It's Friday!
I'll try to find something fun, like music or something...

But first let's geek out a little bit.
Blogdex pointed to an Edd Dumbill article about using shell script instead of SOAP.
For you über geeks out there, here's the simplified bash and sed source:

(QUERY=OReilly ; \
echo "GET /search?q=$QUERY" 1>&3 & cat 0<&3) \
3</dev/tcp/www.google.com/80 \
| sed -e 's/^<p><a href=\([^>]*\)>.*/\1/p' -e 'd'


The article and code sample above are tongue-in-cheek.
But they do point to how simple SOAP really is.
Regardless, this protocol for information sharing is great stuff; I hope to start using SOAP::Lite perl mods soon.

Last night we battled entropy at the primary data center.
One of the cooling units failed, forcing the other to do double-time.
We received automatic pager notification when the temps started climbing.
A six-hour thermal tug-of-war ensued.
Redundant servers and switches were powered down to reduce total heat output.
Colleen Velo, one of our sysadmins, wrote this message around 11:30 p.m. CDT:

I'll probably be up until at least
Midnight, after which I'll probably
try to get some sleep.

I don't think she meant for it to be a poem, but it seemed pretty damn poetic to me.
Fortunately, the HVAC team came to the rescue, and we were victorious, so the servers live on. Yay!
Hats-off to the folks who kept this situation under control.
Good sysadmins are worth their weight in gold.

Film Festival update:
We saw Soft Shell Man on Thursday and Millennium Mambo on Saturday.
The first film was a surrealist French Canadian piece.
Great cinematography and constantly twisting storyline. I loved it.
The Hong Kong film, however, was a drag. Like two hour of music video.
Visually arresting, but ultimately empty. Maybe I just didn't get it?
Tonight I think I'm going to see the Welsh flick.

Congratulations to Ed and Amy, proud parents of a beautiful girl as of 4:00 a.m. CDT this morning: happy birthday (as yet un-named child)!
Congratulations to Cordell and Betty, proud parents of a beautiful girl 33 years ago today: happy birthday Arah!

Rain continues today in the Twin Cities, and it's good. We need the spring rains to wash away the salt, the sand, the grime of winter.

This morning Lost Remote points to an E & P article about media and interactivity. Steve Outing explains that too many publications are making the same old mistakes. One of my heroes, Nora Paul, sets the record straight about programs that are learning how to do this new media stuff.

I saw The Icelandic Dream at the film festival last night. It was droll, but lackadaisical. At 23, Hafdís Huld, formerly of Gus Gus, made a credible teenager. I would have preferred the movie if the story had more "teeth" to it. Still, it was funny. Matt Keeslar was especially good as the American.

Earlier I wrote about animal attacks.
Some of the more terrifying stories that come out of our ocean-side affiliates concern shark attacks.
Well, now you can get paged if there is a high risk of shark attack.
What's next? E-mail alerts for bad hair days?

Meanwhile, it's raining in the Twin Towns. Dreary.

I'm overdue on my time tracking.
I haven't finished my taxes yet.
I'm 25 miles behind my weekly bicycling goal.
I hate it when I fall behind. I bet you do too...

But the film fest is going on, so last night we went and saw Vizontele.
This movie was a treat: rich color, laugh-out-loud humor, complex characters.
Television is arriving to a small village in Turkey, and the whole community is in chaos. Our hero is an eccentric handyman who "could make a radio out of a shoe."
Writing, directing, and acting, Yilmaz Erdogan delivers the goods in full. Fun stuff.

Ever wanted to loot and pillage but just couldn't find the right vessel?
From DNFI I learned that the historic, trans-Atlantic replica Viking ship "Islendingur" is for sale on Ebay.
Apparently, the captain Gunnar Marel Eggertsson is a direct descendant of Leif Eiriksson, so you know it's got to be good.
Can't find a Viking crew to row for you? No problem, it's been fitted with twin diesel engines!

Yesterday I saw two films at the fest: The Year Zero and Time Out.

The first flick was a documentary about a couple of Mayan shamans who were concerned about the climate changes that would come when the 5,200 year Mayan Calendar resets to zero.
For those of you keeping track, that's December 23, 2012 by the more commonly-recognized Gregorian Calendar.
All in all, I liked the ethnography, but there were certain "new-agey" elements that distracted me.
By deliberately manufacturing "archive footage" by shooting old black and white, and by pretending to read headlines from radio news by recording a script, the film maker caused me to wonder how much was documentary and how much was fiction, and I didn't like that at all.

The second movie I saw with AEB, and we didn't get what we expected.
While I had assumed that there would be some satirical or film noire elements it this drama, instead it was just grim.
The cinematography and acting were amazing, but the dark tone of the film left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
I didn't see the primary character as a villain, but I had difficulty sympathizing with him.
Was the film mis-marketed, or did I just read my own assumptions into the capsule review?
Either way, it was a very grey film about career, family, mendacity and delusion.

I should first mention that the amazing University of Minnesota Film Society 20th Annual Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival begins tonight.

Some of the films I'm looking forward to seeing:

• Cyberman (CA)
• Cylcomania (FI)
• Fíaskó (IS)
• Íslenski Draumurinn (IS)
• Ndeysaan (SN)
• Nora (IE)
• L'Emploi du Temps (FR)

I think I'm going to need to get one of those twelve-movie passes again this year...

Tom reports that we have pulled ahead into the TOP TEN of the NTN Premier League:

Rank	Team	Score	Location
1	Inglewood	123560	Edmonton, AB
2	Grand Slam	122821	Washington, DC
3	Stadium C	122140	Addison, TX
4	Teaser's	121709	Chicago, IL
5	Rose & Crown	120744	Medicine Hat, AB
6	Shorty SMA	118497	Edmond, OK
7	Moose Country	117495	Mendota Hts, MN
8	Boss Q'S S	115541	Winnipeg, MB
9	FABULOUS F	115217	St. Paul, MN
10	Heroes BD	115107	Wichita, KS

Go team! "Let's get smart; it's too late!"
As to you, Moose Country, we'll see what you're all about next week...

Because it's Friday, I should make some MP3s available again...

People asked for the Prince song below, so here it is.
I'll probably get sued for publishing it here, but anyway...

From TheHawaiiChannel, we learn that a part-time Honolulu Zoo employee was injured from an attack by an ape that happened Tuesday:

I'm just curious as to why they would let someone that's not that experienced handle animals that attack them like that. If it was a tiger, it would have been way worse.

In other wild animal news, Tawney Kitaen attacks husband Chuck Finley.

From the local Tuvalu internet service provider I have learned that Tuvalu delegates were instrumental in the recent 2002 Model United Nations Conference in New York City.
Go Team Tuvalu go!

Don't tell me you don't know where Tuvalu is and why it is suddenly so important...

Here in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul it just keeps snowing.
At least four inches have fallen already.

But like our favorite local eccentric says:

Sometimes it snows in April.
Sometimes I feel so bad, yeah.
Sometimes, sometimes I wish that life was never ending.
But all good things, they say, never last.

Wow, it is still snowing out there.
If you're travelling through the Upper Midwest today, expect delays.