Old Penang Bus Tickets

I had to use my scanner today, and I finally got to scanning something that I've been wanting to for a long time.

Old bus tickets.

I collected bus tickets during the days when I was taking them to go home from school. It was around the early 90s. At that time, Penang Yellow Bus was still around, and the notion of mini buses on Penang will draw laughs. How things have changed. Now, Penang Yellow Bus has gone bust, and replaced by Milan. Up until a few months ago, mini buses ruled the streets of Penang, but their reign has recently ended, and soon a new era of public bus service will take its place in Penang with the emergence of Rapid Penang.

I've seen the bus service here get from bad to worse. Actually it wasn't really bad during my school days. Sure the buses were far between and usually packed during peak hours, but it is during peak hours. It is expected to be that way. Buses then were actually in good condition compared to now. They didn't have air-conditioning, but none of the buses had it back then. They were relatively clean and comfortable, unlike today.

And soon the whole Penang bus system will be run by Rapid Penang. They promise the buses will be in good condition, and there'll be a lot of them going around the island. It's all good on paper, but I'll wait 'til its here before making any judgments.

Tack-tack-tack-tack! Jalaaaaan.

Joost

I've been hearing about Joost for weeks now, but have never really been interested in it. The thing that got me to try it was a Slashdot post about ISPs spoiling online video. Having first hand experience with TM's crappy broadband service, the last100 article intrigued me.

Almost all the methods that they describe on how ISPs are saving their bandwidth, TM is doing it, and the worst part is Malaysians don't really have an alternative ISP. Sure there's Maxis broadband, but I've heard it's almost as crappy as TM's but with better customer service and higher monthly rates. And don't get me started on how far behind we are compared with other countries in the region.

Anyway, let's get back to Joost. Joost is an online tv service. It has channels like normal tv, and it's free just like normal tv. Joost is still an invitation-only service, but you can get an invite fairly easily. Just do a Google search, which I did, and the easiest link I found was this: Joost - Please invite me! Give an email address, click on the link, download it.... you know, the usual stuff. It installed without a hitch.

The first thing I noticed about it was the video quality - it is incredible. For streaming content, the quality is just amazing. This is no YouTube or Metacafe or any other of those short clips, low quality video sites. Joost holds true to their claim, it's actual TV, only on the net.

It started off with some video showing what's on tv and stuff, but they set the volume at full blast by default. That's not good. The user interface is fairly intuitive, it took me a few seconds to figure out how to hide/show the UI controls.

After messing with the UI, I looked to see what channels were available, and low and behold, one of them was Sports Illustrated Swimsuit on Demand. What more can I say. I watched through the first model's profile, then they showed that the next model was going to be Ana Beatriz Barros. I'm a huge fan of her, so I continued watching. But once she started talking, I wasn't as compelled to watch it anymore. I should stick to looking at her pictures, and avoid her videos. I switched to the Gamestar channel. It all went fine but after a few seconds, the stream started to be choppy. Maybe it's because it was a higher quality stream or maybe a longer show, I don't know.

Ana Beatriz Barros

Overall, I'm really impressed with Joost, and I may get around to watching it again, but it may cause my ISP to cap my bandwidth usage. It really felt like tv for some reason, not like when I'm watching a video file. While I was sitting and watching it, something in my brain gave out a signal that this is tv. I don't get that feeling when watching tv shows that I've downloaded. This could very well be the future of tv, but will people of the future would want to watch tv? Who knows.

Season Finales Roundup

I managed to catch up on my tv watching this weekend. Tis time of the year when the good shows have their season finales. I'll start off with Scrubs.

For scrubs, the season finale is a 1 hour episode, and actually the funniest episode all season. They try to add some serious drama element into this episode for the cliffhanger ending, but it didn't matter. I don't watch Scrubs for the drama, I watch it for the gags, and this episode in particular was chockablock full of 'em. And they were even funny too, unlike some of the ones in other episodes of the season.


JD has is getting child, and Elliot is getting married. At this important turning point in their lives, they look for each other for comfort. Yadyadya.. who cares, the important thing is its a very funny episode. If you're looking for a "dramatic" episode, the one where Laverne dies has more impact than this one.

The next one is 24. I've got to say right off the bat, the stupidest ending ever. Oooh.. Jack's all shaken up. Yeah, yeah yeah... whatever. It's like, you've seen one season, you've seen them all. They seriously need to reinvent the show. If they don't show any significant change in the first 2 episodes of next season, I'll stop watching. It's not even worth it. And, the theme of the season finale seems to be: Jack Bauer is always right, everybody else is wrong.

Jack Bauer survives to live another day.

The problem is that each season, they try to make a shocker episode to bring in ratings, and the shocker is always: somebody's gonna die. Everybody dies except Jack. The only character you're allowed to get attached to is Jack. So, if you don't like Jack very much, there's no reason to watch this show. Plus, this season, Jack is extra emo. I don't want to see Jack get all emo. I mean, the girl can walk already, thanks to Linderman. Just move on.

And speaking of Linderman, the next season finale I watched was Heroes. That was the greatest segue ever. I must say, it was great. I was expecting more of an all-out heroes brawl in the middle of New York, but what they did was okay too. They tied loose ends but they created new ones too for next season. I honestly expected more from the season finale. It felt as if they rushed things too much, there was not enough buildup. It would've been a lot better if they made a double episode season finale.

Peter goes BOOM!

Plus, a few things didn't add up in the story. I mean, why couldn't Sylar stop Hiro. Hiro was running towards him, but he didn't do anything. And how come Parkman didn't die immediately when he was "shot" by so many bullets.

Yattaa!

However, it was great, but I expected more. And one more thing, they need to improve the dialogue in the show. Those kinds of dialogues are okay in comic books, but if you put it in live action, it just sounds cheesy.

And I'm saving the best for last, it's Lost's season finale. First off, if there was a Pulitzer for tv writing, the writers of Lost should get it. Lost has consistently been good throughout. Even during season 2 when people start saying that it's going nowhere, I personally felt it was going somewhere, and somewhere great for that matter.

Going somewhere?

And this season proved it. Throughout this season, they've been revealing more and more, and the best one they've saved for last. The previous season's ending (season2), they finally revealed that there was actually an outside world looking for the island, in the form of Penny. For me, that was one of the greatest moments in tv history. I've never felt more satisfied with a tv episode than that moment. This season's finale didn't actually change that. I still feel that the season 2's finale was still better than this one's. But in terms of overall season enjoyment, this season is the best one yet.

Penny makes an appearance, just like season 2's finale.

They did Charlie justice by killing him in a very meaningful and respectful way. One the best main character deaths on tv. But I'm not sure if he's really dead. I mean he (Dominic Monaghan) is getting married to Evangeline Lilly, so he'll still be around the set in Hawaii. It'll be a waste not to bring him back in some way for next season.

Goodbye Charlie.

Another reason why this season has been great - Kate (Evangeline Lilly) is hotter than ever this season. And the amount of skin she has shown throughout this season really contributes to this season's enjoyability.

Somebody's jealous.

Oh, that's why.

And for the first time ever, and the biggest shocker of all, the flashbacks in the 2 final episodes weren't really flashbacks. We find out that it is actually the future after they've been rescued. And future Jack has regrets about being rescued. Is this good tv or what!

Future Jack with future Kate.

But one minor detail that bugged me right from the start of the episode was how terrible was future Jack's fake mustache is. The makeup guy/girl should get fired for this shoddy job. The beard was fine but the mustache really looked fake. And future Kate looks as if she had a facelift with too much lift.

Bad fake mustache.

Overall Heroes and Lost made this a good year of tv watching. Battlestar Galactica was a disappointment, but I hope the next season is the final one. 24 was a disappointment too, but who cares. Lost more than made up for the disappointments. And all the talk about the next 2 seasons of Lost will only have 16 episodes was really disheartening, but you can be rest assured that all 16 will be great. I hope they make some of the 16 episodes a 2 hour one.

Introducing RIGGLATIONS

I've finally finished my Digg widget. It's called Rigglations. It's a widget that shows the relationships between Digg members. It's quite useful if you're trying to figure out who's been rigging Digg. Get it? Rigging, .. Rigglations. This is only an early release. It's half done. I'll be adding more cool features soon. I hope the widget gets frontpaged on Digg. That would awesome. If I do get frontpaged, I don't know whether my hosting service provider can handle it.

So now I have 2 widgets floating around on the internets. Wickr is doing okay. The usage data I get from Flickr shows light but steady traffic. I've been wanting to make a To Do List widget that incorporates Remember The Milk for a long time now. Maybe I'll get around to making it soon.





AC Milan Wins Champions League

AC Milan beat Liverpool 2-1 to win the Champions League. w00t! The pundits who know what they're talking about, all said that Liverpool is going take the trophy. I myself was worried that Milan won't make it. Throughout the game they looked very vulnerable. Inzhaghi is the man tonight scoring both of Milan's goals. Kaka didn't have much room to do anything dangerous.

Liverpool played better but they lost. I guess this makes up for the time when Milan played better but lost to Liverpool 2 years ago. All is well in football land. The balance has been restored.

The match itself wasn't very entertaining. However, Milan's form towards the end of the season has really been amazing. One player that has really been in from is Seedorf. Previously, he was kicking around aimless passes, but suddenly he starts scoring goals. This season, he was in the best form I've ever seen him in.

I would've loved to see a Milan-Chelsea final where Schevchenko scores an own goal and his former Milan teammates celebrate with him. That would've a sight. The best matches this season in my opinion was the Milan-Man United matches.

Milan winning the Champions League this season makes the chances of them winning the next one very low. I think they'll manage get to the semis next season. Maybe they can get the Scudetto too next season. Juventus will also be back next year, so Serie A will be restored to normalcy.


The Simpsons 400th Episode Double Feature.

Two episodes of The Simpsons were relesed this week to celebrate it's 400th episode. The first one was a "24" spoof that was somewhat amusing just because they actually had Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, together with all the "24" montage and stuff. However, it wasn't a really funny episode. I nearly stopped watching it because the main attraction of The Simpons its "plotless" nature. You can start with one story, but end with a whole different one that's barely related to the one before. The "24" spoof made it predictable, you know what's coming next. They are banking on the parody stuff to make it entertaining, but it didn't actually hit the mark.


The second one was really funny. It's about the Fox network's conspiracy/hypocrisy thing. And the fact that Fox is actually airing this episode makes it even funnier. I never archive The Simpsons episodes I download, but considering these two episodes are somewhat different from the normal ones, I'll just burn 'em to CD just the sake of it. I'll probably never watch it again, but one thing about The Simpsons is that it has a very high "rewatchability" value. Star World show reruns of The Simpsons every weekday at 6, and I'll watch it and still be entertained. However, the old episodes where the animations were still "raw" aren't as enjoyable.

You can see how the characters have evolved over the years not only in animation, but also their behavior. Even the nature of the jokes have changed over time. In the old show, everybody was more aggressive. If Lisa were to behave now like she did in the early days of the show, it would be really obvious how out of character she is. I think these 2 episodes were the season ender too, so it'll be a while before I can get my Simpsons fix again. Looking forward to the movie.

Rambo IV Trailer

So, the Rambo IV trailer has just been released, and the final word is, I'm not impressed. It looks as if this is going to be one sucky movie. It will try to mask its suckiness with loads of violence and gore, but in the end, its suckiness will prevail.

From the trailer itself, you can see that the acting isn't that good. The plot itself is thin. And surprisingly, the camera work was bad too. I expect better production quality for a movie this big, but the trailer shows otherwise.

I thought Rocky Balboa was great, but since the early photos of the new Rambo movie in production came out showing an old, oversized Stallone sporting a mullet, I had my doubts on whether a final Rambo movie was a good idea or not. Plus, for some reason, his face looks weird in the movie. He looks like a transvestite. Maybe it's the hair.

I don't think I want to go and watch a movie about an old transvestite going around killing people in the forest. Bear in mind, my perception of the movie comes from a 3 and a half minute trailer, so I hope I'm wrong. Whatever the case, the movie chockablock full of gore, so the censors here are going to crazy with their scissors. That makes this is a download movie, not a cinema movie for me.


RAMBO 4 / John Rambo: Trailer !

Starcraft 2 Officialy Announced


Blizzard have officially announced Starcraft 2! I've never been this excited about a game release before, but this is da shit. Starcraft fans have been waiting for this for ages. Not much info about the game for now, as the event is still going on. Can't wait for the vids to come out. I think the game will make bittorrent history when it's cracked. Live updates at http://pc.ign.com/articles/788/788627p1.html

Digg Widget Delay

Well I won't be able to finish my Digg widget on time. Some core design flaws forced me to rewrite a lot of code, and not to mention the all important laziness factor. The widget has 2 main parts. I'm undecided on whether to finish both parts before releasing it, which will take longer, or to release it after finishing the first part. Since it's being delayed, I might as well finish up the whole thing, but if I did that, it may take too much time that I'll miss the "buzz" period where Digg users will be looking at new Digg apps due to the Digg API contest. But if I release it not fully featured during the buzz period, the widget won't be as useful and won't attract many users. So, the ideal situation is for me to finish up the whole thing in time for the said period. Good luck with THAT.

Working on a Digg widget

I've been working on a new Digg widget for the past few weeks. I plan to release on the 16/17th of this month. I'm not eligible for the Digg API Contest, but I hope to release it as soon as the contest reaches its closing date so that I don't get accused of ripping another person's idea. Even though I won't be surprised if someone else came up with a similar concept for an app, as it is not mind-blowing idea. However, I think the implementation and its usability is the app's strength. I can't say too much about what it does, but I think it'll one kick-ass widget. Hey, I can't help it, I'm Mr. Vain.

I may not have the time to include all the features that I want to within this week, so I'll release a version with only the core functionality at version 1.0. A few weeks after that, I'll probably update it to include the remaining features.



Testing... 123

Testing... 123