Hello everyone, I've come out from one of my successful hiatus (finally!). I haven't touched this blog for half-a-year. How are things here lately? I looks like everyone is dead... oh my ghulay...

Maintaining a blog is hard nowadays... well, for me of course. There are some people are comfortable doing it. They are gifted ones with the power of words and a bunch of ideas in my mind put together to form a great post, so great that everyone steals them and claims the stolen entries as theirs (okay, that's the sad part) but it doesn't stop most authors to make astounding entries.

With the proliferation of this so-called hype called Facebook, it made matters worse. I got to the point that I never respnded to game requests because I'm too busy with my FarmVille, Mafia Wars and Vampire Wars. But after the great flood, thanks to Typhoon Ondoy, I got back to my senses that I should not dependent to those games.

So... what should I post? Posting for a nerdy introduction sounds bland.

Maybe I'll save my words for later, when the inspiration strikes...

Good day.

At the mountain trip, we had DirectTV, so obviously we turned it on all weekend to listen to XM Radio's '90s channel. Man, that brought back some memories!

I continued the 90s kick back here; I even started watching some really old music videos. Remember this one?

A couple of thoughts after watching this video:

• I didn't realize All-4-One was so ... unphotogenic. These guys would never be a group today. Unless they won some TV talent show.
  
• In that video, four guys run after a single girl and accost her. Is there something not creepy about that?! And even worse, as the video progresses, it looks like the four guys are hitting on her. I can tell you, in real life, if four guys were all trying to hit on the same girl, they wouldn't nearly be as friendly and break out into harmony.

This entry contained scripting, which has been removed for your safety. Click here to see the entry in its entirety.

A hilarious comment posted on reddit with regards to Apple/Flash: (don't know if it's true; emphasis mine)

About six months ago, a friend who was working closely along side adobe's flash application development team told me that they received a prototype of Flash for iPhone. The prototype allowed the iPhone to have less than half an hour of battery life using flash. They then sent the prototype to apple and suggested incorporating this prototype iPhone flash into the iPhone OS in the next update.

Apparently apple sent this letter back thanking them for being interested in developing a working version of flash for the iphone but because the prototype is so processor intensive, and awful for battery life, they would not include it with their OS because it is just not good enough. They suggested using the gpu instead of the processor to render flash. Then they suggested building a seperate app for flash and web browsing because there was no way apple could endorse flash integration on the iphone in its current state.

Adobe apparently didn't want to release the app under their name either and it never showed up in the app store.

A long story in short: Adobe sucks at programming, then apple told them they sucked at programming. If they want to release that shit under the name adobe so be it, but it sure isn't going to be endorsed by Apple.

That was the last they saw of that prototype.

There's always been something very ... amateruish about Microsoft's web properties. Even today, something about bing.com's homepage bugs me - the logo reminds me of those times when I hook up my laptop to a project for a presentation, and the projector only projects at some ridiculous resolution which distorts my screen. Or when people insist on watching 4:3 aspect ratio television shows on HD TVs without switching the ratio accordingly (just because you have that real estate doesn't mean you need to use all of it)

Anyways, the new MSN.com homepage was the first MSFT property I saw and said: "Wow, they're really getting their shit together."

Check it:

Beautiful use of white space - incredibly content heavy, but doesn't feel like it. Great use of accent lines (I'm a sucker for that style). Fantastically clean ... wonderful use of grid design! 

And the logo is even passable for me! (It still feels a bit far to streeeetttched for me)

So much I want to write about, especially with regards to Crisp's comment smackdown, but this other thing is really bugging me.

Does anybody remember me writing a post about the idea for a browser game I posted a couple of years back? I can't, for the life of me, find it anywhere. I vaguely recall it was like Gazillionaire for the web.

I've been offline since Friday - had the yearly trip up to the mountain cabin with some friends. Just got back tonight - feeling rather exhausted (I had a fantastic time). Jane, the budding talented photog, took this wonderful picture that I absolutely love:

. . .

Catching up on the internets is hard, even after only three days!

Tomorrow afternoon I fly out to SD - get in pretty late. On Tuesday I start the grind again. Better get ready!

I heard a song I liked on the radio, only to find out it was Creed. I felt so embarassed. I thought that band disbanded - why are they back and why are radio stations playing them?!

Another song that's hot right now: Britney Spears "3."

Are we back in 2001?

I feel a little ridiculous writing this, seeing as to how everybody and their momma seems to love this movie (IMDB has a 8.1 star rating!)

I'm a fan of Spike Jonze (loved Adapation and Being John Malkovich), so I figured him + children's book = awesome.

I didn't know what the movie was going to be about, so I didn't have any preconceptions.

Much like my earlier (controversial) review of Lost in Translation, I didn't like this movie because even an hour and a half into it, nothing had happened. There was no rich imagination or escapism - nor was there even decent cinematography to keep me interested. It just seemed angsty. I felt no emotional connection to the characters in this movie - geez, a kid is picked on and feels lonely!

Basically the story, when I left it: Max is angry and escapes into a land with these curious creatures and immediately bonds with a creature that is JUST LIKE HIM. The creatures do nothing except be sad and sullen, until Max comes up and offers them random advice to make them happy. I don't know what happens, but I'd imagine there's some discovery of Max not being a king, then for some reason Max returns home happy and not angry.

Maybe if I had patience, I would have "gotten it", but frankly I didn't want to stick around to find out.

That's not to say that I need plot-driven stories; I enjoyed Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter which is nearly devoid of plot and dialogue - but at least it makes a point and makes an emotional connection to the viewer.

Pan's Labyrinth is about a gazillion times better.

(P.S. I fully expect Crispdawg to pop-up and bash me in the comments. Don't disappoint me - I know you still read this site!)