The Oddity That Is Us: Tubes

Showing posts with label Tubes. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Rowan Atkinson, Live

Another Christmas and this time we're reminded of something we've not been able to watch for a long time, since VHS went obsolete.

Some of our favourite videos, which we have on videotape, but over the years they have fallen victim to either fungus, insect eggs, damage from wear and tear, and finally, when all our VHS players finally stopped working.

Some we've managed to get on DVD, much to our delight. This plus the fact that we have converters and the likes mean we also have digital backups asides the physical copy (although we don't cherish the thought of converting all 200 episodes of Sailormoon into a digital copy, what more we have to decide if we're going to just convert them in a resolution just enough for the iPhone, or for the iPad, or use the default settings at the cost of hard disk space). Not all our favourite videos manage to make the leap to VCD/DVD, though.

This is why we love YouTube.

For a few good souls have managed to scavange some of our favourites, and although it's been a good seven years or more since we've watched them, we find ourself still able to quote lines without fail! Let's start with one of them.

All the time we remember how it is to dance as if there's something up the bottom (and otherwise) but muscle memory kicked in when it came to dancing too little when our hands did the job what our brain didn't recall, ha ha!

And there's also the fact that we were old enough to understand all the jokes at the time, although there were only a few scenes that were of the M15+ rating.

We've always found his skits far more entertaining without growing old. But we're sure we'll one day decide to do a Mr Bean marathon! Now, if we do find the DVD of Rowan Atkinson Live we'll be sure to snap it up in a jiffy!

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon

You know, it's rather a fortunate thing that we have YouTube now, because we can see what we're missing. And it's a good thing too, because what we see on YouTube so far really, really, helps us hesitate when it comes to buying the DVDs of the live action version of Sailormoon, otherwise known as Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon.

Perhaps we were looking for a lot more realism, where their sailor suits don't look so bright and their bows aren't so big, or for Sailor Mercury to have a much darker wig in blue...or the four Shitennou to actually keep the costume design they had in the manga or anime, rather than have totally new radical costumes...or their poses. And we haven't seen enough to decide if Luna is supposed to be an animated doll, or that, not being able to use a real life cat as Luna, substituted a doll instead but everyone has to act as if it's a real life cat...And Tuxedo Mask's tuxedo, instead of looking refined, was spoilt by a cheap mask and shiny costume cloak.

Perhaps it's because we want the live action series to be a serious, realistic and rather yau yeng kind of live action series, rather than a more playful show...

We remember the first time we saw the transformation scene on YouTube. We almost died of embarrassment and almost went blind, figuring that Usagi was going to perform some ecchi scene but thankfully she was clothed, and instead horrified us with a less-than-elegant transformation scene with a far too bright background. Tuxedo Kamen's transformation, however, was so bad it should have just been done away with!

Took some gnashing of teeth and a change of perspective of what we expected from this live action series, but we sorta braved our way through the transformation scenes and snippets from the show and we must say, it probably isn't too bad.

Some plus points (based on what we've seen on YouTube, that is):

The characters don't have the hairstyles as in the original design (Usagi with blonde hair or Ami's blue hair etc) but only after they transform (it's funny watching Ami transform, she looks so serious until she waves her arm past her head, and then there is this suddenly bubbly cheerful face with blue hair), hence it's not like the manga/anime where it's odd wondering why people don't recognize that Usagi is Sailormoon in costume;

Luna does have some funny expressions (we think there's a few dolls with different eye expressions!);

There're more different attacks, like in the manga! Jupiter's Flower Hurricane, Venus's Rolling Heart Vibration, which never made it in the anime, get screen time here! Plus, we're not treated to stock footage of their attacks every time;

The script is rather different from the manga/anime, so there's something new to watch here! There's a Dark Mercury for one thing, although dressed far too weirdly!

Well, from reacting rather badly the first time we watched it, we're getting even more curious as to how the series really is.

It may be that the show could be bad enough to tear our soul apart and absorb it, turning the series into a Horcrux for us. It may turn out to be quite ok (but honestly, we kinda liked how the anime portrayed Zoisite and this new white, slit-eyed piano playing Zoisite isn't doing it for us just yet...). First, we gotta do some more teeth-gnashing and part with a pretty hundred or more to buy the DVD set.

Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Alpha Mike Foxtrot!

So let's see. This year there's been a fair number of shows that we had expectations from, but so far we've been let down now and again. On the upside the Chief has been winning lots of free tickets so we've both been enjoying a fair number of movies too! Let's do a recap on some of the shows...

Book Of Eli. Didn't expect much although from the trailer the first impression we had was, "Fallout!" No expectations, so no disappointments but not really that interesting for us. Miss.

Edge Of Darkness. Mel Gibson still puts on a good show, and the show makes sense in the end, but also not really memorable. OK.

From Paris With Love. We'd no idea what this show was about when we went in to watch it! John Travolta shocked us with a different look and Jonathan Rhys Meyers is still King Henry to us but this comedy was ok.

Percy Jackson And The Lightning Thief. We suppose since we never read the books it wasn't as good as the Harry Potter series. But we were fine with them taking liberties with Greek mythology as it was a modern setting, and Uma Thurman really, really make an awesome Medusa. Watchable.

Valentine's Day. Somewhere at the start of the show we thought, "Love Actually!" We need to watch that show again. What really impressed us about the show wasn't how everyone was connected in some way in the show but the house that Ashton Kutcher stayed in, and Anne Hathaway as a phone sex worker! Watchable.

Shutter Island. We actually saw the ending while browsing at the DVD store. Then went to watch the movie to appreciate the beginning. Not a horror show as we thought it was in the trailers, but nevertheless a good movie. Good movie.

Alice In Wonderland. Most people told us that they were rather disappointed with this movie. We could not see why. It's a slight deviation from the story book (oh our goodness we tried reading the book and wanted to kill Alice) but Helena Bonham Carter made the Queen of Hearts the star of the show! Oh and Anne Hathaway amazes us by showing she can act slightly weird (unfortunately we've locked her as the sweet Andrea of Devil Wears Prada)! Watchable.

Clash Of The Titans 2010. Can we cry? The trailer, especially with the minus one of The Used's 'The Bird And The Worm' giving the action an edgy but great feel, gave us quite high hopes for this show. Major letdown as the 3D version had nothing but 3D Chinese subtitles, while the show, dark to begin with, was darker when wearing the 3D glasses. A visual feast but somehow that was all.

Ip Man 2. Great martial arts show that does as well as the first, although the storyline seems similar. Of course the scene to watch for is Donny Yen fighting Sammo Hung. Must watch.

Iron Man 2. No expectations except a reminder to stay till after the credits. Overall the show was good, Robert Downey Jr entertained, and thankfully there was no need to be a Marvel fanboy to enjoy the show (we wonder how many found the Captain America's shield bit funny). Good movie.

Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time. Another show that we hoped would do well. It did...formulaic. Those who didn't know what Prince Of Persia was all about would be wondering what was with all the athletic jumping and swinging. The conversations between the Prince Dastan and Princess Tamina was entertaining, but somewhere in the show it suddenly felt like Pirates Of The Carribean.

Honestly we had even more memorable shows coming from Lady Gaga's music videos. Speaking of which Alejandro is out!

So we had to pick up our jaws at the bed scenes. But our gripe is, "Why can't BodyJam have choreography like that any more?!"

And tonight we got to watch A-Team!

Also another show with no expectations since we've never seen any trailers, only the poster. Only, this movie is so far in our opinion, the best show we've watched so far for this year. There's a lot of budget for the action scenes like Iron Man 2 has but the humour in A-Team outshines Iron Man 2. This is one show not to miss! Even from the second front row in Cathay we had no difficulty enjoying the movie (thumbs up to Cathay for having seats near the front that doesn't need one to crane up and look left and right just to watch the show)!

Oh and honestly Bradley Cooper in the movie. We want his genes. That wavy hair. That five o'clock shadow. Those eyes. That smile. And disturbingly, as we're not a fan off this, the chest fuzz. We want them genes!

Sigh we guess we'll have to resolve to boiled chicken breast meat for two weeks, more cardio and longer workouts. And make do without the hair.

Friday, June 04, 2010

Like A Drug, Like A Drug

This probably started with everyone on Facebook raving about Kylie's upcoming song 'All The Lovers', and the YouTube links posted along with it. Only we'd not the opportunity to check it out earlier so it was only this week in the midst of all the hectic goings-on that we somehow decided to destress by looking for the music video.

And we must say that it grows on us, once we got over our initial shock at how the music video started and started listening to the song.

Funny, Madonna's music videos never shocked us. Pet Shop Boys' videos never shocked us. Lady Gaga...well, even Telephone wasn't shocking because Kylie shocked us nine years ago with the music video for 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head'. After that video what's some tape over the nipples? Although admittedly if we never watched 'Bad Romance' first and jumped straight to 'Telephone' perhaps we might have been shocked at the near-nudity scenes.

So anyways we'll wait for Kylie's new song, hopefully we'll appreciate most of the songs in her new album (unfortunately since we enjoyed the dancefloor album that was Fever, Body Language and X didn't have too many songs that caught our fancy as they were more pop than dancefloor...). And while we wait, we'll busy ourselves by watching back her old music videos, especially those from Fever. Those were great music videos!

We've got to thank Parlophone for putting up her videos in HD.

Only...why isn't there a music video for 'Like A Drug'? That's our favourite from X!

And for a while now we've had Lady Gaga thematically on our iPhone, with the startup screen from Tapulous' Lady Gaga Revenge as our wallpaper and all ringtones from her songs. We're thinking of making a Kylie theme, but we'll wait a while as Lady Gaga's 'Alejandro' music video will be out soon...

Thursday, May 27, 2010

The Moonlight Carries The Message Of Love

We've been rather late in discovering YouTube Downloader. Prior to YouTube Downloader we've been kickyoutubing any videos we were interested in (not a lot), but when we found ourself occasionally heading to watch Lady Gaga's whacky Telephone music video, we thought it best if we kept a copy handy on our iPhone instead.

Beyonce's 'bad girl' line never fails to crack us up.

Then there were the parody videos, our favourites being Sherry Vine's take on Bad Romance...

...and the Key Of Awesome's Telephone.

YouTube Downloader made us a very happy man by making it hassle-free downloading the vids! Then, of course, iTunes had to inform us that some of the videos that we downloaded weren't able to be copied over to our iPhone. It happens. No biggie. We'd just use iTunes to convert it to an iPhone compatible format.

Leaving it overnight to convert as it was rather late and the file wasn't small, we sync'ed it the next day and what do you know, when we watched it the resolution was compromised. Bloody disappointing. Then we recalled reading the review on YouTube Downloader (we think this was a review on Download.com) about YouTube Downloader being able to convert files as well, so we thought, what the heck, might as well give it a go.

Not only was the conversion much faster, but it kept the original resolution!

Finally, something that made putting videos on our iPhone much easier. Then there were the Gag Che videos that, while in Cantonese which meant we understood less than one third of what is talked about, were still funny (thanks Little Prince for introducing!) and so we snagged everything.

That led us to editing all the information so that it doesn't just clog up our video's section on the iPhone, but is categorized under TV Shows etc. Our iPhone videos section now looks much neater!

After all that, we decided to try using the YouTube Downloader for one more experiment: converting Real Media files to Quicktime format.

And so, we now have the entire Sailormoon Sailorstars season on our iPhone! Happiness is us! No more waiting to use the telly, making supper, then proceeding to slot in a DVD to watch an episode! Now all the episodes can follow us wherever we go! Joy! The moonlight carries the message of love!

Too bad we only managed to convert the Sailorstars season. The first season of Sailormoon were in a slightly different Real Media format, .ram, while the Sailorstars season were in .rm format. YouTube Downloader couldn't convert .ram to .mov as far as we tried, hopefully in the future this will be improved on!

Monday, May 24, 2010

This Is A Triumph

Recently we've actually picked up a slight interest in Portal (after listening to Still Alive and watching some of the Portal YouTube clips admittedly) but never did get around to borrowing the game from someone - for one thing first-person shooters give us vertigo, although alakazen tells us that since Portal's very much a thinking game rather than running and gunning the vertigo shouldn't be so bad, and for another we wondered if our PC could support the game.

What really got us intrigued about the game was GLaDOS. Not the thinking using portals and definitely not because it was a FPS.

Then just last week, we got word that Steam was releasing Portal for free!

Hence no need to wait to borrow from anyone. And we'll be owning an original copy.

So far, we've only found time to play the game twice, and both times we could still feel the vertigo come on (although not as fast as, say, when playing CounterStrike or Left 4 Dead!) and we're quite happy that Portal runs smoothly on our PC...when the video settings are set at the bare minimum. That's fine, since GLaDOS kept us entertained with her exclaimations and the game doesn't really need to be played in high-end graphics to be enjoyed.

Our only gripe? Playing via Steam meant we at first spent the entire night and following morning downloading the 5GB game, and then finding out after that that we need to be connected online to play! We're not sure if we need to maintain the internet connection while we play, like for Command & Conquer 4 or Assassin's Creed 2, but we don't like the internet dependency as set by Steam.

What happens if something happens to our connection, like our modem getting fried?

At least with Good Old Games we can download and play anywhere anytime. At least Steam chose a good game to lure us in. Otherwise we might just forgo the download (and getting games from Steam in the future) and just borrow Portal from a friend. For now, we'll be busy exploring the depths of Aperture looking for cake.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Video Games Live In KL!

Ok the first time we heard of Video Games Live was after when we missed the opportunity to go hear Distant Worlds perform in Sporeland. VGL was coming up in Sporeland and we could actually get tickets, but we weren't too sure about it. One thing was because VGL featured music from loads of video games, including games we've not played like Metal Gear Solid, Kingdom Hearts and Halo.

Went to iTunes and found that they have an album out there, and checked the songs. Out of the lot, we were only really inclined to listen to the Civilization IV Medley. We're not really sure how the other songs would sound, and we aren't even sure if the Civ IV Medley would have Baba Yetu in it.

Anyways we skipped the VGL concert in Sporeland as we weren't too sure of the venue they were performing in and moped over the loss of Distant Worlds but got over it...

Then about a month back lad informed us that VGL was coming to KL. Since they were coming here, we made a spontaneous decision to go and immediately bought tickets for lad, esteban (the two most likely to enjoy video games music among the lot heh), and for Chief and us. And every now and then we would get paranoid that we would forget to bring the tickets on the day itself.

Come last Saturday, we drove everyone down to KL, making a dinnerstop at Yellow Cab near Asian Heritage Row for dinner.

So...we couldn't decide what size pizzas to order, and had the waitresses bring out all the pans so we could see just how large a 10" and a 14" pizza would be, and ended up ordering two 14" pizzas to share among the four of us - an anchovy pizza and a mushroom pizza.

Verdict? Rather good, but rather pricey at over RM40 per pizza heh. And these aren't the meaty options with chicken, beef pepperoni and salami and the likes. We've yet to try those. But they were filling, and the four of us were definitely full after that.

Headed straight to KLCC with barely fifteen minutes to spare! Arrived at the Plenary Hall just in time to seat and let the show start.

What can we say about the concert?

Ninty to ninty-five percent fanboy attendance. Rest, fangirls/girlfriends/wives.

The opening had everyone excited. This concert was one where no one sat quiet throughout the performance. Everyone was cheering and clapping at every point of the show! Hearts were plucked at nostalgic 8-bit games coming up on screen with the music supplied by the orchestra, everyone laughed to see Tetris played as the screen slowly filled up with Tetraminos (accompanied by music from the NES version of the game, oh and there was a choir too! They had to shout 'HEY!' at the end of the Tetris piece!), everyone shouted to see old games pop up.

In between performances there were videos from the composers, a Skype conversation with the creator of Pong, and games! One dude was invited on stage to play Space Invaders, he had to wear a t-shirt with the picture of the spaceship and ran left and right about the stage to shoot the incoming alien invaders. He didn't manage to win the top prize, but the goody bag he got had pretty good premiums too! Portable Space Invaders, an Earthworm Jim CD, he got to keep the Space Invaders t-shirt... The fun bit was the orchestra playing the background beat to Space Invaders, which got consecutively faster as the invaders approached closer, and the audience clapped along as well...

It was when the host asked for the winner of the Guitar Hero competition held earlier that we only found out that we missed out a fair bit going on before VGL started that night. Anyways, the winner was invited up on stage where he got to play Guitar Hero: Van Halen. The song? "Jump", accompanied by the host, Tommy Tallarico on electric guitar, the orchestra and the choir (who shouted "Jump!" at every point in the song hahaha). Initially the winner was supposed to play the song on Hard, but the entire audience made him play it on Extreme - which he did quite well!

So there were music from Metal Gear Solid, Mega Man, Kingdom Hearts, Halo (this one we found the music very good even though we've never seen or played the game before), World Of Warcraft (there are more choral pieces than just A Call To Arms!), Sonic The Hedgehog (the choir even sang the "Sega!" bit at the start!), Super Mario, Shadow Of The Colossus, God Of War, a special appearance by Norihiko Hibino (composer for the Metal Gear Solid songs) playing 'Snake Eater' on the sax, and Laura Intravia dressed up as 'Flute Link' playing a medley of Zelda songs, and at the end...

Tommy (host): The company is...Square Enix!
(Audience goes wild.)
Tommy: The composer...Nobuo Uematsu!
(Audience goes wilder, shouts, cheers and whoops.)
Tommy: The game...Final Fantasy!
(Audience claps, cheers, shouts out their favourite series.)

Jack Wall, that is, we think it's Jack, the conductor, raises up one finger. No response from Tommy. Two fingers. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

Tommy: ...SEVEN!
(Can audience go crazier? Apparently so.)
Tommy: THE SONG!
(Tommy and audience in unison, audience in fevered pitch, we too guiltily shouting along.)
Tommy and audience: ONE! WINGED!! ANGEL!!!

Seriously, has there been such fanaticism ever for an orchestra performance? Even for the Lord Of The Rings Symphony everyone was civil. No screaming fanboy singing along to 'The Bridge Of Khazad-Dum' or 'The Black Rider' for that matter. This was a rock band concert kind of audience reception to an orchestral performance.

There's only eight choir members which meant that they couldn't really be heard that strongly but the sound set up was very good. Lyrics from the original One Winged Angel, with music arrangement from the Advent Children movie with electric guitar bits. Absolutely grand.

For their encore performances, they gave us not only one, but TWO encore songs! First was a forum request for Chrono Trigger, which sent lad straight to heaven as he loves the game and wasn't expecting them to perform it. The second? Castlevania, performed by the orchestra, Tommy and Jack on guitars, Norihiko on sax and Laura on flute.

All in all, an awesome performance. Now...merchandise.

When it comes to musicals we would normally get the programme and probably the CD as souvenirs. But for this event, the programme booklet was RM25 for photos from their past concerts, no text, no credits to the National Symphony Orchestra or the VGL Choir or such. It really didn't feel something worth getting. As for the CD, it was the same one as we would find on iTunes, except almost twice as expensive. Somehow we refrained from getting it too. Could have gotten something else since they had other merchandise, like t-shirts, but we walked away with just our tickets and the event leaflet.

Now it turns out that members of the YKLS Chamber Choir were singing as the choir for VGL! This, we did not know as we decided to take a break this year. Met the bunch of them after the show where they let loose some steam over the short period of time they had to learn the songs, the difficulty of some of the scores...talk shop, basically.

Would we have joined as part of the choir instead of the audience if we knew? In this case, we think we best enjoyed the entire thing as audience. The choir couldn't see the screen to see what was showing when songs were playing, so it was hard to make out why the audience were all so hyped up. The energy may be infectious and you'd feel chuffed up for the performance, but the experience just would not be the same.

Plus, asides from Warcraft's 'A Call To Arms', the chanting from the epic-sounding pieces of Halo, FFVII's 'One Winged Angel', we don't think there was much songs we missed singing. Hmmm if they performed 'Baba Yetu' it might be touch-and-go between audience and choir...

For Distant Worlds, if they need choir members, oooh yes count us in straightaway!

So, will we watch this again? Sometime in the future, yeah!

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Angry Birds Catapulting!

Ok so every now and then, like on late Tuesday afternoons when the iTunes Store puts in fresh material, we'll take a looky for free music, vids, and app recommendations and the likes. Occasionally they'd recommend something that we like, occasionally we'll start from one app, head on to 'apps like this' or 'apps others also bought' and browse till we give up at the sheer amount of apps available that we have no interest in.

Or we might end up with a few different apps, mostly (if not all) free. A good thing is that there's always a 'lite' version of an app, which lets us know if we'd ever buy the app, keep the lite version or delete it.

Especially now that otousan has gotten himself an iPhone, and we're both still fresh comparing apps when we meetup, even we get to know a few more apps that we never noticed before. Well ok mainly otousan downloads games, and the games (as we notice) that normally grabs our attention are well-known games or PC games (ie Monopoly, Command & Conquer, Monkey Island, Beneath A Steel Sky, Zooloretto) while the new games that crop up don't usually get our attention, or, if they did, we've only put in about an hour of gameplay before we forget about the game.

So sometime last week we were hunting about the iTunes Store when we came across the lite version of Angry Birds. We'd never clicked onto the app to see the description of the game before and so, judging from the fact that it spent quite a while on the top 10 paid apps (for the Malaysian iTunes Store that is) we thought we'd give the lite version a try.

Turns out that it was a catapulting game. And to think not too long ago we just pooh-poohed another catapulting game otousan was showing to us. Anyways, we played the free six stages offered, and we thought we would forget about the game after a while.

And given the fact that a stage takes less than a minute to play, we've been replaying this game nonstop.

And paid the skimpy 99 cents for the full version.

Hello, the cause of our battery draining even faster. Who knows how our battery will last when they finally make Street Fighter 4 for the iPod Touch much more worth it...

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Inspiring Video

So esteban sends an email to the lot of us, titled 'Inspiring Video', saying:

Hi All....
Just stumbled on this video... very meaningful and kudos to the director...
Must watch soonest....

Plus a link to the video. We know esteban to be someone who would actually watch inspirational Chicken-Soup-For-The-Soul kind of videos, so for us there wasn't really any urgency to follow the link to the video immediately (that, plus the fact that the video couldn't play on our iPhone).

Then, the other Taman Tun-ites start replying to the email, and the general gist was that it wasn't so much a motivational inspiring video but a comedic one. Still, since we couldn't watch it on-the-go we pretty much forgot about it, until lad asked us about it today.

lad: hey
lad: did you check out esteban's movie yet?
Janvier: not yet!
Janvier: cos it doesn't play on the iphone
lad: oh
lad: i think you'd appreciate it the most
lad: takes time to load

And so, we followed the link to the video. And waited. And waited. It really was a rather long wait. And in the end, the video played... Midway watching it at the height of suspense, we were slightly puzzled and freaked out. Then we started laughing, realizing why lad said we would appreciate it the most!

And we forwarded it to the BFF, thinking that the video would be personalized to the person watching it! Sent out this email:

If you're feeling lost, or down, or just feeling uninspired, this is the best time to watch this.

For the divas, you know this video was meant to be for you.

In any case you guys should watch this ASAP!

That, and the link to the video. Only...after a while chatting on with lad we came to the realization that the link we sent to the BFF might be misinterpreted as being rather muka tebal, and so we quickly emailed them again saying it was a wrong link and that we would send them the correct one soon.

Then everyone got a personalized one, much to different reactions!

Oh well, if you've watched the video already, go have fun!

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

More Book Juggling

While we've never really got off the habit of bookjuggling, we'll now thank BookXcess for taking it a step further. Because, just last week we browsed around and came across an audiobook CD of Making Money selling at RM24.90. With audiobook CDs normally costing well over RM100, can you say, 'spontaneous buy'?

Disregard the fact that said copy of Making Money was an abridge version instead of the unabridged version. It's our first Pratchett audiobook and we want to hear how it goes. Years of reading and rereading the Discworld series and we've a certain impression of how the characters sound (as for how the characters look, Paul Kidby has certainly got them spot-on that we cannot think of them any other way!), and we were interested to hear how the narrator would voice the characters.

We already like how the witches were portrayed in the Wryd Sisters cartoon. Not so much how they look, but how they sound.

And how Lord Vetinari was portrayed in The Colour Of Magic movie, to a certain extent.

Anyways we had the CDs converted to mp3 and synced to our iPod, and next thing you know, we're listening to the audiobook while reading another book.

It's possible, due to the fact that we've read Making Money before and was rereading an Eddings book. Familiar material. Not much attention needed to do both except to laugh to the jokes from one book or the other.

Our impression of the audiobook? Plus we're listening now to the unabridged version of Maskerade.

The narrators, as far as we hear, do a good job of narrating, with the pacing is good and the pronunciation clear and understandable. Only that most voice impressions for the main characters and inflections differ from how we would do it (but then again, they are the ones doing the reading and getting money doing it!). We understand, though, and wouldn't really expect the narrators to do an accurate impression of Granny Weatherwax or some of the others. It's good enough that we can distinguish different people, especially during conversations.

Great. Now we've more books to collect!

Thursday, November 05, 2009

DVD Deliberations

So we've finished Battlestar Galactica and Hercule Poirot for now, and of late instead of watching DVDs of movies we've missed over the past months, we've been watching...the director's commentry for Lord Of The Ring's Fellowship Of The Ring.

And later we'll go back and watch the designer's commentry, the production and post-production team commentry, and the actor's commentry. By the end of it all we'll probably need to buy new DVDs again.

Why the commentry and not a movie? 'Cos we've watched LotR before, and so can easily stop any time, while if we watch a movie we'd like to finish it in one seating. Not really feasible when we only come back from rehearsals near midnight.

Also, we've resorted to watching LotR because we've an inkling to watch odd films if we were to go buy DVDs. It started with us remembering a phrase: Clockwork Orange. Never did get a chance to look it up so we wiki'ed it, and that led to Soylent Green later on because we wanted a synopsis of the movie, and then that led to reading synopsis of movies on Wikipedia like Stephen King book-to-movie titles and to other Kubrick films especially 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Clockwork Orange's idea of ultraviolence then is violent, but from the way it's acted out (as watched from YouTube) it doesn't seem so, nowadays movies are rather violent too. It's hard to picture it as violent when Alex sings 'Singing In The Rain' while attacking someone...

From there, since we started on movie synopsis we thought we might as well read up Soylent Green's synopsis. And from this trailer, well, you don't even need to watch the entire film. Just watch the trailer and then, go look up the secret of Soylent Green if you didn't already know and would like to know.

What we do want to catch if possible, is 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But the one question that runs through our mind each time we think of buying the shows to watch: These are old movies. Do we have the patience to sit through them any more?! Nostalgia is one thing where we have already readily accepted the fact that certain elements of a show is old, like the original Star Trek and the fake panels in the background of the Enterprise, but for shows we've not watched or heard before?

We should be preparing for movies like this instead, yes?

Prince of Persia movie! The games were good, but we don't have any feel for Jake Gyllenhaal but hey if the movie's good we can live with it.

Asides from movies, the only DVD telly series we're interested in? Oddly enough Gossip Girl is still sitting on our shelves as we don't find the interest for it much, but we're keen on picking up Monty Phyton's Flying Circus, and The Legend Of The Seeker when and if it comes out over here.

Hmmm should start reading Terry Goodkind's books then regardless of the differences.

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Team Little Mermaid And The Rasa Rasa Hunt

Last Saturday saw members from different treasure hunt teams joining forces to take down the treasure hunt known as the Rasa-Rasa Food Hunt 2009! Ian lir Cel, Andoo, Tuff Teacher and us got together to brush up on our treasure-hunting skills as we still needed practise honing our ability to spot keywords for anagrams and the likes as well as figuring them out quickly.

Team Layton has already participated in three other treasure hunts before this, and admittedly there were times the questions had us stumped. The way the questions are phrased in a treasure hunt doesn't comply to standard puzzle questions, and wouldn't make sense if the answer isn't nearby to look out for.

So, join more hunts!

The one thing we never did like about any treasure hunt was the fact that they started at some God forsaken hour before the sun rises. Like having to wake up at 5.45am thereabouts so that we could reach the venue before 7am. For this hunt, we had some 140 teams meeting up at the National Science Centre car park.

Stickers were handed out during the briefing a couple of days back, to stick to the car.

And then we had to figure out a team name for ourselves.

Except that instead of calling ourselves Sea Slug Team, we decided on Team Little Mermaid. That is to say, we kept suggesting that team name like how Osaka said it while the others tried to think of a better name. Team members Little Mermaid, Sebastian, Flounder and Scuttle. The reason for such a team name? The Little Mermaid soundtrack was playing throughout the treasure hunt on repeat! In the end Little Mermaid caved in and put the team name as Team Little Mermaid after all, haha!

After a quick briefing of what we were suppose to do, it's time to flag off!

This treasure hunt had some unique (read: hi-tech) aspects we'd not come across in previous hunts. In our briefing we were told that it would be require GPS, or a mobile phone with map faciliites, or a road map, a digital camera, and at least one team member with a Maxis line.

The reason for the Maxis line? Maxis was promoting their new 301 Finder service, and so we had to use text 301 to look for six food places, an automated teller machine, and a police station. And not only to text the service for the places, we had to take photos at the places as suggested by the 301 Finder service and print out the photos for submission! We suspect that, as Maxis was one of the main sponsors for this event, we had to do this extra bit of resource-wasting work.

Texting them was a bit of a hassle. First we'd to text them, and they would reply with 3 places, and we had to reply them with a 1, 2 or 3 to get more details of a place...

Texts received are free of charge, hence the RM0. But the amount we spent on texting them for this?! Hmmm at least the photo of our phone showing the text looks good, heh.

So now we have a text leading us to House Of Fishball, we've to take a photo there, making sure our team number could be seen.

We borrowed Bunny's GPS and Junior's 'The Star Guide To Malaysian Street Food' to help us out, and the GPS came in handy in identifying streets quickly as for the first part of this treasure hunt, there was no tulips/road-by-road guide, rather, we were told which street to look out for what particular questions! Luckily we had the GPS to save time, otherwise we might have been looking for answers on the wrong streets!

After much figuring out what treasures we were required to buy for the hunt, running about Hartamas, Kota Damansara, Damansara Uptown, SS2, and Bangsar to solve our treasure hunt questions, solving food challenges in Jaya 33, we sprinted off to the final venue - Solaris Dutamas for the final food challenge!

Which involved one of us making the best roti canai in a group of three. Sebastian/Flounder/Scuttle came out tops!

Once the treasure hunt was over we had time off to rest up before the dinner and prize giving ceremony at night at 3K complex. Team Litte Mermaid snagged...

33rd place! Oh well at least we got a food hamper although we didn't get the cash prizes...

By the way, Little Mermaid was too shy to head up to collect the prize hamper, even though she was the only one who fit the role of Little Mermaid...

After that, Little Mermaid suggested that we all go to Snowflake in Subang Jaya for desserts. An interesting place. You order your dessert, then sit and wait at your table with...

...the Snowflake 'Beeping UFO'. You can click the photo for a closeup as to what's written on it. What it does is start beeping when your order's ready, so you don't have to wait in line for your desserts to be ready.

Yummy way to end the day!

Friday, August 14, 2009

Janvier Soldat And The ShufflePod Meme

Now the Nut has been putting up memes for the last couple of weeks which provide good fillers should Janvier run of out something to blog about. Fact is, it's not that he's coming up empty on stuff to write, it's just that the time he spends in front of his PC is now relegated to time spent in front of the telly watching DVDs.

It's no secret that Janvier had bitten the forbidden fruit long ago, and it has consumed his soul ever since. It's not been easy for the Chief to be around Janvier at times since they will inadvertedly end up looking at Apple stuff, but the Chief thank the stars that Janvier has not started acting like one of the staff in the iPhone/iPod Guided Tour videos.

Nevertheless, Janvier read the memes and the one about having his iPod play songs at random to answer questions (there's been a variant of this about online already, yes?) tickled his fancy. See, initially he had this idea where he'd use the Comic Touch app and answer every question for the meme in a photo. Like for the first question.

Of course, while Comic Touch allows Janvier to make quick and easy comics using photos he already has, the number of questions and finding appropriate photos to use for each question makes this not worth the effort, and so he'll just stick to shuffling songs on his iPod to answer the meme.

So, the rules:

1. Put your iPod on shuffle.
2. Press forward for each question.
3. Use the song title as the answer to the question.

What does the next year have in store for you?

No Need To Argue, by The Cranberries. Janvier likes this answer, as he is naturally a peaceful innocent angel and does not like conflict and will live happily ever after. The photo above says it all.

What does your love life look like next year?
Bye Bye Bye, by N'SYNC. This should mean that Janvier and the Chief are saying goodbye to arguments!

What do you say when life deals you a bad hand?

Dirt Lands Theme, from Heroes Of Might & Magic IV Soundtrack. Possibly Janvier is meant to take a trip to the countryside in Ireland or the highlands and take it easy. Or survive on dirt.

Song that reminds you of good times?
The Dream Of Olwen, by Richard Clayderman. Spooky, because if Janvier met someone he knew who he'd thought had passed away, he might be reminded of good times he'd had with said person. If there were any, of course. Then he can go get freaked out.

What do you think when you get up in the morning?
Tangled, by Maroon 5. How very true! Janvier wakes up most morning tangled up between his two pillows, two bolsters, iKea knee prop and his quilt. Thus waking up feeling all aching and liable to just continue hitting the snooze button while he untangles himself.

What song will you dance to at your wedding?

Leto Atreides II, from Children Of Dune soundtrack. Not really what Janvier would expect to dance to, knowing that Canon In D would feature heavily if he had any say. But this piece is nice. Think flamenco!

Your favourite saying?
Welcome To My Life, by Simple Plan. You won't hear Janvier say this in a tired, defeated tone, or in an ironic manner, in fact you won't hear Janvier say this at all actually.

Favourite place?
The Contest, from Sweeney Todd soundtrack. Well it's true that Janvier has a morbid interest sometimes, but it would take some rather serious levels of boredom for him to go all the way to a marketplace to watch a contest between two barbers.

What song describes your best friend?
Servant To The Slave, by Capercaillie, from Celtic Circle II. How very odd. While Janvier can say that his friends can be obliging, he doesn't think any one of them are welcome mats to be taken advantage of, really!

What song describes your ex?
Harkonnen Force, by David Arkenstone, from Emperor: Battle For Dune soundtrack. Whoa. Ruthless? Janvier's thankful he doesn't have an ex then!

What song describes yourself?

Kiss, by Artist Formerly Known As Prince. Now this one Janvier felt was better described in a photo.

Where will you be in 10 years?
Canon in D, by Pachelbel. Not sure. Does this mean that our life would be like a canon, each year while have some echo of the year before repeating?

Your love life right now?

Super Mario Sunshine, Mario Scat Version, by The Big Band Of Rogues. Chirpy a capella and bright sunshine!

How will you die?

Flight To The Ford, from The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Rings soundtrack. Janvier loves all the tracks that feature the Nazgul lietmotif! And listen to that! Grand right the bit before they start singing (sounds like our death is a very dramatic moment!)? But will this mean that we die at Weathertop before Aragon saves us? Or that the river will not drown our enemies?

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Telly Tunes Nostalgia

Seems that while most people should recognize most of the tunes, a couple escaped notice. And we do notice or remember the tunes easier than the story sometimes! Anyways, we picked a bit of here and there (and all our ages showed with our answers...), and they were...

TV Theme 1 - Ally McBeal

But of course many would get this, with Vonda Shepard's 'Searchin' My Soul' making it oh so memorable. Plain hilarious, especially with surreal imaginative scenes (Biscuit being thrown into a garbage dumpster just as he was dumped by some girl), and one show we tried to catch every week...until the later seasons where we couldn't keep up.

TV Theme 2 - MacGyver

Good Gods he was so young!

TV Theme 3 - Mind Your Language

With the terrifying Dragon Lady!

TV Theme 4 - Dynasty

We love the music, even tho' we don't remember zip about the series (save that the brunette was an evil bitch)!

TV Theme 5 - Picket Fences

This show we found funny because of the many weird things that could happen in a small town! Also we love the piano piece played in the opening. Odd enough that we cannot find the opening scene so we've to make do with clips of the town's hilarious lawyer. Created and produced by David E. Kelly. Ayup, he who went and did Ally McBeal after this show.

TV Theme 6 - Poirot

The music caught our interest, although it never, ever did hit us that we were seeing Poirot when we first caught a bit of it on telly. And rather sadly when we did realize it was the best adaptation of Agatha Christie's Hercules Poirot (seriously, we only did suspect it when we saw David Suchet as Poirot and put two and two together some time later), we never got the opportunity to sit down and watch it!

TV Theme 7 - Star Trek: The Next Generation

Obvious the moment Patrick Steward opens his mouth with, "Space."

TV Theme 8 - I Dream Of Jeannie

Well partly because the music's catchy and the sitcom's funny. Didn't Jeannie had a sister genie?

TV Theme 9 - Airwolf

Goodness knows why we watched this show back then, heh. But catchy tune.

TV Theme 10 - Hawaii Five-0

Now this one, we don't think we ever watched, hahaha. But that tune, so danceable to.

Okeh, this wraps up Nostalgia Week!

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Dead Fantasy

Sometimes, something just comes along the way and blows your pants off.

And no, we're not talking about the Chief.

Initially, when we first came across the Dead Fantasy video, we thought it was a sort of cut-paste job where the creator took scenes from all over to make the video. After all, we never played either Final Fantasy nor Dead Or Alive enough to see every single cutscene or movie. But after a while into the movie we realized that it wasn't a paste job we were watching.

Watch this. Simply amazing. The gaya that you can find in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children or most anime is a-plenty in here.

It doesn't matter if you've never played Final Fantasy or Dead Or Alive before. When this video first came out last year we couldn't pick up our jaw. Every moment was pure impressive fighting (weapons fighting to be exact) with scenes and choreography that'll put any martial arts show to shame - mainly because there's plenty of unrealistic bits like whether gravity matters and the girls' unflagging strength and stamina.

Then again, it's just like a fighting game.

We only recognized the Final Fantasy characters, so you can't blame us for rooting solely for them and not for any of the Dead Or Alive girls (no, we didn't even watch the movie). Now that 4 minutes wasn't enough, and now part 2 is just out! 11 more minutes of pure pleasure. Interestingly the music for Dead Fantasy 2 is taken from Brian Tyler, who gave us the Children of Dune soundtrack as well!

Seems that there's another 5 more parts to wait for now. Oh joy.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Right Left Right Left Right Left Shimmy Jump

We're more than a bit rushed, needing to pack our luggage for Sporeland as well as wrap up certain presents to take over.

Egads, this year has got to be our most rushed Christmas shopping and wrapping. Probably because we're no longer in retail and thus don't saunter our second home that often anymore?

Still. As we're wrapping this song's keeping us company. Not very helpful since we need both hands and sometimes you can't ignore the call of the song. Just like when you hear the BodyJam tracks. It gets to you.

And you can even imagine an instructor going, "Regular people take your options! Double time: right left right left right left right left right left right left shimmy jump!"

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Still Alive

Was going through VGCats's latest comic (which isn't a comic but a Flash video rather). Now we knows little to none about Portal but the Flash video was very cute. It didn't help that the music was rather chirpy and happy, which may mislead you to what GLaDOS is actually singing!

This was a triumph
I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction
Aperture Science
We do what we must
Because we can
For the good of all of us
Except the ones who are dead
But there's no sense crying over every mistake
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake
And the Science gets done
And you make a neat gun
For the people who are still alive
I'm not even angry
I'm being so sincere right now
Even though you broke my heart
And killed me
And tore me to pieces
And threw every piece into a fire
As they burned it hurt because I was so happy for you!
Now these points of data make a beautiful line
And we're out of beta
We're releasing on time
And I'm GLaD. I got burned
Think of all the things we learned
For the people who are still alive
Go ahead and leave me
I think I prefer to stay inside
Maybe you'll find someone else to help you
Maybe Black Mesa
THAT WAS A JOKE
HAHA. FAT CHANCE
Anyway, this cake great
It's so delicious and moist
Look at me still talking
When there's Science to do
When I look out there, it makes me GLaD I'm not you
I've experiments to run
There is research to be done
On the people who are still alive
And believe me I am still alive
I'm doing Science and I'm still alive
I feel FANTASTIC and I'm still alive
While you're dying I'll be still alive
And when you're dead I will be still alive
STILL ALIVE

Still, we likes the song, and Scott's video of it. Watch it!

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Tube Logs

OK. There are times when we're impressed at the way our friends can pop us links to stuff on YouTube, stuff that makes us wonder just what did they type on the search bar to come up with it. But first off, here's a link to an awesome video that you. Should. Not. Miss.

It doesn't really matter if you don't know who the characters are. Work like this deserves credit for the effort they put in. Oh in case you have to ask, it's safe for work. The reason we put a link rather than embed it is because we can't find an option in GameTrailers for us to do so. Sounds safe enough?

Now. First up, something we've just been introduced to by QR. The concept of a video blog, or vlog. This is Minouye, quite the comedian. And he does his videos rather well.

Most of his vlogs are rather good. Worth a look-through. Oh and check out Merlign's Magic Stapler, and the Obscenity Of War (and the LOL Jar!) too.

Now QR sent that vlog to us some time ago, to which we filed somewhere in the back recesses of our memory. Bouncing about YouTube today however we came across this vlog, and that reminded us of Minouye.

This, is TMerman. Well, this particular vlog entry's somehow interesting and brings up a good question. How do you react when someone comes on to you when you don't like that person?

Asides from that, at times we struggle with our bloglist and have nooo desire to add vlogs to it. Nor do we think of starting our own vlog.

Now onto much more sturdier ground: music videos. Well we'd rather if we could just find the song rather than watch a music video (not unless music video was really good for some reason or like that awesome choreography by a Korean kid for Britney's 'Gimme More' as on wingedman's). So we just happened to check back on Slutilla's blog and came across the most. Freaking. Disturbingly. Salah. Video. EVER. If ever we are to keep our happy memories of Eric Prydz's 'Call On Me' in BodyJam we need to Chlorox our brain.

But it did make us decide to mooch about for some BJam songs we haven't manage to get on mp3. Like Freemasons' Club Mix of Beyonce's 'Ring The Alarm' or Alibi vs Rockerfeller's version 'Sexual Healing'.

Can't stop moving to the beat. Legs aren't moving but arms are. Dammit. No control. Left Right Left Down Up Down Up (sounds like we're keying in some cheat code hor). How we miss the first half of BJ35! Black Legend and Stupidisco! T_T

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Do Wop A Do Wop

Alright. Seeing how we'd only gone for Monday's BJ & BC we needed to follow up with a class today - Raya's around the corner and we've to get some cardio or suffer by next week. So happens that last week we managed to get a look at how Line Dance Funk was, first impressions was, "Hey, it looks simple but the music's good!"

Yeah, so choreography was simple. That's probably why the class was quite crowded. :D But what stuck in our mind was the final song Bernard played for the class - Hellogoodbye's 'Here In Your Arms'.

The song played in our head the entire week okay? Good thing Germ knew the song title so we could look for it.

So this week we thought we would give the class a try. And we kinda like it. Bernard jumps straight into the movements (basically two sets of 8 that ends in a change of direction, repeat) and we did 5 different choreos by the end of the class. It was fun actually, with upbeat music from Timbaland and the likes (alright, will admit cannot identify the rest). Just a shame that he didn't repeat the Hellogoodbye song again.

And now, we've forgotten most of the moves. Heh, shouldn't matter. Easy to pick up what.

Onto other matters. Leaving the Buffalax clips behind and onto something sweeter. AC music!

A Capella la. Last time we brought you DeCadence stalking some men sparring in Central Park.

First, something lighthearted. Some "...original songwork from Japan," although one of them actually is from Russia, and another definitely nowhere from Japan. You'll know them when you hear them. Although it may be quite possible that you've already come across this from a long time back. Oh we love the antics of the singers during the Russian bit.

Now, got onto something sweeter. The UC Berkeley Men's Octet.

The Bohemian Rhapsody.

And the Elephant Love Medley.

There's a lot more from them boys, YouTube's 'related' sidetab will guide you along the way. Only we wish that there was a much better recording where they weren't drowned out by the audience...but at least some people did take the trouble to share the boys with the rest of the world.

And to finish today's rather 'Tube-filled post, a final AC piece. We remember reading about this on Fiesty Faustus' blog although his showed some anime video instead. We so hope that this doesn't get mondegreened.

It's 'Leva's Polka', by Loituma. We are not going to post the lyrics here because it's in the 'More Info' box on YouTube.

Now let's see if you still think about Hymen Stores and Benny Lavas. We still do actually.

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Smiles Points

So many things that make us smile this week really.

First was the release of The Legend Of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Announced for release on 1st Oct we never got to see it till Thursday when Gamer's Hideout finally got their stock.

We totally heart heart heart Zelda. Although admittedly the only Zelda games we ever played were:
Gameboy: Link's Awakening (our first Zelda game ever!)
Gameboy Color: Oracle Of Seasons (oh dear, where's the cartridge gone...)
Gameboy Advance: A Link To The Past (finished this and returned it while in UK)
Gameboy Advance: The Minish Cap (sadly the cartridge cannot save games anymore :S)

See, so many we have yet to play, especially the Gamecube/Wii ones. But currently we absolutely LOVE this one. All the controls are done via the stylus! Now once we've finished this we'll be digging out our old Zelda games for another go-through...

Now our sis did send us the link for a videoclip that's been Buffalaxed before but we never did really thought much of it heh. What's a Buffalaxed video? See, in YouTube there's this user called Buffalax, who takes music clips and makes subtitles based on what he thinks they're saying in English, always with hilarious results.

Sis actually sent us the link for 'Indian Thriller/Girly Man'. She sent two actually, one Buffalaxed and another one of the same clip but at double speed - she liked the double speed one. Then mrbrown posted about another Buffalax video and we went, "Oooh, got some more one ah..." and hunted for 'em and shared them about. Our favourite is Buffalax's take of Dschinghis Khan's Moskau. The second line of the lyrics already nearly made us fall out of our seat. It was sooo good we had to share the joy with everyone.

Yet another smile came from the fact that the office laptop has now been repaired where we can actually go wireless! Hurrah! We now actually pack the laptop back so we could go online from our bed/at Starbucks/at Mage Cafe/at Kopi Oh!/oh heck, wherever whenever we happen to be free. This is good so that we can do stuff on laptop without having to buy our own (yet). Unfortunately we be spring chicken so after a while of carrying the lappie our arm feels like it's gonna come out of it's socket. :S

And today we've just picked up another smiles point in the form of this.

More songs for the iPod! More caraoke moments (probably). And an itch to watch Moulin Rouge! again! We're still hesitant to pick up the Soundtrack for Rent tho' (yay we've gotten the song Seasons Of Love!) and well, won't be picking up the soundtrack for Hairspray anytime soon. :P

Oh, and Sandworms Of Dune is finally out! We saw this in Borders but only in hardback.

Unlike Making Money we aren't gonna get hardback for this (we were Pratchett-deprived, see) - the rest of our Dune series are in paperback and this will follow suit. The only reason we're gonna get this is for closure's sake really - finally, the completion of the Dune series (hopefully). We really can't stand the writing style actually.