Morten's Blog

Ostrov (The Island)

If you are up for a good movie this weekend, i can highly recommend the russian movie “Ostrov“, released in 2006.

It’s about a sailor named Anatoli (Timofei Tribuntsev), who during the second world war gets captured by a German patrol boat, along with his captain Tikhon on a small coal freighter. He’s given the choice between shooting Thikon and live, or die himself.

He shoots, and the Germans leave him on the boat. But not before they’ve put explosive charges all over the freighter. The boat explodes, and Anatoli is fortunate to be found alive on the beach by some Orthodox munks. And he settles down there after his recovery.

We then follow an older Anatoli (Pyotr Mamonov) from the year 1976, still living at the monastery, in the boiler hut located on a small island. He is constantly haunted by the fact that he shot his captain and friend, Thikon. He has also become quite eccentric over the years, to put it mildly, and a nuisance to many of the other munks. And while he appears at times to be stark raving mad, there is strange logic to his behavior. People come from far away to see him, asking for help with all kinds of problems; from unwanted pregnancies to demon possessions.

The movie shows a man with strong faith and a hunger for salvation. It is full of good moments and humor.

I give it 5 out of 6.

You can get it at Amazon.com

Eclipse is an Open Source IDE mainly used for Java development; but with the Pydev plug-in installed it becomes a powerful Python IDE. I will now show you how to get Eclipse ready for your Python code.

1. Installing Python

Before we get started, you should check whether or not Python is already installed on your computer. Look for a folder called Python25 or something similar on your C:\ partition, also check the Add/Remove Programs list in the Windows Control Panel for any Python entries.

If Python is not installed, let’s go to www.python.org and download a copy. There are newer versions, but we’ll download Python 2.5.2 to get compatibility with many extensions. You may want to download a newer release if your not too concerned about that.

Execute the Python installer you downloaded, and follow the instructions. The default installation path is “C:\Python25“. And unless that causes problems, leave it as it is.

2. Installing Java

Eclipse requires Java. So unless it’s already installed on your system, you need to get it from www.java.com, and install it before you continue.

3. Installing Eclipse

Let’s install the Eclipse IDE. Head over to www.eclipse.org and look for Eclipse Classic which will be the release we’ll download and use.

At the time of writing, Eclipse for Windows is released as a zip archive. You’ll need to extract the folder inside the zip archive, called “eclipse“. I recommend clicking on the archive to open it, and just drag the folder to a proper destination on your computer, such as the “C:\Program Files” folder. (Read More..)

“The eyes of the storm” by Saviour Machine.

Same method as the previous time lapse video i made, but now you can actually see things happening.

This is a time lapse video i made using my digital videocamera and Python, taking a picture every 5th second. It is quite boring so i had to add some music, Rob Costlow’s “Not Alone”

This is the Python script i used:

from VideoCapture import Device
from time import sleep

SecondsBetweenFrames = 5
FilePrefix = "bilde_"
DirectoryToStore = "E:\\Basen\\"
Kamera = Device()
FrameNr = 0

while True:
    FrameNr = FrameNr + 1
    Kamera.saveSnapshot(DirectoryToStore + FilePrefix + str(FrameNr) + '.jpg')
    print "Lagret bilde: " + FilePrefix + str(FrameNr) + '.jpg'
    sleep(SecondsBetweenFrames)

* You’ll need the VideoCapture and PIL Python extensions

Movie by tr0d

This is a Python spoof logo i’ve made based on the nVidia game logo.