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75 Dystopian Movies to Watch

Wyatt Lyon Preul — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:37:00 GMT

A dystopia is the opposite of a utopia. While there are more movies that fit that classification, I have chosen 75 movies that embody a dystopia. They are not in any particular order. I tried to include an image and summary for each, but it ended up taking longer than I cared to spend, so I stopped. If there are any that you think I missed, be sure to append them to the comments below. After many is a link to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and if there is not a link, then simply visit www.imdb.com and search for the movie. If I had something to say I added it, otherwise I am quoting the plot summary available at IMDb. Also, if there is a sequel I am only including one of the movies . For example, there are 3 Mad Max movies, but I am only listing the first Mad Max (I liked Road Warrior the best out the trilogy).

Children of Men

In 2027, in a chaotic world in which humans can no longer procreate, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea, where her child's birth may help scientists save the future of humankind.

IMDb - Rotten Tomatoes

The Road

Based on the Cormac McCarthy book, this movie is due out early 2009 and is sure to be a classic dystopian film. It is about a man and a boy traveling a main road in a post-apocalyptic period. The book was amazing, so I can't wait to see this film.

IMDb - Rotten Tomatoes

A Clockwork Orange

In future Britain, charismatic delinquent Alex DeLarge is jailed and later volunteers for an experimental aversion therapy developed by the government in an effort to solve society's crime problem.

IMDb - Rotten Tomatoes

1984

George Orwell's novel of a totalitarian future society in which a man whose daily work is rewriting history tries to rebel by falling in love.

IMDb - Rotten Tomatoes

Mad Max

In a dystopic future Australia, a vicious biker gang murder a cop's family and make his fight with them personal.

IMDb - Rotten Tomatoes

Stalkers

The Matrix

A computer hacker learns from mysterious rebels about the true nature of his reality and his role in the war against the controllers of it.

IMDb - Rotten Tomatoes

The Postman

Post-apocalyptic America. What begins as a con game becomes one man's quest to rebuild civilization by resuming postal service.

IMDb - Rotten Tomatoes

The Handmaid's Tale

In a dystopicly polluted rightwing religious tyranny, a young woman is put in sexual slavery on account of her now rare fertility.

IMDb - Rotten Tomatoes

Brazil

A bureaucrat in a retro-future world tries to correct an administrative error and himself becomes an enemy of the state.

IMDb

A Boy and His Dog

A post-apocalyptic tale based on a novella by Harlan Ellison. A boy communicates telepathically with his dog as they scavenge for food and sex, and they stumble into an underground society where the old society is preserved.

IMDb

28 Days Later

Animal activists invade a laboratory with the intention of releasing chimpanzees that are undergoing experimentation, infected by a virus -a virus that causes rage. The naive activists ignore the pleas of a scientist to keep the cages locked, with disastrous results.

IMDb

V for Vendetta

Remember, remember the 5th of November, the gun powder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gun powder treason should ever be forgot.

IMDb

Solaris
Wall-E
Equilibrium
Rollerball
Death Race 2000
Soylent Green
Logan's Run
AI
Silent Running
A Scanner Darkly
Escape from L.A.
THX 1138
They Live
Punishment Park
Dark City
Fahrenheit 451
Gattaca
Planet of the Apes
The City of Lost Children
RoboCop
Twelve Monkeys
Alphaville
The Trial
Sleeper
Delicatessen
Minority Report
Blade Runner
Metropolis
The Island
Quiet Earth
Sleeping Dogs
Johnny Mnemonic
Threads
Harrison Bergeron
Panic in Year Zero
Last night
Network
Judge Dredd
Until the End of the World
BRAVE NEW WORLD
Blood Simple
Modern Times
The Truman Show
ZARDOZ
Terminator
I Robot
The Day The Earth Stood Still
Closetland
The Blood of Heroes
The Andromeda Strain
Kin-Dza-Dza
Alien
The last man on earth
Waterworld
The Beach
Sin City
Code 46
The Omega Man
The Running Man
Le Dernier Combat
No Blade of Grass
Avalon

Visual Studio 2008 Tip: Remove the Design/Split/Source button bar

Wyatt Lyon Preul — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 22:05:00 GMT

I absolutely hate the Design/Split/Source button bar whenever I am editing markup. It is especially annoying whenever I switch to full screen, because it still appears, even though it serves no purpose for me. Therefore, I opt to completely remove it, as you should do as well. I think this may also count as a minor performance tweak, as there is less processing that studio will have to do when switching to the html editor. Below is how to completely remove it:

Add a new DWORD entry in your registry at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Packages\{1B437D20-F8FE-11D2-A6AE-00104BCC7269}

Name the DWORD DisableDesignView and set its value to 1.

Reload Visual Studio and the annoying bar is removed. You should note that this may also disable your CSS intellisense. but who needs that?

Calibre, simply the best text management software

Wyatt Lyon Preul — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 01:26:25 GMT

I have a Sony 505 eReader that I use to read a wide range of information on. Shortly after my eReader purchase I download calibre for managing my documents. It seems that every couple of weeks there is a new version too. Each version does a good job of improving on the last. The program itself is quick, it is written in python. The interface is intuitive and has some nifty features. My favorite is that it can grab the contents of a site and quickly convert it to a format friendly to my Sony. Another nice feature is that it can easily convert books between formats.

I encourage you to try it out if you have a reader or lots of books. It also has a built in viewer. Download here.

Car driving product idea

Wyatt Lyon Preul — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 04:43:00 GMT

Tonight I was driving home dancing to the radio and using my legs to steer the car. I came to an intersection that I needed to turn at and my jeans couldn't get enough friction to turn the wheel. This has to be the most frustrating part of driving with your knees. I am sure I am not the only one who finds themselves in this situation either. My wife suggested a good solution to this problem, putting rubber in the knee area of your jeans. You could keep them in the car and then strap them on when a good song comes on. What do you think?

When are we going to make programming a televised sport

Wyatt Lyon Preul — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 04:59:00 GMT

I have a vision of a future where programmers compete in televised events like athletes. This future is similar to present day South Korea and their televised startcraft competitions. I want to watch a show that alternates between showing source code and then programmers writing it. I imagine these athletes (programmers) would be sponsored by companies like starbucks and logitech.

A sign of a programmer athlete is a mighty clicker muscle. The clicker muscle is the one that flexes whenever you click your mouse.

Do you have any ideas for other geeky challenges that could be televised?

Cooking Tip 203: Keep a cornucopia of vegetables

Wyatt Lyon Preul — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:24:00 GMT

For a couple of years my wife and I have kept our commonly used vegetables on a nice serving platter on our counter. This is an easy way to keep track of how many onions, garlic, potatoes, and any other common items you have on hand. We simply keep our platter stocked in abundance. I encourage you to keep your vegetables out like you would fruit. It not only is handy when you are cooking, but it also adds a variety of color to your countertop. We keep the vegetables that we use less frequently in the crisper. We do find that this collection changes with the season too, where winter squash and summer vegetables circulate. Here is our current stock of common vegetables.

Top 8 3-4 person $5 vegetarian meals to stave off the depression

Wyatt Lyon Preul — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:10:00 GMT

Below is a list of my favorite cheap recipes to make. All of them are vegetarian and all of them are good. With the depression lurking and people trying to tighten their belts and spending, I think it is only appropriate that we all try to cook more healthy cheap food. That is not to say that all of these meals are healthy, but they are going to be better for you in the sense that they are cheap, you cooked it, and there is no meat involved. If you do not currently cook the majority of your weekly meals then I encourage you to first and foremost not buy any prepared foods. To get you cooking more it is best if you also avoid the frozen foods section of the grocery store completely. Another tip if you are just getting into cooking most of your meals is to become vegetarian or cutback drastically on your meat. I am not vegetarian, but I do enjoy the novelty that cooking vegetarian food encourages.

Veggie Burgers with Fried Potatoes

This is a Bittman adaptation. He has a section in his How to Cook Everything Vegetarian covering veggie burgers. Once you read this section you will soon realize that you can make anything into a burger pattie, minus meat. I would say that I enjoy these more than actual burgers too, they are quite enjoyable, and very cheap to make. The following will make 8 patties and when you combine with fried potatoes or sweet potato fries your set.

Ingredients:

1 can garbanzo beans

1 medium onion

1 egg

1/2 cup rolled oats

salt and pepper

1-2 cloves garlic (optional)

1 dash cayenne pepper or red pepper flakes (optional)

1 tablespoon chili powder (optional)

Steps:

1. Combine all of the above in a food processor, I use the chop or mix settings and pulse it until it is mostly smooth

2. Heat a skillet and form the mix in step 1 (with wet hands) into patties

3. Cook each burger on the skillet

For the fried potatoes I do the following:

1. Cut red potatoes into coin size slivers

2. Heat a nonstick pan on high heat, add butter

3. When the butter is melted add the potatoes

4. While cooking top the potatoes with heavy salt, pepper, and fresh thyme

5. When the potatoes are mostly browned they are done

Jamaican Style Rice Casserole

This is a combination of a Bittman recipe, the Joy of Cooking guide to cooking rice, and feedback from my wife. This is a hearty dish and is also super simple to make. One of the best parts of rice casseroles in general is that you can embed a large variety of flavors. One variation idea is to add mango in addition to the pineapple, and to counter this with more pepper.

Ingredients:

1 can coconut milk

1 cup long grain rice

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 15oz can chopped pineapple

2 cans kidney beans

1 large onion, chopped

5 cloves minced garlic (if you like garlic add more)

1 bell pepper

Steps:

1. Heat oil in a pan on med-high heat, then add the onion and cook till translucent

2. Add the garlic, beans, and pepper, cook 5 more minutes (you can use an immersion blender at this point for the beans)

3. Heat the oven to 350 degrees

4. Stir in the rice, pineapple, coconut milk, pepper flakes, salt and pepper, add thyme if you want, bring to a gentle boil then turn heat off

5. Place the mixture in a baking dish and place in the oven for 30-45 minutes. You may need to add water during this time if the rice remains crunchy in parts.

Granola Encrusted French Toast with Berry Compote and Vanilla Yogurt Cheese

This is a recipe that my wife and I created after eating a similar item at Zell's in Portland. They used corn flakes to encrust their bread, and a different style for the cheese. Warning, this may cause you to stop using syrup on your breakfast items, I know we no longer own any. Below is a picture from Sunday's version of this recipe that I created. Another great thing about this recipe is it should take only 15 minutes to make, max.

Ingredients:

8 slices of bread

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

2 eggs

1 cup milk

1 cup vanilla yogurt (If you use whole milk vanilla you can omit the cream cheese)

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon cream cheese (optional)

6 oz berries of your choice, blueberries work well (frozen work work well)

1 bag of granola (I like the archer farms granola cereal)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Steps:

1. Wisk the milk, eggs, 1 tablespoon sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla in mixing bowl

2. Put the berries in a bowl and put in the microwave for 1 minute 30 seconds on high

3. Put the cream cheese in a small bowl and put in the microwave for about a minute on high

4. Heat a skillet, add butter to it, medium-high heat

5. Put granola on a plate and break it apart if needed, I use a pestle for breaking apart

6. Take a piece of bread and soak in the mix from step 1, next encrust it with the granola in step 6 by rubbing the wet bread over the granola, finally add it to the pan to cook, repeat for each slice of bread until the mix is all gone.

7. Combine yogurt and 1 tablespoon of sugar or honey in a small bowl.

8. To serve I put the bread on a plate and keep the yogurt, berries, and cream cheese separate. Put a spoon in each bowl and let each person add however much of each they desire. This is good because some people like it more bitter while others will enjoy more of the cream cheese and yogurt. Just top the bread with however much you desire :)

BBQ and Caramelized Onion Pizza

This is an instant favorite for anyone who eats it. I end up cooking one of these almost every other week it seems. Pizza is really easy to make from scratch. If you add more than the caramelized onions then you may end up over the $5 limit.

Ingredients:

For dough -
1 cup warm water

2 1/2 cup flour (1 cup wheat, 1 1/2 cup all purpose)

2 tablespoon oil

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon yeast

For Topping -
   1 bottle BBQ sauce
   4 large onions
   4 clove garlic
   anything else you want to add, I like to finish with chevre

Steps:

1. For the dough just combine all of the ingredients in the order listed and knead with hands. When everything is mixed, cover the bowl with a wet cloth and let rise for 45 minutes or so. You can add some extra sugar to help it rise faster if you want.

2. While the dough is rising caramelize the onions by following the steps in the next recipe. When the onions are about done caramelizing slice the garlic and add it to the onions to cook alongside them.

3. When the dough is ready spread it out on pizza stone, I like to put wheat flour or corn meal on the stone first.

4. Put the bottle of BBQ sauce on the dough, then top that with the garlic (if you like) and onions.

5. Bake at 400 for 15 minutes

Caramelized Onion Linguine

This is a recipe I got from Bittman in his How to Cook Everything Vegetarian cookbook. This should cost you $4. All you need are 4 large onions, 1 box of linguine, and parm if you want it.

Ingredients:

4 large onions

1 box linguine

Shredded Parm

Steps:

1. Caramelize the onions. This is really simple to do, heat corn oil in a tall pan on med-high heat. Cut the onions and put them in the pan and cover. Stir occasionally for 10-15 minutes. After 15 minutes or so when the onions are browning and starting to stick sprinkle with sugar and a little balsamic vinegar. Continue cooking for another 5-10 minutes. You may want to turn the heat down to medium if the onions are not caramelizing as evenly.

2. Boil water and cook the linguine

3. When the linguine is cooked put in bowls, top with the caramelized onions and parm.

Biscuits and Gravy

This is a favorite of everyone in my family. You can always cook eggs or the fried potatoes from the recipe above to complement this one. With making everything from scratch this will cost you less than $5 to feed 4 people. Here is the full recipe.

Grilled Cheese with Tomato Soup

This is one of my favorite meals to cook in a pinch. I can whip this meal up within a few minutes and it always tastes great. The key, I believe, is the quality of bread and mustard to use. I like to use dijon with large mustard seeds in it.

Ingredients:

8 slices Whole Wheat Bread

Shredded cheddar works best, but you can use slices of a sharp cheddar

Dijon Mustard

2 tablespoons or so of butter

I buy organic tomato soup and just heat that up.

Steps:

1. Heat a cast iron skillet on Med-High

2. Butter the slices of bread

3. Spread mustard on one slice of bread, then add cheese, then another slice of bread on top.

4. Put the cheese sandwich on the skillet and brown each side, remove from heat and cut in diagonal after it is browned evenly

5. Heat the tomato soup.

Serve the grilled cheese on a plate next to the bowl of tomato soup. I think you can get enough out of this for 2-4 people, depending on how hungry everyone is. This entire meal should come in under $5.

Cheesy Beans on Toast

This is exactly as it sounds, I first had this at McNivens in Indianapolis. McNivens is a Scottish pub. I think Cheesy Beans on Toast goes well with beer or scotch.

Ingredients:

1 can vegetarian baked beans (or your own homemade baked beans)

2 pieces of toast

1/4 cup of grated cheese, colby jack works well.

Steps:

1. Heat the baked beans in a large bowl or saucepan.

2. When almost done top with the cheese and let the cheese melt

3. Serve the cheesy beans on top of the toast, top with fresh pepper

Howto upgrade Windows XP to Windows 7 Features

Wyatt Lyon Preul — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:35:00 GMT

Windows 7 Beta was just released to the public and Microsoft indicates that you need Vista SP1 in order to upgrade. Even though it says you need Vista I have found a way to upgrade my Windows XP install so that it has most of the new features in Windows 7 by following these steps.

1. Install Windows XP SP3 so that your computer is more secure and running the latest

2. Disable your themes and search services (start -> run -> services.msc) as well as any other services you do not require. After this your computer should be running close to what it will with Windows 7. Also, for good measure, remove any extra non-sense from your startup items. Better yet, do start -> run -> msconfig and uncheck "Load startup items" then click apply.

3. To get that shiny new finder you need to install Directory Opus.

4. For the nice way to rearrange your taskbar use Taskbar Control.

5. You will want to also install Windows PowerShell 2 CTP3 if you plan on using it.

6. You can also install Internet Explorer 8

7. Download Windows Live if you use IM or blog

I think that pretty much covers all of the new features, and I bet the above steps will take you less time to follow than to upgrade to Vista, then to Windows 7. Once it is out of Beta and I have more time I do plan to install it. Until then, the above will get my by.

Our new food journal is up at consumerless.com

Wyatt Lyon Preul — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 02:30:00 GMT

My wife and I love to cook and entertain. To help us become better at both we plan to journal most of our cooking experiences at consumerless.com. The information provided would have traditionally been written into our cookbooks and entertaining journal. Instead, we have decided to make the information public so that anyone else trying out any the same recipes has useful suggestions.

This should also help us to remember what we have been eating and also assist us in making sure we are trying out lots of new meals.

I encourage you to do something similar if you also like to cook. I have comments on, so if you have suggestions for any of the meals please provide it.

Graffiti UserAgent Theme Switcher

Wyatt Lyon Preul — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:43:00 GMT

Here is a package for Graffiti that allows you to specify a theme to present to an iPhone user or the Google Bot. The package comes with a couple of themes I created for each type of user to get you started. I originally created this to provide a more performant scenario for when a Google bot visits my site. Google has stated on their webmaster blog that you should avoid providing different content to the Google bot other than the content you provide to a normal user. However, I believe they are more focused on the content that is delivered, instead of how the site is laid out. Either way, the plugin for switching themes allows you to disable either theme for the iPhone or Google.

You can download the package below:

User Agent Theme.xml

You only need to install this through the graffiti control panel. After this you will have 2 new themes and a new plugin installed. You need to edit the settings on the plugin to have it running, both the iPhone and Google theme switchers are disabled by default. Also, if you want to provide a different theme you can change the name in the settings.

The iPhone theme is from Engage Interactive with only minor tweaks. Here is a sample of what this looks like on an iPhone, mind you I added margins and better formatting in general after this picture was taken. I should also point out that I don't have an iPhone, so any feedback from iPhone users on how my site looks would be helpful.

For any developers out there, you should note the following lines which show how simple it is to switch a theme in Graffiti inside a GraffitiEvent object.

        public override void Init(GraffitiApplication ga)
        {
            ga.BeginRequest += new EventHandler(ga_BeginRequest);
        }

        void ga_BeginRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
                GraffitiContext.Current.Theme  =  "MyThemeName";
        }