Drive!!!

I finally got this G1 thing everyone's been telling me about.. .. ...... What can I do with it again? Oh right.. drive.... Hm.. I'm been biking so long, I don't mind not being able to drive. Everyone has told me that doing the G1 test is real easy and it's all common sense. I actually got 2 wrong on the "Signs" section, but got perfect on the "Road Rules" section (trust me, they were tricky.. or I really am an idiot when it comes to signs).. Horray, now I can spend a few hundred dollars on lessons, a few hundred dollars on insurance and a few deca-thousands on a car.... < / sarcasm >

Although I'm not as hardcore as those with slick bike tires and 2 pound bikes (they always fly past me, especially uphill), I was perfectly fine riding my bike everywhere. Everyone tells me that driving and having a car is so convenient, but once you lose it, you feel extremely uncomfortable, especially when you have to wait for a bus, and share space on the bus with other people. I really don't feel that way.... (yet?) This is just the way things are when you don't have a car, and I've really gotten used to this lifestyle which lacks luxury. I just need my mountain bike with rough tires, especially in the winter. I suppose, with a licence, I won't be needing my bike as much as I did before.

Hm.. what else did I do this weekend? Oh I.... figured out why my 2nd XBOX (TSOP modded) wasn't loading Evo-X, and finally got everything to install properly. New version of XBMC?? Damn, this means I have to install it on my 1st XBOX... Okay let's do it..! So I did, *BUT*.. I made the mistake of installing it as a dashboard rather than an Application. This totally screwed up the soft-mod and.... I had lost control, the 007 save and ftp access to re-soft mod it properly. I was getting a bit worried. I just bricked my own XBOX. This will mean I'll have to pay someone to rebuild the hard drive for me since I don't have an EEPROM backup. I can't afford to spend another $20.. Maybe I can just try it myself? I knew I should have just mod chipped it.. I wouldn't be in this situation if I did.. This is worse than my landlord's XBOX, of which his son bricked cause he can't read yet.. Oh the dangers of soft-modding..... Oh, but the benefits!!!!! Softmodding is FREEE. It doesn't cost anything (you only need to buy/borrow the tools to do it once, and you can soft-mod an infinite number of XBOXES), and you don't even need to open the XBOX. Anyways, I knew of a tutorial that shows you how to revive an XBOX hard drive (without an EEPROM backup), when everything has gone wrong. It's like the absolute last resort to restoring an XBOX hard drive. There are many out there, but this one is the shortest/sweetest/simplest. I can use this to restore both my own XBOX and my landlord's. I think I'll learn a lot from it 'if' I succeed.

Basically, The XBOX hard drive is locked when the system's not on, and unlocked when you turn the system on. Soooo, to restore the hard drive, you have to turn on the XBOX to unlock the HD and then hotswap it to your PC while both the PC and XBOX are still booting up at the same time. That way, it will be like turning on your PC, and have an unlocked regular PC hard drive plugged in. Once your PC boots up and recognizes there there is in fact a hard drive plugged in and it can read and write to it (if it's unlocked), you overwrite all the files on it at the moment with fresh Microsoft dashboard files. It'll be like taking out of it's box for the first time. I made a big mess out of my roomate's toolbox, looking for torx screw drivers, I had to break the warranty seal on 2 XBOXES (the warranty is long expired anyways), I opened up my own PC and mangled it it's insides so that the IDE cables would reach (not to mention the risk of frying my own PC), but in the end, it worked!!!!. I had to try literally 50 times before succeeding though. I was soooo close to giving up, so close. Nothing was working and I just felt like giving up. Most of the time, my timing was just off. You have to swap the cable at the exact right now, you have to make sure you turn on your PC and XBOX at the right times too. It's a scary process, but in the end, I saved 2 XBOXES from being used as paper weights or door stoppers.

It's funny how I know how to rebuild an XBOX hard drive but don't know how to drive yet..

100mbps Internet?

source: http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=37835

According to CBC news, we Canadians will soon have access to 100 mbps internet... And I thought 5 mbps back at home in Toronto was fast.. Well that's only because I'm being deprived in Ottawa right now. First, we had Rogers cable..... which was advertised at up to 6mbps, but I never bothered testing the connection to see what we could REALLY get because Rogers blocks bit torrent traffic and on top of that, the ping times were so horrible, calling home and my gf with Skype was so difficult. Then we decided to switch to DSL. YES!!! Great speeds, low ping times.. but then.. we the connection kept going out and I couldn't figure out why.. did I miss a filter in the house? It turns out that we were too far from the DSLAM so Primus had to throttle us down to 1 mbps downstream in order to have a stable connection that won't keep disconnecting when I download or upload too fast...... great... Oh well, I'll just have to be more patient. I've already set my router to prioritize things like Skype, youtube, Xbox Live and web browsing to the high priority so it's only my bulk downloads that suffer.

Well, whenever faster internet is available, I'll be willing to pay as long as it's not ridiculously priced and there are no caps. What's the point of getting faster internet if they encourage you to hit a brick wall?

WRT54G + dd-wrt

(note: This is not mine. It's from frappr maps)

I've been looking to upgrade my router back in Toronto. The one I had would constantly drop wifi and still work as a wired router (D-Link 514) and also thinking about getting a router for the place I live right now since my landlord is super paranoid about buying wireless routers. He's gone through 4 of them - all of which he had to return to Future Shop.. (I'm partly to blame since I consume so much bandwidth through P2P traffic, which causes many routers on the market to just reset) So I started to do some research. This may be old news.. (really old news) but...... since I'm currently doing an internship in the telecom industry (hope to do so once I graduate) which is focusing on wireless technology now, I think it's important to spread the word.

So Linksys has this wireless router. The model number is WRT54G. A few years ago, in 2003, it was discovered that the firmware of the WRT54G was actually based on Linux. Because of this, Linksys was obligated to follow through with the GNU General Public License. They were sued by Columbia Law School Professor Eben Moglen, who's apparently someone who really hates proprietary software and believes that information should absolutely free and that free information leads to a better society. Linksys didn't put up a fight and released their source to the public. This let hackers and hackers alike modify the source and release their own firmwares. There's so many of them: dd-wrt, OpenWRT, batbox, HyperWRT Thibor, just to name a few of them.

And now? Guess what, society 'is' better.. Well, at least the population of tech-savvy geeks who absolutely need a really reliable router for all their net needs. It "turns a $60 router into a $600 router" simply because of the open platform. With a 3rd party firmware, it became infinitely more reliable than any other consumer router on the market at the time. Everyone who knows linux knows that you will rarely ever have to reset it. You can do things like QoS (Quality of Service) to prioritize packets for things like online gaming, VOIP, web surfing, streaming video, while having all your bandwidth consumed by P2P traffic =D. Some may argue that today's routers are just as reliable as the WRT54G running on 3rd party firmware, but there aren't many of them.. Most of them don't even support QoS yet and they can't do neat things like let you build a Wireless Distribution System, running your own wifi hotspot, or how about just having a fancy GUI? There's much much more... it's runs Linux!! There's even hard(ware) mods that have installed SD cards into the router. The more space Linux has, the merrier!

So what have I done with my WRT54G? First off, web browsing get premium priority... while my torrents can wait... and throttle down a bit when there's http traffic.. but throttle up again when there's no web browsing traffic! VOIP! Skype to Skype and Skypeout calls get premium priority as well, no more studdering from all the P2P traffic my PC's doing... so no need to manually throttle down my torrents when I'm making a call. In fact, no throttling down at all since Skype doesn't need much bandwidth, just some good timing. Hm.. what else.. WDS, yes, I've got 2~ WRT54Gs! Since I've got an Xbox360 downstairs and I don't want to spend $130 + tax on the wireless adapter, I can just simply build a WDS with the 2 routers - have the 1st router as the main router, it connects to the DSL modem and PCs, while the 2nd router can act as a wireless repeater to boost signal strength throughout the house and allows me to connect to Xbox Live via an ethernet cable. If you don't get it, the point of this is to have a wireless router act like a regular wireless router except it doesn't have to connect to the DSL modem via an ethernet cable. All that's hooked up to the 2nd router now is just the power adapter and an ethernet cable that connects to the Xbox 360. You can even roam without having to lose your live connection as you roam from one router to the other..! As a bonus, dd-wrt supports DNS service. I've got the address deepblade.getmyip.com so now I don't have to worry about my dynamic ip address ever again.

Neat stuff. 802.11n is just around the corner, but do we 'really' need such high speeds? Eventually, yes, but at the moment? I dont' think so.. Broadband speeds for the masses in Canada haven't even gone over 10mps when we've got 802.11g routers which are 54mbps.

Hopefully my WRT54Gs won't be obsolete until many many years from now.

Wii360 vs Playstation 3

In December 2004, I talked how the DS would be competing with the PSP. At that time, both systems had just launched (well, DS launched both in the US and Japan while PSP launched in Japan only) and no one knew how things would turn out for Nintendo. Actually, most people praised Sony for introducing Playstation Portable.... it's kick-ass graphics, a widescreened device that can play movies, music and games!!!!!! And let's see what Nintendo has to offer.... it's.... an ugly, chunky.. system that has 2 screens, a microphone.... and a stylus to work with the touchscreen.. It didn't make a lot of sense to me, it didn't make sense to a lot of people. (At that time, I really did think the DS was ugly, just bad physical design, but I didn't doubt it's abilities and I didn't think that Nintendo was going in the wrong direction.... i did NOT..) At that time, Nintendo kept talking about how games were too complex, and how graphics don't matter. Of course no one would understand, those who actually cared to listen were all hardcore gamers or semi-harcore gamers who don't know how games could possibly be played 'differently'.

Everyone thought that it was really the end for Nintendo. History is repeating itself, history as in N64 vs Playstation 1: Playstation 1 could push more powerful graphics than the N64, it's CD-based media could hold more data for things like in-game videos, it worked as a multimedia device since it could play music CDs. The same applied to PSP compared to the DS.

Things seemed very good for Sony. You could even tell by the launches for each system. There were massive lineups for the PSP in Winter 2004 in Japan and Spring 2005 in the US. It was hard for you to find a PSP since they were all sold out everywhere. Most people got PSPs by pre-ordering. What about the DS? There wasn't much hype at launch.. it sold well since it's one selling point really pushed sales: backwards compatability with GBA games. Launch games weren't the greatest and even with those games, people couldn't fully understand what the fuss is about with the DS. It sold well but you could still walk up to a store without lining up and just buy a DS.

Every gamer you asked said that PSP was going to kick-ass and the DS was just a toy made by Nintendo, whose products are kiddy and 'gimmicky'. Playstation fanboys all bought PSPs and avoided DSs, like Nintendo just to 'kiddy' for them (and some still foolishly do that today).

However, shortly after launch, around mid 2005, it became clear: Nintendo DS was doing well, and the Sony PSP was not. Nintendo had previously stated that, they will rise to heaven if DS works out or they will sink to hell if it doesn't. So true is that statement, because Nintendo was selling LOTS of DSs, and the games were actually fun. So where and how did things go wrong with Sony? Of course, it's not just the fact that Nintendo's doing too good, the PSP has many many turnoffs.. too many: super LONG loading times before you can actually get into gameplay, short battery life, a portable system that's not durable (quite the oxymoron), an analog stick that just doesn't work good, expensive UMD movies that aren't selling, and most importantly - disapointing games. I must say that things look really grim for PSP.. how can you compete with the DS? Especially now that DSlites alone (not counting DS phat) is out and it's outselling PSPs 10:1 in Japan?

Today is Friday, September 8, 2006. Yesterday, Sony announced that they'll have to postpone the launch of the PS3 in Europe until March 2007. I remember back in 2005, there was a lot of talk about the PS3, how it's coming very soon and it's going to be a million times better than the PS2, just because it's PLAYSTATION 3!!!!! but it might not come out til 2007... A lot of people were confused.. how can they wait so long, 2 years..... when we're already talking about it being released really soon? Nah, there's no way it'll take that long to come out. Well now, Sony has made it so, which just shows how much power they have to truly disappoint. Sony initially said that PS3 would launch in Spring 2006. Anyone who truly knows Sony and the video game industry would know that that's impossible and that Sony's saying Spring 2006 just to make gamers wait a 'few' months and to keep them from buying an XBOX360 which launched in late 2005.

In E3 2006, when Sony made the pricing details for PS3 public, gamers were NOT happy... $499 USD and $549 CAD for the BASIC pack?? Many noted that with $499 USD, you could buy a $299 USD XBOX 360 Core Pack + a $199 USD Wii (Assuming that the Wii will sell for less than $199 at launch.. historically, Nintendo has never priced their launch consoles at more than $199). A few weeks ago, Sony announced the slogan for Playstation 3: "This is living".... now THAT is something I don't understand.. are you trying to say that I'm not living if I don't buy a PS3?

In my opinion, Sony, being the arrogant tech (not gaming) company that they are, are going to face a financial disaster within the coming months by taking this huge risk. They've already invested billions in R&D into blu-ray and the Cell processor. Not many people are going to be able to afford a PS3 and most people will not buy into the High Definition movies hype. They haven't even launched PS3 yet and the ONLY news that comes from Sony is bad press [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12*].

*People (especially, ESPECIALLY Europeans at the moment) are super pissed at Sony, so pissed, that they created a website to show how they really feel about the European postponement: http://www.thisiswaiting.com/). Compared to Nintendo? They've been getting only GOOD press lately: [1 2 3]

So what's going to happen when the Wii launches? Will history repeat itself? History as in Nintendo DS vs Sony PSP..... Wii'll see... yes Wii shall.



"And now you say, you want a Revolution. Well, we've got one!" ~Satoru Iwata, E3 2005

It's finally MAY!

Yes, the month when so many things happen. Exams, E3, Ottawa, Nortel, internship, marks. I feel like I'm coming up with tags. Anyways, I can't believe I didn't make a blog post for an entire.. 5 months! Holy cow. I know that I didn't make a post for a long time, but I didn't know it was almost half a year. Hopefully that won't happen again. I do want to this blog to be a big part of who I am.

Electronic Entertainment Expo
Pre-E3 accouncements: Nintendo Wii .. Mmm.. OK, even as a Nintendo fanboy, I can definately say that I like Nintendo REVOLUTION a lot better, especially with those official logos Nintendo presented during E3 2005. I liked it, but I suppose a codename is just a codename and Nintendo does have to give it a real name for marketting and branding purposes. The more I think about it, the name Wii has really sunk in. Nintendo Wii. Although I WAS intrigued when the name REVOLUTIoN was first announced in E3 2005 with the little o representing Gamecube minidvd games..

Nintendo:
Like IGN's Matt Casamassina said, Sony and Microsoft are going to be coming to E3 with guns loaded and Nintendo better be prepared. As with every E3, everyone comes with big announcements and games to show. Watching people play the Wii was pretty neat, especially when there are 5 hour lineups for playing 5 minutes of Wii. Sure, Sony was the one with the biggest announcements by announcing price and launch date, Microsoft is the one showing off a lot of games, but Nintendo is the one that came to E3 with DIFFERENT and QUALITY games. Microsoft boasted a spectacular launch lineup for Xbox 360 but the games shown at E3 for the Wii tops it, by far, not that they'll all be ready for launch day, but from the looks of it, they'll be released during the launch "window" period. The games that I absolutely must play on the Wii are: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Smash Brothers: Brawl.

Sony:
.......OMG... common Sony, first you copy the rumble pack and analog stick from N64, now you're gonna take motion sensing. You guys obviously can't innovate. Sure, there are those who say that Sony DIDN'T copy Nintendo since Sony has been working on motion sensing technologies in controllers for more than 2 years, but it doesn't change the fact that you included motion sensing this generation just because Nintendo did. Your campaign for better graphics, more multimedia capabilities and faster processor is going to break your bank. $600 USD for a gaming machine.....? That's like.... an entire paycheque or 2 for the average hardcore gamer who wouldn't have high paying jobs for you to take money from. What else, "rumble was last generation, movement is this generation." ~ Phil Harrison. WTF? Are you guys retarded? PS3s aren't going to include rumble feature and you're trying to convince us that we don't actually need it? We all know you're not including rumble in controllers because you lost a lawsuit that almost got PS2s pulled from shelves. I can't stress this enough, but PS3 is going to spell disaster for Sony, and for the video games industry.

Microsoft:
Games games games, with just better graphics with a very robust online gaming platform: Xbox live, but you're forgetting that some people are still not willing to pay to play online, especially if/when Nintendo's going to build an online platform and let people play on it for Frii. It's good that PC games can be easily ported to Xbox 360 and that dev environment and dev tools for developping games are advanced and easy to use, but..... you're still losing money. =/ The entire Xbox division has NEVER made money for Microsoft, so eventually, you're gonna have to think of a way to start making money or start scaling back on your push into the gaming market. Sure, you've gained a 1 year head start ahead of Sony and Microsoft, but you can only take so much market share from Sony especially when there are distractions like Nintendo Wii and the entire 'motion sensing in games' idea..

Nortel Internship in Ottawa
OK, the internship. In the comp-sci program I'm in at UofT, there's something called PEY (Professional Experience Year) where you spend one year after 2nd or 3rd year (preferably 3rd) of your studies to start applying your developed skills, your passion and the things you learned in school so you aren't lost once you graduate and come out to look for a job. There were multiple rounds, the 1st round is where a large number of people get placed and when tensions are high because you're competing against EVERYONE (even engineers, for the placements that I truly wished I got back then [ATI]) for a placement. I had 2 ATI interviews in 1st round and I was so nervous. I screwed up the 1st one since I didn't have my r?sum? with me, assuming that they would have it. The interviewer tells me that he forgot to print it or something and there's no WiFi so he can't go online to view it.. Great.. Well, at least most of the questions were technical. I answered the large majority of them correctly but with not-so-great presentation. Then the 2nd ATI interview.. I made the mistake of letting him know that I'm really into graphic acceleration but I don't actually own an ATI card but rather an nVidia card.... oops, that must have pissed them off. Well, then came the day when the placements would be posted online, kind of like those high school "DID YOU MAKE THE TEAM?!?!!1" environments, where a frantic kid runs up to the bulliten board to look for his name, but doesn't see it and then proceeds to sink into depression. Ya, that's what happened.

There was a little break, about two weeks, before the continuous round job postings were listed. I was so withdrawn. I needed to know why I only had 2 interview in 1st round yet I applied to so many. I spent, literally, HOURS every night taking a look at my r?sum? and making changes, some big, some small. Over those weeks, I separately saved my new r?sum?s, giving them revision numbers. At the rate I was saving revisions, I would have had more revisions than there are Final Fantasies. Now that I look back, there are definately HUGE leaps in improvement.

I got a call on my cell one day in late-ish March while I was at home studying. I thought it was the most bizzare thing, I know it's not my gf cause we just talked earlier and she knows that she needs to give me time to study. I picked up the phone and it was someone named Ken McCarthy from Nortel. [ =D !!!!! ] Wow I can't believe they called.. Ok stay calm, what does he want..? A phone interview! I'm always good at that.. I always do better in phone interviews than in-person interviews

Now that I look back at the positions I've been interviews for:
====================================
Verifications Engineer@ATI
Technical Writer@IBM
QA Specialist@Net Integration Technologies
Intern Developer@Clariy Systems
QA Specialist@InSystems
====================================
I can't be happier than I am now to be offered the placement of being a Software Tools Developer@Nortel. Surely, being a software tools developer for 16 months beats doing 16 months of testing slave work at ATI or the smaller firms such as NIT and InSystems (Verifications Engineer and QA Specialist are just fancy names for TESTER). Hmm.. IBM.. well, surely it's a highly well known tech company with a lot of history and reputation behind it, but technical writing.. at first I was a bit interested. I can do technical writing. With practice, I can do quality documentation. I love writing, not essays though, but documentation is good. I even brought 2 piece of references with me: 1 2 and he even tells me that I'm his top choice unless his last interviewee turns out to be a superstar. The next day, I find out that indeed, his last person to interview turns out to be a superstar.. I guess my 2 pieces of references didn't impress him much.. I was a little down about that, but now that I look back, being a technical writing definately doesn't directly relate to what I'm looking for. Surely, being place with Nortel is the best case scenario. I'm not even going to comment about Clarity Systems.. I got an interview the day I submitted my interview, got interviewed the next day, and then received a rejection e-mail the next day. It went so fast I don't even remember much of it.

Exams and marks
==========================================
CSC263 - Data Structures and Analysis
CSC336 - Numerical Methods
CSC343 - Introduction to Databases
CSC318 - Design of Interactive Computational Media
==========================================
Well, all my marks are finally in. I can surely say that marks don't matter as much to me anymore. Definately not as much as they did since high school days when getting high marks was easy. Let's see.. ouu...! I passed CSC336 and CSC263!!! Horray. I thought I might have failed 336, considering how insane that exam was.. Now I know why the autofail borderline is at 30%.. I.. seroiusly think that that course needs to be re-structured. The assignments do not reflect what's expected in the midterm and exam and there is too much material presented, much of it is .. well, boring and is never applied. The beginning unit of the course was interesting. It's much like CSC258 material except it's less technical and more mathy. What really threw everyone off is the fact that.. Tom Fairgrieve would take 20 minutes talking about super complex concepts related to errors and how math relates to it and such, where no one understands anything he's saying but are just blindly writing whatever he writes on the board and are scared to death because they don't understand the material and then he'll move onto spending 20 minutes explaining every single little detail to the algorithm of matrix multiplication.......... very strange... and scary.. Hmm.. CSC263.. I expected more out of this, but it turns out it's my lowest mark this term. Oh well, I learned a lot. I especially learned that surrendering your marks using the "I don't know" rule helps, and it's just not worth the time and effort to blindly elaborate on what your partially know. This has to be my most enjoyed course this semester. Sam Toueg is, well, from Princeton, that's pretty much all that needs to be said... but I'll elaborate: Toueg is a prof who can teach CSC263. He is so enthusiastic when he's up and lecturing, it draws you in. Long before taking the course, I was told that CSC263 was one of the hardest courses in comp sci, however, there is a prof who is very amazing at teaching it. Unfortunately, he would only teach it in the 2nd semester in the 2005/2006 school year. I was a bit behind in our courses and no one would want to wait that long for a course that should have been taken in 2nd year. I knew that taking a hard course on my own not knowing anyone would be hard, but I also knew deep inside that it was the right thing to do. I would wait for Sam Toueg and do 263 on my own. I've already decided that I'll be taking 5th year anyways, so there is no rush. On top of that, the fact that Michelle Craig is teaching in the 1st semester really makes me sick.. I'm a bit shocked.. only 2 people have rated Sam Toueg on ratemyprofessors.com.. How can this be? He is one of the best in the comp sci department. Shame on you all who have taken 263 with Sam and haven't rated him. So that's CSC263.. I passed.. I really enjoyed that course.. CSC343.. At first, the lectures were really easy to understand...... too easy.. so easy to understand that I would fall asleep because Ramona Truta would speak so softly and then blame it on the acoustics of the room .. -_- .. The assignments SEEMED hard, but they really weren't. The lectures were quite (I don't want to say it, but) useless.. yes.. I didn't understand most of the things she said.. Most of the time, I would just refer to the lecture notes for reference. Learning SQL was cool though and SQC (embedded SQL in C) too.. pretty neat stuff.. but I doubt I would be applying that stuff anytime soon. CSC318.. at first I thought it was the course where you learn OpenGL, graphics and such.. but I guess not, it turns out to be a course with a lot of courseload, but in general, quite easy, but just a LOT of material to cover, a LOT of work that needs to be put into it, but still a breeze course compared to what I still need to go through in CS.

Internet Naming
OK, so SCUMBAGS took my nickname DeepBlade for eBay and Skype many years ago, but I'll have the last laugh! I got to register
deepblade@gmail.com
http://deepblade.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/deepblade
http://del.icio.us/deepblade

"I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle"

It's here! It finally arrived!! Terminator 2: Extreme Edition DVD. I got it for $7.50 USD + $4.00 USD shipping = $11.50 USD = $13.67 CND from ebay, brand new, still wrapped, delivered to my mail box. It was -3 degrees celcius with a light drizzle when I opened my mail box to see a package with the words DVD on it. When I got home, I ripped open the bubble wrap. The limited edition metal DVD case was ice cold.. just the way I like it >=D

When I started taking the DVD case out of the metal case, I immediately understood what they were aiming to do.. I hope you do too.. although it's sometimes hard to notice just from pictures. 1 2 3 4


Let me tell you why I love this movie. I watched James Cameron's 1991 Terminator 2: Judgement Day when i was 7 years old.. (even though I probably wasn't supposed to..). My grandparents brought a bootlegged VHS copy of Terminator 2 to Canada with them when they came over from Hong Kong. I must have played that VHS tape and watched the whole movie from beginning to end.. over 10 times since I had little to do as a child. I even remember looking through a calendar, looking for the day when Judgement Day will come.


A few weeks ago, after reading IGN's Top 25 Action Movies of All-Time and noticing that T2 came in to be #4, I decided it's time I own a legit copy of it. I should, at the very least, catch up with technology, to own the DVD so I can add to my collection of DVDs, to pay my respects to (in my opinion), the greatest movie of all time. So I did some research. There's something called the Ultimate Edition DVD and then there's also the Extreme Edition DVD. The Ultimate Edition DVD came out first, and it has a lot of extras. A little while later, they came out with the Extreme Edition DVD.. which is digitally mastered from a brand-new 1080p high-definition digital telecine transfer, which simply means.. it has even greater video quality than the Ultimate Edition DVD, with new extras. None of the Extras overlap, so the Extreme Edition DVD doesn't really replace the Ultimate Edition DVD.


Although I didn't understand 'everything' when I watched it as a child, the story made enough sense for me to understand what was going on. The action was what really got me pumped. What's 'not' to understand when a liquid-metal shape shifting robot from the future is targetting you for termination..? Everything was blowing up so fast, and the special effects were (and still are) impressive. There are so many action scenes, all of which are just spectacular, and it's not all about the graphics/action. For example, John Conor made The Terminator swear not to kill anyone even though The Terminator didn't understand why since the only thing on his mind was to protect John and he'd do anything to accomplish that, even if it means killing people. In the scene where police cars surround the building they're in, The Terminator takes his minigun and grenade launcher and shoots at the police and the cars they're hiding behind, for a good few minutes.. When he's done, his scanner shows: Human Casualties: 0.0

I can't say I have a favourite action scene, they're all my favourite. This movie is DEEP. As I got older, I understood more of the concepts and the story.


Here's a quote by Sarah Conor (John Conor's mother) to show you what I mean:

"Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The terminator would never stop -- it would never leave him, and it would never hurt him, never shout at him or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there, and it would die to protect him."

Even by today's standards, there's some real great acting in this movie. This is the movie that everyone refers to when they talk about Arnold Schwarzenegger as an actor. There are countless memorable quotes by him from this movie. The fact that he plays a 'less-say, more-killing' robot makes this shine even more. Linda Hamilton (Sarah Conor) acts like a psychopath like she should be and Edward Furlong (John Conor) plays a perfectly wild and adventurous child who teaches the Terminator a few lessons about life. The more I watch it, the more I admired everything about it. Beware, the ending.. can be quite emotional. All good movies have great endings to them, and T2 is no exception. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to take aim at T-1000's head while he's still frozen in liquid nitrogen. Astalavista, baby.

CSC300: Computers and Society

Hm.. ok, so this term (1st term of 3rd year CS), I'm taking a course called CSC300: Computers and Society. It's taught by Professor Emeritus Calvin Gotlieb. He's really old, but he's been called the "father of computing" in Canada. He knows and has seen a lot related to society and computers.

The course focuses on how computers have changed society in the past, how it is affecting society today and what computers may offer to society in the future. The tutorials are extremely social, like a mini forum, with about 10 or less people and you get to talk about anything computer related. 10% of your grade goes towards 'Internet Postings' which is just creating a thread in a forum and replying to those who reply to your topic. Here's mine, hope you like it: The Paperless Office. 15% of your grade goes towards a debate. Our topic was "Be It Resolved That: The Digital Divide is Temporary". Let's not talk about that since I lost.. =( [Even I was convinced I was wrong.. that's how bad I lost] The main assignment is a 3000+ word essay worth 30%. I'm not good at writing essays, but I tried my best and I generally had a lot to say. My topic was: Internet Vulnerability: A disaster waiting to happen. This essay was really rushed so.. don't be too harsh criticizing it... Hope you like it: Internet Vulnerability: A disaster waiting to happen.

I talk a lot about piracy in my essay.. which reminds me, I just saw this video on anti-piracy. You can view the video 'here'. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan are on a mission to stop piracy. If it was a movie, they could have taken on the bad guys themselves. But this is the real world, they need your help! When you buy pirated movies and music, you support CRIMINALS! Now these criminals are counterfeiting other things like electronics and medicines. Take Action. Demand the real thing. Help them stop piracy. Let's TERMINATE it!