Author Archives: MXH

Reelviews #6: High Noon

In “High Noon”, of 1952, Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is unexpectedly called to account for his sins. Kane learns that the Governor has freed a man whom he and the town judge had conspired to sentence to death. Furthermore, … Continue reading

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Reelviews #5: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

“The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (dir. John Huston, 1948, from a novel by B. Traven) examines the lives of the burro rustlers of Northwestern Mexico in the 1920’s. Chief among these is Gold Hat (Alfonso Bedoya), whose single-minded pursuit … Continue reading

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Reelviews #4: No Country for Old Men

2007’s “No Country for Old Men” (directed and written for the screen by the Coen brothers, from Cormac McCarthy’s novel) is a languorous exploration of the vehicles of the early 1980’s, concealed within an ostensible fish-out-of-water comedy about mildly autistic … Continue reading

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Reelviews #3: Seven Days in May

“Seven Days in May”, of 1964, (dir. John Frankenheimer, from Rod Serling’s screen adaptation of the novel) tells a story of inter-service rivalry in the middle years of the Cold War. Burt Lancaster plays USAF Gen. James Mattoon Scott, appointed … Continue reading

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CANVAS Gotcha (Precision)

Been playing around with the <CANVAS> tag. Overall, it works pretty well. However, there was this little bit o’ joy: The transforms are all based on 32-bit floats. (See the WebKit code, e.g. translate, transform, &c.) Since 32-bit floats only … Continue reading

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Scott’s Space Wars

I recently stumbled across this page, which describes a very early computer game (in fact, a heavily-qualified “first”). The page included a link to scans of the original machine code. The page also included this portentous sentence: It has been … Continue reading

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Reelviews #2: The Fountainhead

In 1949’s “The Fountainhead”, Gary Cooper plays Howard Roark, a brilliant engineer and terrible architect. Roark offers a Faustian bargain to the city of New York; he will solve their most pressing civil engineering problems, but only on condition that … Continue reading

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Reelviews #1: The Caine Mutiny

Possibly the first in a continuing series. 1954’s “The Caine Mutiny” (directed by Edward Dmytryk) tells the story of aging nightclub “singer” May Wynn’s (May Wynn, nee Donna Lee Hickey) attempts to secure a marriage to a young, handsome, but … Continue reading

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Of Frogs and Boiling

I was just looking over some old records, and discovered something that, at the time, escaped my attention. Between early 2002 and mid-2007, my cable company (AT&T) raised my rates for the same service by about $35/mo, or nearly 50%. … Continue reading

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Ranking

Better the rule of law than the rule of men. But better the rule of men than the rule of lawyers.

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