To tell you the truth

I really, really don't like to blog about emotions, people, society and all of this trivial life stuff. Don't know exactly why.

Maybe and just maybe I don't like to use my free time online to make myself more stressed at life. That's why you don't see me blog a lot about people, only sometimes so that I can have a wide audience.

But as always, each men (and women) to their own.

3 kinds of people

Admit it, the internet is filled with people who is not very bright and like to say things only to make other people upset. But amidst the sea of those people, there are a few people who makes sense. That few people who does inspired me to write this post.

I do a lot of thinking. Sometimes too much that I strayed into things that are way too deep. Anyway after much thinking I've manage to categorize people into a 3 categories. Note that in no way I am saying this is what it should be rather it is my personal opinion.

Believers

We aren't living under anarchy. Our lives are determined by a more superior body usually known as the government. I am not trying to talk about politics here, I'm talking about people. Living in this day and age, we have a a lot of source of news and knowledge around such as the radio, television, internet, books, and so on.

Also note that not everyone in the world put out news because it's true. Some wicked minded people in the world use these kind of media to trick them. believers are the kind of people who believes these kinds of thing. The usual trait to these believers is that whatever makes sense to them, or sometimes even whatever that is so complicated (or sound complicated to them) and due to the attitude of "wow these things are so complicated it must be true" they end up as the believers. Believers also most of the time don't have a clue in what they believe in and on some instances even made up stories about the thing that they believe in due to the ignorance of themselves. Doesn't mean that everything that the believers believe is wrong but rather what they believe in is not given much thought into.

Rebels

These are the kinds of people that are the opposite of the believers and usually have a very aggressive and hasty kind of mind. They tend to just repel whatever news or knowledge that is just not to their liking. A part of the rebels are also the people who just like to see something successful to plunder. The rebels usually despise what is believed by many people just because they want to. Not to say that all rebels are wrong, but rebels usually spear without a true purpose. Just like the believers, what they have in common is they don't have a clear idea of their goals and does it for the fun of it. And because of the personal loathe towards what is believed, fictional news and knowledge are also made up to make themselves feel more secure and a sense of accuracy into what they're rebelling against.

Thinkers

Thinkers are people who don't just gobble in what they heard or instantly reject what is known. Their reaction is based on proper thinking and rational reasoning. Right of the bat, the news or knowledge that is fed to them is analyzed and proven its truth. Thinkers are the people the world is lacking today. A kind of person that thinks about everything, constantly, relying on reliable sources and later deriving their own net of understanding on a given subject. Problem is its not easy being a thinker. You cannot force yourself to be a thinker, you have to train yourself to think and make it a habit to constantly look for the logic and maybe even make rough predictions of what to expect. Thinkers lead a more organic life. They live on what they personally believe and what they personally rebel. They don't follow people, they lead. They are made up of leader material. But sadly they aren't many of them today. They are the optimum person. If we have a goal of change that we need to have, it'll be to be a thinker.

Hook ups vs. Relationships

Now before I proceed, I have to be honest that I do have a couple of reviews for movie that I haven't done but God knows I am so lazy to type them. The movies are Gamer featuring Gerard Butler and a local film, Papadom featuring Afdlin Shauki. Long review short, Gamer sucks, 5/10 and Papadom is pretty good, 8.5/10. Now, onto the pressing matters.

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Before continuing to read on this post of mind, keep in mind that these are merely an opinion and you are open to an intellectual argument with me on the mentioned topic. Also keep in mind that I have nothing against one or the other since nowadays it seems that it's all a matter of choice and preference.

Hook ups
Hook ups are when you agree to be in relationship with each other, but it's in a trial period. Just like a lot of shareware out there where you are given a specific amount of time to try it out, extend the trial period if you did something in particular but all in all, will expire within a certain amount of time. People get involved in hook ups because they can skip one major feature of a relationship; devotion. While in hook ups, they're allowed to date other people and they are not limited to spend time specifically garnering the temporary relationship. Hook ups also give reason for both sides to have reasons to end it early say if a problem appears. It seems to be a very popular choice among youths nowadays since devotion is a very heavy thing to handle and needs a lot of time to have it. Hook ups also allow these people to be able to experience a lot of different people and the multiple hook ups that they have gives them the upper hand of knowing what various problem that can occur once they seriously want to start being in a relationship.
This culture is practiced widely in the western world and is now catching up quickly with easterners. Hook ups are also practiced mainly by youths since they say that they have a long life ahead of them and want to utilize the time to try hook ups and experience multiple person while they still have the time.

Relationships
Relationships are long, devotion-driven connection between 2 people that will stay that way until marriage or death do them apart. People in relationships are stuck with the person of their choice for the rest of their romantic lives. Relationships don't have an expiry date and it is usually bound by a promise to stay with each other. Relationships are the less popular choice of today's youth since devotion is a difficult thing to practice and also they don't have the chance to be with any other person anymore. Any free time for both of them will usually be utilized with bonding and ways to strengthen their connection. Relationships are less popular too because the major arguments and disagreements usually happens in relationships and they have no choice but to look for solution(s) regardless of the difficulty of the situation. Relationships obviously are much, much harder to maintain and having to put up with the same person everyday is a tasking thing. The plus side of it however, in relationships, love exists and with much effort the love will be more than you can handle, which is a good thing by the way. There will be also time where anniversary celebration is held and to achieve that milestone and feel a kind of happiness that is truly a gift from God. In relationships, you too will have a much better idea and perception of the person. In simpler words, relationships are something you go into because you love a single person and want to improve everything together.

If you ask me,
I would prefer a relationship over hook up on any given day. Yes it's difficult, yes it requires a lot of patience, yes it require a lot of guts, but the satisfaction and the feeling of happiness and security that result from it is far more beneficial and leaves a greater and longer term impact to your life. True, I'm 19 and might still be too young for it but to me it is best for us to learn when were young instead of using the free time to experiment. And I never know how long is my future, so I don't want to waste it experimenting. It's not exciting compared to hook ups, I know, but the rewarding feeling that came from it is worth all the effort.

Don't make a promise you can't keep.

Stop being rebellious all the time

If you are to spend your life rebelling, when are you going to fail and learn life as it is?

We are humans. We are not perfect. So wasting time trying to be perfect is just not human.

We are humans. We should learn to fail sometimes.

Is the 360 holding the PS3 back?

When games like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves come along, you have to question why so few games push the boundaries of the PlayStation 3 so far. With 360 versions of multi-format titles regularly inching out their PS3 counterparts, are developers justified in blaming Sony’s tools for their troubles, or is it just a symptom of curtailing coding to work on the 360’s older architecture?

Look at the screenshots of Uncharted 2 we’ve taken. Look at the amount of detail in each. Look at how sharp the textures are, and how good the lighting is. Amazing, isn’t it? And there’s a lot more that these screenshots can’t show, like the animation and Uncharted 2’s physics – which are both excellent. It is the best showcase of what the PS3 hardware can do, when given the chance. And While Naughty Dog must be given a lot of the credit for this, it’s also hard not to look at Uncharted 2 as proof that the 360 is now holding the PS3 back.

Look at the recent multiformat releases and compare them to Uncharted 2 – big difference, right? This isn’t surprising. The PS3 has a hard drive and it has a Blu-ray drive, two things the 360 doesn’t have as standard. The hardware itself is also more recent. As Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells confirmed in a recent interview, these things were instrumental in making Uncharted 2 the game it is:

"We’re fortunate that we get to work on a system that has a hard drive and uses Blu-ray for storage. Without these things, Uncharted 2 would have been a very different game. What we were able to do with the Cell processor allowed us to achieve a density of polygons and a fidelity to our effects that would simply not be possible without it.”"

Wells adds that had Naughty Dog not had the talented staff it does “we wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of the hardware and achieve the results that we did”. But the hardware issue can’t be ignored, and leads you to wonder how many multiplatform titles have suffered because of the 360’s spec. Modern Warfare 2 is a good example. Would we now be looking forward to a MW2 that renders in 1280x720 or even 1920x1080 now – and not 1200x600 – if the 360 was better equipped? Infinity Ward is one of the world’s leading developers, so it’s not a question of ability. Therefore, you have to look at the hardware involved.

This theory is supported by some recent 360 exclusives. ODST is a reminder that Bungie has been unable to make a 360 game engine that can do respectable levels of detail and ‘proper’ HD visuals. And then there’s Forza 3:

"Yeah, it’s pretty special. When you see it running for the first time, the detail and smoothness of it all is quite something. It’s such a step up from previous 360 racers. You just can’t believe that Turn 10’s been able to drag that kind of performance out of a four-year-old console.” "

This is what a journalist who has reviewed the game for a UK 360 magazine told us. And he’s right in the sense that it does things with the 360 hardware that should be impossible. And perhaps they are. Disappearing roads and other glitches are an example of this. And the extra content disc is proof that the DVDs used by the 360 are no longer up to the job.

But because the 360 is every bit as popular as the PS3, third party developers are still required to ensure their multiformat games work just as well on an Arcade spec 360 as they do the PS3. This means that although the PS3 has Blu-ray and a hard drive as standard, most multiformat games released for it will struggle to take advantage of the additional storage and hard drive caching these features offer – especially when the 360 version has been the lead version.

This won’t stop such games being good games. But whenever a developer like Naughty Dog gives you a glimpse of what the PS3 is truly capable of, you can’t help by wonder how much better third party games could be, were it not for the 360.

Article extracted from www.gameswire.net

[http://www.gameswire.net/news/opinion-is-the-360-holding-the-ps3-back_422.html]

My history of Social Networking

As a kid, the internet was a very strange thing for me. For some reason, after entering some keywords into the address bar, I was able to go to site filled with things of my interest anytime and know any kind of information I wanted. Awesome stuff. I was exposed to the internet as early as 6 years old. Later in my life I was just using the internet to get information on all sorts of things and that's that.



As I get older, When I was in my Form 3 to be exact, I heard of a little thing called Friendster. It is a website that allows you to have your own profile and connect with your friends. Back then, I really don't see what's so fun about it but since it was a fad at that time, I registered myself an account anyway. After a while using it, it was getting kind of fun for some reason. I don't have anything specific that I do there but I just find it fun to be there. Sharing pictures with people, writing testimonials about friends; maybe those are the things that I find joy in doing.



Then came along another new and more deep social networking site known as MySpace. It was getting a lot of attention since it gives you the ability to fiddle around with the HTML and CSS of your profile, which means (for advanced user at that time) you can make you profile look anyway you like. One thing that doesn't attact me to use it at the time is because of the complexity of it. On Friendster, there are very little things I have to manage, such as pictures, friend requests and the occasional testimonials. But here there are many other things to manage such as music, videos and other multimedia things. As I grow older and getting more proficient in HTML, I registered myself a MySpace account. I found joy in making my site as flashy as possible and adding as much people as I can into my friends list; regardless whether I know them in real life or not. Commenting on other people's profile was a blast and fiddling with the elements of my profile was a lot of fun too. I had a lot of things to do and the depth of this social networking site, paired with the (kind of) large friends list that I have, it was something to be proud of back then. And I've also met a lot of interesting people that end up being my good friends up to this day.


Then, came along yet another new social networking site, Facebook. Not many of my friends are there so earlier I just stick to MySpace. Thinking that this thing might be a new fad, I registered myself an account there and just leave it. You know, in case if MySpace became outdated, I already have an account there. As I grow older, MySpace gets kinda boring to me. More and more of my friends are getting on Facebook and so what is the purpose of social networking of you don't have any social to network with. After trying on Facebook for a while, I got hooked on it. It was far more simple, neat, and manageable. It was also very presentable and the profile of other people are much more accessible and systematic. I also liked how it gives us the ability to comment on anything that the person has done; befriend with another person, liked something, changed status and much more. And as I grow older too, MySpace becomes so obnoxious to me with all of its sparkly, blinky, seizure-inducing profiles. Thus, I moved onto Facebook and kept using it until now.


I also have a twitter account. I used it kind of late because to me, it's like another way for people to be able to stalk on you, but then when I think about, who wants to stalk on me anyway. Plus I intend to only update on things that are not really significant. It's a new kind of social networking so it doesn't compare to 3 of the earlier ones.

I think I'm not the only one with this kind of experience though. And I'm still thankful that I had registered on all of those social networking sites. Although the 2 earlier ones are now a pain in the neck for me, I still have them standing, on the brink of deletion of course. They have thought me a few things that I treasure up till today.

• Friendster - early exposure to social networking, picture sharing with friends
• MySpace - thought me HTML, thought me to befriend strangers, a site where comments are the currency of your profile
• Facebook - neat, easy and accessible social networking although with a lot of application notification spam that gets on your nerves

I have nothing against any of the social networking sites if you have to know. Those were the times.

I'm only active on Facebook and Twitter now. Feel free to be my friend on Facebook but I only accept requests from people I know in real life. As for twitter, you are free to follow whoever you are.

FB - Rayza Ridzuan
Twitter - rayza_ridzuan

Compensating for lost times

Ok

I know it's been a long while since I've added a new post. If you think I was being lazy, well, that's because I am. I have a new problem now; the inability to do anything productive. Haha. Anyways, I saw 2 movies while my blog was in vacation, therefore I will review those movies as brief as I can. Sorry to keep you waiting. Well a handful of you anyway. People don't read my blog.

Hello? Hello....?? Echo.. echo.. echo.. echo..

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Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince

To cut to the chase, I don't really find this movie as engaging as the previous movies. Keep in mind that I didn't read the novel so throughout this movie I was struggling to relate and figure out what am I really looking at. The actors were tremendous don't get me wrong and the post effects were top notch. It's just because I didn't read the book. The previous movies were lighter but because Harry's getting older and so does everyone else, the story gets heavier and a lot more people kept dying. Not a bad movie for the readers I guess, but for the non-readers, I guess you'll be in the same boat as I am, dazed, confused and wondering. Owh the movie was almost 3 hours too. So, go to toilet and empty your bladder and bowels before hand ;-)

For me, it's just a 6/10

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The Proposal

Ryan Reynolds, gotta love him. He plays Deadpool in the recent X-Men movie and he have a great sense of humor too. I loved the movie, so much that I went to watch it twice. The movie was intellectually funny and it was very interesting to watch the progress between these two unlikely couple. The movie was not over 2 hours and is just nice for people with weak bladder such as yours truly. A great romance/comedy movie.

The odd couple gets 9/10 from me

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Those are the two movies that I've saw before this. Sorry for the short reviews. I will do full fledged reviews after this. And non-review blogs are also coming. Maybe later. Right now I'm pretty busy with my games. Wow, Rayza you're a student, you should be studying. Ouch. I know.

Later peeps.

Public Enemies Review

This was an unplanned movie experience. I was actually going to college to get the results for my previous semester but thanks to the effectiveness of the college, we had to wait for the schedule to be released after lunch which is after 2pm. I got at the college around 11.30am so after taking my results and registering for my next semester (which is Pre-Degree finally!), I still have a lot of time to kill. Luckily I was with a few of my friends. Went to a restaurant and had lunch there and went into the hostel area to hang out with some other friends while waiting for after lunch. There, one of my friend invited us to go watch this movie so lacking of a better thing to do anyway later this day, we agreed. After taking my schedule at 2 something and taking my cheque at 3.30pm, we head for KL. There were 6 0f us including me, going by 3 cars with 2 peeps in each. Parked the car at Berjaya Times Square and then walking to Pavilion for the movie. Since I bought the ticket late, I had to sit on the third row from the screen with Anas. Bought a large popcorn & a couple of soft drinks since we were starving anyway.

The story is about John Dilinger, played by Johnny Depp who is a head honcho of a notorious bank robbing crew who are John Hamilton, Baby Face Nelson, just to name a few. There are very good at what they are doing and they will only rob the bank's money and put away the customers' money. But of course no crime is without it's fighter. With the rise of crimes in the 1920's pf Chicago, a talented police is extracted on the case for Dilinger named Melvin Purvis, played by Christian Bale. Earlier through the movie, Dilinger has also a love interest in a girl in which I don't remember her name in the film nor her name in real life. But she's a big part in the film. Through the course of the film, we see Purvis and his Investigation Bureau chase down Dilinger who is very hard to locate due to his strong influence around his company. I was told that it was based on a true story, and that this particular John Dilinger is the reason why there is FBI today.

I'll tell you earlier, this movie is not for people with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder - the disability to concentrate on something for an extended amount of time) since it is full of story and it is 2 hours and 15 minutes. Yes I know movies nowadays are mostly around 2 hours. Nothing in this movie is improbable as it was based on true story anyway. Therefore for people who's looking for some fabulous hollywood post-effects won't find it here. It's pure movie all the way. The first half of the movie is honestly pretty slow and I admit I am struggling to try to understand what is happening. It's the second half where the first half of the movie really make sense and things becomes interesting. As the law enforcers gets closer to Dilinger the drama heats up and becomes more personal on both side of the party. Gangster life has never been portrayed like this before -- well not this proper at least. And to my favourite part of the movie, the gunfights. They are nothing like you've ever seen in a movie before. If you think you know how a gunfight looks like well watch this movie and get it redefined. They were nothing short of astonishing. it really steals the show. Both sides weren't just spraying bullets as it was absolutely free of charge but rather with a very realistic kind of gunfight. The gun sounds were loud, which is how they supposed to be. And usually during these firearms engagements, there are no background music to give the fake environment. It is pure environmental ambiance in the background. It's the movie with one of the best gunfights I've ever seen anywhere. Every single shot fired in this movie has one thing in which I don't see in many movies, existence. In most movie, they put more attention onto the quantity of shots fired, but in this movie, it's quality, and sometimes both. Johnny Depp was great, Christian Bale too. Great actors as they are. Keep in mind though this movie is not for everyone. It's not the normal action flick you see out there. This is not an action film, it's a gangster drama. And I kinda like it.

Gunshots still ringing in my head, 7.5/10.

One Sentence Opinion

Out of thinking too much, I've thought of giving out one sentence opinion of the things surrounding our lives. Might update if I feel like it.

Religion - guidance
Knowledge - drive
Mind - gift
Money - necessity
Social - companion
Men - perpendicular
Women - complicated
Courage - boost
Time - medium
Food - fuel
Rain - forgiveness
Heat - torment
Hatred - weakness
Love - madness
Hugs - embrace
Kiss - exclusive
Lies - diversion
Truth - reality
Hypocrisy - cowardliness
Drama - unnecessary
Life - redemption

Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen Review

Just for the record, at the date of writing, I've already saw this movie twice. Initially at the Berjaya Times Square and the next at KLCC. My review will be based on my first experience since the second time I saw it, I fell asleep for 10 minutes not because the movie was boring but because I had a long and exhausting day before.

This movie was waited by everyone. Waited so much that the GSC website that offers earlier bookings crashed that they had to divert it to another simplified site for reservations. Even then you will be lucky to be able to book anything before midnight. Holding to that fact, I've decided to book the one on the 10th floor of the Berjaya Times Square. Thank goodness there were still an ample amount of seats available. Probably because not many people know about the place. It is actually a better experience there compared to the conventional cinema because the screens are bigger and all the seats hand rest are retractable. The sounds were also blasting loud but the right kind of loud. Bought the ticket one day earlier. I got a nice view of the movie. Unfortunately I came in about 10 minutes late. So I missed the opening but I could only hope that I didn't miss out much. Since I was kind of thirsty, though I had breakfast at Old Town White Coffee Cafe at Pavilion, I bought a large Coke. The place is big so it is a while before I reach my seat.

The movie, from the beginning should be concluded with one word, colossal. Right from the beginning you could see them getting the bad guys with no excuse to the environment around them, blowing up with anything that is possible to be blown up. The movie is mainly about the hunt for the last shard of the Allspark and the Decepticon's attempt to revive the ancient Prime that went rogue in search of Energon (power source), The Fallen. The quest was littered with battles among them in the most flexible battle I've seen between hundreds of tons of metal. It is kinda hard for me to follow to since most of the Decepticons have very dull colours compared to the Autobots. All the Transformers stay true to the first movie except for Megatron (and another one in which I will not enclose here) in which as we seen in the first movie was terribly damaged, in which he got his spare parts from another Decepticon. This time he's a semi-tank-semi-jet but still pretty much the same. There were also a few goofy Transformers thrown in the movie to slow the movie down since when it is not slowing down, something is blowing up or metals are clashing. The Transformers were so big of a part of this movie that the rest of the human characters that are not Sam & Mikaela seems so puny. And should I say the designs of these Transformers were astonishing. Looking at made me wonder how long did it take to do all that. The details were just eye popping. If you really want to see what they did, it's either you see it at the movies a lot of times or wait for the High Definition version of it is sold to actually see it. There are also a lot of Transformers now and some in which is a lot bigger that the Transformes themselves. Always a sight to behold. There were also so many Transformes that it is not very easy to keep track of. Not that it's a bad thing, I'm just mentioning it.

Well, what more can I ask. Great action, incredible effects, long duration. Great. Just what the doctor ordered, a real action CG movie. Aside from the fact that there is one Decepticon that shifts into a human female that I do not agree as it is already been done by The Terminators, the rest were just beyond words. As a kid, most of us love Transformers, boys especially. Having to see them duke it out on the silver screen with over the top effects is just a dream come true. It's like a little kid walking into toy land. It's that kind of feeling that you get when you this movie. An incredibly tall recommendation from me for those who haven't seen it. Wonder what was all the craze about this movie? Well because it is good and people know it. If you haven't seen it, well you better be soon. Epic.

0.5 shy of a perfect score due to the cameo of a Terminator. [9.5/10]