Get Qurli.

Wednesday 23 July, 2008

See, the thing with short URI services like tinyurl is that they have this habit of going off-line when you least expect it. Sure, they have some nice features like stat counters and baubles and little bells that go bing, but at the end of the day, sometimes simple is better.

Sometimes, all you want is the link — not the full tactical assault required to go get it. What to do? Well, there are some advantages to the do-it-yourself model, like self-hosting. Namely that it’s my ass roasting over hot coals if it goes down. Having masses of (dv) horsepower, which has this frustrating habit of simply not going down, also helps. :)

Thus, with sod all fanfare, and a reasonably low care factor, I humbly present Qurli, a svelte, quotable, simple and blindingly fast URL shortening service. Long URLs suck. Embrace the axe.

I originally built this URI shortening service (pronounced “curly”) for me. A handy place to horde all those annoying, potentially throw-away 400+ character URIs that I just don’t want clogging up del.icio.us or The Lab bookmarks.

Then I realised, why not just share the love? So I have.

Please be aware the service is still ‘very beta’ — just like the fishstick, there is distinct chance it might not end well.

Grindhouse Revival. ∗

Wednesday 28 May, 2008

Something that started off as being a bit of a stress diversion has become a monthly event I entirely look forward to. And it has resulted in a realisation that viewing movies will never quite be the same again.

It all started with the realisation that a “night at the movies” just doesn’t thrill me the same as it used to. The anticipation has faded, jaded by the reality that the modern cinema has been reduced to a cash generating machine, more intent in churning over screenings and jamming souls into rooms seldom larger or less generic than public transport.

Gone are the old style theatres, with truly massive screens, luxurious curved bucket seats and the unique odour that always permeated the dimly lit, cathedral-like atmosphere. Gone is the intermission at the most inopportune moment, where our dashing hero, or busty bimbo is about to do something really. fucking. cool. And gone is the “life” it all seemed to imbue to the entire experience.

So what does one do, when recreating that experience means attending a gold class like establishment with all the stresses and effort required? And it’s not quite the same, is it? Oh it’s quite exclusive, you can consume alcohol, recline in comfort and have food delivered on demand, but it’s still just that little bit fake. And if a night-out is on the cards, why not spend it at a nice eatery instead?

The surroundings might be agreeable, but that life, that atmosphere, that excitement is still missing — the very thing that made going to the movies, well, special, has gone. And that is where my partner and I found ourselves at then end of yet another tiring week a month or so ago. Getting all dressed up to go out, to then relax seemed somewhat counter intuitive.

We could have gone out, spent up on the credit card and tried to pretend we weren’t actually being strip-mined by yet another faceless corporate cashing in on the “old movie” experience. But we decided to do something different.

We put various beers in the fridge to reach that perfect frosty chill. Wine was cooled to near-perfection. My wonderful partner whipped up a batch of some of the singularly best tasting Nachos I’ve ever experienced (why nachos? Why not?!). We turned off the lights and fired up Grindhouse — the Tarantino and Rodriguez collaboration and experiment into re-creating the 70’s style B-Grade epics.

And it was heaven. Cold beer, comfortable surroundings, pleasant company with no pimply faced thirteen-year-old angst-ridden teens throwing food, cellular phones or each other around the theatre. No oh-my-fucking-god-you-have-a-HUGE-head idiots all clumped together in the middle row. No half-drunk projectionist pissing away his last deciding to fuck with the focus every quarter-hour just to make everyone as miserable as he was.

We had a genuine, honest-to-god intermission. With yet more beer being opened, more wine poured. We had the experience that a night at the movies should always be and that is no more. We watched Death Proof and Planet Terror the way it was meant to be seen. And it was, frankly, fucking magic.

Sure, it wasn’t “on the big screen” but what the hell does that actually mean anymore? We don’t go for the experience any more. We only go to see the big effects, or to be bruised any battered by the seventy-billion forty-thousand-watt speakers.

And when you realise that going to the movies is now really just going through the motions of seeing something on the big screen — out of some crazed belief that that is the way everything must be seen — that you realise you’ve just been conned by the motion pictures industry. Because if it’s “good enough” you’re just going to buy the same damned thing on DVD, or Blue-Ray disc regardless.

They’ve conned us all into believing we somehow owe them and by God we must attend, or else! Why? With modern surround-sound systems being a dime-a-dozen and large screen TV’s almost the norm, what in the hell do we get out of our ticket anymore, when one can almost replicate the very thing that we use to justify going in the first instance?

It can’t be “for the experience” because that last shred died when George Lucas proved beyond shadow of doubt that it’s entirely possible to fuck over one of the last truly cinema-worthy epics. There’s just nothing enticing about spending money to sit in someone else’s over-grown lounge to see yet another remake that should have been taken out the back, along with it’s director and shot.

It’s grind-house-time at our place this weekend. Saturday night we’ll have two shows on. One has been decided , the other is still pending. The random assortment of beer will be cold, the wine on ice and the Nachos piping hot. That’s my idea of a good night at the movies. It’s a revival and we will sully ourselves in 70’s style b-grade. The more eccentric, eclectic or horrific, the better. Eurovision is all of these things and so much more, yet it will be just one of the two glorious indulgences.

Who knows quite what we’ll see after intermission. And that is just how movie nights should always be.