A week ago I watched Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, unfortunately I have been too busy too lazy to actually post about it. One the things I wanted to change from my old blog when I started this one, is that I would no longer post about every movie I watch…it was too time consuming. And that’s actually what I’ve done. In the last month I’ve watched Cars, Over the Hedge, Superman Returns, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, and so far I have only posted about Cars. But being the fan of Pirates of the Caribbean that I am, I decided that I should post about it.

To be honest, I don’t really have anything in mind to say about this movie. Except that I can think of two reasons why I don’t have anything to say about it. The first one is that it was exactly what I expected. One of the reasons I like the original Pirates of the Caribbean so much is because the movie is just fun to watch. And Dead Man’s Chest is just more of that. Johnny Depp is great playing Jack Sparrow and watching him and the rest of the characters get into all sorts of trouble is very fun. There really isn’t much to this movie, but I actually think that’s great. To me, it’s the perfect mix between comedy and drama; it’s not all about the jokes, but it’s not a very serious movie either. The other thing I really like about both of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies is that there is a lot of attention to detail and the world in which the movies take place seems to have been planned very carefully. Throughout both of the movies there are many tiny details which you are sure to miss the first time you watch them, but which you’ll start to notice when you watch the movie again. I know that this “movie replay value” is not that rare, but in the case of Hollywood movies, it certainly is.

The second reason why I think I don’t have much to say about this movie is actually a spoiler of the movie’s ending. So this is probably a good time to use my blog’s spoiler hiding capabilities for the first time. Show Spoiler I wouldn't consider that the ending of the movie. The way I see it I have just watched the first half of the movie. To really be able to say what I think about this movie I will have to wait until the last part is released, which unfortunately won't be for another year. Hopefully I'll still be blogging by that time and you'll get to see what I think.

Maybe I’m not sure of the reasons, but I really liked this movie and I’m actually quite hyped about the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Although by now, I’m pretty sure that no matter what happens in the next movie, I probably won’t change my mind. Apparently I don’t need a reason to like this movie.

Apparently while I’ve been busy working on my article about the chaos game, I’ve also gathered a somewhat large amount of links that I wanted to post in my blog. So without further delay, here they are:

The Amazing Chris Bliss is a video of a juggler who was on Montreal’s Just for Laughs. He only juggles three balls, but what’s amazing about this video is that his juggling is synchronized to the music. I actually know how to juggle and I can even do a few tricks, so I know what I’m talking about when I speak of juggling. Most of the tricks he does are not too hard (notice the word most), and I’m sure that with some practice I would be able to learn how to do them. However his timing is astonishing, it follows the music flawlessly and looks very cool.

Arwing in Zelda is a video of an Arwing from Starfox in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which to my surprise is actually real. Apparently using a GameShark, you can switch one of the kids in Kokiri forest for almost any character in the game, and one of this characters is an Arwing. The programmers even included some enemy AI for it to attack Link and a somewhat crappy explosion when it has been defeated.

The Matrix XP is a funny Matrix spoof which is very well done. It’s fun all along and the ending is particularly funny, although the title kinda spoils it.

Four Second Frenzy is a game which consists of 50 minigames that last 4 seconds each. All of the mini-games are controlled using only the arrow keys and the space bar. Most games don’t say much about what you need to do, so you need to quickly figure out the rules of the game. There’s even a “Final Boss”. I’ve always loved games where you need to figure out the instructions yourself, and I think this is a good example of that type of games.

My Animated World is a stop motion video full of gaming references. An incredible amount of effort must have gone into making this video, but the end result is great. Props to whoever made it.

Mathematical Pi is a music video of a song called “Mathematical Pi” which is based on the more famous song “American Pie”. It reminded me of Hard ‘n Phirm’s Pi song. If you have never heard it, you can listen to it in this YTMND.

Finally, Fuzetsu is one of Jos Hirth’s entries in the Java 4k competition. The objective was to create a game in Java which was under 4 kbs in size. I suggest reading how to play before trying it out, I didn’t and since the game contains no instructions I had a hard time figuring out how the game works. Basically you need to kill the red circle in each level by shooting at it. The catch is that to shoot you need to get as close as possible to the enemy “bullets” without touching them. It’s actually quite fun. It’s a Java Web Start application, so you need to have Java installed to be able to play it. You can download it from here.

That’s all the links I’ve got for now. Sorry about not posting any sources, but I don’t remember where I got each link from. All I know is that they all come from one of these: digg.com, Jay is Games, the IGN boards, my brother, or my friend Nor.

Today, while I was working on my article about the chaos game, I discovered a critical flaw in Chaotica. When I was developing Chaotica, I noticed that when the fraction was less than 0.5 the image did not fill the window, and when it was bigger than 0.5 the image was also bigger than the window. To solve the problem what I did was to zoom the fractal in/out according to the fraction. Today, while I was looking at some IFSs(Iterated Function Systems) that represent instances of the chaos game, I suddenly realized that I had made a somewhat stupid mistake in the code that calculated the position of every new point. Instead of calculating the right position it was mapping all of the positions to a resized copy of the image placed in the upper left corner. I know that’s not very clear, but it’s not easy to explain where the mistake was; the important thing is that it is now fixed. To be quite honest I feel kinda stupid that this mistake went unnoticed, but I find it somewhat funny that instead of assuming there was a mistake in my code I just thought that was the normal behavior and implemented a workaround.

Because of the workaround, there is almost no difference between the images generated by Chaotica 1.0 and Chaotica 1.1. The only noticeable difference in the images is that now you should always be able to see where the original points of the polygon are located (in Chaotica 1.0 when the image was zoomed to fit, the points would end up outside of the visible part of the image so you were not able to see them). Other than that, the only change is that I have removed the “Keep real size” option from the preferences since all it did was enable/disable the “workaround”, and should have never been there in the first place. I have updated the article were Chaotica was posted accordingly, you can download Chaotica 1.1 here.

I’ve noticed that many people reach my old website looking for icons or desktop pictures and are redirected here. Unfortunately I no longer make icons or desktop pictures, my interests have changed and I was never very good to start with. However, I’ve decided to post the icons and desktop pictures that I used to have on my old website in case anyone still wants them. I also decided to release a new set of desktop pictures which I made but never posted on my old website. Here they are:

Aqua Icons - click to download

Risings - click to download

Precious Stones - click to download

It’s been more than a week since my last post, so I decided to finally post again. This time I actually have a somewhat good reason for not posting. I have been developing a Sudoku solving program. I thought that it would be an interesting challenge to do a Sudoku solving program that relies only on logical deductions and never on brute force trial and error. Right now, it solves all of the easy and medium Sudokus, but it can’t solve most of the hard ones. After taking a look at this site though, I’m not sure if I’ll continue developing it. It turned out to be a far more complicated task than I imagined, and if I want to continue its development I have decided that it would be best to restructure the whole program, so that’s why I’m still not sure what to do. On one hand it seems like a fun challenge to program each one of the solving algorithms, but on the other hand there are just too many of them. I’ve also been reading some stuff about Sudoku solving programs and apparently there are some Sudokus that so far can only be solved by trial and error programs. As things stand now, I do plan to at least restructure the program and add a couple of the simple solving algorithms, but I have yet to start doing it. The funny thing about all this is that I usually don’t like sudokus.

Aside from programming, I’ve been watching some more anime. This time it was Elfen Lied. You can read my thoughts on it here. I also lost numerous hours of my time to Motherload and Super Serif Brothers. Motherload was very fun at first, but once you go deeper it just gets frustrating, I lost to a lava pit because I didn’t know what it was and thought I was digging up a ruby. Then I played again following the advice I found on digg’s comments and was killed by a gas pocket completely unaware of its existence. As for Super Serif Bros, it was great. For some reason I didn’t expect a text based game to be so hard, but I am still surprised at how much I like it.

I also wanted to post about this house. I’m not convinced that it’s a very good idea, but it certainly is interesting. A couple of pictures and a diagram of the house are available here. Also, this house reminds me of this other house, which I also wanted to post about. Source: digg.com

On a blog related note, I received my first comment spam today. Apparently while I was away from the blogsphere comment spam evolved. The comment read “Love the blog -I always look forward to the posts here !!”, so at first sight, one would think that it’s not really spam, but when you look at the url of the poster it becomes clear that it is. Just in case I’m wrong, and Lisa is indeed a loyal reader of my blog like she claims (and she is without a doubt reading this), then I apologize. Next time please use a less suspicious URL that does not advertise stretch mark removal creams.

I first heard about Elfen Lied on the IGN Boards, where some people said it was great, others said that it was “too disturbing” for their tastes, and everyone only seemed to agree that the opening music was great. Then I read its page on the Wikipedia which basically starts off with: “The story contains graphic nudity and a great deal of blood and gore, as well as psychological violence and extreme graphic violence.” By now I was already expecting it too be the goriest most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen. But it wasn’t. It certainly does have “nudity”, “a great deal of blood and gore”, “psychological violence” and “extreme graphic violence”, but none of it is there just for the sake of it. There is a reason why each one of those “disturbing” aspects is there. From what I had read, I actually thought it was going to be bloodier, sometimes people get cut up in half and there’s not that much blood coming out of them. Even Kill Bill is bloodier.

If you continue reading the Wikipedia article in search for what Elfen Lied is about you’ll reach a link to a Wikipedia entry titled “Elfen Lied body count” and then a description of how the show starts, which basically says that there is a naked girl killing everyone she finds. And its not wrong, but that’s not at all what Elfen Lied is about, at least not in my opinion. Basically, what I’m saying is just a remix of the good old “don’t judge a book by its cover”.

Elfen Lied is great in many aspects. The animation is good, and the backgrounds are simply beautiful; the music (especially the opening song) is great; the story keeps you interested throughout the series; most of the characters are very deep; and even though I don’t understand an ounce of Japanese, I thought the voice acting was good. However the depth of the characters is what surprised me the most. Each character has his or her own story and their actions reflect their background. In particular Nyü/Lacy’s character is simply amazing. In theory you should hate the character but in practice you end up liking her. Somehow although she is the one doing the most brutal killings, the others turn out to be the bad guys. Actually this is my favorite thing about Elfen Lied, it’s often hard to tell who’s right and who’s wrong. Most of the characters seem to either be doing the wrong things for the right reasons, or the wrong things because they were pushed into that position, and only a few characters seem to be doing the right things.

I won’t say anything else about Elfen Lied because I don’t want too spoil too much about it. But if you have a chance you should consider watching it, I highly recommend it.

There are lots of links that I’ve been meaning to post, so here they are:

One red paperclip – By now you have probably heard about this already. A guy from Montreal, Canada decided that he would trade a paperclip for a house, and recently after 14 trades he finally got a house. I always remember the item trading in the Zelda games when I hear about this.

What’s Next iPod Guy (PDF) is a pamphlet from Jews for Jesus which compares Steve Jobs’s life to the life of Jesus to try to convince you of joining their organization. Very weird, but kinda interesting. Source:Boing Boing

Pantyhose as a Fashion Statement is an extremely funny video of a guy who tries to go shopping while wearing a pantyhose over his head. The reactions from the people at the stores are priceless. Source:Digg

Finally there’s a very cool McDonald’s billboard in Chicago. The shadow of the “M” is over a different breakfast item depending on what time it is. Source:ChicagoBusiness

It’s time for another post. Apparently these “updates” are weekly now…I didn’t intend for it to be this way, but I’m just too lazy or too busy with other things to post until a week of not posting goes by and I start feeling guilty about leaving my blog.

So, what’s new this week? Basically, now I’m an anime freak. I finished watching Full Metal Alchemist along with the Full Metal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shambala movie. Both the TV series and the movie were extremely good. So I figured I should get my hands on some more anime and I ended up Googling “top 10 anime” and came up with this list. Then I looked up all of those in the Wikipedia and decided which ones I would try to get my hands on. So far I’ve been able to get Rurouni Kenshin OVA, FLCL, Haibane Renmei, and Serial Experiments: Lain. And I’m still trying to get Last Exile. Those were the only ones that really caught my attention. I’m also trying to get the Grave of the Fireflies movie, although that’s not on the list.

So far I have only watched Rurouni Kenshin OVA and one episode of FLCL. A word of advice for those of you looking for “Rurouni Kenshin OVA“. There appears to be a lot of Rurouni Kenshin stuff, but you’re only looking for the first of the OVAs, that’s the one that’s REALLY good. Your looking for: “るろうに剣心―明治剣客浪漫譚―追憶編” or Rurouni Kenshin – Meiji Kenkaku Romantan – Tsuioku Hen, or Rurouni Kenshin: Tsuioku Hen, or Samurai X: Reminiscence, or Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal or any variation of those names. They’re all the same thing! However, anything else that says either “Samurai X” or “Rurouni Kenshin” or “るろうに剣心” is not what you are looking for. There’s a TV series, a movie, and another OVA. Chronologically the first OVA comes first, then the TV series and finally the second OVA. I’m not sure where the movie fits; as far as I can tell it goes somewhere inside the first OVA. From what I’ve read the TV series is not too bad, but the style is very different from the first OVA and it’s less serious and more like a romantic comedy. The fans seem to hate the second OVA because it does not follow the manga. And the movie…well, I haven’t read anything about it.

But let’s go back to the first OVA. It’s very good. The animation is simply amazing. In some of the scenes the animation is mixed with live footage and it looks beautiful. For example, at the beginning of the third episode there are some great scenes where the water was taken from live footage but the rocks inside it where re-drawn to fit the style of the animation. But it’s not just about the animation; the characters, the story, the score, are all great too. After watching it, you’ll understand why so many people praise it. Do yourself a favor and just watch it.

As for FLCL, although I’ve only watched the first episode, I can tell that it is one of those things that even though you don’t fully understand it, you know it’s good. It’s actually the first anime that I had to watch dubbed. I tried watching the subtitled version first but there was too much going on and I couldn’t keep track of what was happening and read all of the subtitles in time. I know that the translation for the subtitled version is a lot better than the translation for the dubbed version, but I really had no choice.

Other than watching anime, I’ve been editing the video of my sister’s wedding, and hopefully I’ll be done this week. Once I’m done I’ll go back to trying to post some more stuff to my website. In other news, Google finally added my site to their index! Hopefully that’ll get someone to come here.

I decided it’s time to start posting some links, so here are some links I found yesterday along with another link which I’ve been thinking about posting for some time.

GAM3R 7H30RY – This is a book available online about gaming. I haven’t read it all, but what I’ve read so far is pretty good. The only problem is that their layout is not zoom-friendly which makes it hard to read without tiring your eyes. I actually contacted the people in charge of the layout to try and help them fix the problem, but after a couple emails they stopped answering back.

Imagining the Tenth Dimension – This is the website for a book that explains where are the ten dimensions that string theory talks about. There are some great explanatory videos in the section called “Imagining the Ten Dimensions” in the Flash version of the site. Source:digg.com

LEGO Star Wars – These are some LEGO Star Wars movies, there are three different short movies. Revenge of the Brick is the newest one and probably the best. But all of them are quite funny and definitely worth watching. Source:digg.com

Last Saturday I saw Cars. Before its release everyone seemed to be speculating that Cars would be Pixar’s first “unsuccessful” movie, and in a sense they were right. When Finding Nemo was released it was Pixar’s most successful opening, the same happened with The Incredibles, but Cars broke the trend. Its opening weekend at the box office fell below both Finding Nemo and The Incredibles placing it as Pixar’s thrid most successful opening. But, does that mean anything? Of course not. Cars is every bit as good as any other Pixar movie.

Animation-wise, it looks a lot better than Pixar’s last film (The Incredibles); the lightening effects are amazing and the water is one of the best looking CGI waters I’ve seen lately (not the best ever, but still pretty good). Most of the reviews I’ve read complain about the quality of the voice-acting, but I think that the voice-acting is fine. Maybe it could be better, but it’s not bad at all. The story of the movie, as always with Pixar, is quite good and is helped by the great jokes throughout the movie. Particularly, the jokes at the car cinema during the ending credits are hilarious.

From what I have said up until now, it would seem that I think Cars is just like any other Pixar movie and that it brings nothing new to the table. However I do think that there is a big difference between Cars and the rest of the Pixar movies: the characters. Making a movie where all of the characters are cars is not an easy task. The rest of Pixar’s movies have characters that are either human or easily personified as humans, and in movies that try to convey certain emotions to its viewers this plays a critical role. With characters like toys or even fish, there’s clearly a face through which a character can express its emotions. But showing what a car feels is a lot harder, yet Pixar was somehow able to do this in Cars. My guess is that this is the reason why Cars received more negative comments than Pixar’s previous films. In particular, I think that this is why some people complain about the voice-acting; when there is no face which shows what the voice is supposed to convey, it’s hard to tell whether the voice is right or not.

Overall, Cars is a great movie, and if you haven’t already, you should go watch it. Personally, The Incredibles still holds the title as my favorite Pixar movie, but that doesn’t mean that it’s better, it just means that I like it more.