Hung Truong: The Blog!

Get A Customized Message From Samuel L Jackson! For Snakes on a Plane!

I saw this on anandtech, and I’m pretty sure it’ll be everywhere soon. It’s a promotional thing for Snakes on a Plane. You give it some information and Samuel L. Jackson can either call or email a friend with a message saying that they have to watch Snakes on a Plane. It’s pretty entertaining hearing SLJ go insane about a movie starring himself.

Here’s one that I made using a fictional “Samuel” and his copilot “Johnny.” [audio:Snakes on a Plane.mp3]

It actually sounds pretty good for being one of those cut and paste customized messages. Mr. Jackson is very convincing, and I’m kinda scared that he’ll kill me if I don’t see Snakes on a Plane. This is pure genius viral marketing, right here. The only complaint I have is that SLJ doesn’t know how to say a lot of names. Including “Hung.” Oh, I guess it would’ve been cool if he had dropped the F-bomb a few times, or even if he just said “ass” instead of “butt.”

Oh, if you didn’t know, Snakes on a Plane is a movie. About snakes. On a plane. And Samuel L. Jackson’s in it. It’s already gained cult status for having a cheesy plot. I read somewhere that Samuel L. Jackson only agreed to do the movie because of the title. Now that’s what I call quality cinema.

Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories Pre-order at NIS America!

Okay, so here’s the deal: I’m a total Nippon Ichi fanboy. I loved Disgaea, Phantom Brave was cool, Makai Kingdom was better. I even have the rare (well, not anymore) Rhapsody: A Musical Interlude for PS, though I haven’t played through it yet (it seems kinda primitive in comparison). If you’re still not convinced, read this post.

Disgaea 2 is coming out in America on August 29, so I gotta be ready! NIS America actually has a somewhat sweet pre-order package available.

For $75, you can get the Disgaea 2 game (duh), A strategy guide, a volume of the Disgaea manga, an art book, and the official soundtrack. Yeah! There’s some other digital download things too, like the game manual and some mouse cursor or something. There’s also a different package for $65 that only doesn’t include the manga. Lame.

The way I calculate it, the video game is worth $50 (or more; I’ve been waiting forever for it!), the manga will probably be worth $10, and the strategy guide would be $20. Add another $10 for the soundtrack and $75 isn’t looking so bad. Plus I get to support my favorite video game company ever, Nippon Ichi!

Okay, I’m going to stop right now, because I sort of sound like a commercial. But that’s what fanboys are for! N1 forever!

Asian Guys Doing Karaoke (Badly)

So while I was on Youtube looking for actual karaoke videos (like for me to sing along), I found these videos of two asian guys playing Karaoke Revolution. The guy on the left is pretty good, and the guy on the right is not quite as good…

There’s something to be said about hearing two Asian guys singing endless love to each other… And California Dreamin’ is just terrible! They seriously need to switch parts.

Anyway, these videos are the real reason why Youtube is freakin’ popular, so I thought I’d share the wealth:

Greatest Love of All

Endless Love

California Dreamin’

Believe it or not, these videos really make me want to run out and get Karaoke Revolution. They have “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”? I must get it.

Why David Letterman Is Clearly Superior to Jay Leno

I’d always known David Letterman was better than Jay Leno, but after he implemented a new feature I like to call the “Kevin Eubanks Laugh Clip,” David Letterman is the only late night talk show host (besides Conan ‘o Brien).

Basically, David tells a joke, then they show a clip of Kevin Eubanks laughing like a dumbass. Pure brilliance.

Pandora Internet Radio – Find Music You Like!

So I guess this has been around for a while, and I tried it a long time ago and forgot about it. Pandora is this online radio thing. You give it an artist or a song that you like, and Pandora creates a radio station that plays music it thinks you’ll like. For instance, I made a “Toasters” radio station, and it mostly plays ska. The idea is that you’ll find new music you’ll like and buy tons.

It seems like their algorithm is pretty complicated:

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or “genes” into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song – everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records – it’s about what each individual song sounds like.

It’s actually done a pretty good job of finding music I like. The Aquabats station plays a lot of music I already own and like. The other songs are okay too.

After playing with it for a few days, I have a few complaints. First, they repeat themselves way too much. I’ve heard The Toaster’s “Can I Get Another” like, four times already! Next, they only let you skip so many songs every hour. You can get around this by making more than one station and switching them (which will play a new song!).

Other than the weak variety of songs, Pandora seems to work pretty well. It’s at least nice to have free music that you’ll probably like streaming automatically.