Auto Parts for Brains

Every now and then you stumble upon someone who just wow’s you.  That is how I felt this morning when I saw a gallery of Patrick Brown’s artwork on Kontraband.  Patrick Brown is a 23 year old graphic artist from Australia who draws really awesome representations of popular characters in TV movie and video games.  He looks like a really avid fan of Grand Theft Auto as shown in his work. 

I think his work is worth checking out. I like how his drawings have some sort of identity in them.  I wish I can make my sketches as good as his.

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This week we just had the newest trailer from Warner Brothers on the latest Harry Potter Movie.  We at Auto Parts for Brains are just big fans of the books and are excited to see how the best chapter of the series (with the Goblet of Fire), look like in the big screen.  This chapter in the seven books is really very interesting to see because it is in this chapter that we learn more of Severus Snape (he is the Half-Blood Prince), we see Dumbledore die and of course that we see the most controversial betrayal in Harry Potter-dom.  This book introduces a lot of facts that serve as the foundation of the last installment of the series.  In this book we get to see Voldemort rise to power with his cohorts, an we get to know what horcruxes are.  Most importantly for us, this book make the revelation in the final book about Snape, more meaningful- that he loved Harry’s mom so much that he betrayed Voldemort and swore to protect Harry Potter at all cost.  That fact in the last book really was a big “I have to stop reading to take this in” moment.  Imagine Snape, protecting Harry in all those year in Hogwarts.

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I am pretty sure that most if not every Marvel film geek has seen the first trailer for Edward Norton’s play of the Incredible Hulk.  The trailer does succeed in instilling in us the excitement of another Marvel movie.  It promises a totally revamped Hulk movie and introduced us to some facts like who the opponent will be and how Ed Norton will look like as Bruce Banner.  After watching it, it left some questions unanswered.

With today’s release of the second, and longer Incredible Hulk trailer, some questions are answered and light is shed on a few facts.  Among these are the following:

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In his book “Permission Marketing”, author Seth Godin has described just how saturated the market is today with advertisements and ads that are all competing and vying for people’s attention.  The so-called “internet age” just made this matter worse, by providing even to the common man, an easy means to subject a massive number of people to unsolicited promotions.  In his book, Godin, taught the principle of opt-in marketing where people are given the agency to choose which ads they want.

In the real world, however, conventional obtrusive marketing still exists.  And much as a lot of people claim that it is dead, the advertising industry is thriving, maxing out its saturation point.  In a market that is already filled to the brim with messages being shouted to the consumer’s ears everywhere, it is the task of today’s ad companies to come up with louder, and more provocative methods of conveying ideas.  As a result, ads today are funnier, more controversial and more out of the beaten path.

Here are twenty (and more) of the print ads that are made out of the country which I think are just amazing at doing what they are made to accomplish.  Leave a mark (good or bad) to the unsuspecting consumer.  A picture truly paints a thousand words.

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With the start of the new year, it has become a sort of habit to look back on the past twelve months and look forward with excitement to the coming days and weeks.  The last few days have been that of making assessments and predictions of what the year 2008 holds for us.

The advent of the new year has made me think of the things I hope to achieve as well as a lot of the things I wish for.  A chat with friends a few days ago has brought me to asking them about their wish lists for the year.  It did not come as a surprise, though, when they gave me a handful of devices for their wish list, instead of, say,a new president of their choice or “world peace”.

Their responses have brought me to think of my own wish list.  On my search for that as well as with a few of my friend’s response, here are a list of gadgets that we hope will be available by this year.  These gadgets have been the subject of the hottest rumors last year.

After finding out that no Google phone is yet on the wait list, here are a few of the things that might be available by this year.

Apple Macbook Nano/ Tablet

Since mid last year, Apple fans have given rise to a rumor of a smaller more mobile version of its Macbooks.  With the company’s great strides in touch and multi touch technologies, it is not surprising it they will indeed come up with something as cool as a Macbook Nano.

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I love pictures a lot.  A picture has the ability to convey messages that would otherwise be hard or impossible to express.  Sometimes, a single picture can contain a story that could fill a book.

Moving and still images have taken the internet by storm.  From video and photo sharing sites, to improved tools for image manipulation and creation, everyone has turned their attention to this old medium giving it new life.

As an avid web hopper, I cannot survive without a good dose of images to make me laugh, cry or ponder.  Below are a compilation of some of the year’s strongest and most controversial photos in the net.  These images have graced the pages of many social bookmarking sites, and this is merely an attempt to give credit and recognition to those who have labored to make them available to our eyes.  I am tempted to call them The Net’s Best, but wouldn’t want to generalize so, instead, here’s Auto Parts for Brains‘ Best:

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It has been a while since the last time I have been to Netscape.  One can then, imagine the surprise I had, when I have found out that the long promised move to its new name has already taken place. 

Being a loyal patron of Netscape (Navigator is now my default browser and my AIM is open 18 hours a day) I cannot wait to explore the new site.  My first visit to Propeller did not show any new thing from my last Netscape visits.  “I guess they just moved the whole site to the new domain name” I said to myself.  When some of my friends (loyal Diggers) went on attack mode on the site, I know I had to give them something cool. I did some search and found a lot of stories on Propeller.  I saw feature requests, how to’s on using the site and some promise of change in the future but felt these are not enough. 

That is why on my third visit to the new site, I began digging hard to find chunks of information to show my friends.  The following are some of the information I have discovered.  I am pretty sure many of you know them already.  Still there may still be surprises ahead, so read on.

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Ok, I was blog hopping this morning when I chanced upon a contest by Site Fever. They placed a whopping 1 TB Western Digital Mybook Hard drive up for grabs to anyone who blogs about how they would use such massive storage.

Honestly, I don’t easily get excited by contests like this, having had no experience of winning anything as far as I can remember. Still, looking at that 1 Tb of empty space did make me drool and fantasize about what I’d do if someone gives me such an indulging device.

So, win or no win, here goes my 1 Tb plan: Read the rest of this entry »

Summer is almost coming to an end, and I cannot help but feel that the season just passed me by. I did get a lot of opportunities to spend summer outdoors, but some of my more memorable times were spent inside my home in front of my computer. Modern technology and the internet has really made the world smaller for all of us. With my PC, I can get to many places and be up to date with information I wouldn’t have access to otherwise.

With this information overload, the net surfer must learn to identify where to look for the more useful or interesting ones against all the clutter.

Here are a few of the stuff I have seen today that kind of made my day a little more fun. I hope that the following will also help you have a great start and minimize the time you’d have to spend surfing. Read on. Read the rest of this entry »

I have seen this list from the Simpsons episode where Homer was about to die after eating a poisonous sushi delicacy made up of Blowfish.  (originally aired January 24, 1991)  He was given 24 hours to live by the doctor, made this list and went about to try to accomplish them.

Homer Simpson is perhaps one of the most enduring cartoon characters of all time.  Maybe it is because, any person can, one way or the other, relate to him.  Attempts to duplicate him and his dysfunctional family, have been attempted lots of times, but still,  I think nothing comes close to him.  (Yup not even Family Guy)  He remains the classic epitome of our imperfections, a symbol of man’s humanity.

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