file. You’ll end up with 3 difference files.
• Edit the file “install.js”.
• Make the following replacement:

  registerChrome(CONTENT | DELAYED_CHROME, jar, APP_CONTENT_FOLDER);

  ---

  registerChrome(CONTENT | PROFILE_CHROME, jar, APP_CONTENT_FOLDER);
   

• Zip the 3 files back into “flashblock.zip”.
• Rename “flashblock.zip” to “flashblock.xpi”.

This modified version will work properly, and the extension will keep working even after you’ve installed newer versions of your browser. If you don’t want to go through the trouble of making these modifications yourself, you can install (or download) the fixed version of the extension from me here.

Thanks for this fix go to a posting by clav at MozillaZine.

This week I make that black forest cake I mentioned a while ago. This will be the first time in a while that I use real butter rather than substituting margarine (because I want to do it right), and we had to go out to buy 2 8″ cake pans. (For some reason, we only had a square pan – I guess it’s been a long time since I’ve actually made a traditional cake – although I’ve made any number of other types of dessert.)

It was going to happen last week, but didn’t for various reasons. This week’s my birthday, so perhaps it’s more appropriate this way anyway.

Here’s a little something from Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance”.

(If the formatting of this is off on your computer, because your screen is too small to show each line on one line, click on the title of this post.)

I am the very model of a modern Major-General,

I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral,

I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical

From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;

I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,

I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,

About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news,

With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

I’m very good at integral and differential calculus;

I know the scientific names of beings animalculous:

In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,

I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,

He is the very model of a modern Major-General.

I know our mythic history, King Arthur’s and Sir Caradoc’s;

I answer hard acrostics, I’ve a pretty taste for paradox,

I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus,

In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous;

I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies,

I know the croaking chorus from the Frogs of Aristophanes!

Then I can hum a fugue of which I’ve heard the music’s din afore,

And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.

And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.

And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.

And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.

Then I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform,

And tell you ev’ry detail of Caractacus’s uniform:

In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,

I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,

He is the very model of a modern Major-General.

In fact, when I know what is meant by “mamelon” and “ravelin”,

When I can tell at sight a Mauser rifle from a javelin,

When such affairs as sorties and surprises I’m more wary at,

And when I know precisely what is meant by “commissariat”,

When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery,

When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery–

In short, when I’ve a smattering of elemental strategy,

You’ll say a better Major-General has never sat a gee.

You’ll say a better Major-General has never sat a gee.

You’ll say a better Major-General has never sat a gee.

You’ll say a better Major-General has never sat a gee.

For my military knowledge, though I’m plucky and adventury,

Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century;

But still, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,

I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

But still, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,

He is the very model of a modern Major-General.

My favourite miniseries, Shogun, was recently released on DVD. I’d had it pre-ordered for a while.

Imagine my surprise when Michelle not only said that she’d watch it this past weekend, but actually ended up liking it! (This doesn’t normally happen to me.) So, now I’ve got her hooked on it. Despite the fact that it’s something like 9 hours long, we may end up finishing it in just a few weeks.

As for the disc itself (or discs, since it’s actually a set of 5), the quality is all right, despite some imperfections from the original print that were not given the kind of detailed attention as is done to more critically acclaimed movies such as Lawrence Of Arabia or Citizen Kane. (During the opening minutes I repeatedly noticed flashes of black grain.)

There was also a humourous moment when I tried turning subtitles on for Michelle so that she could know what what was being said. The only subtitles that appeared were for the English speakers. Which makes sense, since you’re not supposed to know what the Japanese speakers are saying, but it was still funny.

(One thing that confused me was that I’d always thought that the suffix “san” was used to denote somebody of equal (and perhaps lower) rank or importance, and that “sama” was supposed to be used when addressing somebody of higher status. So, when addressing a lord, it should be, for example, “Toranaga sama” not “Toranaga san”. Yet, in the miniseries, Chamberlain’s character addresses superiors with “san” rather than “sama”. Even more perplexing is that the Portuguese pilot will refer to a ruler as “some sama” as if it’s an actual description of office, rather than just the honorific I’d thought it was. So, either Shogun got it wrong, several of the books I’ve read over the past few years got it wrong, or it’s actually a little more complex than either source is making out.)