Teh Internets

• 60% of all Photoshop users are pirates (sample size: 500).
• Adobe launches Photoshop Express, a stripped down version of its flagship product. Focus is on community and “family” functions.
• Torrentspy.com, which was once the most visited BitTorrent site, shuts down in the face of MPAA suits.
• Firefox 3 will debut in June 2008, fixing its memory-hogging.
  [I still have faith that Opera 9.5 will reclaim its position as the fastest browser when it’s released >:( ]
• Facebook widget-maker Max Levchin sells a 9% stake in his company (known for widgets like SuperPoke ) for USD $50mil.

Malaysia

• A new opposition leader unleashes his blog.
• Elected MP M. Manoharan, who is currently being detained under the ISA, has been denied release by the Govt. [Reuters]
• UMNO flip-flops on the Terengganu MB drama, agreeing to the appointment of Ahmad Said. Pak Lah had earlier insisted that appointing anyone but Idris Jusoh would be unconstitutional.
• The chief of the Penang branch of the National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) has said that attending state functions are no longer compulsory. Teachers are also being discouraged against inviting the new MPs for school events.

World

• A major ice shelf in Antartica is beginning to break apart, as chillingly (pun unintended) captured by time-lapse videos.

Religion/Culture

• The Vatican releases a list of new sins. Among them: stem-cell research, and pollution.
• Why do suicide bombers shave their bodies?

Science/Tech

• Statistics show that monogamous men have the most children if they marry women younger than themselves.
• A Macbook is hacked in less than 2 minutes in a 3-day hacking contest. A laptop running Vista was only cracked after relaxing the rules on the last day, while a laptop running Ubuntu was left unscathed throughout.
• Certain cows are fitted with fistulas, man-made, permanent “holes” into their stomachs, to help research their digestive system.

Entertainment

• Bethsheda claims there will be “over 200 endings” in Fallout 3.

Interest

• Black swan to be reunited with its love - a paddle boat.
• Interesting demonstration of the “lap guitar” method.
• The legend of DB Cooper, whose story features in the hit series Prison Break, comes back to the spotlight after a half-buried parachute is found.

Popularity: 85% [?]

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Indiana Jones is one of the best movie franchises ever! It’s a rare blend of action and humour and doesn’t miss any opportunity to poke fun at itself. It has one of the best, most recognizable theme songs of all time. And it stars Harrison Ford!

My introduction to Indy wasn’t actually the movies though; it was 1992’s Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, an adventure game by the magnificent but now-defunct LucasArts games division. It’s a rare, very rare example of a successful game-movie crossover that retained the qualities of its original, along with a magnificent storyline and memorable characters. It still stands up to any adventure game you’d find on the market today.

If you have been deprived all these years or are in need of nostalgia, here’s the introduction sequence :) :-

I’ve played all the Indiana Jones games and watched the movies more times than I can remember, and I’ve been looking forward to Indy IV for months!Detractors say that Harrison Ford is now too old to play Indy, or that Lucas is just milking an old franchise for money. Well the latter might be true, but Ford will always be Indy like how he will always be Han Solo and the president of the United States. He already has the fedora, the whip, and the Scowl down pat:

Now here’s waiting for May 22, 2008 to see if he has the rest of it still! :).
[Link to 720p Trailer torrent]

Fallout III

Fallout (1997) and its sequel Fallout II are universally considered among the best computer RPGs of all time (I preferred Arcanum, but it was less polished ). In the retro-futuristic Fallout universe, a nuclear war has laid waste to the earth, with the only survivors being the people who took refuge in government-built Vaults. In the original, you are sent out to scour the wasteland and your sister Vaults for a replacement “water chip” for your Vault. Interplay ( I’m so sorry I couldn’t afford non-pirated games back then  :(( ) did a phenomenal job in fleshing out a world of humans dealing with the fallout of nuclear war, as well as implementing a solid game system and an open-ended storyline. The ending of the first game is especially memorable:
If you want to know what it is ▼

The concern everyone is having is that Bethesda Softworks, who bought over the rights to the series, are well-known for focusing more on eye-candy than a solid story ( *ahem* Oblivion ). I’m actually a bit worried for them because there are a large number of scary Fallout fanbois out there!

Whatever the case, we’ll know soon - they are apparently on track (shock) for release in fall 2008.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

My Pottermania has pretty much died down by now, but I’m still looking forward to the sixth movie - the main reason being that I’m very curious how they are going to handle the romance that Harry is supposed to have with Ginny. With all the focus on the big Three, she’s been little more than a wallflower in the movies. Not exactly the spunky, vivacious Ginny from the books.

Context for this still:

[Returning from the village after the DA meets for the first time]

Hermionie: Anyway, at least we know one positive thing that came from today…
Harry: What’s that?
Hermionie: Cho couldn’t take her eyes off you, could she?
Harry: *smirk*
Ginny: *emo*

Popularity: 73% [?]

Any other politician would have taken the easy way out. Denounce all ties, slam the media, find some other way to put the opponent down. Maybe redefine the meaning of the word is.

That was what I thought Obama would do when a series of video snippets surfaced on Youtube of his pastor of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright. In them, Wright slams the US, making racist, even unpatriotic remarks - “The US of KKK A” and “God damn America … for killing innocent people” among them, as well as claiming that 9/11 was retribution for America’s arrogance.

But what Obama did instead was to go home, put his children to sleep, and start writing a speech. TIME called it “the speech he’d been turning over in his mind for much of his adult life”. In it, he would finally touch on race, a topic he’d been conscious not to make the center of his campaign.

Transcript

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/18/america/18obamaspeech.php

Audio

[Obama’s speech - mp3, 96kbps, 37min, 25mb] (Ripped by yours truly!)

Video

He avoids dramatic gestures; never raises his voice. It’s all about what he has to say. He condemns his pastor’s rhetoric, but refuses to condemn him, instead challenging us to look beyond the words and realize that they stem from “the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect”.

The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change.

But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

I really really encourage you to read/listen/watch his speech for yourself and hear what he has to say. Most of you won’t be American but his words still ring true. With Bush, you know he’s either just too plain dumb to grasp the intricacies of leadership (did you read about how he described the Afghan conflict as romantic?). With Clinton, you know she’s pandering to the crowd to get elected. But with Barack Obama, you have the rare politician who is completely believable, who genuinely wants change and rebuild the bridges Bush burnt.

Maybe the tsunami from Malaysia will carry over to the US :P. There is hope for this world yet!

Popularity: 51% [?]

How many passes does the team in white make?

Popularity: 48% [?]

I finally got around to buying a domain name :). I suppose I had to finally put a Nuffnang ad on my own blog lah, as well as link up all my workmates. The exporting of posts went much smoother than the last migration I did from my old blogspot blog (now a secret test site for ads!) to my previous free Wordpress blog.

I’ve changed the blog title too. justchal was just too weird (wtf was I thinking?).

Haven’t really finalized the theme yet so don’t be surprised if the layout and colours keep changing.

Popularity: 41% [?]

I was going to go on a tirade about how a jellyfish has more backbone than all our papers put together, but I’m tired so this will have to do :/.

From NST:

IPOH: Some 50 people took part in an illegal rally at the Ipoh Padang here to show their support for the Sultan of Perak.

They also urged DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang to make an open apology to the Regent, Raja Dr Nazrin Shah, instead of merely via a statement on his blog.

OMG 50 people protested! Let’s snap pics of this watershed event!

Of course when thousands gather for Hindraf or tens of thousands for the Han Chiang rally, the whole area is enveloped by a stealth field :/.

On a related note, going to NST’s front page brings me to an ad redirect - one of the first signs of an empty piggy bank.

Doesn’t take a genius to guess why.

Popularity: 63% [?]

Apparently it should be called Anagrams :(. I still think Grabble is a better name!

I miss those days…

Popularity: 37% [?]

From NST:

Penang Umno will recommend to the Federal Government to stop all proposed mega projects in the state, include those planned under the Northern Corridor Economic Region (NCER), the second Penang Bridge, the light monorail transit system, the Penang Outer Ring Road, the Penang Sentral and the RapidPenang bus service.
State Umno secretary Datuk Azhar Ibrahim said the previous Gerakan-led state government had worked together with the federal government to bring all sorts of development to Penang.

“Since the people have clearly rejected development and made their choice for a change, we will recommend to the federal government to cancel all such projects. Don’t blame us for this,” he said after a state liaison committee meeting here today. In March 8 polls, Umno only won two parliamentary seats and 12 state seats.

I wonder why Penang UMNO is making so much noise when they weren’t even ruling Penang. Even Koh Tsu Koon was gracious enough to attend Lim’s swearing-in ceremony, which UMNO boycotted. But somehow I don’t think Abdullah would really smite his home state.

Popularity: 49% [?]

Sighh… it’s just like a fairytale. Lim Guan Eng has been sworn is as Penang’s Chief Minister.

For those who don’t know, Lim Guan Eng was imprisoned ten years ago in a politically motivated trial. He had printed a booklet accusing the then Malacca MB Rahim Thamby Chik of raping an underaged girl. In a gross miscarriage of justice, Rahim wasn’t even prosecuted while Lim Guan Eng was sentenced to 18 months in prison!

It’s good to know that ten years later, justice prevails.

Among his first acts are to look into reestablishing local council elections, implement open tenders, and waive all summonses involving parking and hawker licenses ( I wonder if the last bit has to do with the police handing out summons en masse at the now-famous Han Chiang gathering ).

It is expected that he will repeal the PGCC project. Malaysiakini also quoted a sarcastic retort from Lim regarding early attempts to “bodek“…

Interestingly, the first bouquet sent to Lim’s office today to congratulate the DAP’s “historical win” was from the controversial RM25 billion Penang Global City Centre developer, Abad Naluri.

“So fast?” a surprised Lim said when told by a journalist on this. The new CM added that previously it had been very difficult for him to meet with the developer.

I guess some people still have trouble getting used to how things are going to be run now! :)

Popularity: 43% [?]

The Sun has the figures I’ve been hunting for.

Yes, BN won 137 parliament seats to the Opposition’s 82 due to gerrymandering, especially in Sabah and Sarawak (To put it into perspective, you can fit 6 Putrajayas into Teresa Kok’s whopping 36,000 majority in Seputeh). But they only got 51% of the popular vote.

Summary rejection, in other words.

Polytikus also has some extremely good news:

The mainstream press coverage was extremely poor. Defending its political masters to the end but there is no worry. I was told by Chin Huat that Malaysiakini can circumvent the Printing Presses and Publications Act of 1984 and go to print because a state can grant publishing permits. I think we have five states willing to lend us a hand :)

Everyone knows that bloggers and online news sites, especially Malaysiakini and Malaysia Today played a HUGE role in these elections - a reverberating cry throughout the world of how the Internet can overcome a shackled media. MSM (yes you Joceline Tan!), take note - you need to change too, or your days are numbered.

Popularity: 34% [?]