The Book of Ashes

Sunday 11:11AM

Too many things and not enough time to do it - the story of my life. Today it rained again most of the day. I went into work and prepared the pictures of Xavian's night out on the town for the web. For those that are interested this entire process from camera to web takes about an hour. This could be sped up if I didn't enhance the images, eg increase contrast, lighting and optimise size versus quality for download. It would help though if I could upload the data and images from where I download them but at the moment I have to manually carry them round to the server and upload them there. Anyway after that I beat Damian at a few games of chess, he managed to win one, the crafty bastard with a nice move indeed. I should never let my guard down.

We managed to get our first backup of the database today which is really slack since we've been working on it for six months without a single backup. Still the backup is on the same computer so if that were to burst into flames we would be in trouble. But I feel happier now. The next step is to arrange it so that I can connect via home and do most of my work from there. That will mean an increase of about 2 or 3 times as much being done on the sites as is currently done.

Went back round to Damian's and Kelly's later on and watched Dune on DVD. It was a redone version (the original looked like it was done on a cheap budget) and was pretty cool. You really need to know the story though as much is left untold in the movie. I have to say there is so much depth and detail in this story. It describes an entire other universe and commerce based on a substance called the spice found on one planet, Dune. There the different factions strugle to maintain a balance of power that is slowly being turned upside down by the coming of one individual. There are the Bene Gessit who spread the base of religion where ever they can that is taken advantage of centuries down the track. They continuously arrange marriages of the right blood lines in the hope of breeding and training one with certain powers. There are also the Mentats, those individuals brought up and taught since birth to be human calculators. They act as advisors to the different houses devising plans and strategies to conquor their enemies. Then there are the Navigators, who were rumoured once to be human but the spice has since changed them. No one has ever seen a navigator though. The spice enhances the mind, opening it to the universe, allowing the Navigators to calculate the immensly complicated paths and calculations required to navigate a space ship through the vastness of space. These are only a few of the powers struggling for control in this awesome book. If I owned a DVD player I would buy this movie just because of the cool ideas it gives me. I already own the book. We were pissed off though when the second DVD ended half way through the story leaving us to get out another DVD at some stage. Oh well, I know what happens anyway