Butterfly on a wheel is an absolute waste of time, 98 minutes of your life down the drain.

The movie is one long cycle of misery and tension leading to a fairly obvious “twist” that leaves you completely unsatisfied. I can’t find a single thing I liked about this movie. Avoid at all costs. I can’t fathom how it’d get a 7.1 rating on IMDB.

My phone is just about dead, as you know if you’ve tried to call me in the last week or three. I was thinking of getting an iPhone, but in browsing around found this BlackBerry 8320 Curve on Amazon that looked like it’d work for me.

So I’m just about to hit the final confirmation button on the order page when I decide to read the fine print. And there it is, under conditions that would disqualify me from getting the $250 discount:

(6) use this line of service to replace an existing account with the carrier.

Excellent. I’m out of contract with T-Mobile. I’d like to stay with them, but they’ll charge me $250 extra if I do. I see an iPhone in my future…

First there was Pooya Parand Co, a company with my and my brother’s names. Now I see there’s even a Parand Rayan company, which would be me and my 5 month old son. Probably doesn’t mean much to you, but these are not very common names (in fact Parand is a very unusual name), so I find it quite a coincidence that the two top results for companies that bear my name also bear the names of my brother and my son.

Watched Kite Runner last night. Surprisingly good, I recommend you see it.

This guy just keeps going. Check out his latest creation, a head-tracking virtual reality setup using the Wiimote. This thing is absolutely sick, I want some games with this already…

Steve’s latest rant is a fun read as usual. As far as I’ve gotten, he’s spent many pages and many innocent words explaining that Java inevitably leads to unreasonably large code bases, which must be avoided at all costs.

While I don’t disagree with his premise, it does occur to me that for Steve the English language is his Java. His use of English leads to unreasonably large articles that must be abridged at all costs. Someone please invent a linguistic Python for Steve to use in place of his current abuse of English.

A busy day is when you realize you have to use the facilities at 12:56 and actually get a chance to use them at 5:54.

I was laughing out loud from the opening sequence of Shoot Em Up – bullet shells bouncing off the pregnant woman’s stomach as Clive Owen is telling her to push. This is one stupid, extremely fun movie. There’s no story, just plenty of shooting things up.

If you like violent, stupid movies, this one’s not to be missed.

This guy is a genius. This time he’s using the Wiimote to turn any surface into a multi-point interactive whiteboard.

Software and details available from his site.

I’ve noticed I’m less and less inclined to log in to FaceBook these days, and it occurs to me it’s because my page is now made up almost entirely of useless info.

X won a movie quiz? Y used the birthday app? Petrolhead invitation? I just don’t care. The only part that remains of interest is the tiny amount of real-estate under the “Status Updates” that actually conveys something interesting about my friends.

I am, of course, waiting breathlessly when my news feed will be full of news about where my friends buy their shoes and linen from. Joy.

Edward O’Connor points out that Lunch 2.0 San Diego is next Friday the 14th. I haven’t been to the San Diego versions of this yet, but the LA ones were interesting. If you’re into technology and entrepreneurship you may want to attend.

It’s raining in San Diego. Lightly sprinkling anyway.

Channel 10 News has “live team coverage”. Literally.

I guess it’s better than murder stories.

This is just ridiculously good. Google has provided a very simple API that generates attractive graphs and charts based on parameters you pass it. Here’s a sample graph:

Here’s how I generated that graph: http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chs=200x125&chd=s:helloWorld .

Full documentation at the Google Chart API Developer’s Page. Via Simon.

Here we go. I just gave Smoosh’s Free To Stay a thumbs up on Pandora. Then I went to the artist’s page. It’s an 8 year old and a 10 year old in Seattle.

Fact is, if I knew who was singing I wouldn’t have liked the song; I’d have too many prejudices in my head to even hear it. Knowing nothing about the artists, I just heard the song and I liked it. That’s how it should be.

Since I switched my laptop months ago I’ve been without my music collection, so I’ve been trying the various music service. I’m enjoying Pandora quite a bit; it actually does a good job of finding music I like. The only trouble is I seem to have listened to everything it thinks I like, since I keep getting the same songs over and over.

As much as I like Pandora I’m not crazy about having it be the keeper of my music preferences – those thumbs up and thumbs downs are very valuable to me. I want access to them.

I took a quick look and it looks like you can do this for easy access to your music preferences:

• Create an account with Pandora.
• “Bookmark” each song you like. Roll your mouse over the cover of the song as it’s playing, click the “Menu” (up arrow) option, and choose bookmark.
• Go to http://feeds.pandora.com/feeds/people/{your username here}/favorites.xml for an RSS feed of your bookmarked songs.