Well, I bit the bullet and made a decision. (wait for appluase)

Thanks to a comment from someone at the Gallery team, I decided to go with the Gallery software for setting up a photo gallery. It was a breeze to install. Now I’ve just got to learn how to use the crazy thing.

I spent all afternoon yesterday processing photos from my 2005 New England Disc Golf Odyssey with Ken so that I could present them in a nice album. Next step is to upload the photos and configure the albums.

I’ll let y’all know when things are available. In the meantime, it’s fun!

School has now started, and we’re headed smack dab into Labor Day, so I guess it’s safe to say that summer is over, regardless of what the equinoxes (equinoxi?) have to say about it. I began the season with a firm determination to write full-scale reviews of all the movies I saw this summer, but then two things happened. First, I didn’t actually see that many films. No costumed crusaders, no blockbuster books turned into dud movies, not even animated vroom-vrooms. Nope, none. In fact, if you include MI:3, I only took in six summer movies–and only two of those were sequels. Now, my friend Jeffrey Overstreet, film critic extraordinaire, tells me that I didn’t really miss anything. And I believe him.

So, what I thought I’d do is provide a short digest of the films I did see:

• Mission Impossible:III
  MI:3 was actually sorta fun. It certainly shouldn’t be remembered past this summer, and truthfully, even now, I’m getting a bit fuzzy on the details. But Hoffman seemed to be having fun not talking with a lisp, and the director even tried to have a tiny shred of a story in amidst all the bang-bangs.
• Wordplay
  Saw this in Chicago with our friend Katrine. It was such a wonderful thing to see people doing something they truly love. The film itself wasn’t the best documentary I’ve ever seen–there were too many things that it didn’t address, like how they come up with clues–but Creadon does a nice job interspersing interviews with the story of the crossword puzzle competition. Calling a film inspirational is usually a proper kiss of death, but Wordplay inspires by showing you people who are inspired without telling you that you should be inspired. In the end, I walked out of the theater wanting to rush out and buy The New York Times so that I could do the puzzle.
• A Scanner Darkly
  There wasn’t alot story-wise in this film that we haven’t seen in other adaptations of Philip Dick stories (Minority Report, Blade Runner, Total Recall) except that it’s ending is perhaps even more cynical than those others. Robert Downey Jr. absolutely steals the show whenever he’s onscreen. I’m not sure he doesn’t unbalance the whole thing actually. Woody Harrleson does his usual druggy thing, but when he and Downey Jr. get going, the pair is really a hoot. Keanu is, well, Keanu.

  The big buzz around this film was less about the story than about the filming technique. The actors were filmed, and then the shots were digitially animated. I’ve had two conversations since seeing it about whether or not the animation detracted from the story or was even necessary. Certainly, the funky camo suits required the animation (and were pretty cool), but the general look of the film had a pulsing quality that caused me more than once to get lost watching the pretty lights rather than be engrossed in the story. In that sense, the technology got in the way of the film and turned it into something of a “gee, whiz! Look what they can do with computers.” sort of deal.

• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
  First, let me emphatically state that Sherry and I are big fans of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. That said, Sherry was thoroughly disenchanted with the film, found it dull, and never cares to see it ever, ever again. I certainly thought it was inferior to the first Pirates, but had a bit more tolerance for it overall. Why were we less than thrilled? On the most basic level, the film lacks the punch and wit of the first. Even taken on its own merits, the film suffers the same malady that we can see in the Matrix sequels, the Star Wars prequels, and PJ’s King Kong: the filmmakers get so wrapped up in their set pieces that they let them go on way too long so that they can show off their nifty special effects. How much time do we really need to spend on a swordfight on a mill-wheel? My guess is that it’s about 33% less than they do. The result is that the story grinds to a halt whenever the effects kick in. The most lively part of of the whole film was at the end when ….. Arrgh! I shouldn’t say.
• The Descent
  The Descent is probably the best horror flick I’ve seen in a good long while. No, it doesn’t really break any new ground (heh), but it tackles the people-on-a-trip-getting-into-more-trouble-then-they-ever-dreamed scenario with great panache. In the end, it does for spelunking what Jaws did for the ocean, and isn’t that a wonderful thing? What sells the movie is that the characters–5 women adventurers–never do anything that stretches the credulity of the viewer. Yes, it’s clear that these are extremely fit and trained outdoorsy types, but they don’t suddenly have the ability to leap 70 feet over a crevasse.

  I’ve heard it said that in this type of fiction, you get one thing that the audience will accept in order for the story to progress. Any more than that and you risk stomping on the good will of their “willing suspension of disbelief.” In this film, the only thing that we’re asked to accept is the existence of the cave creatures. Beyond that, everything is plausible.

  Besides, who can’t get on board with a good Carrie homage?

• Snakes on a Plane
  Ok. Yes. We succumbed to our desire to see Samuel L. Jackson get revved up like only he can. There’s really no other reason to see this film other than to watch Jackson go into Jules mode. Oh, and seeing Julianna Margulies with straight hair was interesting as well.

  Other than that? Well, you see, there’s this airplane. And there’s these snakes, poisonus snakes, lots and lots of poisonous snakes. And then, well, kind of like the chocolate and peanut butter of a Reese’s PB Cup, the two tastes taste great together. So, we put the snakes ONTO the plane. Get it?

  My friend Ken wrote a good review of the film explaining why we really don’t care about anything that happens in the film and why no one is going to care what people writing about the film are going to say about it. He’s right, you know. There’s snakes. There’s a plane. What more do you need to know?

Well, that’s it. That is the sum total of theatrical film releases that I’ve seen this summer. It’s a bit sad, I know. Next up: a digest of my Netflix consumption for the summer, which isn’t all that much more impressive.

Just got back from the 2nd Tiffin Open. I mean, I think it’s the second if we count the big course opening event that occured around the same time last year. At any rate, considering it wasn’t a rated even and there were competing events going on in Toledo and Cincy, we had a great turnout–43 players. There were enough women for a women’s division and 2 juniors. These are all good signs for the growth of the sport.

Oh, how did I do? Well, I didn’t shoot my best, BUT there were several positive things about my performance today:

• Unlike my usual pattern, I played consistently. I shot a 65 and a 64 (19 hole rounds).
• In both rounds, I had some really rough spots early in the round, but I was able to pull things together mentally and finish strong. In fact, in the second round, the whole card was doing rather poorly,but I was able to recover and win the card.
• Part of pulling things together mentally was playing smart under pressure. There were a few sticky situations I got into that I ended up saving par or only bogeying due to taking the safe out rather than trying to thrash around in the brush. Thanks, Ken, for teaching me that wisdom.
• I won 2 CTP’s during the second round, and both CTP shots turned into birdies for me. My drive on #6 was the best I’d ever shot the hole. Thanks Mr. Gazelle and Mr. Beast for flying straight and true.
• In the end, I finished 5th in my division, which put me in the top 25%, and I was only about 4-5 strokes out of the money.

All in all, it was a pretty good day. In addition to the Millenium Aurora I received as part of my player package, my CTP’s yielded my a Millenium EXP1 and a nifty T-shirt. Some day, I’d like to shoot below 60 in a tourney, but I’m going home happy.

Hopefully later I’ll be able to post at least a group picture.

Q: Where did King Arthur park his camels?
A: In a camel-lot.

Yup, that’s right. The Truffins, along with at least 4 other TU faculty, are heading off to Camelot, er, Spam-a-lot. The Broadway spectacular is coming to Cleveland in October, and we’ve got (nosebleed) tickets–we’re not made of money, you know. There’s gonna be singing and rubber chickens and watery tarts. Maybe even a spanking. We’re very excited.

So, in tweaking the look and feel of truffin.com I decided to try out a growing usage in the punctuation of cyberspace: the bracketed word instead of the symbol. You can see it in action up near the top of the page and in the title bar of your browser. Yup, there it is, [dot]. We pronounce it “dot” so why not spell it out?

I must say that it looks a tad bit “precious” to me. Not sure I like it. What do you, vast millions of readers, have to say about it?

[dot] or . ?

Today Sherry and I joined Wade and several of his friends and their relations at the 2006 Bucyrus Bratwurst Festival.

You can read all about it and the deep-fried Twinkie on its own special page. Don’t miss the photo of Miss Ox Roast Festival!

2006 Bucyrus Bratwurst Festival

According to the 1990 Census, roughly 0% of the U.S. population has the last name Truffin, and we rank 66,997th out of 88,779.

Can’t wait to see the 2000 numbers. Will we go up or down?

So, I get home from a somewhat frustrating doubles round of DG. How two guys shooting fairly well can still combine for a +2 is something I’ll be taking up with the DG gods later.

At any rate, my truffin.com project tonight was to install a photo gallery program and get it running. Only, well, I’ve got to pick one. My wonderful new host makes it very easy for me one-click install 3 different programs for sharing photos. Two of them look really good:

• Coppermine
• Gallery2

Of course, this means making a, gasp, choice. So, I go online trying to find comparison studies between the two. Nada. You know, you folks in the open source movement don’t have to be so gorram nice to each other. A little competitive back stabbing wouldn’t hurt you know.

So, now, after almost two hours of combing the webs in hopes of finding some reason to pick one over the other, here’s what we’ve got.
Coppermine: the installation file for Coppermine is like 1/4th the size of Gallery. Way cool. On the down side, there only seems to be one WordPress plugin to integrate Coppermine with WordPress, and it’s not clear how good or stable it is.
Gallery2 seems to be the choice of more experienced users–and I want to look like an experienced user, so that’s a good thing. And it appears to a very nice integration with WordPress. But, and here’s a big BUT, it’s HUGE. It’s 52 MB compared to Coppermine’s 11. Egads!

Of course, no one wants to say one is better than the other. So I’m just going to have to go and install one of them and hope it’s good. Cuz if it ain’t, well, then I’ll have to uninstall it and do all the work again with the other.

Did I say I had a frustrating round of DG?

Call it the power of advertising. Yesterday, while looking up some info on a gel pen, I noticed Staples was having a crazy sale on flat screen monitors. Now, I’ve been wanting a flat screen monitor for some time. Sure, my 17″ CRT was working fine, but it was like Jabba the Hutt sitting on my desk. Sherry even told me on more than one occasion that I should look into a flat screen. So, trembling with anticipation, I trundled out of the house and to the store. Of course, when we got there, they didn’t have the exact model I saw online. But they did have one for the same price, and they had a Sony for just $20 more. Feeling a bit snobbish, I eschewed the no-name monitor and snagged the last Sony they had in stock. With the $40 rebate, well let’s just say it was an easy choice to make.

So, there it is. The Sony SDM-HS75B. It couldn’t have been easier to install and set up. Truly plug-n-play. And, here’s the great part. My 17″ CRT only gave me about 15.5 inches of actual viewable space, but this, my new 17″ LCD gives me an actual 17″. That’s 1.5″ more real estate in a smaller package. Woo hoo!

Hey folks, just a note to announce that the last Glen post was finally published yesterday. I backdated it for posterity. You can scroll down and read it or click here.