All Consuming : Dan Nugent

Yeah, depressing (rated 3 stars)

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 18:44:07 GMT

Let’s cut up little girls with deadly diseases, stick cybernetic parts in them, fuck with their heads, and then make them fight terrorists.

What the hell man? State sponsored child abuse isn’t cool.

For that matter, they never actually explained why they were ONLY using deathly ill girls.

I dunno, I mean, it was pretty good and all, but it’s a brain fuck.

Completely Unbelievable (rated 5 stars)

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 19:06:10 GMT

Transporter 2

Just, just shut your mind off. Put it in a box, then bury the box in a crevase in the Marianas Trench.

Good god its so full of dumb action scenes that it’s brilliant. The movie never, ever takes itself seriously and Statham is in on the joke the whole way through.

The best part is how he disarms the bomb on his car. We had to rewind it a couple of times because we just couldn’t believe that they’d actually done that.

A story about "Thunder, Lightning, Strike"

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 07:27:45 GMT

Thunder, Lightning, Strike

by The Go! Team

This is a really great album. The GO! Team’s found everything sugar coated and managed to cram it into a soundwave.

There’s cheersquads shouting off, jump ropers doing their routines, blaring horns, rollicking guitars, and TWO drummers.

I… I just can’t describe it, it NEEDS to be listened to.

A story about "Steamboy/Memories"

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 18:46:35 GMT

Steamboy/Memories

by Katsuhiro Ôtomo

Great box set. Steamboy is a terrific adventure flick and Memories has three memorable, if uneven, stories.

Definitley watch Gravity Rose if you get a chance. Really awesome sci-fi short.

A story about "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity"

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 06:35:06 GMT

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

by David Allen

I just finished reading the book and I think I’m ready to get the system up and running, I hesitated on going ahead and putting everything in order because I’m moving back to college next week, but I know how I’m going to get it all working once I get there.

A story about "Kung Fu Hustle (Widescreen Edition)"

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 03:36:10 GMT

Kung Fu Hustle (Widescreen Edition)

Kung Fu Hustle is ultimately a good movie.

Note, it’s not really what I wanted it to be really. The action scenes were a lot more intense than I expected and the film had a lot less slapstick than I was hoping for, and also, and this may just be the English dubbing I watched it in on my first time through, I think the timing of the jokes was a little off. Even the sight gags seemed a little laggy.

On the other hand, the more I think about it, the more I realized that if the movie is flawed, it has nothing to do with its subject matter, story, or plot.

It’s worth a rental at the very least and is definitley worth a purchase if Kung-Fu movies are your thing.

A story about "The Ruby Way"

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 13:44:55 GMT

The Ruby Way

by Hal Fulton

The way you should read “The Ruby Way” is, you’re thinking of doing a new project, writing a new feature, or hammering out a tricky bit of code and then you think to yourself, “Hmmm, wonder if I can make this easier on myself?” That’s when you pick up The Ruby Way, browse the sections of the book for a few minutes, find the section closest to what your needs are, and absorb the knowledge Hal has laid out.

A story about "Push the Button"

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 13:41:13 GMT

Push the Button

by The Chemical Brothers

This is a decent album by the Brothers with a weak middle bookended by some pretty decent tracks.

In truth, the remixers highlighted at http://www.chemicalbrothersremixed.com pushed the whole set of sounds in the album way above and beyond where they were (except for the first two tracks, Galvanize and The Boxer, The Brothers did those two a whole lot better).

I think I was sort of hoping for another “Come With Us”, oh well.

A story about "The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky"

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 15:20:37 GMT

The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky

by Joel Spolsky

Well, I thought it was worth it. I know that all (or almost all anyhow) of the essays are available online for free, but I find it so much incredibly easier to read things when they’re in a book for some reason.

Plus, now I can loan it out to friends.

A story about "The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky"

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 00:05:12 GMT

The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky

by Joel Spolsky

So far it’s worth it just because I now have a physical copy of whytheluckystiff’s foxes screaming about Chunky Bacon.

A story about "Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams, 2nd Ed."

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 00:04:08 GMT

Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams, 2nd Ed.

by Tom Demarco

Anyone that’s either an information worker manager or looking for a job as an information worker seriously needs to read this book.

It contains both information about how you can summon Holgar Dansk to reduce the madness and things to look out for so you can avoid getting yourself into a job where you need him.

A story about "The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, 20th Anniversary Edition"

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 23:50:40 GMT

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, 20th Anniversary Edition

by Frederick P. Brooks

No doubt, well written and largely relevant, it still suffers from some signs of it being mostly written in the 1970’s. Things that stick out like sore thumbs are ideas like assigng 7 or 8 support personnel to two programmers with only one doing any work and talking about higher level programming languages as something that may come to be popular in the future.

None the less, it’s important for its historical perspective and in general is a good review of how to keep a big software project from grinding to a halt.

A story about "The Photographer's Guide to Composition (Photographer's Guide)"

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 23:08:38 GMT

The Photographer's Guide to Composition (Photographer's Guide)

by John Freeman

I got this book because I wanted to get some basic introductions to a few of the technical prinicples of photography before I got my new camera. It served that purpose splendidly and also provided some insight into the more aesthetic principles.

A story about "The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master"

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 22:44:01 GMT

The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

by Andrew Hunt

Well, I’m done with it, sort of.

Like I said before, there is just SO much knowledge to absorb in this book. I think I’m going to get the third book in the Pragmatic Toolbox (The one on Automation), read that, and then go back and read all of these again (Skipping some sections that are tool specific).

A story about "Pragmatic Unit Testing in C# with NUnit (Pragmatic Programmers)"

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 04:40:21 GMT

Pragmatic Unit Testing in C# with NUnit (Pragmatic Programmers)

by Andrew Hunt

Another excellent book from the Pragma Proggers. As opposed to the version control books, you may want to keep this one on your desk for a while until you get an iron grip on Unit Testing.

Not that it’s not as good as the SCCS books, just that the lessons take a little more to integrate in to your daily grind.

A story about "The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master"

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 04:37:36 GMT

The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

by Andrew Hunt

The book is absolutely filled to the brim with useful advice on the subject of being a better programmer and that, is in part, the problem. There’s no way to metabolize all this information. The pull out placard in the back is nice, but it’s still not perfect.

There needs to be, I dunno, some sort of cumulative excercise (the individual ones are nice, mind you) that makes you flex all the lessons in the book.

A story about "How We Got Here: A Slightly Irreverent History of Technology and Markets"

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 18:24:23 GMT

How We Got Here: A Slightly Irreverent History of Technology and Markets

by Andy Kessler

The book is definitley very interesting, Kessler spends a LOT of time in the Pre-Industrial Revolution and Industrial Revolution timeframe though, not nearly as much as he spends discussing the Information Revolution.

A story about "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - Criterion Collection (2-Disc Special Edition)"

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 04:49:17 GMT

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - Criterion Collection (2-Disc Special Edition)

by Wes Anderson

Another excellent, surreal, dark comedy from Wes Anderson.

Not much more to say about it except that the scoring was brilliant.

A story about "Land of the Dead"

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 04:45:25 GMT

Land of the Dead

by George A. Romero

I’m hearing a lot of people panning this film and I have to say I don’t think they really understand just what the hell zombie films are about.

They’re not horror movies. The creeping fear that a good horror movie needs to sustain for 90-120 minutes just cannot be present in a good zombie film. Once the zombies have been understood, they’re not scary. Zombies films are about man vs nature, a peculair nature, true, but they’re not evil. The zombies serve to make men react, not proact. You can’t be proactive against zombies.

What makes Land of the Dead good as I see it is the internal consistency and nuance that Romero built into the film. It’s a world where you can believe the situation (assuming the basic buy that the dead have come back to life and have a taste for the flesh of the living). One nice thing is the gradual arc that Romero’s built between Day of the Dead and this film play on Zombie’s gaining basic reasoning skills. Bub and Big Daddy were both played charismatically and minimally, sharing a lot of the same traits that make Frankenstein’s monster (from the films mind you, not the book) sympathetic.

I think the biggest reason why so many people are dissapointed is that they walk in looking for a summer popcorn movie and get something much more intricate and complicated. A lot of the movie is played out in the subtext and despite complaints to the contrary, the film is better for it.

A story about "Pragmatic Version Control Using Subversion"

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 04:30:52 GMT

Pragmatic Version Control Using Subversion

by Mike Mason

A really great introduction to the reasons and processes of version control.

Don’t let the title fool you, this isn’t a book for people that want to learn just Subversion, heck, the main chunk of the book really doesn’t even go all that in depth into SVN particularly (yeah it introduces you to the commands that’ll let you get stuff done), but where it really shinees is if you’ve heard about version control, always wanted to use it, but were just plain not sure how and where you should employ techniques.

I’m not sure if the stuff in this book is necessarily applicable to distributed source control applications, but for any centralized models, the basic themes have GOT to be similar and the stuff it teaches is really great if you’re learning version control for the first time (like me) and maybe even if you’re not a newb (so you can refresh your knowledge and maybe even pick up a trick or two).

A story about "War of the Worlds"

nobody@allconsuming.net (Dan Nugent) — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 03:52:07 GMT

War of the Worlds

by Steven Spielberg

I would have really, really loved War of the Worlds had it not been for a couple of annoying plot holes that could have easily been corrected without impacting the film at all.

1) The tripods shouldn’t have been buried.
2) The narrator shouldn’t have said that we were being observed prior to the invasion.
3) The narrator should have made mention that the invasion was very hasty or something.

Honestly, I just can’t buy that an invasion force that had hundreds of thousands if not millions of years to plan and had already been able to put hardware in place would be defeated by common micro-organisms.

Yes, I realize this was their demise in the book. However, in the book, they landed in giant artillery shells and had been observing us with telescopes. Significant difference.