New DVDs

Given the fact that I had ordered some DVDs some time ago and some last week, I got two packages with DVDs today, a total of four new movies:

- Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

- Kizuna

- Vampire Bats

- Monster Shark

In addition I also got volume 6 of "Trinity Blood", but that's a manga and doesn't count here...

What can I say about movies I haven't even seen yet?

A lot, actually, since I know what I've been buying (except for "Vampire Bats").

For those of you who have seen "Final Fantasy" and now wonder how they could miss part 2 to 6: You haven't missed anything. The movie I mentioned above is based on part 7 of a series of games for consoles. As it retells the story of the seventh part of the series, it has been named like the game it's based on. The characters are computer generated (which is good in this case, because almost all computer games they filmed with real actors were crap), as is the surrounding. The scenes I've already seen (and which, together with the low price, inspired me to buy the movie) were great.

"Kizuna" is the third movie based on a Shonen Ai story I bought (the first was "Fake" and the second was the "Gravitation" OVA). I like the manga a lot and so I'm sure I'm going to enjoy the movie as well. "Fake" and "Kizuna" still happen to be my favourite Shonen Ai stories.

As I wrote already, I can't write much about "Vampire Bats", except for the fact that the movie features Lucy Lawless (aka Xena) and I like movies about blood-drinking monsters - especially if they were created by humans. Which, accidentally, brings me to the next (and last) movie on the list:

"Monster Shark" (which I mentioned already in a post about the dunkleosteus) is a horror movie I've seen before (and sure as hell would not have bought for more than the few Euros I spent for it now). What I like most about the movie is the hideous "shark" which looks like a mixture between an octopus and a dunkleosteus (that's an extinct fish with bone plates all around the front part of its body). I always wondered why they called it a shark - the creature sure looks scary enough even without being named a shark. What about "Monster Fish"? Or "The creature that can strangle and dismember you at the same time"? Or "Tentacles"? (That was a reminiscence to "Jaws" ... at least it was meant to be.) Well, Davy Jones would have liked him, smaller than the Krakken, but not less dangerous...

I see some good evenings coming, even with the bad TV-program you get in Germany these days...

I've not forgotten about "Size 0"

Admittedly my two crusades have been taking the back seat for quite a while. I've written something new about "Killerspiele" not too long ago, but I haven't commented on "Size 0" in ages.

The whole concept of "Size 0" still bothers me a lot, to be honest. I've never been thin (being normal-sized would be nice, though) and I've never wanted to be either - rather unlike a lot of women.

Whenever I see a woman - or more often a young girl - with a good figure saying things like "I really need to loose some more weight, I'm still too fat" I want to jump into the TV (or whatever) and ask "Where the hell do you want to loose weight? Your brain?". That was bad even while I was still a teenager myself, but over the last years, with the blasted "Size 0" and the actresses getting thinner and thinner, it has gotten even worse. I really pity girls these days, their role-models are a lot thinner than those I grew up with - and even they weren't what became of me.

The modern means of manipulating pictures make it even worse, of course. In the past a photograph was, more or less, a precise picture of the object (or person) on it. "The camera doesn't lie" they said - and it was true then. What the lens saw was what you got.

Even then a picture could be manipulated, but then it meant a lot of work - quite usually with a pair of scissors - and a good chance people would see it had been manipulated. Then the computer came and with it - rather soon, at least for those using the Mac - the possibility to manipulate graphics. By now a lot of rather cheap programs can do the same stuff only high-quality, very expensive programs for specialists could do. In other words even I can manipulate every picture to the extreme, if I want to.

I know that, so I don't trust the pictures in the glossy magazines. I know the models there aren't that perfect. I know a specialist has been at work with them, has removed every imperfection the model might have had, has made her look even slimmer and less like an 'ordinary' human being. But the young girls who buy the magazines and want to look like the models don't know. They really believe a human being could look that perfect. And so they diet, they visit the solarium, they spent time, money and quite often health trying their best to look like that - and they can't make it.

Today nobody really knows what will become of this trend. It will, in some cases, take years until the effects on the health and lives of the young girls can be seen. One thing seems sure, though: it's not really healthy. Neither is being overweight like I am, of course, but there's no fashion model making people think being that heavy is fashionable.

"Size 0" should not be worn by grown - or almost grown - women, no matter what fashion designers and the editors of glossy fashion magazines say.

I might grow to love PHP

In my course for becoming a web-master in the near future, I've been learning a lot about PHP lately. It's the first server-based programming language I've been introduced to - and it seems to be extremely useful. So I think I might grow to really love it.

PHP, as I was informed in the beginning of this part of my course, is a language for dynamic website programming. HTML, CSS and JavaScript on the other hand are languages for static website programming. The different is easy to describe. A static website is created once and will always look the same - pretty much like my websites which are currently build with HTML, some CSS and a little bit of JavaScript. Dynamic websites on the other hand consist of static parts (like menus or titles or suchlike) and dynamic parts. The last posts on this website actually are a dynamic part. I put my texts online over a form and they are transformed and displayed on the website. I don't have to reprogram the website every time I add a new post - and I don't have to create the HTML-sites for each post on which they and the few comments can be seen even after they're no longer on this first site. I just put in the new post and the dynamic programming of Blogger does the rest. The same can be achieved by using PHP, I've already learned how to do a simple forum or a program for uploading files without an FTP-program (which you normally use for it).

So PHP seems to be very useful - and XML, too, which will be really covered in a few months. Now I only have to find out whether or not I can use PHP on my current webspace or not. It would really help me to get my quizzes up - with which I still do have a lot of problems (but more in the next post).

PHP, coupled with MySQL, might also be the solution for my main problem with "Geschichtenschmiede". Currently every new story I write means creating a new website. With PHP and MySQL I could feed the text to the database and simply add it to the site this way. But currently that's still dreaming. In the future? Who knows?

Finally we're getting somewhere in the web-master course. I could, theoretically, do a complete web-shop or regularly updating online comic (if I could draw, that is) with the knowledge I have already gotten - and will get in the future - about PHP.

The Quizzes are driving me nuts

When I did the last change on my website "Night-Shade", I promised to do some tests and quizzes on the site - using my other website for my stories. By now I have to admit that the quizzes are getting the better of me.

I thought with JavaScript I would be able to get the quizzes done. I mainly needed to make sure I got the points counted during a quiz, after all. JavaScript can do that.

But now, after searching the internet for various scripts to create a quiz, I'm still not getting anywhere - and I hate that. I'm quite sure I've got the points-gathering part right by now, but I can't get the damn site to give me the results, no matter how hard I try. Now, looking at PHP (see last post), I think it might be easier to achieve my goal with PHP. But, unfortunately, I'm quite sure I can't work with PHP while using my current webspace. Too bad, but then, on the other hand, it didn't cost me any money.

I'll still continue to work on the quizzes, maybe I'll find the solution for my problem - as those writing the scripts I found online obviously think it would work. There has to be a way to do this - and I'll find it, that much is for sure.

And afterwards I might do an English version of this site, too. Unlike "Geschichtenschmiede", which mostly has German stories as I write this, "Night-Shade" would work for English-speaking visitors just as well as for those from Germany.

I'm going to solve this problem, even if it kills me!

Almost like flipper

Not much of a comment in this post. But did you know before White Sharks could jump like that? Always takes my breath away when I see it in documentaries.

About 1.000 kilograms of fish jumping high in the air ... it's amazing...

I hate blue screens!

This post was brought about by my computer crashing when I tried to turn it off.

I like blue as a colour, it's my favourite colour actually (although my websites might suggest something different, especially "Night-Shade"). But I hate the blue screen you get when the computer crashes. I almost hate it more than I hate it when the computer freezes. That's what the restart button was created for, after all. Just press it and everything is well again...

Again and again I thought "I'll switch to Linux or UNIX, they're safer", but I didn't. I love computer games and most don't run under any other operating system than Windows. Damn Bill Gates! And as I'm not a programmer (yet, unless you count websites, but I plan on learning about Flash-programming after the web-master course), I don't really need an absolutely stable environment - or so I usually think until I get the damn blue screen again!

I don't like using Microsoft products, but I don't have much of a chance when it comes to the operating system and my word processor (when I started working with one, I had Works, later on I needed Word for my essays at university - Open Office wasn't out then). I'm too used to Word to just give it up. That's a weak excuse, I know, but it's the truth. I switched from Wordpad to Word once and had to redesign my texts, I'm not doing it again! (Thought I wouldn't have to do, Open Office can read the Word format ... but then, I already decided not to buy another Word version a long time ago.)

I will turn off the computer again now, and may God have mercy on Bill Gates' soul if I get a blue screen again ... for my revenge will be devastating!

Afraid of the dark?

You better should be. The charming person next to this paragraph is ... the Tooth Fairy. Or so the movie "Darkness Falls" says.

I like horror movies and I don't care whether people tell me I'm to old to do so. But what I like most are horror movies that work without all that modern technology. It's possible to create every kind of creature with help of the computer, so creating hordes of half-decayed zombies is possible. But that doesn't make them any better.

So I often go for b-movies instead. Less money for the movie usually means less computer generated effects and more traditional special effects stuff like masks or puppets - or simply damn good lighting techniques.

"Darkness Falls", a movie I hadn't even heard of before I found the DVD for a couple of Euros in my local store, does work a lot with lighting - or rather with the darkness, just as the title suggests. There's also gristly murders, a close-to-reality background legend (which, or so a documentary on the same DVD claims, comes from the fate of a woman in an Australian town) and a well-paced story. That's all I actually demand of a horror movie. Not enormous special effects, not a budged of millions of dollars, just some good effects, a good story and actor which are up to their task (and the actors in this movie definitely are).

The small town of Darkness Falls (if this isn't a town that's been aptly named, I don't know one) has it's own dirty secret in the basement. About 150 years before the movie starts (retold in the movie with a couple of old photographs) a woman named Mathilda Dixon lived in the town. She was a kind woman who gave the children small change for their teeth when they lost them. One day she was caught in her burning house and suffered severe injuries. Most of her body was burned, actually, and the skin became extremely sensitive to light, so she only ventured out at night afterwards, always wearing a porcelain mask to hide her burned and twisted face (especially as she had been a pretty woman before). Then, one day, two children disappeared and the people in town thought it was her doing, so they hanged her and ripped the mask off her face - only to find the children alive and save shortly afterwards. With her dying breath she cursed the town, saying she would take that which she had taken out of kindness out of revenge - for ever. Since that day the Tooth Fairy Mathilda visits the children of the town when they loose their last tooth - and kills those who wake and see her face - or rather her mask.

We jump into the future (or rather our present) to a young boy called Kyle who has just lost his last tooth. Unfortunately, during the night, he wakes up and sees the Tooth Fairy. He escapes her by staying in the light - as she can't venture there, an important fact in the movie -, but his mother, who (as it should be in a horror movie) doesn't believe him, is killed by Mathilda. And he is blamed and spends the next couple of years in mental hospitals - and later on in a flat where there's always some light burning.

Then he is phoned by his childhood friend Caitlin whose younger brother is going through the same fear of the night - because he, too, has seen the Tooth Fairy. So he returns to Darkness Falls and the story takes up speed.

Both he and the boy, called Michael, are stalked by the Tooth Fairy, they are attacked whenever they are in the dark, in her realm. As nobody believes them (another topic used in almost every horror movie), they are pretty much on their own. There are murders committed by the Tooth Fairy (for most of which Kyle gets blamed, just like it was when he'd been thirteen). It's only after the Tooth Fairy attacks the police station (because Kyle is kept there and the electricity is down) and almost all policemen and -women are killed, the son of the sheriff actually believes him, having seen Mathilda himself.

There's a long action sequence in the hospital where Kyle, Michael, Caitlin and some doctors and nurses are stalked - and all except for Kyle, Michael and Caitlin are killed, of course, that's how it works in horror movies. Kyle and the others are rescued in the lobby by the son of the sheriff who drives into the lobby with the car lights on. Light drives Mathilda away at the very last moment. In the lighthouse - where Mathilda lived when she was still alive - they try to get the large light running by activating the generator, but that proves difficult - and even afterwards Mathilda still wants them until…

Well, that would really be spoiling.

What I want to say with this rather long summary of the story is this: the movie is damn good. If you have the chance to watch it - and like horror movies - you should do it. It might scare you - but that's what horror movies are for, isn't it?