My Bro's Hard Work ^_^

Photobucket Album

One of the albums I found in my long-forgotten Photobucket account!

Me <3 Hello Panda

Aaaahhh... Hello Panda. The lovely yummy snack from Meiji. I'm an avid fan of this line of shortbread cookies with a smooth, decadent chocolate cream filling (also comes in other flavors, like sweet milk and strawberry cream!). Good thing I know I'm not the ONLY fan!



Now, It costs SG$5 for a big box of 10 handy snack packs back home, so guess what? It costs around US$5 for the same big box here! Hee... and lookie here... written on the box: "Produced in Singapore"! Hahahah... :)

Not only that, acoording to the official (Australian) Meiji web site, this snack is as old as I am! :)

Back from the dead...

After an almost 5+ month hiatus, I decided to revisit my blog... ahhh... good 'ol place where I lament and ponder about things past and present (I try to worry too much abt the future, life is busy as it is already now! :) ...

Anyway, let's have a brief re-cap of what went on in the last couple of months since my last post (in August 2007!)...

- My parents stopped in for a visit, a hop from my dad's business trip / partial holiday in San Francisco. Always great to have mom and dad around! Plus, we found time to celebrate my dad's birthday!

- Our good friends Jinji & Siewling had a new arrival in their family! Baby Edward arrived on Earth with a strong voice and a wicked sense of timing. That's Jinji's boy alright! :)

- My wife managed to score some great tickets to Las Vegas and a hotel room in the Riviera on the weekend just prior to X'mas Eve... We had a great two full days in Vegas, catching the sights like the Bellagio fountains and the Siegfried & Roy's Tiger/Dolphin Habitat at the Mirage. Of course, we flew back from Vegas on the Eve, in time to join my brother, sis-in-law, niece and fellow Singaporeans to count down to Christmas! :D

- My bro hosted our Singaporean-Ohioans' New Year 2008 party at his place... lots of folks joined us to count down along with the rest of the revelers at Times Square on TV. We also had a few rounds of Choh Dai Di (a.k.a. Taiwanese/Chinese "Big 2" poker)... it was great playing it with everyone - brought back fond memories of high school and Chinese New Year! :)

- At work, as the deadline looms closer, there's been quite a bit of research and groundwork needed to be done by me (along with my colleagues) to ensure that our IT operations are in compliance with the University's new computing security standards. We've been working on different ways to get our machines secure by encrypting hard disks, removing unnecessary local accounts, reducing the number of users with admin access, and occasionally locking down machines in research labs and offices! Phew!

- I've been looking into switching from Cable Internet to DSL, ever since AT&T decided to offer a "Naked" DSL service (part of a FCC ruling) at a somewhat reasonable price - $29 per month for 3Mbps/768Kbps. Without the promotional offer, having to fork out the full cost of $45/mth for RoadRunner broadband (6Mbps/768Kbps) each month makes me really think about my Internet use and bandwidth requirements. AT&T doesn't make it easy to get that offer tho! You'll need to know the right number to call... :P

Hmmm... Ohio seems to be going thru a rather mild winter period in the start of 2008, with pockets of very nice weather (once it got close to Indian Summer temps!) in the midst of the frosty winter chill. :D

Hopefully I will be able to post more stuff when I've got time... till then, happy new year 2008! ^_^

1 2 3 4 5, 6 7 8 9 10, 11, 12.. Twelve!!!

Loved loved loved this sequence as I grew up, whenever I'm watching Sesame Street!

Hope it brought back some memories! :)

Once again, VG Cats strikes a chord...

Ouch... the ever-so-subtle VG Cats certainly summarized their feelings about what Michael Bay did to the Transformers aptly.

I second their opinions! x(

Autobots, Transform, and Roll Out!

Indeed, Optimus Prime's voice just rings so true in my head... ahem... I guess you can already tell I've watched the new Transformers live-action movie. Yeah, can't keep me far away from something like that! :P

Anyway, I've got quite a bit of expectations to fulfill when it comes to my favorite childhood toys/animation, so here are my rants/raves of it (minor spoilers warning!):

• The Transformers were animated well... major kudos to the guys who worked on it... only issue is that sometimes I can't figure out heads from shoulders (nor can my wife, who has only a vague recollection of the G1 TFs) - maybe I was a little overwhelmed, coz I was watching it from a iMAX sized screen!
  
• So maybe this was more tuned in for non-fans, y'know, folks who never watched the TF G1 (Generation One - the first seasons of the TF cartoons) series, or THE original '86 TF Movie, don't know Optimus from Rodimus, Megatron from Galvatron... but what was wrong with the original idea of the good 'ol Cybertronian Matrix of Leadership, Bay? I mean, AllSpark? Is that the best they could do? When I read about him talking abt it, it wasn't too bad... but seeing it for myself, well, I kinda felt let down that a beautiful thing like the Matrix of Leadership is replaced by... a black cube. Sigh.
  
• TOO MUCH CLOSE-UPS in combat scenes!!! Gawd dammit if I am gonna watch a movie about gigantic robots duking it out I wanna watch some of the action from a spectator's view, not from the CHARACTERS' view... I mean a few pan-ins to the characters is fine, but stop swinging your camera around the battles as if you are holding a damn hand-held camcorder!
  
• Megan Fox is hawt!!! :D
  
• Ok, so we all agree that Megan Fox looks smokin' hot, but I could do without the corny jokes and romantic blah-blah inserted. Stick to the original formula of having the humans as "compatriots" to the Transformers than being the "Chosen One" to defend humanity. I'm here from the 'bots, not your replacement for Sparkplug/Spike/Daniel (the -very different- WitWicky family featured in the original G1 cartoons)
  
• Sometimes one simply cannot sense a 3-storey-tall robot - no, make that FOUR 3-storey-tall robots - stomping around the backyard... :P
  
• Wished there was a kick-ass money-shot sequence... like Optimus' run thru the Decepticons during the "Assault of Autobot City" on Earth.
  

[END RANT/RAVE]

So... what are you waiting for, huh? Stop worrying about what a little kiddy-w00t-mad-fan like me have to say abt the movie and GO WATCH IT for yourself! NOWWWW!!!

btw, here's a nice CGI visualization of what Optimus might have looked if they stuck to the original G1 Toy's Cab-over design... looking at where his hands are supposed to magically slide out, I guess it would still involve some redesigning for Optimus to look like our favorite toy, and yet keep the reality aspect of it intact. Nonetheless, this design + video is the amazing work of an independent animator (and most-likely TF fan), so give him kudos by checking out his official site after watching the video!

More TF Humor

Just a compliation of humorous TF-related images:

btw, the Elephant is one of the versions of "Optimus Prime" released by Takara/Hasbro

Ba Weep Granna Wip Ninni Bong?

Transformers, and the Nintendo DS. ^_^

Comic strip from the geniuses at VG Cats!

PWNAGE!!!

Definition of "Pwnage":

Pronunciation Key
v. n. pwn, pwnd, :pwnage, :pwnd

1. From the Root word Own, and Ownage, the process of defeating an opponent or opponents at various Multiplayer Online Games, including 1st person shooters and Rts game simulators.

2. To Eliminate (a character) from a game whereby the character is lost and terminated including extreme frustration, whereas slamming the mouse and keyboard helps justify the action of destroying ones own property.

3. To describe, pride, joy and accomplishment.

4. To inflict pain and frustration to opposite opponents, where the character : (semi-colon) followed by the character P, creates the word :pwnage. :pwnage in most typographical form creates a "smily face" infront of the word, ownage. Whereby creating :pwnage, which stands for "I'm laughing at your Bitc* A$$, because I just Owned your A$$".

i.e. supreme dominance of anyone in anything


Visual definition:

Kudos to Momo for making such a superb piece of animation