Bort’s Portal

This is sort of a movie review, but it sort of isn’t. My time today is spent writing about the movie V For Vendetta. More specifically, I am writing about how tired I am getting of seeing movies so falsely advertised.

V For Vendetta is advertised as an action packed, dark, facinating film about - well, the trailers sort of avoid what it’s about, they just show you the scenes that intrigue, like Natalie Portman in a little-girl skirt and sneakers. Allow me to save you time and tell you what this movie is truly about. The people of Britain are being oppressed and persecuted by evil conservatives who resort to such tactics as murder, rape, and imprisonment of homosexuals. V (the name of the savior) uses terrorism (against the evil conservatives) to speak the will of the people, who are too scared to do anything themselves. A cop (who is played by a very good actor Stephen Rea) on V’s tail becomes sympathetic to the cause while Natalie Portman’s character Evey is just a poor, pretty, young thing that V saves (from the evil conservatives). America is no help during this troubled time because they have had non-stop civil war since the Iraqi war (thanks to the evil conservatives).

This is not the first (and it most certainly won’t be the last) time false advertising is used for a movie. Take Brokeback Mountain for example; tv ads showed scenes of two cowboys fighting, a guy and a girl dancing, etc. Only when you watched the movie, or heard from someone who did, did you find what it was truly about. The reason is that nobody could sell a movie about gay cowboys. Want another? How about Million Dollar Baby? Advertised as a boxing movie, it was actually about the “right to die” debate. Again, they couldn’t sell that garbage, so they disguised it.

The point is, do not get too excited about previews! If you don’ t believe me regarding V, go spend your own money. It bothers me that because conservatives are being blasted in these movies, it’s all OK. I would never have believed that after our recent events here and overseas that terrorism would be painted in such bright colors.

One last thing - one tagline for V For Vendetta is, “An uncompromising vision of the future from the creators of ‘The Matrix’ trilogy”. This implies a reasonable prediction and that since the Wachowski brothers did it, it has to be good. They are wrong on both accounts.

Some time ago I decided to stop buying anything Sony. I finally realized that everything I had ever bought that bore the brand Sony either stopped working properly or stopped working entirely. Whether it was a whacky WalkMan or a dingy DiskMan, Sony’s sordid sound machines always went on the fritz.

And then they go and do this.

C’mon Sony … keep giving more reasons to hate you.

My design work is getting its spread on. I recently submitted a design for a contest held for a new blog engine. Typo is a new blog engine built on Ruby-on-Rails, and they needed more templates for new users to choose. Prizes included PowerBooks, iPods, hosting, and software. How can I turn down a chance at cool new free hardware?

Check out Typo Garden to see all the entries, including mine. Since I submitted mine at the last minute, my design ended up on the front page! Sometimes there are benefits to procrastination.

I will keep you updated on the status of the contest, if I win anything, etc.

The Web Standards Project, or WaSP, created a test many moons ago that was meant to test web browsers. The Acid2 Test puts web browsers through a rigorous test of standards prowess.

The test basically has code that should only, by standards accounts, be rendered one way. Most of the code is very advanced HTML and CSS techniques. Some of it is actually older code that should not be rendered at all. This is all part of the test. One problem browsers have now is that they don’t ignore old or badly coded HTML (Internet Explorer, I’m looking at you).

Passing this test is the current gold-standard for a web browser. However, no browsers (not even the mighty Firefox) have been able to pass it…until now.

A few weeks ago, Apple released an update to its operating system Mac OS X Tiger. With this update came a new version of Safari. David Hyatt, one of the chief engineers behind Webkit (Safari’s rendering engine) made a point to study the Acid2 test and make Safari conform to it. So now Safari is the first full version browser to support the Acid2 test.

This does not mean Safari conforms to every single web standard. It just means it has corrected the problems made apparent by the test. It also means it’s getting very close.

To see how your browser stacks up, just visit the Acid2 Test page and take the test. Have fun.

If anyone saw Spike Lee on Real Time with Bill Maher a couple weeks ago, you already know and agree that perhaps he should go shopping for one of those white jackets with the extra long sleeves. He is convinced that the government blew up the levees in New Orleans to get all the black people out of town. This makes sense, of course, because New Orleans had about a 67% black population, so that would really make a town which previously sported a population of about 400,000 to 500,000 quite roomy for all the whites left behind (after making deodorant mandatory as a way to get rid of all the Frenchman too, of course). That and we all know black people can’t swim, so they probably would have just gotten killed straight away and not bothered any other towns with their blackness (note the sarcasm). When Tucker Carlson challenged him on spreading what could not be true, Spike responded by challenging Tucker back on whether or not he knew of the Tuskegee experiment, taking a tangent to put him on the spot to discredit him (and the audience, although I know damn well very few if any knew of the Tuskegee Experiment, groaned in unison because apparently Spike had beat that ignorant white boy).

The problem here is not that one man had a “dismissed from reality” opinion on what happened during the time of the hurricane; I am certain others share his view. The problem is that some people are actually going to believe him. Why? The black population of America is starving for leaders and role models. That is why you keep seeing Jesse Jackson’s face on TV. Any real man (especially a Reverend) would have apologized, hung his head in shame, and crawled under a rock after being caught stealing tens (possibly hundreds) of thousands of dollars from the very people he proclaims to care about to give hush money to a woman he had an illegitimate child with. Not Jesse! He did none of this and in fact is still in charge of the very company he used to steal from other black people. Al Sharpton, another black leader, has had his share of problems as well, but is still getting listened to. Upstanding members of the black community, however, such as Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, and Clarence Thomas are disowned by blacks because they have the audacity to be conservative. Tiger Woods is not a role model because he has no “Street Cred”. It’s a freaking joke. Spike Lee seems to be acting in the black people’s best interest because he made some movies about black people, Malcolm X being extremely well done. Because his quality of work is very high, it should not matter that he borrowed his definition of “documentary” from Michael Moore.

The point of all this to remind all people to just think for themselves and not buy in to what someone is selling just because they are famous or they appear to be intelligent. Our celebrities are as a whole a low educated demographic. When someone does challenges an idea, don’t get fooled by ancient tricks of debate like Spike used on Tucker Carlson, read between the lines and see what the real information is. Most of all be very cautious when a man that falls in the upper 1% of income in the United States pretends as if he has the pulse of the minority he once was a part of.