ANAKIN

Finally got to see Revenge of the Sith last night. I was disappointed. While the movie was clearly better than the first two, and finally offered a decent basic plotline, the nuances were awful. I mean, why exactly did Anakin turn to the dark side? A more plausible scenario than the one given would have involved him paying too much for car insurance. Overall, a decent flick, but a letdown for a mythos that has captivated me since I was six.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

So I'm experimenting with JXTA using the JXTA Programming Guide. I've bought several books on the subject but I found them difficult to grok(that's read and comprehend, in geekspeak.)  The guide, also, would serve as the best reference for the latest and greatest version on the JXTA API, which changes constantly. Well, at least on paper, JXTA's programmability is supposed to be getting easier with each released iteration. I'm not finding that to be so true in practice. For one thing, the documentation isn't suited for someone looking for a high-level abstract toolkit to build a peer-to-peer application on. To be fair, the material is outside my usual ken, which is more of a gluecode kind of work, but I should be able to pick it up. Anyways, I continue to plug away. One nice discovery is that the latest and greatest version of NetBeans (4.1) is turning out to be a pleasant surprise to work with. I'm not sure if it will replace Eclipse as my primary IDE, but NetBeans seems purer in concept and less daunting to the casual coder. Eclipse definitely has the leg up in features, though, but it can be maddeningly confusing to use. Does anyone know if NetBeans has an equivalent to Eclipse's templates? A nice presentation of NetBeans' current and future is here.

I'm posting this using Sauce Reader 2.0 Beta. I've been using Sauce in its earlier iterations for well over a year now to compose my blog posts. I find its superb editing environment to be unequaled. I'm wondering, though, what happened to spell check in this release?

Darth Vader's blog, Memoirs of a Monster, finished up today. It was/is a fascinating read that sought to portray the Dark Lord's innermost feelings regarding the events between A New Hope and The Return of the Jedi. Kudos to the author, Matthew Heming on a fine idea, finely executed.

Got a gas (propane) grill over Passover and have been rigorously grillin' ever since. Lorraine marinates a French Roast for me to grill for our Friday night dinners and it's scrum-diddly-umptious! Having some friends over tonight for some steaks and turkey burgers. Can't wait. Got tiki torches for the occasion. For a primer on gas grilling in America read Patio Man and the Sprawl People, by David Brooks. Also, watch King of the Hill.

OUR SO-CALLED LIVES

Watching Office Space for the upteenth time with my wife, I realize what draws me to this movie and its ilk on screens big and small: It's the chronicling of the mundane in such artistic fashion. Mike Judge, who wrote the script, is also the genius behind the brilliant King of the Hill (and Beavis and Butthead) cartoon which also captures the inanity of life in America hilariously well. The Simpsons was the first of the modern generation of screen productions to capture this zeitgeist, which somehow seems to be the exclusive domain of the Fox network and comedy central.

TWO BAD GUYS

What do I do while eagerly awaiting the theatrical release of Star Wars Episode III, The Revenge of the Sith? Why, I read Darth Vader's blog, of course. Astonishly well written and funny.

Johnny Knoxville hosted SNL last night. Skit after sit, he amazed us (wife & I) of how eerily he resembles a young Jack Nicholson in look and manner.

ALL IS WELL

You ever get that feeling that all is right once again with the world? The trees are blooming, birds are singing, the stream near the house is bubbling with the cool mountain runoff. Yes, that one. The feeling you can only get when a favorite series of yours is revived from the dead, like once-dormant flora. Sigh, I'm so happy now that Family Guy has started up again. Last night's first new episode answered such age-old questions like what would it be like if Ralph Cramden actually decked Alice and why the hell did Jesus just sit and take it?

Also, we bumped into an old acquaintance, Marci, over the Passover holiday, who hails from where I now live and was home visiting. It turns out that Marci is quite the vocal talent, check out her demo at the William Morris agency here.