Pet Peeve and OCD

Just like any normal person, I have my pet peeves and OCD. A lot of it I've grown out off. I remember when I was a kid whenever I walk on the side walk with rectangle patterns, I avoid stepping on the lines. I also make sure I step on the boxes an equal number of times, depending on their size. Sometimes, I see other kids do it today and I just smile and tell myself, "See, I told you weren't a psycho." to which myself responds "Yes, you're right. I am not a psycho."

Anyways, one of my pet peeve is google maps response to the middle wheel button of the mouse. In Photoshop, you drag the button towards you to zoom-in. This is like dragging the picture towards you. In google maps, doing the same thing results in the map zooming away from you! How evil is that! What happened to the "Do no evil" mantra that the folks at google live by.

My friends has told me that they see it as the user flying and so moving the wheel away is like flying towards the map, making it zoom-in. I don't buy that. I figured, the photoshop behavior is the de facto standard, why go against it?

Well, I've always knew there's a reason why I feel the need to scroll the wheel towards me to zoom-in, and today I found more ammo. Google's own product, Google Earth (version 3.0.0762), behaves the way I want it to! Which is opposite of google maps.

Well, I did some searching, and I found out that Google has decided to change Google Earth's behavior on version 4 to match that of Google Maps. That just sucks. But I guess if you're a 900 lb gorilla, you can change de facto standards, even one made by Adobe's Photoshop.

But hey, instead of throwing stones from the outside, I think I'll try and find a job at google and maybe change this behavior someday. Or at least give google maps the option of changing its behavior by un-checking a "Behave Evil" option.

More Movies

I recently some movies, two of which sucked bad.

1) Ghost Rider
Probably the worst comic book adaptation since The Punisher and The Hulk(the movie that almost ended Ang Lee's career). This was just Nicolas Cage at his worst. The script was horrible, there was no action scenes at all.

I give Ghost Rider Two Thumbs Down.


2) 300
I can't find anything good about this movie. They tried to sell it like Braveheart, selling the patriotism line, but it fell flat on its face.

Somehow when they made the movie they couldn't figure out how to make more action scene, so they decided to slow things down to eat up screen time. I liked the slow-mo in The Matrix, but mostly because they added the 360-degree rotation, just like the opening scene of Swordfish. But 300 just slow things down, just for the heck of it. It reminds me of old movies and TV shows like 6 Million Dollar Man, and those lame 80's movies that used a lot of slow-mo.

Personally, I like my action movies with "action" in them, like Ong-Bak and those Hong Kong-type action movies. While I watch 300, it kept reminding me of action scenes from other epic-type movies, only slooooower. There were scenes right out of LOTR, Troy, etc. The most obvious one was the jumping stab move that Brad Pitt used in Troy.

I give 300, Three Hundred Thumbs Down.


3) Shooter
This movie is based on Stephen Hunter's book "Point of Impact" which I tried to finish reading before the movie came out, but haven't finished it yet. The movie didn't stick to the book, which is not a surprise. I was hoping the movie would move in a Bourne Identity speed, but there was a lot of slow down on the movie.

I'm a sucker for sniper movies, maybe because when I was a kid, I used to hide up in our neighbor's mango tree with a blowgun with shooting mung beans. Or up on our roof shooting kids and chickens with my slingshot. Somehow I like snipers over sloppy spray shooting from Rambo movies. There's skills and calculations involved in shooting from a mile away, while anyone can spray bullets everywhere (like 8 year old kids in Africa with AK-47's).

I give Shooter One Thumb up.

Summer of Sequels

Summer movie season is back, and that means sequels. Why make new movies, when you can patch-up the old one and make money out of it.

Here's how I see this summer's sequels:

Two I'll pay full price for:
1) Bourne 3
2) Transformers 2
Michael Bay should die if he fucks this up. I guess this is more of a re-make than a sequel. But it's my list and I'm calling it a sequel.

Ones that I'll watch matinee (or two-fers)
1) Pirates 3
Johnny Depp was great on the first one. The second movie was alright but didn't live up to the first one. I just hope this doesn't suck as bad as Matrix 3 did.

2) Spiderman 3
This is actually pretty interesting, but it had become just another action movie.

3) Shrek 3
I loved the first two Shreks. I can't see how this one can top those two.

4) Rush Hour 3
I'm getting sick of these buddy movies.

5) Harry Potter 5

One I'll wait for on USA network, or F/X
1) Die Hard 4


Two that you'd have to kill me to watch
1) Ocean's Eleven 3
The first Ocean was good. The second one sucked bad. I'm staying away from this one.

2) Fantastic Four 2
The first one was a real downer. This one can't be any better.

TV is Back!

I haven't been watching TV much lately, just Seinfeld re-runs and Jeopardy. TV started to suck when all these "reality" shows started popping up. It would have been nice if they were "real", but they're not, so what's the point.

But this week, good TV is back! And by good, I mean the bad-ass. Last night "The Shield" premiered it's sixth season. I'm glad to see Forest Whitaker back, fresh from his award-winning success on "The Last King of Scotland", a biopic about dictator Idi Amin. I haven't seen that movie, but I did saw Idi Amin back when I was a kid. I saw him in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he was exiled after getting kicked out of Uganda.

On Sunday, The Sopranos will be back for their last season. I can't wait to see how it all ends for Tony. I hope it's not a lame ending for a great series.

Also back this week is Entourage. That show is alright. Some of the cast can't act, but Jeremy Piven is really funny, though I recently read he tipped a couple of waiter with the Season 1 DVD set of the show. I would have asked him to at least autograph it so I can sell it on eBay, instead the guy threw it back at him.

My Politics

Here's what it says about me. Kinda accurate, I guess. I've always considered myself Libertarian on personal issues (ie. get the church off my bedroom), while Liberal Socially (ie. money for schools and no oil drilling on my national parks):

Neo-Liberal You scored 54% Personal Liberty and 23% Economic Liberty!

A neo-liberal believes in moderate government intervention on personal matters and moderate to high government intervention on economic matters. They believe in a social safety net or welfare state and try to balance personal liberty with safety or security. Some neo-liberals believe in more foreign intervention or war then most other leftists. Others are more like Centrist Democrats. More authoritarian-leaning Neo-liberals (such as personal 40/economic 30) are the result of a "fusion" between "old left" and "new right" tendencies.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on Personal You scored higher than 99% on Economic

Link: The Politics Test written by brainpolice on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Freestyle Video of the Day

Not really the original video for the song, but it's really cool nonetheless...

Rent - Can't We Try

Freestyle Video of the Day

Stevie B - Dream About You

The Wire

With The Sopranos, The Shield, Monk, Psych and Entourage all in hiatus, the only thing I watch on TV today is The Wire on HBO. I never followed this show until this year as there is nothing to watch on Network TV. It's really sad that all these reality shows and even new scripted shows all suck ass. No wonder I see more people say they don't watch TV at all than ever. The two new shows that had potential are Heroes and Studio 60. But Heroes has become a teen version of Lost, and Studio 60 is just way too much like The West Wing. Lost has become too annoying to watch. As for reality shows, the only reality show I watch is the one that follows paparazzi hunt celebrities.

The Wire is really interesting. It's set in Baltimore, and follows the city government, the police department, the school system and life in inner-city neighborhoods. It exposes flaws of social beliefs and theories of both conservative and liberals alike. Acting is pretty good, and while Law & Order and CSI franchise (and others) use sensationalized murders, rapes and one-liners (damn you, Horatio) to attract audience, The Wire relies on strong writing and more realistic plots. The show is also a lot less violent than its network counterparts. It's like comparing an indie-film with strong writing, plot and acting from no-name casts, to a big-budget "stuff-blows-up" summer flick.

One of these days I'll find the DVDs of early seasons and watch the series from the beginning.

Harsh Times

I went to get an oil change today. So with two hours to waste, and a movie coupon from a friend, I decided to go see a movie. I wanted to see The Departed or The Prestige, but it's an hour wait for either one, so I decided to see Harsh Times instead. What caught me by surprised was in the beginning of the movie, they kept playing Freestyle music. You rarely hear those on the radio, much less movies. But I guess the movie's Hispanic theme kinda fits in.

The movie is directed by the person who wrote Training Day. So as expected there are characters from that movie that's in Harsh Times. The ones the stood out are Noel Guglielmi and Samantha Esteban. In Training Day, Samantha Esteban played Letty, Guglielmi's cousin. She's the one who was almost raped and Ethan Hawke came to the rescue. Later on, his heroics came up useful when Guglielmi was holding him upside down on his bathtub and ready to blow his head off with a shotgun, until Guglielmi found out he earlier saved his cousin, so he let him go. In Harsh Times Guglielmi plays Samantha Esteban's boyfriend. Samantha Esteban's character's name is also "Letty" in Harsh Times.

Samantha Esteban is kinda cute and almost always typecast as Mexican, but she's actually mixed, and has Filipina blood in her.

Evangelicals and the GOP

Interesting article from a former Bush adviser about how he now sees as GOP using Evangelicals.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/archive/2006/11/13/findrelig.DTL