Screenwriter and author John August

Finding the RSS feeds

January 27, 2005 Geek Alert

[Stephen](http://batflattery.blogspot.com) wrote in to say that the RSS feeds were acting up. I think I’ve addressed the problem, particularly with Firefox’s “live bookmarks” pointing in the wrong directions. (If you’re having an issue where “Live Bookmark failed to load,” delete the bookmark and make a new one.)

You can always find the right links for the RSS and Atom feeds in the cleverly-named “Feeds” section on the right. But for your convenience, here they are as well.

**For Atom:** http://johnaugust.com/feeds/atom
**For RSS 2:** http://johnaugust.com/feeds/rss2
**For RSS .92:** http://johnaugust.com/feeds/rss

Copy and paste these URLs into your newsreader of choice. Or, if you’re using Firefox, just click on the tiny orange button in the bottom-right corner of the window, and select your preferred version of the feed.

Phantom of the Opera

January 27, 2005 Rant

phantom First off, this is not a film review. If it were, I’d write about the performances, production design, music and all all the other factors that make or break a movie. Also, I’ve met the director and co-screenwriter, Joel Schumacher, who is every bit as nice as his reputation. So I don’t want it to be weird next time I say hello to him at some event. Rather, I just want to point out some story issues that stuck out to me — things I’d want to tackle if I’d gotten the script before it went into production.

I saw [Phantom of the Opera](http://imdb.com/title/tt0293508/combined) last night. This was my first exposure to it — I never saw the stage musical, nor read the book. I can say I’m glad I saw it. There were things that really worked, and things that didn’t. What was interesting, and frustrating, is that a lot of the film’s biggest issues were on the page.

Be advised that everything from this point forward is full of spoilers.

Phantom is essentially a love triangle. You have **Christine**, the gifted chorus girl. **Raoul**, the unaccountably hot viscount. And **The Phantom**, a deformed genius who lurks around the Paris opera house where the story is set.

Christine is an orphan, natch, who was raised by **Madame Giry** in the opera dormitory. Before he died, Christine’s father promised an Angel of Music would watch over her. And in fact, that’s what the Phantom has been doing. He’s the voice in the darkness who’s been giving her singing lessons. So far, it feels like [Beauty and the Beast](http://imdb.com/title/tt0101414/combined).

Here’s where the movie gets into some very un-Disney territory. The Phantom has been essentially a surrogate father to this girl, and in fact pretends to be the spirit of her father at times — and yet he wants to marry her and, well, ravage her. Don’t get me wrong: I love that it’s kind of sick and twisted. But the movie never really does anything with this idea. No one calls him on it, or points out that Madame Giry has essentially been pimping out Christine to an evil lech who lives in the sewers.

[Read more…] about Phantom of the Opera

Why does anyone still use Internet Explorer?

January 25, 2005 Geek Alert, Rant

One benefit of switching my new webhost, [TextDrive](http://textdrive.com), is that they have a much cooler statistics program called [Urchin](http://urchin.com). With it, I can see a lot of information about who’s visiting the site, and what articles they’re reading. Plus, I can learn what browsers they’re using. Here are the current percentages:

26% Internet Explorer 22% Firefox 5% Safari 3% Opera

(The numbers don’t add up to 100%, because I’m omitting RSS readers, robots and specialty browsers, such as those on mobile phones.)

I’m genuinely curious to find out why anyone is still using Internet Explorer, when there are much better options. [Firefox](http://www.mozilla.org) is available for both Windows and Mac, and is superior on just about every level. It’s faster; it blocks pop-ups; it offers modern tabbed browsing. It even automatically imports all your old bookmarks.

If you haven’t at least tried it, stop reading and [get it](http://www.mozilla.org).

One thing the official site doesn’t explain is that it actually makes web pages look much better. That’s because it properly supports modern standards like CSS and .png graphics. For instance, compare the brad icon in the upper ~~left~~ right corner:

brad comparison

Currently website developers have two choices. They can make their sites compatible with published standards (and support Firefox, Safari and Opera), or they can support Internet Explorer. Increasingly, they’re simply giving up on Internet Explorer, which hasn’t been properly updated in a long time.

That’s what I’ve chosen to do. With a day or two of work, I could probably get johnaugust.com looking better with IE, but I’m convinced it’s not worth the bother.

Non-errors in English

January 22, 2005 Rant

Via [The Tin Man](http://www.tinmanic.com/archives/2005/01/21/non-errors/) comes [this helpful site](http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/nonerrors.html) listing a lot of the most common “non-errors” in English. A non-error is defined as one of those prescriptive rules of grammar or usage that fussy people insist on pointing out, even though they’re generally wrong. For example, “since” versus “because.” I agree with pretty much every point made. In this case, if a “mistake” has been consistently made since the 14th Century, you really can’t call it a mistake.

It’s certainly [worth a look](http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/nonerrors.html).

While you’re at it, you might also check out my earlier rant about [“data.”](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/data-is-singular)

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