Charlemagne Stavanger

Happy New Year!

2007-01-01T16:17:00.000-05:00

Happy 2007 Everyone! Hope you had a wonderful 06 and an even better 07!

Pretty much everyone I know make some sort of resolution in the New Year. I, however, have never made a resolution or take one seriously, so I guess I'll just live through another 'aimless' year.

Since I don't have any resolution to share with you, here are some New Year Resolution I found on Smile of the Day, reading these, I almost made my own resolutions.

New Year's Resolutions for Internet Junkies
1. I will try to figure out why I *really* need seven e-mail addresses.

2. I will stop sending e-mail to my wife.

3. I resolve to work with neglected children -- my own.

4. I will answer my snail mail with the same enthusiasm with which I answer my e-mail.

5. I resolve to back up my 10GB hard drive daily ... well, once a week ... okay, monthly then ... or maybe ...

6. I will spend less than one hour a day on the Internet.

7. When I hear "Where do you want to go today?" I will not reply "MS Tech Support".

8. I will read the manual.

9. I will think of a password other than "password."

10. I will stop checking my e-mail (and writing my blog entries!) at 3:00 in the morning.

Attainable New Year's Resolutions

I want to gain weight. Put on at least 30 pounds.
Stop exercising. Waste of time.
Read less.
Watch more TV. I have been missing some good stuff.
Procrastinate more.
Drink. Drink some more.
Take up a new habit: smoking.
Spend at least $1000 a month on hookers.
Spend more time at work.
Take a vacation to someplace important: like to see the largest ball of twine.
Stop bringing lunch from home: I should eat out more.
Quit giving money & time to charity.
Personal goal: bring back disco.
Start being superstitious.
Only wear jeans that are 2 sizes too small and use a chain or rope for a belt.

Amazing Photos

2006-12-20T17:45:00.000-05:00

Today I found some simply amazing photo on cybernetnews, I will post a couple here, to see the whole collection please visit cybernetnews.

Lightning Fast Browsing Trick For Internet Explorer And Firefox

2006-12-18T18:51:00.000-05:00

Lightning Fast Browsing Trick For Internet Explorer And Firefox - video powered by Metacafe

Excellent video showing how you could be surfing the web faster!

Underwater Hotel

2006-12-14T17:41:00.000-05:00

If you are willing to spend $15,000-per-person, per-week reservation fee, you may very well be one of the few people in 2008 to take a vacation in the world's first large scale underwater hotel. Bruce Jones, a renowned submarine architect is planning Poseidon Mystery Island Resort by sinking many habitation tube in the island Fiji. Here are a few pictures of what's to come:

Threadless

2006-12-13T17:02:00.000-05:00

The internet opens up many opportunities for brilliant ideas and ventures.
Whoever thought you would find a friend via a cold electronic machine? or
Electronic sticky notes? The basic idea behind Threadless is members can
submit their t-shirt designs and after votes, ratings etc Threadless will
choose a dozen every month to print! There are prizes and other incentives
to submit a t-shirt design, however having people buying your t-shirts is
just way cool.

Threadless is actually the very first t-shirt design community, there are
many spinoff from this idea and not just t-shirts either; NakedAndAngry is a
tie design spinoff, but I fine tie patterns limiting compare to the
possibilty of t-shirt designs.

Anyways today I just submitted my third design to Fast Food Nation Loves
Threadless competition. Threadless has three or four additional competition
around a central theme in additional to the ongoing general competition.

The theme of Fast Food Nation Loves Threadless is "Where Are You On The Fast
Food Chain?", but I think this is extremely hard to express and the result
may not be suitable for a t-shirt. So, as you can see, I went with "Fast
Food Nation". What other nation in the world can claim the title other than
the United States? Show your patriotism! Now if only I have some extra
colors (Threadless only allows five) I will change the hamburger box into an
actually hamburger...

For Fast Food Nation I have another idea of French Fries spelling out the
words American Fries with maybe a French Fry who has French mustache running
away. The competition ends on the 15th, otherwise I surely would have submit
this design as well. These design requires so much detail and time (which is
the reason I only enter the Loves competition thus far so I don't have to
think up my own theme) anyone interested can submit the idea as long as they
send me a shirt if it goes to print...o wait, I'm not sure I would wear that
:D

Here are some other awesome entries to Fast Food Nation Loves Threadless

Here are some awesome winning design which you can purchase

OSX Security Updates

2006-12-05T19:23:00.000-05:00

How many time have you talked with a Mac Lover over the argument that Macs are totally hackpoof and far more secure than Windows? I have nothing against Macs, in fact I may get one when OSX Leopard is released, but people please open your eyes. A Mac may be more secure than a PC, but being totally hackproof, having no-exploits, worms etc, that totally another matter.

Over the last week, Apple release 31 security updates with several other security still left unaddressed. Like windows, if you search the web, you can find many Mac exploits. However the difference between these vulnerbilities and Windows flaws is that they are all patched and no longer remain a threat until now with the above security holes. And don't forget, with the introduction of Boot Camp and dual booting Windows-OSX, Macs inheritted all the virus that plagues Windows.

I guess in the end, it all comes down to how you would like to be infected with a virus?

NASA Moon Base!!

2006-12-05T19:07:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Stephen Hawking wanting to explore the last frontier; today, NASA announced it plan of permanent human habitation on the moon. NASA prosped the moon base mission will start in 2020 with the help of over a dozen countries and corporations and probably finished by 2024.

It isn't the first time a moon base is been comtemplated. In the 1950s, the moon was Pentagon's military outpost in space and "moon-based military power will be a strong deterrent to war..." Later in the 1970s with the oil crisis, the moon is sought after as the source of electricty for earth with solar panels the size of football fields. It would interesting to see how things turns out this time.

Hawking Still Keen To Visit The Final Fronier!

2006-12-04T17:27:00.000-05:00

A few days ago, the renowned scientist Stephen Hawking expressed his fear that terra firma will ultimately be destroyed by nuclear war or some sort of asteroid

"The long-term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet,"

-Stephen Hawking On BBC Radio

Hawking shows optimism in matter-antimatter annihilation as a way to settle on extraterrestial planets for that Hawking, wheelchair bound is still keen on visiting the final fronteir!

"My next goal is to go into space, maybe Richard Branson will help me."

-Stephen Hawking On BBC Radio

Well Prof. Hawking, if I were ever to build a spaceship or more precisely a starship, you would be my guest of honor.

MSNHotmail

2006-12-04T16:36:00.000-05:00

Email brings the world closer, the second after you send your email, your recipient will receive it in their virtual mailbox. Now, is this true? I knew for a long time sometimes emails can take minutes if not hours to be delivered by Yahoo or MSN Hotmail, but something different occurred today.

Earlier this afternoon, I sent two email to myself. Don't ask me why I sent the first, but the second one was sent after I forgot to attach something to the first...Anyways, I logged in to my email again, to my surprise, my second email was there however the first which was sent 2 minutes earlier wasn't. I waited for ten minutes and poof! there first email. I have no explaination for this delay...

Here you can see are two emails to myself :-8. One is bigger than the other by 100 times because of the attachment

The first, smaller email on top was sent at 3:57PM

The second, larger email at the bottom was sent at 3:59PM

Futuristic Dates

2006-12-03T12:49:00.000-05:00

With most book I read, the time is always set somewhere in the future and most of the time the precise dates given to the reader each chapter. When I finished Hammered by Elizabeth Bear, which is a pretty good cyberpunk by the way, it just occurred to me to check up if September 14, 2062 actually falls on a Thursday. So, I pulled out my calendar, and quite easily scrolled down to the year 2062 and sure enough, the 14th of September is a Thursday. I guess only amateur authors like me, if I were to right a book, would ever date their book Sunday February 31, 2106 :D.

Well next time I come to a book that takes place thousands of year in future and the author actually give me a date, I'll spend some time and do the math if my calendar doesn't go that far.

Monday Traffic

2006-11-29T18:04:00.000-05:00

Many web developer I have know all say monday is the peak of the week's
traffic as people return to work after the weekend. However, my experience
says the contrary. I recently optimized my forum Blogcrowds.com to be more
search engine friendly and I have to say the results are great, I'm getting
more and more visitors via Google. From the 1 guest constantly showing up at
my forum status display, I suspect Googlebot visits the forum quite a bit.

This upbeat traffic peaked over the Thanksgiving long weekend last week as I
added some content. Looking over the traffic reports, I thought "this is
Thanksgiving, most people wouldn't even be online right now, so monday
should be even better!" So Sunday night, I added a lot more useful content
and checked the traffic again Monday night. To my great surprise, the number
of visits to my forum remained constant, my pageview gone done, and there I
was expecting a huge jump. Even more surprising is that I only had 2 visiter
from Google while before almost half my visitor came from Google! That made
me look at my referers to my forum, it happens my Custom Template blog is
the leading contributor. So, this made conclude probably at the beginning of
the week, mondays, more people check news, read blogs etc. Over the weekend,
especially long weekend, people finally found time to tweak there blog (as
most of my Google traffic was from template fixes etc) change their layouts
etc.

I'm not sure if this is accurate but I'm waiting for next monday to try to
jump my traffic again, so wish me luck!

Nuclear Poisoning

2006-11-26T15:19:00.000-05:00

Investigation continues over the death of Ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko due to nuclear poisoning from Polonium 210.

An investigation was under way last night into Russia's black market trade in radioactive materials amid concern that significant quantities of polonium 210, the substance that killed former spy Alexander Litvinenko, are being stolen from poorly protected Russian nuclear sites.

As I track this story over the last week, I couldn't stop making a connection to the 2003 movie Cradle 2 The Grave with Jet Li, featuring rapper DMX.

DMX and his professional heisters stole some extremely rare black diamonds that turns out to be top secret Taiwanese military project for stable plutonium until its enriched. Becuase of this, DMX is swept into a storm of people trying to get there hands on these diamonds namingly Jet Li - Taiwanese Agent who tries to destroy the diamond - and of course his evil traitor counter part Mark Dacascos, who kidnapped DMX's daughter.

The most relevant part of this movie is when Dacasco enriched the black diamonds with a green laser and read out its potential to a whole bunch of international terrorist representation...tomahawk missile, hiroshima, 2 hiroshima...new world order from one black diamond. Then Jet Li flies in and in an ultimant show down against Dacasco, Jet Li made the villian swallow a enrich black diamond. The special effect shows plutonium begin to radiate and light up as Dacasco quickly begin to quickly disintegrate atom by atom.

Fog

2006-11-26T11:36:00.000-05:00

This photo is taken at noon yesterday, the lights that you can barely see are either store lights or lights from cars. With this much fog at the end of November you may think I live in London or something.

Pilgrim Thansgiving

2006-11-22T18:58:00.000-05:00

In less than twenty-four hours, the world will approach the fourth Thursday of November (clarified by Franklin D. Roosevelt) and the Thanksgiving in the United States! Thanksgiving will of course feature the traditional turkey, stuffing, family, football etc. However, here are some interesting things about Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving & Pilgrims
According to The History Channel, the pilgrims like today's families would prepare for the feast starting to cook in the early dawns and some turning the spit over a open fire hours at a time. When the food is done, the pilgrims would have a largely buffet style feast with their hands, spoons, knives, but no forks. What's most interesting though is that pilgrims did not eat some of what we thought are traditional Thanksgiving food. Of course not everything is accurate as the first the pilgrim feast did occur hundreds of years ago. Something for sure though, pumpkin pie and maybe cranberry sauce, one Thanksgiving favorite is not on the menu.

Probably to some's liking, there were more meat and far less vegetables on the tables of the pilgrims than there is today. And not just turkey either, there were far more types of meat including lobster and seal!

Foods That May Have Been on the Menu
Seafood: Cod, Eel, Clams, Lobster
Wild Fowl: Wild Turkey, Goose, Duck, Crane, Swan, Partridge, Eagles
Meat: Venison, Seal
Grain: Wheat Flour, Indian Corn
Vegetables: Pumpkin, Peas, Beans, Onions, Lettuce, Radishes, Carrots
Fruit: Plums, Grapes
Nuts: Walnuts, Chestnuts, Acorns
Herbs and Seasonings: Olive Oil, Liverwort, Leeks, Dried Currants, Parsnips

What Was Not on the Menu
Ham, Sweet Potatoe, Corn on the Cob, Cranberry Sauce, Pumpkin Pie, Chicken/Egg
Source

Of Course, I don't have to go into the Thankgiving today in the United States, thinking of it makes me hungry. And for those who do not celebrate Thanksgiving or live in the United States, there is of course the official beginning of the holiday shopping season with price cuts and big holiday spending!

Title Problem Resolved

2006-11-18T17:06:00.000-05:00

A few day or maybe a week ago, I posted an entry regarding switching to Blogger Beta and a particular problem I was having with Blogger not showing a title for my entries. Today when I was giong through the Blogger help section I came across this article. As it happens, I turned the title off in the Setting --> Formatting section, why I don't know, I don't even remember doing so. Anyways, good job man, you are really smart, this should teach you about complaining without looking things up first :D

Windows Vienna

2006-11-13T16:51:00.000-05:00

Today, Microsoft announces it will start selling Windows Vista and Office 2007 through CompUSA stores starting Nov. 30, two month before general release date in January 2007. As we get closer to Vista's releasing date, Vista will become commonplace and old news; So now, I'll take a look at the Windows Vienna, the Windows OS following Vista.

In Feburary 2000, Microsoft announced Windows Vienna then codenamed Blackcomb as the version of Windows following Windows XP codenamed Whistler. Of course, it suffered major delay and Microsoft introduced Windows Vista codenamed Longhorn as the OS between XP and Vienna. Its very interesting that Microsoft codenamed all their operating system after Whistler-Blackcomb resort in British Columbia.

Some of the features of Vienna include the entire replacement of Windows explorer shell as well as well as a new Start Menu taskbar. Vienna may also include a 'Sandbox' approach probably similar to running a virtual machine inside the operating system to improve security. Finally there will be different ways of input methods such as type auto-complete or voice command. These and other features are of course all tentative, noone, probably not even Microsoft, will know until Vienna comes out in...who knows...ten years?

For more information visit the Windows Vienna Wikipedia Page

Blogger Beta Switch

2006-11-12T16:39:00.003-05:00

I signed up in August to check out the new Blogger Beta and a few days ago migrated my other blogs to Beta as Blogger completes its beta phrase (why am I still calling it Beta? I guess the name stick huh?). So far so good, except that in my personal blog I'm still unable to enter a title for my entries. I don't have this problem with any other Blogspot blogs and switching to Beta haven't fixed it either. Before, I just bold a section of my post to make it stand out, but this is becoming more and more of a problem as I'm hoping to get into some more robust things and its totally out of my control, so hopefully I'll find a solution somewhere on the World Wide Web :)

On the other beat, not much have changed since migrating to Beta. I still use the classic template, and to my pleasant surprise I see labels now at the bottom of my entries. Eventually, I think I will recode this template to Beta to support labels in the sidebar etc.

2006-11-12T12:29:00.000-05:00

MacBook Pricing

They used to say Windows 90% of the computer market, however now with Intel Macs, iPods becoming more and more popular, the percentage should have changed a bit. I don't know exactly how much, but by the number of times Macs appear in my day, I would say 50% of all computer are Macs now. I know that's an exaggeration of exaggerations, and I'm gonna be seriously flamed if I don't explain myself. The more modest guess would probably somewhere an increase around 3% to 5%, but the thing is, the sleek titanium Mac with glowing Apple insignia appears everywhere: in hands of random guys sitting on a bench in the park somewhere, in the hands of Rudolph Murdoch in Fortune, on TV, ads, commercials, random photo of an operating room in a science magazine...

Anyway, back on track, the fact there is a black and white MacBook, commonly advertised as 'The World's Newest Power Couples", shouldn't be news for you or me. What is news for me as I checked out the Apple Online Store is that the black MacBook is $200 more expensive than the white MacBook with the exact same hardware configuration except for a 40 gig larger hard drive. When do you start getting charged $200 extra for a different color of the same thing? All the different colored Nanos and iPods are priced equally. Of course, it might be the larger hard drive and if in 2006 not 1996 hard drives come at 5/gig then you might as well upgrade to a MacBook Pro for the better spec.

I'm not an expert on metal works, so forgive me for asking me this: Should I start stenciling "Comes with 40 gigabit larger hard drive at $5 per gigabit" on MacBook ads and upload the video somewhere just like that guy did with the iPod batteries having ridiculously short life span?

2006-11-10T19:05:00.000-05:00

Unsolicited Adsense Email

A few days ago, I received an unsolicited email from someone titled "Earning Money Through Google Adsense". This email was obviously targeted at me specifically as its not in my spam folder and I'm its only adressee, so I took some time and read it. After reading it, my eyebrow was all the way up in the sky.

Hello,
You receive this email because we have just visited your website/blog and we would like to invite you to join our fast making money program.

We have a huge number of members joining us since 2005 and each of them is making a good earning until now.So,what actually is the concept?It's easy,each of the member clicks on each other Google Adsense Advertisements once in a day.Now,you might be wondering that Google Adsense Team might find it out and they will ban your account instantly.But to tell you the fact,not only our accounts not getting banned,but on the contrary we are making almost $5000 monthly.

Certainly,we have our own clicking methods and it's almost impossible for Google to detect it.Well,before we tell you how it's done,we want you to consider first and then give us a favorable reply as soon as possible.Your reply is either yes or no.Thank you.

Yours sincerely,
AdsenseForumAdmin

I have to say, I was curious after reading this. Now, my Google Adsense earnings for my site Blogcrowds.com are so embarrassing, I won't even further elaborate; however I'm not interested in blackmarket scheme. If you offer me valuable returning visitors for my forum, that's another thing. But as I said before, I was curious, so, I read the email over and over and over again. In doing so I found many interesting things along with all the spelling mistakes (I won't say grammar as mine aren't perfect either) etc.

In Depth Analysis

Hello,
You receive this email because we have just visited your website/blog and we would like to invite you to join our fast making money program.

Yes, hum, I have been wondering how you got my email...It can't really be my site Blogcrowds since I added Adsense ages ago, but I just added Adsense to two of my blogs Custom Templates and this blog just days ago.

We have a huge number of members joining us since 2005 and each of them is making a good earning until now.So,what actually is the concept?It's easy,each of the member clicks on each other Google Adsense Advertisements once in a day.

Oh yes, the ultimate scheme

Now,you might be wondering that Google Adsense Team might find it out and they will ban your account instantly.But to tell you the fact,not only our accounts not getting banned,but on the contrary we are making almost $5000 monthly.

Yes I have been wondering about that, but I'm more puzzled at what you mean by 'on the contrary we are making almost $5000 monthly'. If 'we are' means collectively people participating in the scheme is almost making $5000 monthly, I have to say you guys aren't making alot. If I feel like doing math right now, I can try calculate how much each person makes a month if you guys have 100 members, 500 members and so on. But of course you have a huge number of members join since 2005 so I won't have to do the math.

Certainly,we have our own clicking methods and it's almost impossible for Google to detect it.

Oh man, even more conspiracy, I thought you mentioned your scheme before already.

Well,before we tell you how it's done,we want you to consider first and then give us a favorable reply as soon as possible.Your reply is either yes or no.

Why do I feel I'm conned into something? Yes or No huh? So no more details...aw that's too bad.

Thank you.

Thany you as well, but no thanks.

After reading the email over and over again, I was still not satisfied. The email was signed AdsenseForumAdmin and I varied many search terms in Google but came up with nothing. The closest is AdsenseForum.com which is a domain owned by NamesPro.com for their Google Adsense sub forum. I guess this is either a covert email operation or the domain has a low pagerank which is good for remaining obscure.

Entry also mirrored here.

2006-11-01T12:40:00.000-05:00

Cross-Browser CSS Tips - IE 7 Part III

As I continue to code CSS & HTML for multiple browsers, I find that if you follow two 'simple' rules, your design will most of the time come out pretty much the same in all browsers.

1.) Never use padding along with width
This is probably the cause of the biggest headaches as IE 6 renders padding incorrectly. To make everything look the same in browsers, you will probably have to do some extra math and use an underscore or star html hack to set the width differently for IE. So it is advisable to never use paddings with width. If you absolutely have to use padding, create another container (div, span, p etc) and set its margins.

2.) Always remember to clear your floats
This is an IE problem that shows up most commonly in Firefox or Opera. Confused? Now let me explain. In IE 6 even when you don't clear your floats, the parent container will still rap around the inner content. However rendered correctly, the parent container would only appear for maybe five pixel at the top of the page and your child container seems to break out of its parent container and extend to the bottom of the page. So in Firefox when you see your parent container appearing only at the top of the page for a few pixel, remember to check if you cleared your floats or not.

Please keep in mind that these are tips for rendering designs the same in different browsers and not tips for how to code CSS. For example with tip number one, if you put a div that is 800 pixels wide with 10 pixels margin all around in a div that is only 800 pixels you will still get an expanded parent div, but at least it shows up the same in all browsers; whereas if you put a div that is 800 pixels wide in a div that is 800 pixels with 10 pixels padding, who knows what's gonna show up.

2006-10-31T18:38:00.000-05:00

IE 6 Standalone - IE 7 Part II

Now that I have upgraded to Internet Explorer 7, it of course removed Internet Explorer 6. This present yet another problem for browser testing for IE 6. It is not possible to run to versions of Internet Explorer...now wait a minute, here's something interesting, you can download the standalone version of Interenet Explorer 6 here. Simply download the last file, unzip the file and put everything in a folder somewhere and you're good to go.

Because of the standalone IE probably use some functions from the shell, which is integrated with Internet Explorer 7, you can see some of the feature from IE 7 in the standalone such as the little icon for some sites in the address bar. Don't worry though, the standalone still renders webpages incorrectly just as IE 6 does...in this case, that is a good thing.

2006-10-30T17:07:00.000-05:00

Internet Explorer 7.0

Like many others, I upgraded to Internet Explorer 7.0 from Internet 7.0 Beta sometimes last week. I didn't give a second thought about it since Firefox (version 2.0 was release a week later), not Internet Explorer was my native browser. Not until yesterday did I get a huge wake up call to do some browser testing to see my sites show up ok in 7.0.

Internet Explorer 6.0 and below are notorious for not conforming at all to the CSS/HTML coding conventions and your webpage show up in a mad jumbo. Why I don't know, all I know is how to implement some inconvenient but absolutely necessary CSS hack to make sure everything shows up at least close to how it is suppose to look in Firefox and Opera (I mostly use the underscore '_' hack and star html '* html' hack for IE 6.0).

To my great relief, when I typed in http://www.blogcrowds.com in the IE 7.0 address bar, my site Blogcrowds.com showed up fine if not better in IE 7.0. That, I give my thanks Bill Gates :).

I guess the reason that I forgot about testing my site for IE 7.0 and not testing when I got IE 7.0 Beta was because I thought most users will still be using IE 6. My initial thought, perhaps influenced by some 'internet browser trend analyst', was that IE 7.0 will be shipped with Windows Vista sometimes in early 2007 but most users who does not switch to Vista will still be stuck with IE 6.0 for another couple of years and still taking up most of browser population. Now it looks like IE 6.0 will be obsolete sooner than I expected (hopefully), which is a very good thing and I could stop worrying about hacks :D. Something else I will be looking forward to is the 'new' age of online images with .PNG for better qualities and transparency (which isn't really recommended because IE 6.0 does not render transparent .PNG properly). And again, thanks to Bill Gates.

2006-10-27T18:33:00.000-04:00

Blogcrowds Directory Launched!!
I am happy to announce that Blogcrowds.com has launched its own directory at http://www.blogcrowds.com/directory/. Feel free to add your blogs to our directory, it however does require a recipical link as our directory is not a 'no-follow' one like many other directories and every link included in the directory goes toward Page Rank as well. Thanks.

Over the next period of time we will also look for some feedback on the directory, categories etc. So please post your comments about the directory in the feedback forum. Thanks again

2006-09-20T17:44:00.000-04:00

International Fiasco
In the past few days, a lot have happened internationally.

Today, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called George W. Bush "the devil". Of course Bush is not the best or most liked guy in the world, but "devil"...

Yesterday, the Thailand President was sacked when he was in New York for UN. Well, that says a lot about the United Nations (yikes, almost put quotes there...)

The day before Yesterday, the Hungarians protested against their president, Mr. Ferenc Gyurcsany who was a former Communist as well as a millionair. Quite a change of heart there Mr. Ferenc Gyurcsany :)

2006-09-12T20:20:00.000-04:00

New iPods
Alright, not exactly new iPods, but Apple just release new iPod Nano in different colors! The colors themselves seem to be a carry over of iPod Mini colors. However my favorite color is still black :). Another difference thats I'm probably personally more interested in is Nanos comes at 8 gig now, a lot more than MP3 players of the same sizes.

Personally, I don't really like the design of the Nanos, I think they are a bit too long or not wide enough. The iPods has the perfect porportions, but it is still nice to see Nanos in new colors, especially the new lime green :)

2006-09-10T19:17:00.000-04:00

US Open

I spent most of this weekend watching the US Open. Overall, it has been what good tennis is like. One hundred miles plus aces, non-stopping rallies, and several deuces (god forbid, duece #8 in Roddick vs. Federer).

Last night, Maria Sharapova defeated Henin-Hardenne and following traditions, tipped over the trophy at the award ceremonies.

Andy Roddick struggled against Roger Federer since the start of the final match today. And just a second ago, Federer became the only person to win 3 Wimbledon and 3 US Open.

In closing, American Express like for other top level professional sport tournaments, featured Andy Roddick vs. Pong. Yes, the very first video game Pong. They also introduced the viral game at Stop Pong. This site has a very high traffic, I wasn't able to connect several times so if you do, don't close your browser until you beat Pong!

2006-09-07T18:47:00.000-04:00

Tobacco Duplicity
Amongst the tobacco companies, Phillip Morris applaudablly, is the only one that advertises about the health risks in smoking and offers free resources for smokers who wants to quit. However, while Phillip Morris is advertising the risks of smoking, it and many other large tobacco companies has double or tripled the amount of nicotine contained in a common cigarette. So it is harder for a smoker to quit since he or she become more addicted to nicotine. Smokers beware.

Somehow this particular news does not strike me as surprising, after all, the tobacco companies has lied about the risks of smoking to the public for decades.

2006-09-03T15:51:00.000-04:00

The Last Days On Earth Part II
This is a long time overdue, but here it is anyways :). On the ABC program last days on earth aired this Wednsday, it outlined seven most likely 'doomsday' in order of probability with 7 being the most improbable.

7. Gamma Ray Burst - Black Hole
6. Artificial Intelligence & Smart Machines
5. Supervolcanoe
4. Asteriod Strike
3. Nuclear Warfare
2. Plague/Pandemic
1. Global Warming

The first in the list Gamma Ray Burst & Black Hole are probably the most fascinating. Both results from a collapsing star. If a Gamma Ray Burst occurs within 500 light years of earth, it will penetrate our atomsphere and extinct most multicellular life on earth. A Gamma Ray Burst would cause more damage than a supernova at the same distance. A black hole on the other hand would destroy the entire planet since not even light could escape its gavity. At first, it was thought black holes are static in space, however recent findings suggest that blacks holes actually travel through space and there is evidence suggest that there is a black hole near our solar system but traveling away from us. If a black hole is found traveling in our solar system, it would gives us around one hundred years until the end.

The next threat on the list is AI, which I think is quite ridiculous compare to a gamma ray burst. Even Stephen Hawkings said ultra intelligent machines may rise within our lifetime. It certainly doesn't look like its going to happen within my lifetime the way things are going. The field of Artificial Intelligence has become more and more lacklaster after its start in the 60s, the field is split and there are suggestions that half of the people are barking up the wrong tree. Chess has long been held as a sign of intelligence however since IBM Deep Blue has beaten International Grandmaster Garry Gasparov it looks like chess is just another game and Deep Blue is just another super fast computer that runs a incrediblely large program...

Mt. Velsuvious devoured Pompeii in 79A.D. however that is nothing compared to a super volcanoe between the earth plate running many square miles. One of the most prominent super volcanoe is Yellow Stone National Park. If it blows, debris from the eruption would cover the entire world in a few days and not settle for many years to come. Supervolcanoe eruption has a cycle of millions of years and we are overdue...

Another threat to earth is an asteriod strike. Thousands of asteriods hits the earth everyday but most are harmlessly burn up in the stratosphere, but a more sizable chunk could cause much more damage like the extinction of dinosaurs. In 2000, an asteriod was project to travel between earth and our 'higher' satelites. And in 2003, British Astronomers have found Asteroid "2003 QQ47" which may collide with earth. The chances of collision is very small and these asteriods are not big enough to cause global extinction.

The top three threats on the list are all 'man' made. Nuclear & Biological Warfare are science going bad in the mentally unbalanced. In addition to some epidemics like SARS and Avian Flu, it is very easy for one of the thousands of chemistry experts to alter a deadly disease such as small pox for a 100% fatality.

Finally, the number one threat to our existence is surprisingly, Globabl Warming, which is already will under way. If things continues as it is, many major cities will be submerged and drastic temperature changes occuring within the century.

2006-08-29T19:07:00.000-04:00

The Last Days On Earth Part I
No, today is not Doomsday, nor will it be when Part II comes, or Part III, Part IV, Part V. Rather, the above si the title of a two hour ABC special showing tommorrow Wednsday August 30, 2006 at 9/8 centeral. This program will be, shall I say, very 'interesting' to see.

To me, an avid hardcore sci-fi guru, this is a must see, although most of the sci-fi stuff I see/read/hallucinate are far less morbid. They're usually kind of like a hybrid between CSI, Pirates of the Carribean, Dynasty, Sopranos, SWAT, Special Forces, Alias on an inter-galactic scale. Even when things take the wrong turns there is always someone that saves our butts in the nick of time, but I guess that's why it was a book...

Like the title suggests, the program is about the last days on earth, not to be taken literally as today, tomorrow, or a thousand years from now (hopefully). From what can be gathered, it looks like the program will feature an asteroid strike and interview with the renowned phyiscist Stephen Hawkings, At the point it dawned upon me that some part of it will be about the end of humans on earth (well, there has to be someone on earth to be Last Days on Earth) and not the obliteration of earth. For that probably will require a piece of of a decent fraction of the mass of the earth or when the sun goes nova (some billion years from now). I'm sure some sort of life form will emerge after the Last Human Days on Earth, not like I care though...The interview with Stephen Hawkings alone would be worth watching, the man who is the foremost living black hole theorist. On second thoughts that might be a bit too omnious.

That's about all I can get from the previes, for more information please visit ABC.com.

Tune in tommorrow at 9 Eastern and here Thursday for a reflection and Part II!

2006-08-27T10:16:00.000-04:00

Comair Crash
After several airline alerts and offshore airplane crash, today in Lexington Kentucky a small ComAir(Delta) flight 5191 carrying 50 people crashed at 6:07 a.m shortly after take off, there are at least one survivor.

Update
From flight data ComAir Flight 5191 mostly like crashed because it went off the wrong runway which was too short for the plane to gain enough momentum to become airbourne. It crashed and erupted into flames.

It has been confirmed that the co-pilot was the sole survivor of this tragedy, victims include former Kentucky baseball player in the Minor Leagues. Most of the victims died in the fire.

2006-08-23T21:30:00.000-04:00

Will You Be My Friend?

Ok, ok everyone here is my friend.

Now, I need a very special FireFox friend who doesn't have FireFox yet. I will share why Firefox is so great with you following up with a download. If you download it it before September 15, like they say, we will be immortalized in Firefox 2.0 and our names appeared on FireFox Friends Wall!!!

Come on, won't you be my FireFox friend? Its a great browser! Just leave your name & email address here please!

Thank you so much!

For more information check out the Firefox link

2006-08-20T19:11:00.000-04:00

Hygiene of Tommorrow
Two hundred years ago, if you told someone that you put a stick in your mouth with some paste squeezed out of a metal tube, you would probably pass as a witch and burned at a stke. This just shows how much science and our ways of personal hygiene have came along. Today, in addition to toothbrush and tooth paste, there is an elepantine quantity of mouth products. From the sting alcoholic mouth washes to the prehistoric strings we call floss; pill like mints to all flavors of gum (apple cinnomon!?) that all the cool people chew. The hype doesn't stop there either, there's a whole line of product for the whiteness, shape of your teeth and so on and so on.

So it shouldn't be a surprise if I introduce the tongue cleaner right? Yep there is a tongue cleaner! The new Colgate 360 not only brushes every angle of your crooked teeth but it also has a tongue cleaner attach to the back. Now, don't immediately burn this idea or the TV you saw it on at the stake, considering this might be the general norm in a hundred years and eyeball cleaners in the next hundred :)

2006-08-17T15:26:00.000-04:00

Trash Clash

For those of us living at the top of highrises, we are familiar with ow we take out the trash. Usually, tehre is a chute on the side of a wall with a hinge, but every one is unique, so let me describe ours.

In my building, the gabage chute is right next to the elevator, probably the most visited spot on the floor. But to conceal it, there is a tiny room with a door. So when you take out the garbage, you close the door behind you and step into a place perfect for claustrophobia with sticky floors, but otherwise very clean and bright lit room. Then you send the trash down the chute that is perfect for spies like Sydney Bristol to spy through since its like the only two square feet that's open in the entire building. At the bottom of the chute is probably a huge paper shredder like machine that chews up all the trash.

Now you have an idea of how I take out the trash, lets start my story. It was a normal day, I stepped into the claustrophobic room and open the hinge, prepared to say farewell to my trash when a torrent of someone else's trash flew right out. It must came from at least five floors above judging from my whole armful of garbage, at least half a dozen crushed beer cans, leftover pizza, chinese takeout, paper towel and other stuff I don't recognize. From teh beer can & pizza I can tell its the drunk several floors above who doesn't recycle. Promptly, his voice was carried down the chute, he must ahve heard the noise in the echoy small room. "You 'lright man?"

"Just a bit of trash man, I'm good."

"You wanna come up for a drink?" %#$#^...jeez, why can it be the girl upstairs? "No, don't drink man, thanks anyways and gotta take a shower first.

"Yeah, you do that and if you feel like coming up, do so, always welcome." He closed the door with a bang and left. Well, that's that. From this I learned to open what I now call the "trapdoor" with caution because when open it creates a perfet ledge for other people's trash to fly throught and of course, I'll add this to my list of pranks.....muwhahah ;)

2006-08-14T17:47:00.000-04:00

Never Go Swimming On A Cloudy Day!!!
I have been very busy lately and haven't got a chance to take a dip in the pool for a long time. So today, I decided to do so despite the lukewarm weather. I thought it was gonna be alright since I swam before when it was couple of degrees lower than today and the water was pretty warm...... but what I didn't realize was the sun was shining that day. A difference of few degrees in the air does not matter much to the temperature in the water. However, if the sun is shining on it, the difference maybe drastic.

I should ahve known its too cold right after I went down to the pool. Around this time the pool is usually pretty busy, but today, those who I call the sun-soakers have either went home or sat under the terrace. They traded swim suits and bikinis for t-shirts and tanktops. I saw one life guard sitting in a lounge chair with a couple of other people and the other saw me and came to his post.

"Don't worry, Dmetri, I won't drown on you, promise." I joked and dived into the pool. Once in the water, how cold it was hit me like a brick wall. As I did my laps, I felt so much like one of those bolar bear people who swims in frozen lakes in the middle of the winer. And it wasn't that much different either. When you stand in the shallow parts of the pool the breeze feels like midwinter snow blast. I logged some twenty laps until raindrops start to come down and the lifeguards begin to lockup.

Upstairs in the bathroom, I started to chain sneeze in a scorching shower. Damnit...this maybe my very last entry...tommorrow, I might die of hypothermia...

2006-08-12T17:21:00.000-04:00

Moral II

Once upon a time, there was a kng of a very small kingdom, however his army was by no means small even if it is comprised mostly of mercenary soldiers. The king often likes to inspect his army and ask any soldier he see three questions.

1. How old are you?
2. How long have you been in my army?
3. Are your parents alive and well?

Of course, most of the soldiers are mercenaries and does not understand the king at all, so, the general made all the soldiers memorize their three answers to the question.

One day during a parade the king walked up to a mercenary. This man memorized his answers very well. He knows them like he knows he one hundred and one most profane curses in his own tongue, so he was supremely confidant and not a bit nervous.

The king ask his soldier warmly, "how long have you been in my elite army?" The soldier didn't understand a tad of what the king said. He had no idea the king asked the second question instead of the first and answered "almost twenty eight years!"

His Royal Majesty was a bit puzzles and not only by the strange accent. He thought funny, this runt only look twenty something and he's in the army for twenty eight years? The king continued with the second question which is suppose to be his first "how old are you?" The soldier thought this is the question and answered "only six month!"

This time the king was mad, he used an extremely low voice and asked, "What? Only six month? What are you trying to say? You think I'm crazy like you?" The soldier thought this was the third question, asking if his parents are well and answered confidantly "Yes!"

2006-08-11T17:02:00.000-04:00

The Eleventh Hour

In the last twenty-four hour a terrorist plot to repeat the tragedies of the past having been unveil. As usual a deluge of information became available. As I sift through all the information a particular article title Ingredients for a Bomb Are Not Hard to Find from Washington Post especially caught my eye.

"From available commercial material, and with the right basic knowledge, it doesn't take too much expertise," said Tal Hanan, a security expert at Demoman International Ltd. in Israel. "Any second-year chemical engineering student, probably with the right guidance and some handbook they pull off the Internet, could probably compose such an explosive."

Alas, this is not anything new... I doubt even a second-year chemical engineering background is needed; for that of course, the key is the information available over the internet. Long before this millennium and September 11, before internet became widely used, I have seen random 'journal' and 'cookbooks' of amateur pyrotechnicians with detail instruction of how assemble home-brewn explosives, abtaining ingredients from local drug store, even social engineering involved. And to this day, these information have probably multiplied yet remains easily accessible to anyone who has a second to search for them or simply stumble upon them.

This is very wide spread and not confined to explosives, the instructions for making methanfedimine and various other drugs, hate groups etc etc are all available across the world wide web. Alas, such is the problem of instanteous communication and freedom of information. Without a doubt freedom and sharing of information is essential absolutely essential, but the question is what you do when these information fall into the wrong hands?

2006-08-08T17:34:00.000-04:00

Moral
Once upon a time there was a man whose son was named Nigel. One day the man took his son to see his grandma. On the train Nigel was very restless and kept stucking his hands and legs out of the window.

"Nigel, quiet," said the man to his son, "and keep yourself inside the train or you'll be blown straight out of the window."

However, Nigel did not listen to his dad......so when Nigel wasn't looking, the man took Nigel's hat and hid it behind his back. "Look" said the man "your hat's gone!"

Nigel was very scared and upset. He begins to cry and tries to find his hat. Seeing this, the man comforted his son, "Don't worry about it kid, your hat will come back, just try to whistle."

Nigel climb to the window and whistled for so long that he didn't even feel his dad quickly putting the hat back on his head.

"See, its back!" exclaimed the man.

"Wow, cool!" Nigel smiled and quickly grabbed his dad's hat and threw it out of the window. "Dad, its your turn to whistle!"

2006-08-05T20:16:00.000-04:00

Pringles
Everyone has probably seen the Pringles commercials where a guy like me with Lays or some other brand of potatoe chips gets told by a little girl with Pringles. Its true, Lays come out of the bag broken and greasy while Pringles come out of the tube in perfect stacks, whole, and a lot more crunchy. Its just then, looking at the perfect stacks, a thought came to me. Unless Pringles have top secret conspiracy plant where they grow perfect tube potatoes they must waste a whole lot of potatoes. Anyone who has bought a sack of potatoes knows that taters comes in all sizes, shapes and mutations with werid bumps. SO to cut these oddball potatoes into the perfect Pringles chips they must thrw away a lot of scraps. And its not like you can melt potatoes together like chocolate or butter.

Well, just a thought, don't have anything against Pringles and this certainly won't stop me from eating Pringles just like P. Anderson won't persuade me to stop eating Kentuky Fried Chicken (she won't persuade me into anything) or the con woman into stopping me eating Wendy's Chili.

2006-08-01T16:36:00.000-04:00

Heat Wave!!

For the past weeks there have been reports of record heat wave sweeping the nation, however I was pretty much oblivious to the fact until today. Boy, walking out of the AC today and the heat just blasted straight against me. I could literally feel the sweat coming out like mass flood. Technically its not even that bad today, 91 degrees, but as people say, its not the heat, its the humidity. I never imagine a place that is covered by several feet of snow during the winter could be so hot. Or perhaps I have become less tolerant to heat considering that Chicago, where I lived a year ago, experienced weeks of 100+ temperature.

I guess global warming has finally caught up with me. I'm not sure which is worse, the gruelsome heat or the aftermath in The Day After Tomorrow. An ice age later in the century or not, this condition is unbearable to be in. So for right now, I think I might take a dip in the pool :)

2006-07-30T17:19:00.000-04:00

Design Marathon

Alright I just started a new blog, its mainly about blogger template design and coding. I have added a few unique designs I have so far. Next in my to do list for this blog is to change most of Bloggers default template in to three column fluid templates. Hopefully this process won't take as long as starting a new template from scratch, ideally within 10-20 minutes each.

We'll see how long this is going to take, but one thing's for sure: alot of work is ahead of me.

2006-07-28T17:53:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! Hosting

Everyone has probably heard of the internet giant Yahoo! as one thing or another, internet protal, search engine, official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup, owner of del.icio.us, flickr etc. One thing that probably won't come to mind though is Yahoo! being a webhost. Unlike other big webhosting companies like Dreamhost or HostGator, Yahoo! Small Business only offers three levels of shared hosting plans. Despite the fact that it doesn't offer the most competitive price and lacks the room for expansion, some features of Yahoo! Small Business hosting makes it perfect for startup sites which is one of the reasons I hosted my site Blogcrowds.com with Yahoo!

Yahoo! supports the most popular languages and databases with FTP accessibility and a nice control panel that is sufficient. But the best Yahoo! has to offer is the online software available with one click such as phpbb or WordPress. Another important feature Yahoo! includes is credits with various marketing tools, it even offers $100 free advertising with Yahoo! and $50 with Google AdWord. Finally since you are hosting with Yahoo!, of course your site is automatically submitted to Yahoo! and it will constantly spider it before your site even show up on any other search engine. Not a big deal? Well it is when you're just starting up.

2006-07-23T16:58:00.000-04:00

GOING OLD SCHOOL

For quite a while I have abstained myself from video games and considered myself free from what I call VeGAS or VidEo Games Addiction Syndrome. Video games used to take up hours of my life everyday and I spent the time in between asleep in school. As soem major tests & higher education came, I beat all the games for one last time and sold most of my collections on Amazon. I have been free ever since and probably won't go back, or so I thought...

A few days ago I picked up VeGAS again, there just haven't been much to do late nights this week, after all its summer & FIFA's over. Well, it might have been much worse, with some self control left, I found some old school DOS games and decided to start with Ultima. For those who are unfamiliar with old school games, let me explain. Old school video games is considered between 1980s-1990s, they have depressingly pixelated graphics with a range of 2-56 colors and requires around 4hours or less of gameplay so hopefully by that time I'm gonna be sobered up and fast asleep orquit gaming because of the horrible graphics. Anyways, I went through Ultima right up until Ultima VI - The False Prophet...

Alright, just went to DOS, Origin Presents a Lord British Production...TV lightning, red flash, needs Avatar, gargoyles, got it

Created a character "By what name shalt thou be called?" what !#$^#!}, did I mention the horrible language? Other than been called milord, it completely drives me nuts. And art thou male or female? ...femaile for the heck of it then I chose the most male looking portrait, trust me its just too pixelated

Ok, up to the voodoo witch, "Thou hast..." excuse me lady, you think I can read? I will just flip a coin

Yes! Journey onward. Lord British's room, aw great, the keyboard stopped working I freaking can't do anyting. Ok, let me try Escape for help. What the, nothing. You know even most DOS games Escape displays a menu or help. Twenty minutes later, finally found the buttons (that's what they are) at the bottom, time to kill some gargoyles, piece of cake, but the dead body on the floor is disgusting even pixelated.

Time to talk to Lord B. "Sir Thomas blah blah blah much has happend blah blah blah only the true Avatar would know what was contained in the Compendium" wtf? What Compendium noone told me about the compendium...great he's talking again "How wert the headlesses produced?" Sex? Nay. By killing them? Nay 'tis not the correct answer Consult thy Compendium. What compendium!!?? Alright, so I fired off dozens of answers for I don't know how long. Couple hourse later I decided to hack the game instead, loooked for the notes I made in the yellowed manual and I saw "Ultima 6 Copy Protection Quiestion and Answers. @#$(*#^&# ....so...the menu is the compendium and the questions were for freaking copy protection!? Jeez, these old school junk is een worse thean Sony BMG rootkits. Ok three questions later, got a key, great ABOUT TIME to leave.

Ok, now someone tell me what's going on with the door? Its not funny, I used the key Lord B. gave me, no use, attacked it, moved it, talked to it, looked at it, all to no avail...somebody tell me what's going on please...nice, letting a door trip me up...

Of course I beat Ultima VI before. As for right now, the freaking blasted door will stomp me and I probably won't touch another video game till Final Fantasy XII comes out.

2006-07-18T18:08:00.000-04:00

FIREFOX - A COMPANION TO "WHY I HATE IE"

Like the way Firefox is straight after install? Well, thats only half of what Firefox is capable of. Unlike other browsers, Firefox has a fantastic open source community that provides excellent tools, adons, and pluggins at the best price of all, free. Instead of covering all of the enormous amount of resources available, I will focues on how I customized Firefox.

BUILT IN - before going into addons, lets exploit some of Firefox's features to the fullest. Most of Firefox's features are ready at your fingertips but some might be hidden.

Tabs - everyone has heard of tabs which let you unclutter your takbar, but at first Tabs might not be easy to find,

for me I like to keep a shortcut for creating tabs at the top of Firefox. So go to VIEW --> TOOLBAR--> CUSTOMIZE or just right click the top Firefox tool bar.

find the new tab button and drag it to where ever you want on the firefox menu bar.

Search Tool Bar - Tired of successive search bars in Internet Explorer taking up too much viewing real estestate, but still like to get search results without actually going to the search home page? Will Firefox have something that you will like

The compact Firefox search bar at the top right corner allow you to add your own search engines to the drop down list and switch between the list as you choose. To add your favorite search engine or site to to http://mycroft.mozdev.org/. Now, no more extra toolbars to take up space! for extra search bar functionalities download the addon here https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/552/

Now that the built in stuff is done, let download some stuff! Before we move on here's some useful shortcuts: Ctrl + Tab browse between tabs Ctrl + U view page source Ctrl + J view downloads Ctrl + H view history.

ADDONS for all your addon needs goto https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/, the site maybe slower than usual because of massive encryption

Skin - first off, lets customize Firefox to be aesthetically pleasing. You can download many Firefox skins at https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/themes/, and then using them by going to Tools --> Themes
However, I find firefox default theme quite nice, my windows blue bar simplly ruins many of the skins.

FTP - FireFTP from https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/684/ provide a simple yet powerful FTP tool that's ideal to use for your webhost or directly publish your blog to blogger via FTP.

RSS - NewsFox from https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/629/, a three panel RSS viewer for RSS fanatics like me to get updates on new/blogs.

Validate Your Code - Total validator from https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2318/ help website developer to validate their code within Firefox

Spell Check - AspellFox from https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1022/ spell checks any window within Firefox

WYSIWYG - A built in What You See Is What You Get (jeez what a mouthful) editor for those less experienced with css/html codes to visual design their webpages. "Because the Xinha editor is installed on your local machine rather then a server it is both portable (use it on any website) and faster (files don't need to be transfered over the net)."

After equiping Firefox with a number of addons, Firefox is quite robust and will most likely satisfy all your internet needs and even some non-web applications.

2006-07-17T17:58:00.000-04:00

WHY I HATE IE

For some years Internet Explorere was my native browser in Windows until another competent browser come along (certainly not Netscape!). I was amongst the first to test Firefox at the time with no intention on switching. I was soon attracted to Firefox's clean interace and its speed however minute in my dial up era. It seems that Internet Explorer just has too many bugs and vulnerabillities that does not actually compromise your machine but reduces performances.

To me, vulnerability is not IE's biggest problem. As anyone who's familiar with CSS will tell you, IE's biggest problem is Microsoft's big corporate incompatability. It goes without saying that if you design a high caliber site, its probably not even going to show up in IE without any down grades or hack. Internet Explorer 6.0 simply does not support more advanced techniques and renders half of the properties incorrectly. One of the biggest problem IE have is no hover support for Take for example some features on my site, Blogcrowds, on the forums main page when your mouse hover over the forum name/description and the newest post, in Firefox, they change color and the text blackens making it more interactive and increases legibility. In this case IE does not support hover outside links. To achieve the same effect, if possible in IE, would prbably involve an unprecedented ammount of padding for the link which is imprecise considering different text length and dimensions of the forum description. Same goes for the links inside the list item on the header menu. In Firefox you would see the tabs lighten. There are other browser discrepancies across the site, but most have been fixed and others relatively minor.

Some designer even use IE's lack of support for certain elements to design to different themes for one site. The result of MOSe (Mozilla, Opera Safari enhancements) is surprsingly dramatic while leaving the IE version lackluster in comparison. Hopefully all the will change with Internet Explorer 7.0, for Microsoft its either conform or die...

2006-07-16T18:08:00.000-04:00

UNBREAKABLE

Well, its Saturday night and I probably have a billion othe rthings that demands my attention, but out of nowhere I remembered a commercial for a M. Night Shyamalan fil that shows on ABC. So I promptly tuned in at eight o'clock and the movie, Unbreakable, was surprisingly memorable to my comics persona (I'm a huge JLA fan, you didn't know that? Well you do now)

The prologue to the movie was kind of unusual for M. Night Shyamalan (perhaps its on next Saturday?), I waited until his name appeared to actually settle down and watch it. Unbreakable has two main characters: Elijah played by Samuel L. Jackson, an avid comic collector crsed by genetic mutation with wak bones factured easily therefore name Mr. Glass n his youth; David, played by Bruce Willis, is an otherwise ordinary man who was never sick and survived a deadly train crash unscath while all other passengers died. The film proceeded in an archetypical superhero motif. David, gradually aware of his "gift" is relunctant and held back by people he cares about, very much like Peter Parker. While Samuel L. Jackson acts as his "mentor" not so far away from Professor Xavier considering he si also in a wheelchair for the most part of the movie. As Elijah uncovers david as the man of steel and his kryptonite-water, David begin to accept what he is and use his ability to sense people's shady past to the great good (which brings me to a point of confusion, David clearly "saw" a drug dealer pocketing something but when he pat him down, nothing came up??) David arrives at a train terminal sensing a motley of crime, theft, hate-criming, rape, and ultimately murder. He followed the murderer and ends up in a scene that shows his superhuman abilities. The next day, the local newspaper shows a story of unknown hero with a hooded figure that remined me of Batman. With all well and the film finnishing, M. Night Shyamalan throws a shocking curve ball ending in an ironic twist. It turns out Elijah has satged many disasters in search of his superhero, David...and I thought he was Professor X. But it wasn't hard to imagin Samuel L. Jackson in his dark purple trenchcoat to be the evil genius, after all he is Mr. Glass...

Although through a different kind of depiction, Unbreakable is a classic superhero sotry worthy of comic books, the hooded figure in the newspaper drawing is pretty darn close.

2006-07-11T18:17:00.000-04:00

BLOGCROWDS LAUNCHED!!!

I have recently launched my new site, Blogcrowds.com focusing on all aspect of blogging. I spent quite a bit of time coding the design and skin for this site and there is still some parts of the design I am unsure of. So this is the time to get these issues off my mind and ask for some suggestions:

1. Just the overall design of the site with 800 pixel overall width and a side bar that's always there no matter what your resolution.

2. How is the triple color? Is the gray text to faint on the light blue background?

3. Having the navigation on a white background just didn't look right so I put it at the top there...at least it should be visible.

4. The Blogcrowds logo is every where on the site to create a feeling of regular theme but over branding?

5. How did I come up with forum names that are all one word? Me in quirk mode?

6. Finally should I change the forum description in Blogware & CMS or should it stay the same? I think it should probably change.

Alright, that is all I can remember right now and if you find anything else we can improve please post here or in the feedback forum.

Thanks and Enjoy!

2006-07-10T20:03:00.000-04:00

WORLD CUP IN MEMORIAM

The 2006 FIFA World Cup ended yesterday with Italy finishing in a triumphant glory, this wraps up a month of fierce soccer rivalry. It also marks the end of the first World Cup I actually watched. Beginning on the kick off day, June 9 2006, I would say I watched (or sometimes when soccer is on TV and I'm multitasking) a good half of the total 64 matches, so averagin around one game a day. Since this is the first time I seriously watched soccer and the NBA finals starts around June 9th (this year the Dallas Mavericks vs Miami Heat), I couldn't help but to compare soccer with basketball which is more widely watched in North America.

My first total surprise is how long an actual soccer game is, 90 minutes, over time 30 minutes...Its not that actually it is such a long time, but instead such a long time with not much going on. I mean come on, one goal in 90 minutes!? and the rest of the time just kicking the ball around. Its not like you can pas the time watching their 'beautiful' dribbling. Basketball on the other hand, 48 minutes jam packed with action averaging around 80-100 points for both sides and a 24 second shot clock to ensure never a dull moment. Every few minutes with an alley oop, fade away, hook shot, or a dunk that you can just get up and start cheering. You can also actually watch Dwayne wade dribble past two defenders, a crossover, then spin move, and finish it with a layup, SKILLS...which bring us to skills in soccer. I'm sure all the soccer players in FIFA are extremely talented, but you can't get past the fact that its very hard to control a soccerball with your feet much less with someone chargin towards you, so this results in the umpteenth turnover, corner kick, and the soccer ball stuck in midfield action.

I guess soccer is an okay sport to watch, don't get me wrong, I will still continue to watch soccer - just not like how I watch basketball or another sport - and probably only at the next FIFA World Cup.

2006-07-08T18:02:00.000-04:00

Germany crushes Portugal 3-1 taking 3rd place in 2006 FIFA World Cup

Wasn't much in the first half, but starting in the second half Bastian Schweinsteiger made a beautiful goal from way out in the field. Then few minutes later the Germans passed a penalty kick to Petit from Portugal for yet another goal...aw nice, Petit, score on you own net... Later in the second half Bastian Schweinsteiger scored again from way out in the field, quite an amazing curve ball. Almost at the end of the match Gomes of Portugal scored with a header that was just to fast for German goalie Kahn.

But all to no avail German finished 3-1 in this quite exciting match, it would be nice to see Germany in the finals but I guess we will have to wait for another 4 years.

2006-07-07T19:54:00.000-04:00

FIFA WORLD CUP OVERVIEW

As early July begins, the 2006 FIFA World Cup draws to a close. After three weeks of stiff competition, an all European Final Four was produced; and the Italians and French are going to duel it out at the Fianls this sunday. To me, this conclusion was a totally unexpected and chucked my predictions staight down the drain.
The biggest upset this year is of course that neither socer powerhouse Brazil nor Germany(I don't usually watch soccer) made it to the finals. The home team Germany put on a stellar performance right up until facing he Italians in a stalemate (like so many other World Cup elimination games) concluding with an Italian goaldue to positional negligence.

The Italian made yet another goal a few minutes later, making their victory final and sent the Germans home.
Brazil vs. France, omg, I still can't get over this, just look at the stats. The odds against the Frenchmen were just to great. Brazil has a team of world class soccer superstars, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Kaka and take a look at the Frenchmen performance.

Finishing off second in their group after Switzerland, France tied both Swiss and Korea, only winning agianst Togo. I mean come on, for that group I was rooting for Korea...
With all that been said, this World Cup Finals maybe quite interesting, of course not a good as German vs. Brazil. I think France might just win with their...I don't know what to call it, usual luck, underdog determination, or new found skill but they have a formidable Italian team to beat.