Derailed

Watched Derailed today. Movie was okay. There was a twist, but I guessed it halfway through the movie. Even so, the movie was still enjoyable. Something I’d recommend you watch when you’re bored.

Official Website
IMDb: 6.0/10 (4,445 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: RATING: ROTTEN / READING: 22%
Yahoo! Movies: Critics: C- / Users: B-
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
Amazon.com Soundtrack

derailed poster

Spoilers: (Show)

Saber Marionette J to X Episodes 9 – 26

So I finally took the time to finish this series this weekend, which actually involved not going to sleep till 11am yesterday. The series finally exited out of random mode and into story mode somewhere around episode 15 and I just watched it non-stop from there. Like I said, my expectations for the series was low when it first started out, but the story was a lot more touching and emotional than I had expected. The series was good, but not as great as the original in my opinion.

9 – 26 is a lot of episodes, so what I ended up doing was just taking the screenshots of the baby Saber Marionettes instead. I’m hiding the images this time around because this IS the ending, so be warned. When you click the “show” link below, it’ll be display over 130 images.

It appears you can preorder this entire DVD collection from Amazon.com. They also carry the Saber Marionette J – Anime Legends Complete Collection.

Baby Saber Marionettes Screenshots/Images: (Show)

Spoilers: (Show)

View the short clip of the Saber Marionette J to X – Babies.

Ninjai

Been awhile since I visited the Ninjai: The Little Ninja homepage, since they stopped producing more chapters, but apparently 2 new chapters have been released (since my last visit). I’ve always wanted to see his face. It gets close, but you something is always covering it.

Looking on Wikipedia, apparently these 2 episodes were released in Januaray and March of 2005 respectively. Can’t believe it’s been that long since I visited the site. I was browsing through the forums, trying to see when the next chapter would be release, but no one seems to know.

For those who haven’t seen Ninjai, you can watch the tralier here, though it doesn’t really do it justice on how much nicer the graphics and animation has gotten in chapters 11 and 12.

Haircut Experiences

I went to get my haircut today, which has been overdue for several weeks already. When my hair starts to cover my ears, it’s the indication that I need a haircut.

So let me tell you about my haircut experiences here in Seattle. I’ve gotten a total of 4 haircuts here. Twice at SuperCuts and twice at a place known as The Barber Shop.

First time, I didn’t know which places were decent, so I went to the closest SuperCuts and got my hair cut there. First of all, the wait time was ~2hrs, and they recommend that you just make an appointment next time, which I took note of. The next thing was the haircut they gave me was pretty awful. All the time, it felt like she (the barber) wanted to just finish up and move on to the next customer. I mean it was a haircut, but there were so many places that weren’t even, that I didn’t bother trying to get the her to fix it. It really felt like I getting a haircut from a barber training school. The haircut itself was $13.95 + tip (maybe + tax too, I don’t remember), but that was expected. There won’t be any Monterey Park $6 haircut prices up here in Seattle.

The next time, I’ve gotten several recommendations on the Microsoft newsgroups for new graduates. There were salons ranging from $15 to $40. The Barber Shop was close to where I live and it wasn’t that much more expensive: $19 for a haircut (so only $5 more). The service was great and he was quite attentive. He asked he how’d I like it done and I asked for his recommendation. He suggested me to try 5 and 3 and if I wanted it shorter, he can continue working on it. After he showed me what a 5 and 3 looked like, I wanted it a bit shorter because I tend to be too lazy to get haircuts and he said no problem and continue to cut my hair. I was really satisifed with this haircut. But that could also be due to external factors such as I actually had fun talking to this barber and it tickled when he cut my hair and it felt nice. Then of course, there’s the self-fulfilling prophecy where I had to pay more, so if I didn’t get a better haircut, I’d think myself as being stupid for paying more.

So in order to test that theory, plus the fact The Barber Shop wasn’t opened on Sunday, I gave SuperCuts another try. I made my appointment and went to Costco. Spent an hour or so there, and when I arrive at SuperCuts, it still wasn’t my turn. So I headed off next door to Starbucks and got myself a Mocha Frappuccino and waited for my turn. This time, completely new barber, so I thought hopefully my luck would change. It turned out to be a lot worse. So most barbers use these clips defined with numbers, which I can understand why and how that makes their life easier. I wasn’t too sure if The Barber Shop had used clips, but I was leaning toward now, because I don’t remember the clipper actually touching my scalp. But anyway, back to SuperCuts. I’m usually fine with clips, but this one did not have a FLAT surface. There was a bump in the middle of it and it kept scratching my head where ever she tried to cut my head. At first I tried to just endure the pain, but imagine taking a somewhat sharp plastic object and scraping your head back and forth. It got to the point I told her there was something wrong with the clip and it was scratching my head painfully. She took the clip, checked it, cleaned it, and tried again. It was better, but still scratched, but not as painfully anymore. I’m not even sure what the problem was. Was it because she was pressing too hard (I don’t think so). It really felt like there was an extra piece of plastic on the bottom of that clip. I didn’t bother telling her anymore since it doesn’t seem like it’ll get me anywhere, and I just wanted to get this over with. Once again, bad haircut. Choppy areas. The only thing accomplished was my hair was shorter and I can go around without another haircut for 2 months. I’m not sure if all SuperCuts are like this, but now I’m certain I won’t go to another SuperCuts for a VERY VERY long time.

Since The Barber Shop is closed on Sunday and closes at 2pm on Saturday, I had to get up early this morning to go get my haircut. The barber that cut my hair last time wasn’t there, but everyone here seemed cool. I think the barbers here use clips too, but they don’t press it against the scalp so it feels like it’s floating through your hair when they cut it. The barber would try to bring up topics I’m interested in, and make jokes which I actually smiled and chuckled at. I’m actually having fun getting my haircut. Once again, a very satisified haircut. I even asked him to trim my tail a bit, because it was getting a bit too long, so I think he took off an inch or two (or so he says). I even left him a big tip because I was so happy.

After just visiting SuperCuts website, it turns out you can get a $2 off coupon for your next visit. Just search for SuperCuts you want to go to with their Locator, and click “Sign up for haircut alert”. At $11.95, it’s not that bad anymore, but I probably won’t be going there for a really long time.

Friday Night

Happy Birthday StanMan!

Today was StanMan’s birthday, so a bunch of us (Joe, ChemChampion, Saran, and I) celebrated his bday dinner at Todai. The sushi there is usual Todai quality, but it was a buffet and my stomach hurt after I finished. Though I’ve finally had crème brûlée. Not sure if it’s authentic, but it was pretty good. I’ve heard so much of Cari’s crème brûlée, but don’t think I’ve ever got to try it.

We came back to my place to play Settlers. Game was close. I was actually leading, but not having a good source of wheat or ore really doesn’t help the end game. Perry and Joe came from behind and took the lead. Joe stole my longest road and I ended up 3rd or 4th place with 6pts.

We then spent some time watching random clips on my computer (the selected few I keep after I show it to you guys). It was a fun night.

April Fools!

This has to be the coolest April Fools joke yet:

grow your own 1up mushroom
Grow Your Own 1up Mushroom Kit (from /.) – Deep in the basement of an ancient house in Sonobe (tucked in the fields of Kyoto, Japan), an amazing discovery has been made: real 1up Mushrooms. We know this sounds unbelievable, and we laughed when we were contacted by an exporter about them two months ago. But then we were sent a sample, and that’s when our lives changed forever. At first I was skeptical, especially with the eyes. Then the description made it believable. I actually clicked on Add to Cart and BAM, it hit me, today (or tomorrow when I read it) was April Fools. But being able to grow 1up mushrooms from Super Mario Bros. would be so damn neat! The eyes should’ve really given it away. ThinkGeek has some more April Fools joke on their homepage.

Another good April Fools joke was posted on Ars Technica: Duke Nukem Forever. It claims the game has finally been released and everything was going fine, until it stated it was supported on every system using Ajax and you had to play the game through a browser.

If you think you’ve seen a cool April Fool’s joke/prank, please share it!

Expired Food

Do note this post may produce gross images in your head, so be forewarned!

So several days ago, I left work past 10pm and I didn’t especially feel like fast food (since I had Wendy’s the night before). Came home, looked into the fridge and cupboard, and my options were cereal (actually ran out of milk), battered halibut (fish from fish and chip), mozzarella sticks, hash browns, chicken nuggest, spicy chicken wings, or sandwich.

I looked at my bread and it had expired 1.5 weeks ago, so I thought I might as well try to finish it up. I looked in the fridge. I had peanut butter and strawberry preserves. Then I had egg. I looked at the eggs and the expired mid-february. So I thought I really needed to get rid of those. Made myself several fried egg sandwiches. Felt pretty good going down, but felt really bad coming out. Well, the good thing is it came out through the correct hole. The bad thing was it was all liquid. Not just for one day, but it’s been a few days already and at least it’s starting to get mushy. I don’t really have any stomachache or anything. It’s just that my solid waste (or what used to be solid) is now in liquidy form. And when I need to go, I REALLY NEED TO GO!

I highly doubt it was the bread, since no green stuff is growing on it yet. The egg did seem more thick than usual. So for future reference, I’ve got to give a shorter “expired period” to use eggs or start putting them in the freezer.


Random Crap:

Apple, Bose, Dell tops in consumer electronics brand trustMicrosoft faces big consumer defection risk. One measure of consumers’ dissatisfaction with Microsoft is seen in the 5.4 million households that give it a brand trust score of 1 [distrust a lot] or 2 [distrust a bit]. Compared with all Microsoft users, these at-risk users have higher income, are much more likely to be male, and are bigger online spenders. These households know they run Microsoft software but would be just as happy to leave it behind — if they could. I find it hilarious where Microsoft is located on that chart, all alone in the bottom left corner where it had the least brand trust with users and the least brand potential.

Expression Crew – Marionnette Show (from MsticAzn) – A pretty cool video. Reminded me of our Calculus Airbands, but quite professionaly done. After some digging around, I found out their homepage: BBoy Master. The team is named Expression Crew and is led by WooSung. However, all the video links on their site are dead, so if anyone finds a higher quality version than YouTube, please let me know. Thanks!

It was brought to my attention from several people that the music from the above video was taken from the Amelie: Original Soundtrack Recording from the movie Amélie. Might be time I get the album myself!

I believe all the music on that soundtrack was composed by Yann Tiersen. The tracks that were used include: (click to preview the track)

I also found someone who had a better quality of the original video to upload to rapidshare: ExpressionShow2006.avi (from ichidahero). Enjoy!

iGod | Artificial Intelligence Chat (from Artemyst) – Chat with an AI God. Repenting made easy. Was fun for a few minutes.

Blast away fat with ultra sound! (from RayAlome) – Check out this video, where in just a 1 hour session, you can use ultrasound to blast away 1″ of fat. I’m curious if it actually works. No surgery required.

Teen truant exposed by “burglar” boyfriendWhen officers arrived, the girl’s mother told them the room belonged to her 15-year-old daughter who was at school. Further investigation revealed the mother was wrong. “She wasn’t looking at school books, she was in bed with her boyfriend and was presumably learning something else,” Frankfurt police said in a statement.

The Elder Scrolls – Oblivion

Once again, my blog posts will be dwindling. Started a new game: The Elder Scrolls – Oblivion. Been hearing many good things about it and how people are actually going to get an Xbox360 just to play it. Too bad I probably won’t get an Xbox360 for another few months (when supply becomes aplenty).

Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Collector’s Edition (DVD-ROM)
Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion (DVD-ROM)
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Collector’s Edition (Xbox 360)
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Xbox 360)
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Official Game Guide)

At first I was hitting into many issues.

The first thing I noticed is that when I exit the game, I have a gazillion ffdshow audio codecs loaded on my task tray. After searching online for links between Oblivion and ffdshow, it turns out many people are experiencing this also and supposedly it loads 1 instance of the codec for every audio file it plays (so when a character speaks, you’ll get an extra codec loaded). So after an hour or so, you’d see about 20+ of them in your system tray. Many have recommended that you uninstall ffdshow to gain performance, but as a major movie and anime watcher, that was something I would rather give up playing a game on than uninstalling. So I thought, what about if I just unregister the codec when I play and register it back when I exit out of the game. Turns out that worked.

For most people who are running as an Administrator, all you need is to execute the following lines.
To unregister: regsvr32 /u “C:\Program Files\ffdshow\ffdshow.ax
To re-register: regsvr32 /i “C:\Program Files\ffdshow\ffdshow.ax

For those who are smart and run as a non-admin local user, execute the following lines.
To unregister: runas.exe /u:Administrator “regsvr32 /u \”C:\Program Files\ffdshow\ffdshow.ax\””
To re-register: runas.exe /u:Administrator “regsvr32 /i \”C:\Program Files\ffdshow\ffdshow.ax\””

You may need to change the italicized path to whever you installed ffdshow.

There is actually a better way to get around this problem as provided by Ferital in my comments area:

There is a far better way than unregistering ffdshow everytime you want to play Oblivion:

  1. Click Start
  2. Click “All Programs” (or just Programs, depending on the version of Windows, whether they’re using “classic,” etc)
  3. Go to the ffdshow folder
  4. Click “Audio decoder configuration”
  5. In the left hand pane, click “Info & debug” (This is the second entry in the list)
  6. In the right hand pane, near the bottom [right], find a check box labeled “Don’t use ffdshow in:”
  7. Check that box, and in the text box underneath (it lights up when you check the check box), add “oblivion.exe” (don’t include the quotes). If there is already something in that box, put a semi-colon ( ; ) after what’s already there, and oblivion.exe after that. Do NOT use spaces, since ffdshow will think that’s part of the filename. A valid entry would be “explorer.exe;oblivion.exe” (without quotes).
  8. Finally, click “Ok” and start Oblivion.

So that solved my ffdshow audio codec case. I thought everything was fine and dandy until I exited the dungeon (I know, spoiler spoiler, deal with it). Then everything went down hill from that point. Do note I had already lowered the quality settings because I was hitting lag issues. I was running at 848×480 and with almost everthing turned off. But images started to get garbled and there was a like a 2 second delay between me moving the mouse or hitting a key and my character actually moving. After even lowering to 720×480 and disabling any graphic enhancement I can find, the problem was still as apparent. I mean my system specs aren’t that bad:

  • AMD Athlon Sempron 2800+
  • Kingston 1GB DDR400 RAM
  • ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB

I know that isn’t the best in the world, but I’m only 1-2 generations behind. Anyway, I was actually contemplating on getting a new system to play this game. Then I thought, I might as well just get the game when I got my Xbox360. Then I thought, I might as well give up for now since it was pretty unbearable to keep playing.

Suddenly I got a really bright idea of updating my graphics drivers. You never know about these things. I didn’t have any problems playing Fable, but who knows. I was currently running ATI Catalyst 5.8 and the newest drivers available at ATI.com was Catalyst 6.3. Did the install and rebooted. Guess what! I can run at 1280×720 (what I ran Fable at) with NO PROBLEMS! Even enabled anti-aliasing, turned back on all the goodies and I’m pretty much happy with the speed and frames per second.

So what is this game? I don’t really know yet. I haven’t bothered reading much reviews or anything. All I know is there’s a lot of eye candy and it’s a very open ended game. You start off locked in a dungeon and you witness the emperor’s death. Right before his death, the emperor gives you a mission to bring an amulet to someone who knows where the next heir to the throne is. And pretty much from that point on, I’ve been trying to reach there but have been getting sidetracked over and over again, completing several quests already.

One thing better than fable, is in this game, there’s quick save, so I don’t have to find a stupid save spot before saving. So yah… expect my blog post count to dwindle while I play this game.

Vicious Dog Pack Kills Gator in Florida

Taken from MS newsgroup:

Vicious Dog Pack Kills Gator in Florida

At times nature can be cruel, but there is also a raw beauty and even a certain justice manifested within that cruelty.

The alligator, one of the oldest and ultimate predators, normally considered the “apex predator” in its natural eco-system, can still fall victim to implemented ‘team work’ strategy made possible due to the tight knit social structure and “survival of the fittest pack mentality” bred into the canines over the last several hundreds of years by natural selection.

Note that the Alpha dog has a muzzle hold on the gator preventing it breathing, while the remainder of the pack prevents the beast from rolling.

See the attached remarkable photograph courtesy of Nature Magazine…

We strongly recommend that you preview this privately before determining if a younger audience should view the photo below.

View the photo

Second Lego Championship – TV Champion 2005

Aircraft carrier entirely made of Lego (from Esca) – It’s amazing how detailed it is. Anyway, I pasted this link around to some friends and then was told of this Lego Championship. After watching a short video clip and looking at pictures, I was in utter amazement.

You can watch a 10 minute clip of the Second Lego Championship – TV Champion 2005 at YouTube. The entire episode will be posted later in this entry. The championship was held in Denmark (where Lego’s originate from).

You can view images of the contenders at Let’s LEGO. Just scroll to the bottom, and below Final – Jack-in-a-box! Surprising LEGO contest, you can find the four contenders:

Friendship between Denmark and Japan
Let’s go to the Earth Park!
Viking Train
Future City

My favorite was the Let’s go to the Earth Park! as was everyone else. Haha. I hope that didn’t spoil it for you. The mushroom houses were awesome and the animals were just too cute! That never ending escalator was also a really neat addition.

More images can be found at TV-Tokyo.

You can download the entire TV episode from D-Addicts: torrent available. It’s 600 megs. I’ve compressed it down to 100 megs which you can download off rapidshare. The episode itself is over an hour long (without commercials I believe).

I’ve uploaded the video onto my Gallery, so enjoy! Second Lego Championship – TV Champion 2005 (if watching in a browser, may take some time to start)

Enjoy!