The Kingfisher And The Bulbul

What a day! I caught a collared kingfisher on camera near Gurney Drive in Penang.

He's eating a frog or something. Perhaps it's a crab.

Here's a very fluffy yellow-vented bulbul resting on a branch in the Botanical Gardens.

Macbook In The House

Yes, I got my own Mac. I couldn't help it, it was so cool-looking; like a monolith from 2001.

I've never had my own laptop before (or my own Mac, even though I've used plenty and my mother has one). Next I have to figure out how I can get Linux to run on this.

Genting Highlands Part III

On Sunday, we couldn't go to the outdoor park anymore since our passes had expired. There is an indoor park we can visit though, and I spent the morning going around in there.

This was taken at the Ripley's museum. It's full of freaky things like this.

This looks useful, if you're a one-armed person. I wonder if they still make these.

This car is plated with coins, painstakingly glued on.

There's a room with artificial snow that you can play in. They don't allow your own camera in there, and you need to pay to get your photo taken by their photographer. I'm holding one of my penguins in this shot.

Genting Highlands Part II

I continue my adventure at Genting Highlands with a visit to the dinosaur-infested corner of the park. The dinosaurs did not run amok and eat the visitors. However in the event that something like that should happen, I was there in case I needed to save the day. Because I know Unix.

Dinosaurland! That reminds me of my friend Seth, who says dinosaurland is where you end up past your 25th birthday.

Here I am, at the entrance to Dinosaurland. This picture is hard evidence that I actually did go on the trip.

An ancient bird fossil replica adorns the rocks.

My penguin friends somehow stowed away with me (those sneaky birds). A therapod threatens to eat a visitor in the background.

Penguins are fearless. Here they are atop a dilophosaur. The designers of this model must have gone to the Steven Spielberg school of paleontology, since it has a frill.

In the park there's a boat ride which lets you see the attractions along a little artificial stream. On the banks of the stream, a pair of deinonychus stand motionless with a fearsome pose.

Anachronisms galore! Dinosaurs, elephants and ferris wheels apparently co-existed.

At the end of the boat ride, you go into a little shack with animatronic dinosaurs. This is a life-size tyrannosaur that roars at the boat passengers.

Genting Highlands Part I

My workplace was nice enough to sponsor a weekend getaway to Genting Highlands Theme Park for the entire office and their families. I didn't have anyone to take with me but that's all right, I had fun. We left last Friday night and spent Saturday and Sunday there. This post is going to be graphics-intensive, so apologies to those with slow internet connections.

Morning mist envelopes the peaks of the mountains.

You can see the theme park from the hotel.

This is the first ride I saw, but I didn't get on it since those chairs looked a tad flimsy.

The first ride I tried was the balloon-themed ferris wheel. It provided a view of the entire park.

The colourful building is the hotel we stayed in.

The corkscrew is the next ride I tried, and it was the first time I tried riding a roller coaster. It was awesome. I don't get the screaming though. Everyone seems to love screaming.

This is the Space Shot, where you get shot up at high speeds, then made to fall, over and over. This did not appeal to me, so I skipped that one. You can hear lots of screaming from there though.

The Incredible Hulk

I saw The Incredible Hulk today. This isn't a sequel to the 2003 Ang Lee movie, but a remake. Hollywood loves remakes of old movies. The attention span of today's audiences are such that 5 years is enough of a gap to produce a remake. Which is probably a good thing in the case of the Hulk, since I only have vague memories of watching it.

This new movie stars Edward Norton as Bruce Banner, who becomes the titular character whenever he gets angry. The Hulk's origin story doesn't get fleshed out in this movie, and is only glossed over as a short montage during the opening credits. A lot of elements in the movie are a homage to the 70's tv series with Bill Bixby, such as how the Banner got his dose of Gamma radiation from an experiment he performed on himself (even the device looks the same). After the credits, we see Banner hiding from the US government in Brazil, learning how to control anger, and working at a drinks bottling factory while looking for a cure for his condition, by conversing with a mysterious man via the internet.

A minor accident in the bottling plant causes a bit of Banner's blood to contaminate one of the drink bottles heading out for export to the United States, which the US government tracks down, leading to a manhunt for Banner. When cornered by the US troops, Banner transforms into the Hulk and escapes. In an effort to find a cure, Banner must evade US forces long enough to be able to contact his correspondent and find a cure. The government, led by General Thunderbolt Ross, wants to use the Hulk mutation to create super soldiers. This leads to Ross using a soldier named Emil Blonsky to undergo and experiment to become stronger and faster. Eventually through the course of the movie Blonsky mutates into The Abomination, a large fiendish creature that the Hulk has to battle in the end in a big CGI-laden finish.

The movie is chock full of cameos, from the usual appearance by Stan Lee (guess who drinks the contaminated drink) to future villains from the Hulk comic book series. The best cameo is by Tony Stark who talks about the Avenger initiative. As far as summer popcorn superhero movies are concerned, this one is pretty standard. It is neither great nor terrible, but will leave you reasonably entertained.

Tracking Kernels That Panic

Arjan wrote to LKML about a website that collects kernel oops reports from various mailing lists and also via a client program you can download from the website (included in Fedora and Debian). It's a nice utility to install if you're helping to test kernels out.

I'm So Sorry, Hobbes

Poor little Hobbes passed away after a terrible accident. I had checked under the car before going out, I did not see you.

I'm so sorry.

I'm so very sorry.

I will miss you.

:(

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

Our favourite archaeologist-adventurer is back for an unnecessary sequel! I caught the movie 3 days after the world premiere, and I was pretty relieved it wasn't as bad as the Star Wars prequels. It wasn't great, but it was a pretty enjoyable film.

Major spoilers lie ahead, so stop reading now if you don't want to be spoiled.

The action takes place in 1957 with a rather old Indiana Jones. Many folks were concerned that Harrison Ford was too old to play a convincing action hero, but rest assured this isn't a problem at all in this movie. Indiana Jones is still the good old hero we remember, albeit older and wiser.

The film's cold open takes place in the giant warehouse (yes, the one at the end of Raiders Of The Lost Ark) where the film's antagonists, a bunch of one-dimensional Russian villains led by a thin woman named Irina Spalko (played by Cate Blanchett with a very fake accent), have kidnapped Professor Jones and his sidekick, a pudgy man named Mac (played by Ray Winstone). They are looking for the remains of the alien body found in Roswell, and they get what they are looking for when Mac double-crosses Indy. Our hero makes an improbable escape of course (this time, it involves hiding in a fridge during a nuclear explosion; yes, it's very improbable).

After the opening sequence, Indy walks away from a nuclear mushroom cloud to be interrogated by government goons, and then be fired (sort of) from his job at the university for his ties with Mac who is a traitor. The tone of the movie did not sit well with me at this point. The Mccarthyism combined with Indy's dismissal (and the rather gloomy image of the nuclear explosion just moments before) made it feel depressing. In the previous movies, no matter how much Indy bungled up, the opening action sequence always ended on a high note with Indiana Jones escaping with the triumphant Raiders March playing in the background. This is not the case now. Indy's been dismissed, and he's catching a train to nowhere.

At the station, a young greaser named Mutt Williams (played by Shia Labeouf) recruits him to find his mother and missing father-figure and who happens to be Indy's friend and colleague, named Harold Oxley (played by John Hurt). Oxley was in search of a crystal skull. The skull is an artifact of ancient South American people, but the Soviets believe it's the skull of an extraterrestrial being and legend has it that whomever finds the skull and returns it to a mythical lost city will get the secret of ultimate power. Every movie villain loves that, so it's up to Indy and Mutt to race against the villains to find the skull, rescue Oxley and Mutt's mom and save the day. Mutt's mother turns out to be none other than Marion Ravenwood (reprised by Karen Allen), and Marion drops the bombshell on them both by revealing that Mutt is Indy's son. Mutt's real name is Henry (aww, just like dad), and Mutt is a nickname, which incidentally means 'dog' (aww, kinda like dad too).

The rest of the movie is fun and fast-paced, just like the previous installments of the series. There's a cool car chase and sword-fight, and lots of exploring of ruins. Just like old times. However the plot takes a turn towards the realm of science fiction rather than fantasy-adventure when the mystery of the artifact is revealed to be dimension-hopping aliens. This was kind of a let-down for me as it jarringly sets the movie apart from the other three. Also, the opening sequence pretty much gives the ending away. It's as if Spielberg wanted to revisit his Close Encounters movie with CGI.

Throughout the movie, there were numerous continuity nods to the other films. The lost ark from the first film makes an appearance, and Henry Sr. and Marcus are mentioned in passing. If you listen carefully, you can hear familiar musical themes from the previous movies subtly interwoven into the score. Also, Indy's adventure with Pancho Villa is also mentioned, as was seen in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

I enjoyed all the little nice touches, and yet there wasn't really any defining moment in the film, nor any memorable dialogue. The problem with making an Indiana Jones movie after so many imitations have been made is that there is no longer any new ground to cover. The previous film had Indiana Jones, his father and their two best friends riding off into the sunset. It was the perfect ending. This film felt like an overly long coda to a memorable trilogy, rather than as a film on its own. It was fun, it's worth watching once, but in the end it remains to be seen whether the movie will be remembered as fondly by the fans as the other three.

Man With Jetpack Flies Over The Alps

This is the coolest news I've read all month. A very brave man named Yves Rossy has an actual jet-powered wing which he straps to his back and flies with. He calls himself Fusion Man, and he took to the skies yesterday for a public demo in his really cool-looking jetpack-wing (AP photo below). His jetpack looks really cool too, with 4 engines and sleek foldable wings.