230 strings to go.

I guess now only a miracle can get Fujitsu to come up with the missing hard disk in time for my trip to Belgium, next Thursday...

326 strings to go.

Advanced a bit more on the translation but not as much as I wanted to. Tomorrow is another day...

Late Night. Bad, bad day. Null day, actually. At least in terms of translation. Good thing I had a 20 string buffer from yesterday so not all is lost. I'll have to catch up tomorrow.

Happened to visit the shopping mall tonight and somehow it turned out quite interesting. Bought Dan Brown's prequel to The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, Robert Langdon's first adventure before breaking the now-famous code, and a Two Disc DVD edition of Fight Club (something I had been craving for a long time), one of my favourite films. Also, there was some second-hand book fair going on and so I also got myself a copy of O'Reilly's Running Weblogs with Slash for a €2.50 bargain. Finally, bought September's issue of Linux Journal aswell, mostly feauting wireless and radio stuff. I've always been kind of interested in amateur radio but never got to know much about it nor did I ever have any hardware to play with. Perhaps this LJ issue will enlighten me a little bit more.

Saw Rabbit-Proof Fence earlier today. It's a movie about australian aborigenes and the atrocities perpetrated by the Australian government in the first half of the past century to these people which still echo in the present day. The film tells us about the escape of three aboriginal girls after being forcibly taken from their homes and family to be trained and taught for domestic duties. After escaping, the girls take on a nine week journey of more than 2,000 kilometres across the Outback to rejoin their loved ones. Phillip Noyce (The Bone Collector) directs this movie in which tree real aboriginal girls star. It's a good movie, with a moving story, which tells of harsh and truthful facts and that makes you wonder how is it possible for human beings to do such cruelty unto others. The DVD version also includes a good 43-minute documentary about the making of the film, entitled Following the Rabbit-Proof Fence, which is a nice companion to the film and helps understand a bit more about the aboriginal culture. It is also a lovely insight into the character of three young girls starring in this movie whom had never made any film before (nor after for that matter, not yet anyway).

A hard working day expects me tomorrow...

Evening. 100 strings translated today exactly. This is good news, as I've actually did more than I was meant to do according to the 80-strings-a-day current plan. Let's just say it is a slight make up for the last couple of days lazyness. Still, 369 to go. The problem is, most of the remaining ones from now on are very long sentences indeed, though not particularly challenging, only lengthy. This basically means it will become tough to wipe those 80 strings each day until next Thursday. But, as they say, when the going gets tough, that's when the toughs get going!

I guess I'm on a bind of DVD re-runs. Today's was no more no less than my very favourite of all-time: The Shawshank Redemption. I guess it is truly useless to introduce this movie to anyone these days, as everyone must have seen it one time or another. It currently sits comfortably in the #2 spot on IMDb's Top 250 second only to Coppola's 1972 masterpiece The Godfather. I feel like comenting a bit on Shawshank but I must confess I fear I can't make justice up to this film using my own bare words.

I feel everything about this flick is perfect. The mood, the way it is shot, the cast, the scenery, the plot.. well, everything. Not a single flaw in my point of view but I'm (very) biased. My favourite actor of all-time (Tim Robbins) stars in it as Andy Dufresne, and Morgan Freeman comes very close in my own personal favourites list so that helps quite a lot. Silly as it may sound, this movie has served as an escape for me many times in the past. I used to play it over and over during my most difficult university years when things weren't going too good and I wasn't happy with what I was doing. The sentiments echoed in the screen, the warm feeling of companionship on display despite it being about inmates jailed for life in a high-security prison, all these factors helped me having a feeling of comfort and security watching it. Also, because the story is so beautifully told, it immerses the viewer completely into its world.

(Mild spoilers ahead..)

Then it is full of those scenes that chill you to the bone, dialog-driven scenes so uniquely acted that you can't do anything else but stare at the screen and drink it all the way. Consider the sequence of Brooks Hatlen out of jail and his quick and heart-breaking descent into suicide. It is ingenious how the whole sequence is narrated by Brooks himself reading aloud a letter left to his inmates at Shawhshank, that they actually read later on after he's gone and dead. The whole sequence is the perfect corolary of Red's early talk about being 'institutionalized': "They put you here for life, and that's exactly what they take. The part that counts anyway." And then you got all the scenes with Red being heard by the parole officers. The way he goes from very keen on getting parole to completely careless about it is magnificient and reflects the story just perfectly. Or the sequence with Andy broadcasting aloud the Italian opera for every inmate to hear through the facilities speaks which cost him two weeks in the Hole. And right after he gets out of the solitary, his little talk about hope, at the lunch table, with Red and the others, when Red deems it as a 'dangerous thing'. I could tell you about dozens of beautiful scenes but if you've seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about. I'm yet to meet a single person on this Earth who didn't like Shawshank.

In fact, the movie is full of outstanding quotes. I've chosen one to transcribe here:

Red: [narrating] I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.

This is a movie about redemption and most of all, about hope. To quote the tagline:

Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.

And that's exactly how it is.

Early Afternoon. Slight progress on the translation front. The current plan is to have the second part all done and wrapped up before I go abroad in a week time. Some quick calculations show that there are 469 strings left to translate on this batch (some of them rather long) which means I'll have to wipe an average of 80 strings per day until next Thursday. Damn deadlines, really.

Needless to say, no word from Fujitsu yet.

One quick note to thank everyone who emailed me and posted flattering comments as replies to my yesterday's article at Chelsea Blog. I really appreciate it, and I'm delighted to see people actually enjoyed reading it. Thanks!

Midweek. Still no news on the laptop front. I don't wanna get negative or anything but I guess I'll have to start preparing myself for not having it ready when I leave for Belgium next week. The good thing about this absence is that it'll surely feel good to type in a laptop keyboard again. I'm sick of the regular external keyboard I've been typing on all month. And my wrists have already started to complain. Let's all just make a positive energy chain or something for the phone to ring tomorrow and it being Fujitsu arranging for an appointment with me.

This has been a most atypical day. Lazyness seems not to have gone away quite yet and so I didn't touch the translation all day, despite being close at some point during the afternoon. When I finally decided to face it and ditch the work idea for the day and watch a movie instead, the movie player decided not to cooperate and I'm too lazy (works both ways) to fix it today. Finally, got around to pick up where I left off two days ago so I'm now working again at a steady pace, crunching the strings as I go along. It gets really boring sometimes. I better pick up on the GUI database application project before the start of next week aswell. Perhaps the weekend is a good time for it.

Oh, I forgot to tell you the good news. Seinfeld is finally getting released on DVD next November! Apparently only seasons 1 and 2 will be available and only Region 1 so far. So a little more waiting is in order, but there's finally light at the end of the tunnel. I must state here that not having Seinfeld out on DVD all these years was probably the most serious crime perpetrated by the owners of the show. Thanks to Tiago for the tip on his blog!

Must... not... be... lazy... tomorrow...

Ever since Miguel told me about this blog, I've been a quite frequent visitor to Chelsea Blog. Today, after submitting a reply to the Crystal Palace match aftermath post, the webmaster deemed it worth of front page spotlights and kindly asked if he could publish it as an article in its own right, which I prompty accepted. No need to deny it, having some lines of my own featured alongside such talented and entertaining writers as the ones at the Chelsea Blog is nothing short of flattering and makes me really proud. If you're curious about it, I suggest you pay them a visit. It's well worth it, especially if you're a football (and Chelsea) fan. Here's a quick link to the article I mentioned before.

Thanks Nick for your kindness!

What a bad boy I've been. I haven't got any translation done today and I shouldn't be lazy like this many more times in the future or it will cost me dearly. If I can say anything in my own defence, then I'll say that all morning today has been taken up by extraneous-social-life-outside type things right until 2 pm when I finally got home, showered, cooked lunch (bolognese soy with spaghetti which unfortunately wasn't too tasty due to a couple of cooking mistakes) and sank in the sofa watching a DVD re-run of Se7en. More on this movie later in this post.

Early afternoon was spent doing various web related stuff (*cough*, what a lousy excuse this one) and went out to play a bit of football in the late afternoon. Back home again, shower again and another terrible crash on the living room's couch to watch Chelsea's match on TV. The bottom line is, I was utterly lazy all day, better admit it, and try to remedy it by working extra-time tomorrow.

As for Se7en, this is a 1995 movie which played back quite a lot on my VCR when I was younger, a few years back. Giving it another go now was quite enjoyable as I caught lots of little details which are subtle but altogether important, stuff I hadn't really spotted before. Having Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt starring together, both with a performance highlight of their careers, certainly helps. And David Fincher (Fight Club, The Game) is undoubtedly one of my favourite directors out there. He's just so fresh and innovative, it's unbelievable. Obviously Kevin Spacey (who, for my money, needs only to stand around looking pretty and still be an awfully awesome actor) as always delivers an astonishing performance even if he only shows up for like twenty minutes of the movie.

So, the point I would like to make concerning Se7en is actually about the ultimate idea present in the story of this flick. I wouldn't like to go ramble about religious details as everyone should believe whatever they want to believe. I'm giving this preamble because as far as I know the idea of the Seven Deadly Sins is something particular to the Catholic ways (please correct me if I'm wrong on this). Anyway, by watching this movie again I felt it is so much thought-provoking like I never felt before. By the way, if by some weird, unfortunate and unbelievable circumstance you haven't seen this movie, be warned: spoilers herein.

John Doe (Kevin Spacey) is a serial killer who takes on individuals guilty of commiting each of the seven deadly sins: pride, envy, lust, wrath, sloth, greed and gluttony. He believes that by killing an individual in his eyes guilty of each of these sins he's doing the work of God who will be studied upon and hopefully followed in the future. Detectives William Sommerset (Freeman) and David Mills (Pitt) are hot on his tail until John Doe (certainly a wise choice of a character name) decides to turn himself in. This happens after we have seen the aftermath of five of his homicides, along the course of story, with all their twisted details. Through his lawyer, Doe proposes a deal to both detectives: either they accompany him to the place where the remaining two victims are or he'll plead insanity in the courtroom, in all likelihood getting away with it.

Having agreed on the earlier option, the car trip the two policemen make with John Doe is certainly one of the hottest and most memorable scenes of this film. The dialogue between the three men is, for my particular money, among the best ever and provides quite a lot of food for thought. Take on this short excerpt for example:


David Mills: Wait, I thought all you did was kill innocent people.
John Doe: Innocent? Is that supposed to be funny? An obese man... a disgusting man who could barely stand up; a man who if you saw him on the street, you'd point him out to your friends so that they could join you in mocking him; a man, who if you saw him while you were eating, you wouldn't be able to finish your meal. After him, I picked the lawyer and I know you both must have been secretly thanking me for that one. This is a man who dedicated his life to making money by lying with every breath that he could muster to keeping murderers and rapists on the streets!
David Mills: Murderers?
John Doe: A woman...
David Mills: Murderers, John, like yourself?
John Doe: [interrupts] A woman... so ugly on the inside she couldn't bear to go on living if she couldn't be beautiful on the outside. A drug dealer, a drug dealing pederast, actually! And let's not forget the disease-spreading whore! Only in a world this shitty could you even try to say these were innocent people and keep a straight face. But that's the point. We see a deadly sin on every street corner, in every home, and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it's common, it's trivial. We tolerate it morning, noon, and night. Well, not anymore. I'm setting the example. What I've done is going to be puzzled over and studied and followed... forever.


While I'm certainly not defending the killing of human beings here, you'll have to agree with me that this makes you wonder about a lot of things. I for one can't dismiss anything John Doe says here as being lies. I try to understand what sort of world we live in and I still can't reach any decent conclusion. The truth is, regardless of what kind of importance you give to the concept of Seven Deadly Sins, the actions they represent are present in every day life, around every corner, in nearly every place. And what I know for sure is that David Fincher, under the covers of a regular whodunnit type story thriller, managed to put his finger on the wound and press real hard.

Now, this makes me wonder about something else. Earlier on this post I mentioned I was lazy today, not getting any real work done... isn't lazyness one of the seven deadly sins?

I guess this mention is coming a little late but, as they say, better late than never. My good friend Tiago has a really nice blog primarily describing (in portuguese, so be warned) his work days at Procter & Gamble in Belgium this summer. Particularly cool pictures of his lovely nephews somewhere thrown in there too :) This reminds me that I depart to Belgium myself by the end of next week (September 2nd to be precise) to spend the better part of 5 days with him. This shows some really good promise as I'll hopefully be able to visit Antwerp (home town of dEUS!), Amsterdam and more. Also, there's the possibility of meeting an old time #champman IRC friend, Yallii, who's currently living and studying in Antwerp. Hanging out with him sometime during the weekend would be nice. Looking forward to all this.

On the other hand, the bad news is that my laptop is currently AWOL. Unfortunately it stopped functioning early on this month, a Fujitsu guy came over to take a look and he decided to order a new base unit and a new hdd (good thing, warranty). The base unit arrived in their department the day after it was ordered but the hard drive is proving to be much more difficult, as apparently they don't have it stocked. I've already rang them twice and they've acknowledged this situation but are impotent when it comes to the disk. It's ordered and all we can do now is to wait for the factory. I wonder if they somehow lost track of the process or something. Right now, all I'm asking is that I have it back before I go to Belgium next month so I can get some work done while I'm staying abroad.

Talking about work, I've been pretty much focused on the translation work lately. To make a long story short, I'm one of two portuguese translators of the well-known football manager simulation PC game called Championship Manager. This involves a lot of work and I've been doing it for the past three or four years, for different editions of the game. This time it's actually changed its name into Football Manager 2005, due to it having a different publisher (now Sega, then Eidos Interactive). Eidos kept the CM trademark to do whatever they please with it but the game proper is still property of Sports Interactive in London, UK, only it now has a different name. So, the amount of work for this next installment of the game is divided in three parts, each amounting to anything between 2 and 3 weeks of work, roughly. I'm past the first one already (finished a couple of days ago) and currently going through the second one which is a little bit heavier than the first (most notably it has a huge amount of unusually long strings) which in turn is a little bit lighter than the third and last one (though this one apparently has no long strings). This basically means the amount of work (and drudgery, if you ask me) will increase at a steady pace and I'll have to cope with it. The payment however is well worth the effort and if I want to keep my plans of buying a nice, shiny and sweet Apple Powerbook 12", then I'll have to do it and do it all the way.

Now I notice the post is getting too long, sorry about that. I'll leave a few more thoughts for later on.

`hdparm' is a rather nice UNIX utility which lets you tweak the inner settings of your hard drive. Usually, under Linux, the hard drive is not optimized by default in things like DMA and read-ahead. Using `hdparm' can be done to do just that but understanding it and how to use correctly may prove tricky. Even if the manpage is somewhat helpful, the help page is indeed rather terse. There is a number of hdparm information pages up on the Web and here's a quick link for a very simple but straightforward one.

In it you'll find a quick overview of hdparm's main features and settings and also a neat way to use hdparm itself to benchmark your harddrive with different kinds of disk reads. As far as my hard drive is concerned, here's the -tT test results with all the default factory settings (i.e. nothing tweaked):


bash-2.05b# hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 1.02 seconds =125.02 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 10.27 seconds = 6.23 MB/sec


Whereas, using the hdparm -X66 -d1 -u1 -m16 -c3 /dev/hda command suggested in the page I've just linked, the buffered read improves dramatically:


bash-2.05b# hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 1.01 seconds =126.25 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 4.65 seconds = 13.78 MB/sec


More than 50% improvement! This is especially encouraging if you have an old and slow machine. The actual performance gain is noticeable and with these simple setting changes extracting a .rar archive, for instance, became a good bit faster. Now only to keep tweaking it to the last breath, using all the possible configuration settings...

This is just what I need: a rice cooker! Because every time I've tried to cook some rice using the traditional methods, I always failed miserably. This is good news. Thanks goes out to Colin Walters at Fedora for posting this on his blog.

To quote a friend of mine as of yesterday: "someone broke the wheather". Damn right. It is mid-august and it's pouring rain outside. I don't care. I love it.

Finally my first Amazon.fr order has arrived. To be honest, this was just an excuse to buy the "High Fidelity" DVD as I couldn't find it anywhere else. While I was at it, decided to buy a couple of books (yeah, as if my backlog wasn't big enough). These are Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road by Neil Peart, the acclaimed Rush drummer and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, an all-time classic written by Robert M. Pirsig. As anyone who knows these books can tell, both ask and try to answer roughly the same questions from a similar point of view, with motorcycles as a common factor. I'm still reading "The Da Vinci Code" anyway so I haven't picked them up yet. Also, last Saturday paid a quick visit to the shopping mall back in Lisbon and I bought yet another book on impulse (been a while since the last time) and that's Kim Stanley Robinson's Years of Rice and Salt. I guess the "Imagine a World Without Europe..." tagline caught my eye. I've always been kind of fascinated with alternate history novels or anything related to different historical scenarios other than what actually happened in the past. The last such book I've read was the latest collaborative effort by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter entitled Time's Eye.

On another note, took some time to go through a few weblogs featured in Blogger's homepage and came across a decidedly interesting one called Funfurde. It's tagline is "Funky Furniture and Design" and the pictures in there caught my eye. In particular, there's a rather nice bookcase in which you can store books vertically (in effect pilling them) instead of the regular horizontal disposition in a shelf. Here's a picture to illustrate the thought:

Isn't that cool? The price isn't that cool but that's a whole different story.

In the past couple of weeks I've found myself with some time to watch a few DVDs from my own private stash. I've been trying to write some reviews but honestly it seems to be quite hard for me to write anything decent or at least to write something I'm happy with. Despite that negative feeling, I've managed to review a few flicks down at Pi (a blog I occasionally write in with a couple of friends, in Portuguese), but that's pretty much it. I guess reading quite a lot of Roger Ebert reviews hasn't helped my self-esteem on this particular department either, for obvious reasons. Anyhow, here's a quick recollection and a minute review for each of the movies I've seen this month on DVD (or on a variation thereof, *cough*DVD-rip*cough*):

Thirteen Days: This is a 2000 movie directed by Roger Donaldson of "The Recruit" and "No Way Out" fame (and, for that matter, "Cocktail" aswell but that's a whole different letter). Even if I'm not very literate on American history, this seems to be a quite realistic account of the October 1962 events concerning the Russian missile crisis in Cuba which directly affected the Kennedy administation at the time. Kevin Costner shines as one of the President's special assistants and Bruce Greenwood (who we can see these days on the big screen starring in "I, Robot") plays JFK himself. For almost all of the film's 145 minutes, the threat of a potentially apocalyptic war is hovering above the events and it depicts how President Kennedy tried everything under his belt to prevent it from happening. Fortunately for the interested viewer, the film never goes down the easy road of mindless and meaningless action so often taken in Hollywood. Instead, it strives for realism and almost never ceases to entertain and interest the audience. Strong performances are delivered by Costner (who stars for the second time on a JFK related movie, the other one being precisely Oliver Stone's "JFK"), Greenwood and also by Steven Culp as the President's brother and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, making this a quite enjoyable and historically important war thriller and drama.

Back to the Future: Blessed is he who decided to release the "Back to the Future" trilogy in a nice and quite inexpensive DVD boxset. I'm among the fortunate ones to have bought it and this way I could re-run these films which were among my favourites during my youth. For the record I'll only mention the first installment here as it pretty much applies equally for both parts II and III. Damn, I can only imagine how cool it must have to have seen this in 1985 when time-travel (despite very early H.G. Wells stories about it had already been released 90 years before) wasn't such a beaten subject. This is the story of a crazed scientist, Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) who after suffering a hit in his head has the brilliant idea of building a propulsion system which enables and transforms a regular DeLorean automobile to become a sophisticated and shining time machine. Brown, who uncannily resembles Einstein after whom he named his faithful dog, is helped by a young kid named Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) who travels back and forth in time only to find time travel is more dangerous than it might seem at first. But hey, why am I telling you all this? I'm sure everyone knows the "Back to the Future" saga so it suffices to say that director Robert Zemeckis simply achieved quite a breakthrough with this and the proof is that it lingers on as the McFly stories still sound fresh, original and funny today!

Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain: I must say right away that I've got mixed feelings for this movie. On one hand, from a directorial point of view this is certainly one of the most brilliant movies I've ever seen. Every detail on the way the story is presented to the viewer looks like it was taken good care of and every shot is just so original. So, congratulations and thumbs for Jean-Piérre Jeunet on this one. However, and probably this was influenced by whatever mood I was in when I saw this film, the story didn't touch me as it certainly should have. I feel I should have fallen in love and feel totally sympathetic with Amélie and the way she was sweet about things but the truth is I was quite indifferent to it to the point of feeling slightly bored. Either way, Audrey Tatou - as always - puts in a decidedly brilliant performance and so does every other major character in this motion picture. The soundtrack is quite pleasant aswell and suits the mood of the story perfectly. This is definitely a film about the good small things of life and in that sense I thoroughly enjoyed it. On the surface however, for me, it leaves something to be desired.

Ken Park: Director Larry Clark certainly seems to be obsessed with American youngsters and their erratic and problematic behaviours. Following "Kids" and "Bully", "Ken Park" (released in 2002) stretches the limits of graphical violence and particularly nudity to a new high. Not that it impresses me much, but having this one kid jerking off to female tennis players and nothing (I mean NOTHING) being concealed from the viewer's eyes not only does indeed stretch the concept of 'explicit' on screen, it also adds nothing to the point of the story and can easily be taken for mindless and cheap pornography. Having seen both "Bully" and now "Ken Park" (with "Kids" in my backlog aswell) I won't say Larry Clark is a pervert and a paedophile, though he'll be dangerously close to being one if he decides to make yet another feature film on the same subject. On "Ken Park" in particular I take it his message is to tell people that sexuality is a natural thing (even if he does it in his very own and peculiar fashion). The problem is, he seems to fail on actually showing it to the audience except in very short bursts, particularly in the final scene. Of course there's also all the usual child/parent problems and despite veement denial from American people in some message boards discussing the movie, I have absolutely no trouble believing this actually happens in some American (and elsewhere) families. That, of course, is thought-provoking. All in the all, I think Clark's greatest achievement is to get his movies released worldwide at all, nevermind his theories about American youths.

Raging Bull: Last but (definitely) not least comes Martin Scorsese's "Raging Bull". I was meaning to see this for a very long time now and the DVD had been lying on the shelf for a good couple of months before I finally got off my arse to pick it up only to sit it again and watch this gem. Needless to say, "Raging Bull" is one of the films most featured in every film buff's top 10 list. Released in 1980, the film features Robert De Niro as Jake La Motta, a raging boxeur who "fights like he didn't deserve to live". After finally watching "Raging Bull" I can wholeheartedly enter the club of those which have it inside their top ten lists. I'll even go as far as saying this is the best 80's movie I've ever seen and probably one of De Niro's best ever performances (alongside with "The Godfather Part II"). So "Raging Bull" is a kind of documentary on Jake La Motta's career as a boxing fighter, the first guy to defeat Sugar Ray Robinson and eventually to become winner of the Middleweight championship later. La Motta's wasn't however the most straight guy in the block and here he is depicted as someone who is a terrible and possessive lover who takes his fears and frustrations with him only to unleash them on his adversaries. The movie is also famous by a brilliant ending passage where De Niro quotes Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront" and gives the famous "I coulda been a contender" speech to himself while looking at the mirror. This movie deserves to be seen over and over again as it is arguably the pinnacle of both De Niro and Scorsese's carreer as a filmmaker (as well as a great support role by the priceless Joe Pesci).

More progress on the GUI programming learning front. Went over the Getting Started tutorial from the WxPython wiki page. Despite being incomplete, it still is a very nice introduction and encouraged me to get my hands all dirty on the subject. There's also a snippet of code in there which shows how you can write a bare bones text editor in about 50 lines of Python code. Of course it's a pretty useless app when it comes down to it, but still it goes to show how expressive you can be writing code using Python. I'm now feeling comfortable with the basics so I guess I'll just dive into the database design and then pick up the more advanced and complex concepts as I go along.

On other news, José Mourinho, current Chelsea FC manager and former FC Porto (where he won both the UEFA Cup and Champions League as well as every possible domestic trophy) won his first official match in England. The opposition were no less than Manchester United and Chelsea came out shining after a difficult 1-0 win in what was a nearly perfect tactical display from the Blues in a match that in terms of emotion left something to be desired. Personally, I think Chelsea will sooner or later enter Cruise mode and virtually wipe any domestic opposition. Perhaps it won't be so soon, perhaps not even this season, but Mourinho seems to have all the conditions to achieve enormous success at Stamford Bridge.

Also, I was watching Serendipity earlier on but I simply had to stop and let it recording on the VCR. Kate Beckinsale just looks too damn nice to stare at right now.

Day 0.
Finally got off my lazy arse and decided to get something done. Not much anyway. Read some of the very basic tutorials and stared at some code. Found some Slackware packages for both wxGTK2 and wxPython which saved lots of work, though only after wasting almost an hour compiling wxPython from source. Anyway, it's up and running and I can now flawlessly compile the basic example programs. It doesn't seem too difficult to tame this baby afterall and I fear that getting the database together will prove to be much more of a challenge. Luckily I've managed to find a wxpython program somewhere on the web which does exactly what I'm looking for, ie. connect to a MySQL database from within wxpython and triggered by its own events. This way the bridge between wxPython and MySQL which puzzled me at first seems to be pretty much built. Tomorrow I will try to get my act a bit more together and hopefully try some example code. Soon it will be time to lay out the theoretical database design and then it will also be time to pick up some database theory.