I’ve been in love with Coen brothers movies ever since I saw Blood Simple way way back when.
I can watch Barton Fink,The Big Lebowski and Miller’s Crossing over and over again. I love them when they are humourous because they employ intelligent humor(not that falling down BS that makes up what passes for humor in mainstream movies these days.Ahem:Good Luck Chuck,Daddy Day Care?) But I adore them when they are dramatic,slow,violent and Southern.Texas plays a part in Blood Simple almost as important as the characters and plot and again In No Country For Old Men we are treated to the bleak greatness of a wide open Texas landscape.
No Country For Old Men began almost exactly the same way as Blood Simple but instead of
M. Emmet Walsh narrating we hear the voice of Tommy Lee Jones.
When I watched this movie I was struck by how long it has been since I was utterly transfixed by the goings on on the screen.
I was prepared to see a good movie, The Coen brothers usually deliver at least that. But this was something else. The lowest points were Llewellen’s mother in law because that character actress is just too memorable from Speed as the selfish lady who tries to get off the bus and ends up as roadkill. i like Woody Harrelson. I don’t know what was off about his performance but it wasn’t doing it for me.Though both had such minor parts that it did little to reduce my enjoyment.
My boyfriend and I are very sad cases as we can’t get to the theater to watch a movie before it comes out on DVD.
Is it just me or are movies getting into the rental store a lot faster?
Anyways you have to see this film. I’m talking to the one or two other folks in this world who haven’t seen it since it won the Oscar,ha.
Month: March 2008
Conflict with Next Gen Gallery and WP-shopping Cart
When I was setting up my friend’s new site I installed Next Gen Gallery.
Then she needed to be able to sell stuff so I installed WP Shopping Cart.
Then the madness began!
Thumbnails were doing cartwheels and somersaults or not opening at all.Or double images were appearing for each thumbnail.Was it a Poltergeist? A Gremlin? Nope: just 2 copies of scripts doing things together and doubling up everything! Not good.
Why was this happening?
Both plugins use thickbox.js,thickbox.css and lightbox.css.You only need one copy of each installed or you will experience odd performances of the lightbox window when clicking on a thumbnail image either on your shop or gallery pages.
My solution is probably not the best but it worked.
I went to wp-content/plugins and opened the wp-shoppingcart folder.I found thickbox js and css and also lightbox.css and just erased the code from all files,leaving the blank file in the folder.
I thought about deleting these files but then I decided to be on the relatively safe side I’d just leave them but empty.
I should say that separately both plugins work fine,at least when it comes to using the lightbox window).
Problem Resolved.
I should state just for the sake of the easily befuddled that if you do not have both plugins but are still experiencing trouble this solution will not work for you.This is just for trouble had when BOTH plugins are installed into one WP installation!
A Short Discourse on font-family Papyrus
People in the ARTS. Please! Stop it right now. Stop using Papyrus!
I know you teach Yoga.I know you make beaded jewelry or ceramic crafts. I know you teach dance or movement of some kind. I know you are artistic and sensitive. But you still make me want to slap your face when I see that you have used Papyrus for the font for your entire website. There are perhaps 15 other font-families you can select with Yahoo Site Builder. Excluding Comic Sans, they are all far more appropriate for reading text online. Well, maybe not Monotype Corsiva. Let me address your artistic nature, the one that leads you to select this now completely dead font for your web pages;it’s not making you look any more spiritual or artistic. It’s just making you look pretentious and unimaginative. The fact that you used Yahoo Site Builder I will try not to hold against you.But there is an awfully similar look to all websites built with this lame app, not unlike the tacky scourge that was spread by Frontpage. Yahoo Site Builder gives you the option of designing your site by yourself. So a ton of people went and did just that. And you can tell!
Spotting Yahoo Site Builder Websites:
Usually the unbordered page text floats over a hideous or boring background (sometimes the background image is an image of a body of water because water is, as we all know a symbol of life and spiritual types are prone to this wallpaper).Then there is an image of the perpetrator of this mini-design crime of asthetics and then some links also floating un-anchored somewhere on the page.Sometimes to the left,sometimes to the right but never attractively or sensibly.
Can you please use Georgia? Or even just “sans-serif”? What about Arial? It’s not so bad.There’s Helvetica,too what did it ever do except be readable and serviceable?
You’ve got a point there
I just came across a website devoted entirely to stamping out the ubiquitous practice of requesting free work on “spec” from designers,Web and Graphic.
I admit I have done a lot of free work. I had to learn how web design worked in realtime, didn’t I? All that free work has made me accomplished.Especially when it comes to creating websites overnight.Ok not overnight but faster than it used to take me (2 months at the very start.) Now it takes me a mere 3 to 4 days to complete a project.This could not have been done if I hadn’t accepted free work.The combination of responsiblity to a real life client and not just some sandbox project I was fiddling with plus the interaction with real client led to my being able to take an idea and make it into something, fast.Speed isn’t everything but it sure helps.If you have to spend months between showings working away on one aspect of development your client may die from old age before they ever get a website out of you.
All must start somewhere.
But yes,now spec work isn’t something I would leap up for anymore.