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Recently my favorite book portal (Polish) posted on their Facebook page a question. “Do you prefer to read book first, or maybe watch movie adaptation?”. That made me thinking and my post would be a reply to that question.

I always prefer book, as movie adaptation is always worse. You simply can’t contain 300 pages in 90 minutes, it’s impossible. Something would always be cut. Not to mention that movies often have really invasive producers with their “excellent” ideas how to make particular scene, or entire movie, better. Want an example? Read “Phantoms” by Dean Koontz and you’ll see. Great book and lame movie. Not to mention my favorite example “Dreamcatcher” by Stephen King, where movie stripped entire psychological edge which was core of the book.

Recently I have started using Chrome as primary browser (and I’m happy so far). Because of that I’ve needed to log into my Google account to be able to use Reader and other Google apps. I’ve typed my login and password, but as I’m using 2-step verification I was asked to input a code I should’ve received by sms message. I was trying to log on August 30th somewhere around the noon and was waiting for code to arrive for a good while, then finally gave up and used Printable backup codes (good that I was already authorized on Firefox as I’ve lost this printout). After a while I’ve started receiving Google codes (I’ve tried to repeat login procedure few times). First code arrived on August 31st 1 PM my time (Prague), last one today few minutes ago:) Wow! And what if I would really need to access my Google account as a matter of emergency and wasn’t logged on other machine/browser and lost my Printable backup codes? I would be literally fucked. 2-step verification in login procedure is great for the security, but it must work fast to be useful. Maybe it’s only problem with Europe and Americans got their smses on time, or maybe it’s only my phone/network (T-Mobile). I don’t know, but I’m pretty annoyed.

Since yesterday I’m a happy subscriber of Office 365 P1 plan. I now have 25 GB Exchange mailbox (using only 0,5 GB), Lync IM (awesome), Sharepoint site (quite useless), and access to Office web apps (which are free anyway). As I’m “half American” I was able to buy it for only 6,38 USD, which is a little less than what I was paying Apps4Rent (6,95). I’m pretty happy with the service, setup went smooth. I was even able to trick O365 a little, so my domain is still managed by my main hosting service, but I have all records as they should be. If you have your domain elsewhere and want to keep it there, but you want to use it for O365 services do as follows:

Few days ago I’ve watched Arthur. As for modern comedy (they’re not making good comedies anymore) it was quite entertaining. I was actually pretty surprised because I don’t like Russell Brand, but in this movie he was quite good. Maybe because he is so similar to character he’s playing, so he wasn’t playing a lot. However I wonder how much of his IRL behavior, which is quite extravagant, is real. Anyway, this picture is entertaining and I don’t feel that I’ve wasted my time watching it, but original Arthur was better. Why? Let me break my answer into points:
1. Object of Arthur’s love.
In the original this role was played by Liza Minnelli, do I really need to say more. In the new version it’s Greta Gerwig and she’s “plastic”, not very pretty, has no charm. Generally I don’t like her. Also I’ve preferred this character to be a shoplifter than unlicensed tour guide. It simply felt better. The story they’ve made up to fool the police was also better in the old one. This new girl just seemed to be more like a wallpaper than a character which is really important to the movie.
2. Arthur’s fiancee
Maybe Jill Eikenberry was not much impressive as Susan, but Jennifer Garner was just awful. Garner has no ability to play with the face, she could be replaced by car crush dummy and nobody would spot the difference. She’s pretty, but it’s not enough. She was not convincing at all.
3. Arthur’s chauffeur
Luis Guzmán was total misunderstanding. I haven’t smiled once on his “jokes”. I believe he and Jennifer Garner attended the same acting classes, if any.
4. Hobson
As I love Helen Mirren, she is in top ten on my list of favorite actresses, I must say that John Gielgud was more convincing as a nanny. And I think that a man was better choice for this character. When in original movie Hobson was dying I’ve felt really sad, now it was just a glimpse of a feeling. Also connection between Arthur and Hobson felt stronger in the old movie.
5. Absence of grandmother
Where is Arthur’s grandmother?! She added depth to original movie and Arthur felt more legit when you saw that he has his insanity in blood.

I’ve read very interesting text about 3D movie projectors used by cinemas and how bad security design led to worse end-user (viewer) experience. You can find full text here. But I want to write about something I’ve recalled after reading this text.

Few years ago I was working at call center for major Polish telecom (TP SA). I was help-desk for ADSL service called Neostrada. We were divided into two groups:

Today I’ve read about Financial Times launching their HTML5 based app (instead one for iPad only) to deliver their content. Good move as it means access for more people. But it’s not what I want to write about today. I wish Wired would do the same. I love this magazine, however to buy it in shop here (Europe) it costs around 12$ per issue, international subscription is better, but still it’s 75$ a year. They have iPad app with annual subscription for 20$, which is acceptable, but you must have iPad. And I don’t want to have iPad! I hope that they would follow Financial Times soon, possible profits should be best incentive. We’ll see.

Well, actually not. But as I’m a fan of Bruce Schneier and TED I’ve wanted to do something to support them. So I’ve translated subtitles for Schneier’s talk about Security Mirage into Polish. And reviewer needed to fix only few issues, mainly punctuation:)

Finally we have Firefox 4 here, it was delayed several times and I have a feeling that main reason that it was finally released was release of Internet Explorer 9. Why I think so? Because among many advantages new Firefox has few flaws. Let me list them here:

1. When I’m opening a site which has Facebook applet which shows you people who liked it, Firefox is opening this applet also in new tab. Only this applet. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s quite annoying when it does.
2. SiteAdvisor add-on is working on my Firefox at home, but at work it says that due to instability in Firefox 4 this add-on needs to be disabled. Both browsers are at the same version. It’s fixed now.
3. Sometimes Often when I’m clicking link on the page browser opens it, but “forgets” the previous one. So no go back one page functionality is available. It’s especially irritating when using Google.
4. FireFTP add-on crashes when transferring file using SFTP. Actually entire Firefox is crashing:( Fixed! Now this add-on works even faster than on FF 3.*:)
5. Home button on the right side, I’ve really got used to having it on the left, it’s hard to switch now.

I still love it and I’m using it every day, but they should first polish the product before releasing it. But I know that they didn’t want to be late. OK, to not be the grumbler here, I’ll list what I like in new Firefox:

Today I’ve received email from Blizzard saying that they want me back to Azeroth (World of Warcraft):

I haven’t been playing WoW for quite time now, and I’ve never was dedicated player, so I wonder if maybe they’re experiencing some shortage of users. Who knows, I wouldn’t find out as I’m not planning to come back, WoW is too much time consuming (and to be honest quests are a little bit boring).

Have you recently noticed that you see less messages on your Facebook wall? It’s because of new filtering which is showing you the post only from people and pages which you’ve interacted most. Rest is filtered out. It could be nice, but actually Facebook rolled it out without any special notification, so I didn’t know about it. Was feeling a little lonely;( Good news is that you can easily turn it off. You need just to navigate to Facebook page, scroll to the bottom and click “Edit Options”. Now select “All of your friends and pages” and click “Save”. That’s it.