Self Dysmorphic Disorder I am

Tom sez, “Our Stanford Creative Writing class wrote and illustrated a 224 page Graphic Novel this past quarter, and now it’s up on the web. The story concerns the phenomenon of acid attacks in Cambodia, especially against women. We made the Graphic Novel in 6 weeks, with a collaboration among 17 students in creative writing, art, and design.”

-taken from Boingboing.net-

I am always wondering why all of my studies’ assigment has never made me excited to do it. Sometimes I really want to create something interesting and enthralling that I can show everyone what I’ve learned and what I can create, but the moment has never come to me, at least until now. While I was reading Boingboing.net, I found this article about 17 students at Stanford University produced a graphic novel, I was wondering why I couldn’t do such thing. Well, enough whining, and for you, read Shake Girl please.

Yesterday I played chess with my senior at university around 5 pm. There was a heavy rain and for thousand times the thunderclaps uproared in the sky. Strong wind carried the rain to where the crowds were, and blew some plastic bags. As a result, some college students who were frightened of the lightning closed their ears and eyes. It was a mess in my university cafeteria. However, despite the rain, II exercised my brain in the middle of that mess. I exercised my brain using some old game which came from Indian or Persian civilization and each player has 1 king, 1 queen, a pair of rooks, knights, and bishops, and 8 pawns. This game is won by simply checkmate the opposite’s king. Yes, it’s chess. I thought the game could only kill my time. but yesterday I found wisdom on that game.
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Have you ever wondering how many times you user your finger to click? And what if suddenly the mouse you use doesn’t need to be clicked anymore? I’ve tried myself and it’s irritating enough to not clicking with my own finger to see what’s next on my computer’s screen. Want to give it a shot? click here then.

Woo-hoo… Attention to all manga readers, Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys will be coming soon. The teaser trailer displays the “Book of Prophecy” that plays the central role in the story filled with the song titled “20th Century Boys” from old school English rock band, T-Rex. The first film in the trilogy opens in Japan on August 30. Check out the trailer here. And there are the cast:

Creating a website like Digg was never a bad idea. Users put an interesting news, votes which news are the best and then let the all the other users see what people like the most. Wikipedia also creates the similar atmosphere for internet users: it works as an encyclopedia and get the content from any users online. So does Flickr , blogs, and tumblelogs, they all put links here, there, and everywhere on its sites. They’re all work together in order to allow all the information spread without borders. My question is: can we trust them? Let’s be honest, no matter how stylish the blogs, or how interesting the news were, the possibility of fraud must be exist.

There’s one case where Digg deleted account of one of its top users, Karim Yergaliyev, after found out the he was violating Digg’s terms of service when he promoted VoIP service JetNumbers in return for free calls. It was unpredictable, huh? Know or do not know, care or do not care, he had just navigating people’s perspective and It’s obviously an unethical way of promoting something. When I was reading Thomas L. Friedman’s The World is Flat, I found an interesting story about a young girl told him that Al Gore was a Jewish. And when he asked back about where did the girl know that Al Gore is a Jewish, she said she got all the information from the internet. That was a good example of how information can be turned upside down through the internet. . According to a study by Hitwise revealed that, at any moment, just 0.16 per cent of YouTube visitors are there to upload video. The same study found that just 0.2 per cent of visits to Flickr are to upload new photos. It turns out that user-generated content is scarcer than you think. Ask yourself this: If Digg has millions of users, how come stories make it onto the front page with just 85 diggs? This is what netmag calls the tyranny of the minority. To me, it’s the few control the many.

Yes, the few control the many.

Then how we supposed to act?

I have no comments, I just wanna say: Yeahhh… Yeahhh… God’s Online….!

One day one of my friend asked me, “If you’re stuck in elevator, which would you prefer: Stuck there with one comic in your bag or stuck there with three novels without pictures?”. “One comic book, I guess.”, I answered. “Why?”. I replied, “Well, I don’t know actually why I’d choose a comic book, but one thing I know for sure is I love the way a series of pictures tell me a story than the way words telling me a story.” Then my friend just raised one of his eyebrows and walk away.

Actually, the story above was not an interesting story to tell, but I just want to tell that in my opinion pictures let you ‘create’ the story itself. And, never bored me. Here I give examples of pictures that tell you more from my favourite comic writer, Derek Kirk Kim.

Couples of years ago people worry to leave their house because they worried about some important calls, but today that problem seems never happened. Today some of my friends want to have a long vacation, but they don’t want to leave their bedroom for a long time. I thought that was stupid until I found this.

Narcolepsy disorder is a neurological condition most characterized by Excessive Daytime Sleepiness (EDS). A narcoleptic will most likely experience disturbed nocturnal sleep, which is often confused with insomnia and disorder of REM or rapid eye movement sleep. A narcoleptic may also sleep at any random time. For example, the narcoleptic could sleep while he was snorkling or the other unpredictable moments. The person who has this kind of disorder is called Narcoleptic, and I think Monkey D. Luffy, main character of One Piece Manga, is one of them. Here’s some evidence:

First, when he fell asleep while he was eating. (It’s so funny though)

Second, when he was about to be hit by his grandfather, he fell asleep. (Actually they both fell asleep, and it’s really funny)

And the additional evidence that the Narcolepsy disorder runs in the family: Ace, Luffy’s brother, fell asleep while he was eating.

I bet there’ll be a scene when Dragon (Luffy’s father) fell asleep while eating or doing something else.

“Don’t Judge Book by Its Covers”.

So the old wisdom said. However, cover books has been made for us to be judged, naturally. Well, at least that theory works on me. Today I found an interesting article on Smashing Magazine with the title: Excellent Cover Books and Paperbacks, and I don’t know why, I was really amused to see all of them. It is said that an effective book cover manages to catch human’s eye and convey the idea behind the book on one single page. However, it’s getting even harder: to make a book really hard to forget, designers need to design the cover in a unique, creative and striking way. Here’s some of them:

Clockwork Orange

Exile and The Kingdom

Nikelleo Rellana’s Work

Soviet Science Fiction

St. Cyber

War Gaming

The Creative Process (I have this one, and it’s a good book!)

A General Theory of Love

One Red Paperclip