On Inception - an amateur critique

Like many armies of movie goers, I saw Inception last evening and was ... not disappointed. I can't say the movie was good, but I think I can say it was not bad either.

Here's a trailer:


WARNING: Spoilers ahead.

I found it to be a combination of some opposed styles, combining on one side the exploration of the mind through dreams and symbols with Matrix-style effects and Mission Impossible-style action.

While it's a good combination of styles, none of them prevailed, and each style was sacrificed somewhat  in favor of the others. As such you have a movie that could have been a great effects-movie (but it's a bit too convoluted for that), a great action movie (but it's a bit too convoluted for that also) and a great psychological movie (but it's too action-packed for that).

Also, the trailer makes you think the movie is about the power of an idea. It's not (well ... it is about that, to the degree that say ... Ronin was about the power of a suitcase - that is to say, not at all).


I liked a few themes in it (the "going deeper" in the subconscious by entering a dream within a dream for example). Maybe I found it interesting because it sounds like a plausible hypnosis technique (I'm not sure).

I also liked the symbols (though some were repetitive and simplistic), the ending, some of the dialogues and I especially liked the idea put-forward at the end:

Mal (a figure within Cobb's subconscious) tells Cobb that maybe his reality is the dream because it's implausible for nameless corporations to chase you all over the globe - it sounds too much like a dream.

This idea, striking to Cobb at the time, seems to support one of the possible interpretations of the ending of the movie.

I also found the idea that at the deepest subconscious level there's a common ground very ... attractive. It gives you something to think about (if nothing else).

What I didn't like about the movie was ... well for one, I would have expected Cobb to actually be an expert in the mind (considering the movie starts by portraying him as such). Instead, he appeared more like an action man who "knows all the tricks".

Cobb: I know how to find secrets from your Mind, I know all the tricks!

(see? :-D)


First, there's not much about those tricks in the movie. There's the Totem idea (actually that was quite good), the idea of things being hidden in symbols of safety (a safe within a house within a house and a safe within a wall and a safe within a fortified fortress? I mean ... subtle much?). Then you just have some veiled references and explanations in conversations that didn't touch on much of anything (some explanations on how the mind builds the dreamscape, why you shouldn't change somebody else's dreamscape endlessly and so on).

Through the movie, Ariadne - a beginner in the field trained by him - trumps him over and over again; and ... err ... Ariadne constructs mazes. It must have been a coincidence.

In this light, it seemed like, while Cobb knew all the tricks, he was not so much of an expert on "all things mind". He also ignored the problems in his own mind to such a blatant degree that he risked ruining mission after mission (the first mission is complicated by his issues, the second even more so, and we're left to understand this had been going on for a while), while the most important thing in his real-life (living with his kids) was at stake. I understand having a troubled past and living with your own demons, but this looks a bit like a plot-hole, or like dilettantism on Cobb's side.

Second, the mind-scape issue is also lacking a bit and incomplete. I found a much better exploration of the subconscious and symbols the mind creates in What Dreams May Come for example.

While the movie abounds in dream-specific symbols and items (a spinner that goes on and on in a dream, the coherence of reality being broken, heavy rain because the dreamer had to go to the bathroom, or walls that squeeze you while you struggle to get through) any dream-like feeling is completely missing. There are other movies that manage it way better (see the tensioned atmosphere in Lester Burnham's dream in American Beauty, or Mary Lomax' dream in The Devil's Advocate). Such an atmosphere would have probably detracted from the intense action though, so it was probably sacrificed (if it was even considered).

Third, there was the whole "going deeper in the subconscious than anyone else in the whole world, and synchronizing three things falling at the same time and at different speeds, and in three different dream levels, by three different people with Robert break into his own mind to construct a false idea in a way his own subconscious will not reject" thingy. Did I mention convoluted? I thought I did.

I had two friends ask me "Did you understand anything?" the moment we met outside the cinema. I understand the question is being asked by others who saw the movie also.

All in all it was an entertaining movie for me. If you want an action movie (that's not about the power of an idea - as the trailer suggests) but more about Mission Impossible-style action using Matrix-style effects in convoluted overlaid dream-scapes, go and see it.

It was entertaining.

At Nemo33, Bruxelles

First dive at Nemo 33, Bruxelles.

You don't need an insulation suit, or any weights. The visibility is perfect and the environment is great for exercises. A dive takes around 40-50 minutes (max - in our case it was 27 minutes) and costs 22 Euros.

Dive data for the dive:
Time In: 12:24
Time Out: 12:51
Max Depth: 11.4m

Water temperature: high (no insulation suit needed)
Weights: none (no insulation suit, 12L steel)
Visibility: perfect

Air consumption (12L):
In: 180 BAR
Out: 100 BAR

on forgiveness

In ultimate analysis, your choice to make is between being right and being happy.
(excerpt from "The Book of Utnapistim", which is not yet written)

Forgiveness is not something you do for another but something you do for yourself. I am talking here of the exact moment when you let go of all the pain, of all the anger and resentments and your shoulders drop suddenly. You all of a sudden feel very relieved and ... possibly happy again.

It is a moment of great release.

This kind of forgiveness is not about accepting everything that happens to you, or letting someone walk over you - in fact you should remove yourself from a situation where you get hurt as soon as possible. What I am talking about is not clinging to the pain after you've been hurt.

Forgiveness is the awesome power to let go of what happened, to be fresh again in the next moment. This is one of the keys of lasting happiness.

When seen from this angle, forgiveness is the opposite of letting someone walk all over you. It is a way of saying "my life is not about <whatever hurt me>". In fact, what happened matters so little that I have already gotten over it - it just doesn't matter in the long run.

In the end, this king of forgiveness is simply the right perspective to go with.

This forgiveness begins with acceptance - with the unconditional acceptance of the situation as it is now. If you were hurt, accept you were hurt. If you are angry about it, accept your anger.

Accepting means that you will stop rationalizing it, justifying it, thinking about what happened, spinning it, reinterpreting and going over it again and again, thinking <what ifs>, and <I should have>s, making scenarios, explaining it in your head, and generally all that jazz*.

We do this all the time: some event makes us feel pain, then we spin it in our heads for minutes (the lucky ones), for days (that would be ... me) or - in the worst cases - for years to come. Instead of moving on, your whole existence becomes "about that".

I don't mean that it's bad to keep it going, or that you should or shouldn't or any such crap.

It's just that this kind of suffering comes from what is basically clinging to your own pain and what you get out of the whole process is just more pain (although while you're at it, it may look like some kind of "justice", some form of "I was injured", or "poor me", a settling of accounts or proving yourself right). In the end, clinging to your pain is just more pain (just like getting revenge, in the ultimate analysis is just more pain).

In the end the key to forgiveness is this: look at all the hurt and face it like an upstanding human being (to the degree that there is such a thing as an upstanding human being). Embrace all the pain you may feel with all that you are at this moment.

When you do this, your tension towards it is gone, and you may come to realize something startling: you're not actually that hurt, it's not as bad as it seemed while you were fighting it and it is in fact quite small; You may even discover it's insignificant.

When you are here, forgiveness has already happened (and no, nobody walked over you in the process).

---

* Come to think of it, jazz is actually quite nice. Don't go starting to associate it with mental pain now.

Change is Good

This is my last day in this company. I was hired for two projects here, both of which were successes (methinks) and now it's time to depart.

I will have to clear my browser cache, my local files (I kept my CV in My Documents and all that), and I will have to make sure I didn't leave any incriminating papers on my desk (err ... not that I'd have anything to hide - I mean).

Seriously though, as strange as it may sound, I will miss the one hour drive to office every morning (I drove with the window open as I came uphill this morning, to catch the morning's fresh air in the small forest).

I will also miss the too-sweet-not-warm-enough-cappuccino made by the machine down the hall and these guys that I've known for three months, and whose jokes I still don't understand (as they speak French among themselves and they speak too fast for me to understand).

Through all that, I have this feeling of change, of new beginnings.

I still have no idea where I'll be Monday morning, but at this point it doesn't matter.

Change is good.

The Dark Side ... of Your Resumé

If you were to look at my resumé, youd' see a lot of wonderful things:

It says I have ten years of experience in IT and five years working with C++.

It sais I have a very varied experience, having worked with performance-critical apps, multi-server systems, cryptography, security protocol design and some others.

It's designed to make you feel you know what I'm talking about, after you have read it.

Here's what my resumé won't say:
I also have experience with having to maintain inefficient crap that should have never seen the light of day.

I've maintained over-engineered code, redundant and dead code and generally things that should have been rejected, before seeing the light of source control. To be fair, I've also written that kind of code, mainly in my first two-three years as a software developer.

I have seen obvious mistakes being made in early design that were taken all the way to implementation and maintenance because (probably) someone didn't want to admit their mistakes.

I've seen code that was so ugly that it survived only because those who saw it's ugliness for ugliness were not mad enough to touch it, and the others who were not savvy enough to recognize the ugliness just didn't bother.

I have been asked to stay over the weekend to fix my mistakes, or (in the last years) someone else's mistakes in design (as I tend to learn a bit from mine - as slowly as I sometimes do).

My resumé doesn't say all that, and it will not, because the software engineers who understand that aspect of the job, do not participate much in the hiring process.

Instead you have to impress the others: the ones not savvy enough to understand - either the managers, or the people we tend to talk about over a beer ("I have this guy at work who ...").

Very seldom will you see the hiring decisions being touched by the people that will be actually affected by those decisions, the people that you will be directly working with.

In the last company I worked with, I was interviewed by my would-be manager - the technical guy I was to be dirrectly under, once I passed the interview.

I was lucky that way.

Most of the times, in order to get hired, you need to put on a suit (that you will not wear past the interview) and your best business face, then speak to somebody that evaluates your skills based on your own description and the amount of achronyms on your CV (my CV says I've done OOA/D and maintained a HP/HA server system with a MTBF of a year or so).

In a typical interview you will probably speak to somebody that is interested in the business side only, or that has (at best) seen some code a few years ago. The only apport technical people have in these jobs is (maybe) to advise the management on a test they should give to potential candidates.

In the cases where you have a technical interview it is usually the second (that is, if you pass the non-technical one).

Sadly most companies dismiss the best developers at the interview stage (because if they were able to speak business they'd be business people, not developers).

not a zen koan

These are all things I've done before: the thoughts, the actions, the gestures, the ideas, the aspirations, the wishes, the illusions of illusion and truth, the sensations, the search, the questions and the answers.

I'm trapped in the iron circle, and the only exit is through the middle of a puzzle, burned to ashes, scattered by the wind and washed away by rain.

Where is my exit now?

I got lost again.

It's tiring

This is tiring: we've been to the Golden Triangle today. We went to Laos and the guys drank snake whiskey, we have a plane in the morning and had one three days ago to get to Chiang Mai.

I rode an elephant, had strange (but good) food each day and experienced Thai massage.

It's a tiring trip ;)

No substance / random update

Well, G, it seems I haven't posted anything of substance on this blog lately (that is, in the last year or so).

I figured it's high time I did something about it, started this post, then realized that this post will actually not increase the general noise-to-signal ratio on the blog (yeah, I'm full of myself).

Let's see:

• I'm starting work in a week or so. It's a relatively large consulting umbrella company dispatching consultants to various clients.
I am moving forward with all this and I finally feel I'm making some progress (yeah, it's all subjective).

• My focus shifted somewhat:
I'm no longer doing any shamanic work, reiki is at the moment suspended (I still watch my awareness from time to time though) but I started looking into more concrete and down-to-earth things (something that was missing in my oh-so-spiritual life).

• I'm preparing for a trip to Thailand.
It's an idea that was taken at the wrong moment (or is that the right moment afterall? I can never tell) from a financial and organizational point of view, something that I jumped right into without thinking much. These kinds of decisions have their place I guess.

• I am back into photography,
having taken the lead in organizing the photography meetups in Bruxelles.

• I'd like to get into Aikido again,
but that's very much a matter of opportunity right now.

There's a bunch of other stuff going on, but I'll post some of that later on.

Maybe.

Best Food I've Ever Made

The Knoblauchcremesuppe (Austrian Garlic Cream Soup) is the best food I've ever made (just finished eating it).

Here's the recipe:

For the chicken stock (for vegetarians, the recipe can be made with vegetable stock instead):
- some chicken bones/pieces (approximately 2-300 grams)
- two bay leaves
- olive oil
- two tablespoons of salt
- one large onion
- 1 liter of water.

For the soup:
- eight large cloves of garlic
- one small onion
- one tablespoon of butter
- parsley
- two tablespoons of flour (though I think I should have added more)
- two slices of bread (for croûtons)

Making the chicken stock

Dice the onion, and cut the chicken to small (2cm) pieces.

Fry the onion in olive oil for 2-3 minutes (stirring occasionally) over a medium/large fire until it starts to become brown; then, remove from the fire.

Fry the chicken pieces of chicken until the meat becomes white, then add the onion, cover, reduce to the smallest fire possible and leave to fry for 20 minutes.

Parallely, bring the water to boiling (start boiling the water when the chicken still has 5 minutes left).

When the chicken has been fried for 20 minutes, add it to the boiling water along with the salt and the bay leaves, then leave it boiling over a large fire for twenty minutes.

When finished, strain it to separate all solids (they are not needed). The liquid is apparently called chicken stock.

Making the soup

Chop the garlic and onion to very small pieces (alternately, the garlic can be crushed).

Melt the butter over small fire, then add the garlic and onion, and fry them over a very small fire (otherwise the garlic burns and the soup is ruined) for ten minutes.

Add the flour in very small doses with small quantities of milk (stirring continuously) so that the flour is mixed homogeneously, then add the chicken stock, the parsley and the rest of the milk and bring it to boiling.

While the soup boils, cut the bread to pieces and fry it to make the croûtons.

Then, enjoy!

A Global Poll

It is said that at one point, the UN decided they would do a world-wide poll, using the question According to your personal opinion, is there a lack of food in the rest of the world?

Apparently the poll failed, because:

• In Africa nobody understood the word food
• In China, nobody understood the phrase your personal opinion
• In Germany nobody understoon the meaning of the word lack
• In the USA nobody understood the meaning of the words the rest of the world

four forty-two in the afternoon

It's four forty-two in the afternoon and it's raining outside.

I've been reading all day, except for some emails I sent and making something to eat.

I was cleaning my years just now, with the last cotton bud in the box and suddenly, I had this clear sensation of an end and a beginning. I'm not sure what those represent, if they represent anything more than an impression in my mind. And end to what? A beginning of what?

Isn't it strange to think about a new beginning in a random moment like that?

It's like the first moment of consciousness in somebody sleeping, or the first spark of light in the darkness.

Seing is Believing ...

... or, How I Got Repeatedly Duped in Egypt.

A few years ago, I visited Egypt, along with a group of friends. We went with an organized tour and were taken by a professional guide, to see the Pyramids and the Sphynx, the National Museum of Egyptology, the Nile and a bunch of shops we weren't interested in. These shops are what I wanted to touch upon:

We saw leather shops, Egyptian parchment shops, volatile essences shops and a few other shops that our guide insisted were a good idea, but that we didn't really want to see. In all these shops, we also bought a lot of things we didn't need (parchment spelling our names or reproducing writing from the Pyramids, essential oils and so on).

It went like this: we were angry with the guide for bringing us to the last shop. He would insist we still have one to see, we would go into it determined that we wouldn't buy anything at all and we would exit the shops half an hour later, having bought new stuff and happy about it. It would take us between a few minutes and an hour to realize we had been duped again.

I tried to realize how these guys did it: how did they convince a bunch of strangers that buying that crap was a good idea and how did they do it so reliably?

Now, a few years later, I may have found an answer in reading Why You Can’t Help Believing Everything You Read.

Apparently, absorbing information is done in two separate steps:

• First, you comprehend and believe what you hear. That is, all in one step; seeing really is believing.
• Second, you think about it in critical terms (eventually confront the information with what you already knew or with new information) and determine it's validity.

This means that if you don't have the time (or inclination) to think about it, you just absorb it as "fact", as the way things are. This not only explains what happened to us all those years ago in Egypt (the shop keepers sat us down, and talked continuously, not giving us time to think about it), it also explains some hypnosis techniques (create more than one thread for the attention of the subject to focus on, then use one of them for your purposes), why charismatic people get their message across easier and a bunch of other things.

Now, take the time to think about this :-)

South Park - A Christian Critique

The internets have proven time and time again to be an inexhaustible source of fun.

In today's installment of the stupiamusing things you might find on the internet, we'll be talking about movie critique (Christianity-influenced).

These guys critique South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, from a Christian perspective. At least they try to - I found the critique to be ridiculous and funny, not Christian (except for the references to the bible and imagining of devils casting souls into the fire - or something).

I don't usually care for things such as these, but I found this one hilarious and wanted to share it with the world (along with some comments).

Here are some excerpts:

South Park is an incredibly dangerous movie for those who do not understand or are developing an understanding of the Gospel ....... INCREDIBLY dangerous. Some of the scenes in South Park reminded me so much of the image of demons screeching and dancing around a boiling cauldron as Satan gleefully looks on from the background as the demons pitch soul after soul after soul into the burning cauldron..

This is so full of FAIL I don't even know where to start. The scenes just made me laugh though.

Hussein waves his disembodied male member around. And it was not a cardboard drawing like most other images of the movie -- it was of photographic resolution.

Oh noes! Children watching the movie might see a P-E-N-I-S ... err ... I meant a disembodied male member! NOOOOOOOO!!!!!
Get a hint guys! Half of the population on this globe has one. The other half will see one by the time they are twenty (if they are educated and lucky enough, or uneducated and unlucky enough).

And you cannot imagine the depths of the influence of this sort of entertainment! In the months that followed our posting of this analysis report we received thousands of emails from adolescents who have seen this movie and spoke just like it. [...] And some people actually believe movies do not influence kids.

First, it doesn't take a big effort to imagine people influenced by what they hear. Why, it's only been a few centuries since people (influenced by the church) burned people alive for being afraid of them, just to eradicate them (in the case of Jews), justified slavery with a biblical story and killed people in the name of love.

Second, to believe the people writing you hate-mail are using vulgar language because they saw the movie and that's the whole reason implies a level of naivety that is startling.

That's all about the actual review.

The guys apparently also have a scale called WISDOM to rate movies on. Sounds nice?

It stands for:

• Wanton Violence/Crime
  
• Impudence/Hate
  
• Sex/Homosexuality
  
• Drugs/Alcohol
  
• Offense to God
  
• Murder/Suicide

Wisdom is not quite the best acronym for that. Guys from CAP, trust me on that!

Like a River

An old zen master was on his dieing bed, surrounded by his disciples. He prepared to speak and everybody waited in silence.

He said: After years of investigation, I can certainly tell you that wisdom is like a river.

After a minute, one student broke the silence and asked: Master, forgive me, but what does that mean "wisdom is like a river"?

Ok, the master said - it's not like a river.

Then he died.

Midnight Ramblings - and the Half-Blood Prince

It's midnight and I felt the need to write. I'm not sure why; maybe I needed somebody to listen to my thoughts and ramblings and there was nobody available. It doesn't matter much 'why' I guess.

We went and saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince tonight (just got home). I found it entertaining (in the same way I used to find fan fiction entertaining), but the party I was with, got bored.

I can see where they're coming from: the movie is a continuation of the previous one, and ends by opening the path to the action in the last book of the Harry Potter series. Thus, you have no introduction at the beginning and no ending at the end and the characters are completely unknown if you haven't seen the previous ones.

I wanted to post some more random stuff (like "hey, when I go to sleep I like standing in the dark in my room and watching the clouds pass by in the sky outside") but I'm getting sleepy, tomorrow is a long day, and it's around my usual bed time.

As such, good night and all that.
Pleasant dreams!
utnapistim

Going Through the Photography Backlog

I came home two hours ago and I don't feel like sleeping. Thus, I am using this occasion to go over my photography backlog and process some pictures:

Please Rephrase

Removing the hostiles
collateral damage
remove the target
hit a target
remove the threat
... and I'm tired of the bullshit.

If you happen to channel-surf over Discovery Channel (and some others) while documentaries on weapons are playing, you are bound to hear one or more of the expressions above.

These shows try to show you how cool new weapons are, how advanced their technology, and how they are superior, while glossing over a simple truth: they are perfected for killing people.

All of the euphemisms above mean the exact same thing: killing people. The problem we have here is "killing people" doesn't sound cool, and it's more difficult to have a show on how cool the weapons are, if we actually put on the table that they are better tools for killing people. Instead, it's "we protect our country" [that usually means the US, since the guys in the shows I've seen are American].

I'm not arguing here that these weapons are not helping in the protection of your country (whatever that may be). I'm sure they help, but cut the bullshit! They are killing instruments.

It's not cool that you have them, it's sad that you may need them.

A Letter from Bill Gates

BoycottNovell has a posting on a letter on strategy, written by Bill Gates. The spin they put on the story is on how Bill Gates is afraid of linux, but I want to focus on something else: is it interesting?

First, a small paranthesis: Is the letter authentic?

I'd say yes, for the following reasons:
1. I'm not very familiar with BoycottNovell and their sources of information, but from what I've read of the letter (provided in it's entirety in the article) I would say that it's either authentic, or whoever made it is very insightfull and has lots of "vision".

2. If they published a fake letter, they be very open to attacks (which would only serve them in the short run - publicity stunt/shock value/whatever).

The letter talks (among other things) about linux and java being Windows' largest competitors and the need to preventing commodization by linux (you may be too late on that) about taking good ideas for improvement from a variety of sources, about a major overhaul of the file/storage system (the points being made there sounded to me both revolutionary and obvious at the same time), about a need (stated explicitely) to improve system monitoring enough to be better than on linux, difficulty of setting up windows for a speciffic purpose, unifying the application platform technologies to win back Java and J2EE developers, improving Windows boot time and improving asynchronous communication (email, Gmail, CRM, scheduling, etc) - maybe they should take a look at Google Wave.

All in all it's an interesting letter, and if they manage to achieve all that, it will make for interesting times.

A Recipe I Tried Today

This is a recipe that I kind of stole, by watching while it was made, in La Bocca restaurant, in Limassol:

What you need (for two persons):

• pasta
• 200 grams of sour creme
• 50 grams of smoked salmon
• olive oil
• one egg
• a spoon-full of dill (preferably fresh)

First, the pasta is boiled separately, then dried.

For the sauce, use a big pan(preferably a wok).

First, dice the salmon into smaller pieces, and the dill into small pieces. Then heat the pan, pour the oil inside and drop the salmon in oil, to fry (it tends to stick to the pan, so you apparently need to stir it somewhat).

Once it's fried, drop the sour creme, then the dill, add a bit of salt and stir. Once it's homogeneous, you can leave it unattended for a few seconds, so it's a good time to separate the egg yoke, add it, and stir again.

About ten seconds after mixing in the egg yoke, add the pasta (that's why you needed a big pan :) ), stir, then turn off the heat and serve immediately.

I'm sure the recipe is not new or anything, but it's the first time I made it and it was great, so I thought I'd share.

Total time required: time to boil the pasta, plus two extra minutes.