Andre

MJ Memorial tweets

andre — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:29:40 +1500

My Michael Jackson Memorial service coverage by using Twitter, sorted by oldest (first in order) tweet on top:

Why does all the TV coverage from the US always looks so shitty in quality? Blurry and worse.. YouTube looks better than a US live coverage.
ATV was mentioning Twitter & Internet in general, some impressive numbers.. Would have been good opportunity to introduce their own account.
I believe the last and only time the world stood still, glued to the TV waiting for something to happen was when man set foot onto the moon.
I guess the next similar event might be something like Madonna, moon again or Mars. Expert guesses suggest the world stands still right now.
It is actually an excellent test to see how the media and the Internet in particular holds up to the challenge as mankind becomes connected.
I wonder what % of the MJ Memorial followers' mass is actually the part which follows the event because of its mass, thus enlarging it more.
In the age of combined TV and Internet coverage, I think the last Pope did not do too bad in the ratings when it comes to death ceremonies..
As usual when tragedy struck, people are more famous afterwards. With many unpublished tracks, reworks, MJ'll be richer than ever, in death.
RT @TechCurious: ... wow look at all the hot spots from the MJ streaming worldwide on this Akamai map! http://tinyurl.com/ytwysn
RT @olgs: RT @william_ma: We are WITNESSING history! This could be the event we go back and say geographic limited broadcasting TV is DEAD!
I am really looking forward for "the day after the Michael Jackson Memorial" statistics, reports and analytics of the event and its traffic.
A couple of funny but also good harsh lines so far. I expect any moment now the Pope on stage declaring MJ a saint for bringing world peace.
I was close with my "saint" tweet: that US Congress lady declared him a national hero with that bill, even if very unlikely it doesn't pass.
TVB Pearl was the only station to go with the live coverage through to the end. Glad I kept switching between ATV and all TVBs all evening..
Funny & interesting to read how US President Obama got shoved aside by the current global Michael Jackson "mania": http://tinyurl.com/mb4kbt
Zooming live over Los Angeles in one of the news helicopters. They got a great camera onboard, feels like I stand on the street by myself :)
Reading MJ's Memorial created a lot but not as much as expected online traffic. I doubt the result counted by 1 agency. What about restream?

Dude, where's the pool?

andre — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 14:05:25 +1500

Poor people of Tung Chung: sweating away in the hot summer temperatures, they are too far on the outskirts of Hong Kong and their place is too young (not taking into account the tiny fishing village it once was) as a town to have a public swimming pool; the nearest public one would be in Tsing Yi. Locals have resorted to play in the CityGate Outlets' shopping mall fountain and (most) children come fully prepared with the right swim gear.

To seemingly taunt them even more, each time the Tung Chung population decides to visit the city by MTR, they will pass an Olympic swimming pool mock-up in the Central MTR station:

However, a public pool project is under way for Tung Chung so in just a few years time - eternity for a child - cooling off options won't be limited to in- and outdoor shopping mall activities anymore (poor parents).

The Dark Knight-mare

andre — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:16:12 +1500

I had a chance opportunity to watch the latest Batman movie The Dark Knight in a Philippines shopping mall theatre. Happy about this and excited to see what everyone's talking about, the afternoon turned into a nightmare to the point of ruining the movie experience. I shall never set foot into a local cinema again, given I was assured there's nothing unusual about all that I experienced.

In short, throughout the movie I had to endure:

Most of the audience were children aged anywhere from 5-10, having a blast like it would be their own McDonald's birthday party (forget about any movie rating whatsoever);
People chatting like at a bar on a weekend evening;
People coming and going like in a train station;
Mobile phone lights like in a disco (surprisingly no ringtones though);
The couple next to me was exclusively playing for the first 2/3 of the movie with their mobile phone and then left, not looking once at the big screen;
People standing up for no reason;
It was a lot colder than even the freezing Hong Kong theatres with occasional wind blows matching a typhoon.

In addition to that, there's the inconvenience of registering and giving up at the security check-point any picture-taking device (though mobile phones seem to be ignored). I'm not in favor of movie piracy but I think I'm not wrong in wondering why a country like the Philippines has such strict measures when the movies sown there are already available in DVD quality both on the Web and on the street markets. With today's high expectations of the quality of illegal copies, I doubt there's any market left for hand-recording movies already on sale.

Lack of seat selection (first comes, first served), no staff monitoring the audience for their behavior, no blanket rental, are only a few of the many other inconveniences.

At least I was told there are better places to enjoy a movie.

Aussie KITT

andre — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:16:11 +1500

I just came across a music video of David Hasselhoff featuring KITT, his trusty car from the American television series Knight Rider. "The Hoff" (Hasselhoff) himself is both beloved and hated, and now his partner in fighting for justice - his car - has puzzled me even more. Originally an American car, the one used in the video clip is an Aussie (clip made in Australia). I think it is rather strange to do such an obvious mistake no matter how cheap it was to use a local car and that the video was mainly used in Australia and the UK: the featured car is right hand driven whereas the original one from the US was a left hand driven.
For all those who never saw Knight Rider, I am sure you nevertheless know very well who "The Hoff" is: actor and executive producer of Baywatch, according to The Guinness Book of World Records the most watched TV show in the world of all time.

Music video "Jump in My Car" - do try this at home

Zombie movies

andre — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:03:45 +1500

I recently came across someone's review of a zombie movie which summarizes almost all zombie/monster movies ever produced. They all have at least some, if not all, of these features in common:

Intelligent zombies (conflicts with purists' views)
College setting
(Mainly if not only) teens dying all over
Massive rave
Drug use
Tits
Fart and oral sex gags
Russians (or other non-local/-US villains)
Donuts

TV and Web interactivity

andre — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:59:00 +1500

Many people watch TV while being online. I'm not referring to watching TV online but watching TV while surfing the Internet. This activity can be seen by the numerous crashes of Web Sites featured in shows due to many simultaneous visits of the TV watchers.

Try it, that's realtime interactivity with pre-recorded (not live) shows.

Beowulf - Poor Grendel

andre — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:09:04 +1500

I haven't felt as sad for any movie creature as for Grendel from the Beowulf 2007 animated movie adaption. I frequently side with the "bad" guys because they often have valid reasons - from their point of view at least - to do what they do.

Grendel is one of three antagonists (the others are his mother and later step-brother turned dragon) in the Old English heroic epic poem Beowulf written somewhere between the 8th and the 11th century.

[Spoilers ahead]

In this movie's story, he's the son of King Hrothgar who had an earlier involvement with his mother (a daemon/witch/whatever living in a cave nearby). Grendel is a monster in appearance with terrible wounds, an external eardrum, disfigured and generally a bad living environment (a wet cave with plenty of gold treasures).

Grendel's face being the least monster-looking part of his body.

As it it's not enough to live in such conditions, the nearby celebration of the construction of a new mead hall by King Hrothgar drives him crazy; that external eardrum doesn't come in handy with the beats of a loud party. Long story short: he visits the neighbors and kills (throwing, stomping, crushing, biting...) everyone but the King, Queen Wealtheow (by pure luck) and Unferth, the King's most trusted advisor who hides in a water trough.

Of course, being unwanted and actually never mentioned to anyone by his father, being a monster in pain and living in a cave, it's no easy life. His mother warned him not to interfere with humans but the pain of the loud beats was too much: he had to stop it. And thus he sealed his fate.

His father would offer half of his kingdom in gold to any man who can defeat Grendel and so plenty of people would take on the challenge, just adding to his misery. Eventually, Beowulf shows up and lures him to the mead hall once more. Fighting with Beowulf, Grendel looses his arm and just makes it home to die in his mother's arms.

Grendel pleading with Beowulf to let him go. His arm being trapped by a chain, it's eventually torn off when Beowulf shuts the door.

Grendel's later step-brother (Beowulf being the father) awaits no better fate either. Becoming a dragon, he dies by Beowulf's hand - thus his father, who only sees his son in human shape once: when both lie next to each other on the beach, dying.

Jurassic Panda

andre — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 14:51:08 +1500

Hong Kong's Ocean Park is currently undergoing an extensive expansion with many new attractions and more used space ahead. Their main attraction are 4 Giant Pandas but judging from this construction site, it looks more like they're soon going to open a local Jurassic Park (just look at the fence size).