Another example of IT department taking the easy way out.
With so many examples of IT departments abandoning the “right” way to favor the easy route, I am not surprise to see so many non-Standards (W3C) web sites out there.
Movie: Stealth
| My Rating: |  |
This evening I went to see the movie “Stealth” at Broadway Theater, Olympian City Plaza.
What can I say, I should have known from the cast in this movie and the numerous bad press I heard from its theatrical release in the United States. Although, may be it is because of these low expectation going into the movie that I actually enjoyed it. Or it could be because I did not have to pay for it; it was on Broadway Theater, from completing a customer service survey this past Sunday.
So, if you like me and do not have to pay for this movie, and not have much of an expectation, you may too enjoy it.
| Rating Legend: | |
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Not to be missed |
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Wait for the DVD |
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Buy from iTunes Store |
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Rent it on iTunes |
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Waste your time elsewhere |
Movie: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
My Rating: 
This evening I went to see the movie “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” at Broadway Theater, Olympian City Plaza.
Johnny Depp has always taken on strange and unusual roles in the past. This time with the character of “Willy Wonka” it is definitely the most unusual even compared to “Edward” in “Edward Scissorhands“, but Depp made it very believable.
Depp played an eccentric chocolatier who owns the worlds best chocolate company. With a director like “Tim Burton” the story became a fairy tale similar to Burton’s “Edward Scissorhands“, “Big Fish” and “Beetle Juice“. You could see elements of all these movies in this one.
Along with Steven Spielberg and John Woo, Tim Burton is one of my three favorite directors. This time Burton had again brought us his traditional fairy tale that we have came to expect.
Rating Legend:
Not to be missed Wait for the DVD
Buy the VCD
Rent it if you can
Waste your time elsewhere
Realistic facial animation
At this year’s SIGGRAPH, SofImage; a subsidiary of Avid, demonstrated their software “Face Robot“, which allows animators to create facial expressions. More on that in The Register.
With technology like this, content creators will be empowered to create more and more realistic animations. Although, many in the movie industry believe that such technology may eventually lead to the demise of the actual actors.
I do not think so. Take the case of “The Polar Express”, staring Tom Hanks. Without the amazing acting of Tom Hanks, the animators at Warner Brothers Studios would not have been able to create such believable characters.
So contrary to what most actors think, I believe technology will open up the vast possibilities for actors to express themselves in ways they never before thought possible.
One must remember that technology is a tool. Like any other tool, without creative utilization, any technology will be no different than a single pencil sitting on a table; functional but useless without the writer. Although, how the technology was designed and perceived make a big difference on how useful the technology can be (ie. the Macintosh and Windows platforms. I will leave that to another blog entry).
read more | digg story
Disasters Come in Threes?
WARNING: The following post may offend some readers.
I am sure many of you have heard of the saying “bad things come in threes”.
Whether you believe this superstition or not, sometimes this saying does seem to apply. Although, the number “three” may not be exact.
For example, when disasters occur they seem to happen in groups over a relatively short period of time. For the case of natural disasters: earthquakes, floods, forest fires, etc., scientists may explain these as related geological or environmental changes of the Earth. I may accept these scientific explanations.
When you examining derailments, airplane crashes and other human or mechanical factor related disasters, these are much more difficult to explain.
Over the years I have paid attention to airplane crashes and they do appear to happen in groups and within a relatively short period.
Take the first half of this year, from June 2 until today (past 75 days), there were 12 crashes with 412 fatalities out of the 801 persons on board. The worst one happened a few hours ago when a Colombian, West Caribbean Airways chartered MD-82 crashed in Venezuela from Panama to Martinique.
I pray for those friends of mine in the airline industry. May God go with you all.
Geo Location
Today I decided to use my account on Flickr.Com to highlight some of the photos I had taken over the years, which are stored on Fotki.Com.
To make it more interesting, I have introduced the cool features from GeoBloggers.Com into my photos. If you click on the GeoBloggers link in the photo descriptions on my Flickr pages you will be able to see where I took the respective photo (with the link).
This is type of the Geo Meta data information had been embedded into my pages. Like my Home page and My Weblog.
With the help of GeoURL.Org, you can now see all the other webloggers and site owners located near me; physically. You can try this out anywhere on my site you see the GeoURL “chicklettes”
I will be adding more features like these to the rest of my site. So keep checking back.
Adding Geo Tags to Photos
Digg Leeching Exposed
With the proliferation of “Social Bookmarks Managers” like Furl, Del.icio.us and Digg.Com it is unfortunate that people like those described in this article (by TheTechnologist) would exploit (“leech”) these managers for their own monetary gains.
I think owners and operators of these “Social Bookmarks Managers” should do something to stop these leechers, while still allowing legitimate users like ourselves to blog and link to Digg stores.
PS: I urge readers of this article by TheTechnologist NOT to click on the “leechers'” links.
The 2000 Mark
Another month another milestone has been reached for my online store. Today I reached 2000 feedback points on eBay while still maintaining a 100% rating. According to most, maintaining a “100% rating” with such high number of feedbacks (2186) is a rare achivement on eBay.
As you will see from the actual comments of past customers, much of these feedbacks had been the result of the customer service delivered.
This further proofs that a customer focused business would be more successful than simply selling to make money. If I just focused on delivering the best quality products at the most competitive price, without also providing the excellent customer service I would not have the high percentage (30%) of return customers and referrals.
Movie: Robots
My Rating:
This afternoon I went to see the movie “Robots” at AMC, Festival Walk.
At first, after watching the trailer for this movie I was a bit skeptical whether this will be a good movie to watch, but then I found out that Robin Williams was the voice of one of the robots (“Fender”) I knew it will be good. I was not wrong.
Fortunately, I stuck to my believe of watching the movie in the original language version and not in Cantonese as I mistakenly did with “Madagascar”.
I always believe that animated comedies should be played (or voiced) by professional comedians. In this case, like many of the professionally created animations, the animators modeled the animated characters based on the actors who did the voices. For example, in this movie “Fender” has all the characteristics of Robin Williams and it just would not be the same if I had watched the movie with some Hong Kong actor’s voice.
There are many analogies to the famous movies in the past and situations that most North Americans would relate to. With the latter I do not think the audience of Hong Kong would be able to relate, because of this I do think the non-North Americans around the world will like this movie as much.
Rating Legend: Not to be missed Wait for the DVD Buy the VCD Rent it if you can Waste your time elsewhere