Lim vs Koh, tonight 9pm TV9 ( repeat at 12.30 am). Don’t miss it!

Popularity: 8% [?]

Just sharing a story I saw on the Web…

So this guy, Patrick Moberg, from New York, spots the girl of his dreams while waiting for a subway; love at first sight if you will. He’s 21 and a designer for Vimeo (a startup, think Youtube in high-res). Said guy quickly makes a sketch of her and posts it up on www.nygirlofmydreams.com. Can you guess the ending?..

Yes! Word gets around, even in crusty New York, and he finds the girl. She was Camille Hayton, an Australian interning in the city. An update on the site read:

FOUND HER!

A friend of hers came across the site, recognized the description, and sent me an email. We’ve been put in touch with one another and we’ll see what happens!

But there’re endings, and there’re endings. Real life ones. www.nygirlofmydreams.com was updated a few months later with a wistful farewell:

Here’s where it gets tricky… In our best interest, there will be no more updates to this website. Unlike all the romantic comedies and bad pop songs, you’ll have to make up your own ending for this.

Not good enough for the noseys around though, and the real ending was indeed dug up by an Australian magazine. They broke up after two months.

I think each person would take away something different from the tale. Is it the journey or the destination? :). In Camille’s words:

I wanted to give it a go, so I wouldn’t later wonder, ‘What if, what if?’

Popularity: 31% [?]

Interest

• Two men raise a lion cub named Christian for years, and are forced to release him when he got too big. This video shows their reunion.

• Impossible vertical 360 photo
• What Google News would look like in utopia.
• “Unicorn” found in Italy
• Pennsylvania experiments with painted “speed bumps” - optical illusions - which can be produced for much less than the real thing.
• Man from Oregon uses helium balloons strapped to a lawn chair to safely fly 200 miles, using a BB gun to slowly pop enough balloons to lower him to earth.

Ethics

• In contrast to heroic stories from the Sichuan earthquake, a secondary schoolteacher tells of how he fled rather than help his students evacuate: “I’m only really concerned about myself”.
• Writer Christopher Hitchens, who had initially opposed the designation of waterboarding as torture, decides to undergo the procedure himself. His conclusion: “Believe me, it’s torture!”
• Teenager from faith-healing family dies of treatable condition.
• Romanian rape victim is allowed to have an abortion that would usually be considered illegal
• Should we give convicts the same opportunity for (expensive) treatment?

Internet

• France government strikes a deal with its ISPs to block porn, terror, and hate web sites
• Associated Press draws up rules that require you to pay $12.50 every time you quote more than 5 words from any of their syndicated articles. Uh-oh!
• A stroll through Wikipedia shows disparities between the attention given to certain subjects: Call of Duty, the popular WWII game, has a longer content total than actual WWII articles.
• Speed test of the latest browsers shows Opera still ahead of the pack! (FF3 is ahead in RAM usage, but most computers have enough RAM, and most browsers use up unused RAM anyway to cache data.)

Science

• Evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski takes a single e. coli bacterium and cultivates its offspring, which make a significant evolutionary shirt in the 31,500th generation.Some editors at Conservapedia take offense, demonstrating their ignorance of scientific research while hassling Lenski to reveal “his data”.
• Survey of undergrads finds the more men choose romance over success.

Consumer

• P&G evades sales tax by claiming that Pringles “are not potato chips”
• Up to 95% of returned gadgets in the US still work.

Games

• CEO of the company behind Crysis blames piracy for Crysis’s failure, claiming a 20:1 piracy ratio.
• Manager at THQ (Titan Quest) posts similar rant on a forum, taking aim against game piracy.
• Fallout 3 is tentatively banned in Australia
• Kotaku.au has a feature on the experience of a WoW poweleveller (i.e. person who hires someone to do his levelling for him )
• MMORPG Tycoon attempts to simulate making an MMORPG. Activities include setting zones with level ranges, and adjusting monster numbers.
• Only 2, 676 out of millions who were eligible choose to collect on the infamous “Hot Coffee” settlement of Grand Theft Auto
• PS3 exclusive MGS4 pokes fun at the Xbox360’s inferior capacity in-game: “There is no disc 2!”

US

• Damning article about John McCain’s ex-wife and how he left her after her disfuguring accident.
• McCain admits he doesn’t know how to use a computer.
  (To be fair, I don’t think Pak Lah does either…)
• The best of Dubya

Malaysia

There are intentionally no Malaysian political snippets this time :/

• Malaysian taxis voted worst in the world in a magazine survey.

Popularity: 41% [?]

Entertainment

• A new Street Fighter movie is said to be in production. The title: The Legend of Chun Li. The star: Kristin Kreuk
• A MacGyver film is rumoured to be in the works.
• Hilarious Batman vs Iron Man video:
• Russian Communist Party members threaten to beat up Harrison Ford if he ever steps foot there, following the negative portrayal of Russians in the latest Indiana Jones film.

Tech

• Real-life Iron Man technology boosts endurance and strength by up to 20 times.
• SMS-ing is four times more expensive than receiving data from space.

Games

• A US-based monitoring group mistakes concept art for the post-acolyptic game Fallout 3 as al-Qaeda simulations for the aftermath of a terrorist attack.
• The award-winning game Bioshock has been confirmed for a movie adaptation. The director, Gore Verbinski, worked on Pirates of the Carribean.
• A pole-dancing game is being developed for the Wii (no, not Polish artists).
• PC version of the Bioware hit Mass Effect is launched. Complaints abound regarding its strict anti-piracy measures, among them an online check every 10 days.

World, Politics

• Bush claims to have given up golf in 2003, to honour fallen soldiers in Iraq. The claim is promptly debunked with video evidence.
• Barack Obama has finally cut ties with Trinity United Church of Christ, following months of controversy because of its pastor’s beliefs.
• China looks to outsource certain jobs to the US.
• India is hopping mad after the US apparently blames them and other developing nations for food price increases.

Internet

• A Singapore firm claims that they hold a patent on image-linking “technology”, planning to claim millions from Google.

Science

• South Korea puts its cloning research to good use - by cloning seven Labrador retrievers from a highly-trained “original”, to sniff out drugs an explosives. They are all named “Toppy”.
• Girls are becoming just as good as boys in math.
• Teenager isolates a microbe that can break down plastic bags for a science project.
• Six “human” traits (Culture, mind reading, tool use, morality, emotions, and personality ) - have been observed in animals.

Religion

• French citizens and lawmakers discuss marriage laws after a Muslim divorces his wife because she was not a virgin.
• Vatican astronomer says aliens could exist.
• A group based in San Diego calls for a boycott of Starbucks after the company reverted to an adaptation of its old logo, featuring a mermaid. The image apparently “has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute.”

Interest

• Homeless Japanese woman lives undetected in a stranger’s closet for a year.
• Teacher faces criminal charges after giving out too much information in a sex-ed class.
• Macbook used to cut a cake
• X-ray image of a python that had just swallowed a cat.
• Woman wakes up after being declared dead following two heart attacks. Interesting thing is rigor mortis had already set in.

Consumer

• There is a serious problem with certain HP notebook models that can cause motherboard damage. BIOS update for all affected notebooks rated “Critical”.

Popularity: 40% [?]

Apologies for missing this last week, was busying watching HIMYM :P

Malaysia

• Dr. Mahathir joins the ranks of the unemployed lying females in Malaysia.
• MCA newsletter editor Wong Chun Wai follows suit.
• The Sun aggressively calls for reform of press freedom laws.
• Newly appointed CM of Penang Lim Guan Eng is spotted flying economy class. Meanwhile, in a written reply to a question in Parliament, PM Abdullah Badawi says that the government spent RM792,325 for the use of executive jets for himself and DPM Najib in the two weeks before the polls.
  (Yes, somehow it’s hard to believe that we don’t have money for projects in Penang).
• Anwar is in TIME’s list of 100 most influential people in the world.
• Jakim has rejected the PM’s proposal to compel Muslim converts to inform their families about their conversion.
  (Apparently the PM is not in their list of influential people).
• Hishammudin Hussein finally “apologizes” over his usage of the keris. The Star calls him a “big man” for this.
  (WTF - it bore all the hallmarks of a non-apology apology, was much belated, and he was practically forced to do it. “Big Man” my ass. )
• The much-ballyhooed sports complex to be built in England is scrapped. Citizen Nades of The Sun reports.
• Malaysia ranks 2nd-highest in the world… for malicious web activity.

Science

• According to Nature, 20% of scientists who participated in an informal survey said they used “cognitive enchancing” drugs.
• Australian researches find that there is a very effective way of preventing prostate cancer by 40%.
• A genetic study suggests that humans came close to extinction 70,000 years ago.
• Keyboards may carry more bacteria than toilet seats, a UK study finds.
• South Korea has cloned seven dogs from an active drug-sniffer in active service. All of them will be named Toppy.

Entertainment

• JK Rowling is suing a (former?) fan who planned to publish his own Harry Potter lexicon, an encyclopedia to the series. He reportedly cried on the witness stand.
• A million WoW players were online at the same time over the weekend, reports the company that hosts WoW servers in China.

Interest

• A New Yorker survived being trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. The ordeal was captured on CCTV.
• Six Masai warriors were invited to run in the Flora London Marathon. “The marathon was easy, there were no lions!”

World/Politics

• A Russian newspaper reported plans by President Putin to wed a former Olympic gymnast half his age. He denied the rumour, and the paper was promptly shut down.
• 60% of the world’s paintings apparently are churned out from a single village in China.
• An Italian performance artist who planned to hitchhike from Italy to the Middle East in a wedding dress to “send a message or peace” is found brutally murdered in Turkey.

Tech

• A writer from MacWorld builds and successfully runs Mac OS X on a “clone” computer.
• The latest beta of Opera 9.5 blows competitors out of the water - yes, including FF b3!

Popularity: 67% [?]

You reach the season end of a show you recently started watching… :(

BUT then you notice the scrollbar at the bottom - there was another episode left to watch!!

How I Met Your Mother has been growing on me . Been getting cranky after being too long away from sitcoms! It seemed lame at first but blossomed out after the middle of the first season. Surprising for a show that tells you in the first episode that the main love plot ala “Ross and Rachel” is doomed not to work out! Not quite up there with WnG or Friends yet, but I’m giving it time. Barney especially is a legendary character.

Exhibit A: ”The greatest pickup line of all time”

Popularity: 52% [?]

Note: I was planning Snippets to be just a mishmash of everything interesting I find on the Web but would never have the time to blog about. I thought making it a fortnightly thing would be fine, but it appears a lot happens in two weeks :/. Oh well.

Malaysia

• Hamilahton, mother of maths prodigy Sufiah Yusof who was recently revealed to be working as an escort girl in UK, starts a blog to tell her side of the story.
• GSC’s website is hit by a trojan that can potentially exploit IE to steal user passwords.
• Malaysia Airlines is hit with an RM900k loss after a ticket price typo.
• Faizal Tahir, who was recently censured for baring his chest onstage during an 8TV concert, receives the most AIM (Anugerah Industri Musik) nominations this year.
• A Samad Said hits out at the Education Ministry for omitting his works from the national curriculum because they are too “difficult”, also blames DBP for the decline of Malay literature.
• Dr. Chua Soi Lek starts his own blog.
• Tengku Faris, Crown Prince of Kelantan, says that non-Malays should not seek equal treatment, and that their citizenship is owed to the Malays.

Tech

• A class action lawsuit is being brought against Apple for fitting newer iMacs with inferior TN displays. (For those who don’t know, the widely-used TN panels cost roughly half of a higher quality S-IPS/PVM panel, and have much worse viewing angles and colour reproduction.
• Sony BMG is found to be using pirated software after one its employees called tech support with an invalid key.
• It seems that buying an upgrade edition of Vista without actually “upgrading” allows you to nearly halve the price.
• President Bush is apparently caught with pirated songs after talking about his iPod in an interview.
• Universal claims that promotional CDs sent out en masse still belong to them.
• A power grid in San Franciso is hacked in less than a day by a team of penetration testers.
• A Microsoft exec talks about Vista’s UAC at a conference and informs participants that it was “meant to annoy”.

Science

• A study shows men are much less able to tell when a woman is interested (or rather, disinterested ) in them, and vice versa.
• The youngest planet ever discovered could be less than 2,000 years old.
• New data from spacecraft orbiting Venus suggests that the evolution of the planet was “too fast”, ultimately rendering it inhabitable.

Teh Internets

• Two bloggers die “on the job”, sparking reflections on the frenzied pace of news today. (One of the victim’s final emails said: “Have come down with something. Resting now posts to resume later today or tomorrow.”).
• TIME begins compiling its annual index of the top 100 most influential people in the world. The online version again sees Korean pop-star Rain at the top, followed closely by Stephen Colbert and Shigeru Miyamoto.

  Context:

  There are also a number of spinoff lists, including the top 25 blogs and a list of top lists.

Religion/Culture/Issues

• A young Saudi woman is murdered by her father for using Facebook. [related] Also, a Saudi court increases a gang rape victim’s sentence because she “used the media to influence them“.
• In a case of legality over morality, two public defense attorneys disclose that their client had boasted of committing a murder he was on trial for 20 years ago. They felt it would breach the lawyer-client privilege.
• The family of a baby born with two faces in India refuse medical care, claiming that she is the incarnation of the goddess Shakti.
• A raid on a polygamist cult in Texas frees 400+ children [related]

World/Politics

• China eases its restrictions on Wikipedia ahead of the Olympics.
• Zimbabwe’s elections sees its dictator of 28 years, Robert Mugabe, losing his grip on power. (Go tsunami!)

Entertainment

• Mass Effect for the PC is delayed a month from its initial launch date of May 2008.
• More juicies about Fallout 3
• A comprehensive list of games to look forward to in 2008-2009

Interest

• An 80-year old man has been phoning his wife’s voicemail every day to hear her voice. She passed away in 2005. In a network upgrade, the voicemail was lost, but after hearing of the story, the telco restores the voicemail from their archives.
• Rustylime has a photoessay comparing family food expenditures around the world.

Popularity: 82% [?]

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: 78% [?]

How many passes does the team in white make?

Popularity: 45% [?]

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: 38% [?]