Welshrogue

The first mission to mars runs into problems and a second mission becomes a rescue mission but are they ready for what they will find?

A lot of big names star in this movie. Tim Robbins (the mission commander), Don Cheadle (a survivor from the first mission), Gary Sinese (a member of the rescue team) and Jerry O’Connell (technician) to name a few. This is a well acted movie with even bit parts played well.

The main space ship looks wonderful, especially with its rotating wheel. While not the first movie to have such an artificial gravity module (2001) it is particularly well done and very convincing. The mars landscape looks great and the storm clouds are very impressive. The special effects, especially the dust storm look really good.

The plot is a good one although a few months after this movie improved images from mars kinda spoiled it. A pretty good movie overall, no where near a blockbuster but watchable and enjoyable.

I have found a website that allows you to catalog your book collection online. You can enter your books by a variety of ways, including ISBN. This is a lot quicker than typing in author and title.

The only thing I am uncertain about is paying for the service. For free you can catalog up to 200 books, something that wouldn’t be much use to me. For $10 dollars a year, or $25 for life, you can enter an unlimited number of books. I can use Google spreadsheets to do pretty much the same thing except without the social aspect. On the positive side, you can check your list from your cell phone (can you say geek?).

There are several usuful and cool things you can do with the site including creating exports, sorting, and finding other people who read the same books as you. Its social networking by the books.

Library Thing

I don’t buy into many commercials. I don’t cry at a particular coke commercial or at ones for the special olympics like a certain wife I know. There is one that hits the spot though. Its shown mainly at the cinema rather than on television.

A young boy is trying to pass a note to the girl sat next to him in class. The teacher intercepts the note and then proceeds to read it out loud to the class. What the teacher reads is a poetic version of the usual, meet me at recess note.

How tired I am of this unbearable distance between us
How I long for the toll of the recess bell
Have you forgotten me?
Grown mindless of me?
Tell me that I am I not writing into an abyss
Or that is what will become of my heart.

View the commercial for yourself here

The commercial is for a fund run by a well known bookstore in Canada to help supply books and reading materials to elementary schools in Canada in need.