costela.net

Yeah, about that…

Leo Antunes — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:23:56 +0000

I was trying not to complain about it, but now that the number of people asking me about it is getting bigger, my frustration got the best of me.

So unfortunately I won’t see you all there.

Away-on-lock 0.5.2

Leo Antunes — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:28:43 +0000

Changes:

added an INSTALL file by popular request
use LIBPURPLE_LIBDIR in install target

Get it here

The Cat Piano

Leo Antunes — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 01:07:46 +0000

Well, what do you know? Sometimes you can actually find some pretty interesting things, when looking for something totally unrelated.

My heathen gods bless the internet.

Original site: catpianofilm.com

Re: Making pbuilder just that little bit faster

Leo Antunes — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 22:45:33 +0000

Absolutely, but there are at least two workarounds:

Adding
```
BINDMOUNTS="/var/cache/apt/archives"
APTCACHE=""
```
to your .pbuilderrc, in case you don’t need any special separation of local and pbuilder caches (that’s my case).
Using apt-proxy or the like, which has its overhead, but also its other advantages.

None of them seem all that bad to me, considering the sensible speed improvements to pbuilder, but the ultimate decision probably depends on the amount of disk-access the packages in question need.

“Pocahontas 3D with Aliens” review

Leo Antunes — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 21:14:23 +0000

After watching Avatar twice – first the normal version then the 3D one – I must say it’s a pretty interesting movie.

If nothing else for being another brilliant example of media as message. The plot exists as a simple support for the astounding aesthetic voyage, being specially appealing for those that appreciate the fact most of it was drawn, technically assisted as it may have been. The eye-candy blurs the line between reality and animation so successfully it barely needs any suspension of disbelief.

The plot, on the other hand, needs plenty. If you’re only interested in the higher art of story telling or the myriad social and cultural implications of human-alien interaction, the movie will probably disappoint. It’s not a bad story per se, but it’s just too basic to be of interest, even if well told and superbly assisted by the visuals.

It’s a pity the producers didn’t deign the story worthy of a more serious take, specially considering the extreme graphic violence. It’s certainly no kiddie movie so I see no reason why the story couldn’t have been sensibly improved and turned into a compelling argument about several different interesting dilemmas with only a few basic twists.

As it stands it surely takes the prize as the most beautiful film I’ve seen in a while and the 3D experience only adds to it, but it could have achieved classic status had they taken just a few more risks.