Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Furious Five

Time to write something casual today. Let's talk movies. As far as I can tell, I am a big fan of animation. My favorite animation studios are Pixar and Dreamworks Animation. Both studios have shown great expertise in their artworks and humor. I love the laughter they brought. :)

For now, I wanna talk about one of Dreamworks Animation movies; that is Kung Fu Panda. Po was an extremely funny character. Having Jack Black -or is it Black Jack?- acting as the voice of Po was the right choice. That man IS funny with only a few people to compare though right now I can only think of Jim Carrey. :)

I can't tell you much about Kung Fu Panda except that it's a recommended movie for the whole family to enjoy. Its intended audience is definitely kids. However, if you enjoy a good laugh then Po and the Furious Five is for you.

Speaking of the Furious Five ... don't know who the Furious Five is? They are the five top students of the temple where Po is studying Kung Fu with Master Shifu. Errr ... You should Google it or have a look at IMDb here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0441773/.

*Image grabbed from http://www.cinemablend.com/

Dreamworks made an additional movie (only around 30 minutes long) about Kung Fu Panda. As I was stating in the title of this post, Dreamworks produced Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Furious Five.

Every movie fan would enjoy getting to know more about the characters in a movie. Secrets of the Furious Five tells the story where Po was assigned to teach the basic of Kung Fu to a class full of anxious cute little Kung Fu student bunnies. Seriously, they are cute. :)

In that Kung Fu class, Po shares the background of the Furious Five before each of them were heroes. In such a short duration animation, Dreamworks still manage to offer a hilarious story. However, some Kung Fu Panda fans might be disappointed due to the fact that it's not CGI (Computer-generated Imagery ). Nevertheless, it's enjoyable.

A Fragile Halt

Both Palestinians factions and the Israel Defense Forces are putting a hold on their war game. Each party declares their own version of ceasefire. There is no mutual agreement between the two parties.

I never expected that this kind of condition would exist following a 22-day war on Gaza. I thought for sure that Israel would do what they can to bring Gaza to the ground. Looking at their objective, i.e. stopping rocket attacks from Gaza, then I assume their intention was to put a whole lot of fear in Palestinians living in Gaza through obliteration and massacre.

Nevertheless, each side decides to hold back. Olmert said that Israel have achieved its goals. Have they? If a single rocket were to be fired to Israel after this ceasefire declaration then wouldn't that mean that their "goal" have not been achieved? I'm not surprised if some Palestinians think that they have achieved a symbolic victory. They only need one single rocket to claim that victory.

I don't think the war ends here. Gaza faces a fragile situation where any false actions would lead Gaza back to December 27, 2008. Not to mention Israel refused any deadlines in removing their troops from Gaza. It's like having a bomb in Gaza waiting to be detonated. Gaza is still a dangerous playground.

Even if the war temporarily ends then Gazans are faced with more than a thousand dead, thousands injured, hospitals struggling, rumbles everywhere, homes destroyed, businesses out-of-business, food shortages, lack of supplies, and the list continues.

"He said Israel would "continue to do whatever is possible to prevent the humanitarian crisis in Gaza," and expressed sorrow for the deaths of innocent civilians. "It wasn't our intention to fight them or to harm them, to hurt them or to shoot at them," he said." - Hamas, Israel set independent cease-fires

I guess actions failed to meet words. :|

A dark future still awaits Gaza. Hopefully it won't last long. I'm pessimistic about it but neither of us can predict the future. At the very least, I sincerely hope that humanitarian aid would reach Gaza as soon as possible.

Reference:

• Hamas, Israel set independent cease-fires. January 18, 2009. CNN.com. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/18/israel.gaza/index.html; accessed on January 19, 2009.
• Hamas offers conditional ceasefire. January 19, 2009. Aljazeera.net. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/2009118123631230393.html; accessed on January 19, 2009.
  

More Ringtones for Gaza

Someone who won't mention his name on his comment suggested Audacity to edit the MP3. I took some of my time to download it and tried making the same ringtone as before. It's an open source project so it was within my area of interest anyway. Not to mention I have plenty of time to spare. :p

FYI, Audacity requires LAME MP3 Encoder library to be able to export an audio track to MP3 format. If you're interested in using Audacity, you can download LAME library from rarewares.org.

One key feature that I've come across during my short use of Audacity was its capability in mixing more than one audio tracks. I simply import the audio tracks that I want to mix and Audacity will show me separate audio tracks to edit instead of one already mixed audio tracks. That way I can easily modify each audio tracks without affecting the other. After I'm done with my modification, I can directly listen to the mixed result. When I'm satisfied with that result, exporting the mixed audio track was only a mouse click away. That is if I already have LAME MP3 Encoder.

When I'm using Music Editor Free, I can only mix more than one audio tracks. It won't be a problem if all the imported tracks were ready to be mixed. What happens when something was not right and I have to edit one of the tracks to be mixed? You can imagine how troublesome this could be if I were to go back and forth between editing a single track then tried mixing it with another audio track. So that's 1-0 for Audacity. :)

OK then. Before things get way to technical, I present you the result of mixing two copies of the first ringtone into a single audio track with a little time shift made to one of the track to add an echo effect. Mind you that this is coming from a beginner. So don't laugh, OK? ;)



You can download it here: http://www.4shared.com/file/80894398/316163a9/MichaelHeart_WeWillNotGoDown_Edit3.html

Many thanks to "Mr. I don't really know who" for directing me to Audacity.

Ringtone for Gaza

I never thought I would meet the day where I would be editing an MP3. Up until today, my interest in MP3 was not much. I don't really like to hear songs anyway. Only selected few can show up in my playlist.

Yesterday I downloaded We Will Not Go Down from Michael Heart official website. I listened to that song a couple of times. I really liked that song and decided to add it to my playlist. Hurray!!! :)

Next thing I know, I wanted to set that song as my cellphone's ringtone. Unfortunately I don't want the whole song as my ringtone. So I started Googling for free and reliable MP3 editor. From Google, I stumbled upon Music Editor Free.

That was it. That was the one I'm looking for. It was easy to use. The interface was easy to comprehend and the help was quite helpful. I got a decent grip on the application in no time.

Editing Michael Heart's We Will Not Go Down was easy. I simply select the part of song that I want. Cut here. Trim there. Add a little fade in effect and voila! I have my ringtone. :)

One thing that's lacking from Music Editor Free was I cannot save the file as MP3. I can only save it in WAV format. That means excessive file size. Next step was to find a WAV to MP3 converter. Using Google, I came across FreeMp3/Wma/Ogg Converter. I used this application to convert WAV to MP3 in a snap.

Result? Click the play button in the embedded player below to listen to the ringtone I made. It's not coming from an expert but I'm satisfied with what I've produced. Hopefully it's legal. :)



In case you're interested, you can download it here: http://www.4shared.com/file/80844593/5aae0222/MichaelHeart_WeWillNotGoDown_Edit1.html

Many thanks to Michael Heart for publishing his song for free.

Gazans Will Not Go Down

The song composed by Michael Heart, We Will Not Go Down (Song for Gaza), was warm and touching. I can almost feel his sympathy towards the war occurring on Gaza.

If you're Indonesian and curious of what Michael's song mean in Bahasa Indonesia, then feel free to look at the translation I made here.

Michael did his part to save the humanity in Gaza. He composed that song and decided to donate the sale to charity to help Palestinian in Gaza. When he bumped into technical complication, he decided to share that song for free and encouraged the people who downloaded his song to also donate to help Palestinian in Gaza.

He did his part to help the victims of war in Gaza. I did my part in donating some money through local (Indonesia) aid organizations called MER-C. The future are still open for more donations. What about you? Have you donate anything to help civilians in Gaza?

I seriously hope that Gaza will not be brought down and Israel would realize that their actions are not justifiable with a mere reason of "stopping rocket attacks from Gaza to Israel". I seriously hope that the world leaders would take stronger actions towards the war in Gaza instead of making peace resolutions that in the end will be deemed "unworkable".

We Will Not Go Down is not just about saving Palestinian from Israel attacks. It's about the struggle of helpless civilians facing the attacks form one of the largest army on this planet. It's about the civilians survival from disguised genocide.

My highest appreciation to Michael Heart for his song and sympathy and to any of you who seriously wanted to help Palestinian civilians from the cruel attacks of Israel tanks and airplanes.

More on We Will Not Go Down through Michael Heart's website: http://www.michaelheart.com/Song_for_Gaza.html.

Google Search Result Collaboration

Official Google Blog: SearchWiki: make search your own

There was this one time when I caught a glimpse of a strange looking Google search result. Back then I only noticed that there are small icons next to the links. I didn't really give it much attention especially because I never saw it anymore.

It turns out that it was a new feature from Google called SearchWiki. This feature allows you to modify your search results, i.e. promoting, removing, and making notes on each link shown in the search results.

I emphasize on the word "your search results" because promoting, removing, and commenting on any links can only be done when you're signed-in to your Google Account. Other than that, based on my experience, there's another catch to access this feature. It seems this feature is not accessible through www.google.co.id even if I'm signed-in.

That's why I only saw it once before. This is because every time I'm searching through Google, I always got redirected to www.google.co.id even though I'm already signed-in to my Google Account.

For the sake of testing, I took my time to access my Gmail and then click the "Web" link located on top on the Gmail interface to access www.google.com. I tried searching for "manga". A sample of the search result is shown in the image below.


I marked the image with two red arrows. The above points to the "promote" and "remove" icon. The lower one points to the "comment" icon. Clicking "promote" will put the link next to the icon to the top of the search result while clicking "remove" means throwing the link away. Clicking "comment" would obviously popped-up a text box to add your comments about the link.

I advise you not to abuse this feature like removing a link because of hatred or anything as such. :)

We can manage our search result in anyway we want. Plus it is a good thing that even though it only affect our own search result, we can see a collective result of any promoting, removing, and comments from other Google users. Just look for the "See all notes for this SearchWiki" link around the bottom of the search result. Clicking that link will show us all relevant actions recorded using SearchWiki.

That's all I can explain about Google SearchWiki. Now for the questions. One, will this feature replaces Google PageRank? I don't know about replacing, but I'm sure this feature brings a new method of search result promotion. So is this feature going to start a new Search Engine Optimization (SEO) technique? I can't really say, but I think the possibility are high. SEO providers will have another instrument to promote any links they want. One thing's for sure, Google Search now involves human interaction and opinion in promoting links in its search result.