One thing I've missed about living in a city is having an art house cinema nearby. When I was at university I was less than 100 yards from the Hyde Park Picturehouse. So I was quite pleased when this weekend I had chance to see two films at my new local arthouse, The Duke Of York. I was watching the local news on Friday evening when they had their "What's On" section at 18:50 and mentioned that Napoleon Dynamite was opening at the Duke Of York. I checked the showing times only to discover it started at 18:45. I did notice, however, that the next day they were showing Garden State before Napoleon Dynamite.

Garden State

Garden State is the first film written and directed by Zach Braff (he of J.D. in Scrubs fame). It tells the story of Andrew "Large" Largeman (Braff), a reasonably successful actor in L.A. who returns to his roots in New Jersey when his mother dies. Large takes this chance to take a break from the lithium pills he's taken since he was ten. While he's at home he catches up with old friends and meets Sam (Natalie Portman).

Garden State is a visually beautiful film and highly stylish, but you get the feeling Braff is trying too hard on occasions, with moments like the slow motion in the hotel lobby or the lingering shots of Large's hands on the girl's thigh during the game of spin-the-bottle. Natalie Portman redeems herself after the abysmal acting in Attack of the Clones, but I still don't think she was outstanding. The film was funny and had a superb soundtrack. If you enjoyed Donnie Darko, but want a film that is more amusing and makes more sense then I think you you'll enjoy this film.

Napoleon Dynamite

Napoleon Dynamite is an unfashionable kid, dealing with the double heartache of being unpopular at school and living with his 32 year old brother who cruises internet chatrooms for women and his uncle, a failed american football player. When his new best friend, Pedro, stands against the popular girl, Summer, for class president, they have to work hard to win.

This is a strange film. Deeply funny at points, annoyingly cringeworthy at others. The film seems set in the 80s yet there are numerous references to the Internet. There were way too many instances of boom in shot for it be by accident and that just annoyed me. It didn't add anything to the film. I never felt massively connected with the main character and I think I cared more about Pedro than I did for Napoleon. Despite these faults I enjoyed the film. I laughed so much at points to make up for the films shortcomings. I would definiately recommend it, although I suspect I prefered Garden State.

I would like one of these for Christmas please.

Who ever though that putting the default key for "exit without saving folder" next to the key for "change folder" in mutt was a good idea deserves to discover how goatse was produced. Personally.

/me goes to disable the exit keybinding

Update:For those interested in fixing it, put the following in your ~/.muttrc.

bind pager x noop
bind index x noop

You're the least-punctual train operator in the country. Solution? Rewrite your complete timetable to lengthen journeys.

I'd like to apologise for those people reading my blog via Livejournal. I did a bit of reorganisation last night, but made sure that both PyBlosxom (used on my website) and Planet (used on Planet Debian) didn't consider them to be new posts. Sadly it appears that livejournal wasn't so clever and managed to mark them as new and spammed people's friends page.

Sorry. I won't do it again in a hurry.

I gave up reading the hot-babe thread shortly after it descended into discussing the crusades. To me, the whole discussion has failed to mention the more interesting question of whether the package is useful and if we want Debian to be full of silly pointless packages. I know traditionally if someone was willing to maintain a package and it was DFSG-free then it accepted into the archive. But now sarge doesn't even fit on a DVD anymore we have to start asking ourselves "Just how many media players/irc clients/load meters/menstrual calendars do we need in Debian?" Maybe it is time someone went through the archive, looking at the orphaned, unmaintained and trivial packages and ask "Do we really need this package?"

Monday evening I managed to scratch my right eye taking out a contact lens just before I went to sleep. I've scratched my eye before and didn't think anything of it. Just went to sleep thinking it'll be fine in the morning.

It wasn't. It still hurt as much as the night before. Had a shower and it wasn't feeling too bad, but had the occasional twinges. Put in a contact lens in my left eye and headed to work and was in discomfort all morning so at lunch time I decided to find an optician I could visit, just to put my mind at rest I wasn't going to end up blind or something. Annoyingly my optician is 120 miles away, near my parents, in Milton Keynes, and the nearest branch is a 20 minutes train ride away.

First I tried Boots, only to be told that they don't do emergency appointments and I would need a full eye test, but they couldn't fit me in today anyway. Next was Specsavers, who basically told me they wouldn't even think about looking at me unless I became a customer. Finally I went next door to Eyesite who said I'd probably need a full eyesight test but they could fit me in early afternoon and would cost me �18.50. That sounded the best offer I was likely to get so I went with that. When I went back later they did a full test including taking photos of the back of my eyes, which I'd had done before, but I'd never seen them until now. He said I did have a small scratch on my eye but it looked to be healing and would probably be healed by tomorrow and he booked me a quick appointment for the following lunchtime. By the evening my eye was feeling a lot better and didn't really hurt at all.

And then I went to sleep. Woke up this morning in more agony than I was yesterday and my eye was causing me all sorts of grief during the morning. Went to the optician who said that it was quite common for th eye to heal 90% during the day only for the eyelid to stick to the healing area during sleep and reopen the scratch when you wake up. He has said to get some anti-bacterial lubricating ointment from a chemist today so that it shouldn't happen again tomorrow morning. In the mean time I'm wondering around with everything blurred to my right and in mild agony. Ho hum.