Damn, I love imdb

I’ve just finished watching Silent Hill and I could swore I’ve almost understood it. Almost makes a difference, though. First thing I did was opening the imdb board for this movie. Surprise, surprise at the very top of the list is the post called Complete Guide to Understanding Silent Hill. After reading it (don’t do that if you haven’t watched the movie!) I’ve bumped the rating from 9 to 10 as this is truly an excellent work (and everything makes so much sense!). Not to mention that I was a little bit off from the true meaning of the story. At moments like this I really do love imdb.

The best actor according to imdb

… is …

Fred Astaire

To those who do not know him (shame on you; shame on me coz as of lately I did not know him either), it’s Fred Astaire. Now why do I say that according to imdb he is the best all-time actor? The answer is very simple – look closely at the provided link – especially at its last part: nm0000001. He was the first actor to be added to the imdb database when it was being created. This cannot be just pure coincidence!

PS: Unfortunately, the first added movie (with 0000001 index) is some 1894′ 1 minute short called Carmencita (1894) and it’s not widely known.

WP Movie Ratings v1.3 released!

This release is mostly a bugfix one, as there are no major features. Only fixes for some nasty bugs and features that did not make it into the 1.2. And so the WP Movie Ratings wordpress plugin made it to the version 1.3. The most important fix is a much extended css file, that makes the plugin look good with most popular WordPress themes. Tested with Almost Spring, Blix, Connections, Green Marinée, Pool, K2, Laila and, of course, the immortal Kubrick.

Other notable changes include:

  • added reviews when in page mode.
  • added pingerati.net pinging when adding/changing movie rating.
  • you can now edit the title of the movie.
  • added sorting options in page mode (sort by title, rating, view date).

Go ahead, download it now or go to this project’s page.

Btw: Does any of you use the included bookmarklet to rate the movies?

6th Era Nowe Horyzonty Film Festival ‘2006

Era Nowe Horyzonty Film Festival is over. 11 days in the cinema have passed quicker than one could imagine. Two years ago I wrote a summary report (in Polish) of the 4th edition of the festival, which took place in Cieszyn. This year’s edition, the 6th, took place in Wrocław. Over 100,000 viewers, 675 showings, 522 movies out of which 120 had its first-night showing. 5 screenings a day in 14 cinema halls at the same time (sometimes it was very hard to choose the best available movie to watch).

So was it all worth it? Hell, yeah. I’ve had one of the greatest vacations in my life. It was the third film festival that I’ve attended and it was surely the best. Mainly because of the great titles that Roman Gutek (the organizer) managed to show to us (lots of titles were from the recently ended Cannes Film Festival).

Here are some of my personal statistics: 49 watched movies (5 out of 18 in the main competition, including La Sagrada Familia which has won by popular vote) which gives the average of 4,45 movies per day (that includes the first day that had only one screening of Volver). Most of the time I was able to watch 5 movies a day. I’ve spent about 1050 zł (circa 330$) on the whole festival (including accreditation, accommodation, meals, etc.).

The best movies of the festival (TOP 10):

  1. Plac Zbawiciela (2006)
  2. United 93 (2006)
  3. Doskonale popoludnie (2005)
  4. Slunecní stát (2005)
  5. Volver (2006)
  6. Ryna (2005)
  7. Jak to się robi (2006)
  8. Buena vida delivery (2004)
  9. Crónica de una fuga (2006)
  10. Enfer, L’ (2005)

The worst movies of the festival (TOP 5):

  1. Parapalos (2004)
  2. Leyenda del tiempo, La (2006)
  3. Picado fino (1996)
  4. Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man (2005)
  5. Paheli (2005)

See you there next year!

WP Movie Ratings v1.2 released!

It’s been less than three weeks since the v1.1 release and I have managed to prepare a significant upgrade to the WP Movie Ratings wordpress plugin. Here is the direct download link. Remember to follow the upgrade instructions when upgrading.

Significant changes include:

  • you can now edit and delete your movie ratings.
  • added option to customize the dialogue title for movie ratings box via WordPress options panel.
  • added option to display movie ratings using 5 stars instead of 10.
  • ability to set custom date the film was watched on (instead of assuming the current date) and display movie ratings based on this date instead of id.
  • fixed plugin activation problems on Windows machines (no more of those errors: WordPress database error: [Table 'wordpress.wp_movie_ratings' doesn't exist]).
  • added separate page listing all movies (just create a new wordpress page and add this tag there: [[wp_movie_ratings_page]]).

Hapland 3 walkthrough

For the walkthrough itself, scroll down.

Much to my surprise Hapland 3 has been released! It’s been over a year since Hapland 2 saw the light of the day, yet I still remember very clearly my struggles to finish this highly addictive game.

By the looks of it, Hapland 3 seems to be much more complicated than the first two parts. Complicated as in harder. Hopefully I’ll have it finished by the end of July.

Hapland 3

Now I know what you came here for in the first place, the walkthrough itself. I really do think it’s so much more fun to solve all of the puzzles by yourself, but oh well, if you persist…

The complete Hapland 3 walkthrough/solution:

  • Click on the stickman beside the carrot to make it walk to right and click on the carrot, before he eats it, click the top of the box below to hit the carrot down to the cave and at the same time click the 2 yellow flies before they take away the carrot.
  • Click the leverman until you see another carrot, click stickman to eat it.
  • Click on the right side of the box to release a flap.
  • Click leverman again until you see the arrow. Click the other red arrow to face right.
  • Click the arrow above the stickman and the stickman will go down.
  • Activate both the hover pads.
  • Click on the UFO and when it gonna abduct the stickman, click on the right yellow button under the box so that it abduct the rolling stone instead and the landmine exploded and the stickman run into the house and flush the toilet.
  • Click the doorbell, click on the stickman again so that it go up the platform.
  • Click stickman again so that it goes left.
  • Click leverman until you see shield.
  • Click on the switch beside the green arrow and click on leverman.
  • Click the tube to bend upwards.
  • Click on the UFO, when it fly out of the screen, click on the shield and click on the leverman so that the stone will hit the UFO and freezes the pond. (Timing is required).
  • Click on the shield and click the leverman two more times and this will shoot a rock and a black bomb, bounce off the shield into the basket.
  • Turn on the light above the door and the stickman will go back to the other side.
  • Click the gear on the center of the box and click the left yellow button to launch a wheel to other side of the lake.
  • Click the switch on beside the green arrow again and pull the lever until you see red bomb, click on the bomb.
  • Click the leaves above the crow and spider will come out.
  • Click on the window to drop carrot.
  • Click the spider then at the same time click the crow. Timing is important again, it sequence are done correctly then the crow will shoot down a ladder and drain the lake.
  • Click the switch beside the green arrow again to make leverman go down to the bottom of the lake.
  • Click the top of the right tree to drop fruit destroy the hover pad.
  • Click on the bell and the mechanic will come down to repair, when he is outside, close the door behind him.
  • When he is at the red arrow, click him will climb up the ladder.
  • Click him again will burn the vine.
  • Click him again he will come down.
  • Click arrow twice to point right.
  • Open the gate between bathroom window and repaired hover pad.
  • Click on the left of the crate in the cave.
  • Click the mechanic to go down the cave.

Last part is the hardest, again timing is very important. Click on the mechanic, when the cart just underneath the red blob, click on it and the orange doughnut will drop into the cart, when the cart move to the left cave and just before the opening of cave, press the leverman in the bottom of the lake so that a green doughnut will drop into the cart and release the monster which eventually smash the bottom right cave and reveal a do not press green button.

Do not push the button because it will blow up the guy in the cave. You can still finish even if you do, but if you let him live, you can see some concept art for all 3 Hapland games at the end. Click the gear at the bottom right to change the sign to blue press button. Now press it and shout: I did it!

The above review comes from a comment by one of my users.

Google AdSense will not display any ads

I’ve been noticing a strange problem with my Google Adsense advertisements. Quite often, in fact just too often, Google would not serve any ads in the right sidebar of my homepage. There would be just this blank space staring at your face. What’s weird though is the fact that the ads would display properly on any of the content pages. No ads equals no money, so that was not acceptable.

Trying out different ad combinations and sizes I’ve noticed that the ads would suddenly start appearing when there was only one ad block per page (be it a homepage or a content page). Most of the time I had three and I’ve rarely seen all of them being displayed. Placing just one helped greatly. I’m thinking that maybe Google has some content to ads ratio system in place as that would at least partially explain this behavior. Nonetheless it’s working now (meaning that at least one ad block is displaying properly all of the time).

It’s a pity that Google does not want to make more money off me letting me decide how many ads to run ;)

UPDATE: Seems I’m not the only one.

WP Movie Ratings v1.1 released!

This is mostly a bugfix release as it does not include any revolutionary features (they are planned for 1.2 and 1.5 versions). It is now available for download. Remember to follow the upgrade instructions when upgrading from 1.0 or 1.0.1.

Notable changes include:

  • sidebar mode, where movie ratings are on a separate line, so the box can be as thin as 170px for star ratings (images) and 100px for text ratings.
  • renamed HTTPRequest class to WP_HTTP_Request to avoid conflicts with other HTTPRequest classes from other plugins.
  • new options panel which lets you set different display options (like the aforementioned sidebar mode).
  • option to display movie ratings using just text as an alternative to the images with stars.
  • fixed CSS problems with Internet Explorer (now works properly even with IE 5.0).
  • css inclusion moved to <head> so that the generated pages that include the output from this plugin can now be XHTML compliant.
  • removed nested SQL queries so that the plugin now works with older versions of MySQL.

WP Movie Ratings plugin page.

Russian rocket missile shot over Eastern Poland

It all happened after 9 am on Saturday, 17th of June in Łomża, a small town in the Eastern Poland. There was a loud noise and few seconds later something big crashed into the ground. Luckily, no one was hurt. The object hit a car – Nissan Primera (pictured below) parked at local housing estate. It managed to crash the windshield, control panel and the engine of the car.

Russian rocket missile hit the car in Eastern Poland

Eyewitnesses began wondering what actually this thing is that fell from they sky. Looking at the crashed car some of them were assuming it must have fallen from an airplane passing by. The doubts were dispelled by sappers from the local army unit. – This is a part of a Russian rocket missile from the 1950s. – It seems someone was conducting a military experiment nearby.

The missile is about 15 centimeters wide and over 50 cm long. The police is looking for a person who shot it up in the air. Not everyone is convinced that it was shot from the ground, though. Some of the local residents believe it was UFO. – It must have fallen from the space. You don’t see that kind of missiles just lying on the street – argues Mr. Jan.

(via gazeta.pl)