January 2010

It is already the end of January 2010, and this blog of mine has not been given the treatment that it used to get.

I do not know how many times have I repeatedly write about how my busy life as a working person had sucked and steal my time from doing this one activity that I used to like.

I know very well the reputation of the Japanese working culture, and I have no intention to bitch about it.

I chose this.

But as I got used to the serious working life, I started to realize that my life is full of emptiness.

I started to feel bored with my unexciting life; coming back late from work to an empty room that have no life except electronics and furniture; material possessions that used to be my motivation when I was still a student.

It took me all this time to realize that my goals in life have changed, and currently I do not have one detailed purpose.

I am just in for the ride, and this is so not me.

Damn, I cannot see myself breaking from this tendency to write gloomy.

I wish I could write more about fun stuff, and weird Japan.

So unfortunate that work fatigue has cast a black shadow on everything.

What is YOUR motivation?

The Fuss About The Word Allah In Malaysia

When I first heard about this issue concerning Herald the Malaysian Catholic Weekly, demanding the rights to keep using the word ‘ALLAH’ to refer to their godly deity in their weekly publications, I knew that this will not end very well.

It will be problematic. Very problematic.

Non-Malaysians who have learned a thing or two about the basic history of Ancient Egyptian Empire-inspired religions like the Abrahamic ones would probably say:

“Why would this be a problem? The word ‘Allah’ has been used to refer to a godly deity among the Arabic language speaking people from various religious backgrounds, even before any of the Abrahamic religions ever started! Arab traders travel all around the world, and besides goods, they also trade language, expanding the vocabulary of many other languages where they made business.”

Unfortunately, things are not so simple; it will never be.

In Malaysia, religious blindness has always been a convenient tool for politicians.

The truth is that although Malay Muslims could be considered as quite religious and passionate towards their faith, it is a great irony that the same people are mostly NOT very well informed with their own religion.

The basic principles, its history and how it all started.

Opportunistic politicians know this very well.

People are not interested in meticulous facts about history, about who is right or wrong.

People just want to ‘appear’ to look like they are fighting for something great.

People want to vent anger and stress, pat themselves on the back, feeling good with the illusion that they're doing something good for their god.

Yes, this is problematic.

Because people don't know what they really want.

And people are too lazy to think for themselves.

They need opportunistic politicians to think for them.

When there are no trustworthy politicians in Malaysia…

Yes, this is problematic.

Clearly we need to revise our education policy.

2009 winter holiday gaming plan

It is the winter holiday season again, and what better way to spend this cold season locked up in front of the big screen playing video games?

This year I got games covered throughout all the systems.

Modern Warfare 2 for the PC.

Grand Theft Auto Episodes From Liberty City for the XBOX 360.

God Of War Collection for the Playstation 3.

Nothing for Nintendo Wii because I don’t own one as I never considered it as a gaming console. Although stories of guys who successfully lured women into their caves with the help of the Wii are quite enticing, I know I’m not that desperate.

Modern Warfare 2’s single campaign was pretty fun; with that ‘epic feel’ going on from start to finish. Lots of explosives and lots of shooting people on their faces with modern weaponry that could fill 10 Bruckheimer movies. The multiplayer was even better, but they got nothing compared to Battlefield Bad Company 2. Cannot wait for that game to come out!

GTA Episodes From Liberty City contained the 2 previously released downloadable additional content (the lost and damned + ballad of gay tony) and both episodes were nothing short of spectacular, although having different ‘feel’ and atmosphere to it. It was also cheap, and probably the best deal in gaming for 2009 for how much content it offers yen to yen.

God Of War Collection ports God Of War I & II into HD, and put it into one bluray disk at a low price; how can that be bad? Although an already old game, a good game is a good game, and the HD fix made it compatible with today’s high definition TVs. Cannot wait for God Of War 3!

With all the time I got, I am not very sure whether I could finish all 3 games during this holiday. Hell, I got tons of more games to finish… and I haven’t even opened the plastic wrappings for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 yet!

And I still haven’t finished playing the first one yet!

Plus, both are really, really old games already!

Time, is something that I don’t have.

What's YOUR gaming plan this holiday season?

James Cameron’s Avatar 3D Review

I know I’ve written my last movie review for 2009, but I just got back from watching Avatar, and it is impossible to wait for 2010 to do this.

First of all, Avatar is the latest effort from the guy that made Aliens and Terminator; that fact alone is more than enough to raise the hype-bar to an impossible level. He also directed Titanic, so this guy really knows how to make big budgeted blockbuster movies.

Having hype is great for any entertainment media, but it also comes with the risk of disappointing the fans if that hype is not fulfilled; and Avatar has a hype-rate that is almost impossible to achieve.

Although it was more expensive (1800yen plus 300yen for 3D glasses), I choose to watch the 3D version of the movie. I am not really a big fan of 3D movies but I heard the 3D technique in the movie is new and different; so why not?

Ok enough about me, here goes the review.

The movie progresses in a very methodical way, and the story is nothing new actually, taking ideas and themes from Braveheart and Last Samurai. Nevertheless, James Cameron has successfully created a fantasy world so finely detailed and rich with content that it took about 2/3 of this 170 minutes running movie to introduce the world and build connection between the characters and viewers; one very important element if you want your viewers to care about the climax and ending.

Although it was quite long, this anti-war and eco themed movie was nothing short of amazing, taking little time for the viewers to be absorbed into this fantasy world make-believe. To summarize the story, a wheel-chair bound soldier gets a second fighting chance when he gets to take control of a Navi body, the natives of Planet Pandora where humans are trying to conquer its rich resources. The motive of the initiative is to infiltrate the natives from the inside and learn their way for the benefit of the humans. The new found strength and agility that the Navi body gives was a refreshing freedom, but he was left with a difficult decision to choose which side to take, as he falls in love with the people of Pandora and its culture… and this also means that he HAD to fuck the native tribe leader’s only daughter. So as I said, the story was nothing new, but it was really good nonetheless and was never boring because the pacing, atmosphere, acting, music and level of detail put into every element was nothing short but impressive.

Talk about acting, I have never seen a movie that translates human emotion so flawlessly through computer generated images, and for the first time I forgot that I was watching a CGI movie. The technology used to make this movie in term of motion capture is truly years ahead of anything out there.

The 3D feature in the movie was something new too. Other 3D movies out there tend to bring images ‘out’ from the screen but Avatar uses a totally different technique that emphasize on depth and distance between object in focus and out; achieving an effect of ‘being in the movie’ instead of ‘being brought to’. I really don’t know how to explain it.

I don’t want this to be any longer, so here is Avatar in a nut shell: One extremely well made albeit methodically, movie that uses new technology that could change how big-budgeted movie are made from now on. The story was not revolutionary, but the combination of drama, detailed fantasy, stunning images and action scenes could definitely stimulate the senses and leave the viewer wanting more, made this movie one jewel that is hard to miss. The 3D feature adds to the experience tremendously, and I highly recommend the 3D version. Even without 3D, this is simply the best movie of 2009, and its mainstream broad appeal won’t scare even the most strict movie mania.

So people, go watch Avatar. NOW! You will not regret it. Get ready to experience something new from the movie industry. Next I'm going to watch the 2D version to see how different the experience could be. I'm also buying the blu-ray the first thing it's out.

Yes, I have become an Avatar fanboy. Good job Mr Cameron!

Win 7 Network Hassle

I remember praising Microsoft for their effort on Windows 7.

Well, I take that back.

Because they made resolving network problems such a pain in the anus hole of chipanzeez godamnit I don't know how to spell the closest species to humans correctly!

A couple of weeks ago, I suddenly cannot access the internet.

It says (by it, I mean the network and sharing center) that I got only Local Area Network but no internet connection.

So I did the obvious, and checked my ipconfiguration through cmd>ipconfig/all

Everything was OK and pinging the default DNS server gave a positive response.

Then I tried pinging google but to avail. 100% failure.

I understand that there are thousands and thousands of reasons for this, but after changing my LAN Adapter (yes, that’s a hardware change) and upgrading it to the latest driver (I have another computer with Win XP running flawlessly) with no improvement what so ever, I cannot avoid from being angry; anger management can't fix my network problem can it now?

I tried releasing ip through cmd>ipconfig/release and then force it to generate a new one through cmd>ipconfing/renew but nothing changes too.

I even tried the cmd>netsh winsock reset catalog command but still, nothing happens.

I am pissed like a muslim from a third world country in a stupid cartoon demonstration.

I must admit that I am very new user to vista and win 7, and I got me some heavy fast reading through the internet to get a hold of the idea of the new ip protocol, the Ipv6.

I tried turning off Ipv6 and just use Ipv4, and still nothing improves.

Even my last effort, the hidden card; to make a OS reinstall did not improve the problem. I am scratching my balls and pulling my hair for this.

At this point, I realized that I have used my entire network troubleshooting knowledge, so I decided to bring the computer to the professionals.

I put the darned heavy beast in the car, and drove to the nearest PC DIY store.

The computer guy boots up my computer, put the Ethernet/LAN cable in, and magically, the damn thing got internet connection!

It's like David Blaine is hiding there somewhere with a hidden camera to capture my reaction to his latest magic trick. Damn you David Blaine! You're so fucking cool.

I am so pissed that I really want to slap that computer dude’s face with a HUGE wood dick that they used in Penis Festivals in Japan, even though he did nothing wrong. I just hated his unnatural smirk that he has on his face, a common facial feature in geeks.

So my hardware is 100% OK, and this means that the real culprit is my ISP, or maybe it is just a compatibility problem between my LAN Adapter and NTT's Hikari Fiber line.

So I contacted my apartment’s administrator to get hold of NTT so that I could ask their DNS server because I want to manually set up my network for my new but troublesome core i7 Win 7 setup; but they said that NTT cannot give that information because of security reasons.

Does NTT really know their own shit?

How the fuck could I invade their security by just knowing their DNS server address?

I can’t believe this shit is happening to me during this cold winter holiday; I could have been bothered with something else!

I need to talk to the NTT guy personally, and I’m going to smack his ass on the phone; because the act of smacking ass through physical means is illegal in Japan, and I am a good citizen.

And this does not mean that Win 7 is not a partner in crime. The new HOMEGROUP network setting is such a hassle when one wants to link to another computer using OS other than Win 7.

Bad, bad boy Microsoft.

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