I must say, the television commercial for the move does not do the film justice - this is definitely a movie that cannot be judged based on what their marketing department can conjure up. When living in a world with movies such as “The Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End”, “Shrek 3″, and “Spider-Man 3″, - movies which made nearly a billion dollars, and walking out of the theater feeling ripped off - it’s not difficult to see that the quality of a movie can be vastly different from what the general perception is before walking in to the theater.

The television commercial for the movie DOES display how far some of the great technological advances computer-generated animated films have come, what with very realistic-looking fur on the rats and smoothly flowing water in the sewers. What it does NOT show, though, is just how well the story goes along with it.

The premise for the film, as is described in the commercials, explains that a rat who likes to cook befriends a chef who can’t cook, and together, they become one of the greatest cooks in France. To I don’t know about you, but to me, this is a story that seems unappealing, but it all works out in the end! The funny thing is, the movie trailer for Spider-Man 3 was so appealing to me that I wanted to see it over and over again. But, it turns out, the movie Ratatouille is so great that THAT’S what I want to see over and over again.

(From radr)

This is not true. 307 simply states the number of Applications that Facebook deems is allowed to be in the Directory, meaning that these are high-quality applications that they believe gives value to most Facebook users. Facebook Application developers can still create Applications, but they are not listed in the Directory unless approved by Facebook.

When people look at the number “307″, they believe that there is a small number of Applications available and that there’s still the chance to create new Applications without competing with others.

This is also not true, since, as I mentioned above, Applications don’t need to be listed in the Directory in order to be used. There are already probably thousands of Facebook Applications available to be used right now.

I’ve noticed that the number of total Applications in the Facebook Directory hasn’t changed in the past few weeks, and so I’m guessing that they’ve received so many submissions that they’ve finally reached the point where they temporarily stop accepting new Applications to list.

This is obviously a disappointment to most Facebook Application developers, because the possibility to quickly propagate a newly created Application to a large number of users is gone. The primary way now to do this now is to proactively advertise your Application on a popular website, in order to gain the traction needed so that it eventually self-propagates.

It’ll be interesting to see if new Applications will be accepted in the near future. I predict that it’ll be a few weeks at the very least before we see this; I’m guessing that it’s not at the very top of their list of todos.

I’m talking about the upcoming Webware awards, of course!

The button shown above is a common image seen on websites that have been nominated by the website in a total of 10 different categories; in the end, a total of 100 of the ‘best web 2.0 products’ will be announced on June 18, this coming Monday.

This is a great way for Webware to increase its popularity dramatically because I’ve been seeing websites that have been nominated for an award to link to Webware in order to get more votes; examples include TypePad, Drupal, NewsGator, and ConceptShare. Some websites only link by posting about it on their blog, whereas some others make a big deal out of it and add a link to Webware directly from their homepage.

To be fair, Webware is owned by CNET, which has quite a foothold in the web world already, but even if we look past that, it looks as though the Webware 100 is really working out for them, eh?

How do I determine if I should remove someone from my Facebook profile? Well, Facebook nicely reminds me whenever a friend’s birthday is coming up within the next few days. If I would find it awkward if I posted a simple ‘Happy birthday’ message onto a friend’s Facebook profile ‘wall’, then they probably shouldn’t be connected to me on Facebook.

I’ve also previously mentioned that it’s always a good idea to specify your relationship with your Facebook friends, so that in the future you remember that you met Bob from that short-lived job that you worked at a few months back, or Jane at your friend’s birthday bash last week.

I’ve talked to a few people, and among my peers, I’d say that Facebook and LinkedIn are the most popular social networks, in that order. Some people simply go for numbers and try to get as many friends on Facebook and as many contacts on LinkedIn as humanly possible, but personally, I aim to only add people on Facebook if I’ve conversed with them at least once. This is a cardinal rule that many people don’t bother with - I’ve personally received dozens of Facebook friend invitations from people whom I’ve never heard of but are in some way connected to me! For LinkedIn, I only add people on it if I’ve had some sort of interaction with them, since it’s always nice to expand my professional network.

How do YOU weed out your Facebook friends list, or your friends list on any social network in general?

Stumble.tv was interesting for the first few minutes, but its novelty quickly wore off for me. Watching YouTube videos on my computer was bad enough, what with the low video quality, but when watched on an LCD TV that’s much larger than my laptop’s monitor, it just wasn’t cutting it for me anymore. The website responds to the Wii Remote’s buttons, using them as navigational controls; they are pretty useful and intuitive, I’ll give you that.

Another major issue that I have is that if you want to click on links, you have to point the Wii Remote at the link and press a button. Simple enough, right? After a short while, though, it quickly tires out your arm because you constantly hold it in parallel to the ground in a steady position. Playing games on the Wii does not tire out your arms as easily because you are constantly moving around, so you get to flex those muscles. This is why I’d rather just jump back to my computer to do whatever I need to do instead of using the Wii for something that is not one of its main features.

I’m surprised at the number of Wii-compatible sites so far, because a large number of them are simply recycled websites that respond to commands sent by the Wii Remote. I’m still holding my breath for a Wii-compatible website that will blow me away. (Or maybe one of you could point me in the right direction?)

To everyone coming from Google Blog Search - welcome! (I’m the first result for the search ‘american idol sanjaya’ )

One of my guilty pleasures is that I watch American Idol. Yes, yes, I do. (Because the people that I live with do as well - not my fault! Honestly!) Just a few seconds ago, Sanjaya Malakar has finally been eliminated. I’ve continuously had doubts as to whether the system really works, whether the viewers really know what they want and who they want to win, and whether there were (large) groups of people out there that were ‘hacking’ the system, such as Howard Stern’s campaign to vote for Malakar to win the competition. I guess the MySpace guys on hunger strike can finally stop, too.

This finally shows that at least the American Idol system works, to some extent!

For more on this, visit here to go to b5media’s American Idol blog.

On a side note, I’ve gotten a few hundred visitors for this one post alone, within the first few minutes of publishing it. Thanks to all the visitors for stopping by, and feel free to click around!

I have posted a follow-up to this post, just talking about what happened and why this particular post got a sudden surge of visitors.

There’s that Mac Mini that I have…

I have a Mac Mini that I haven’t touched since obtaining my MacBook Pro, and it’s just been sitting on my table, collecting dust. I had thought of using it as an ‘entertainment hub’ for my home for some time, since it has built-in wifi.

The synergy of the Wii and the Mini is a great thing

I thought of purchasing an infrared receiver for my Mac Mini so that my Apple Remote which came with my MacBook Pro could be used for it. My eyes then laid upon my Wii Remote, with its simplified-yet-useful set of buttons, and inside of it, its built-in motion sensor… and I thought, why can’t I use that as a remote for my Mac Mini? Well, it turns out that I can, with the help of DarwiinRemote! I installed the application immediately, and lo-and-behold, I’m now using my Wii Remote as a remote for both my Nintendo Wii AND my Mac Mini. The Wii Remote works with my Mac Mini because both devices have Bluetooth enabled. I’m now deciding upon which media center program to use; my options include Front Row, MediaCentral, and CenterStage, among others.

At this point, the Nintendo Wii is used for gaming purposes, which the Mac Mini can also be used for - but primarily, the Mac Mini is used for viewing media, such as movies or TV. I’m also thinking of also integrating my Tivo box into the equation to include time-shifting abilities, but that’ll be a project for the future.

1. Improve your relations with at least one of the civilizations, enough so that your relation with that civilization turns to ‘Friendly’. (Trade resources and technology, and give some free gold to speed this up.) In my game, I was China and my ally was the United States. (I had set my civilizations to Random. Honestly!)
2. Once you’ve reached the relation level of Friendly, form a Defensive Pact with that civilization. This was pretty easy, because the Americans had no State Religion, and so they didn’t have any opinion about what State Religion my civilization was.
3. Provoke a war with another civilization (preferably the one that already wants to go to war with you.) You can do this by demanding technology, resources, gold, or anything else from that civilization. People don’t like getting pushed around, and neither do world leaders! At this point, I had provoked the Romans. (The Roman Empire isn’t supposed to exist in the year 1800 AD, anyways!)
4. Once a civilization has declared war on you, your Defensive Pact with the other civilization will come into effect, and both you and your ally will be at war with your opposing civilization.
5. After a few turns at war, you should be able to form a Permanent Alliance with your ally.
6. Your civilization might get a huge boost from the technology that your Permanent Alliance has given you from your ally; it did so to me, which was absolutely fantastic.
7. At this point, if you can, continue with your war that’s going on. Every time you take one of the opponent’s cities, check the trade window with the opponent to see if they are willing to Capitulate to you. If so, great, and if not, then continue taking cities until it IS available. Once it is, click on it to trade it (it’ll also automatically cause you to have Peace with your enemy AI.) What this does is it makes that civilization a vassalage of yours, meaning that it follows your rule (if you go to war with another civilization, then it’ll follow suit, or if you vote one way in the United Nations, then it’ll vote the same way, etc. - but it does NOT share any of your technologies, resources, etc.) The civilization is basically a protected nation under your command, somewhat like Puerto Rico and the United States, I suppose. They can be a self-governing nation once again if they grow large enough (such as reaching 50% the size of your total nation, including theirs.)
8. Continue the above steps of going to war and forming vassalage nations until you’ve created the United Nations.
9. Now you have a lot of votes and you should be able to win a Diplomatic Victory! (Or even a Conquest or Domination victory, because forming vassalage nations is just like conquering them - and it’s more quicker, too!)

Update: There are some photos available now, provided by Edge.ca.

I’ve returned from EdgeFest 2. There was a mish-mash of marijuana, brassieres, and loud music.

The following bands played at the event, and bands that I specifically watched and listened to are marked in green (they are in order of showing, and also probably in order of least popular to most popular, generally speaking):

Main stage (in order of showing) Anberlin Ill Scarlett Matchbook Romance Story Of The Year Hawthorne Heights All American Rejects Yellowcard ‘Next Big Thing’ stage (in order of showing) Damone Tokyo Police Club Lovedrug (did not show) In Flight Safety Panic And The Rebel Emergency Magneta Lane The Miniatures ‘Bedlam Society Stage’ Inamere Attack In Black Johnny Truant Cancer Bats The Junction Sydney

Yellowcard Ticket

What happened

Three friends and I went down to the Molson Amphitheatre, in Ontario Place, to attend EdgeFest 2. We met at Scarborough Town Centre, took the RT and the subway down to Bathurst, and then took the tram to Ontario Place. Once we reached Ontario Place, it was 11 am but there was still quite a line there already for the event, and so we decided to line up. Let me remind you, it was EXTREMELY hot today, this afternoon (42 C last I heard). We waited outside for about 2 1/2 hours before the line began moving, and we then proceeded to find ourselves some seats. It’s a good thing that we were near the lake, so that the air was a bit cooler and there was more of a breeze, so it felt somewhat more refreshing than it would have been if I were still in Scarborough.

It was surprising to me that there were actually not many people attending the event; there were a lot of seats available throughout the entire event; probably only 3/4 of the seats, at most, were filled (The seating plan has 4 sections: Level 200, Level 300, Level 400, and then the Lawn Seating (which is where you sit on grass.)) Also, upon entering the stage, all our bags were checked, unsurprisingly. But I found it strange that they told us to remove all bottle caps from our water bottles before entering the premise; I suppose it’s so that, either the audience can’t use the bottle caps to throw on stage, at people, etc. or also so that if you have a water bottle full of water, and you throw it while it’s NOT sealed, then the water comes out, and then the water bottle is not used as a weapon that is basically a heavy piece of plastic with all that water in it.

Now, on to the performances. The music was mostly rock and hard rock as the House of Blues described themselves, and as this isn’t my forte, I don’t know the bands quite as well. The two that I know the most are the All American Rejects and more recently, Yellowcard, which I both like more so than the rest. But, some of the ’side’ bands were, surprisingly, the type of music that more closely resembled what I like. One of them was Magneta Lane, which really reminds me of a band that I like, Stars; more specifically, the lead singer for Magneta Lane really looks similar to Amy Millan, at least to me.

During the performance of the All American Rejects, they requested that people throw clothing onto the stage (i.e. sunglasses, t-shirts, and brassieres). All 3 appeared on stage, plus some panties. During Yellowcard’s performance, the smell of marijuana was easily noticeable among the crowd, but the source remains unknown, even after Security browsed around the audience to try to find the culprit. Yellowcard also has a violin their band, which is an instrument that I play. It’s interesting to see how they work the violin into their songs; it’s not just in the background, but it’s plays a prominent role in the beginning and end of many of their songs. Also, I think the guys in the mosh pit really enjoyed themselves, especially when random people just jumped on top of a crowd of other people, hoping that they would be supported instead of dropped onto the concrete floor below. Eventually, though (as in, 5 seconds later), security grabbed the people (which includes a group of at least 20) and took them away somewhere. That’s all I saw.

I find it better to listen to music that you can actually clearly hear what the person is singing about, rather than loud, blaring music, but that’s just me. Although, I was a bit tired today due to a lack of sleep the previous night, so I caught myself slowly nodding off a few times - goes to show that nothing can stop the power of sleep when you’re lacking it. I’m hoping to, one day, finally see Coldplay, Death Cab for Cutie, et al., live. I find that the Molson Amphitheatre hosts a lot of good and popular bands and music artists, in fact, so I’ll check back with them about once a month for anything new that I may be interested in. (I already missed Keane and Dashboard Confessional!)

It was interesting to see Yellowcard returning to the stage in only their bathing suits, outside of their element, before the concert began, and then back in, during the concert.

On a bit of a side note, I finally managed to play the Xbox 360 for a few minutes, for the first time! There was an Xbox booth setup next to the Amphitheatre, and there were 6 Xbox 360s setup, each playing a different game. Of course, most were occupied, but I managed to play on the following 3 games with Blake:

• Perfect Dark Zero
• Project Gotham Racing 3
• Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis

More to look at:

• bands that I’ve seen live so far
• random EdgeFest photos from previous years

That’s all I remember for now. I’ll update this tomorrow when more details come back to me - I just returned home from the concert!

Update: For those of you who just want a list of the movies, well, here they are:

• 1984
• 24 - Season Four
• 24 - Season One
• 24 - Season Three
• 24 - Season Two
• A History of Violence
• Alien
• Alien 3
• Alien Resurrection
• Aliens
• Assault On Precinct 13
• Austin Powers in Goldmember
• Batman Begins
• Brokeback Mountain
• Capote
• Cellular (New Line Platinum Series)
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• Cinderella Man
• Coach Carter
• Collateral
• Constantine
• Crash
• Dave Chappelle’s Block Party
• Dirty Harry
• Donnie Darko
• Fahrenheit 9/11
• Family Guy - Season 4
• Family Guy Presents Stewie Griffin - The Untold Story
• Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
• Fever Pitch
• Fight Club
• Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within
• Finding Neverland
• Firefly - The Complete Series
• Flight of the Phoenix
• Four Brothers
• Friday Night Lights
• Futurama
• Futurama
• Garden State
• Good Night, and Good Luck
• Good Will Hunting
• Hitch
• Holes
• Hotel Rwanda
• Howl’s Moving Castle
• Hustle & Flow
• In Good Company
• Jarhead
• Kingdom of Heaven (4-Disc Director’s Cut)
• Lord of War
• Mad Hot Ballroom
• March of the Penguins
• Million Dollar Baby
• Mona Lisa Smile
• Munich
• My Name Is Earl: The Complete First Season
• Napoleon Dynamite
• Ocean’s Twelve
• Pride & Prejudice
• Ray
• Red Eye
• Road to Perdition
• Robots
• Saving Private Ryan
• Scrubs - Series 3
• Scrubs - Series 4
• Serenity
• Shall We Dance?
• Shark Tale
• Sideways
• Snatch
• Spider-Man 2
• Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones
• Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
• Star Wars, Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
• Steamboy - Director’s Cut
• Syriana
• The 40-Year-Old Virgin
• The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• The Constant Gardener
• The Corporation
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• The Godfather, Part III
• The Incredibles
• The Longest Day
• The Longest Yard
• The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King
• The Manchurian Candidate
• The Shawshank Redemption
• The Village (Widescreen Edition) (Vista Series)
• Top Gun
• Troy
• V for Vendetta
• Walk the Line
• Wallace & Gromit - The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
• War Games
• War of the Worlds
• Wedding Crashers - Uncorked
• What the Bleep Do We Know!?
• Zathura

For Civilization 4, I almost always play a multiplayer game with David. The games are sometimes stretched out and long because he lags a lot due to his (cheap) connection, but reading a magazine between turns can solve that. (Yes, it’s a turn-based strategy game. Deal with it!) I use Xfire to log how many hours I play, and to chat with David while play Civilization. I’ve played more hours in the past week than I’d like to admit!

Also, on a side note, I’ve been watching TV show DVDs. Specifically, My Name is Earl. I really like the show; it’s good when you don’t want to think and you can still enjoy it! (I would watch more, but I’ve already burned through ALL the season DVDs of both 24 and Scrubs. Those were GREAT DVDs to watch.)

Update: I just played another game today, and looks like I’m being more and more consistent. My score was 42-18, so somewhat similar to yesterday’s game.

Some examples of artists whom I’ve purchased albums from:

• Keane
• The Raconteurs
• The Futureheads
• Of Montreal
• The Strokes
• The Mars Volta

Bands that I love, but would never have discovered without first listening to one of their songs completely, first:

• Death Cab for Cutie
• The Postal Service
• Stars
• Joshua Radin

I’ve probably spent hundreds of dollars on music over the last few years now, but on music that I more thoroughly enjoy because they really appeal to me, rather than mainstream music that plays on the local radio every day. My music library is also much more diverse, and so I get a much wider breadth of genre and styles of music. I have, on average, 1.5 songs for every artist, so I definitely have a lot artists with only one song in my library. I love it like that, and wouldn’t have it any other way.

I watched “Superman Returns” today.

Just some of my thoughts on the movie:

• The special effects are blended in very well. There were effects that made the film seem more hazy, and dream-like, a la “Batman Begins“.
• The movie did indeed seem that it was stretched out a bit too long, as many reviews have pointed out. It’s about 2 1/2 hours long, and it shows when you’re watching it.
• I’m sure many people expected it to be an action flick, but it turned out to be more of a character analysis of Superman, and Clark Kent.
• I felt that the final scenes took away from the impact of the film, up to that point. I’m not going to ruin it for you and tell you what happens, though.
• Kevin Spacey, who played Lex Luthor, acted as too much of a goof to be the right villain of the movie.
• Spacey either should have acted more sinister, or someone else who fit the role better should have played Luthor.
• Adding in bits and pieces of previous Superman movies, specifically audio, and I believe, some video, of Marlon Brando, gave the movie a nicer touch of “authenticity” as it was able to somehow connect and tie in this movie with previous ones, in a way that improved the movie’s experience, in my opinion.
• I have not yet seen any other Superman movie yet (I know, I should!), so I can’t compare with any of them.
• Brandon Routh does look like a good fit for the Superman role.

Final verdict: Recommended, but keep in mind that it’s NOT entirely an action movie.

The game I played on Thursday was 3 full games and 9 frames in the 4th game, played in 2 1/2 hours. Today, I played 4 games and 2 frames in the 5th game in two hours. Goes to show how slow we were in the first game and how efficient we were in the second.

I also got 3 strikes in a row (called a turkey), and so I’m pretty happy about that.

After observing some of my friends, family, and other people playing, I think I can conclude that it’s pretty useless to run up to the line, then throw the ball, without using the momentum that you gained from running to the line in the first place. Also, for me, I bowl MUCH better without distractions than I do with. I was listening to my iPod while bowling the second time at certain times, and those were the times when I was ‘in the zone’ and got my strikes - so there MUST be a relation!

The inconsistency in my bowling scores is because my arm gets tired after bowling too often, because I usually use a 14-pound ball, and this resulted in me using a 10-pounder afterwards because my arm needed a vacation.

After reviewing my scores, I can conclude that, if you’re going to bowl with me, we’ll have to play up to game 3 before we count the scores, because I always seem to do the best in game 3 every time I bowl.

Anyways, I’m off to the ACI BBQ/party. I’ll make another post when I return, and if I’m not feeling too tired.

The scores are:

Totals (not including game 5):
Gene: 447
Kenneth: 264
Gary: 456
Susan: 355

But, if you were to ask me what my favorite song is, I would have to say it’s “Such Great Heights” by The Postal Service (at least, for now.) This is probably because of how differently the song sounds from my other songs, though, or maybe it even stems from the fact that its music video is very similar to an advertisement of one of my favorite companies, Apple.

If you asked me what my favorite artist/band was, though, it probably would then be Coldplay. I heard that their next album was going to be vastly different from their previous three albums, though, in that it would have a much more darker feel to it. I remember Chris Martin mentioning that there would be no pianos in the tracks; I’m not too sure how that will turn out to be, but I’m hoping they’ll be just as addictive as their latest offerings.

Anyways, some interesting tidbits that I’d thought I’d like to share.

Description at YouTube:

It’s my dog, ’singing’ while I play the violin. He only knows when to sing at the right times!

Some say it’s because it’s hurting his ears, but he runs to the violin when I’m playing, and scratches the door when it’s closed (even if he was in the basement or somewhere nice.) I’m guessing he would rather run away from the sound if it hurt him, instead of plop himself in front of the violin and start singing like that. Also, he sings on low notes but with a fast tempo, too.

I first played this song when I was about 6, so it ISN’T a display of my full potential on the violin…

Also, don’t forget to visit my blog at www.kinggary.com !