Archive for January, 2009

Gold

I finally got around to trying gold (the new linker) for real.  Today I built it and tried linking gdb.  Sure enough, it is a lot faster — it was more than twice as fast at linking gdb as the F9 system linker.  The link went from 48 seconds to 22 seconds.

It is very simple to build and use.  Just check out binutils and configure with --enable-gold.  Then build and install it, put it in your path, and you’re done.

Tampopo

Elyn got me this DVD for Christmas.  Aside from being a “spaghetti eastern” (har, har), it is a lovely meditation on the universal act of eating.

This is such an unusual film that I’ve been thinking a bit about what attracts me to it.  I like the joy and the quietness of it — I like happy endings and mundane, as opposed to extreme, conflict.  Also, I enjoy how very foreign it seems… I know zilch about Japan, and for all I know a truck-driving cowboy is some kind of icon there — but here he just seems bizarre.  And, I like the film’s digressions from the main story, which are entertaining but not excessively distracting.

This is a must-see.