The Last Samurai

I just saw this last night (on DVD)- Tom Cruise goes from Top Gun to Shogun in "The Last Samurai". Overall, it is a spectacular and entertaining movie with outstanding acting and breathtaking cinematography. However, be aware that the movie is fictional.
Did you know that the pink cherry blossoms that Katsumoto (played by the superb Ken Watanabe) was referring to were fakes - they were made of cotton. The reason for this was because they couldn't find cherry blossoms at that time of year for the scenes that were filmed in Japan.

Fuji-yama's twin .... Mt. Taranaki, N.Z. >
Besides filming in Japan (mostly in Kyoto and at Himeji) and the States (on sets on the Warner Bros. studio lot in Los Angeles (Burbank), many scenes were also filmed on location near New Plymouth on the west coast of New Zealand's North Island, with Mt. Taranaki standing in as Japan's Fuji-yama. Take a look at the picture above and see how Mt. Taranaki closely resembles Fuji-yama!

What do you think of this NEW template ?

Blogger has recently introduced a NEW interface. I took the opportunity to try out one of the new templates designed by the talented Douglas Bowman who is the Founder and Principal of Stopdesign. It's cool .... don't you agree ?
There is no longer any need to use "Haloscan" for the Comments feature.

The New 17" PowerBook G4

I was in Funan IT Mall yesterday surveying the Notebooks. The one that caught my eye is the 17 inch PowerBook G4. It's simply gorgeous and undoubtably the supermodel of notebooks. Miraculously engineered, the ultralight PowerBook G4 is just 1-inch thin and 3.13 kgs, making it the thinnest and lightest notebook with a 17-inch display on the market today.


PowerBook G4 17"

Would I buy one? To be honest, I would not. Simply because the price is too high, or rather the price/performance ratio is not good enough. For the $5,288 price tag I can also buy two state-of-the-art Intel Centrino based notebooks, which might not look as good, nor have a 17 inch widescreen monitor, but will still get the job done. That does not mean I would not want to own one, it is just that in my opinion it is overpriced.

To quote from Seong Swee "Price good, wallet loose ... sure go!"
Here are the specs:

PowerBook G4 (17" 1.5 Ghz)
Processor: 1.5 Ghz PowerPC G4, 512K SRAM on-chip L2 cache.
Memory: 512MB DDR333 SDRAM - 1 SO-DIMM.
Display: 1440 x 900 resolutions TFT XGA widescreen.
Video Card: ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 with 64 MB of DDR SDRAM.
Hard Disk: 80 GB Ultra ATA/100 drive @ 4200 RPM.
Slots: 1 PC Card (Type I or II).
Optical Drive: Super Drive DVD-R/CD-RW.
Ethernet:10/100/1000 Base-T (Gigabit).
USB: 2 2.0
FireWire: 400 and 800.
Wireless Communications: Built-in 54Mbps AirPort Extreme wireless networking(based on 802.11g standard); Built-in Bluetooth 1.1
Modem: Built-in 56K V.92 modem.
Keyboard: Full size illuminated fibre optic backlit keyboard with ambient light sensor
System Software: Mac OS X v 10.3 "Panther"
Video Accessories: S-Video to composite adapter, DVI to VGA adapter.
Audio: Two built-in stereo speakers.
Weight: 3.1 kgs with battery and optical drive installed.
Dimensions: Height 1"(2.6 cm) x Width 15.4"(39.2 cm) x Depth 10.2"(25.9 cm).

Yahoo! Mail

Wow! Just accessed my Yahoo! Mail and now I have 100 MB of free e-mail storage space. Sending and receiving messages has also been increased to 10 MB

Its time MSN Hotmail wakes up, its the world's largest free e-mail provider with the smallest storage. Presently, with a free Hotmail account, you receive 2 megabytes (MB) of free storage space. You can send messages up to 1 MB each, including attachments. However, MSN also offers 100 MB storage space ... if users pay US$59.95 a year.

Goodbye Windoze !

I have been driven to the edge by the Microsoft Twins.

I Switched to Mozilla today !

According to Paul Roberts, IDG News Service, the new IE holes defy latest patches. This was reported in Technology - PC World dated Fri Jun 11, 2004.

Four new holes have been discovered in the Internet Explorer Web browser that could allow malicious hackers to run attack code on Windows systems, even if those systems have installed the latest software patches from the Redmond, Washington company, security experts warn.

It seems that many of the flaws which have been discovered in Microsoft products are the result of nothing more than bad coding practice and an obvious lack of testing and quality assurance.

Microsoft says that they have the "lion's" share of browsers in the marketplace. But how many browsers identify themselves as MSIE so they can use sites which use 'proprietary Microsoft features'? I know my copy of Mozilla do because I actually find them better for browsing sites intended only for MSIE than MSIE itself. At least I don't have to put up with all the advertising pop-ups and other invasions that MSIE seems to attract that seems to be suspiciously absent from other browsers.