A friend sent me a link to an interesting review that I was writing a long response to but thought I’d turn it into a blog post instead. The review is fantastically written by Zadie Smith but there’s a few glaring holes in it that frustrated this post into existence.

Smith, like many mainstream journalists and writers, seems to fundamentally understand what makes people like us excited about programming. I’ll respond to some choice quotes from the review.

No doubt the filmmakers considered this option, but you can see their dilemma: how to convey the pleasure of programming—if such a pleasure exists—in a way that is both cinematic and comprehensible?

If such a pleasure exists? Really? She mentions in the review she talked to a “software expert” but she must have avoided this topic of discussion. The pleasure in coding combines creativity (like creating art, no-one will ever write a program the same way as you), building to try to simplify the lives of others and mathematical problem solving. I think the film communicates this fairly well but it’s one of these things that’s pretty much impossible to hide the elements of programming that immediately turn some people off it. Some people find the idea that I sit at my computer typing for most of the day fundamentally boring and there’s not much you can do to argue against this viewpoint other than display the great things that can result from it.

E Pluribus Unum—that’s the point. Here’s my guess: he wants to be like everybody else. He wants to be liked.

It’s a shame that for anyone who is or was ever considered “nerdy” that we fall victim to such poor pop psychology. Just because we weren’t all deemed “cool” in high school doesn’t mean our entire careers are driven by this reductionist need to over-compensate for what others thing we missed out on. Zuckerberg I’d imagine, like most software engineers wants to build something that everyone will think “how did I manage before this came along” and, even if they don’t know he made it, he’ll know that he’s simplified the lives of a lot of people. This is why we do it and this is why we love it.

The fact that Zuckerberg open-sourced his earlier applications (not just gave it away for not monetary value, her review misses this) shows this; he values the pleasure of people using his tool over the monetary return that he could have instead. This also points to why Facebook didn’t take the many chances to sell out to large companies earlier in its existence.

I am dreaming of a Web that caters to a kind of person who no longer exists. A private person, a person who is a mystery, to the world and—which is more important—to herself.

The type of web (and person) she mentions already existed and still exists: you can use private email, private Facebook messages, protected Twitter accounts and use other services that guarantee privacy, even relying on end-to-end encryption so only the sender and receiver can see any content. Arguably, this was the first web, the one many of us were using 10 or 15 years ago. The problem is that she fails to see the flip side of her argument: what about those of us who are very public people, how could we share things with the world without relying on a gatekeeper or third-party before the internet and, arguably, before Web 2.0′s concepts became mainstream?

This is why she’s writing her review in the New York Review and not by monetizing a personal blog. She seems to believe in the gatekeeper, the Web 1.0 (or Person 1.0 from her article) and the tight separation of career and personal life, of the private persona that lives their life and the public persona that does their work (or perhaps I’m the one who is spouting pop psychology now).

As said, this was a brilliantly written review even although I disagree with many of the arguments in it. The Social Network (and indeed Facebook itself) is a great advertisement for the beauty and power of software: that someone can produce something that will change the world from their university dorm room with scarce resources, no corporate sponsors, some programming experience and a lot of hard work. It’s the antithesis of programs like X Factor and other reality TV that spouts the lie to society that success comes from being lucky enough to be picked by a corporation and that fame itself is the thing worth striving for.

Start showing films like The Social Network in schools. Get high school kids writing software rather than the letters in Word. Teach them how to write Facebook and mobile applications, programs that they and their friends will use outside of school. Let us, as software engineers, rekindle the passion that got us into this field in the first place and let’s see a return to late-night coding binges and building useful stuff for fun. Let’s see the youth of tomorrow look at our field and think “wow, that’s cool, I want to do that too”.

I felt the plot tied really well together. The initially unlinked subplots came together nicely and not in a way that felt rushed on unnatural. Clearly the writer of the novel this was based on is very talented and I have a real desire to read some of his work. The majestic outdoor scenes were filmed in my native Scotland which I was pleased to recognise without having to use IMDB. The acting was great (especially Robert De Niro in an unusual role) with a mostly-British cast and the CGI really helped me to get engrossed in the world.

I find it impressive when fantasy or sci-fi films introduce you to a completely new realm whilst introducing a decent number of characters and still having a great plot which keeps you engrossed.

I’d really recommend you see this film if you haven’t already. If you have, what did you think?

Another bonus from the film was seeing the trailer for Philip Pullman’s ‘The Golden Compass’ film adaption. I’m definately seeing it the CGI looked incredible, the best I’ve seen in a long time. It also had fighting polar bears. Polar bears kick ass but armored polar bears? How can you not watch a film with armored polar bears?

I found the film really enjoyable and thought provoking. The camera work was bordering on beautiful, loads of still shots perpendicular to flat, bland surfaces helping you to focus in on the characters. The acting was convincing enough but it was the direction and story that really dragged me in and made me think.

I find it completely abhorrent that in the supposedly civilized world of the 21st century politicians are willing to have people tortured to fight an invisible enemy. I find it doubly so that my country is willing to have these prison flights landed and refueled on their soil and allow their citizens to be sent to places like Camp X-Ray to be tortured and abused without trial only to be simply released without any compensation on their innocence being decided.

Coming out the film made me sick to my stomach of the way the world is going as of late. Average people don’t seem to care that their liberties are being revoked and their country killing hundreds of thousands abroad in an illegal war we entered under deliberately false pretenses.

The thing that saddens me the most is I truly have no idea what I can do. When faced with the power of governments, foreign wars and a populace who neither seems to notice or care I feel impotent and powerless.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on helping with some of these problems? I’d be interested in hearing your comments.

I just want to (geekingly) declare my love for you, Lindsay, across the internet. Happy 5 years which I hope are just the beginning of many more.

I’ve now moved both my laptop and desktop to the respective ~arch branches of Gentoo, and both are running fine. I remember a few years ago when I started using Gentoo, using the ~arch branch was suicide, perhaps just due to my inexperience, but now, maybe once a week something breaks, I need to check or file a bug report and roll-back to an existing version, but all that takes me now less than 5 minutes, and I feel I’m doing my bit to make Gentoo a more stable distribution overall.

There’s a lot of fuss been kicked up lately about the whole Novell-Microsoft deal. Basically, it seems they’ve got in bed together, with Microsoft calling a cease-fire on patents with Novell, but warns the other Linux distributions won’t be so lucky. This is a bit of a bummer for me, as Novell was a company I was quite keen on working for, but this is somewhat called into question with recent events. Also, it just seems like more FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) from Microsoft, as, if Linux really infringed so many of their patents, I would be interested to know why they have been yet to file any suits.

The whole SCO debacle has shown that Linux has powerful friends and users, such as IBM, whose patent portfolio threatens Microsoft with MAD if they decide to start suing. It’s also shown that claims of patent infringement seem to be false.

Irregardless, Linux isn’t going anywhere any time soon. Even if Microsoft and pals decide to sue the major distributions, it will stay underground and people will keep hacking on it regardless. It’s a good operating system, and no-one will convince me or many thousands or others otherwise.

Oh my goodness me.
That was a GOOD film. I don’t think I’ve come out a cinema that happy ever before. Some of my favourite films include The Shawshank Redemption, Heat, Fight Club, The Game, Platoon and Spinal Tap, but sadly, I saw none of the above at the cinema. I however, last night, did see The Departed.

It was good. Really good.

I’ve become a bit of a snob lately with cinema, and actually watch for the camera work, acting, script, body language and other things, before deciding how good a film was. Everything in this film, bar a few regional accents, was flawless. A dazzling array of good actors, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon, Leonardo Di Caprio (who, usually, I hate), Alec Baldwin and Jack Nicolson make this film a real treat to watch. Scorsese’s direction really sucks you into the plot. You care about the characters, you care about the outcome, and you are left gobsmacked when the film unexpectedly twists and turns.

If you haven’t seen this film yet, please do. Even if you’re a girl and normally just watch romantic comedies, this film is very good. I honestly think if you can’t enjoy this, your taste in cinema is not worthy. Just watch it. In fact, stop reading, book a ticket and go now. Unless its night time, then go to bed and see it as soon as possible.

I reckon I’ll see it again this week. This film is a real classic, and will be held up with Heat, GoodFellas and The Godfather Trilogy of how to make excellent films. If it doesn’t win at least one Oscar, I’ll do a forfeit of choice for the first person to call me on it.

Rating: 10/10 (No, really!)

Ronin
Bought this on DVD the other day, purely because the cast looked sweet. A really cool action movie, with some nice twists, and one of the first car chases that I’ve found generally exciting (normally they bore me stupid). A nice little twist at the end, with my only regret being that the legend Sean Bean wasn’t in it for longer.
Rating: 7/10

The Devil Wears Prada
To call this a “chick flick” would be to do it injustice. The only fair description would be the worst film ever made.
The script was poor, the characters one dimensional and either loathsome or boring. The topic matter was pretentious and it wasn’t even funny, either to laugh at or with. It’s the worst film I’ve ever seen by a long way. I’d rather drink my own urine than watch this again.
Rating: 0/10

The Last Kiss
I was pleasantly surprised by this film. It wasn’t predictable, wasn’t girly, wasn’t cliched. The acting, I thought, was great, with Zach Braff giving a really authentic performance. The camerawork and directing had really good attention to detail, it was really like getting into the characters lives. I would really recommend this film, even if the title puts you off.
Rating: 8/10

Babylon 5
Not a film, I know, but I’ve just finished watching the first series with my flatmate. I bought the >40 DVD boxset this summer, and its amazing. I loved it before, and I love it even more now.
It’s quite simply breathtaking. The story arc weaves and turns, with all 5 seasons planned out perform the first episode was filmed. You can see pointers and references to future events, and its great watching everything unfold again. It was pitched as “Scifi for adults”, and the description is more than fair. Even if you aren’t into scifi, I challenge you to watch more than a few episodes and not get hooked.
Rating: 9.5/10