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Donnie Darko

Just watched Donnie Darko today. It’s quite an intriguing movie. Though it left a lot of questions unanswered, but deadlock says the Director’s Cut explains a lot more, so I guess I’ll be rewatching it. Actually, after discussing with deadlock, most of my questions got answered. In fact, it turns out I watched the Director’s Cut. Haha. You can watch the trailer here. There’s also the Director’s Cut trailer. IMDB users rated this movie an 8.3. You can get the DVD at Amazon.com or the Director’s Cut.

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Spoilers:

The movie starts off with a plane crash and a sequence of events where Donnie Darko, the super hero of this movie, meets his imaginary friend Frank, a giant evil looking bunny, who saves his life. They only found the jet engine, but no actual plane crash and the jet engine landed smack into Donnie’s bedroom. However, Donnie is a sick boy with mental problems and he was sleep walking thanks to his imaginary friend. The story continues with an fantastic ending.

MAJOR SPOILERS TO FOLLOW!

Several of the questions I had included what would happen after Donnie Darko’s death. Would the timeline be the same? Or would it be completely different? I’d imagine that the plane crash would still have to occur since if the plane crash doesn’t occur, no jet engine would travel back in time, and no dead Donnie Darko. However, because of Donnie Darko’s death, he would not have a chance to burn down that Fear guy’s house. That will lead to the gym teacher not asking Donnie’s mom to take the dance team to compete, since the reason why the gym teacher couldn’t go was because that the she was a big fan of the Fear guy and wanted to be at his hearing or trial to support him. With Donnie’s mom not taking the dance team to the competition in LA, neither her daughter or she would be on the earlier flight home which became the plane crash.

One does wonder if the Fear guy operating the underground kiddie porn network would ever be revealed.

Another question I was wondering was what did happen to the mother of Donnie’s girlfriend. If you remember, she came looking for Donnie at the Halloween party saying her mom disappeared and the house was a ruin. One could only assume that the stepfather found them. Yes, the stepfather that stabbed the mom’s chest 4 times.

Another question was regarding Grandma Death. What was she waiting for? Was she really senile? Did she know that Donnie was going to give her a letter? Will she not wait anymore now that Donnie’s dead?

Also, the legend regarding Grandma Death hoarding a lot of money and gems, and the fact that the 2 punks actually tried to rob her on Halloween, leads me to actually think who she really is. They never elaborated much about her past besides that she used to be a nun, wrote a book called the Philosophy of Time Travel and became a teacher at Middlesex school.

“Cellar Door” was noted as the most beautiful phrase/words by the English teacher (played by Drew Barrymore). I actually think that it’s quite beautiful, but I wonder if any linguist ever really said that.

Welp, that being said, if you’ve never seen this movie, go watch it! It’s rated in the top 100 movies of all time!

One special note that the movie mentioned that I never knew was that Smurfette was actually a spy sent by Gargamel to infiltrate the smurf camp. According to Wikipedia: Smurfette, a female Smurf with more delicate features than the male Smurfs, was chemically created by the sorcerer Gargamel as obnoxious and with stiff, black hair. She was transformed through a spell cast by Papa Smurf, wearing a white dress, white high heels and having long wavy blonde hair (surgery in the comics). It’s a fact that I never knew. There’s jokes about how she’s the only female smurf and would mate with all the other smurfs to have babies, but apparently smurfs can’t reproduce. Baby Smurf (male-gendered) joined the village later, brought in by a stork, which increased the number of smurfs to 101. (The number eventually went higher as more Smurfs appeared.)

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Blingo!

Won again at Blingo! But still only a $10 iTunes Gifit Certificate. Has anyone tried the Blingo Movie Ticket yet? How easy is it to use it?

Blingo

I currently have a balance of $21.58 on my iTunes account balance, none of which were paid by me. My first iTunes gift certificate was from Liam. Then I got $20 more in gift certificates from Blingo. Now I’ll be getting $10 more. Will I ever pay a penny at the iTunes music store? Still I’m curious on how I got some weird balance left of 58 cents. Boooo! They’re charging tax! When did this start? I’m getting charge 8 cents more per song. Hmmmm… I wonder if my address is still in CA or if that matters at all. Nope, I updated to Washington. My purchase history shows earlier purchases didn’t incur any sales tax. I wonder if it’s because I updated my address to Washington… Going to change it back to CA and see what happens with my next purchase.

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Mad World

A quite interesting flash video given to me by deadlock: Mad World Collab. At first I thought it was just a compilations of random flash videos to fit the music, but apparently they’re all created for this flash video, but different authors I’m supposing. The song played was taken from the Donnie Darko (Score). It was titled Mad World by Gary Jules. You can listen to a sample here. The original Mad World song was sang by Tears For Fear. You can listen to a sample of it here. I personally like Gary Jules version a lot more, but maybe because it’s softer and utilizes a piano.

According to deadlock, apparently many of the scenes were taken from Donnie Darko and the movie was highly recommended by him. IMDB gave it a 8.3, so I guess I’ll be checking out the movie sometime soon.

Random Crap:

New IM worm chats with intended victims (from /.) – A new worm that targets users of America Online’s AOL Instant Messenger is believed to be the first that actually chats with the intended victim to dupe the target into activating a malicious payload, IM security vendor IMlogic warned Tuesday. According to IMlogic, the worm, dubbed IM.Myspace04.AIM, has arrived in instant messages that state: “lol thats cool” and included a URL to a malicious file “clarissa17.pif.” When unsuspecting users have responded, perhaps asking if the attachment contained a virus, the worm has replied: “lol no its not its a virus“, IMlogic said. A similar article on Ars Technica: New virus chats with you on AOL IM. I guess if you ever see me sending you a *.pif link, DO NOT CLICK IT!

Work bores Japan’s young, many want to quit-survey – Almost three-quarters of Japanese in their 20s and 30s have no motivation when it comes to their jobs and half would quit if they had the chance, a survey has found. Sounds quite like what happened in Serenity. I guess one day, they’ll just lay down and stop eating and breathing.

Woman Allegedly Hires Hit Man for Cheese – In an unusual case of mistaken identity, a woman who thought a block of white cheese was cocaine is charged with trying to hire a hit man to rob and kill four men. The woman also was mistaken about the hit man. He turned out to be an undercover police officer. Wow! What a chain of events. Mistakening a block of cheese for cocaine, then hiring a hitman, only to find out the hitman you hired was an undercover police! What a bad day for this lady…

Square Wheel Car Propels Itself by Shifting Weight – Possible MEMS Locomotion – The first prototype consisted of a car with 4 square wheels, in the general configuration of a typical car, with all 4 wheels mechanically connected together so they must all turn in unison. Furthermore, the rotational orientation of the wheels are sequentially off-set from one wheel to the next by 22.5° (¼ of 90°), moving around the vehicle in a CW or CCW direction as viewed from above. It’s an interesting idea until you see the demonstration and how unsmooth the movement is. You can check out the video demonstration here. Along with that, there was this link: Riding on Square Wheels – Stan Wagon, a mathematician at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., has a bicycle with square wheels. It’s a weird contraption, but he can ride it perfectly smoothly. His secret is the shape of the road over which the wheels roll. Now this is actually very interesting. Because the shape of the road, it allows different shape wheels as long the point on any corner of the wheel creates semi-circular humps.

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Blood+ Episode 8

Blood+ Episode 8 – Phantom of the School

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Spoilers:

This series takes a big turn and we end up in Vietnam. Kai and Rick are abandoned, but are left with a note not saying much and a credit card apparently with enough credit to buy a tank. Curious as I am, I wondered how much a tank costs these days. Apparently they cost an average of $4 million per tank. But Kai and Rick are unsatisified with the situation and decides to go look for Saya herself.

Switching back to Saya, she successfully infiltrated the school they’re investigating by enrolling as a student. She meets her roommate Min, a girl from Shanghai I believe or some other part of China. She’s rather cute, even with her glasses off. But anyway, apparently Haji infiltrated the school too by becoming the new gardener. Apparently all the girls are falling for Haji and calling him the phantom. There’s a story at this school about how there used to be a girl with black hair named Lycée. She was trying to plant roses in a garden, but they would never bloom. Rumor was that a devil watched over that patch of land, but Lycée kept pouring love into the roses and the devil was touched and the roses bloomed magnificantly. The devil proposed to Lycée and Lycée said she’d accept if he could bring her a blue rose. The devil searched all over the world but could not find a blue rose, but did not dare return till he found it. Soon after, news of Lycée dying of old age reached him and he cried and cried until he could cry now more. Legend says that when his last drop of tear hit the floor, a blue rose sprung out and he took it to Lycée’s grave and disappeared. Nowadays, the story goes that the devil returns as a phantom whenever there’s a crescent moon and tries to look for a girl with the same black hair as Lycée.

Saya believes that just a cover story for the vampire(s). That night, she sees a candle in the bell tower and goes there to find the director the school as a vampire. But I don’t believe Saya’s met the director yet or recognized him. Haji came in time and fought the vampire off. But before the vampire disappared, he left a blue rose.

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Bleach Episode 59

Bleach Episode 59

What an amazing episode! So much happened that there were still plenty of screenshots I wanted to take, but I’ve decided that I’d only do 9 per episode, so I’ll stick with that. Anyway, this felt like 3 episodes worth of action and probably 6 episodes worth of Naruto episodes. I watched this episode almost a week ago when Bleach-Society released it, but I got Lunar’s version today and rewatched it and decided to finally post it on my blog. Dattebayo already released Bleach 60 last night, but I don’t particularily like Dattebayo’s works.

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Spoilers:

In the last episode, you saw Ichigo release his bankai. In this episode, Byakuya releases his bankai’s true form, which stops being defensive and sacrifices everything to kill the enemy. One thing I couldn’t figure out was why don’t all the swords attack at the same time? Is it because Byakuya thinks too highly of himself or is it because he can’t or is it because he believes it’d be unfair? Either way, Ichigo started to get tired and started to lose it. When Byakuya was about to end him, Ichigo’s hollow form suddenly overtakes him and starts pushing Byakuya way back where he couldn’t even keep an eye on Ichigo. The hollow form busted out a new move that even Ichigo didn’t know: Kuro Getsuga (黒月牙) which translates to Black Moon Fang.

But Ichigo didn’t let him continue to fight and overtook that body because the hollow was fighting for the wrong reason. This left Ichigo and Byakuya one final move. Before the final move, Ichigo asked one more time why Byakuya wouldn’t rescue Rukia. Byakuya said he’d tell him if he won. So the ultimate move of Byakuya vs the only move that Ichigo learnt from Zangetsu (残月). Ichigo somehow defeated him, and Byakuya tells him his reasoning:

Laws were created to be followed and enforeced. Those who break the laws should be punished. As a member of one of the four noble houses, one should be even more strict when the law is broken to set an example for the rest of Soul Society. Feelings and kinship are useless things which prohibit us from doing our job.

I call a bunch of bullshit. I actually lost a lot of respect for Byakuya just because of his reasoning for killing Rukia. But it was Ichigo’s victory!

The episode ended with the chibi captain (I forgot his name and #) and his big breasted lieutenant trying to enter the center office, only to find that the locked door was not gaurded and the alarm didn’t go off when they broke through. Only the next episode will tell what really is going on in there.

Nakama (仲間) vs Tomodachi (友達). I’ve always associated nakama with comrade and tomodachi as friend, but the subtitled translated nakama to friend, which I found insulting to Rukia. To me, being called comrade means a lot more than being called a friend. Of course I don’t really believe I’ve ever called anyone a comrade, but I guess best friends come the closest to that definition. Basically someone who you’re willing to risk yourself in helping. What do I mean when I say risk yourself. It doesn’t always mean that you’re risking your life, but it can. It means basically from anything that’s inconvenient for you to you losing something in order to help. Rukia was more than just a friend to Ichigo and the clan and as I said before, I felt that the subtitles insulted her.

In the subtitles, I found it strange that they capitalized that the translation of shinigami (死神) was Death god where Death was capitalized and god was not. I understand if it’s not the “true” god, you’re not suppose to capitalize the G, but it brought up an interesting point and that was if Death is normally capitalized when used in literature. According to Wikipedia and Answers.com:

Death, personified is a personification of death as an anthropomorphic figure or a fictional character who has existed in mythology and popular culture since the earliest days of storytelling. Because the reality of death has had a substantial influence on the human psyche and the development of civilization as a whole, the personification of Death as a living, sentient entity is a concept that has existed in all known societies since the beginnings of recorded history.

In modern-day, European-based folklore, Death is also known as the Grim Reaper. In the Septuagint version of the Bible, Death is portrayed in the book of Tobit (considered apocryphal by Protestants) as Azrael, the angel of death. Father Time is sometimes said to be Death.

So I guess you do capitalize Death when he’s personified! What I’m also curious about is if the bible acknowledges Death. I know Lucifer is mentioned, but is his messenger Death ever mentioned in the bible?

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King of Fighters – Another Day Episode 1

King of Fighters – Another Day Episode 1 – Chapter 01: All Out

Just saw this anime released and decided to check it out. It’s a fairly short episode with about 5 mins of content and 5 mins of credits. Looks like they may continue it since they did call this Chapter 01. I wonder if each episode is going to be longer or if it’s going to be weird mini series. Anyway, several famous characters were introduced like Alba, Soiree, Iori, Mai and Athena.

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Alba apparently is the other brother of Soiree. Alba had to leave town for the weekend and told Soiree to look after it. There’s a cute little girl named which I don’t recall them ever saying the name. I’m not even sure if she’s in the King of Fighters game. Maybe someone can tell me by looking at images 3 and 4. Somehow in the middle of a nap, a big fire starts in the city and Soiree and a few others try to evacuate everyone. However, in the midst of chaos, Soiree meets Iori who apparently lost his Yata Mirror (some magic thingy that allowed him to make fireballs or something I’m guessing). Athena and Mai shows up when the noticed the little girl was in danger. Athena seems to be some pop star and Mai, well, she just had big boobs. So Soiree and Iori gets into a fight over a trivial reason. I didn’t see why Soiree decided to stop evacutating people and began fighting with Iori, but the fight scene was pretty neat where you got to see some signature KOF moves. The building they were fighting in collapses and Iori disappears while Soiree, Athena, and Mai protects the little girl. Later Alba returns and says he met the red haired guy in another part of the city he was helping evacuate. The animation ended there.

However, a story in text began to be displayed. I’m not sure if it was the fansubber’s addition, but it was interesting:

“Soiree” and “Alba” defeated the boss of the Gang “Mephistopheles”, “Duke”.

But the days of peace did not last for long.

When twilight fell, South-Town suddenly burst into flames. With his brother “Alba” absent, “Soiree” ran to protect the city, and in the middle of the flames encountered “Iori Yagami”, who had lost the power of the Yata Mirror.

But this was nothing more than the prologue to a new battle…

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The Leader

I first read this article: Pakistan orders Bush poem deleted from school book. I tried to google for the poem and found this article: Veiled ode to George Bush deleted from Pakistani textbooks . Pakistan has ordered that a poem in which the first letters of each line spell out the name “President George W. Bush” be deleted from a school textbook. The Education Ministry said the poem “The Leader” was unacceptable as it had been downloaded from the Internet and was anonymous.

Part of the poem was displayed in the 2nd article, but that didn’t sound too bad, so I googled some more and found the real poem:

THE LEADER by anonymous

Patient and steady with all he must bear,
Ready to meet every challenge with care,
Easy in manner, yet solid as steel,
Strong in his faith, refreshingly real.
Isn’t afraid to propose what is bold,
Doesn’t conform to the usual mould,
Eyes that have foresight, for hindsight won’t do,
Never backs down when he sees what is true,
Tells it all straight, and means it all too.
Going forward and knowing he’s right,
Even when doubted for why he would fight,
Over and over he makes his case clear,
Reaching to touch the ones who won’t hear.
Growing in strength he won’t be unnerved,
Ever assuring he’ll stand by his word.
Wanting the world to join his firm stand,
Bracing for war, but praying for peace,
Using his power so evil will cease,
So much a leader and worthy of trust,
Here stands a man who will do what he must.

I also found a similar poem at Daily Kos: Sycophant Poem touting "Powerful bush" in Pakistani schoolbooks:

THE FEEDER by citizen bronte

Petulant piques which we all must bear,
Ready to sidestep every challenge with care,
Easy to manipulate, slippery as an eel,
Strong in his sect, he obnoxiously deals.
Isn’t afraid to propose what is doled,
Doesn’t mind handing out favors to cajole,
Eyes that have forsaken, hindsight won’t do,
Never reviews all the history so true,
Tells it all jumbled, spins it all too.
Going ever backward only wanting to fight,
Even in doubt he never listens to right,
Over and over he makes mistakes so clear,
Reaching to punish the ones who won’t veer.
Growing in doubt he won’t be unnerved,
Ever ensuring his mistakes are preserved.
Wanting the world to kneel at his feet,
Bringing world war and creating deceit,
Using his powers so evil can’t cease.
So such a leader is unworthy of trust,
Here stands a man whose legacy is disgust.

*A feeder is someone, usually (but not necessarily) male, in a relationship with a feedee. As the name suggests, the feeder provides the feedee with an abundant supply of food, either to encourage weight gain or simply for delight in the act of feeding.

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24 Hour Stock Market

I always wondered why the stock market wasn’t open for 24 hours. It’s not like humans are really needed for the stock transactions to take place. By having an opening and closing time, it creates these artificial points in time where stocks fluctuate more. Also, many brokerage services already have after-market trading within its own brokerage. The stock exchange I’m speaking of is the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange). I believe that the NASDAQ already is opened 24hrs if I’m not mistaken. I understand complicated transactions may require human intervention, just like most things that computers can’t take care of, there’s always customer support. Take a retail store for example. Before, real humans were needed to help customers out at real store locations, but how many customers really needed customer support? I mean nowadays, even the checkout process has no humans. I went to Fred Meyers the other day to purchase some necessities and all I had to do was swipe the items myself, slide my credit card, and walk out the door. A better example would be online retail stores. No human being needed once again, unless the servers go down or you have a complicated transaction, which then you’ll have to wait to humans come in and are available to help you.

I spoke to lilsneezy the other day about this and she’s working for a trading firm. One of the reasons she gave me that the stock exchange isn’t opened 24hrs a day is because in the event where a stock is plummeting, by having the stock exchange closed, it gives the company time to release some press or try to stablize its stock before the exchange opens the next day. I guess that is a valid reason, but I’d still like to see it go 24hrs/day. They can always issue a temporary lock on the stock like what Enron did and not let any trading go on, which I think would be the better solution than using the closing and opening times. If anyone has a better reason on why stock exchanges shouldn’t be open for 24hrs/day, I’d lke to know why.

Random Crap:

Bank apologizes for grooming guide – One of Australia’s largest banks apologized on Monday for a “grooming handbook” that suggested staff wear flesh-colored underwear and advised against shiny stockings because they make legs look fatter. They actually sell flesh-colored underwear? As Tera noted: flesh colored underwear sure is risque, cause ppl would mistake you were not wearing any. i think they shoulda said wear plain underwear and no lingerie/lacy shit.

S. Dakota’s tallest building resists demolition – “It is kind of a bust. It didn’t get knocked down,” said Regan Smith, Sioux Falls risk emergency manager. “It took the first floor out and it is leaning at about a 30-degree angle.” I think they should just rename it to the Leaning Tower of South Dakota and make it a tourist attraction.

Sony creates new public relations disaster – In a relatively minor gaffe, but one that is nonetheless illustrative of a disconnect between Sony leadership and the Real World™, Sony has been caught in an embarrassing marketing campaign. The company has hired vandals, or artists, depending upon you point of view, to paint images of PSP players on the sides of buildings. This has resulted in a counter-defacing backlash in cities including Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and San Francisco. The thing is, it’s not really graffiti and defacing property, at least according to Sony spokesperson Molly Smith.

Car paints changing with temperature (from /.) – It’s now common to build materials which can change colors depending on their surrounding environment because of progresses made in colloid chemistry. But now, German researchers have gone a step further. They’ve used ion bombardment and gold metallisation to produce new particles whose bonding behavior can be chemically tailored. This could lead to new shimmering car finishes which can change with temperature or humidity, new cosmetics, but more importantly, to new applications in optical data processing.

Science Groove (from /.) – lectures given in song format. Pretty interesting and funny, plus it’s free!

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Convert APE to MP3

I downloaded some music in .APE format. APE is a lossless format which is nice, but besides the fact each song is 30megs, iTunes also doesn’t support it. I didn’t particularly needed it to be lossless, so I search online trying to find the easiest way to convert APE files to MP3. I could’ve converted it to WAV using winamp and the encoded it in AAC with iTunes, but I didn’t particularily like that format. Plus that requried multiple steps. The easiest way apparently is a conjunction of foobar2000 and the Lame encoder. After installing foobar2000, copy the lame.exe and lame_enc.dll from the Lame compressed file to your foobar2000 directory (i.e. C:\Program Files\foobar2000). Drag and drop the files into foobar2000 and select the songs you want, right click and then convert. There are MANY different formats you can convert to such as APE, MP3, WAV, FLAC, and many more. LAME/MP3 also had several settings such as standard, medium, extreme, and insane. I didn’t bother trying standard, but medium is VBR of about 160kbps and extreme is 320kbps. I don’t even want to guess what insane is.

Just a really neat tool I thought I’d introduce you. Before, I did most of my audio conversions using Audio Catalyst, which was a useful tool, but didn’t have that many options. But it was rather simple and easy to use. foobar2000 has a somewhat steep learning curve, but once you do it a few times and get the hang of it, it becomes a breeze.