General

Doubt

By on Thursday, February 5, 2009

Doubt is about Sister Aloysius, a ultra-strict ultra-conservative nun who is the headmistress of a school. She is on a crusade against Fr. Flynn, a progressive-minded priest who is teaching at the school. She is quite sure that the priest is engaged in illicit activities with an altar boy/student.

The movie does not attempt to form an opinion for the viewer. Instead, it relies on the main character’s portrayals: Sister Aloysius’ accusations against Fr. Flynn and her absolute lack of doubt, Fr. Flynn’s passionate justification of his actions some of which are actually observed by the viewer. These portrayals is what carries the movie and it is quite impressive.

However, considering the not-so-recent news  about the past actions of priests, most viewers would probably have an opinion similar to Sister Aloysius. Perhaps, without that influence, the movie would have been even more thought-provoking.

Rating: 4/5

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General

Asus EEE PC 900HA

By on Friday, January 30, 2009

I was pretty excited when Asus launched the EEE PC 900. But when I learned that it doesn’t have the Atom processor, I decided to wait for the EEE PC 901. However, when Asus decided not to sell the Asus EEE PC 901 locally, I finally decided to just get the EEE PC 1000H.

The 1000H is a pretty good netbook by itself. But I’m a sucker for the small and cute and, to me, it’s a just a little bit on the bulky and heavy side. But I was fine with it until the 900HA came along.

The 900HA has almost everything the 1000H has 1.6GHz Atom processor, 1GB RAM, and a hard disk drive. And all this comes in a smaller, better looking package. It is almost the same size and look as the original 7-inch display EEE PCs. Notable exception would be the glossy lid and the re-laid out keyboard.

Of course you lose something in the downsizing: 9-inch display instead of 10 inches, regular sound instead of Dolby, and a smaller keyboard. It’s also got flimsy, and cheap power and touchpad buttons. So it’s not really for everyone. But for me, it sure is so I pulled the trigger on it :D

My sister, Elwyna, noted that we have five notebooks in the house. And three of them are mine. Crazy huh? Hehe.

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General

Car Is Back

By on Sunday, January 25, 2009

Finally got the car back yesterday. It had been undergoing front-end repair as well as a full-body repaint at The Wet Look after that unfortunate collision last December. And damn, does it looks good! The headlights have been replaced with new ones. Along with the fresh paint job, the car was gleaming almost looks like new. I was quite happy.

Until I discovered that they didn’t reassemble the door lock (it unlocks automagically) and the turn light (blinks rapidly) properly. And today, I noticed they missed a small dent and the bumper’s paint job wasn’t very neat along the top edge where it meets the grille. I had the door lock fixed at a nearby shop since it was quite critical. The rest can wait till I return it to The Wet Look.

UPDATE: Got the car back. They did an outstanding job fixing their mistakes so I’m somewhat mollified.

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General

Traffic, Traffic, Traffic

By on Saturday, January 24, 2009

In my quest to avoid working at the mentally and physically draining night shift (especially the ungodly hours between 2 to 4 A), I’ve been going to the office in the afternoon for the past week or two. I’ve noticed the horrific traffic congestion that seems to be everywhere lately. It seems that every car, jeep, bus, and truck is out there. No doubt because of the price drop on fuel. I passed by the gas station last night and E10 is at about P30 per liter. At that price, I guess people decide it’s better to drive than take public transportation. But I’m wondering if things are better once you get stuck in traffic and burn all that fuel, and time, just sitting there idling.

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General

Windows 7 Beta

By on Monday, January 19, 2009

My sister needed to install some medical courseware and it only runs under Windows so I took it as a chance to check out the recently released Windows 7 Beta. I had problems accessing the official site but after some searching here and there, I was finally able to procure a copy.

I installed the beta on my IBM Thinkpad X22 (it’s goodbye Kubuntu, for now). My Thinkpad only runs at 800MHz and has just 640MB and 40GB of RAM and hard disk, respectively. But it actually, surprisingly ran the beta reasonably well. We were able to run OpenOffice, Firefox, Quicktime, Flash, Acrobat Reader, Yahoo! Messenger, Skype, and the medical courseware with no problems at all. One or two at a time only though.

Looks like Windows 7 is going to be better than Windows Vista. Well definitely, since it seems to be just Vista with the problems fixed :P

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