Month: March 2006

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Detective Conan – Desperate Revival

Heard an interesting from Detective Conan: “If that woman really does know, there’s only one reason why she won’t say so. She’s waiting. Waiting to hear it directly from your lips.” You can generalize that to be, “If a woman finds out your secret, the only reason why she won’t confront you about it, is because she’s waiting to hear it directly from you.” I’m wondering if the same applies to men. Though there is also the possibility that the woman wants to live in denial, but that isn’t the case here. If saying Detective Conan isn’t enough hint for you, the woman (or girl) in which Hattori Heji is referring to is Ran and the secret, awwww common, you must know it by now.

Episodes 188 to 193 was a very cute and short series called Desperate Revival. No images will be provided and it’ll probably be the only entry of Detective Conan where I’ll throw in spoilers and a summary.

Spoilers: (Show)

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The Greatest Game Ever Played

Just watched this movie today. Decent enjoyable movie. Pretty much like most Disney sports movie where the entire plot is already known 5 minutes into the movie. I even knew the ending before they announced what the ending could’ve been. Though I do have to say, the trailer made Harry Vardon like a bad guy, but he totally wasn’t.

Official Site
IMDb: 6.5/10 (681 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B- / Yahoo! Users: B
Rotten Tomatoes: RATING: FRESH / READING: 61%
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
Amazon.com Book

the greatest game ever played poster

Spoilers: (Show)

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Shure E4C Earphones

As I mentioned several days ago, I finally received my pair of Shure E4c-n Sound Isolating Earphones in Black.

shure e4c-n

I had actually mention a few months ago, before I got my Logitech Wireless Headphones for iPod, I was contemplating on getting either the Etymotic ER-4P Portable Earphones or Etymotic Research ER-6 Isolator Earphones, but I hesitated and the prices just weren’t right. Last week, or maybe 2 weeks ago, Buy.com was having almost 50% off Shure earphones including the coupons available on the new black versions of their E2c, E3c, and E4c. I jumped on this opportunity and got myself a nice pair of earphones and am quite happy with it.

The sound is just amazing! Or maybe that’s just the self-fulfilling prophecy since I paid so much for it. I’ve read reviews and they’ve compared the Shure E4c and the Etymotic ER-4P and both were in the same ballpark in regards to quality. They did mention the E4c was missing a shirt clip, which I can totally understand now. The wiring is a bit thick to ensure quality, but that leads to a heavy dangling wire.

The earphones comes in one of those stupid plastic super sealed boxes which requires a razor to open. Inside you’ll find instructions, registration cards, the actual earphones, a volume control unit (which isn’t actually attached to the earphones), tons of ear pieces so you can find the correct ones that’ll fit your ear, some replacement parts, and even a earwax picker. The ear pieces are the interesting part. There’s foam; there’s soft plastic; there’s hard plastic; they even have those funky 3 layered ear plug thingies. I haven’t tested all of them yet, but so far the soft plastic is what I’m using. I actually had to switch to a smaller size because the default ones that came on the earphones were a bit too big.

At first it was hard getting used to the earphones, because the plastic actually expands to fill your entire ear. This helps isolate sound and allow more air for bass noises. They help isolate sound so much, I’ve already not noticed 5 or 6 people that were calling my name at work trying to get my attention. Haha.

Did a quick search on Blingo and found this review: TrustedReviews

CNET also has a video and more photos.

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Jail vs Community Service

Break the law and live by a beach – Article was interesting, but it brought up a point I wanted to comment about: The 2.6 square km (1.0 sq mile) Bastoy island offers its 115 “residents” cross-country skiing, tennis and horse-riding, but before the inmates can slope off to practise their serve or head to the beach for a swim, there is work to do on the farm.

I’ve always thought jail was the most stupidest form of punishment. They get locked up and live OFF the expense of tax payers. I agree there are some corner cases where psychos do need to get locked up, but most of the time, instead of having us pay for their meals and shelter, why not have them contribute back to the community for what they’ve done? It’s basically cheap service provided to the community which they’ve done wrong to. Having the community forgive them for what they’ve done on the other hand is different question, but at least they’ve tried redeem themselves from their wrongdoing.

And studies have always shown that incarceration doesn’t work correctly most of the time. Another interesting point is when jailed people come back out looking for jobs, it’s very difficult for them to find work having a “record” as they say. By doing a good job with community service, they can even get a recommendation letter from whoever is the officer overwatching them.

Just my 2 cents.

Random Crap:

Cambodia by Julian Li (from MS newsgroup) – I spent two and a half rollercoaster days of highs and lows in Cambodia. Some of the experiences here are now seared into my conciousness forever changing the way I look at life as well as certain aspects of what I believe in. In truth, I nearly deleted this gallery as it was painful to recall back the memories months ago, but then thats not going to help the kids here. I hope some good comes to the children from my photos, and maybe someone with financial power can come to help. Does anyone know Bill Gates? The pictures were beautiful and touching and shot very well. You can see more of his photo projects at www.julian.li.

Nerd caught Playing W.O.W World of Warcraft (with himself) (from Esca) – NOT WORK SAFE! Splitting the word “playing” and “with himself” tricked me.

The Ladies Bathroom (from Cari) – NOT WORK SAFE! A cute little animated cartoon about what really goes on in the ladies bathroom.. When women refer to objects such as lipstick, chocolate, or even horoscopes, do note those are names for their ‘vibrators’, just like how men have names for their *cough*

Texas arresting people in bars for being drunk – The first sting operation was conducted recently in a Dallas suburb where agents infiltrated 36 bars and arrested 30 people for public intoxication, said the commission’s Carolyn Beck. Getting drunk in a bar is considered public intoxication?!?! Guess the only place left to get drunk is in the comfort of your own home.

JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank (from Panzer) – Although a bit ugly, for $20 grand, you can own your own tank!

ThinkPad X60 laptop – The X series is the Thinkpad ultra-portable lineup, which consists of a single spindle design. The Thinkpad X60 is the current incarnation, and our model sports a Intel Core Duo T2400 CPU clocked at 1.83GHz, Intel GMA950 graphics, and a 2.5″ SATA drive. (Note: this is a different model than the X60s, which, while lighter, utilizes a lower-voltage Core Duo L2300 CPU and lacks the fingerprint scanner). It weighs in at a svelte 3lb (depending on configuration) and claims to have quite an impressive battery life. An optional dock can hold a second battery and/or an optical drive. Drools… I was originally thinking my next upgrade would be to a Thinkpad X41 (or is the X42 out?) which is the tablet version, but now that the X60 is out… I dunno… It’s just as light: 3lbs!!!

Viagra for stallion who wouldn’t horse around… – And when the stallion was given the potency drug, it emerged he was fully functional, he added.

Windows Vista delayed into January 2007 – Immediately after this announcment was made, Microsoft stock drop from 2.56% in after-market trade. It dropped from $27.74 and I believe today it opened today at $27.08. Let’s just say I’m happy I sold my stocks a few days ago. =)

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Moguu

(from Tera) Originally hosted by: lobsterlabs

Thought it was rather cute and thought I’d share. So it’s a purple hair girl in a blue dress with nekomimi making really cute noises when you click on her (3 noises in total).

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Private Posts

I just noticed that several of my posts was marked as Private unintentionally. That has been fixed. Enjoy!

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Final Fantasy XII – Opening Movie

Final Fantasy XII – Opening Movie (from Esca). Graphics are really pretty. Several of the aliens remind me of the ones from Star Wars. Not too sure what the story is going to be, but the video was fun and pretty to watch.

The link provided above is actually a recompressed version so it’d fit on PutFile. Do note the actual file size is 120MB. You can download the torrent here.

I’m currently in the process of recompressing it down to 100MB so I can upload to RapidShare. Link will come shortly.

*update* Here’s the direct download link as promised. Do note the video was recompressed to 95MB so I didn’t have to split the video into 2 seperate archives. That way you can download it without waiting 70 or 80 minutes before you can start downloading the 2nd part using the free account. I used Super v2006 and recompressed it using the H.264/AVC video codec at 1776kbps and mp3 codec at 48khz 128kbps. Quality difference is actually minimal, though still discernable.

I had actually tried to use VirtualDub before that, but was hitting into problems where the ffdshow codecs were giving me a: Cannot start compression: An unknown error occurred (may be corrupted data). (error code -100). DivX 6.1 worked, but I was having this weird echoing effect. Tried many ways to fix it including finally splitting the audio and video and saving it in raw formats and then muxing them together again. Finally gave up and decided to use Super v2006 as stated above.

So apparently the game’s already out for the PS2 in Japan. Torrents are already available if you follow my “drift”.

I’ve decided to re-encode it into wmv and upload it to my gallery: Final Fantasy XII – Opening Movie. Enjoy!

Random Crap:

The Great Escape (from /.) – You’re trapped in a high tech Spanish slammer, crawling through real tunnels, behind real bars. First-person gameplay breaks out of the box. … This medieval-looking electric chair sits deep inside an old bank in Madrid. The building has been remodeled to house La Fuga, a real-life role-playing game. Think of La Fuga (The Escape) as a $20 million cross between Halo and laser tag. The goal is simple: Decipher visual riddles to navigate and escape Mazzina, a high tech prison. This actually sounds really fun and only costs 15€ for 3 lives.

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My Weekend

My weekend was rather relaxed. Caught up on a lot of sleep. Didn’t post much as you may have noticed. It was a relaxing weekend. Did I just repeat myself. Haha. It’s not everyday where I can wake up at 3pm anymore. Sigh.. Wish I could though. Haha. Though I have noticed some weird symptoms lately that resemble my lifestyle back in college. First thing is I noticed for the first time in many many months, that I actually fell asleep on the table in front of my computer.

Last night, I went over to CDMCC’s place to check out his new Xbox 360. It’s so pretty, especially on his 51″ HDTV. We played PGR3 for a bit, but it turns out that game doesn’t support over 2 players on the same console/tv and Elizabeth wanted in. So we switched over to Perfect Dark Zero, which allowed up to 4 player split screen. The wireless controllers didn’t have the lag I was expecting. They sure have gone a long way. Play Perfect Dark Zero was really fun. We only played Team Kill Count and it was us 3 against 3 boths set to the easiest level, and even then we were having problems. Though we finally got to the point where we go to win every round. Then we started playing with what weapons we get on the round and we got slaughtered when we chose rocket launchers only and assault riffles. Haha.

After dinner, we came back and played several rounds of the Guillotine Card Game. It was an interesting game which I’ve never heard of or played. It even came with a little guillotine stand up thingy which was nothing more than a decoration. The game has 2 piles of cards, nobles and action. The point of the game is to get the most points. You get points for killing off nobles and each noble has an associated point value to it. You can also get negative points if you collect heros and martyrs and other creepy looking guys. Either way, there’s a specific order the nobles get executed and the next player has to pick up the next noble. Before he/she executes the noble, she can play some action cards which lets you do one or more things such as rearranging the order, forcing other players to give up their action cards, adding more nobles to the guillotine line, giving you extra points for having specific colored nobles, etc. The game ends when the 3rd day is over. Was rather fun since I won a few rounds.

I just notice today my Shure E4c-n Sound Isolating Earphones in Black were delivered on Friday. Of course I didn’t pay that extravagant price on Amazon.com, but it was quite expensive. But I’ve always wanted a good set of earphones since I listen to my iPod Nano several hours a day. The UPS guy must’ve been lazy because he didn’t drop off one of those yellow slips telling me they left my package in the office. Good thing they still had them since there was a notice stating that they were going to send packages back that aren’t picked up in 3 days.

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Xbox 360 Hacked

Xbox360 DVD Firmware Hacked – Video (from /.) – Months of hard work have come to an end. The 360 FW security details were posted a few days ago already, so why not make it official 🙂 It’s been done. … And no, the team decided not to release a hacked FW. The security details are proof itself. The team advocates hacking, not piracy. You can read the replies in the thread. Direct download of the original video is available on RapidShare. What they show in the video is an opened Xbox360, a burnt copy of Project Gotham Racing 3, and how they booted up the copy and the game started. Nothing too fasicinating. No explosions, but just a proof of concept as they stated.

I’m still waiting for Costco to carry stock for the 360 before I purchase one.

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Credit Cards

If you don’t already have the Citi Dividend or Chase Cash Plus Rewards credit card, GO APPLY! Both have a full 5% cash back on purchases at supermarkets, drugstores and gas stations, plus 1% on all other purchases. You don’t need to care about the 1% since most cards already offer that. The catch is both are limited to $300 cash back per year, so get both and now that restriction goes up to $600 per year. Currently Chase is holding a promotion: $100 bonus cash back check when you sign up (from FW)!!! I only had a $50 bonus when I signed up. The offer code is 94B and expires 4/30/2006.

For those who eat out a lot or travel a lot, might also went to invest in a Costco American Express card. That gives you 3% at restaurants (including bars) and 2% on all travel. I think they count movie theaters as “restaurants”, but don’t quote me on that because I recall seeing it listed under that category once on my bill. There’s a catch though. The cash back on the Amex is in the form of a gift certificate you can use at Costco and comes once a year (every February).