Is this like the End of the World or something?

^ WHAT A BEAST ^

Today, I went and saw the movie Knowing with some church pals. What a mistake that was. Ok, actually it was kind of my idea to see the movie because honestly, the movie posters looked so damn cool and I couldn't pass up another chance to see Nicholas Cage making a fool of himself again. Too bad it turned out to be a huge dissapointment. Knowing is a story of this guy, I think his name is Jon or something, who finds out through his son that the world is going to end (yeah you know, it's almost the most original movie I've ever seen!). He figures this out by Googling some numbers he finds on a piece of paper that this crazy little girl put in a time capsule fifty years ago. Turns out that girl, as well as Jon's son, Caleb, are both being whispered to by some crazy aliens or angels (which we don't realize until the last ten minutes of the movie) who want to obliterate the earth, saving just two humans to "start over". Well you know, the premise of this movie really isn't that bad; I mean, a quest to discover the meaning of these mysterious scrawled numbers, and a plan to re-invent the human race? It sounds like you could really make something out of it, right? It's just a shame that this movie was just too disjointed, totally random and horror-ish to live up to it's cool image of numbers falling off the earth. I still wrap my head around those "angels"! The worst part is that throughout the entire movie, they keep showing up in the forest near Jon's house, staring through the windows at Caleb while they stand there, immobile, like human-shaped telephone poles or something wacky like that. Sort of way too creepy and pedo, right? Nicholas Cage delivered on his necessary comedy act though. I remember there was a scene where he was like "IT'S NOT GOING TO WORK, IT'S NOT GOING TO WORK, IT'S NOT GOING TO WORK AHH". Watch his performance in The Wicker Man and you will see why I find this guy so utterly hilarious. He's but a mediocre actor but he has great potential to be a comedian, I think. Really!

Cheers,

Kamster

Lap of Luxury

Since I was a kid, I've always had the dream of buying a nice car to drive around town in - something to impress the ladies with and something that I can really push to its limits. My top picks were traditionally Lexus, Acura, Volkswagon or Volvo, but now I think I'd rather purchase a Mercedes GLK more than anything else. What changed my mind definitely was the new microsite Mercedes-Benz has just launched promoting the newest member of their family, the Mercedes GLK. 

This vehicle caught my eye because Mercedes is really trying to get a certain message across to it's customers; that it's serious about making cars that fit their consumers' lifestyles. In fact, the motto for the the GLK is "Where Do You See Yourself?" I find this rather fitting, as it is clear that the GLK would fit nicely into anyone's lifestyle with ease. I especially liked the sites high-tech and futuristic feel, with cool beeping noises when you click on the various tabs (all of which lead to very informative and, if I may say, sexy pictures of the interior and exterior of this fantastic vehicle). I think the best thing about this car would be the unbelievable leather seats... they look absolutely gorgeous. Anyways I'd encourage you to take a look at the GLK promo website yourself to understand what I mean when I say I will definitely be shopping for this car in the future (hopefully!)

Cheers,

Kamster

Sponsored by Mercedes-Benz

Shoot For The Moon... Even If You Miss, You'll Land Among The Stars

I just got my yellow star on eBay; I'm so happy! Basically "reputation stars" sort of represent how good of a buyer/seller you are. Ideally for each transaction you complete the person you sold an item to or bought an item from will leave you feedback, either positive, negative or neutral. Each positive feedback raises your feedback score by one, and when you get to ten, you get a yellow star! I know this is really lame :P but I believe I'll be using eBay more and more in the future, maybe when I start piling up junk that I need to get rid of. From what I've seen, there are certainly many people who make their livings off eBay. Apparently, if you earn more than ten thousand dollars a month off eBay, you qualify for some of the benefits you might categorize with a regular nine-to-five job, such as dental, health insurance and other benefits, although I haven't really checked to verify if this is true.

However, there are people who sell a CRAPload of stuff each month. For example, some people I buy from are green or silver shooting stars... that's from five thousand to one million items sold! Holy crap.

For now though I'm content to purchase items on eBay and have no inclination to start selling; I don't really want to deal with the shipping details and the costs to list an item with eBay just yet.

Cheers

Kamster

Quick Update

Yoooo March Break is coming up I am excited. Amazingly, I have two weeks off from class whereas most of my compadres have only one - which is good and bad. It's kinda bad because - obviously - we can't hang out for one week; in fact, I'll have one week with almost nothing to do except mope around the house and do work. But it's also good in that I can take that time to visit universities that are having early open houses; I definitely need to make time for some of those. What's also nice is that I have almost no work these upcoming two weeks; most of my classmates are going off on a trip and teachers are scared to assign homework, so the rest of us that remain behind are having it real nice 'n easy.

Oh, and I just downloaded Opera 9.6, and it is really amazing - SO much faster (and smaller) than Internet Explorer, and very user-friendly. Download it here.

Cheers,

Kamster

Feed Me Now!

If you have been keeping up with Up the Ante these past few months, you may recall a previous post where I lamented about Google's up and coming domination of cyberspace and their rapid emergence as Microsoft's biggest competitor in the computer/internet marketing realm of today. Well, it seems that Google hasn't let up as of late, continuing on to swallow up smaller companies who simply don't have what it takes to resist the enormous pull of Google's gravity.

When I signed into my Feedburner account for the first time in a while, I found out that Google had taken over FeedBurner!

Quoting the email to my inbox:

"You may now view and manage your feed and its settings by visiting this address:

http://feedburner.google.com

You will no longer be able to sign in to feedburner.com, but that's okay: from now on, there is no reason to do so. Also, your old FeedBurner feed, found at feeds.feedburner.com, will automatically redirect traffic to its new address on the feeds2.feedburner.com domain. You may still want to update any links or buttons on your website to use the new feeds2.feedburner.com address."

Actually, they had bought over FeedBurner in 2007 but I didn't know until now! Apparently it took them the better part of two years to integrate FeedBurner into their group services, but now they've done it. Like I've said... Google is taking over the world (although, I haven't noticed any differences with the *new* FeedBurner except for a change of domain name)!

Cheers,

Kamster

Phone Problems Solved!

A while ago I had this phase where I tried really hard to get some games on phone, a Samsung D807. I didn't want to pay money to buy from Rogers, and so I tried to download some free games off the internet. After doing some searching around, I found some sites that offered free phone game downloads. The problem was however, that the file extensions were really weird; for some games they were .jad and others they were .jar, and for a few games, both types of file were offered. By this point I was totally confused. Other than telling me to "download and install", I had no idea how to turn these confusing files into games that I could play.

In this situation, a site like File Extension Library would have helped me out greatly. Until today, I had no idea what those two file types were, but after visiting File Extension Library, I have learned that .jad files are actually a small type of file that contains instructions for the retrieval, installation and identifications of MIDlets (a java application that you can run on your phone - usually a game). I also learned from the file extension library that the .jad file opens your phone browser to download and install the game automatically. No wonder I couldn't get those games to work! My phone's browser was disabled! I realize that File Extension Library is a great resource that I can and definitely will use in the future when I'm dealing with confusing file types, such as .bup, .jar and .dll files, just to name a few. Indeed, the comprehensive library contains dozens of odd file extensions, the likes of which I have not (and hope not) come across. However, with software becoming obsolete the moment it's bought, you never know when you'll come across some file your friend has sent you that you have no idea how to deal with. Like today; how was I supposed to know that .doc files (the standard for Microsoft Word documents, or so I thought) are no longer used, and instead have been swapped for .docx? Good thing I came across File Extension Library at the time I did. Hopefully now I'll be able to get DawnOfDarkness.jad to finally work!

Cheers!

Kamster