Daily Archives: 6/13/2004

Weekly Weigh In

Today’s weigh in saw me give back last week’s loss. Not too surprising given the fact that I have been eating a bit more. A company picnic full of yummy barbecue food probably didn’t help much, but there were plenty of other times when excessive snacking happened. Oh well, I shall try to do better next week.

Weight Loss Graph

An aside: Carmen and I got out of a movie late last night and felt like we needed some kind of dessert. Normally this means either air popped popcorn, watermelon or Skinny Cows, but we were out of all three. I stopped in at Albertson’s to restock.

I decided to give the CarbSmart Ice Cream Sandwiches a try, since they were on sale. Their numbers are 80 calories, 40 from fat, and 1g of dietary fiber. If you compare this to a mint Skinny Cow, you’ll find that the Skinny Cow has 120 calories, but only 20 due to fat and 2g of fiber. Both work out to around two points (the Carbsmart sandwhich has higher fat and lower fiber, which counts against it). So arguably, both are about the same, at least for those of us on the Weight Watchers diet. No reason to prefer one over the other, right?

Wrong. The thing is, the Carbsmart bar is a 2oz sandwhich which amounts to barely more than a mouthful (at least for someone with a big mouth like me). The Skinny Cow is a 4oz sandwhich, literally twice as big.

There you have it: Skinny Cows, just better.

Holy Crap! My scanner works!

coinsI have a Canon LIDE 20 scanner, a super cheap LED flatbed scanner. I figured there was no way that it would possibly be supported under Linux. After all, none of my other scanners ever was, largely because I am so cheap I never buy SCSI scanners. But remarkably, it does work, and right out of the box with Fedora Core 2. I typed scanimage -L and land of mercy, it found my scanner. Then a simple scanimage --resolution 300 --mode Gray | cjpeg > foo.jpg, and voila! It works! A bit of GIMP work, and you can get the image on the right.

I also scanned an image of an ordinary quarter as a test. At 600dpi, considerable detail, some of it nearly microscopic is clearly evident.

The Chronicles of Riddick

Ah, this time, a Saturday evening saw my wife and I attending a late showing of The Chronicles of Riddick, a sequel to Pitch Black, starring Vin Diesel as Riddick, an escaped convict with an uncanny ability to see in the dark and to kill.

I must admit, I wasn’t a huge fan of Pitch Black. It had some good points, and had a look which I found compelling, but ultimately I found it to be a bit predictable. You knew that the action would center around the escape, and that ultimately just about everyone would die. That’s what happens in this genre.

The Chronicles of Riddick suffers a bit from this basic flaw, but it is all-in-all a more well rounded story. It is a story with villains and heros, with battles and treachery, and lots and lots of really nice special effects. Riddick is being hunted by mercenaries, and traces the money back to Helios Prime, a planet which is about to be overrun by the Necromongers, a fierce race of conquerers who go from planet to planet, assimilating all those who will join them and then destroying the planet and all that remain. Aereon, a mysterious Elemental has summoned Riddick to battle against the Lord Marshal of the Necromongers, as prophecies have fortold.

So the story begins.

Overall, I found it beautfully rendered, exciting and well paced. It’s a classic summer action movie, perhaps a bit darker than some, but it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The look has some of what you might have expected from Dune, but delivers it with greater impact and panache. I don’t really think of Vin Diesel as a good actor, but he does have a certain rugged style and his delivery is dead on. Dame Judy Dench turns in a good appearance, but it’s over quickly and actually has very little to do with the plot. Alexa Davalos plays the grown up Jack from Pitch Black, people who watch the same programs as I do will recognize her as the electrical temptress Gwen Raiden on TV’s Angel. I immediately wondered if she was actually the same actress in Pitch Black (I might not have recognized her with a shaved head) but she was played by Rhiana Griffith.

I rate the movie as a good solid 8 out of 10. If you like action packed science fiction movies, or just good special effects and costuming, you’ll probably enjoy it too.