Salvage The Movie

Salvage is one creepy horror film.

It regularly makes you cringe in anticipation and unconciously slow your breathing such that you can feel your heart pumping away silently.

There was one particularly disturbing scene that totally got to me. I had to temporarily stop eating when I saw it. Don't close your eyes. It's essential you get the whole thing in. And when the truth unravels itself, you are gonna go

OMG. *shock
WHOA. *still shocked
YOU MEAN THAT'S... *implications are starting to sink in
THAT'S SCARY. *rethinks implications
OMG... *thinks of possibilities
OMG... *realised you had been offered a very unique perspective into how things may work there and conclude it's one hell of a movie.

Watch it if you can. The actors did a pretty decent job. Just the plot itself warrants it a 7/10 in my book. I don't understand how did it get 5/10 at IMDB.

IT Professionals Feel Traumatized

(Source)
If your screen freezes, try ignoring it. As that report you've spent a week working on gets chewed up by the hard drive, shrug and forget about it.

Whatever happens, don't call the exhausted souls in the information-technology department. They are too stressed out already. The last thing they need is you shouting at them.

According to a survey released this month by Dublin-based consulting firm SkillSoft, 97 percent of IT professionals feel traumatized by their daily work. Indeed, 80 percent of them get tense just thinking about going to the office.

Poor them. Read more!

Whether IT is really the most stressful occupation on the planet is something we could all have an interesting, if nervous, conversation about. What appears beyond doubt is that workplace stress has turned into an epidemic.

Why is that? After all, as the world becomes wealthier, and as billions get invested in new technology, you might imagine our working lives would get easier, not harder.

In reality, work has become so psychologically demanding because we choose to make it that way.

No one would deny that stress is everywhere. SkillSoft talked to 3,000 people to come up with its conclusion that handling the computers frazzles the nerves more than any other job, Kevin Young, managing director of SkillSoft, said in a telephone interview. "That is true right across different industries. The speed of change just gets faster."

In the SkillSoft survey, the IT jocks came out at the top of the pile. They were followed by medicine and engineering. Yet, according to a paper presented to the British Psychological Society earlier this year, librarians suffer more from stress than any other occupation.

It is hard not to sympathize with all of them. IT workers have to wrestle with technology that never seems to get more reliable or user-friendly. If our cars were as wonky as our computers, we'd all keep a spare horse in the garden just in case. Librarians have to deal with people who don't bring their books back on time, or maybe fold down the edges of the pages. (Well, maybe most of us could roll with those punches, but they are very gentle souls, which is why they didn't become firefighters or hedge-fund managers.)

The rankings may well be meaningless. Everyone is under pressure at work.

Why are jobs becoming more stressful all the time? There are three reasons:

First, hyperactivity is now a badge of honor. In the modern office, there is little place for the people who puts their feet up on the desk, push back the chair, and stare at the passing clouds for a few minutes. If you aren't rushing around like a hamster on steroids, the boss thinks you are lazy. You will be downsized before you've had a chance to say "mañana."

Stress has been built into the DNA of office life.

Next, we have created an ever more demanding, 'round-the-clock business culture. Shops are always open in many countries. The call center will take our orders in the middle of the night. The markets switch from one time zone to another. As consumers, that's great. We can get anything we want, when we want it. As producers, it's not so great. We have to be plugged into the working world all the time -- it is hardly surprising we feel under pressure.

Yet, most of us participate in the economy both as consumers and producers. So while we've benefited as the former, we have suffered as the latter.



Lastly, we have forgotten how to be polite and considerate when dealing with our co-workers, suppliers or customers. In the SkillSoft survey, IT workers cited bullying behavior by managers and colleagues as among the reasons they felt so stressed.

Yet, work is so stressful because we've chosen to make it that way.

Maybe it's time we all just relaxed a bit. And perhaps even stopped shouting at the IT department -- I'm really not sure they can handle the strain anymore.

Annapolis

Annapolis
Originally uploaded by Arnold Ho.

Annapolis is a very rousing film. I think we all got a bit of Mississippi in all of us.

It's the chances we take, the effort we put in, the luck that turns in our favour and the recognition we receive that take us somewhere where we want to be.

You could be the worst at the beginning. You may be totally unprepared. And you are venturing into unfamiliar ground. Trying to meet new expectations. It's not easy. It's not guaranteed. But with heart and the people we meet along the way, let's make it special.

Gentoo On The Acer 3010 / 3012WTMi

I was having trouble booting my 2006.0 Gentoo minimal installation CD on my new ultraportable Acer 3012WTMi.

So I tried my 2005.0 CD instead. It booted but could not detect the root device! After some scouring, here's the solution. I made a few changes that worked for me.

1. Insert the liveCD into your Firewire DVD/CD drive
2. gentoo acpi=off
(Without acpi=off, even when I manually "modprobe tg3", my Broadcom Corporation Netlink BCM5789 ethernet adapter does not appear. With acpi=off, it is automatically detected)
3. shell
4. udevstart
5. exit
6. /dev/ram0

Surprisingly, I had more trouble booting Gentoo Linux than Mac OS 10.4.6 on the Acer 3012WTMi! 10.4.6 booted right off the DVD!

There's always a first for everything I guess.

I haven't installed Mac OS 10.4.6 yet. But it booted perfectly all right. Looks like I am gonna have 3 OSes on my ultraportable too!

Eagerly Awaiting Superman Returns

I have watched all the Superman movies that starred Christopher Reeve. Yes. Even Superman III aka Superman vs. Superman. And I like them all. Except Superman III.

Superman Returns veers way off course by having Lois Lane marry someone else and even becoming a mum. Another comic-to-bigscreen movie that messes with comic continuity. Do note that this movie takes off from Superman II and not Superman IV.

Non-conformity aside, I really hope it will give a reason for fans around the world to cheer for Superman: Truth, Justice and the American Way and be a fitting dedication to Christopher Reeve if it intends to be. It's a pity both Christopher and Dana Reeve have both passed on and wouldn't be able to see it.

X-Men 3 The Last Stand Sucks

I took X-Men and X-Men 2 in my stride. But X-Men 3 snuffs out Cyclops, completely rewrites the origins of The Phoenix and its powers, kills Xavier and portrays Wolverine as the sensible leader of the X-Men?! This I can't take anymore. This movie is blasphemous.

Cyclops dies after scowling in all his scenes, saying "not everyone heals as fast as you, Logan" and blasting some lake water? He is the leader of the X-Men. He hasn't even fathered Cable yet! I repeat. He is the leader of the X-Men!!! He's been there from the start and is still around! How could you kill him!? OMFG. No wonder James Marsden's Cyclops looked so pissed in the movie poster. He got such a screwed-up script!

Juggernaut's powers are mutant-based? Isn't his power mystical-based granted by the Crimson Ruby of Cyttorak? I must have sounded like an idiot when I went: "Hey, why did he get knocked out?". Everybody probably thought: "His mutant abilities are affected by the bald mutant-cure kid, silly". Argh.

Phoenix starts to look like she just got possessed when she gets mad?! Why stop there? Make her hiss one-liner warnings like "He is coming!" in Latin why don't ya?

The Phoenix isn't a immensely powerful energy being? She's just a pent-up Jean Grey? She didn't become Dark Phoenix because of the Inner Circle? You are telling me it's because she was just really pissed at Xavier?

The Phoenix doesn't dispose of her enemies by incinerating them? She makes 'em rot and crumble away?

What? No flames? No sexy female human-torch effects for The Phoenix?! This is your one chance to make a smoking hot body enveloped in hot orange licking flames. You give me a constipated Famke Janssen and in-the-background car-wreck fire?! What is wrong with you people?!

Why does Warren Worthington have such short hair? Why is he shorter and slimmer than Wolverine? Why is he portrayed as such a wuss when he was one of the original X-Men? If they could suppress the X-gene so quickly and easily with a tiny fast-acting dart, why the hell do they have to use that huge metallic in-your-vein syringe gun for Warren Worthington? Ya guys ran out of normal syringes?

Why is Rogue so tiresome and boring? What happened to her determination, coolness under pressure and edge? What happened to her power of flight, invulnerability and full hair? What happened to Rogue?! Her scenes were largely inconsequential to the movie except to give some reason for the damn cure. There were so many solid characters to expand on (Rogue, Angel, Cyclops, Juggernaut, Phoenix) and you give 'em all shitty parts?

Wolverine giving locker-room inspiration to Iceman?! Giving stupid advice like "Hold the line!"? I understand Hugh Jackman is huge but revolving the whole movie around his character is getting tiresome. Even the movie poster has Wolverine's claws in it. Urgh. This gnaws away at the idea of the X-Men, which is a team. Not a ragtag bunch of kids and their mommy (Storm) being led into battle by daddy (*gasp Wolverine).

The only thing X3 pulled off accurately is Comic Book Death (Xavier miraculously downloads his mind to some mindless abled-body and freaks out the doctor). And even that isn't a good thing.

X3 sucks.

Frequence3

I have been tuning into SKY.fm's Classical and Jazz streams since last year and have recently found New Age rather appealing too.

I am currently tuning into Frequence3.fr which plays the latest hits. It's streams at a high quality 192kbps and has 19 servers to connect to. My stream has been crystal clear and smooth so far. Awesome. It's also a station that would have a higher probablity of airing Alizee's songs.

The astute would have noticed that it's a french radio station so the DJs speak French. I can only make out 5% of what they are saying. D'accord. Tre bien. Bon bon and short sentences. It's time to take out that French to English dictionary and brush up on my conversational French but alas, I have prior commitments.

What I have listened to so far.
Ronan Keating - If Tomorrow Never Comes
Natasha Bedingfield - Unwritten
Lifehouse - You and Me

Lots of hits. Really nice for a rainy and cool Thursday afternoon spent indoors. Buried in books.

The Legend Of Lucy Keyes

I have just finished watching the movie The Legend Of Lucy Keyes. I knew it was based on a true story so I went searching for more information on what really happened.

Note to self: stop watching horror flicks in the dead of the night.

The mother was brought to the verge of insanity by the loss of her little girl, and for a long time after her disappearance she always went out at night-fall and called, Lu-cy! But the echo from the aged forest was the only answer.

- From the notes of Prof. Erastus Everett

Early princeton natives often said that on stormy nights when the winds howled about the rocky slopes, they could hear the faint, distant cries of a distraught mother crying, "Lucee --- Luceee!"

- From "Wachusett" by Warren N. Sinclair, 1996

The following story is true

Robert Keyes and his family moved to Princeton, Massachusetts in 1751. They purchased a large tract of land, some 200 acres, on the South-Eastern slope of Wachusett Mountain.

On April 14, 1755, Keyes's daughter Lucy, who was 4 years old at the time, followed her sisters to fetch some sand from Wachusett Lake. Lucy never returned from the lake. She vanished in the woods that day never to be heard from again.

The towns-people made every effort to find the girl. Search parties combed the woods, the lake was dragged, all to no avail. Martha Keyes, Lucy's mother, was pushed to the edge of insanity by her grief over losing her daughter. Every evening she searched the woods calling her daughter's name.

Martha died in 1786. She never found Lucy.

Many people believe that Martha Keyes has every reason to haunt the wooded hillsides of Wachusett Mountain calling, "Lu - cy, Lu - cy", since she never learned the grim fate of her daughter. And witnesses still experience the spirits of both Martha and Lucy Keyes to this day.

Closure (this can be considered a spoiler for those who haven't watched the movie)

A Dying Man's Confession of Murder

To the Postmaster of Westminster, in the State of Massachusetts:

I, Tilly Littlejohn, am now an old man, hard on to ninety. Six weeks I have been sick, and three days I have been dying. The doctor gave me up day before yesterday; but I cannot die till I tell the true story of Lucy Keyes.

I once had a farm in Westminster, east of Wachusett, and Robert Keyes’s joined mine. We quarrelled about the line fence, and the referees decided against me. After that I hated Keyes, and would have nothing to do with him. He had a happy family; and from my home I could hear their shouts of laughter; and Keyes was happy. This made me hate him the more; for I was unmarried and alone. To this I trace the ruin of that family and of my life. If I had boldly sought and wed—before she chose another—the girl whom in my youth I loved! But I cannot tell that story—I am too far gone. I only wish the young to be warned by me. My desolate way of living made me a terror to all children. I hated them, and they feared me.

One summer afternoon, in the year 1755, or thereabouts, I was crossing the path to the lake, near Keyes’s field, when I saw the child, Lucy. She saw me, and appeared frightened, as if I were a wild beast. She began to run away. My anger was aroused. The injury Keyes had done me, in robbing me of part of my land; his prosperity and his happiness, with wife and children, and their loathing of me—all this rushed into my mind, and made me a demon of hate. I gave vent to my spite in a heavy cuff on the side of the child’s head. I did not mean to kill her. I was mad, and did not know how hard I struck. She fell, quivering, at my feet, and without a groan. Then I thought: “Here is more trouble for me on account of that hateful Keyes. If she lives, they will know it all, and I shall be punished; and she may not live for she now lay still at my feet. I will despatch her.” Mad with hate and fear, I struck her three heavy blows on the head with a stone. I then hid the body in a hollow log, and went to my house. That night Mr. Keyes came to ask me to help search for the child. I did so, to prevent suspicion; but I told him that I had seen a band of Indians the day before on the mountain, and that they had probably stolen her. When I saw how earnest and thorough they were in the search, I knew the body would be found; so I took it from the log and buried it near the roots of a fallen tree, scraping the earth from the roots into the hollow, and piling stones and rotted leaves with the earth above the body. This was late in the evening. I then built a fire above the grave, to conceal the place where earth had been moved.

While I was piling wood on the fire, the family all came; and, before long, men came from Princeton and Westminster; and, the next day, from Lancaster. When the first ones came, I thought they had found me out; but I kept on adding wood to the fire, and said nothing. I was so busy with burying the child and concealing the evidence of it, that I did not think that the bonfire would call people together, though this was always the signal— so much was I beside myself. But when Mr. Keyes took my silence as the natural thing for me, and asked me where the child was found, I saw that no one suspected me; and their faces filled me with terror, lest the truth should be discovered. I, therefore, told them she was not found; and I made plans for a more thorough search. I kept them searching till they all thought that the Indians had, without doubt, stolen the child. My fears were then at rest.

It was a natural thing for Indians to steal a child. Nobody suspected me; and I was safe. Then I went home, feeling free once more. But at sunset I heard the cry of Mrs. Keyes, calling for Lucy; and “Lucy!” “Lucy!” would be repeated from the mountain, and then from the hill, and then again and again from farther and farther away. It seemed as if all the spirits of the air were calling on me for Lucy. And then at night I would dream that Lucy was under my feet, and when I went to step upon her, in hate of her father, I would fall into a deep pit. This would awaken me; and as the misty light streamed through the trees, or into the room, I would seem to see her before my eyes as she looked after that first blow. And every night at sundown I used to hear the frantic mother calling for her little girl; and the echoes answered back the call. The nights were made hideous by my dreams.

I could not stand it. And so, disposing of my farm, I travelled to the Far West, and took land on the Mohawk river, in the State of New York. The shadow of my dark deed has hung over me. The sunset-cry of Mrs. Keyes, calling for Lucy, has been in my ears; and in dreams the child has appeared to me, here, with the sad, stunned face. I have longed for death to take me; but death would not come. Even with the weight of ninety years upon me, he will not take me with this burden of guilt upon my soul. I want this story to be told to Robert Keyes~ that I may die and be free from the apparition of this innocent child, and the haunting of the mother’s voice, and the memory of my crime.

(Signed) TILLY LITTLEJOHN


Accompanying this confession was the following statement of Mrs. Elizabeth Peters:

DEERFIELD, N. Y., August 12, 1815.

Respected Sir,

I have written the enclosed confession, and it is signed in the tremulous hand, as you may see, of Mr. Littlejohn. You will like to know the circumstances. I am a widow of more than twenty years, and my children are all dead. With my younger sister, herself rising sixty, I have kept house for Mr. Littlejohn these ten years. He was a neighbor of ours and lived alone. After my husband died from the effects of drink, my little ones all having died before, I was living alone with sister in the house, when on a summer night it was burned with all that we had. My husband’s habits had left me deeply in debt, so that we could keep the farm no longer. I was destitute and homeless. In the midst of the fire, when we had but just escaped from the burning house with our lives, Sir. Littlejohn appeared and began to pile wood upon the flames. He seemed to be out of his head; and he would say nothing to us, but kept talking to himself about Lucy. He would say, “Lucy is not here; the Indians have her; go and hunt for the trail.” Relapsing into silence he would pile on the fuel. When the conflagration was over he had disappeared. The next day he came over to find us. He said that his home and his heart were burned out more than fifty years before. He was alone, and we had no home. He wanted us to come and live with him. We went; and since then he has spared no pains to make us comfortable and happy.

We had known him as the Hermit of the Mohawk. He had avoided society, and had no company but his dogs. He now became more cheerful in the thought that he was helping the homeless. But every evening as the sun went down, he would hide himself in his bed-room; and when curiosity led us to peep in and see what he did there, we saw him with his face buried in the pillow and his hands stopping his ears. He must have fancied that he heard the mother’s call for Lucy—or was he seeking pardon from on high? Perhaps, both. For two months past he has been growing feeble, and lately he has not left his room. The doctor said, two days ago, that he was dying and no medicine could help him. Since then he has taken no food. We expected to see him breathe his last every hour, but he lingered on. Last night he sat up in his bed and called me. He told me to get pen and paper quickly; and then he told me this frightful story quicker than I couid write. When it was done he grasped the pen and affixed that tremulous name. He then lay back on his pillow and said to me, “Don’t hate me; I did not mean to do it. Stay with me. I have suffered enough.” I said, “You have been good to us, we will not leave you.” He immediately expired; and we shall bury him as he had asked us to do, in the garden at the foot of a large elm, which he called Lucy’s tree, and there he used to sit for hours in the sunny afternoons.

Yours truly,
ELIZABETH PETERS

P. S. - Mr. Littlejohn deeded his farm to me and my sister; but on learning this sad story, we wish to share it with any poor relatives of Mr. Keyes’s. It would be the wish of the poor man now gone. We hope to hear from you all about that family. - E.P.

- from an article in New England Magazine, 1887 by A.P. Marple