Merry Christmas

I want to wish everybody a Merry Christmas. I know I am a bit late but that's what happens when you are not at home.

Work: We Purchased Another Company

I have to say I was quite surprised when the bosses (Big Cheeses) told us yesterday that we had bought a company in Singapore. This is great news, we are finally moving up. With this acquisition, we are one step closer of going on the market. The name of the company is MVI, they make machines that inspect IC Packaging.

Work: We've Moved!

So the big day has arrived, we've finally moved to our new place. It's been one heck of crazy day. Let's just say the place is not totally finish... I just got access to the internet. As with all company relocation, there are always some people that get screwed. It's sad but a fact of life. I for one did not get screwed, but I did not win the jackpot either. But it's ok, I'm better situated then before.

Movie: Back To The Future 4

Well it looks like Michael J. Fox wants to return to the final film in the series. That is great news, I've always like him since the time of Family Ties.

But the thing is, he doesn't want to play his young self in this movie. Micheal being 44 years old wants to play the role of the Doc. Hopefully as his replacement.



[ Links ]
Source - The Movie Blog

Video: Drifting A Semi

Man this is crazy.

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Video

Funny: Tokyo Breakfast

I had found this video a while back. It's real crazy, uses the n**** word often.
This video can offend some of you, be advised.

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Video

Cool: Goonies Reunited Picture

Funny: Star Wars Leet

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Video

Funny: And You Tought That American Idol Was Funny

Here's a clip of Korean Idol.

I dare you not to laugh!

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Video

Funny: Shingo (Power Ranger Parody)

Actually not bad.

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Video

Funny: Yoda Rap

Check out this video of Yoda doing his thing!

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Video

Cool: Write In Elvish

Found this great site that teaches you how to write your name in Elvish.

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Write Elvish

Funny: How Men Screw Up Romance

Funny video.

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Video

Funny: German Forklift Safety Video

Man, all safety videos should be like this!

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Video

Rant: Snow!

And you wonder why we stay up north, really, why? It's not like we get benefits or anything like that. What do get, is to wake up to a blanket of snow, roads that are not plowed, people who are stuck, slowing the traffic and a parking full of badly parked cars.

I love winter!

Gaming: Dungeons & Dragons Online Stress Test Preview

A friend told me that there was a stress test of DDO this week so I tried it out.



First thing, my comments are directly related to the build that I was testing, there are bugs, glitches and other odd behaviors. I don't know much about the end product so I will mostly stay with the stress test version.

Graphics
As you can see from the image on top, they are real pretty! The world is very vibrant, the dungeons are dark and convey a sense of dead and unknown. This is not World Of Warcraft where the graphics are all nice and vibrant, dungeons included. There was even rain last night. I don't really know if it always rain where I was. I was really impressed with the graphics, I was not expecting something this polished for a stress test. Yes there are bugs, the shadow looks weird and can detach from you when climbing a ladder. But still, it's what I would expect from a D&D world.

Environment
So it's kind of hard to know how big the world is since I just started yesterday night. The way it works is that everything is in an instance, meaning, you are in a little bubble and nobody can penetrate it. The exception is in town. There are still instances but you can change from one to the other to look for your friends or people to adventure with. I do not know the limit of people in an instance before another is created but there are still a lot of people in one instance. One thing to note is that every building, dungeon, open space are in an instance. Meaning loading screens, lots of it. It is the #1 thing that I hate of this game. You enter a dungeon, loading screen, when finish, another loading screen to get out, 1 min later you enter a tavern to regenerate, another loading screen. They are also quite long, but I'm sure it will be faster once the game is finished and shipped. One thing I really like, description when entering a certain part of a dungeon, it's a really nice addition.



Gameplay
It's action oriented, you must move while battling baddies since it's that only way to dodge an attack. If you don't, you get hit. It's a nice change from WoW. The game is very oriented by quests. They are the only source of experience to advance. Killing mobs does not give you any xp, only finishing quests objectives. The way I understand it, most quest cannot be done alone, you must adventure with a group. I for one, sometimes like to be able to finish quests on my own, so it's another thing that bothers me about this game. When entering a dungeon with friends, you will be the only ones in it, no other player can enter the same instance as yours. This is nice and not; it's nice to be bothered by other players or be ninja looted. On the other end of the coin, in WoW, it's always fun to be helped or help somebody on his quest. Many times, I've formed a group with people I'd encounter during a quest.



Conclusion
The game looks amazing, it's still has bugs (normal since still in beta), some really nice touches (descriptions) but the loading screen drove me nuts last night. It will be interesting to see how this game develops. I can't judge it at this stage of it's development. It's nice but hard to compare to WoW since they have so much difference.

[ Links ]
Dungeons & Dragons Online
Stress Test (Fileplanet)

Anime: Studio Ghibli Next Movie, Tale From Earthsea

Yes that's right, they will be making a movie based on Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea. The movie will be out by July of next year in Japan.

[ Links ]
Source - ICv2

Movie: The Da Vinci Code Trailer

The trailer is out and it looks good. I can't wait to see it!

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Trailer

Weird: The 10 Most Puzzling Ancient Artifacts

It's amazing to think that there are so many unexplained things in our world. Reading these 10 artifacts really makes you wonder if we are alone in this world.

[ Links ]
Article - About.com

News: Car Buried in 1957 to Be Unearthed in '07

This is interesting, a car was buried in 1957 as a sort of time capsule. It will be unearthed in 2007 as part of the Oklahoma centennial festivities.

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Article - Yahoo

Space: Mystery Object Orbits Earth

Something odd is circling our planet. It's small, perhaps only 60-ft long, and rotates once every minute or so. Amateur astronomer Bill Yeung first spotted the 16th magnitude speck of light on Sept. 3rd in the constellation Pisces. He named it J002E3.

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Source - NASA

News: Film Piracy In Canada

Well, it looks like we canadians aren't that nice:

A recent report is suggesting that almost almost 50% of illegal movies recorded in movie theaters from camcorders and then made into DVDs are recorded in Montreal.

Now I'm from Montreal and I've never seen this happening. They must be recording at the midnight representation.

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Source - The Movie Blog

Images: Cool And Funny Images

Cool: Pencil Carving

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Pencil Carving

How To: Make Your Screen See Thru

Ever wanted to make the illusion that your computer screen was transparent and you could see what was beyond it? Well here is how you do it.

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How To

Magic: Japanese Magician

So I was surfing a bit and found this clip on a magician who make a quarter go thru a glass table. I continue my search and find the same magician who does a card trick that I had seen Criss Angel do; you mark a card and throw the pact at a window, the marked card sticking to the OTHER side of the window. Well this magician does the same except the other side of the window is water. It's quite amazing to see.

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Quarter trick
Card trick
disappearing act
Criss Angel

Gaming: EVE Online

EVE Online is a game that I had seen previews way back in 2003 but lost track of. This weekend I found a 14 day license to try it out. Wow, what an amazing game.



So what is EVE? Well it's a complex space RPG game. I say complex because there is so much to do; mining, killing pirates, creating game objects, running courier missions, being the boss of a big corporation. The sky's the limit, or I should say, the universe is the limit. EVE's world is huge! There are so many systems to visit, with spacestations, deadspace complexes, planets, asteroids fields and people.



You play as a character in this universe but you only see your persona as a static image. It's not like World of Warcraft where you play as your character, on screen. In EVE you play as your ship. This is fine as most of the time you are in space, fragging pirates, or mining for some cash. The world is very player influenced. Most of the items in the game are made by players.

The game resembles, at it's core, like and old BBS game called Trade Wars. The object of the game, god only knows, to have fun and make a lot of money. The skill system is quite ingenious, skills are trained while playing, but there is no experience points from killing pirates, or from doing anything in the game. Your skills are learned in real time. Let's say you decide to bring you Frigate skill up from level 2 to 3, then it would take let's say 9 hours. During those 9 hours, you can play, be logged off, it does not matter. 9 hours later your skill will have been upgraded. This is actually a really nice way doing it since not everybody wants to go kill pirates for experience. There is so many ways of making money in this game that it would be impossible to have experience points given for doing stuff in the game. There are also no classes, so you can be a good pilot and a good miner if you wish so. You buy skills like you would buy equipment. It's a bit like The Matrix, skills are learned by downloading them into your brain.



As you can see from the screenshots, this game is just beautiful. Each system has a very nice background. The effects just fit correctly; when warping, depending on the distance you warping too, you might not go fast enough to see the warping tunnel. It's little details like that make this game so immersive.

As a World of Warcraft player, I have to say that I thought that WoW was complicated (my first online game experience) but when I started EVE, I knew then that WoW is very easy. EVE is huge! I recommend it to anybody to try.

[ Links ]
EVE Online
EVE 14 day trial (From Penny-Arcade)

Weird: Live-Paintball Online

That's right, play paintball thru the Internet. Shoot girls in bikini, I kid you not! You can officially do pretty much anything on the Internet.

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Live-Paintball
Video

Movie: Battle Angel Moving Ahead

Reports are saying that James Cameron's Battle Angle has now begun casting for the movie.

[ Links ]
Source - ICv2

Gaming: Deflexion

All kids (read adults) like to play with lasers. Well somebody had a great idea of adding lasers to a board game and voilà! Deflexion is born. The game resembles a bit to chess, as the object of the game is to tag with the laser the Pharoah game piece.



It's a good idea and I would think that this game can come out to be quite interesting to play with friends.



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Deflexion

Image: Europe At Night

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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Gadget: HAL-5

This is the new improvement to the older version HAL-3. It's very slick, and it glows! :)



So this is an exo-skeleton robot that you wear to help you in your mobility.

HAL has the hybrid control systems which consist of the autonomous controller such as posture control and the comfortable power assist controller based on biological feedback and predictive feedforward.

[ Links ]
Engadget

Funny: Squirrels Kill Dog In Russian Park

Squirrels have bitten to death a stray dog which was barking at them in a Russian park, local media report.

Passers-by were reportedly too late to stop the attack by the black squirrels in a village in the far east, which reportedly lasted about a minute.

They are said to have scampered off at the sight of humans, some carrying pieces of flesh.

Should you be scared, I would. They took pieces of flesh!

A pine cone shortage may have led the squirrels to seek other food sources, although scientists are sceptical.

That means, stock up on pine cones my friends. They are out there, watching us...

[ Links ]
BBC
Proof that squirrels are mean bastards

Gadget: First E-Paper Watch

And it has an interesting design...



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Akihabara News

Religion: Teenage Buddha

This is Ram Bahadur Bamjan, he's been meditating for the past 6 months without water! He his supposed to carry on for another 6 years until enlightenment. Normally, a human can only survive a couple of days without water, but 6 months...

[ Links ]
BBC