Jun 30 2009

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Directed by: Michael Bay

Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

Tagline: Revenge is coming.

Plot Outline: Decepticon forces return to Earth on a mission to take Sam Witwicky prisoner, after the young hero learns the truth about the ancient origins of the Transformers. Joining the mission to protect humankind is Optimus Prime, who forms an alliance with international armies for a second epic battle.

My Rating: 9.0

Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel

I was glued to the screen from beginning to end. It’s not often you get to say that the sequel was better than the first one. Usually it’s the other way around. In this case it’s not true. The sequel has more action, more adventure and more digital effects than the first movie.

Many people say that film had several kinds of errors. The first time watching the film I can honestly say that I didn’t notice all of them. The other aspects of the film where keeping me busy in order to notice them.

Concluding the film deserves a solid 10 but since it had many mistakes that could have been avoided by doing some research and paying more attention to history and geography. But nonetheless by my count it’s a worth watching.

What do you think?


May 22 2009

Synergy

Synergy

The Setup

I have one desktop computer running Ubuntu Linux connected to a wall mounted screen. I also have a 15″ Unibody MacBook Pro connected to a 24″ Apple Led Cinema Display.

The Problem

All this hardware creates a clutter on my desk requiring me to have more than one set of keyboard and mouse. It also makes it difficult to work on both computers at the same time.

The Solution

A small piece of software called Synergy. This piece of software gives me the ability to share my keyboard and mouse connected to one of the computers via the network interfaces, either being wireless or wired.

Synergy works with almost any setup and any operating system that being either windows, macintosh or linux. And the best part is that the client computers do not have to have a keyboard or mouse connected to them.

Synergy give me the ability to control 2 or more computers (windows, mac, linux) with the keyboard and mouse of only one of them. This means that the wall mounted computer doesn’t need to have any keyboard or mouse. For my problem this was the perfect solution.

Not having a keyboard for said computer in the long run presented some other problems. Like I could not restart the machine, or logout or switch users. Since when I did any of the previously mentioned actions it resulted in Synergy loosing connection and me needing to plug in a keyboard to make everything work again.

Thus a solution was needed to be created.

I’ve altered my login scripts to start Synergy so it will connect to the sever automatically. Bellow you will find what files I’ve either edited or created in order to make this work.

File: /etc/gdm/init/default and File: /etc/gdm/PreSession/default

/etc/init.d/synergy stop
/etc/init.d/synergy start

File: /etc/init.d/synergy

#!/bin/sh
# Start synergy to connect to server pc2

case "$1" in
'start')
    synergyc pc2
    ;;
'stop')
    killall synergyc sleep 1
    ;;
'status')
    ps auwxx | grep synergyc
    ;;
*)
    echo "Usage: $0 { start | stop | status }"
    ;;
esac
exit 0

Also for the above file the following command need to be executed.

chmod +x /etc/init.d/synergy

For the configuration file of Synergy itself here is a sample but this depends on your setup. Remember that the opposite of this configuration file must exist on the server otherwise you won’t be able to move your mouse back to it.

File: /etc/synergy/synergy.conf

section: screens
        pc1:
        pc2:
end
section: links
        pc1:
                right = pc2
        pc2:
                left = pc1
end

May 9 2009

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Directed by: Gavin Hood

Genre: Action, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Tagline: How it all began.

Plot Outline: Wolverine lives a mutant life, seeks revenge against Victor Creed (who will later become Sabertooth) for the death of his girlfriend, and ultimately ends up going through the mutant Weapon X program.

My Rating: 9.0

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Will i Am, Lynn Collins, Kevin Durand, Dominic Monaghan, Taylor Kitsch, Daniel Henney, Ryan Reynolds, Scott Adkins, Tim Pocock, Julia Blake, Max Cullen, Troye Sivan

Very nice movie, I honestly loved it. Although when it finished I wanted more, but then again I was suppose to get that feeling since it is the origins of X-Man Wolverine. I believe that if I wasn’t left with the feeling of incompleteness then the movie would be a failure.

All I can say it’s I can’t wait for the next Origins movies.

What do you think?