Doesn't Vangelis' NASA Mission to Mars theme song sound awfully like Star Wars — The Phantom Menace's? ¶

It seems that East Timor will get 90% of oil sales after a new treaty with Australia. I can see Petrogal rushing to Timor at any moment now, starting another era of 'friendlier' Portuguese colonization. Can't we ever leave those people alone? *sigh* ¶

Hurrah, got the perfect PSX emulator: FPSE will make old Playstation actually look better, and it's much more configurable than that VGS crap I was using. The result: a few hours playing International Superstar Soccer.¶

The 2001 Designer Site Chklst: is your website really trendy and tuned to the zeitgeist? This is a nice stab at today's creative elite, and although I may admit to use random polygon shapes, lowercase type, experimental sections, :: as design element, MM_ javascript, sans-serif fonts, experimental electronica loops, and scanlines as design elements, I'm still far away from checking all 30 items in the checklist, right? Right. Anyway, what saves me (and my clients and visitors) is being a functionalist, so my websites at least are usable and intuitive, although I might have a cronic disrespect for web standards. I think no item on the checklist can be considered as bad, as long as people design responsibly and ergonomically. (link via the asian bastard)¶

Today is St. John's Day, that means the annual celebration in this city. So we'll all be eating sardines at diner, and afterwards we'll launch balloons and go outside and try to hit anything that moves with a soft plastic hammer (it used to be a weird garlic stick in the old days). Tradition is fun.¶

So, that Net Authority thing was an hoax. I fell for it, so did The Register. Such fundamentalist groups exist though, and that's why that hoax did work so well.¶

However... Is this worse? It seems that Christian groups consist mostly of negligent parents that prefer to ban 'offensive content' rather than properly educating and keeping an eye on their children. People should go after such negligent parents, not people who provide content that is not for children. (link via Zeldman) ¶

Now this is just stupid. So let's ban Minesweeper, because that small inhuman game is actually pro-landmine propaganda. What a load of crap. I'm really fed up of these 'humanitarian' dreadheads who are against censorship (defending 'offensive' games such as Quake) but then decide to attack WinMine... had Christian fundamentalist groups decided to attack WinMine first, hippie marxists would be pro-Minesweeper now. Why can't just people understand that it is a fucking videogame? We've all killed billions of electronic creatures, haven't we? Are we all serial-killers? Of course not. In WinMine you are not placing landmines (unlike in good strategy games like C&C), you are avoiding them! So WinMine has landmines, let's ban it! Shootings kill people, let's ban shooting games! Car accidents kill people, let's ban racing games! Drugs kill people, let's ban Dopewars! This is just a load of bullshit, as hypocrite as Brigitte Bardot's pro-animal rights, but racist movement. You either allow everything or ban everything, for sake of coherence. Radical groups have tried to ban a few of the genres mentioned, but personally, I'm against censorship, which only fuels hypocrisy and oppresses people. Let's fight landmines and other forms of violence in real life, and let's leave videogames alone, 'cos many of us love them. Shall we? (link via the null device)¶

Video Data Bank: Video Art and Video Artists. Pity there are no full video downloads, as copyright still seems stronger than indie ideals. Anyway, it's still worth browsing. ¶

Afghanistan is the hidden superpower, the Taleban are the shadow rulers of the world: According to this article, their leader, the Mullah Mohammad Omar, claims that the cause of the US' (and the rest of the world's) economic slowdown is their ban on poppy cultivation, starting a crisis on the world's drug trade. And obviously, the 'economic miracle' of the late 90s was tightly related to very high production of opium (and thus heroin) in Afghanistan. I once read that one third of the world's economy is illegal economy, so I find the Mullah's claims quite believeable. (article via Rebecca's Pocket) ¶

FC Porto 2 — Marítimo 0: Which means my football club has won the Portuguese Cup. Nice.¶

Vaguely related to 'The Tailor of Panama', but possibly a spoiler: Why do American movies have always this shitty morality thing at the end. Why can't movies be realistic? In The Tailor of Panama — a production with a strong European influence — the villain wins and ends up laughing at everyone else. There is absolutely no morality in it, it is just how things are. And is this bad? Won't people watching the movie be able to tell the difference between right and wrong? Do typical American movies really need blatant morality? Does it work? Looking at American crime, lack of ethics, selfishness and dementia, I think not.¶

I went to see The Tailor of Panama, a movie based on a book by John Le Carré and starring Pierce Brosnan and Geoffrey Rush. As anything related to Le Carré, this is a spy drama, and indeed a very good one. Brosnan's casting is obviously no coincidence, as he's given the chance to play the ultimate anti-James Bond, a crap but ruthless spy in Panama with questionable ethics, zero charm and absolutely no desire to save the world. Like real spies, indeed. Geoffrey Rush is also brilliant in his role, a tailor who likes to talk far too much, inventing all kinds of stories that Osnard (Brosnan) will take very seriously. Or won't he? Definitely a great flick, highly recommended.¶

The Open Directory Project is definitely made of reasonable people. Nice one. (via Slashdot)¶

Portugal six, Cyprus nil. Good.¶

So Netscape quits the browser business following my praise of Internet Explorer 6. I am relieved as a web developer (as browsers are definitely on the way to standardization now), but worried about Microsoft having virtually no opposition (to please AOL perhaps?). ¶

SULFNBK.EXE: Unlike other mail viruses, this one instructs the user to delete a Windows system file (told to be a 'virus'), which ends up doing all the damage. Ouch! The same way you can't trust cookies from a stranger (or a friend behaving oddly), you shouldn't buy advice, should you? However, doesn't SULFNBK.EXE have a strange icon or what?¶

Say I want to call some girl to say "I love you", something that was kind and tender before Stevie Wonder. Since that, if I say "I just called to say I love you" on the phone it just sounds crap, laughable, ready-made and unromantic. Indeed, pop music is evil. ¶

Don't read if you take a major religion too seriously: First there were the Jews. They had this Arch containing some laws, and a city called Jerusalem. They built a temple. Then the (Assyrians?) came along and destroyed everything. Later, a king named Solomon decided to build another, bigger temple. Then the Romans came, and helped the Jews enhancing this temple (by this time, a guy called Jesus was spending fourty days on this tiny little hill it only takes five minutes to climb). There was a rebellion. The Romans trashed the temple and forced the Jews to go away. Seven hundred years later, the Muslims conquered Jerusalem. At first, they looked at the temple's ruins and thought about building a Judaism Theme Park, but they decided to use the good quality stone to build their own temple — a Mosque — right on top of the old one. A thousand years later there was this World War II. The Jews were the victims of heinous crimes, and the nice English and American people, famous for their hospitality, decided that they didn't want any Jew refugees in their countries and forced the Muslims out of Jerusalem and gave it back to the Jews. Not many minutes later, shit happens. And why? Had the Muslims built their temple a few metres away, none of this would happen. A FEW METRES! Or would the Jews see that the Muslims had no fault, and build a new one a few metres away from the old ruins. A FEW METRES! Why can't you guys get along?... ¶

Soulful electronica: Sometimes good music can be completely free.¶