Star War Episode III

This is quick! Star War Episode III pictures (more than 80 of them). Actually, the site pretty much tell you the whole movie plot. So click only if you want to know everything before watching the movie. Via Slashdot.

Updated [3/3/2005]: Apparently the site is now down. Expected :)

Bomberman

I used to play an extremely fun game on SNES: the Super Bomberman 3. 5 playes, blast the others with different kinds of bomb... that was a very simple but tons of fun game to play. The most fun is with 5 people staying in front of a small TV, trying to kill each other. That was way before DOOM and other online multi-players games.

Then I graduated, and forgot about this game all together. Until yesterday... we were brain storming on what to do this rainy President day weekend, and someone suggested playing multi-players computer games... the first multi-players game I remember, of course, is Bomberman :D

I found The Atomic Bomberman, a 10(!) players IPX-based PC replica of the Bomberman. I wasn't aware of this game until today. It was designed for Windows 98, and had been abandoned by the game company. Well, doesn't matter, as long as it ran on our PCs. We found that the game ran on XP professional only, no good for Windows 2000 / XP home. Also, wireless network could not handle the (flooding) IPX traffic and disconnected frequently. However, once we had everything setup, that is, a total of 4 computers connected to the ethernet hub, we were in business. We had a total of 8 not-too-young people, and boy-oh-boy, we were shouting and yelling like crazy. Reminded me of my university life :)

Build your own 747 flight simulator

One word: Speechless. Click on their photos, and you will too. Better view on IE than Firefox.



Oh, in case you didn't notice. The whole 747 corkpit can move like a commerical flight simulator.

When I retired, will I be doing something like this? Do I have the mindset to work on and complete such an ambitious project? I really admire this guy.

Amazing (paper !) robots

I used to build scaled models when I was in HK. I have so much fun gluing, sanding, painting and destroying those plastic scaled model. "1/144" might not mean much to others, but any Gundam model builder will know what it mean.

Well, this has nothing to do with 1/144 or Gundam. The robots are made from paper, and the joins are completely movable. It is really amazing, and bring back many of my childhood memory. Saw the link from We-make-money-not-art.

Gas tax becomes Mile tax?

The CA government wants to tax driver according to how many miles they drove each year, instead of the amount of gas they use. Their "logic" is, as car get more efficient, they get more miles per gallon, and hence less tax for the government to fix the road. So they wanted to equip each car with a GPS to track the miles.

Hmmm, in order words, if we drove the same number of miles per year, a big heavy gas-guzzler SUV will pay the same amount of tax as a smaller and way more efficieny Prius, while causing 3 times more damages to the road, emitting 10 times more pollutents and wasting 3 times more of natural resources? (Oh, I forgot, Mr. Bush just took over Iraq. Sorry, I forgot we have cheap oil. Wait a minute..., I am still paying US$2 per gallon!)

After all those years trying to clean up CA air by encouraging people to use less gas (hence less pollutents), now they tell us it is ok to drive big heavy SUVs which cause more damage to the road and air? Only Arnie, with his HUMMER could come up with such a brilliant idea.

From HIV to treasure hunt

I was reading using HIV to fight cancer, and clicked on the side link... wow, a real national treasure hunt. They are talking about 12 tokens, each of them redeemable for a cool US$ 1M gem. Only in America.

à la carte

Came across this web site. Have some excellent stuffs like cutting techniques and recipes. From Lifehacker

Doraemon

Remember Doraemon (ドラえもん)? When I was a kid, Doraemon is THE comic books to read. I think many Asian kids of my age (or even younger) is familiar with the blue robotic cat (with lots of gadgets) from the future trying to help a primary school kid to be successful. I still remember all the story line, characters and gadgets... Gadgets, those things really stretched my imagination, like the small helicopter blades attached to the top of the head for flying, the door you can go anywhere, the air pistol / canon, etc. I think some of the "future" gadgets actually become real things today. Thanks for my sweet childhood memory, Doraemon.

You can read some of the comics online here. In Chinese, 1 and 2.

Korean celebrities

Hmmm, are Korean movie / TV stars all look the same? All the girls in Korea go to plastic surgent and get the exact look and feel? I don't know. But here is an example. She (박한별, Park Hanbyul) (Note: link works on IE only) looks exactly like her (전지현, Jun Juhyun), the one who was in one of my favorite movie, My Sassy Girl. (No, this is not a porn movie :D). Can you tell the difference? Answer below.

박한별, Park Hanbyul	전지현, Jun Juhyun

Answer: Park Hanbyul's chin is a little bit pointier than Jun Juhyun. Her face is also slimmer.

See what you can do with your camera phone

Here. Take long time to load (the site is slow), but the gif movie clips (created by Korean students) are pretty funny and creative. Recommended. Starts with this one first.

Funny Chinese Slogans

Regarding criminals:
- 在河南的國道上看見的： "搶劫警車是違法的!!"
(Illegal to rob (steal?) police car)
- 在山東看到的標語："光纖沒銅，偷也沒用"
(Optical fiber does not contain copper. No use to steal.)
- 有一路口有一標語，上書： "投案自首是犯罪" ，大吃一驚之餘往下看...還有： "份子的唯一出路"
(Ah... too difficult to translate....)

Regarding birth control:
- 雲南楚雄某農村標語: "一人超生，全村結紮!"
(One extra baby, whole village to vasectomize!)
- 北京某遠郊縣： "少生孩子多種樹，少養孩子多養豬！"
(Give fewer birth, grow more trees. Feed fewer child, farm more pigs!)

Amazing...

Outerspace

Nope, this is not a cheap sci-fi movie. It is a robot... like to be touched. I found the video to be really funny. The way the robot respond to touch is amusing. Oh, the backgound music... one word, "weird". Doesn't match the video at all. Warning! Take quite a bit of time to download even for DSL. Via we make money not art.

Chinese New Year

Today (2/8/2004) is "Nian San Sup" (Year, 30), that is, the day before Chinese New Year.

Traditionally our family will clean the house, bought new clothes / shoes to prepare for the new year. And today, all the family members should come home and have dinner together. This is called "Tun Lin Fan" (Yearly together dinner?). I don't remember what kind of foods we eat, but the foods were always good :)

I think the "Jo Krun" (Kitchen God) supposedly will go back to Heaven to report to the Big God during new year. We wanted "Jo Krun" to speak good words for our family in front of the Big God, so what do we do? Bribe him :)

After dinner, my mom will prepare steamed whole chicken with head and tail (To symbolize the beginning and end), fish (have "leftover", rice / money, etc), "Fat Choi Ho Si" (aka. "hairy vegetables" and dried oyster, symbolizing making money and good businese), "Ton Yun" (rice-flour ball in sweet soup, symbolizing family together) and many things I don't remember. She will offer those foods to the "Jo Krun" at midnight, and it is called "Hoi Lin" (to start this year).

How? Easy. She will take out the wood tray.. around 2.5' x 3.5' (painted in red) and put everything on top. She will get 3 pairs of plastic mini-chopstick, together with 3 small cup with rice wine. She will pour the wine from each cup on the ground as an offering. Then her kids (aka me, my brother and sister) will give the god a buddist gesture - palm-to-palm closed both hands, put in front of the chest and bow 45 degree, 3 times. What will happen to the food? Of course in our stomach tomorrow.

There is another saying, the longer the children stay late for this night, the longer the parent live. So what do we kids do? Playing poker / majong, of course :) Actually, when I was too small for those games, I usually help me mom to prepare red packet. She always get the new HK$10 bills from the bank. You know, the kind of absolutely brand new, un-fold, clean, still-smell-the-fresh-money-smell, easily-cut-your-finger, still-stick-together bills. And we (used to be 3 brother and sister, then me and my sister, later me only...) will fold the bill in half and put in the red packet. We also prepare some HK$1, $2 and $5 (coin) red packet. I heard from news... the average red packet this year is HK$20 - $30. Inflation at work :)

PodBrix

I think I can't resist Lego. I really like Lego. Unlike the last post, this time is more modern. PodBrix. Via Gizmodo.

2046 (continue)

To be honest, 2046 is not the best movie directed by Wong Kai Wai. Personally, I like Chungking Express more... way more, than this movie. I feel 2046 is completely lack of focus. I think he just pieced everything together at the last minute. I can feel he changed his mind (too) many times during the filming... maybe he has no idea what he really wanted this time. A movie in making for 5 years, well, I can understand why he kept experimenting with different stories, different actors, different techniques and changed his mind so many times (esp. because he is "Wong Di Do" [Wong, the Big Director]). But please, in the end, give me a focus movie. Or just break it into a couple of stories, like what he used to do. Yes, I am disappointed by him this time. Oh well, time to re-watch Chungking Express.

2046

Finally watch 2046. I think my expectation was set so low that it actually turned out to be a good movie. I was surprised to hear people said the movie was difficult to understand or boring. Well, his movie has to be "feel", i.e. you have to be in the mood too.

Story line is pretty simple, it continues from the last movie In the mood for love - what happened to Tony Leung after Maggie Cheung left him. Well, more precisely, how Tony (or any men who have suffered a major love disaster) pieced back his life, leave the questions and memory behind him and move forward. The journey (the time-travel train departed from year 2046 to the future) could be short, but could be very long, maybe forever for some people. Good thing is, during this (potentially) long journey, there are beautiful female robot stewards serving you. They were there to help you to forget the past and heal your wound if you allow them to. However, there are two catches. First, you cannot fall in love with them (as a rule of the train). Second, those stewards have been travelling in time for so long, and their "emotion" become very "slow" - when they wanted to cry now, they tears came out after 10 hours. But Tony (in the image of the Japanese actor) found out, maybe the robots are not slow, they react slow just because they may be thinking of other person (just like him). In effect... the hugging (and love) they gave to Tony, was a temporary mutual-comforting act. (Ok, there is one other love story taken up a lot of time, but I would say it is totoally out of place and unnecessary, so I skipped talking about that part).

This film ended with a... I would definitely say a happy ending, at least for Tony. He finally broke away from his deep secret (and memory) with Maggie. His journey on the time-travel train, finally came to an end. Give me a lot to think about myself...

How to fold a shirt, the new way.

Very neat! Saw it from Lifehacker.

Cheap Vodka + Brita = Premium Vodka?

For us drunkies, we might have heard the story of how someone turned cheap vodka into premium vodka by filtering it with a Brita Water filter. Urban legend? Probably not...

If Saddam were as smart as Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper...

This is really funny. In a 2002 war game, which obviously was a rehersal to kick Saddam's ass, the mighty US army / navy / whatever were defected totally by a small low tech army. The ships can't even get close to shore and aircraft carriers were sunk outside the gulf! What do the Pentagon do? Classic way - "refloated" all the ships :D

By the way, the Pentagon prepared for that war game for 2 years. 9/11 / WMD my ass.