waider dot i e

September 13: Really enjoyed Tolkien which for some inexplicable reason seems to have had a mediocre critical receiption. It's funny, poignant, and well shot; it has drama and character development and what not. I guess there are no exploding helicopters or spandex-clad heroes so maybe that's why it's not scoring higher. I think you should see it.
September 06: Despite having read the book, I couldn't remember the slightest plot element from The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. It's an excellent movie despite its age, and the plot is actually rather good. Also it's funny seeing 1965 Dublin standing in for Berlin and parts of London (why they used St. Stephen's Green instead of, say, Hyde Park is probably a matter of logistics, but it was pretty funny seeing the familiar pond & island in what was supposed to be a London park.)

(now I look it up online and find references that say it's Battersea Park. I'm not convinced.)
September 02: Finished reading Catch-22. Erm. I think the idea's good but the execution is questionable. There were whole sections I sped-read through because frankly I couldn't be bothered.
August 31: Tooling around with TinkerCAD in an attempt to create some bits and pieces to use in SweetHome3D; for some reason they disagree on which way around the axes are, so objects created upright in the former appear face down in the latter; and exports with defined materials won't load directly - you need to replace "d X" with "T 1-X" (or just remove it outright since you're probably not creating transparent things, right?) before SweetHome3D will import the objects. Still, though: pretty cool.
August 30: So, ah, The Grifters. Somehow nominated for four Oscars, including "Best Writing", and damned if I can tell why. It doesn't actually appear to have a plot, it's just a bunch of stuff that happens. There's no character development. There's no reason to care about any of the principals. I am confounded as to how this got any sort of good reviews for anything, to be honest.
August 27: Just discovered that my mail server has been silently bouncing mail for the last week or more due to an almost-full disk. Trying to figure out where the almost-full disk came from right now. If you sent something to me at waider.ie and got a bounce, this is why.

(I should stress it's not been bouncing all mail, which is why I didn't notice the problem.)
August 24: Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story was a fascinating look at a fascinating person. The best part about it is that it's partly based on, and made up of, an audio recording of an interview Lamarr did late in her life, so in some places it's literally her own words telling her story. Really enjoyed this.
August 23: Hellboy: not a patch on the previous version. Really. It wasn't terrible, but it kinda dragged and lacked... oomph. (also the trailer spoiled at least one reveal, boo.)
August 20: Trying to build some tools for the GoPro linux partition. Three different packages with three different ways of configuring for cross-compilation and installing somewhere other than /usr/local.

But YESSSSSS I managed to put a working ssh binary on the camera.
August 19: Finished up with Catch-22 tonight. Given how... visceral the McWatt/Kid Sampson bit was, I was surprised at how restrained the makers were with Snowden's moment. I find myself trying to recall the book at this point, and will probably reread it for comparison - but a lot of what I remember from the book wound up on screen, and well portrayed.