Posts
1568
Following
138
Followers
878
I'm a bit of an eclectic mess 🙂 I've been a programmer, journalist, editor, TV producer, and a few other things.

I'm currently working on my second novel which is complete, but is in the edit stage. I wrote my first novel over 20 years ago but then didn't write much till now.

I post about #Coding, #Flutter, #Writing, #Movies and #TV. I'll also talk about #Technology, #Gadgets, #MachineLearning, #DeepLearning and a few other things as the fancy strikes ...

Lived in: 🇱🇰🇸🇦🇺🇸🇳🇿🇸🇬🇲🇾🇦🇪🇫🇷🇪🇸🇵🇹🇶🇦🇨🇦
@AngelaPreston IKR? It’s just that there are people from a lot of countries here and so I don’t know if it’s just that it’s normal for them to just approach people they don’t know and ask for their WiFi? Or was this somebody who really was up to no good?

I really can’t tell. I want to give people the benefit of the doubt, but when something like this happens …
1
0
1

Fahim Farook

If you get a chance to watch “The Collective” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23556408) save yourself some grief and give it a miss.

This was like people acting at being actors — it was horrible 😛 They mostly pose. They’d attack an enemy and then pose, then attack, and then pose. As if the heroic posing was mandatory.

And don’t get me started on the stupidity of supposed “professionals” …


#Movie #English #MiniReview #Horrible
0
0
1

Fahim Farook

*Ring* - it's the doorbell.

The bell rings twice more before I even get to the door.

I open the door and there’s somebody standing in the doorway of our neighbour’s apartment. The angle is such that I can’t tell if they actually have the door open and are inside the apartment or are just standing in the doorway.

I look at them inquiringly.

“Can I have your WiFi password?” they say, holding up their phone.

I’m like, “What?”

“Your WiFi password. I just want to make a call,” they say as if this was the most normal thing.

“I don’t want to give you my password,” I say and close the door.

That really was the whole interaction. I’m just flabbergasted by the whole thing still. Did they really think that I’d simply hand over access to my WiFi to somebody I didn’t know? (I don’t know my neighbours and they’ve never spoken to me before …)

Do they understand the security implications of the whole thing? Or was it an emergency (like trying to make a call without anybody else knowing for some reason)? If it was an emergency, why didn’t they tell me so?

I don’t know … But I’m still wondering …

#People #Interactions #Security #WiFi #Neighbours
1
2
4

Fahim Farook

I've been seeing some stuff on Reddit about how difficult it is to work with ComfyUI (https://github.com/comfyanonymous/ComfyUI) and how it doesn’t work for a bunch of people ...

So I thought it must be even harder to get it working under macOS …

But about 10 minutes of work is all I needed to install it, run it, and get my first image generated. So not sure what the issue is, but it does look as if it works fine out of the box?

#ComfyUI #Python #ImageGeneration #StableDiffusion #maCOS #Ventura
1
0
4
@vicki This is a wonderful idea 🙂 Would love to contribute in some way … Haven’t read the full GitHub page yet … will do and see if I can contribute in some form.
0
0
1

Fahim Farook

Edited 1 year ago
@askonomm Without meaning to be argumentative, you can’t really know what the creators intended. Sometimes even the creators don’t know where a show will go — “Lost” is a great example. The creators never knew where that show would end up …

Sometimes they create a certain show and over time it morphs into something else. We loved the first season of “House” it was exactly what we wanted — good medical drama, as advertised on the tin.

It’s the later seasons which relegated the “medical” part to a footnote and concentrated mostly on the drama 🙂

If you re-read my original post, I was talking about how “Warrior” actually balances the core story and the character development well. That’s what I like — not just character development (or drama) at the cost of everything else …
0
0
0
@askonomm I’m sorry if you feel attacked if I said that I disliked “House” but you do realize that not everybody has to have the same opinion, right? The world would be a pretty dull place if all of us had the same opinions and/or likes/dislikes 🙂

It’s just my opinion. You are free to have your own 😛
0
0
0
@askonomm I do enjoy sitcoms but I don’t watch shows for the drama — I watch it for the medical, mystery, thriller part of the show. Not the drama part. All power to the people who like drama for drama’s sake but there are some of us who’ve had enough of drama 😛

I do agree with you about movies and characterisation but that’s a different medium — in a short form like a movie, the heavy characterisation makes sense. But if you do the same in a long-running TV show, it just becomes too top-heavy.

Sure, there should be character development, but not to the exclusion of everything else.
0
0
0
@askonomm Each to their own — I got interested in the show because of the medical cases and the diagnoses they made, not because the main character was an ass 😛 So once it got to be all about House and his co-workers, friends etc. I really wasn’t that interested.

Personally, I think US TV spends way too much time on character development and disregard all other aspects of the story. A more balanced approach probably will cater to both types of viewers, but that’s just my opinion.
0
0
0
@stevesplace Yeah, we joke about that a lot when we watch those too 🙂 Same with “Death in Paradise” given that it’s a small island 😛
0
0
1
@stevesplace I assume some people do like all the drama too, otherwise in a profit oriented environment, they wouldn’t be going for that approach, right?

But personally, I don’t like loading up a show with all the personal drama instead of the original subject matter that got me hooked in the first place.

Take shows like “Midsomer Murders” which has run for over 20 seasons in the UK — the show has stuck to its core premise all those seasons. The personal stuff is incidental and is not the main focus of the show. I like that approach much better 🙂
1
0
0

Fahim Farook

Something I've noticed about a lot of American TV shows — the first season starts off with a great idea but by season two or three it has become all about the personal lives of the characters and their relationships and the core idea gets relegated to the background and gets lost.

“House” was a great medical drama at first and I loved it for the medicine but eventually it became all drama and not much medicine. The same with “The Good Doctor”.

(I can contrast this to UK TV but I guess that’ll have to be a post for another time 😛)

“Warrior” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5743796) is a show which doesn’t do this as much and which manages to maintain a balance between the core story and the character development. Or maybe, it’s because the story is all about the characters 🙂

But what I do like about the show a lot is the fact that the characters learn, grow, and change. Characters who started out looking as if they are pure evil start getting shades of grey as you learn about them and their motivations. Others change their attitudes and stance as time goes on.

The show is constantly changing and alliances constantly shift. And it’s marvellous to see these happening and to see a story being told so deftly 🙂

As the end of season 3 approaches, I can see a lot of changes and a bunch of new alliances happening. I hope there’s a season 4 since I want to keep on watching!

#TV #US #English #Warrior #BruceLee
1
2
3
@davemark I believe the display name on device is “X” while the app name on the App Store is still “Twitter” 🙂 @mcelhearn
2
0
1

Fahim Farook

Back in the day, Tamil movie songs used to have meaning — some of them espoused deep philosophies in song. Then things changed. It seemed to become all about the rhythm and the beat and less about meaning.

"Maamannan" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20242416) made me acutely aware of this because one character in the movie sings some of the old songs and I realized how much I'd missed these meaningful songs.

But that wasn't all of it. The movie has a very melancholic vibe and I keep expecting bad things to happen. And they do.

One of the characters sings "the only thing that humanity hasn't learned is how to be human" (or words to that effect) and the movie is all about that — how humans endlessly oppress and kill other humans in the name of constructs that they've created such as caste, status, authority etc. to keep humans separated from other humans.

A couple of characters buck this trend and stand for equality and not bowing down to "authority"/bullies, but it's a telling sign that even one of these characters has to tell others what to do in several situations. This is a characteristic of almost every Indian movie — the "hero"/protagonist has to tell others what to do, even when the actions are fairly self-evident (as in taking an injured person to the hospital). It's almost as if people are being told, you shouldn't act/think for yourself — let somebody who's "the one" tell you what to do ...

And that probably is the most harmful thing that a movie which preaches the opposite message can do? If more people would think for themselves, perhaps they might not fall prey to those who try to control them by sowing division amongst them?

#Movies #Tamil #MiniReview #Reflections
1
0
2

Fahim Farook

Edited 1 year ago
I’ve generally not been keen on Varun Dhawan movies — maybe it’s my general dislike of the kind of movies his Dad used to make seeping through, or maybe it’s because most Varun Dhawan movies I’ve seen have had him playing comedic roles without much weight.

But “Bawaal” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt19755170/) is a movie which changed my opinion of him. It’s an interesting and impactful movie in many levels.

Based on the description, I expected a war movie and half didn’t watch it since I dislike war movies intensely. But this was good, it talks about war, the impact I has on people, but it’s also about society, how we want to portray ourselves, relationships, and a lot more.

While this part gets a little lost in the rest of the story, it’s also about teaching and teachers. That’s something I’ve loved since “To Sir, With Love” and while this is not on the same level, it does have some of the same impact, in a way.

#Movies #MiniReview #Bollywood #Hindi
0
0
3
@giuseppe Maybe we should form a club? Or a support group? 😛 @christianselig
0
0
1
@christianselig Thank you 🙂 Hope you had a great birthday as well?

The thing about my birthday is that I was born on the other side of the world when they landed on the moon, so my birthday is on the 21st — so you and I have a sort of a Schroedinger’s birthday where we share the birthday and don’t 😛
2
0
1
@christianselig And I’m 54 today — I came here when they landed on the moon 😛
1
0
3
Show older