Archive for May, 2005

Shopping

Published on May. 30, 2005 in General. 2 Comments

My new hobby is shopping. Why? Because the walking is good exercise and because sometimes I bring home something nice. Or, at least, I get something good to eat or drink. Also, since I have to sit at a computer for eight hours a day for work, I really don’t like being on the computer so much at home anymore. My eyesight is worsening by the second, so it’s beneficial to get some quality time away from the glowing screen. Shopping is also good because it’s something I can do alone. Organizing people is so much work and sometimes I’m just too lazy to ask people to go out with me.

I’m not a heavy shopper though. In the past few weeks, all I’ve bought is a vintage shirt and a classic multi-striped shirt. The latter was an excellent deal - it was only $16! Photos of me sporting my new clothes will not be on the site any time soon though. My brother took my digital camera to his job in Arizona and he’s not coming back until mid-August.

I’d also like to get The Official GNOME 2 Developer’s Guide and Mono: A Developer’s Notebook to help me get into the cool new things happening with GNOME. Since I bought my Mac, I’ve been feeling a bit of Linux withdrawal. However, I’ve set up VNC to my Gentoo server so I can try my hand at some GTK# development when I feel up to it.

Over the weekend, I looked for a gift for Jer and Mel’s wedding. In the end, I got them the coffee condiment tray from Pottery Barn. My reasoning is that it will go well with the cappuccino maker that somebody bought for them from their Bay registry. Also, it’s something that they’ll use often. I was eyeing a different condiment set at Caban too, but eventually decided against them. The Caban set had a very modern, metallic look to it, whereas the Pottery Barn ones were porcelain with cute writing on it. I opted for the cuter ones, as I am wont. It was surprisingly fun shopping for housewares! I spent a few hours looking through the stores, checking out all the neat things they had in stock. I’m definitely going to keep these two places in mind when it’s time to get gifts for my parents.

So, it’s my birthday

Published on May. 27, 2005 in General. 5 Comments

Yes, it’s my birthday today. Thanks to one45 for treating me to Dairy Queen today! The Moolatte isn’t really as good as a Starbucks Frappuccino, but it was still a nice treat. Thanks Brian for finishing it off for me - even a small size is too big for me to drink all by myself.

It’s also Amy Ho’s birthday today too, so she invited me out to dinner with a bunch of other people. On my way home from work, I thought that I should get her something, but couldn’t really think of what to get. So, I went the safe route and got a gift card. When I arrived at the restaurant, we exchanged the usual happy birthdays and pleasantries. A little bit later, Amy pulled out a card and gave it to me. I opened it up and found a shiny new Starbucks card inside it. Dumbstruck, I handed her my card, which had the exact same Starbucks card in it. We totally rock. Dinner was a bit awkward, since I didn’t know anybody there except Amy, so we phoned up Jonathan and forced him to come. Thankfully, he felt bad for me and came to keep me company. I was really happy to see him, since I’m really not good at introducing myself to other people, especially when they all know each other really well. I talked to one of Amy’s friends for a little bit while Jonathan was on his way and he thought I was hitting on him. I think they all went out to see Madagascar afterwards, but Jonathan and I went home instead, since we didn’t really know anybody there.

I think I’m going out for a birthday dinner tomorrow night with my family too. Lots of birthday celebrations for me! It feels weird that today is my birthday, since I already had my main birthday party a month ago.

In Spite Of It All

Published on May. 18, 2005 in Music. 1 Comment

Kalan’s video for In Spite Of It All is much better than Single. It starts off with glam shots of him playing his violin, followed by more glam shots of him singing with his band. He took a cue from his fangirls and threw in a whole bunch of curl clutches too. On a whole, it’s not very interesting, but at least it shows that he can pull off the rocker thing; however, I think it was a pretty poor choice of a second single. It would have been better to release After All or And We Drive instead - or better yet, to go back and record a new album where he has more creative freedom over the project. He’s still one of my favourite Idols, but it’s evident that he’s not going to get too far with this album.

Tiger

Published on May. 8, 2005 in Tech. 10 Comments

It’s been about a week since I installed the new Mac OS X release, Tiger, onto my PowerBook. I’m a little bit late on the bandwagon, in terms of Tiger blogging, but I need something to help me procrastinate from finishing off my work term report.

The most welcome feature enhancement for me is definitely Spotlight. Find-as-you-type search is one of the greatest innovations ever, so it’s awesome to see it in action throughout my desktop. I shouldn’t have to spend so much time looking for things on my computer - I want to spend more time actually doing things, not wading through my thousands of files. Spotlight has definitely helped me out a lot and has saved me much time, but it still could use some improvement. By default, it should highlight the top hit, not “Show All”. I want to spend as little time as possible searching, so give me my top hit instead. I don’t want to see all the results unless it doesn’t show up in the shortlist, so “Show All” should go at the bottom, after I’ve read through the top results.

Dashboard is pretty nice, allowing me to quickly check the weather, look at the TV schedule and search the dictionary/thesaurus. I haven’t tried out too many widgets yet, so I’ll have to remember to go download some new ones soon.

The swirl of interest around the new Safari prompted me to give it a fair shot at taking over Firefox as my main browser. At first, the lack of find-as-you-type and a dropdown of recently-viewed sites really put me off, but I pressed on anyways. Safari is nice because it integrates better into OS X, renders pages faster and loads quicker than Firefox. Also, its JavaScript implementation has been improving, now supporting Gmail and Google Maps, but sadly, not Google Suggest. I miss find-as-you-type within the browser like in Firefox, but Safari is definitely a formidable browser and I’ll probably keep it as my default for some titme.

Oh, and the new Mail icons look ugly, but at least it has smart folders now.

The new battery power settings are awesome now. I can change them with just two clicks now, instead of having to open up System Preferences and digging through the pref panes. Awesome!

The Amazing Race

Published on May. 1, 2005 in General. 2 Comments

Thanks to everybody who came out last night for my birthday party! It was fun to hang out with all of you, especially those of you who participated in my Amazing Race. I hope you all had fun - it was fun for me to put it all together, albeit stressful at times.

Team Clue 1 Clue 2 Clue 3 Clue 4 Clue 6 Pit Stop
Frannie & Mike 3:58pm 4:16pm 4:35pm 4:39pm 5:13pm 5:14pm
Suzy & Mike 3:56pm 4:13pm 4:40pm 4:51pm 5:45pm 5:58pm
Chrissy & Andrew 3:57pm 4:11pm 4:37pm 4:47pm 6:16pm 6:18pm
Jen — — — 5:00pm 5:45pm 5:47pm

Thanks for all the gifts too! I love my new shirt and necklace, as well as the Jem CD. The Incomplete-inspired birthday card was awesome as well. Thanks for dinner and the cake too! I had a great time last night - I hope you did too.

I suppose it’s only fitting for me to thank Virgin Music, Caffe Artigiano, Vancouver Public Library, Chapters, Vera’s Burger Shack and Hell’s Kitchen as well.

Mmm, it’s always fun spending time with good friends. I’m glad you all could come and celebrate my birthday a month early. ;-) Too bad my mom took my camera to Hong Kong - I have no pictures to remember last night. Ah well, it was still great nonetheless.