Movie: Once

The movie Once was fucking brilliant. And I say that with a British accent (or was it Italian?), fucking brilliant.

The movie was about a guy who plays a guitar (and sings remarkably well) meeting a girl who plays the piano (whom also happens to sing remarkably well). They record songs together with a couple other random people, and two people I think have a name the entire movie("Timmy the drummer" and the baby).

Really, it was really good.


+/- Trailer

Canon PowerShot SD780 IS

So I finally bought a digital camera all on my own. Yaay! It was unbelievably hard choosing a camera, mostly due to the fact that I don't know jack about cameras, so most of the specs I read meant nothing to me. 12.1 Megapixels? What the fuck does that even mean? My best guess is that there are 12,100,000 pixels on this 2in x 1.5in screen? IS? AiAF? Doesn't matter, I'm happy with it. The buttons are kind of hard to push, though.

Oh yes, so the first picture I took with my camera was a picture of my plants. The one on the right that looks kind of dead is Tim, and the one on the left is Pik. I'm thinking Pik is taking all the sunlight from Tim but I'm not sure so I'll just leave them like that.

WIP: Threadless: Sea of Pixels

All right, it's about time I coughed up another shot at Threadless don't you think? My goal is to get *bleep* Threadless submissions in by the end of this summer. I'm not saying the number, because then I can end up failing. Man I hate thinking like that.

Anyway, it looks like I'm following the pattern of "pixel art wrap-around" for my designs. This one is a shot of the deep sea (the ocean? What's the difference between a sea an an ocean? Deep sea/ocean creatures?) so we've got a sunken pirate ship, some jellyfish (which aren't really fish), some fish, some more fish, several more different types of fish, fishing fish, fished fish, a seahorse if you look close enough, a school(?) of shrimp, one kelp forest, an open treasure box just like in the video games, a person with no diving gear just standing, and countless bubbles of all sizes. It's like a scavenger hunt! Weeeeee!

When I first decided on this theme, I was gonna add a dolphin, HUGE whale shadow, starfish (again, which aren't really fish, but I refuse to call them sea stars), crabs, lobsters, and sea turtles.





Idk what happened lol


To be honest, I'm so tired of working on this shit lol, all these little, tedious things lead to countless layers and my computer is not catching up with me (I'm faster than a computer!?). At the same time, the obsessive repetitious nature is exactly what I like about pixel art. I don't know what I'm talking about anymore. This submission is up for critique so it's not the actual submission itself.

I Just Woke Up...

...from an 11 hour night's sleep.







FUCK

Guy Sings Aladdin Duet... Alone

Wow.

That is amazing. Just... Oh my god that is amazing...

Nick Pitera YouTube page

Go check out the rest of his stuff.
Go.

+/- Over the Rainbow (All Girl)

Survivorman

I have a confession to make, I don't have cable. Well, cable internet, but not for television. The reason behind that is because our family doesn't watch much TV. Come to think of it maybe we don't watch that much because we don't have cable. Huh.

Anyway when my family went on a trip to Canada a couple of years ago, the hotel we stayed in had cable. Us kids were not used to this kind of luxury, Discovery Channel is not a made-up thing? It makes me want to cry that I even thought that lol. So we were all hooked on discovering new channels, and that's when we first came across Les Stroud on Survivorman.

Basically, this guy tries to live on his own with all his cameras and shit out in different biomes, like in the desert or lost out at sea, for seven days. He films everything himself so that's a lot of work. Michael Scott from The Office does a little thing on this too :) After seven days the crew comes to pick him up. He always sets the scene with a made up scenario (like a plane crash, or your tank goes empty) so it's sort of a survivor's guide type thing. I love shit like this. Back when we did have cable, my brothers and I used to watch Crocodile Hunter, but as you all know we lost the show (because we got rid of cable), and, well, soon after we really lost the show (because he died :( [Did you know there was a Steve Irwin Day?]).

Back to Les. I asked my sister's boyfriend Roby what he liked most about this show, and he replied, "How unbelievably miserable he gets every episode." First I thought about how funny Roby is, and then I realized how right he was. Every single episode, Les becomes sick of what he's doing (sometimes even complaining about his pay) and it just gives you this warm, fuzzy feeling inside when you see him miserable and regretful like that. It's also really good when his hand-made shelter and gimmicks don't work out either, oh god it's so good. Not that I'm not happy for him when it does work out, like when he caught those scorpions on the Desert episode, or when he catches a snake and a turtle on the swamp episode.

Speaking of the swamp episode, I went through the trouble of finding this on YouTube just to show how funny it is when he fails. Les made himself a 3-logged raft to canoe his way out of the swamp. 3-logged.
Soooo funnyyy
You can catch a good number of Survivorman episodes on YouTube if you're interested. He's very corny though I must warn you, it makes me embarrassed a lot of times just listening to him.

Now, the key to enjoying this TV show is to try not to eat before you watch it (so be a little hungry), make yourself some food (not sweets, like food food, like Cup Ramen), carry a blanket if you're watching a cold episode, and just be happy while you watch him become absofuckinglutely sad as hell :)

+/- Edit 2009/06/22

No, that's not Les. I just added it because Donna said, jesus christ that's disgusting, I would rather eat shit lol

Movie: The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas

Coincidentally I've been watching a few Holocaust films lately. Actually, just this one and Valkyrie, but still.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is based off of the book by John Boyne and is about the Holocaust seen through the eyes of an eight-year-old German boy. He moves into a new house near the concentration camps because his dad is a soldier and needs to get "work done," and makes friends with a Jewish kid at the camp while he's out exploring. The family gets a tutor to teach them about why the things that are happening are happening, and the protagonist is torn between what the adults tell him about the Jews and what he sees.

The movie was excellent. It's a really, really sad story and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody unprepared to cry. For me, reading about the Holocaust and the concentration camps in text books did have an impact, but that was it. I read it that one time and had the tests on it; not like I went home and cried myself to sleep. Sure it made me sick, but textbooks make you look at these things critically, and so all I thought was Hitler did look quite appealing to the Germans at the time given their shitty situation, and having someone to blame it on didn't sound bad either. Taking the field trips to the Holocaust Museum (I don't know if it was called that) had a bit more impact, we had a lot more pictures and it was more interactive. Our school had a Holocaust survivor speaker about twice, and those just scared the shit out of me. Gah, we read a book too, can't remember the title.

This movie was really something though, it caught my attention from the title (isn't that such a cool title?). They started off the movie with a quote I thought was interesting so I'm gonna go ahead and post it here.

Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows.

-John Betjeman

Isn't that so true? God, what a cool quote. I know everything I did as a child had no reasoning behind it whatsoever. I don't know who the hell you are John, but great job on that! :)

Oh yes, the movie. Watch it.

+/- Trailer

Movie: Fired Up

Another one of the four films I watched the other day. Fired Up. F U. Lol.

Fired Up is a comedy movie about two football players deciding to become cheerleaders so that they can go to cheerleading camp where there are 300 girls from other schools. During their stay they hook up with countless girls, and of course end up getting serious about that one and really getting into the whole cheerleading thing. It was a funny movie! Wha- is that Wayne Jarvis, the "professional" lawyer from Arrested Development!? Watch it if you like that stuff, don't watch it if you don't, blah-blah-blah.

The one thing I got out of this movie was: "Panthers, out!" *Knock knock* HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Again, not your thing? Don't watch it-blah-blah-blah.

+/- Trailer

Movie: Bride Wars

Holy shit I watched a lot of movies today. Four movies and two stand up comedies in one day, I think that might be a record for me.

I woke up this morning and wanted to watch a movie, but nothing really too serious or heavy, something more stupid and funny. This movie was perfect in that sense. The thing I liked about Bride Wars was that the movie was everything I thought it was going to be, and probably what everybody that watched the trailer expected it to be. It wasn't a great movie, it was just a movie; it entertained me and made me laugh a few times like a romantic comedy movie should.

The film is about two girls that are best friends and hold the same image of their ideal weddings. They get engaged at the same time and find out they're getting married on the same day at the same time, same place, and get in a huge fight over who will change the date. They sabotage each other and each tries to ruin the other's wedding, but of course in the end they end up being best friends again.

And I guess that's all I have to say about the movie, really.

+/- Trailer

Movie: Push

It's been a while since the last time I've seen a movie with Dakota Fanning in it. Damn, of course, but damn she's grown up. Do you remember her back in I Am Sam? Nah, I don't really either.

The movie Push was excellent. My opinion might be slightly biased due to the fact that I watched The Day the Earth Stood Still a day before I did this one, but I loved it. It was about people with special powers (i.e. "watchers" can see the future "movers" can move objects "pushers" can push their memories and thoughts into somebody else) and an agency going after them. The protagonists try to stop this by devising a mind-blowing plan and allying with the other psychics spread throughout Hong Kong. The agency after them is called "Division" and are trying to get together these psychics to make an army, and perform experiments on them also which usually ends up killing them. The protagonists keep trying to stay one step ahead of them, but the agency also has psychics on their side. Their watcher sees something and moves accordingly, and as the other watcher sees the future change they move differently also. It's like one long, complicated, exciting game of chess.
By the way, Dakota Fanning is a watcher! :)

Love shit like this, definitely worth a watch.

+/- Trailer

Yearbooks

We got our yearbooks today! Yaay!

I usually have a problem with how the yearbook staff does the things they do the way they do. At the same time, however, I complain fully aware of the fact that I have absolutely no right to because I would not take the time to sign up for the class either. Nonetheless, I complain.

It bothers me when cropped images are cropped poorly, when small images are blown up into gigantic pixels, when photos are forced to stretch or squeeze according to the amount of space allowed to them, when there are typos and forgotten capitalization, when punctuation is inconsistent, when the photo they use of someone is obviously one that even that person wouldn't want, and when quotes duplicate and fonts collide.

It bothers me.
When, as common as it is, "the" is spelled "teh."

It bothers me.
When for some very sad reason, an ad in the yearbook reads, "Congratulations! We're so disappointed in you! Love, Mom and Dad"

It bothers me.
When under Donna's picture for Most Likely to Succeed it reads: "Most Likely to Suceed."

It bothers me.


+/- Well,

Okay, the last one is more funny than bothering.

Misery Business Screamo

My little brother was listening to this the other day in the other room, and I couldn't help but laugh out out from mine. It sounds really cool though, but at the same time I thought they were doing it for the lols. He has a nice voice.

Movie: Taken

Every single person I've talked to so far to about this movie has said it was really good, so I watched it with my brother yesterday. We saw the trailer on youtube right before we decided to watch it, and damn was that a good trailer. I put it in the collapse so go see for yourself. He has such a cool voice.

The movie was about the guy's daughter getting kidnapped on her vacation to Paris and him flying there and looking for her, all the while killing and torturing people on the way. It's very good, kept me interested the whole time anyway. It's also not too gory for those of you who are like me and twitches every time something too hurtful happens. I twitched like twice.

+/- Trailer

Tetris 25th Anniversary

Happy 25th Anniversary Tetris!

That says "Google" for anybody that's colorblind.

Tetris is one of the most widely known and longest standing puzzle games on Earth. It still surprises me to this day that my friend Kiye (Key-yay!) did not know what Tetris was when I was humming that song in math class. Also surprising was the fact that I had to rmb->Add to Dictionary when I was wrote that just now (both the words Tetris and Kiye).

By the way, does it bother the shit out of anyone that every single Tetris game you play has different rules? One of the Tetris games I played as a kid had these "blinking 1x1 blocks" where you can delete the blocks underneath it every time you press enter, and different "slowly blinking 1x1 blocks" where you can freely add 1x1 blocks every time you press enter. A lot of the online ones are weird also. Like the ones where you can't drop the pieces, God I hate those. Surprisingly, the Tetris every math student plays in their classrooms on their TI Calculators is a pretty solid game (well to me at least).

The Tetris I like to play the most is the one on my DS. By the way, has anyone seen the new DSi? Pretty coooool! Anyway, the Tetris DS by Nintendo is a really good game. You can see about 4 or 5 blocks in advance, and there is a "Hold" option, which seems a little cheap at a glance, but actually greatly enhances the blocky experience :) Basically if you don't like the piece you got, you can press R or L and it'll hold it for you. When you want to swap the held piece for another piece that comes up, you can. If you mess up and press R or L, you can't swap them back, so one swap per new block. Another cool thing about the Tetris DS is the Battle Mode for when you play with other people. When my little brother first got his DS, my older brother and I played Tetris a lot (my little brother didn't play at all). You can put items on and stuff, and being a Nintendo game, all the items are like mushrooms, red shells, bananas, etc. The mushrooms make your opponent's pieces fall faster, the red shells sand off your bottom 2 or 3 rows, the bananas rearrange your opponent's blocks (by columns not by rows), the ghosts hide your opponent's upcoming block window, the stars give you all the 1x4 blocks (a.k.a. the blue blocks) you need within the melody, and that's about all I can think of right now. It's really, really fun anyway definitely worth the money if you own a DS.

For those who don't own a DS, are really patient, and love Tetris, here is a game called Giant Tetris. It's ridiculous. Lol.

Motherfucking idiots

Another productive day in AP Calculus BC. Sadly, that was our last seminar for one of the most attention-requiring books I have ever read (or not). Chaos is the book we're reading in that class.

Luckily, everybody in that classroom is either a nerd or a geek, so not a single soul looked at the piece of paper and said, "Wtf? A move?"