Hung Truong: The Blog!

New Mexico Snow Rescue!

It’s been snowing a hella lot these past few days in New Mexico. On the worst day, we got like, more than 10 inches of snow! My brother was at work and couldn’t get his Miata out of the snow, so we had to go rescue him.

I recently got a Macbook as a graduation gift, so I decided to take some video and make a movie. I present to you, NM Snow Rescue!

I Purchased A Playstation 3 on Amazon.com: Should I Keep It?

On Friday, Amazon.com had some kind of promotion where they picked a random time to take orders for the Wii and Playstation 3. I was around when the Playstation 3 went live on the site, so I picked up a 20gb PS3. I should be getting it some time next week.

The question now is whether I should keep it to play, or resell it on ebay. The ebay prices have been falling steadily, and I have a feeling it might be a risk to put it on ebay. On the other hand, I don’t really want the 20gb PS3 right now. I’d be pretty happy with a Wii, though.

If I think I can make a profit, I’ll probably just put the thing on ebay. I don’t think it’s too readily available yet, and if I can make a quick $100 profit from taking a box to the post office, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me…

Nintendo DS – Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Impressions

I recently went on a video game buying splurge, since I finished school and I figured I’d have more time to devote to video games. One of the games I bought was “Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.” It was released in limited quantities a while back, gained a cult following, and was subsequently re-released.

Phoenix Wright is a lawyer game. Yeah, that’s right, you play as a defense lawyer. Your job is to prove that your client is innocent, even when the evidence is strongly against him. While this might not sound like the coolest idea for a game, it actually works pretty well. You listen to witnesses give their testimony and try to find inconsistencies. If they lie, you press them until they admit to it, or present evidence that proves that they’re lying. It’s pretty fun.

Right now I’m on the third case, where I need to prove that an action star is innocent of murder. The characters are all fairly amusing, and the story isn’t bad either. Apparently, the Phoenix Wright 2 preorder is underway. You can get a finger stylus to point at liars if you preorder.

John Hodgman Reads “The Areas of My Expertise” Outloud For Free!

So John Hodgman is quickly becoming a major internet sensation. He’s the guy who plays the PC in those “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ads. He also makes me like the PC enough to keep using it.

He recently wrote a book entitled “The Areas of My Expertise” which makes a lot of nonsense. Actually, the full title is “An Almanac of Complete World Knowledge Compiled With Instructive Annotation And Arranged In Useful Order By Me, John Hodgman A Professional Writer, In The Areas of My Expertise.” It’s pretty funny, though. Actually, I’ve never read the book. Instead, I’m listening to John Hodgman read it to me, for free! The book is available free (for now) on iTunes.

Right now, he’s reading the table of contents. Apparently the book lasts hundreds of CDs, so the table of contents is really long. He’s joined by Johnathan Coulton, who sings the theme song for the audio book. Apparently, pairs of Johns are usually very entertaining.

Since this is an “annotated edition,” I’d actually think about buying the book (and reading it)! The book’s only like, $11 on amazon.com, so it wouldn’t be too difficult of a decision.

Classic Hung Truong Movie: Hellevator

Back when I was a media arts major (in 2002), I made a movie called “Hellevator.” It’s probably the crowning achievement of my career at UNM. I figured I should put it online for posterity, and include comments before I forget about what happened.

[flv:/blog/video/Hellevator.flv 480 360]

I skipped putting it on youtube, since the compression sucks. Here’s some of my director’s commentary:

The movie was actually based on a two-minute play that I and Brian Hesch wrote during drama class in high school. The idea was that the two characters would enter the elevator and then just “fall” for the entire thing. Needless to say, the script was reworked to make it more interesting.