Archives For November 2008

The ‘hemma’ project

November 15, 2008 — Leave a comment

My friend YoungDoo (Ydoo for short xD) has a really interesting project going on. I will let her explain herself

whenever my friends go on trips to their homes/ home towns/ home countries, i send my camera, Rollei XF 35, with them and have them to save their memories of home/ people to share with me.

none of the photos of ‘hemma’ project will be taken by me, however, i think the concept really works and i can’t wait to see more of my friends’ homes/ home towns/ home countries through their eyes.

^^ ~ Here is the slideshow!

A 2001 film of a girl named Sachiko (Aoi Miyazaki) who befriends a street kid, and the things happening around her due to things she’s done and witnessed in her short past.

Genre: Drama
Starring: Aoi Miyazaki, Seiichi Tanabe, Tetsu Sawaki, Ryo Amamiya, Koji Ishikawa, Yu Aoi
Duration: 1:30hr

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MixTape – Mix-a-Beatle

November 12, 2008 — Leave a comment

Been so long since last mixtape, eh? How about some Beattlemania~ Enjoy!

  1. Kaiser Chiefs – Getting Better
  2. The Smithereens – I Want To Hold Your Hand
  3. Fiona Apple – Across the Universe
  4. Glenn Case – Eleanor Rigby
  5. Elliott Smith – Blackbird
  6. BOX FIVE – Run For Your Life
  7. The Libertines – Eight Days A Week
  8. Fred – Let It Be
  9. Rogue Wave – All You Need Is Love
  10. Jim Tyrrell – Yesterday

my handwriting sucks

November 12, 2008 — 4 Comments

I have never liked my handwriting, in the history of my handwriting… NEVER EVER liked it. I don’t usually write much anymore… other than the usual post-it (and post-it writing is always crappier than usual) or some notes. I seriously can’t tell when I last wrote something on paper… maybe Julyssa’s letter last last week? But then, she can probably tell you how crappy it is… and my Kanji… no comments. xD

So tonight, I decided to use the glass calligraphy pen (aka. my glass pluma) that Diana gave to me from her trip. ^^ – Gosh, you wouldn’t believe how hard I tried. xD

Practicing Crappy Calligraphy

In case you can’t understand my handwriting – “Hi, Diana! I wrote this with the pen you gave me. My hand-writing sucks BIG time. Sorry~ Amy Wong”

With Independent Spirit Award Nominations just around the corner (Dec. 2) – Awards season pretty much begins~

I haven’t seen many (if any) films to fuzz about… yet. Studios say they trust their films, and all are hoping for December releases. This wasn’t the case last year, when Julie Christie (April) and Marion Cotillard (June) released in the US their films and swept awards.

Waltz with Bashir - PosterPretty much everyone is hoping and fuzzing about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I am too – because let’s face it, it looks cool… it has a good cast, and a great director. From what I could read, this will be the movie to watch… it will be IT.

Nothing else can’t be said, on my behalf…

The animation category will undeniably go to WALL-E, which was good. However, wouldn’t it be interesting if there were other animated films? One of them could be the Israeli-German-French animated production of Waltz with Bashir. I have heard interesting things about it… but could it surprise Oscar watchers? Unlikely. But it will be a good change… just like I thought Les Tiplettes de Belleville should have won, or Persepolis last year~~

Waltz with Bashir, just from the trailer, looks visually interesting. Definitely different to other animated films in subject, theme, and possibly even different animation approach. I also think this poster on the right looks way more intriguing than the other colored poster. Nonetheless, from the same trailer you could see some funkyness with the animation, as if they had used Flash on some sequences (like some of those MTV crappy animated shorts)… and some others looked just splendid.

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上野樹里 Ueno Juri

上野樹里 Ueno Juri by KHN ;)

Just testing it out to finally see that my Flickr can post directly to my blog. Damn this Firefox incompatibility! Try IE as much as you hate it… it did work.
A beautiful test post with a photo by Kentaro Shibuya from A Piacere, Juri Ueno’s Photobook. Enjoy.

It took me 3 months (almost 4) to finish reading The Sally Lockhart Mysteries series – shameful I tell you! Four books in that time, shameful!

Thank you, Diana, for letting me borrow these. ^^

So Sally… from the books by Pullman that I’ve read, I noticed that I like his style. Though the more you read him, the more you can predict… guess it’s always like that. The first book on this series, The Ruby in the Smoke, was quite interesting in story and themes. I highly doubt they would’ve let me read this book in school, which deals with the opium trade, dealing, and usage… stuff like murders, extorsion… LOL’ not your very typical ‘children’ literature.

The next book, The Shadow in the North, went sort of the same path with murders and extorsion, but focused a lot more on the financing aspect. However the book wasn’t as good, even though you get to care a little bit more about the characters, and grow up with them. There is also a eh… bedroom scene? xD It reminded me of those PG-13 fanfiction stories. It was intimate on its own, awkward… but you know, it does its purpose for the next book~~~ xD

Book 3, The Tiger in the Well, has some very interestingly written chapters… or maybe just paragraphs. However, by this point, I was beginning to think it was so predictable. I clearly remember I began reading the first chapter, and said out loud “I bet this and that is the one behind!” and then BAM! “I knew it!“. Despite the no-surprise, I enjoyed reading this even more than TSitN… Perhaps it was because it was more complex to me, and I enjoyed Sally discovering how as herself she was a lady, but as someone else she was just a woman… and yes, everybody seemed to be lusting over her. LOL’

Finally Book4, The Tin Princess, which is not really a Sally Lockhart mystery… she’s barely in it. This one was okay, I have nothing against Adelaide, or Becky… and I do like Jim. There are some very well written parts in this one two, but I often found myself skimming. The ending… the ending? I didn’t care enough to… care?

You know how His Dark Materials has sort of a bittersweet ending… more bitter than sweet? This one has a bittersweet ending sweeter than bitter~ LOL’

Okay, to make up for my badness (I am trying to make time here) I made another simple wallpaper. This time with a photo of Dandelion. Currently made it my wallpaper last night, and since the other became so popular… I decided to share this one too.

Aoi Yu - Dandelion

This is just to make up for the delay, while I find the time to re-watch Gaichu (Harmful Insect), which is the next film I will be adding to the “Yu Aoi Film Discussion” (which right now contain 3 films in watched-order). Since then, I decided to begin doing it on a more chronological order… except for the ones I haven’t watched, or am not so interested in watching, but probably will in the end~ who knows!

Enjoy  the wallpaper which is 1680×1050, but I’ve also got a fullscreen one sized 1280×1024, in case you want one…

Digital Content Question~

November 5, 2008 — 3 Comments

I do… I do like digital downloads, but can’t figured out WHY an eBook is as expensive as buying a book. Also, can’t understand why digital films are as expensive as buying a cheap DVD… and don’t get me started on music~~

Also… region restriction? Sucky. Digital should be for all.

Does anybody know good online stores for digital content available internationally?

*EDIT*
For eBooks, I seemed to have found ebooks.com, who answered my email wondering if international users have access to the books there. They told me that some books have region restrictions, but that most are available to anyone.

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AVG 8 Free, Win XP issues?

November 5, 2008 — 2 Comments

I have been googling about it, but haven’t found much. Will blog more later, coz I’m off to see Volver. Has anyone found issues with the AVG update of last monday or yesterday? Been having issues… just managed to uninstall AVG, and will write more here when I get my computer back online…

I am having a similar problem to the one I had when I did the last Silverlight Windows update.


Ok… back to my computer. According to the comments below,  AVG now works fine.

Anyway, there’s also the description of the problem… maybe someone can explain why it could happen, or how to fix.

The problem I had was with the Win XP interface. Whenever I tried clicking on the Start Menu, it would open for a blink and disappear. No right-click menu could be open… so basically the taskbar was not usable. On the desktop, any icon clicked to try to open a program would open the Property Window instead.

If by chance I managed to open Firefox to try and google, I couldn’t type anything at all. And if by chance I would type any letter (eg. “S”) that would open a menu item(eg. “History”), the menu would drop down. If I managed to open a website and try to click on a link, it would work as a right-click-save-link-as.

The only thing I could do was either restart or turn off the computer.

The first time this happened was on a Windows XP update of Silverlight, which was undone by a system restore. The second time is this with AVG. Does anyone know why? O_o