Let's start off with an inspirational image...
This is a photo of Peter McCann at the Sydney Royal Easter Show performing a crazier version of the Superman. Hands-free. I understand the physics of it all but unless he's the same weight as the bike, he can't do this trick for very long. Mad props to this guy though for doing something few would attempt.
So the movie I was talking about very early this morning was "Better Luck Tomorrow". Apparently Wai-Lin and Joe saw it already behind our backs (!!!) but Wai-Lin was apparently grossed out. She kept on talking about how it was pretty sick, so much violence and all. Just made me want to see the movie more. So here's what apparently happened at Sundance. A critic (non-Asian) spoke up about how this movie seemed to be "amoral to Asian Americans". One of the cast (cast is all-Asian) said that he should "F*ck off..." Then people got all worked up until Ebert, who loves the movie, rose up and calmed everyone down. It was like Moses had spoken and raised his hand to calm the waters. "Asian-American characters have the right to be whoever the hell they want to be," Ebert said. "They do not have to represent their people." The thing is, something similar to this really happened in LA. As a kid, I remember the stories of these young Asian kids who got caught for murder, theft, and all sorts of weird crap. I can't seem to be able to Google the exact story, pretty sure it happened in the 80s. I myself have done crap that I'm not proud of. Even now, in LA, I'm sure kids down there run their own software piracy rings and whatnot. People who base their entire view of a race on movies though should be smacked on the head. If I'm to believe movies, I'd say that all Irish people are looking for a fight, all Japanese people carry around cameras at all times, and all Canadians are comedians, actors, or singers. That last one is actually true. lol. Maybe this movie will help Americans as a whole see Asians as less of a "Model Minority". Asians have the same social, economic, political issues as any other minority but they tend to get pushed aside because a whole generation above us is too afraid to speak out and buck the trend. These are the same Asians that thought that the Abercrombie shirt fiasco was amusing.
America's oldest person dies recently here in the Bay Area. 113!!! Born BEFORE the turn of the century. That means that she saw both World Wars. Saw the invention of tons of things. Geez...
This story has me in the whilies. I live on this little peninsula that sticks out into the Bay Area. This means soft soil. Liquefaction effects are not to be taken lightly. Although were I'm living isn't on the Hayward fault. It's close enough that it could be a problem. For maps and graphs, look here, thanks to some research by my mom.
Slow day today. Not too much happening in the world. Seems like it has all slowed down. Man, so many people around me are talking about that Asian movie with the cars and the fast women. There's some stories circulating around it about how its racist and what not. Apparently at Sundance, the critics got all worked up about it. More later. Gotta sleep.
Parents were on a 9-hr car trip down from Redding all the way back to Orange County. Seems they saw snow in Oregon.
Internet connection at the apartment really is the pits. I'm upgrading the connection sometime this weekend cause I really can't stand it anymore, it's so bad. I'm also going to have to make sure that the cable won't cut out like it does anymore. Geez.
People are selling Airforce Delta on ebay for like $60-$100 dollars. Crazy. I think it's mostly cause it's so rare and it's the only flight sim for the Xbox right now before Crimson Skies comes out (which is Xbox LIVE!). Even then, we won't have a realistic flight sim till maybe Airforce Delta 2. Or Microsoft can re-release it as a Platinum Hit even though it was pulled off the shelves right after 9/11 and probably didn't sell as many copies as expected. My search for Steel Battalion in the Bay Area is still ongoing.
Anger Management was pretty funny. Jack Nicholson was perfect for this role. I couldn't imagine anyone else playing it. The role was probably written with him in mind. See source.
Today is another great day in the Bay Area. Clear skies and minimal clouds, it's great!
This dad has really gone overboard with the Mechwarrior thing. Just look!
Disney is getting set to release Laputa and Kiki on DVD along with the upcoming release of Spirited Away on DVD. I think Best Buy is having a deal where if you buy Laputa, Kiki, and Spirited Away, you'll get Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke) for free. Nuts to those who already have Mononoke Hime. This is all out on Apr 15, 2003 which means that some people already have the 4 US releases already. I have almost all of Hayao's works on DVD but those releases probably won't compare to the extras, sound quality, found on the US releases.
Simpson's Season 3 is supposed to come out in August (even though that date has been pushed back at least 3 times). King of the Hill and Alias are all coming out on DVD.
My old guidance counselor, Prof. Ron Fearing, has been working on a flying micro-robot since 1998. Recently, they got a half-working fly wing to go. It's attached to a horizontal boom so it still requires guidance but hey, it has enough thrust to move that boom along. It has polyester wings and stainless steel struts.
Stanley Hall was recently taken down to build something new, just like how Hearst Mining was 4 years ago when I first came to Berkeley.
Hearst Mining is now a whole new building and now they've moved on to Stanley. Here are pictures detailing the fall of Stanley Hall.
Adam just sent me this link to a story about an insider trader who says that he's from the future. Ties in well with the Terminator 3 trailer below. Says that he'll tell us where Osama is and a cure for AIDS if we'll let him go back to his ship. Here's the link.
Another good movie to watch
out for is LXG (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). It's got Sean Connery in it!!! Here's the cast as depicted by the movie poster...A banner across the top
describes each member of The League: "A Rogue" (The Invisible Man), "A Scientist" (Captain Nemo), "A Spy" (Tom Sawyer), "A Hunter"
(Allan Quatermain), "A Vampire" (Mina Harker), "A Beast" (Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde), and "An Immortal" (Dorian Gray). I'm debating
whether or not to buy the book because I may be a bit disappointed in the movie if I read the book beforehand (Jurassic Park and the
loss of the guts-spilling-onto-lap scene).
Hmm, gotta love EBGames for giving gamers more info than companies like
Koei are willing to give out. Just look at these links.
Buy Dynasty Warriors 4 for the Xbox
Buy
Otogi for the Xbox
Dynasty Warriors 4 for the XBOX. Aiight! More "Huh Huh Hah!!!" than you
can ever handle. MWAHAHAHAHA.
Lotta people seem to be buying PSO. The boards are just crawling with people looking to get together to fight some baddies and to trade stuff. I don't know. I may just get addicted to that game yet again. Man...I just don't know. I guess as long as the "Black Screen of Death" doesn't appear anymore, PSO can't be a bad thing to get.
Incredibly Cool UK Terminator 3 Trailer. Never released in US!!!
Sure seems like Kingdom Hearts II is in development from what I saw in the secret movie for Kingdom Hearts. At the end of the movie, it
has a uber-serious Mickey somersaulting and landing on his feet in a very Final Fantasy-ish style. Looks like he has a key in his hand
too. Nice. Movie seems to make the sequel to be darker than the original.
Today Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee or Godzilla: DAMM for Xbox is released.
IGN gave it a 8.5 which is pretty darn good for a Godzilla license. It's
4-player compatible so this might really be one to pick up.
Phantasy Star Online also is out today. Whooooo....people on the boards have been rushing out to get their grubby little hands on that gem. Wish I was too. I wonder about paying $9 a month to play PSO though.
Kingdom Hearts II is in the works? So it seems, although no official word just yet. A look at the final movie for Kingdom Hearts (after getting all the puppies and whatnot) seems to hint so. More info on that later.
After all these years, last night I went back to the old old Korean place on Telegraph that I used to go to. I don't know if the old woman there recognized me (I almost detected a slight snigger when I asked for Soon Doo Boo) but it really seemed as if nothing had changed. Should have asked for extra-spicy though. It's lost a lot of its kick compared to the other Hot Tofu Stew places I've been to since then. Wai-Lin got a Soon Doo Boo as well and Leah got this Ramen thing.
A couple days ago, I got my taxes amended by HR Block. Apparently they found a way for me to not pay $150 and instead pay only $6. My tax preparer Theresa always give my weird looks like "I can't believe I'm doing taxes for this guy." She can't believe that I'm doing taxes cause when I came in the first time, she thought I was like 15 or something. Annoying.
A couple deals in the East Bay that I found. You can get 10 hangers (nice sturdy regular hangers) at Longs in El Cerrito for $1. Also on San Pablo, south of Target, I found a place that has regular gas for $1.99. Yes that's right $1.99. The cheapest in Berkeley I've seen is $2.04, which can be found near the Claremont entrance to 880 and near the University/San Pablo area.
Upon futher investigation, I found that lychee candy or lychee cups or konyaku are no longer being sold in the US. I just always assumed that there were more to be had. Now, my jar of jellies must be like rare. I never should have shared them with others! hahaha. I did find some articles before some stupid parents fed them to small children and the FDA took them away from us. Here's an especially good article explaining the happiness and sense of heritage that lychee cups can bring. I have the Jelly Chews brand!!! Gotta feel sorry about the death of those kids though. Asphyxia is not a good way to go.
Square-Enix is putting out a North American Beta Test of FFXI. PC and PS2!!! Sign up and let me know if you get in! The only beta I've done is the Xbox Live! one. Didn't mention that in the application. Not sure if that was the smart thing to do or if Square-Enix would want Xbox gamers. hmm...
Sony released a new PS2 (SPCH-50000). It has better DVD support and a better remote. They also got rid of the IEEE 1394 port. Did they have any peripherals for it? Maybe it was supposed to be used to link PS2s together.
Couple days ago, Lih-Chern showed me Final Fantasy Origins. I wonder what Japanese gamers think about us Americans finally getting stuff we should have had years ago? I mean we're talking 80s nostalgia here! I also got to take a look at Zelda: Wind Waker on the Gamecube that Amado had borrowed. That game seems to be as fun as I thought it would be judging from the gameplay movies I've seen. Conducting the Wind pipe is one of the coolest things I've seen and the ways his eyes move around. Just awesome. I've added Zelda to my list of GCN must-haves (which are like Animal Crossing, Smash Brothers...if I had one, I'm sure my list would be bigger).
Sorrow...last night I found out that the different versions of Soul Calibur II have different special characters. Spawn is on the Xbox, Link is on the GCN (for obvious reasons), and Heihachi (from Tekken, I believe) for the PS2. Hopefully, Soul Calibur II will be Content Download enabled for the Xbox so maybe we can get those extra characters in the future.
Joy...Steel Battalion is getting a LIVE! update via a booster disc! That means you don't have to buy Steel Battalion 2 to get Steel Battalion 1 online! Now, I need to figure out a way to get Steel Battalion 1. Probably means more starvation and self-torture. 1 guy was selling it on Craigslist for $130 but he must have been enundated with replies. Still looking I guess.
Oh yeah, here's some great news for people holding off on getting a GCN but really really want one now that Wind Waker is out. Nintendo of America announced last week that beginning May 4 it would add Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker to its free game with purchase of a GameCube for $149.95 promotion. The offer will run through July, the company said. Additionally, beginning in May Nintendo said that it would release a promotional disc complete with samples of upcoming Nintendo GameCube titles, both playable and in movie form. Is that cool? Heck yah if you're getting the darn thing for just that game. Wonder what the replayability of Wind Waker is though. Wouldn't have to worry about that with Animal Crossing.
The internet at the apartment is slow due to the 128KB download speed (it's only $25 or $29 a month, don't remember). I'm probably going to call them up today and move back to the 1.5MB down for $39.99. It just isn't working out. Maybe if all I ever used the internet for was to do my email and look at html pages but uploading pics and whatnot took forever to do. Downloading the super-large Matrix trailer took lik 3 hrs.
In other news, childhood friends Chu and Cheng may be coming up to the Bay Area to establish their pet company, Cantaloupe Systems. Pretty neat if they decide to stay in the Bay Area for long-term. Bummer otherwise. In any case, I'll probably be seeing Chu tooling around in his new WRX this summer. Sweet. I'll ask before I post a pic of it.
Who likes the Lychee candies? I do. Yet here we go. That box that I still have from 4 years ago is still good. Me, Chris, and Adam had one while moving out. Luckily we didn't choke but here's a story of whats become of the candy and its problems with children and America. Who knew that they were actually banned? You could walk around Chinatown or 99 Ranch, and probably find some.
There's free wireless Internet spots all over the Bay Area. It's not like New York but still cool. Here's a link and here's another link. And another link. I wonder how many people have converted to the g standard. Wish I had the moolah for more adapters and routers.
Images
1. U.S. forces confiscated a golden German-made gun from Iraqi forces in Baghdad.
2. A U.S. Army soldier shows off a briefcase-concealed German-made MP-5 submachine gun in Baghdad.
3. A peshmerga fighter leaves City Hall as soldiers from the United States Army's 173rd Airborne out of Vicenza, Italy, stand guard after taking control of the building in Kirkuk, northern Iraq.
Got me a monitor riser on my desk to maximize space. Also the infamous Poang chair. Gotta love Ikea. Xbox is getting a keyboard even though the official word from Microsoft was that it would never get a keyboard. It's all thanks to PSO, or Phantasy Star Online to you Dreamcast-less people. Sega is releasing it cause voice had its share of problems. State of Emergency is actually pretty darn challenging and SSX Tricky is again, a must-buy for the Xbox.
The Human Genome Project just officially completed. Some dignataries are being handed CDs of the whole thing. The SARS virus has also been sequenced. Hopefully, we'll have a cure for it soon.
The Matrix: Reloaded final theatrical trailer came out this past weekend. Man, that trailer was so cool I must have watched it like 5 times already. Stepped through it frame by frame once cause the action moved so quickly. That last scene of Agent Smith the Virus swarming over Neo and then being repelled in mass was incredibly cool.
My parents and my kid sis came over during the weekend. Cal Day was Saturday by the way and boy did it rain. Probably one of the suckiest Cal Day's in memory. They're on their way to Oregon for whatever that state has to offer besides trees. They brought lots of home cooking. Yum yum. Hung around at the apartment a bit and then headed off to Todai. We were supposed to go to House of Prime Rib but the reservation was at 9:30 and they couldn't wait. Even with a sampling of my new pot roast, they couldn't stave off the hunger. Cathy showed my her new Gameboy Advance SP. Very cool.
Internet at the apartment on Friday in the morning! Also, my domain name jookwarrior.com is back up and running. That means that andy@jookwarrior.com works again as well. I'll be checking both the yahoo and the jookwarrior account anyways.
Pretty good thing I held up on getting DSL at the apartment. I much rather go through cable.
Working on the Scratchboard's message archive. It's now has quite a large set of records so I should be only displaying a certain set at a time. Then again, I'd rather be working on cookies and site colors.
Those in the know for the gaming industry probably know that Square and Enix joined hands recently. On their new website, they have several positions open and some comments on what each position does. Just look at some of the behind-the-scenes materials involved in FFX-2 and Kingdom Hearts!!!
GBA is getting a pseudo-port of Crazy Taxi. I remember a couple of months ago when I said that it was crazy that SSX
Tricky was getting ported to the GBA. This is the same deal. 3D and everything but I'm thinking that 2D would have been a better
design decision here. It's another example of trying to push the hardware envelope and gameplay losing as a result. I think people
would have been happier with a GTAII look and feel. The developers for Tony Hawk on the GBA had the right idea I think.
Video
Just looking at it, made me want to retch into
the nearest trashcan. What were they thinking?!!! This looks like about as fun as writing a 10-page essay on the applications of laundry
lint in the defense industry.
N.U.D.E is coming out in Japan next month. As well as Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters.
Image 1
Image 2
I hope N.U.D.E makes it to the US although the
name will doubtless throw off potential buyers. Or it may increase the number. Hmm...
Splinter Cell was compared on all the
platforms
(GCN,PS2,Xbox,PC) by IGN. Thankfully, the Xbox version came out on top. Down with PS2!!! Man, the things they had to do to get Splinter
Cell running on GCN and PS2 were laughable. The lighting as all off and they actually made the game easier for the GCN/PS2 fanboys.
hehehe
If I keep this up, there won't be a website to update. Don't have internet at the new apartment yet but I've finally completely moved out of the old apartment. This process tooks days to do. I just hope we get most of the deposit back. On top of it all, we had another bird on the balcony to deal with. It's got 2 eggs. Actually from the last I saw of it, 1 had already hatched into a chick. It's really nice waking up in the morning and seeing the bay/ocean while going to work. Really feels like I'm living in Laguna Beach or Newport Beach. That is, until I get to Berkeley. Then's its crapola from there on. Geez, where else do you see people riding bikes without any tires?!!! Only in Berkeley. Where else do you see a guy ride a bike and have another bike dragging alongside it? Only in Berkeley. Where else do you have guys wearing trenchcoats in the middle of summer to conceal bolt cutters so they can steal bikes? Only in Berkeley.
Right now, me and Adam are all moved into the room. I still have crap to sort out thats sitting in the living room. Put all of my Pixar posters up on the wall. The setup is a bit different. Pictures and whatnot maybe this weekend. How's this for news? Konami is releasing Dance Dance Revolution (better known as DDR) for the XBOX! It's going to be integrated with Xbox Live for downloadable content. No internet competitions though I believe but DANG!!!
