Ever since discovering Smart.fm (formerly known as iKnow.co.jp - see below), I’ve decided to spend more of my time and energy into the pursuit of learning Japanese. I’ve always been interested in combining technology to help facilitate learning and have taken this approach towards acquiring the Japanese language.
Over the past 6 months, I’ve scoured the internet and completely geeked out on every single aspect of the language and I’ve found a plethora or helpful tools and techniques to share.
Here are some things to forward to in the next few posts:
Chocolate is new Thai movie that came out in Thailand in February. It tells the story of a girl afflicted with Autism, who has somehow learned martial arts from watching Kung Fu movies and needs to get revenge for some reason or other… Ah Phuket (har har), I don’t need to describe this, just watch the trailer! It’s freakin amazing and brought to you by the makers of Ong-Bak!
Chocolate stars Yaneen Vismistananda in her first movie and was specifically written for her in mind. She originally had a background in Taekwondo and had to undergo stunt training for the movie and just like Tony Jaa in Ong-Bak, she does all her own stunts. No word when this’ll be hitting the states, but I’ll keep you posted.
What ever happened to good old fashioned riddles? As a gamer, I see an occasional puzzle or riddle here and there in between killing zombies or saving princesses in my green tunic. What about a game that was so full of riddles, you couldn’t walk anywhere or progress at all unless you solved each one? And how about throwing in some of the best animation ever seen on the Nintendo DS? And a Detective Conan-esque subplot? Mix that all up and stir it around and you’ve got yourself Professor Layton and the Curious Village.
Professor Layton is a new game for Nintendo DS, created by Level-5, that requires you to solve puzzles and riddles along the way to unveil bits and pieces to help you solve a greater mystery going on. It was one of the best selling games in Japan last year especially due to the older casual gamers and just recently got translated for folks in the US.
You follow Professor Layton and his assistant around St. Mystere talking to the townfolk, which all have riddles or puzzles that need to be solved. It is all done in an adventure game style (a la 90s Lucas Arts games) and utilizes the touch screen perfectly to navigate and search for secrets like coins. These coins are hidden in random locations like barrels or paintings and can be used to give you hints in case you stumble upon a riddle that is just impossible to solve.
EXAMPLE: One riddle gives you 8 weights. They all look identical except 1 weight is lighter than the rest while the rest weigh the same. There is an old fashioned balance scale nearby that you may only use twice. How can you determine which one is the lighter one? I’ll let you guys answer in the comments section.
No matter how much you play the Brain Age games, the most they’ll do is train you to excel at the same activities through repetition. If you really want to wrack your brains with logical and analytical skills, I definitely recommend giving Professor Layton and the Mysterious Village a try. You can ever try an online demo of the game here (click on Game Demo on the top right).
Is Harrison Ford too old to eat solid foods? Will Shia Leboeuf pull off a convincing 50s greaser? Will this movie be more patriotic than Spider-Man 3? We’ll find out May 22nd.
We rang in the Chinese New Year by making some noodles, which oddly enough is how we celebrate Thanksgiving too. Noodles are supposed to symbolize a long life on Chinese New Year and on Thanksgiving it means that your parents don’t know how to celebrate American holidays. It is also the year of the Rat in the Chinese Zodiac, which comes around every 12 years, and signifies luck for everyone born on this year.
Also on Chinese New Year, CCTV has a huge variety show event that includes singing, dancing, comedy skits, and a lil thing called Wushu, which is more popularly known around the world as Kung Fu. Here’s the best clip I could find of yesterday’s performance:
UPDATED WITH BETTER QUALITY VIDEO 2/9/2008
The performers in the middle are some of China’s top competitors from the 2007 All China Games.
The Apple store was down this morning and came back up with new doubled capacity iPhones and iPods Touch (passersby? tacos surpreme? Why not iPods Touch) at 16 gigs and 32 gigs respectively (via Apple). This is what most people wanting an iPod Touch were waiting for since 16 gigs just is not enough when you’re carrying your music collection and DVD rips. This comes at a cost though… of $499.99 each for both the 16 gig iPhone and 32 gig iPod Touch. Ouch.
Maybe once they perfect the PSX and GBA emulators for it with faster frame rates than this:
UPDATE 2/7/2008
Yes to be fair to the author, Zoddtd’s GBA emulator is quite up to speed with a playable frame rate. Here’s a video of it in action:
Jason Bateman, who played Michael Bluth on the show Arrested Development, has confirmed that Michael Hurwitz and Ron Howard have contacted the cast members to reprise their roles in an Arrested Development movie (Yahoo! TV). This is definitely the next best thing for fans hoping for another season of the canceled show. Arrested Development was one of the most brilliantly written comedies that rewarded you for being a fan of the show. Episodes would reference events and jokes that happened episodes ago or even foreshadow future events and continue reoccurring themes throughout the show.
Apparently the show was too clever for the average FOX viewer, who would rather challenge themselves to see if they are indeed Smarter Than a 5th Grader, and was canceled prematurely. Hopefully with enough fan support, Arrested Development will follow in the footsteps of Family Guy and Futurama, which were both canceled by FOX and resurrected on another network due to high DVD sales.
So if you haven’t heard of the show or watched any episodes, go Netflix it or pick up the box set immediately and watch it all in order like it should be viewed. You can also watch all the episodes streaming online here (you may need to use IE or Safari though since it’s an MSN site or just use User Agent Switcher extension in Firefox). For more info on the fight to save Arrested Development, check out Save Our Bluths to see how you can help. So go on and have a marathon, whether it’s for the first time or the fifth time, and tell everyone you know about this under appreciated gem.
Welcome to the new home of Gorgonzola Cheese. It’s taken a while but I’ve finally decided to evolve the site into a full on website off of myspace.com. For new readers that want to see what Gorgonzola Cheese was about, feel free to browse the older posts here. Special thanks to friends and readers for helping this get started and San Francisco based Laughing Squid for their excellent web hosting.
