[[image:darkknight01.jpg:Dunno why’s called the Batpod, but it’s hella cool:left:0]]No. The Joker is not the Clown Prince of Crime in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, the sequel to his 2005 movie Batman Begins. Crime is just a tool and a means to an end. And that end is a total breakdown in the order of Gotham City. Not just anarchy, but absolute chaos. Heath Ledger is for me now the best Joker actor around (or not any more, as the case may be), edging out Mark Hamill’s performance who was previously in my top spot. He is a frightening character, not because he’s creepy or insane, but he seems to be the one most in control of everything, did the best planning, execute his plans, keeping everyone on their toes by constantly hitting them with his machinations left and right at the same time Even if he aims to create chaos, […]
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Welcome Alya Jean Renstrom
Last night Vin called to tell us that Sila has given birth to a beautiful baby daughter named Alya Jean Renstrom weighing 8.9 lbs at 10.39am Eastern Standard Time at the Atrium Medical Center in Middletown, Ohio. Truckloads of congratulations to Vin and Sila. Sila is fine and I talked to her as well over the phone last night, but she’s still in the hospital and Opah Alya’s her company for the night until Vin and Atok Alya return the next morning. I’d like to have waited for photos to announce the birth, but I’m late announcing it as it is. Again, congratulations!
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Communications As If It’s Science Fiction
Earlier today (well, about 5 minutes ago) Hisham, Ain and Irfan talked with Sila, Vin, Atok Irfan and Opah Irfan for almost an hour with one of those new-fangled tee vee phones. (Well, we used Skype.) We could hear them perfectly but not vise versa… no idea why. Irfan showed off his drawing skills live to the other side of the planet. Atok Irfan is contemplating installing a webcam on his machine at home. Here’s a screencap of what transpired.
Continue readingTwo Mediums: A Visual Comparison
Last year I wrote about the upcoming Watchmen movie to be directed by Zack Snyder. Today, I finally saw a trailer. I’ve been had by trailers before, so there’s still a chance that the actual movie might still suck. But still I’m an optimist. When I first saw the trailer in High-definition Quicktime, I knew I had to make a comparison of the shots in the trailer and panels in the actual Watchmen comics. Then I thought, why not do it here in this weblog. Enough gab. Enjoy the images, starting with Mister Blake here: [[image:watchmen_comp01a.jpg:The Comedian’s last laugh:center:0]] [[image:watchmen_comp01b.jpg:John Winchester himself:center:0]] Here’s the Comedian during the Vietnam War. [[image:watchmen_comp02a.jpg:Superheroes in a war:center:0]] [[image:watchmen_comp02b1.jpg:Burning the Viet Cong:center:0]] [[image:watchmen_comp02b2.jpg:Sam and Dean says, ‘Dad?’:center:0]] Jon returns, after a fashion: [[image:watchmen_comp03a.jpg:Yes. It’s a blue peener. What of it?:center:0]] [[image:watchmen_comp03b.jpg:No blue peener here, though:center:0]] Doctor Manhattan takes Vietnam: [[image:watchmen_comp04a.jpg:I still remember this powerful image […]
Continue readingJust Two Short Movie Reviews
Hooray for Cheap Ass Wednesday. Because of Cheap Ass Wednesday, it’s cheaper for Irfan, Ain & me to catch a movie than it is for me to buy one novel to read. That stinks to high heaven but it’s a rant for another day if I’m bothered to do it. Ain didn’t feel well enough to get to work that morning. So I picked up Irfan after classes (so he skipped daycare) we went to Cathay Cineleisure where a lot of movies await us. Some really good ones are out cause we’re smack dab in the middle of the summer movie season. I chose two movies for us to enjoy. No spoilers ahead! A Non-comic Book Comic Book Movie: A Hancock Review [[image:movie_hancock01.jpg:Aw hell naw:left:0]]Hancock is a study of the Superman-type superhero template, with a twist. John Hancock is the only super-powered human around. He has the power of flight, […]
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Illustration Friday: Foggy
Finally an Illustration Friday artwork that’s actually published on a Friday! This week’s topic is apparently “foggy”. It’s nothing special. Just a simple, literal interpretation of the topic.
Continue readingOut On The Frontier… With Giant Robots
[[image:macross_frontier02.jpg:VF-25 Valkyrie:center:0]]I wrote earlier about the continuation of the Robotech saga with the Shadow Chronicles. Robotech is actually three different anime series juryrigged and tweaked so they become a (more or less) coherent whole to be syndicated on the American market. However, the first of the three, The Super Dimension Fortress Macross is a saga still being told in its native Japanese, disregarding the entire Robotech thing. [[image:macross_frontier01.jpg:VF-25 Battroid:center:0]]Throughout the years, there’s been among others Macross Plus, Macross 7, Macross Zero… and now the latest series to continue saga of the original Macross is Macross Frontier. [[image:macross_frontier03.jpg:VF-25 Gerwalk:center:0]] As with the first Macross, the story’s teenaged central characters are positioned in a love triangle. Saotome Alto is a male student pilot and former kabuki actor who has long and pretty hair and nicknamed hime (princess) by his schoolmates. Ranka Lee is a female aspiring singer who works in a Chinese […]
Continue readingOn To The Far Side Of The Planet, Redux
Irfan’s grandparents left Malaysia at 2245 local time for Singapore, which is their first leg on the trip to Middletown to visit Sila. An attempt to catch the ERL from Bandar Tasik Selatan to the KLIA was scrubbed because of the Monday back-from-work rush hour. So we jumped directly to the district of Sepang where many a visible flying machines dotted the sky on their way to and from the airport. There was a minor hitch with one of the luggage, which required a new baby padlock. But thereafter, everything went smoothly. [[image:klia_july2008_00.jpg:Checking in at the counter:center:0]] [[image:klia_july2008_01.jpg:New padlock being tested by Atok:center:0]]We went to the surau for Maghrib and then to the Food Garden (a food court, not a real garden… maybe someday, but not today) for a bit of dinner. Also, Irfan’s Opah Ngah and a friend joined us for a while. [[image:klia_july2008_02.jpg:Irfan playing with the trolley:center:0]] [[image:klia_july2008_03.jpg:Irfan […]
Continue readingDinner With Irfan’s Tok and Opah Unggai
Irfan’s grandparents are here from Sitiawan and have been spending several days with us. Tonight they will be heading for Middletown where they will spend the next two months with Vin, Sila and their upcoming child. On Saturday, Irfan’s great-uncle and great-aunt, designated Tok Unggai and Opah Unggai arrived all the way from Taiping to spend the night at the Tenth Floor. We were soon joined by their daughter and son-in-law, designated Cik Da and Pak Long Fadzil. Opah Unggai recently had a promotion and had decided to treat us for dinner. Ain and I thought the Thai restaurant in the Pandan Indah sprawl close by would be great for the dinner. Night fell and we headed for the restaurant where we had sweet and sour siakap, steamed siakap, kailan ikan masin, kerabu mangga, tom yam campur and telur bungkus. [[image:opah_unggai_belanja01.jpg:The ones belanja-ing in the foreground:center:0]] [[image:opah_unggai_belanja02.jpg:Ain uses a holographic […]
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Tagging The Entire Weblog
I seem to be on a roll this weekend. Yesterday, I spent some hours trying to fix the layout in Internet Explorer, as noted by Sila in the previous article’s comments. This morning I’ve started to activate the Pivot weblog‘s Tag feature. This should help further categorising the articles herein, and to search them based on the Tags. I find that its more versatile and faster to implement than the Categories feature. I will leave the Categories feature on the left column for the time being. If it still feels redundant to have it on after some time, I will remove the Categories block. After tagging the last 80 entries, I have discovered that the tag cloud looks like this:
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Irfan’s NimbleX
I’m currently running a new LiveCD within which resides the Linux operating system called NimbleX, and I’m writing this article with the Konqueror browser nestled deep within the LiveCD. The reason why this article is entitled “Irfan’s NimbleX” is because upon the startup of the OS, a voice says, “Welcome to Irfan’s NimbleX” in the voice of famed Star Trek and The Simpsons guest actor Stephen Hawking. The special thing about NimbleX is that the ISO file you download to burn into a CD is customisable! You get to decide what applications are included, how the default wallpaper looks like (and upload your own), the startup and shutdown sound and other neat stuff. This is how part of the custom ISO generator page looks like: Click on the thumbs to view the full images. I haven’t fiddled around with xorg to get the screen to conform to 1200 by 800 […]
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The Layout Goes South
I’ve been trying to code the CSS file for the weblog all morning. I woke up and thought, how nice it would be if the site was optimised to a width of 1024 pixels. So I tinkered. And after altering and jury-rigging a bit of code here and a snippet of script there in the CSS file, I have arrived at a temporary solution before I needed to stop working on it. Here’s how it looks like using three different browser types on a 1200px by 800px screen: The left column is still there. It’s just overlaid by the centre column. I shall return to fix this for IE users.
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Dreadwind Rising: A Blog Upgrade
Many, many months after the latest version of Pivot had been released, and remember that this weblog uses the Pivot content management system to… manage its content, Hishgraphics blog has finally been upgraded. It was for a very long time running on version 1.30 codenamed “Arcee”. As of yesterday, this blog has been upgraded to version 1.40.5 codenamed “Dreadwind”. It feels great performing the upgrade manually – uploading files individually and rebuilding everything – instead of using some automatic upgrade application. After about 4 man hours or so, it’s back in business. Not that it really matters for the regular visitors of the blog, but there you go. As a behind-the-scenes bonus, here are some pop-up images of the administration interface:
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Top Incisors Have Been Extracted
For the second time, Irfan visited the dentist with two loose upper incisors. According to the dentist, it would hurt to pull them out directly unlike before. So without further ado the doctor brandished a needle which was epic in size. Irfan took it all in stride and within five minutes the two teeth were out of there. Irfan bit on the gauze to stop the bleeding, but when asked if it hurt, he just smiled and shook his head. What a trooper.
Continue readingAll This Has Happened Before
[[image:bsgs4_00.jpg:Bill and Saul:left:0]]This is it. This is the home stretch. For the humans on the brink of extinction and traveling across the stars looking for a new home in Battlestar Galactica, the end is near. As viewers, we have arrived at the fourth and final season’s mid-season break. 10 more episodes before it’s all over. Will it be a happy end? Will they finally find the 13th tribe on the lost colony of Earth? Will the Cylons annihilate the last forty thousand human beings of the Twelve Colonies before they arrive at their destination?[[image:bsgs4_01.jpg:Viper Mark II:right:0]] Trying to formulate a good theory on what will be revealed in the series finale next year is probably a futile effort, but I’m going to attempt it anyway. I have a theory that’s been percolating in my mind since the 3rd season of the show. This discussion will have SPOILERS. So stay away […]
Continue readingNot So Jolly Green Giant – An Incredible Hulk Review
[[image:hulk01.jpg:Holy crap! It’s Bill Bixby’s Zombie!:left:0]]The new movie from Marvel Studios entitled The Incredible Hulk has been released. The movie is about a man who has been altered by an overdose of gamma radiation causing him to transform into the nine feet tall, green-skinned monstrous creature known as the Hulk. The movie is directed by Louis Leterrier and stars Academy Award winning actor Edward Norton as Bruce Banner, Liv Tyler as Betty Ross, William Hurt as General “Thunderbolt” Ross, Tim Roth as Emil Blonsky and Tim Blake Nelson as Samuel Sterns. Ty Burrell also makes an appearance as psychiatrist Dr. Leonard Samson. Oh, who am I kidding. This isn’t really a review for the unwashed masses. This is me hulking out comic book geek style over an awesome comic book-turned-movie, which is in my opinion, a hundred times better than the 2003 Ang Lee movie only entitled Hulk which I […]
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