A Pirate's Journal

Nikon D90 Sample Movies

Spaceman-Spiff — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 03:34:10 +0000

I’ve been loving this camera since it was announced and previewed: [1] [2] [3]. Besides the upgrades from the D80, the most attractive feature is, of course, the ability to record 720p video at 24 fps.

I’ve been watching some professional and user-made videos today, and a few of them caught my eyes (click on each link for the HD version):

D90 goes partying	Pizza with the nikon d-90

D90 color-corrected and exposure fixed	D90 Japanese sample

Am I gonna buy it? Probably not, at least not this year (my Nikon D40 is only 6 months old). It’s still the first generation video D-SLR. It will just get better and better with upcoming versions. Auto-focus, larger resolutions, longer recording time, stereo sound, etc, etc.

More videos to watch here: http://vimeo.com/D90/

Finally Seen the Dark Knight

Spaceman-Spiff — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:43:10 +0000

Wow.

I have to see it again…

Joker says to Batman, “You just couldn’t let me go could you? This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. You truly are incorruptible aren’t you? You won’t kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness, and I won’t kill you, because you’re just too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever.”

So sad that’s not going to be the case. Different Jokers may come, but we won’t see the same one again.

Furigana Injector

Spaceman-Spiff — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 07:00:37 +0000

A great add-on for Japanese learners. It adds furigana to kanji characters in webpages with a click of a button. There’s also a preference to set your level of kanji and to ignore furigana for certain kanji characters (that you have memorized).

	->
Before		After

Download Links:

Add-on page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6178
Project page: http://code.google.com/p/furigana-injector/ (Latest version)
XHTML Ruby Support: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1935 (Recommended for better display)

Mozilla.org has the older version of the add-on. The project page has the latest version that works for FF 3.

New DVDs

Spaceman-Spiff — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 06:10:13 +0000

I vowed to stop buying DVDs since they will soon be obsolete. I haven’t gone HD yet, but I didn’t see much point collecting DVDs if I will just complain about their image quality in the future and ended up buying their Blu-ray versions. Before this week, probably the last DVD I bought was Sin City collector’s edition over a year ago.

Last weekend in HMV, I couldn’t resist getting Memento’s special edition DVD. The packaging was so nice. Also got Seven for $10 each. Both were special edition DVDs.

Today, I was at Wal-mart, and surprisingly found some good movies in their $5 DVD piles. Usually only real old movies or crappy movies, like Daredevil, are in those piles. But I found some cheap special/collector’s edition DVDs: bought Hellboy for $9, Catch Me If You Can for $5, and Planet of the Apes for $5. The last one isn’t a fav, but what the heck, it’s a $5 collector’s edition. I probably will enjoy watching the extra features more than the movie itself.

Well, at least my DVD player does upscaling. So it won’t be so bad when I go HD.

Oh, and the roommate bought the Daredevil DVD…

Foxkeh!!!

Spaceman-Spiff — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:52:34 +0000

I had Foxkeh Theme installed on my Firefox since months ago. I never used it till today. The menubar is too much for me, but the running Foxkeh animation is really cute.

2007 Movies

Spaceman-Spiff — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 22:03:19 +0000

My annual (and sometimes only blog post =P).

I feel I’ve seen a lot less movies in the theatres in 2007 compared to 2005 and 2006. Part of the reason was cause my movie buddy moved out overseas. Another reason is cause I worked full time the whole year, and sometimes in the weekends I just feel like staying home and lazying around (watching TV shows or DVDs). I’ve seen a lot more TV shows and Dorama in 2007 than ever before…

Now, let’s round up 2007 movies that I’ve seen.

Fav (Great) Movies

Bridge to Terabithia
The Bourne Ultimatum
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Good Movies

Zodiac
Planet Terror (funniest “horror” movie I’ve ever seen)
Waitress
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Ocean’s Thirteen (better than 12)
Sicko
Ratatouille (I still don’t buy the idea of rats cooking good food, but nevertheless it has a nice story)
Stardust (good cast and interesting side characters, not so much with the 2 main characters)
Juno (very funny dialogs)

So-so Movies

Meet the Robinsons
Blades of Glory
No Reservations
The Simpsons Movie
30 Days of Night
Bee Movie

Bad Movies

Ghost Rider
The Last Mimzy
Pathfinder
Shooter
Next
Spider-Man 3
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (better than the first, but still sucks)
Evan Almighty (they’re trying too hard to make Evan looks like Bruce, but it’s so out of character compared to the original)
Live Free or Die Hard (crappy plot)
Transformers (all eye-candy, no plot)
Balls of Fury (if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen all the funny parts)

I’m still missing a lot of good movies in 2007. Current to watch list for 2007 movies: Breach, 300, Death Proof, Sunshine, Lust Caution, and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.