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.···