Watched "Jailer" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11663228) and while it has the usual Rajnikanth style, though at a slightly more muted level given his advancing age, it was overall not a movie that probably would not appeal to anybody other than die-hard Rajni fans since it really doesn’t make a lot of sense 😛

The first half of the movie might have kind of worked, given some suspension-of-disbelief, since it was a fairly straightforward story which (kind of worked). But the latter half had a heist segment which didn’t make a lot of sense nor was warranted since the application of a smidgen of logic at the end of the first half would have prevented that storyline altogether 🙂

Overall though, it was good to see Rajni in action (and Mohanlal too) and I think I’ll leave it at that …

#Movies #Tamil #Kollywood #Rajnikanth #Mohanlal

Oh, found one app which (possibly) does not work with the Sonoma betas — Defult Folder X.

The current version of Default Folder X does not work with Sonoma. It might be that this is simply a permissions issue and once you grant the necessary permissions (I believe Accessibility and Full Disk Access) it works correctly, but it used to work fine in Ventura but would not work on Sonoma.

However, there’s a new beta for Default Folder X which does work correctly with Sonoma. If interested, you can get it here:

https://www.stclairsoft.com/DefaultFolderX/beta.html

#SonomaBeta #macOS #DefaultFolderX #NotWorking #SonomaUnsupported

I decided to upgrade (well, OK, switch) to Sonoma Beta 6 yesterday since I really wanted some of the CoreML enhancements for #MachineLearning (especially #StableDiffusion model loading) that Sonoma brings along …

The switchover itself was fairly uneventful and I like some of the changes and hate a few others 😛 Overall, it works (mostly) OK and I have not run into any issues with any of my existing apps.

But then today, I ran into not one but two issues with my custom apps 😀

One turned out to be something that I could fix quickly with a code change but I haven’t been able to figure out the other one still. And both of these apps were working fine with no crashes till now …

Ah, well, the joys of living on the crashing edge 😛

#SonomaBeta #Apple #macOS #Swift #Coding

According to this Telugu movie I'm watching at the moment, “Parkinson’s is a disease that affects only rich people”.

Hah! The things you learn (and I say this very loosely) from movies 🙂

#MovieWisdom #MovieFacts #Surreal #WhereDidTheyLearnThat

@lishaberzins I do enjoy hearing about #writing (which is how I found you since I follow the hashtag) though I don't write about writing that much these days 🙂

One way I’ve found to make my timeline more interesting is to follow hashtags of interest and then follow the people who make interesting posts under that hashtag … but you might be already doing that? 🙂

@penciledpage You’re welcome 🙂 Weinbaum wrote some great stuff but unfortunately, if I recall correctly, died very young ….

@guybrooker Thanks 🙂

I hadn’t considered releasing because I wasn’t sure if there was a need for another editor since I myself have purchased like three different editors over the years 😛

The trouble generally is that releasing means that I have to make features discoverable for others, not just myself. But I guess if it’s useful to me maybe it helps others too? I’ll think about it …

If you want to test it out, let me know. I can always set up a quick TestFlight release and that’ll always help me figure out if a feature is immediately discoverable/easy to use or not, I guess?

@penciledpage The sense of wonder was what got me into science fiction in the first place. I still remember reading Stanley G. Weinbaum’s “A Martian Odyssey” and how it painted Mars …

I think that story was partially instrumental in getting me to read Bradbury in the first place because he too had stories about Mars and I wanted to feel the same sense of wonder 🙂

I have at least 3 - 4 subtitle editors installed on my machine. Each one of them does one particular bit well, but falls down on others …

For example, one will take a subtitle file which does not quite match the movie and re-arrange the subtitles by rearranging the time to somewhat match the movie. But if there’s an unexpected addition to the video (a left over ad for example) all the subtitle would be quite off. It doesn’t have an option to let me fix things block by block easily nor add missing subtitles to the file.

Another lets me add missing subtitles or edit subtitles easily, but often gets the timecode and/or subtitle number wrong and doesn’t let me modify easily.

In fact, some of the above editors mess up the original subtitle file so much, that it’s hard to use the subtitles afterwards at all 😛

I finally got fed up of this and decided to create my own subtitle editor which has the features that I want.

Started with somebody else’s abandoned initial work and was able to get something working fairly quickly. The original was meant to be simply a subtile editor — you could edit the text for the subtitles and that was it …

I wanted to fix subtitles or the timecodes, insert new subtitle lines, delete existing ones, or move lines around. And also, be able to see when there are issues with the original subtitle file.

I think I’ve managed to achieve all of that and for the first time ever, I was able to fix a full subtitle file for a movie without getting frustrated 🙂

So yeah, progress …

#Subtitles #Apple #SwiftUI #Catalyst #Coding #PersonalProjects

@penciledpage I’m glad that it was a book that you didn’t own already 🙂 I have only vague memories of “The Martian Chronicles” since I think I read it over 30 years ago but I remember the feeling of wonder I had while reading it still …

@penciledpage I was thinking “Bradbury” when I saw the clues, but not a specific book. So didn’t really have a guess 🙂

Plus, I was certain that this would be a more recent book than something by Bradbury …

@alsv_ @CTGT @Violinknitter @BarrenPlanet @agasramirez @noellemitchell

Part 3 in (what is now a four part series) of posts by Karl Guttag on using Apple VisionPro as a monitor replacement is now out:

https://kguttag.com/2023/08/20/apple-vision-pro-part-5c-more-on-monitor-replacement-is-ridiculous/

This part compares a desktop monitor set up to the Meta Quest Pro and extrapolates the results to guess at what the experience might be on the Apple Vision Pro.

Disclaimer (since it appears that I have to add this to this type of post 😛) — I am not the author of the post in question. I am also not affiliated with Karl in any way.

I do find his opinions useful as a yardstick for figuring out AR/VR related stuff and for making my own mind up.

If you are annoyed because somebody dared to “besmirch” Apple or discuss a product that’s not released yet, please vent somewhere else and not at me 🙂

On the other hand, if you’ve experienced AVP yourself or have experience in the field and have a differing opinion, or even a similar one, I’d be interested to hear about what you think since finding a compact, portable monitor replacement has been a goal of mine for years …

#AppleVisionPro #Apple #Hardware #Analysis #MetaQuestPro #MonitorReplacement

@penciledpage I did find your post due to the hashtags. So it’s working … It might be that people don’t know what to guess at maybe? 🙂

I wondered what the book was, but had on guesses and so would have just kept on wondering and not responded if I hadn’t seen this post in the replies …

@ruthnineke Yes, please 🙂 Would still like an invite. Please let me know what you need from my side …

“Warrior” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5743796) never dissappoints — storylines don’t go the “obvious” way, people don’t always think the way you would suppose they would, enemies become allies in the most unlikely ways, and nobody is ever totally good or bad …

I love this show because it captures humanity so well while showing us how brutal we all can be, given the right circumstances …

The season finale started out with such a small scene — but it played out totally differently than I thought it would if I’d been in the same place. It showed understanding and empathy where I’d have been full of rage.

And then topped that off in the next few scenes with such a satisfying ending to one of the most annoying and smug characters the show has had this season.

From there on, it just keeps building, building, and building to a bloody climax on top of all the groundwork laid out this season, ending with some interesting open threads which hints at some interesting developments and new power dynamics next season, if there is one.

I hope there’s another season (or two or three), I really do!

#TV #Warrior #BruceLee #Western #Finale #RenewWarrior

"The Jengaburu Curse" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27327718) started out looking like an interesting thriller, but by the end devolved into a stupid, brainless story which seems to have been written by kids — and I bet you, kids could probably come up with a better (and more intelligent) plot than this one 😛

The protagonist is a “tribal” who lives and an works in the UK, in fintech no less. But apparently she has no idea of how surveillance works or how you can be tracked … I guess her “tribal” brain just can’t comprehend such “marvels” of modern technology?

I had such high hopes for the show after the first few episodes, but by the end it had turned into a caricature of a show where people just did stupid things because it advanced the “story”, if it can be called that.

#TV #India #Hindi #MiniReview #BadPotBoiler

Indian movies "borrowing”/remaking English and other language movies is fairly standard. But what's even more prevalent is Indian movies in one language being remade in another language 🙂

This is a practice which probably goes back all the way to the beginning of Indian cinema. I certainly remember Tamil movies being remade in Hindi (or vice versa) all the way back to when I was a kid … and that was almost 50 years ago.

In fact, some stars have made a career out of taking a movie which was successful in another Indian region/language and making a hit movie — Jeyam Ravi and Ajay Devgn are names which immediately come to my mind …

Ajay Devgn has starred in the remake of the Tamil Suriya starrer “Singam” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1655607) franchise, renamed to “Singham” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1948150) in Hindi 🙂

Even more interestingly, the Hindi “Singham” movies have taken on a life of their own and spawned spin-offs which make up Rohit Shetty’s (the director of the movies) “Cop Universe” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cop_Universe) which has various cops, including Singham, inhabiting a shared universe.

You can find the Tamil version of the first movie on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G-c07uvZik

There are multiple videos claiming to the Hindi movie on YouTube as well but I haven't found one which is actually the movie 🙂 It looks as if most are just re-assembled clips from the movie with an audio commentary — probably because the authors are violating copyright by uploading the movie 😛

I have not seen the Hindi version but my impression was that it was mostly a scene-for-scene remake rather than a re-imagining …

Guess I should find out one of these days?

Also an interesting thing to note about these cross-language remakes is that some actors, such as Prakash Raj (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0695177) who plays the baddie in both “Singam” and “Singham” will reprise their role. Prakash Raj is fairly notable for this BTW since I remember him playing the same role in multiple such remakes …

(I actually wanted to talk about another re-made franchise Ajay Devgn starred in which has been re-made in at least three different Indian languages, but I think that’ll have to wait for another post …)

#Movies #India #Hindi #Tamil #Remakes #Singam #Singham #Suriya #AjayDevgn

@PavelASamsonov Would love an invite if you've still got any left 🙂

Acorn woodpecker storing acorns

Continuing on with the theme of Indian remakes, “Coming to America” (1988) is an interesting one since I’ve seen at least three sub-continental remakes of the movie — two Indian and one Pakistani 🙂

I’m fairly certain that there are many more movies which lifted elements from the film, but I’m talking of the ones that I distinctly remember from back then as being fairly close to the plot of “Coming to America”.

I don’t recall the name of the Pakistani movie any longer (I think I saw it in ’92 or ’93) but I do remember the Hindi and Tamil versions fairly well.

The Hindi version is “Dil Hi To Hai” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106724) — it had Jackie Shroff and Divya Bharti and I loved at least some of the songs in the movie, if I recall.

You can find “Dil Hi To Hai” on YouTube here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFPV6SdKjIw

Then, on the Tamil side, you had “My Dear Marthandan” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0254593), which starred Prabhu and Kushboo and was trying to cash in on (probably) the Prabhu/Kushboo pairing which was very hot at that time.

“My Dear Marthandan” is on YouTube here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8Pqq_dtsMA

It’s been around 30 years since I’ve seen either movie, I think. I’d love to watch them both again and see if they still hold up or not …

#Movies #Indian #Hindi #Tamil #Remakes #Bollywood #Kollywood