The Music of The Passion

I heard an interview with Andy Trudeau explaining why he thinks John Debney deserves the Oscar for the musical score of The Passion of the Christ. It is fascinating to listen how complex the music is and how much influence Mel Gibson had on the music. For example, Gibson thought that the most painful scenes visually should have the most beautiful music.

Listen to this with headphones or a computer with good speakers.

NPR : Listening to the Movies: ‘The Passion of the Christ’

Wikipedia – It works

Below is a link to a rather long, academic article that argues why Wikipedia is as good as and even better than conventional Encyclopedias.

Anyone can add an article. Anyone can edit any article. Anyone can undo anyone’s edits. Sounds like a formula for chaos, and indeed sometimes there are “Wikiwars” when an argument over an article (often political) begins. Some steering group helps govern these.

In practice, Wikipedia is amazingly orderly and professional.

I agree with the author that Wikipedia is a very useful resource. I use links to it in my own blog postings and e-mails. I visit it regularly to look things up. I also end up visiting it because others use it as a reference.

Greg added an entry for Rosary Army. Looking under the edits history it looks like others have come in and helped “tidy up” the article. I thinking the word organisation (a British spelling) is evidence of such tidying.

Article:

Free Software Magazine – The FUD-based Encyclopedia

Trackbacks Locked Up

Kelly and I went through the MovableType MySQL database and closed over 120 old blog entries with open Trackback pings. This involved the repetative task of going row by row and changing a 1 to a 0.

I also deleted the trackback spam entries from the database, most advertising on-line gambling.

Since we don’t really use trackbacks (we all seem to use comments instead), I recommend not leaving this option open when posting a new entry.

And for the moment, no one can leave a trackback because I changed the name of mt-tb.cgi until I can implement some kind of security to prevent trackback spam.

SwapMouseButtons and Carpel Tunnel

Years ago I repeatedly developed carpel tunnel swelling in my right hand. I switched the mouse to my left hand and that solved the problem. I think keyboarding plus mouse-clicking plus using my right hand for writing all built up too much strain. Switching to my left hand for mousing distributed the work, and I have not had a problem since.

mouseswap.gif

At night, I use my laptop keyboard, so I have to become right-handed again. This means twice each day, changing my mouse settings from for the left and right buttons.

A little hotkey utility called SwapMouseButtons solves this problem. This would be good for anyone who switches mouse hands or for a house with right and left-handers who like to move the mouse from one side to another.

It even has an option to make your pointers mirror so they tilt left or right, reminding you which way the mouse is set.