Hotel Rwanda (2004)

That’s one movie that I wish I hadn’t seen.

2004 (when the movie was released) marked the 10th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. The majority Hutu people killed about a million minority Tutsis to free themselves of the spectre of tyranny. Within 100 days they carried out one of the most vicious and devastating attacks on fellow humans that a nation ever attempted.

Why do I wish I hadn’t seen this movie? Because I was sitting at the sidelines, unable to help, unable to do anything, praying that someone would finally send troops to help in Rwanda, to help stopping a senseless slaughter whose main weapon ended up being the machete.

Mambo/PHP Weight Table

I was continuing to learn about Mambo and thought the next step forward would be to create a component. I learned how to do Mambots (really easy) and now it was time for something more complex.

Components in Mambo have two things in particular:

1. They are meant to be displayed as body of the page
2. They have an administrator component

I was struggling to find something that I could contribute in the area, then I realized it was staring at me!

Tra Te E Il Mare [Laura Pausini] (CD)

Growing up in Italy is a bitter-sweet. Italy’s culture is strong, rich of an imagery that had thousands of years to mature. In particular, design, architecture, music, and movies are world class, as many have recognized.

While Italian design has world renown in cars, furniture, and – to possible parity with France – fashion, the other items are not widely accepted to be part of the Italian strengths. Architecture, for instance, is something that most people associate with past centuries, and they see no new contributions. Similar fate awaited the Italian movie industry, once leading the pack of avant-garde movie making. Today all the common man knows is Il Postino and Life Is Beautiful.

Met Kevin Caudill

Ah, so this city is not New York or Los Angeles, and celebrities are not as frequently visible as they are there. But we have our own A-list, made up of actors (Robin Williams), directors (George Lucas), singers (Barbra Streisand), tycoons (Larry Ellison), and the like.

Well, ibam forte via sacra, and at the corner of Castro and 18th a random guy calls out my name. I turn around, and it’s someone I have never seen before. He introduces himself: it’s Kevin Caudill, known photographer of male nudes!

Surviving Thanksgiving

I don’t think you could cross my plans worse than happened this year. First, I was looking forward to 6 days in Hawai’i, with invitation to Thanksgiving dinner already extended and accepted. Then I had to move and it was clear I was not going to be able to make it. I thought: no big deal! I can still go snowboarding! Forget about that: this year the season starts late, to make up for the early start last year.

PHP Weight Table

Somehow this application follows me like a curse…

The PHP version of the weight table is available as a Mambo/Joomla component. It was my first attempt at a component, and I have to admit it was much easier than I thought. You can download the component from the Remository.

A long time ago I decided I needed to track my weight. I used to be a fat kid, and even in early adulthood I had real problems keeping my weight. In the winter, in particular, I would need comfort calories to an excess.

Hotlinks Off

I noticed that more and more of the requests to this site are for images that are embedded in somebody else’s pages. That’s quite a drag (as it has caused me almost to lose my other ISP for bandwidth violations until I turned it off).

What to do? Well, wonderful Google helped out.

People that link an image externally to save bandwidth are called bandwidth thieves and their activity is called hotlinking.

The Four Boxes of Democracy

A quote from a Canadian on /.:

There are four boxes to defend liberty with: the soap box, the jury box, the voter box and the ammo box. Use in that order.

Saved! (2004)

Never ever listen to NPR. They will make anything they like sound grave and wise, and everything they don’t will become sinister and perilous.

Saved! is a teen comedy about Christian fundamentalists. It has all the trappings of a typical teen comedy, and the Christian fundamentalist component is just color added to the usual plot of popular vs. not so trying to get through hell.

Mary attends a Christian high school in Baltimore, MD. Her life of perfect Christianism takes a sudden turn when her boyfriend tells her he’s gay. She decides Jesus wants her to have sex with the boy; as a result, she turns pregnant.

Heavenly Not Opening On Friday, After All

It was all over the skiheavenly.com site until Friday: the season was to open on 11/18!!! That didn’t happen, although the snowmakers are pretty busy. Now the opening date is set to Thanksgiving. If that happen, there is going to be one sick puppy that is going to be in heaven(ly)! I am already thinking of bringing a turkey sandwich to the slopes. Or maybe I should break down and finally buy the turkey jerky I always stared at in the supermarket.