Star Trek movie

5 of 10 dongs. This movie was made for kids eight through 14 years old. I prefer scifi for adults, like BSG and Firefly. Another disappointing Trek movie.

The actor playing Kirk was not a good choice. There needs to be a flash of devlish genius (or at least intelligence) in Kirk's eyes and with this actor there was nothing but blankness. He has a squeaky voice too. Compare it to Shatner's voice. He did not embody Kirk just as some actors who have played Bond fail to become Bond.

Overall the story was weak, with little character development. The time travel theme has been done to death and the writers didn't add any new wrinkle.

I like the idea that the crew was struggling to master new technologies and dreaming up new uses of these technologies. There is a trial and error aspect to technology that many people (in real life) are not willing to accept. They feel entitled to results but are unwilling to learn how to use the tools required to gain those results . . . unless it's a cell phone.

I'm less sympathetic to the he "cheating = hacking" theme. I'm sure this attempt to blur the difference between hacking and cheating will be a huge hit with the 8-14 audience but that doesn't make it right. Sure the Kobayashi Maru test is impossible to defeat but cracking the test's server did not prove anything except to demonstrate Kirk's cracking skills. The object of the test is to reveal the subject's character; to show what he might do in a seemingly hopeless situation. Not every test has a right or wrong answer and cheating is not the answer.

Pulseaudio is for fappists

Why the FUCK is there another audio subsystem in Fedora now? Fuck you, you fucking fucks. ALSA is fine. Leave it the fuck alone. I need TWO audio softwares on my box? Again I say, fuck you you fucking fucks and the fuckdog you rode in on.

Best Dilbert Evar

paramiko to sftp without keys

Stupid server does not allow installation of ssh keys. This makes file transfers harder to automate from a cron job for example because scp and ssh have no --username --passwd options.

Python can help! I can sftp a whole dir of files to the sftp server with this script. My next task is to make paramiko accept filename extention wildcards. i.e. 'sftp *.csv mucknuck@sftp.computrid.com:'

import paramiko
import os

hostname = 'sftp.computrid.com'
port = 22
username = 'nucknuck'
password = '05N9289!'
dir_path = 'moo'
local_path = '/home/datasvcs/AIG/moo'

if __name__ == "__main__":
t = paramiko.Transport((hostname, port))
t.connect(username=username, password=password)
sftp = paramiko.SFTPClient.from_transport(t)
files = os.listdir(local_path)
for f in files:
print 'Uploading', f
sftp.put(os.path.join(dir_path, f), f)
t.close()

reset OS X Leopard user's video mode

This hackintosh of mine is a trip. When logged in as an ordinary user I ask Leopard to use a video mode not of its choosing. The screen turns blue and fails to revert back to the previous setting. Perhaps if I had an Apple LCD display it would behave differently but I doubt it. I rebooted the machine from an ssh login and tried to login as the same user who had the blue screen. Guess what? I login and the screen turns blue and stays that way.

Anyway to expunge the broken setting all you need do is ssh into the stricken user's account and:

cd /Users/msh/Library/Preferences/ByHost

rm com.apple.preference.displays.*
rm com.apple.windowserver.*

Lemme know if this works for you.

Body of Lies

Blah. Dumb movie. I couldn't sympathize with any of the characters. The one bright spot is Golshifteh Farahani as Aisha. She could melt an iceberg with those eyes. Then again, the idea that she would date DiCaprio's dodgy character is pretty far fetched. DiCaprio will only tell her is that he's a "political advisor to the King." nplz. Aisha would be deeply suspicious, and rightly so. Also, women as pretty as Farahani (especially in a traditional society) always have men chasing them so where are her would-be suitors? If DiCaprio had a run-in with some Arab guy over her my willingness to suspend disbelief might have lasted a bit longer.

Oh yeah, the fake Middle Eastern soundtrack is nauseating.

Note to Hollywood. Stop making movies about Arab terrorists. You suck at this.

The Spartan

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0360009/

This movie is the shit. It has a great cast, superb dialog and it's full of twists you can't anticipate. I like movies that don't varnish their characters too much. These characters, especially Kilmer's, are deeply focused on their missions. You rarely get to see them as their private selves. As with other Mamet joints, the characters declare their intentions in blunt, Hemingwayesque fashion. Nobody mumbles; nobody minces words. Any one of them has more nerve than the rest of us combined.

I'll give it 9 of 10 dongs.