Tuesday, February 27, 2007

The Ultimate Guide of Finding your Anime.

Since there is nothing much going in my life and there ain't no new subjects to talk about for the Iraqi situation remained the same since Baghdad Security plan was declared. Same bombings and killings day after day which keeps ya wonder if they ever get sick or if one day all the blood shedding will stop. Back to topic and as the title implies I will give you readers hints about how to download Anime and more important how to find them. The following holds the steps I took until I could find every anime on the planet.

The first step was getting a fast internet connection, I mean who would want to download big files with a 2-3KBps bandwidth, not me.
Afterwards I began my search of anime and movies, where to find them, how to get them and calculate the time it takes to download them. First I went to General Forums, Forums that talks about everything, I started searching for my media and I got a lot of torrent references for movies, I wanted to try it so I downloaded BitTorrent, a torrent download manager that's so lame and weak. At first I thought this was my only choice of downloading torrents "Go with the flow!" thats what I said to my self, if everyone is using it why don't I use it too. Turned out I was one of the few that were using this stupid software, I found many other torrent download managers in a site refered to my by one of my friends, here is the link. Anyways, I've downloaded the Bit Comet download manager and my god was I amazed. Instead of the small black download window that Bit Torrent had I now have a fully featured interface, even a web browser embedded in it.

At that time I was in heaven or at least I thought I was, I searched the forums for torrents download the torrent files and then download the whole file. Unfortunately I was wrong, it turned out to be that most of these torrents were considered dead since nobody is uploading them any more. I did not know anything about seeders and leachers and how to tell if there is anybody uploading the file so at that time I thought that I have the same problem I had with other file sharing programs like Emule, they were slow and stop downloading after a while.

I had to search for another source, I started searching for anime forums that give ya a DDL link to animes. Fortunately I found them, unfortunately though they used file sharing sites, like Rapid Share and Mega Upload which are slow and sometimes your download stop in the middle and since they don't support resume only to those who pay, the only way to complete your download is to start it from the beginning. Those were the dark days of my life, I still remember staying up all night waiting for the download to finish and hoping it wont stop 2MBs before it ends.

Using this method I've downloaded a couple of movies like "Street Fighter Alpha" and "Detective Conan Movie 9", all were in real media format and showed a really poor video and/or audio quality. Being all depressed and all I thought I should give the torrents another shot so I re-installed Bit Comet. When the application started I got a message asking me to upgrade to the latest version of Bit Comet and so I did. The new program window almost looked the same except for a little small list on the left side of the window that made me jump up and down on my chair with tears of joy streaming down my eyes. The list held links to some of the top torrent sites in the world, web sites like Demonoid, Torrent Reactor, Torrent Spy, Torrent Portal and W Torrent.

A new era has started, I didn't waste any second, in a couple of minutes I began downloading and anime that is called Ayakashi. It was fast and it took only a couple of hours. When I started watching it, at the very beginning they referred to a web page something called Anime Suki. I didn't bother since I now know where to get my merchandise from for free. I've reached episode 3 of the show and to my surprise as there wasn't any episode 4 in the torrent sharing site. I've waited for two weeks and still there wasn't no torrents for me, I've searched all the other sites that were listed in Bit Comet and couldn't find it. I remembered the URL in the show so I decided to check it out and see what is it. OMG, these were the words that came up to my mind as the page started showing, I was in heaven, at that time I really was, no words could describe my feelings, I found my lost episodes of Ayakashi and started to download them one by one. It was the worst anime I ever saw, the first episodes were great, the last eight were a disaster. I said to my self "Whatever, just get another one", "Why don't I search for Trigun", So I did.

Another disappointment, it turns out that due to federal laws and to be kid of legit, the site does not sub or distribute any anime that has been licensed in the US. In other words "If you are looking for good animes don't enter the site". Hmmm, could this be the end of my journey, only average rated material. I don't think so. This site has opened my eyes, it made me see through a new dimension, the dimension of fan subs and groups. So the hunting began.

I've typed Trigun on every single search bar in the WWW until I found the site of my dreams the ultimate one. ANIME DB .

What this anime encyclopedia gives you is nothing compared with somewhat similar sited like ANN. Instead of just news and trivia about animes, it also have a data base for free fan subs. The data base contains IRC channels, URLs and information regarding every fan sub on the planet. If you search about an anime you get the fan subs that are subbing the anime and a link to their IRC channel and/or a link to their web page.

Now one may wonder which fan sub do I get my download from? My answer to that question is simple, either you find a new fan sub that has just started or get your files from a group that's not subbing many animes. Why? So you won't wait for a long time till they finish it.

A risk involved in each type of fan subs mentioned above. For the first type "the new ones" there is a risk that the group might stop subbing due to financial issues. As for the "groups with minimum active projects", some times they start with few projects and in the middle of the road they end up subbing a wide number of shows, a number that they could not handle so they might drop the show you're watching or it might even get stalled.

Now that you know how to find your anime, I leave you to your search and may god bless your souls.


Friday, February 23, 2007

The greatest game thats never been created.

Shenmue 3, the sequel to the amazing shenmue saga. The one that over 40000 people around the globe are waiting for. Its been over 4 ears since Sega released Shenmue 2 which was amzing in every way you look at it, no matter what they say about its been over rated and that Shenmue fans would just forget about a sequel, I've played Shenmue 2 like 10 times and would still play it. For all Shenmue fans out there please join the petition and let your voice be heard as thousands around the globe posting their signatures demanding an end to the Shenmue saga from Yu Suzuki.
To add your signature click here.

And here is a video of a Shenmue Online trailer submitted by a fan as Shenmue 3. Enjoy and remember to spread the word.

You're the master.

Hey guys I'm back with something really cool check it out. Click here and type whatever you want in the command bar and the guy will do it no matter what.
Actually I'm still amazed about how he could put it all together, the endless possibilities of the human actions and orders combined together. Wow, it's amazing I'm none of you viewers have ever thought about this especially the geeks reading this post. Enough talking now, you have a human being to command.
Almost forgot, Firefox worshipers and Microsoft haters you have to use Internet Explorer to view this coz it uses an activeX control that only works with Internet Explorer 6, I know it sucks X(.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

The truth and the Myth

For the last couple of days all the news were about that Iraq girl called Sabrine al- Janabi who, as she proclaim, was raped by the police or the national guards, not quite sure.

Is it true, the Iraqi government and the US say its not. Still some political and Islamic parties say its true, happened and there is nothing to prove the opposite. This matter has become the main topic in all Iraqis meetings, people in the street, clubs, apartments, night clubs and mosques are talking about it and they forgot all about the main issues that they should be discussing, as if Sabrin's case is the key to save Iraq from its misery. We all know the role of Al-jazeera news channel and the methods its been using ever since the Iraqi government closed its main office in baghdad, I'm not going to talk about that since its already known by many around the globe but the question is why now? After things got, well some what, better in baghdad. Also the use of the family name and not the middle name as if to tell all Janabis to rebel against the government and thus all Sunnis should follow their lead.

I saw the two interviews with the girl and I don't know why but I didn't believe a single word she said. Maybe for a couple of reasons, first of all I haven't seen any sorrow in her eyes as if she wanted to be raped or she was merely lying, my second reason was that , in my point of view, no woman would do an interview after what being raped wearing makeup and jewelry, I don't believe any body even with an average IQ will believe that this girl was raped just a couple of days before doing this interview. Last but not least, talking about these kind of issues in public, to Iraqis, is considered dishonoring and kept secret or reported to police using nick names because these kind of stuff are considered disgraceful to the whole family. Sabrin used her family name to introduce her self, plus most girls in Iraq won't do interviews and similar stuff without consulting their families and in Sabrin's case I don't think any Iraqi family would accept to do an interview and reveal to the whole world that their daughter was raped, in Iraqi community these things are better kept secret than go public. No Iraqi woman under the circumstances- under any circumstances- would publicly, falsely claim she was raped. There are just too many risks. There is the risk of being shunned socially. There is the risk of beginning an endless chain of retaliations and revenge killings between tribes. There is the shame of coming out publicly and talking about a subject so taboo, she and her husband are not only risking their reputations by telling this story, they are risking their lives.

Now even if the story is true, why turn it into a Sunni-Shia debacle, it doesnt matter if Sabrin was Sunni or Shia even if she was Kurdish or Christian, she's an Iraqi so this issue should matter all Iraqis and not only the Sunnis or Shia. As a matter of fact, the Janabi tribe is a huge one in Iraq and consists of Sunnis and Shias.

Stop giving small things more than they deserve. Its better to think about how to work together and build our country. How to get rid of all those terrorists that are swarming our country so our children and grand children will have better lives. Stop thinking for today only work for tomorrow coz we live the future not the past, and for the present, well it became history just as I'm writing those words.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Star wars asciimation..


Here is something I found while surfing the net, its really fun and entertaining. All you need to do is a couple of very simple steps:
  • Go to Start menu
  • Click Run
  • Type the following command: telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl
  • Click OK
Wow the fun begins, now watch it till it finish and in the mean time I'll browse the net some more.

As this flick has no sound, I watched it while playing the Star Wars theme in my music player, unfortunately I couldn't find a music sharing site to upload it and embed it in this post. If you know of such a site let me know it should work similar to youtube.

Prince of Persia hits the big screen.


The Highly acclaimed video game, thats been on the top since 1989 will hit the big screen next year. This big news was announced by Jerry Bruckheimer as he would be a co-producer in this movie. The movie's full name is "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time" which is the same name as the first game in the video game trilogy and is based on the same story. The cast haven't been assembled yet, only that the Prince would be played by a guy named Charlie Clausen Haven't seen his work before or any of his movies or series, don't even know what he looks like. More info about this movie will come as I will track it till it hits the screen.

p.s. This info might change in the future since the movie is just announced and hopefully we'll see it next year.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Vaio VGN-UX390N micro PC, The future is now.


Sony Introduced this little piece of art quite a while ago still I think that many people don't know about it. The VGN-UX390N is part of the Sony Vaio UX series which SONY's been releasing for quite some time now, this little thingy that I'm gonna talk about rules over them all.

Specs:
  • Processor: Intel® Core™ Solo Processor U1500 (1.33GHz , 2MB L2 Cache)
  • Operating System: Windows® Vista™ Business
  • Front Side Bus Speed: 533MHz
  • Chipset: Intel® 945GMS
  • Integrated Wireless LAN: Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (802.11a/b/g)
  • Integrated Wireless WAN: Integrated Wireless Wide Area Network (WAN) accessing Cingular Wireless National EDGE Network with SmartWi™ technology
  • Bluetooth® Technology: Integrated Bluetooth® Technology
  • LCD: 4.5” Wide SVGA LCD, Touch Screen (1024x600)
  • Flash Memory: Capacity: 32GB, Interface: PATA, Format: NAND
  • Memory: 1GB PC2-3200 400MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Graphics: Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with 224MB dynamically allocated shared RAM/Video memory. Chipset: Intel® 945GMS
  • Ethernet: Fast Ethernet 10BASE-T/100BASE-TX (RJ-45)
  • Audio: Sound System --- Windows® sound system compatible with Built-in monaural speakers
  • Audio Interface: Microphone jack, Headphone jack
  • Media Slot: Memory Stick® Media Slot --- 1 - Supports Optional Memory Stick DUO™ media with MagicGate® functionality
  • Communication: 2 Built-in Cameras (front: 0.3M pixels and back: 1.3M pixels)
    Built-in microphone

As you can see in the picture above, the VGN-UX390N is a small portable computer that fits into the smallest pocket. Notice the black square thingy on the right side of the device, its the touch-pad or just the thumb-pad which is very sensitive and can sense the smallest movement. Facing this on the left side of the device is the left and right mouse buttons aligned vertically so I guess they should call it the up and down buttons instead. Also you get two zooming buttons which enables ya to zoom in and out to view the smallest text on the screen.
Now for the fun part, I mean what is a computer without games?! Nothing is the answer. The great lack of this device is the intel GMA 950 graphics card, I know that because I have this damn card built into my laptop, it doesn't support shading 1.1, thus most of the new games wont work with it, Oh Oblivion when do I play thou, but still you can play games like Quake 3 on it as I've read in an article in Stuff Magazine, why 3? well they've tried 4 and they say it runs slow.

Wanna piece of this beauty, unfortunately it still haven't reached the ME but hopefully soon. In USA it cost about 2500$ and ships with a genuine Windows Vista Business Version. Thank god we can dream.

Its ALIVE!!!!!!!!

After a year of researching, hard work, playing XBOX games and watching tons of movies without mentioning the nightmares I had every night, my project finally works. Yes, now I can sleep with my eyes wide shut, hope so, and just get a look ahead of the things to come. Well there is still some work to be done to get rid of some noise in the signal but thats nothing compared to the things I've been through. Now I can see the world in a different color instead of GREEN which is the oscilloscope screen color that I've been seeing for quite a while now.

Damn it, still got a thesis to write but still I don't care.

New Eb club site

I thought I should talk about this since there are so many people that don't know how to work with it, actually the haven't read the thread published in the ebooks club site regarding this topic. First of all lets see how the main page of the site looks.




Looks nice huh, well first thin you need to sign in to your account using the old ebooks club account or just register for free. After that you have two options just like in the old site, eather browse through the ebooks or search for a book. Browsing is straight forward, searching is kinda tricky if ya heven't read the thread in Ebooks club, lets see how the search page look like:



As you can see there are two search bars, one is kinda useless which is the Google search bar. If you want summaries and book info write your query in the Google search bar, but if your like me and want to find a link to download your favorite books put your search query in the Item Search bar. Now lets make a search for a book and see where the download link to that book is.

The next part is kinda easy and doesn't need too much explanation. Still lets see how an ebook page look like:
Yeah its Abarat, one of my favorite books by Clive Barker and yes I know he's gay, well lets get back to business. In every Ebook page you have four tabs: Amazon Info, Descriptions, Links and Comments. Only the last two are important and contain the download links. As an example, the links page to this book is empty and the link to download the book is found in the comments section.

This was a quick guide to get ya started. Now I shall review the new site.
Whats new in the site, nothing. After you get pass the organize tabs and new icons, there is nothing new to the site. Actually some of the features that were found in the old site are missing, like the rapidshare and mihd search. Everything else look the same but there is still hope of improvement.

Hopefully in the future we could get lots of mihd.net links for downloads and hopefully the site administrators will be checking the site every once in a while to remove all the dead links that were spamming the old site.
As mentioned in previous posts, No links will be published in posts. To go to Gigapedia, either go to the old Ebooks club site where you can find the link in the main page or click on the Gigapedia link located on the right side of my page.

If you think theres something new in Gigapedia that I might have missed please tell me so we can spread the word.



Sunday, February 18, 2007

Death Note

This post is dedicated to review Death Note anime, Since I've spent the last few days at home, there isn't much to talk about, I thought that I should give a review to this anime which I have become one of its fans. The series start in a small Japanese town where lives the main character "Yagami Light" a smart high-school student who by accident finds a note book that has fallen from the death gods "Shinigami" realm which is the death note. The note has instructions of use written in it stating that if a name of a person is written in the death note with that person's image in the mind of the writer, the person days after 45 seconds. After reading that Yagami thinks that its some kind of chain letter but out of boredom he takes the note with him home just to give it a try. Whats written in the note turns out to be true and soon afterwards the original owner of the death note appears, his name is "Ryuk" and hes a death god. With the aid of Ryuk and the death note in his hand Yagami tries to change the world by killing all criminals and low lives out there and bring justice and peace to the world, little did he know that on the other side of justice there is a brilliant detective named "L" who is counting Yagami's moves and trying to catch Kira, which is Yagami's nick name given to him by the public. How would Yagami act to such threats and what are L's methods of discovering the real Kira, watch this must see anime to find out you can download the episodes from various fansub sites which can be found in the anime database site located in the blog links. I'm not going to post any download links here if thats what your asking.

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Genere: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Police, Psychological, Shounen, Supernatural
Age Rating: Teens

The series have reached episode 18, Watch now to catch up.
Episodes released in Japan every Wednesday.
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P.s: If you think this post contains spoilers please tell me where the spoiler is to remove it from the post.

Friday, February 16, 2007

A red Light in the afternoon

I know I should be writing my thesis instead of blogging but I just don't feel like it. Don't know if I would finish my project or not, all I know that I should not quit because I'm no quitter.

Any way, I think that there is to much to say about the Iraqis situation outside their country, especially in Jordan.

Today I was in a cab going to place called Swaifiah, we stopped for a red light and a newspaper seller came out of no where begging us to buy one. I knew that he was an Iraqi immigrant from his accent, seeing the condition he was in and the way he begged for anybody to buy something from him made me shiver. I had to give him some money, after all we Iraqis should help each other till the black clouds surrounding our country pass. I gave him some money and told him that it was a gift and I don't need a news paper. The guy looked at me and threw back my money which was more than enough to buy a dozen of his newspapers, he told me that he's no begger and that I should keep my money if I don't want to buy something.

In Iraq this kind of thing almost never happens, it never happened to me, and to see the guys shape as if he hadn't eaten anything for days and the condition of his clothes and still having this kind of pride after all the things we've been through and knowing that things might get even worse and still keeping our pride and dignity made me proud that I'm an Iraqi citizen, I wanted to go out in the street and shout it out loud. I got hold of my self and kept quite knowing that doing such things would get me into more troubles that I already have.

Some might wonder why a guy would leave his own country and wander in a foreign city selling papers, gum and cigarettes. My answer to you is "Watch the friggin news!!!".

After all that being said I should go back to my work and I want you guys to pray for all of us that maybe one day we'll get back home.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

A small adventure with a very high price.

Last week I went to college to work on my graduation project. I arrived to college at 10 am and worked on my project till 3:30 pm. I was exhausted and it started to rain outside so I had to hurry to the parking lot to catch a bus ride home. I picked up my stuff, got out of the building and ran to the bus stop. Many of you would thing that is easy and the bus stop should be next to the building that I was in, well your wrong the bus stop is at the other end of the university, on another hill or maybe a mountain coz its sure is a long way up. I had to run for about a 1 and a half kilometers thats about 1 mile in the rain. Believe me its not like dancing going up and down climbing hills and going down stairs and up again.
It took me 20 minutes to get there, I ran out of energy and just wanted to go home, so I caught the first bus I saw sat in the back took my phone out of my pocket attached my ear piece to it and started to listen to music as I closed my eyes just to relax and save my last drop of energy till I get home. Everything seemed alright back then, "Don't worry the driver will get you home in no time" I said to my self, little that I know I was not going home. I took the wrong bus. I knew that the hard way, just as I opened my eyes to see where were going I saw the sign that shocked me. "Al Zarqa welcomes you" Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. For you who are not familiar with Jordan, Al-Zarqa is considered like another state, I live in Amman which is 20 miles (about 30 kilometers) east of Zarqa. I could not ask the bus to stop coz we were in the middle of nowhere, I just sat in my seat waiting for the hell ride to end so I could catch a cab back home. The Driver stopped at the far end of the city, I asked him if he's going back, he said that he normally would but he has to go to a mechanic to fix something in the gear box and he has to go fix it now.
Well it was my fault, right?!, I should have read the sign on the bus which read that the bus goes only to Zarqa. As I got out of the bus I turned and look at it one last time, there I was literally shocked, there was no sign on the bus, nothing that said where the bus is headed and as I crossed the road to catch a ride back I gazed at the other side of the bus and again nothing. How to tell where each bus is going and how students know which bus to take this still puzzles me. Well after that wild adventure I learned one important thing, always ask the bus driver where he's going. I've done that the very next day, as I reached the bus stop I went to the first bus I saw, stood in front of the bus door and asked the driver gently "Sir, where is this bus going?", the driver looked at me from head to toe and said "It's going to Amman, Where else?!!!".

Yeah right, where else?!!!

Why at worlds end...

Well, isn't it obvious that we really are at worlds end. Many threats surrounds us nowadays and we all just sitting here waiting for our fate. Just what are we waiting for thats the question that been bothering me for quite a while now. Did we gave up hope? Are we waiting for someone or something to take us out of our misery? or are we just satisfied to were our action has taken us? and is there a way to go back and fix the mistakes that we've made? ,put a big question mark after the last one, too many question and no one got the answer to any one of them.

These days we lie to each other, talking behind our best friends back, steal for fun, and sometimes even kill for fun. What are we trying to achieve? and what are we getting from doing all that, the answer is NOTHING.

How to make this world a better place to live? anybody got an idea?

Now why am I asking too many questions that I know no one can answer and moreover why am I doing it on my first post? I really donno, maybe I got bored of this life and maybe I got sick of hearing the same bullshit everyday, the excuses and justification of wars, pollution, poverty and diseases that surround us. The ones that we hear about in the news and never raise our voice against it. maybe thats why, or maybe I just have a really bad fever and needs to go to sleep right now.... well think I should GO to bed, its 4 am damn it.