Home
Daily WTF
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: WTF
- Hits: 1839
A new list of inexplicable things. Take the above for example - when will Disney buy up the rights and dub it with the voices of Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon in English? And, you know, why does it even matter? All that matters is that this is THE PROOF that cheap digital and CGI effects will only make movies better...
The Beale Cipher
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Lost
- Hits: 1806
"I have deposited in the county of Bedford, about four miles from Buford's, in an excavation or vault, six feet below the surface of the ground, the following articles, belonging jointly to the parties whose names are given in number three, herewith:
The first deposit consisted of ten hundred and fourteen pounds of gold, and thirty-eight hundred and twelve pounds of silver, deposited Nov. eighteen nineteen. The second was made Dec. eighteen twenty-one, and consisted of nineteen hundred and seven pounds of gold, and twelve hundred and eighty-eight of silver; also jewels, obtained in St. Louis in exchange for silver to save transportation, and valued at thirteen thousand dollars.
The above is securely packed in iron pots, with iron covers. The vault is roughly lined with stone, and the vessels rest on solid stone, and are covered with others. Paper number one describes the exact locality of the vault, so that no difficulty will be had in finding it."
And so begins one of the bigger treasure hunts in history. But the treasure hasn't yet been found. Maybe it never even existed....
Link: Wikipedia on The Beale Ciphers, The Thomas Beale Cipher - Short Film
A tangled skein of thought
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1933
It's like a big ball of yarn in all different colors rolled up by my cat, and I spend the day picking at it and trying to unravel it all. Today, five hours down the well trying to convert 3 lines of code into a class method that - at minimum - would have taken 10 lines. But you get so entangled in thought, so focused on the problem at hand, finding solutions, applying them, then finding that they weren't really solutions at all. And still it goes on. And when finally you take a break - mandatory now, because your obsessed, you realize that it was far, far easier (and more productive) to live with the 3 lines of code - however ugly - and just move on. Such is inspiration. But I'm so close to being done - and done properly - and it's all in the details....
Marwencol
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1798
Movie tonight, becoming a bit of a Wednesday routine (the boy calls it IFN, for Independent Film Night). So we see Marwencol - The embedded trailer below. Shot on Super 8, it's a brilliant documentary tracing - in his own words - one man's recovery from a beating that left him brain damaged and unable to function normally. Shot on a Super 8, it probably cost less than $10, 000 to make, and offers easily a thousand times the value of a film that cost a thousand times as much to make. See it while it's still at the Uptown.
Page 733 of 877