Back on the islands

{moszoomimglink:View from the hotel towards Mauna Kea}It’s been a while now: I had to refinance the loan and get my act together at work, but I am finally back at the house. I am writing this from the living room, a trusted Kona Koffee Kan next to me, and my computer running on batteries because I am too lazy to get the generator going.

I did something new: I realized how much it annoyed me to come out to Ninole after landing late at night in Hilo. I mean, the flight gets here at 10p, which is 1a in Pacific time, and then I have to get the car, drive out, find the bed, etc. I didn’t know what the house was going to look like, after missing the last two months. So I decided to just get a room in Hilo and stay there overnight.

Resurrecting the site after upgrade

Again, an upgrade to Joomla – and again the change to sef.php reported previously. These security holes in Joomla start being costly for anyone that has done even minimal customization, and it start becoming relevant to actually change the behavior of Joomla to not require that kind of customization.

1453 (R. Crowley)

{moszoomimglink:1453}There are moments in time when history looks over your shoulders, and you know it. The whiff of history hit me twice: once in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell right in front of my eyes; and then years later, when I was part of the Internet Bubble and could see with my own eyes fortunes made and unmade in days.

The year 1453 had one of the most astonishing event of that kind: Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, a bulwark against the world domination of Islam since the days of the prophet Muhammad, fell to the invading army of Mehmet II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

Horror Story of a WoW Traveler

The following story is from the World of Warcraft forum. It is corroborated by a bunch of links, and it seems it is genuine. It’s both funny and instructional – as it shows just how crazy the fear of terrorism has become.

I played WoW, I became a terrorist (story!)

This … is going to be a long one. And believe it or not, it’s a 100% true story. Its relation to World of Warcraft will not be immediately apparent. Anyway, the gist of what happened is here: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html? id=6a11bd67-f717-4aa3-80a9-840c07949730&k=28503

Corpse Bride (2005)

Tim Burton has a gift for surprise. His movies all have a depth that erupts from anything that usually wouldn’t make a movie worth watching, somehow emphasizing their value beyond logic. He is, in that respect, not unlike Mozart, whose work has that same flow of the pleasant paired with the eruptive force of genius.

We are in a fairy tale set in Victorian England. Our hero, Victor, is the heir of a fish monger’s fortune and is to be married off sight unseen to Victoria, heir to a delapidated aristocratic fortune. As the movie starts, the singing families are going to meet to introduce the two young heroes at the wedding rehearsal.

I (HEART) Huckabees (2004)

I am so happy I didn’t see this move in the theaters! I ♥ Huckabees is a strange comedy, the same type of slow-moving humor that made The Royal Tenenbaums so memorable.

A string of famous to very-famous actors is embroiled in an “existential investigation” that ends up being about a petty discord and corporate greed. At the same time, the life of a bunch of people is forever changed by the realization they are not living their own lives.

Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest (2006)

Swashbuckling Johnny Depp did it again: the latest installment of Pirates of the Caribbean (PotC) is a total success, grossing on its second weekend as much as the next four movies combined. I can hear the sigh of relief out of Burbank: they had bet big time on this sequel, going as far as shooting two of them back-to-back.

As movies go, PotC 1 (The Curse of the Black Pearl) was funnier and more interesting. This one is way too long, way too predictable, and the special effects are too repetitive. Was it worth it? Not really, unless you really don’t know what to do with yourself on a hot summer afternoon. Towards the second half of the movie, I started wishing I had a remote control to zip over the less interesting scenes.

The Flanders Panel (A. Perez-Reverte)

Et tu, Amazon? The infallible suggestion engine decided I should read Arturo Perez-Reverte’s The Flanders Panel, a European (Spanish) novel of chess and murder. I guess that having read The Eight was a hint in the right direction, as both books focus on chess as a key to solving a murder case.

My review of The Eight was not too positive, particularly because the novel fails to deliver the promise of the publishing house. In all, though, it’s a readable novel that makes sense and is entirely enjoyable. Where the plot makes little sense, big adventures in the Sahara clearly make up for it.

Joomla Upgrade

Netcraft reported a serious SQL injection flaw in Mambo and Joomla. Given that SQL injection is pretty much the worst that can happen to your site, I immediately ran to the Joomla download page and got myself the upgrade from 1.0.8 to 1.0.10. Ran flawlessly, except for the usual SEF problem reported on several sites.

To fix that, I had to go to includes/sef.php and manually change the behavior. How annoying! In this case, I had to go down to line 511 of the new file, where you’ll find the following lines:

Cancel online?

I have been in a Netflix hole. That’s when you put movies on your list that you don’t really want to watch, and then they sit at home. You feel too guilty to send them back, and they just sit there. When it’s one, no problem, you watch the other two. Then it becomes two, and you exchange only the third movie. Finally, the third dud arrives, and you are in a Netflix hole.