Gifts!

My parents and sisters got me some nice gifts for my birthday this year. I got a Logitech Pure-Fi iPod dock and clock radio. It'll go well with my iPod Touch and maybe help me wake up in the mornings ;)

I also got a copy of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty. Never played Starcraft before but I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon this time.

And as my birthday present to me, I got a Logitech G330 gaming headset so I can play without bugging my sister and the rest of the apartment.

Thanks mom, dad, and sisters!
Thanks me!

Happy Birthday to Me

Well I've completed my 31st orbit around the Sun. Wheeeeeeeeeee.......

What's happened in the past year? Let's see...  got a promotion of sorts, lots more work, my parents finally moved from my crummy home town, I got 4Mbps internet, bought a few gadgets and stuff, and... that's about it.

To celebrate, here are a few fun facts about the number 31:

• 31 is a prime number, and not just any prime number, but a Mersenne Prime which is a prime number 1 less than a power of 2. I enjoy powers of two, so this is cool.
• 31 is the number of ice cream flavours from Baskin-Robbins. Ice cream is always good and I like Baskin-Robbins better than that overpriced and overrated Häagen Dazs.
• 31 is the atomic number of gallium. Gallium is widely used in light-emitting semiconductors. I like LEDs, so this is cool.
• The sum of the digits of the 31st Fibonacci number (1346269) is 31. Creepy.
• 31111111111111111111111111111111/31 is prime. That's 31 1s on the numerator. Cute.
• 31 has the first two digits of pi and pi³ is allllmost 31. Pi is fun.

And here are some people who share my birthday:

• H.P. Lovecraft (1890) - Creepy horror writer
• Isaac Hayes (1942) - Composer of the Shaft theme. I can dig that.
• John Noble (1948) - Actor who played Denethor in LOTR and Walter Bishop in Fringe! I like Walter a lot. He's so funny and cute.
• Jonathan Ke Quan (1971) - Short Round from Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom.
• Misha Collins (1974) - Castiel from Supernatural. The most amusing Supernatural character by far.

Happy Birthday to me!

(Number facts from Wikipedia and  Prime Curios!)

Repo Men

Repo Men seems to take place in the near future. The architecture and technology is very similar to current conditions with one exception -- artificial organs have been perfected and are available to everyone. There is however, one caveat: if you miss your payments for three months, Jude Law will show up at your house, zap you with a stun gun, cut you open, and take the organs back, leaving you to probably die. Jude Law is a Repo Man, one of many who work for the company that manufactures the organs - The Union.

Remy (Law) is one of the best repo men in The Union. Together with his friend and partner Jake (Forest Whitaker), they happily go around repossessing organs for their boss Frank (Liev Schreiber). Things aren't going so well at home, however, as Remy's wife Carol (Carice van Houten) has issues with his job and would rather he switch to sales. Eventually, Remy decides to finally hang up the scalpel and make the switch, much to Jake's displeasure. Jake persuades Remy to do one last job before quitting the repo game. Things go wrong and Remy ends up with the latest model in artificial hearts. Remy suddenly grows a conscience and can no longer perform repossessions and he sucks at sales. Eventually, he can no longer make the payments on his heart and has to go on the run. You would think the company would give him a free one after all his years of service, but whatever...

Remy meets a girl while hiding out at a derelict settlement of artificial organ deadbeats. Now this girl, Beth (Alice Braga), is practically a machine. She's got fake eyes, ears, larynx, knees, stomach, kidneys, and even girly parts (Lady Mystique edition, comes in five sparkling colours). Remy comments that they make a complementary pair since he has an artificial heart and she has an artificial everything else. They run away together and eventually decide to break into The Union headquarters to delete their records which eventually leads to an icky conclusion and a little twist at the end.

Now I'm not usually one to be bothered by much in movies, but this film bothered me a little. The subject matter, while quite original, is morally disturbing. The repo men carry out their jobs like any other job, feeling no wrongdoing in attacking people, cutting them up, and leaving them to die. They even trade stories about their clients' begging and sobbing as easily as trading office jokes. That all this could be legal is frankly, ridiculous. Within the confines of its universe however, the acting was actually quite good. Law and Whitaker play their roles convincingly. Schreiber plays the morally bankrupt organ salesman as a big jerk (has he ever played a character who is not a big jerk?).

The effects are decent but the violence level in this film is extreme. Blood and limbs fly with wild abandon as Remy hacks and slashes his way through individuals and groups alike. This movie bombed badly at the box office and was generally disparaged by critics with good reason. The film is not sure if it wants to be a serious social commentary or an action film and ultimately doesn't do well as either. The twist was totally expected too. I should have just watched The Last Airbender...

Häagen Dazs

We decided to have some dessert at Häagen Dazs in 1-Utama. I've only had Häagen Dazs ice cream once before and thought it was overpriced and overrated. But hey... ice cream is always a good idea right? Right?

First overpriced ice cream: Caramel and biscuits flavour with roasted almond nibs, in a cone. This was really really sweet. Sorry about the out of focus pic; the lighting was bad and the ice cream was melting.



I had the Belgian chocolate ice cream on a brownie with roasted almond nibs. The ice cream was quite nice and the brownie too. Putting ice cream on a hot brownie may not have been a good idea though - it was soon a chocolatey mess.



The bill was about RM40 for two small scoops of ice cream and a brownie. I think I'll stick to other overpriced ice creams.

Dragon-i

I've always thought Dragon-i was one of the better Chinese restaurants around. For lunch in between movies last Saturday, we went to the outlet at The Curve. We've come here quite a lot so we usually order the same dishes. First up was some stir-fried long beans with minced pork. I'm not usually much into pork, but it's quite good when minced and fried.



Next up was sweet and sour chicken. Deep-fried chunks of chicken with sweet and sour sauce served with capsicum and pineapples, this rendition of a common Chinese dish is one of the best I've had. The chicken was still crisp and and all the ingredients melded together nicely.



We decided to try something new and ordered fried tofu with assorted mushrooms. Served as described, it was unfortunately only adequate. Oh well... live and learn.

Speed limit: 4Mbps

I've been subsisting on 512kbps ADSL for years (sad, I know). I was just too lazy to upgrade and didn't really see much need for it. But with TMNet's 'Blockbuster' promotions, I decided to take the plunge and visited the TMPoint in Bangsar. A week later, a technician called and he came to the house yesterday to check the line quality.

The minimum line quality for the speed I requested is >20dB of SNR and <40dB of Line attenuation (you can look this up in the ADSL statistics page of your modem settings page). So the tech sees my line quality: 11dB SNR and 41dB attenuation.

Heartbreak.

Undaunted, the valiant technician suggests testing at the source: the wall socket. Whipping out the free modem supplied with the package, we set up the connection on a laptop and wait. Several agonizing seconds later we are greeted with 24dB SNR and 39dB attenuation.

Joy.

Not satisfied with merely knowing the speed, the dedicated technician suggests multiple scenario testing to find the cause of the change in line quality. Phone cable quality is suspected. I was using a 60ft cable from the wall socket to my old modem. Using a new 100ft cable, we get 19dB SNR and 39.5dB attenuation. Ah, so cable length significantly impacts SNR! The solution was simple if not convenient: install the modem near the wall socket, then run Ethernet cables to each of the computers in the house. With this in mind, we activate the package and it was decided to temporarily reconnect to my old modem before I bought the network cables. The engineer in me demanded one final test: use the new modem in the place of my old modem, preserving my current wiring scheme. So we power up and connect the new modem and opening the statistics page, we are greeted with.... 23dB SNR and 39.5dB attenuation!

Eureka!

So it seems my trusty old modem, a D-link DSL-2540T, was quite ill indeed. The spanking new modem, a D-link DSL-2640B, being a younger model extracted the signal with ease where the old one stuttered. So now it sits where the old one used to, happily blinking away as the bits travel through the tubes. Goodbye old modem, you've done well. Now rest.
 
I bid the technician goodbye, thanking him for his kind service, with the assurance that the new speed would be activated within 24 hours. This morning, I disconnected the modem and hoped for the best for tonight. After a long day battling deadlines, I came home and ran a speed test.

Success!



Here's what it was before:



Now that's an improvement :)

And so the story ends well. Here's to many years of speedy viewing of dumb videos on youtube.

Dessert at The Apartment

We had a little time before the movie last Saturday, so we decided to have some dessert at The Apartment, a strange restaurant at The Curve built around the concept of being an actual apartment complete with living room, bedroom, study, and even bathroom. The picture above is the bedroom section, where we sat. The food here is nothing to shout about, but they have some interesting desserts.

We tried a meringue a week back, so this time we had our second meringue-based dessert, the Eton Mess. Now, I know nothing of Eton, but it seems they have good desserts! The dish consists of meringue with fresh strawberries, drizzled with strawberry sauce. It looks messy, but it was very nice.



Our other dessert was a Baked Chocolate Pudding. It took 15 minutes to prepare the dish as it was baked fresh and served in the baking cup. The pudding was rich and moist and went well with the vanilla ice cream included. Definitely worth the wait.



I also had a Mocha Latte just because.
It was good too!

The bill came to about RM40 which I guess makes up for the cheaper lunch we had.

Lunch at Kitchen Creatures

At Centrepoint in Bandar Utama, there's a little inexpensive restaurant called Kitchen Creatures. The food is varied, mostly Italian type dishes with a bit of local fusion. The prices are very affordable, which is apparently their thing as they promise "no frills dining".

For lunch on Saturday, before watching The Sorcerer's Apprentice, we had for starters, the Baked Stuffed mushrooms. The mushrooms were stuffed with crabstick and shiitake flavoured cream cheese, then presumably baked. They were quite nice and it's a shame there were only five of them :)

There was also some standard-issue garlic bread. Ho-hum...



Main courses included a beef stew which was quite nice. Not that much beef in it but what was there was tender, the gravy was tasty, and the price was right. The bread was nice for dipping too.



The pizza was a mushroom, ham, and onion pizza. It had the ingredients described on a fairly thin crust. It was about the size of a 'regular' pizza at a fast food place. Not bad... not great, but not bad.



There was a weird drink too: Limey George. It was Sprite, Ribena, and a slice of lemon. Not a bad combination. All in all, it was a fairly good meal, and at RM43 for two, very affordable.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

This film has  a storied past. Originally appearing as a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1797, then a symphony by Paul Dukas in 1897, the story was famously brought to attention by Mickey Mouse in Disney's classical music celebration Fantasia in 1940 and again in 1999 in Fantasia/2000.

Inspired by the animated short, we now come to the present CGI-laden incarnation of the tale with Nicolas Cage as the sorcerer and Jay Baruchel (forever known to me as the voice of Hiccup in How to Train Your Dragon) as the apprentice.


Spoilers follow (it's really predictable though, so I think it's safe to read)....

The story begins with the death of Merlin (seriously) at the hands of Morgana le Fay. This was made possible by the betrayal of one of Merlin's three apprentices, Horvath (Alfred Molina). It seems Morgana wants to get a hold of a spell guarded by Merlin called 'The Rising' which would raise the dead and enslave the world. Before she can get away with it, Merlin's other apprentices Balthazar (Cage) and Veronica (Monica Bellucci) arrive to stop her. Veronica is forced to draw Morgana's soul into her own body to prevent her from killing Balthazar, but Morgana starts to kill her from inside. In order to stop Morgana and save Veronica, Balthazar imprisons them both in an inescapable magical vessel known as the Grimhold. Before Merlin dies, he entrusts Balthazar with his dragon ring and instructs him to seek 'The Prime Merlinian', a boy who will inherit Merlin's powers and be the only person who can kill Morgana.

And so, Balthazar goes looking all over the world for a thousand years (must have been boring) until he encounters young Dave Sutler (A Night at the Museum's Jake Cherry, whom I'm sorry to say still can't act) who of course turns out to be The Prime Merlinian. The boy accidentally releases Horvath who has been imprisoned within the Grimhold like many other Morgana followers over the years like Russian nested dolls. A fight breaks out which ultimately results in both sorcerers getting trapped in a magic urn with a ten-year timer (they sure like trapping people in strange vessels).

Ten years later, Dave has gone from an awkward pre-pubescent to an awkward college student. He meets his intended sweetheart from his schooldays and she seems interested (of course) but his joy is shortlived when the timer runs out on the urn and Horvath comes after him. Fortunately, Balthazar is not far behind and rescues him. After overcoming the initial shock and reluctance (and a few battles), Dave eventually becomes Balthazar's apprentice and trains to become a real sorcerer which complicates his romantic plans with Becky (Teresa Palmer). Meanwhile, Horvath gets his own apprentice Drake (Toby Kebbell) and continues his scheme to free Morgana and execute The Rising culminating in a big battle scene, the outcome of which I think need not be mentioned.

The film is clichéd and derivative, but the effects are quite well done if not very spectacular. Baruchel plays the awkward youngster... very awkwardly and Cage turns in the performance expected of him. Of the supporting characters, Molina is always fun to watch and the others are well... they were there. Disposable summer fun, this movie is family friendly and a pleasant enough way to spend an afternoon. There's even a nod to the original story and be sure to stay for the extra scene after the credits (which I didn't see... bah).

Nerds!

While at Bangsar Village, I picked up a few boxes of Nerds candy from Wonka. I heard about these from an American friend some time ago and was delighted to find them here. They're little pebble-shaped candies of various flavours and colours. The outer shell is crunchy and the inside is juicy and soft. They come in many flavours and they're great :)