The Download Munkey : Tracking the Treasure Down …

This opening cinematic for Initial D : Extreme Stage, the PS3 edition of the game series inspired by the manga/anime of the same name, is probably one of my favourite racing game trailers for this year, the other video being this trailer for Codemasters’ GRID. Thankfully, the Initial D trailer focuses totally on fast cars and slick driving skills instead of having ladies strutting their stuff at the starting line for half the trailer in one of the “underground/street” style racers (can’t really recall the game now but I think it was probably Juiced 2 : Hot Import Nights)

There’s shiny cars modelled in intricate detail (just keep in mind it’s CG and not the actual gameplay though) and skillful drifting action covered by some great camera angles in this trailer which you can view online or download at Gametrailers.

While I have never read the manga or watched the anime series before, I did watch the 2005 movie starring Jay Chou although all I can remmember from the movie were the dark mountain passes and the three cars – the white Toyota AE86, the yellow Mazda RX-7 and a Nissan Skyline which are all shown in the trailer. BTW, if you’re looking for the Eurobeat track in the video, it’s Dive into Stream by M.O.V.E.

Dowload or watch the trailer at Gametrailers or visit the official site for Initial D : Extreme Stage.

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Wangan Midnight : Maximum Tune 2 Soundtrack
Be a Despatch Rider!

It’s been 10 years since the release of SNK Playmore’s The King of Fighters ’98 and to celebrate that joyous occasion together with the legions of KOF fans, SNK decides to release a Ultimate Match remake of that same KOF ’98 in 2008. Hmm, perhaps they ran out of ideas this year?

The recently uploaded wallpapers for the Ultimate Match edition feature simple and retroishly styled characters not exactly different from the sprites in the original 1998 release. While these character designs are not exactly attractive – especially when most of the male characters look slightly effeminate since they seem to share the eyes of their female counterparts, these wallpapers bring that sense of nostalgia that only games that we played years ago as kids or teens can.

© SNK Playmore

Thankfully, the illustrated wallpapers look far better

© SNK Playmore

Download the wallpapers (18 in total) from the official SNK Playmore Japan site or visit the official site (in Japanese).

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UFS Wallpapers – Darkstalkers, Soul Calibur III, Samurai Shodown V, Street Fighter & King of Fighters 2006
SNK Playmore Wallpapers (King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown, Metal Slug)

A very good collection of photos taken by David Pride at the Yad La’Shiryon Museum in Israel which houses an extensive collection of armoured vehicles in service with the Israel Defense Force from its birth in 1948 to the current tanks like the Merkava IV.

The most interesting exhibits to me are the indigenous variants of the American M4 Shermans which Israel acquired in substantial numbers after WWII and modified into up-gunned tanks with French 75mm and 105mm guns as the M50 and M51 (the Sherman in WWII was fitted with a 75mm cannon and a 76mm cannon in the case of the Sherman Firefly) , 155mm self-propelled artillery and even multiple rocket launchers as in the MAR-240s and MAR-290s. More information on these interesting variants of the Sherman can be found at israeli-weapons.com.

© P. David Pride

Other than the Sherman variants, there’s the Achzarit APCs converted from captured T-55s as well as refurbished T-54s, T-55s and T-62s known respectively as the Tiran-4, Tiran-5 and Tiran-6. There’s also up-armoured M60s known as the Magach 6/7 and locally-upgraded Centurion and AMX-13s.

© David Pride

Due to the disparate numbers of tanks in the inventory of Israel and its hostile neighbours during the early years of the Israeli state, it had to make do with every vehicle on hand, resulting the variety of up-gunned and up-armoured improvements as shown in the photos above.

If you know your armoured vehicles, simply head over to the thumbnails page and start browsing from there, otherwise you might find it more enlightening to start at this page and take a virtual tour of the museum complete with captions for each photo. For more pictures of armoured vehicles, don’t forget to check out David Pride’s other photos taken at various American Army museums including a picture of the infamous 280mm German K5 railway gun below.

© David Pride

Check out David Pride’s Yad La’Shiryon Museum photos.

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Armed Forces Handbooks (DPRK, PLA)
ACE Armoured Vehicle Scale Model Boxart
Tompei’s Museum of Machines
Merkava Mk III Baz 3D Renders
T-72! Balkans on Fire Renders and Wallpapers
Theatre of War Renders
800mm Dora Railgun

Now The Download Munkey isn’t always all about fun and games, and here’s a good example why While almost everyone has used Wikipedia before, but I’m pretty sure not everyone knows about Wikibooks.

Now, Wikibooks, as you can guess from the title is another community project initiated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Quoted from the Wikibooks site:

Wikibooks is a Wikimedia community for creating a free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit. Wikibooks began on July 10, 2003, since then Wikibooks has grown to include over 29,979 pages in a multitude of textbooks created by volunteers like you!

Been learning a bit of German from the PDF version of the German language Wikibook after following the links from Rich Hoeg’s eContent site – if you’re the type who’s always on the lookout for new repositories of knowledge on the Net, I’m very sure you’ll find plenty of useful resources over at eContent

To browse through Wikibooks, there is a staggeringly long list of all currently available Wikibooks in various stages of completeness but you’ll probably be better off starting with the list of featured Wikibooks (essentially Wikibooks with substantial content) with the list of Wikibooks with PDF versions.

© Dash-of-Pepper

Dont fret if you encounter any Wikibook that isn’t available as a downloadable PDF. A eContent commenter StormBringer introduced the very useful WikiType which works like a charm in formatting any Wikimedia or Wikibook article into a downloadable PDF.

Check out Wikibooks and WikiType.

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Recommended Mythology E-Texts from Padraic Colum & Others
Foxit Reader vs PDF-XChange Viewer vs Sumatra
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Alright, Nuffnang just offered me free tickets to the latest Batman movie – The Dark Knight – last week in exchange for an sponsored post about this movie. Since I was going to watch the movie with thoo2 anyway, so I thought to myself “Hey, why not?”

© Warner Bros

The official The Dark Knight website @ www.darkknight-asia.com is chockful of downloadable goodies from PDF posters to wallpapers to adorn your desktops. And yes, there’s a streaming video trailer if you wish to catch glimpses of Batman’s couple of hot rides Some stills from the trailer below.

Batman making a grand entrance with style in his Bat Tumbler – looks like what Automobili Lamborghini would build if they dabbled with tanks instead of supercars

The perpetually unsmiling Dark Knight and his gruffy-looking arch nemesis The Joker have been gracing covers on the likes of local entertainment mags 8 Days, LIME and of course the July edition of the movie mag, FiRST these days (IMHO the best cover of the three).

© SPH Magazines Pte Ltd

That’s just the tip of the iceberg of The Dark Knight madness since there’s been a slew of Batman and Joker’s related fan material all around the web for the past few months, my favourites being Dan LuVisi’s portraits of two of the main protagonists in the The Dark Knight which I think deserves special mention. And let’s not forget the upcoming Lego Batman game which also features most of the characters from The Dark Knight

© Lego

As for the movie itself, I’m glad that it turned out far better than I expected (otherwise I would be extremely guilty and embarrassed that you’re still reading up to here )

My last impression of Gotham City from 1992′s Batman Begins was a dark, decaying and extremely depressing city of frightened citizens and I was thankful that the same city portrayed in The Dark Knight looks far less gloomy and much more suitable for human inhabitation with the additional bonus of making appreciation of the film much easier on the eyes

The main draw of The Dark Knight however, is not the self-appointed guardian of Gotham himself, not his fancy rides but the wild and unkempt Joker himself. Or specifically the late Heath Ledger (Brokeback Mountain, The Brothers Grimm) himself, who put in an amazingly mesmerizing performance as the deranged criminal genius who revels in unleashing wanton destruction and mayhem in Gotham City on top of brutal cold-blooded murders of his foes, minions and innocent civilians alike.

Heath Ledger, with his convincing portrayal of The Joker as a man with an uncannily thorough understanding of the human psyche who always seems to succeed despite his half-baked and haphazard schemes, steals the show whenever he’s onscreen which makes the whole 153 mins of the show breeze by.

OK, at this point I’m supposed to ask you readers to check out the official www.darkknight-asia.com to watch the trailer but I won’t since I’m sure you’re already itching to stop reading and go catch The Joker (and Batman) in action at your nearest cinemas now