Ironhide twists and jumps away from the path of the incoming missile, and as he falls in slow mo he fires off a missile of his own. Holy shit! This will be for me THE movie of 2007. The recent Transformers trailer than was released last week dropped a couple of jaws. It had a close-up of Bumblebee transforming, Optimus Prime transforming with the classic cartoon sound effect, Starscream jumping up and transforming into an F-22 in mid-flight, Megatron about to stomp on Jazz in mid-flight, and Bonecrusher expressing his distaste for the public transport system on a bus. As a fan of the cartoon series and the awesome 1986 animated movie, I have no expectations of this live-action movie being a faithful adaptation of them. In fact how can one be a faithful adaptation of Transformers cartoon when you have Generation 1, Generation 2, the Marvel series, Energon, Armada, […]
Continue readingAuthor Archive: hisham
A Time of Reunion
We don’t get together that much these days, but when we do the survivors of the ACS Sitiawan, SPM 1990 batch, create one hell of a ruckus when we sit around the table talking about… well, anything that comes to mind. Earlier tonight, a bunch of them fell upon the Tenth Floor for a gathering and of course, to eat. There was also talk about peeing or hocking a loogie onto passers-by or the swimming pool below from the window and/or balcony. However, some sort of decorum was maintained since there were kids in the room. Apart from our household, the roll call included: Teik Sing (with Michelle and Baby Ashley-Joan), Shahar, Tern Lik, Nguk Lui, Alvin and family, Hudson and Kok Soon. Ain cooked two variations of bihun goreng, both of which were tasty. Teik Sing bought appetizers and desert, Shahar bought some kuih, Hudson brought chips and Kok […]
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Irfan’s Sports Day
Precipitation did give us a break this morning. The sun shone brightly. Since we’re not too far from the equator relatively, a shining sun means sweltering and scorching heat. Tear glands were overtaxed in their efforts to cool off meatbag human bodies. However, Irfan’s school sports day did not yield to the heat. Participating with Irfan’s school is its sister school, where the kids wear violet-and-yellow as opposed to Irfan’s blue-and-yellow uniforms. There no real competition, just the kids all having fun doing the stuff they’re doing in the following photos. In other news, Irfan seemed to be under constant attack by a smaller kid who likes to push him around. From my observation Irfan just avoid the blows until he gets hit then he pushes the kid hard, which dissuades from further attacks for the time being. If this keeps up, I’ll have to write an entire entry around […]
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A Birthday At Irfan’s School
It was supposed to be sports day today at the kindergarten. Unfortunately the heavy rain had other ideas, so instead the school proceeded with the birthday party of a boy, whose mother I discovered was my classmate in Perlis. Small world. The principle postponed sports day for tomorrow. Hopefully precipitation gives us a break. I’ll take more photos tomorrow. It’d be interesting seeing a bunch of hyperactive 5- and 6-year-olds running around competing for something. Below, Irfan poses before the humongous cake. It’s a 6 there not a 9. The cake being conveyed from car to the kindergarten. Look at them Smarties. Irfan awaits the eating of the cake. The troops assemble for the singing of the birthday song. Yeah, that song. The one everyone’s familiar with. Finally Irfan reveals to his mother his uncanny ability to eat cake.
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You Rolled Poorly
Some weeks ago I wrote an entry on role-playing game motivational posters. Last night I discovered a website that allows you create your own by uploading your own pictures and entering your own lines of text. (Doesn’t even have to be about RPGs, even.) So here we are with my own RPG motivational poster.
Continue readingFinally Playing with PHP
Referring to some help sites and pulling back the curtain to look at source codes, I finally got the nerve to save some text files which I wrote on a text editor as php files, which I usually always do in html! Not really ground breaking stuff; all I did was to include the navigation and the footer parts into the main files from separate php files. Later I’ll see about learning to link the php files to a (gasp) MySQL database! I should have started to learn this stuff earlier. It would have gone a long way in teaching me stuff that would help me in my project paper for college. But in the meantime, both the Hishgraphics Gallery and the workplace website are now fully php-ized! Yeah, they look the same from 2 days ago, but the Legos I used to build up those two sites are all […]
Continue readingVillain-o-rama – A Spider-Man 3 Review
[[image:dualityspidey01.jpg:The black costume:center:0]] As previously reported, we caught Spider-Man 3 at Digi IMAX theatre on opening night. But first a non-spoilery rundown of the movie based on early press releases and trailers. Peter will be asking MJ to marry him, but before that there are a few small problem. First, of course, is continuing the tale across the last two movies is Harry Osborn’s desire for revenge against Spider-Man for his father Norman Osborn’s (a.k.a. the Green Goblin) death. Then there’s Eddie Brock, a rival photographer who will stoop to nasty methods to frame Spider-Man for a position as the Daily Bugle’s staff photographer. His character starts out as a nice guy but a series of unfortunate circumstances slowly strip away the guise and finally reveal himself for what he truly is. In the midst of it, Flint Marko an escaped convict on the run who unwittingly finds himself in […]
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Irfan Webs An IMAX Theatre
It’s May 1st. Some might say it’s Labor Dabor Day. Others would say it’s the first day of the general release of Spider-Man 3, beginning 2007’s run of monumental summer movies which will eventually bring us At Worlds End, Shrek the Third, Order of the Phoenix, Rise of the Silver Surfer and Transformers. We just got back from Sitiawan after spending 3 days with Irfan’s grandparents there (and having the sotong celup tepung as well). Irfan made a new friend in the form of Opah Irfan’s friend’s grandson – one Amir from Melaka who was also on vacation in Sitiawan. Today, we got home, grabbed Ain’s two aunts and headed right for Berjaya Times Square where we would be watching the IMAX presentation of Spider-Man 3. There was another reason for the excursion to Berjaya Times Square, and that was Irfan’s Cik Su’s birthday. Labour Day for her is literally […]
Continue readingIrfan’s Political Affiliation….
[[popup:voteofnathan01.jpg:(thumbnail)::left:1]]… is not really known from this photo of him, because we really have no idea which party Nathan Petrelli belongs to. But hey if you want a good quality in a congressman, why not settle one with the ability of flight, no? Not to mention a brother who can absorb and retain powers of other supers.
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A Noumenon Review at RPGNet
I rarely write for my supper, so when I see a good review for something which I participated in I get very elated. Noumenon, the RPG published by Abstract Nova, was reviewed by Jocelyn Robitaille at RPGNet on the 30th of March and I missed it… until just now. For an idea of the RPG setting flavour, take a read at the reviewer’s first couple of paragraphs, “Imagine J. J. Abrams’ Lost mixed with Alex Proyas’ Dark City and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, but written by William S. Burroughs and with a pinch of Silent Hill thrown in for good measure. Now, picture a game that makes Nobilis look like D&D in terms of how easy it is to grasp. Combine those two pictures in your head. Are you there, yet? Good. “You now have a rough idea of what Noumenon is like.” I am proud to have contributed […]
Continue readingSunburn Is The Least Of Your Worries: A Sunshine Review
[[image:sunshine01.jpg:The shieldship with the bomb:left:0]]I just saw this movie on a THX screen and it was quite a ride. I liked it very much. Absolutely no spoilers ahead. Danny Boyle directs this movie and what he did was create an atmosphere that doesn’t not really accentuate claustrophobia or xenophobia. What Sunshine has instead is a layer of despair and hopelessness which barely registers but hangs over the proceedings like a thin film. You can almost feel the despair being radiated by the characters and the situation mounting as the movie progresses. Sunshine gets right to the point with Cilian Murphy’s voiceover. It’s 50 years in the future and the sun is dying, and with it the slowly-freezing Earth. The crew of the Icarus II (a shieldship right out of the pages of Dark Force Rising, heh!) has been tasked with the delivery of a Manhattan Island-massed bomb which would theoretically […]
Continue readingIrfan Wants To Be A Doctor…
[[image:who01.jpg:Who’s being displayed onscreen here?:center:0]]… but it’s not that kind of doctor. Now, when he’s got shampoo in his hair, he fancies himself as the Gallifreyan Time Lord, known as the Doctor from BBC’s Doctor Who series. Specifically he wants to be the Tenth Doctor, played by David Tennant. He keeps going on and on about travelling about in a TARDIS, having his own K9 and enjoys the fact that every week the Doctor (along with anyone in his vicinity) has to run from something chasing them – be it disease-ravaged human constructs, werewolves, Judoon policemen, or Cybermen, or Daleks. If the Doctor has to flee for his life, Irfan digs it a lot. Not too bad, really, cause I haven’t seen Doctor Who since the Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor and I still thought BBC’s production of the series is constrained by a lack of budget. When I first saw […]
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The Grey Armour Looks Pretty Good
And here we have it, the first image online of the first Iron Man armour, the one Tony Stark had to build in captivity in Vietnam (original comic) / China (animated movie) / Afghanistan (upcoming movie). No one ever, ever gets captured by bad guys in, say Decatur, Illinois… why?!? I think it looks pretty good. It really does look like Iron Man and it even has what seems to be a flamethrower that was used in the comic story back in the old Tales of Suspense #39. But the eyes appear to be larger than usual. I can’t wait for him to move on to the more famous red-and-gold armour in the course of the movie (as designed by Adi Granov, no less). Or the War Machine armour even! Before we go on to the movie image, here is the picture of the grey armour, and Iron Man’s debut […]
Continue readingOw! My Butt!
Last night my body temperature hit the roof. This morning, I thought it’d be prudent to visit a doctor because it’s been too short a time since the last time I went feverish. Which was when we were in Pasir Mas about two weeks ago. So, the doctor took one look down my throat and called Ain to check out the white spots on my tonsils. “Septic tonsilitis” is what I got and my temperature was 38 degrees Centigrade, though I was pretty sure I felt much better at the time compared to say three hours earlier. The doctor rattled out the treatment he was about to dish out, but what caused me to go “Wha-?” was the word “jab”. Great, I was about to get a cold, hard metal needle inserted under my skin. It’s something I haven’t done for years, in fact probably since I was a teenager. […]
Continue readingBlue Underpants Goes On The Dragon
[[popup:nextwave_foom.jpg:(thumbnail)::left:1]]Since the desktop is deader than a doorknob now, I’ve been using the work laptop for both work and leisure internet use. The current desktop background that greets me every time I boot up the computer right now is… Well, just hit the thumbnail to see it. Please take note that it isn’t the dragon speaking in the picture. The lady, saying all the words in the word balloons, at the head of the fiery trail of the jetpack is Tabitha Smith of Nextwave.
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Motivational Posters, But….
You’ve seen those motivational posters? The black bordered ones with the inspiring and or beautiful picture of nature, or a cute child or a kitten. Below the image is usually a word or a phrase of the facet of humanity requiring the motivation. Below that line, in smaller type, is a line of blissful and inspiring words as chicken soup for the soul… Anyway, a bunch of nice people over at RPG.Net has come up with a thread in their forums to create more and more of these spirit-uplifting posters. And a kind person has collected these posters and put it in a gallery at his website which you can check out here (dead link). Feel free to browse, absorb and digest some of the fantastic wisdom which, hopefully, can help you when you face bad times in your life. Here are some choice posters for your preview: Beautiful, they […]
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