Posted By admin on March 7, 2010
A critic described The Hurt Locker as almost perfect. Hmm, I guess so. I suppose it helps that it apparently is based on a true story. I can’t really think of anything that irked me, except maybe when the snipers didn’t reposition after their positions were known, and the enemy decided to stop firing for some reason.
A good time waster. I could probably re-watch it in about a year.
Posted By admin on January 30, 2010
Here’s an interesting article on the BBC website.
“Obama’s administration made a tremendous mistake by not immediately branding the economic collapse that we had just had as the Republicans’ Depression, caused by the Bush administration’s ideology of unregulated greed. The result is that now people blame him.”
The problem is, the left doesn’t play like that (whether you think it’s true or not), even if the average voter would eat that right up. The left prides itself as intelligent and intellectual (not to say I haven’t met some intelligent and intellectual conservatives), and above all that. They want to reach across the aisle and hold the conservatives’ hands. Sounds like an ivory tower. As Mao said, politics is war. And despite having a majority in the senate that could not be filibustered, the Democrats couldn’t pass the big stuff. Sure, there’ll be excuses on why it didn’t happen (some very good, actually), but the end result is failure. If the situation was reversed I doubt the conservatives would give a damn about working with Democrats. They somehow seem to be able to move in lockstep towards their greater good.
On a somewhat related note, I think many liberals assumed Fox News, known for generalizations like the quote above, would kind of just go away, or remain a niche product, and yet it’s actually become quite popular, despite how much the liberals bitch about it on the internet. Arrogance or naivete?
Posted By Ron on January 27, 2010
Actually, that’s not possible, because British television is so much more liberal than US network television (as in, allowing swearing and nudity). So it’s more like, what Heroes should have been if it were on cable. Anyway, if you are like me, you thought Heroes sucked ass, and progressively sucked more ass as time went on. And if you were like me, you had never heard of Misfits. But now you have, and I recommend you find it somehow. Don’t look up the wiki because wiki gives away everything.
If you want to be legit, someone told me ep 1 is on netflix. However, I think you really need to watch the first two to get a complete feel for the show (ep 2 is pretty awesome, btw). At least for me, I don’t really like shows where a moron can be a main character (but only one of them is a total tool, and at least he captures the true essence of a tool). Hence, I never liked Dennis the Menace when I was a kid. In fact, I’d always hope he’d get caught.
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ve been looking for a show to watch while Lost is off, but I just couldn’t find one that I really wanted to stick with. Mad Men got a bit irrelevant (I’ll expound in the future), Dexter started to seem like a huge time investment (and murder-of-the-weekish), and Deadwood started boring the hell out of me. My friend mentioned Misfits, and the short 6 ep commitment seemed very tempting. It’s about juvenile delinquents sentenced to community service who somehow acquire minor supernatural powers. It sounds weird, but the writing is actually very good. The lack of crazy super powers makes the story more manageable, and more about the characters themselves rather than some kind of world-shattering predicament. And the delinquents feel authentic. You get to see (delinquent) teens be teens. Over here in the States, with all the decency rules, American-equivalent characters just feel so…fake. The closest I can think of was the much more serious and f’d up movie Kids. Other than that, you just get the typical brooding, back-talking punk. It’s so ubiquitous that I don’t think we Americans notice until we watch something like Misfits. Then it’s, “Aha, he reminds me of so and so when I was in grade school.” I’m sure most of us knew that one guy who was the perverted jackass of the class.
Anyway, check it out if you can. The main issue I had was trying to understand British slang. So far I’ve gathered that slag means slut. Other than that, no idea. Thankfully, there’s this: http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/. Misfits is listed as a dramedy, but I don’t really think it’s too comedic. There’s definitely very funny moments, though, but mainly because of what the main jackass character says. I guess it could be a dramedy, in the sense that Boston Legal is also a dramedy. But it’s not like Friends or anything like that.
Posted By admin on January 26, 2010
This is random, but I thought it was interesting. Plus, I like artists and designers, and I need to get my mind off healthcare stuff. So my coworker told me he designed the look of Ken Block’s new Ford, as seen here:
The skull logo seen at 0:42 is designed by his friend, Huck. Ken Block had seen a similar logo at Huck’s site, which can be seen here: http://huckgee.com/.
I guess he makes a pretty nice living as an artist/designer. They were just going to license the skull logo to Block, but QuickSilver wanted to buy the logo out completely (and they did, for a nice sum).
Huck also designs for kidrobot.com, which sells zany stuff, such as a Soviet walrus plush. The artists primarily have urban roots, according to my coworker.
I don’t know how this led to Nigo, and Bathing Ape, but it did. Nigo is some popular designer from Japan, and Bathing Ape is his brand of trendy clothing that people like Kanye West wear. All for ridiculous prices of course. Nigo has teamed up with two others to form the Billionaire Boy’s Club/Ice Cream, where you can buy $80 shirts, and $250 hoodies. Insane.
What was the point of this? I don’t know anymore, sorry. Well I stripped out all the business parts because I didn’t know how much of that I could talk about, but it looks like if you have talent, there’s some fun ways to make some money!
Posted By admin on January 22, 2010
This guy is the shiznit. After diagnosing himself with appendicitis, being the only surgeon on the expedition, he operates on himself. Pictures included. It takes a real man to poke around your own innards, without gloves. Ha, that could be misinterpreted lol.
“I did not sleep at all last night. It hurts like the devil! A snowstorm whipping through my soul, wailing like a hundred jackals. Still no obvious symptoms that perforation is imminent, but an oppressive feeling of foreboding hangs over me . . . This is it . . . I have to think through the only possible way out: to operate on myself . . . It’s almost impossible . . . but I can’t just fold my arms and give up.
“18.30. I’ve never felt so awful in my entire life. The building is shaking like a small toy in the storm. The guys have found out. They keep coming by to calm me down. And I’m upset with myself—I’ve spoiled everyone’s holiday. Tomorrow is May Day. And now everyone’s running around, preparing the autoclave. We have to sterilise the bedding, because we’re going to operate.
“20.30. I’m getting worse. I’ve told the guys. Now they’ll start taking everything we don’t need out of the room.”
Posted By admin on January 21, 2010
And it just confirms what we already know: Asian and white women prefer white men, and middle eastern women are hot. OKCupid has access to some very interesting data sets and I’m glad they’re actually doing something with it. Thanks to Eric for the heads up.
- Black women write back the most. Whether it’s due to talkativeness, loneliness, or a sense of plain decency, black women are by far the most likely to respond to a first contact attempt. In many cases, their response rate is one and a half times the average, and, overall, black women reply about a quarter more often that other women.
- White men get more responses. Whatever it is, white males just get more replies from almost every group. We were careful to preselect our data pool so that physical attractiveness (as measured by our site picture-rating utility) was roughly even across all the race/gender slices. For guys, we did likewise with height.
- White women prefer white men to the exclusion of everyone else—and Asian and Hispanic women prefer them even more exclusively. These three types of women only respond well to white men. More significantly, these groups’ reply rates to non-whites is terrible. Asian women write back non-white males at 21.9%, Hispanic women at 22.9%, and white women at 23.0%. It’s here where things get interesting, for white women in particular. If you look at the match-by-race table before this one, the “should-look-like” one, you see that white women have an above-average compatibility with almost every group. Yet they only reply well to guys who look like them. There’s more data on this towards the end of the post.
If you were a little thrown off by the Zodiac control like I was, they’re just showing that a person’s sign has no bearing on how compatible people are (based on their compatibility algorithm). You can read more about how they calculate compatibility and the effects of religion here.
Posted By Ron on January 20, 2010
I love Yelp, but I also love credibility and honesty. Apparently, Yelp’s been accused of massaging scores if businesses hand over some advertising dough. There was always that minor suspicion but this article details it fully: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/eastbay/yelp-extortion-allegations-stack-up/Content?oid=1176984
The story, which was picked up by national news outlets including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, detailed the accounts of local business owners who said that sales reps at the popular user-generated review site offered to move negative reviews of their businesses if they advertised.
Anyway, today, my friend told me about how one of his (very legitimate) reviews got removed:
A:
oh hey apparently yelp is like, fuckin 1984 shit
maybe that’s not the right analogy
they went all china censor on me
back in august 07 i went to this bed and breakfast in monterey bay, and it was dirty and filthy and had clogged plumbing and no toilet paper and BEBBUGS IN ALL THE BEDS
woke up in the middle of the night like omfg wtf and just left
so i wrote this harsh ass review of it on yelp, and posted pics of bedbugsRon Hsu
they deleted the review?A
and a few weeks ago
i got an email
from “Frank @ yelp hq” saying they were removing my pics from that business because they “fall outside our local business photo guidelines”
a couple of days ago, i got a personal message on yelp from the owner of the business offering a free night’s stay at his business (which, since I went there, has apparently undergone new ownership and a total renovation) so that i might have a better experience and change my rating
i wrote him back saying thanks, if i ever go to monterey again maybe i’ll take you up on your offer
and for now i’ll add a line to the beginning of my old review saying “note: i haven’t been back, but apparently there is new ownership and the place has been renovated”
and today, i got a message from “Casper @ Yelp HQ” telling me that one of my reviews was deleted “because it lacks a first-hand experience of the business”
and i was like what the fuuuuuck how was my review not a first hand experience of hte business
it was ANYTHING but secondhand
smells like BS to me
i suspect you can pay off yelp or bitch to them or do something shady to delete bad reviews
which, of course, defeats the purpose of yelp in the first placehttp://www.yelp.com/biz/the-inn-at-del-monte-beach-monterey-2
check it
only 5 reviews
used to be 6
mine got killed
they have to be a yelp sponsor of some sort to be able to list that “grand opening! rates start at 79!” ad rectangle right?
the only review from the last two years is from someone with 2 reviews, who just started yelping in january 2010
fiiiiishy fiiiiishy
yeah yelp sold out or something, cus that is bullshiiiiiit
i sent a message to that hazel q chick, yelp oc community organizer or whatever, no response
dunno if she has any power or say in the first place
but yeah, bullllshiiiit
“your review was deleted because it lacks a first-hand experience of the business,” LOLRon Hsu
actually i had just read an article about something like your experience a few days ago
The only legitimate rationale I can think of is the new ownership angle, and thus, perhaps, my friend’s review no longer counts since he hasn’t been to the “new and improved” version.
Posted By admin on January 18, 2010
This is why people bag on Microsoft.
SQL Server Management Studio 2005 forgets password
As does the 2008 version. I ran into this issue, and was (not) surprised to find the bug dating back to version 2005 and still not be fixed. Hey, at least you can delete some files to fix it though.
On another note, it’s not often you see a woman write something like the following (what can I say, there’s not that many women in my field):
It doesn’t take too long to set up a tool to monitor a file or directory – you can download FileMon from:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/Filemon.mspx
The Connect to Server dialog can pop up in different situations where there is no security context for the connection to use. If you use registered servers (and save the password there) when you view the registered servers, select a server in the Registered Servers task pane and then click New Query on the toolbar or Right Click, Connect, Object Explorer or New Query which will result in connecting under the security context you used when registering the server. If a server isn’t selected, there is no security context available so the Connect to Server dialog pops up. I haven’t heard of passwords being “lost” or “forgotten” using the registered servers task pane and saving registration information there.
Good info.
Posted By Ron on January 14, 2010
Sorry, can’t help but nerd out. Fox released the original script.
http://io9.com/5446538/everything-that-was-cut-from-avatar-sex-drugs-and-suicide
It’s interesting to see the differences from that and the final theatrical version. That would explain some of the scenes in the trailer. And yeah, probably not a good idea to look at it if you haven’t seen the movie yet.
Posted By Ron on January 12, 2010
Another X-Men? Huh? That’s for kids! Well, this one’s written by Whedon, who is typically a pretty sharp writer. That whole mutant cure arc that X-men 3 drove into the ground? They originally stole it from Whedon.
Anyway, I’ve read the original comic version, but you can find a very faithful video version of it at Hulu. I say video instead of animated, because it’s not animated really. It’s some weird “moving comic” format. I didn’t mind it too much, because the great voice acting makes up for it, but some people may. Besides, it’s kind of different in a fresh way. Either way, at only 10 minutes a piece, Whedon’s writing skillz become apparent pretty quickly.
So, not willing to wait for the next release, I read all the comics. And…I’d rate the whole thing a 3/5. I’d recommend it to any X-men or Whedon fan, but probably not to anyone else outside those spheres. The writing was sharp in typical Whedon fashion, but the story felt really contrived at times. Maybe he was just emulating the stereotype of mainstream American comics, but I don’t really buy that. Unless someone was pushing and prodding him to do things a certain way, he’s the storyteller, and he determines how things unfold (unless FOX is involved). The rise of Danger (and the blight on Xavier) and her ultimately becoming another one of Whedon’s snarky, witty, Buffy-esque characters just felt extremely…lame.
Then the giant bullet flying through space, that was laughable. I actually chuckled a bit when I saw that pane. That truly would only have worked in the comic book medium. Transcribe that into film, and I think audiences would be laughing. P.S. I don’t want to get into a nerdy planet killer debate, but I suspect there would be far more efficient, less silly-looking, weaponry.
But yeah, that was my only major gripe: the story. Okay, I lied. The writing’s fun and witty. Maybe almost monotonously fun and witty. I kind of got the sense that a lot of his characters were just similar derivations of the same mold. Witty bitches for all the chicks, for example. The Danger character really made that apparent. Oh and then this odd gem from Emma Frost, “He has a disease if you recall: an inexplicably adverse reaction to being shot at.” Wow. YOU GOT SERVED. That was almost cool if it weren’t so long. Who the hell says that? It reminded me of the tactical martyrdom line from Avatar (which actually is not bad in comparison, wow). Awwwwkward. Well, a good effort from Whedon, but I think Neil Gaiman is still better at characterization, at least for this comic.
