Film — The Thief of Baghdad

Yes, time once again for the event that first drove me to blogging, the Cambridge Film Festival.

Unlike last year, none of the first night opening films struck me, so the first out the door was this remastered print of the original 1940 classic Arabian Nights style tale.

The lushness of Technicolour showed -- for all that the effects indicated towards the bleaching desert sun, the sets strove to be as lush as any of those in the Yimou Zhang wuxia movies. That you could at times see the join did not detract from the extensive use of blue-screen effects.

Rather, the film showed its age more in the conventions of its story telling and its pacing -- and that we were spared being emoted at for the romance strand of the plot. Definitely a movie from a simpler time, when Araby was a far and mystical land, where orderly regime change could be effected simply by a brief aerial bombardment.

Links for 5-Jul

Patterns I Hate #1: Singleton -- Global variables in OO clothing

The links in the comments to this post make it, well, suitable for singleton instantiation for today's links.

Links for 4-Jul

Ruby -> JavaScript conversion.

Ajax managed site navigation -- accessibility and flexibility

Singularity -- rethinking the software stack

IronPython and PyFit -- revisited

In my earlier post, I omitted one crucial detail, which I hadn't actually connected with getting the PyFit system to work, and that is I had already added the existing Python 2.5 standard libraries to my IronPython 1.0.1 site.py file thus:--

This should not be needed if you use FePy instead; and may not be needed for 1.1 or 2.0

Links for 3-Jul

Writing Orthogonal Code

The Big Ball of Mud Anti-Pattern

DLR Hosting Services -- For IronPython 2.0α1 and Silverlight 1.1α1

Links for 2-Jul

Exception handling policy

IronPython 2.0α2 -- more refactoring, slightly out of step with the current Silverlight alpha

Software Development -- probabilistic or deterministic?

Drag and Drop JavaScript

OpenID simple registration

Garden rubbish

One silver lining to the rain clouds that have been deluging us this month. In a gap between depressions, yesterday, I finally got around to emptying the rain butt and rebuilding the stack of bricks and paving slabs it was sitting on.

The bricks at the bottom had started to settle into the gravel on which they'd been set (in the only really wonky bit of work the builders did); and the tout ensemble was only staying approximately vertical by resting against a fence panel of dubious structural worth.

This evening it was 2/3 full already, and dripping from around the tap. So, with more rain promised for the weekend, I had no compunction about emptying it again, and then having to crawl into the smelly depths to re-fit the tap. And then a good shower.

[Now playing - Planet Rock]

Links for 29-Jun

Haskell-based web store -- e-commerce and functional programming do mix

CarbonPython -- build .Net consumable DLLs from RPython

Moonlight Desklets -- cool stuff

Distributed programming IDE for .Net -- gives the ability to program multiple remote computers (i.e. servers) from within one IDE instance

Links for 28-Jun

InfoCard relying parties on non-MSFT platforms -- and other goodies

InfoCard kits for HTML and ASP.Net

Rhino on Rails -- the inside story

Safari's new WebInspector

Links for 27-Jun

Information Software and the Graphical Interface -- Interactivity considered harmful, and other design heresies

S5 : A simple standards-bases slide-show system -- a slide show format based entirely on XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

BOO -- a pythonesque  language for the CLI (and which also interoperates with IronPython to some extent)

F# -- Microsoft's ML-for-.Net language

Colour inspiration from the Old Masters -- pulling color palettes from famous paintings.

Safari 3.0 for Windows re-considered

Normal Service...

My Demon hosted site has re-emerged from the ether, intact.

I shall still continue to migrate the more bloggy bits to Life Before Blogging; and then give the site a good look-and-feel makeover, making use of 3 years more web coding savvy.

That darn cat

I don't know if it's that she misses the scrum that used to characterise feeding time, but Jemima has got into the habit of attracting attention, then going to her bowl and eating (and purring a bit). And repeating if we go away.

Flaming Weather

An intermittently sunny morning, with the forecast of being dry for a change. Still didn't fancy cycling into the stiff chill nor-westerly wind.

This quarter's weather has been put on back to front, I think.

Linkes for 26-Jun

This I believe... the developer edition

Feature complete CardSpace control

Testability and its costs 

Links for 25-Jun

Rails in JavaScript -- Google clones Rails.  This looks big

A Web Based Interactive Console for IronPython

Carnival of the Agilists -- round-up article