Heipei

Yesterday I went to the movies to watch the new Bond (Quantum of Solace). I’m an avid Bond-fan, having seen every Bond movie up to date (I think) and regularly watching re-runs on TV. I was already skeptical after the last Bond movie (Casino Royale) but figured it was a one-time deviation from the usual plot and atmosphere.

Well, it wasn’t. First of all Quantum of Solace continues the storyline which started in Casino Royale. That doesn’t have to be bad thing per se, but the way it was done in the lastest installment certainly is. I won’t spoil the story for those of you who haven’t seen it yet or plan to watch it on DVD (good decision by the way). Let me just get to the core of my criticism:

Quantum of Solace is a solid action-movie but a bad Bond-movie.

Why? Because it’s not like the other Bonds. The last movie just had one gadget, this one had exactly none. There is no Q, no Miss Moneypenny, no british charme and very little of the swiftness and elegance of a secret agent free of any personal interest who moves through circles of international crooks with his Walther in one hand and a martini and/or pretty girl in the other. The villain is not someone with a crazy scheme to take over the world from his spacestation but just a dumb guy with a fake accent solely driven by money. No battle-scenes with two opposing teams of divers.

This all means that the storyline is getting more “realistic” if you will, more down to earth and believable. Bond smiles less, shoots more and gets worked up because one of his girls suffered the inevitable fate of winding up dead (Hey, that was one movie ago, get over it Bond! Whatever happened to Mr. Kiss-Kiss-Bang-Bang?).

Some people might think this is a good change, as it goes with the time and modernizes the character of Bond. I disagree. When I watch Bond I don’t want a realistic account of international crime and the people involved in it. I don’t want believable human emotions. I want friggin sharks with friggin laser beams attached to their heads! If I want any of the above I’ll go and see a movie from the Bourne-triology (which at least has believable action sequences).

The soundtrack was good though, and the opening credits were still there (thank god).

Why not to watch it in a movie theatre

This is the second part of this post and it doesn’t just apply to this movie. I’m not a big fan of the big screen, for numerous reasons. But yesterday I discovered that not even the supposed technical superiority is a reason for going there anymore. Rest assured I watched it in a big and professional screening room with a huge screen and loud (not impressive, but loud) sound-system, so I expect that their equipment is top-notch. Here’s the thing: Whenever there was fast motion I couldn’t make out who was chasing whom or even who the bad guy was.

This sucks big time. Just seeing some dark blurred movements and the occasional gun flash isn’t good enough, especially when you can see it just fine watching it at home. Of course it’s also a problem of movie-makers today, but I can tell you that it really spoiled the experience for me. The contrast and brightness is no match for any screen in my home as well. The sound-system, as mentioned, wasn’t impressive but just loud. Watching movies with little camera movement and without action sequences might still be fine, but for everything else cinema seems really unfit. I don’t even want to get started on cinematic trailers for other movies where all you see are quick fades of about a hundred cuts which are separated by bright flashes. Almost made me close my eyes.

Last but not least, and I can’t repeat it often enough, try to avoid the synchronized version (german in this case). The voice of Bond was even ok, but everyone with a foreign accent sounded like a cheap version of a sex-hotline. Of course with this Bond you won’t miss any wordplays or jokes because there simply are none…

Speedcubing is something that has been gaining considerable popularity over the last 2 years. Just recently Pro7, a big TV station in Germany, did a short piece (Part 1, Part 2) (between “how to open a bra” and “how not to get a cold”) about fw and a few friends of him, calling him the “Keimzelle” (the one who got it all rolling) of Speedcubing in Aachen.

So, with a big number of people already Speedcubing in Aachen, and a very open and nerdy community of students, a Speedcubing competition in Aachen was bound to happen sooner or later. In January of next year it will, and it’s called “Aachen Open 2009”. I’ll leave the details to the website, but rest-assured this is not just a little private get-together, but as official as it gets (they have WCA-delegates) and the orga-team would like to see new faces, be it people already proficient or just starting out. I’m also gonna be there (doing my painful 2-3min. “solve” of the 3×3×3 ;), so you know there’s gonna be someone who will suck more than you! ;)

You can sign up for the event until the day it starts, but it would be a lot easier on planning if you did it as soon as possible.

Normalerweise lasse ich solche Dinge an mir vorbeigehen und bringe erst Recht nicht den Aufwand auf darüber zu bloggen. Nachdem ich aber heute bei Spiegel Online schon wieder etwas lesen musste was von vielen Stellen so oder ähnlich berichtet wird und auch in den Köpfen vieler Leute festsitzt, habe ich mich entschlossen mal meinen Senf dazu abgegeben.

Von Anfang an sollte klar sein dass ich Microsoft-Software nicht besonders mag. Es gibt wohl Leute die ständig Tabellenkalkulationen machen müssen und andere die ganz besonders DirectX-Spiele mögen, aber für beides gibt es halbwegs vernünftige Alternativen meiner Meinung nach. Und als Informatik-Student ist es mir besonders zuwider sich genauer mit einem System auseinanderzusetzen das nicht nur technisch minderwertiger als andere Betriebssysteme sondern auch noch komplett verschlossen ist, so dass man weder aus den Fehlern Anderer (der Microsoft-Programmierer) lernen noch sie verbessern kann.

Der Artikel spricht davon dass Microsoft Software an Start-Ups “verschenkt”. Das hört sich erstmal ganz nett an, und auch hier an der RWTH “verschenkt” Microsoft Software an Studenten (bis auf Office, da damit wahrscheinlich 90% der Umsätze gemacht werden). Nun habe ich das auch schon in Anspruch genommen um Windows mal in einer VirtualBox zu installieren, und das Downloaden aus dem Softwareportal ist auch nur ein bisschen schwerer als sich das ganze auf illegalem Wege zu besorgen.

Aber gucken wir uns doch mal an was manche Leute als “verschenken” verstehen. Verschenken, so wie Microsoft es macht, heisst dass sie einem das Produkt geben, man es eine bestimmte Zeit benutzen kann und dann, wenn man richtig eingearbeitet ist und evtl auch andere Programme erworben oder sogar geschrieben hat, kurzum ein Stück weit abhängig ist, anfangen muss dafür zu zahlen. Jeder halbwegs vernünftige Drogendealer wird es genauso machen mit seinen “Kunden”. Nur dass Drogendealer an Bildungseinrichtungen weit weniger offen auftreten (zumindest hier) …

Obwohl ich das schon ziemlich mies finde gibt es ja sicherlich die ein oder andere Firma die von Anfang an weiß dass sie ohnehin definitiv Windows brauchen wird (oder das zumindest denkt) und so immerhin 3 Jahre sparen kann. Aber in vielen Fällen wird es nicht so sein, und ich denke jeder hat nach 3 Jahren (oder einem ganzen Studium) Programme und Gewohnheiten angesammelt die sich nicht so schnell auf andere System übertragen lassen. Und da man als Firma nach 3 Jahren (und als Student am Ende des Studiums) oft mehr Geld hat als am Anfang ist man dann eher bereit die Lizenzkosten zu blechen damit man sein “Geschenk” auch behalten darf. Super Sache…

Finally, I found a solution to something that has really been bugging me for quite some time. I use vim, not only on my linux machine but also everywhere else I’m able to get my hands on it. Vim has a feature called viminfo, which is basically just a file that remembers stuff like your last edited files, the last commands, searches, etc you typed, your buffers and also, this is the important part, the position for each file you were editing when you closed it. And this feature simply did not work under Mac OS X, driving me nearly crazy. Anyway, with this little snippet in your .vimrc it should work. Enjoy.

if has("autocmd")<br /> autocmd BufReadPost *<br /> \ if line("'\"") > 0 && line("'\"") < = line("$") |<br /> \ exe "normal g`\"" |<br /> \ endif<br /> endif