C is definitly much more satisfiying to code than Java. With Java, the code is a mess as the program gets larger. With C, it's still a mess, but at least it's my mess.

Thoughts on 天地英雄( Warriors of Heaven and Earth ) WHE ( The acronyme the article will use, since I'm a lazy bastard :P ) is the latest big budget Chinese movie to hit the Chinese cinema scene since Hero. Like Hero, it's a pseudo historical drama. The similarities between the two films end there. WHE describes the story of a band of retired soldiers in their voyage to protect a caravan across the Gobe desert and to reach the Tang dynasty capital of ChangAn. They later realized however, that the caravvan brings with it an extremely important religious artifact that can tip the balance of power in the outer west rim of China. Of course, a band of bad guys chase after them for the entire duration of the movie. I must confess I liked the movie, but I don't love it. The movie did everything by the book, but the story flow was very mundane, and there weren't many memorable moments. I guess my biggest peeve about the movie is the costumes, I'll go into details about that later. The characterization of the movie is rather 2 dimensional. All the standard characters are here: The good hearted and seasoned veteran, the comical relieve, the girl, the hatable antagonist. The cast are obviously able to breath much more life into the characters, too bad the script didn't allow them to. The dialoges are very natual, and at most places well written. I could really do without Zhao Wei's voice overs though, the situations of the characters should be felt, not told. The connections between the characters never grew strong enough for me to care much about their fate. There are many scenes hinting LaiXi and Lt.Li's bonding, too bad they are mostly trivial and short. Once the characters do start to connect, the movie was over. Zhao Wei's character didn't do much either. She hardly ever spoke, and it was hard to detect her emotional attachment to JiangWen's character to anything beyond a simple crush, as they hardly ever interacted. The historical inaccuracies in the movie was staggering. First, the costume. It's hard to put my finger on what period exactly the costumes are from. They are a mixture of Japanese and European design. They feature helmets and shoulder protectors not found in that historical period. Also, why does JiangWen have short hair? The costumes are made of cheap leather, and looked like they can't block anthing. Is this an attempt of the director to cut budget? With such amazingly historically accurate movies as Hero and The Emperor and Assasin, there's no excuse for Chinese directors to have such sloppy background research. It's inevitable to compare WHE with the Korean movie MUSHA, as a result of their similar locale and theme. Although MUSHA was released first, WHE started shooting before MUSHA. But upon comparison, MUSHA beats WHE in almost every category. The accuracy in costume of that period is amazing, MUSHA simply had the best looking Asian armor in all the movies I've seen. The characters were strongly depicted, especially the general, who grew from his inital arragance and selfishness to finally fighting along side his men as equals. The fighting was much more gritty than that of WHE, and many scenes captured my imagination. ( Rushing down the hill, fighting in the forest... ) Hm...it seems like WHE isn't really that good. I didn't even get a chance to talk about the suprising super-natural element yet ( which made no sense ). the ending was also very sudden, and left much to be desired. Oh, and the final castle siege felt very tacked-on, as if there have to be a castle-siege in this kind of movie or something. If the movie ended with the old guy, I would be happy, as that was the only impressive scene in the movie IMO. The production of the movie feels a little rushed, and the scenes were mostly hurried along. Well, I actually thought the movie is ok, despite what you might think after reading this article. I actually have many more bones to pick, but I should do some research before I make them :P

I managed to recover the data on the old back-up CD that I thought was lost. Which means I got all my digital camera originals back for the older pictures. Plus all the original files for my sketches. Whoohoo! What does that do for you dear reader? Aboslutely nothing.

Yup yup, 22nd was my birthday. So I'm officially 20 years old now. Although it doesn't mean a damn thing. As for my computer, seens that the processor have a static multiplier of 7. Hence requiring my Motherboard FSB to be 133MHz to achieve the advertised 933MHz clock speed. Well, that problem was that my RAM are of only pc-100, so my computer locks up on me on FSB settings higher than 120MHz. I went and bought 512MB pc-133 RAM by exchanging my old RAM. The processor is fine now, but new problem arose. My motherboard doesn't recognize high-density single sided RAM ( fuck ), so it thinks it have only 256MB. I'm gonna exchange them for double-sided ones tomorrow. Ugh, so much work. I should really just buy a new computer, if only I'm not so broke... On the other hand, everything are running beautifully fast on my computer now. Things are popping up faster than a nest full of rabbits. I can actually play the likes of Halo and Homeworld 2 and Medal of Honor and Bridge Commander and....... So good!

Oh yeah, since I am here I might as well put down, Happy Birthday David (for four days ago) :p

Oh god this few days went by so fast, is already Saturday, and I felt as if I slept through the entire time. With so much work laid up, I think I am gonna have to work super hard now. Two of the toughest includes the learning of two new programing language in three days, and that dose not even including all the other assignments and projects. Later on tonight, I have to go work again for the mid-night shift, because I switched it from the day shift. Due to the fact that a friend ask me to goto a BBQ, but ending up cancelling it, hence I switched the shift for nothing. Now dispite of the fact that I am getting sick, I think I am gonna be even worse after this night. Worst come to the worst, I'll just goto hell. *cough* *cough*

Poor David, but perhaps you are getting something good out of this accident, lol.

My computer's power supply exploded in my face I was cleaning the dust off of it. I guess I must've cause some static discharge while I cleaned the ventilators. It must've been trapped inside some dust bunnies that I unintentially stuffed inside the power supply as I whiped it with a tissue ( I'm never wiping the inside of my computer with a dry tissue again, helllllo rubbing alcohol! ). After I plugged it back in, the fan came on momentarily and everything looked fine. Next thing I know, there was a loud BANG! A few chucks of stuff flew out of the power supply, leaving a puff of bluish cloud circling above the computer. If the computer isn't mine, this would've been hilarious. I bought a new power supply and installed it today, everything works fine. I decided that if I'm gonna go through with such operation, I might as well upgrade my processor. I went and bought a PIII-933Mhz today, but my cranky old motherboard is fighting it, only recongnizing it as a 700Mhz. I'm heading home to continue wrestle with it right now ( I'm in UT typing this up ). Fight the good fight I shall.

Stats midterm tomorrow, and I really should be studying right now. Well, I am studying, technically... Went to Liwenjun's Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. Met her roommates & boyfriend. Took some pictures, and I looked like a dumbass as usual. Maybe I'll put them up, AFTER my midterm of course. 勉強する勉強する…

また日本語のブログです： コンピューターの宿題は金曜日にべき終わります。 でも、まだ始めません� ああ、どこから始めますの事をわかりません。 この宿題は終わってられないば、あしたの柔道授業へ行きますか� だめ、もう話せられない。 宿題はべき始めます。 はい、頑張ります。