Category: Entertainment

Firefox 3 Beta 4 Graphic

I wrote about Firefox 3 Beta 2‘s cool intro page upon first launching it. Now Beta 4 is ready with a new intro page (though I’ve been using the nightly builds for some time now). It’s table as hell. And it’s nappy as hell (almost as fast as Safari 3 now).

firefox_3_beta_4_graphic

I honestly can’t find any bugs that are show stoppers. So head over to Oxymoronical and download the Firefox Nightly Tester Tool to help enable all your favorite plugins on this beta and start enjoying the new Firefox.

Here’s a list of improvements made in this version for you geeks out there…

On a similar note, sites I’ve built ever since Firefox 1.5 are still holding up perfectly in Firefox 3. But looking at the progression of Internet Explorer, what was built for IE5.5 almost always needed tweaks with each subsequent upgrade! Talk about poor forward planning on Microsoft’s side! Boo! And that’s what happens when a company makes piss poor browsers that doesn’t adhere to industry standards (and with its own internal standards changing all the time).

Brian in Salt-n-Pepa Music Video?

Brian sent me a music video of the old pop band “Salt-n-Pepa” and showed me someone how looks just like him in the video. And indeed, that guy looks just like Brian when we were in college — everything from the facial structure, body build, hair color and style to the facial expressions, even…

It’s really quite amusing… He said he even managed to convince some girl at our dorm that it was really him and that he did it for the money… Hah hah!

Hunky Brian 1

Hunky Brian 2

Hunky Brian 3

In case you’d forgotten what Brian looks like, here’s a picture of him at my wedding from 2004:
Hunky Brian 2004

Perhaps if I smudge the image a little you wouldn’t be able to tell him and the guy in the MV apart? Hah hah…

Here’s a YouTube video of the MV. The “fake” Brian appears at about 2/3rd of the way into the video…

On a side note, apparently the “Brian” look is in. Even Wendy’s website now features him…
Brian on Wendy's

Good times.

Meeting Kevin Spacey

I was just chatting with Brian briefly about a bunch of silly stuff. Then he reminded me that a few of us good friends actually met and hung out with Kevin Spacey when we were in college!

See, he was filming Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil at the time, and that was when the book had really put Savannah on the map. I barely knew who he was at that time because I was so new in the United States still back then*. Another cool thing we did, which I totally forgot, was that because we knew Kevin Spacey, we got to go to the Wallflowers concert AND hung out with the band backstage in the presence of Kevin Spacey all for free! Actually, we saw the entire concert from the backstage… which was really a weird experience.

Somehow I suppressed all this memory until today! Holy smokes…

Good times.

*True story. All I knew about the U.S. was all academic — I knew a lot about its history; I knew more proper grammar than most in my English class; and I saw many movies with tons of stereotypes ingrained in my head. But to fit in to the crowd at parties, I had to subscribe to a lot of junk reading materials, namely Entertainment Weekly… etc. I literally had to stuff myself with all the gossips, latest trends and a lot of useless knowledge of such nature… A few months later, I was able to fit in and able to carry on conversations without being such a FOB. Hah!

Keep Breathing

I came across this song by chance. It’s a deceptively simple song with a lot of stuff packed into it. It suddenly made me remember that “keep breathing” is sometimes all we can do about circumstances we have no control over — financial chaos, ruined life, people, situations… etc. As long as we are still breathing… everything else will pass.

Try to ignore the video clip and pay more attention to the music and the lyrics… (I think she wrote this piece for “Grey’s Anatomy” after someone high up took a liking to her music)

Lyrics

The storm is coming but I don’t mind.
People are dying, I close my blinds.

All that i know is I’m breathing now.

I want to change the world… instead I sleep.
I want to believe in more than you and me.

But all that I know is I’m breathing.
All I can do is keep breathing.
All we can do is keep breathing now.

All that I know is I’m breathing.
All I can do is keep breathing.
All we can do is keep breathing now.

All we can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing.
All we can do is keep breathing now.

I did some digging into Ingrid Michaelson‘s songs. She’s one of the best Indie’s I’ve listened to in a long while…

So I keep breathing… and am hoping for the best in 2008…

Totoro, Catbus and Bryan

We introduced My Neighbor Totoro DVD to Bryan for the first time today. He was all excited about the characters especially the famous catbus scenes. There’s so much imagination in Miyazaki‘s stories that every single time I watch them I am at awe, not to mention all the subtle life lessons about nature, courage and appreciation to the simplicity of everyday things. As far as stories are concerned, American productions (even Pixar) are probably still decades behind some of the most advanced Japanese Animes to date.

My_Neighbor_Totoro

Totoro_Catbus

Grace wants a catbus.

A Beautiful Flickr Find

Flickr, as with any publicly viewable photo services, is filled with surprises and wonderful images. A couple of days ago I was looking for inspirations on images of toddlers, I discovered Rachel Devine‘s collection of images of her daughter, Gemma. Grace and I just fell in love with Rachel’s beautiful and striking images. The downside is (what, there’s always a downside), they make my images look, well…, inadequate. I am glad I am not doing photography for a living (yet). But man, I REALLY wish I can. Come to think of it, I think I made a mistake changing my major from photography to computer art.

Gemma Jumps
© Rachel Devine

I hope Rachel doesn’t mind me “borrowing” one of her images to show case her creative talent. Rachel has a few links to her personal sites on her Flickr profile.