Movie: Mission Impossible 3

In general, action movies have a few criteria:

• Lots of explosions
• Lots of guns
• Car chases
• planes, helicopters and other vehicle stunts
• A roof chase scene
• Funky gadgets
• Lots of babes, either in distress or wielding guns; and finally
• a bad script

Except for the 2^nd to last point (there was only one beautiful woman in the movie IMO), MI-3 fulfils all of those criteria, especially with regards to roof top action. It's not a great movie, but it's not a bad action movie.

Stupid Windows

A picture is worth a thousand words ...

Sport and Development

Over the weekend, the UCT Badminton Club hosted the inaugural UCT Schools Challenge, a schools only badminton competition played in a cup format. I am quite proud of the turnout considering it was my pet project, and 66 boys and girls participated from about 10 different schools. It is my pet project, and like the UCT Open, I hope that it becomes an annual event.

Badminton was once a very popular sport at UCT, and during the bad old days of apartheid in the 70's, UCT was once the strongest clubs in the country featuring a number of South African players. In fact, the UCT Sports Team of the Year trophy is called the Doug Butterworth Trophy after a past chairperson of both the UCT Badminton club and the WP Badminton Association. But being a white dominated sport in the past has meant that the sport is in dire need of "transformation" in some parts of the country. Furthermore, because it is not a professional sport in South Africa, there is very little money in the sport. This is despite the fact that it is also an Olympic sport, but then look at swimming and sponsorship and it is easy to see that money only flows to Cricket, Rugby and Soccer.

Regardless of these hindrances, badminton is a huge sport in Oceanview, a predominantly coloured community in the Cape Flats. And there are two very good reasons for this. First and foremost is Dorian James, currently one of the top four South African players (and off course a two time winner of the UCT Open ;)). His rise to the top (and also his brother Enrico) has meant that the community has something to celebrate. Secondly is the involvement of Chris James and Francois Wessels in the development of the sport in the community, pushing it in to the schools. This has resulted in even more results with virtually the entire South African U19 squad coming from Oceanview.

It is the last fact that has really inspired other kids - to see that their friends have come to the level that they are traveling around the country and overseas. In the Schools Challenge, the largest percentage of the kids were from Oceanview, and they had teams in both the girls and boys semi-finals, with one of the boys teams loosing the final is a very close deciding match and one of the girls teams winning the finals. It is in them, that the results of development can really be seen, and ultimately measured.

F#$%*&@ Stormers

What a crappy sporting weekend ... Ferrari and Schumi gets beaten by Fernando the most boring grand prix of the year so far (resulting a crappy return on expenses for food at sports cafe). But it was spoilt already by the really pathetic performance of the Stormers in their Super 14 match against the Bulls. I mean, come on ... a maximum of 31 points deficit was all that was asked, but no ... all the Stormers could do was score 10 points and let in 43! And the Stormers players were bitching about not being included in the Springboks squad ... there is the reason! Admittedly part of the fault does lay in with the Sharks, first for not beating the Bulls and secondly for letting in the late try from the Western Force but rationality has never been a strong feature for sports supporters ;)

Movie: Inside Man

Spike Lee is a brilliant director, and in my opinion, he is one of the rare directors that has managed to merge entertainment with a distinct political viewpoint that often challenges the viewer's opinions on the subject matter. 25th Hour for example was about racism and xenophobia wrapped up in a story about drugs.

Inside Man is largely about a bank robbery - the ellusive, perfect bank robbery. But, there are so many other facets about the story - the treatment of victims, xenophobia and racism and the very touchy subject on profiting from the plight of others - in this case, profiting from Nazi clients during WW2. Until the end of the movie, this is not even the focus - but it is very much the central core of the movie, and like othe Spike Lee movies, this also raises uncomfortable questions - how much sympathy should we have for people (or companies) that made money out of exploitation. It is a touchy question, because some of the economic powerhouses are involved.

The movie cast is a list of mega stars - Denzel Washington, clive Owen, Willem Dafoe and Jodie Foster. It is a great story, very clever, well told and definitely ranks as one of the best movies about robberies.

Movie: Mrs Henderson Presents

Take a very rich, well connected, old lady (Judy Dench) who has been recently widowed. Since her only son was killed in WW1, she has basically got a lot of time and money but nothing to do. So she buys a theatre. And, because ordinary shows are not going to make as much money - she pulls her connections and debuts the show with a difference - nude still models around who the shows will run. In conservative London, this is a big hit - and once WW2 starts, it becomes more popular with all the young men off to the army.

That is the gist of the story - it is hilarious, well acted and has a nice, simple but sentimental story.

Movie: Brokeback Mountain

This movie is incredibly slow (as many movies in this genre are), it has beautiful cinematography, it has a great story - but because it is so slow, it is also incredibly boring. I can't really say more, because I spent more time fast forwarding (the DVD) than watching at some points,, and I think I know very well why Crash won best picture oscar - because it was entertaining also!

Telkom: The Ripoff

Also known as the "continued experiments with Skype"

So, I decided to arm myself with 10 Euros of Skype credit (the only ammount you can purchase) and try to phone some places - chief being my family back in India. To test it out however, I decided to call my Mom in Durban first. The 3 minute 19 sec call (just before 6pm) cost me 22 euro cents or approximately R1.67 according to xe.com. The quality was not great unfortunately, but was still audible, and understandable - although there were quite a few dropped packets.

Comparatively, if I used a Telkom Payphone, it would have cost me R4.50 on a Telkom pay phone and R2.66 on a land line. As for using a cell phone, it would have cost me just under R10 according to the rates on the Vodacom website. Thus, Skype beats all of them at the rates game!

As for India there was some serious lag ... about 4 to 5 seconds. But hell, the cost made it worth it.

Skype Conference and Laura Croft

So I had the Skype conference this morning, and it really went well. At least 3 hours of video conferencing with minimal lag (a few dropped packets here and there) - it was a pleasure. Presenting a 19 slide slideshow from 12 000 Km away was also very interesting, and it all went well. Off course having a receptive conference organiser was also part of the deal, and my thanks to the DMP for great organising!

As for Laura Croft ... totally unrelated really. I read an article at Wired today, where the writer discussed the idea that the success of Laura Croft is not necessarily due to horny teenage guys lusting over big boobs but more of the thrill of rescuing a woman from danger. It's quite an interesting read - and does ring true somewhat. But I still think, that the big boobs do have a big factor ... I don't think small boobs and an ugly face would have sold as well ....

Skype

So I have finally joined the Skype revolution, and boy was I impressed. Helped with the extra bandwidth allocation from ITS (I think) I had a long (over 30 minute) video call with absolutely no problems. My friend on the other end (Tobias) actually commented on the smoothness of my video link!

Anyway, the whole point of this Skype exercise is to participate over the Internet in the Digital Media Project (DMP)'s 10th General Assembly, where I have submitted a proposal that will hopefully be adopted as a standard! Due to financial reasons (cost was estimated about R15 000, which I had to pay by myself, and did not have at the time) I could not attend physically - so this Skype solution was proposed by the organisers.

Which brings me to my next pet project ... there are a lot of conferences in the world, and due to financial reasons, student participation from UCT at these conferences are minimal, restricted usually only if the student is presenting a paper (and even then I have known students not to get funding!). But, if research is to be truly "world class", participation at major conferences is a priority in many fields. And this is where Skype comes in. Skype seems very good at video (can even do full screen), and there is usually good bandwidth availability at conferences. Surely, it would therefore be easier to hookup a connection at these conferences and "broadcast" it back to UCT, where interested parties can then take part in the presentations and even forward questions to the speakers! This would be a step up from the blogging that Carl and I did from Siggraph and ACM-CCS respectively last year, and certainly more useful.

I know a few conferences might object, but assuming we have their blessing, this could certainly be a good step forward in engaging researchers around the world! So, as a start, I would like to invite anyone who is interested in the DMP to come around and join me (but I think it would be rather boring for most people). I am also willing to do a Skype broadcast from ISSA if anyone is interested and I am allowed to ...

Music: Superdan & Apocalypse Cows

Wednesday night was Sara's first gig as part of her new band - Supadan at the Mercury Lounge, and a whole bunch of us went along to support. Supadan themselves are not a new band, but it was the first time I have seen them live. The music is best described as Hip-Hop with quite a bit of Jazz and Rock influences. To be honest, the music was nothing special, and I thought the stage show as such does need a bit of work. But, it was very enjoyable, and I would love to go see them play again. I hope they sort out the reverb on Sara's mike though ... couldn't really hear her because of the reverb.

Apocalypse Cows was the band that followed Supadan, and they can be best described as heavy rock accompanying cacophony. Indeed, the lead singer very much reminded me of the bard Cacofonix in Asterix and Obelix. Whether he actually utters words into the microphone or its just one scream after another, is up for debate ... but we did not stay behind long enough to investigate. The only positive is that they had a good heavy rock sound (in terms of the music). But, they need to get a better singer or failing that, better songs.

Internet for the masses, Chuck Norris and the Wonders of the World

In an earlier post I mentioned the availability of free Internet access to all Cape Town library members. I didn't want to work yesterday morning, and took the opportunity to have a relook at the system at the Mowbray library. Incidentally, the company tasked with providing this service, Sm@rt Cape, is also rolling out trucks with PCs for the wider poorer communities in Cape Town.

The system is completely open source, using Firefox, Open Office 1.1 (should really be using Open Office 2.0 in my opinion) and runs on Linux in what seems like Enlightenment window manager for X. I didn't spend too much time on the system, but it was pretty easy to use, and I do not think it will require too much training to use. In particular, there is no need to learn complicated menu systems (there are no menus), and there is a clock counting down how long you have left on the system. I was however not impressed with the Internet speed, and websites took forever to load - so long that I just gave up in the end. The only other complaint I have is that there is no taskbar, something that could confuse a lot of novice users of the system who know how to multitask - but are not sure on how to get around multiple windows.

Later on in the afternoon, was the annual UCT RAG Floats Parade. For the second time in its 80 year history (first being last year), it was held on Main Road between Rondebosch and Mowbray. It was also held in the afternoon, and like last year, there was a mini carnival held at Mowbray Town Hall - this year featuring some top bands like the Finkelstiens and 340ml. From outside, the carnival was not much of a success - there was hardly anyone there, and to charge an entry fee for such a small carnival was suicidal in my opinion.

The floats this year were of poor quality this year, despite have longer time to actually do them. The amount of student participation in the floats was shocking (some floats barely had people in them), and most floats was rife with adverts from various companies. In fact, some residences went so far as making the company the subject of the float - definitely a sign of the modern times - but not really a wonder of the world.


Varietas' music dog was one of the best floats, featuring a spinning disc and lots of students, mostly playing various instruments. But a wonder of the world?



Chuck Norris made an appearance, with a number of Kopano boys strutting their stuff as Chuck Norris. I don't know (or understand) what the recent fascination with Chuck Norris comes from, but he appears to be everywhere.




EBE's (the engineering students) had some real engineering with a plane that could tilt from side to side. It was definitely one of the better floats. The Marquard space shuttle was small, but atleast they kept to the theme.



Smuts had the most commercial float - scoring not one but two sponsors. Whether McDonald's qualify as a wonder of the world can be debatable, but Scooters Pizza's 3 for 2 deal might just qualify ;)

Movie: V for Vendetta

In some ways, this is a movie with some very serious points, examining the effects of slowly giving away civil liberties in exchange for security. In this futuristic world, 1984 has come about because the public voted it in, scared by the prospects of terrorism. In many ways this new world is a lot like Nazi Germany, with a high chancellor (played briliantly by John Hurt), segragating people because of their sexuality and their religion. It is also a movie that briefly explores the issues concerning genetic engineering, and the masked hero V (played by Hugo Weaving of Mr Smith in the Matrix fame, and unlike other masked heroes, he never actually reveals his face) is a product of genetic engineering.

On the other hand, it is also an action movie, but the action never really dominates the movie, and neither does the special effects. Most people will go to watch the movie because it is an action movie, but the serious plot is the bedrock to the movie and it is rare to see a movie that can merge the action and the serious so flawlessly.

CocaCola Massive Mix

I first posted about the massive rock concert here. Since then, Metallica were added to the mix, the golden circle ticket price went up by R100, and it all took place on Saturday. It was by far the longest single music event I have been to (the Levi's AIDS concert series last year and Obs Fest were around 9 hours while 46664 was about 6 hours) and, in my opinion, featured the best lineup between the lot!

Of the locally based South African bands (i.e. excluding Seether), I found The Finkelstiens to be the best. Their performance was really bad while supporting Offspring, but Saturday brought back memories of their awesome performance at a beach festival in Durban about 3 years back. It is ironic, but looking back, I think their type of performance really works well with smaller crowds - mainly because of their on stage antics. Arno Carsten and Nude Porn were good, but it is nothing like their Springbok Nude Girls days. As for Seether, their songs were brilliant, but their stage presence was not really what I expected - rather lethargic to be honest. But that did not really detract from the actual music.

Of the international acts, Simple Plan were really awesome. Of the bands on show, they were the only band that I did not really know too much about; but their on stage performance, their interaction with the crowd were top notch. They also seem to have huge "teenage girls" fanclub considering the screaming going on. The Rasmus were also great, but sadly most of the crowd were not too familiar with their music, and as Sarai commented - we need to watch them in Europe to really appreciate their performance. Collective Soul were also great, but to be honest, I think most people were trying to regain their energy after Seether and preparing for Metallica.

Metallica started late by about 15 minutes, but the wait was worth it. Even a power problem minutes into their act (which brought down all the insturments) did not dampen any spirits and in fact every one just rocked harder. Their energy on the stage (I have never seen such an energetic bass guitarists ... Rob Trujillo puts most performers to shame on that front) was amazing, and they played for over two hours, mostly from their older albums, including a number of songs from Kill 'Em All.

It was a great night (and day), spoiled (only a bit) by some really rough moshers (if you can really call them that) and lazy assholes who wanted to try squeeze into the front because they couldn't be bothered to pitch up earlier. The organisation was awesome and the music was great - I hope 5FM (and others) can organise a similar concert next year! A special mention also to Quintin Cloud, a friend I made through the Paddock Club at AtlasF1, and eventually met on Saturday [yes those things actually happen ;)]

The Multilingual Salesman

On Tuesday evening, I went to the "A.R.T. Gallery" in Kalk Bay for the opening of a small photographic exhibition by Sean on his mad cycle trip from Kenya to Mozambique. While it was a small exhibition (featuring only a small subset of his photos), the quality was remarkable none the less, which was not really surprising, considering Sean is quite an accomplished photographer.

On the way back from Kalk Bay, I met a salesman at the station. The train was late and the few passengers got talking to pass the time. Turns out, that the salesman can speak at least six of the eleven South African languages fluently and also knows atleast 3 other foreign languages. The fact that he had a fluent conversation with four different people with four different languages (English, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Sesotho) did lend some credibility to his claims. Turns out, that while selling sweets and biscuits on the train is his job, he spends a lot of time teaching, without pay, languages esp Xhosa and Afrikaans at different primary schools. He is trying to get a proper teaching qualification so that he can actually make a proper job out of it and his ambition is to master every official language in South Africa.

It is a bold ambition, but it was amazing to meet someone who, despite his own difficulties (after all selling sweets cannot be that much of a decent living) has so much to give to others. In hindisght, I realise that I should have tried to at least get his name ...

Movie: Syriana

It's a complex movie, a bit like Traffic (no wonder ... same people) and Crash, with a number of different threads that all link up together. Unlike Crash however, the story is a lot more controversial, promoting the view that the US government through he backing of major oil companies are more interested in money and oil for the US rather than peace and stability in the world. It's not a new allegation, but the story is very powerful and features some superb acting esp. from Clooney. It is also a very "heavy" movie, and not exactly a fun, exciting movie - but then movies of this subject type are rarely fun and exciting.

Fallen Heroes and the American Cricket Fan

It did not even take a week before the South African cricket team came back to earth with a bang - loosing the first test match within 3 days. In my opinion, it all started with fear and wrong decisions -- after all, after a good night's rain (in fact it even rained early in the morning), heavy cloud cover -- all indications of a good bowlers wicket, why on earth would any one choose to bat? Understandably, Graeme Smith was wary of Shane Warne bowling on the last day -- but still -- if you are not going to take him on, why bother to play in the first place?



But to be fair, batting was slow going for both sides, and for once the bowlers had a good match. But regardless, it was pretty bad viewing for Saturday when Tim, Justin (Aaron's brother and a UCT Radio DJ) and I went in for the third day - hoping (actually more like praying) for a South African fightback. Alas, it was not to be - although bad umpiring decisions did not help the South African cause.



Justin's valiant effort in the rousing the crowd (with the help of an inflatable sheep and my big SA flag), was well, valiant. It did not help that the security guys seemed to be on a power trip - constantly taking down posters (ok they were a tad offensive including ... but the players laughed) and generally pissing everyone else off. As for the pictures, we started off sitting in the Oaks embankment (pic 1), but moved to railway embankment (on the opposite side) during the lunch interval (to get more shade). There was a large contingent of people wearing SAB gear ... presumably got a company day outing or something, and were one of the more vocal supporters.

We also met the unknown - American cricket fans (well the guy loved cricket, the two girls thought it was better than baseball but not as great as basketball or American football). Not the migratory Indians and Pakistanis who have made America their home - but born and bred American who also tend to like American Football and Basketball. One of the girls works for the US embassy in Turkmenistan and had quite a few interesting stories to tell about the country and its madcap dictator. I think Tim put her into a tight corner asking her about her opinions on US foreign policy, which she declined to answer.

[I had more pics, but uploading pics has been a nightmare ... so none of the "action" shots ;)]

Hero Gibbs se Babelas

That was just one of the headlines I saw this morning on my cycle ride, and for once, Zuma, baby Jordan and the powercuts were off the front page. Sunday's cricket match was remarkable - not only because of the number of runs scored, but also because of South Africa's spirited chase and victory. But Cricinfo's label of the match as the greatest ever ODI is just wrong in my opinion. After all, a cricket match is a battle between the batsmen and the bowlers, and in Sundays game, other than Nathan Bracken, bowlers did not even feature in the game. To be honest, I think that neither Gibbs nor Ponting really deserved the man of the match - because while their performances were good - it should be expected that at least one batsman will make a lot of runs on that pitch. On the other hand, Bracken took 5 of 14 wickets that fell on Sunday - a greater contribution percentage wise than any other player.

As for the greatest match - I think the 1999 semi final between SA and Australia still ranks as the best ODI ever - it featured everything about cricket - runs, wickets and great fielding.

Movie: The New World

The New World is a beautiful movie. Unfortunately, that is the only good thing that can be said about the movie (although the music wasn't bad). It is extremely long (ok not as long as King Kong), has a very simple plot, almost no conversation and is extremely boring. In fact, Carl confesses to have fallen asleep during the movie. The movie is basically the story of Pocahontas, so if you are really keen on knowing the story (white man comes to America in 1500's, meets a native american princess, fall in love etc), you are better off watching the Disney movie.

Interestingly enough, there is a shorter version (by about 20 minutes) available ... why on earth was the extended version not released as a DVD? All said however, its cinematography is top class ... but I cannot really recommend it as a movie.

The Big DRM Mistake?

In his column, Scott Granneman calls DRM a mistake; mainly because of its many current shortcomings and also because of the restrictions posed by DRM to consumers. In my opinion, that is not the big mistake about DRM - the mistake is how badly DRM has essentially been marketed, including its vilification in the GPL 3 draft.

Fundamentally, DRM is a about persistent access control - it is a term for a set of technologies that allow for data to be protected beyond the file system of the original machine. Thus, for example, the read/write/execute access control on most *nix file systems will not only be applicable to the original machine but to all machines. DRM is not perfect yet - that is the reason it is still an active research area; but a claim like "it will never be perfect" should not be a reason to investigate and prove that such a claim is false.

And most of the problems with DRM is not about technological failure - but a failure of communication and bad marketing. Granted The SONY-BMG saga was about technological failure - because fundamentally it was bad technology. But it was also about a miscommunication - customers should be told that they are buying a DRM enabled CD. Similarly, my criticisms on Vodafonelive (which I made to the INDICARE Workshop in Budapest this year, and in a law paper I co-wrote with Thomas Bechle last year) are based on the failure of Vodafone to make the consumer aware.

And fundamentally - many of the fair use issues are not a matter of given right. Just because a traditional CD allows me to give to a friend should not imply that any future format will allow me the same freedoms. Fundamentally, DRM enabled CDs are not the same thing as non DRM enabled CDs and should be labeled as such. It is like selling a German book sealed in an English cover without warning that the contents are in German. It is a case of bad trade practices and bad communication - and if consumers don't like the restrictions, they shouldn't buy it, but they need to be given the choice.

At the end of the day I believe that DRM does have a place - it can be used to protect sensitive data that needs to be highly regulated - for example, your health records. trying to advocate the DRM should not be researched because of possible misuse is just plain wrong.