The Simpsons Movie

I went to see The Simpsons Movie today after finding out that the movie is being shown without any cuts. And the verdict? It was great. It's like a simpsons espisode, only longer, with better animation, and no boring parts whatsoever. The movie is packed with funny bits. Watching this movie, I can see why it took such a long time to make. The time they took certainly was not due to rendering the animation. This a 2-D movie, there's nothing to render. I feel like during all those years of production, they threw in hundreds of thousands of ideas for the film, and finally they filtered it out to only the few best ones to put into the movie, and result was a Simpsons fan heaven.

It's starts off insulting the viewers of the movie, saying they are stupid for paying for something that they watch on tv for free. And in the opening sequence where Bart writes something on the blackboard, He writes, "I will not download this movie". Yeah, like THAT's gonna work. Tom Hanks and Greenday make a cameo, and there's too many funny things to mention, or even to take in for that matter. It warrants a rewatch to get everything.

A Simpsons fan needs to watch it more than once, so for me, I ain't wasting another 7 bucks on it, I'll just wait for the DVDRip and download it. Watching it in the theater kind of spoilt the experience a bit for me.

You see, different people have different kinds of sense of humor. I had the unfortunate luck of sitting beside a girl who thinks every little funny thing warrants a laugh. However, I also have the feeling that her overzealous laughter is because she wants to show her boyfriend that she's having a good time watching this movie with him, while the fact is that she couldn't care less about it. Oh, the things people do for love. And apart from her, the other members of the audience laugh at different times, so throughout the movie, there's constant laughter, and its hard to concentrate on what they're saying in the movie over the laughs. So, I'll definitely need to watch this movie again, alone.

"Grey Image" Problem Fixed in Wickr

My Flickr widget, Wickr, has had this problem where parts of image(s) being displayed are "greyed-out" as if the image is being displayed before has completed its download from the net. The problem is that the images is not from the net, they are from the hard disk. The cause of this problem is the fade animation used on the image. It only happens when the fade animation effect is used on multiple images, or big images. I've tried to get around this problem by creating my own fade function instead of using the built-in fade function in Konfabulator, but it resulted in the same greyed-out image. I've even tried a 2-step fade where the image goes to 50%, then 100% opacity, and even then the problem still persists.

The "grey image" problem.

I posted this problem on the Konfabulator forums, and at first they didn't understand the problem and said that the image hasn't completed its download from the internet, but I keep telling them that it is from the hard disk, not the net. I was somewhat miffed at the fact that they thought I was a n00b at widget making. I told them I know my stuff, and gave instructions on how to recreate the problem on Wickr, and finally the problem is recognized as a bug and has been reported. It's a Windows-only bug and doesn't occur on Macs.

So the "fix" to the problem was to do away with the fade animation altogether. It's a small aesthetic blow to the widget, but a necessary one to maintain a high degree of usability. In the course of fixing the problem, I also decided to update the widget for Kanofabulator 4.0. So, Wickr now has a dock icon, and its id is a UUID. The update also requires me to address the change in the onMouseMove function in Konfabulator 4.0, as it is not the same as in previous versions. onMouseMove is now called whenever the mouse moves over the object, not when the mouse drags over the object. For the drag action, they introduced onMouseDrag.

Wickr dock icon.

I plan to overhaul the whole widget sometime in the future as some parts of the code are really dated, and Flickr have changed their API quite a bit of too. I don't know when I'll get around to doing it though.

Pink Panther Surprisingly Good


I saw the first few minutes of Pink Panther on a HBO or Star Movies, I can't remeber which channel, but I was surprised that I enjoyed the portion of the movie that I watched. I didn't finish watching it on tv, so I downloaded it, and watched it, and liked it.

I don't usually find these kinds of goofy physical comedies, like Naked Gun, National Lampoon etc. that funny as I mainly watch them for the sometimes-funny parodies that they have. But Pink Panther is not a parody movie.

When it was first shown in the theaters, I wasn't even remotely interested in it, and the trailers and promos that they showed didn't help either. They marketed it as a physical comedy for kids with Beyonce thrown in to bring in the cool factor. I am not one of their target audience.

Sure the movie has some physical gags and fart jokes and genitalia jokes and stuff, but there is something different to it that makes it funnier than usual. And that something different is Steve Martin. The single most outstanding thing that made me enjoy this movie was Steve Martin's silly French accent. From that French accent alone, numerous hysterical jokes is derived. He portrays Inspector Jacques Clouseau excellently. I'm not saying his accent is good, I'm saying it's funny. And he's the only one form the cast that maintains a French accent throughout the movie, apart from Jean Reno of course. The other casts slip in and out of their accents.

Maybe it's just me having a French accent fetish, but this is one of the better comedies I have watched. Almost everybody else hates it, but like it. IMDB gave it a 5/10, and Rotten Tomatoes gave it 24%. If I have to rate it, I'd give it a 7/10.

I've compiled some of the funny moments from the movie to give you a taste of my sense of humor:

Getting YouTube Videos to Look Good

I've been uploading video clips to YouTube, Metacafe and Veoh for a couple of months now, and I've seen a few good quality clips on the sites which make mine look like abstract art. Somehow they manage to crack the secret encoding settings that make videos look good on these sites.

Yesterday, I found a page that teaches you how to optimize video for YouTube. So, I decided to give it a try. The site teaches you how to do it using almost any of the popular video editing/encoding software available. I'll try doing it with 2 software that I have installed on my computer, Sony Vegas and Movavi Video Converter.

I'll start of with a 22 second video clip of MPEG2 DVD NTSC quality.
The file can be downloaded here.
The GSpot Data for the file is shown below:

Then, the clip is encoded to WMV format in Vegas using these setting:
Save as type: Windows Media Video V9(*.wmv)
Then Customize it with these settings:
Project >
Video rendering quality: Best
Audio >
Mode: CBR
Format: Windows Media Audio 9.1
Attributes: 128 kbps, 44kHz, stereo (A/V) CBR
Video >
Mode: CBR
Format: Windows Media Video 9
Image Size: Animation (320 x 240)
Pixel aspect ratio: 1.000 (Square)
Frame rate (fps): 30.000
Seconds per keyframe: 3
Video smoothness: 100 (Sharpest)
Bit Rate >
Internet/LAN: 1M

The video that I referred to for the Vegas settings is here:


The result is a 2.87 MB WMV file.
The file can be downloaded here.
The GSpot data for the resulting file is shown below:

Then, it's time to encode the 22 second DVD quality clip into an AVI file using Movavi Converter. It's much easier to do it with Movavi as they already provide a preset for YouTube encoding. The setting are below:
Output format:
AVI (DivX, Xvid, etc)
MPEG4 Xvid for YouTube

The video that I referred to for the Movavi Converter settings is here:


The result AVI is much smaller (1.75 MB) compared with the WMV created from Vegas.
The resulting AVI file can be downloaded here.
The GSpot data is shown below:

Now it's time for the YouTube results.
Here's how the original DVD quality clip looks after it has been "YouTube"d without any conversion:


Here's what the Vegas encoded clip looks like:


And here's the Movavi encoded clip:


From the results you can clearly see that the DVD encoded video turned out the worst of the three with it's video vertically stretched, and the video substantially pixelated. The difference between the Vegas and Movavi encoded videos isn't very obvious. The Movavi version seems to have more saturated colors compared to the washed out colors of the Vegas one. But I do feel as if the Vegas version is smoother compared to the Movavi version where it is sharper.

Since the Vegas version results in a larger file, I'll only use it when I have the patience to wait. When I want to upload stuff quickly, I use Movavi.

Innocent Voices - Good Movie

Innocent Voices

Smack in-your-face reality of the civil war in El Salvador. Though the acting wasn't that good, everything else was perfect, and more than made up for the poor acting. I found it really easy to immerse myself into the story. I think it has to do with setting. The school uniforms, the shanty houses in the village, the mango trees, the communal and family relationships portrayed are all very similar to that of what you will find here in Malaysia. Really good stuff.

Potter and Messi


Just watched the new Harry Potter movie, and I think it's a solid continuation of the last one. It's more focused this time around. Right off the bat, it's about Voldermort, with the lighter macigky stuff being put as a side story. And some cool new characters were introduced too, like Nymphadora Tonks played by the newcomer Natalia Tena, who is hot, by the way (why else would I mention her out of the all other new characters). And like most movies, the fight scene at the end of the movie was awesome. It looks as if they put most their special effects money on that fight scene, because there are some parts of the movie where the special effects looked cheap, but still better than the effects from the first movie. Harry Potter movies ain't all about special effects, the movie is mainly for kids, but there's enough depth to the story that adults can actually enjoy it without the need to turn off their brains.


Apart from the movie itself, another awesome thing that I saw today was Loinel Messi's goal against Mexico today. After watching that goal I had to clean the walls because it blew my brains out. The moment he chipped that ball, my brain went, "no way... No Way", then it happened, the ball went in, and my brain exploded. Argentina meet Brazil in the finals, my bet is on Argentina.

Cloverfield Trailer


Apple HD 1-18-08 (Cloverfield) Trailer

JJ Abrams, the creator of Lost, is working on a movie called Cloverfield, or at least that's what people are calling it. The title of the movie is still a mystery, but the trailer gives an idea of what the movie is about, and it looks awesome. Some say it's Godzilla, but whatever it is, it's good. At first, the Blair Witch style camcorder camera work made me assume that it was going to be a low budget indie thing, but then, at the end of the trailer, you'll see how kick ass this movie is going to be.

Hayden Panettiere Bikini Pics


She looked good in Heroes but few episodes towards the finale, it looks as if she had consecutive bad hair days. Plus, her acting during those episodes weren't good, but it's hard to make it good with lame dialogs from the script.

Wimbledon - Federer Wins, But More Importantly, Ivanovic Is Hot

Roger Federer just won Wimbledon, 5 times in a row. Great match between him and Nadal. Nadal is improving fast, and Federer, even though he's superb, his form is stagnant. If things keep going on like this, Nadal will become the better player soon.

Ana Ivanovic

But that aside, the main thing that I've discovered from the tournament is that Ana Ivanovic is HOT. Even slightly hotter than Sharapova. That is one of the greatest discoveries this year.

Die Hard 4.0 Is Way, Waay, Waaay Better Than Transformers

I watched the 2 movies back-to-back over the weekend, and Die Hard was beyond expectations, Transformers was a disappointment.

McClane's 'Da Man!

At first I thought the PG13 rating was really going to hamper the "McClane"ness of the movie, but I was wrong, and this is one of the rare times where I'm wrong is a good thing. The movie really kicked ass. Its in-your-face action really worked. The tradition that McClane is one bad ass cop that's not invincible but can kick ass when it matters was done really well. And the action wasn't mindless too, it had a purpose. They didn't blow things up just for the sake of blowing things up, it contributed to the story and character development.

The hacker taking over the U.S. plot really looked believable, and they didn't dumb down the computer/hacker thingy like Transformers and so many other movies did. Overall, the best action movie in a very long time. I would happy if there was a sequel if it's going to be this good.

You know why the Autobots' logo is a sad face? It's because this movie sucked.

Then there's Transformers. They claim that there's more than meets the eye, but I say there's not much you can see with your eyes in this movie.

The way they designed the robots, coupled with their choice of camera work (which is usually shaky and quick close shots), it's hard to make out what the robots are doing most of the time. They design these robots to look kind of organic machines with small mechanical parts joined together. That made it hard to make out the the robot's features because everything looked like it was camouflaged. Even when they're not moving if hard to make out where's the head, which limb is the leg, and which is the hand.

Plus, they littered the movie with stupid, Stupid, STUPID jokes that just killed the mood. They made this a fluffy movie. They didn't show any respect. It would've been a lot better if this movie was more serious without all the stupid jokes.

Now I hate Michael Bay. He destroyed what could've been an awesome movie. Transformers got to a bad start, and it's sad that the sequel (I'm sure there'll be one) will as bad or worse. They need to remake it to make good, but that's not going to happen.

I really, Really, REALLY hope they don't mess up the ThunderCats movie.