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“Italiensk for begyndere”: 7/10. A no-nonsense, quality film, albeit a bit too corny for my taste, although I’m willing to overlook that. But if you’re planning on seeing it, don’t expect too much.

I love when stuff works out—doesn’t everybody?
For those of you aren’t aware, Tommy and I recently finished a 12-week internship at Digitaal Leren, hammering out the basics of Dokeos’s upcoming LCMS implementation. While every student is required to host an elaborate presentation mid-June, we got to host an extra presentation today, in front of a bunch of Dokeos community members.
Now, sadly, Tommy was taken ill earlier this week. Consequently, I was on my own today—that is to say, our internship mentor Bart kindly leant a hand by operating the Impress presentation and walking people through the demonstration.
Still, you may or may not know that, frankly, I am a bad public speaker, partly because I speak very quietly. Furthermore, being in a fairly large room, without a mike, in front of some 30 people, most of whom know their stuff pretty well, doesn’t help. Add to that the fact that I pretty much live at night and that I had to get up at 7:30 this morning, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster—or at least I thought so. Which didn’t bother me as such though—I’d laugh it off, because that’s what I do.
Ironically, because of this apathy, I was dead calm, and delivered what was probably the best presentation I ever gave—which would be “above average” for normal people, I guess. Apparently, I am capable of talking for half an hour straight, and answering questions diplomatically. I think it’s safe to say that I actually enjoyed being up there for once. Of course, I had a very good audience in front of me. Everyone seemed dying to hear what we had to say—not sure if they were, but hey, judging by several pleasant chats I had with them after the presentation, I’d say their interest was sincere.
I can only hope our final presentation—hopefully with Tommy this time, not that I don’t like Bart—goes this well. If anything, this whole thing has convinced me more that I should consider a career in education. However, I am still going for the Industrial Engineer’s degree next year, no matter what.

Taskbar Shuffle is pretty nifty, though it just adds functionality that should be there by default.

“El Maquinista”: 7/10. Christian Bale is such a good actor that, in this one, he overdoes it to such an extent that it sucks all the tension out of the movie. Tension which is actually there, in the form of a quite intruiging buildup. That buildup, however, is shattered the moment the pieces start falling into place, and you are confronted with nothing more than a cheap pseudo-psychoanalytical plot. Save yourself the trouble and watch the ending first. If, after that, you are still interested, you will adore the rest of it.

Kinda like when you try to commit suicide and you slit your wrist in the wrong direction and you bleed and bleed but you don’t pass out and eventually they come get you and you’re like “Am I dead?” and they go “No, you moron, but you’re costing tax payers a hell of a lot of money right now so try to get it right next time, will you?” and you’re all “Whatever, bitch, at least I have the guts to off myself!” … Sssssppppppiiijjjjjjtig! Another €60,000 well spent, huh. Especially if you let a quarter of it go to your outfit—not that it would have made a difference if it’d been otherwise. And that is the last thing I want to hear about it. You had your camp yet sad fun, now pull yourself together and do something meaningful with your life.

Short Circuit (unearthed by jay is games) is both brilliant and disturbingly annoying. I totally love games that use interactive music.

“What’s the Secret Sauce in Ruby on Rails?” BURNSAUCE!

“Calvaire”: 7/10. So … It’s about this crooner and a bunch of lunatic hicks … And um … Yeah, I dunno. It’s just weird. Damn socialist Walloons. Too poor to come up with an actual storyline.

Well, it figures: I spoke too soon. When there are a bunch of black and white pixels on a single line, the panel goes berserk with nauseating scan lines. It only happens with DVI, but I’m sure as hell not going to hook a 20″ LCD monitor up with VGA—not permanently anyway. I emailed the store, asking if it might have something to do with my Asus V9520 Video Suite card, and I’ll see what happens. I’d definitely be reluctant to trade in the monitor or get a new video card, but I won’t use VGA permanently either. Ideally, it would be a problem with this particular monitor and I would just return it, but I doubt that. Bah.

I just installed my new ViewSonic VX2025wm and I love it. The only downsides I’ve encountered so far are the ones I was aware of: no height adjustment, and a bit greenish grays; the former is easily corrected since it tilts, and the latter is a matter of tweaking the colors to your liking. While the panel reveals a pleasant tranquility, the colors it produces are vivid and CRT-like. And finally, after an elaborate test, I was not able to find any dead pixels. Awesome. I was sceptical towards LCDs, but this one’s a keeper.