Easily Distracted

Despite no grand plans of getting pleasantly inebriated tonight, 2007 was actually a very eventful year. I finally finished up my undergrad in May; something that was long overdue. After, I enjoyed some free time in Vancouver’s fantastic summer (and then Fall), and I just recently started making a much needed dollar. (I got Jesse to thank for hooking me up with that.) My big brother and his girlfriend of six(?) years announced their engagement AND that they were expecting a little one. My dad announced his (2nd) engagement. My cousins are expecting their first and second kids. One of my best friends, Kurtis (who I’ve known since forever), moved to Brazil and got married! Alex married Dez. Ben and Mayu had a baby (whom I’ve still yet to meet).

But one person in particular made this year very memorable for me: you know who you are. Thank you.

And to all my friends and family, Thank you! And Happy New Year!

ありがとうね。　あけましておめでとうございます！

2008 will be interesting, I’m sure. たのしみよ！

Update: I went to the local watering hole for a drink and some chat with our homestay student, who also had no plans. We even got champagne!

Two of my friends got married on August 25th, 2007. Congratulations to Kurtis and Nubia in São Paulo (sorry, I wasn’t able to attend), and Alex and Desiree in Vancouver (it was a very nice wedding). I’m happy for everyone! Also, within the same week, my big brother announced that he popped the question to his girlfriend of 6 (?) years and she said yes! The wedding will be next year. Not only that, but they’re gonna be parents! (I wanted to wait a little while before posting that bit.) This is pretty big news in my family! On that topic, Ben and Mayu should be daddy and mammy very soon… Happy times.

Hmmm… ‘Guess I’d better start swimmin’, or I’ll sink like a stone, For the times, they are a-changin’.

Gatherings

Had a nice get-together with the gifu-crew, on Sunday. Chinese-Taiwanese-Japanese fusion hot-pot shabu shabu. The pot was courtesy of Shirley (thanks!), despite her not being able to make it. Unfortunately, I don’t think there were are any pictures captured in the digital medium to show. But it was good times!

Ubuntu Feisty

My Desktop PC was not able to complete a dist-upgrade of Ubuntu from Dapper to Feisty, and consequently has trouble booting. Yes, I tried skipping Edgy, and I advise you not to do the same. I’ve decided I’m just going to start with a fresh install, because my system was very cluttered with stuff I don’t use or need. So I started going about backing stuff up, from a live CD boot onto my external USB drive… it was becoming very apparent that this would be painfully time consuming, as I was quickly running out of space. Easiest solution? Get another hard drive. I did that and am now running Feisty. Most of my settings and everything have been transferred and I must say I’m very impressed with the latest Ubuntu. Videos seem to “just work” on Gstreamer Totem, and many things seem much snappier. It will be making its way to my laptop soon, as well.

goals

When my computers are all back and healthy, I plan on regulating a few short-term goals:

• Reading a chapter a day in my Python book, Dive into Python. I think I’m on Chapter 6 or something, at the moment.
• Blogging every 2-3 days. I don’t need to have earth shattering news to report (do I ever?), but if I can’t say a little something every few days, then I’m certainly not doing enough with my time.
• Update blog aesthetics. ’nuff said.
• Enjoy the sunshine, when it comes.

I was planning on making a nautilus extension for easy image resizing, but someone beat me to the punch. It uses ImageMagick, is pretty much what I had in mind, and seems to work great. I just tested it out with my meal from the Cloud 9 rotating restaurant, on March 8th. (I went there to take advantage of their extended Dine out Vancouver with a couple friends.) I now demand that you become hungry, with pictures of FOOD!

links of the day

• Western Perspectives on Japanese Game Development – Interesting Gamasutra link John sent me.
• Family Guy vs Christianity – I swear, Family Guy is the Kevin Bacon of Youtube.

Ah right. Forgot about this. Okay fine, I knowingly neglected it. Not completely, though… I had a partially written post from a few months ago, but it never made the transition from Tomboy to WP. Things to report:

First thing’s first. January has come and gone (along with a few other months…):
me.age++;

I got a pretty sweet blazer from my brother. It’s a little big, and almost too warm to wear now, but I like it. Saw Children of Men with Kurt and Jesse. Great movie. Longest, craziest takes ever! Have also since been to a restaurant called the Foundation (on 6th and Main, I think). I had an awesome dish of beans and rice with papaya and lime sauce… so good, I must go again and try making it myself. We also went to an Ethiopian restaurant on Commercial and stuffed ourselves silly with our bare hands. Like men are meant to do. Food and service were really good. Price, ironically, was a little steep. Oh yeah, and now Kurt is in Brazil….

Speaking of travelling. I will not be going to Japan. I did not get accepted into JET. I had a bad feeling after the interview in February, so I’m not terribly surprised, but I am disappointed. I was looking forward to going to Japan again… even if I got stuck in some remote place. But more importantly, I must now decide what I will do. Do I look for a job? In Vancouver?

I don’t really have any plans, at the moment, aside from enjoying my summer and learning up some computer stuff (in preparation for job interviews, i guess). I just finished my History exam, last night, so school’s pretty much behind me. Have a couple meetings left and that’s it! Felt kind of elated on the bus home, last night – I guess I’m happy to finally be finishing school. I plan on lots of rollerblading. Too bad the seawall will be closed. Really… that sucks. I’ll have to go back and forth in English Bay or something.

I also meant to apply for Google’s Summer of Code. And, on the very last day, I had an idea and figured, “sure. why not?” So I put together an application as fast as I could not expecting to be chosen, and I wasn’t. My idea was really “out there” too. Still, like JET, disappointed. That woulda been awesome. I’ll see if I can put together my idea for another post… and I may work on it anyways, this summer.

For some cheap amusement in Wii Weather channel, zoom into the Turks and Caicos Islands, to the north-east of Cuba.

On Friday, December 8th, at 9am, I was among many that were ushered into the Best Buy on Cambie St in Vancouver. As we walked down the stairs, there were a bunch of staff that clapped. I gave my ticket to one of the guys at the bottom and he directed me to my basket containing a Nintendo Wii and Zelda: Twilight Princess. My friend Jesse bought the exact same thing. We paid for our stuff and walked back to his place, exhausted. We hadn’t really slept. You see, to get a Nintendo Wii in Vancouver, apparently, you must wait in front of the store that is getting their shipment, all night.

I knew from talking to the Best Buy representative that they were getting 25-30 units of Wii. They were also getting a similar number of PS3′s but I wasn’t concerned about that. Initially, the plan was to go hang out with Jesse, play some games, get some sleep, and walk over to line up early in the morning, around 5:30am. But when I talked to the Best Buy guy, he said there were already a couple people lined up, earlier in the afternoon. So, on my way to Jesse’s, I scoped out the line: about 10 people at 8pm, Thursday. This changed the plans.

We played some Soul Calibur 2 on the cube and Jesse eventually admitted total and utter defeat (par for the course).

yup.

At midnight, we went out for a walk. I would grab something to eat and we could check out the line. Jesse wasn’t really planning on getting a Wii, but was nice enough to keep me company for a while. First, we checked out the line, it had more than doubled! I checked the posters at the front of the door: 27 Wii, 8 60GB PS3, and 17 20GB PS3. Then I did a quick poll of everyone in line: the 60GB PS3s were taken by some people near the front, the rest were Wii. If Jesse and I lined up right then, we would be #19 and #20 for the Wii… so we did. Since the time of my arrival, Jesse had somehow decided he was going to get a Wii, as well. It didn’t even take much convincing on my part!

It was 12:30am by the time we entered the queue. The store opened at 9am, so we only had 8.5 hours to wait on the cold concrete. We had nothing to do and I still hadn’t had dinner! I asked the people around me if they wanted something from Wendy’s, up the street. Chili for a couple people ahead of me, a coffee for Jesse, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted yet. I walked up to Wendy’s, maybe around 1:30am. Only the drive-through was open, so I went and tapped on the window. They ignored me for as long as they could, and then one girl came over and said, “I’m sorry, we don’t serve walk-through.” What the fuck?! That had to be one of the stupidest things I’d ever heard! “Why not?! Would you like me to pretend I’m in a car?” “We can’t serve you.” *sigh* Fine. It’s clearly difficult to argue with that logic. Sorry guys, no chili or coffee. I had to eat something, so I walked to a Pho place on Broadway, and got a large beef steak pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) to go. It was kind of expensive ($7) but it was exactly what I needed. And after I opened that bad boy in the lineup, a few others made the trek up to that store and got something.

The line at 2am.

I think the cutoff point for Wii was around 3:00am. Some people decided to “try their luck” anyways, and others may have ended up getting a PS3. It’s funny, initially, because of the PS3 shortage, a lot of PS3 buyers ended up getting a Wii… but now, because of the demand for Wii, some Wii buyers end up getting a PS3. There were still a couple PS3s left when they finished handing out tickets around 8am.

after a failed attempt at self-documentation…



…the person in front of us offered to take a picture. Beard keeps me warm.

Best Buy did not get any extra controllers with their shipment of systems, neither wiimotes nor nunchuks, so we could only get the ones that come with the system. Rayman and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance were sold out for Wii. No Wii buyers I met were selling, and one PS3 buyer I spoke to was. There were a couple parents lining up to get a Wii for their kids, but they ended up leaving after realizing they weren’t going to get one. There were quite a few people who would walk up to the end of the line, set up their chair and blanket, check out the numbers, and end up leaving with a disappointed look on their face. Kinda sad. At one point, closer to opening, the line was humongous! There were only systems for 52 people, but there must have been an additional 30 people that just… appeared. Crazy.

line at 5am



line at 7am

After getting back to Jesse’s, having not slept, we tried out Wii Sports. Since we each had a system (and thus, a controller), we could play two-player. It’s pretty fun. I’d say tennis and bowling are the best. Boxing would be awesome if the control was more intuitive, but I haven’t quite got it yet (if it’s even possible to “get”). Golf is also pretty hard to control the power of the swing. Finally, baseball is a little too over-simplified. Wii Sports is a fun demo of things to come. Good for multiplayer, but I’ve not yet played it by myself. Could be because I’ve been playing Zelda, I guess. Not much to say that hasn’t been covered in the millions of reviews already. If you like Zelda games, or adventure games in general, you’ll like this game. I’m hooked.

merry xmas to me!



yay!

video: Jesse tries wii

Now, I’d better study for my exams.

Yesterday, I was at a cafe with my friend, Jesse. We each bought a coffee and a cookie for our nutritional kick-start of the day (around noon, at the time). I gave my visa card to the well-endowed clerk to pay for my purchase, and she gave me the debit user-input pad saying “You have to confirm.”

Huh? Um… Okay. “Purchase $3-something Okay?” I click Okay.

“Tip?” I think I actually made an audible grunt of surprise. Whatever. Fine. She’s nice to look at, I guess I’ll give her 15%. I’m so weak. “Purchase $4-something okay?” Okay.

I took my newly purchased beverage over to the counter to sweeten it up. Now, this may sound strange, but I actually prefer the taste of non-sugar sweeteners to actual sugar. Maybe this is because I’ve got a bit of a sweet tooth, and I don’t like adding so much sugar to my coffee. And I figure I could lose some weight, maybe not adding so much sugar would help. As I explain this to Jesse, he says something along the lines of “Weight or cancer, one of ‘em will get ya.” I added one packet of sweetener, and one of sugar (regretfully, I missed the brown sugar).

Later in the day, I was in a computer lab at school working on project with my group. Jesse had given me a Tab energy drink earlier. He said he didn’t like the taste of non-sugar sweetener. I was kind of thirsty, so I pulled it out of my bag and was about to drink it. One of my group members said, “You know that stuff’s carcinogenic, right?”

“That’s what people say.”

“So… why do you drink it?”

“I dunno… tastes good?” I enjoyed my energy drink.

Since the start of this school term, I’ve been drinking a coffee sweetened with a sugar-substitute nearly every day. So this morning, I decided to look into the controversy over these sweet things I enjoy.

My current sweeteners at home are Sugar-Twin and some no name “calorie-free” sweetener. Both contain sodium cyclamate. Both say, “Use only at the advice of a physician” and both are available on the shelf of any grocery store, in Canada. In the US and the UK, cyclamate has been banned since 1969 and 1970, respectively, due to some tests on rats linking cyclamate to bladder cancer. According to Wikipedia, Sugar-Twin does not contain cyclamate in the US market, but instead uses saccharin, which has been banned in Canada since 1977, excpet for diabetic usage. Tab Energy apparently uses sucralose as its sweetener, which seems to be the least controversial. Many other low-calorie soft-drinks currently use aspartame as the sweetener, which has been linked to brain tumours. Of course, all of these “links” are not of the greatest strength.

For a seriously fascinating read, check out the Wikipedia article on sugar substitutes. For a much less fascinating read, search Canadian Food and Health regulations.

Now, as I finish my cyclamate-sweetened coffee, I embark on a painful journey of homework and assignments. I wonder if that’s the cause of this slight bitterness….

Whatever you use, use it in happy moderation.