Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Sony Ericsson Satio

SatioAs some of you know I have been interested in mobile phones lately. From the iPhone to the MyTouch 3G (HTC Magic) and now we have a phone of interest from Sony Ericsson. It was announced a month or so ago and is based on the latest Symbian platform. I love the Symbian OS and find it remarkably stable. Anyways the Sony Ericsson Satio sparked my interest because it has a 12 megapixel camera! Being a photographer this really makes me want to ditch my Canon Powershot and switch to something like this. The power to shoot high quality pictures from one device. Also Sony has a great media player interface. They have been in the game for a while with their walkman software. I have used Sony Ericsson phones before and have really liked them. The only problem with this phone is that the phone has not yet been released to North America. I believe Europe is only place that has the Satio right now. Hurry up Sony! I think this might be a great product!

P.S. If you would like to check out more about the Satio check outhttp://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/cws/home?cc=gb&lc=en

The ATV Lives On!

ATVThe Apple TV has been one of my favorite devices for a while now. Even though the fact that it doesn’t support a variety of video formats does bother me. Anyways lately it would seem Apple is paying less attention to their little hobby and I was quite worried that Apple would discontinue the product. Well today Apple proved me wrong today. Thankfully they released a brand new long awaited update. Apple tv was updated to 3.0 today, I’m not sure if the update was released today or earlier this week. It would seem that Apple is not yet finished with the Apple TV.
This update actually really enhanced the interface of the Apple TV. I was really impressed with the UI and I believe they have made the interface a little more user friendly. Maybe it even fixed some of the reliabilty issues I was having with the ATV connecting to the iTunes store. I have noticed it seems more consistant. Anyways I thought I would pass the news along! So if you have an ATV I recommend updating it! Well anyways enjoy!

Have you ever noticed that people just seem dumb in horror movies? No matter what is going on, the victims judgment seems to be impaired and the killer always ends up mutilating them. Well this youtube short was inspired by those people. This is a short film about four ways on surviving a horror movie. I owe it all to my friends who helped me. Without them I would of had no one to act! Them I would of had to do some kind of Eddie Murphy shot and superimpose myself in all the scenes. lol! Anyways we had a great time shooting this video and it was a learning curve for me in shooting a movie and then editing it. I’ve done productions and plays before but never my own short video. But anyways I hope you all enjoy it!

Undeserved Humility

Even though this semester in college has been very difficult, I have been learning a lot. Subjects like humanities, American history, Chinese, New Testament survey and theology have really made this semester one of the most intriguing semesters I have had so far in college. I just hope I can finish this semester with flying colors! Anyways this concept came to me sitting in my Theology 101 (Christian theology) class a couple of weeks ago. I have been thinking and exploring on this since that class. I know this will be a rather long article, but please bear with it, I am praying that you will not regret reading this.

I think that everyone that has read the Bible or maybe those who have not read the Bible probably could at least say that the overall message of God’s Word is how He redeems us (His creation). Well lets analyze this for a moment. The Bible teaches us that God is all knowing, He knows what is going to happen, even before it happens. Why? Because He created everything and He is omniscient. So what does this really mean if God is all knowing?

If God is really all knowing, then He knew way before we were created that we would rebel against Him. God knew that once Adam and Eve were placed on this planet, they would eventually turn from the path He placed them on. Not only would Adam and Eve turn their backs on God, but the rest of mankind there after. But God still chose to put all of us on this planet, even though He knew we would all sin against Him. Wow! That in itself is pretty breathtaking.

Well lets go into some more depth about God. Maybe these are some concepts you haven’t gone over in your regular church service. They may not even be concepts that you have ever thought about. What are some quality traits of God? Love is not just the only answer! I hear so many people say “well God is love”. He is so much more! In fact, just merely placing a label on God is limiting God. The Creator of the universe cannot be described by earthly terms, because to do so is to define Him by earthly means! That in itself is kind of subjecting God to a lower level than that of which He should be exalted to! Whatever term you describe God as, whether it be; love, all knowing, Almighty, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, even Yahweh is not enough. Haven’t you ever wondered why God is known by so many names in the Bible? It’s because we cannot limit Him to just one term! Even the pastor/ instructor of our class made a comment along with our discussion that whatever concept we have of God is so limited, that when we see God face to face in heaven, it will blow our minds.

So we have mentioned how God created us, even though He already knew His creation would turn against Him. We have also mentioned how God is somewhat limited by our standards, because we cannot even describe him adequately. There are two other points I would like to make before I conclude this article. Why does the Bible teach us that God is a jealous God? If you have not read any books from Piper, I truly recommend his writings to you. First of all, we may think of jealousy as a bad thing. Well I would have to say your wrong! By our earthly ways of understanding jealousy, it is wrong. But remember since we are coming from the Bible, God is perfect in every way possible. There is NOTHING He can do that would be considered sinful. So lets try and think of a God that is so perfect and Almighty that jealousy actually becomes a virtue instead of a dysfunctional character trait. Here is a God that is so perfect, so powerful, so wise, that He actually gets jealous. Why does God get jealous? Well God is so amazing that He wants us to enjoy Himself. Our primary mission in life is to bask in the Glory of the Almighty. He is jealous because He is so good, that He wants us to focus on Him, instead of anything else. He is jealous because He loves us so much and He wants us to dwell upon the very best. The very best being GOD Himself! He is not being jealous for any sort of gain on His part, but He is jealous because He wants His creation to have the very best in life before, during and after.

If you knew the secret to obtain eternal happiness and had the chance to share it with anyone you knew, would you do that? I sure would hope so. You would tell all of your family and friends, because you love them! This is the same for God. What kind of father would give his son a serpent after his son asked for bread? God Almighty is our father and has our best interest at heart, no matter what hardships we have experienced. God is so amazing that there are angels surrounding Him with their eyes closed and ever so often they open their eyes slightly. This is happening for all eternity and the angels have to cry out God’s glory every time they see another glimpse of Him. This is definitely overwhelming for our finite minds.

The final paragraph I would like to talk about before I close this article is about how God has to communicate with us. God being so much Higher than any of us has to daily lower Himself to even speak with us! Even words are insulting to God. He is so much higher than us that even the way we speak is somewhat demeaning of Him. I heard a friend put it this way. God often was to speak to us in baby talk. This really hit me. Every single thing that God has to do with us is requiring God to sacrifice Himself to us daily, even by the minute. Think about it. Our limited vocabulary and means of talking to Him are so much lower than God is. Every one of our actions are the filthiest of rags compared to just one-fourth of God’s Being. But you know what, He still chooses to speak to us every day, whenever we are willing to hear Him. He still chooses to bless us whenever He wants to. God still chooses to love us (every one of us) every second of our existence. From the beginning to the end.

So lets dive in a little deeper here. Why would God ever want to deal with something as low as mankind. God is so good that He Himself could delight in Himself for all eternity. By the way, this is not prideful. What if we served a God who could not admire Himself for His purity, for His goodness, for every character trait He holds? Well that would not seem to be a very powerful God. If God cannot delight in Himself, then what kind of God would He be? Anyways back on subject, we serve the Highest Being ever! We as humans are just one step higher than the animals. Why would God ever want to even deal with such lowly creatures? Creatures that turn their backs on such a Holy God. It is because He loves us! This to me doesn’t even make any sense. Such unconditional love is unimaginable. He paid the price for us by sending His Son to die for us on the cross. This pays the debt we owe God for rebelling against Him. We cannot ever pay this debt, we are too impure and unholy to even try and attempt to pay off our debt to Christ. But doesn’t this just speak leaps and bounds about the God we serve? Wow, so I am sorry that this blog entry was so long, but this is just something that God laid upon my heart to share. It is something that He has been revealing to me. I am praying that this will speak even more to you and that God will expound upon this concept to you many times over! Thanks for reading and God bless.

I do not believe I have officially announced this on my blog, I know I have mentioned it on Twitter. As of umm I think it was last month I sold my iPod Touch and used the money I received for that to purchase an iPhone 3G! I wanted to purchase it used so I did not have to sign my soul over to AT&T for two years. Anyways I unlocked my iPhone 3G and I am now using it with T-Mobile. I probably will do a blog entry on that in the future. Anyways I have been testing and exploring different applications for the iPhone! Here are some of my favorite apps that I found.

Mint.com- This is probably one of the most used apps on my iPhone. Mint.com is a web-based way to manage all of your financial accounts from one place. Credit cards, saving accounts, checking accounts, loans, whatever you have, you can monitor it from this one application. Mint even added some security to the app, requiring you enter in a pin to access your records. Of course this is after you enter in your email and password. This app is FREE.

iheartradio- I absolutely love this application! This is a way to stream thousands of radio stations from around the US straight from your iPhone. If I was a customer with AT&T I could even use this application over HSDP. I currently have to use WIFI. Every weekend I am able to turn in to KFI AM 640 located in California. This app is also FREE.

Skype- as most of you probably know, Skype is an excellent way of making cheap IP phone calls. This is really the reason I sold my iPod Touch and bought the iPhone. I travel overseas for missions work almost every summer and this is an excellent way to make cheap phone calls back to the States wherever I have access to WIFI. I can even purchase a Skype-In number, which means I can choose a local number and my family or friends can call me on this local number and not get charged for international phone calls.This app is FREE but to call phone lines or the SkypeIn feature etc does require you to purchase these features.

Qingwen- is a Chinese dictionary! Most of you that know me, know I am minoring in Mandarin Chinese. This application is truly worth buying! If I have a Chinese character and I have no idea how to pronounce it or the pinyin for it, I can write the character using my finger and the dictionary will look up the word! I saw dictionaries in China and Hong Kong that had this feature over the summer, but this saved me literally almost $300 USD and I can carry it around with me anywhere. The single purpose electronic dictionaries I saw in Hong Kong were $200+ USD. As I mentioned before, this app is not free. But if you are serious about your Chinese, it is worth the price. This app is $4.99.

Rolando- is a game for the iPhone! It kind of reminds me of Katamari and I am a huge fan of Katamari. By the way, I am not a big fan of games on the iPhone, but I have had fun wasting a few moments waiting in line or waiting in the doctor’s office with this game. The object is to move your iPhone around to roll these creatures to safety. This game is $2.99, but they do have a lite version to try the demo. Which is FREE

Ocarina- is a really ingenious app! It is very simple, but it is a great app to show off your iPhone to your friends. This particular app turns your iPhone into an ocarina! Simple blow into the mic receiver and tap the buttons on the screen. It is kind of fun, but it’s definitely something you probably will not play with much. It is only $0.99 cent.

CBC Radio- is of course programming from the CBC in Canada. I just found it last night and I am absolutely loving it. Oh and for those of you who are do not know what the CBC is, it is pretty much like NPR but for Canada. You can choose between what city or province in Canada and listen to their local programming. I am a big fan of NPR, but I also love listening to the CBC programming (it’s kind of funny, because I consider myself a Conservative and I love NPR).

Well these are some of the apps that I have found that I am loving with my iPhone. If you have any suggestions or recommendations please leave a comment! I am looking forward to hearing some recommendations! Thanks for reading.

Love Connected (保持爱你)

Love_ConnectedLove Connected (保持爱你) is one of the latest films by the Hong Kong director Patrick Kong. If any of you have seen the British love comedy “Love Actually” well then this type of storyline will be very familiar to you. The only difference is that these actors and actresses are speaking Cantonese. ;p Throughout the film, you are expected to keep up with several different love triangles all through the movie.
Before purchasing the DVD I read several different websites that are linked to this article about the film. Except I never really seem to agree entirely with the articles I read on lovehkfilms.com. I always seem to enjoy the movie more than whoever is writing the review. I do agree with the writer that this movie in particular was not Patrick Kong’s best film, but it was still a cute movie to watch. Despite what most Hong Kongers say, I really enjoy the cast in Patrick Kong’s films. Stephy Tang is one of my favorite Cantonese actresses and I seem to gravitate towards her films every time she releases a new film. *Probably mostly because she is cute lol* Anyways I think she is not as bad an actress some people portray her.
I found the movie on eBay for around 9USD and I definitely think this movie is worth spending $9 on. The movie is quite humorous in several areas throughout it and a lot of the characters are compelling. There was only one story that did not add up throughout this movie. I do not want to say who the character was because it probably would spoil the movie. But I will say one of the characters is actually deaf, except you do not find out who it is until the end of the movie. The only thing is that I do not buy the different ways the director shows the audience in how the character was actually deaf. The different scenes that are replayed just did not match up. But besides this one character, the movie I thought was enjoyable.
So if you are interested in a cute fun little movie with a lot of Hong Kong pop stars then this is your movie! You can either find it on eBay or YesAsia. This seems to be a nice date movie, so buy it and watch it with your girlfriend. :P

asianmediawiki
lovehkfilms

The 5th Season

张韶涵 or aka Angela Zhang is one of my favorite Taiwanese female artists. She has been taking a break for the last two years from the music realm, but I am very glad she is finally coming back into the scene! The last CD that she released before her break was called Ang 5.0. This CD happened to be one of my favorite CDs she has released. Some of her popular songs on the album included 我戀愛了(I Am In Love), 不想懂得 (Don’t Want To Understand) and 重來(Again).

Her 6th CD to be released is called “The 5th Season”. Don’t ask me why it’s not called “The 6th Season”. lol I have no idea why she chose to name this album that. The CD is expected to be released on October 2, 2009 and if you pre-order her CD then you will receive a fifty-two page photo album of the lovely Angela. :P The CD also includes a DVD of all the music videos that she did for the songs on her latest album. So if your interested in Angela Zhang you should definitely check this one out. Also her latest single “White” which was recorded for the television show Sophie’s Revenge is available on the CD.

P.S. If you are interested in pre-ordering this CD then I provided the link below or you can head on over to http://yesasia.com and search for The 5th Season.

Drama Wiki
Wikipedia Article
Pre-Order the CD

Rainy Days :P




Rain Droplets

Originally uploaded by brandonnc

I just felt like posting some pictures that I took during one of our rainy days here in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Ever since I got back from Hong Kong, it has been raining here in Fayetteville a lot more than it did when I was in Hong Kong. It even was typhoon season over there! It’s been kind of weird. Anyways I took this picture with a little Canon Powershot. I thought it did a great job with the colors and capturing the picture. :P If you would like to see some more of the pictures then please go to http://flickr.com/brandonnc I love rain though, so it hasn’t been a problem for me. I love listening to thunder and listening to the rain. :)

Nokia’s Branching Out


I can remember my very first cell phone. It was a Nokia phone and it was back when they did not have color screens yet. I believe I was in the 7th grade in Junior High so that was around umm 2001 or 2002. Well ever since that first cell phone I have been a Nokia fan. Out of the four phones I have had since then three of my phones have been Nokia. My current phone that I have is a Nokia N95. I have always been impressed with Nokia’s Symbian based operating system and the durability that they seem to have. No matter how well you take care of a cell phone, you are going to eventually drop it.

Anyways Nokia’s market share has been dropping gradually ever since the introduction to Apple’s iPhone some two years ago and Canada’s notorious Blackberry. This being said, Nokia still has the largest market share in the mobile market than any other cell phone manufacture. Well in an effort to saturate the market even further, they have announce plans of jumping in the Netbook branch of the tech industry. Nokia has been a leading player in the mobile computing market with their tablet computers. Will Nokia be able to compete against the other established players in the Netbook realm? The good thing is this category of computers is new in itself. So luckily Nokia is not too far behind.

Well I am looking forward to playing around with one of these little machines. Judging by the youtube video they are going to be a very sleek high end type of netbook. I think they are clearly going against Asus and their new branch of netbooks known as the Seashell. For more information on the story, please follow the links provided at the end of this entry! Thanks for reading!

http://www.nokia.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/technology/companies/25nokia.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Flying Green?

Now before I discuss the story that I found on the internet I would like to say that I do not buy all of this global warming fuss. Well allow me to rephrase that statement. I do believe the earth is warming but it is because of a cycle that the planet goes through every so often. I do not believe that all we are doing is screwing up the planet and that we are going to bring total destruction to the planet. But despite all of this I do believe we should be good stewards of what God gave us. So I was delighted to read this story.

So eight of America’s largest airlines are beginning a giant step in the direction of lowering their carbon emissions. Not only does their effort help the environment but I believe it will drive costs of airfare lower. Considering the source that they are using (biofuel) they will be able to obtain higher mileage and at a cheaper price than what they are currently paying for fuel. I admire this effort because I do not see flying decreasing in the new future, in fact given the current market and ideas people have on flying I see that flying will continue to be essential to our every day life. So if you would like to read a little more on the article, please refer to the link below!

http://english.cctv.com/20090820/101035.shtml

Older Posts »