eslabs

Avatar is not the game changer that is hyped up to be

2009-12-17T16:08:00.005+08:00

Avatar is the first movie I've watched in 3D. The hype is that it is made to be watched in 3D, and the 3D is not some afterthought tacked onto the movie like some other 3D movies. But being this is my first 3D experience, I'm unable compare Avatar's 3D to other movie's 3D, but from what I've seen, it gives a different experience, but not really essential. I have to admit that 3D does add something to the experience of watching the movie, but what it adds just isn't enough for it to be something that will change how people go watch a movie altogether.

Apart from adding something, 3D also takes something away. If you're not used to wearing glasses, then wearing those 3D glasses while watching the movie isn't really "comfortable". You never really forget that you're wearing glasses. The feel of it on your face, and the glass itself gives you a feeling like you're watching a movie through a window. And wearing glasses also makes the movie darker than normal. Some dark scenes become just too dark to see what's happening.

But the CG in Avatar really does push the boundaries of what has been done before. What they've really nailed is the facial expressions on virtual characters. That, they got it almost perfect. But as for the human/humanoid body movement, they've got most of it right, but some if it just isn't that good. But one GC element that they made "their's" bio-luminescence. Nobody has done it, and if they have it was never as good as what is seen here. The CG of mechanical things like vehicles isn't the best of what we've seen. Transformers 2 did a way better job of it than Avatar. And the vehicle and mech designs in the movie seems as if James Cameron is stuck in the 90s. They seem dated.

In the end, what makes a movie isn't the CG, it's the story. And the story in Avatar isn't a very original story. It is about humans trying to exploit the riches of a foreign planet at the expense of the aliens living there. Sure James Cameron did a great job of fleshing out the environment of Pandora, the alien planet, but as to what takes place on the planet, he could've done better. The dialog is very simplistic, but it's not as Star Wars prequel bad. There's nothing "edgy" to the story. It's very straight forward ,feels like it's a story made for a kids movie. There isn't any plot twists that turn things upside down.

So it has beautiful CG, but has a mediocre story. It still can be enjoyable if it has great action. But I'm sad to say that the action does not redeem the movie to enter the "enjoyably fun" category. The final battle is a big one, but I never really got into it. Maybe it's the 3D glasses, maybe it's just the direction, but it didn't work for me. What makes an action scene work is choreography and damage. As for the choreography, there isn't really much opportunity to implement cool choreography in the action scenes as most of the action is organism vs. machine. It's organism vs. orgasm is where choreography can shine. And as for damage, in their effort to keep the movie PG, there is very minimal blood splatter, and the vehicular damage wasn't very dramatic.

So there it is. Avatar. A movie that wanted to change things, and change may very well come if enough studios jump on the bandwagon, but if seen as what it is, a movie, it's just mediocre.

Transformers 2 Is Way Better Than The First One

2009-09-28T11:18:00.002+08:00

I hated the first Transformers movie. The reason I hated it was because I had very high expectations for the movie. Being a fan of the cartoon series, I expected it to have a serious tone and a coherent story. The movie could have been so much better in the right hands. I couldn't understand at that time why anyone would enjoy the shitty juvenile excuse of a movie. After experiencing the first movie, naturally I decided not to spend money to see the sequel and waited the for dvdrip to be released. The first movie also lowered my expectations for the sequel, and the all round bad reviews that the second movie got when it was released in theaters didn't help either.

Yesterday, the dvdrip was released and after watching it, I am surprised to say that I enjoyed the movie a lot. The silly jokes somehow worked for me this time, and the nonsensical story actually made sense to me. Now it's the opposite, I can't understand why people hate this movie so passionately. It's not the greatest movie of all time, but it's a summer action movie that delivers what it advertises.

If you are going to watch this movie, make sure you watch it in HD. One regret I had while watching the movie was not waiting for the HD version of it to be available. I did watch the 3 cd version of the dvdrip, but it just wasn't comparable to the 720p version I saw from the sample I downloaded. This movie is made to be watched in HD. The action and and special effects are what I enjoyed most about the movie and it needs to be seen in all their HD glory. They have toned down the use of the "shaky cam" technique compared to the first movie and as a result, the action was more discernable this time. You actually know who's fighting whom most of the time and which limb they are using to beat each other up. Plus, the use of slow motion for "cool" action set pieces helped too.

My advice for anybody that's going to watch Transformers 2 is to turn off your brain, get in mood to see lots of explosions and huge robots fighting each other with some juvenile jokes sprinkled in between. You'll be rewarded with two and a half hours of pure unadulterated fun.

District 9 Is The Best Movie Of 2009 So Far

2009-08-13T19:21:00.004+08:00

Saying this movie is good would be an understatement. The movie has it all, a very intriguing deep plot, good acting and great action. If I was to find a flaw in this movie, it would be the shaky cam technique employed at the beginning part of the movie and also at the very end. The shaky parts are supposedly documentary clips telling the story of Wikus, the protagonist. But rather than add to the feel of it, the shakiness is just nauseating. They just over did it. But after a while into the movie, they got out of the documentary mode and things couldn't be any better. And the special effects in his movie will have you believing that these aliens are real.

It's better that you go into this movie not knowing the deeper plot as a big part of the movie's entertainment value for me is the parts when things look hopeless and you really feel the despair and hopelessness of the characters. The only thing you need to know going in is that there are aliens stranded on earth and they are put in slums.

This is one of those movies that teases you that it's nearing its end, but inside, you go "No, I want more. It can't end like this", and the movie hears you and gives you more. And it's primed for a great sequel. The potential that this franchise has is just enormous. The way they can expand the story is just limitless and all of them can add to it's lore. This is a classic franchise in the making.

Ovrebo, not Iniesta who stopped Chelsea from reaching Champions League final

2009-05-07T06:12:00.006+08:00

Tom Ovrebo

Don't be fooled. It wasn't Iniesta who prevented Chelsea from winning the match against Barcelona. It was Tom Ovrebo, the *&#@* referee. Personally, before the match I thought Barcelona was going to win it. I believed the hype that newspapers were spreading that Barcelano were playing football from the gods. I started watching the match as a neutral. I didn't actually mind who won. But as the game progressed, I was impressed how Chelsea held back Barca and actually had the better chances of the match. And they would have been at least 2 goals up if not for Ovrebo. Ovrebo's lack of courage to award Chelsea the penalty(s?) cost Chelsea the match when Iniesta scored in added time. I went into the game as a neutral, but by the end of the game, I felt the rage Chelsea fans would've felt towards the referee for denying Chelsea the match. This Tom Ovrebo guy should stick to being a psychologist and never referee a football match ever again.

SRWare Iron - Chrome Without The Google Updater Crap

2009-04-13T19:00:00.009+08:00

I installed Google Chrome once way back when it was brand new back in September 2008. It was impressively fast, and the thing I liked best about it was the address bar. Once you start typing in the the address bar, the browser searches your bookmarks and history for what you're looking for and almost every time, the browser gets it right. Then you just hit "Enter", and off you go to where you want. Though Firefox 3 has a similar feature, but with Firefox 3, you can't just hit "Enter" after the search because the results are shown below the address bar in a dropdown menu. So you have to either hit the down arrow key or the "Tab" key once before hitting "Enter" to go to the first result of the search. With Chrome, the first result of the search is shown inside the address bar itself, that's why you can just hit "Enter" right away.

But Chrome's primary weakness was it's lack of extensions. As a power user, you need extensions to make the browser you're using and the page you're visiting to work for you the way you want to. So after using it for a few days, I went back to Firefox. From my short experience with Chrome, the one thing I hated most about it was the fact that it installed Google Updater on my computer and they made it very hard to get rid of it. It's designed to always run in the background and check for updates for any of Google desktop applications you have on your machine. I don't like softwares that loads on startup and check for updates without my explicit permission. And this reason alone have made me stay away from Chrome, that is, until recently.

I was browsing through reddit and saw a story that says google has made the Google Updater open source. I thought if this is the case, then there might be a way to install Chrome without intsalling Google Updater. So I put forth the question in the comments section and got a reply linking me to a Lifehacker story on how to do just that, but only it didn't. The story shows where to get the standalone version of Chrome that installs Chrome directly. You see, if you download Chrome from its official site, you are actually downloading Google Updater, and then the Google Updater downloads Chrome and installs it. However, the Lifehacker story fails to mention that even if you install the standalone version, googleupdater.exe still gets installed on your system as it comes as part of Chrome itself. The purpose of the Lifehacker story is more about helping users with non-existent or slow internet connection get Chrome installed on their machine. The standalone version can be installed on any machine without requiring an internet connection whereas if you downloaded it from the official site, you're actually downloading Google Updater and if you run that thing you downloaded an a machine that has no internet connection, then you won't be able to get Chrome installed.

So, for those who want to install Chrome without having googleupdater.exe installed with it, the Lifehacker story was completely useless, or so it seems. This is where Web2.0 comes and saves the day. Browsing through the comments for the Lifehacker story, a reader commented that there's this thing called SRWare Iron. As it turns out, SRWare Iron is exactly what I've been looking for-a stripped down version of Chrome without any of the Google Updater crap.

I tried it out and it works as advertised. I'm not really going to use it as my primary browser. I'm working on a new project right now and I need to see the whether the web-based project works on the WebKit engine. My choices were either Safari or Chrome, but instead I found something better - Iron.

Slumdog Millionaire Is A Masterpiece

2009-01-09T01:31:00.004+08:00

The latest product from Danny Boyle, the guy the brought us Trainspotting, 28 Days Later and Sunshine but Slumdog Millionaire must be his best work yet.

It's not one of those movies that gets critical acclaim for it's great acting, or eyeball exploding special effects, or any of those award show categories. It is great because it does what movies do, and does it in an almost perfect way. It takes the everyday Joe's fantasy, put it in film form, and make anybody who watches it live the fantasy, even if just for 2 hours.

This movie is for the everyday Joe, what Twilight is for unpopular school girls, and Danny Boyle does it without the involvement of sparkling vampires.

Right from the get go the movie pulls you in. It's not one of those slow burning movies. The movie tells about this kid from the slums of India, who goes on the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire gameshow and reaches the final question. They ran out of time before the final question is asked so they have to continue the next day. The police find it hard to believe a slum kid can answer all those questions so they interrogate him and he tells how he got to know the answers. In telling it, he practically tells his life story. And he has been through a lot. However, it is rather convenient that in the movie, the events that lead to him knowing the answers to each question in the gameshow is in the same chronological order to the chronology of the questions that are asked on the gameshow. But hey, it's a movie and I'm not complaining. So it shows how he knows the answer to the first question from events from he was a kid, up to the answer to the penultimate question from events just moments before being asked the question.

One of the things that sets this movie apart is how it shows India. This ain't your Bollywood India. It's the slums and how people go about their lives living there. Some scenes are harsh but at the same time, this is not one of those dark and gritty movies either. It actually is a feel good movie. Sure there are some hard reality shown in the movie but overall the movie is overwhelmingly feel good. It's so feel good that you can consider it to be Bollywood in a way. And that's why this movie is almost perfect. Everything was going perfectly in the movie, but how they wrapped it all up in the end seemed too Bollywood for me. Sure it's feel good, and I admit I did feel good, but I prefer my feel good endings have a bit more believability.

But why am I arguing about believability when I'm an everyday Joe and I had an excellent 2 hours. Plus, the music is great too. A.R. Rahman.'Nuff said.

The Love Guru Is Surprisingly Funny

2008-07-11T04:29:00.005+08:00

Even before the movie was released, this movie had bad reviews. I myself thought this was going to be a shitty movie. From the trailer, it looks as if Mike Myers is recycling his old jokes for this movie. The last fairly good movie of his was the first Austin Powers, and every movie after that was terrible. The first Mike Myers movie i saw was Wayne's World 2, and loved it.

So after The Love Guru was released, the critics ripped the movie apart, saying Mike Myers is a "has been" and has lost his magical touch. It currently has a 3.2 rating on IMDB. They complained that he keeps doing the some jokes over and over again in his movies, and they have a point there.

Then yesterday, a screener of the movie appeared on the internets, and being that there has not been any good movies released on the net lately, I figured I'd give this one a shot. So after watching it, I was surprised at how funny I found it. Sure he rehashes some of his old jokes, but the rehashes worked well in the movie. These jokes worked better in this movie than in his Austin Powers movies. In his Austin Powers movies, he kinds of over-do it with his jokes, it's like "yeah, I get the joke already", but he keeps banging the joke on your head until it loses its funniness. It seems that he's learned from his mistakes and the jokes are done very well in this movie. He has learned when to stop.

Plus, compared to his previous movies, this movie is heavier on word-play jokes than physical jokes. And I like it like that.

Definitely, Maybe Is A Recommended Watch

2008-06-08T08:36:00.003+08:00

Definitely, Maybe is one of the better romantic comedies in recent times. Just like the poster says, it's from the makers of Love Actually, another recommended romantic comedy. The story is set in the 90s, so there's Nirvana and Bill Clinton references, but they are more than just references, they are an integral part of the story. Instead of a story about one guy with one woman, or 3 guys with 3 women, it's about 1 guy with 3 women.

The story is told through flashbacks, the guy is telling this story to his daughter. The daughter wants to know about how the guy met her mother, so he tells her about the relationships he has had, and the daughter needs to guess which one is her mother. The story is heavier on the romantic side than the comedy side compared to Love Actually, but it's good. A highly recommended watch. And Elizabeth Banks is hot.

Lost Season 4 Finale Is The Best Episode Yet

2008-06-02T02:18:00.003+08:00

Off the island they go

Desmond finally reunited with Penny

I've just finished watching the Lost season 4 finale, and it was by far the best episode yet. Every time Penny makes an appearance, the episode is surely going to be good, but this episode is almost perfect. It shows the actual rescue. The season started by implying that they're going to get rescued, but the actual rescue was only shown on the final episode. The so called rescuers that appeared at the start of the season weren't there on a rescue mission, but in the end they played a part in the rescue.

It shows how only 6 of them manage to get off the island. Desmond is finally reunited with Penelope. It was the most satisfying moment of the entire series. After showing them searching for each other for several seasons, to see them finally together was very fulfilling.

These Lost writers really are geniuses. They manage to find the perfect balance between resolving some story lines and to continue with some to make you want more. The show started with flashbacks, then this season, it's mostly flashforwards, but after the events of this season, it's hard to figure out how the format is going to be next season. It may very well be without any "flashes", showing events on and off the island as they occur. But that itself is going to be tricky, because the time on the island is different than time off the island. It's all about this space-time continuum.

So after being rescued and living off the island for 3 years, circumstances have all the 6 rescued to want to go back to island. And how they do that is what season 5 is going to be all about. And going about doing that isn't going to be easy because Ben has moved island.

L.A. & Vegas

2008-04-28T12:00:00.018+08:00

Farmers Market

Hollywood

The Grove, just beside Farmers Market

Hollywood

Filming going on in front Hooters in Hollywood

Walt Disney Hall

The famous & weird statue at Ernst & Young Plaza, downtown L.A.

Downtown L.A. from Getty Center

Getty Center

So I went to the U.S. of a about a month ago, more precisely, I was in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.It was my first time in the U.S., and also first time outside of Asia in more than 20 years. I expected to see white men everywhere, but it was easier to spot Hispanics than white men in L.A. And I blended right in with them. I think I was even mistaken for a gang member at one point, but that's another story. The cashiers there speak to me in Spanish so I have to speak to them in English first to give them a head's up that I'm no Latino.

The climate is dry. Coming a country where the humidity is high, this became a problem. My lips started to crack, eyes became red, nose started to bleed and my skin became stretched. And at Venice beach, I thought it was spring, the weather isn't that hot as it is in Malaysia, the last thing on my mind was putting on sunscreen. But when I got back, my face was burned.

The cars over there actually stop for pedestrians. The respect that they give to pedestrians is surprising. The freeway surface isn't that good, compared to what we have in Malaysia. So Samy Vellu isn't 100% incompetent as I would like to think he is. And also, you can turn right on a red light. The reason for that is because their roads are all in a grid. So it's very orderly. You can't do that in Malaysia.

The people are friendlier than I thought they would be. Bus and cab drivers always greet you. You don't always get that here. The public transport system is very good in L.A. The Metro rail and buses all publish their routes online, so it's very easy to plan your journey. The only problem is with the non-Metro buses and also on less popular routes where the buses aren't as frequent.

But one thing that bugged me the most is this culture of "tips". They expect tips for the slightest of things. WTF is up with that? Why can't they just do their damn job. Don't extort people out of their money. Even cab fares need tips. This tip thing is needs to go away.

Maybe I wasn't at the right place at the right time, but in L.A. I expected to see a hot chick at every corner but that wasn't the case. But the percentage does increase as you get closer to the coast line. But in Downtown, not so much. And downtown L.A isn't as busy as I thought it would be. And it's quite small. You can explore the whole downtown area on foot, which I did.

Other than Downtown, I also went on a tour that took me around Hollywood and Beverly Hills. I thought I saw Stan Lee, or at least somebody that looked like him at the Farmers Market. The next I visited the Getty Center. Then on the day after that, my plan was to do the beaches. Take the rail down to Long Beach, then go back up a bit and do a triple of Redondo, Manhattan and Hermosa beaches. But by the time I was finished with Redondo, it was already late, so I didn't get to Hermosa or Manhattan beach.

Long Beach

Redondo Beach

Next, I did a double of Venice and Santa Monica. The first thing that I noticed about Venice/Santa Monica beach is how wide it is. The amount of sand you have to wade through just to get to the water, it's like a 3 minute walk in the sand. This is where da girls at.

Venice Beach

Baywatch on Venice Beach.

Venice Beach

Santa Monica Beach

It's Hot

And in Vegas, there wasn't much travelling to do becsue the hotel was right there on the strip, so I had time to really watch tv there. I switched through the late night talk shows that they have there. There's Leno and Conan on NBC, and there's Letterman and Craig Ferguson on CBS. Of the 4, I actually like Craig Ferguson the best. Craig Ferguson is Drew Carey's boss, Mr. Wick, from the Drew Carey Show. His talk show is actually very funny. He doesn't have a sidekick to pick things up if the shows gets slow, because it doesn't. It's a one man show, and still he manages to beat the others in funniness. When Letterman calls it quits, he should get Letterman's slot.

Vegas reaches it's peak on Fridays and Saturdays. People start coming in droves on Friday afternoon. They do whatever they went there to do, then leave on Sunday, and go to work on Monday. So it's nice to go for a walk on weekdays when its not as crowded.

The dancing fountains at the Bellagio is reason enough to go to Vegas. And the best part is it's free. It is easily one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. It starts at sunset every night, but they turn it off if it's too windy.

And there's quite a big population of Muslims in Vegas. There are even mosques there, but not on the strip. So, halal food in Vegas isn't a problem. There are halal restaurants and even halal grocery stores. My mom bought some chicken and rice to cook. While there, there was this halal restaurant that served Philly Steak. At first I thought it was a steak as in one big piece of meat, but a Philly Steak is actually a sandwich. What?! I expected a steak and they gave me a damn sandwich?! But the sandwich is actually good. It's filled with little slices of meat with melted cheese together with sliced mushroom, and it's really really good. I wish they had it here in Malaysia.

And I also went to see Ka, a Cirque Du Soleil production. I've always wanted too see a Cirque Du Soleil show ever since I saw a documentary about them on tv. The show was okay, it had it's moments. It was the only Cirque show on discount at the time. Ka is more about the props, stage and special effects and a bit lacking in the actual circus acrobatics stuff, compared to other Cirque shows.

Vegas Strip

The newly opened Trump International in Vegas

Encore,Wynn and Palazzo on the Vegas strip

Bellagio Casino

Bellagio dancing fountains.

Protest against income tax in Vegas. It seems that there's no law requiring individuals to pay income tax. It's only for businesses.

Barstow Station. We took the Greyhound to travel between L.A. and Vegas. Barstow Station is somewhere in between.

I can go on writing a lot more about my trip but this is already the longest post on the blog. And it took me a long time to make this post. So it ends here. Plus, nobody reads my blog anyway. The reason I'm late in posting this is because I was waiting to finish editing all the photos that I took on my trip, but there just too many of them. So I'll attach the few good ones that I took, the rest of them will be on Flickr when I've finished editing all of them.

Dhaka, Bangladesh

2008-03-29T15:42:00.011+08:00

Traffic

Lanes are just whites lines on the road to be ignored.
Instead of using signal lights, just honk.
It's really hard to spot a car without a dent on it.
Light bumping between vehicles are normal.
Hardly any motorcycles.
Most vehicles run on CNG.

Food

Good briyani. Katchi(mutton) briyani is traditionally served at social functions.
They squeeze lime over their briyani.
Most of the chicken is the "kampung" kind, though they have multi-storey chicken farms.
Lots of Jack fruit.
Allegedly has the best mangoes in the world.
Avoid tap water.

People

About 90% muslims, a lot of the women wear sari.
Their perception of Malaysians is that we are a very religious bunch.
They learn about Tunku Abdul Rahman in their schools.
They admire Dr. Mahathir.
11 million millionaires there, out of 150 million population.
Very small middle class.
Canada is a very popular migration destination for the rich.
Advised by the hotel staff not to go out at night.
A lot of police officers around. It's like there's one every 100 meters.
Supermarket entrances have metal detectors.

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull Trailer

2008-02-15T00:23:00.003+08:00

First trailer for Indy 4. Looks good.

The only iffy thing about the movie is that Shia LeBeouf is in the movie. I hated him in Transformers, and I'm afraid he will spoil this movie too.

Lost Is Back!

2008-02-09T13:55:00.000+08:00

Finally, something that can take them off the island.

Lost returned with it's 4th season last week, but the first episode was underwhelming for me. It didn't start with a bang. Things that happened were expected to happen. Nothing much revealed.

Somebody's carrying this photo of Ben.

But this week's episode really hit the mark. The rescuers finally manage to get on the island, but they aren't really there to rescue the lost bunch. The rescuers, there 4 of them, with their stories (they have their own flashbacks), really sets up what season 4 is going to be about. And it's looking good.

A Perfect End To Rambo

2008-02-07T15:53:00.000+08:00

I decided to see this in theaters after hearing that it wasn't butchered by the censors. Overall, it was a very enjoyable movie. Over-the-top violence and gore as expected. But the best thing about it was how it ended. John Rambo finally finds peace with himself and returns home. A great way to end the series. After all that he's been through, I'm happy to see him at peace. Good for him.

Bandoleros Fixed Audio Sync Download Link

2008-01-23T23:38:00.000+08:00

Well, I've just finished uploading Bandoleros aka Ladrón que roba a ladrón, a movie I mentioned about in my previous post. The movie, originally released by VoMiT had audio sync problems. I decided to fix it myself, and share it with everyone. I re-encoded the original source, so there's a slight dip in video quality, but not much.

Here's the link:
http://www.yaStorage.com/download.php?id=186014&key=da81aa885gndf676f1gg8aaa6c582ffg

The way to use the yaStorage link is to click on the word "Request" from "Request Download Link". Then after that, click on the letter "F" from "Downloading File".

Here's a sample video of the movie for you to check the quality:
http://rapidshare.com/files/85796986/bandoleros_fixedaudio_sample.avi

Enjoy.

Editing XviD Video In Sony Vegas 8

2008-01-23T07:15:00.000+08:00

I downloaded a movie the other day called Bandoleros. It's an American made Spanish movie. Haven't seen it yet, but the audio was out of sync by a few hundred miliseconds. A few hundred miliseconds is enough of a difference to make the viewer notice it and spoils the movie. Most pirated movies are released in XviD format. I've tried to edit Xvid video previously using Sony Vegas but for some reason Vegas doesn't recognize XviD format video. The last version I tried it on was version 6 of Vegas. Now the latest version is version 8, and and I've got a new laptop with some serious power in it, so I decided to give it another try.

After installing it, to my dismay Vegas still doesn't support XviD editing. So googled around for some solutions to this problem. I encountered 2 YouTube videos that have 2 different solutions to this problem. The first one is here:

I tried the method showed in first one, but it didn't work for me. In some of the comments for the YouTube video, it is said the the trick only works on XP. My laptop runs Vista so that may be the reason it didn't work.
So on to the second video:

This trick did it for me. This method tricked Vegas into seeing the XviD video as a DivX video. I managed to fix the audio sync problem. But since I re-encoded the XviD to XviD again, there is a slight deterioration in video quality, but barely noticeable. I basically used the same video setting as the original file.

I have decided to share this fixed version of the movie with the world. So in a way, I am now a true pirate. It's still in the process of being uploaded. It's quite slow. As of right now, I still have about 8 hours to go before the upload is completed. I'll post and spread the links when it's done.

Cloverfield Sucks For Others Too

2008-01-19T04:44:00.000+08:00

Click image for larger version

An updated version is below. The jump goes higher than I thought it would be.

Click image for larger version

It seems that I'm not the only one who thinks Cloverfield sucks, and I've got the stats to prove it. After my previous post titled "Cloverfield Sucks", my blog got a big jump in the number of visits. Most of it is referred from Google with the search term "cloverfield sucks". Apparently I am not alone with this sentiment.

Click image for larger version

After further analysis of the movie, I think the problem was the movie didn't make me want to care enough about those yuppie characters. There are a lot of other movies that made me feel very attached to its characters, but this one didn't do it well enough. Maybe it's the unconvincing acting, or the maybe it's the script itself that didn't make me believe these characters were real enough to invest my emotions in them.

But the it's not like I didn't enjoy it at all. My main disappointment was with the ending. It ended at a point where I felt that things were only starting to get good and looked forward for it to get better. I wanted to see more of the monster.

I expected a different kind of movie. But my expectations are from the promotions and hype that the movie itself has generated. If I didn't know anything about the movie, if I didn't know that it's about a monster, and my only knowledge of the movie is from the movie poster only, then, maybe I'll truly enjoy it. But after so much focus on the monster from the media hype, I expect it to be monster-centric, not yuppie-centric.

Cloverfield Sucks

2008-01-17T16:41:00.000+08:00

Cloverfield doesn't live up to the hype. They clearly had a sequel in mind when they made this movie. At the end of the movie, I went "That's it?".

It's a love story with the monster as a sideshow. Yes you get to see the monster, but it doesn't even touch on what the monster is, where did it come from, why is it attacking Manhattan, etc. I didn't go to see the movie just to see a monster being hit by missiles, but that's what the movie really is. Who gives a shit about the love story, I want the monster to be the star of the movie, not a bunch of yuppies with relationship problems. I have nothing against sequels but at least make the first movie a complete movie, and not just a jumping point for the real movie. And the camcorder style thing, was okay, it didn't bother me that much, but I prefer normal traditional camera style.

A real disappointment. Not worth my 10 bucks. I hope the movie doesn't do well, so they won't have to make a lame sequel.

American Gangster

2008-01-10T03:18:00.000+08:00

American Gangster is a true story about Frank Lucas, a black gangster honcho who was bigger than the mafia during his peak. It's a really good movie.

Enough about the movie, while looking around for pictures of Lymari Nadal, who the lady plays Frank's wife in the movie, another person always crops up beside her in her pictures. That person is Edward James Olmos, the guy who plays Admiral Adama on BattleStar Galactica, and Lt. Martin Castillo (the boss cop) on Miami Vice. It turns out that this old guy is the babes' husband. WTF! Nice.

Lymari Nadal

Edward James Olmos

Married

Other than that, American Gangster is a very good movie, it was really easy for me to "get into" it. It feels long, but in good way. There's hardly a boring moment in the movie. Good editing.

Stardust is a / (5/5)

2007-12-04T04:02:00.000+08:00

Stardust is superb. It's a fairy tale, but unlike most fairy tales, it's not written by some old hack who has died half a century ago, but written in modern times (1998) by the famed writer Neil Gaiman. I admit I'm not much of a novel reader, and I've never read the novel itself, but the movie really is excellent.

It has all the good things you expect from a fairy tale, without the pitfalls of a fairy tale created in olden times. Old fairy tales were made for people of that time. The way its told, the kinds of magic and stuff that are in it, the story elements, all are conceived by by old day mentality and experiences. That's why though some of those stories are good, they never really "clicked" perfectly (for me, at least). You have to condition your mindset to the way the story's needs it to be. But with Stardust, there's no need for that. There aren't any of those little quirky things in the story that you never really "get" just because "that's what people back then used to do". It flows effortlessly without interrupting your enjoyment of the movie.

This Neil Gaiman guy must be really good. I look up for more of his work on IMDB, and found out that he is one the the screenplay writers for Beowulf. I wasn't really interested Beowulf when it came out, but after seeing Stardust, I'll surely make an effort to download it when a DVDRip of it emerges.

The Strike Is In Full Swing.

2007-11-16T14:19:00.000+08:00

The WGA strike is in full swing. A lot of tv shows have stopped production. Shows that matter:

24: Production shut down with 8 episodes taped. Show on hiatus. Premiere has been delayed until such a time that the Day 7 season can air continuously with no or few interruptions.
Lost: 8 episodes out of 16 ordered taped. In event of protracted dispute, the 8 in the can could run as a mini-season starting in the New Year with remaining shows held back for 2008-09.
House: 12 episodes have been completed. Repeats to air after American Idol in January.
The Simpsons: 22 of this season's 23 episodes will be completed.
Heroes: Heroes: Origins spinoff suspended. December 3 episode to serve as finale of volume two.

And all the talk shows have stopped production and airing reruns. The surprising thing is that they are actually ending Heroes early. Not that this season has much to shout about, but still. The conclusion I have come up with about all this is, "this sucks".

Just give the writers their damn money. At first I was somewhat against the writers and their strike. But after watching this video, I think it's fair game for them to have this strike. Whether they actually get what they want is another matter. Just give me back my tv shows.

Dimmented is Live!

2007-11-12T13:18:00.000+08:00

My latest app, Dimmented is live. It's still in beta, but all of the functions work, I hope. Only the UI stuff needs to be fine-tuned. It's my first Flex app, haven't got around to reading about transitions and effects yet, so there are no fancy animations yet in Dimmented.

Dimmented is an app that shows your Digg comments or any other Digg user's comments. I used to keep track of my Digg comments by using their API and reading the raw xml. But the problem with that is it doesn't show the replies to my comments. With Dimmented, I made it show replies, and not just the first level of replies, but all the replies, plus, it can also show the first level of "reply to".
I also included the "remember me" function so that I don't have to type in my username each time. At first, I tried to do this using cookies and php, but for some reason, it didn't work. Then I found out about Flex's shared objects, and it was so much easier, and boom, it was like the feature made itself available.

It is a good learning experience for me. At first I thought Flex was very different to what I already know about scripting/programming, but it turns out it's very similar to the xml-script structure that I'm used to making Konfabulator/Yahoo widgets. So, it wasn't that difficult. And the next version of Flex will have better support for making AIR apps, I don't know whether I'll ever go back to Konfabulator. I already have plans for my next Flex app.

Amazing Race 12

2007-10-26T00:23:00.000+08:00

The Teams

The best reality show on tv, The Amazing Race, will be starting it's 12th season on November 4th. I went throught the teams compteting this time, and the only team worth following is the "sisters" team of Marianna & Julia. A double dose of hotness. I hope they win the 1 mil prize just because they're hot.

The Sisters

There's also another hot chick from the "dating for almost one year" team, Rachel and some guy with 2 letters as a name. Who gives a shit who the guy is.

The Hot Chick and Nobody

The other teams are just extras. They replaced the obligatory gay team with a goth couple. The "minority" team is now an Asian father/daughter team. I know the term "Asian" can be vague and I hate to use it, but where in Asia wasn't mentioned in the article. They're the sepet kind of Asian if I have to further drill down. Just look at the damn picture on the site.

E4X in Flex

2007-10-24T04:33:00.003+08:00

I've just started working on an Adobe Flex project, and I've messing around with E4X. I'm familiar with Xpath 1.0 from working with Konfabulator widgets, but it took me a while to get to grips with E4X. Most of what I learned, I got from this website. So, I'll just go ahead and use some of the material from the site. Here's what I've learned so far. I'll be using the below XML as an example.


   <?xml version="1.0"?>
<rdf>
  <channel>
      <title><![CDATA[Test file]]></title>
      <link>http://www.sephiroth.it</link>
      <description><![CDATA[A custom description of this document]]></description>
      <language>en-us</language>
      <items>
          <item id="001">
              <resource url="http://www.sephiroth.it/tutorials.php" />
              <channel>FLASH-PHP</channel>
              <author email="alex@alex.com">
                  <name>Alessandro</name>
              </author>
          </item>
          <item id="002">
              <resource url="http://www.sephiroth.it/tutorials/flashPHP/E4X" />
              <channel>Flash 9</channel>
              <author email="mich@alex.com">
                  <name>Michael</name>
              </author>
          </item>
          <item id="003">
              <resource url="http://www.sephiroth.it/tutorials/flashPHP/scrollRect" />
              <channel>Flash 8</channel>
              <author email="fk@alex.com">
                  <name>Frank</name>
              </author>
          </item>
      </items>
  </channel>     
</rdf>

httpResult.lastResult..item will give all the items in XML fromat:


<item id="001">
  <resource url="http://www.sephiroth.it/tutorials.php" />
  <channel>FLASH-PHP</channel>
  <author email="alex@alex.com">
      <name>Alessandro</name>
  </author>
</item>
<item id="002">
  <resource url="http://www.sephiroth.it/tutorials/flashPHP/E4X" />
  <channel>Flash 9</channel>
  <author email="mich@alex.com">
      <name>Michael</name>
  </author>
</item>
<item id="003">
  <resource url="http://www.sephiroth.it/tutorials/flashPHP/scrollRect" />
  <channel>Flash 8</channel>
  <author email="fk@alex.com">
      <name>Frank</name>
  </author>
</item>

httpResult.lastResult..name.text() will give all names in normal text, without the XML formatting. That's what the .text() is for.

AlessandroMichaelFrank

httpResult.lastResult..item.@id will give the ids of every item:

001002003

httpResult.lastResult..item[1].@id will give the id of the second item. But there's a warning that popped up in the debugger that discourages from using square bracket operator. It recommends using the ArrayCollection.getItemAt() instead.

002

After knowing all that, I can virtually get any value I want. But there's still along way to go in mastering Flex.

Grindhouse

2007-10-17T04:49:00.000+08:00

Grindhouse is a mixed bag. Death Proof, the Tarantino half of the movie is one of the most boring movies I've ever seen. You can literally fall asleep watching the movie. The dialog is filled so much with "inside" reference, if you're not into the "Tarantino" state of mind, you wouldn't give a shit about what they're talking about. By "Tarantino" state of mind, I mean you're into old vintage cars, and 70s pop culture, and stunts and stuff. I'm not into that stuff, so the only good part of the movie was the lap dance scene by Vanessa Ferlito. Other than that, it just stretches itself with pointless rambling about car stunts. Even the violence isn't that heavy compared to the other half. I'll save you the hassle of watching the whole movie by embedding the only good part of the movie, the lap dance scene, here. Enjoy.

The other half of Grindhouse, Planet Terror by Robert Rodriguez, on the other hand, is one of the best movies I've ever seen. It's one of those over-the-top ultra violent zombie movies that is fun to watch, and at the same time, it doesn't feel old. They've put new ideas into it to make it feel different from the other similar movies that have been made. I can't even begin to tell how much I enjoyed this movie. A must watch.

If you're going to catch this one on DVD or download it, I recommend Planet Terror and give Death Proof a pass.

New Season

2007-10-11T00:53:00.000+08:00

Well, it's time again where good tv shows start their new season. And there're a few new ones too. The new shows that people are saying is good is Pushing Daisies, Journeyman, and Chuck. Of the three, I've only watched the first episode of Journeyman. I'm not sure about Journeyman after reading that the creators are going to focus more on the weekly time travel escapades rather than unraveling the mystery of why he's traveling through time. What got me interested is the mystery, not the lame weekly outings. I just haven't got around to watching the other two shows.

What I'm actually downloading and watching is House, Heroes and Smallville. I know, Smallville is kinda lame, but I'll watch it until 24 or Lost returns, or until one of the new shows really makes a breakthrough. Kristin Kreuk makes it worth the download. If you don't know how hot she is, then you're really missing something. And there's a new set of pictures that show that she is one of those girls who get more beautiful when they're upset. These pics prove it. There hasn't really been any "breakthrough" shows yet this season. Last season's "breakthrough" was Heroes. I don't think there'll be one this season.

Of the three shows I'm currently following, House is easily the best. This season's House is hilarious. I find the chemistry between House and James (James is the friend, not one of those docs who works for him) just perfect this season. The banter between them just hits the right spot for me. And Heroes, the first season wasn't great, it was just good. And this season looks like its going to continue being good, not great. I've figured out a way to heighten my enjoyment of Heroes. The trick is not to take the show as seriously as 24 or Lost. If you do that, you'll just get disappointed. You need to see it as a show like Smallville with a slight touch of mystery like Lost, but not as deep. If you can manage that, you will surely increase your enjoyment of the series.

What I'm really looking forward to is Lost, but it ain't coming until next year. Other shows to look forward to 24 where rumors say there'll be no CTU, and Battlestar Galactica. And the fact that the coming season being the last season of Battlestar, it is surely going to be EPIC. But there are rumors that say that the final episode of the season will be pushed to 2009. It'll really suck if it's true.

New Rambo Clip

2007-09-10T05:41:00.000+08:00

Stallone released new footage the latest Rambo film. From the look of it, it's going to be as violent as it can be. I wonder how anyone can enjoy this film when it hit theaters after the censors have had their hands on it. I'm starting to believe it's going to be good. The earlier footage that they released wasn't convincing, but this one did it for me. They totally set up what the movie is going to be about-- it's about Rambo killing South East Asians in creative ways. The previous clip tried to present it as an emotional film with Rambo having to make moral decisions or something. But this one hit the mark. Can't wait to download it, then watch it.

http://view.break.com/362761 - Watch more free videos

Journeyman

2007-09-07T07:53:00.000+08:00

There's a new tv show called Journeyman that's going to be shown soon on NBC, but as usual they leaked the first episode on to the internets to get the buzz going. There has been a lot of leaked first episode new series that has come out, but the only one that piqued my interest was Journeyman. I gave it a go, and it was somewhat entertaining.

Basically, Journeyman is Quantum Leap recreated for the 21st century. There's this guy who goes back in time to help certain people. But unlike Quantum Leap, he's not stuck in the past, but goes in and out of it throughout the episode. And to give it the 21st century touch, they added some mystery and drama. First, why he time travels is made a mystery. He has no control over when he leaps into the past and back, so his life is turned upside down, sometimes disappearing from the present for days. And for the drama part, he meets his ex-fiancee who died in a plane crash during his escapades into the past, but he's already married in the present. And to top things off, plus spoiler warning, the ex-fiancee is actually not dead, but is alive and well, and she has something to do with the guy time traveling. He actually met the future version of his ex-fiancee in the past.

But the show has its flaws too. First of all, the dialog/script needs a bit of work. There were too many cliches. I know it's the first episode, you need to introduce the characters, so it's hard not to fill a few cliches in, but there was just a bit too much of it. The acting ain't that good either, but I don't know if it's the actors' lack ability, or the script that made the acting look not so good. The only good acting came from the journeyman himself and his ex-fiancee. The others just weren't into it.

Aside from that, overall, I enjoyed the show and will keep watching it to see how it develops. There needs to be a deeper plot than going into the past saving another person each week. The unraveling of why he time travels should be a good tactic to keep audience wanting more, but it better be a good reason and reasonably paced.

Sucks x 3

2007-08-31T01:04:00.000+08:00

Left Leg Shorter Than The Right

I've started jogging again after stopping for several months due to a knee injury. I think the injury occurred because I tried too much too fast. This time around, I'm taking it slow. Not pushing too hard, building my distance gradually. But one thing I've noticed this time around is that my left leg is getting or at least has gotten shorter since I started. I'm not sure why, but it may have something to do with my previous injury. It kinda sucks to have a leg shorter than the other, but I like running. I'll continue running, but if my leg gets any shorter than it already is, I'm afraid I'll have to stop. You can't visually see that the left leg is shorter, but I can very well feel it. My whole walking mechanics needs to be change to adapt to the new imbalance. And I even have to change the way I run. It really sucks.

YouTube Account Permanently Deleted

And few days ago, my YouTube account got permanently deleted. I've uploaded excerpts of movies that I've downloaded, and after a second warning, they directly deleted my account without telling me that they'll delete my account. At least give me a warning that my account will be deleted. The warning they sent only said that I'm not allowed to upload copyrighted material. I've put a lot of effort in creating some of the videos, and I don't have backups some of them, so they're gone permanently, and it will take a lot of time to make them again.

I created a new account, with a different username, but I found out that they not only blacklisted my old username, they also blacklisted the email address that I used in the previous account. So I registered with another email address, but in the account options, there's an option to change my email address. I figured that I've already succeeded in registering, so changing the email to the previous one wouldn't have any effect, but alas, changing the email to blacklisted one deleted my newly created account. So I had to register for an account for a third time and this time not changing my email settings. Losing all my videos really sucks.

Bourne Ultimatum Nuked

Then there's Bourne Ultimatum. I prefer to watch in the cinema but a good copy surfaced already, plus I don't want to wait until October to see it, so I downloaded the R5 version. As it turns out, the version I downloaded is missing about 15 minutes of the movie. The moment I realized something is wrong I stopped watching. I checked the forums and everybody was saying that the R5 version was nuked. Now, do I download the whole movie again in lower quality, or do I wait for a better version to come along, or do I wait for it to be released in the cinemas? I've already watched a third of the movie, and I need to know how the story ends. This sucks.

Mmmmmmmore... Natali Del Conte

2007-08-17T14:22:00.000+08:00

Natali Del Conte

She keeps getting hotter. The green outfit from episode 68 has a lower neckline, but was loose and doesn't show the contours much. The outfit in this episode is tighter, but doesn't show as much cleavage. I can't decide which one I like better. But this time I know how to optimize YouTube videos, so you can see her in all her glory in better quality.

Yann Tiersen Makes Good Music

2007-08-10T02:53:00.003+08:00

I was searching for mp3s on Google one day, and stumbled upon a song from the soundtrack of the movie Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain which I've just watched days before. It all started when I was listening to the radio and heard a remix of the 80s song, Africa by Toto. I wanted to listen to the original, but I didn't have it in my collection. So I searched Google for it using this magic string:
-inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:"index of" mp3 "toto africa" - Google Search

You can modify the search string to fit your needs by replacing the "toto africa" term to any song you want. However, back to that Amelie soundtrack, I downloaded the song I found, and kind of liked it. I searched around for the whole soundtrack album, downloaded it, listened to it, and it is a good album. All the songs are from Yann Tiersen.

I personally think this Yann Tiersen guy is a musical genius. Most of his songs are instrumental where he mixes sounds of the violin, piano and accordion to make exquisite music. I downloaded a few other of his albums and I like his work. It's a good alternative if you want to listen to music that has no or minimal singing apart from classical or techno. It sits in the middle between the two, not as slow classical, but not as fast as techno.

Here's a sample of what he's all about:

And about the music player above, I searched around on how to present multiple mp3 files so that the user can easily play them across platforms, and I found a Flash-based solution called XSPF by a guy called Fabricio Zuardi. This page tells you how to set it up, but the code on that page didn't work perfectly for me. It worked okay in Firefox, but in IE it loaded a different playlist. The syntax on how to create the xspf playlist showed on the site is okay, but I had to tweak the object embed code to make it work on both Firefox and IE. Here's my modified code:

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,0,0" width="400" height="170" id="xspf_player" align="middle">
<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
<param name="movie" value="http://www.yourwebsite.com/xspf_player/xspf_player.swf?playlist_url=http://www.yourwebsite.com/music/playlist.xspf?xn_auth=no" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />

<param name="bgcolor" value="#e6e6e6" />
<embed src="http://www.yourwebsite.com/xspf_player/xspf_player.swf?playlist_url=http://www.yourwebsite.com/music/playlist.xspf?xn_auth=no&autoload=true" quality="high" bgcolor="#e6e6e6" width="400" height="170" name="xspf_player" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /></embed>
</object>

And about the code above, I found out in that you can't just paste code to show it or it will run the code rather than display it. You need to "escape" it or something. Here's a website that con do it for you.

PC Security Overhaul

2007-08-09T04:42:00.000+08:00

I replaced my anti virus and firewall software recently, and the thing that made me do it was ZoneAlarm. The electricity went out during my computer's start up and during that time, just before it happened, ZoneAlarm was doing its loading or something, and after restarting when the electricity was restored, it went bonkers. It lost all its settings and it began blocking some stuff it shouldn't be blocking. So, I decided to overhaul everything, and needed to do it anyway because both my anti virus and firewall are really out of date.

Before this, I was using Antivir anti virus, ZoneAlarm firewall. I haven't updated my firewall and anti virus for more than 2 years, and during those years, the security technologies have progressed a lot. I searched around to find out what's hot right now. For firewalls, I found this page where it has results of leak tests for all of the popular firewall programs. At the top of the list ranked no. 1 is Comodo Firewall Pro, and what's even better is that it's free.

Comodo Firewall Pro

For anti virus, there's this website where it lists out the top 10 anti virus of 2007. No. 1 is Bitdefender. I searched for a download of Bitdefender Anti Virus but every copy that is available for download is a "Plus" version. The "Plus" version includes a firewall with it, and don't want it as it may cause conflicts with my new Comodo firewall.

So no. 2 was Kaspersky. I downloaded it, but decided not to use it as the installation process was somewhat cumbersome. To install the crack, you need to boot in safe mode and stuff, I don't want to go through all that. So I settled for no. 3, Nod32. It's as secure as the previous to firewalls, but its user interface ain't that good. I can live with that. Plus, people say it's lightweight, so it doesn't consume much of my computer's resources.

Nod32 Anti Virus

I've run these two softwares without a hitch so far.

Chain Of Events That Led To Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain and Beyond

2007-08-02T04:10:00.000+08:00

It all started with a Digg post about a horse breaking free and joining cyclists on the Tour De France. One of the comments of the post pointed out that the story has already been submitted before and got frontpaged on Digg in this original post. A comment on that original post pointed out that this footage was from a movie called Amelie. Replies to the comment and other comments were in praise of the movie. I became intrigued, and did a search on this Amelie movie that I've never heard of before. IMDB gave it an 8.6, Rotten Tomatoes gave it 90%.

So, I search mininova for amelie, and the torrent of the movie with the highest number of seeds is one with around 70 seeds and 40 leechers. That's a good enough number of peers for a non-mainstream movie. However, none of the torrents from the search results had English subtitles in them. The one with the highest number of seeders only gave a link to an .srt file of the subtitles.

I've never watched a movie with separate subtitles before, so I didn't know what player to use to view it. My google search on this showed VLC can load .srt files with movies, and I tried it, it works, but another player that cropped up in my search was Crystal Player, and there was high praise for this player. I decided to check it out, and managed to find a link for it on IT Hot News. And to my surprise, it is actually a very good media player. Not only can it load subtitle files, but the killer feature of this player is its ability to control the brightness/contrast of the video being played. I've been looking for this feature in a media player for so long, and I finally found a player that can do it. It is very convenient to have this feature, because more often than not, videos that I download, especially tv series like Lost and 24 have very dark scenes where it's very hard to tell whats happening. Couple that with my crappy monitor's low max brightness, it's unbearable.

Now, for the movie review itself. The title Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain more or less translates to The Fabulous Life of Amélie Poulain, at least that's what the subtitles I downloaded said. This film is touted as a masterpiece, as one of the best romantic comedies ever, but for me, it doesn't deserve that kind of critical acclaim. It's good, but not THAT good. It's not a romantic comedy in it's traditional form, because the romance part of the romantic comedy doesn't start until about half way through the movie. Even the guy she's supposed to be romantically involved with appears late in the movie, so I don't think this movie set out to be a romantic comedy.

First and foremost, this movie is about Amelie, and Amelie alone. Even though the other main characters of the movie have their own littles stories in the movie, but the main reason for their character's existence in this movie is to illustrate who Amelie is, what kind of a person she is, and what she is going through.

The movie has an artsy feel to it. It doesn't take itself too seriously, and the camera work complements this approach. And the use of special effects to convey Amelie's emotion was done well too. Audrey Tautou, who plays Amelie is cute. She's the chick who plays opposite Tom Hanks in The DaVinci Code. She looks a lot younger than she did in the Da Vinci movie.

Overall, I feel like the movie lacked focus. There was no pre-destined endpoint to get to. The movie doesn't start out with "Amelie is a lonely woman who's looking for a guy". This is more of a slice of life / coming of age movie. It shows a series of events in Amelie's life that leads her to becoming a new person, and the other characters in the movie are there just to facilitate her (albeit indirectly) to get to that point. The movie itself doesn't stick to me, but the character of Amelie, for some reason, still lingers in my mind.

So, there it is. From a lame story on Digg, to a fairly good movie, to a very good media player.

The Simpsons Movie

2007-07-26T19:41:00.000+08:00

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

2007-07-25T09:23:00.000+08:00

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

2007-07-19T16:01:00.000+08:00

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

2007-07-19T14:21:00.000+08:00

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

2007-07-15T14:56:00.000+08:00

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

2007-07-12T15:11:00.000+08:00

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.

Messi's goal
Uploaded by charlatecnica

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

2007-07-10T08:51:00.000+08:00

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

2007-07-10T08:07:00.000+08:00

Click image to view 'em 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

2007-07-09T05:46:00.000+08:00

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

2007-07-02T14:50:00.000+08:00

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.

Natali Del Conte... Mmmmmmm...

2007-06-14T17:06:00.000+08:00

Natali Del Conte

Natali Del Conte on Cranky Geeks episode 68.

Natali Del Conte On Cranky Geeks Episode 68
Update:
Another cute video of here from Cranky Geeks episode 77 can be seen here.

2007 MTV Movie Awards

2007-06-07T04:01:00.000+08:00

I just finished watching the 2007 MTV Movie Awards. This year's host, Sarah Silverman, was great. Her jokes were the highlight of the show.

Sarah Silverman has good jokes.

Mike Myers got one of those lifetime awards. At first I thought it was going to be lame, because he hasn't been very funny in his past few movies, but surprisingly it was good. The gag about not being a sell-out was really funny.

Mike Myers selling out to Pontiac.

And Cameron Diaz, who presented the award to him, wore this ridiculously short skirt. It'll be very hard to not see her panties (if she's wearing any) when she's sitting down. She'll need to cross her legs constantly.

A short skirt and Cameron Diaz.

Other things that happened, Jack Nicholson's acceptance speech was incomprehensible. Jerry Bruckheimer is afraid of his writers, specifically the writers of his Pirates movie. You can see/hear him whispering to Johnny Depp telling him to thank the writers of the movie. And speaking of Johnny Depp, he's still stuck in the 80s, at least in his fashion sense. He wouldn't be out of place if he walked in on the set of 21 Jump Street dressed the way he was. And the flailing hand gestures of Captain Jack Sparrow is actually natural to him, and not something he made up for the character. You can see it during his acceptance speech.

Depp stuck in the 80s. Torn-at-the-knee jeans & shirt tied around the waist.

Depp with Bruckheimer.

And this year, they have user submitted video spoofs thing. They are trying to get on teh user generated content bandwagon, and all 3 of the user submitted videos they showed were lame. The one they did themselves was very funny.

-

MTV Movie Awards 2007 spoof video.

And Rihanna performed live, and I was really impressed by it (the performance). She can actually sing, and the song was good too. The other performance was from Amy Winehouse. I've heard her name before, but never knew that she was a singer. She's not that hot, and I couldn't care about her music. Her performance, with her 60s hair and moves, with tattoos all over her arms, to be honest, she looked retarded. And she has bad teeth too.

Rihanna: Good.

Winehouse: Meh..

Then they presented the awards for the Best Summer Movie for this summer, and Transformers won. I'm more excited about The Simpsons Movie than Transformers. Of the all the 8 nominees, the one's I'll go watch at the theater will be Transformers, Rush Hour 3 and Harry Potter. I wish I could watch the Simpsons Movie at the theater, but I doubt it will ever be shown in Malaysian theaters, and even if it was, it'll be censored to death.

Old Penang Bus Tickets

2007-05-30T00:34:00.000+08:00

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

2007-05-29T20:38:00.000+08:00

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

2007-05-27T17:42:00.000+08:00

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

2007-05-24T20:50:00.000+08:00

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

2007-05-24T05:04:00.000+08:00

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.

2007-05-23T03:18:00.000+08:00

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

2007-05-20T07:46:00.000+08:00

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

2007-05-19T14:10:00.000+08:00

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

2007-05-16T20:33:00.000+08:00

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

2007-05-13T01:02:00.000+08:00

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

2007-05-12T23:06:00.000+08:00

Testing... 123

eslabs

Avatar is not the game changer that is hyped up to be

Transformers 2 Is Way Better Than The First One

District 9 Is The Best Movie Of 2009 So Far

Ovrebo, not Iniesta who stopped Chelsea from reaching Champions League final

SRWare Iron - Chrome Without The Google Updater Crap

Slumdog Millionaire Is A Masterpiece

The Love Guru Is Surprisingly Funny

Definitely, Maybe Is A Recommended Watch

Lost Season 4 Finale Is The Best Episode Yet

L.A. & Vegas

Dhaka, Bangladesh

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull Trailer

Lost Is Back!

A Perfect End To Rambo

Bandoleros Fixed Audio Sync Download Link

Editing XviD Video In Sony Vegas 8

Cloverfield Sucks For Others Too

Cloverfield Sucks

American Gangster

Stardust is a *****/***** (5/5)

The Strike Is In Full Swing.

Dimmented is Live!

Amazing Race 12

E4X in Flex

Grindhouse

New Season

New Rambo Clip

Journeyman

Sucks x 3

Mmmmmmmore... Natali Del Conte

Yann Tiersen Makes Good Music

PC Security Overhaul

Chain Of Events That Led To Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain and Beyond

The Simpsons Movie

"Grey Image" Problem Fixed in Wickr

Pink Panther Surprisingly Good

Getting YouTube Videos to Look Good

Innocent Voices - Good Movie

Potter and Messi

Cloverfield Trailer

Hayden Panettiere Bikini Pics

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

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

Natali Del Conte... Mmmmmmm...

2007 MTV Movie Awards

Old Penang Bus Tickets

Joost

Season Finales Roundup

Introducing RIGGLATIONS

AC Milan Wins Champions League

The Simpsons 400th Episode Double Feature.

Rambo IV Trailer

Starcraft 2 Officialy Announced

Digg Widget Delay

Working on a Digg widget

Testing... 123

Stardust is a / (5/5)