Happy Birthday... to me!

"... to us."
"Yes, Precious... I mean to us!"

Enough Lord of the Rings fanboyism! Today, is my birthday. Now I am 22 years old. I am growing older, and hopefully, wiser.

We are having a small family party here, so I haven't eaten the cake yet. I will save a piece for GLaDOS, so that she may know how a delicious, juicy cake tastes! The cake is not a lie today.

I had a great day, today. Really. A big thanks to those that made it that great.

I received very good birthday gifts this year. I can say that Arsenal Gear is my family's gift. I got a Logitech mouse from G-Company. As you see, all of these are PC hardware. So, I decided to give myself a different gift... I bought myself a new toothbrush!

Mid-year vacation movies

I have seen a lot of movies this mid-year vacation. I can't possibly write a review for each and everyone of them. So I am just going to rate them.

I am changing my rating system. Instead of the 1-10 scale, I am using a 1-5 one. This way, I will have 10 possibilities, not 20 as in the previous system.

Here is the list, ladies and gentlemen:

Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others): Mind-blowing... 5/5

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: A huge surprise! 4.5/5

2046: no score given, entitled for a re-watch. It was the last part in a trilogy!!! Damn!

Brazil: re-watch is a must!

Gone Baby Gone: Ben Afflick has talent!!! 4/5

Ballad of a Soldier: Heart-breaking. 4/5

Annie Hall: Finally, a realistic romance. 4.5/5

Lust, Caution: Generally, good. 4/5

The Matrix Reloaded: Better than what I remembered from my first viewing. 3.5/5

The Matrix Revolutions: Shouldn't have been filmed... A disgrace to the original. 3/5

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Special Extended Edition): 1000/5! Enough said!

Fight Club: I haven't seen this movie in ages... Still great. 5/5

I, Robot: A decent sci-fi flick. Not the next Terminator. 3/5

I Am Legend: A bad ending to an otherwise very good movie. 4/5

The New World: Malick delivers... as usual. 4/5

Atonement: My only complaint is that it was too short: 4.5/5

Los Olvidados (The Forgotten Ones): It has aged terribly... Watch Cidade de Deus (City of God) instead. 3.5/5


As you see, they are a lot, but I wanted more... You have to take into account that I was busy with the assembly (err... I mean forging) of my precious Arsenal Gear.

If the assassin was an Arab...

I remember when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. I was about 10 years old. We were moving flats then, so most of our stuff was packed in cardboard boxes or plastic bags. Beside some books in an old cupboard we had, there was some pages from the daily Al-Ahram wrapping something. I remember there was an article title printed in large font, saying in Arabic, If the Assassin Was an Arab.

Of course we know that the killer was not an Arab, but was an extremist Israeli. But, as the title says, what if the killer was really an Arab? I think all hell would have broken lose.

My good friend Falcon asked me to write about the recent massacre in Illinois, to demonstrate to the world (err, I mean to the handful who reads my blog!) that terrorist acts are done by other people than Arabs and Muslims.

Yesterday, a student in a university near Chicago opened fire on his fellow students and professors. He was armed with three handguns and a shotgun. The police found 48 empty bullet casings and 6 shotgun shells. He killed 5 people before he pointed the gun to himself.

As you see, this was an act of lunacy. A despicable act that claimed the lives of many innocents. The gunman was not a "raghead". He was not an Arab or a Muslim. He didn't have an explosive belt or a rusty AK-47. He was an American citizen.

Does this make all American terrorists? Nope! It doesn't. This is (I mean, was) a troubled person who did an unbelievable thing. The thing he did should be condemned but without generalizing. Without racial remarks. Without hatred to his kind.

In last year's Virginia Tech shooting spree, the shooter was South Korean, but American media didn't jump to the conclusion that all South Koreans are crazy terrorists, right?

So, dear reader, I ask you the question that haunted my memories for so long:

What if the killer was an Arab?

P.S. I hope that they don't blame the shooting on video games! Blame it on guns, people!!!

"Dave... I am afraid..."

Machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence by 2029, a leading US inventor has predicted.

Humanity is on the brink of advances that will see tiny robots implanted in people's brains to make them more intelligent said engineer Ray Kurzweil.

He said machines and humans would eventually merge through devices implanted in the body to boost intelligence and health.

"It's really part of our civilisation," Mr Kurzweil said.

"But that's not going to be an alien invasion of intelligent machines to displace us."

Machines were already doing hundreds of things humans used to do, at human levels of intelligence or better, in many different areas, he said.

Read the full article here.

Scary!!!

HAL 9000, The Matrix, Metal Gear Solid and Arnold Schwarzenegger comes to mind...

"A gift to remind you of the Alliance..."

Last Thursday I received an early birthday present from my three dear friends: Kamolly, Falcon and Leopard. A mighty gift, it was. A Logitech G5 mouse...

Yeah... Finally, a good gaming mouse. This baby has a 2000 dpi laser engine that rocks!!! Not only that but you can change the sensitivity on-the-fly, sans any drivers!!! You have a choice between 400, 800 and 2000 dpi, which is great for playing FPS games.

The mouse is so ergonomic and feels professionally done. It has extra custom weights to adjust the weight of the mouse to your liking. It also has 2 extra thumb buttons.

Add this mouse to my precious Arsenal Gear and you have a PC gamer's wet dream!



Thanks a lot for this gift, my dear friends.

One Rig to Rule Them All

Three Rigs for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Rig to rule them all, One Rig to find them,
One Rig to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

And for my vanity...

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

- Gandalf

Behold... The Rig of Power...

• Intel Core 2 Duo "Penyrn" 45nm E8400 @ 3.0 GHz with 6 MB of L2 cache
• Gigabyte P35-DS3R Revision 2.1
• Gigabyte GeForce 8800 GT overclocked @ 700 MHz with a custom Zalman fan
• 2x1 800MHz Kingston DDR2 RAM
• Western Digital Caviar SE16 500 GB SATA HDD
• Samsung 20X DVD+/-RW
• HEC 580 W PSU
• LG L194WT 19" WS LCD

Precious... My Precious...

ARSENAL GEAR

May God protect you.

And may you last me for many years and give me the power to conquer all those in Game-earth. We wants it... We needs it... It's ours... Ours...

Yes... Precious...

Stupid people!

Today I had a truly horrible experience! I decided to go with my family and watch I Am Legend in the theater. Don't get me wrong. The movie is actually very good, and I do enjoy going to the cinema with my family, so that's not the issue. I will try to write a review for this movie soon.

The experience itself was horrible. For me, going to a movie in a theater is the highest possible way of entertainment for me. It's my nirvana! But that's not the case every time. The problem is when people in the theater start talking! Theaters are made for watching movies, not chatting with friends. Talking in the sacred shrine of movies is unbearable for me.

I don't know if I am neurotic or my luck is really bad, whenever I go to the theater, I must meet one of these retards. A man with his finace, he tries to show her that he has some gray matter and she tries to show him that she is the innocent girl who can't think for herself, so he must explain the movie for her, and most of the time, he doesn't understand a thing of what is happening on the screen. A person who gets a mobile phone call and he must answer it! A mother who, in her immense stupidity, must take her 3 years old into the theater, and of course the kid must scream! A group of young men going out together, they don't care about the movie and all they want is to have a good time. Or worse, a group of young men and women going out together, again they don't care about the movie, and as in the first example, the man will play the know-it-all role. Or finally, my favourite, an old woman with her adult daughter who don't give a damn about the movie and they just sit there chatting! Wow, what a charming bunch of people I meet in the theater.

I require absolute silence while I am watching a movie, it's part of the rituals of watching a movie. You see, rituals. The process is very spiritual for me.

But it's never easy for me, I ask politely, and I ask not-so-politely, and most of the time nothing happens, or they just shut up for a short time before they start their normal routine.

Today, I had a nemesis in the form of a mentally-retarded individual who was accompanied by two women, possibly his wife and his mother or mother-in-law. They started talking. I asked politely to shut up. It worked for a few minutes, then two young men started talking, loudly, to my right. I hushed them. It failed. Then the trio sitting behind me started talking again, and this time I wasn't able to do a thing. I felt really humiliated. I am not an aggressive person and I believe in reason, but how can you reason with someone who is mentally-retarded? Someone who doesn't even think that he/she is doing something wrong. Someone who doesn't even think that they are attacking my freedom.

A friend told me that your freedom ends when others' begin. All I want is my freedom. I don't want to take anything more than my freedom. Theaters are made for watching movies, not for talking. People should respect this. They should keep their stinking mouths shut at all times when they are watching a movie. This is the right thing to do. This is what should be done. This is all I am asking. I don't want them to do anything special for me, just follow the simple, civilized rules of humanity. When you keep your mouth shut, you won't be harmed and you won't harm anyone. But when you talk, you annoy other people and you make a fool out of yourself.

So, please, people, shut up when you are in a theater. SHUT UP. SHUT UP!!!

Accordingly, I decided that this is a thing that will never resolve. People in Egypt will continue to talk when they are watching movies because they don't care about movies. All they want is to spend a good time with their friends and to have a good laugh in a stupid movie, so when they watch a movie that forces you to think they just start talking, to pass the time and to enjoy themselves so that the night won't be a failure!

So, I decided that I won't attend the 3, 6 and 9 p.m. shows anymore. I will only attend the 10.30 a.m. and maybe the 1 p.m. ones because they have the least possible audience, and besides, they are cheaper. Most of those who attend these early shows are either people who really want to watch the movie, otherwise they wouldn't go there in that early time with all the inconveniences it has, or they are love birds who just want to sit with each other, and most of the time they are silent.

If this doesn't work then I will stop going to the theater, but I highly doubt I can do this!!!

I have a dream: when I have the money, I will get the best possible projector and a screen and I will watch the movies I want, sitting in the comfort of my home, alone, in a dark room and without any interruption and with surround sound. High-definition movies in 1080p make this a possibility, and who knows, maybe when I actually have the money, quad-high-definition will be out, along with 12.1 surround sound!!! This will be fun! If only I had the money...

But even if this doesn't happen, a good 19" or 22" wide screen LCD with 5.1 surround sound and showing a 720p movie will be acceptable, and this is more affordable, you know. And the good thing is that you can get the movies for free, from you-know-where!!!

KDE 4.0 gets released!

I have always been more of a Gnome fan than KDE. But KDE 4.0 is pretty interesting. Some of the new ideas in this new release are amazing. The new artwork is so good, and in fact, so Gnome-ish!

But the sad thing is that they rushed it. So far, all reviews of the release candidates were not good. Reviewers spoke of instability and frequent crashing. Even some of the project's leads spoke of the same issues.

It's a safe bet that version 4.1 will be better, but this will be 6 months from now, but the month of April is getting nearer and we will see the distros that will be released, Kubuntu and Mandriva and how they will handle KDE 4.

openSUSE, Mandriva, Fedora, Kubuntu, Debian and many other distros are already providing either Live CDs for the final release of KDE 4 or they have already uploaded the updates to their repositories.

I will be downloading the Kubuntu 7.10 KDE 4.0 Live CD soon, God willing. I will post back here for my impressions, but I highly doubt that it will be stable or usable. After all, a lot of the awaited KDE 4 programs are still to be released, as Amarok 2.0 which is still in the works.

Operation: Clean Fingers

This is my good ol' trusty A4 TECH keyboard I bought in 2003. Thank God, it has been functioning ever since. It's a good keyboard with only one minor flaw, it has no LEDs for the Caps and Num locks.

Throughout the years I cleaned this keyboard several times. It's a painful and tedious process in which I must use a piece of cloth and glass cleaner to clean individual keys! So, I didn't do it too often.

I left this keyboard for almost 8 months or so without cleaning and this was the result... Behold...


You will notice that the W, A, S, D and E keys were clean. These are the keys used for games mostly. You will also find part of Tab, Lt. Shift, Lt. Ctrl, Lt. Alt, the Space bar and a small area of Enter to be clean, because these are the keys most often used. Oh, and I forgot to mention the Esc key.

After criticism from my family and friends, I decided that this must be cleaned immediately. And this was the result...

When my sister saw the clean keyboard, she asked me if I had bought a new one!

Mission Accomplished!

A night with the monkeys!

I never learn, do I?

Last Thursday, I brought to my home my 2 friends; Falcon and Kamolly. Originally, it was a mini-LAN party night meant to be spent fragging each other in CoD4. But, instead we decided to watch a movie. We picked some movies and I recommended one of my favourites: Kubrick's eternal 2001: A Space Odyssey. Well, I should have known better...

I don't know what the rest of my family thought, but I think that they thought we were on crack or something!!! Falcon and Kamolly's hysterical laughter rocked the house! Their comments during the "music" intervals in the movie were simply hilarious!

Kamolly kept commenting on the apes at the beginning of the movie and he made the night's most hilarious comment: he described the Discovery as the world's largest sperm!!!

Falcon, on the other hand, was laughing, even more than Kamolly, because of an episode of Futurama that was a parody of this movie.

I can't say that I was disappointed that they didn't like the movie. But I don't need their opinion to like or hate this movie. You can't help but LOVE this movie, if you are not on crack, that is.

This movie is like a poem, you either love it or you hate it...

Finally, after countless comments and an insane amount of laughter, especially at the movie's legendary ending, they left.

I have recommended this movie to 2 friends before, one of them saw it and its sequel, 2010, and he liked it!!! The other didn't, for now...

The codeword was: monkeys!