The Wicker Man
It’s funny what one can remember and what sticks to the mind sometimes.
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“Citizen Kane of horror movies”
‘The Wicker Man’ on wikipedia.org
I must’ve seen this movie somewhere around 1988 I guess… You could argue I was too young to see this movie back then (I must’ve been 14 years old or such) but maybe, next to the fact that it’s an unforgettable movie on it’s own, it’ll be the reason it made such a big impression on me back then and it has sticked to the mind to the present day.
Of that first time I saw it, I only know I was alone at home and I should’ve gone to bed already when I fell right in to this movie. Reconstructing that moment later, it must’ve been the airing on the BBC (I just found out it’s been the first movie of the excellent moviedrome-series, which was this late-night cult-film program on BBC2, with very obscure films and with great introductions of Alex Cox) which I saw. Anyway, at that moment, I know I watched it till the end (I fell in the film right after the beginning, not knowing what it was called) to be able to spot the title of the movie, so I could see it some other time.
...and even if you’re not into cult-movies, if you watch the original, you get to see Britt Ekland in the flesh, a fact to impress your dad with! ^_^
It has made such a big impression on me back then, that I even remember talking about it with roommates, when I attended University in Rotterdam, quite some years later and not having seen it since or knowing anything more about it. It was a couple of years ago when my sister gave me a rough guide to cult movies as a very nice present, I found out that it actually is a highly rated (among some people) movie. (from the rough guide: “a horror fantasy classic that plays on what we’ve always feared about people living on remote islands” ... “atmospheric and unforgettable”). As far as I knew, this could’ve been the worst rated movie ever (as if I would care), I personally just liked to see it again, because in some mysterious ways every now and then it kept popping back into my mind. Luckily, after some searching (it must’ve been 2002) I was able to download a copy by the means of eMule/eDonkey… (psst… don’t tell anyone). So 14 years later I was able to see this movie again and I wasn’t disappointed, it still was an excellent movie. I did however lose that copy because of some harddisk crash, but after seeing it twice or maybe three times, my quest for the Wicker Man was fulfilled…
...until two days ago when I browsed imdb.com, spotted the title somewhere on the page and found out there has been made a remake of this movie. You can watch a trailer here if you want, but after reading some reviews on this new Wicker Man, with Nicolas Cage, I guess I have a better suggestion…
My suggestion, either if you’re going to see the remake or not, is to watch the original in all it’s glory… It’s worth it. Because of this renewed interest in this movie, I did a search for it on this very well known Swedish network and the version I was able to download is 97 minutes long (what’s this link doing here?). I missed some scenes somehow. Not that strange if you know that there have been several versions of this movie. I guess the one seeded right now is a cut-up version as well, but this DivX-version is your chance to see what this is all about. I personally will go look for a longer version on DVD (there’s this limited edition on Amazon, but that’s a little steep… $147.95!). Any way, this is one movie to remember!
Christopher Lee shouts at you:
“Come, it is time to keep your appointment with The Wicker man!”
*^_^*
some screenshots:
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Don’t forget to check out the soundtrack as well! (which has a story attached to it on it’s own…)
One last thing, once you’re into this movie like I am, you can easily spend a sunday-afternoon reading stories/reviews/strange facts and such online which at all isn’t an annoying way to spend some time… I can highly recommend the original Wicker Man and all that comes with it…
related (or not)
www.wicker-man.com a homepage for the original film… which says enough on it’s own. A fairly fresh site dedicated to a film made in 1973…
The Wickerman Festival (in Scotland of course)
The Wicker Man on Scotland: the Movie Location Guide
Media Myth: Burning Man (Festival) is based on ‘the Wicker Man’
fun fact: next years Burning Man theme is ‘The Green Man’ which is also the name of the Pub in the movie… but of course, no connection whatsoever with ‘The Wicker Man’ :-)
travel hint #2
Well, the t-shirts were the first hint of where I’m travelling coming tuesday… And remember, where I’m going I need them bad, so no hackerconference or personal visit to Theo de Raadt or such (I wish it was ^_^)
Here’s hint number two…
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that picture combined with the this is Mark picture on Flickr by Nadya Peek will have all the info to deduct my destination (for this trip! nothing else!!! ;-))
If you can’t figure it out, I’ll reveal where I am coming tuesday (wednesday morning in my local time overhere) ... it’ll be the longest tuesday of my life (33 hours!) and it also happens to be my birthday…
end of an era, SGI stops production*
*SGI stops production of MIPS IRIX
But wait a minute, weren’t they broke already? Well… not really, they filed for bankruptcy, but called it a reorganization. Now, the end-of-production of MIPS and IRIX doesn’t come as a surprise, but still…
MIPS® IRIX® Products Approach EOP
SGI probably will stay some highly-specialized company, still developing some crazy Itanium-systems and hopefully they keep contributing to the linux source code… Which is all quite nice of course, but without MIPS and IRIX, SGI is just not SGI anymore…
The MIPS/IRIX-SGIs were the only real SGIs imho… That’s also why I didn’t feel too sorry to be modding this SGI320-case to become my workstation... which resembles ever more the current SGI line-up, running linux X86_64 (shock! horror!) ^_^ ...
But I will always have this soft spot for MIPS IRIX stuff for sure. I already got a couple of them and I have this hunch there will be coming some more (nooo, I didn’t buy anything already!)
For instance, something like this:
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a maxed out Octane2, now for sale in Holland...
They even have a Warehouse Clearance Sale at SGI themselves (‘all items must go!’ ...now wait, they start to make sense!), although that’s still ridiculously overpriced compared to ebay for instance (but somehow, that fits them *^_^* )
My friend Roberto from Italy got a similar system and even though I’m not a jealous guy… in this case… ;-)
Well… last words…
MIPS IRIX is dead, long live MIPS IRIX in the hobbyist scene!
and my favourite quote when it comes to this:
“Mac users may form a cult, but the SGI community is the tech equivalent of the pre-Reformation Moravian church—unknown, tiny and years ahead of its time.” source
earlier on this site
Silicon Graphics, may you rest in peace
Whatever happened to SGI?
and you can find a lot more SGI-related stuff on this site of course, this site started off on a SGI and the site-design is still inspired by that
earlier on bright.nl (in dutch, by me)
Einde in zicht voor Silicon Graphics
fresh t-shirts!
I thought I could use some fresh t-shirts… Especially since I’m going away for a couple of days next week, although I’m not telling exactly where I’m going yet… (and for those of you I know in real life and because of my tendency to talk a little bit much sometimes… please don’t spoil the fun quite yet)
anyways, believe me, I’m going to be needing these t-shirts next week, although I guess I can make my point by carrying my green iBook also, but still, I just want to make sure… *^_^*
Let me put it this way, the dresscode of where I’m going no doubt will be kakhi pants and a blue polo-shirt, but somehow, I don’t think so…
If you’re curious, make sure to check in here september the 13th, I’ll probably be on target by then…
Back to the present day, look what I found in the mail! (in time!, thanks Wim!)
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If you like these t-shirts (and you don’t have to be going to kakhi-pants/blue-polo-hell for liking them), you can order them here.
it's sunday... *^_^*
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that's quick, a new battery from Apple!
Last friday (August the 24th) I checked online if the battery I have in my old green iBook was up for replacement. Last year I got a new battery in there and chances were this was one of the explosive kind...
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...and indeed, even though my iBook is a G3, the combination of my serial number with the serial number of a new battery is something they accepted. So no phone-calls or such, hardly five minutes of work…
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I was expecting this to take several weeks, but this morning a UPS-truck showed up, with a new battery! When I told the driver about the battery-exchange-program and that the package probably had all the info inside on how to send back the old one, he kindly waited. When I opened the package, all the stickers and such for returning the old battery were inside and so I quickly changed the battery and put it back in the box and the UPS-guy took it with him.
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So, this exhange went pretty suave if you ask me. Now I only feel a little stupid I’ve been so careful about the battery I just send back. In one years time I only put thirty cycles on it… But well, I’m whining, I’ve got a brand new (non-explosive?) battery with one cycle right now… ^_^
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...oh, and if you’re wondering what that green sticker on my battery is. I exchanged that quickly too…
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*^_^*
a fresh backbone for my home network
Putting money into switches and stuff will be down on the list of a lot of people, I guess. In my case, I’ve been planning to buy some proper gear for ages, but everytime when I could’ve invested in a fresh switch, I thought of something else I could buy with that same money, something which gave me some extra possibilities or something to play with. Anyway, when I found out last week that this 3Com 8-port-gigabit-switch had come down in price, I thought it was the proper time to buy it. Alongside, to have enough ports, I bought this 8-port 10/100mbit switch for all the gear that needs to be connected but not necessarily on gigabit. A little while ago, I already bought this 54Mbit access point cheap (it’s been discontinued), so now it’s a nice 3Com OfficeConnect threesome.
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Some better pics I made with flash (although I like the other ones better):
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Look, it’s a christmas-tree!
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But wait a minute… OfficeConnect? Hardware for wiring up some office? That’s for freakin’ amateurs! Whatever happened to Enterprise-class stuff?!?! *^_^*
Well, of course, guys like me die for enterprise-class hardware… but well, manageable gigabit 19” switches still cost a fortune, so that simply has to wait. I did consider buying a 19” switch out of the 4400-range but really, would it make sense? I don’t think so. I really want to experiment with gigabit in combination with my encrypted fileserver, to see if I can crank some more performance out of it and doubts arose if the network has been a bottleneck…
First quick-and-dirty tests show that at least on the decoding (reading from the fileserver) side there was a bottleneck. The reading now goes around 15MB/sec and writing around 8.5MB/sec.
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But then I tried to write to my Windows-media-center (from my workstation, so without the fileserver) and writing on there (even when the switch tells me both are connected through gigabit) only gives me around 9MB/sec … aaaah, wait… I guess that machine can use a reboot… *^_^*
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...and some other news... Elsie is back up again! Last weekend she stopped working and I really needed to take a look at that. Well I did, checked everything, replaced a SCSI-cable and tada!
You can find this wonderful 33MHz webserver right here... She’s in the closet with the rest of the stuff (the fileserver, the dual-bridge, the new switches)
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So, now it’s time to get to grips with this Cisco 2610 I have and integrate that in my closet as well…
We’re getting there…
(although I really don’t have a clue where ‘there’ is…)
The last mile into my SoundStorm-setup
This weekend I thought it would be nice to finally put in the last mile into my audio-setup, when it comes to nVidia’s SoundStorm. I now connected my home-theater-equipment optically to my Media Center, therefore bridging the gap between computer-hardware and audio-hardware optically, not electronically. But of course, there will always be audiophiles whining that this also isn’t optimal when it comes to digital audio, but in my case and especially within my budget, this is as good as it gets. (and when you ask me, that’s pretty damn good!) *^_^*
I guess SoundStorm now truly deserves a spot on this site since it’s obsolete, but normally, being obsolete would also mean there’s plenty of other and better stuff on the market today, but is that really true? I doubt that. So that’s why I put in some extra effort to sort of round up on SoundStorm, why it’s special, why I like it and why I will keep using it for a long time ahead.
click to go to the projectpage
You can read it here:
SoundStorm, obsolete but hard to beat
cleaning out my (server)closet
This afternoon I thought it was a nice time to clean out my servercloset. Somehow I’ve got several plans with it and I’ve gathered some hardware I want to put in it, now and some stuff coming soon.
First of all, last week I got another case for my fileserver, which I reinstalled recently. I could take this 19” case home, so I did, on the back of my bike (no joke…). In between rainshowers I was able to bike it home, without a scratch :D.
Any way, today I took all the hardware from the old case and put it into the new one.
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Look, there’s space in my closet! ...and a livingroom full of techjunk (sort of…).
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...and while I was at it, I did put back my old fileserver-motherboard and such back into the old case (which is an old HP Netserver E60 case BTW, I also put the skins back on.)
(The Netserver-case is going to be a spare-system. It’s got an Asus A7M266 inside, with an Athlon MP1800+, 512MB DDR, ATI Fire GL4 which I still had laying around and a 40GB IDE-drive. The general idea is to put Windows on this system, so I can finally put some open-source-Media-Center-something on my Media Center. I now also use my Media Center as my Windows-system, for compatibility-reasons, to install stuff on and such. I control the machine by remote desktop from my workstation and that works brilliantly. So… this old Netserver-case with totally different contents is just going to sit around and whenever I still need to do something ‘on windows’, I can power it up and use the system from my workstation through rdesktop…)
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And a last checkup before I put it back into my closet…
...and then… I ran out of time, so I just put the other stuff on top of it. Not very tidy or such, but it’ll run for the coming week (or two…).
So… what is it all together?
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The fileserver in the black 19” case now is a:
Asus SK8N
AMD Opteron 146 (2.0GHz)
512MB ECC REG
Adaptec 2940 SCSI-controller
9GB SCSI-bootdisk
2×200GB IDE Western Digital disks
running on OpenBSD/AMD64
...with encryption on both 200GB disks (these are going to be replaced by two SATA-drives any time soon… and then in mirror…)
Then, the Sun Ultra’s (both Sun Ultra 1 enterprises… I’ve got a few of those...)... one’s a router and one’s a dual transparent bridge, both running OpenBSD/Sparc64
The Sun which runs as a router will be replaced soon. I’ve got a Cisco 2610 with an extra ethernet-board in it, so it’s dual ethernet now and I’m going to configure that as my router, in between the dual-bridge. That should be the ideal setup to finally get to grips with this dual-transparent-bridge-project. (...and I yet have to see if this 2610 is capable of some nowadays bandwidth… I guess it’ll handle 4Mbps or such… Well, I can also make up my mind if I want/’need’ a more powerful Cisco after I’m done with this one…)
And then, one machine which isn’t in the closet right now is Elsie, my beloved 33MHz webserver… Somehow she halted today, she does that more often, but now she doesn’t boot up anymore, so I’ve got to check on that as soon as I’ve got time.
Like I said, I ran out of time, so it’s not a very big improvement right now, although having my fileserver in a 19”-case is nice. The fileserver makes way too much noise at this time by the way and I need to rewire everything I guess to get it neat and tidy. Well… this is fun stuff to do, so you won’t hear me… ^_^
And last but not least… how’s Bates doing? Weeeeeell, she’s feeling quite at home by now and doesn’t mind me geeking around all day. *^_^*
What do you think? Will this be the first cat able to do some stuff on the Unix-console-line? We’ll see… I might build her a little nice VT100-catproof terminal (fooooooooooooooooooooooood!!!) *^_^*
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abandoned futuristic housing
Well, since it seems I’m not capable of producing my own content right now… *^_^*
(as I said earlier, there’s a lot going on, all positive things by the way, but nothing I can blog/publish right now)
Soooo… to keep things going, I pick up on an old favourite… abandoned places, like these Japanese buildings earlier on…
This time I came across these wonderful images of abandoned futuristic houses in Taiwan…
clicking the pic brings you to the flickr-photoset
Just look at them!
UPDATE
...even more pics… (thanks! Rollmops!)
