Moved!

My blog has officially been moved. There will no longer be any postings at this address. But this will remain up (for a whie) in order to let people know where I have moved to if they come to check.

My new blog/website is at: http://www.adimofunne.com

see you soon

MRM: Running Scared

I was in blockbuster a while ago with a friend trying to decide on a movie to see. It was one of those days that you look through all the movies on the shelf and everything just seemed confusing, nothing fit exactly the criteria of movie you felt like watching and the ones that seemed like they did you had never heard of them before so you are not actually sure if you want to see it.

So I ventured to ask one of the blockbuster employees for advice for a movie to see. After thinking for some seconds he recommended this movie. I must say I am really surprised I never heard of this when it was in the box office, well if it was ever in the box office. This was a very good movie, one of the best ones I had seen in 2006.

The movie is basically about a guy who is part of a mob, he was told to get rid a gun which was used to kill a cop(by accident). The gun was stolen by his sons friend and used to shoot his dad. This little incident spiraled out of control when the cops find out that the gun used to kill the police officer was used by the kid to shoot his dad. It is a really intense, action packed movie. This is one of those must see movies. I am not usually a guy that watches mafia/mob related movies, not that I have anything against them but they are just not my favorite genre. This movie is one is an exception, one that I think anyone will appreciate.

Note: It is a bit graphics, sexually and in violence.

My rating: 85%
Rotten Tomatoes: 39%
Yahoo:B

I have been thinking....

I have been blogging for a bit now and I think I am starting to get the hang of it and I am thinking I might want to take it more seriously now. I have looked around and seen some blogs which I consider serious (in the sense that it has become a full fledged hobby for the authors). These authors mostly have their own domain names and they have really customomized templates, hence having a proffesional look.

Well I dont plan to be launching a own site very soon but my first step I feel is to gain total control of my blog and my problem with that is that I dont think blogger.com can do that for me.

Here are my issues:

1) Blogger.com is not fully compatable with safari (Ya I am a mac user), and I think that is ridiculous considering that macs are becoming more popular daily. This also causes me to use two browsers FireFox for blogging and safari for everything else (I prefer safari to Firefox due to FF's memory leak problems) this is a problem for me.

2) There are not alot of options in templates on blogger.com as supposed to wordpress, you have to mess around with alot of the HTML on blogger, which can be seen as a plus, cause you are kinda given full control of your template. But for me who has no time, I prefer to find some obscure template, tweak it a little and I am ready to roll.

3) Blogger doesn't give future posting feature. I travel alot and I don't know how my internet access will be when ever I am away, so I would like to schedule posts to be saved and then published the day I want them to, so to my readers it seems I never left.

4) With blogger I have to use third party applications to view my web stats, this is ok but need me to manage and create extra accounts on the internet thereby keeping track of multiple user names and passwords.


I am presently living with all the issues listed above and if I am to take blogging seriously, it has to be something I enjoy and not a burden, I have to reduce all this over heard, so I started this research and then I found out that Wordpress (Blogger.com's main rival) has all these features I am looking for and more and to put icing on the cake they have an import function that lets me import my blog and comments form blogger.com to the new blog, which I think is amazing.

Hmm... so when do i move? when i finish my personal website or before?

Seeking Inspiration

You remember my previous post about how to become a genius?. I quoted Thomas Edisson, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" What I left out is that finding that 1% Inspiration might be as hard as or if not harder than putting in that 99% perspiration.

The definition of inspiration as defined by Dictionary.com is: "Stimulation of the mind or emotions to a high level of feeling or activity" but the definition I liked best of inspiration was that of spiritwritings.com which was: "a psychic state in which one becomes susceptible to creative spiritual influence or, to a varying degree, unwittingly lends oneself as an instrument for through-flowing ideas" . This is because I like to liken the recieving of inspiration to seeing the light (an internal awakening).

Sometimes I run out of inspiration for different things, from blogging topics to my next computer related project to how to start my assignments. Sometimes I go out of my way to seek inspiration, for me I need to break the flow I need to change my routine. Routine stagnates my mind, so these are a few methods I use to clear my mind:

1) Go to bed Thinking about what I want to solve.
Thats right, whenever I have a problem and I don't know where to start I lay on my bed with the intention of sleeping (to also calm my nerves) but sometimes if I am lucky I wake up with a clue or finally decide on the path I want to follow in tackling whatever the situation is.

2)Read a magazine
Many times when I am short on inspiration on designing a website, flyer or I am short of a blog topic. Magazines have never failed. Well published periodicals are filled with other peoples creativity which you can feed off and gain inspiration.

3)Put yourself in a random scenario
I go to places where there is talking but not to much noise that you cant think, just watching random interactions from people and events pop different Ideas into my head. Library and Coffee shops fpr example.

4)Colors
There is this place on the first floor of my school library which is called the Idea Factory (as if they knew) I can dare to say it is one of the most colorful places on campus, multi colored couches, abtract paintings on the walls, a flat screen tv in the corner and so many other things. The place is so busy that your mind processes a lot at once but at the same time so organised that you can see symetry in this madness. That kind of place is my ideal place to do homework. think and relax.

What are your own methods when you seek inspiration?

Bible in classrooms

Reading my weekly dose of Time, skimming through the pages, looking at the headings that interest me and skipping the ones that don't, I could not help but notice the cover story, "Why we should teach the bible in public schools". I was like not again, This has been an on going argument for a while now, how Christians have been trying to enforce the learning of Bible in public schools either by proposing it or trying to sneak it in through ideas like Intelligent Design. I was like o.k I'm just gonna give it a peak and as soon as I started reading the article I was hooked.

This was a whole new perspective. This article was saying that many high schools have started teaching the bible in schools not to convert them into the religion but to increase their knowledge/literacy. Considering the Bible is the number one Bestseller every year since bestselling books have been recorded it is quite obvious that the Bible is so much embedded in the history of the world and our cultures we cannot just sit back and erase it. This article poses strong points such as, from reading Shakespeare to the latest bestsellers (For example the Da Vinci Code) knowledge of the Bible is key to enjoying the full experience and understanding of these books. Littered all over what we call literature are references to people, places and scenarios in the Bible, even in the movies. You cannot enjoy/understand the full impact of the Matrix if you do not have an adept knowledge of the Bible.

The point is that it has been discovered that to be considered literate in todays world you have to have knowledge of the Bible. After reading this I smiled, so Christians did not even need to try to get the Bible into the classroom, it was practically destined to be, we need the Bible to be educated. It made perfect sense.

Food for thought: Something I found Interesting was that in the Bible it is said that at the end of the world (Which many predict not to be far away) majority of the world will forget God so when he comes again it will be those who really love him and have been with him, will he take to heaven. If the bible is on its way to be a standard in school curriculum, is it going to be possible to forget God and his teachings? How close is the end of the world?

MRM: The Prestige

This was one of my best movies of 2006. I was privileged to find time to watch it again this weekend. You know that is something I hardly do, watch a movie twice. There are really few movies in recent times (I'm talking about the past 4 years) that I have watched twice. I am a movie buff and I watch movies to gain perspective/relax so if I feel I have derived the maximum profit from a movie I'm not going to watch it again until I can barely remember what its about. Nowadays the originality in the plot of a movie woo's me more than the cinema effects, or the complexity of the story. I have seen so much that for me to call it a good movie I feel it has to be original in a way or make me think.

The Prestige gave me that effect. The bottom line is that there was nothing really original, because it was basically a story about revenge, but the way it was executed is what made me like the movie. It made me wonder how far I would go to pay someone back for the way they hurt me and what I feel would be a justified pay back. What also caught my attention was the magic in the movie, a little mystery is always a selling point for anything. In order not to give the details away and keep it short and simple. If you havn't seen this movie you have to see it.

My ratings: 85%
Yahoo: B
Rotten Tomatoes: 74%

What is Genius?

There has been a quote I have been thinking about for some time now. The one from Thomas Edisson where he said "Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration". Its not one of those quotes that just hits you as immediate truth or as i like to say "Shows you the light". Its one that makes you think, it gives a different perspective on a topic in our society that many of us think is inborn, rare and special, but this quote nudges you to think otherwise. It says we can all attain this rare staus by just working hard.

Yes I know you have met people with extra ordinary skills, people that could multiply 325 by 672 in their head in a minute or even seconds and then you ask, how are these people not born like this, how can you say they are not talented or given a gift from God. But from observation I have seen those such people are those who have worked the hardest. They are the people while you party they are writing computer code, while you sleep they are reading. Definitely at the end of the day it is going to show. No I am not saying that people are not gifted differently in intelligence, what I am saying is that the skill or the ability we call Genius (Which is defined as: someone who has exceptional intellectual ability and originality ) is attained through hard work and is not just randomly assigned. In order to confirm my thoughts on this i did a little digging and I came up with this article (From New Scientist).

Basically What it says is that if we look at all the people we call geniuses in different fields, from Mozart to Einstein, what brought them fame was not the inborn intelligence but the work they put in. That hard work broke ground and led them to come up with things that no one thought about. According to the article IQ does not assure greatness. There was an elementary school in New York where the requirement to get in was an IQ score above 130 (Which only 1 percent of the world is on that level of intelligence) but when these students were watched although they had satisfactory/successful lives, none of them came out with a Pulitzer prize or a Nobel prize, very few of them are even recognizable by name today.

If you look today at who is making the news and actively changing our world, Bill Gates, Micheal Dell, Steve Jobs and co, these are all college dropouts. That leaves me asking, what about those kids that get 4.0 in MIT and Harvard? where are they? what companies do they lead? I personally believe the brain is a muscle, the more you task it and test it, the more powerful t would be, and the closer to genius you will be (If that is your desire).

New Design

I decided today to work a little on my design. From time to time I plan to customize this template so that it would really reflect who I am and what I plan to discuss. So far only the header and the overall template has changed. I also changed the name of the blog from "The codex" to Panorama (to reflect the broadness of my topics). I think these are the first steps towards a cleaner and better blog. I have also added a feed widget on the right so that all of you who are interested can sign up for my feed. My aim is to update this blog daily. I hope it works out as planned.

Eating The Forbidden Fruit...

Finishing was interesting, I thought it was funny that the full title of this post was so long that I got errors while trying to post it. The Full title I intended was - Eating The forbidden Fruit: Five reasons Apple can take over the world. I guess that didn't work out. I also realized after I named the post "Eating the forbidden fruit" That the apple logo has a bite taken out of it.

Anyway unless you have been living under a rock, you must have heard the media waves made by Apple. This is a company that was saved by the revolution of the Ipod, taking the world away from portable cassette/cd players to pure digital (mp3) sound. Now Apple has revamped their computers (Their core product) changed their design pimped them out with the new core 2 Duo processors from Intel and now like the Ipod, the once obscure computer platform is becoming a craze for the young and old alike. Apple is not shying away from all the attention, in fact they are embracing it, and coming out with more cocky "Get a mac ads".

So I have sat down and analyzed this company, where do they plan to go? where is this hype going to take them? are they going to switch places with Microsoft? after a lot of thinking and research I came up with 5 reasons why apple has a chance of taking over the market.

1. The Cool Effect
The Ipod revolution created an effect where your not cool if you don't have an Ipod. That effect is beginning to migrate into apple computers. In high school and Universities all over America having a mac is personality statement, now macs are going mainstream having a mac means your either cool or your different in a good way. Everybody wants to be different in a good way well in other words special. So what do they do? go get a mac.

2. The Cult Effect
There has been a lot of talk about the Apple marketing strategy, Ilker Yoldas in her blog described the mac fan club as having cult like characteristics. I agree, there are the Mac Evangelist who spend time trying to convince people into using or buying a mac. This is very popular with mac fanatics and this has been used to convert many present mac users such as myself from windows. This tactic is very deep and creates brand loyalty which means most mac users will be mac users for life, which maintains the company at a certain level at all times.

3. They have the chicks
As a result of the cool effect apple has manage to get girls on board their fan club. This is a feat that the game industry has been trying to do for years. Companies like Nintendo has worked hard to break this barrier for a long time, because they know once you have girls interested in your electronic device you have won over the world (like in the case of the Ipod). There are even blogs like the macenstein that have girls (some of celebrity status) that pose every month (mac chick of the month) and say how much the mac has changed their life and the wonders it is doing for them. The apple store (practically anywhere) is the only electronic store I have ever been to where you see girls ranging from the age of 14 - 22 playing with the electronics and at the store and at the same time matching the number of males at the store at any given time.

4. Microsoft Messed up
Microsoft just recently released the a new operating system after 5 years, Windows Vista. There has been a lot of criticism on the software giant about how they have copied apple in the ways the operating system works. So the question if Microsoft are still the leaders in producing the best operating system arises. To me that is not where they messed up. Where they messed up was by them making the operating system so hardware intensive that anyone one who want to upgrade from Windows xp has to practically buy a new computer. What this does is that it lets consumers think. It lets them contemplate if they want to stay with Microsoft or use this opportunity to move to the coolest thing now (an apple machine). This lack of seamless transit to the new Microsoft operating system has been of benefit to apple.

5. They are good
This is last but not the least, in fact it might be the most important. Apple has actually done a good job in marketing, designing and Engineering their products. Without this all the above points will be futile because as soon as consumers use these products they will be able to see right through the deceit. If you have used their products for a while you will know that real thought has been put into every step of the design and it feels so intuitive, in my opinion they have giving us tomorrows operating system today as Steve Jobs will put it. Now with Leopard coming out in a few weeks, the iPhone coming out in June and rumors about all their hardware being redesigned they are increasing the barrier farther again from their competitors, lets just keep our eyes out and see what they have in store for us.

Watch out for part two or this post: 5 reasons why Apple should not take over the world

Movie Review Monday (MRM): 300

I am always asked to recommend movies when ever my friends are debating seeing a movie and for some reason I always go blank. I find that really unusually cause I'm the kind of guy that should get paid to watch movies. I think I have a broad range of movies I watch, actually I am really unbiased when it comes to movies and music, for me it is all about the mood I am at, at that particular time. So in a way I could be a good movie partner but many people dont like me cause I always give side commentary while the movie is going on. Yes I am that guy, that annoying guy that feels he can predict the next five scenes and feels that he can actually tell you the end of the movie from like 40 minutes into the movie. O.k I know that is bad but I think for a significant percentage im right though but anyway I am steering away from the point.

I recently decided to review one movie I have seen recently every monday (hence forming MRM: Movie Review Mondays) so all of you out there can know what I have seen and from my review decide if it is worth your while or not. Although I do not believe in movie ratings by movie critics I will put them side by side with my own rating for you to see what other people are saying about that movie.

So I recently saw the movie "300". To give you are very brief description of the movie without saying too much, it was about 300 legendary soldiers from sparta (a city in ancient Greece) and how they fought against the Persians (Who wanted to enslave them). It is a typical ancient Greek war movie, if you liked the movie Troy, you would probably love this. The cinematic effects was highly impressive. This movie was highly digitized so you can probably find it in a 3-D movie theater near you (recommended). This is one of those movies better seen in the theater than at home on you couch, its an action packed adrenaline pumping movie that I would recommend.

Movie Trailer here.

My rating: 80% (A must see)
Rotten Tomatoes: 61%(Fresh)
Yahoo movies: B+


Note: Rotten Tomatoes rates harshly and rates better towards Oscar worthy movies rather than what might just be a plain chill/fun movie