Super Hero Clock teaser animation and 2012

First of all, I've to say that it's been so long since I last posted anything here.  I've become an online freelance animator and it's hard to update my blogs and whatnot.  This blog is almost forgotten and is filled with very old previous posts about totally my supernatural encounters for the past 4 or so years and some random stuff.  As the years passed, updates have become more of a Facebook and Twitter thing so I don't really blog anymore.  But since I\m free, for these last days of this significant year (2012), I thought of spending some time doing some traditional online blogging.

So within the past 6-7 weeks I've been working on a teaser animation for my future Super Hero Clock animation series!  The old original flash movie was done in 2007 and released on Clock Day.  I've released the flash version on Newgrounds and after converting a video version, I'm uploading it to youtube.  If you like Super Hero Clock, don't forget to check out the Facebook page or follow it on Twitter!  The new website layout is gonna be up soon-ish.

So the whole world has been going about this end-of-the-year thing that's due on December 21 2012.  Some say the Mayans predicted it.  Some say NASA detected something but they themselves said they never did.  I heard some people who really believed that the world would end on that day actually made preparations to take shelter for what was yet to befall Earth.  On the other hand, Chinese Astrologists observed that date and claimed that there wouldn't be an apocalipse.  According to them, there would be a few disasters happening all over the world around that time of date but wel will still be orbiting the sun with a moon orbiting us.

And at the time of typing this, it's already December 22 2012.  As much as I want to express how glad we 'survived the end of the world', I think it would be ridiculous to say that we survived some disaster that never happened.  But anyway, looking ahead, it's gonna be another great year next year and for now, let's just enjoy Christmas like we always did and always will for the years to come.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Super Hero Clock Series - Super Hero Is Back In Action!!

I know my blog has been rather boring because of all those posts about Metaphysical and supernatural mumbo jumbo.  So I thought it would be nice to post about some fun stuff.

Ok there's gonna be a series for the flash movie Super Hero Clock.  In case you guys out there haven't watched the first movie yet, well, it's about a guy who's normal guy by day and super hero by night and unaware of it himself.  The scene starts off with a guy snoozing his head of and his clock shows that it's like 2 in the morning.  Then the scene switches to 2 thieves robbing a jewel store by the street.  The were getting away when the clock struck, and a a mysterious thing came crashing into them in the middle of the street.  And there stood in between them an enigmatic purple man with his face covered in blue and a glowing clock on his chest.

The thieves make a run for it but they got warped to the top of a building.  The hero appears before them and they knew they had no where else to run to so they had no choice but to fight!  Sword fight!  Swoop! Clash! Thwak! Klank!  The thieves were no match.  One of the thieves got frustrated and pulled out a gun and shot the hero point blank.

Cut scene.  A window of an apartment lit up.  A damsel shows up behind the curtains and catches the jewel store crime scene and calls the cops.  Cut scene again.  The thief with the gun trembles with a dropped jaw as he stares at the floating bullets at the hero's palm.  The other thief, speechless, motionless.  The hero lets go of the bullets letting them drop on the ground.  The clock on his chest began to glow and the bullets that bounced off the ground stuck in midair.  Then a void opened up and there was a loud "DONG!" of the clock.  The scene switches back to the damsel.  She looks out of the window as the cops arrive a the jewel store just to find 2 knocked out thieves in front of it.  Just then, a shadow dashes past the damsel's window.  She opened the window and gazed in the direction the figure went and saw a bright star in the sky that soon faded out.

The next scene shows the next morning with a normal busy city.  The guy (hero) wakes up and finds himself on the floor with his clock in hand.  This time it shows 8 in the morning.  Still not fully awake, he sits up and scratches his head probably wondering how he ended up on the floor.  He then replaces his clock on his desk.  Cut scene.  The hero stands on top of a building and watches over the city.  Logo rolls in.  The End.

Well, it's more realistic if you watch it.

I don't know when the series will be released but I hope that it'll be great.

Not Feng Shui - Square One With An Equation Twist

Three consecutive years and a stunning new record!(well at least for me it is...)  After a year living in this house my family and I are moving again and I don't think there's not gonna be an end to the 'Not Feng Shui' series for my blog.  If any of you who are reading this don't know what I'm talking about, you can check out 'Not Feng Shui - A True Blue Story, Seriously! Part-1'.

But here's a quick review.  2 years ago, my family and I moved from a small, old, shabby and lousy apartment to a bigger newer apartment far away from town just to ram ourselves into lots of spiritual trouble without knowing that we would at first.  Then after a year, after knowing that, we moved to a double-storey terraced house to get ourselves away from the uneasiness.  Now, it's been almost a year since we lived in this house and unfortunately, although not as bad as the haunted apartment before, my family still feel spooked.

At first, things were fine.  The psychic said the house and the land the house was on were fine.  Feng Shui, nothing bad except for the house facing straight at a Void and Emptiness degree.  My room was smaller but I could live with that.  But my family, especially my brother and mother, were still complaining about having numbness and swelling in the lower part of the legs.  At first we thought it was just an effect of the ground.  Unlike apartments(2nd floor and above), houses are built directly on the ground.  Sometimes, the ground can be too cool. And for some people, stepping on the cool ground can cause leg discomfort.  So for that, we wore slippers whenever we were downstairs.  But after all that, my brother's and mother's legs were still the same.  It got worse when they climbed up the stairs.

From my observation, their condition was pretty odd.  Sometimes, their legs were okey.  Sometimes, they're just thick.  They even tried experimenting on them.  From their experiment, their legs were okey when they spend more time outdoors or after they wake up in the morning.  And the strangest part was only my brother and mom were complaining about their legs.  My brother also often said that he felt weak.  For that, mom always told him that he worked to long on his computer.  But hey, I work whole day on my computer too.  I feel tired too but after a meal and a night's sleep, I'm charged and back in strength.  Besides the leg discomfort, my mom also claimed to have heard noises like footsteps and things-placement noises around the house day and night just to see nothing and no one there.  Freeky!  So as usual, we suspected that some 'unseen company' was at work again so we turned to the psychic again.

The psychic was unavailable at that time so we consulted the other psychic who knew the psychic we know and he said that the house we were living in, although not haunted, get visits from spirits often.  It's like they pass our house as if it were a public path - like how humans consider the sidewalk public.  He also said that the house was too big for the 4 of us.  Most of the house wasn't occupied most of the time and when there are empty places, spirit activity is more probable because spirits like empty, quiet and dark places.   When I heard that, it reminded me of a few occasions when the corner of my eyes actually caught sight of some wispy figures around the house.  Those wispy figures looked like smoke and I couldn't really identify if there were far or near.  I knew what I saw but I just couldn't be too sure.

The psychic then told us that to make out house 'private', we have to burn some joss-sticks stuck in an orange and some hell notes at each corner of the house.  We did what he told but the results were minimal.  Legs, still swollen and brother, still weak.  Some time after putting the joss-sticks and oranges, my brother claimed that he saw a figure in his room in the middle of the night.  He then decided to sleep in the bigger bedroom with my parents but for his first night sleeping in the bigger bedroom, my dad tried to sleep in his room to see if the figure would show up.  Well the figure didn't show up but in the middle of the night, he was awakened by a slap on his thigh.  He woke up just to see no one there.  I seemed like a dream and yet it felt so real!  We had to do something about this because it is definitely not good to sleep in a room with a ghost hanging out in the next room so again we turned to the psychic.  The psychic then confirmed that there WAS some activity in my brother's room at night.  He also included that it was a bored Iban spirit which hung out at my brother's room just to ease its boredom.  And to keep him out of my brother's room for good, the psychic told us to hang a net-like pattern with red string over the window.  He said doing that would make the spirit to give up getting into the room and finally leave.  We did what the psychic said and for the first night and the following nights with the string upon the window, my family had soundless nights' sleeps.

Besides that whole spiritual problem, we were also running short of cash.  The rental for this house was 800 bucks per month but our family income was running low.  Since the psychic said the house was too big for the 4 of us and, of course we realized that from the start, we were paying the rent not just for shelter but more empty space to clean up plus a whole lot of spirit disturbances.  And on top of that, out landlord was a stingy scrooge and he often gave us an impression that we were not to damage the house.  From what he told my parents, he bought this house by loaning a big sum from the bank and he's actually using the rental we pay to pay the house loan.  We just think it wasn't worth paying.

So we brought up out objectives again and rearranged out mission which we kinda forgot about.  The reason why we rented this house was because we wanted to get away from the haunted apartment.  And then wherever we move to from there is temporary.  So it seems that it's about time we got ourselves a real home.  So it's that time again - house hunting time!  We hunted online as well as offline but luck just wasn't on our side this time.  So many hunts and they were all fruitless.

Desperate, we turned to our last resort which was to go back to the cramped, shabby, old apartment where we so wanted to get away from.  That apartment was owned by the state government.  We haven't surrendered it to them yet and we still had the right to go back and live there although it had been abandoned for 2 years.  For my family it was the reason why we moved out of it in the first place despite it's cheap rental and now we are actually going back to square one?!  Well for me, it wasn't a bad idea considering that the current mental and physical health situation of my family now was way worse than it was when we were living there just that compared to living here, we had to tolerate leaks and dirty walls.

We all knew it was the best bet.  But this time we ain't moving back to see those leaks and black moss on the walls.  It's about time it went through some serious renovation that it should have gone through 15 years ago.  So my parents arranged for the renovations, and of course, we also picked a good date to start the renovations.  At first, we thought it was gonna burn another hole in out pockets but after getting the price quotation from the contractor, it cost less than renting this house for 4 months.  And come to think of it, we've been paying 800 to live in this house for about a year!  

Now, at the time of typing this post, that shabby apartment looks better than what we could have ever imagined before.  It was totally occupiable!  Going back to square one isn't so bad if it were the square one of a different equation.  Ha ha...  All is good but there is still one thing that can't be changed about this apartment which is its size.  It was obvious that it couldn't accommodate the couch and some few pieces of furniture we bought since we moved to a bigger place.  So my mom decided to sell those bulk before moving back to the apartment.  That sales fetched us about 2000+ bucks which was about the same amount we spent on the renovations.  After doing the math we actually realized we got some home improvement for almost free!  Not bad!  Not bad at all!

For the sake of this 'Not Feng Shui' series, I decided to include this part because what's a Feng Shui related story without Feng Shui in it, right?  Hehe...  Before the renovations, I managed to do check out the Feng Shui of the apartment to see how it affected us in the first place and how it would affect us if we were to live there again after the renovations.  It wasn't facing any void directions and after plotting the Flying Stars chart, it turned out its Feng Shui wasn't THAT bad at all.  Our lousy feeling of living there and desire to move out of that place that we had in the first place were probably caused by the impression we got when we saw the damages of that apartment.  Maybe living there could be better now that it has been renovated with a new coat of paint.  Well in terms of Feng Shui, this is what is called Sheng Qi.

Sick Of Chemical Off-shelf PB? - How You Can Make Your Very Own Homemade Peanut Butter

I had always loved peanut butter when I was a kid.  It was like a compulsory element for my family every breakfast.  One 510g jar of peanut butter cost about 9 bucks and that finished in about a week's time.  We never really paid attention of the food labels.  And when we did, we felt like we were actually on board the carriage bound for doom so we stopped eating peanut butter.

Since then, we always felt that our breakfasts were always missing something.  We decided to bring back our daily spread again but we just couldn't bring ourselves to eat those nasty chemicals again.  So I searched the Internet about peanut butter to see if things like those were REALLY edible and found all sorts of stuff about PB.  There are lots of people out there who say that the common peanut butter sold at supermarkets contain lots of chemicals that include, food preservatives, coloring, chemical sugar and salt and trans fat in the form of vegetable oil that are not good for the body when consumed.  And because of that, they make their own peanut butter.

So I thought it was a splendid idea.  Then I went in search for videos on how to make peanut butter and found some good instructional videos.  I couldn't follow exactly what they did because I didn't have the proper equipment so I improvised.

Ingredients:

• 500g peanuts
  
• Himalayan rock salt
  
• Organic brown sugar (the really brown and moist one)
  
• some water

Main Tools:

• pot
  
• blender

How I did it, well, first, I soaked the peanuts.  Then I boiled them until they were cooked.  Then I put them in the blender, added the sugar and salt and blended them!  Walla!  Homemade organic, chemical free, peanut butter.

After an afternoon's work, I finally made myself some healthy peanut butter.  But there was still one more thing to go - The Moment of Truth - Tasting!

No doubt, it was indeed edible.  There weren't any complains about it from the rest but when my mom tasted it, she said it was a little too bland and couldn't stand feeling the texture in her mouth.  It wasn't smooth and creamy.  The blender couldn't blend all the peanuts and made the peanut butter chuncky with some peanuts still in one piece.  It was kinda hard to spread due to the chucks.  Then I came to conclusion that my peanut butter turned out that way because 1) I didn't add oil to it.  Factory peanut butter is packed with oil that contributes to the smoothness of its texture.  And 2) I used a blender instead of a food processor.  Probably a food processor is more powerful than a blender and can mince food more evenly.

Unlike regular peanut butter, even regular homemade peanut butter, this one I made has a cream pale white color.  It's probably because I boiled the peanuts instead of roasted it.  Roasted peanuts tend to be more golden brown and that color is what makes the peanut butter made out of it browner.

I kept my homemade peanut butter in a jar which was formerly used to hold rock salt and kept it in the fridge.  After 3 days, it still didn't smell bad but I decided to finish it fast because my mom didn't really like it so I enjoyed the very last bit of it.  Since then, I always felt hesitant to make peanut butter because I knew I am likely to be scolded for doing it.

Anyways, I got the inspiration, ideas and guide for making my peanut butter from this video at Howcast.com.

Come to think of what I just did, I used 500g of peanuts to make just one jar of peanut butter.  I wonder where the peanut butter factories get their peanuts to make like hundreds and thousands of jars to be distributed and sold in numerous supermarkets.  Did they really use peanuts?  Oh please tell me they did...

Not Feng Shui! - A True Blue Story Revisited

This is the sequel of this story which I posted in my previous blog posts.  Well, personally, I really hope this is the last part and I think it should be (maybe I should call it 'Not Feng Shui! - The Final ... just kidding haha) because... well you'll know if you read it.  Besides, all this is getting old and I just wanna get over with it.

About more than a month has passed since the whole incident.  Everything really seemed to be normal.  Everybody, especially my brother, was feeling better.  After my brother's birthday, we headed out of town again to seek the chiropractic treatment.  We were there for 5 days and 4 nights and I found something interesting there.

All was good until recently when my brother started to feel weak and breathless again.  This time, we knew that it was definitely some spiritual disturbance again because my brother had no physical reason to be sick.  If it were something he ate, we would all be sick because we share the food we eat every meal!  My mom then asked my brother when he started to feel his sickness.  He then said that it came overnight.  We were all puzzled.  After a bit of thinking and recalling, my brother then realized that that sickly feeling always came after he used his laptop.  He also recalled that it was also after he bought that laptop that the whole spiritual incident started to happen.  And besides, he never felt good using that laptop.  He never even wanted to buy it in the first place but he had to because it had a slot for wireless modems.  Now that he's not using the wireless modem anymore because we're using an external modem for better a faster Internet connection, he felt like getting rid of it.  But all we could think of were speculations.  We still need confirmation.

So mom decided to consult the psychic about this.  That psychic said that there was a spirit of a guy disturbing my brother.  That spirit likes the laptop that my brother used.  He also said that, in spiritual terms, my brother's frequency somehow matches that laptop's frequency.  And whenever my brother uses that laptop, it triggers certain other frequency that attracts spirits.  He also added that the spirit of the guy of that laptop was always displeased with my brother using that laptop because he claims that laptop to be his and my brother using it was actually snatching it from him disturbs my brother for it.  Then my mom asked the psychic why I don't feel the same when I use that laptop.  The psychic then answered, in spiritual terms again, that my brother is more vulnerable for that spirit compared to me.  That's why I don't feel anything when I use that laptop.  Then he summarized that in my brother's case, that laptop served as some sort of gateway for spirit attraction and it would be best if he got rid of it ASAP.

Finally, the mystery was unfolded for real.  After about 5 months of our stay at that apartment at the uneasy ground, my brother bought that laptop.  After that, things started to happen.  This time we really believed it was caused by that laptop and were sure blaming the laptop wasn't creating a false cause fallacy.  Then it was completely logical that my brother using that laptop attracted all the spirits into out home because a 'gateway' was created every time my brother used that laptop.  And then when we moved to our current home, my brother felt okay when he chucked that laptop out of his room downstairs and used our other laptop.  So all in all, everything started with that laptop!

We decided to get rid of the laptop.  There, we paused a sec.  It's a laptop.  Something more expensive than twice the whole load of Feng Shui stuff we threw away due to what that it caused.  So we thought of giving it away instead.  But what if someone got 'lucky' to get a laptop out of the blue and get a queue of spirits after that?  Finally, we decided to give it to a friend of the psychic who also happened to be psychic because we figured that if the laptop starts acting up again, he'll know what to do.

Now that the laptop is gone, my brother seems more free, as in no more 'disturbances' kinda free.  He bought a desktop PC with Windows Vista and a fast 2GHz RAM and is pretty happy working with it.  I hope he stays like that.

Spiritual things really are unpredictable for us normal non-psychic humans.  Sometimes they are already there when you don't even know that it's there!  It can haunt you, swing your mood round the clock, change your diet, even change your looks for some serious cases!  However, humans can train to be more powerful to overcome them.  Even if they don't train, they can chant a protector chant that calls upon a protector that the spirits fear.  But nowadays, people are just too busy to even talk.  So if that's the case, at least try not to have a confused or an uneasy heart because that's what makes people vulnerable to hauntings.  That's about what the psychic said.

Oh and by the way, be careful when buying a laptop.

Although it looks like a good idea to have such a laptop skin like that one, it is not advisable because you can't paste talismans anywhere you like without consulting a taoist or a talisman expert.  I made that laptop skin just for fun.  Haha...

Top 10 Ways On How To Learn Correct English

English was, is and, I think, always known as an international language.  Wherever you go, you're gonna need it somehow.  So English is indispensable especially for those who wish to travel.  For me, English ain't a problem.  (If not I won't be able to type all the blog posts I have so far)  But for those out there who are trying hard to learn English, or those like me but still seek English reference once a while, I've written this post of 10 ways to learn correct English specially for them.  Okay! Let's start the count!

1. Buy a bilingual dictionary that translates words in your language to English and vice-versa and start reading it.
2. If you are a beginner (I actually mean noob kind of beginner but I just wanted to save the offense), start recognizing and trying to read simple English words wherever you go.  Start with 3-letter English words and slowly increase the length as you get more familiar with English words.  This helps builds basic English vocabulary.  If you come across a word that you don't know, refer to your bilingual dictionary or ask someone who knows to teach you about that word.
3. Join English classes.  It helps a lot more when there's someone there to teach you and others to discuss with.  But you have to be careful because some English teachers are not qualified to teach English and may even make English mistakes and teach wrong things about English.
4. Read, read, read.  Look for anything like books, magazine, ads and product labels written in English and read them.  Reading English can help you know more about the structure of the language and its grammar.  This can also give you a boost in English vocabulary.
5. Listen to lots of English speeches.  You can watch English movies, play English video games or even catch English advertisements on TV. When you are listening to them, pay attention to pronunciation and intonation. Make sure you pick a media that has a level of English that suits you.  For starters, pick the easy ones first.  During your free time, test yourself by asking yourself how to say words and phrases in English.
6. Practice your English often.  Try forming sentences in English and say them out.  If possible, converse with them.  Don't be shy about making mistakes or afraid of making a fool out of yourself.  Just do your best.  It's okay to make mistake because you can learn better through experience and mistakes.
7. Do not do direct translation when learning how to form English speeches or phrases.  English grammar may differ from grammar of other languages.  Direct translating can cause English sentences to sound awkward, be grammatically wrong or give your listeners the wrong meaning of what you want to say.
8. When you are already good at basic English, you can start going into advanced English by picking books written in more advanced English.  Although English poetry is a good English reading material, I don't really recommend it because some contain archaic English that may seem confusing to readers especially those who are not very familiar with English.
9. Have English references like notes, reference books or online websites or blogs that provide explanations and examples about English grammar like this one.  Although you seem like you know a part of English grammar correctly, it is always better to seek reference to make sure what you know is really correct.  This can boost your confidence in English and capability of committing English grammar to memory.
10. Teach others English.  This only applies to those who are very good at English.  When teaching others who are weaker than you in English, you might discover a thing or two about English that you can be unsure of that you missed when learning English.  This is twofold because this way, you can help others avoid making such mistakes and at the same time, learn something new for yourself.

There you have it!  Learning new languages is always difficult at first but once you get used to it, it's actually kinda fun.  Hope this helps those who want to learn English.

A Spider's Diet - To Eat Or Not To Eat

Things are so far so good since the day my family moved to the current house we are staying in.  But unlike living in apartments, there is one uncomfortable difference - BUGS.  Well unlike apartments, houses are ground-leveled.  And because of that, bugs from all around can enter our house.  Now we get more mosquitoes, 24-7, ants, flies and even spiders - big ones!

A few days ago, my mom spotted a spider in the living room clenching something.  I went to check it out and there it was with it's catch of the day.  It actually caught a fly about its size but it wasn't eating it.  I seldom see spiders with such a big achievement and was actually feeling lucky to see one so I decided to snap a picture of it.

For people who get goosebumps at the sight of bugs, this might probably make their hairs stand on ends as well and probably think of this spider when they are having their meals.  Haha... don't sweat it.  I know it looks creepy at that size but actually it's really not that.  Sometimes things give different impressions when they are in different sizes.  That's what I thought so I decided to take a close up picture of it.

If you see it as-is, it still seems small.  The origninal size of this picture is 848x558 pixels.  The white spot on top of it is the reflection of the living room light on the ceiling.  But anyway, just look at this furry little itsy-bitsy cutie.  It was having part of the fly between it's mandibles when it looked up at my camera for a snapshot.  You can actually see it's 2 front compound eyes looking innocently at you.  What a pose for a bug!

After I took its picture, it crawled away to the corner of the living room.  My mom and I thought, "The fly is almost as big as it is.  How's it gonna eat they fly?"  That actually gave me a funny imagination of what that spider would look like if it really DID swallow the whole fly.  But my mom and I really didn't know what was gonna happen next.  Probably that spider was also going through its worst predicament in its life.  To eat or not to eat.....  

The next day, when I was sweeping the floor, I found the fly on the floor of that corner of my living room.  The spider was nowhere to be found.  I guess it took the bitter better choice.