Spaceman-Spiff August 24th, 2003
Herbert just got back yesterday from his trip, and we decided to go out today. I left my house at 10:40 am and met him at Columbia Station. We then went to his cousin's place. I forgot his name though (I'm not very good at remembering names <– purin should know this well 
). Anyway, let's call him A for simplicity sake. It's A's first time in Vancouver, so we took him around and show things. We went to Metrotown for a bit, then went around downtown Vancouver. I bought a pair of dress shoes, which I will need for job interviews and other formal stuff (I only have runners -_-). Around 7pm, we had dinner at Ichibankan in Thurlow St., and I had my first Unagi Sushi there. It was so delicious~~~, too bad it's CAD$ 4.25 per plate (2 pcs.) or I would've ordered more for sure 
. After we ate, A went back to his place and I went to Herbert's place to borrow some Crayon shinchan mangas and some DVDs that he just bought. I got back home at 10:30 pm, so I've been out for 11 hours and 50 minutes… I got lots of stuff to read and watch now 
.
Anyway, I got to do some work tonight before I go to bed, and tomorrow I might have to attend a funeral. My friend's grandparents were killed in a car accident 
.
Spaceman-Spiff August 21st, 2003
I've been watching Last Exile anime lately. It's really great, I consider this one of the best anime this year, maybe even better than Wolf's Rain. So far this year, I've only liked those two animes I just mentioned, nothing else interests me so far. But that might also because I don't watch a lot of animes.
Anyway, Last Exile's story is about two orphans, Claus and Lavi who live and work together. Claus is a vanship pilot and Lavi is his navigator. They deliver messages with their vanship as their job, and also participate in vanship races occasionally. Claus and Lavi dream that someday they can go fly to the Grand Stream, a mysterious and dangerous place in the skies.
 Claus & Lavi's vanship. |
 One of my fav scenes in the anime. |
The main characters aren't that young, they are 15 years old. The ones in the picture above is taken from the flashback scene 
. Anyway, this anime is really good and the graphics are awesome, you should check it out!
Click here if you want more info on Last Exile.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, the ending song of this anime is very good . It's titled Over The Sky and sung by Hitomi.
Spaceman-Spiff August 15th, 2003
I saw the movie last week. I think it has good materials & potential, but wasn’t done very good. Overall, tt was okay and quite entertaining. I think the best scene of the movie is the 1st scene; it was quite intense. The rest is just normal hollywood action stuff. Warning: this review contains spoilers! Read at your own risk! I’ll try not to spoil important parts of the story. (see movie trailer here)
Before seeing the movie I was hoping that it will be CS-like (counter-strike), but it turns out not to be like what i expected. The movie has interesting characters and materials, but not used very well throughout the movie. Examples:
- during the first half of the movie, we found out that Sanchez is good at fighting, but we never seen her fight in the movie
- we see the SWAT team training to snipe, but we never see them sniping anyone, beside in the 1st scene and the enemy. I think a sniping scene will be very cool, or even cooler: sniper vs sniper scene! I think one of the coolest sniping scene I’ve ever scene is the one from Full Metal Jacket. And the sniper was only using an AK-47!
- Hondo (Samuel L. Jackson) didnt do anything cool in the movie
- Most of the SWAT trainings stress on teamwork, like the last training that they did was cool. But in the real thing, imo, they didnt show good teamwork.
- Contains ending scene:Hidden Text:
I think the last scene will be the coller if its similiar with the first scene, the bad guy holds a hostage and the good guy has to make a decision to shoot or not. Instead, it’s just some regular hollywood movie fist fight. I also thought LL Cool J was gonna fight with that French guy, but no, nothing happened, he got arrested without any fights.
My final question about the movie: do LA gangsters really carry bazookas around?
I hope one day there will be a good CS-like movie. With all the terrorists vs counter-terrorists, good teamwork, cool sniping scenes, etc.
Spaceman-Spiff August 15th, 2003
My theory on this afternoon's power blackout in eastern US & CA:
I think it is the internet rebels who shuts down the power plant. They must've used the nmap program to scan a vulnerable SSH server in the power plant, exploited it and shut down the power plant. So they can go inside a highly-secured building in order to meet some Architech dude. I believe they are known as the children of zion hacker group.
Btw, have I mentioned that they wear black with shades too? 
Spaceman-Spiff August 13th, 2003
A build of MozillaFirebird 0.6.1 optimzed for Pentium 3 and above has been released. Just installed it a few hours ago. It is really faster than 0.6.1 and it comes with an installer too. I love it already .
The blaster worm has been spreading quite fast these few days. If you're using Windows 2000/XP/2003 and haven't installed the patch for the RPC security bug. It's IMPORTANT to read this!!
I have a marketing exam tonight. Not my fav subject, but has to be done .
Spaceman-Spiff August 8th, 2003
Some random tech news:
An Interesting Global msg on mirc-x today: -Global- We would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone to make sure your computer is fully patched and behind a firewall. Nearly all versions of Windows are currently exploitable due to a recent bug, and the only way to protect yourself currently is to use a firewall. Please see www.zonealarm.com or www.tinysoftware.com for some software based firewall solutions. Thank you.
ZA is my fav firewall (maybe because i’ve never tried other firewall programs 
) and and i’ve had no complains using it. If you wanna test your pc, go here and click on ‘common ports’ or ‘all service port’.
Cool stuff: Wakthrough fog screen.
A long article on PHP5, could be interesting, I haven’t start reading it yet…
The new version of Mozilla Calendar finally works fine in my computer. They’ve fixed the GUI bug in the previous version. Its good to be able to schedule stuff and have a reminder, specially when you’re in front of your computer a lot.
<off topic>
Btw, livermouse posted that Kenshin will be released in Graphic Novel format, not in magazine. Hikago will be the one replacing SandLand in ShonenJump.
S.W.A.T. movie was released today. The newspaper says its good, maybe I’ll see it this weekend. Anyone seen it yet and wanna give comments? No spoilers pls…
</off topic>
