Friday, January 31, 2014

Happy Chinese New Year!

Year of the Horse, here we are! May the year bring you lots of joy, happiness and prosperity!


[Simple post because I'm slightly brain-dead right now. Off to eat mandarins!]

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Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Happy 30th (plus one week, give or take) anniversary, Apple!!

[This post is one week-plus late.]

I stumbled onto the Apple website last Saturday, and it took me down memory lane.


This was technically my first ever computer, because even though my dad bought it, I used it 95% of the time. He bought it in 1993 (I can’t recall the year myself, but the wall postings – don’t ask – say 12-3-93).

What I do remember is my dad borrowing his brother’s VCDs (in its advent) and one such VCD was Army of Darkness. How I re-discovered this movie in my teens is a story for another time.


Lil’ ol’ Malaysia. People used to get this blank look on their faces when I told them I used a Mac. When they asked me what it was, I told them, “Not PC.”

I always thought it was us tiny Mac users against the PC world. After a few years, ‘PC’ became ‘Windows’ and after that came ‘DOS’, which had the coolest-looking (in context) games that I couldn’t play on account of my having a Mac. ‘PC’ now stands for ‘personal computer’, generally referring to computers (or even laptops, I think) that aren’t business-owned or something, I’unno. I never bothered with the term.



My dad bought, and I read, a ton of MacFormat (and it’s still around!! Whooo!!) more for its games and 'edutainment' content than anything else, and playing a ton of game demos. I remember wanting Living Books (any Living Books, really), but only had to settle for demos where you can only play the first page. My childhood was mostly made up of demos.

Aside from MacFormat, I also read other mixed platform magazines, which had mostly PC/DOS games and nary a cross-platform one.


How time flies. And I’m really glad I was there for 21 of those years.

Happy 30th, Apple. Here’s to another 30 years of innovation, creativity, and awesomeness.

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Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Just saw "His Last Vow"...

...and I take back my comment about shark-jumpers.

This episode has all that I've been missing so far in Season 3. It has so many twists and turns, and, like in earlier seasons, the focus on the episode is on crime-solving, and everything that happens throughout the episode leads back to that crime-solving and the villain at hand.

[I'd rather interactions and relationships and all those other human things take a backseat rather than the front row.]

And what a villain! The "Napoleon of Blackmail" wasn't introduced in previous episodes (only very minorly hinted-at) but Lars Mikkelsen (the actor who plays him) was cold and calculative and what you'd expect to get from a villain in the final episode of a season people have been waiting two years for.

Simply brilliant, overall. Luckily there's only three episodes per season for this kind of build-up / pay-off, because if I had to wade through any more episodes like the previous two, I may have given up streamingon the show entirely.

Main story aside, there's a titbit at the end of the episode that hints at what Season 4 could be like, and if it really isn't misdirection... well, I just really hope it's not misdirection. Fingers crossed!

'Till Season 4, here's Sherlock Humour for ya. I'm currently on page 39 and it took me a few nights to get there.

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Sunday, January 12, 2014

Saw The Sign of Three...

...and found it rather 'meh'.

I've been getting this niggling feeling that Sherlock has jumped the shark a little, with the absolutely funny but case-wise slightly pointless Episode 1, and with Episode 2, aside from the much more exciting third act, it was really quite boring.

I don't get why this needed three writers on it; it's like a massive filler episode. Ep. 1 (though it seemed to cater more to the Internet than anything) had only one writing credit to its name, and it was far more enjoyable than this one. Go figure.

Episode 3 will be aired today. Since Tuesday is a public holiday, I'm still totes gonna check it out; hopefully we get to see the major villain that's been hinted in Ep. 1.

[I still think it's a shame to bump Moriarty off so early; the guy who played him is really brilliant at being psycho.]

[Or is it "evil high-functioning sociopath"?]

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Monday, January 6, 2014

Ehmagerd, Sherlock's on AXN!

And about bloody time!! AXN has been showing previews yesterday like nobody's business.

For the past three years, I've had to read about how glorious Sherlock is, given that BBC Entertainment is extra and I don't stream or download shows because of my slow Internet connection.

And right now I'm only streaming the series because it (up till now) only had six episodes in total, though an hour and a half each, and I never expected that we could get this show at all (like Will and Grace). Plus, Benedict Cumberbatch showed an excessive amount of bad-assery in Star Trek into Darkness so there's my catalyst there.

So finally(!), Sherlock is going to be made available to the rest of us who have minimal satellite TV, and my mom can finally see how frickin' awesome this TV show.

Can't wait for Thursday!! Series 1 Episode 1, wooo!

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Sunday, January 5, 2014

#SherlockLives! Spoilerish!

Totally. Worth. Skipping. Office's New Year Party. For.

And I was totally tricked into thinking that the opening scenes were how he did it! Never mind that it seemed a bit far-fetched with the whole Mission: Impossible face-off thing and the hypnotist.

But the part when he kissed Molly... Oh em SQUEE!! I don't ship but still!!

Series 2 Episode 3 ended with Sherlock faking his suicide. It's in line with the original stories, except that instead of falling into a waterfall, BBC-Sherlock falls off a building.

I mean, it's a lot more difficult to go fake-splat onto concrete than it does on water, yannoe.

The actual case for this episode really isn't much unlike previous episodes (it brings to mind the V for Vendetta movie); its brilliance comes from John coming to terms with Sherlock being alive, which leads to some very funny (and very emotional) scenes between him and Sherlock, and with Sherlock's interactions with all the other characters.

[I don't know why I'm into bromance these days. Thor/Loki FTW!]

The episode even pokes fun in answering how Sherlock did it, showing us three scenarios, one of which has a scene that totally made my day:

I DON'T SHIP BUT STILL!!
Though the actual answer is not outlandishly ingenious as expected/hoped, it doesn't exactly disappoint either. Thankfully, I've only jumped on the series some months ago, so I didn't experience a two-year withdrawal like other fans (hopefully this doesn't happen to me when Series 3 ends).

Parts of the episode didn't really sit well with me, though. Sherlock riding a motorcycle through London like a bossstuntman? It seemed like an unnecessary bit of action. And Sherlock himself is a lot more humorous now, which is a bit weird watching because part of the humour from Sherlock is from watching him being completely aloof from others. Plus, I know it's his thing to gather facts on people only at first glance, but I kinda prefer it when there's an explanation as to how he derives those facts.

[Like in Series 1 Episode 1, when he first saw John. Good times.]

Anyway, Episode 2 is coming out this Sunday, which is a fantastically unexpected surprise to me as I'm used to weekly schedules, and I absolutely cannot wait. Toodles!

EDIT: I was just informed by the Internet that even Sherlock's admission, which is the last of the three scenarios, seems just to be that: another scenario. Damn. No wonder at the end of the episode John asked him how he did it; I just presumed that he didn't share with John what he told Anderson. 

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Saturday, January 4, 2014

2013: Resolutions I Couldn't Be Bothered To Keep.

[As I didn't expect the apocalypse to be postponed indefinitely and all.]

In line with the general idea that at any given moment we were all going to die, I kept even less resolutions than I did the last time around. To save you all a heck load of time, I only achieved...

One. Movie-go more.

Sadly, my writer's block prevented me from hitting two resolutions (the second being 'blog more'), although I did top my counter from '07.

That's all for today, folks. Dry run, today.

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Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Happy 2014, peeples!!

Aside from it being nice to get a holiday mid-week, thankfully, this doesn't fall on a Saturday, which is a non-workday that won't get replaced! Woooo!

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