Diary of a Network Geek

BookOfEli

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw The Book of Eli Friday night.

Wow, this was not what I was expecting! I went in expecting this to be a straight-forward post-apocalyptic action movie, but it was a whole lot more than that.
The basic plot is pretty simple, actually.  A wanderer by the name of Eli, played by Denzel Washington, is traveling West.  He’s carrying a book, along with his sword, a bow and arrow, a gun and, in a master stroke of product placement, an iPod.  He’s a righteous man in a savage world of radiation, destruction and desperate people.  And, those most desperate of people come after him, to try and take whatever they can from him, perhaps even to take him for their stew pot.  After all, in a world where everything is scarce, meat is meat.

Eli meets several groups of people, from the barely organized savages who try to lure him in with a woman in distress to the much more dangerous roving gangs of bikers.  The savages he slices and dices, but the bike gangs turn out to be a “road crew”, of sorts, for  a much more organized nasty by the name of Carnegie, played by Gary Oldham.  Turns out, he’s looking for a book, a very special book, that he thinks can unite all the locals into a city-state of sorts.  A city-state he can franchise over and over and over again.
Eli wanders into this little dictator’s town looking to get his iPod charged up, because, you know, a war ravaged and devistated landscape is no place for a day hike without some portable tunes.  The local engineer sets him up, for a pretty good trade in pre-war goods, obviously salvaged, and sends him to the only bar in town for a drink while the iPod charges up.  That’s where things get a little dangerous and Eli takes out the road crew who he’d seen on the road.  That draws the attention of Carnegie, who “invites” Eli to stay on.  When Eli declines, Carnegie insists he stay the night to think about the offer, he sends in Solara, played by Mila Kunis, to try and convince Eli to stay.  Of course, in the end, she ends up convincing him to take her with when he leaves.

I won’t give away more of the plot, so as not to ruin the film, but you’ll quickly learn that the mysterious book that Eli carries and Carnegie wants is a Bible.  Seems after the war, they were all destroyed.  All save this one.  And Eli is the last righteous man on Earth, following God’s calling to take the book to the West where he’ll mysteriously know what to do with it and who to give it to.
And, yes, that is where the spirituality of the whole thing ties in.  Eli is the most just and upright man in a very savage and essentially Godless world, trying to follow the teachings in the Bible he carries, even as he fights for his own survival.  Carnegie represent all that is wrong and venal in a world ruled by baser politics and power and controlling the masses.  The dichotomy of these two men make most of the product placement shots rather more ironic than I think may have been intended, but, regardless, it’s a great morality story.  And, a great story for modern Christians to consider.
We, too, are in a world that is often far from “God centered” and ruled by baser ideals.  Are we going to keep God’s ways?  Are we even going to try?  Or is our religion just something we do once a week?  How faithful are we to what we believe is God’s way?  When we hear God’s voice, do we listen?
No, I don’t have the answers, nor does this movie, necessarily, but it does ask the right questions.  Or, at least, it provoked them in me.  And, yes, it was great to see a spiritual hero who was far from perfect and far from a pushover do his best in a particularly difficult place.  There comes a time, when the world is so banal and corrupt that no one else has anything more than base survival on their mind that even the smallest attempt as spirituality is huge.

In short, I loved this movie.
Sure it was pretty violent for the younger folks, but I’d encourage everyone to go see this one, even if you don’t like violence.  The themes, especially for Christians, that are brought up and snuck into your thoughts under the cover of an action film are well worth the price of admission.  Incidentally, the movie is based on a graphic novel with which I’m only vaguely familiar, and there are some fight scenes that really show the influence of that in their beauty and artistry and coreography. It’s a really well done film with top-shelf actors in it.
It’s a rarity for me, but I would see this again.  Hell, I’d even pay full price to see this one again.  It was that good.
Really, it may not have the visual impact of Avatar in IMAX 3D, but, I assure you, this is a fantastic film.

No, I haven’t done it. Yet.

But, when I do, I probably won’t end up using MythTV, like I thought I would. Rather, I think I’ll be using BoxxeeBox. Where MythTV is geared toward making a DVR, like Tivo, BoxxeeBox is more geared toward making home theater/multimedia machine, which is really what I want.

So, yeah, there are options.  Check this one out if you’re thinking about building a home theater machine.  It’s worth considering.

(And, yes, I’m trying to clean out old posts that have been lingering as drafts again.  New Year and all.)

So, way, way back a couple of weeks ago, I saw the surprisingly good Ninja Assassin.

Now, I recognize that not many of my regular readers are likely to be into martial arts films of any kind as much as I probably am, much less the somewhat specific sub-genre of ninja films.  But, somehow, I did manage to talk one of my friends into going to see this one with me.  And, you know what?  When it was all over, he thanked me for it!  Yeah, that’s how good a film this little sleeper was!  I mean, really, this is the best ninja movie I’ve seen since Sho Kosugi did Enter The Ninja back in the early 80’s, practically launching the ninja craze in America.  In fact, the Great Master himself was in this movie as the old master who teaches Raizo, the main heroic ninja assassin of the title, played by the Korean pop-star, Rain.

The plot is a ninja film classic; the hero suffers through a brutal and very thourough training as a child to become the ultimate silent assassin only to be betrayed by his clan, who hunt him even as he seeks to bring them to justice.  No, really, this is a pretty common theme in these kinds of movies.  Honest.
So, the hero, Raizo, has help in the form of an international police researcher and her partner, though, he ends up not being as much help as you’d think at first.  She, however, gets in over her head by getting a file, of sorts, from a former Soviet intelligence agent who died under somewhat mysterious circumstances, who had been researching the ninja.  Mika, the researcher, played by Naomie Harris, had also been researching the connection between the ninja and several high-profile, virtually impossible assassinations.  The only problem is, no one else believes her.  No one, that is, except the ninja themselves and they come to kill her.
That’s where Raizo comes in.  He intervenes and saves her, then takes Mika on the run.  Not so much out of choice as neccessity.  They run from both the clan and Mika’s organization, who both come after the pair.  And, really, that’s pretty much the entire movie, right there.  It is, in the truest sense of the word, an action movie, but it’s a bit more than that, too.  It’s a kind of archetypal ninja action movie, with all the “required” elements, including honor, justice, a really good training sequence flash-back, a skilled master, a beautiful girl, and, of course, a love story.  That, along with the most amazing martial arts action you’ve ever seen in your life, make this a winner.

Now, you may think I’m exaggerating on this, but consider for a moment who made this film.  This bad boy was produced by the Wachowski’s of The Matrix fame and the script rewrites were done by J. Michael Straczynski, the guy who wrote Babylon 5.   These folks are geniuses in their field and have done truly revolutionary things for science-fiction, movies and television.  Really.
I mean, you’ve got the guys who reinvented action and, essentially, set an entirely new standard for action movies.  Then, you combine them with the guy who changed the face of episodic television science-fiction.  Mash them together with a ninja theme and think about where this might go.  And, yes, it really goes there.  Honest.  It was a visually stunning film.  Not in the same way that Avatar was, but, again, as an action movie, it took filmed martial arts to a whole new place.  It was fantastic.
Also, while it was paying homage to the ninja films of the 80’s, it included the guy who started it all, in a kind of ultimate homage; Sho Kosugi.  I’m pretty much convinced that any really great ninja film has got to include Kosugi or at least reference his work, so, you know, they score on that point.

So, yeah, this is kind of a special sub-genre of film, but if it’s your thing, you have got to rent this one.  I’m sure it’s not in the theater any more, but this should absolutely be in your Netflix queue.  If you love acttion, martial arts movies, or ninjas, you need to see this one.  Really.

And, there you have it.  Three movie reviews in three days.  A pretty good start to the new year, I think, even if I am reviewing movies from last year!

Avatar3D-IMAX

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

This was a fantastic movie!

No, really, Avatar was quite possibly the most important movie of the past several years.  Certainly, I think it was the most visually stunning and will launch us into an entirely new world of digital animation that will get better and cheaper as time goes on.  In fact, this movie was so fantastic, that when I saw it in a regular, non-3D, non-IMAX theater, I knew I would eventually see it in the full, 3D IMAX version.  So, instead of this just being the second of two slightly stale reviews, I’ll be combining in the review of the 3D version, too.

Right, so, this has been one of the most anticipated science-fiction movies ever.  People have been talking about this for months, at least.  In fact, it’s been around so long that when we first started hearing rumors about it, no one quite knew what it was really going to be about at all.  Just that it was going to be big, that James Cameron was behind it, and it had something to do with people taking over bodies via some science-fiction thing-a-ma-bob.
I purposely avoided reading about it as long and as much as I could.  Early on, people were tossing around terms like “revolutionary” and “ground-breaking” and that sort of thing always makes me nervous.  So often, that just sets up consumers like us for a movie that, frankly, can’t possibly live up to expectations.
Well, this one did.

I saw it first in 2D and I was impressed.
For most of the movie, you forget that it’s almost all computer generated graphics.  The backgrounds and sets that are digital just look real.  In the best CGI films, like this one, the effects are forgotten, mostly, and just, well, part of the background.  The movie, the story, is what you see, not the effects.  And, this is just what happens in Avatar.  As spectacular as the CGI is, at no point did I feel that the story took a backseat to the graphics.  The Navi, the indigenous aliens, are all computer graphics, but they’re so well done that you never really think of them as anything but real.  Truly fantastic.
And, that’s the story, really.  There’s a planet that has a very valuable mineral on it and we’re there mining that mineral.  The problem is, the Navi, those native aliens are sort of in the way.  In fact, there’s a big tribe of them right on the richest deposit of that very valuable mineral.  Enter Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington, who, due to a quirk in genetics, timing, circumstances, ends up “riding” a genetically engineered “avatar” which looks just like a local.  He replaces his twin brother, who was a scientist, on the mission and ends up getting into a bit of trouble early on which separates him from the rest of his team and lost in the very alien woods.  That’s where he meets one of the local girls, who reluctantly takes him under her wing.  Turns out, she’s the chief’s daughter and her mother is the local tribal shaman.  Mommie dearest is the one who insists that Neytiri, the little local girl, played by Zoe Saldana, teach Sully their alien tribal ways.  And so it goes until the fateful day that the miners show up to destroy the tribe’s home camp so they can get at the huge mineral deposit.  And really, that’s the the plot, in a nutshell.
Now, I won’t tell you who wins, but I asure you it’s the good guys.  All you have to do is figure out which they are.

So, the thing is, it’s not a revolutionary plot.  The characters, while fully fleshed out, aren’t anything overly special.  The music is mostly good, though there are a couple of times that the songs aren’t particularly great.  The acting is solid, which is sort of remarkable, considering that much of it’s done through motion-capture CGI.
But, somehow, it all comes together.
I think that’s the genius of James Cameron.  Somehow, he can make the magic work.  And, in this movie he really does make the magic happen.  He takes these disparate elements, none of which are particularly interesting on their own, and marries them to the best and most advanced CGI anyone has ever spent the money to make.  It’s at that point that things get really interesting.  That, in a nutshell, is what makes this film something new and special.
People have compared it to Star Wars in its import.
I’m not sure it’s quite that, but it certainly is a bit of a game-changer.

Now, this may not be quite obvious if you see this in 2D, but when you see Avatar in 3D you will see a miracle on screen.
This may seem like an exaggeration, but I assure you it is not.  The 3D is so good, so seamless, so real that you will flinch when things fly at you.  You will believe that you are seeing documentary footage of an alien planet with an alien landscape filled with alien flora and fauna.  You will forget to blink.  Seriously, I had to remind myself to blink.  That’s really how good it is.  It really is the most remarkable thing I’ve seen on screen since, well, I think since Star Wars.
The level of detail is incredible.  The insects fly off the screen at you like something actually alive.  The glowing plants are so realistic that you feel like you could order them off the damn internet.  All the crazy stories about all the bullheaded determination that Cameron pours into his movies and with which he tortures his crew must be true because his end product is like being immersed in an entirely different world.  And, that, of course, is what you’re paying to see.

And that, in the end, is my reccomendation to you.
GO SEE THIS MOVIE!
What’s more, go see it in IMAX 3D.  It may cost you a bit extra, but it is worth every penny you pay to see this film as Cameron intended you to see it.  Also, waiting until you see it on home video will not be the same.  I promise you, it will be a good movie no matter what the format, but the way to see this film, the way that will make sure you don’t feel like you’re missing something big and important, is to get yourself to an IMAX theater and slap those goofy 3D glasses on your face.
Trust me.  You will love it.

So, I’ve seen a couple of movies in the past several weeks that I have been too busy to review.  Here’s one of those.

I’m doing this in reverse order, by the way, and reviewing the most recent movie first.  On Christmas Day, I saw Sherlock Holmes with a friend, like we have for the past three years now.  In fact, when we started that shortly after I got out of cancer treatment, that was the start of my massive spree of hitting in the theaters.  In any case, I’ve seen a lot of movies in the past two years, but I try not to get jaded and all snooty about it like the professional critics do.  I tried to set aside any preconceived notions about what this film should be and just tried to be open to the experience.

It was, um, interesting.
I don’t really think of Sherlock Holmes as an action hero, but, that’s sure what Robert Downey Jr. and Guy Ritchie made him.  And, you know what?  It worked.  Yeah, it really did.  Now, I’m sure purists will get bent out of shape with Holmes boxing, or doing savate, or whatever it was supposed to be, but, really, it doesn’t seem like such a stretch to me.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
The plot is typical Victorian era adventure stuff.  The opening scene starts with an attempted occult murder, a sacrifice, that is thwarted by Holmes, played by Downey, and his faithful companion, Dr. Watson, played by Jude Law.  The erstwhile occultist, and thwarted murderer, is Lord Blackwood, a nobleman and, quite obviously, the villain.  And, yeah, if his name didn’t give it away, his theme music did.  A little heavy handed, but, still all in the spirit of a good adventure.
Then, we quickly fast forward through Blackwood’s trial and right to the day before his execution.  Watson is set to attend the execution as both one of his accusers and as a physician, to certify his death.  However, it’s Holmes that Blackwood calls for before his execution so that he may deliver a prediction about his return from the grave and other, more dire, predictions about deaths that Holmes won’t be able to prevent.

Naturally, these things come to pass, in spite of Holmes and Watson’s best efforts to stop them.  We also discover the person Holmes always referred to as “The Woman”, in the stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ms. Irene Adler.  In the movie, however, she’s a much more active and adventuresome woman, at least in the athletic sense, and played by Rachel McAdams.  And, she’s quite troublesome to the pair of friends.  At first, she seems to be working against the two men and, possibly, is in league with Blackwood.  But, it’s not long before we discover that she’s actually working for someone else entirely and is only partially at cross-purposes to Holmes and Watson.

There is also at least one subplot here; Watson’s engagement.
He takes his fiance to meet Holmes for dinner, though he’s obviously been avoiding it.  It seems he’s not all that keen on losing his best, and oldest, friend to marriage.  The meeting is a disaster as Holmes only partially deduces her story and essentially accuses her of being a gold-digger out to marry a wealthy doctor.  In fact, her previous fiance died and she is quite in love with Watson, who already was aware of all the things which Holmes correctly detected.  And this will prove a key relationship as she is quite helpful to Watson several times during the ensuing adventure.

The prophecies that Blackwood made all start coming true, of course, much to Holmes and Watson’s growing discomfort.  And, naturally, Holmes obsession with trying to prevent these events, as well as trying to track down Blackwood, leads the two men on a twisting journey through a slightly anachronistic Victorian, really almost Edwardian, London.  Along the way, they run afoul of Ms. Adler and her mysterious employer until she and Holmes eventually agree to work together, though, she never really stops working for the other man.
Blackwood’s predictions, incidentally, all seem to be centered around some sort of occult plot to take over the world, naturally.  Blackwood is trying to gain control over a quasi-Masonic occult secret society with roots in England, but branches as far as America.  As is usual in the Sherlock Holmes stories, he uses cutting edge science to make what seems to be magical events occur under his control.  The superstitious members of the society assume that he’s managed to achieve a higher level of occult competency and, therefore, out of fear, or greed, follow him.  But, of course, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are there to fight for justice, etc., etc.

Now, I won’t ruin the movie by revealing more of the plot and I certainly won’t tell you how it ends, except to say that they do leave things open for a sequel.
Okay, let me make it clear here, I liked this movie, even though it does present a somewhat non-traditional Holmes.  I didn’t mind the boxing or savate or whatever it was Holmes was doing.  It made for fantastic action sequences.  I didn’t even mind that Downey couldn’t seem to maintain a consistent English accent.  Honestly, the action was so good and the rest of the acting was so good that the minor slip of accent was barely noticeable.
I was somewhat less thrilled about the heavy-handed occult references and the entire secret society subplot.  Maybe it has to do with the fact that I am a Freemason, so I see the attempts to mimic the Fraternity in these occult societies and, frankly, I know just how wrong they are.  Also, frankly, the older I get the more hokey I find the average supernatural stories in the movies and such.  Maybe it’s just that I’m getting more spiritual and therefore less superstitious, but it just seems less and less believable.
And, the one anachronism that was just too huge to ignore was a reference to radio waves.  At the time the story takes place, if “radio waves” had even been discovered, which I’m almost certain they had not been, they certainly wouldn’t have been called radio waves.  If anything, they might have been called Hertzian waves.  But, Nikola Tesla, the first patent holder of a true, working radio device, had either not been born yet, or was less than ten years old, depending on precisely when the story in the movie was to have taken place.  But, honestly, that was a relatively small thing and didn’t get in the way of my general enjoyment of the film at all.

I know this film will be eclipsed by Avatar, but I really enjoyed it and I whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone who likes action movies, or even Sherlock Holmes.  It was thoroughly enjoyable and well worth seeing.
I think I may even look forward to seeing a sequel!

Hey, look, it’s a new year!

First of all, let me apologize to my faithful readers for not posting more this week.  I had intended to get a couple of movie reviews up here, since I’ve got a bit of a backlog, but that didn’t quite happen.  There are a couple of reasons for that.  First, I’ve been busy helping people with their internet connections and doing some extra stuff for people at church.  Secondly, I was getting ready for last night’s little party at my house.  Thirdly, I’ve been sick.  In fact, I probably should have called off the party last night to get some rest, but, well, that’s just not how I roll.  Yo.

In any case, my laziness not withstanding, the new year is upon us!
Which means, it’s time to start figuring out what resolution you’re going to fail miserably at for the coming year.  Oh, c’mon, you don’t really think anyone believes that those resolutions are anything but an extended exercise in wishful thinking, do you?  Well, I suppose some people make resolutions they intend to keep, and a few people even manage to actually do it, but, mostly, I think they’re just good intentions.  So, given that, why not at least have some fun coming up with one?

That was my thought a couple years ago when I coded up my very own, home-made New Year’s Resolution Generator. You can choose whether or not to start something or stop something and leave the rest up to drunken, sexy chance! (Well, that sounds better than leaving it up to my feeble programming skills and a pseudo-random number generator, doesn’t it?)  Now, I will admit, this thing might be a little weighted toward kissing strangers and other mildly inappropriate behavior, but, again, that was mostly wishful thinking on my part.

Anyway, it’s free, and fun, and a number of years ago, Comedy Central picked it as a funny link of the month, or week, or day, or something, so you know it has to be sort of fun.  I know I enjoyed making it, at least!

So, no matter how you choose to start it, with or without the crazy suggestions from the New Year’s Resolution Generator, try to start the year with a little fun, a smile, and my best wishes.
Happy New Year, everyone!

The Christmas Spirit arrived sort of late for me this year.

So, yeah, I haven’t put up any decorations or anything.  Why?  Well, I just wasn’t feeling it this year.  I mean, I was all alone and I’m pretty much officially middle-aged now and, damn it all, I don’t even have any kids who are all mad at me because I’m not with their mother any more, or anything.  All of which translates to me feeling sorry for myself, right?  And, frankly, that just doesn’t make for a great holiday spirit.  Also?  It makes me a miserable bastard to be around.  Yeah, I know it and I own it.  It is, as they say, what it is.

So, what changed?  Hell if I know.  Monday was the Winter Solstice.  For those of you who don’t know, that means it was the shortest day of the year.  It had the fewest hours of daylight of any day of the year and was celebrated by the Pagans.  But, what they celebrated was the return of light to the world, because every day after the Winter Solstice was longer, filled with increasingly more light.
Maybe that’s what it was.  The increase of light in my heart.
I’m not sure what it is, really, but it is a change, even though I didn’t put up decorations.  I did go and do some last minute Christmas shopping yesterday, though.

I started out looking for a few simple things.
For one, I planned to hit Half-Price Books and get couple cheap, “token” gifts, so there’s something to unwrap, and a gift certificate for two-and-a-half of my favorite readers.  And, I’m sure the little half will grow up into a full-fledged reader.  The gift certificate is the real gift, though, I’d hoped to get a list of books from each of them to facilitate a low-pressure “to-read” stack for my favorite newest parents.
The next was a combo stop, a “two for one”.  Also at a bookstore, but this was a full-price shop to get a couple of Moleskines; a journal and a sketchbook, for two different people.  Also, since I was actually in a Barnes and Noble who had a music section, I thought I’d get the latest Dolly Parton CD and Snoop Dogg’s latest, too.  And, yes, they were both for the same person.  Unfortunately, for some reason, Barnes and Noble stopped carrying Snoop Dogg, which meant another stop somewhere.

Okay, so right now, you maybe asking yourself why in God’s name I’d be buying Dolly Parton and Snoop Dogg for the same person I’d be getting a journal for and, honestly, you’d be right to ask those questions.  She’s a little unusual, but in a good way.  She doesn’t fit a standard mold by any means, but she’s been having a sort of rough go of it lately.  Part of that included getting ripped off a couple of weeks ago.  And the weasels stole pretty much everything electronic or music related and that means that her entire, unusually diverse, music collection got lifted, too.  So, I decided to play Santa Claus and, hopefully, repair a little bit of the damage the world did to her this year before it’s too late.
Hell, it’s complicated.

So, the Moleskine sketchbook needed something more, namely, some colored pencils.  See, my Santa Claus duties are limited only by my meager budget!  So, from the bookstores I was off to Hobby Lobby to hunt up a set of colored pencils.  This person has stiffled their art instincts.  That almost physically hurts me to think of someone else cutting themselves off from their more creative urges because life circustances make it easier to set that down that face that particular demon.  So, for that one, the super nice sketchbook and a set of pencils and those big, rectangular acrylic crayons all in a pretty nice tin.  I put that all together with a note beneath the wrapping paper telling her to “MAKE TIME for art”.  I hope she takes the hint.

But, if you were paying attention, I had more things to get.
So, amidst the craziness that passes for last-minute Christmas shopping, I decided to brave the wilds of Target to get that Snoop Dogg CD.  But, it wasn’t as bad as I would have thought.  Of course, it probably helped that I was on a mission and just had the one thing to get, but it was pretty much in, right to the music department for the last copy of “Malice In Wonderland”, then right back out again.
Really, Target wasn’t the worst of it.  That, surprisingly enough to me, was Barnes and Noble.  Of course, I cheated there by checking out at the Music counter and bypassing the huge line up front.  Besides, I’m hoping that surprise of getting these very contradictory things from me, because, you know, I’d listened to what she was saying, will make the small effort of the extra trip worthwhile.  I mean, that is the point right?

When I was a kid, I was told that it wasn’t the gift so much but the giving and the idea.  Having something that was meaningful mattered more than what it really was.  But, this season in particular, that the whole commercialism aspect of this holiday really got to me.  I don’t know, it just seemed so bad this year.  Maybe it’s that I find myself struggling with my spirituality that I find the crass commercialism even more, uh, crass.  So, no one was more surprised than I to find msyelf suddenly motivated to spread a little joy.  Joy that extended all the way to a year’s worth of Flickr Professional for yet another friend, incidentally.
I hope it lasts until Christmas Day, at least.

Well, while you wait to see just how jaded I really am, you can track Santa on NORAD and hope that he brings you something good.  Oh, and they added a new feature this year!  Now, you can get updates to your cellphone for just where Santa is!  How cool is that?

Do you remember THX1138?

It was George Lucas’ first real film, before he did American Graffiti or Star Wars.  Well, in it, the characters talked to computer “therapists” who “diagnosed” them based on what they said, rather like the now infamous ElizaBot, but with prescriptions.  Well, now, there’s TweetPsych which will analyze your Twitter stream and tell you based on your word choices and patterns, what you’re fixated on.  Dwight Silverman, at the Chronicle, reported on this and found mixed results, so, you know, caveat emptor and remember, the free advice is worth what you paid for it.

Have fun!

Not your writing composition, by the way, but your photographic composition.

You know, it’s not like the world needs another photography blog or anything, or I think I’d be tempted to convert this site from “Diary of  Network Geek” to “Journal of an Obsessed Amateur Photographer”!  So, you all will have to excuse me while I geek out over photography once in a while.
This time, I’m sharing a link to the Amateur Snapper’s 10 Top Photography Composition Rules.  Of course, I think of them as guidelines more than rules, but, then, I’ve always thought rules were for other people, so take that with a grain of salt.

In any case, the link has ten really good suggestions for composing better pictures.  You may be familiar with some of them, but I’ll bet there’s one or two you’ve forgotten or never thought about much.  Also?  The rest of the site isn’t bad, either, so, if you’re interested in photography, go ahead and click the link.  You won’t be sorry!

It’s not quite the “birthday” of the mouse, but…

Today is the 41st anniversary of the first time a mouse made its commercial debut, though the patent was actually granted just a few weeks earlier on November 17th. That’s right, the mouse, that marvel of modern technology that most of us use daily is just a little older than I am. Invented by Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, the original mouse was little more than a square, wooden box, but the little device would change the world. Engelbart showed how the mouse could let a user jump from text on one part of the screen randomly to another section without having to scroll through the text inbetween. Doesn’t sound too revolutionary to us today, does it? But, think about how you navigated to this page to read this little blurb, then try to imagine doing it without a mouse.  Or, imagine trying to use Photoshop or any other graphic design program for that matter without the point-click-and-drag of a computer mouse.  Yeah, pretty much everything cool you can do on a computer these days involves a mouse or similar pointer.  Now, of course, to me, that’s the real genius of an invention like the mouse; it seems so obvious that we wonder why we didn’t think of it sooner!

So, happy demo day, little guy. Thanks for giving me a job and us a way to waste time at work.