… all 3 or so of them. [[image:fried-lolwut01.jpg:Uh…. right.:center:0]]
Continue readingAuthor Archive: hisham
It’s Still The Milage – A Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Review
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull shows that Henry Jones, Junior has been busy for the last 19 years as it’s now 1957. Has it been almost 20 years since Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Man, I feel old. Apart from giving a straight review, this movie requires a bit of dissecting and we shall now dissect in SPOILER territory. SPOILERS! Avert your eyes, like this Russian chap below! Indy’s helping him avert his eyes, even. [[image:indy01.jpg:This seems to be an unfinished FX shot :center:0]] Indiana Jones is George Lucas and Steven Spielberg’s love for pulp movie serials of the 30s redone using modern filmmaking techniques. However with the fourth installation of the series, our intrepid hero, now about the same age as him father as played by Sean Connery in The Last Crusade, has entered the B movie era of the 1950s as we will […]
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Illustration Friday: Baby
An Illustration Friday entry, done before the weekend is over. The topic is merely “Baby”. The other parts where it has cables connected to its cranium and spine are mostly me.
Continue readingLance Is Virtually A Cat
[[popup:thatpoorcat.jpg:(thumbnail):Lance Lampkin:center:1]] Warning: Spoilers for Battlestar Galactica episode “Sine Qua Non“. Click on the thumbnail at your own risk.
Continue readingSome Good Saucer Men News
[[image:indy00.jpg:Take that, commie reviewer bastards!:left:0]]This summer will see a whole lot of nerd rage with wave after wave of nerds complaining to the tune of George Lucas screwed the pooch with the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Why? Because, yet to be released are The Incredible Hulk, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, X-Files: I Want To Believe, Punisher War Zone, The Dark Knight, Star Wars Clone Wars (Yes! There’s a Star Wars movie coming out in theatres this summer and it’s not being overly marketed by a juggernaut on steroid, thank you very much! A heartfelt hurrah!) and of course next week’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Yes, a lot of nerd rage has been directed towards Kingdom of the Crystal Skull because of… well, nerd reasons. (And Speed Racer will probably tank badly because of horrible marketing strategy and bad word of mouth from people who […]
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Irfan’s Second Sports Day
Last Friday, Irfan had his second ever sports event at his kindergarten during this years’ Teachers’ Day. This time, Atok and Opah Irfan was also present for the proceedings. Last year it wasn’t so apparent, but this year it was so obvious that Irfan towered over everyone else, and the photos here do not do his actual height real justice. As Opah Irfan and I snapped away with still cameras, Atok Irfan wielded a video camera which I turned into a proper DVD video in the next couple of days. Irfan was asking Ain for drinks every a couple of seconds or so. Here is a photojournal of what happened at the sports day. Above: As per last year, everyone’s a winner; no one’s a loser. Above: Winky and his friends gather together on the field one last time for a photo shoot.
Continue readingNonja-busting Action – A Speed Racer Review
[[image:speedracer01_copy1.jpg:Mach 5 vs the Shooting Star:left:0]]I never saw a lot of the Speed Racer toon (Japanese title: Mach! Go! Go! Go!) on TV while growing up, but I did promise Irfan to take him to watch the new movie adaptation, directed by the Wachowski brothers. I saw the trailer weeks earlier and went in with Irfan and Ain expected a dumb storyline with epilepsy-inducing special effects. I mean, how can you make a meaningful story with the protagonist’s younger brother who was always climbing into the trunk of his car (with a monkey for a best friend) and getting into screwball adventures, as his elder brother races in dangerous car races. And “Speed Racer” was his actual name, not just his job? I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there is a solid, entertaining storyline with twists embedded satisfactorily within the movie, with just the right amount of drama […]
Continue readingOf Romance, Sarcasm, Math and Language
Once upon a time I mentioned about a comic strip in this entry. Since then I’ve found out (for quite some time now) that the webcomic in question is xkcd – a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language. Usually the strip has only from one to four panels per comic. But once in a while they do epic storylines like the following one. [[image:xkcd-manwhofellsideways.gif:Strip originally conceived in conversation with Jeph Jacques. Soon to be a major motion picture.:center:0]] To learn what happens in the end, click here for the full strip. Here are a couple more favourites: The Words that End in GRY Tesla Coil Bass Network Ninja Turtles And the prophetic classic: Action Movies, which we finally got after a fashion in the form of this TV show which I wrote about earlier.
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Aerocarnival 2008
As I spent three full days over the weekend (plus Friday) manning the booth at Aerocarnival 2008 which was held at UniKL-MIAT, Ain, Irfan, Cik Emma and Cik Su went about the fair outdoors, taking photos among the static displays. There were lots of kids looking for jobs in the aviation industry, wearing the wrong clothes for it and with bad haircuts. Needless to say I was a crazy old man with a shotgun yelling at the kids to get off the lawn.
Continue readingI’d Pay Good Money To See This TV Show
So anyway, to cut things short io9 pitched in jest the idea for Star Trek: Captain Wesley Crusher, Starfleet Investigative Services starring Wil Wheaton. Here’s an excerpt: Yes, the much maligned ensign should be brought back as the captain of a Starfleet science vessel that warps around the Alpha Quadrant solving mysteries for the Federation. Think of it as CSI . . . in space! Wil says, “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.” Which is the title of his blog post. But then, I got to thinking. CSI… in space! Well, thinking led to another thing and, voila… [[image:wesley_sis.jpg:Do a google search on Wheaton + clown + sweater.:center:0]] It wasn’t easy coming up with the script. It took me almost 6 hours to come up with something I was moderately satisfied with.
Continue readingA Novel Tale of a Novel Cover
Once upon a time, I went to study on how to repair flying machines. During my dozens of years (not really, just 2 and a half years) of studying there were many instructors that taught me different aspects of flying machine repairs. Some taught me metalwork, some taught me electrics, some taught me theory of flight. One particular person taught me about turbine engines. He was a tall gentleman, he was. Over the years after I returned home, I’ve always known from second hand accounts that he’s now living in this country. In recent years, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting up with him again briefly. Last month, he and his lovely wife came down all the way from Ulu Klang (which is about 10 klicks up the Middle Ring Road) asked me to produce a cover for a science fiction novel that he has written and is about to […]
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Wait! WHO Wears Ten Rings? – An Iron Man Review
I don’t monitor Iron Man as close as say Spider-Man or the X-Men growing up. However, I do know what he’s all about. I’ve checked Armor Wars out of Perth Library (again, that’s Scotland and not Australia) and read it entirely. Two of the most iconic Iron Man cover for me is the “Demon in the Bottle” cover and the one where “Stark” in the Stark Enterprises logo is replaced with “Stane”. Earlier tonight, we went to catch Iron Man (on opening day) at Cineleisure. I’m not going to talk about the plot of the movie. It’s a basic origins movie with a battle with a bad guy. It’s not high literature, but it’s a great action movie with lots of fun moments throughout. The Iron Man origin in the movie is transplanted from the original comic book location of Vietnam to Afghanistan. So, I’m just going to list out […]
Continue readingA Strange Place To Lie Down and Rest
On the way back from the Sungai Merab area, where the PLUS highway intersects with the ELITE highway right by the exit to Universiti Putra Malaysia, the traffic slowed down considerably. This was strange because I’ve never experienced a traffic jam of this magnitude before at this particular location. Which leads me to believe something’s up front. [[image:toppledtruck00.jpg:Highway blues:center:0]] The road curves downward before climbing back up, and I lost sight of the road before me. [[image:toppledtruck01.jpg:Closer:center:0]] Then finally, TA-DAAHH! [[image:toppledtruck02.jpg:On its side:center:0]] But don’t worry. The drivers were fine although they looked a bit dazed crouching on the far side of the wreck, waiting for assistance to arrive.
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A New Baby For Hanim and Awie
Young Aisyah has a new brother! Abdul Qayyum bin Mohd Zawawi was born to Hanim and Awie at 0715 hours on the 22nd of April. We went a-visiting the newborn and his family and took a photo. Irfan tried to wink at the camera and he’s almost got the wink down pat. Almost.
Continue readingIrfan Takes Atok’s Pictures
As told previously, Irfan likes to use the camera (that is wondrously chimaeraed into the phone by wizards) to take pictures of everything. Some weeks ago, we went to Sitiawan and lo and behold, there was a kenduri at the Seri Manjong stadium that was organized by the new state government which gave the old state government a run for their money during the recent elections. During the speech by the local representatives and politicians, Irfan took a couple of good photos of his grandfather. .[[image:manjong00.jpg::inline:0]][[image:manjong01.jpg::inline:0]]. Then he got bored and went to enjoy the nearby playground. .[[image:manjong02.jpg::inline:0]][[image:manjong03.jpg::inline:0]].
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So what IS a Role-playing Game Anyway?
I have a Role-playing Games category right over there at the left sidebar on the front page of the site. I’m sure there’s a lot of visitors to this site that will probably shrug and say, “I dunno”, or half-heartedly answer, “Something like Dungeons and Dragons?” Well, Dungeons and Dragons is a role-playing game (RPG is the popular acronym attributed to it), true. But it’s more than just D&D and we’ll get to that later. If you ask ten gamers, you’d probably get ten different answers on the description of an RPG. So this is a description of a role-playing game as what it means to me. What Do You Do? A role-playing game (RPG) is a collaborative game where players take roles of characters in an interactive story which is planned out and refereed by a game master (GM). There needs to be at least two people in the […]
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