The Island

We went to see "The Island" yesterday, to find a movie starting out with a great concept and finishing as another lame second rate action movie.

If you haven't seen the movie, do not read further - This rant Is a bit of a spoiler.

The movie starts out with a society living a weird, forced, monitored life in a big cylindrical establishment: When the character first wakes up he is told that he is having bad dreams again, his urine is tested when he goes to the loo, causing his daily meal be sans meat. During the day he will see the establishment's head doctor, who will try to understand the character's dream.

Also, all the people are living their lives waiting to win The Lottery, a ticket to The Island - A utopia made up for them to wait for so they would live a happy, quiet life trying to achieve passage to. The world is destryoed and The Island is the only place surviving. Everyone want to win the lottery, they are being forced to think that from "birth". Social contact is minimal and is discouraged, inspite of what the heads of the establishment would say: "Proximity" is against the law.

Eventually, the character and the viewer discover that the whole establishment is just a facade for a life insurance company of the worst (or the best) kind: The grow human replicas, clones, of the insured people so should something happen to them (infected liver, heart problems, etc) they would get a transplant from their best donor: Themselves. Obviously the insured are unaware to the fact their donors live a life before being cut to shreds in order to supply them with body parts, so when the character finally escapes this establishment with a female clone, they try to find their origin and tell them of what is really going on.

This is where the movie goes terribly wrong: Instead of having some clever, phylosophical endeavour, they go off in a wild run to a random location, to find themselves in the most common of action movie scenes: First the horrible bar scene looking for clues, then the cars chasing a truck with heavy things falling off it scene, followed by a flight scene, on to a car chase scene, to the obvious sex scene, and then to the commando scene where they come back to the establishment, two people who lived for merely 4 years at most, and stop a whole army sitting there to defend the place. If that wasn't enough, the movie gave us a final "the-bad-guy-is-having-second-thoughts" scene where the one chasing them all along, killing (in numbers) around half the population of Israel on his and their way, decides to help them out at the last minute and they all save the day.

Oh, I almost forgot the scene where he meets his origin, and they have a fight, and there is a guy pointing a gun at them, and they argue about who is the origin. Classic.

Sigh... I just wish movies could start AND end with a good idea...

Addictive

I hate getting addicted to games. It started with Digger (By the way, did you ever see this?), moved on to some other classics, then to die off with three great games.

Now, years after (some would say "years after buying a Mac and having no game to play," though I wouldn't agree..) I have found a new addiction in the form of Village Sim!

And Joah is very pleased about it, too.

Phantom Car

Microsoft just filed a patent for an application that would replace how-to-reach-X instructions.

Instead of studying an on-screen map or listening to spoken instructions, the system lets a driver pursue a cartoon car projected onto the windscreen in front of them. The navigation system checks a car’s location and calculates a route in the usual way, but the driver follows the ghost car as if it were the leader of a convoy.

Can't say I don't want that for my car.

Notes from the Disengagement

I didn't give much of a preview to the last post, so I would like to correct it and write something here. Call it a postview, if you like.

The first week of actual disengagement was an intense one. Even though it was definitely not characterised by violent acts, it was absolutely filled with intense feelings. One day, standing near a Jeep, I realised I had a lot to say about what's going on here, and to as many people as possible. I took out the notebook I always carry around, asked for a pen from a friend, and starting writing. I found myself filling 4 pages just then, and another 4 got filled up quickly in the next long break we had. I can write much more and I will, and for now I translate some of it and put it up on the blog.

I hope it will shed some new light on the events during the disengagement. I am sure there are many blogs or forums showing things like this, and I am glad. People ought to write what they feel and see in this disengagement, from both sides.

I have to thank Joah, more than once and probably forever, for being like an anchor to me in a lot of cases even without knowing she is. Her love is an amazing one, and so is my love for her.

Disengagement Posts

Crying Man

A gentle grown man with an American accent is clinging himself against the wall crying; He doesn't want to leave his house.

Disengagement

No need to hide it. Some people are going to the disengagement. Some do not.

Crying Man

A gentle grown man with an American accent is clinging himself against the wall crying; He doesn't want to leave his house - Is it really his house? The house is empty except for a cornflex box, religious books and a suitcase already packed. There is nothing else to do, he is being told. The disengagement, the evacuation, it will be done. It's better to go quietly so that no-one would get hurt.

He stays up. Doesn't move. Partially whispering, probably trying to shout but being too drained from the crying to do so, he sings the now-common phrase "A jew does not drive out another jew". We heard that phrase so many times during training, we screamed these slogans at each other during training, when simulating the settlers. After the first week of training was over, it seemed logical to me that a good portion of what the training did was make us less sensitive to these words; Words that caused us all embarrasment, sadness, anger and sometimes arose humouristic remarks from us; This done so we could do this task in a slightly easier mind.

Obviously, it all sinks in eventually; And looking at this man crying, holding a book - most likely a Bible - I felt the tears building up in my throat. He was gently put down to a sitting position, from there four people held him from his arms and legs, making sure he can't fall and that the way they're holding him was as gentle as possible while still managing to hold his body weight. It wasn't the first time I felt like crying in the disengagement process and unfortunately, it won't be the last.

Mighty Mouse

No, this is not another cartoon post, even though I have a lot to say on the cartoon subject.

This post is about Apple's new mouse, the Mighty Mouse. This mouse actually Looks like the regular, elliptic, some would say archaic yet elegant one-button mouse. In fact, the only noticeable difference is a small dot in it's front.

Practically speaking, this is a two-button mouse scrollable mouse. The no-button surface, as Apple Mice have been famous of having in their last few iterations, is actually built with touch sensors, so that the mouse knows whether you chose to make a right click or a left click, even though you're actually pressing a "one-button" area. Also, the small dot is a scrollable touch point, enabling vertically, horizontally and even diagonally scrolling. To finish it off, the useless half-ellipses on the regular Apple Mouse became a touch-sensitive pair of buttons, for programmable use.

I dislike the two side buttons myself and I usually disable them on my Microsoft IntelliMouse at work (Oh my, he said the M word!). Since this feature is programmable, it can be disabled and that satisfies me.

Just to conclude things: I wish I was able to test this mouse, because from the specs side, it looks great. No wonder it reached my Wish List.