Hope you brought your towel

The verdict: Overwhelmingly awesome. Completely hilarious, faithful, original and well-translated. Brilliant brilliant brilliant brilliant.

If you've just joined us, I'm talking about the new Hitchhiker's Guide film. I just went to see it tonight (release night) with a large group of my good friends from uni.

Also, on the way to uni this morning, checked the mailbox and GOT MY 3 TOWELS! Woot. Kept one for myself (heh) and had a raffle on the other two. Once again, very sorry to everyone who missed out. Two of us hoopy froods wore our towels through the whole film. And gee, if we looked silly going in, it was EVERYONE ELSE IN THE THEATRE who looked silly going out. Tsk tsk, such strags, to go see the Hitchhiker's film and not know where their towels were!

Just.... too brilliant. I am not going to give any spoilers here because I want everyone to see it for themselves. I want to say that, at least from my point of view, the horrid Magrathea review was completely unfounded. I don't know, perhaps they we're watching the outtake reel.

Here's a quick non-spoily review.

• About 50% of the film was based on the book. 50% was brand new. Most of the new stuff was written by Douglas. But all of it was good.


• The story blended well; new story elements were cohesive and the changes were, I believe, necessary to ensure it worked as a film.


• All the characters are absolutely lovable, even Marvin whom I've never been a big fan of in the books.


• Yes, a lot of content from the books is missing. Boo hoo. It simply isn't possible to fit it all in. Most of the good stuff is there, including a number of excerpts from the Guide, hilariously illustrated and narrated by Stephen Fry.


• Although, I was a bit O_O'd at the start, when the whole bit in Arthur's house up to when they left for the pub (the entire first chapter) was condensed into about 3 minutes. Although it slowed down after that, you could almost hear the pen scratching as they crossed out all the unnecessary lines and kept only the best. It was very tight, but very funny.


• Personally, I really enjoyed seeing changes. It would have been boring to see the story told out with actors. At certain points they decided to "speed up" parts of the book by having them happen in a totally fresh way, which was, really quite refreshing.


• American accents are a little awkward at first, but you get used to them very quickly and hardly realise. In fact, there's even a few lines in the film which try to account for Ford's american accent! ;)


• DON'T PANIC! The meaning of life is still 42! (I heard on the movie show that another director they had lined up, Ivan Reitner, wasn't too keen on that idea!! Good god).

And now for a little spoiler
They have very definitely gone out of their way to set up a sequel. There hasn't been much talk about this before, but the way they did it, not only did they keep in all of Adams' references to "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", but they actually added totally new plot elements which are hanging over... AWESOME!

So that about wraps it up. I don't feel too excited right now, but three hours ago I was nearly wetting myself... this is the best film I've ever seen!!!

As always, the biggest tragedy of all was the one man who worked the hardest and deserved to see it most never will. We miss you, Douglas.

"...Brockian Ultra-Cricket (a curious game which involved suddenly hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then running away)"
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Sunny side up

</rant>
RANT OVER ("IT'S OVER!")

Yesterday I went completely crazy with this huge rant! Luckily, the planets have since moved out of their sinister alignment and all is fine in the world of Matt.
(Sorry to all folks out there still in the dumps... seemed like a pretty crummy day for everyone!)

Well firstly, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is being released TODAY (April 28) in Australia and UK, and tomorrow in Canada and US. In fact, the first screening started at the same time as I started this blogpost. I am all booked up for the session at 7:30 today... after I sleep.
:D:D:D:D:D

But, unfortunately, I downed myself even further this morning by re-reading this review. Hated hated hated it. This guy also is very much a die-hard frood, so its very worrying.

But tonight luckily I kept the TV on after the Glass House because I saw "At the movies" with Margaret and David. The Guide was on there, and it looks FANTASTIC. I managed to see a number of extra clips of the film not seen in trailers, etc, much longer clips. And they are as funny as hell. A LOT of new content not found in the books. But as we've been reading, Douglas Adams wrote a lot of it himself before his tragic death.

Marge and Dave both loved the film. She gave 3.5, he gave 4 out of 5 stars. But, thankfully, neither of them said they took marks off for "not being faithful" or "not being funny" as the previous reviewer said. On the contrary, they said it was very faithful to the books. Margaret took marks off, she said, because it was "too complex"... now as a frood who really knows where his towel is, I'm not too fussed about that.

Speaking of knowing where my towel is...
RANT #3
I rang up Village today to complain about said towels (see yesterday's rant post). I'd like to thank MagooChris for his info about him getting the towel which prompted me to wonder, where is mine? So called up village. Lovely chap said he'd mail three of them to me. So should get that in the next day or so (pity, not in time for the film which kinda ruins all the fun of it, but meh).
Now the only problem is... three towels. Eleven friends. :/
Looks like its up to me. Gotta find the hoopiest froods there...
Although its probably too late for any of them to read this... I think I'll be most favourable to anyone who actually BRINGS a towel to the screening tomorrow. That seems fair... it is, naturally, a symbol of one's devotion to the Guide.

I will be bringing mine, there's no worry about that.

Also, thanks to Toria, found this interview on slashdot, which is an interview with the executive producer. A very good look at it. He refutes that first bad horrid review, stating: "Thankfully of people who have actually seen the film, whose opinions I really respect, Mike has so far been a lone voice."
Interview with exec. producer: Robbie Stamp
Very reassuring. As I've always thought, the film has been in capable hands since its original creator left us...

And if you've not seen it already, check out this essay from the man himself, in 199? before Mostly Harmless even came out!
Douglas Adams: A guide to the Guide

And check out my little tribute on CodeStar (the banner)... codestar.lidonet.net.

RANT #1
Moving right along now into Rant #1 - my hard drive which decided it didn't feel like showing up for work.
Even after installing drivers... :/
Well thanks to a very helpful Uruite, Paul, I managed to get it WORKING!!!! wootage :D. He found some more appropriate drivers with a slightly more obscure name :/. Heres a screenshot to prove it. Which has not been photoshopped *that much* heheh.

So thanks a heap Paul. Now to go and fill it up with crap again ;)

RANT #2
Replaced the mouse batteries :/ Working, but not sure for how long.

But, yay. Everything worked out. Now, looking back, these problems were all very material and meaningless. So I hope all the real problems out there get sorted too. In the meantime, I'm off to bed. Got some hitchhiking to do in the morrow ;)

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Arthur: "We're gonna die, aren't we?"
Ford: "Yup. We're gonna die. ....
UNLESS!!! What's this? ....
*turns the handle*
Oh it's nothing. Yup, we're gonna die."
- The Hitchhiker's Guide MOVIE

"The aircar rocketed them at speeds in excess of R17 through the steel tunnels...

R is a velocity measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel that is consistent with health, mental wellbeing, and not being more than, say, five minutes late...

R17 is not a fixed velocity, but it is clearly far too fast."
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Lets have a good ol' rant

I'll open the rant tag right now.

<rant>
OK don't like to be one of those whiney emo moody crap crap depression bloggers, but this is about as low as I get. I cannot remember the last time all the planets lined up with little laser sights all pointing at me, but right now I have one really big problem and a little annoying problem too and it feels like a whole lot of little naggly ones too.

Yeah I know, there are starving kids in Africa.

So, I've spent the past month or so finally preparing for the "big wipe." My computer has been chugging along like a snail's ass for some months, no doubt infected with countless viruses, spyware, windows bloat, registry mounds and endless crap. So, time to do a wipe. My first reformat ever.

Having found out a week and a half ago that the company who sold us our computer (under warranty still) was under liquidation... (serves the bastards right...) (by the way don't buy from e@pc no matter how many smiley faces there are on the guy's tie... they will cut your warranty)... I took it upon myself to clean up both of our hard drives and reinstall Windows XP myself.

I was worried I might run into trouble formatting a RAID-array hard drive. But no, surprisingly, that was completely smooth sailing and after an hour of hard-formatting, I had a fresh new 160GB hard drive to play with. That was the secondary drive.

Move on to the C drive, the main one with Windows and all the important stuff. That's all backed up, so I go ahead and reinstall Windows XP, which automatically wipes C drive and starts again.

Ahh the smell of a fresh new desktop in the morning. Wait a minute.... NO D DRIVE???? WTF??
After a bit of investigation I find out that, in fact, despite the fact that I (luckily) backed up all my sound drivers, network drivers, modem drivers and all that other stuff, the one thing I didn't know about was that my RAID ARRAY NEEDED A WINDOWS DRIVER... so now I have a brand new computer setup, everything's fine, except I'm missing a 160GB RAID hard drive. Have downloaded drivers from company website. Didn't work. Sent angry email. Waiting...

</rant>
<rant id="2">
Yes I bloody know you can only have one top-level element!

So abut 2 months ago, I bought a mouse. From a shop at uni. I don't think its against the law to name places that piss me off. SmartShop, bottom floor of Union at Melbourne Uni. Don't go there unless it's to return something.

Anyway, bought this mouse. $20. Nice and cheap. Pisses me off to no end, because when you click once, it double-clicks. Long story short, had to take it back because it simply was defective. The guy at the store gave me such a nerve.. "oohh what, you want me to take YOUR word for it??! I'm going to have to get the "engineer" to test it!" "Well do that then, you snooty bastard!"
"Engineer" comes back, yes indeed it is defective. Not a word of apology, just grudgingly accepts my receipt. I guess it was pretty stupid to buy a new mouse from him, especially since I upped my price range to $50.

Now I've got a Logitech cordless mouse. Pretty much the best name you can get in mouses... so wtf happend was it smuggled from Taiwan? The mouse button squeaks (perhaps adding realism?) but more anoyingly, the "long life" batteries... I've had the mouse for 3 weeks now and am on my third set of batteries!!!
Stupid thing just stops working. Yeah I guess I could get rechargable batteries but.... eurhghghh!

</rant>
<rant id="3">

HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE.... WOOT. Hopefully I'll do a non-ranty blog about the upcoming movie soon. But right now, I am once again pissed.

Village Cinemas are offering a promotion, if you are in the first 1000 people to book, you win a free towel. That's right, a TOWEL! Sounds very cool.

So first thing I do is, (this is Monday Monday, 18 April) send an email asking a bunch of questions (to Village) because they didn't really make it clear, will it be the first 1000 to book, or will there be a raffle? No response.

But undeterred, me and Mel (who's been a real good sport about this whole thing) raced up to the computer lab, at uni, with our parents credit cards, just especially so we could be in the first 1000 and secure towels. We booked 11 seats too, for the whole group. It was 2pm, one hour after the ordering opened, but we thought we were in.

As I was ordering the screen just went white. So... I called Village up. "Oh yeah, that's been happening a bit lately. Not to worry mate, I got your order here, I'll just send you the details via email."
"I want to order some more, should I do this?"
"Yes, just keep going, and I'll put them all through"
So I book 3 lots of seats, all 3 of them crash to this white screen. Not to worry, eventually, an email comes through with my booking information.

No towels came though. In fact, I don't recall even giving my address. Last night, however, I talked with my friend MagooChris, another HHG fan, who told me a) he got a towel in the mail, b) he booked at 4pm. That's odd, I booked at 2pm and didnt get one.
Two theories here: either a) it was a raffle after all and we just weren't lucky. or b) as I feared, the fact that the stupid machine screwed up means we missed out on a chance to enter the competition.

Now, do recall that I sent an email asking a bunch of questions about the competition on MONDAY, 18 APRIL... Today I got an email. TODAY IS TUESDAY, 26 APRIL... OVER A WEEK LATER.

Thankyou for your inquiry on the Village Cinemas website.

The first 1000 people to make a booking will win one of the towels.

OK so there you have it... stupid computer screws up. We lose again. I'll just add for anyone readin this who has a stake in the towels that its one towel per booking not person. So that's 3 bookings we made, we're owed 3 towels. Therefore if justice is eventually done (which I doubt, but I will be making enquiries), there will only be 3 towels to go around. I got dibs on one, god dammit!

</rant>

Oh and umm, check out this comic Andrew and his friend Luc did.... its hilarious if you go for random:
the neither here not there

"Honey, if you're angry, just squeeze up all your rage into a little ball and release it at an appropriate time. Like when Daddy hit the referee. Do you remember? When Daddy hit the ref?"
- Homer Simpson

Bart: "I know you Homer. You're an emotional guy. Just because you were made last night doesn't mean you'll be mad in the morning."
Homer: "I'LL SHOW YOU MAD IN THE MORNING!"

CodeStar is live!

Now for some grood news for a change... in light of the previous post in which I did some hearty experimentation into free web site hosts, the site in question is now LIVE! And, I did choose to stick with FateBack.

So after three years of thinking about it, and three months of getting my act together, I present:
CODESTAR
Your all-purpose programming resource

codestar.lidonet.net

I hope programmers of all backgrounds, languages and interests will take a look and have a read of some of the articles. As I explain on the site, I've done this because I had so many notes to myself which I just wanted to share. So from now on, I'll be making my programming knowledge public through this space!

Any readers who wish to contribute anything can contact me through this blog or my email which I'm sure you can find somewhere (and which will probably end up on the site).

On Functional Programming:
Can I write an operating system in a Functional Language?
Yes, you can. It's actually been done twice. The fist one who did it is now locked up in a room with padded walls, the second one is still alive and kicking. Rumours has it that the latter built a C compiler in a FL and then recompiled UNIX sources. The compiler is still working on it, but hasn't given an error message yet, so there's still hope.
What is "lazy" evaluation?
Lazy evaluation is one of the most expensive evaluation strategies information scientists have ever invented.
Why is it so expensive?
Because a lazy evaluator spends almost all its time trying to find things it doesn't have to do.
- Languages Humour

Free Web Hosting: The ongoing Arrgghh...

One thing the Internet has brought to our lives is a renewed concept of free-ness. Whether it be legal or il-, everything can be gotten for free because everything can be put up for free.

Now I'm not here to debate the legal issues, because I am currently in the business of making information I have written available for free out of the goodness of my heart. It's called "CodeStar" and it's a new website I've been working on (actually since 2002!) which is devoted to programming of all kinds. The whole site is basically done, and I've spent the past few days looking for a host.

Since I'm providing my own information for free, I think it more than fair that I be able to post it to the web at no expense. Fortunately there are a tremendous number of free web hosts out there. Unfortunately, they all have some way of screwing either you or your web pages.

I think it perfectly reasonable that they display a small advertisment on my page - that is after all, how they make their money. But some of the ads are a) ridiculously large, b) stupidly placed, or c) horrendous for my page layout.

I am a web-page designer who loves his CSS, loves his pages to be laid out with that extra bit of care. So I naturally hate it when an ad comes along and ruins that.

This all started with my Myst fansite, EMS Relto, which was (and is) hosted by Geocities. This site was all going very nicely - Geocities would place a fairly large but closeable layer floating over my page. This layer was good because it had absolutely no impact on the page layout at all. Then it all changed to the huge monstrosity you see now, which actually compresses your page to 4/5 of the original width.

Also... you can forget about valid HTML code. Ads are basically never compatible, even with HTML transitional. Tim has stated that this is because it makes it harder for clever CSS/JavaScript coders to remove the ad from displaying. But this is a pretty poor excuse, since they can do it anyway. I'd like to have a page that validates. Cest la vie.

So... I tried the following free hosts, with some interesting results.

• Angelfire (Lycos) - A nice little ad on one of my computers. On the other, a monstrous and uncloseable flash ad over the top of my page, in addition to two huge extra banner ads at the top and bottom. (wtf?) And why is it dependent on my computer? Also, requires a stupid directory name, making your URL longer and harder to remember. Example.
  
• Tripod (Also Lycos) - Similar problems to Angelfire IIRC but with some other terrible thing I've no doubt shunted out of my mind. Example.
  
• FortuneCity - BLECK! Didn't let me have CSS?!! Even if I used a different extension, blocked it out somehow! Avoid! Example.
  
• Top Free Web Hosting - Looked good for awhile. Notice the ad at the top is kinda nice, and best of all, relevant. But if you press refresh a few times you'll see some different ads, including some very large, awkwardly-shaped and annoying ones which are simply unacceptable. Also, overrode my link hover colour!!! Example.
  

</rant>

Finally I stumble upon this one, the interestingly-named FateBack. Their web address is yourname.lidonet.net which is nice and short too, and doesn't contain the word "fate". Check out the ad: EXAMPLE. Now this is very cool. They are getting what they want - they have a number of clickable ads. It is TWENTY-FIVE PIXELS TALL (at normal display heights). Sometimes when its feeling extra nice, the ad disappears entirely (:|). This is a good one! (I just hope they aren't somehow stealing my credit card ;))

FTP access, 60MB, unlimited bandwidth, POP email account. Its very good and I plan to stick with it.

If you want to go with these guys, beware of a couple of things:

• Problem with ad: If you increase the text size, it looks ugly
  
• Also, if you mouse-over the ? boxes in the ad it can get ugly too, but thats basically due to my site design
  
• BIG ONE: 200KB FILE SIZE LIMIT! (I'm going to live with this for now)
  
• Still not valid XHTML
  
• I can read emails but cant find any way to send emails using this account (?)
  
• Very very ugly 404 error (example)
  

Keep in mind these are all minor flaws. In my opinion this is by far the best free webhost I've seen.

So look out for CodeStar in the next few days. I'm looking forward to it. You can bet there will be a link there from this blog.

And OT, I'd like to say a big WOOT at the Adelaide Crows' huge win over the reigning premiers, Port Adelaide.
Crows unleashed, Power turned off

"Let's see... X for sex, XXX, ooh! Mr. X... do I dare cross the final frontier?"
- Comic Book Guy, upon seeing Homer's "Mr. X" website.

Wow, what a rant!

We're dropping one of our three Software Engineering lecture streams next week. Sounds good, but lemme explain... for myself and a large number of my friends, if we dropped the tuesday lecture, it would mean a three-hour break. We'd all much rather drop one of the other two.

Got a chance to vote on it... cool. Democracy sounds fair. Pity the moment three of us got into the lecture theatre the votes were quickly tabulated and most of the people I knew completely missed out on a chance. So, very annoying: the tuesday lecture was chosen!

In a way, its very very whiney but in another way, justice missed out. So some of us decided to send the lecturer an email. The reason I'm telling you this is so I can pop up the first draft of the email I sent... (thankfully I made some changes before sending)

Look buddy Dear Dr. **** , if you really are a doctor,
There is no justice in the world!!! I and several of my friends arrived to the 433-252 lecture , a bloody fifteen-minute walk from the previous lecture (which is one of the bloody reasons I want to get rid of this lecture slot!) this morning to find that not only had the lecture started five minutes early, as usual, but the farce vote on which lecture stream to drop had already been counted. (Well, technically, I was there for the vote, but sshh.... all my friends missed out!) Therefore they we "missed out" on our vote and are pissed unhappy with the Tuesday decision. Plus, Tuesday is really really stupid!

In the interests of fairness, we demand would it be possible to have a re-vote on Friday at the END of the lecture, which really is a very logical time to have it, isn't it? to make sure that anyone who is on my team wants to vote is present? This would be the only way to preserve democracy for future generations.

Thanks for taking another vote (you will, won't you?) your time, which is quite obviously scarce,
; Matt/Eat_My_Shortz

Yeah... it was pretty whiney. But hey, its worth a try anyway!

So, onto our favourite soapie, Neighbours. You may remember my blog waay back in December when Neighbours' 2004 season ended dramatically with the Lassiters explosion and the arrival of Paul Robinson.

Neighbours Explosive Finale
(Once again British and I-taped-it-and-will-watch-it-eventually viewers (Tuesday's episode) should stop reading now).

That was very cool! Here's what I said back then...

After the explosive events of the episode ... we got a glimpse in the final shot of the face of the perpetrator, which must have sent a shiver down the spine of anyone who watched the show prior to 1993. After doing a bit of research, I discovered the man was Paul Robinson.

The so-called "perpetrator" turned out to be a lovely benevolent man. He arrived officially in the first episode of 2005 and immediately started splashing money around all over the place. Initially, I had theories about him burning down Lassiters so he could come in and take over. You could see that he had some hidden motives.

But as time went on, he just seemed too nice to be responsible for the death of Gus and the destruction of all these properties and livelihoods. It just didn't seem likely, and I think we all got attached to him.

Well I guess my original assumption was sadly proven right on Tuesday when the evidence was found, he was accused and confessed. Its still not out in the open, but I guess poor Paul has not much time left on the show. For what its worth, he was a really nice guy. Pity hes a murderer. :(

Now to finish with a rant... as everybody knows I'm a big wikipediholic. I recently wrote an entire article on Zork Zero. But it seems a few days ago somebody came along and deleted almost all of my text and completely rewrote the article. True, he had some new information to offer. But it was not necessary to delete my original text, and replace it with much more colloquial language. Makes me angry!

The "drastic rewrite"...

Here's a gem from the recent Melbourne Comedy Gala:

'Some authors write in third person, and some authors write in first person. I'm writing my book in fifth person. So all of my sentences start with "I heard from this guy who told somebody."'
- Demetri Martin

Gmail is counting... up!

Gmail was one huge April Fools joke back in 2004. Announced on April 1, in a time when most online users were piddling around with 2MB on their Hotmail accounts, Google announced the service which gave users a whopping ONE GIGABYTE of space. It was no joke. Although it was limited to Google friends and family at first, the system started giving out invites to users who could invite others. In an ingenious "covert" system, Gmail has now spread across the entire internet and now there is nobody who doesn't have an account or know anybody who does. (For fans of logic, in that last sentence, the "or" takes precedence over the "doesn't").

Skip forward to April 1, 2005, and Gmail is talking about an interesting scheme to achieve Infinity Plus 1 space. Now, they didn't say they were giving it away, just that they are working towards it. THIS IS NO JOKE EITHER...

The first thing was, we suddenly got upgraded to 2GB! That was very generous. But then, a counter appeared on the main page, which was counting up. We thought it was a little javascript joke which would disappear the next day. But it's not... sure enough, the counter is, slowly, counting higher and higher, and the space we have available is increasing. Hence they are, in fact, working towards Infinity+1.

From a quick test, one can see that it's increasing at a rate of about 400 millikilobytes per second (where 1 millikilobyte == 1.024 bytes). This projects to a rate of 400*1.024*60*60*24/1024/1024 = 33.75 MB per day. Which is quite a hefty rate.

These calculations are confirmed by the fact that now, just over one and a half days into this new game, we have 2053MB available. I really hope this continues... Well good on Google anyway.

(And lets hope this isnt some wierd continuing joke which will eventually be relegated back to 2GB. Or 1GB. As the wiki seems to think it is.)

"Another accurate usage [of infinity] is an infinite loop in computer programming, a conditional loop construction whose condition always evaluates to true. As long as there is no external interaction (such as switching the computer off, or the heat death of the universe), the loop will continue to run for all time."
- Wikipedia: Infinity (As of Apr 3 2005)

Heeeeere's Johnny!

Very very excited now, because I am about to announce a brand new game from Summit Interactive! (ie. me :D)

Readers of this blog will no doubt remember my Australia Day post, where I let slip some information about my upcoming title.
It's the best thing forum

No I can't wait. OK here goes... it's a futuristic fantasy/action hybrid where space trolls (not the Tolkien kind, more the doll kind with huge fluoro hair) from the planet Trompton invade Earth. You are Johnny Armeck, the one man who, with his party of merry men, have to travel to Trompton to put an end to the troll menace through a combination of puzzle-solving, action, and fashion-sense. I'm developing the game in Haskell, (but writing the fast code in Visual Basic) and it's using a special effect that makes 2D graphics look 3D, as seen in Duke Nukem 3D.

Well as discerning readers (eventually) figured out, that was supposed to be a joke. But that didn't deter me! Johnny Armeck is about to hit computer screens in his first adventure...

JOHNNY THE TROLL SLAYER

The official announcement and complete website are now online at the Summit Interactive website!

Summit Interactive Online

Please go and have a look! I've spent the past two days preparing all of the material for the website and am very excited to present all of the information, screenshots, concept art and music related to the game. Enjoy!

"It's a good thing that beer wasn't shaken up any more, or I'd have looked quite the fool. An April fool, as it were."
- Homer Simpson