Michał's blog

A Single Blow

Tonight on INHD I watched A Single Blow. This is a documentary about Naoki Eiga, captain of the Japan Men's Team at the World Kendo Championships. I don't know much about kendo but this was a fascinating film about what it takes to win in kendo. I didn't actually see the whole movie since I discovered it by randomly turning on TV but in the part I watched they have shown the path that Eiga took from focusing on the desire to win to an approach more based on intuition. I'm trivializing a little but this was the part that I took out of the movie. I recommend it if you have a chance to watch it.

Hiding and Seeking

This documentary was showing last week on PBS in the POV series. It was quite interesting to me since it partly involved Poland but mostly because it showed ways of thinking different from what I usually encounter in life. To me the thinking of the sons (or at least one of the sons) in the documentary was hard to understand. I think that people are generally tolerant of each other and it always puzzles me when I see people who openly say that instigating hatred towards other is a valid way of life.

New version of Thingamablog

I installed the new version (1.0.2) of Thingamablog. I wonder if it improved support for other languages. Here's a short test.

Polish: Michał ąęśźżń

Chinese (default font): 你好

Chinese (MingLiU): 你好

Moving my blog

I have moved my blog to http://blog.cierniak.org. This new blog uses the blogger.com technology although it is hosted on my server.

House of Flying Daggers

I watched today House of Flying Daggers at the Bella Botega. I quite liked it although Yiru who we invited said that she saw the movie and it was very bad and Yuan didn't like it too much. All my other friends I can think of liked the film probably even more than I did.

Ligretto and Settlers of Catan

I went yesterday to another game might. During the course of the evening I played three games: Settlers of Catan, Ligretto and Carcasonne. They were all fun but Ligretto deserves a special mention because it is different from an average game. It is a card game with very simple rules and it is played very fast. I should see if I can get a deck for myself.

Bad Education (La mala educación)

Kai and I watched today Pedro Almodóvar's Bad Education at the Harvard Exit. We both liked the film very much. After the show we had dinner at the Bacchus Restaurant. I had a very good Moussaka there. I also ordered a glass of Retsina with the dinner but I didn't like it at all.

del.icio.us

I heard so much about del.icio.us that I decided to play with it today. I set up my page and added a few bookmarks. It is indeed a neat idea. However I will probably stick to Yahoo for now since I like having everything on one web page.

Cellular

On the flight from Chicago I watched Cellular. It was an OK film for its genre.

Foucault's Pendulum

I finished reading Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. I really enjoyed it, although it took a little effort to get through the beginning.