Phone Post:

[Bad username or site: prog' phonepostid='10 @ livejournal.com]

(no subject)

I see on friends' blogs that they expect a report outta me, so I'll write a little something, sure.

It took the wind out me several times. Most of these had to do with musical cues; all the LotR films make full use their scores, but this one does the most to actually make a voice out of the music. Indeed, at least two of these gut-punching moments involved characters singing. All the character-themes introduced through the first two movies came together in this one in a very striking way: witness the battle-version of the Rohan theme -- horns, no longer strings -- mingling with the Fellowship and Gondor motifs, as things come to a head.

While watching Fellowship for the nth time (though the first time I saw the 4-hour version on the big screen) I felt a little regretful about seeing the movie yet again, and tried to nap through bits. But as Two Towers got underway, my feelings changed; seeing the whole series all at once really does lend a unique perspective, and I could more clearly see events and images echoing through the different movies. Lots of small things I saw for the first time, too, such as the rain at Helm's Deep, and how it dripped off the warriors' faces as they awaited the enemy's charge; it's an example of detail that TVs just can't bring out, to me.

So how was the actual event? Great, with some weird bits. There was some grumpy confusion about seating, within my party, and alas I had my part in this; it was strange and stressful environment, leading to short fuses, I suppose. This sort of thing was exacerbated by the theater management, which while overall positive, took a bizarrely domineering stance over many things, mostly invested in one particular person who considered herself a champion of the law. We witnessed her moving people (not in our group) around due to perceived misbehavior, and confiscating the batteries from digital cameras she spied among the audience. (And she, or someone like her, threw out a friend's PB&J sammich when she tried to take it into the theater, not knowing of the strict no-food-unless-we-sold-it-to-you rule. (Friend trashpicked it (it was wrapped) and ate in the lobby.)) She also made up new rules and shouted them in between showings. Happily, everyone ignored her rule about no applause or cheering during the final movie. (?!?!). (Leaving to go to the bathroom was also forbidden, but I saw people doing that too. Naughty folks!) (I was amusing myself thinking of the series of strangled noises that customer-service champion daerr would be making were he with us and seeing all this.)

Summary: I'm all done seeing these movies for a good long time (though I might see the last one again during its first run). It's over, this great big thing is finished at last. I should spend some time being small and still.

(no subject)

The SVG editor Sodipodi looks intriguing, and I'll try installing it tonight. (It'll be from source, so, it's an intense, hit-or-miss sort of operation, will involve installing fink's xfree86 binaries, and so on.) Meanwhile, the website is very bad, and I will amuse myself by picking it apart before I go home.

Page title "cleverly" rendered in non-Latin alphabet, even though everything else is in English... it took me a couple of moments to figure out what I was looking at, sure that this couldn't be the correct page. (It looked like I was at the page of "Coanoanh" or something.)

The front page doesn't have any obvious text about what Sodipodi is; it instead shows the latest news from the programmers, which is pretty weak without context. (Today, I know that sodipodi has something to do with pirate flags.) The 'about' button is simply a link to the site's front page, and therefore a no-op. This was annoying to be becuase I came to the page from a friend's link, so I really didn't know what it was.

I find this alone to be worth noting, since I frequently run into software package homepages that make this same error.

Screenshot page rife with images from Sailor Moon that the page author finds charming but most of the world (yes, even "geeks") probably finds creepy. Also flavor text that's meaningless to anyone but anime fans.

Conclusion is that this person is either an insane creep, or too young and socially inept to know better (i.e. "looks like something I'd have made 10 years ago"). I will favor the latter explanation for now.