It’s funny that someone would actually go review the Transformers preview. I haven’t watch the movie, probably be watching it next week or something. I kinda grew up watching Transformers and but I can assure you that I do not remember a thing about the cartoon except that it’s about a bunch of robots that actually transforms.

Watching this little preview prepared me for the movie, I’ll just go watch the robots kicks some ass. The guy is right about Michael Bay though. But isn’t Michael Bay films about the effects and the fast action?

Transformers (2007) Movie Preview Review

Posted Jun 13, 2007

A mega in-depth review of the new live action transformers movie.

Holy Fucking Shit That Looks Awesome!

Well, I’ll tell you more next week.

Yeah, I just finish watching Ouran High School Host Club (æ¡?è?­é«?æ ¡ã??ã?¹ã??é?¨ Å?ran Kōkō Hosuto Kurabu) anime, it has manga origins. Artist Bisco Hatori (è??é³¥ã??ã?¹ã?³) has her first hit in this. It’s not a bad anime. Quite funny but the ending is somewhat expected I guess. I shan’t spoil it for you guys though.

Ouran High School Host Club is about the gathering of a bunch of super rich kids studying in Ouran High School which is an exclusive school for wealthy families. The main characters are from prestigious families, think along the lines of F4 just that they don’t really hang out, act cool and be gay enough to all like one same girl. In Ouran High School Host Club (hereafter refered to just ‘Ouran’), the super rich kids are hosts for women. They entertain their fantasies of perfect romance. There is no ero-ero in it. The host club was doing great until someone came in and knock over their 1 million yen vase.

No, Ouran is not about the vase; Ouran is about the person who broke the vase - Fujioka Haruhi. The vase smashed onto the ground and Haruhi has to work to pay of the debt. Haruhi, a commoner, begins serving women.

The twist? Haruhi is not a guy. She just has short hair. Her petite looks and beautiful skin is an attraction to many school girls. She dresses up as a man and the Host Club gang taught her how to be a host. And Haruhi, who enjoys instant coffee and street shopping, help the Host Club guys learn more about themselves.

Ouran has 26 episodes, not awfully long. The pace is just right and it’s quite enjoyable to watch. Ouran gets 4 stars out of 5 for having a dynamic set of characters, good story and pace. Minus half for the fact that the girl-mistook-as-guy thing - well, it’s done over and over again. Minus another half for the Host Club guys being too rich.

You can find more screencaps in BasuGasuBakuhatsu Anime Blog, I gotten the above screenshot there too.

Continues from part 1 of Nike+ Review.

I ran for 200 metres and stopped. Jon plugged in the iPod to the Mac and iTunes is launched. It automatically uploads the running data from your iPod to your computer and up to the internet. Yup, it goes to the internet where you can share your runs with other Nike+ users.

(Click to enlarge.)

Now here comes the fun part, you get to monitor your runs. It connect to the Nike+ servers using your iPod receiver as your unique identifier. That would unfortunately mean that losing your receiver mean bye bye statistics. Here are some screenshots of the Nike+ interface, it’s something runners would find useful. It tells you the distance, the time, the pace and the calories burn out of your run. It’s the feature I love most! It charts your progress.

(Click to enlarge.)

See how you perform in each run. It tells you where you use your PowerSong. It’s always fun to return home after a run and plug in your iPod to your computer to check out the statistics.

With such comprehensive statistics for the runner, running will never be the same again. The whole interface is well thought and easy to navigate around. If you have Yahoo! Widgets you can download a widget to your desktop. It is compatible to Windows (including Windows Vista) and Mac OS. It monitors your goals and you can even challenge friends to runs!

(Click to enlarge.)

I am not really a runner but many people already are, about a thousand odd people are using Nike+ and they upload their route online to share. You can scroll to Jurong East and see what routes people are running. It’s a simple idea but it’s ingenius. When you get bored with your own running tracks, you can try nearby locations. You can plot your own track too and it will measure the distance as you plot. Really cool stuff.

Nike+ Apparel

(Click to enlarge.)

I previously mentioned the problem of iPod ear phone wires jumping around when you run. It wouldn’t happen if you have one of those tops above. Nike+ apparel holds your ipod Nano in a snug fitting, water resistant pocket right in your shirt or shorts. In addition Nike+ apparel comes with a wire management system that lets you loop your earphone wires through a network of holes to hold the wires in place. This prevents irritation and more importantly abrasion. Men and women designs are available. You can enlarge to view a larger screenshot.

Conclusion

Overall the Nike+ online experience is just awesome. I absolutely love the social aspect of the tool, you get to interact with friends and look at their runs too. It’s most rewarding perhaps to monitor your own statistics knowing how much better you are running today, as compared to say - two months ago. Nike+ is definately a must get for iPod Nano owners who loves their runs, it makes a great gift for a friend too!

I get into the Nike store without knowing much about this product and my experience has been a positive one. It’s fun knowing and blogging about it too, I thank Jon for the opportunity.

Find out more information at Nike+.

Last Saturday, Jon gave an opportunity to try out one of Nike’s new product - Nike+.

In case you haven’t heard, Nike teamed up with the great guys from Apple to build a device that can monitor runner’s pace and distance through Apple iPod and a sensor.

(From left to right: Nike+ shoes Moires, Apple iPod, Nike+ Sport Kit and Nike+ Armband.)

You’ll need the following:

• Apple iPod Nano - The most common digital music player of today!
• Nike+ Shoes - Nike rolled out a whole line of shoes designed by Bill Bowerman (co-founder of Nike) that supports the Nike+ device.
• Nike+ Sport Kit - Comes with the sensor and receiver, to be attached to shoes and iPod respectively.
• Nike+ accessories or apparel - The armband secures the iPod to your body. Nike+ tops are also available, I’ll show you more later.

These Nike+ enabled shoes includes a special compartment that’s located within the sole of the shoes that allows you to slot in the sensor. You can remove the insole of a Nike+ enabled shoe to insert the sensor. It rests under your feet, measuring your acceleration as you move your left foot during a run.

Jon picked a pair of Nike+ Triax X for me to try, it looks a little like the main shoes in the picture below. I’ve got slight flat foot and Triax X is designed to give better stability. Walking around felt comfortable and light and I instantly for in love with the pair of shoes. For years, I’ve ignored my foot condition and go those normal foot shoes! Oh, Nike hasn’t forsaken the female jogging lovers too; Nike has shoes that you’ll love.

(Main feature: Men’s Air Structure Triax+ 10. Bottom, from left to right: Women’s Air Structure Triax+ 10, Women’s Air Zoom Vomero+ 2, Women’s Air Span+ 4 and Women’s Air Zoom Moire+.)

The left shoe insole is removed to reveal a tiny compartment to fit the Nike+ Sensor. The iPod Nano is then plugged in with a receiver. I wore the Triax again and it didn’t feel heavier on the left, the sensor weighs around 10 grammes only! The iPod Nano knows what to do once you plug it in and the Nike+ menu is revealed. Here a Basic Workout is selected:

The iPod provides information all runners will love to have, your pace and your distance traveled! I tried moving my feet around, stepping around without really moving. Seem like the sensor’s actually smart enough to detect I’m just cheating around. The sensor is an accelerometer and not a pedometer so it does not measure the number of steps you run and convert it. Instead, it calculates your speed (miles or km per minute) & distance based on the interval between each footstrike. You may have to calibrate it a little to increase the accuracy.

(Nike+ Armband Monty.)

After explanation of the technology involved, I got on a treadmill to test out. It’s been half a month since I last ran and running in front of restaurants makes me hungry. I didn’t have an armband and running with the iPod wires didn’t feel enjoyable. Once I press the center button, the iPod narrates out my pace and distance traveled. I don’t even have to look at the screen! The voice didn’t sound like a crazy female robot too by the way.

I watch the numbers increase magically on the iPod. It tells you almost everything you want to know, playing your favorite tunes. Music keeps me going in a run. It’s just like in the army here they force you to sing crazy shit as you run, now you can listen to whatever you want! What’s really cool is when you’re feeling a little tired, you can hold on to the center button and iPod will launch your PowerSong! PowerSong is a special song that you preset to come on when you’re in need of some encouragement! The one at Wheelock Place just Justin Timberlake’s Rock Your Body as the PowerSong.

My Nike+ running experience is great. It’s fun and iPod’s interface is easy to use. The narating is a great feature. Nike+ doesn’t take your heart beat and it is quite expensive to start your run:

• A pair of Nike+ shoes is about SG$150
• An iPod Nano goes from SG$248 (2GB) to SG$428 (8GB)
• Nike+ Sport Kit cost SG$50

They all add up to SG$448++ if you don’t have any of the items. If you already have an iPod Nano, you can get a pair of Nike+ shoes once your shoes wears out. Because the real fun part is behind - monitoring your statistics.

Google rolls out new version of Google Analytics and it’s looking better than ever!

What is new?

In the new version, your reports have been redesigned for clarity, greater visibility of important metrics, and ease of use. Here are just a few of the features you’ll notice:

• Email and export reports: Schedule or send ad-hoc personalized report emails and export reports in PDF format.
• Custom Dashboard: No more digging through reports. Put all the information you need on a custom dashboard that you can email to others.
• Trend and Over-time Graph: Compare time periods and select date ranges without losing sight of long term trends.
• Contextual help tips: Context sensitive Help and Conversion University tips are available from every report.

The new interface has everything the previous interface had and more. In addition, links within reports make it easier to navigate related information and explore your data. (The above is from an email that Google sent me.)

Anyway, let’s take a visual tour of the new interface.

The interface undergoes a tremendous update, first of all. It looks much cleaner, much sleeker and feels faster. I’ll share with you some site statistics meanwhile.

From the above chart, you can see where my visitors are coming from. Not many people come from Asia and the reason is that most people come to this blog for images. I mean, they even took image of my brother’s birthday cake and post it on blogs to wish their friends happy birthday, wish they at least link back sometimes. I don’t block hot linking but I discourage hot-linking by placing a watermark on all my images. (more…)

My previous blog post got picked up by Mallr, a website that I haven’t heard before till 20 minutes ago.

The above is the all-famous Digg.com.

Here is the similar Mallr.com.

Mallr.com has a similar interface to Digg.com, just uglier. The developer has to work on the colors (just like I have to work on my blog’s colors) and resolve some bugs. If you try to vote with Mallr, Mallr throws you an error while Digg actually gives you the field to log in.

Mallr has a tiny community and viewership is crucial to the success of these social bookmarking websites. And they need a bunch of people who love to bookmark. It needs to position itself different from Digg to be successful or it would be just the Mallr of nobody-knows-where. Perhaps promoting tagging in the website may help.

The ability to blog from Digg is great too, although I always edit my post after I blog from Digg to add the categories and pictures and stuff. Mallr could have something similar.

The great thing about Mallr is that it is quite regionalized (or perhaps localized). I see local (Singapore) websites and news more which is a good place for Singaporeans to gather. The problem with Digg is that it’s just too American and I wish there were more news about Asian regions too. I will definately keep Mallr under my radar for a while.

The sign-up process is easy, the profile update is quite user-friendly but not as friendly as Digg. There’s a lot of work to do and it’s sinful to copy too much from Digg. It might be successful in the future. I haven’t got a chance to find out more about Mallr. Do comment here if you have more information about Mallr.

Nacho Libre is another movie starring Jack Black, directed Jared Hess. The movies Jack Black starred in seemed to have this loser-turn-hero style and Nacho Libre doesn’t change any of that.

As usual, we’ll let the pictures do the story-telling.

Nacho is raised in a Mexican monastery orphanage and he is quite fat.

Loving God and the children, Nacho works in the orphanage to cook food for the kids.

He likes wrestling and decided to give it a go at Lucha Libre - a wrestling tourament - to earn some money.

Sister Encarnacion looks pretty here. Nacho seems interested.

Well, unfortunately not all his co-workers think highly of wrestling as it is considered sinful. Would Nacho be able to convinced them and make the kids at the orphanage happy again? Likely.

Anyway, I like Nacho Libre, it’s fun to watch, I haven’t gotten sick of that loser-to-hero formula. The plot is straight forward, predictable and at many times nonsensical. Sister Encarnacion (played by Ana de la Reguera) is perhaps the most beautiful nun that you’d ever see. Nacho Libre deserves 3.5 upon 5 for all of the above.

[Just a month to ORD! Finally leaving the crazy place.]