JonCellini.com

Almost two years ago Feutz, Hewy, and I worked on a skunkworks project to assess the viability of Linux on the zSeries platform. We were running the project on an old mainframe owned by one of our subsidiary companies. Last December I thought we had torn everything down as our proof-of-concept was wrapped up and we were overdue to return some of the items we had “borrowed”.

Fetuz called today to let me know that one of the instances still seems to be alive and kicking…

12:53pm up 231 days, 5:37, 8 users, load average: 0.13, 0.08, 0.03
Linux linux1 2.4.7-timer-SMP #1 SMP Tue May 6 06:56:30 GMT 2003 s390 unknown
cellini@linux1:~ >

I just got home from seeing Chronicles of Riddick and I was disappointed. The film is an uninspired and unimaginative sci-fi mess. The concepts and characters were interesting but they weren’t developed at all. While sitting in the theater I couldn’t help think that this was a less interesting rehash of Conan the Barbarian with a Dune like fight scene thrown in at the end. *yawn*

We should have saw the Stepford Wives instead.

I have been thinking for a while that it would be cool / convenient to be able to stream digital audio to my home stereo. Heather and I don’t own a CD changer and I don’t see the value in purchasing one since I already have the contents of all of my CDs ripped to my computer. Since the iTunes music store is so convenient we have all but stopped buying CDs anyway.

I was looking at the Squeezebox which seemed like a pretty decent solution. The only things I weren’t thrilled about were the price and not being able to natively play protected AAC files purchased from the iTunes music store (yes I know I can burn re-rip them as unprotected files but that seems like a waste of time). Fortunately I waited since Apple announced their new AirPort Express on Monday.

The AirPort Express is a wireless bridge / router, wireless print server, and a streaming audio device all in one elegant little package. While a wireless print server isn’t of much use to me (especially by my stereo) it will steam digital audio and provide a Wi-Fi bridge all in one device. Since it comes from Apple it will “just work” with iTunes and will play their protected AAC files without any hassle. Since it is priced less than the Squeezebox and does more it can’t be beat.

It is a shame that they aren’t shipping until July.

Heather and I went and saw the third Harry Potter movie last night. Surprisingly for a 12:00 AM showing there was quite a crowd. Apparently Beaverton has more Harry Potter fans (or insomniacs) than I thought. While I wouldn’t call myself a fan I did enjoy the movie quite a bit. The third installment is darker in tone than the prior two films and has both strong acting and effects. The pacing of the story was a bit slow at times but it didn’t detract much from the experience.

During the film when Harry would get angry and lash out I kept waiting for a Muppet to pop up and spout some nonsense about hate leading you to the dark side. Presumably this was an attempt by the filmmakers to show him coping with his adolescence, but then again he could just be angry because the dorky kid seemed to be getting the girl.

Chris, my boss, called me today to inform me that my favorite horrible movie, Highlander 2, is getting another special edition DVD release in the near future. The new two disk set to be released next month has a number of extras including over 100 new effects shots and an alternate “fairytale” ending. Perhaps in the alternate ending we find all that nonsense about planet Zeist was just a bad dream. For those of you who have not seen the film Jabootu’s Bad Movie Dimension has a comprehensive and hilarious analysis here.

The sad thing is I know I’ll rush out and buy a copy.

A while ago I had written about how to roll your own PDF files without the need for Acrobat. I recently came across PDFCreator which comes with a simple install and provides a much more polished user interface. It is more convenient than trying to setup GhostScript and RedMon manually and is easier to use.