General – Page 203

Neon Genesis Evangelion

By Jay Lagare on Saturday, September 1, 2007

I’ve heard about Neon Genesis Evangelion or Evangelion before. In fact I’ve seen an Evangelion movie (forgot which, see below) and Rei Ayanami is a favorite anime character. However, I haven’t seen the TV series. This is bad since Evangelion is supposedly one of the best as well as one of the most influential animes. This changed when I was able to borrow a copy of the TV series from Aby. I immediately and eagerly watched it over several days.

Evangelion is set in a post-apocalyptic Earth under attack by an enemy referred to as Angels. The Angels are invulnerable to conventional weapons because of their AT shields. The only weapon that can combat the angels are Evangelions or Evas. These are experimental highly-unstable mecha which also have AT shields. As the series progresses a lot of combat ensues and a conspiracy unfolds. This plus the focus on the characters makes for a quite compelling story.

Unfortunately, the ending– specifically episodes 25 and 26– was, to say the least, confusing. It was all a sequence of psychological and metaphysical meandering occurring purely in the characters’ heads. I did some research and found out a lot of fans were also confused and dissatisfied with the ending.

Thus, when the first Evangelion movie, Death and Rebirth, was released it included an alternate ending. It is composed of two parts: Death which is the merging of the truncated TV episodes and Rebirth which is the the alternate ending. Rebirth however is not the full ending as the movie was released before it can be completed.

So another movie called The End of Evangelion was released which is composed solely of the alternate ending episodes (episodes 25′ and 26′) to the TV series. After watching this, things become a bit clearer but also a bit more muddled. But heck, it rocks!

All these were finally brought together in Renewal of Evangelion which is composed of an edited Death part of Death and Rebirth plus End of Evangelion. This movie is considered the complete Neon Genesis Evangelion movie.

But wait! There’s more! A new movie called Rebuild of Evangelion with new scenes is coming out. And there’s even rumors of a live action movie.

Rating: 4/5

General

USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE Adapter

By Jay Lagare on Saturday, September 1, 2007

This one is one of those indispensable techie tools. It’s a 3-in-1 external drive adapter from large IDE, small IDE, and SATA interface to USB 2.0. This means that with only one kit, you can connect practically ANY disk-based storage device via high-speed USB 2.0 to your PC. That would be 5.25″ form-factor CD and DVD drives, 3.5″ desktop hard drives, and 2.5″ notebook hard drives. You can also connect both a SATA and an IDE device at the SAME time. And here’s the clincher: there’s no fancy shmancy casings. Only exposed wires and circuit boards. How geek cool is that?

It’s available in most computer shops (I got mine from AWD at Robinson’s Galleria) or online (including, of course, the famous Brando).

Here is a more comprehensive review.

Rating: 4/5

General

Death Proof

By Jay Lagare on Sunday, August 12, 2007

Yesterday, my friends and I decided to check out the ongoing Cinemanila film festival and we decided to watch Death Proof, a film directed by the legendary Quentin Tarantino. The film is a parody of exploitation movies, the kind of movies shown in so-called grindhouses. In fact, this film is, along with Planet Terror (a film directed by Robert Rodriguez), is part of a two-movie set complete with trailers called Grindhouse.

As we settled in for the movie, in walks to applause none other than the man, Quentin Tarantino, himself! He gave a short introduction, punctuated with jokes and laughter, to the film. He then settled in with the audience, which is composed mainly of budding filmmakers (Quark Henares among them) and film buffs, to watch the film.

Death Proof is about a bunch of women from the show industry being offed serially (or should I say in sets?) by a deranged stuntman on his “deathproofed” muscle car. As expected, it’s full of action, including a longish car chase involving not one but two muscle cars. And, of course, there’s an exaggerated amount of blood and gore. In addition the film is full of intentional bad filmmaking. It’s an obviously synthesized crap movie. Which makes it quite enjoyable for what it is.

Rating: 3/5

General

Langues, Langues, Langues

By Jay Lagare on Friday, August 3, 2007

Yesterday evening, I started French lessons at Alliance Francaise de Manille. I’ve had an on and off relationship with French. Tried studying it on my own through the years. A few years ago, I took the exact same course but I didn’t push through with it so it all sort of went to waste. But I’m thinking, if I persist this time around, I just might succeed and become conversant. I think so because now I can practice it more with Aby who is also taking up French and maybe even with my French bosses. I think so because I’ve learned English, Tagalog, Cebuano, some Hiligaynon, and even a bit of Maranao. And I probably would have learned Arabic had I more time. My teacher in that language was said to have been amazed by my progress. So I’m thinking this should just be a matter of seeing it through to the end. As with all things.

General

Notebook Malfunction Redux

By Jay Lagare on Monday, July 30, 2007

And my Thinkpad T60 is at it again. When I got to work this morning, I plugged it in, opened the lid, swiped my finger on the fingerprint scanner, and tried connecting to the office network. Nothing. I “repaired” the network interface. Nothing. I disabled and enabled it. Nothing. So I rebooted. And I get a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death). I tried Safe Mode. Works. I tried Safe Mode with Networking. BSOD. So I know now that the problem is networking related. I was not in the mood to fix it myself so I asked Jon if he can fix it. After an hour or so, I checked on it. It’s been fixed. The solution? A simple restore to a previously known good configuration. Still it was irritating.