Saturday, September 22, 2007

Interesting undergrad classes

I read an interesting post from a friend's blog about what he considered to be his favorite and most interesting classes in his undergraduate degree....

I'll put mine here.

Anatomy and Physiology –the body is amazing, beautiful, and the most perfect thing in the universe..

Pharmacology–painful, time consuming, boring and absolutely essential..

Ethics– Why you “should”, or “should not”, because too often “we do” only because “we can”..

Pathophysiology– The body is amazing, beautiful, and the most perfect thing in the universe, except when it isn’t..

Organic Chemistry– The blue collar science, that explains enough information to be relevant to nearly every situation encountered.. (as compared to say, Physics, IMHO, YMMV!)

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Blogs

We met up with our friend Alvin at Camp John Hay's country club last night. We met his lovely family who are in town as part of their annual trips that they make here twice a year, once for his Lola's birthday, and again for X-Mas. Anyways, we caught up on new stuff, laughed about old times, and had some nice food and coffee in the establishment. Alvin is nice enough to read and comment on my blog regularly, giving me the inspiration and motivation to continue with it. He asked me for advice on how to start his own, and upon further reflection, I will post the response here, as a blog of my own. So without further ado, here is my response.

  1. Do you really want to blog? - I ask this question because blogging takes more time (once set up, you can knock out a post in 5 minutes) and is a little less user friendly than some social bookmarking sites that may be more useful to the average user. I find I split my time here and at facebook. the nice thing about a blog is that everyone can go to my blog and read, whereas access to my facebook account requires your own setting up of an account. A big question that needs answering, if "no" go to question #4.
  2. Where do I sign up for a blog? - www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com . If I am not mistaken, wordpress may have the edge these days for ease of use and flexibility if you want it, but I imagine the differences are not profound. Just pick one, and go for the free blog account (back in my day, I hadn't heard of wordpress, so I went with blogger. Either will allow you to create an overall look and theme, profile, and format for posting.
  3. Follow the directions, they are pretty straight forward. You will be up and running in about an hour with your layout and style complete, title and profile done, and maybe a pic or two and your first post.
  4. Social Networking (or facebook). This has taken over a lot of what I see people who use blogs and emails use them for. You can upload photos, send out quick notes, and keep "up to date" with people in your network. It is a cleaner interface than it's predecessor "friendster", more secure, and easier to manage. You are confined within the parameters of facebook, so if you are more creative and require more freedom, a blog might be a better fit. But if you want to be up and running in about 30 minutes with friends, family and a messaging type interface, go for facebook. I will keep my blog for now, but it's relevance has been challenged recently with facebook. Facebook does require a log in, but once you break down your facebook-less friends, they will quickly come over to your way of thinking, and soon you will be spending your time there.
  5. Another option for the type who hate typing, or want a much simpler communication tool is www.flickr.com . This is a photo sharing site where you just upload pics and share. Its an online photo album where the pictures speak a thousand words for you. A small caption, and off you go.
So, there is the sum of my knowlege of Blogging/Social Bookmarking, et al. I hope it helped.

Osama bin Laden Movie Review


So, I signed up on facebook last week after almost a year of continuous bombardment from friends and relations. Glad I did. Nice little site, and a nice way to keep in touch. Anyways, I stumbled upon the movie review application, so I quickly reviewed a bunch of films in my typical sarcastic way, when looking through the news, noticed that our good buddy Osama has released his own cinematographic epic.

I figure that I'll give my take on his latest offering. Tentatively entitled, "Convert ye masses, lest ye be killed, and oh yeah, capitalism sucks" that hit the theaters world wide this week.With a team of the finest make-up crews, Osama appears youthful and swarthy, his 0.4m long usually "salt and peppered" beard dyed a deep, rich black. He sits calmly and confidently in this feature film, wearing a white shirt and yellow shawl, that costume designer Alijjiba Majinniiyad made from Osama's wardrobe further conveyed the upbeat message of mandatory religious conversion and rejoicing in the failure of the Western World possible. The set director, Hafaad Hunnaji, bravely chose a "brownish" background to complement the overall message and tone of the film. Almost in spite of these memorizing special effects, the words of Osama really hit a powerful note, mostly underlining the evils of capitalism. Problematic in the plot, is the fact that his entire fortune was derived from capitalism, implicating himself. Nevertheless, Osama recovers from this oversight expertly by simply not mentioning that aspect. A true mature actor's ability to overcome the obvious hurdle showed a near Academy Awards performance. Special mention must be made to the lighting crew, who chose a "minimalist" subject in the lens obscura, dismissing past "film noir" qualities of Osama's last offering, "the October 2004 tape". From the position of the viewer, the well diffused lighting came from a series of incandescent and florescent bulbs, (25 watt former, and the 17 watt super saver types of the latter type), bringing out the rich olive, tan beige, yellow, white and the previously mentioned "brownish" hues evident in this film.

The Soundtrack of this film, a disjointed "voice-over", seemed to be the weakest part of this already earmarked classic. Several moments of voice did not coincide with the movement of Osama's mouth, indicating further need for improvement. During the advanced screening "post interview", Osama simply made an off camera gesture of a finger dragged across his neck when asked if he planned on using the same sound crew for his next eagerly anticipated film. His current crew could not be reached for comment, their feet being held to furnace heated irons.

To summarize, Osama has once again proven that he is more entertaining than ever, at the top of his game and relevant to his cause, to beat both Big and Little Satan. His offer for the world, and especially American's to "convert to Islam" proves his realistic short term objectives, and the aforementioned diatribe against the evils of capitalism come at a timely moment in history, when everyone is looking for communism and despotism to answer the needs of the workers of the world. 4.5/5 stars.