Movie of the Week: Iron Man 2

Posted on 9 May, 2010 by Matthias Scheler

Silke and I really enjoyed the first Iron Man movie. It is also one of our favourite Blu-ray Discs not only for its entertainment value but also because of the superb image quality. Unsurprisingly we were both looking forward to the sequel ever since we saw the first trailer.

Last Tuesday we could finally watch Iron Man 2 in a local cinema. Just like the first part it is full of humour, action and amazing special effects. Robert Downey Jr. delivers another brilliant performance as Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man. Tony Stark’s attitude towards his status as a super hero is still refreshingly relaxed and his worst enemy is once again his ego. Even after a healthy dose of self-discovery and the unavoidable fight against a supervillain he remains a big kid which really enjoys flying around in his armoured suit and doesn’t take life very serious. This refreshing attitude is what makes this film really enjoyable.

While Iron Man 2 is not quite as good as the first part it is still very entertaining and definitely worth seeing. According to The Internet Movie Database there will be a third movie as well which I’m looking forward to.

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Major updates in pkgsrc-2010Q1

Posted on 19 April, 2010 by Matthias Scheler

During the previous week the new stable package source branch pkgsrc-2010Q1 was created. Among the many new packages my favourites are clearly these three:

  1. Samba 3.3.12
    NetBSD’s Samba package (version 3.0.37) is outdated and no longer supported by the Samba team. The new net/samba33 package provides a newer and above all still supported version. The upgrade worked without any problems on my home server and didn’t require any configuration changes.
  2. PHP 5.3.2
    I’ve mentioned in the past that I have doubts about the security of PHP. But as PHP is required for the software used by my blog it is installed on my web server nevertheless. Since a few weeks pkgsrc provides the latest stable version via the lang/php53 package. As this version receives the best security support by the PHP project at the moment the new package helps me to keep my home server safe.
  3. MySQL 5.1
    Sun (Oracle?) have recently announced the end of the active support for MySQL 5.0. Fortunately the new database/mysql51-server package provides MySQL 5.1 which is still fully supported until the end of this year.
    Updating my home server didn’t work very well initially because InnoDB support was missing (or not enabled?). However, in the meantime this has been fixed in pkgsrc. You therefore don’t have to dump and restore your database (although creating a dump before an update is always a good idea). Instead you only need to start the new server and run mysql_upgrade afterwards.

Owing to all these new packages I’m less concerned about the security of my home server, at least for now. For this I would like to thank Takahiro Kambe who added these packages to pkgsrc.

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The Phantom of the Opera

Posted on 25 March, 2010 by Matthias Scheler

My favourite musical is probably The Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber. I’ve listened to the orginal CD recording countless times, visited the German production in Hamburg with my mother many years ago and saw the movie in the cinema and on DVD.

Last Saturday Silke and I went to London with two friends from Germany. This trip was only possible thanks to Andy and Michelle who kindly offered to watch our puppy Vader for the day. The highlight of our visit was clearly watching The Phantom of the Opera life on stage. This musical is still shown at Her Majesty’s Theatre where it has been running continuously since it first opened in 1986.

The show was absolutely brilliant all the way from the first note of the overture to the great finale. I was especially impressed by Gina Beck who played Christine Daaé. She has a truly amazing voice and her rendition of the song The Phantom of the Opera was probably the best I’ve heard since Sarah Brightman’s performance on the original CD recording.

It was a truly unforgettable evening for all of us. And I’m looking forward to the next musical that we will enjoy life on stage.

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