Superman, His Villains and a Red Son

Warning! Various spoilers ahead!

After noticing a new villain in Smallville, I went on to check it out. A dark, shadowy figure with what appears to be thorns around it. Soon, I found out that it was Doomsday. Wikipedia is really an excellent source for information. I am not a super fan of Superman but this is one superhero that I grew up with. He is also still relevant in current times, albeit a little less popular compared to Batman.

Anyways, back to Doomsday. According to Wikipedia, it is a creature that was designed (through excruciating means) solely for destruction. In Smallville season 8, it has a human form that is in love with Chloe. Slowly, but surely, it is turning into the creature that is something like the one pictured here. :|

Doomsday is famous in the comics for having 'killed' Superman. It is a monster that adapts and will not be harmed by the same means a second time.

While checking out Doomsday, I clicked on links to Superman's various other villains such as Brainiac (whom takes on many revisions throughout and also features in Smallville) and Darkseid.

Besides the interesting villains, there are also a few sides to DC's Superman. The current Superman we know is really the original one all the way from the first comic book featuring him. What I did not know was that there is also another Superman, from Earth-Two, in an alternate universe. A slight variation and also decades older than the one we know.

DC also came out with the Elseworlds concept where the familiar characters that we know live different lives in different worlds. This is not an alternate universe thing but instead is a totally different take. I initially thought there might be an evil Superman in Superman: Red Son but I was wrong. This Russian Superman is still a good one. Right now, I am reading up on another Elseworlds storyline - the spaceship carrying little Kal-El crashes in Gotham and he is adopted by the Waynes...

Blardy Spammer

Another day, another bunch of spam. I think I've received millions of spam mails already and today I am in the mood of putting one here for all to view. Being spam aside, this mail sure needs a lot of formatting!

Business Proposition‏
From: Mr Song Lile (galeriatambemgalicia@iol.pt)
Medium riskYou may not know this sender.Mark as safe|Mark as unsafe
Sent: Tuesday, 27 Jan, 2009 1: 53 PM
To:

--
Good Day, Greetings of the day to you,although you may be
skepticalreceivingthis email as we have not met before, I am Mr. SONG
LI(Executive Director andChief Financial Officer) of the Hang
SengBankLtd.,nevertheless I have abusiness proposition involving the sum
of$19,500,000.00usd in my bank which Iknow we will be of mutual benefit toboth
of us, and I believe we can handletogether,once we have a commonunderstanding
and mutual cooperation in theexecution of themodalities..Should you be
interested, please forward thefollowing to me:1.Full
names,2.Occupation,3.Private phone number,4.Currentresidential address. Via
this emailaddress:{mrsonglbk24@yahoo.com.hk} Yourearliest response to
this mail
willbe highly appreciated. Mr Song Lile

________________________________________________________________________________
Crédito até €15.000 com prestações decrescentes.
Conheça o Crédito Pessoal Capital Mais e peça uma proposta on-line.
Saiba mais em: http://www.iol.pt/correio/rodape.php?dst=0901052

Happy Chinese New Year Laaaaa...

Windows Vista Incompatibility

Despite many complains about Windows Vista's compatibility issues, today is the first time I had encountered it. Tried to plug in an ancient (that's right... sigh...) scanner and let Vista search for the drivers. I did not expect any problems because Windows XP found it. However, Vista reported it cannot find it and redirected me to the Windows Vista Compatibility Center. Even HP doesn't have the drivers. HP said it does not support any hardware older than 7 years old.
I also have an old HP inkjet printer and I can't use it now not because of Vista. I do not know if it is compatible with Vista or not but the main reason I can't use it is because I do not have a parallel port in my home computer. :(

Justice In Tainted Milk Scandal?

Justice is served for the the melamine laced milk scandal from last year. Or so China hopes. Two men were sentenced to death, while one was given a suspended death sentence (may be converted to life imprisonment on good behaviour). Sanlu's, the company behind the scandal, former general manager Tian Wenhua escaped the death sentence. She was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment. Meanwhile, others were sentenced ranging from 5 years to lifetime imprisonment.

A most painful sentence from the parent of a victim:

Spring Festival is coming up, but what happiness is there for us?" said Hou Rongbo, whose son died in early January just a week before his first birthday.

Link: Star Online "China sentences two to death over tainted milk"

Intel's Cutting

Update: My bud Andrewk's got my attention again. Our Pulau Pinang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng denies that Intel is moving out. According to him, Intel's just relocating higher up North - to Kulim, Kedah. Meanwhile, Intel's corporate affairs manager Loo Cheng Cheng said that none of the workers will be laid off for now. For now. Instead the workers will be given similar positions in the company's other plants throughout Malaysia.

Intel is closing 5 of its manufacturing facilities worldwide and two of it are located in Pulau Pinang, Malaysia. This will affect about 6,000 people worldwide. The 90% decline in Intel's earnings last quarter probably had something to do with it though the leading chipmaker expects things go return to normal in the second half of this year.

Links: CNNMoney.com, MarketWatch

Everyone's Talking About Obama

Oh yes. You bet. And since I fell asleep early last night and did not watch the inauguration, I resorted to Google for the speech in text and found it here. I find this particular paragraph almost towards the end most interesting:

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

Now, we wait and see.

Space Crap

Wow, wow, wow! There is nothing else that one can do other than to blow one's top off after reading this No action against angkasawan: Science Minister! Lift off!!! Excerpts:

...the ministry had sent a show-cause letter to Dr Sheikh Muszaphar and he had explained that he gave the talks after office hours or while overseas, so his work at the ministry was in no way affected.

“He (Dr Sheikh Muszaphar) has provided his explanation to the queries in the letter including why he charged for the talks and we feel that it is acceptable, so there is no reason to take the matter any further...”

He said the investigations also revealed that although Dr Sheikh Muszaphar was paid for the talks he gave locally and overseas, the amount he was paid in no way amounted to over a million ringgit.

Ongkili also explained that there were certain “grey areas” in Dr Sheikh Muszaphar’s existing contract with the ministry and this was part of the reason it could not take any action.

He said the ministry’s lawyers would start working on a new contract after the Chinese New Year holidays and were expected to have it ready next month.

“The new contract will look into the weaknesses in the existing contract and address them accordingly.

“Dr Sheikh Muszaphar has expressed his wish to continue working with the ministry and in the programme but it will be up to him to decide whether to accept the new terms,” he said.

The last I read, the angkasawan was denying all such allegations but now he is working part time? Looks like our space tourist is really shrewd quite smart after all. We have been conned even though we knew we had been conned.

Early 2009 Woes

It was really shocking to read about how the people of the world lost 21,000 jobs in just one day, Bloomberg said. The companies involved ranged from the makers of my CPU - Advanced Micro Devices - to Hertz an American car rental company to a bunch of other companies I've never come across.

Link: 21,000 Jobs Worldwide Erased in Day as Recession Chokes Demand

Meanwhile, troubled Citi is going to split into two as previously blogged about but the current update is much more comprehensive. After declaring a loss of US$18.7 billion in 2008, Citi said it will split into two - Citicorp as the bank and Citi Holdings for what it calls "non-core" assets consisting of $301 billion of mortgages, bonds, corporate loans and other assets that the government agreed in November to guarantee. Both will be managed separately but, at the moment, will still be under the same umbrella. Reading further from those two links below got my head spinning so I shall not write further.

Links: Citigroup Reports $8.3 Billion Loss, Splits Into Two, Citi's split personality

These are a few of the things that I found while quickly browsing through the internet. I suppose the world is in a much bigger trouble than highlighted here. Lets hope we are already in the process of recovery... already.

My Puppy's Desk

First blog post from Puppy Linux. This is Puppy Linux's default desktop which is (SURPRISE!) also my default on the AMD Duron.I had earlier today screwed up the resolution of the screen and was in a bit of a panic as it became unusable. After doing some searching on the net, I found out how to edit the resolution settings by going out to the command prompt and get back to the low XVesa driver. Phew.

Here's a little bit more about Puppy since my first post about it here. Note that first post was done on Windows Vista while this second post which is also my first on Puppy was done on Puppy Linux. Pardon me, I woke up a little too early on a Sunday. Anyways...

The browser that came with Puppy is SeaMonkey, derived from some Mozilla codes, if I read the "About" correctly on the browser. Oh yes, during installation, I had no problems of any missing drivers that I need to search all over the internet for... very unlike Windows. If I were to install Windows on this ancient without any drivers discs, I might just have to open up the computer, clean out the dust and take out a magnifying glass and torchlight to check on the make of the motherboard.

The other day, I had to format and reinstall Windows XP on a (ancient, what else?) laptop. I was surprised that XP did not recognise the Video driver which is an Intel integrated one. Oops, I had talked about this already. You can find it here. Please take note that I refuse to acknowledge that repeating myself here has anything to do with failing memory from old age.

There's Something Funny With The Internet

Hmmm... lately I realised that there's something funny with the internet. There's The Onion - America's Finest News Source which is a full fledge "news" network with a lot of twists. Definitely will put a smile on your face (note: for the open minded) - a great alternative to the usual but not sure why so serious news websites. One great example is a video of the "very innovative keyboardless laptop from Apple". You would wonder why no one thought of that earlier even after the first iPod was released so many years ago.

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Another example is this "opinion" that I read this morning about a very talented boy who wrote a short story about a school shooting. Like I said, this site is best for those who would like to keep an open mind.

There's also this website for people that got really fed up for being asked too many questions when the people with the questions can find the answers online. The said website is Let me google that for you. I've got this message from my bud a few times now. :P

All these were introduced to me by my very informative bud Andrewk (besides Google, he is the one I trust most for information) who insists that he is a PNN. Click on the link and you be the judge what a PNN is. ;)

Last, but not least, we have a local newspaper that is, of course, also available online, with the most accurate news on our Government. It is none other than The New Straits Times. Really, nothing funny about that. See, an example is NST's very quick publication of the Kuala Terengganu election results. What's wrong with this? Why are some of my text in italics? Hah! There it is again!

Maxis Oops...

Reading an article about Firefly working with Maxis to offer promotional offers for the telco suppliers reminded me about this incident that I had a few nights ago and here's my... (yawn?) story:

I would normally try to fully discharge my phone's battery before recharging it up (contrary to the believe that current lithium ion batteries do not have the memory effect, I am still skeptical about such a thing and that could possibly be why my battery's still going strong after 7 years) so I did just that that night. I would start the Snake II game and let it run and run and run...

So, after numerous prompting that the battery was running low, the phone switched off. I then went to plug in the charger and waited a few seconds before switching it on to find no signal. Did a manual search and found Maxis, Celcom and DiGi but I could not connect to Maxis (right, forgot to mention that I am a Maxis subscriber).

I thought this might be another one of those uncool maintenance thing and it was time to sleep anyway so I did not bother. Next morning... still no signal. GASP! Switching on and off the phone a few times made no difference but just as I was about to step out of the house for work, I tried calling my mobile with the house landline and it rang... Conclusion?

1. My ancient Nokia's failing...
2. Maxis is failing...
3. Phone and Maxis are failing...
4. Twilight Zone

Being kinda worried, I called Maxis when I reached my workplace but the customer service girl said there were no such problems... oh boy, oh boy. I did ask if my line got hijack or something but she reassured me that nothing of that sort happened. Concluding conclusion:

1. There's a Maxis conspiracy...
2. There's a Nokia conspiracy...
3. There's a joint Maxis-Nokia or Nokia-Maxis conspiracy...
   

Eyes Half Close

I would like to think these as Garfield's or Jon's or Odie's eyes as most of the time they are half closed. I could barely keep my eyes open and had been skimming through this morning's feeds without actually concentrating on them. I guess I would have to rely on my really awesome 67 friends to share the cool news that I missed out. :P

Oh, now that I am typing, my eyes are concentrating again but I still feel the strong remnants of insufficient sleep and the need of a weekend to recharge. Don't think there will be much time to recharge during the coming couple of weekends, though, because Chinese New Year is coming and frequent traveling to the shopping mall with family is in order.

Yawnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!

Puppy

Downloaded and installed Puppy Linux on yet another ancient acquisition. This time it's a desktop with a 1GHz AMD Duron with 256MB of RAM in it. My first intention was to install the latest Xubuntu 8.10 (like Puppy, it's another light Linux distribution derived from Ubuntu) in it but that had failed. Every time I tried installing, I get thrown out to some command prompt which I had no idea what it is. As I am quite a Linux newbie, I have no whatsoever skill to solve that issue. Googling did not give me any solution either.

However, Googling for a light Linux pointed me to the Puppy direction and the latest version 4.1.2 being less than 100MB was totally amazing. I did install Ubuntu 8.04 a week or so earlier but due to slow performance, I tried this instead. Successfully did the installation two nights ago and tried it briefly early this morning. As the desktop will be primarily used by my dad, I had set the screen resolution to 800 x 600 for easy reading. The monitor is just 14". :P

Everything really required is installed together using the download image which was burnt to a CD. Such as word processing, image editing, spreadsheet and browser. All are of the lighter genre, I have read. Tried the browser (but can't remember what it's called) with Google Reader and Gmail. Both ran fine but were slightly sluggish though still useable. I would think that is due to the processing power of the grand ancient and not to blame on Puppy.

Another alternative light Linux worth considering is TinyMe. Was weighing between Puppy and TinyMe but ended up with Puppy. Maybe I will talk more about Puppy in the future but no promises. :P

INSANE: The Ancient Atari Joystick That Can Control An XBox 360

Shocking! The Atari joystick... the very first joystick (quite a few of my friends told me it's really called the batang gembira) that I ever held and used in my hands with my very old second-hand Atari console. A joystick with a stick (yes! the real thing!) to move around in a game and a button to fire. Broke numerous ones and tried various methods of using glue and tape to stick the inside plastic back so that it would push buttons again as I played games. Even my first ever computer, the Atari ST used this joystick, too. And now, via Engadget via Xbox-Scene, I got to know that Benjamin J. Heckendorn modified it so that it can play games on current generation XBox 360! Below are a couple of photos of the said modified joystick. GASP! What a lot of extra holes! Ok, enough of nostalgia. Got to post this so that one of my 67 friend can read about it because he can't access Engadget. Don't know the technicality behind it anyway.

Interesting Windows Driver Software

Recently, I had to format an old Acer laptop (yeah, recently, I've been dealing with a lot of old technology and my mind that is tuned to only the current couldn't keep up :P). I went to Acer's website for the drivers because those that came with the laptop have already gone missing... naturally, naturally. However, the laptop could be that old to the point that the drivers are not found in the website (found the laptop model but not the drivers)! Did some head scratching but luckily I came across this DriverMax just a few weeks or was it a few days (?) ago.

The software (for Windows) saves the drivers in the computer and will restore all of it upon completion of a fresh reinstall. What a miracle! It worked fine except for the integrated Intel graphics. I find this weird because it's Intel but even Windows (as new as XP) could not detect and install drivers for it. Besides that, it went looping round and round so I had to stop it. After a restart, like I said, only the graphics driver was left hanging.

Anyway, other than saving and restoring drivers, DriverMax claims it could keep your drivers updated. Did not try that feature. DriverMax comes with a free version (and a paid one, too, but guess which one I used?) but you would need to register. Otherwise, you will be left with a 30 days trial.

The Israel and Hamas Conflict in Pictures

Update 18 January 2009: UNICEF has a photo essay with emphasis on children casualties.

Update 12 January 2009: There will be a special parliament sitting today against Israel's offensive stand. Articles on this here and here.

My back to work blues is nothing compared to the conflict between the Israelis and Hamas. By just reading news articles of this continuing war does not paint a picture of the suffering caused to the people until I came across photos from The Big Picture. Do be warned that before you click on the link, some of the photos contain extremely disturbing images.

Update: More despair here.

Back to Work 2009

Things are going back to normal again. Sigh... I actually started work last Friday, 2nd January TWO OH OH NINE but that didn't really feel like the real work because:

1. The bosses were also sufferring from long holiday syndrome.
2. The second day of a new year, so what work, right?
3. The next day is Saturday (though I had to work for half a day)!
4. It is only the second day of another 365 days' worth of countdown.
5. Much to look forward to a better year!
6. It's still school holiday, so no jam!
   

But today... sigh, sigh, sigh... the bosses got hyperactive again, school reopened and reality sets in that there are another 360 more days before the above repeats... and it's a MONDAY! Sob! :'(

Oh, but I am proud of myself for writing today's date correctly. A silver lining in everything no matter how small, eh? ;)

Puffy Clouds...

Monday's coming so I went and Gimp-ed and Inkscape-d and came out with another mindless comic... :P

This Year We Soar High!

Alright, people! 2009 begins today and Chinese New Year is just around the corner so here's wishing all 步步高升.