Not exactly up to the minute news here, where did the last three weeks go and I've left my blog sadly unattended. The biggest news here is that I'm a real honest-to-goodness uncle. Patty had a baby boy ten days ago, Ian Christopher. He's cute, and sounds like he cries a lot.  They're also lucky since he's been sleeping through most of the night, from what I hear he wakes up once, maybe twice, during the night. The unfortunate thing is, according to my mom and pictures, is that he looks a lot like me when I was a baby. Hopefully, he'll outgrow it, otherwise...

Seeing Patty's pictures with him, and despite the stories of having to stop pee with her hand - I imagine it in an appropriately superhero-ey kind of way, has made me more anxious for our own son to be born. Its only another 5 weeks or so. It may seem long at times, but work is actually pretty busy so the days go by quick.

The last movie the Netflix gods delivered unto me was, Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut.  I moved it to the top of our queue after catching Superman - The Movie on HD Movies, twice. I'll be the first to admit that I can't really review these movies super-critically. When the movie came out originally in 1978/79, we still lived in Bolivia and I must have been four years old when I saw it. I remember going to the movie theatre distinctly, its my earliest memory - I distinctly remember my dad buying the tickets, running into a friend of his in line, and then I remember him reading the subtitles for me when Pa' Kent is lecturing a young Clark after showing off his super speed.

Please belive me when I tell you that Richard Donner's cut of Superman II blows the orginal away. Its not just an "extended edition" type release with 10 more minutes of Superman flying around here and there.  Donner had been filming Superman I and II, simultaneosly since it was written as a two movie story arc, and had shot a staggering amount of footage that ended up being archived away. This is a wholly different, more serious, and more coherent movie than the original.  Gone are the campy jokes and one liners, the magic kiss of forgetfullness at the end, replaced with never before seen footage and a more serious treatment of the material, particularly the romance between Superman and Lois. It's definitely a movie I recommend, both if you enjoy comic book movies or have fond memories of the original.

Why is this version so different and have to be made?

Following the release of Superman in December 1978, it was widely assumed that Donner would be re-called to complete the remainder of the sequel. However, a number of events led to Donner's eventual replacement as director of the movie. Most importantly, the producers (Alexander and Ilya Salkind) announced that Marlon Brando's completed scenes for Superman II would be excised from the movie in order to prevent them having to pay the actor the reported 11.75%[1]{.external .autonumber rel="nofollow"} of gross U.S. box-office takings he was now demanding for his performance in the sequel. Donner publicly lambasted this decision, announcing that he would make the film his way or not at all. The April 1978 issue of the sci-fi magazine Starburst quotes Donner as saying, "That means no games...They have to want me to do it. It has to be on my terms and I don't mean financially. I mean control."

Cal Evans wrote a straightforward and excellent tutorial on how to to use Zend_Auth and its OpenID adapter to authenticate users today. I was not only impressed by the tutorial itself, and I liked how he had code up front and so well commented, but also by how easy it was to implement the code here on my blog. This was my first practical look at the Zend Framework, and the only gotcha I encountered was that it threw an Exception because I'd used session_start, but it provides its own classes to handle sessions. 

Unlike Cal, I did have luck in finding information on using AOL as an OpenID provider. It was the first result when I googled for OpenId and AOL. The short of it is that if you have an AOL IM account, you can login wherever you see OpenId, as on the sidebar here.  Heres what I'v been able to find about providers:

1. AOL - your Openid URL is of the form http://openid.aol.com/SCREENNAME, replace SCREENAME with your IM username.
2. Google - if you have a Blogger account, you have to enable it and then you can use your blog's url as an openid url
3. Yahoo! can provide openid, but you have to enable it. The usability is pretty poor, as the first url it gave me as my OpenID identifier looked like some weird hash token.  But you can chose an easier to remember one, or use your flickr url as an identifier if you have one.

There are more providers listed on openid.net. If you have an account with AOL or Yahoo! and want to know what all the fuss is about regarding OpenID, try leaving me a comment!