Saturday, October 13, 2007

Paul Westhead Bowl.

The Warriors of the University of Hawai'i defeated San Jose in OT last night 42-35. Colt Brennan attempted 75 passes, completing 44 for 545 yards. He's out of Heisman competition I fear, because of his 4 interceptions.

Sadly, I don't think the Warriors are going to make the BCS. But I'd love to see them in a bowl against Texas Tech.

Friday, October 12, 2007

The Kingdom. Thumbs up. I'd rate it an A-.

The only problem I had...

SPOILER ALERT

...was the last minute of the movie.

It's not that it tries to be politically correct, it's that this attempt fails.

Miserably.
Okay, I really mean it -- spoiler alert -- I'm going to tell you the end of the movie.
At the end, the four FBI guys are in their cubes and one of the members asks the team leader (Jamie Foxx) what he said (at the beginning of the movie) to get Jennifer Garner to stop crying:
Adam Leavitt: What did you say to Mayes to get her to stop crying?
Ronald Fleury: I said we were going to kill them all.
And then Director Peter Berg does his pious ham-handed cut to Riyadh where a woman asks a child what his grandfather (the movie's Osama bin Laden figure) whispered to him before he died: "He said we would kill them all."Janet Mayes

Yeah, it's set up to allow Berg to show his face at the soirées, but the real problem is that the statement is so inconsistent with the Fleury (Jamie Foxx) character it stands out like Jennifer Garner in a town full of burqas. It's a stretch and it doesn't work.


At worst he would've said "We're going to go there and get some justice."


* * *

Also, the character playing Gideon Young, the Attorney General, is set up to be a religious fanatic like Orin Hatch, but he swears in private, well,

...like Orin Hatch.


But Jeremy Piven, the State Department weenie, and Richard Jenkins as the head of the FBI both work well.

* * *


Sgt. HaythamActually, it's my understanding that the original ending was nixed as too depressing:
The first Saudi on the scene in the movie, Sgt. Haytham (pictured on the left) was beaten by the Saudi National Guard general in charge. In the movie, Al-Ghazi (very well played by Ashraf Barhom), the Saudi policeman comes to the aid of Sgt. Haytham, however, you can see that Sgt. Haytham is troubled after being tortured by his own government for his suspected involvement in the bombing. The nixed ending has Sgt. Haytham saying goodbye to the FBI team at the air base with a hidden bomb strapped to his chest. Chris Cooper (Sykes) wrestles Haytham away from the group, but Haytham detonates it before Sykes can get clear.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Add Ons. In installing a home network, I've had to reconfigure all the different PCs I use which has caused me to figure out what add-ons I like and what I don't.

First, I use the Mozilla Firefox web browser. IE7 isn't bad, I just prefer Firefox and the add-ons for it. Next, I add the Google toolbar and the following buttons: Bible Gateway; Download; Webster's Dictionary (what I would love would be a button for the Catholic encyclopedia).

Then come these add-ons:
  • Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer. Using browsers on at least 4 different machines, I can log in and get my bookmarks wherever I am. Plus, when I update one, they are all updated.
  • IE Tab ever get those webpages that will only work with IE? Trick 'em. This embeds Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox.
  • TinyUrl Creator - allows you to right click and make a tiny url. Simple.
  • Do you want to print a page, but it's got this color intense graphic smack in the middle which is going to gobble up ink? Use Nuke Anything Enhanced to eliminate it.
  • Cooliris Previews gives you a preview of a page before you surf to it.
  • Finally, PDF Download lets you choose how you want to view a .pdf document you are going to download - in the browser, in Adobe, as HTML, or save as a file.
I've heard good things about Greasemonkey, but it's over my head.
There is one I have been avoiding - StumbleUpon - because I love to go on tangents and can really waste time. You have to figure it out yourself, if I've tempted you.
More
I forgot a few more -- I told you I'm getting several machines networked.

  • Forecastfox - I forgot about this, because it's just there. It places the Accuweather forcast for your zipcode on the bottom of the browser. If you use Yahoo widgets, you might have something similar on your desktop, but I like this on my browser. It's out of the way, but handy when I need it. Also, I switch the "Alert Slider" to be inactive (except for severe weather) -- if not, it does take up some resources (when the slider pops up) and slows things down. Also, it doesn't have the spyware that other similar widgets and programs (Weatherbug) have.
  • Alternatives to IE Tab, mentioned above, include IEView and IE View Lite. I haven't tried either of these.
  • DownloadHelper is one I'm still playing with - it lets you download web content like videos and images - and yes, it works with flash video like YouTube. However, this past week, I tried using it to download the Dahlia Lithwick & Jan Crawford Greenburg exchange on bloggingheads.tv and it didn't work.
  • Similarly, I'm still trying to decide whether I like Clipmarks or not. It allows you to clip and save portions of webpages. Where it's been nice is I've saved whole articles (although there is a size limit) in a private space, which I don't feel like I can legally post (in their entirety) here. That way, it's archived, accessible and available when the original online article disappears.
  • Oh, and what the heck, here is the link for StumbleUpon.
Also, the good thing about being networked is that I should be able to get back to doing some of this blogging stuff on a more regular basis.
Maybe I should've copyrighted the idea?

Or the acronym? From a long post I wrote back on January 11, 2004:

Next was Martyn Minns, rector of Truro Church, speaking on "The Network" Since his talk is on-line, here, [link no longer works] I'd direct you to read it in it's entirety. It is important. My only comment would be on the name: Network of Confessing Dioceses and Parishes. I prefer the Confessing Anglican Network of America ("CANA") -- as in the place where our Lord took stagnant water and turned it into wine.