crafting in O(n!) time

unbelievably troll.

Posted by: zammy on: December 7, 2009

This is why we should learn how to vote RIGHT.

How Twilight Works

Posted by: zammy on: December 1, 2009

This is a pretty funny but true article I found online from The Oatmeal:

How Twilight Works

A few weeks ago I had the miserable experience of reading Twilight. A friend bought it for me and I took it with me to read on a long flight from Seattle to Houston. I knew it was going to be crappy, but I thought it would be a guilty pleasure kind of crappy – where you know it’s bad but you still get enjoyment out of it. I actually managed to power through around 400 pages until I gave up and started reading Sky Mall. I’ve been seeing Twilight everywhere lately, especially with Vampire Teens II New Moon’s release, so I thought I’d break down why chicks go apeshit for it.

The fans

First off, the author creates a main character which is an empty shell. Her appearance isn’t described in detail; that way, any female can slip into it and easily fantasize about being this person. I read 400 pages of that book and barely had any idea of what the main character looked like; as far as I was concerned she was a giant Lego brick. Appearance aside, her personality is portrayed as insecure, fumbling, and awkward – a combination anyone who ever went through puberty can relate to. By creating this “empty shell,” the character becomes less of a person and more of something a female reader can put on and wear. Because I forgot her name (I think it was Barbara or Brando or something like that), I’m going to refer to her as “Pants” from here on out.

Pants

So after a few chapters of listening to Pants whine about high school, sucking at volleyball, and being the center of attention, the second major character is introduced. Imagine everything women want in a man, then exaggerate it by ten thousand – and you’ve got Edward Cullen. The level of detail that the author goes into while describing Edward’s appearance is remarkable. At one point while reading I started counting the number of times the author used the expression “Edward’s perfect face,” and it was far into the double digits. The author excruciatingly details his muscular pecs, clothing, hair, eye color – even his goddamn breath (I’m not joking).

Edward

Edward intensely listens to everything Pants has to say, even if she’s bitching about she had diarrhea on Christmas or her preferred method for cutting a sandwich in half. As far as the reader is concerned, Edward cares about nothing in the world more than Pants. What the author has done is created a perfect male figure – a pale Greek statue which the reader can worship and in turn be worshipped by.

Edward

So what about men that like Twilight?
If you’re male and you like Twilight, you’re gay. I don’t mean that in the derogatory sense, I mean it in the “you want to put your testicles against another man’s testicles while gripping handfuls of chesthair” kind of way.

And the movie?
The movie is just the same uninspired crap shat out onto a film reel. If you like the taste of horse manure on your bologna sandwiches, you’re probably gonna like it on your birthday cake as well. The same principle applies with Twilight.

Beyond that, it’s just a romance novel with the occasional vampire teen drama bullshit peppered here and there. It doesn’t really break any new ground in the realm of vampire fiction, other than portraying vampires as a family of uncomfortable retards who prance around the woods eating deer and bunny rabbits. There’s lots of nervous lip-biting, tender kisses between Pants and Edward, and lengthy descriptions of every feature of Edward’s body. Pants is a static character who never really progresses beyond being an insecure vampire fangirl who obsesses over Edward. Whether her character grows beyond that is unknown to me, I’d stopped reading by then and shifted my attention to an electric butt-massaging chair in Sky Mall.

The Twilight formula

——-
I’d have to agree that the Twilight ( or any other book in the so-called Twilight Saga) is not a guilty pleasure kind of book. It is crappy beyond doubt and there seems to be no moral whatsoever in any of it. Twilight lovers might kill me for this but it is true. I’m really sad that poor crappy writing like this could even be considered as literature. It feels so fan fiction-ish, and even just saying this makes me feel bad because most fan fiction are better written than this.

Introducing Web2Mobile

Posted by: zammy on: November 22, 2009

I just want to share this amazing Firefox plugin that 2 BS Computer Science students from the University of the Philippines-Diliman made entitled, Web2Mobile. I’m really proud of them not only because we come from the same department and school (I know both of them, one of them is my org-mate!) but because they were also able to build something as good as this, and I hope that I’d be this good. The plugin sends messages at P1 per SMS. They were planning to make it suitable for UNLI but due to lack of time they weren’t able.

Introducing Web2Mobile

One program that we ran last April was the Globe Labs Summer of Code program. 16 students from Ateneo, DLSU, UP and SLU worked on different applications for Globe Labs. The UP team, composed of Olive Ruth Dag and J. Allen Santos, was tasked to develop an add-on for Firefox that would be able to send text messages and MMS. Roughly one and a half months later, Olive and J. Allen showed the Globe Labs team the result. We were in awe with what these two kids were able to produce in such a short time frame. Today, we’re introducing that amazing application to the world –Web2Mobile.

Web2Mobile is a Firefox add-on you install on your Firefox web browser. Once installed, it allows you to send text messages and MMS without leaving the browser window. The main benefit here is that you no longer need to pick up your phone or type using a small phone keyboard when sending out text messages – you can do it all in the comfort of your computer! Now if only the features ended with that, it would have been a great application already. However, the UP team brought it further by introducing killer features:

  1. Select a text from any web page and send it as an SMS – Just highlight any text on the web page you’re looking at, right-click, and then hit Send. Now, there’s no need to retype interesting pieces of information you find on the internet!
  2. Send any image, photo or picture from any web page and send it as an SMS – Frankly we think that this feature revolutionizes the way we send out MMS. No longer are we limited to the pictures that we take using our phone cameras, or those images that we download via our phones. Now, any image on the internet can be sent to your phone. Just right-click on the image and hit Send.

That’s enough talking. Try out the Web2Mobile add-on yourself. Click on the link below to download the add-on to your computer. Then drag the file to your Firefox window to install it.

About Me

Hi, welcome to my not-so-all-about-craft blog and to my world.

I'm a proud self-taught stitcher! I learned crocheting from the Crochet for Dummies book and knitting from youtube and knittinghelp videos.

I'm a also 3rd year college student from the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City.

I live in the suburbs and I dream of going to beaches during vacations.

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