djm's scribble

Only one month since my last update, maybe there is hope for me yet…

Last Sunday we saw Star Wars ROTS, booking out a “gold class” with a bunch of our friends. It was a little weird seeing closure on a series of movies that captivated me when I was five years old. I went in with pretty low expectations after the last two movies and so I wasn’t disappointed - there was quite a bit to like about the movie. Lucas’ (or his art department’s) ability to conceive stunning vistas has come of age - the city images were simply amazing, as was the wonderful sequence in the lava mine (to pick two examples out of many). Unfortunately the film suffered greatly from Lucas’ desire to ram as much narrative into the film as he could and, worse, from his inability to convince. This latter point is the most annoying - Lucas had source material of Shakespearean power: how a good man turns evil, how a democracy becomes a dictatorship and he failed to wield it properly. Vader’s moment of conversion in particular was utterly unbelievable, despite its being repeatedly telegraphed throughout the first half of the film. He did a better job with the corruption of the democracy (and the direct pot shots at the current US administration were rather amusing). Despite its flaws, I enjoyed it as a satisfactory conclusion to the series and as an visually spectacular action film and I’ll probably go see it again at the cinema (if I can someone to come with me). 7/10. PS. I was deeply, deeply disappointed by Lucas’ failure to play the John William’s excellent “Imperial March” score (you know, the Darth Vader theme) when Vader had his helmet first placed on - the score seemed to be musically hinting at it and it never came… WTF were you thinking there?

My hacking efforts of late have been restricted to polishing the connection multiplexing features in OpenSSH. I aim to have the openssh-4.2 release’s achieve feature parity between multiplexed and “vanilla” connections. Practically this means hooking up an escape filter (e.g. “~.”) and making X11 and agent forwarding work for multiplexed slave connections. As usual, implementing something that works is pretty easy, but figuring out sane and usable semantics and working within the constraints of the SSH protocol is annoying (why is there no way to relate X11 and agent requests back to their parent channel?).

BTW, I’m still riding my bike to work when I can. I have been pretty slack at it lately, because we have finally had some rain (yay!), but I lack wet weather riding gear. Excuses, excuses…

This is just to funny to let go. Being given the opportunity that Galloway had to cut loose and speak his mind at a bunch of ideologues ranks as high fantasy for me.

Well, my fears are confirmed: I suck at keeping any sort of diary. In the last six months a bit has happened, most recently an excellent holiday to Europe and Japan. I’ll post some photos once I have sorted them out a bit. I had a moderately nasty bike accident right before Xmas that broke my big toe, injured a bunch of ligaments around my ribs and left me with some amazing purple bruises all up my side. Everything but the toe is healed now, but the physiotherapist bills pushed the point where the bike paid itself back a couple more months.

I have seen a couple of films in the last few months, the best being Michael Mann’s Collateral (9/10, if Cruise can pull off a couple more performances like that, then I’ll stop avoiding films he is in). The Motorcycle Diaries (9/10, beautiful, touching and delicate in its treatment of such a controversial figure). Hero (8/10, visually amazing and mythic in treatment, compensating for a somewhat repetitive plot). The Eagle has Landed (8/10, classic ‘70s war film and Larry Hagman was hilarious). Year One in the North (8/10, a little heavy with the allegory). The Incredibles (8/10, but I am a sucker for Pixar films).

I have also read a couple of books, the most notable being Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, but I think that I need to read it again (at least once) before I will start to grok it properly - most of my first reading was marred by figuring out the Russian patronymic thing and the variable way that Dostoevsy referrs to his characters (formal name with and without patronymic, first name, affectionate first name). Despite my flawed reading, it is a obviously a keen observation and critique.

This week is the 5th anniversary of OpenSSH. My involvement with the project started about a month later than its real beginning on September 26th 1999, but it fell to me to send out the birthday announcement. My attempts at getting wider press coverage were only partially successful, but there was a good writeup in The Age. It has been challenging and fun over the last five years, though this has been marred by some pretty harsh criticism when we have made mistakes.

I have just purchased a light mountain bike and have been trying to ride into work every day. It is only about 12km and the way is very flat, so the ride isn’t difficult at all. Except, that is, on the return on my first day where it got quite wet and I was without a raincoat. I’m much more worried that some inconsiderate driver (Melbourne has plenty) will do something dumb and put me at risk. So far, so good. Riding along St Kilda road in the spring is simply lovely - the giant elms are bursting their first leaves and the bike lanes are good. Paradise. The big test will come next April - can I keep this up over winter?

My wife and I watched a couple of films recently, finally seeing Fahrenheit 9/11. Overall I liked this film, despite a few objections. I think the politics of this movie have already been thrashed to death by everyone with an opinion, so I won’t dig too deep into this aspect, except to observe the most of the political criticism has been pretty superficial. The unsung hero of this film are definitely the editors, as the film is largely a work of collage. It was very reminiscent of Koyaanisqatsi. In fact the similarity of pace and the Philip Glass-like music make me wonder whether this was deliberate emulation. As a work of polemic, the film was very effective - I think that the use of collage and irony perhaps brings the message home more forcefully than a documentary, or more directly critical style could. In forcing viewers to make their own associations between the images that they are presented with, and keeping the pace of change sufficiently high, viewers have time to come to a viewpoint (probably that which Moore intends), but not enough time to properly criticise it. This is the same technique that Koyaanisqatsi (more effectively) used. Between the effectiveness of the technique, its skill in execution and the nature of the argument, I don’t think that Moore needed to exaggerate and embellish to the extent that he did. Some parts of the film weren’t so good; in particular, the long sequences on Iraq and the obligatory reference to Flint, Michigan. On the other hand, the concluding sequence, and its reference to Orwell were very effective. 8.5/10.

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. This film actually had a score by Philip Glass, though I don’t think he was at his fulminant best. The film is basically an extended interview with McNamara, tracing his career from the 2nd World War until close to the end of the Vietnam War. The intensity of McNamara’s intellect and ego were clearly visible, despite his age. I don’t know what constraints were placed on the interviewer, but the questions asked seemed to be very friendly and non-challenging to someone who played a real part in the deaths of millions. Moreover, I don’t think that the format of condensing a first-person historical discussion into “eleven insights” (which sounds like the title of one of those trite management texts one finds at an Airport) was an appropriate way to communicate the subject matter. Some of the visuals, especially the frequent shots of war plans, were a little repetitive. Despite this, the film is engaging and enjoyable. 8/10.

Japanese Story. There seems to be a rash of films using the Japanese as a device or as a metaphor. I’m not sure why, perhaps because they have visible cultural differences that are at the right level of penetration into Western awareness. These films get to both play up and resolve these differences for narrative effect. This is probably one of the better ones - it one goes deeper than Lost in Translation despite touching on some similar themes (individual alienation, being a stranger to the world). Mostly shot in outback Australia, it is visually stark and beautiful. The shock and the space of the landscape is enhanced by the use of silence in the film (hooray! silence is so rare in modern western cinema). It is difficult to describe the film in much more detail without ruining the central plot, so I won’t try. Suffice to say that this is well worth watching, especially if you are Australian (some great cultural critique in there). 9/10

Solaris (the 2002 Soderbergh version, not the better 1972 Tarkovsky version). I heard bad things about this film, and I didn’t expect Hollywood to do justice to Tarkovsky’s science fiction masterpiece. My concerns were largely justified: this film isn’t nearly as good as the original. A few aspects were interesting: many scenes in the film demanded solitude and silence and Soderbergh partially complied, foregoing music in much of the film. However, in most of the scenes where real silence was appropriate, Soderbergh filled the void with excessively loud air-conditioning noises, conveying an impression of a reflexive rejection of real silence. There was no narrative basis for doing this, just a typical western-cinema rejection of silence. The score, where it appeared was quite good, some parts had very strong resonances to that of 2001, A Space Odyssey. The original parts of the plot were reasonably good, but they paled when held up against the Tarkovsky version. I wonder if the film would have been better if Soderbergh had been more adventurous and had tried to re-tell the story in an entirely different milleu. 6/10.

My thoughts go out to the families of those involved in the Russian school tragedy. I cried at the horrible images of depraved slaughter, of the classrooms where the killers executed the defenseless hostages and of the unimaginable grief of those left behind.

This morning, I noticed two letters in the local newspaper that starkly exposes the dichotomy in people responses: One letter, full out outrage, dismisses the perpetrators as animals and “some ancient subspecies of humanity.” The other letter was full of sadness and reflected upon man’s capacity for unspeakable evil. My sympathies lie with the latter; we do not need any more object lessons to remind us that it is homo sapiens alone who is capable of evil. Mankind invented the gas chamber, the killing field, the mass grave. Animals don’t torture, take hostages or enslave. To believe otherwise is to risk placing our own morality beyond criticism and to lose an important moral absolute.

Rather than venting my disgust regarding the now-announced election campaign, let me tell you about the movies that I have seen in the last couple of weeks:

I, Robot. Being a fan of the stories of Asimov, I approached this film with extreme trepidation. Hollywood has destroyed many great science fiction works, sucking any depth and engaging ambiguity away in a high-budget flourish of special effects and soulless team script writing. My fears were partially borne out in this film - there wasn’t a whole lot of sub-plot, despite some absolutely golden opportunities to develop it. To be fair, it was reasonably faithful to Asimov’s style - an enjoyable, if straightforward, detective story with the requisite twist at the end. The special effects were appealing and weren’t overdone, the acting wasn’t terrible and there were a few precious moments where it operated above the literal. 7.5/10

Zatoichi. I missed this at MIFF, but was fortunate enough to get a DVD brought back from overseas by my good brother. Zatoichi was written and directed by Takeshi Kitano, and follows a long series of novels and similarly-named movies produced in the 1960′s. This film is another example of the tangled symbiotism between national film industries - the story of Zatoichi started in Japan, jumped continents to the USA in the form of Blind Fury and has now been reclaimed by Japan. The story is of the blind Samurai / Masseur Zatoichi, who kicks the ass of the oppressive and cruel crime families who rule a town. Pretty standard stuff, but very enjoyable in its deft execution. What really made this film special was the attention to audio cues and gags - the sonic evolution of modern cinema seems to have been focused more on increasing the fidelity of foley sounds, rather than innovations in their use. There are a couple of disappointing aspects to this film: the CG blood effects were a little incongruous and overdone. Also, there was this very strange dancing scene at the end that didn’t work at all. Don’t let that stop you, it is good fun and good cinema. 8/10

I have been very lazy in updating this thing. It is really quite appalling, because it only takes a few minutes to write something. In late June I travelled to Calgary, Canada for the annual OpenBSD Hackathon. There I met many of the people I have only known by the email addresses for the last 5 or so years and saw some of the most beautiful scenery of my life, during quite a difficult hike around Lake Louise. During the hackathon, I got a bit of work done on OpenSSH (now released in openssh-3.9), but I spent too much time fighting jetlag from the ~24 hour journey from Melboure (the return leg wasn’t nearly so bad).

Sadly, I returned to find that my paternal uncle, Don, had passed away after his struggle with cancer. He went peacefully with his wife and daugther at his side, which is as much as one could ask for. Don was an intelligent and sensitive man, with a strong sense of social justice. I wish I had taken the time to get to know him better before he got sick - in retrospect we had much in common. Because Don was something of a serial guest in the newspapers’ letters section, I thought that it would be fitting to honour his passing with one of my own. I’m sure he would have liked it.

The Melbourne International Film Festival was on last month. The program was a good deal better this year than the last couple, with a strong showing of the New Asian Cinema that I love. Due to my disorganisation and procrastination, I only got to see two films, but a few of the others that I want to see are heading for theatrical release anyway.

The first of these films was Silmido (this link is to the IMDB page which is pretty content-free, but more intelligible than the Korean or Japanese advertising pages, both of which require horrid Flash™). Silmido was based on a true story of a South Korean incident, where an assassination attempt by a North Korean commando squad provoked the government to return the favour, by assembling a squad of death-row inmates. The movie follows their brutal training on the eponymous island of Silmido, their betrayal by the government (who belatedly realised that death squads are frowned upon in the democratic world) and the havoc that unfolds when they escape. The story was told using a mix of styles: prison movie, war movie, political thriller and Peking opera slapstick. The film reflected upon the redemption of the prisoners, most of whom embraced the second chance offered to them. I won’t risk spoiling the film by describing their betrayal and the consequences, because I recommend that you see it for yourself. I am still wondering about some misogynist undertones that I couldn’t quite figure out: the only two depictions of women were as Mother and Rape Victim. The only thing that was slightly awry was the soundtrack, which was a bit too “Pirates of the Caribbean” for a little too long - it worked during the amazing action sequences, but not so well at other moments. Despite this, a great film: 8.5/10.

The other film that I saw was Nine Souls a sort of Japenese existential road-movie. It had a really good soundtrack, but was a little slow in parts (and a little long). It follows a gang of Nine prison escapees as they seek first a stash of counterfeit money, but ultimately atonement or release for their crimes. I still haven’t figured all of its symbology out to my satisfaction. 8/10. (I’m not doing this film justice with this short blurb, I’ll try to update it later when I have more time).

The images of torture from the US and British prisons in Iraq are terrifying. Beyond the awful degradation and torture they depict, and the shame and anger they must induce in the Arab world, they represent a shocking Western Democracy’s hypocrisy. How can we pretend to stand on the high moral ground when we (our governments, whether we voted for them or not) condone and perpetuate such things? Those, typically right-wing commentators, who seek to draw some sort of moral equivalence between the prison atrocities and the hideous murder of Nick Berg miss the point - Al Qaeda doesn’t pretend to be a moral organisation.

Beyond the symbolic dimension, the practical ramifications of this are equally scary. The US senator Diane Feinstein sums it up perfectly, “If somebody wanted to plan a clash of civilisations, this is how they’d do it.” (Maureen Dowd, How to plan a clash of civilisations, The Age 14-05-2004). The highly sexual nature (almost S&M) of the “softening up” techniques used on the prisoners will be optimally offensive to the Muslim world and will therefore act as a perfect catalyst for another round of radicalisation and recruitment to extremist groups.

The US, British and Australian governments have succeeded in turning the “War on terror” from a fight with an unhinged organisation into an ideological battle with a movement. Every ham-fisted attempt to stomp on local manifestations of this movement infect more with its nihilistic ideology. All my hubristic hopes that the 21st century would be more enlightened and less blood soaked than the 20th are fading rapidly. I simply do not see a tenable way out of this - even without politicians using terror for short-term political capital, every attack will further polarise the general public (hmm, this sounds familiar.)

I have just finished watching Fulltime Killer, the Hong Kong action movie starring the ubiquitous Andy Lau (who has appears to have a flash game, which I can’t play because I don’t use flash). This is easily the best Hong Kong action movie that I have seen since my favourite Hard Boiled. It covers all the familiar themes in such movies: sexual tension, romance, woman as pawn, woman as killer, struggle between cop and assassin, rivalry between killers, betrayal and the Final Showdown. I don’t care whether the film is subservient to the genre, because it was so classily executed (pun!). 9/10.

The Melbourne winter is well and truely upon us and my desire to do any outdoor activity is pretty much gone. Instead I have been occupying myself closer to the indoor heater. I’m reading Gary Chartrand’s Introductory Graph Theory, which I can say is one of the best pieces of written mathematical pedagogy I have come across.

I have also been hacking OpenBSD a bit more, fixing a bunch of OpenSSH bugs and adding PF table support to the new BGP daemon, so it can be used to distribute real-time spam blacklists. I’m thinking of writing a paper on this for AUUG2004, if I get time.

Last night we watched Kill Bill Volume 1 (finally). Perhaps I swalloed too much hype, but I wasn’t terribly impressed. It was a good film, but it was somewhat let down by its overdone sound effects and its hagiographic treatment of Uma Therman. Still, 8/10 isn’t bad.

Quote of the week goes to Rich: “Heidegger was a Nazi writing in Ancient Greek because it was the language of the great philosophers; he was such a tosser.”