There’s a moderately old article called “Don’t Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You” that I was thinking about recently.

A lot of programming languages allow for classes, generic classes and beyond. In the real world, companies insist on using object-oriented programming. Why? So they can re-use objects and methods at a later date. Now, outside of the codebase that the objects were originally created for, how often do you think they’re used? That’s right: close to nil.

Now, why have I been thinking about it recently? Because I’m being forced to use “generic classes” AKA “one layer of abstraction too far”. The chances of reusing a generic procedure in the real world? Absolutely nil. The things are too generic (you can basically only do assignment operations on them) to be useful for anything.

Abstraction is all well and good, but only if there is actually a need for it rather than when it could be implemented (i.e. all the time).

The film Dreamcatcher is bad. Words can’t possibly sum up the badness. In fact, I’ve done my absolute best to wipe most of it from my mind.

It starts out reasonably: 4 friends reunite and reminisce about how they got super-powers from a mentally handicapped boy they saved from bullies. Yes, that’s the reasonable part. After that, all manner of bizarre (read: shit) plot contrivances make it laughably bad.

I would recommend people see it, if only for the short film they’re showing before it: “Final Flight Of Osiris”, part of the Animatrix films (no direct link). Now that’s how you make a film.

This has got to be possibly the funniest crash bug for IE. Basically, by having an input element (used in forms) with no body tag, IE dies on its arse.

I voted for the first time yesterday. It wasn’t a very overwhelming experience. Nobody that I really wanted to vote for.

What’s the point in a democracy that does such a poor job of representing the people? As far as I can tell, no party fully represents a single person (other than the party themselves). The normal voters have to pick the closest fit; Everyone compromises and hopes for the best.

Of course, the best never comes. The various political parties don’t put their real agendas on the table. No sir, can’t have the people getting what they wanted.

Excuse the cynicism of this post, it just seems that our countries are far from what they could be.

Catch Me If You Can isn’t a bad film. It’s not a very good film either. Although there are some amusing moments throughout the film (Leonardo DiCaprio pretending to be James Bond, for one), the plot jumps around too much for it all too work. It seems like cleverly scripted set-pieces, held together with some under-done characterisation and weak plot devices.

From the outset, we’re never allowed to connect to Frank (the protagonist of the film): his genius and daring, although apparent from the outcomes that we’re allowed to see, are never truly portrayed. He goes from small-time cheque fraud, to having stolen several million dollars in the space of a few scenes, with no intervening growth really shown. We only really see his early failures, and his great escape scene later on. That’s it.

His pursuit is entertaining in places, but largely empty. Nothing really convincing. It’s about as half-hearted as this review.