Full Moon high up in the sky

Mahajamba, Madagaskar

Near Jakarta, Indonesia

Icy Aral Sea

And in case you’re wondering: yes, these pics were taken from the space.

I love you too, Google <3

So, it’s still not that far from the New Year’s Day, hence the title, and I have two resolutions:

1. To blog more

Recently I feel that I actually enjoy setting up Wordpress and doing its Themes (not designing, more like the coding aspect) more than the actual blogging.  In 2009 I only made 5 blog posts here, and I’ve also recently just setup a new photoblog ( still working on the theme). My goal for 2010 is to blog at least once a month here, and to post at least one photo per week (average) on my photoblog. I still have a lot of backlogged photos that haven’t been post processed.

So little time, so much to do…

2. To watch the IMDB Top 250

I thought about this after watching In Bruges last weekend. I checked IMDB after watching, which I do quite often when I like a movie, to check the director’s other works. I noticed that the movie was in the Top 250 list. Another one I just recently rewatched, Good Will Hunting, is also on the list.

I realize that it’s not the perfect list: a lot of good movies are not in the list if they’re not popular enough and the list is always changing. So why IMDB’s top 250? Well, I gotta start somewhere, and IMDB’s list is the most accessible one to me.

Methodologies

I thought of 3 ways in doing this:

1. The easy way: watch all movies in the list made in the 80’s and above (easier to find) that I have not watched
2. The normal way: watch all movies in the list that I have not watched
3. The hard way: watch all movies in the list

I think I will go with the normal way, unless if some of the old movies are really hard to find.

I’m going to start from bottom up. I saved the current list in a spreadsheet. When I actually finish the list someday, I will make a diff between the new and old list to get the new movies.

I currently have already watched 74 movies in the list within the last 8 years. I excluded those movies I watched when I was younger, as I now I have pretty different perspective in movies and life.

I usually don’t have much time in the weekdays, and I only watch 2-3 movies max in the weekends. So, if I have no trouble finding the movies, and I can watch 2 movies a week in average, I should be able to finish this list in 88 weeks (around fall 2012). Maybe I’ll move on to this list after.

I’ll try to update in a few months on my progress.

Again: so little time, so much to do…

Polish newspaper claims ‘Pedobear’ is 2010 Vancouver Olympic mascot

A Polish newspaper mistakenly identified “Pedobear“, a notorious internet meme, as one of the mascots of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

The Gazeta Olsztynska published an image showing the bear alongside genuine Olympic mascots Quatchi, Sumi, Miga and Mukmuk to illustrate a feature about the Games.

It appears that the newspaper lifted the picture from Google Images, unaware that it had been created as a prank by Michael Barrick, a Canadian artist and graphic designer

Source: telegraph.co.uk

The History

It all started from this guy’s blog: Michael R. Barrick – New Mascot Added to the Vancouver 2010 Team

Michael photoshopped Pedobear into the Vancouver Mascot team drawing. It’s a pretty good and believeable Photoshop work:

Some of the blog’s visitors also participated and made more photoshopped images and pictures:

I for one, welcome Pedobear as our 4th mascot.

The functionality is similar with Wordpress’ Blog This shortcut/button, but I find this more useful, as I share stuff on Google Reader a lot more often than I blog .

After putting this shortcut/button on your browser’s bookmark toolbar, you can use it on any web page you want to share. For example, I found this good deal on NCIX sale page. To share this on my Google Reader, all I need is to highlight the part I want to share, then click the shortcut/button.

Good deal!

The Google Reader box pops up on the right corner of your browser page. You can fill in notes there and check/uncheck the option to share the item. After you click Post Item, you can see it in your Google Reader under Your Stuff. There, you can add more comments, email, star, or do anything to it like any other Google Reader item.

The new item on Google Reader

What it looks like when you email it

I also been using this feature lately to email interesting articles I found to friends. Most news websites do provide emailing feature on their articles, but often they come with a captcha field and missing Google’s useful auto-complete contact list.

I love the bokeh. Sometimes at f/1.8 focusing is hard, object an inch further/closer will be blurry. Got lots of practising to do. I can feel that this will soon be my new fav lens.