This is Halloween

Boys and girls of every age, wouldn't you like to see something strange?

If you wear makeup and a suit on Halloween even though it's a practically non-existent holiday in your country, you're 21 and despite all of this everyone in your favorite pub only gives you compliments and even a few free drinks.... you know you had an awesome night.

Triumphant

I had no internet access for four days. At least I got to play some games, I finally finished S.T.A.L.K.E.R. after like five years of owning it. Well it came out in 2007 but it felt like five years anyway. The ending was kinda anti-climactic, but whatever, it was still a good and challenging game so I enjoyed it throughout.

I like statistics, I like to read them on various subjects, so I figured I post some. What better statistics to post, than my own blog's? Grow that ego, Eon boy.

Well it's no secret that I'm Hungarian, so naturally I get most of my visitors from Hungary. 465 of them to be precise and for a small personal blog without any ads, it's pretty neat I think. I have a few friends in the USA and in the UK so I kinda figured I get some hits from there too. What puzzles me is the fact that I got a two visitors from Russia. Russia? Really? Why? How? Weird. Also, six hits from Norway. I don't know a single soul from Norway. Guess they like Tool too.

This is an interesting one. 56 people came here, looked at like the header image and decided to leave. Less than five seconds. That's not even enough to read a more complex sentence. Maybe they're returning visitors checking for updates, maybe stranded people who got here by accident. Probably both. Anyway, 32 people decided to stay for more than an hour. This makes me happy. Or they just clicked on my blog and went out to have dinner or to watch a movie. Interesting how the two most common visitor lengths are total opposites.

I like this one. Firefox is such an awesome browser it's neat that the majority of people use it like I do too. But seriously. Safari? Who the hell uses Safari? Who the hell owns a Mac? If you have the kind of money to choose a Mac over any given PC then lend me some of it because you obviously have more than enough. Those of you who used Internet Explorer, you should work or study instead of looking at my blog in the office or during computer science class.

Finally, here's a summary of page loads, unique visitors, first time visitors and returning ones since I started this blog back in August. Three months and 489 unique visitors and 370 of them returned. Not too shabby I might say.


On a completely different note, check out this song. I've been listening to this one for at least a week now and I'm still not bored with it. I just can't get enough of this song, it's my Surfing Bird of the month.

Struck a nerve

Don't you just love re-installing your copy of windows?

I did it not long ago. To be honest, it's kind of a guilty pleasure because of my minor obsessive compulsive tendencies. When I'm in such a mood I totally clean up my place, make everything tidy, clean and I actually enjoy the process. I don't consider this to be a bad thing, since it doesn't really affect my life in a negative way, but it's still there. Other times, my room is a complete mess and I just don't care at all. Now without sidetracking much, let's keep at the subject. So I re-install the OS on my computer when things get too hectic and I feel it would be too hard and annoying to manually uninstall all the stupid crap I ended up piling on my hard drive. I just back up my important stuff and do a quick and clean re-install.

This time however, the aftermath got really annoying. You know you always need to download and re-install all the essential stuff like a proper browser, music player, msn and stuff like that. Speaking of which. Seen the new MSN... I mean "Windows Live Messenger"? Take a look:

Isn't it absolutely fabulous? Now I can chat with my friends while I browse all the new, hip and cool stuff on the internet, click on interesting advertisements, socialize with even more people, use the awesome built-in search engine; bing and get up to date with important issues like who are the sexy male tattoo lovers, Courtney Cox and David Arquette called it quits and celebrity trend reports. This is what I really needed in my life all this time, I just didn't knew. I needed the new WLM to tell me. Thanks so much, now my life is complete.

No. I don't want this shit. Go away you obnoxious piece of corporate diarrhoea fuckfart. It might interest some retarded, new generation, self centred teenager who has rainbow coloured emo styled hair, owns an account on every single social networking site and has no real life friends or an actual life, but not me. I'm 22 for crying out loud, when I want to chat with my friends, I want to chat with my friends, not read about the latest god awful hairstyle of some washed up, train-wreck celebrity who I don't give a damn about.

This new WLM looks like garbage, I can't customize anything, I can't see 95% of my contacts for some reason, the actual MSN part is like 5% of the main screen, it won't leave me alone with stupid advertisements that NOBODY cares about, it's the worst WLM version ever... and I don't like it. No. I don't care if you can actually make these things go away. It shouldn't be my task to remove all this crap to make the application actually useful, user-friendly and enjoyable to use. Even simple, basic stuff are missing like chatting while appearing offline, make it remember only my name without my password, only send or receive webcams and I bet there are a ton of stuff missing. It's annoying

So I uninstall it and install the older version I used before. What do I get?

Okay, this thing is evil. Not only I can't login with my own account, I MUST upgrade to the previously uninstalled shitbiscuit. Great, just great, next time I have to cut off one of my fingers, record it, send it to Microsoft and then maybe I can login with my own goddamn account. Why have a "no" option if you won't let me in anyway? Want a kick in the balls? No? Here's one anyway. Enjoy.

If you don't browse the web for solutions and don't go to every underground forum then you can't do anything, you won't figure this out of your own unless you're some computer expert. I can thank only my persistence because I searched high and low and found to solution. So this goes out to any and all of you poor unfortunate souls who makes the same mistake.

Download and install WLM version 8.5.1302, right click on the exe file and set the compatibility to Windows 2000. Then you can finally log in. That's the only way for some obscure reason.


I'm sorry for the unusually angry post, I just felt the need to rant, 'cause this right here is some really dumb, annoying, redundant and obnoxious crap Microsoft's pulling on us.

Well, at least something good came out of this. I found a neat little application called Circle Dock. It provides a nice way to store your shortcuts on your desktop in an organized and stylish looking way. You can customize it pretty well too, lot of options, I recommend it.



Here's some really nice, calm music after all this tension.

What planet is this?

I love science fiction movies. They give the opportunity to let loose your imagination and the possibilities are endless. It's a genre you have to approach with an open mind and suspend your disbelief to truly enjoy and appreciate it. I could go on for ages about Sci-Fi movies from the 30's to this generation, but that's for another time. Today, I'd like to talk about a certain sub-genre and a certain movie from that sub-genre. It's an alien movie and a pretty unique one.

District 9.

I know it's more than a year old and most of you probably already seen it, but hey, I'm not here to talk about all the new movie releases, there are other sites for that. For those of you who didn't see it go and do so, or read on at your own risk because I'll give away a few things. In other words: SPOILERS.

Here's the story:

In 1982 a massive alien ship parks above Johannesburg, South Africa and just chills there for three months without giving any sign of activity. After a team enters the ship and find more than a million starving and beat down insect-humanoid aliens, they relocate them in a camp named District 9. Two decades pass and in 2010 the government hires a private military company, the Multinational United (MNU) to relocate all the aliens to District 10, another camp far from Johannesburg. Of course the MNU aren't so eager to help because they're such nice guys. District 9 is the home of alien weapon technology. Problem is, the weapons can read DNA signs and they only work in alien hands. The official reason behind the relocating of the aliens, is that the people can't stand them anymore near Johannesburg, protests and riots break out with violence and all that "good" stuff. The task is not so simple, because the alien inhabitants of District 9 don't really think as individuals, more like a hive. Only a very very few aliens are capable of fully individual thinking and can make intelligent, consistent decisions. Not to mention the Nigerian arms dealing gangs that settled in the district.

This is where our main protagonist comes in the picture, Wikus van de Merwe an Afrikaner bureaucrat. He's appointed by the head of MNU and his father-in law to lead the whole relocation operation. His job is to make the aliens sign the eviction papers, confiscate any weapons or other illegal stuff, and do whatever to settle things without violence, even use deadly force provided by the MNU soldiers. That's not hypocritical at all.

Here's the spoiler part: an unknown alien liquid sprays over him while he's searching a shack, he gets ill and starts to turn into an alien and he has to seek refuge in District 9 after he escapes from the MNU research facility where they experimented on him. The liquid turns out to be the fuel for the alien ship that an alien named Christopher Johnson gathered in the past 20 years. The only hope for the cure for Wikus is to help Christopher get to the mother ship. Now I won't spoil the ending, let's just say it's pretty epic and moving.


My opinion:

This movie rocks plain and simple. It's so unique, even by Sci-Fi standards. I love how it switches things up, making us humans the bad guys. If you really think about it, things would probably play out the same way in real life because, well... we're selfish assholes. We can't get along with our own species, how could we do so with a whole new intelligent one? Especially when they're at our mercy. It's a masterful statement on xenophobia and social segregation a mirror we should look into.

I like how they shot the film, I really dig this whole mock documentary style. The first half of the film is filled with news reports, handycam shots, but not to the point where the action becomes a messy, shaky closeup filled blur like in a bad Micheal Bay movie. The second half was shot like a more traditional movie, so it balances out well.

The guy who plays the lead, Sharlto Copley is a complete new face to the movie world, this was his first major role in a feature film and he does a wonderful job. He really makes the character come alive, he's believable in the role. At first he's your typical bureaucrat, white shirt with tie guy, a little awkward, shy and whimpy. But as the film goes by he becomes more and more of a badass and it's a believable change, you really see how he gets more desperate and determined at the same time. Wikus is a really human character and Copley pulls it of flawlessly, probably because nearly all of his dialog and acting is improvised.

I want to mention that this movie had an unbelievably low budget, around 30 million dollars. In comparison, Avatar's budget was 237 million $, Terminator Salvation cost 200 million $ and Transformers RotF also needed 200 million $.

The reason I mention this is because District 9 looks better than any of the above mentioned movies. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I never seen such convincing and real looking CG in my life. It's a thing that you can make super colorful and high definition blue aliens on a fluorescent planet or giant robots unconvincingly beating the shit out of each other. It's a whole other thing to actually make it look and feel real. The amount of detail is mind blowing, you really have to see with your own eyes. It doesn't even need all the bullshit 3D or tons of special effects to make it look better than it actually is. The reason why it looks so good is that it's not perfect. Everything has flaws just like in real life, nothing is crisp clear or too gritty, nothing is too shiny or plastic like, everything looks as it should look. The aliens are organic, the mother ship looks like it's made out of metal, everything feels natural and convincing.

I really recommend this film to all Sci-Fi lovers it's a must see. If you like social commentaries you should also see it. If you like eye candy and action I also recommend it. Just go see the damn movie whatever taste you have and whoever you are. You won't regret it.