Archive for December, 2004
Clusty.com. Let’s start by saying that the name kinda sucks. No wait - it just sucks. Haha! I admit, I’m pretty impressed by this new search engine and how it clusters info (hence, its oddly-sounding name) either by topics, URLs or sources. All of it is powered by the “Vivisimo clustering algorithm,” which seems to me to work simply by smartly organizing keywords that are in websites. It’s pretty cool, or scary depending on how much you want your privacy, when you search for something like your name and some of the “topic clusters” will be links to your friends’ blogs, websites you contribute to, whatever. When I did a search for my name, one of my topics was “Whoa,” and that’s always fun to see. 
While some things definitely need work on - like the image search - the orgazination of links and stuff is pretty well done for being in beta. For me though, I succumb to A9.com.
Continue reading ‘Your friendly, neighborhood search engine’
Haha.. Hokay, it’s not THAT bad to be stuck in Palm Springs - but you gotta admit, the bad weather and countless flight delays ain”t helping. 
I’m actually glad to be at home for a little bit longer, though at the same time, I’m starting to miss East Coast life. Who’d believe I’d say that?! Though this is going to be my 9th year living back east, hmm - a lot of people still consider me a Cali boy - is that starting to fade!?! 
Anyways, after leaving the airport to go back to my parents’ house, I start thinking, “Hmm.. I should blog something, and maybe, MAYBE draw some comics,” haha. So just want to let people know that I still think highly of this site (though there’s dire need of SOMETHING new for it, hehe) and I’m glad so many of you have patience for it and still read it (um.. I hope, keke!). I do have more strips for Cup-O-Robots coming in (months in the works, so it’s gotta be good right? Um.. shhhyeaaah), I’ll be doing more film reviews for this site and Gearcritech.com, more desktop images, PLUS I’m going to be crazy ambitious and start another comic project - though it’s bit of a secret for now. 
Okie dokie, hope y’all had a great holiday so far, and if you’re around NYC/NJ during New Year’s, gimme a shout! Cheers.
I would just like to say we should all take some time and pray for those whose lives have been lost from the South Asia earthquake and tsunamis. God bless.
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou opened at Lincoln Square last Friday in Manhattan, and my friend Saki and I decided to give it a whirl - being pretty big Wes Anderson fans and all, haha. So from the get-go I’ll probably talk about this film from a very fan POV, so bear with me.
The Life Aquatic is a film that you have to let yourself be sucked into. You have to prepare yourself to let go and just absorb the world that the movie presents to you. In general, Wes Anderson’s films have to be watched in this way in order to really get the full enjoyment from his cinematic style. While not a perfect film, it had a lot enjoyment packed into it, from some good performances (a few were even a surprise to me) to some really cool set pieces of Zissou’s ship the Belafonte. Like I’ve said before, the director’s films are almost always a love or hate affair. What is it about Anderson’s films that do this?
Play-Asia.com got their hands on a PSP from SCE’s aution of 500 pre-release units (the auction’s procedes went to charity for those affected by the Mid-Niigata earthquake). In this article, Play-Asia give a a quick breakdown of the system and its hardware, and what they received in the Value Pack. They mention things like first powering on and customizing the system (similar to the DS and is pretty cool I must say), and setting the time and language (Japanese or English, good sign for importers, if you can get find one on release day ;)). They also give a ton of videos and photos displaying the interface and hardware. Though the quality of videos are iffy (taken with a DV cam I’m sure) there’s a lot of them and gives a nice impression on what it’s like to operate the thing - and the 16:9 screen looks pretty hot, just wished Play-Asia had better quality video, hehe.
I can see why Sony is pushing this in competition with like the iPod in being this generation’s Walkman. While I agree with a lot of people in that you don’t need hardcore graphics and technology for portable gaming - the original Gameboy survived nearly a decade before it went “Color” and even that upgrade wasn’t that big, plus the DS totally exceded my expectations on 3D portable graphics already - Sony’s willing to take that risk, as in losing a lot of money, to give people near-PS2 graphics and multimedia goodness.