Adaptation

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Drama

This is a hard film to categorise and review. It's by the people who brought you Being John Malkovitch, which should warn you that it's a bit weird. It's about the writer of that film Charlie Kaufman and his fictional brother Donald (who gets a writing credit and was jointly nominated for awards). Charlie is trying to write a script for a real book called The Orchid Thief, but is having some problems. Meanwhile his brother decides to be a script writer too in a more mainstream way.

Nicholas Cage plays both of the brothers and Meryl Streep is the book author. It's basically a film about writing that film and so is a bit up it's own behind. However, I enjoyed it as a comedy. It made me laugh a few times and kept my brain working. It's tempting to investigate the characters further to see how close to the truth it is or if it's all made up.

Multiply are very responsive with their tech support

The other day I was having problems revoking some invitations to a
group. I mailed the Multiply support and they responded quite quickly
asking for more details. A couple of mails later it was fixed, all
within one day. I was suitably impressed.



I've not had many issues with the site over the last year or so. The
latest changes are for the better in general. They've put a limit on
how many pictures you can upload (150/month for the free option), but
overall space allocation is now unlimited. You can also upload 20 audio
tracks and 50MB of video, but I'm not sure how useful those will be for
me. I may have the odd bit of video of the kids that I want to share.
You can pay for a premium account with higher limits and no
advertising, but I thinkI can get by on the free option.



So for those of you who have not uploaded anything so far, how about
some pictures and stuff? Oh, and feel free to comment publicly on my
stuff. This is a two (or more) way medium.

A wildlife bonanza

We get quite a lot of wildlife in our garden. Lots of bird and the
occasional frog or toad. Today I was working at home and happened to
glance out of the window as a squirrel was scampering around the apple
tree. I don't think I've ever seen one in the garden, although I have
seen them in Arlesey, including the local black variety.



Then this evening I was watching TV when I saw something running along
by the fence. My first thought was that it might be a rat as we have
had them in the past, but it turned out to be a hedgehog. It's a while
since I've seen one here. I didn't manage to get a picture of it.



It's nice to know that these animals are still about. MInd you, our garden has enough wild parts to hide a whole zoo.

The Confusion

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	History
Author:	Neal Stephenson

It's taken me quite a while to read this book due to it's length and my lack of time for reading. This is the second part of Stephenson's Baroque Cycle after Quicksilver. It continues the story of a set of characters during the late 17th century. There's Jack Shaftoe who's gang of galley slaves plan an audacious robbery and Eliza, a former harem slave, who now moves amongst the nobility of Europe. It also features assorted real royals and intellectuals of the time.

The story is actually mostly about money, with some alchemy thrown in. It was a time when modern concepts of money and science started to form. It's become my favourite historical period and I've been reading a few other books about it.

It's a bit slow at times, but always fascinating. He writes very well and I just hope he comes up with a decent ending in the third and final part. Endings have been his weak point in the past.

Easy photo uploading on Multiply

Some time ago I converted to Firefox
as my main browser, partly for it's features and security and partly to
standardise my applications on Windows and Linux. Multiply generally
works perfectly well with Firefox, but I had read that there were some
benefits to using Internet Explorer when uploading photos.



I tried this out with my latest album. You have to install an ActiveX
control, but then you can browse your drives with thumbnails of the
pictures. Just tick the boxes of those you want. You can also edit the
descriptions at this point.



I can only hope that they add this functionality for Firefox at some point. I see there are some changes coming soon. These include the ability to host video and music on your site.



Has anyone else discovered hidden wonders in Multiply?

Miami June 2005

Visiting a client

Cinderella Man

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Sports

This is the true story of a former champion boxer, laid low by the depression, who makes a comeback to save his family.

Russell Crowe is the boxer (drawing from his own fighting experiences?) and Renee Zellweger as his wife. They both play their parts well, as do tghe rest of the cast. The period detail looked fine to me.

I'm not a fan of boxing and this film did not do much to change my opinion, but the fight scenes are spectactular. I find it hard to imagine why anyone would deliberately want to risk getting hit that hard.

Even without knowing the story, I still worked out what would happen.

It's a very well made film and should stand a chance of some awards. I enjoyed it.

I saw the film at a special screening in Miami. The audience were quite free in expressing their emotion through the film and even clapped at the end. I think a UK audience may have been a little more reserved.

Ray

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Drama

I watched this on a flight to Miami, so I will not comment on the picture or sound quality.

Jamie Foxx does a very good impression of Ray Charles. This film traces his life from moving to the big city to play professionally up until his recovery from herion addiction. He certainly had some personal issues. As well as being a junkie he was a serial adulterer.

There are lots of flashbacks to his childhood that sometimes involve hallucinations. These help to explain why he was so messed up.

The acting is very good and I have to admit I was quite moved.

Oh, and the music is excellent.

Learning to use Multiply

I've been playing with this site for a while now, but there are still
some features I have not exploited. One source of information is the New to Multiply
group. Anyone can set up a group on Multiply for whatever they want.
I've started a few for work friends and other purposes. If you go to
your Network page you can search for groups there.