Aleks' Domain

This is actually old news, for me anyway.  But, I thought I’d share it with the rest of the world.  Asus recently came out with a monitor that was invincible.  No, like really invincible.  Don’t believe me?  Well, here is a video for you.

You really don’t need a translation for the video below.  Basically the Russian-speaking-Ukranian guy reviewing the monitor draws on the screen with a marker, draws on the screen with a nail, tries to hammer the monitor with…a hammer (surprise?), tries to hammer a nail into the screen, and then finally fires a crossbow at it.  The monitor remains unscathed after all of that.  Although, when the light flickers off of it, you can notice the smudge these things did to the screen.  But it’s barely noticeable.

I don’t know, but a monitor here in North America would need to resist the odd office nerf dart, or paper airplane.  These are the standard weapons of all office wars.  I guess in Russia, office wars are a bit more serious.

I’m the kind of guy where if you’re nice to me, I’m nice to you.  Actually, I guess that’s not entirely true.  I am nice to everyone.  In fact, some say that I’m too friendly.  Aleks stop smiling, Aleks why are you looking at me that way?  Aleks get your hand off of me.

But the reason I am making this post is because my day has been made.  It’s not every day that my day get’s made, but today is different!  I am sure you are all aware of the website Pixel2Life.  If not, then you have been living under a rock.  Pixel2Life is the largest tutorial archive on the net.  You won’t find anything bigger.  It hosts tutorials for everything.  And when I say everything, I mean everything!  Anyways, a while back I submitted one of my tutorials for review, and hopefully the chance that it would get put up on the main Pixel2Life site.  Lo’ behold, I open up my inbox today to read:

Congratulations, your tutorial titled “Variables and Data Types” has been approved and is now in the queue to be posted to the main page. There are 1 tutorials ahead of you in the queue (new tutorials are posted from the queue every 30 minutes).

The grammar nazis will notice that the automated email I received has a few errors, but I don’t care! My tutorial will be on Pixel2Life! Bahaha. Today is a happy day.  You don’t need to tell me that I’m overreacting.  I know that I am.  I sound like a school girl who just…I’ll stop myself there.  It would have been a rather inappropriate anology ;) But yes, I even took a screenshot!  It’s too bad I couldn’t have taken it earlier, so I can see my tutorial in the #1 spot.

 

I’m #10 :p  And already 32 views!  That’s 32 lost souls who have just seen the light. 

I couldn’t be happier sandwiched between my fellow bretheren jQuery tablesorter and Display xml data.  I shortened their names, I hope they don’t mind.  Oh, and I promise I won’t make a post about this every time my tutorials make it

Oh yes. This is what it all boils down to. It’s funny, because I remember being busy with school work in the past, but this is ridiculous. Call it a hunch but I think it may have something to do with this being the last week of the term. In any case, I am swamped. In my final week I have two tests and a quiz on Monday, a project due Tuesday, an essay Wednesday and a midterm on Friday. Ahhh! This is terrible

So, then how do I have the time to write this? Well, we’ve been having some crappy weather here in Toronto and I ended up leaving a bit too early for school. Needless to say, I arrived earlier too. So I have about half an hour to burn before my computer science lecture begins. Not bad. Anyways, I’ve got some exciting news.

First of all, the website is getting a complete revamp. There will be a slight name change, and a new permanent theme. Just a few more creases to iron out. I will also be posting that huge Python tutorial after this week. Hopefully I can get it submitted to some sort of tutorial portal, or something. I desperately need traffic, lol. I will also be upating the Projects section with something very cool. Basically, expect a crap load of new content once this week finishes.

I’ve got nothing else to say, really. Wish me luck with my tests.

I’ll be blunt. They killed Kira. No, not literally, although yes, that happened too. What I really mean is they actually killed the character Kira. Light was such an awesome Kira. Throughout the entire anime, Light was calm, cool and collected. He was very clever, intelligent, diabolical and above all, cunning. Things came to pass exactly as he wanted them to. He had control over everything. He never once faltered. Not once! And then, at the end of Death Note, you want to know how he acted? Like a complete idiot! He was screaming for his life! He acted like a child. It was disappointing to see such a cunning and intelligent character degrade himself.

So how would I have ended it, you ask? Well, not like that! The Kira I have come to known would have had a back up plan. No, he wouldn’t have had just one, he would have had many! Actually, I don’t even care much if he had one or not. Any ending other than this one would have been better for the series.

All right, that ends my little rant. I won’t lie, though, I kinda wanted him to live. Sure, a real life Kira would be horrible. Can you imagine a Kira in our present day? It would be absolutely hell. But, Death Note isn’t our world. And I am curious as to what kind of world it would be with a Kira around. Ah well. I still actually recommend this anime to anyone. If you enjoy the inner workings of the mind, mystery, fantasy, amazing plots and twists, then you will like this.

I’ll be straight with you. If you aren’t into fantasy, you won’t get along with this book. In fact, you might even consider it a dry read. However, if you do love fantasy, then it would be a crime not to read it.

The book itself is really a collection of intertwined stories depicting the beginning of Middle Earth (and life), and some of it’s major events. In other words, it’s the kind of story you’d get if you mixed the bible with history. A bible, because it clearly shows how life began, and who it’s creators were. A history book, because it retells the major events that shaped Middle Earth. Sounds pretty boring , huh?

Well, screw what it sounds like! This book is a work of art. I don’t care if you love fantasy or not, there would have to be something wrong with you to deny this book of being anything less than the masterpiece it is. The paperback may be small, but The Silmarillion is HUGE. Tolkien has really created something wonderful. There are vast generations and generations of names, places, and events. In fact, it’s so HUGE that there is an appendix in the back that lists all the names and places in the book (I swear, it must be a good 30 pages, or more). I constantly found myself keeping my bookmark in this appendix while reading. Don’t let that scare you, though. The only thing you need to worry about is if your imagination is big enough to take in Tolkien’s world.

Going back to The Silmarillion itself now. It does not have a single clear-cut story. It does not even have a single engaging plot. Instead it has many stories and many plots. And best of all, they all intermingle in some way or another. If you’re a Lord of The Rings fan, you’ll be interested in the coming of men, how the dwarves came to be, who Sauron was, and who the first dark lord was, to name a few. All of them are great. However, one of my favourite stories is that of between Lúthien and Beren. You want action? Adventure? And for the ladies, love? And I’m not just talking about any love. This is the kind of love story that will bring the burliest man to his knees weeping. Well, the story between Lúthien and Beren is all that, and more. However, this is just one of the many minor stories in The Silmarillion. Hah, I can’t believe I used the word minor. Every story just feels so damn huge and epic. It’s just that The Silmarillion revolves around Fëanor’s silmarills. Those are the three precious (more powerful than the One Ring, for you Lord of The Rings fans) jewels that Fëanor himself crafted. I don’t want to give away anymore, though. You can guess that someone probably either steals them or something else. I won’t give it away. I want you to experience The Silmarillion for yourself.

I could go on and on about this book, but I’ll stop here.

With that, I have a confession. I may have been a Tolkien fan, and a fantasy fan, and I may have gotten to this book eventually, but they aren’t my reasons for reading it. Blind Guardian, my favourite band, has an album entitled Nightfall In Middle Earth, and it’s entirely based on The Silmarillion. In an effort to understand the album’s lyrical content, I read this book. Every song is so much more beautiful now, thanks to that decision.

All in all, you’ll be doing yourself a favour by picking this book up. I don’t give linear reviews (4/5, 5/5, stuff like that), but if I did, there would be no scale to hold my score. Do not listen to anyone who says it’s a dry read. Their imaginations aren’t large enough. And there is a quite of bit of people who think this book is quite boring. Remember, don’t listen to them. I assure you, it’s not. I mean, I don’t often give praise for something unless it’s good. Really good. And I couldn’t have made up all the stuff I just said. In fact, I’ll prove it to you, with this closing sentence:

I look forward to the day that I begin reading it again.

I started a book reviews section not too long ago. So I figured, why not have a section where I can post movie reviews as well? Of course, since I plan on only writing reviews after I’ve seen the movies, I won’t have too many reviews to start with. If you want a lot of high-quality reviews, I suggest you check out my friend’s blog, which you can find here. My reviews tend to be more about plot and little rants in between. Tyler’s aren’t.

I love movies. In fact, I could proudly say that there wasn’t a movie that I’ve seen that I didn’t like. I liked them all. Loved, even. And I’ve seen a lot of movies. Wow, can you believe that? To live your whole life and not see one bad movie…This wonderful streak of mine was ended yesterday, when I saw Sunshine.

Let me say some nice things first. I love the gotta-save-humanity-before-time-runs-out theme. And this was exactly what Sunshine was about. Sunshine’s description even reminded me a lot about The Core. The only difference is that The Core was a wonderful movie. In The Core the hot spinning metal that surrounds the Earth’s core was slowing down, making the Earth’s magnetism weaker. All you physicists should know that spinning hot metal creates magnetism. As the magnetism became weaker, the atmosphere started giving away, little by little. Eventually, with no atmosphere the Earth would be scorched by the Sun’s radiation. To make a long story short, they dug a hole into the Earth and made the hot metal start spinning again. Not plausible, but certainly a very entertaining movie.

In Sunshine, there is a similar scenario. The sun is dying. And again, all you scientists should know that if the sun dies, we do too. First the sun shrinks to a very small size (a dwarf star), then it expands into a red giant, possibly engulfing the Earth. And if the Earth doesn’t become engulfed by the sun, it’ll certainly be burned to a crisp by it. The difference between The Core and Sunshine is that Sunshine’s story will happen. Yes, you heard right. The sun will die one day, and with it we will too. However, this is billions of years from now. All Sunshine did was fast-forward this doom-scenario to our time (maybe 2050, or something like that, I didn’t hear).

Humanity is doomed. A group of astronauts and scientists are sent aboard a ship called Icarus 2 to “restart” the sun. “Restarting” the sun consists of dropping a nuke with the mass of Manhatten into the sun. Apparently, the resulting explosion will give birth to a new star within the sun, thus saving humanity from extinction. Interesting, I must say. But again, not very plausible.

In any case, one by one, things start to go to hell on board. They lose their captain early on, and it just goes downhill from there. Oh, I didn’t tell you about Icarus 1. Apparently, the first attempt to restart the sun failed. The ship that made the first attempt was Icarus 1. Well, guess what? Icarus 2 finds Icarus 1! To make a long story short, they find the crew onboard the Icarus 1 dead. After 7 years, they would be. Everything makes sense so far. Then this is where the movie loses me. The captain aboard the Icarus 1 isn’t actually dead, but instead is some super-human zombie. The point is, he is still alive. And he sabotages Icarus 2’s voyage to deliver the nuke into the sun. Or at least, he tries to. Again, to make a long story short, the crew (actually one guy now, since everyone is dead) manages to successfuly restart the sun by sacrificing himself. Icarus 2 is no more. But! Humanity is saved thanks to his courages efforts. The nuke has restarted the sun, w00t! We get to live!

*sigh* I really didn’t like this movie. A lot of it didn’t make sense. Most of it, like my good friend Scott pointed out, was more artistic than anything. What really made me mad (the whole movie actually made me mad, but thats besides the point) was how the nuke exploded. It stopped right in front of the guy. Then Kappa (I think that was the guy’s name) stuck out his hand in front of the nuke. I get what they’re trying to do with this scene. It’s pretty powerful, but it makes no damn sense! When something explodes (especially a nuke), it EXPLODES! It doesn’t just magically stop half way because a human being is in front of it! Argh!

All in all, save yourself an hour and change, by NOT watching this movie. It really isn’t worth it. If you’re a sci-fi fan, you’ll be sorely disappointed. If you’re – no wait – if you’re a human being capable of rational thought, you’ll be sorely disappointed by this movie. I was kind of hoping that they wouldn’t succeed in “restarting” the sun so I can die along with the rest of humanity, and not see the rest of Sunshine. I’m not kidding folks, it was that bad. I wish I could forget I ever saw this movie, so I can have my streak back.

I have been toying with the idea of adding a book reviews section on my website. Or blog. Call it whatever you want. It turns out that I really like this idea. So, what a better way to start this section off than reviewing the last book of the Dark Tower series? Oh, and I’m obligated to give the classical “Warning! Spoilers ahead!” warning. So,

Commala-come-come, sang The Dark Tower now just over the horizon. Commala-come-come, gunslinger may ya come. Commala-come-Roland, the journey’s nearly done.

After years and years of travelling with Roland, when I read that I think my heart skipped a beat. Roland was finally going to get to the tower! Oh man.

Unless you’ve read the other six books before this one, this book won’t make much sense to you, I’m afraid. And its a shame too. The characters feel as if though they are real people. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say that Roland of Gilead is my favourite character of all time. Yes, thats how much I admire him. He is a real hero. Superman has nothing on him.

I remember when I finished reading The Gunslinger, the first book of the Dark Tower series, it seemed as if though Roland was on this quest of his to reach the Tower on his own. Boy, was I wrong. To make a long story short, Roland becomes dinh of a ka-tet of 5. He wasn’t going to reach the Tower on his own anymore…but with friends! W00t! Roland learns to love them, and becomes a different man altogether. I was really hoping they would come to the Dark Tower together.

So it came to me as a surprise when Eddie, Jake and Oy died. I hope you read the spoilers warning above. If you didn’t, too bad. Next time, read everything. My eyes almost welled up with tears; these characters have been with us since the second and first novels! And they die in the last one…damn. As for Susannah, she leaves Roland on his journey to the Tower by going to a parallel universe where Eddie and Jake exist.

I will skip over some plot points. Not that they aren’t important or anything, believe me, they are. But I want you to figure them out on your own. I want you to cheer for the ka-tet as they save the Beam. Or as they make a narrow escape from the Dixie Pig. Plus, I am too flabbergasted by the ending to write much about this novel anyway. For those of you who have read the Dark Tower series know exactly how I feel. How will his journey be different this time around? Sure, he has the Horn of Eld this time, and the Tower promised it would be different next time, but HOW WILL IT BE DIFFERENT!? IS HE DOOMED TO REPEAT HIS JOURNEY FOR ALL OF ETERNITY?! HOW LONG MUST A MAN STAND TRUE!? Give Roland a break! Who knows how many times he has reached the tower before? Probably hundreds of times! The next time better be the last.

It’s just a shame King won’t be writing about it anymore. I want Roland to enter the room at the top of the Tower (for the last time) and see the whole universe layed out before him. Every parallel world, every soul, everything just simply layed out before him. I want the sight of what he sees to be too powerful for words to describe. So powerful, that Roland begins to cry at the beauty of what he seeing. And as he enters, the door closes after him slowly, and stays closed forever.

That, my friends, would be my ending.

But other than that, this book is a grand read of epic proportions. I don’t like giving ratings like 5/5 or 10/10 stars. That sort of rating system is too linear. Words are much better. Just know that the Dark Tower series has become one of my favourite series of all time. And it’s with good reason too. This book is simply amazing, just like the others in the series. It truly is sai King’s opus maximus.

Seriously. These guys don’t know what they’re talking about. They give ratings like its nothing. They’ve seen so many movies that they must all be boring on some level. Well, at least to them, that is.

The reason I bring this up is because I’ve recently seen Rush Hour 3. Actually, just saw it yesterday. I’ve seen the first one, and the second one, and had high expectations for the third one. So before I go and watch, I check out some reviews, some ratings, you know…to see what other people thought of it. Not that I care, or anything. Okay, maybe I do a little. But anyways, every review I read gave it either 2/5 stars or 1.5/5 stars. That’s a failing grade! It couldn’t be that bad, I thought! My hopes were dashed. Dashed, I say! I’ve been anticipating this movie for a while now, and to learn that everyone thought it sucked, was disheartening.

But then I thought to myself. I’m not “everyone”, am I now? What do those lousy critics know?

And I turned out to be correct.

Rush Hour 3 was amazing! It was much funnier than number one and two, in my opinion. However, I am not here to give you a review, only to tell you that critics suck. So before you go reading a review, keep in mind that it’s their review. Not yours. Everyone is different. Especially critics, who are obviously the scum of this earth. A little harsh, I know. But I felt happy after I left the movies knowing that the critics were wrong. So cut me a little slack.

Not that many people read what I have to say, but hopefully this negates a few of those reviews: 5/5 stars for Rush Hour 3. It is worth noting that I am a Rush Hour fan, so I might be a little biased .

Check this out! One of the coolest DIYs I’ve seen in a while. Make sure to read the warning under the video! I also realize that I am late in that I’m blogging about it months after everyone has already talked about it. Oh well.

• This is a very powerful laser!
• Looking at it directly WILL blind you.
• Looking at it, even if its a reflection you’re looking at, WILL blind you.
• Lasers over 5mW are considered strong. Depending on the DVD drive, the laser diode will be over 200mW (100mW+ was needed to light a match, just like in the video).
• Operating a laser over 5mW requires a license from the FDA.
• This isn’t a toy. It isn’t a weapon either, but it can be used as one. Please use the knowledge you have just gained for educational purposes only.

I hope you enjoyed that. I myself, am planning to build one of my own. I know what I am getting myself into, which is why I plan on buying goggles designed to handle the specific wavelength of the laser. I need my eyes. And guys, if you plan on building one yourself, for the love of god, please be responsible.

Edit (May, 7th 2009): This was posted a while ago by a younger version of myself. While I don’t plan on building it any more, I still think the idea is pretty cool.