Well work is getting busier and busier. Tomorrow I won’t be in the office at all, off to a client site. I’m glad it’s getting busier, there’s nothing worse than inactivity.
Well, I finally managed to install SUSE Linux. It was a lot less scary than it could have been once I’d done some background reading. I’m sure it shouldn’t have been that scary in the first place though, and I shouldn’t have had to do any background reading to install it. While installing an operating system is hardly a day-to-day activity and certainly not having two co-exist on the same machine, we are often told these days that Linux is ready for the end user and it’s not as techy as it used to be. Rubbish. Sure, I could trust the suggestions of the installation program (they were pretty much correct), but then why did I need to make all the decisions? An normal computer user will not understand what it means when the boot sector is on hda1 and root is installed on sda1 which will be repartitioned and formatted with the ReiserFS file system. Eh? Like I said, it all worked smoothly, but I was confronted with a lot of technical questions, and I’m supposed to reasonably technical.
On use Linux was quite pleasant and intuitive. I decided to opt for GNOME rather than KDE as a desktop thingy, mainly because I’ve read it can auto-mount USB drives, which I use quite heavily. One frustration is that I’m going to have to download codecs to view most movies and listen to most of my music. For various copyright reasons they were not included with the OS which I find quite annoying. I want it all to work out of the box. It manages to come with an adequate office package (I would describe OpenOffice 2 as excellent, if it weren’t for that immense let-down, the database is ships with), half a dozen MP3 players, but if you want to listen to a WMA or watch an MPEG you have to go online.
I watched the directors cut of Alexander the other day and I really enjoyed it. I’ve not seen the theatrical release of Oliver Stone‘s epic, but I’ve been informed the directors cut is much better. Alexander got panned in reviews when it came out in cinemas. Empire Magazine’s review was one of the more balanced. It gave it 4 stars and described it thus: “Unwieldy and flawed, but Stone remains a tornado in an era of airless formula and — to paraphrase our Ptolemy — its failings are greater than most films’ successes.”
Interestingly, they only gave the director’s cut 3 stars, saying it was cut down and more audience friendly than the more cumbersome theatrical version. I can’t comment on that, but I did enjoy the directors cut. The characterisation was good in my opinion. Some judged it hammy and overacted, but these are strong, epic even mythical characters. Sure, the plot jumped between the campaigns of Alexander to his youth all the time, but it was well timed to show where his decisions came from and what his influences were. Some say the battle scenes were too messy, bloody, violent and horrific. Yes they were. It was war in simple, bloody, vicious times. Fans of the battles of Troy will be appalled. I thought it was great, depicting clearly that there was no glory in his conquests, just blood.
And yet, Sin City is still my film of the year.