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Watch the teaser trailer of Batman Begins, coming in a year's time, and an unofficial video clip (6.5Mb Quicktime) of the new Batmobile (or Bat-Tank, by the looks of it), in action.
I'd save it into your hard drive if I were you. It does not look like WB will let this kind of thing float around, and the site hosting it may also find the load too heavy eventually.
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Can you really tell what a female blogger looks like from her written word? Mr Miyagi has a friend who says he can. Plus a good overview of some good blogs written by women (got mention Karen Cheng leh!)
Excerpt:
...more likely than not, if you do meet up with a blogger in real life here, it should turn out to be WYSIWYR (What You See Is What You've Read), NOT!
I have a friend who thinks he's got a talent for sussing out the physical attributes of a blogger even if the blogger doesn't have a picture online or desribes her physical self anywhere on the blog. I've shown him a few blogs that I like, and he tells me things to the effect of, 'Dude, she sounds like a fat ugly chick'.
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So SP2 was released to business users, and they found that among other apps, the update also caused the following GAMES to not work (or as MS puts it "may seem not to work"):
-Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2
-Unreal Tournament 2003
-Unreal Tournament Game of the Year Edition
-Midnight Outlaw: Illegal Street Drag 1.0
-Scrabble 3.0
-Star Trek StarFleet Command III 1.0
I am sure those business users were using the games for, er, business evaluation and trend spotting purposes.
"Er, is that IT Department? Your, er, Microsoft SP2 patch on my machine just caused my, er, Unreal Tournament to crash. Yes, I will send you a ticket number. Must c.c. my manager ah? Then never mind, lah."
As SPUG forum poster ReLaX put it so eloquently:
Typical of Microsoft to issue:
- Patches that cause problem for their own Microsoft Software.
- Patches that cause problem for other Patches.
- Patches to solve problem created by their "Previous Patch on another version of Patch"
Also read on The Daily Irrelevant
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Russell Beattie comments on the NPR story that there are many empty seats at Athens. In fact, so desperate is the IOC to fill seats (looks bad on TV, man) that they are thinking of giving it away.
"IOC officials, worried by the television images being flashed around the world of athletes competing in near empty stadiums, have told the Athens Games organisers to give tickets away for free if necessary." -news24.com
Maybe people were not attending because they were not wearing the right logos on their t-shirts.
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Petrol prices are back up, dammit. That is not even the premium tier, just the regular 98 octane petrol. As Studman put it, "When they call this petrol 98 Gold, they really meant Gold". This is ridiculous, coming just days after the 16% National Day price war. This entry was blogged by grabbing an image from my phone via Bluetooth with the Mac's Bluetooth File Exchange app. I did not even have to get up to get the phone to get the image. Too cool (and lazy).
P.S. This image is not meant to suggest that Caltex is the only one with higher prices. Shell and Exxonmobil did it too. Only BP and SPC have not raised their prices. Yet.
Update: SINGAPORE Petroleum Company (SPC) and BP raised pump prices yesterday, joining their rivals who did so over the weekend. -ST 17 August 2004
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Grumpy Gamer wants to see a Video and Computer Game Supervillain Showdown chart, after seeing this Cinema Supervillain Showdown chart.
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Grumpy Gamer has a rant about the Athens 2004 website's Hyperlink Policy.
Who has been giving these geniuses advice on the *air quote* Information Superhighway *end air quote*?
By the time you get approval to link to their precious site, and meet all their guidelines, the Olympics will be over.
One of Grumpy's readers posted this:
Reason for linking: To enable readers of "The Grumpy Gamer web-log (or "blog")" to navigate from the "Grumpy Gamer" forum to the Athens 2004 Official Olympic website via a single mouse click.
So if I want to write in to tell them they have a spelling mistake in their website headline, which web form should I use?
ATHENS 2004 Organising Commitee[sic] for the Olympic Games -Website Hyperlink Policy
Send a request letter to the Internet Department stating:
-Short description of site
-Reason for linking
-Unique URL containing the link (if no unique URL than just the main URL)
-Publishing period
-Contact point (e-mail address)
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Smart Mobs refers to an Australian news report that Singapore wants text from youth.
Excerpt:
SINGAPORE'S new cabinet has asked young people to send their views on the country's long-term future by mobile text message and other high-tech means, a report said.
*sends sms "myb u cn let us hv more Opposition."*
Young people are defined as those born from 1965. I am a young people! I feel better already.
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A Gartner report on Windows XP Starter Edition (XPSE) and why you should avoid it.
This low-cost edition is meant for Asia, but hard to imagine how anymore would want to buy an OS that only allows three apps to run at the same time. What, they think Asians run less software at home?
I can imagine the computer store guy trying to sell XPSE to a home user: "Auntie, this Windows very cheap and goot one. Like, you won't have the confusion of having too many program open at the same time. In fact, we recommend one program open at a time. Like that can run faster."
Excerpt:
"With XPSE, only three applications can run at any one time. For example, if Yahoo Instant Messenger, Microsoft Instant Messenger and an e-mail client were running, the user couldn't open a Web browser."
Via Slashdot
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Excellent interactive and graphical explanations that help you to understand the various Olympics sports and their rules, a kind of Olympics for the armchair sportsman.
Discovered by Faith, rummaging through the Athens 2004 Olympic Games.
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Are we a country or child-care centre, asks Michael Backman. I dunno, don't ask me. Ask the Government, they will know.
(The Age online may require registration, like The New York Times. To get around this scourge, go to BugMeNot.com)
Singapore must drop 'out-of-bounds' censorship
By Michael Backman
Asia Online
August 13, 2004
What is Singapore? A country or a child-care centre? That is a question Singapore's new Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, might do well to reflect on.
Singaporeans are sophisticated, well travelled and rich - yet the rules governing their media belong to another era. When it comes to local media, Singaporeans are fed a diet of mush and only the occasional solid.
Why? Singapore is no longer threatened by communism. The battle was won long ago and it's time to loosen up. Media freedom today is a business issue. Media that doesn't simply report but also scrutinises promotes better corporate governance in government and business. The threat of media exposure is a powerful one. But not in Singapore.
Continue reading "Do we need to lose some or all the OB markers?" »
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metastasis on why he is unlikely to found a cult of personality.
My personal feeling on this is that he is wrong on one major point. Whaddaya mean Halo sucks?
Halo rulez! (That sounded really mature of me.) Halo 2 will rule even more!
Whatever he may say, I think he writes real good and anyone who can use words like "grotesquerie" (note to self: find way of using the word "grotesquerie" in next column) deserves to have his memoirs written, complete with his "hot and broody" picture on the cover.
Yeah. I think if I had to write a memoir, I'd have to make shit up too. My noble moments are hardly hard cover material. And I was not born into a poor family. Or a rich and powerful one. Even though I am a Lee.
Excerpt:
But all that is really beside the point, which is my sudden realisation that I will never have my very own cult of personality because I am simply not very noble or visionary or revolutionary and often not very nice. My stand on animal rights is that with exceptions for comedic purposes, I would I suppose not like very many puppies to die horribly if it can be helped, because they are cuddlesome. My stand on human relationships is that more humans should have with me the sort of relationship wherein praise and material good is lavished on one party (me) by the other (them) because the one party (me) is so amazing. My stand on family is that however much they may suck, you need them, because otherwise you do not get to use the comeback 'At least I have parents'. As for artistic freedom, I like it, and as for politics I do not. I am for literature and giant robot fight scenes, and I am against stupidity and also death except where the two intersect. I think Halo is pretty lame.
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In case people start to accuse me of an overly Mac biase (and they will not be entirely wrong), here is some Windows news of interest.
Seems like XP SP2 plays nicer with Bluetooth. I haven't installed it yet myself, just waiting for other guinea pigs, more experienced PC users to install it first and read their reports.
Brian Jepson also points us to Lee Wei-Meng's May 2004 article that looks looks under the hood of XP SP2
An Inside Look at XP SP2
by Wei-Meng Lee, author of Windows XP Unwired
05/04/2004
Microsoft has been readying its update to its flagship Windows XP operating system -- Windows XP Service Pack 2 (XP SP2) -- for some time now. At the moment, it is in Release Candidate 1 (RC1) status, which means the product has reached a certain level of stability and is more or less feature-complete. In this article, I'll walk you through some of the features you can expect to see in XP SP2 when it is finally released in the second half of this year. For now, if you are interested to see for yourself what XP SP2 will look like, download RC1 yourself.
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This is brilliant. Don't know if it is a real ad or not, but whoever came up with this ought to get an award and a raise. Got this off eclecticism.
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The time is now 5pm, and according to the well-informed SPUG forum, the "North South MRT line is now suspended." This news is still not out in official channels, it seems (not on their sites anyway).
According to the poster's friend, "Someone jumped off the platform at Bukit Batok MRT station. I was there right after it happended though thankfully I didn't see any sights of the accident."
The info was posted on the forum at 2.50pm.
Another forum poster said that he wasn't in the train, but was told to leave the station whilst waiting for the train in the other direction. He said that he didn't see the guy jump, but the police and the SCDF arrived minutes after the station was closed.
We shall keep our ears open for more official reports.
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Warnings are coming from many quarters regarding the Google IPO, and this latest PR no-no, granting an interview to Playboy magazine during their IPO's "Quiet Period" is just another alarm bell going off.
Jeremy Pepper, friend of The Peking Duck, lists other reasons to steer clear.
Excerpt:
Google Frightens Me
And, if you are in public relations, it should frighten you as well.
Why? Because it's the rebirth of the dot-com era, which hurt public relations in such a way that we are still recovering from it (okay, it's been brought to my attention that still recovering might be wrong - it might be that we we are still trying to crawl out from underneath the mess). The Google IPO will set back the industry a year, at the least.
Here are just 4 reasons that the Google IPO frightens me, and should worry the industry."
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If you are planning to watch the Olympics, make sure you are not drinking Pepsi or anything non-Coke, they may throw you out. And leave that Burger King t-shirt at home too.
Because, as an IOC official says, "We have to protect official sponsors who have paid millions to make the Olympics happen."
And all this while I thought the Olympics happens because people want to watch the greatest sporting event of the world. Now I know that we lowly peasants have to thank the magnanimous sponsors for this privilege. I wonder if they will still get sponsors if people decided to boycott them or their sponsors for having such ridiculous restrictions.
Excerpt:
Olympian struggle
Fans face boot for eating or drinking wrong brands at games
By MARK FRANCHETTI / The Sunday Times
In a far cry from the high-minded ideals of humanity and tolerance embodied by the Olympics, the organizers of the Athens games have warned spectators that they could be barred for taking a surreptitious sip of Pepsi or an illicit bite from a Burger King Whopper.
Strict regulations published by Athens 2004 last week dictate that spectators may be refused admission to events if they are carrying food or drinks made by companies that did not see fit to sponsor the games.
Sweltering sports fans who seek refuge from the soaring temperatures with a soft drink other than one made by Coca-Cola will be told to leave the banned refreshment at the gates or be shut out. High on the list of blacklisted beverages is Pepsi, but even the wrong bottle of water could land spectators in trouble.
Via boing boing
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Latest TODAY column: New era for S'pore but...
Excerpt:
By the time you read this, it will be a new day for Singapore. We will be led by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, with support from SM Goh Chok Tong and ... er ... MM Lee Kuan Yew.
I am glad they finally announced Minister Mentor Lee's new title. It ended a lot of coffee shop speculation and online forum discussion on possible titles (come on, guys — "High Overlord"?). And it definitely befits him as an "old political warrior" to guide and give advice.
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mr brown Lesson of the Day: if you do not want to be picked up, don't give out your handphone number.
Especially if you are a straight guy and the interested party is male.
Your typical boy-meets-boy, gives his mobile number, regrets thereafter, story.
The friendly advice Kopikia received in his comments field was just as funny, I thought.
Excerpt:
In my past entry, i mentioned something about being picked up by a guy. So no prizes for guessing who called just now. Before i continue, allow me to describe the unforuntate circumstances under which we met (EEKs. In this situation, words with connotations of togetherness irk me).
There I was at Borders on Monday evening, casually browsing a book on copywriting. While i was busy flipping and reading my book, i heard an unfamilar voice behind me.
"What book is that you are reading"
Heavily tinged with a Malay accent, the speaker was definitely not a local, and certainly not someone i knew.
As i turned to my back, there was this guy with a short, neat business cut, black plastic-rimmed glasses, decked in business wear; black blazer, dark blue shirt and black pants, smiling cordially at me. Looking like he was in his early or mid-thirties , he is probably a Malay. The black glasses and his rather polished demeanor hinted sophistication from a person of management position, probably of geeky descent.
Being a polite person, but with no apparent interest to interact any further, my reply was a customary Hi along with a brief remark about not knowing what the book was about.
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"For any openings in any good acting roles, commercials, sexy dancing", be sure to contact Singapore's Sexiest Man, Steven Lim (yes, the one who stripped down to his undies in Singapore Idol).
My friend "The Russian", who was viewing the site on a 21-inch monitor, only saw the top half of that photo, and proceeded to scroll down the page. He very quickly scrolled up, before anyone in the office saw the bottom part of the shot. Ewww.
The mosaic censorship was performed by me, in the interest of public health (also, we are are a family site).
I think his nude shot can fight with the one of PaRaDoX on Balderdash's site.
Double ewww.
Update: It seems that Steven's site has been taken off the air ("ACCOUNT SUSPENDED: Please, contact to the billing or support area otherwise the hosting service will be deactivated soon."). Until then, you can read about it at somethingawful.com, because his site made it as one of their Awful Links of the Day for August 10th.
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