We’ll be heading out to Ain’s parents this weekend to attend a wedding. Tok & Opah Irfan will also we joining us tomorrow there, then they’ll be heading back with us to Kuala Lumpur via the Gua Musang road, which they’ve never been before. Hope to show them some sights there on our way back. We’ll be back Monday, according to schedule. So here’s the last post from me in the month of March, a great blog entry I found on FraudWasteAbuse, “Why Men Are Never Published On Dear Abby”: Dear Abby, I’ve never written to you before, but I really need your advice on what could be a crucial decision. I’ve suspected for some time now that my wife has been cheating on me. The usual signs… Phone rings but if I answer, the caller hangs up. My wife has been going out with the girls a lot recently […]
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I’ve Transformed My Wallpaper
So today I made a brand new desktop wallpaper, which I think looks great. Click on the thumbnail over there to the left to view it in its entirety. I’m wondering about that glyph etched into the metal above his eye. This is where I got the original image, which is substantially larger than what is seen on my desktop.
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Straight From The Bear’s Mouth
Bear McCreary has become my favourite composer for soundtracks. I love what he did throughout Battlestar Galactica. The music isn’t a traditional symphonic orchestral score, although it is in some places. I can’t quite categorize listening to the score as a whole. It has string quartet, Japanese tako drums, Armenian duduk, bagpipes, gamelan, erhu…. a hodge-podge of traditional instruments being used to make the music of the Battlestar Galactica universe. Lyrics are sung in languages like Latin, Sinhalese, Sanskrit and Italian. Modern earth music even make their way into the episodes as source music, such as Philip Glass’ “Metamorphosis Five” (played by Starbuck at her Caprica apartment) and the super spoiler full-blown music which rocks the closing scenes of the recent third season finale, which broke my mind in half. Anyway, Bear McCreary’s website has a blog and the blog has entries pertaining to his work on Galactica, which also […]
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Not Very Uplifting
Here’s another rant I stored somewhere which I rediscovered. Say you’re waiting on the ground floor of a building. You need to get up to the tenth floor. When you arrive at the elevator doors, the cab is currently at the tenth floor. You hit the button and it starts to descend. Another guy waits with you by the lift. It stops at the 8th floor to pick up a passenger on the way down. Then it stops again at the 7th floor, where it remains there for more than 30 seconds. Then it descends and stops at the 5th, 4th and finally the 2nd floors. The doors open and a bunch of folks come spilling out. One guy is carrying a large item of furniture, which probably held the lift at the 7th. Once the lift is clear, you and the other guy waiting board the lift cab. You […]
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“I Make Lots of Graphs”
Lisa Simpson once claimed pessimistically in the episode HOMR, “As intelligence increases, happiness decreases”, and made a graph about it. Without going into the intelligence territory for super geniuses like Albert Einstein, Richard Feynmann and Querl Dox, it’s apparent that every human possesses a certain amount of intelligence. As a human grows and develops, he or she learns more about the surrounding world, including things that is picked up in school and at work and media such as books and television. A human would learn, among other things, of science, history, geography, arts and literature, and of family, friendship and love. Unfortunately, the human will also learn about the negative things in life such as pollution, greed, racism, war, and of course the inevitability of death. It would make it seem like life is a matter of jumping of a cliff in thick fog, hitting some tough branches on the […]
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Tron – A Look Back at a Reindeer Flotilla
It’s been a while since I saw Tron. I never saw it on the big screen. I believe I last saw it when it using one of the most sophisticated, technological wonder of a multimedia player at the time known as the video cassette recorder. So here I am more than twenty years later, and did it stand up the test of time? And more importantly… is there a Mickey Mouse out in the cyberscape field in the background under the solar sailer in one scene? Let’s answer the second question first: Tron was one of the factors that got me into computers back in the 80s. It also sow the seeds of my interest cyberpunk too. The Story Kevin Flynn (played by Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski), a former programmer of Encom, is trying to hack into Encom’s intranet to find evidence of his former colleague Ed Dillinger’s (played by […]
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Meanwhile Out On An Aircraft Carrier…
Awesomeness, is all. Found on the RPG.Net forums.
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This Weblog Is China-Friendly
It’s been in the news since last year that China has been censoring internet into the country. So, thanks to a website called greatfirewallofchina.org, I am able to test whether the subject matters of Hishgraphics blog entries are forbidden to be view from within China. Apparently, we’re not blocked! Yay! (Or, who knows, perhaps because of this post we will be before long, heh.) Greetings to everyone reading from China! Peace, y’all!
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Retro Review: Vejur Returns To Look for Dad
My first foray into the world of Star Trek consisted of a single page ad on a comic (might have been a Gold Key comic) for Star Trek The Motion Picture, back in 1980. It had a picture of the new refitted Enterprise (no bloody A, B, C, or D) with a photo line-up of the characters along the bottom. My first thought was (probably) how great it was to be part of this team, exploring the unknown in the 23rd century (it said 23rd century right there on the movie ad) in such a sleek starship. I don’t remember when I learned that the movie was based on the TV show, or if I learnt it before or after I saw the movie ad. Anyway some months later, I bought the novelisation of the movie, which I believe might be my first ever movie novelisation bought. Tok & Opah […]
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Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?
Who watched and caught a glimpse of the Easter egg in the trailer for Zak Snyder’s new film 300? It’s been all over the internet now so if you’re online most of the time you’d probably have seen a screen capture of it in the last couple of days. Twenty years ago, plus change, Alan Moore wrote a 12 issue mini-series for DC Comics called Watchmen. It was one of the books (along with books such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman) that elevated the generally considered lightweight storytelling medium of comic books into serious literature. Twenty years ago, plus change, Alan Moore wrote and Dave Gibbons drew these panels: Last week, it was discovered that this image was slipped into the 300 trailer at 1:52 on the time stamp: Zak Snyder who directed 300 is now slated to direct Watchmen for release in 2008. The image was […]
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I Thought I Could Build An X-Wing, At Ten
I seriously did think back in the earlier years of the Eighties I could build a fully functional Incom T-65 X-Wing space superiority fighter given the proper parts and tool. I thought that it would be cool to pilot the ship to school. I even picked out a landing spot, right by the Standard Three classes behind the principal’s office. Needless to say, I never actually did build the fighter with my 10 year old hands. However, within the last decade or so, everything I achieved personally has had the “if I put my will into it” stamp on it. I had believed that if I put work into it, I could create passable digital art – and it worked. I had believed if I put work into it with a little help from friends I could create websites using HTML and CSS – and again it worked. The same […]
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Did It or Did It Not Exist?
The stormy clouds of the gas giant were where the rag tag fugitive fleet was undergoing refuelling operations last week in Battlestar Galactica. But Captain Kara “Starbuck” Thrace patrolling the skies of the planet in her Viper caught a glimpse of a Cylon Heavy Raider and chased after it. Without invoking spoilers, the question would be whether she was hallucinating or not. If she wasn’t then a whole set of new variables can be introduced to the outcome of the episode, entitled “Maelstrom”. As the viewer, we saw Starbuck’s point of view of the bloodied child in the cockpit. We also saw the silhouette of the man in the room outside her cockpit as she was flying deeper into the storm. Let’s not get into the dream sequence. (I hope the paint was non-toxic.) The shots of the Heavy Raider were for the most part in her point of view… […]
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Another Suitor For Lily
Young Tiger Lily Belle, who just meowed her way into Sila & Vin’s household, already has suitors apparently. You can get the details from Sila later, about the poet and the two-timer. I would like to suggest another candidate for Lily. A powerful sandcat. From Arrakis. The Shai-Hulud: From here.
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From the Tenth Floor At Night
Atok Irfan took some fantastic night photos from the balcony of the tenth floor here, something I couldn’t have done without a tripod. You can see the Menara Maxisegar and the Menara MPAJ in the first picture. Click on the thumbnails for larger images. Thanks to Irfan’s grandfather for the beautiful photos.
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Ubuntu Adventures: Survivors of the KDE Desktop
Last time I wrote about the Linuxification of the home PC, I mentioned that I turned my Ubuntu into Kubuntu by installing the KDE desktop. It turns out I prefer the old GNOME desktop and the Nautilus file browser more, so with the command line in Terminal, sudo aptitude remove kde-desktop and POOF! A KDE holocaust. Lots of K thingamajigs were culled and removed from the operating system. We’re back to the regular Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake. Here is how my desktop looks like now: However, I did retain a couple of KDE applications which I can’t do without, survivors of the culling so to speak. Amarok Still a fantastic music organizer and player. I spent a couple of hours earlier this week reorganizing my tunes on Amarok, ensuring the ID3 tags for each music file aren’t screwed up. I used EasyTAG to edit by batch the ID3 data, and […]
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