The voice of the movies trailers will never be the same again.

RIP
Don LaFontaine.
Sept 1 2008.
King of the Movie Trailers
VOg

Is it bad to look?

I may not have the saavy appeal of David Beckham nor his reputation but I can relate to how a guy would be in his shoes.

Married but still being male. Can't remove our intuition to at least glance.

Video games gets another blame for social problems in society

Sorry, but I refuse to believe that video games can be the scapegoat for all of our problems. Call me a video game apologist or just another gamer hack, but it's true. Why should the video game industry be blamed for the problems all of humanity faces?

According to reports, Thailand has halted the sale of Grand Theft Auto 4 after a teenage boy confessed to robbing and murdering a taxi driver in an attempt to recreate a scene from the game.

"We are sending out requests today to outlets and shops to pull the games off their shelves and we will replace them with other games," Sakchai Chotikachinda, sales and marketing director of New Era Interactive Media, told Reuters.

Always one to jump on the bandwagon, Reuters found an anti-video game hack to tell us all that it's only going to get worse, but we also should watch out for those GTAIV-wannabes.

"This time-bomb has already exploded and the situation could get worse," Ladda Thangsupachai, director of the ministry's Cultural Surveillance Centre, told Reuters. "Today it is a cab driver, but tomorrow it could be a video game shop owner."

Millions of copies of GTAIV have been sold around the world and when one crazed kid decides he wants to rob and kill a taxi driver, we need to stop selling the title for fear of more disturbed people resorting to violence? That doesn't make sense.

Sorry, but I fail to understand how a video game showing pixelated violence is somehow worse than a movie showing even worse violence. I know, I know, "it's the participatory element you're forgetting." Uh, no.

The fact of the matter is this: more than 99 percent of individuals playing video games don't kill people, don't want to reenact what they see in a video game, and don't perform these kinds of acts. Sure, it may be difficult for the average anti-gamer to fully comprehend when they don't hear the other side of the story, but it's true: video games are not the root of all evil and they shouldn't be the scapegoat when people try to make them evil.

This is just another case of an obviously disturbed person acting out in a way that doesn't fall in line with the norm. So he blamed it on GTAIV. Are we now supposed to believe that the video game is telling kids to go out and kill taxi drivers?

A dog told the Son of Sam to kill people. Should we start killing off every dog we see for fear that dogs are sending us subliminal messages telling us to kill other people?

It doesn't make any sense.

It's easy to blame video games when we don't want to blame ourselves, but it needs to stop. This person obviously suffers from some unique problems that the vast majority of gamers simply don't. I played violent video games all my life. You don't see me running out and finding the nearest taxi driver to kill, do you?

Each and every individual is different and there's no telling what might set them off. Sometimes it's a cheating wife, other times it's a dog, and still other times it's a video game. Until we start eliminating every cheating wife and dog in the world, I don't think we should eliminate violent video games.

Instead, let's try for some common sense.

By CNET editor - Don Reisinger

People fall short when thinking about reality sometimes.

VG Cats + Pokemon

http://www.vgcats.com/super/?strip_id=0

If you have played Pokemon for the first few minutes of a new game, that is enough to see this.

Slashbot - Guitar Hero Robot

Playing multiplayer on Expert, the robot finished "My Name is Jonas" with 97% accuracy. Vinny, the human challenger, finished with 96% but had a higher final score.

Left side: Slashbot
Right side: Vinny

SlashBot is the Electrical Engineering senior design project at Texas A&M. The system plays Guitar Hero by analyzing the video signal.
http://slashbot.wordpress.com/

Stress Reliever

A pair of Harvard researchers say violent video games don’t turn children into killers. In their two-year study, they found that there was no data to support any causation between games and real-life violence.

Video games don’t turn children into blood-thirsty killers – Harvard research

So boys (and girls)... play at least one console or one pc game [and have fun doing so].

"A danger sign for boys is not playing video games at all, because it looks like for this generation, video games are a measure of social competence."
-Kutner and Olsen.

Intelligence hurts

Intelligence, it turns out, is a high-priced option. It takes more upkeep, burns more fuel and is slow off the starting line because it depends on learning — a gradual process — instead of instinct. Plenty of other species are able to learn, and one of the things they’ve apparently learned is when to stop.

The Cost of Smarts

Is this the reason why I have so much white hair on my head? I think too much...

TIME asked who you thought should be on the list of the 100 most influential people of the year. Over 200 candidates were given a rating of 1 to 100. And your #1 choice? Shigeru Miyamoto! The video game designer had almost 2 million votes, over 300,000 more than runner-up, Rain. After a tight race at the top, Stephen Colbert came in third place with close to 900,000 votes.

Your Time 100

Stephen Colbert got a higher rating, but he can not come close to Nintendo's infamous creator of Mario (and Donkey Kong xD....)
RAIN RAIN RAIN... ROFL

Reminiscing "Endgame"

I must be an unusual person to watch the last episode of Star Trek: Voyager "Endgame" before I fall asleep. Best Star Trek show I have enjoyed ever.

Caffiene and Skin

Coffee, tea, or ... sunscreen? That might one day happen if research into the anti-skin cancer properties of caffeine proves true. As this ScienCentral report explains, research into the effects of caffeine in mice shows it can help get rid of sun damaged skin cells before they become cancerous.

Caffeine and Skin

Hats off to the people at Rockstar. They've put up a parody of the Apple's products on their game's website.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog

The Reason(s)

I'm not a perfect person
There's many things I wish I didn't do
But I continue learning
I never meant to do those things to you
And so I have to say before I go
That I just want you to know

I've found out a reason for me
To change who I used to be
A reason to start over new
and the reason is you

Out of time

As parents get older, friends that they know within their lifetime will eventually pass away. In the modern Thai culture, the deceased family puts funeral ceremonies on VCD and gives them out to family friends who couldn't be there. The one who passed away was someone I met briefly when I was young and I remember going to his house. It was interesting how he had a thing for one of my aunts even though he was pretty old.

Life is short. Live life.

Life Smells

My interests in computers won't go away. But I do know I will soon not play on WoW. Where its going seems bleak. Over half of my friends who plays already quit so it is time I get serious about what people call it, "getting a life."

phew.... false alarm?

phew, I thought my wireless card died. False alarm. It works after I open the bottom lid and I couldn't find it. I closed it back up only to find that it works again.

Another false alarm was the physics building's fire alarm went off. Evacuations and fire trucks with the whole "safely exit the building" + noise racket.

Test on Tuesday... not a false alarm but a CODE RED.

hrmmmm chocolate

Addicted to chocolate~

Hershey's Bliss

Last day of my age

So this must be the last day before I hit the age of 25. The age where I reflect and think about where "life" will take me. In the next few years, I will finish in the college I transfer to and get that darn degree in Engineering (preferably Mechanical?).

Taking:
Physics + Calculus, iff (if and only if) life does not equal WoW.

So, where does one find resolution and satisfaction after a hard long day of Physics calculations?

I could substitute more Physics? So,
2 * Physics + Calculus = life D.N.E (does not exist)?

No more math
Tomorrow - The Forbidden Kingdom

Success! Where is the frisbee?

After today's success on my group's project, things are looking up. For the Out n Back project, we got the closest near zero displacement. 2 meters distance and 8 centimeters displacement. My test was surprisingly not so bad. Definitely is better than last year's test for sure (before - too much kinematics; now - thank goodness mastering physics).

Next project I knew was going to be a Vpython project based on celestial calculations. Shoot down a satellite orbiting the Earth. Shouldn't be as hard as last year's launching an Apollo rocket to escape Earth's orbit by spiraling it and have it cycle around the moon once and come back.

I hate drama.

/ignore
Welcome to my ignore list. (WoW reference)

I can't spell erginear... but I can do math. 1+1 = two 1's

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/top-5-reasons-i.html

Read the comments in the link above, some people left interesting stories to tell.

From the site... (Does these apply to you?)

5. Awful Textbooks
Thick, dry, black and white manuscripts are rarely a source of inspiration and sometimes can cause loads of confusion. Often, the text is poorly written and interrupted by lengthy equations with symbols that are different from those used by the professor during lectures.

4. Professors are Rarely Encouraging
During each class, a professor that would rather be tending to his research will walz up to a blackboard or ovehead projector and scribble out equations for an hour without uttering a single sentence to create some excitement.

3. Dearth of Quality Counseling
College students may not have a sense for how to build their resume and they might be clueless about the variety of career opportunities that await them. Unfortunately, some academic advisers do little more than post fliers about internships and hand out a checklist of classes to take. They should make some projections about the future job market, learn about the interests of each young scholar, and offer them tailored advice for how to best prepare themselves.

2. Other Disciplines Have Inflated Grades
Brilliant engineering students may earn surprisingly low grades while slackers in other departments score straight As for writing book reports and throwing together papers about their favorite zombie films.

Some professors view undergraduate education as a type of natural selection, but their analogy is flawed. Many of the brightest students may struggle while mediocre scholars can earn top scores because they have a larger group of supportive friends to or more time to dedicate to studying.

1. Every Assignment Feels the Same
Nearly every homework assignment and test question is a math problem. Only a few courses require creativity or offer hands on experience.

Pick one... anyone

I Guess You'll Do - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTkp9UqVVHs&e

After viewing this video, it dawns to me this is probably how my life will be.

• Is there no diversity in how relationships will end up?
  
• Can we just all not get married and live a solitude life of pursuing happiness by ourselves?
  

It is most likely unavoidable. Most of us want to have kids and be successful... or strike out kids and be happy living a life we would want someday (aka live our "dreams"). I actually contemplated seeking a place to live where no social influence will affect my life. As the world's population grows, that seems to prove to be more difficult. *shrug* Back to my studies...