UNCONVENTIONAL WORLD RECORDS

It’s amazing what make-up and/or perhaps just the right camera angle/lighting can do.

She looks positively world class in the following pic (she’s the one on the left) courtesy of mysabah.com. BTW, there’s more pictures of her there. She’s pictured next to Penampang districts’s 2006 winner, Trinna Joyce Dison, and IMHO, from purely physical beauty’s POV, there is no contest as to who’s better looking. Madelyne hails from the same district as Trinna, meaning Madelyne was also the Penampang district Unduk Ngadau for 2005.

Well, she looks very ordinary in the following pic (sourced from havuk’s blog):

Of all the reviews on the movie, only the review by Anthony Lane at newyorker.com made me actually stop and read in its entirety. The review begins with:

The story of “The Da Vinci Code” goes like this. A dead Frenchman is found laid out on the floor of the Louvre. His final act was to carve a number of bloody markings into his own flesh, indicating, to the expert eye, that he was preparing to roll in fresh herbs and sear himself in olive oil for three minutes on each side. This, however, is not the conclusion reached by Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), a professor of symbology at Harvard, who happens to be in Paris.
Questioned by Bezu Fache (Jean Reno), the investigating policeman at the scene, Langdon starts rabbiting about pentacles and pagans and God knows what. But what does God know, exactly? And can He keep His mouth shut?

From that paragraph, I knew I had to read the review till the end.

[Langdon] and Sophie visit a cheery old duffer in the countryside and spill every possible bean. In this case, the duffer is Sir Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen), who lectures them on the Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicaea, in 325 A.D. We get a flashback to the council in question, and I must say that, though I have recited the Nicene Creed throughout my adult life, I never realized that it was originally formulated in the middle of a Beastie Boys concert.

hahaha

Silas answers to Bishop Aringarosa (Alfred Molina), who in turn answers to his cell phone, his Creator, and not much else.

hehehe

The task of the Bishop and his hit man is to thwart the unveiling of what Teabing modestly calls “the greatest secret in modern history,” so powerful that, “if revealed, it would devastate the very foundations of Christianity.” Later, realizing that this sounds a little meek and mild, he stretches it to “the greatest coverup in human history.” As a rule, you should beware of any movie in which characters utter lines of dialogue whose proper place is on the advertising poster. (Just imagine Sigourney Weaver, halfway through “Alien,” turning to John Hurt and explaining, “In space, no one can hear you scream.”)

Ouch! LMAO.

Read the full review, it’s worth it.

[link] - i dunno how long this link’s gonna last, grab it while you can.

We’ve heard of legendary persons raised by apes, wolves and possibly other animals too, but chickens???

Meet Sujit Kumar, 34, the real life “Chicken Man” or “Toddler Boy” , as his foster mom calls him.  (more…)

Zorpia.com is a social networking website that provides a community setting for users to share unlimited photos, post journals or forum entries, and customize personal profiles and skins. It is similar to myspace, flickr, friendster, facebook, hi5, xanga, and tribe.net.

It was created by a 20-year old student from Hong Kong, Jeffrey Ng in Dec 2003. (more…)

I have been experimenting with pageflakes for a few days, and find it much better a startpage than any of the offerings by the other players in this field.

The AJAXified environment means Windows-like interactivity level and feel is very high. I hardly felt like I was using a browser. Drag and drop, point and click, every customisation can be done very quickly.
And you can have multiple pages - I havent checked how many is the limit, I’ve only tried up to 3 pages.

The only thing missing seems to be a calendar feature - the to-do list seems to limited.

And yes, pageflakes has an affiliate program!

Check out pageflakes.

Excellent list from pcworld.com. Scope is downloads, sites and services: offline and online tools, even blogging tools.

As the article author write: “the best things in life aren’t just free, they’re indispensable.”

I’m already using some of them, and probably some of you are already using a lot of them, especially well-known ones like delicious, flickr and bloglines.

Some are not so well known, like that Adobe Acrobat Reader killer.

The above stapler is not a new invention, it was made by the Lihit Industrial Company of Japan in the mid-1980s.
Instead of using staples, it cuts a little flap in the paper while also cuts a slot, and it then tucks the flap through the slot. You use it as you might use a normal stapler - just push the stapler down as if it was a normal stapler - it will do the rest. Apparently can staple up to 5 pieces of paper.
A video of it (WMV) in action available at grand-illusions.com

I am not sure if it’s still available, but a modern equivalent could be this:

Available for USD8 (arnd RM30) online at cyberguys.com. They have an affiliate programs, but there seems to be too much paperwork involved to join them, so I defer for the time being.

Apparently, colour photography has been around since the beginning of the 20th century, and used extensively by the French during World War I.

The following site has many photos of the last 2 years of the Great War.

It’s an eerie experience watching these photos because you don’t expect colour photography during those times - in my own head, I was imagining grainy black and white photos and fast moving silent movies.

It definitely made WWI (ended in 1919 if I’m not mistaken) seemto have happened only several years ago.

Link:

http://www.worldwaronecolorphotos.com/index.html

Does this mean we should legalise marijuana instead, and make cigarettes illegal?

A newsreport from Reuters, sourced from MSNBC said, the new study was done by the University of California Los Angeles. And the results “surprised even the researchers,” because logically, they would’ve expected to find that a history of heavy marijuana use, like cigarette smoking, would increase the risk of cancer. Instead, the study found no elevated cancer risk for even the heaviest pot smokers.

However, it’s the same bad news for cigarette smokers: It did find a 20-fold increased risk of lung cancer in people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day.

Samsung Electronics has claimed this first, which it says will be released next month.

In this case, stick to the usual rule: don’t go for first generation tech, unless you have money to burn.

Points for it:

• the wow factor
• claims to runs in complete silence
• claims to boot 25-50% faster than hard disk based notebooks

Points against it: (more…)