9 May 2004, terribly early in the morning
Van Helsing wasn’t good, it wasn’t bad, it was just one of those movies you watch that leaves no real impression on you whatsoever. The plot was a bit stupid, and the acting wasn’t so hot either. What it did have going for it was sexy, but annoying, vampire women, and Kate Beckinsale, who is omega hot.
8 May 2004, terribly early in the morning
Hellboy has restored my faith in comic book movies. The film is great. The story is well done, and the characters in the movie are pretty interesting. The Nazi assassin in the film is one of the more stylish bad guys I’ve seen in a while. Also, the film features Rasputin — lover of the Russian queen — so how can it be bad. I recommend the film, its fun to watch.
7 May 2004, mid-afternoon
del.icio.us links is a social bookmark manager. What that means is that you can submit bookmarks that get saved at your own bookmark page. Anyone else can view and subscribe to your bookmark page. Furthermore, you can see how many other people are linking to the same things as you. The project is pretty interesting, and has been around for sometime. I may start using it, and importing the links I save on my del.icio.us links page here.
5 May 2004, early evening
Thanks to an invite from Ryan, I now have a gmail account. My email address is chungking@gmail.com. I actually didn’t want to use that, but I accidently pressed enter when I was checking for names that are free. I’m apparently not so good at picking names for online services.
Comment [7] Life | Technology
5 May 2004, mid-afternoon
Mezan, Carvill, Steph and I were standing on the corner of University and Richmond yesterday evening when a truck being escorted by cops started to make a very slow left turn. The truck was carrying a film crew, and another car on its back. Inside the other car was none other then Samuel L. Jackson. After realizing it was him, I stuck my hand up to wave. Jackson looked over, and waved back. So, I have concluded he isn’t a jerk-face. Eugene Levy was also in the car, in the passenger seat.
You would think one famous face downtown would be enough, but Janet Jackson was also at Much Music. Mind you, the crowd around the building was too big, and we didn’t even get a glimpse of her. Nevertheless, she was there.
We spent the whole day loitering downtown. Mezan and I were going to see Rishi that evening at IV lounge, so we thought we may as well go down early and wander downtown. The two of us haven’t been doing much with our time since school ended. Carvill was downtown already for work, and Steph was also in a killing-time sort of mood, so they both joined us downtown.
IV lounge was barren as usual. There was one other group besides ourselves. I like it there when it is so empty, it feels like you are in your own VIP room or some such thing. Rishi’s set was great. I had brough an MD player down to record it, but that didn’t work out so well. Anyone know if you can record music with an iPod?
4 May 2004, terribly early in the morning
I watched The Pianist tonight with Mezan. The film follows the life of the Polish pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman, as he attempt to survive life as a Jew in Warsaw during WWII. The film is depressingly realistic. The acting by Adrien Brody is top notch. I thought the film was excellent. All the oscars the film won were well deserved. I highly recommend the movie.
3 May 2004, evening time
Anyone in Toronto should check out IV lounge tomorrow, Rishi will be the guest DJ for the inner city/outer space night. Rishi will be spinning techno music. This weekly event is run by Transient Orange. My friend Matt spins downbeat music there every tuesday and has been trying to get other DJs or artists to come in and work alongside him. IV lounge is nice and small, like someone’s living room.
3 May 2004, early morning
Man on Fire was a good movie. Mezan thought there was too much flash with the way it was filmed, but I would disagree. The story is great, and the acting is also quite good. As revenge films go, this one is top notch.
We watched the film at AMC. Steph’s car was broken into while we were in the theatre. The joys of living in Scarborough?
1 May 2004, terribly early in the morning
There was a crazy lady sitting in the McDonald’s near my house.
My friends and I arrived at McDonald’s, excited to get some Cappuccinos, Lattés and Coffees. I know, you’re thinking to yourself, “McDonald’s doesn’t sell Cappuccinos.” Well think again, because the McDonald’s near my house isn’t some run of the mill McDicks. No sir, the attached McCafé serves up a slew of McDonald’s styled coffee shop items. More then that, the McDonald’s is a hotspot, offering up 45 minutes of WiF access to anyone who spends more then three dollars at the restaurant. I had brought my iBook with me to try the net access out.
My friend Matt ordered a ‘cheesecake’ which apparently had a homogenous taste to it. The gram cracker crust tasted like the chocolate layer tasted like the vanilla layer tasted like the fudge icing. That’s the science of McDonald’s for you. I ordered a McCoffee. I don’t usually drink coffee, so I haven’t a clue if it was good or bad.
Now, as I was saying, there was a crazy lady sitting in the McDonald’s. Well, it’s not nice to call people crazy. She probably wasn’t crazy, just really angry. Very, very, Angry. We picked the spot next to her to sit, not realizing she wasn’t pleasant till after we had dropped our stuff there. Now, it would be rude to get up and leave, so we stuck it out. However, in between dropping our stuff down and ordering our food and drinks she got up and left to sit at the other side of the restaurant. She was belligerent for a good while before finally being forced to leave. She didn’t leave quietly.
I opened up my iBook, and tried to connect to Google. I was redirected to some sort of authentication page. I was excited, ready to write about my adventures at the WiFi-McDonald’s. I typed my assigned user name and password and waited patiently while it sent my information off.
30 April 2004, the wee hours
I watched “China Strike Force: last night with Mezan. The film features the very sexy Norika Fujiwara, who is a whole other kind of hot. So, the film is worth watching just to see her. What makes the film really appealing though is how bad it is. The film is bizarre because its set in China, but everyone is speaking English with different accents. The soundtrack features some strange songs, including some really bad rap music from Coolio. The acting is pretty atrocious, from all parties involved, but Mark Dacascos and Coolio in particular. The movie is that special kind of HK Action film you just have to see.
29 April 2004, early evening
Well, word on the street is that Google has filed for an initial public offering. I wonder if this will have the profound effects people are hoping for, causing a serious rebound in the tech sector. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. This tidbit of news is also my first post to Metafilter.
Comment [6] Metafilter | Technology
28 April 2004, mid-afternoon
Apple realeased several updates today for those products related to its online music venture.
There is a new release of quicktime which promises dramatic improvements to ACC. There is also a new lossless encoder that will encode songs to some apple format which is about half the size of the equivalent CD audio. This would still be quite large for most people I imagine, but could be good if you have a big iPod but a small CD collection (or if you have a giant hard drive).
There is a brand new iTunes, which has a slew of new features. You can read more about them at the iTunes site itself. The update looks promising. One of the more interesting features is posting your playlist online, and the ability to vote other people’s playlists up and down the online playlist charts.
Finally, if you own an iPod, grab the new iPod updater to take advantage of the changes made to iTunes.
Update: Jim Heid provides a more compressive review of iTunes 4.5.
27 April 2004, mid-afternoon
For those of you having trouble getting your websites processed by Kinja, try adding a Atom or RSS feed to your site. Shima’s site is now being processed by Kinja, although it was not before.
If you use Moveable Type or Blogger this is done for you automatically. You just need to include a link to your feed in your URL, like I am doing on this site for example. Making your own RSS feed yourself isn’t too hard a task, but it is easier if you have a program that does it for you.
For those who don’t know, Atom and RSS are syndication formats. Atom is a newer format, whose popularity stems from the fact it is the default (only) syndication format available for use within Blogger. RSS is an older format, though there are in fact several conflicting versions of RSS available for use.
Comment [2] Weblogs | Web Design
26 April 2004, evening time
I watched Punisher on saturday night. I make it a point to go see all the comic book movies hollywood has been churning out recently, if only to make sure that they don’t stop making them. Punisher was horrible. For a film about getting revenge, there really wasn’t much violence going on. There was the occasional arrow through the neck and knife through the mouth, but not enough to redeem the film. The lady John Travolta’s character was married to was sexy, in a sexy old lady sort of way, which was one high light of the film.
26 April 2004, mid-afternoon
I’ve come across a lot of really great sites from reading the text pattern support forum. There are a lot of really cool designers making pages with text pattern.
Here are a few I like:
Comment [3] Interesting Links | Weblogs
26 April 2004, the wee hours
I saw the Dalai Lama speak today. He began by mocking himself and his age, when he explained his need for a translator stems from the fact that the older he gets, the worse his english gets. (That said, almost all of the talk was given in english.) There are two qualities about the man I was most impressed with. First, he is quite humble. Second, he is quite funny. The self-mockery illustrates this point I suppose. He joked about his inability to learn quantum physics as well, something he is apparently interested in. The Dali Lama is probably the only religious leader who doesn’t strike me as a hypocrite at all.
The day was centered around the Dalai Lama’s talk. I had lunch with Riadh and Shima at Kama, and Indian buffet restaurant downtown. I’m not a big fan of buffets, but the food at Kama was pretty tasty. I think perhaps the fact they had good naan bread left me biased.
After lunch we walked through the rain to the Sky Dome, where the Dalai Lama would be speaking. The line to get in was huge. We must have been standing in the cold for a little under an hour. Poor Shima had left her shoes in Waterloo, so she was standing in the cold in a pair of white flip flops.
After the talk, I saw Shima off at the bus station. Shima had gotten a locker to store her laptop and backpack while we were downtown. She managed to put money in the one broken locker in Dundas station. A friendly attendant helped her get her money back. I saw the same attendant when I went back to get her stuff, and once more at Dundas station. Shima caught the seven o’clock train back to Waterloo. I grabbed the TTC back to Scarborough. I got home the same time she did.
Tomorrow I begin looking for a job. I bought the shoes I was going to get if I got into grad school. They’re more like motivational shoes now.
24 April 2004, mid-afternoon
Everyone who doesn’t know, should know, that I love action figures. I love them a lot. With that said, I have to say, this star destroyer is the greatest thing ever.
24 April 2004, terribly early in the morning
The Rundown was quite entertaining. A funny film I must say. Highlights include: Rosario Dawson, who is omega hot, The Rock fighting pygmies, and Christopher Walken giving a monologue on the Tooth Fairy.
22 April 2004, late afternoon
Kevin, the Assistant manager at TJ’s, tells all in a very interesting online journal.
This is the most fascinating thing I’ve learned this week: natural gas has no smell. When you “smell” a gas leak, you are not smelling the gas, which has no smell, you are smelling an additive they insert into the gas to give it a smell, so you can detect it and get a safe distance from your home before it blows up and kills your neighbors.
This guy is brilliant.
20 April 2004, lunch time
Please, for the love of god people, don’t open those dirty emails from your friends at work. If you do, this may happen to you! (update correct link now.) A funny little movie I found at plasticbag.org
19 April 2004, early morning
Well, it took them a while, but Waterloo finally told me to piss off. I applied to do graduate studies here back in December, and have been waiting to here from them all this time. My dad called this evening to say that they got a letter saying I didn’t get in.
Am I surprised? A little bit. I’ve done quite well in the computer science program here. Though, in all honesty, that isn’t much of a feat. Perhaps the faculty here knows that as well.
Now I wait to see what U of T has to say. I think I’m going to be looking for a job quite soon.
Comment [9] Life | Computer Science
18 April 2004, mid-afternoon
Went out to see Kill Bill, Vol 2 last night. The film was quite entertaining, which is what I was expecting. If you liked the first one, there is no reason to think you wouldn’t like the second. The scenes where Umma Thurman is training under her Kung-Fu master are hilarious.
17 April 2004, mid-afternoon
Making a website can be tricky business. Well, if you want to do it properly, anyway. Some of you may have noticed I waste countless hours mucking around with this page. Incase you are feeling jealous, and would also like to muck around with your website, but don’t know where to start, here are some links for you to check out. Hopefully this will help get you all well on your way to prettier, well structured, web pages.
Read the rest of this post. (237 words)
Comment [2] Web Design | Weblogs
15 April 2004, mid-afternoon
I have now written my last exam as an undergraduate. My last exam was STAT 231. Seems like a good way to go out, writing an exam for the class I managed to put off for 3 years.
I was worried about this exam. I’ve written lots of exams where I didn’t really know everything we were supposed to know. I mean, this was the case with the last two exams I wrote. I was really worried about stats though. Every time I did a confidence interval question I got the wrong answer. And confidence intervals are easy, how the hell was I supposed to do the rest of the exam?
True to form, I opted to sleep more last night instead of staying up late and study. My plan to wake up early was foiled by my laziness. I got up with enough time to skim through an old final, and headed off to the PAC.
The PAC was where I wrote all my exams first and second year. I haven’t had to write there in ages, but this term I wrote both my Compilers exam and my Stats exam in the PAC. I hate writing in the PAC.
I had told Shima the previous night that I could probably get through the whole exam in an hour. That would give me 2 hours to try and figure out all the stuff I didn’t know. I made a pretty good prediction. I got through the exam in about an hour, and was left with two odd hours to figure out how likelihood functions worked. I’m still not sure if what I wrote was right or wrong, but it was something.
I’m done now. I hope I didn’t fail. I certainly don’t think I did. Everyone cross your fingers for the next couple weeks. Now I need to write two more essays and I can official end my career as an undergraduate student.
