Simply Jonathan

There’s nothing so lonesome, so dull or so drear,
Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer

I just finished watching the Aardvark’d film about 4 interns at Fog Creek Software.

All in all, it was decent. I like these kinds of stories, like Revolution OS, about software and clever people saying clever things. Paul Graham is great in this one.

There are numerous things with this film, however, that really annoyed me. First of all, there’s a side story about one of the developers having a tomato plant on the balcony; this has absolutely no relevance to anything else in the film, and just seems so weirdly misplaced. Second, there are these awfully made reconstructions. The people participating aren’t great actors, which they really shouldn’t be either. But this shines through so clearly in the reconstructions, it ruined quite a lot for me. In one instance, one of the interns attempts a jump out the window, but in realising his failure, he clings on to the window ledge. The next scene is an attempt at showing it from his angle while he’s stilling hanging in the ledge. The others then come running, not looking convincing and asking what he just did. All the while, when he’s supposed to be holding on for his life, his fingers are relaxed, and no one looks really panicked.

As stated, it’s a decent film. I just wish they would have hold on to the story about the software, instead of doing these half-hearted dramatic sequences.

New York City Cops,
New York City Cops,
New York City Cops,
They ain’t too smart.

Who is forever anyway?

Palatino is probably my favourite serif font, which I tend to use in all my school work. Unfortunately, Palatino has an annoying little glitch, when pairing c and e at small sizes:

This is especially problematic when you — as I do — write in a language, where æ is actually used.

Why is it that word processors (NeoOffice in my case, but Microsoft Word does it too) automagically turn URIs into clickable links? Maybe it’s because I’m a strange user, but very close to all of my word processor use ends up being printed when it’s done. And, well, clickable links aren’t worth much on paper. I just don’t see the incentive to do it (other than it being, admittedly, a quite logical behaviour for a computer program), when you’re dealing with stuff that winds up being printed.

I read the news today, oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well, I just had to laugh

It’s just so sad when people confuse countries.

Yes, Netherlands and Denmark are located quite near each other, but, well, we have a country called Germany between us. Had it just Belgium they had confused Netherlands with, or Sweden and Denmark, but really? Netherlands and Denmark?