Film geek stuff: Right, I want a steadycam. You know, those camera mounts that cancel vibration so you can do really smooth movements. Problem is, an entry-level steadycam can cost as much as 2000 dollars. However, since everything in the film business is completely overrated and overpriced, I know a metallic frame and some weights is much cheaper than that. So let's see: Good. But won't the thing move sideways? Ahh better. The price: $14. Which is nice.···

The other day I had the book Blogs in my hands. Even though I knew about it earlier I wasn't really interested in it, since I knew it would be predictable. However, Henrique (mentioned below) told me there was a mention of Cafeína in this book, so I browsed it for quite a bit at a library. And here we go: It wasn't as predictable as I expected, but for worse. I expected the usual politico-journalist A-list interviews, instead I found completely arbitrary content. Not the legendary (albeit A-list oriented) stuff things like We've Got Blog was made of. Just interviews of people I think are perfectly ordinary bloggers. Some good, some bad, some whose blogs I read, some whose blogs I won't. Wouldn't it be much more interesting to copy-paste 'great' weblog entries like Rebecca Blood did in her edition? Of course, the book has some introductions to weblogging and associated information, not exactly a taxing job to compile. And in the end, the dodgy Weblog Index. Yet more randomness. I'm honoured Cafeína is along with Marciana the only weblog mentioned in the Historical section but I think that's very, very limiting, besides sounding suspiciously like labelling these two websites as things of the past, which Cafeína is not (and I'm sure Rita hasn't a much different view).

The main problem I see with this book is credibility. Not that of the authors, but that of the websites mentioned, and the webloggers in the interviews. Not that I'd give a much better interview, but experience should play a role surely. And I'm not telling that I'm more experienced because I started blogging earlier than most people in this country. Time has nothing to do with it, neither output. People who wrote one megabyte of text in three months are probably much less experienced than someone who wrote 100K, because they obviously still think that every redundance can be blogged about, that everybody cares about your tiny opinions, that people are willing to waste time with you. Because — come on! — no one is that interesting! And then there's the endless discussion about the New Whatever, basically the Whoa! effect of blogging. It ain't like that. I see blogging as the old man who collects model trains. It's all about knowing the community, that is, where are the auctions, the good models, the techniques, the factories and the collectors. Not about being cool and discussing theories where "Train Modelling is the New Collecting of Stamps" or rubbish like that. Oh well, the backlash has begun anyway, there aren't news about new bloggers in the newspapers anymore and the abandon rate now exceeds the starting rate. We've Got Blog, for instance, gives a broader view in which the big conclusion is just that — blogs are a hobby, and their authors are mad. I recommend that book instead. And it is cheaper and has a hardcover (oh yes, the legendary quality of portuguese publishers...).

By the way, I noticed that both Historical Blogs are from the Porto area, and nearly all 'new' blogs (thankfully this category isn't explicit in the book) are from the South. Am I being a typically paranoid Northerner?···

My friend Henrique is now a client of the asseptic.org weblog emporium. He writes in portuguese though, and is still trying to find his Way. But he'll come around to good blogging, I'm sure. He did right not to start publicizing from post one.···

Spot on Cat & Girl. Are there people who really like The Chicks on Speed?···

I went to see Kill Bill: Volume One the other day. It's probably the funniest film I've seen in theatres lately, a perfect critique of VHS-era martial arts and action films, probably as ironic as Last Action Hero (yes, the one with the Governor of California) but really good. And it has no lame story, it's actually quite clever despite the total nonsense overexaggerated scenes of squirting blood and severed limbs. The House of Leaves scene makes that 'burly brawl' from The Matrix Reloaded seem tame (or the bar scene from Desperado), however it's done for fun and comedy value, not for the "whoa that's cool!" value. Or as we say in portuguese: Não é azeiteiro. By the way, the animé part was also quite good. I'm itching to see Volume Two.···

And in case you are wondering, back there is VirtualDub, processing DV video via the Panasonic DV codec. At last I found a way to use DV with it, since all compatible codecs I had found earlier were trial versions of commercial software.···

It seems my latest post initiated a mini XP theming fever, and while Graham tried my theme suggestion I tried this one (loads of links in there, surely you don't expect me to copy-paste everything), incidentally via Graham, and ended with something quite similar. Yeah, the best of two worlds. The Mac OS X dock is far superior to the stupid XP 'enhanced' Start Menu, and a classic mode Start Menu and the taskbar up there is a lot more functional than Mac's top bar thingy. By the way, an often-overlooked Windows feature is the ability to place the Address toolbar in the taskbar (top right), and it is quite handy to launch websites directly, besides working perfectly as a Start Menu — Run... dialog replacement.···

Shareware, Freeware and (nearly) essencial Free Software for Windows which won't spy on you:

- Mozilla Thunderbird. E-mail app as friendly as Outlook Express but featuring spam filters, and isn't as popular among virus writers.
- Mozilla Firebird. As a browser it's just as good as Internet Explorer, although it lacks polish. It will probably overtake IE in the next release.
- Filezilla. My FTP client of choice.
- UXTheme Multipatcher. So you can use alternative themes in WindowsXP.
- b0se Classic XP Theme. A minimal theme that makes Windows XP look like a usable OS, not a baby toy. Ths author has some other fantastic themes, although not quite as 'serious'.
- Winamp 2.91. The best all-round audio and (now) video player. 3.0 versions are overbloated, even when running in a 512MB 2800MHz computer.
- EditPad Lite. Windows will never bundle a decent plain text editor, so I use this.
- Nutshell Toolbar for IE. Instant Google, Amazon and IMDB searches, just like in Mozilla.
- MS Powertoys for WindowsXP. Command Window Here, Tweak UI and PowerCalculator are quite nice, I wonder why aren't these included in the default XP installation.
- Ad-blocking Hosts file. Won't kill all obtrusive ads in webpages, but it's a good first line of defense.
- Nimo Codec Pack. All the video codecs you're likely to need in one convenient package. Warning: Some codecs such as DivX 5 Pro contain spyware. Avoid installing those using custom installation.
- Audacity. ProTools-like multitrack audio editor. More than enough for 99% of us.
- CDex. May those who never ripped an audio CD throw the first stone.
- Moppi Demopaja. Let's make some demos!
- Sun OpenOffice.org. Why do people still waste their money on MS Office?
- AIST MovieXOne. A good (although rather ugly) video editing app. The freeware version is not available anymore officially, but you can still find the older 1.03 version in shareware directories.
- VirtualDub. A powerful video format converter, unfortunately doesn't handle DV.

There you go. A Windows installation functional with guilt-free quality software.···

At last I'm blogging in my new computer, as I spent the last couple of days swapping hardware and readying for work, and in the end lost a whole afternoon trying to get the new graphics card TV-out to work properly, as the image I got on TV was too poor. Eventually I tried connecting the computer via a VCR and then it worked fine, which is quite strange, but I eventually pinpointed the fault to a dodgy S-Video/SCART converter that I bought for 1.50€ euro. Hardly gold-coated home cinema quality. Anyway, a tip: when you buy a new computer, don't ever forget to take a good look at the available cases, or else you get some hideous-looking monsters. Photos here soon, as well as a handy list of essencial free/open-source software I installed. Now excuse me, I'm going to play Vice City properly. At last.···

Rui Carmo finds out Windows Movie Maker is crap. Big secret there. The article, however, addresses all the problems of Microsoft's free video editing offering. It's idiotware. However, I don't think comparison to Apple's Final Cut Express is fair. FC-X is a medium-range video editor (the light version of Final Cut Pro), while Windows Movie Maker is a basic-level editor, comparable to Apple's iMovie (which is a just as poor piece of software). If you want a powerful (for basic use) and free video editor for Windows, there's AIST MovieXOne (although it has a hideous violet skin). Its makers made the unfortunate decision to pull off the free version and are now selling MovieXOne Pro for €39, but if you google around for it you can find some shareware/freeware websites still featuring the old free version for download (try here — although in Czech it's self-explaining). ···

CSS floats tutorials. If reading the official specs is too abstract, here are a bunch of nice practical examples so we can practice in case TABLEs are made illegal or something. Anyway, when a tutorial says "this will be ignored by IE" when mentioning a hard block width limiter which is commonplace with the Old Techniques, it gives it all away. I can't be conviced by techniques which aren't now-proof. ···

A very good critique of Lomography. Yep, we all know it's all about hipsters getting a few pretty photos by shooting at random their plastic renditions of old Soviet cameras (ok, you can get a medium format camera for €50, but when the kit includes electric tape to seal light leaks you can see it's no good — you better off looking for real ones in auction sites — I have a friend who found one at €80, which is nothing). For that kind of thing, I prefer the digital Benq1300 you see in action in the imagelog — did you, dear alternative-minded lomographer, know that the manufacture of film is one of the most polluting industrial processes? And then, it seems the über-cool Lomographic Society has a very big history of sending nasty letters to anyone who dares using the name Lomo. So, what we have? A trademark-fundamentalist monopoly selling flawed products to the pseudo-artists of the new urban youth, using Soviet mythology as a marketing tool. Marx wouldn't be pleased. a guy who really knows about photography ···

I went to see Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things. It literally punches you in the kidneys. The director of High Fidelity (no shit!) delivers the engrossing tale of two illegal immigrants in London who get to see the dark side of living in the West. It deconstructs any demagogic anti-immigration propaganda, by showing the slaves that keep our nice cities running — a sadistic sociological experiment would be to kick all illegal immigrants out of the UK (or France or Germany or Portugal) and then look at our societies crumble to dust when there's no one to work in textile factories or in the fields or collecting garbage in hotels or (in Portugal's specific case) building our apartments and shopping centres. Besides, the lead character is one great actor (Chiwetel Ejiofor — look out for him!) that completely overshadowed Audrey Amélie Tautou. Five stars — if you have the stomach.···

Via Virulent Memes, the Rasta/Patois Dictionary. And if you scroll down, there's a Phrases and Proverbs section which is far more interesting than the dictionary. Lef mi nuh.···

Also via ACB, Sine Fiction, soundtracks for books. I can't say no to free MP3s, can't I? No Type used to have some interesting experimental electronics (to be honest I haven't been visiting lately), which probably fit reading about fossil fuel powered spaceships roaming across the space 25 thousand years from now in Isaac Asimov's Foundation.···

Kids play Pong and Space Invaders, think they're rubbish. Suddently I feel 20 years older. The Null Device···

A new-ish Asseptic.org. It's becoming more and more like a light (although actually heavier) version of this weblog — a gateway blog. Being someone who has made and maintained more than sixty different websites over six years (and over one hundred if you count complete redesigns), I can really tell weblogs conquer all. If Then Else has already absorved three other websites — and Asseptic.org is turning into the fourth; and Cafeína absorved the content which I used to place in five other websites.···

Not everything is bad though. I got lots of positive feedback about those sexy LED-style sidebar links, so here's how these are done, so you don't have to view the whole source to find it. Unordered lists seem the best way, so let's start with the HTML code:

<ul class="sexylinks">
<li>
<a href="http://www.asseptic.org/blog/">Normal (white) LED</a>
</li>
<li class="redlink">
<a href="http://www.asseptic.org/blog/">Red LED</a>
</li>
</ul>
Of course, I did place the unordered lists inside a TABLE to get the two collumns you see in the sidebar. Now, to the CSS file! I start by defining the basic character of all unordered lists:

ul {
font-family: "Lucida Sans", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 10px;
}
And of course, the basic character of all links:

a {
color: #DDDDDD;
text-decoration: none;
}

a:visited {
color: #BBBBBB;
text-decoration: none;
}

a:active, a:hover {
color: #FFFFFF;
text-decoration: none;
}
Now we will specify how the class 'sexylinks' — when applied to an unordered list — will look, which will complement the basic UL definition — and override some attributes in case we define them again (which I didn't):

ul.sexylinks {
list-style: none;
margin: 0;
padding: 2px;
}
You may want to set the padding to zero, I set it to two pixels because every item in my sidebar is slightly indented in relation to the block title. I also added:

ul.sexylinks li {
margin-bottom: 1px;
}
So that we don't end up with a long vertical bar when we style the links. Now, to the links:

ul.sexylinks li a {
display: block;
width: 100%;
border-left: 3px solid #666666;
padding-left: 5px;
}

ul.sexylinks li a:hover {
background: #555555;
border-left: 5px solid #FFFFFF;
padding-left: 3px;
}
We already defined the text colour and decoration earlier and I decided not to override these attributes — but you may want to override the text colour. We set to display a 100% width block so that the entire width of the list is treated as a link (not just when you mouse-over the text) and lights up (somehow IE doesn't require this attributes, but Mozilla does). And then the trick: the use of a smaller padding that compensates a thicker border when we mouse-over. Never forget that margins work outside the border (and by default it is zero in links) and paddings work inside. Now, since we set up specific classes for different colours:

ul.sexylinks li.redlink a {
border-left-color: #660000;
}

ul.sexylinks li.redlink a:hover {
background: #660000;
border-left-color: #FF0000;
}
We just override the relevant attributes, and voilá! Enjoy your LEDs.···

I went to the college today to attend a session of last year's best video works. Among these, the moderately crowded room watched my documentary O Zero. It wasn't a big event, and most people attending were colleagues and professors. However, it was the first time I ever watched something I directed in a big screen (I once sent a couple of experimental movies to a video festival but I wasn't there when those were shown). And I can tell you it feels horrible. The thing is, I hadn't watched my documentary for a couple of months, and now I saw it in perspective, as a flawed documentary full of mistakes. What was I thinking when I wrote that part of the voice-over? Why did I use that poorly composed shot? Cuts completely out of sync. Bad splices. You notice the camera shakes a bit during a pan. And I felt shame. It's totally different from showing people your work on a TV set, and commenting while they see it, trying to justify every glitch. When the screen is big and the room is dark, your heart races fast, you are sitting deeper and deeper, and people are judging your shitty little documentary. Strangers will see your name in the credits twice (as producer and director) and will think you are an egotistical self-centered arrogant git. Luckly, my documentary was followed by an experimental video that finished with a 3 minute long shot of its director smoking while wearing Raybans.···

Some people told me this website now looks broken in IE5 (I'd be happy if someone could mail me a screeshot). I haven't had the chance to test it in older browsers yet so I'm not making any changes, but this might be a good example of what I consider the technical wrongness of relying too much in CSS. I even went across sites showing how webdesigners could explore some IE5 bugs to load specific corrections to the stylesheet. Is this what modern webdesign came to? The dark ages of losing hours of sleep while trying to make things look the same in Netscape4 and IE4? Web-standards are a goal for the future, but don't work in the present. Can anyone criticize a designer who uses fail-safe techniques to prevent a few headaches, even if these don't validate or conform to modern protocols (I don't think they should even be called standards as that's a lie)? And I still believe in the artistic merit of TABLEs — just because the web isn't paper, it is, for now, a form of two dimensional design featuring text and pictures (static or not), and I believe the use of a grid makes as much sense. And by the way, I like that strong pink. It's the opposite of green.···

I should be working with the new computer I ordered by now if it wasn't for me living in the rear end of Europe. I selected some pretty specific components that apparentely will take ages to get here (computer shops are not good UPS clients). So I was expecting to go pick up my new computer today, instead I got a phone call asking me to select other components since the motherboard and graphics card are unavailable — anywhere in Portugal according to what they say. I never believed computer stores in this matters, but there, I browsed the net a bit, then went to the store and selected a bog-standard Chaintech GeForce FX5200 (apparentely any videocapture GeForce cards are unavailable here) — I'll keep using the PCTV card for the odd capture from VHS (I was just trying to save one PCI slot) — and a MSI Neo2 motherboard. Both items are available. The trouble is, they also had forgotten to tell me that S-ATA hard drives are unavailable (bullshit — I considered buying an HD-less computer and going to find the drive myself, but I'm not that desperate), so I'll have to wait until next week. I hope. It seems in this country you just can't buy good value for money electronics, you either wait a lot of time or you get the shitty overvalued components they place in their readymade computers — or worse, you buy a branded PC. Do computer stores need to resemble mechanics or public contractors this much?···

I see many fellow bloggers were busy redesigning this last weekend, so I took the extra few days before college begins (I was expecting classes to start yesterday but I got an extra week vacation) to work in this weblog a bit. I kept the same layout but got rid of a few redundant tags (as always, I kept TABLEs as grid markers) and added some CSS tricks (read: sexier links). It probably doesn't validate, but it works — at least on IE6 and Mozilla.···

Satan's Laundromat. One of the most interesting photologs around. Some photos remember me of Portugal no Seu Melhor, but thankfully the website has no Hot or Not? bullshit.···

According to some Tibetan Buddhists, your hard disk drive can be a religious relic — a Prayer Weel — if the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum is in someway stored in. The thing is, the faster the prayer weel spins, the greater the benefit, so it seems 10000RPM SCSI hard disks are also better than laptop 4200RPM IDE drives in religious terms. Madness.···

Some impressive figures about weblog abandonment, numbers backing my claims blogs (most of them) are hype.···