Economy Size Geek

Ali (2001)

You know I’ve been meaning to see this forever - since it came out as a matter of fact. Some how I just never got around to it - but I guess Netflix sorted that out for me.

Ali is an odd character for me. I grew up way after his day - and I only have a shadow of him in my head.

I did see When We Were Kings a long long time ago. It’s a documentary about his fight with George Foreman in Zaire. I think that movie more than anything sparked my interest in Ali.

The movie Ali isn’t that bad. It’s certianly long - 160 minutes. Not that that is a bad thing unless you start the movie at 10:30 pm on a Sunday night not realizing that you are making a serious commitment.

Will Smith does a decent job of the role. The movie tries in a lot of ways to show the life behind the bravado and I think in those areas Smith doesn’t do as well. He’s great being upbeat “I’m the greatest Ali” but not entirely believable as the man who was champion and had it taked away because he refused to go to Vietnam.

The film maker seemed a lot more interested in dealing with Ali’s religion (Islam) and the controversy that it caused than his boxing. Which struck me as odd as first - probably because since I didn’t live thru that period of history it’s sort of hard to imagine that it could all be to serious.

But overrall, I think this is a one major failing of the film. Ali was a big personality. He lived thru a lot. I don’t know of any other boxers who were at the heart of a Supreme Court decsion in their favor. The film just can’t seem to decide what it wants to talk about or even follow as it tries to cover a huge chunk of Ali’s life.

I didn’t realize that Ali was so close to Malcom X. In the process a X takes up a chunk of the film. Again this isn’t a bad thing - frankly I think that part could have been really interesting. But intstead of really getting into it - you’re shuffled on to something else in Ali’s life.

I understand that’s probably just the risk of doing a Bio pic. You want it to be interesting and captivating even though everyone already knows how it ends. But there were certainly things about the way this movie played out that made it seem like it was being scripted by a committee instead of a single voice. And that is really the shame - because even now - years and years after he first said it - Ali’s single voice sill comes thru when someone says - float like a butterfly sting like a bee .

Bottom Line: If you really really want to you can spend the time - personally I’d watch When We Were Kings and then Malcom X instead of this film.

Kelly learns the joys of the hulk hands + czar

Hanging with the puffy taco

beerman bitch slaps a puffy taco

henry the puffy taco and puffy jr dance to ‘what is love’ from night at the roxbury

SITH-O-Peno

probably impossible to see but bobba fett threw an opening field

Ok I have a HP Pavilioin zv5000. It has a bunch of those special buttons on it (www,photo, music, volume). When it’s in the dock it has a handy buttons for voulume control and muting. Since I got sound to work - I thought wouldn’t it be cool if those buttons worked as well.

Guess what they do!

Thanks to LinEAK project which supports my keyboard I was able to set it up. Basically I added the deb.

Run:

lineakd -l

This gives you a list of keyboards

lineakd -c HPzv5000

This gives you a sample config file for my keyboard. Now on to control sound.

amixer

Turns out ALSA sound comes with a neat little command line program called amixer which you can use to adjust your volume and toggle mute. The only annoying thing is that when you mute and unmute it sets your volume to 0. I adjusted it so it now sets it at 40% here’s my config


AudioLowerVolume = "/usr/bin/amixer -c 0 sset Headphone 1-"
AudioMute = "/usr/bin/amixer -c 0 sset Headphone toggle;/usr/bin/amixer -c 0 sset Headphone 40%"
AudioRaiseVolume = "/usr/bin/amixer -c 0 sset Headphone 1+"
WWW = "/usr/bin/mozilla"


Start up

Ok I feel like a dork because I didn’t know how to do this. Basically to get it to startup when you start gnome you need to build a shell script to get it started. Mine contains:


( /usr/bin/lineakd -f ~/.lineak/lineakd.conf >/dev/null ) &


This basically forks a shell and puts it in the background.

Now go to Gnome Menu-> Desktop Preferences ->Advanced -> Sessions

On the last tab “Startup Programs” click on “Add” browse to your script and viola you have special buttons working.

#At the Missions Game# My favorite part - frito pie

spoonerisms » women in games… what’s the question again?

Spoon wrote about girls in gaming. I figured I’d relate my own experience on the subject since I play a lot of them.

When I moved in with my girlfriend (now fiance) I had to undertake a campaign to make sure that there wouldn’t be an issue when I needed playstation/counter strike/etc time - or as I usually call it now

“I’m going to go kill some people - I’ll be done in an hour”

I’ve tried to show her the joy of the FPS - but it’s not really her bag. I though she would like Prince of Persia - which is just amazing - but I think she found it more confusing than fun.

I was really really hoping that she would get into and enjoy GTA:San Andreas - but no luck (based on comment below I’ll be trying this again this holiday weekend)

There are a number of games that I used to rehabilitate my fiance’s view of the ps2 from intense time/space waster to cherished member of the family.

1. Tetris - Must have all girls will play this - especially because I suck at it
2. Bust-A-Move - See above

3. Katamari Demacy - she likes the puzzle fun time - I enjoy reaking havoc on villages.

The next two are not only fun, non-threating, but useful at parties if you need to make your guests look ridiculous
4. Eye Toy - I like killing ninjas - she likes washing windows
5. Kareoke - yes - girls like to sing - I’m crap - but people enjoy my rendetion of Toxic by Britney Spears.

We ended up getting into poker and I found a cheap app that you can run on the lan and play against each other as well as AI opponets

6. Something you can play together - in this case poker.

Why don’t girls game? Well - I suppose part of it is that it just isn’t as much a part of their growing up as it is for boys. That’s probably changing but I don’t know how fast.

Also, I think it’s kind of silly to beat up on an entire industry because they haven’t figured it out yet. I mean you don’t hear the NFL complaining because a majority of their fans, players, and owners are all men.

Which is pretty much my parallel for the gaming world. Except they would like to get more girls since that would mean a heck of a lot more money - (Sims is a perfect example).

Personally I think it’s going to take more girls getting more involved on the production side to improve the number of girls on the play side. So often the “girl games” produced by male programmers try to cater to the worst stereotypes of female attitudes. So my advice is if you have a daughter encourage her to become a software developer…..