lightning strikes twice

starring Chris Cooper and Ryan Phillipe

Based on the story of Robert Hanssen, an American FBI agent who spied for sixteen years, selling secrets to the Russians.  While building a case against him, the FBI brings in Ryan Phillipe to be their man close to the action.  Initially they don’t reveal their reasons, but in the end they have to, and he sees his boss in a new light.

Not a bad spy thriller.  Hard to keep the tension up in a genre that’s been done a million times, but they pulled it off pretty well by keeping it quite real, and dispensing with the cliches (mostly).

7/10

I never, never, never play computer games, but this is addictive, totally: Desktop Tower Defense. Like a twenty first century lemmings or something.

Joe’s Goals has become an invaluable tool for me when it comes to building new habits… like flossing.  Seriously, I have never flossed in my entire life, but when I went to the dentist (for the first time in four years), she really hassled me about it.  If it wasn’t for ticking that little box on Joe’s Goals everyday, I don’t think I’d have the flossing habit.  Mundane, yes, but probably also good for me too.

Vaguely interesting article on what those people are doing all day: The mystery of the daytime idle: Why aren’t you working?

Georg Dreyman and Christa-Maria Sieland are a writer and actress in socialist East Germany in the early 80′s. Their unknown rival is Mr Wiesler, an ambitious and stoutly committed socialist member of the State Security Service (or Stasi). As his surveillance of ‘the lives of others’ unfolds, we see a divergence between his ambition and that of his superior Grubitz, and also glimpses into the life of a powerful minister in this sort of regime.

The film presented such a foreign and unknown atmosphere, and was obviously confronting for an Australian audience that takes freedom for granted. It was a jarring, but also very ‘human’ film.

8/10

What a manic day, up at 5am to trawl a whole heap of clothes and stuff out to Kirribilli markets just under the Harbour Bridge.  It’s so manic there at 6am, there are people tearing through your bags of unopened clothing trying to find the best things (usually shop owners out to restock — wifey swore that she sold some stuff back to the same shop owner she’d bought it from before).  Then after that is another 8 hours of sitting around and dealing with general market shenanigans.  Was actually quite fun.  Wouldn’t want to do it every weekend, but there are worse things than sitting with a gorgeous view, amongst fellow Sydney-siders on a warmish late-autumn Saturday afternoon.   The only downside was the stupid, stupid old eastern-european woman who tried to rip us off (and sort of did), not once, but TWICE in the one day.

Awesome jumpsuit!

Neat way of using touch to change desktops on MacBook Pro (from lifehacker):

Changing Desktops on Macbook

Watched The Fog of War last night, a documentary focused on lengthy interviews the filmmaker Errol Morris conducted with Robert McNamara in May 2001.  I knew absolutely nothing about McNamara before the film, but left very impressed with his ability to sort out the real issues from the distractions and his steadfast belief in quantitative approaches.  After doing some more reading on him after the film, it seems some feel he should shoulder a large portion of blame for the Vietnam war, but it seemed to me he had a pragmatic and logical approach to the nasty business of conflict.  Errol Morris extracted “11 lessons” from the interviews, but the only ones that really stick with me are “Get the data!” and sometimes rationality doesn’t make sense.

Anyway, good viewing.

8/10

The NBA has done the stupid thing and suspended Stoudamire and Diaw for Game 5 of the Spurs/Suns series.  Looks like Robert Horry’s unsportsmanlike foul worked out well for him huh?  Dirty, boring cheats.

Steve Kerr has a good wrap up