Moviegoings

I’m still trying hard to catch up, but I’ve hit another snag, this one courtesy of WordPress, which I have adored since I first started this blog about a year ago. WordPress frequently makes slight tweaks and changes to the blogging that goes on behind the scenes, and without fail these changes are wonderful and useful and make my life easier . . . until now.

On the 4th, they suddenly upgraded everything from WordPress 2.0 to WordPress 2.5, a move that completely changed the interface of the “dashboard,” where all elements related to blog composition take place. Almost all of these changes, I have come to expect from WordPress, seem like definite improvements, unfortunately, a lot of them don’t work properly. Among the currently broken elements are spellcheck, wordcount and, worst of all, picture uploading.

Lesson #1: Do not make an irreversible upgrade that fails to function as well as the previous version of your software. You will be hated for it.

In the midst of my annoyance, I happened across a link to this article from The Guardian. It notes that there is a petition demanding the resignation of one Uwe Boll, considered by many to be the worst and sleaziest director operating in the motion picture industry today. According to the article, Boll, who once beat the snot out of four film critics when the accepted his challenge to go at it in a boxing ring, has stated that he would retire if the petition reached 1,000,000 signatures. As of the publication of that article, the count stood at 48,000. I proudly became the 125,854th signer of the petition (which can be found here).

For the record, yes, you do have to put your e-mail address in to sign. I did, and I set it to private, and I’ve had no further troubles. If it bothers you, take an extra five seconds and make a dummy address on yahoo or hotmail or something. I encourage you to sign, not because I believe Mr. Boll will actually resign, but because a) I will be amused to hear of his reaction to those who question him about what he promised earlier and b) because filmmaking this bad is always worthy of a response from those who recognize it.

Also for the record, to the hapless critics who stepped into that boxing ring: Never allow a stupid man to settle an argument with his fists instead of his brain. As Isaac Asimov pointed out, “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” Keep explaining why his movies suck. That’s what you’re good at. Whether or not he can crush your skull like a walnut really doesn’t enter the picture. Seriously.

~ by Jared on April 10, 2008.

Posted in Referrals