August 2005 – Urban Giraffe

The Necronomicon

The other week I managed to watch a pretty bad series of horror stories, all wrapped together in a film called The Necronomicon. I knew it was going to be a bad movie even before it started, but I was still looking forward to it because it’s based upon the stories of H.P. Lovecraft.

For those unfamiliar with this author, he was a reclusive American writer who wrote in the mid-1920’s. His specialty was horror writing, but a horror unlike almost everything else in the genre. If you have any familiarity with Edgar-Allen Poe then you’ll know the style. We’re talking dark brooding horror, focusing on insanity and the human mind. Lovecraft managed to create his own shadow world which looked like ours, but contained unimaginable evils waiting to break free.

I read his stories as a teen and was struck by just how unique his visions were. They are not always scary, but most are genuinely creepy in a way that I’ve never seen before or since. The power of Lovecraft was that he rarely described the horror directly, but just suggested it and let you fill in your own details.

The movie is loosely based around Lovecraft’s world. The Necronomicon is a book that features in this, being ‘the book of the dead’ and containing all manner of dark secrets.

Loosely is a very apt term as the movie has little to do with the real stories. The whole story is centered on Lovecraft himself, performing research for his stories. He finds the Necronomicon in a monastery in America, and attempts to use it to further his stories. In doing so he discovers some of the events that happened because of the book. These are shown as sub-stories, with three in total.

Growing Flesh

A recent BBC news article caught my eye:

An international research team has proposed new techniques that may lead to the mass production of meat reared not on the farm, but in the laboratory.

Developments in tissue engineering mean that cells taken from animals could be grown directly into meat in a laboratory, the researchers say.

Scientists believe the technology already exists to directly grow processed meat like a chicken nugget.

Exactly what does it mean when it says ‘grow processed meat’? Should we expect fully-formed and genetically perfect burger trees? Are we heading to a Matrix-style ‘Field Of Flesh’, with our daily Meat intake provided by the latest harvest of Meat cubes?

HTTP 406 Error

Some work I’ve been doing recently has involved debugging a Mambo installation. The website had developed the curious ability to block the editing of certain articles, but allowed other ones through. These blocked attempts to save articles were resulting in a ‘406 Not Acceptable’ error.

According to the W3 specification, this means:

The resource identified by the request is only capable of generating response entities which have content characteristics not acceptable according to the accept headers sent in the request.

Say what?

Czech food (and the effects of globalisation)

I’ve been introduced to a lot of Czech food recently, courtesy of some Czech friends, and it’s been a fun (if sometimes weird) experience. It’s also given me the opportunity of visiting real local-style places. I haven’t quite decided what the criteria for distinguishing a ‘local-style’ place is yet, but if it’s in anyway intimidating then it almost certainly counts.

The food I’ve been served reminds me a lot of the food I used to eat in England as a child: heavy, meaty, and simple. Popular foods here are dumplings (potato and bread varieties), meats and meat sauces, bread, cabbage, and cheese.

Fried food is far too popular, and a meal may consist simply of fried mushrooms, boiled potatoes, and some tartar sauce. Tasty, but not particularly healthy.

As an unconfirmed vegetarian it can be a frustrating experience, although there are some notable exceptions (the excellent Radost FX being one).

I’ve had some pretty unexpected surprises. For some reason, eating spinach with cream is very popular here. Now I love spinach on its own, but with cream? Using my basic understanding of Czech I ordered what I thought was a spinach pizza. The menu mentioned spinach (spenat) and cream (smetana), but I figured it was spinach, with some sort of sour cream in a small side dish. Alas not, it simply meant spinach and cream. It would actually have been alright if it hadn’t been for the raw egg placed gently on top. I missed that word entirely!

Possible MSN scam

I’ve noticed a couple of the contacts on my MSN list have started displaying ‘http://msncheck.41m.com – free way to check who blocked and deleted you on msn‘. Naturally I went to this website to investigate and found that it promised the ability to check if anyone has blocked or deleted me, provided I gave my msn username and password.

Now there is no way I’m giving my username or password to anyone, let alone an unknown website. However, I was curious as to what would happen if I did. I tried the website with false information:

Note the ‘your login info will be stored on our server for future use*’. This is the closest to any sort of privacy statement and/or website intent.

Dr Zhivago

I’ve been churning through a lot of books recently and so I thought I’d talk about some here.

First up is Dr. Zhivago. I’ll admit a distinct liking for Russian literature, ever since Crime & Punishment blew me away. The country is so big and has so much history. I just wish I could explore it all. As I do not possess an unlimited budget I have to make do with whatever books I can get my hands on, and this was provided by Boris Pasternak.

I knew almost nothing about this story. I’ve never watched the movie, although I was aware it was a big thing back in the 60’s. It even seems to have been remade for the TV, and stars the delightful Kiera Knightley (shown above for decorative effect).

Japanese theme

Another addendum to the Giraffe theme, with a Japanese localization courtesy of Tai. The .mo file can be found on the Giraffe page, and the WordPress localization file on the WordPress localization page. Test it out from the sidebar Localization menu.

Thanks once again to Tai.

Hot bugs

Prague is being subjected to a minor heat-wave at the moment, and towards the end of last week it managed to break records, reaching around 38 degrees. Pretty hot and coupled with a high humidity it makes for very unpleasant and sticky days. Sleeping at night can also be difficult, partly because of the temperatures, but also because you need to leave open windows, and so invite all sorts of outdoor noises and bugs.

The noises are a side-effect of living in a narrow street with tall buildings on both sides. Even relatively quiet sounds echo upwards, and in the dead of the night everything just seems louder anyway. Of particular note are three Terrier dogs (currently residing near the bottom of my least-favourite-dogs list) that like to make themselves vocal, and an owner that doesn’t seem to mind.

The bugs have been more of a nuisance though. Usually I’m pretty much immune to bugs. They seem to ignore me, for whatever reason (bad blood and bad taste maybe), but over the weekend something had a royal feast on my back. Currently, judging by the marks, I’m suspecting a giant bat. It really makes you wonder what exactly is going on at night when you’re sleeping.