Archive for November, 2005

Dark Lord returns

Saturday, November 19th, 2005

Goblet of FireIt’s not Darth Vader, neither Sauron! It’s your friendly Voldemort. The planning of his ressurection is in perfect timing with the Tri-Wizard tournament and for the week-ends top box office spot. The theater was packed this Saturday afternoon in a french speaking community, suspense reached it’s peak when we saw the WB sign announcing that the fourth installement of the Harry Potter franchise was unfolding. The Goblet of Fire is a magical item used to select the champions that will compete in the tournament. Potter’s name is unwillingly put in the tournament and has to “survive” three tasks. Problem is that he’s 3 years under-age to participate and that Voldemort’s mignons have an eye on him. You get to see the entire cast reunited in a very good movie, those who haven’t read the book will have a pleasent time discovering the plot. Everyone will be satisfied by the beautifull special effects. You’ll have a few laught, be transported out of your seat thanks to that well paced adventure. It’s a must see, this franchise is stable and a very realiable source of entertainment! Have fun watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

I’ll rate it 8/10, it’s much better than #1 and 2 but is quite even with the third movie.

Dirge of Cerberus

Saturday, November 19th, 2005

Dirge of Cerberus 1024x768More great news for the game industry! I’ve made a wallpaper for Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus, one of the new titles from Square Enix coming next year. This game will make use of Vincent Valentine as a central character from wich you will play a different RPG style. The game will be 3rd person and based on the PS2 console. The official web site suggests the game will have an online mode, not sure since it’s written mostly in Japanese. Seems like there is still a lot of development on the PS2 since Final Fantasy XII will also appear next year on this console.

So be sure to set my wallpaper on your desktop and check all the info you’d like on this coming game.

Jarhead

Friday, November 18th, 2005

Jake Gyllenhaal in JarheadIf you’re looking for your typical war movie, you won’t find it in Jarhead! “Every War is Different. Every War is the Same”. This movie focuses on the smaller aspects of war, the soldiers themselves that most of the time are absorbed by the war itself. For once, I got to see how it might feel to be there. I had a similar feeling when I saw Band of Brothers. The story follow a young Marine that has to go fight in Kuwait, we get to see all the low blows that exist in that universe and how some people had to join the army. This movie is about the people, the good and stupid stuff they do. I enjoyed watching it, had a sad-controversial humor. This movie is not for the faint of heart, but still might be a good rent.

This year is a big year for Jake Gyllenhaal, main star of Jarhead, co-starring Jamie Foxx. It’s a total of three movies for that young actor that hasn’t made this many movies yet. Be sure to check it’s filmography on IMDB for more information. :)

Sony, how could you?

Monday, November 14th, 2005

I am fairly disappointed by what I’ve heard about one of my top respected compagnies. Those, I have highly estimeed for years made use of an eery program on their CDs. About 20 of their new CDs include a malicious program that is supposed to prevent piracy. But the best thing it could do: Collect personnal information, and leave your computer open to attacks using an advanced stealth program. As the news came out, Sony decided to halt the production of those discs. They have not proposed a replacement program nor seem to have any remorse for their actions. Now I’ll think twice before putting a Sony dics (CD or DVD) in my computer if I’m running Windows, I suppose we might have to stick with conventionnal CD & DVD players.

Update 11/15/2005: Removal patch has been release

My first video

Saturday, November 12th, 2005

Yoh and Amidamaru
I had once expirienced video editing before, found it to complicated though. Perhaps I wasn’t interested enough, anyways I gave it an other try last night and managed to get used to it. My video is a remixed opening theme for Shaman King. You can download a compressed version here (7,8 MB). Be sure to have the latest DivX codec installed.

Bottomline, I took the two openings from the Japanese version of Shaman King, re-edited them and put the US Theme over them. You’ll still see some subtitles but I couldn’t trim the entire picture. :P

Design Notes:

TMPGEnc-2
*Recode AVI to MPEG-1
*Trim top and bottom of the picture for the subtitles (Original Japanese anime)

Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5
*Sequence edition
*New audio track (original US Theme)

VirtualDub 1.6
*Compression from 225 MB to 7,84 MB in DivX 6.0
*Compression from 225 MB to 87,4 MB in Indeo 5.10

Never though Opera would’ve been this great!

Thursday, November 3rd, 2005

Just keep up the good work. Opera has once again redefined surfing.

[This post was originaly sent using Opera Mini on my Motorola v186 cellphone. This is why it's quite short, typing on a cell phone was really painfull]

Opera Mini

Thursday, November 3rd, 2005

Google inside Opera MiniThis product/service was announced a few months ago, but was available in the Nordic Countries. As an Opera Community member I got to test this amazing service. Yes, I’ll remind you that I live in Canada, and that it is not part of the Nordic Countries! Surfing the Internet with a cell is now what I should of always been. Access to the entire World Wide Web, the Opera servers convert the page I wish to access, so they render it for my cell phone. This means that most cell phones that can install Java games can install Opera Mini as well (no need of a Smartphone [PDA like cell phone]). I don’t know how my CSP (Cellphone Service Provider?) will react to my use of this service, because I only pay 2¢ a page for the cellular Internet, meaning I’ve loaded the hole 17kb (rendered version) of this blog on my cellphone (Including the images resized!).

Opera is a true blessing!
Opera, ad-freeStandard Internet Browser & Opera Mini information