It’s time to lineup in Randolph!

Well, [[TheOneRing.net]] has done it. They’ve set up a place where interested people can sign up to have a party while waiting in line for advanced ticket sales for Fellowship of the Ring.

There’s already 15 people signed up at the Randolph theatre (where I’m planning on attending the opening show). Maybe I should sign up???

He covers a wide range of topics surrounding the movie.

After years of speculation, it’s finally here. It’s safe to say that director Peter Jackson’s three-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is the most anticipated film series this side of that galaxy far, far away.

Over the long haul, will Fellowship of the Ring beat out Harry Potter at the box office?

On its opening weekend, [[Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone]] raked in a cool $90.2 million. But in some countries, tickets for “Fellowship of the Ring” are already on sale and selling faster than for Harry Potter.

I found a lot that I liked in Dave Winer’s manila project, but I didn’t have much control over the development of it.

##History

[[Frontier]] began as a scripting environment on the Macintosh platform. In fact, it preceded [[Apple]]’s own Applescript by several years.

After several years of languishing in the scripting market, and with some very frustrating interation with Apple, Dave Winer decided to stop development on Frontier and release it for free.

People started playing with it, and found that it’s object oriented database and scripting language could be used to good effect for holding and building websites (this is back around 1993 for those that are interested). So, development started up again, but the product remained free.

I started playing with [[Frontier]] back when version 4.2.3 came about (it’s now at version 7.1). It took me a while to grok it, but once I did, I fell in love. I was able to do things with my website that most of my friends could only dream of. And it had nothing to do with the look of the site. It had to do with how quickly I could add content and have things linked together in a reasonable way.

I ported the site to Frontier 5.0, and then something completely understandable but a little disappointing happened: Frontier went commercial. Or, I should say, it returned to being a commercial product.

##A Hobby

My website is basically a hobby. I update it often, modify the layout, etc. just because I have fun doing so. I couldn’t justify the cost of Frontier for something that’s not much more than a toy for me. I decided to stick with Frontier 5.0 (which is still free by the way), and hope that eventually there would be another free release of Frontier with some bugs fixed and some new features.

Enter [[Radio]].

Radio is essentially the same scripting/database/outlining environment that I was used to with one very important enhancement: It talked to the manila site engine (which runs inside a Frontier web server). And, it’s free!

So, I ported my website into Radio. I loved it.It was the same, only more.

##Manila

Also about this time, I started working as the Director of I.T. and my company, and decided to buy a copy of Frontier to explore the possibilities of Manila as a content management system for my work. It worked well, but it was a bit slow. And, unfortunately, it didn’t really take off.

But, it did get my brain working.

##MacOSX

Then, a miracle happened. Apple release [[MacOSX]], and the world changed forever. My Macintosh now runs UNIX natively! The entire open source world opened up to me. I immediately started playing with [[MySQL]] and [[PHP]] and after some aborted attempts to use some other (in my opinion) inferior to Manila content management systems, I decided to write a CMS that did all the things that I liked most about Manila, with some things that I wish it would do.

I can’t remember what this movie is about!

Have you ever walked into a room and forgotten why you were there? Have you ever started a sentence and forgotten what you were going to say? Imagine a life in which every moment was like that. Now, imagine that life with the last thing that you can remember being the murder of the one you loved. What would you do?

##Twists and Turns
[[Memento Poster]]
Once in a while, a movie comes along that defies all conventions in storytelling. Several years ago, “Pulp Fiction” did that by telling 4 overlapping stories out of sequence. Today, it’s Memento.

Memento is a strange mystery in which the only way we can find out who-done-it is to tell the story in reverse order. Why? The main character suffers from a bizarre (and real) medical condition in which he can’t make new memories.

I’m still trying to decide whether or not this i really a good movie, or whether it was just a novelty that will wear off with second, third, or fourth viewings. I think not.

Is Harry Potter really a re-telling of Lord of the Rings???

I had never put together how many similarities there are to the basic stories of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Take a read of this and decide for yourselves…

Also, (from [[TheOneRing.net]]), in Sweden, they’ve already sold 200,000 tickets for the movie!

And, it’s official… the running time for the movie is 2hrs 58min.! Excellent!!!

Now when you search, the results are highlighted in the documents! Give it a try! Search for some word and when the list of results comes up, click on one of the items. It’s cool!

Movie Review: [[Memento]]

Does the new department code work???

FAQ: “Why did I write myManila?”

I’ve just deployed a new family tree site in CarneyWeb. Check it out!

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, and now I’ve done it. Check out the new [[Family Tree]]! Hopefully soon there will be a way for anyone in the family to update the information here.

Enjoy!

Can a party-hearty California girl make it in law school and win back her beau?

##High Expectations

I had very high expectations for this movie. My mother-in-law raved about it, as did my sister-in-law. So, it was going to be hard to please me, but I was pleasantly surprised.

##Fast Times

The movie starts near the end of senior year at a University of California campus with our hero Elle planning her acceptance speech for when her boyfriend asks her to marry him that evening. Got that?

It turns out, however, that he dumps her that night instead. She’s not *serious* enough for him. He’s planning on being a senator by the time he’s 30, and she just wouldn’t make a good senator’s wife.

So, he’s off to Harvard Law School, and she’s left depressed and helpless… or is she?

##Is Harvard hard or something?

[[Reese Witherspoon Headshot]]
Elle decides that her best course of action is to go become a laywer too and show him that she can be plenty serious enough. She takes the LSAT and, since she has a 4.0 GPA and lots of extra-curricular activities, she makes it into Harvard (the scene in which the admissions office at Harvard looks over her video admissions essay is one of the high points of the movie!).

After she gets in, she works her way to the top of the class, notwithstanding some painfully embarassing moments along the way. Once there, she gets a special internship at a local law firm and helps to defend a murder case. Of course, it’s because she’s on the case that the defendent (a friend from long ago) is found not guilty.

##Wonderful writing

Although at times improbable, course that the movie takes is both fun and at times unexpected. The success of the movie depended on two things: the writing, and the bubbly personality of Reese Witherspoon.