cat /proc/claus

It was a productive Sunday.

I woke up 5 in the morning, with the intent to play in an online D&D game, using Hamachi and Maptools to build a virtual table with some folks in Brazil. However, although Hamachi has a linux client in their webpage, I couldn’t get the client to connect with the network, and the game ended up being cancelled.

I tried to go back to bed after that, to wake up at a saner time, but couldn’t sleep. So instead I took the extra time to upgrade my laptop from ubuntu 8.04 to 9 (stopping at 8.10 in the meantime), and cleaning my room. Updating the system solved the problem I was having with audacity not playing my audio files. And while cleaning my room, I was able to throw away about three big bags of stuff I was not going to need anymore, and finally find some of my winter clothing I thought missing. I also found a very cool set of 3D castle tiles for dungeons and dragons which I completely forgot I had - I’m eager for using those in my live campaign, although they probably won’t come into play until the current adventure arc is over, and the players return to the fantastic-europe themed kingdom.

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Late morning I went to talk to my Landlord, a old lady who lives in the same apartment as myself. For a while I have been planning to have a roommate move in, and now that I have someone in mind, I went to ask her (and most importantly, her daughter’s) permission - which they gave me without any problems. If all goes well, my roommate should be moving in by December - more news about that then

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In the afternoon, I went to Akihabara, the famous electronics neighborhood of Tokyo - It has been a while that I haven’t been there, although I pass nearby every Thursdays on the way to my RPG sessions. It was a great weather, so I went by bike. My first goal there was to sell a bunch of DS games which I was not playing anymore - mostly completed tactical combat games. I was surprised at the fairly good prices I got for my games - an average of 1500 yens for each game (the price for buying used games is around 2000-3000 and the price for new games is around 4000). I also got one of my glasses fixed.

While window shopping, I found a wireless headphone - something I wanted for ages - for 1500Y - much less than I expected to buy it. I almost bought it right away, but I’ll wait for some part time jobs to come through first. I also saw some street vendors pawing off R4’s (the cartridge that allows you to play homebrew and pirated games on the DS) - The Japanese government has banned the sale of these cartridges so you can’t find them on normal stores anymore. This was a very stupid move, as there are loads of legal and useful software that you can install in your DS via R4. I have a music player, lemmings, and an RPG dice roller, all legal.

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Back at home, I saw the movie “Us Now”, recommended by my friend Raffaels. It is a Creative Commons licensed movie you can download for free and legally at their website. It documents the growth of “community enterprises” - services that are powered by direct interaction and communication of its user’s communities - things like social networks, wikipedia, youtube, couchsurfing, etc. Some of the most extreme and interesting examples were: Zopa, a P2P financial service, My Team, a football team managed by polls among the team’s fans, and Slice the Pie, a P2P music label.

I found the extent and variety of ideas interesting and refreshing. Some, like Zopa, I was a little doubtful about, and reading their foruns and some internet reports didn’t allay my doubts. Others, like Slice the Pie, seems more feasible and thriving. The main idea of the movie is that this increasing P2P communities being generated among the diverse services will eventually encompass even government itself. While in fact there is hope that greater connectivity may allow greater participation of the population
in political activities in developed countries - my experience with online communities is that it also disconnect members from each other’s humanity (the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory) - which makes me doubt a bit if this is actually a good thing in every field.

Anyway, I suggest that you download and see this movie. It is food for thought.

A few weeks ago, while talking to Marilia (I don’t remember the subject), I said something to the lines of “This looks just like the Groundhog Day.” and was surprised to learn that she had never seen that movie.

So last week we saw that film, me for the second time. It was amazing to realize that a movie I remember as a “pretty good one”, since I last saw it more than 10 years ago, could make such an impression on me this second time around. It was much better than I remembered it to be.

For those who have not seen it, “The Groundhog Day” is a movie about a weatherman who gets stuck in “the worst day of his life” - he wakes up every time on the very same day. Whatever he does that day, is undone when he goes to sleep, and the calendar never moves forward. No one but him seems to notice it.

The premise of the film, by itself, is enough to let your imagination fly - what would you do if you got stuck in a time loop on some day of your life? What COULD you do? Then the reaction of Phil, the guy who got stuck in the time loop, is pretty believable, going through different stages in a very reasonable way, some you may have though beforehand, some you probably haven’t. Then the movie itself is pretty funny.

So, if you think of “Groundhog Day” as a teenagerhood memory, maybe it is time to pay it a second visit!

This weekend, I have been to Takao-san, a 600m high mount near Tokyo (actually, quite near Marilia’s school). It was a nice trip, and I took some fine pictures there (check my PICASA page by clicking the picture in the side bar). I was intending to write about it today, but it just happens that I spend the night reading that book I’m reviewing for my professor (50 of 300 pages done :-(), so I’m a bit tired to write about Mt. Takao in details.

Instead, I’ll speak a little about recent movies that I have seen:

* Red Cliff: Red Cliff is a recent movie by John Woo about one of the biggest battles in the Romance of Three Kingdoms - one of the most important stories in eastern culture - about the fall of the han dinasty in ancient (3rd century) China. I’m a big RoTK fan, and I was curious about how the events and heroes in that book were going to be portrayed in the big screen.

I was not very happy about it actually. First, the film is kinda confusing - the events were being all being presented quite quickly - and the scenes would shift focus from the different armies without any warning, so that it was hard to tell who was doing what, and what army we were actually following at the time. It was hard to follow by people who know the story - should be completely inscrutable for those who never seen it.

Then I was a bit bothered by the portrayal of Cao Cao, the prime minister, who is the bad guy in the movie. He is portrayed as an overconfident buffoon, who never listens to good advice and revels in bad advice, and generally takes all sorts of stupid decisions and harsh actions - in other words, a bumbling fool - which is in complete contrast with the fact that he was the most powerful person in the period, and achieved such by self merit. Cao Cao was a corrupt bastard? Yes he was, but he was no fool, and I think this movie does not do him justice.

On the up side, the film is beautiful, and does bring some of the magic of the RoTK to the big screen, with heroes larger than life defeating hordes of soldiers while playing music and discussing philosophy in their downtime, beautiful courts, and a lot of eastern charm. And I’m pretty sure it will be made easier to follow when it is converted to the 2.5 hour feature for western audiences (when compared to the 4 hour 2-part movie for eastern markets).

* Mamma Mia! - This was a very very cute adaptation of the musical (which I had never seen, just heard some of its musics). For a musical, the song performances of the movie were actually quite uninspiring (when compared to other musical movies like Moulin Rouge or Chicago), but that gets easily forgiven, because the movie itself is so cute. It was for me one of those movies that make you a little happier with life after you’ve seen it.

* Heroes Season 3 - It is not a movie, but I cannot end a discussion about things I’ve seen recently without stopping to mention how utterly BAD and HORRENDOUS is the third season of heroes. Just wanted to get that out of my chest.

Good night! And a more interesting post tomorrow.