…living through several variations of relationships, today I am more than ever convinced that natural way of behavior is the best. Enter relationship without expectation and give nature and laws of compatibility and attraction to do the rest. Arguably, anyone with enough talent or skill may project a certain image or make particular calculated impression, narrowly targeted to achieve faster or easier result. But even the most talented of all would not be able to sustain the masquerade for long and thus… eventually to reveal the true nature of character, which might not be compatible at all. Honesty - generally admirable human quality in any situation - is especially important as it is ensures that there will be no BAD surprises in the future and the path to mutual exploration is safe. Moreover, the actual flow now becomes more enjoyable once any pretenses become unnecessary…

Immigration. For those who have never experienced its psychological impact it is just a term, it is just a change of physical location of an individual or a group. Only those who lived through immigration understand the shift of inner paradigm on a scale of habits, customs, climate, language, culture and everything else in between.

Even after so many years, despite on the illusion of complete adaptation, a self-deceiving assurance on language barrier absence, and finally, a selfishly fulfilling pride of various accomplishments, the occasional feeling of cultural and spiritual isolation is still there. It is such a complex trade-off of your roots and the ultimate compromise with yourself…

A quintessential, brilliant celebration of incredible talents united by David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize winning script. Despite on the evergreen hypnotism of the “Sales Conference” scene, its placement and impact is too dominant and after undetermined number of watch-times, it hits less and less, giving a viewer long awaited opportunity to explore the other no less deep and significant scenes.

One of these scenes is my all time favorite: “Are we just talking about it or we just talking about it?” The prior mutual cross-complain dialog only emphasizes the sales speech Ed Harris projects on his fellow salesman Alan Arkin. In addition incredible Al Pacino, mesmerizing Alec Baldwin - absolutely the best 5 minutes of his acting career, Jack “The Legend” Lemmon, Kevin Spacey in non-psychotic role, and star of Brazil Jonathan Pryce.

The Conversation (1974) - low budget masterpiece by Francis Fold Coppola. Nominated for Academy Awards® in three categories, it has never won anything, being overrun by the other well known Coppola’s creation The Godfather II.

The film delivers an extremely well crafted and slowly and carefully unfolded analysis of humanly uninteresting but remarkable for his obsession with privacy, professional surveillance expert Harry Caul - according to many critics, the most complex role ever delivered by Gene Hackman.

“You see, I would be perfectly happy to have all my personal things burned up in a fire because I don’t have anything personal. Nothing of value. No, nothing personal except my keys, you see, which I really would like to have the only copy of…” explains he to his landlord.

At first, he appears as a man who is assured in his own invincibility and proud of his professionalism, as he commissioned by The Director (Robert Duval) to record a conversation between two people somewhere in San Francisco, where he has recently fled from East Coast, hunted by guilt and sorrow: his previous assignment has lead to a death of three people.

While working on the assignment and lecturing his business partner Stan (John Cazale) on how uninvolved, how faceless, how autistic this business must be to a very subject of the events and recordings, he finds himself engaged into the conversation he has recorded between Ann (Cindy Williams) and Mark (Frederic Forrest). This fatal deviation from established by Caul himself, professional self-ethics leads to complete crash and destruction of what is left from so-called life of Harry Caul. Want to know more? Read about it at IMDB.

Being a true fan of late Modernism and post-Modernism, I have always been fascinated by the level of perfection achieved in commercial and residential works of Richard Meier - one of the most respected architects of our time along with Alvar Aalto, Tadao Ando, and other brilliant few. Each of his white concrete opuses appears as a clear continuation of the best modernistic traditions, and, being mixed with distinctive and consistent Meier’s style, delivers a real visual treat.

Placed mostly within green zones - especially residential - these remarkable buildings create magnetic paradox as they appear alienated from the environment and, at the same time, completely embedded, emphasizing linear and three-dimensional harmony of the modernistic wave. From Smith House (1965-1967) to Friesen House (1998-2001), Mr. Meier has been sustaining this striking tendency of contradiction.

One of the most recent of his creations is Church Dio Padre Misericordioso (Jubilee Church, 1996-2003). Emerged about 6 miles from the center of Rome, it exceptionally redefines ecclesiastical architecture of the 21st century. Despite on translucent and remote resemblance to the lighting effects employed by Le Corbusier in Notre Dame du Haut, the church is full of symbolism and spiritual fulfillment. “Light is the protagonist of our understanding and reading of space. Light is the means by which we are able to experience what we call sacred. Light is at the origins of this building”, says Richard Meier. Explore the world of Richard Meier at Richard Meier and Partners Architects LLC.

We all remember the time of The Bubble. Back then, among many uptight and stuck up technology news sites, consumer product reviews, etc. CNET was like a breath of fresh air. Trendy, smart, and young at heart, it was definitely an attractive source of information for a wide range of readers - from complete newbies to serious Information Technology professionals. Not only the content but its presentation has been well formed, organized, and delivered for our viewing pleasure day after day, month after months, year after year.

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Naturally, it is no longer possible to imagine today’s society without all the technology that surrounds us. But, should this modern progressive sphere be so cacophonous, so chaotic, so random, so exhausting, so soulless, so autistic, so inhuman? How can it be that millions and millions of wired, wireless, bluetoothes, RFIDed, infrared, iPodded, laptopped, PDAed, headsetted, and overall technology-jacked-in individuals are going completely insane? It seems like our average consumer-Joe out there is getting less and less resistant to the avalanche of annoying marketing campaigns building their meaningless presence on all the favorite nowadays buzzwords, promoting useless products on a wave of the cool and hoping for a “big hit”.

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Consumer products and especially software are becoming way too complex for The Consumer it was originally designed and intended for. What the Flock? Where is the logic? It seems like all ergonomics and usability experts, product designers, technical literature writers, quality control specialists, and finally focus groups are all locked up in isolated bunkers doing nothing but listening to overly loud orders from The Lord of Marketing, coming from a single speaker hanging off the bunker’s windowless wall. How hopeless and disturbing.

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Getting tired and aggravated by cacophonous instrument tuning, you are loosing the meaning of the preparation. You are sitting there, impatiently waiting for opus to begin but instead you are getting fed these meaningless exclamations of nothing. More and more you are getting saturated by this mis balanced audio jungle, and sense of deception rises, gradually elevating you to the state of autistic absence and isolation. Drowning hopeless in the bottomless abyss of nonsense, you are wondering if the change will ever come, if a sacred manifestation of talent will be ever revealed.

And here it is. As it starts to fill flawlessly all available cavities of your soul, you immediately forgive. You are no longer a lab rat, you are no longer a powerless slave, chosen to be tortured by the supreme and being observed while at it. Warmth of certainty and light of assurance surround you and grow simultaneously in all directions, proclaiming nothing but the ecstasy of understanding.

First resisting to its unconditional pressure but opening more and more, you are sliding side-to-side in its cradle, trying to achieve the ultimate climax on every swing. Further, coordinates of reality become amorphous, vague, and blurry, leaving you with fading away foundation and reason for sanity.

This ever ending carnival of emotions demands complete obedience and you feel that surrender is your only chance to survive and be rewarded. Continuously transiting to the unknown levels of pleasant autism, you are no longer yourself - you are helpless part of the whole, part of this well-orchestrated exposure of excellence.

Unexpected. The fatal ax of silence cuts off the oxygen of expectations with its needless and irrational rudeness. Strong urge to scream is burning your throat as a weak attempt to protest, to return to the Eden of sound… or at least not to acknowledge the End. But, nothing will save you; nothing will lead you to the salvation, to the clue for this upsetting charade. No matter… the hurtful but inevitable contrast of silence is final…

I.S. Bach: Adagio. Concerto for Oboe and Violin in C minor

Assuming that you already have GD and CGI::SecurityImage Perl modules installed, lets proceed with the actual Captcha implementation. If you do not have the necessary components, please refer to Captcha. Part 1: Installation article. Also, please note that you need a TrueType font file in order for the program to draw specified random string. Here is the example image (every new reload will generate new random string):

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One of the well known methods of human vs. machine identification on the Internet is Captcha - blurred, deformed, obfuscated image, containing code only (well, almost only) human can recognize. At some oint, management required me to deliver a Captcha-based solution, which would have to identify real subscribers trying to add their e-mail addresses to our global “Spam-bypass” list.

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Many of the novice Perl programmers are often struggling while trying to manage and, most importantly reuse database connections effectively. Tracking multiple instances of the corresponding connection handlers may seem like an uneasy task but, it can be accomplished with the simple technique described below.

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