A New Face

I’ve updated the theme for our site. You might notice the interactive archives at the bottom of the page and the swanky flickr images at the right.

This is still a work in progress: the flickr images aren’t cached so I’m pinging flickr each time the home page loads. The old photo album plugin (FAlbum) is broken — it just stopped working — so I need to find all the references in our older posts and fix them. Plus I need to bring back the search and contact features, but at least the new face is up.

Because we no longer live in Newburyport, we changed the name back to just metrocat. The server changed names some time ago, now the site reflects that.

I’ll Never Get That Time Back

Last night we watched Eragon. I wasn’t expecting much from a story written by a teenager, but the movie started with backstory narration (never a good sign) and moved quickly on to wooden acting from John Malkovich and the rest of the cast.

The story was crammed full of every cliché in the fantasy genre. Not one was left out. Despotic evil overlord: check. Wicked, nearly immortal sorcerer: check. Disgraced warrior becomes town drunk/trouble-maker, but has a heart of gold: check. Unknown youth becomes the salvation of the world: check.

The only redeeming point in the whole movie was the depiction of the dragon. Unlike most fantasy movies, the dragon wasn’t particularly reptilian. She was distinctly bird-like. While I don’t have opinions one way or the other on dragons, this was a unique touch.

I have no idea how this movie rated almost 5 stars on IMDB.