Category: Random

It is my observation that most of the movies that have come out in recent years tend to be classifiable in one of the following two categories. On the one hand there are movies that rely entirely on computer-generated special effects to captivate their audiences, whilst on the other hand there are movies that don’t use CGI effects at all and instead rely on a decent performance from the actors who play in it. It is unfortunately rare to find a movie in which good acting is combined with spectacular CGI effects. And perhaps it is just as rare to find a movie in which both convincing CGI and good acting are entirely absent, which I think is just as well.

But if for some reason you happen to be looking for an example of this latter sort, then ‘Seeking a friend for the end of the world’ will certainly not disappoint! For this movie contains neither the grand computer-generated special effects you might expect from a movie based around the imminent extinction of mankind by the pending collision of an asteroid with earth, nor any of the good acting that usually compensates a more limited production budget

This is a thoroughly boring movie. Unsurprisingly, the trailer for the movie turned out to already have all the funny parts in it, so I would suggest saving yourself a lot of time by watching that instead.

P.S.
I really enjoyed the outdoor theater in Greece where I watched this movie, you can find its location on the map below ;).

[google-map-v3 width=”350″ height=”350″ zoom=”16″ maptype=”roadmap” mapalign=”center” directionhint=”false” language=”default” poweredby=”false” maptypecontrol=”true” pancontrol=”true” zoomcontrol=”true” scalecontrol=”true” streetviewcontrol=”true” scrollwheelcontrol=”false” draggable=”true” tiltfourtyfive=”false” addmarkermashupbubble=”false” addmarkermashupbubble=”false” addmarkerlist=”38.022385,23.785302{}movierental.png{}Cine Filothei (Cine Φιλοθέη)” bubbleautopan=”true” showbike=”false” showtraffic=”false” showpanoramio=”false”]

Earlier this year, my girlfriend and I went to the Museum night in Rotterdam. Wonderful event, by the way! Plan to go again next year. But I digress… Because the main reason I’m writing this post is not the museum night, but the fact that my girlfriend impulsively bought a fancy looking doo-dad in one of the museum shops: a deliciously green Le Sack!

– “So what the fuck is a ‘Le Sack’?” – I hear the reader thinking. Well, to put a finer point on it, it’s a moldable vase. You see, it starts out as a bag (hence the ‘Sack’ in the name), but it’s made from a plastic that becomes malleable when you fill it with hot tap water. Then after ‘Le Sack’ has been molded into the desired shape, you simply fill it with cold water and it will lose its malleability. So now you are left with a uniquely shaped vase in which you may display your fragrant posies. O joy!

However, this is all theory. Practise has proven to be quite another matter altogether. I have now tried several different shapes and have discovered that the vase can also change shape when filled with cold water, causing it to topple over. It is particularly prone to do so if you make it top-heavy with flowers, which is strange since that’s what it’s supposed to be designed for. This can lead to most unfortunate results, for example when using a ‘Le Sack’ to decorate a digital piano as I did. Thus I awoke the next morning to find my ‘Le Sack’ resting on its side, the flowers all but fallen on the floor, and the keys and electronics soaking in the water… It was a tragedy.

So now I am trying different molding shapes to see which shapes confer sufficient stability. The vase has toppled over four times since then, though this time I was wise enough to position it in a location where it could do no harm. I still like the look of the vase very much and am willing to overlook its stability issues for now, but caveat emptor my friends… Consider carefully where you place this pretty vase.

Installed the AVG virusscanner and security software on my parents computer, and it’s sorta working OK. Except I neither like nor need the AVG Safe Search option that is apparently enabled by default. What this does is ‘scan’ your Google results for possibly unsafe websites. Don’t know whether it works or not and I don’t care. I didn’t ask for this crap and it’s messing with my search results, so I want to disable it.

And that’s when things become tricky. First of all, I can’t remove the extension in Firefox. This is all the more strange since I also noticed Firefox automatically disabled the extension for being incompatible with Firefox versions 11 and greater. But weirdly that doesn’t seem to stop AVG at all, since all my searches still redirected me to their stupid Safe Search page. So I dug a little deeper.

And then I found the cure. What you need to do is open AVG and disable the Safe Search option. Then you also need to enter ‘about:config‘ in the address bar of Firefox, look for the line with something like ‘AVG Safe Search‘ in it, and change it to ‘Google‘. Restart Firefox (just for good measure) and you should be all set!

So now my address bar searches finally work normally again, but if anyone can recommend an alternative good free antivirus program (though that does sound like a contradiction in terms), then please drop me a line in the comments. 😉