De Reünie is a Dutch film starring Thekla Reuten as Sabine, a woman who is disturbed by her half memories of her final year of secondary school some twenty years ago, when her girlfriend Isabel dis­ap­peared without trace. The arrival of Olaf—once a classmate, still a jerk—at her workplace triggers more memories as they are drawn together. Slowly, very slowly, through extended flashbacks, we learn more about that fateful spring in a small coastal town as Sabine and Isabel fell out of love. In the present day, both Sabine and Olaf grow more …continue.

I needed to create a wildcard SSL cer­tifi­cate and upload it to AWS CloudFront today.

First, generate a 2048-bit private key. This will prompt you for a passphrase:

$ openssl genrsa -des3 -out example.key 2048

Check which signature algorithm was used (SHA-256 is rec­om­mend­ed):

$ openssl req -in example.csr -noout -text

Transform the private key to PEM format:

$ openssl rsa -outform PEM -in example.key -out example.pem

Generate a Cer­tifi­cate Signing Request. Note the * in the server FQDN:

$ openssl req -new -key example.key -out example.csr

Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:US
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:Washington
Locality Name (eg, city) []:Seattle
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:Example GmbH
Organizational Unit Name (eg, 

I’m familiar with most of Shake­speare’s plays, but not only had I never seen Cymbeline before today, I knew nothing about it. While the per­for­mance we saw was enjoyable, I began to see why it’s one of the lesser-known plays. It’s one of Shake­speare’s later, minor comedies, with such familiar elements as a cross­dress­ing heroine, confused and separated lovers, false ac­cu­sa­tions of infidelity, stolen princes, a knavish villain who gets his come­up­pance, and a loyal servant. It’s easy to see a tired Shake­speare trotting out yet another comedy to amuse the groundlings.

We saw the Greenstage production at the scenic Lake Wilderness Park …continue.

Three bomb disposal techs in Iraq are the subject of The Hurt Locker: Sgt James (Jeremy Renner), Sgt Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), and Spec Eldridge (Brian Geraghty). James has grown addicted to war and he is reckless and cavalier about disarming bombs, while Sanborn is in­creas­ing­ly angry at James’ en­dan­ger­ment of them all and Eldridge grows ever more terrified and fatalistic. The Hurt Locker is a gritty and visceral war film. We have no idea what’s going to happen next and anyone could be blown up or shot at any time. The bomb makers …continue.

The Ghost­busters remake is a light­weight but enjoyable summer comedy and a lot of fun. Four women, mostly dis­cred­it­ed scientists, fight an increasing number of paranormal incursions and kick some as­s—with­out wearing skintight clothing or being adjuncts to male leads. Internet trolls may be outraged but the non-tra­di­tion­al casting works. Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones are funny and jell together. And Chris Hemsworth as the hunky but dim re­cep­tion­ist is an amusing bit of reverse casting, while Kate McKinnon seems to have become a queer icon overnight.

I dislike Hollywood’s lazy …continue.

History was made tonight as Hillary Clinton became the first woman nominated by a major party to run for President of the US. It’s a watershed moment for women’s equality and it was long overdue.

I was a Bernie Sanders supporter in the earlier stages of the campaign, as his message resonated more with me. But I was always ready and willing to support Clinton. I can’t think of a nominee with a more impressive résumé who’s run for President: first lady of Arkansas for more than a decade, First Lady of the US for two terms, US Senator for New York state for eight years, and Secretary of State for …continue.

1018AD. King Cnut of Denmark (aka Canute) has recently conquered England, and now must broker peace between the Saxons and the Danes at Oxford. Also in Oxford are Winston, a talented il­lu­mi­na­tor of man­u­scripts, and Halfdan, a roguish half-Danish half-Saxon landless noble. A prominent Saxon has been murdered and Cnut commands Winston and Halfdan to in­ves­ti­gate.

While the mystery was reasonably while done, I found the anachro­nis­tic speech patterns quite jarring. The book is translated from Danish; I presume this is also true in the original.

Star Trek Beyond is the best of the Kelvin timeline Trek movies, easily surpassing the two previous episodes in the reboot.

The Enterprise is lured into an ambush where the ship is destroyed by Krall, a mega­lo­ma­ni­ac who has a grudge against the Federation. Most of the crew are captured, leaving only a few of the officers at large to run around fre­net­i­cal­ly. They find an ancient Federation ship, free the crew, and stop Krall before he can destroy a giant starbase.

I thought that this was the best of the three Kelvin movies and the …continue.

We’re in Los Angeles for the weekend to attend a wedding and it’s scorch­ing­ly hot. I took this photo of the car’s dashboard while we were at a stop light in Topanga Canyon. It reads 109°F (43°C). I actually saw the tem­per­a­ture briefly reach 111°F. I’ve ex­pe­ri­enced the low hundreds before, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt 109°F.

June was the 14th con­sec­u­tive month of record-breaking global tem­per­a­tures. Even Ireland is getting in on the act, with tem­per­a­tures soaring to 30°C (86°F) the other day.

Via carrots are orange and ReadyMade, here’s how to fold a t-shirt:

1. Lay shirt face-up on a smooth surface, long side facing you, with the neck on your left. With the edge of your hand, draw an imaginary line from shoulder to hem on the far side. Along this line, pinch the shirt with your left hand at the shoulder and with your right at the middle of the chest.
2. Fold the shoulder over, crossing left hand over right, to meet the hem along this line. Now pinch the hem and shoulder together with your left fingers.
3. Lift the shirt and uncross your hands, pulling the shirt taut. Give it a shake.
4. Lay the shirt down …continue.