Oh boy oh boy oh boy. Jet Li’s last martial arts film is going to be Fearless, and it looks like it’s going to be one awesome wushu packed movie. I am so glad that he is making his farewell with a throwback to his older style movies (ie. Once Upon a Time in China), and not with such stinkers as Cradle 2 the Grave.

Fearless portrays the story of Fok Yuen-gap, the master of the fictional student in Fist of Legend (and Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury). Fok Yuen-gap is best known for taking on and defeating foreign fighters that challenged him in a series of competitions that took place in China. I expect that Fearless will have some great fight scenes with all the dramatic flare that Jet Li can muster. No kooky R&B inspired scenes or frivolous gun play. This, my friends, is going to be old school Wong Fei Hong style at its best.

At least, I hope it will, or it’s going to be a sad sad farewell for Jet. To this day, I believe that he is the most graceful fighter on the big screen. His extremely dedicated experience in Wushu has brought out some of the best cinematic martial arts fight scenes of all time. He is, in fact, the reason I became interested in Wushu in the first place, and he is in one of my earliest childhood film memories.

So, here’s to you Jet Li. Thank you for your body of exhilarating work. I only wish you wouldn’t leave the silver screen just yet.

Rumors are flying around that Opera will be acquired by Google. This, in a nutshell, would make me a very happy techie indeed. I love Opera. There is no doubt in my mind that it is the best browser I have ever used. Firefox comes in second place, but I feel that Opera is a more finished product than Firefox.

That, and I just find it snappier.

But Opera users are still in the minority, which isn’t always a bad thing. But, having an industry giant like Google backing Opera will guarantee even more benefits. I would love to see more integration of Google features into Opera, which it currently lacks (besides the ubiqutous “g mysearchterm” in the URL bar).

A marriage between Google and Opera would also be a great way for skeptical users to try out Opera. Heck, it’ll be the ultimate branding experience for Opera. Finally, I won’t have to convince my friends that Opera is the best browser. Period.

It is indeed a sad week for bloggers, especially student bloggers. A dental student at the Marquette University Dental School has been charged for saying “crude, demeaning and unprofessional remarks”, and has been sentenced to probation on the condition that he plead guilty. Oh, and no blogging either.

This is just outrageous. His blog is pretty innocuous, and talks about normal student subjects. The most offensive remarks are about a professor who he insulted by saying he wasn’t fit to teach. I don’t know about you, but doesn’t free speech mean anything anymore? He didn’t even mention the professor’s name, which clears him of potential libel charges.

I suggest all student bloggers at universities be on caution now. A precendence has been set–Marquette is responding way to harshly against his blog posts. They do have all the right to punish him, but it’s not really worth it. From the comments about what he said, he is definitely not a rabble-rouser. This incident is well covered by other blogs.

Rumor has it that Google Calendar will be debuting tomorrow. I really hope this is true. I’ve been waiting for something like this to dump all my important dates to. Plus, if they incorporate RSS feeds, I will be a really happy guy. I could see a million uses for this: flight notifications, anniversary notifications, integrated to-do lists. The uses are nearly endless.

It’s time to unload yet another task to Google that our brain usually needs to conduct, so that it can focus on more… important things. Right?

I knew this would happen. I didn’t want it to happen. But Wikipedia is buckling under pressure due to scandals in their articles. Apparently someone had written an article suggesting that one of Robert Kennedy’s aids was involved in the assassination. The article was written by an anonymous user.

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, claims that this was an abberation in the system–a single needle in a haystack. He goes on to say that since the particular article wasn’t linked heavily to other articles, it was missed. They are now barring anonymous users to submit new articles.

Ouch. I think this may spell the beginning of great critisicm for Wikipedia. The crack is showing–even though it does have great moderation, just a single controversial error like this can make Wikipedia lose credibility. I love the concept of Wikipedia, but they have to have a much more extensive way to verify articles rather than on a randomly checked basis.

I haven’t had a whole lot of time to play Cloud, a game where you’re a boy flying freely through the air interacting with clouds. From what I’ve seen, the game itself is simply beautiful, and includes hand painted graphics, somewhat like the ones seen in Final Fantasy VII and VIII. Actually, this whole game reminds me of the Square games. The music is peaceful, with a flair of Nobuo Uematsu.

What else is neat is that it’s produced by the Division of Interactive Media at the University of Southern California School of Cinema and Television, and they’re giving it out free. EA Games also helped them get this game out. I think these types of collaboration between industry, academia, and art is where the interesting games will be coming out. I’ve seen enough first person shooters. Give me something thats different, and perhaps a little more peaceful and poignant like Cloud.