As I was walking to the Physics Building today, I walked past a guy carrying a film cannister. Then I saw that there were a bunch of people and equipment down past the other end of the building. Somebody yelled action, and a bunch of people in costume marched through the quad. I didn't find out until later that they will filming 'The Express', a movie about Ernie Davis, a Syracuse football player. I didn't know who he was but IMDb has the plot outline: “The life story Ernie Davis, the first black player to win the Heisman Trophy, whose NFL career was cut short by leukemia.” The movie is directed by Gary Fleder (Runaway Jury, Kiss the Girls) and has Dennis Quaid in it. Too bad I couldn't find a way to sneak myself into one of the shots.

I caught this article on MSNBC. It turns out that it's actually from a magazine, which explains why there's no attempt to hide the author's position on the matter. There's so much to be annoyed about in this, but the one that sticks with me is this attitude that a person should be able to blindly and stupidly wander through life and have everyone else look out for that person's interests, even when it means sacrificing their own. The inconsistency doesn't seem to bother the author.

They have come a long way: Subject 74

Consequence you've seen has been stranger than sci-fi of any kind

When I was writing the previous post, I checked to see if Symeons had a website. Indeed, they do, but all it says is that they don't have one and gives a link to cnyEats. That site forwards you to the forums at CNYforum.org. CNYforum.org has restaurant and food reviews for the Utica area and some other stuff. One of the things that I found interesting was the collection of photos of Utica. Somewhere along the way, I found a link to Joe Mezzanini's Photo Blog. Almost more interesting to me than the photos was the software that he is using for his photo blog. I couldn't find the name of the program, so I searched SourceForge for something similar and I believe I happened on the same software. The problem I ran into was that the Atom PhotoBlog requires PHP 5 and Godaddy only seems to offer PHP 4. That is until you look closely. It turns out that all you have to do is put a .htaccess file with the lines

AddHandler x-httpd-php5 .php

AddHandler x-httpd-php .php4

in the base directory of the software that requires PHP 5 and everything works fine (supposing you hosting is up-to-date). The upshot of this is that not only did I get an install of Atom PhotoBlog working, but I also got an install of MediaWiki working (MediaWiki is the software that runs Wikipedia).

It's true. I caught a little blurb about a Greek Cultural Festival going on this past weekend on the local 24 hour news channel (why does this exist?). Visions of gyro meat cooking in it's own grease were enough to overcome my disdain for all things “cultural” and even my dislike of eating out alone.* So last Saturday I headed out to St. Sophia's Greek Orthodox Church in Dewitt. From what I saw while I was there, the festival consisted of food and a bit of loud music, definitely my kind of festival. Except for the loud music. I started out with some spanakopita, then I got a gyro and an order of dolmades. I finished off with some Greek yogurt. The spanakopita and gryo were a bit dry and the dolmades were cold (admittedly a standard way of serving them, but I'm not a fan), but the yogurt was really good. It had some nuts and something really sweet on top. Overall, I think I would have done better if I had just gone to Symeons. Though Symeons could stand to offer more desserts that aren't absolutely bathed in honey.

*If you're wondering why I didn't ask anyone to go with me, it's because I also have a dislike for dragging people to something that has a good chance of being really boring. From direct observations that I have made, I can tell you that this is not a dislike that my brothers share.