Gemizo's Thoughts

2009-04-20T16:38:00.021+01:00

Gemizo started out as a Youtuber, but now has began many other projects. He has started a wiki, a blog, and joined various internet communities. His posts here are about his life and thoughts and are designed to be easy to read and entertaining.

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The Great Wheel of London

2008-08-29T21:11:00.004+01:00

(A coloured representation?)

While I was browsing the Wikipedia page for the London Eye I read that there was a predecessor called The Great Wheel of London, that could carry 1600 people. I was extremely impressed by this, further impressed when I discovered that it was built in 1894, but was destroyed 13 years later. Although I am sure there are more references to it in other web pages, the only one I could find in my quick search was here. It seemed pretty cool, but it came to an end due to not being profitable. It is apparently unknown elsewhere, despite carrying 2.5 million people in its lifetime. How can something this big go unknown and un-remembered. Please remember this and digg it and spread the word.

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New Forrest Gump Movie in the Works

2008-08-20T00:36:00.005+01:00

"Struggling to make a life for his young son when the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company falls on hard times, Forrest Gump embarks on a new series of adventures that entangle him with corporate America and more famous politicos."

This quote is from the New York Times website....there is going to a sequel to Forrest Gump. I found this out originally while on the IMDB page for Forrest Gump Movie Connections. As it turns out, a movie called "Gump & Co." is going to follow Forrest Gump and hopefully make me as happy as the previous one. I am looking forward to this film, but I know they will make a mistake somewhere and it won't be as good as the first film. But I still want to see it.

For now, I can't find any more information because to see the page for Gump & Co. at IMDB you must have IMDB pro.

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Dumb American

2008-08-19T23:33:00.006+01:00

This has to be the funniest "dumb American" picture I have seen in a long time. In this picture a concerned American worries that his state (the American state of Georgia) is being bombed by Russians, confusing the US state Georgia with the country of Georgia. Hahaha, it's a funny thought to imagine and American who is so out of touch with the news that he or she has absolutely no idea where countries are and what their relationships to their neighbours are.

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Funny "Don't Feed the Animals" Sign

2008-08-19T00:01:00.005+01:00

Link

This has to be one of the funniest "Don't Feed the Animals" sign I have seen in a long time. To be honest I don't see many signs of this sort that are intended to be humorous, and this one isn't really anything special, but it still is funny.

The fact that the sign placers are more concerned with their animal getting sicked than you getting eaten alive...too obvious? Okay, I'll stop.

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Scary Movie 5 To Be Released This Year

2008-08-18T23:48:00.003+01:00

The latest installment to the cult comedy series is to be released this year, according to IMDB (the Internet Movie Database). Not much information is available on the film (despite the fact that there is only 4 1/2 months available to release) and to retrieve what little information is available you must be a member on IMDB Pro.

I enjoyed the Scary Movie series quite a bit, and thought the first three ranked in the top films of all time (but this was when I was a small child, forgive my immature opinions). To this day they are very funny, but I found the fourth one very irritating and not all that funny. It was still mildly entertaining though, so I am looking forward to the fifth installment, and I hope that it is the best in the series.

My favourite movie was the 1st one, then the 3rd one, then the 2nd one, and last of all, the 4th one. The 4th one began resembling dumb movies like Epic Movie, or perhaps it is just that I am getting too old for that sort of movie. Anyway, I hope they don't sensor the movie, like they did with number 3 and 4, to get the much-seeked PG-13 rating. The lack of swear words makes the two latest films looks specifically for 9 year olds.

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Metacritic

2008-08-18T00:39:00.004+01:00

This article, as a supplement to my previous one about Game Rankings, will be about the web site Metacritic and how helpful it can be at times. What Metacritic does is it gathers reviews from the internet (many of them originally on print) from good sources of books, films, DVD's, and video games, and averages the reviews that it finds of the specific product to find an average rating of the product. So I can find the average rating for a movie that I am interested in, to see whether I should watch it or not.

As the example I just gave you might show you, I mainly use Metacritic for movies, because only losers read book reviews, and Game Rankings features better video game reviews. Also, it's mainly losers who read DVD reviews as well. So go to the website and check it out.

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Game Rankings

2008-08-18T00:30:00.005+01:00

This post is to inform people who haven't heard of the Game Rankings website. What Game Rankings does is, it averages reviews from various game reviewers around the web and on print and give games an overall score, so they can be judged. So instead of reading several reviews, reading one will suffice and you can also read each individual review without leaving the website. I always use it in deciding my choices for what game to buy, and the average review usually gives you a good idea of how the game is and whether it is worth buying.

Sometimes, I will admit, they average scores from far too many websites and this waters down the overall quality of the score, but the general idea still remains. This should always be done, on top of reading a review of one or two gaming sources or reviewers that you have come to trust. All the reviews are user-submitted, as well. It's sister (C-Net) site is Metacritic, which I will discuss in my next post.

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How to Disable Hibernation in Windows XP

2008-08-17T00:50:00.004+01:00

There are many reasons why one would disable hibernation. It increases the speed of and free space in the computer. Anyway, I'll skip the introduction and go to the instructions.

1. Go to Start, then click on Control Panel.

2. Look for an icon for "Power Options", if you can't see it, click on another icon on the left side of the screen that says "Switch to Classic View" and then click on "Power Options".

3. A little window will pop up. Click on the "Hibernation" tab at the top right of the window and click in the little box next to the text "Enable Hibernation", making sure that there is no check mark next to the text.

It's that simple. If you do not use the hibernation (info) feature, this is a great way to free up some space and make your computer faster. Note that if you use a laptop, you might not be able to open the Power Options tab because your default power software automatically opens. In this case you must uninstall the software before doing this.

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Why is Wall-E so High?

2008-08-16T23:03:00.006+01:00

Excuse me for doing this again, but I have yet another IMDB rant. This time about the film Wall-E. I loved the film and found it extremely enjoyable, but users on IMDB have voted it the 26th greatest film of all time (at the time of this writing). The movie does not deserve such a high place on the charts, it is just because people give animated and children's films easy ratings because many adults vote who don't judge children's movies on how good they are, but instead how cute they are, or some such crap. You will notice that most of the movies in the top 250, and well past that will have comments saying that the film is the greatest film of all time. But for Wall-E, these comments are slightly lacking and rather weak.

Wall-E does deserve a place in the top 250, but perhaps lower. Other films, like Finding Nemo, which manage to grab places in the 100's don't deserve to be there AT ALL. They are filled with crude annoying humour that is just not as innocent or close to as entertaining as Wall-E. So I believe that Wall-E should take the place of these Shrek/Finding Nemo movies and these movies should go off the charts all together.

Leave a comment saying what you think about these movies. Wall-E was a great movie though, and I would highly recommend it to anyone.

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Simpsons Tree House of Horrors

2008-08-16T00:26:00.005+01:00

This is going to be a short rant about the Simpsons Tree House of Horrors, the Simpsons Halloween special that has aired every season since its debut in the second season. That's a total of 18 Halloween specials.

There are some real classics amongst these 18 episodes. I could name several, but the one that stands out in my mind was the one where Homer made clones of himself by lying down in his hammock. The Treehouse of Horror VIII. That one has got to be one of the greatest Simpsons episodes of all time. But, at the same time, there are also many weak ones out there. The most recent one (XVIII), that I watched tonight, I found not as good as a normal episode, I was glad when it was over. The jokes just didn't make me laugh and the plots ranged from okay to horrible (the one where Bart and his friends play tricks).

One clip I expect every time, but don't like, is the one with the two aliens. Why the hell do they need to make a cameo every special, they just bore the life out of me. Leave a comment saying what you think about the Treehouse of Horrors.

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Metric Martyrs

2008-08-16T00:14:00.005+01:00

While looking some information up about the Metric System, I found out a rather interesting group of people called the "Metric Martyrs". These people refuse to use metric units on their measuring devices, even though UK law says you have to have metric unites (although you can use Imperial units as well).

One man, Steve Thoburn, who was the main defendant in the case was sentenced to six months in prison, but died of a heart attack before he could serve his sentence. He was probably so shocked at getting such a ludicrous sentence. I think that metrication in the UK is a good thing and should definitely continue under then guiding hand of the government, but in no way should they take things so seriously and start going crazy, making new laws a imprisoning people, just to make sure the metrication goes all right. The EU deadline is in a few years, so give it some time. People want to conserve the British culture.

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Mass Effect Bug

2008-08-15T00:50:00.005+01:00

I recently bought the game "Mass Effect" for 10 pounds and I at first I was very skeptical about it and thought it wasn't a very nice game. It is overly complicated and lacked instructions. Also, I spent about 2 hours trying to get past a bug in the game. While on the first planet; Eden Prime, I kept getting stuck with an error message before the first encounter with the husks. Sometimes it happened in the cut scene sometimes before. Occasionally it occurred before the cut scene with Nihlus. But in the end the only way to get through it was to save every five seconds and eventually hope the bug didn't come.

The error message that came was the one that said the disc was unreadable and that I should clean it with a soft cloth. I did clean it with my spectacles-cleaning cloth and after that it would work for a bit longer but the error came back. However after many tries I landed on the Citadel and the error never came back again. Still, the error really ruined the gaming experience of the first few days for me.

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The IMDB Top 250 Horror Has Been Undone

2008-08-15T00:39:00.004+01:00

Previously on this blog I did a post showing my aversion of the fact that The Dark Knight was at the time the number one film of all time on the IMDB top rated charts. I am glad to say that the movie has lost to The Shawshank Redemption and The Godfather, but an extra twist comes into play. In all the confusion and commotion that took place on the top 250 charts, people began voting The Shawshank Redemption higher and higher, because now it has claimed the top spot on the chart.

The Shawshank Redemption is easily one of the greatest films of all time, but I have only watched the first 50 minutes of The Godfather so I am not to judge. I look forward to further developments on the charts and other interesting trivia to report on.

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My First Blogger Goal

2008-08-07T23:33:00.005+01:00

I have a new Blogger goal (this is my first); it is to post, on average one post a day for the whole month and see how it affects things like my blog's traffic and popularity. If it is seems to have a positive effect I will definitely continue on enthusiastically. If it doesn't seem to be going that well, I will try to post one blog post a day, just to see what happens. One month isn't a long enough period of time to figure out if this is working so I will need more time. My blog seemed to average 50 hits a day last week, but the number has been dropping. The numbers keep fluctuating though, and I don't believe the amount of hits my site gets is related to anything, just plain luck. Anyway, have a good day, and for people responsible for the one or two hits this post will get, keep visiting!

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The Vacations are a Great Time to Get Healthy

2008-08-07T23:19:00.003+01:00

I am on my school holiday and I decided that it was a brilliant period of time to get healthy because I had 3 months where I had all the time I liked and no inconveniences or any reason not to have home-prepared food. I also had so much time on my hands that I could afford to go for jogs and walks without worrying about the time.

I have not had a Coke since Monday, and have stopped eating desserts. It's easier to break a routine while you're on holiday because your routine is changing anyway. I added a 40 minute daily walk to my routine and I am becoming much fitter, I even begin noticing how much easier the running gets by the day.

It also gives time to read a lot. The reason I don't read on school days is because I lack the time and attention span. But on the holidays I have so much time that I would do it easily without hesitating.

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Smosh is No Longer the Most Subscribed Channel on Youtube!

2008-08-06T01:17:00.004+01:00

Something very odd has happened on Youtube. Smosh is no longer the most subscribed channel on Youtube. Not only have Nigahiga, Universal Music Group, and Kevjumba taken over them, Smosh is completely off the list. When I found this out by looking at the "Most Subscirbed Channels" I was shocked. I remember something about Smosh being temporarily suspended and I assumed that something else had occured that had caused Smosh to get suspended again. So I checked their channel, but there it was, fine, with 40,000 subscribers ahead of Nigahiga still. They even had profile honours that said they were the most subscribed Partners. Yet they were absent from the overall list.

This is indeed a very strange things but I think that Youtube's systems will update from this error. Here is what I think happened. Smosh's channel was suspended x days ago. The Youtube network checks for changes in the most subscribed list every x days, so Smosh was not presnt at the current check. However the most subscribed partners list checks either more or less often than the overall list (probably more often, since Youtube treats its partners like VIP) , the partner's list ended up missing Smosh's temporary ban.

Here is the video Smosh posted on their secondary channel (IanH) about them getting suspended:

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The Problem with the MPAA Ratings System

2008-08-05T12:01:00.005+01:00

I think that (besides the fact that the MPAA rating system rates films completely unfairly) the biggest problem with the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) rating system is the ratings. G, PG, PG-13, R, and X are all good ratings and should be included when rating movies, but there should really be some rating in between PG-13 and R, as most film systems around the world have. For example the BBFC gives films one of the following ratings:

Uc (Children)
U (Universal)
PG (Parent Guidance)
12A (12 Accompanied)
12 (12 and over)
15 (15 and over)
18 (18 and over)
R18 (Restricted to certain shops; 18 and over)

The inclusion of the 15 rating is very useful as there are some films that have quite a bit of bloody violence, which is too much for PG-13, but would not constitute an R rating. An example would be the film "There Will be Blood", which is a very tame movie, only having on fight scene. It was given the R rating, though in fact it isn't that bad (some countries went as far as giving it universal, and if any of you have seen the movie, you'll know that that was a bad choice). Some countries also have a 10 ratings, like South Africa, which replaced the "12" in the UK rating with 10 and included a further 13 rating.

These rating systems can get very elaborate and having ratings for every age group as well as letters following the rating which gives clues to the movies content (violence, language, prejudice etc.). The simplest system, which has all the right ratings, I believe is the South Korean one:

All
12
15
18
Limited

Enough of this PG, PG-12, 12, those are all the ratings you really need, but for countries really concerned with content (US, China, etc.) having many ratings is fine, just don't skip important ratings like 15/16.

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How to Make Your Blog Better

2008-08-04T15:56:00.005+01:00

There are various ways you can make your blog better and more organized and in this blog post I will share on of the ways that I utilize on the front page of my blog (as of 2008-08-04). When I originally started my blog I was very confused how I could divide up my posts so that someone only interested in certain posts would be able to access those posts only. I then came up with a method by observing the way that Blogger blogs work. Every tag has it's own web page in the Blogger network so you can click on any blog tag and it will take you to it's own page where you can see all the blog posts tagged with a certain tag.

I exploited (in a good sense) this system and began tagging all my "rant" posts with "gr" (it should be short just to save time). This stood for "Gemizo's Rant". Then what I did was I made a blog post which had a short introduction to my site along with links to things like Rants (gr), Investigation (gi), Reviews (gre), et cetera, and the text, for example "Rants" would have a link to the tag "gr" and would display every post that has that tag. To look at the post for yourself click here. Make sure you don't title that blog post or title it the name of your blog.

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The CSI Theme Song

2008-08-04T15:48:00.003+01:00

Most of us have heard the CSI theme song; "Who are you" by The Who. The song is a good song and I have nothing against it, but it is COMPLETELY irrelevant to the show's content in it's original sense. If you here the song without CSI context then you will assume it is a song about self-identification or some other such nonsense, but it is about nothing of that sort when put into the CSI beginning.

At first I could see no relevance at all between the theme song and the show, but I realized after a while that they are asking "Who are you" to the criminals whom they are trying to expose. The problem is that the show does not match the song's original meaning because CSI has almost no character development. And I do admit that that is a very nice thing to have in a show nowadays where almost every show about a profession (specifically medical dramas) feature less professional dram and more personal drama, which can get rather tedious after a while. I also admit that the song is a very nice song, I was just saying that it was a bit irrelevant. To be honest I don't care if they change it or not.

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Strange BBC Disclaimer

2008-08-01T22:17:00.004+01:00

This is going to be a quick blog post where I talk about the weird sign above that appears on most BBC pages. Why did they bother to include it on their templates? It is so useless and inane. Why would anyone assume that the BBC was responsible for someone else's website? This is an incredibly odd thing for the BBC to put on their website. Is it to avoid being sued by someone? Well there was one time where BBC did link to a shock site (saying it was a link to a shock site), but even then, they are not responsible for the clicker's stupidity (or unluckiness). They wouldn't be able to be sued for that anyway. It is indeed an odd sign, and as someone who pays for the BBC's existence, I demand they take it down.

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Best Movie of All Time = The Dark Knight?

2008-08-01T21:58:00.003+01:00

You might wonder what is so strange about the image above. It shows the top three movies on IMDB (the Internet Movie Database) based on votes from regular voters on the website. Today is August 01, 2008 and look at what movie is on top. The Dark Knight. This move was released just about two weeks ago and it immediately flew right to the top. I have not seen the movie, and I have no doubt that it is a good movie, but does it deserve the #1 spot? Perhaps. Do the people of the world consider it the greatest film ever? No. The reason for the difference in these two answers is that IMDB is voted by internet geeks (no offence) and we were all victims of the huge free promotion given by millions of internet users as the Dark Knight's release date came closer.

People were absolutely obsessed with this movie. Thousands of videos and stories came up on Digg, Youtube, Facebook, Blogger, every website contained something about it. The movie clearly isn't the greatest movie of all time, it is just popular on the internet, so don't let the IMDB chart fool you.

Now let me compare the top 2 movies in the IMDB chart, The Dark Knight, and The Godfather on three websites; IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, and Metacritic. The Dark Knight got 9.2 on IMDB, 82 on Metacritic, and 94 on Rotten Tomatoes. However, The Godfather has 9.1 on IMDB, 100 on Metacritic, and 100 on Rotten Tomatoes. You'll notice that critics aren't influenced by fanboyish opinions.

Lastly I would like to mention that the movie is probably going to go down on the charts as the DVD sales come, etc. I think by the end of the year it will be in position 4 or 5.

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How to Have Google Mail for Your Website

2008-07-30T18:58:00.003+01:00

In this blog post I will give you detailed instructions as to how to receive e-mail on your domain name using Gmail instead of your default e-mail client for your registrar (the company that registered your domain for you). Suppose you own the domain http://www.example.com and you want your e-mail to be email@example.com. You can either work things with your registrar and get their e-mail, or you can get Gmail for your website for absolutely free. You don't need to know anything about domains or computers to do this. All you need to have done is registered a domain name (I would recommend Godaddy or 1and1).

First go here and sign up for Google Apps. Once you click on the sign up button you will be taken to a menu that allows you to choose what edition you want. Unless you are getting really technical you wouldn't need the features provided by the Premier Edition, so I would highly recommend clicking the Sign Up button underneath the Standard Edition text. You will be directed to a screen where there are two tabs containing different options. You can either buy a new domain (if you haven't already) or continue with the registration. I will assume you have already registered a domain so go ahead and click the circle next to Administrator and type in the name of your domain.

In the next screen put in all your information and then continue. You will eventually be asked for proof of the ownership of the website. To do this you can either upload an HTML file or change some DNS settings. I would recommend to change the DNS settings as that is easier and more accessible to web administrators. After that your account will be done and you can start making e-mail accounts, calendars and much more.

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Words I'm Coining (Expendicular, Excrementious, Bunga)

2008-07-29T19:01:00.006+01:00

Today I will share a few words that I have coined. Just so that when Google's bots go crawling around the internet they find this page and now that I was the first one to coin these words and no one else. This is just a quick draft so I can get it over with and have these two words coined (I particularly like "Expendicular"). Compare these to sniglets. I am considering writing another post later that will have more terms and give more details. Eventually the list of words that I have coined will be longer than Shakespeare's. Here are the two words that I have invented plus an extra one that I don't have a definition for but I will have one by next time.

Expendicular (Ex-pen-dik-ew-lur)
1. (adjective) Something wonderful, magnificent.
That house over there is expendicular.
2. (interjection) Uttered when the speaker has had good luck or good news.
Expendicular! Now I will be able to get my revenge.
3. (adjective) Something very expensive.
That house over there must be expendicular!
4. (adjective) Relating to expenditures.
I want to have that expendicular report on my desk by the end of the day.

Excrementious (Ex-kre-men-shus)
1. (adjective) Something horrible or foul.
The cafeteria food in our school was excrementious.
2. (adjective) Of, or relating to excrement.
The excrementious tests showed that the droppings belonged to the springbok, not the elephant.

The word I have not yet thought of a definition of is Bunga. I was thinking of it being a word synonymous with homie, friend, or buddy, but I am not that sure. Leave a comment using your Google account to tell the world what you think it should mean.

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My New Youtube Video (Using Youtube Annotations)

2008-07-28T20:11:00.005+01:00

I have just created a new Youtube video. The video is an animation however instead of using traditional computer animation techniques such as using Flash or Windows Movie Maker I made my video in a rather different way. I used Youtube's new Annotations feature where you can add notes, speech bubbles, highlights, and links to your videos to point out things that your viewers may not have not known or to link to something useful or relevant (however it must be on Youtube's website).

How is used it? Well instead of using the annotations for the purpose they are supposed to be used for (annotations, of course) I used the rectangle-shaped boxes to create a character. I also used speech bubbles to show what my character was saying. In the video I just created I featured a man who wondered what these shapes (highlights) were doing hovering around him when it turned out that there were people aiming at him with a sniper. If you do not want this epic story to be spoilt for you, read no further. The man gets shot in the end. That's the end of the film.

I will correct what I said before, I DID use Windows Movie Maker to create a black screen, but I did not use it to animate. I just created a 1x1 black dot and opened the image file in Movie Maker. Movie Maker automatically stretches an image to fit the whole screen, so this effect created a low sized movie file (under 900 kb). If you want to stare at a black screen for 20 seconds (who am I to judge you) watch the video below. To watch the real video click this link.

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