Wow. In retrospect, it was a good decision to separate the movie in two parts, because it gives Tarantino (and Uma Thurman, and David Carradine) more time and you would not want a single scene cut here.

8 points

Who says this has to be in English?

C'est notre plaisir de continuer a fabriquer les gateaux aimes par vous tous dans cet environnement de la villeriche de verdure.

Again I am reading the first novel of a series after the second, but this time I am not alone, as The Da Vinci Code has been a New York Times best-seller, and most readers are directed to Robert Langdon's first adventure by the blunt marketing slogans pointing out that fact. The two books are terribly similar: Langdon is pulled from his bed to the site of the brutal murder of a CERN scientist (rather than the curator of the Louvre) and finds himself with the victims daughter (rather than his grand-daughter) in a chase across Rome (Paris and London) where he has to figure out an ancient puzzle created by Galileo Galilei (Leonardo Da Vinci) that leads to the secret lair of the Illuminati (the Knights Templar), all the while being chased by a dangerous Arabian assassin (an Albino monk) and fooled by a traitorous friend who turns out to be the master-mind that has been deceiving both the evil assassin (the Catholic sect) and our heroes. Add to that an unhealthy dose of science fiction (only in Angels & Demons) with massively super-sonic flights and an anti-matter bomb(!), and you might have to think this is a rather silly book. Maybe so, but it is really fast-paced, full of twists and Brown pulls no punches in the incredible (yes, silly, but stunning) finale.

Try our Naive Lady, toilet tissue soft and of good quality. Choosing recycled paper is the first step to keep the earth full of greens for your own children.

At least half of the power of Perl lies in the many modules that are available for almost any programming task you can imagine. Finding, getting and using these modules is very easy, thanks to the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN). The core Perl distribution includes a CPAN client application that can automatically download and install the desired module, along with all the modules it depends on and their documentation.

The only problem with CPAN is that because everyone can upload and because there is always more than one way to do things in Perl, there are often a lot of similar modules to choose from and it is sometimes not easy to decide which one is best. A recently introduced rating system should help here.

A movie about Tokyo that has it all: Karaoke, German tourists, stupid expats, lonely expats, ikebana, excursion to Kyoto, skyline, crowded trains, foreign celebrities, hot baths, Shibuya, salary men, sake, school girls, crazy parties, confusion over consonants, taxi rides, video games, luxury hotels, Japanese TV, elevators, temples, bullet trains, sushi.

7 points

When the curator of the Louvre in Paris is found murdered in his own museum, an American professor of symbology and the victim's grand-daughter find themselves in the middle of a struggle for survival between a radical and desperate Catholic sect and an ancient secret society sworn to protect the Holy Grail. What is most intriguing about conspiracy theory novels is that it is hard to tell where historic fact ends and fiction begins. I have doubts for example about Leonardo Da Vinci having invented public key cryptography. But for what little I know about art and history, he could have been the head of a secret society and hidden a lot of subversive jokes and messages in his pictures. I have to check the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper more carefully when I have a chance to see them again.

No comment.

Frame: 8/- 8/1 -/8 7/X 7/1 7/X -/- 7/- 5/- X/7/1
Score:   8  17  25  42  50  60  60  67  72    90

Frame: -/8 5/2 5/4 -/5 1/2 7/- 9/- 6/- 9/- 8/-
Score:   8  15  24  29  32  39  48  54  63  71   

DBI is the Perl database interface. Like all modern database interfaces, DBI consists of a database-independent API and specific drivers for the various databases. This means that you can write code for Oracle, SQLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL or any other supported SQL database management system without having to learn a new interface every time. Theoretically, this also allows you to switch your application to another DBMS just by loading a different driver (without changing code). This does not work in the real world, however, as each DBMS has its unique features (which you can hardly avoid making use of) and SQL flavour.

Java people seem to think verbosity a virtue, and this also shows in JDBC (the Java database interface). Perl DBI is much more concise. Compare the following two fragments that do the same thing (a one-row database query).

Java version

PreparedStatement sql = conn.prepareStatement(
    "select count(*), sum(price) from sales"
    + " where category = ? and trunc(sales_date, 'Month') = ?"
    + " group by trunc(sales_date, 'Month')"
    );
sql.setString(1, category);
sql.setString(2, month);
ResultSet rs = sql.executeQuery();
int count, sum;
if (rs.next()){
    count = rs.getInt(1);
    sum = rs.getInt(2);
}
rs.close();
sql.close();

Perl version

my ($count, $sum) = $conn->selectrow_array ( q[
    select count(*), sum(price) from sales 
    where category = ? and trunc(sales_date, 'Month') = ?
    group by trunc(sales_date, 'Month')
    ], {}, $category, $month);

The images for the T-Files are hosted on a separate server (Saving Bandwidth Part Three: put stuff on other people's servers ;-) and this server is moving next week. Actually, the machine itself is not moving at all, it will just be changing its name (from gaiax.com to gaiax.co.jp). That means I have to update all the links on the T-Files (luckily, there are not too many images). Updating old entries without changing their date is a little tricky in Blosxom however, so there could be some missing images for a while.

I am getting about thirty spam mails every day now. Deleting them is only mildly annoying as the Apple Mail filter detects most of them automatically. But I got one email this morning that really made me unhappy, as it had a faked return address and pretended to have been sent by me (it also included my picture, but that was fortunately not really part of the mail, it was automagically inserted client-side by the OS X address book -- got me startled, though). I wonder how many people are getting spam using my address. I hope all of those messages get deleted unnoticed.

The last exam in the Oracle DBA track covers setting up database server and client applications for use in a network as well as backup and recovery operations. About half of the 63 questions focused on Oracle's recovery tool (RMAN), which I have not used at all so far. I was hoping that just reading about RMAN would be enough, but the exam was rather tricky and I missed the passing score by two questions. I suppose the backup procedures of the database I am managing will enjoy a lot of attention during the thirty days I have to prepare my second shot at 1Z0-032.

On the average weblog you can not only read what the author thinks, you can also read what he reads. Here is my current list of subscriptions (which I feed to the excellent NetNewsWire Lite):

• General news

  BBC News

  BBC News: Updated every minute of every day - FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY

  Japan Today: National Headlines

  Japan Today: National Headlines: The world's leading source of Japan news in English.

  SPIEGEL ONLINE

  SPIEGEL ONLINE: Schneller wissen, was wichtig ist

  N24 - Nachrichten

  N24 - Nachrichten: N24 - Werden Sie Augenzeuge. Deutsche News rund um die Uhr. News in German.

• Tech news

  Slashdot

  Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters

  kuro5hin.org

  kuro5hin.org: technology and culture, from the trenches

  Linux Journal

  Linux Journal: Linux Journal focuses specifically on Linux and other open-source OSes, allowing the content to be a highly specialized source of information for open-source enthusiasts.

  Lockergnome Bytes

  Lockergnome Bytes: The latest technology news and links from the perspective of a Lockergnomie.

  Wired News

  Wired News: Technology, and the way we do business, is changing the world we know. Wired News is a technology - and business-oriented news service feeding an intelligent, discerning audience. What role does technology play in the day-to-day living of your life? Wired News tells you. How has evolving technology changed the face of the international business world? Wired News puts you in the picture.

  Japan Today: Technology Headlines

  Japan Today: Technology Headlines: The world's leading source of Japan news in English.

  heise online news

  heise online news: Nachrichten aus der Welt des Computers

• Mac news

  MacDevCenter

  O'Reilly MacDevCenter -- macintosh development, open source development

  MacMegasite

  MacMegasite:

  MacMerc

  MacMerc:

  freshmeat.net - Mac OS X

  freshmeat.net - Mac OS X: freshmeat.net maintains the Web's largest index of Unix and cross-platform open source software. Thousands of applications are meticulously cataloged in the freshmeat.net database, and links to new code are added daily.

  macosxhints

  macosxhints: Get the most from X!

  MacSlash: A daily dose of Macintosh News and Discussion

  MacSlash: A daily dose of Macintosh News and Discussion: A daily dose of Macintosh News and Discussion

  MacRumors

  MacRumors: the mac news you care about

• Mozilla and web design news

  MozillaZine

  MozillaZine: Your source for daily Mozilla news, advocacy, interviews, builds, and more!

  Blogzilla - a blog about Mozilla

  Blogzilla - a blog about Mozilla: Blogzilla is a weblog about Mozilla

  WebReference

  WebReference: Daily news, views, and how-tos on all aspects of web design and development. Features free web-based tools, open source scripts, and in-depth tutorials on DHTML, HTML, JavaScript, 3D, Graphics, XML, and Design for webmasters.

  A List Apart: for people who make websites

  A List Apart: for people who make websites: Web design news, info, and insights since 1995. CSS layout, XHTML, usability, accessibility. Designing with web standards. ISSN: 1534-0295.

• Perl news

  use Perl

  use Perl: All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

  Perl.com

  Perl.com: The Source for Perl

  search.cpan.org

  search.cpan.org: The CPAN search site

• Personal blogs

  Surfin' Safari

  Surfin' Safari: Dave Hyatt's Weblog

  Sucking less, on a budget

  Sucking less, on a budget: I try so hard to make things suck less...And miles to go before I sleep.

  raelity bytes

  raelity bytes: The raelity bytes weblog.

  0xDECAFBAD

  0xDECAFBAD: Confessions of a Caffeine Addicted Mind

  Squawks of the Parrot

  Squawks of the Parrot: Dan natters on about, well, stuff.

  Tim O'Reilly

  Tim O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly & Associates.

  Nicholas Riley's Weblog

  Nicholas Riley s Weblog: High-performance computing, medicine, usability, Mac OS X, Python, Cocoa and hiptop development, and my life.

  Joel on Software

  Joel on Software: Painless Software Management

  WIL WHEATON DOT NET: Where is my mind?

  WIL WHEATON DOT NET: Where is my mind?: WIL WHEATON dot NET: 50,000 monkeys at 50,000 typewriters can't be wrong.

  codepoetry

  codepoetry: technology, unabridged

  ::: ztracen v Japonsku :::

  In Czech. I do not understand a word.

• My own sites

  The T-Files

  The T-Files: Everything Thilo feels he needs to share ...

  The T-Files: Access statistics

  Big Thilo is watching you: Web site access statistics for the T-Files

  Weblog Japan: Recent updates

  Weblog Japan: Recent updates: These pages have recently updated

  PerlPad project summary

  PerlPad project summary: A summary of key project details for the perl-pad project on SourceForge.net.