Hung Truong: The Blog!

Nintendo Delivers on Lime Green DS!

More than two years ago, I wrote a post about how I wished that Nintendo would release a lime green ds. Strangely, this post has received a lot of notoriety on videogame sites since some people couldn’t understand that I just photoshopped a DS to look lime green and pined for a real one. At the time of this writing, that post is #1 on a Google search for “green ds” and probably a few other similar searches. Probably not for long, though.

I just learned today that Nintendo really is releasing a lime green DS, but it’s in Europe only. Hopefully I’ll be able to find some way to snag a lime green DS. Maybe through ebay or something.

This Week in Hung Truong: 5-25-08

So quite a lot has happened this week. So much, in fact, that I haven’t really had much time to do things like write about what I’ve been doing in my blog. So here’s a bulleted list of things I did this past week. Perhaps I’ll write posts about them too, if I find some time:

• Bought a PS3 and Grand Theft Auto 4.
• Started a new company with some friends (part of my internship). This should probably require a whole new post or something.
• Watched Snakes on a Plane.
• Got Wii Fit.
• Started moving some of my websites to a new server. Currently trying to figure out how to run rails using Mongrel.
• Currently fighting off an ant infestation.
• Etc.

So, yeah. If I have time maybe I’ll write some more about these things. Anyone have a preference to what they want to read about?

EDIT: I also just realized that I also:

• Am growing a beard.
• Did some taste experiments on a Faygo flavor known as “Rock & Rye.”

There’s probably even more.

Nacho Libre: Movie Review

I borrowed and watched the Jack Black movie from a few years ago, Nacho Libre, last night. I’m not a huge fan of Jack Black but I guess I do find him generally funny. I figured this movie would be pretty good since the Napoleon Dynamite guy directed it and Jack Black stars in it.

I have to agree with Ebert. The movie just isn’t that great. Or rather, it doesn’t reach the potential that it obviously has. There are so many untied loose ends that at the end of the movie, I was really sure there had to be more.

What about the skinny guy’s relationship with the fat woman? What about the skinny guy’s love of science, and not God? Wasn’t Nacho supposed to convert him or something? And wasn’t Nacho going to get married to the hot nun (who I thought was Penelope Cruz through the entire movie but is apparently a different actress)?

None of the characters were really fleshed out that well. The hot nun was just sort of a token hot nun who just looked confused for most of the movie. The skinny dude sort of became a companion to Nacho, but his character really didn’t go anywhere either.

I think part of the problem is that you lose a lot of Jack Black’s funniness when he has to use a fake Mexican accent. Instead of talking like Jack Black, he just does a lame impression of a Mexican dude. It’s like they put really heavy ankle weights on Jack Black’s comedy ankles and they never took them off! Except maybe for the scene where he sang. That was pretty funny.

Also, the movie was a “Nickelodeon” production, which explained the lack of cruder humor and the abundance of fart noises.

PowerSet: Good For Searching Wikipedia!

There have been quite a few blogs today comparing the newly released preview of PowerSet (an alternative search engine) Vs. Google. The line we’ve been reading for a while now is that PowerSet uses NLP (Natural Language Processing) to figure out what you want to find, not just stuff that sort of has what you want to find in its body text.

Previous comparisons have been throwing out things like “what does an orange taste like?” or “what is the capital of New Zealand?” No one asks those kinds of questions. Therefore, I will just search “who is Hung Truong?” since I’m sure lots of people want to know. It’s probably the most popular search term of all time, really.

The Google search does pretty well. 6/10 links on the first page are actually attributable to me, Hung Truong (the most popular Hung Truong on Google today!).

Hmmm… Powerset just returns a bunch of stuff from Wikipedia. Unfortunately, I don’t have a Wikipedia article (yet)! 0/10 of the first 10 results are actually about me.

So there you have it. Google beats PowerSet because PowerSet is only good for searching Wikipedia at the moment. Usually, when I want to search Wikipedia, I use Wikipedia.

The Meijer-Garfield Connection

Meijer, the grocery store I usually frequent, uses Garfield the cat as a sort of product mascot. I hate Garfield. Garfield is probably the least funny comic in existence. The comics are so bad that removing all traces of Garfield makes them funnier.

So it’s strange to see Meijer use such a hated cat as a mascot. Personally, seeing Garfield on a product makes me want to buy it less. I used to like Garfield when I was a kid. It’s probably because back then, my brain wasn’t fully developed or something.

Anyway, I bought some Meijer String Cheese today. It’s pretty good, despite the existence of Garfield as a mascot.