iP3K

“I got to your blog and was sure to get all the latest news on everything that’s cool, what’s up?!”

Well if I put everything in perspective I haven’t posted in 10 days, it’s no unusual but I do need to make an effort and start posting again. I’ve given everyone a break on my life by providing, movie and techno news. As I’m writing this post there is three drafts listed awaiting to be published. Let’s say with the work and the conflict of finding time for myself I pretty much lost myself. I will not call it exhaustion but I needed a break from a lot of things and they just won’t let me be. Never mind it’s just a phase I’ll find my voice back

Song of the day: Fort Minor- Where’d You Go

Anyone who is familiar the Opera web browser is aware of it’s capability to display content outside the browser windows. These content called Widgets can display time, weather, to-do list, various information and RSS feed readers. A full list of Widgets are available on widgets.opera.com. I’m not a huge fan of those but there are a few I’m keeping on my desktop and with their new feature any blog can create their own widget with a few clicks. If you enlarge the screenshot I’ve taken you’ll see my blogs widget along with the current weather and a simple clock. Since the official release of Opera 9 tons of new widgets started appearing such as one covering the World Cup, other acting as calculator and even some that create mini-games.
By using Opera to view this blog you will see a widget icon appear at the end of the address bar similar the RSS feed one that enables you to automaticaly add the iP3K Blog widget to your browser. I’ve also added the Widgetize button in the list of syndication tools. It’s now seven days before I turn 20 and I have no idea on how to celebrate this. If you got any ideas please tell me lol!

The title is obviously an overstatement, but thanks to Listal I can list my DVDs, Music, Games, Books and seen movies. The website is still in beta but has been growing nicely over time and it’s features are inspired from social bookmarking. At some point I had started keeping track of all the DVDs I bought through an Excel spreadsheet. The technique worked for some time but was obviouly monotonus and was displayed as a grid with a list of price and names. The real need for listing became requiered when some of my friends wanted to borrow one of my DVDs or just look at one while they’re coming over.

Now thanks to listal interface I can share my collection with everyone, discover other peoples list and keep tracking of my personal ratings. An other nice little feature allows you to put a note on some of your items mentionning that you loaned it to someone since Christmas. So I’ll invite you to have a look at my list and signup yourself.

I can’t say I was shock, I can’t say I was injured either. It happened so quick, with no warning what so ever. We we quietly coming back from church, my father, mother, brother and I. I was trying to listen to some music on my MP3 player when a car hit us. Not only it bumped the left door, it was filled with people. It was like one of those “flat” mini-vans. I saw their car bounce off the middle lane where we were and somehow their driver curved the wheel so much that he lost control and hit a wall. Their car was severely damaged and one of it passenger was injured, he lying on the concrete waiting for the ambulance to arrive. It created a big jam over the bridge of Pie-IX just before we arrived in Laval. I watched as the passing drivers slowed down to look at the scene and one even ask if someone was dead. We waited until the police got our deposition and were able to leave. It is thanks to our Lord that I can write about this today. Without him, their car could of rolled back from the wall and make a full frontal on us. I’m happy that my brother and parents are well. I also will pray that the man that was injured may recover promptly.

It all happened around four thirty a Sunday afternoon, after a great service at church. I must meditate on these events. How thankfully I am to be alive, how fragile life is, how pathetically a simple minute spend talking, a decision of taking a particular bridge could lead to these events.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe how much I fall in the general category of boys that start off with reading Dragonball mangas just for the thrill of it to then become a skilled analyst of anime. I don’t have a master degree and visual conception of art (does a master degree like that even exist?) but I want to tell you about my favorite anime of the hour.

I’ll put my cards on the table right away, from what I remember, I used to watch Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z all the time and really liked anime over other animation, still I loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mummies Alive! and X-Men. High school and college is pretty much a big black-out from anime culture, I still had my roots with my all time favorite character Piccolo.

Shaman King: The story is about a young boy named Yoh Asakura who wishes to become a great shaman. The shaman merges with his gardian ghost who then enables him to use the ghost powers in the physical realm. Yoh teams up with the ghost of Amidamaru, an ancient samurai and throught their fusion they must battle ennemies and enter the Shaman Fight. The winner of the tournament will be crowned Shaman King and will receive the Great Spirit. By accomplishing this the Great Spirit grants his owner all the knowdledge of any spirit of Earth, thus gaining all-knowingness. The plot eventually thickens as the opponents become more powerful and the techniques required to fight them off more elaborate (Oversould, Giant Spirit). None the less the story eventually an evil twin brother who wants to destroy the world and reshape it to his own twisted vision. In the end the objectives change and Yoh and his friends have to go against an unbelievable new foe that is to put it simply overwhelming.

It’s a 64 episodes show of about 24 minutes each. Very fun to watch, oriented towards friendship and how to live with one an other and that you have to stick with your friends to the end. Even if there are ghosts all over the place the theme of death is crushing you since you have multiple parties with weird visions of what human life is worth competing to be shaman king.

Just like many other anime you sometimes get the impression the show got cancelled towards the end and they had to wrap up the show so towards the end you get crazy gear shifts, those actually add to the excitement of a great show. I have a short video sample from a previous post you can see what kind of content you can have in Shaman King.

You can read more on Shaman King on Wikipedia. Part two of Anime Love will present RahXephon and Vision of Escaflowne. Stay tuned with RSS feeds!

March, I just realized today that this month means so much for me. This year in particular I believe the is a lot to expect from a month who takes origin after the god of war. So here is my personnal guide to what is so good with this month in particular.

First of all, the month started with my one week spring break! I had some time to take some pressure off and prepare some school stuff that were already late. The month of March is a birthday month among my relatives, some how there is at least a dozen birthdays. Unfortunately they are not associated with any parties so the point is just to wish them happy birthday and know they are spending an extra year with us.

For a more commercial approach I have to mention the release of my long awaited Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, it might be the subject I’ve blogged the most about. I did receive the bonus disc for my pre-order witch is great and have to wait four more days to get my hands on this little baby and revisit MGS3 and get a shot at the praised online gaming mode. In addition, This re-edition of the game will include the original MG1 and 2 that were released on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Movie buff that I am, I’ll also mention the release of V for Vendetta, a futuristic vision of the future brought to life by the brothers how transformed the world with the Matrix trilogy. It hits theaters March 17, 2006.

You might not find it much to expect, but also consider that spring is coming and we’ll all enjoy some nice weather

This post follows Dead Series Society (Part 1).
I’d like to take some time to talk about an other show that was lost. It starred Domic Purcell as John Doe, a guy that has complete amnesia about who he is but knows everything else there is to know, litteraly everything you could study in school he
knows. The show was based on police investigation of different crimes and
John Doe was the lead expert on everything. But that was only half of the story, the show introduced clues on how could Mr. Doe know everything and the supernatural quickly came in order (or at least science-fiction). The show never was able to find it’s right place on Fox and was not renewed leaving all the viewers with a cliff hanger to kill all cliff hangers. As referred in the previous article, some shows like Firefly got the opportunity to rise from their ashes and come to the big screen. Some other show have the opportunity to make a mini-series to close up the show in an orderly fashion (not the case of John Doe). So by talking about those two “dead” shows I’ve realized that they are not really wasted. You have to consider that Scifi channel has/is airing those shows and they have decent ratings for re-runs.
The Internet is a beautiful medium that started to change our lives a decade ago, but the changes in the services and products we are used to getting will dramaticly change. You can start thinking about VoIP phone services that are way cheaper than regular phone.
I might of drifted away from the main subject but one thing I’ll settle on is that I will not judge the value of a show, a song, an artist or a movie from it’s ratings or it’s popularity. There are some movies that are rated 35% on rottentoamoes.com that I still like, and no matter what some critics may say I’ll still love it. Whenever you get the chance make yourself an idea using your own head. Thanks to the marvels of the Internet I can do that…
**Sorry for the delay before this post was finally published**

Today was a big day, mostly because I had a video project from school. It all went well and the kid we filmed was very cooperative, and so were the parents. I’d like to send them a big thanks for letting me get in their home and film their child for an oral presentation in one of my classes.

More than ever I’m fired up about Ubuntu and I’m really starting to adopt the system a lot more often. Something that started as an experiment with version 4.10 is now becoming a nice habit up to now with version 5.10 (Breezy Badger). Ubuntu is a linux distribution that is quite on the go with one CD and I’ve managed to get everything working like I want in a few days. After setting the media players to play Quicktime, WMV and DVD, setting up my ATI graphics card and UT2004! I’d like to present my first stable version of Ubuntu which lets me do everything I usually do, from Torrents to website, Office work or games, and instant messaging my friends. New life style might emerge from this. Just enjoy the fresh and cool look of my desktop. Leave comments, please!

Be sure to come back tomorrow to read the part two of the Dead Series Society