The 10 Commandments of Facebook

Seriously. Everyone needs to read this.
Depending on how Facebook imports my notes, here's the URL as well: http://www.cracked.com/blog/2008/09/10/the-10-commandments-of-facebook/

Google Bandwagon

Sometimes Google has great ideas. Sometimes they buy awesome ideas.

Sometimes they try, and fail miserably (Orkut? Lively?).

Most of the time, they do it right, and things only fail because people don't like change, and would much rather stick with the established products, thankyou very much.

So how will Google Chrome, a new web browser, fare in the wild? With the beta released yesterday/today/a few hours ago/recently, there have already been people complaining that it's missing some 'vital features'.
Example: Ad Block. Thing is, it's beta, it was released hours ago, and it's owned by people that market ads. Why would they even build an ad block feature into their own browser?! I wouldn't expect ad block until closer to a final release.

Let's just talk about how Chrome compares to other browsers in its primary function - browsing pages. Some people claim it loaded pages slower/didn't load some pages, while others say that they experienced no such problems on the exact same pages.
In general speed tests on graphics heavy pages, Chrome beat Firefox and IE.

So for now, Chrome is both able to browse better and worse than Firefox, with both being better than IE.

Until there is an extensive library of plugins for Chrome as there is for Firefox, it won't be ursuping FF as my primary browser.

Chaos;Head

Described by the development team as a 'Delusional Science' visual novel, Chaos;Head is garnering a new boost in fame with the recent announcement of an anime adaptation. What many of the visual novel community are more interested in, however, is the English localisation project of the game.

Translation was completed at break neck speed, and it appears that we'll soon be able to see just exactly 'whose eyes are those eyes'. Gore may abound, but we're in it for the psychology!

I, for one, want to know why there's an auction of a dead, possibly decaying man (he's green, for goodness' sake!) in a bathroom. Er...

<_<

Battle Moon Wars Act 4

Well, after one day, the C74 games are starting to emerge from the depths. The new Touhou game has been met by a growing horde of fanboys and girls, as has that "Magical Battle Arena" (there's a Kinomoto Sakura look-alike!)...

But the game I was looking forward to most was Battle Moon Wars Act 4. Technically, it's an expansion pack on top of the original Act, one that requires the other two expansions... >_>;; But let's not get into technicalities.

On the same day it went on sale at Comiket, a patch was released on WERK's support page. Not really something that inspires much confidence in their work, but as most of us were wondering if they'd even have anything ready for Comiket... Ah well.

Regardless, a lot of characters make their debut in this act, many of which are going to appear as playable characters (*cheers*). Aozaki Aoko and Bazett Fraga McRemitz are the ones I most want to test, but I'll have to wait until the game gets here. ;_;

Anyhoo, we all look forward to Aroduc's translation. :3

Olympics Fever

Well, opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics of 2008 was last night, and can I say the commentary was almost always at inappropriate times? They talked during the good music and didn't talk when there was er... auditory entertainment that wasn't exactly something the Western culture has much of.

Anyway, the loli at the start was most obviously a Nikki Webster, Mark II. Young female? Check. In a dress? Check. Singing a song? Check. Hanging by wires later? Check. Not much of an improvement on the original, but hey, Webster wasn't that bad at the Sydney Olympics.

The whole printing press thing was very impressive. Australia had this performance where all these little brats had those giant sunshades you put in cars, and they waved them around like it was supposed to look like the ocean. It looked nothing like an ocean. With this one, it was well choreographed and looked so well done I can understand why they had everyone poke their head out at the end - even though you could see their legs down the bottom when they lifted the boxes to their 'maximum' height, a lot of people still thought it was machine run!

And talking about 'maximum' height - not all the performers were the same height. They may have been roughly similar, but man, that must've taken some training to ensure nobody lifted just a bit too much! XD

The song with the British lady was awful. Absolutely awful. Ugly guy and far too extreme for the woman.

What the hell was with the loli with the piano guy? She's grinning like mad at the start, and when we cut to her later, she's slumped over and looks bored as anything.

Regardless, the Opening Ceremony was quite a good watch (SMILE! BE HAPPY! :) :) :) :) SMILE FOR THE CAMERAS!! :) :) :) )... and then came the entrance of the athletes and their groupies.

It. Took. So. Long.

I feel so sorry for all the cheerleaders... what was funny was at the start, they were jumping and waving their arms above their heads. By the time the first fifty or so countries had passed, all were just moving from side to side and clapping their hands, sometimes waving. The ones that were furthest from the entrance barely moved more than clapping! Anyway, the ones closest to the entrance had the most television coverage... and I suppose that's why the organisers put the best looking ones there? Those were also the ones that kept moving the most, but there was a particular lazy one that was sort of doing it half-heartedly... XD

The formation of most teams was horrid, particularly that of the larger groups. You could see that the front two rows were about the width of the track, but then it tapered off at the back to gather at the edge of the track. In the case of the USA, practically all of them shoved off to the edge of the track, extending the length of their procession and slowing down to a snail's crawl as all of them fought to be caught on camera...
Many other countries exhibited this camera whore behaviour, but America was the most obvious, what with having such a large group and because almost all of them were engaging in this behaviour.

Australia came in 3rd last, as there are 15 strokes in the first character of the Chinese version of the name (the last country has 16), and it was rather odd to not see them in the official Australian colours of green and gold. Rudd, when did we become Finland?

And finally, China came in, with a shota at the forehead and a long block of athletes that did not break formation.

Anyway. Somebody upload the ceremony in HD already. Preferably with subtitles.

Think your name sucks? Think again.

Some of us really despise the names we were given. Some of us would do well to realise there are people out there that have far worse names. A New Zealand judge had a girl become a ward of the court so that her name could be changed (this was during a custody battle for the girl), as her name was originally 'Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii'. Serious.
Other such amusing tragic names include 'Sex Fruit' (wth), 'Number 16 Bus Shelter' (um...) and 'Violence'. *cough*

Srsly.

Why so serious?

I saw Batman: The Dark Knight today... major impressions are that the actor for Bruce Wayne isn't 'masculine' enough, Ledger was alright as the Joker (sufficiently loopy), and there were just too many homoerotic subtexts.

Or text. I'm not too sure.

While many hero-villain relationships are almost always spun into being 'something more', the script for this movie seemed to want to remind the viewers that such a practice abounds amongst 'fans' that continue on to write fanfiction... most of which doesn't do the original source material any justice and/or fails as a tribute.

Anyway. It's ok. I think I'll enjoy 'The Forbidden Kingdom' far more, but that may be my HK blood speaking.

Speaking of Hong Kong, why did all the Chinese people speak Mandarin? They were in HONG KONG, for goodness' sake! They should have been speaking Cantonese. Maybe they couldn't hire any Cantonese speaking actors (no actresses, as these were thugs) that would put up with not being able to show their 'awesome kung-fu'. And be beaten up by Bruce Wayne in a completely embarrassingly easy manner.

Or something. Maybe they 'had' to speak Mandarin because that's the official language of China and HK is (and has been for over a decade) part of China. But seriously, Cantonese is the language of Hong Kong - not Mandarin, not English, not German, no. Perhaps the script writers wanted something 'easily understandable' by the Western masses, as Mandarin is the dialect of choice for those wanting to learn Chinese... But that didn't stop them using Cantonese in 'The Departed'.

Anyway, the references to having one's mouth widened with a knife and drinking alcohol with a gaping hole in the side of one's face certainly reminds me of Pan's Labyrinth. Which is interesting, considering Hell Boy II is made by the same group... or something like that.

BTW, with burns that bad? He wouldn't have been in excrutiating pain... all the nerve endings would have been burned.

PS: Lancelot is a better Dark Knight. :)