After all that bleating on about how I need to post more, I’ve admirably succeeded in not doing so. This is mostly to do with playing God, looking for work and looking after a sick child. There’s plenty of stuff building up in the drafts folder though. Maybe later depending on how the hatchling is.

So how are you all?

*(Thanks to Annie for the idea of using some of the more meaningless spam titles for post titles. This one courtesy of Devon Nielson)

So, Best Original Screenplay Oscar goes to Little Miss Sunshine.

This is definitely one of those “I told you so” moments.

If you get a chance to see this film before sunday’s Oscars ceremony, do so. That’s pretty much the recommendation I can make about this deeply dark and humourous film. I had heard good things about it but confess that I hadn’t realised it had scooped a fair haul of BAFTAs recently, including one for best original screenplay. I feel vindicated now as when the credits started rolling, I turned to my wife and said “That was a superbly written film”.

The story is very easy to describe: a middle class American family drive from their home in Albuquerque to California so that their daughter can take part in a beauty pageant. So far, so nauseating. But this is by no means a heart warming tale of achievement and success in the vacuous world of highly questionable pre-teen popularity contests. To call the family in question a bit dysfunctional would be like describing Idi Amin as not a very nice man.

For a moderately low budget film, costing only $8m to make, the cast is surprisingly recognisable. Alan Arkin has a BAFTA winning turn as the foul-mouthed grandfather, Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette the parents and 10 year old Abigail Breslin, who we first saw in Signs alongside Mel Gibson and Joachim Phoenix, puts in a wonderful (oscar nominated) performance as Olive, the aspiring beauty queen daughter.

The humour in this film is dry and bleak - more slapstick than The Royal Tenenbaums but considerably more subtle and intelligent than, say, a run of the mill Steve Martin family comedy. There were moments which were so deliciously absurd that I laughed out loud. This film deserves a batch of Oscars in my humble opinion, the first of which should be for the writing which was inventive and witty. I doubt it will get the gong for Best Film but I do very much hope that young Miss Breslin gets the one for best supporting actress as she is solid and believable all the way through.

If I ever wrote a film about an alien invasion the script I wrote about an alien invasion of earth ever got made into a film, Paul Gascoigne is the second last person I’d ever permit to play the lead male role. The last would be Squeaky Voice Beckham.

If, on the other hand, they announce that Vinnie Jones is to play the lead alien, I’ll be a gnats dick more impressed.

(This may be the beginning of something that should spawn into a seperate blog. It’s also of no interest to anyone but myself and other Domino developers. In fact, I could be the only Domino developer on the planet who couldn’t suss this but just in case…)

I’ve been trying to extact file attachments from Notes documents using Lotusscript. In theory, this should be one of the most simplistic coding challenges I’ll face today and second only in brain processing power to blinking, or perhaps breathing.

The code should go something like this:

If doc.hasembedded Then
Forall o In doc.embeddedobjects
Set obj = doc.getattachment(o.name)
Call obj.extract(FILEPATH + o.name)
End Forall
End If

But the code failed when it got to the Forall command and through up a Type Mismatch error. Now normally this error would occur because there aren’t any attachments on the document. But this is something we checked for in the previous line. So what’s going on?

This particular application is accessed through the browser and only through the browser. That means that files are attached to the document can only be attached by use of a File Upload Control which in turn means that the files are attached directly to the document and not to a rich text field as they would if the document had been created through a Notes client.

Again in theory, this shouldn’t cause a problem: I should still be able to use the embeddedobjects array property of the NotesDocument object to get to the files. But I can’t. I know the files are kosher and not corrupted, I know they exist and I can access them through more conventional means. So how am I going to access them programatically now?

After a bit of headscratching and a cup of weak, machine-vomited coffee, the workaround presented itself and was just as simplistic as the original code. All I needed to be able to save the file to another location was the file name and another way of being able to get that name was with the formula function @AttachmentNames. So my new code looks like this:

Dim filenames as Variant
...
If doc.hasembedded Then
filenames = Evaluate("@AttachmentNames", doc)
Forall o In filenames
Set obj = doc.getattachment(o)
Call obj.extract(FILEPATH + o)
End Forall
End If

It’s a shame that the documented method doesn’t work and that you have to find a workaround, however simplistic it is. Still, if they’re going to work with 8 year old software that’s two versions behind the current release, what do they expect?

I’m always up for a challenge. (That’s “always” as in “sometimes, and only on my terms”).

Gordon’s recently suggested one that I’d normally take to like a carrion crow to an eyeball and is a pretty straightforward “how many miles can you run in a month?” Admittedly, I haven’t run in 3 months and have a half marathon in 2 weeks and am feeling a little past my best before date but this is the sort of challenge that normally would get me motivated to get back into running. The last one I did was organised by my old gym and was a “how many calories can you burn in a month”.

The “stipulation” of sorts that Gordon has, well, stipulated, is that it’s for Nike+ users. Now on the face of it, Nike+ is exactly the sort of gadget I could go for as it measures distance, average speed, temperature, rooute and other non-essential information. I already tend to use a Polar HRM system (which reminds me, I need a new strap for my receiver/watch) but so far the problem that I have with the Nike+ is that it requires an iPod Nano. Or just an iPod or something.

The Nike+ site actually recommends using a particular set of shoes too - marketing bumpf which led me to believe it was a totally exploitative way of getting people to buy their shoes but both Gordon and Richard have informed me that this isn’t the case. So no biggy there. But it still seems to need an iPod. Which I don’t have and don’t currently need and, well, there’s this other factor: I no longer listen to music while I run.

I have spent years pissing around with playlists and tracks and all sorts trying to sort out music to run by for training or for races. However, late last year I had a bit of an epiphany. I went for a two hour run and had kitted up as normal with music, shades, camelbak (it being July) and HRM and set out. After about 25 minutes, my MP3 player ran out of juice. Pissed off, I contemplated going back to get a new battery but realised I’d never finish the run or complete the route I’d planned. So I ran without music, concerned that I’d find the remaining 1.5 hours tedious at best.

It wasn’t. At all. Apart from the fact that I chose a very scenic and challenging off road route, I felt more comfortable running than I had done with music. Everything felt better: my stride, my attention, my ability. What really surprised me was that the run seemed to be over before I knew it.

So with this revelation, I decided not to run with music anymore.

That’s not to say that I wouldn’t be interested in finding out more about the Nike+ system, particularly how tough it is and whether the foot based sensor would survive the rough and extremely muddy terrain I normally tackle. I know that a GPS system would probably give higher accuracy out of the box and less need for calibration than the Nike+ works (how does it work anyway? If it’s stride length then surely it’s not going to be less accurate for off road runs where stride pattern can vary quite a lot?). Perhaps I should investigate the Garmin Forerunner range.

On the other hand, I’m getting to enjoy the minimalist approach to running and not going with any gadgetry whatsoever.

Lack of impetus and lots of work/househunting/jobhunting/parental duties/video watching has lead to a dearth of updates. Live with it.

One word film reviews:
Cars: Marvellous
Little Miss Sunshine: Hysterical
Children of Men: Anachronistic.

Tip for the day:
Brandy and Orange Juce is palatable. Sherry and Orange Juice isn’t.

Lyric of the week:
“I feel like I could rape a nun”

Current hypochondriac musings:
Is itjust my jaw that’s hurting or do I need root canal surgery?

On the fourth day, God said “Where are the backups kept?”

And lo, the minions around him replied “Backups, Lord?”

And God said “Yes. Backups. You know, of this highly confidential and business critical data that you’ve got on this server. You do have backups don’t you?”

“Ah. Well, the thing is…” responded the humble and sheepish looking server administrator dude, ” the thing is, actually we don’t. But what we once didn’t know we now know and this is all down to your wonderous and mighty wisdom and knowledge.”

“Are you taking the piss sonny?” frowned God, “Because if you are, you’re going to get a lightning bolt shoved so far up your arse your nostril hair will catch fire!”

“Not at all, Lord. I mean it. I beseech thee to be calm in thy infinite patience and other biblical sounding phrases that I might use to try and placate your anger and disappointment.”

“Oh,well, in that case…”, said God, “Let there be backups!” And there were backups and a regular data backup schedule. And God saw that it was good.

On the Fifth day, God said “I suppose there’s absolutely no point in asking you about SOX and compliance, is there?”

“Compliance, Lord?”

Another year over and what have I done
All my aspirations have shriveled in the sun

I don’t normally mention it but today is to me what yesterday was to Adrian. I was looking forward to some Hot Fuzz but as I’m working, that will have to wait. Oh well. Steak and chips for supper, a glass of wine or two and an evening in front of the telly.

Don’t dare tell me I don’t know how to celebrate.

My life is halfway through
And I still haven’t done
What I’m here to do

(Bonus points for artist and song titles)

I haven’t really got into the whole MySpace thing. It reeks of “sellout” to me. Perhaps it’s techy/blogger snobbery but it’s a subculture that’s not quite niche enough for me to be into. On account of, you know, the world and her dog having a myspace page. I quite frankly don’t feel the need for one. MySpace is where I am, the square metre or so around my physical presence which, if invaded by uninviteds gets a punch on the nose. Unless you’re my wife, my son or particularly cute.

Should I be concerned, therefore, that I found myspaces for TheThe, Foetus, Alexander Hacke, Neubauten, Lydia Lunch, Skinny Puppy, Jarboe et al? Or should I just get with the program?