Archive | 2010

Movie Review – Resident Evil: Afterlife – Scary Zombies Wuwu

Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)

In a world ravaged by a virus infection, turning its victims into the Undead, Alice, continues on her journey to find survivors and lead them to safety. Her deadly battle with the Umbrella Corporation reaches new heights, but Alice gets some unexpected help from an old friend. A new lead that promises a safe haven from the Undead takes them to Los Angeles, but when they arrive the city is overrun by thousands of Undead – and Alice and her comrades are about to step into a deadly trap.

The 4th in the series which started back in 2002 when video game adaptations were just starting to take off. Resident Evil is a game everyone is familiar with and many people love (to the point of obsession for some). The first movie was better than expected, the 2nd and 3rd weren’t too great and thankfully the 4th one is better.

This was a movie I went into with extremely low expectations, probably because of the two films that came before it in the series. Also an interesting fact, this is the first video-game adaptation movie to be shot in 3D.

Anyway it’s a movie I had to watch, and honestly speaking I have to say I’m glad I did – I really enjoyed it and it was 1000x better than Tekken. It’s doing pretty well on IMDB for this kind of movie with a solid 6.7/10.

Milla Jovovich is still hot of course (and that always helps) and truly kicks ass in this movie plus Ali Larter who is always a winner in my book.

Milla Jovovich as Alive in Resident Evil: Afterlife

The filming was good, soundtrack was good, characters were decent, monsters were suitably scary, bad guy was suitably indestructible and the action sequences were hard and fast.

All in all a good action/horror film with a bit of suspense and some awesome fight scenes. I watched it in 2D but I can imagine the 3D might be quite spectacular, especially the shower room scene with the hammer dude (The Executioner).

There’s definitely going to be a 5th installment judging from the end, and we may well have just got introduced to the new heroine.

If you go into this movie expecting what it is (action, horror, suspense, cheesy dialogue and some beautiful scenes) you will get exactly what you paid for. Just don’t expect anything deep and soul moving..because it aint that.

I give it a very enjoyable OMG THAT’S A BIG HAMMER 7.5/10.

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Random Post #10 – Hamsters, Sepang, Village Park Nasi Lemak & The Nokia N8

Phew things been a bit hectic lately plus Streamyx is totally dead at home, suspect it’s the cable from the phone faceplate to the appt distribution point that is dead..cos the TM guy came and plugged in directly to the DB and the phone worked. Not under the remit of TM to fix it and they don’t have the number of any contractors who can fix it…so need to sort it out ourselves. Meh! Blogging maybe sporadic until that’s fixed.

As this post is Random style, I’ll start out with something completely random – The cutest furry little bastard EVAR!

Hamster

Man these little fellas are hilarious, I just stood there for a good 10 minutes watching them. There was one little critter who kept thinking he was bi-pedal and standing up on two legs..then promptly proceeded to topple over backwards much to his dismay. And he kept doing it over and over…extremely amusing. Oh well they do say…simple things amuse simple minds LOL

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Selamat Hari Raya For 2010

Just want to take this opportunity to wish everyone Selamat Hari Raya and Happy Eid!

Selamat Hari Raya 2010

If you are driving off anywhere, please do make sure your car/tyres etc are in good condition and drive safely. Take a rest if you are feeling sleepy.

If you are sticking around KL, enjoy the empty roads!

And remember, today is a day for forgiveness – so let go of any grudges, be happy and love thy neighbour.

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Brand New Combine Harvester – The Beard That Was

You might remember a while back I posted about Removing The Safety Blanket — Shaving Your Head! when I chopped off my safety blanket. After that I decided to grow a beard to see what it was like.

I took some pictures of the experience and whilst browsing my archives I found this one which just straight up had me in stitches. And well I thought I’d share it so you could laugh at me too.

Brand New Combine Harvester

When I saw the picture for some reason I thought of this song.

I have no idea what I’m looking at or why I look so CHEESIN – I look like some kinda weird mormon/farmer dude who just saw his shiny new combine harvester.

Will write about the beard experience at some point if anyone cares 😀

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Happy 2nd Birthday To BFM Radio – Bloody Fantastic Music!

BFM - The Business Station

If there was one thing I really missed from the UK it was the quality of radio broadcasts, yah we have shitty format radio in UK too (Capital, Virgin etc) but we have the pure win that is BBC Radio 1 – that was pretty much the only station I listened to. They had awesome hosts an amazing variety of musical genres and it was just generally interesting, although I can happily live the rest of my live without having to listen to Tim Westwood again.

Most of the time I actually couldn’t stand to listen to Malaysian radio, Lite is ok now and then but the music was a little too gentle and lulled me to sleep. Mix is moderately better than Hitz but still plays trash pop on repeat all day long.

I resorted to ignoring the radio and listening exclusively to CDs in the car.

And then I discovered BFM! I actually love BFM, this paragraph from their about page perfectly sums up the situation for me:

But format radio, really now in its 14th year, has taken a toll on the quality of the radio conversation. Radio DJs commonly talk down to their audience and breakfast show topics are reduced to trivial, inconsequential topics. Even music programming retreats to the lowest common denominator of mass market music. Many mature listeners wish for the return of quality conversation and discerning music.

And this is where BFM steps in.

This is bang on for me, I don’t want the slapstick, the stupid gotchas or whatever, I want to hear good music and intelligent conversation and this is what BFM delivers and they deliver it consistently. They play a fantastic selection of music from the 60’s all the way to current (non-pop) tracks.

The interviews are interesting and the people they talk to are relevant and the hosts don’t have stupid fake American accents. They discuss some hard hitting topics and they don’t hold back on the questions.

They also have some interesting niche segments like the tech segment with Matt Armitage, the book section with Umapagan and the new movie section.

They also have some football coverage which is pretty entertaining – sorta like a bunch of chaps in a pub discussing what’s going on in the premiere league.

Honestly in my car there is only 1 station in the memory on my stereo and that’s BFM! If you don’t listen to it, you should retain whatever brain cells you have left (format radio turns your grey matter into mush) and tune in.

I also love the way they embraced social media with their podcasts, live stream and the use of Twitter – they really interact with their followers. You can follow them on Twitter here: @BFMRadio and their Facebook page is here – BFMRadio

Of course I find it awesome they had me on too back in August last year, you can listen to my interview here:

You can tune into BFM at 89.9 on your FM dial or listen online here – https://live.bfm.my/

They are launching a new site soon and will have a new cross platform live stream (the current one uses Windows Media Player), a mobile version of the site and much more. So look out for that soon.

Rock on BFM!

Coincidentally Eyeris also wrote about the same thing today 😀

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Breaking Bad – The New BEST TV Series EVAR!!

Breaking Bad

A drama about a high school chemistry teacher who’s suffering from the world’s worst case of mid-life crisis and becomes a criminal.

As you probably know I’ve become quite a TV Series Junkie and have been rabidly looking for new awesome shows to watch.

I guess it’s partially do to with the fact movies in recent years have mostly been disappointing, there hasn’t been that many great movies or new movie series to get interested in.

One of my UK friends recommended I start watching Breaking Bad, he was the one who told me I should watch The Wire – which I still maintain is one of the best TV shows ever aired. Breaking Bad starting airing in 2008 and has just completed its 3rd season and all of us fans are eagerly awaiting the 4th season coming in 2011.

And simply put, is a superb piece of Television in every way. It’s almost like a prolonged movie, the same kind of feeling you get from The Wire and Sopranos. It’s deeply involving, very dark and extremely realistic. The street life isn’t glamourised or stereotyped, it’s just very much how it happens in reality. The characters are inspired, especially Walter H. White played masterfully by Bryan Cranston (best known for playing Hal in Malcolm in the Middle.

The chemistry between him and Aaron Paul who plays the particularly useless Jesse Pinkman is just fantastic. Walter White is just such an intense character, he has his funny moments and watching him sometimes can be heartbreaking.

Jesse Pinkman and Walter White

The series in general isn’t super complex like Sopranos which has at least 2-3 layers of sub-plot at all times and is constantly throwing in new characters. Breaking Bad is a true masterpiece in character study, there aren’t a whole lot of characters and complexities. There is a main group of people that the series focuses on and a few more peripheral roles and transient characters who come and go.

There are some nice twists, some very interesting events and thankfully it doesn’t do that stupid cliffhanger thing at the end of each episode – which the US tv shows generally seem obsessed with. Probably because they don’t need to, it’s just so well written, well filmed and well produced you just HAVE to watch more even without a cliffhanger.

I love the way it’s shot too, it’s not overstylised, not pop style, it’s almost like watching a very nicely shot documentary.

The pilot starts out at such a frenetic pace you really wonder how they are going to keep it up and top that, but it dissolves itself wonderfully into the back-story and then proceeds to go forwards from there.

Truly Breaking Bad is a masterpiece and I hope we see another 2 seasons to give it a nice round 6. It’s definitely a show that can stand up to repeated viewings as it’s not gimmicky or trying to be deep. A testament to that is that this show has WON 6 Emmy Awards (it has won in all 3 seasons 2008, 2009 & 2010) and has had a shitload of other nominations.

If you are looking for something new to watch, you like drama style series, you can take fairly dark content and you want something original and different – perhaps it’s time you checked out Breaking Bad.

More on:

IMDB: Breaking Bad
Wikipedia: Breaking Bad
AMC: Breaking Bad

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Successful Blogging (If You’re Lucky) – Some Tips To Get You Started

A while back FHM asked me to write an article containing some blogging tips (as a part of Project Alpha), I’ve never really blogged about blogging (how to make money, blogging tips, SEO etc) so it was an interesting departure for me. I have written a bunch of technical stuff here, but never something like this. So now the next issue of FHM is coming up I thought I’d publish it here, I actually meant to publish it earlier but I completely forgot about it..I have to thank Tian Chad for remind me about it on Twitter.

Now I’m not claiming to be any kind of blogging expert or guru, but I hope I’ve learned a thing or two in the past 6 years of blogging and from reading all the fantastic blogs that are out there. This is the version I submitted, it was edited slightly for publication but the gist of the thing is the same. I’ve been in FHM before, but it’s not usually for writing – more often for taking pictures. Anyway, here it is.

The Beginning

Well here we are on the hallowed pages of FHM, one of the corner-stones of traditional media. And what are we talking about you may ask? Well today we are talking about a disruptive new media platform known as blogging. I’ll skip the overly simplistic explanation of what a blog is and the rather clichéd quote from Wikipedia — if you want that I suggest you head over to Google.

What I’ll be sharing with you today is some of the things I’ve learned over the past 6 years of blogging and countless years online before that. It’ll mostly be in relevance to your own blog (if you have one) or the hope that I may cultivate enough interest in you to start one and give you some tips to get you going.

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Continue Reading · 20 Comments · Internet & Tech

ADSL – StreamyX Noise Ratio/SNR Numbers & Line Attenuation – What Do They Mean?

It’s good to get to know your modem/router whichever ISP you are using, log in to the control panel and explore what kind of data it can give you.

You can most likely access your admin page here:

https://192.168.1.1 or https://192.168.2.1

If that doesn’t work, or you don’t know the login/password please RTFM or JFGI.

The basic thing to check when your line is activated is that you are getting the speed that you signed up for (512k/1mb/2mb etc.) and the DSL line is synced at that speed. Whichever modem/router are you using, it should show you that under the general status or ADSL status page.

Mine looks like this:

Streamyx 1MB Connection

It is supposed to be a 1mb so at least it’s synced at that speed. Ok that’s the basic part to make sure you have the right line speed, now DSL is running over some pretty old technology (copper lines) so the quality of your Internet connection depends on lots of bits of wire such as…

The wire from your phone socket out of your house, the wire from your house wall to the pole or underground. Or if you’re in a condo the wire from the distribution box into your condo/appt. If the wire is shit, so is your Streamyx connection.

Now this is the part most people are unaware of and I had to do a fair bit of Googling to make sense of the numbers so I’d share it here. In every modem I’ve tried so far, in one of the status screens you can also see the Noise Margin (Signal to Noise Ratio) and the Attenuation level, mine looks like this:

Streamyx Noise Ratio & Line Attenuation

Ok so what do these numbers means? Here’s a break down.

Noise Margin (AKA Signal to Noise Margin or Signal to Noise Ratio)

Relative strength of the DSL signal to Noise ratio. 6dB is the lowest dB manufactures specify for modem to be able to sync. In some instances interleaving can help raise the noise margin to an acceptable level. The higher the number the better for this measurement.

  • 6dB or below is bad and will experience no sync or intermittent sync problems
  • 7dB-10dB is fair but does not leave much room for variances in conditions
  • 11dB-20dB is good with no sync problems
  • 20dB-28dB is excellent
  • 29dB or above is outstanding

Line Attenuation

Measure of how much the signal has degraded between the DSLAM and the modem. Maximum signal loss recommendation is usually about 60dB. The lower the dB the better for this measurement.

  • 20dB and below is outstanding
  • 20dB-30dB is excellent
  • 30dB-40dB is very good
  • 40dB-50dB is good
  • 50dB-60dB is poor and may experience connectivity issues
  • 60dB or above is bad and will experience connectivity issues

As you can see from the above numbers, as for Noise Margin – my upstream (22db) is better than my downstream (15db) but both are within an acceptable range and won’t cause any disconnection problems.

As for the line attenuation, that’s where it get’s ugly. My phone line is super quiet (on the few occasions I’ve used it for voice) and has some kinda hissing which gives me a clue..it probably got wet somewhere along the way and it sucks basically.

Both upstream (63db) and downstream (53db) are at dangerous levels..and may cause me connectivity issues. Which is right, when I fully load the line (download something at 1mb) it drops like shit and ping times can go up above 1000ms.

So to be realistic, what you should hope for on your Streamyx line is Noise Ratio of between 10-20db for both upstream and downstream and as for line attenuation, the lower the better but being in the 30-50db range would be fine. If you manage to get these numbers out of your router/modem do share them here,

I’m writing this, cos well soon I won’t be able to give any Streamyx tips because I’ll be on Unifi wuwu 😛

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Random Post #9 – Lights, Bak Kut Teh, Wax & Traffic Jams

Hmm so what have I been up to lately, a lot of things actually for once I’ve been incredibly busy rather than just scrooging at home. Mostly due the fact the house renovation is reaching the point where I need to keep buying stuff, a lot of stuff, expensive stuff wahhh. Stuff like lights, woooo – light wonderland. I did a LOT of research where to buy lights, glad I did because this place was great – plenty of choice, good prices and very good service. Everything is already fitted and working fine. The shop is Top Ten in Puchong near Tesco.

Top Ten - Puchong

Oh well, it also means it’ll be done in the not so distant future, so we can actually live there..which will be nice.

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Movie Review – The Expendables – BOOM BOOM POW

The Expendables (2010)

This is a movie ALL action fans have been looking forward to, however ridiculous or bad it was we’d still watch it due to the awesome line-up of action movie legends making up the cast. It’s another movie by Sylvester Stallone, starring…Slyvester Stallone, with the 2nd lead being Jason Statham. And whilst Mr. Statham started out with the classic British cockney con-man roles in Snatch/Lock Stock – he’s become a great action star.

How can you not watch a movie that has Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Mickey Rourke, Terry Crews, The Gov (Arnie) and Bruce Willis (even tho the last two are just cameos).

Eric Roberts and Gary Daniels are from those classic 90’s martial arts movies like Full Impact, Best of the Best & American Streetfighter. Anyone who was born in the late 70’s or early 80’s will know EVERYONE in this film and love the style of the movie.

It’s a very ‘Stallone’ film – the pure conviction of the violence is very reminiscent of Rambo IV from 2008 and is very real. Although I can’t say I like the fact they use the new age MTV style of filming some of the fight sequences (handy-cam style with very tight angles so you can’t really see what is going on). I think we can blame Bourne for that trend.

As for the man himself Sly, I defy anyone to find a fitter and tougher looking 64 year old busting out some moves and kicking some arse.

Sylvester Stallone as Barney Ross in The Expendables (2010)

I can say with great conviction that 2010 is a fantastic year for action movies so far with Kick-Ass, which gets it’s butt handed to it by Expendables and A-Team which is about on par with it I think.

I’m so glad I watched this on the opening weekend as I got to see in the huge THX certified ‘Screen 1’ at Tropicana City Mall and it was fantastic, you could feel every explosion vibrating your intestines.

I have to say I think Jet Li had the weakest part in the movie, both his sappy Asian character and his lack of fighting skills. Plus the only casting choice I really couldn’t tolerate was David Zayas as General Garza…to me he’s always the rather comical and not at all scary Angel Batista from Dexter.

Those that were missing for me? Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal, Mel Gibson, Cynthia Rothrock & Michael Dudikoff then it would have been complete!

Other than that it was pretty good non-stop action, some decent dialogue and well EVEN MORE ACTION. Just how I like it. I can definitely say the ladies probably wont like this one very much, especially those born in the mid to late 80’s as they won’t know who the hell half the cast is.

But for those guys around my age (which shall remain undisclosed) this has to be one of the most superb movies EVER. I was surprised to see it’s rating is a super high 8.1/10 on IMDB – but then I guess a lot of those rating the movies are male and around my age – so rock on!

I can foresee I’m gonna watch this movie over and over again, awesome! And YES I want an AA-12 Shotgun!

I give it a 120 shotgun shells per minute 9/10.

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