Geekdom

So today’s little trip down south was a fruitful one and my feet are effectively sore-ish from all the meandering. Anyway, one of the stops for our party of three lightly seasoned with a hint of otaku was the Silver Snail. This, of course, is a comic book store, but so much more! It’s located near Queen Street and St. Peter Street (southeast corner, if I’m not mistaken) and it’s full of all the things a nerd could ever ask for. There are busts (as in the “shoulders and up” statues, not fun-bags) of anime, movie, and comic book characters, modeling kits (Gundam, Evangelion Neon Genesis, and even a giant submarine), comic books of course, figurines, pre-built models for display, toys, etc… They even had a Samurai Champloo Zippo that I would totally buy if I had the money. Needless to say, the place left some of us in a mutliple geekgasmic state.
We saw a lot of stuff downtown and you can find the photographic evidence at my flickr. I’ve been using flickr for the last couple months and I’m quite fond of its convenience and clean look and feel. I especially like the nifty description and image name editing that are quick and simple (i.e. doing these things on other service providers such as Mediamax is a real chore). For image hosting (like the image you see at the start of this post) I use Imageshack. Queenie told me to use it and I finally got around to it (I never bothered to try it out for no reason before… FTW).
Anyway, flickr and Imageshack honourable mentions aside, destinations of today’s trip all over downtown include the three floors of the Eaton’s Center (the Coast Mountain Sports there had three floors worth of Nalgenes but sadly, not a single one that was pleasing to my eye), up and down Queen Street, Burrito Boyz, the Silver Snail, all down what I think was Neville Street, a closed Bay-Bloor Radio, and Ginger for dinner (a little Vietnamese restaurant beside a strip club). After dinner, we just started strolling along Yonge and walked off all the food we had (burrito was decently sized but dinner wasn’t super heavy). All in all, a fun day.
I don’t know why but I felt very anxious at times (mostly the quieter times on the subway) and it’s a stirring feeling. Fun though. It was funny when I received a 2007 calendar full of, what I think was, Hugo Boss or Calvin Klein (or something to that effect) male models as a gag gift. I didn’t bother taking a picture but I was genuinely relieved when Queenie busted a Shrinky Dink “bones fish” out of her purse. This one was to replace the one I’d made myself (and snapped accidentally months ago) and serve as the actual gift (or bonus… to the very homosecular calendar). Very sweet.

Light on a Hill v. 2.0 Beta Release

Here at TJCAC co. we like to treat our environment nicely by holding weekly get-togethers and treating our neighbors to some free food, live music, and car washes (saying that reminds me of that Canadian Tire commercial with the man pressure stripping the paint off of his car). We’ve even got arts and crafts for the little ones. Last year, we managed to come out and have a pretty sweet showing every Wednesday evening/night (starting at seven o’ clock or so) and so we’re going for the same thing again this year.
So this has been my shameless plug for LoaH 2007 and if you are at all interested in having something to do on Hump Day evenings (other than what you’d normally have planned for Hump Day) then come out and have a burger.
Note: TJCAC can be found at 9950 Sheppard, just east of Meadowvale. It’s a giant red bricked building (that looks every bit the church with its high top and chiseled orange steps…) after an open field of nothing. You can’t miss it.

I’ve got firmwear on!

Today I headed out to have lunch with Shivon and Kishon. It was their first time at a KBBQ restaurant and they really liked it (even if we did eat about six times the amount of meat they’re used to in one meal).
Shivon was running late but about five minutes after sitting down across Kishon, my dad walked into the place looking for me. He asked me “Where’s the PSP?” and so I handed him my thigh-warmed PSP wondering “WTF? He came all the way out here to get the PSP?” I didn’t pay it too much thought.
When I got home, I went into my dad’s room to look for… I don’t even remember anymore but I found my PSP on his bedside drawer/counter thing with a note. Apparently he found the latest homebrew firmware hack for the PSP compatible with update 3.5 and below. I couldn’t do anything about my PSP before because I’d upgraded to 3.5 without checking whether anyone had yet found a way to hack it (that was a couple months ago).
Anyway, long story short, I can now play my PlayStation (that’s the FIRST PS console) games on my PSP along with, obviously, PSP iso files. This might not sound too significant but I’ve got two words for you. Final Fantasy.

Finally!

A fight scene that hasn’t been botched or cut up to achieve cool effects. Have a gander at the video below and note that it’s all been done in one take. That means no fancy editing to pull of the insane stunts.

Amateur

Rumor Busted: Silver PSP Exists

Everybody, come hither and bask in the light of the little mentioned but oh so stunning Silver PSP. I mentioned spotting this thing a while back but I had never gotten a chance to see it again/find it again since then until today. My parents happen to be out of the house at the moment so I got to take a few sneaky shots of it without anyone knowing. My dad is a sneaky one, what can I say. I didn’t even know they made them in silver… It’s too bad there’s already word of a PSP 2/Slim coming out…
On a PSP related note, I am still considering whether or not I should custom firmware my PSP… I’m wary of writing over the flash memory of it since I might brick my PSP (“brick” means to freeze up the PSP and turn it into, well, a brick). I also happen to own the games I play so I don’t have any real motivation to go ahead and get a homebrew firmware. It would be nice to have PDF reader on it though…

Life’s Edge

Is the tentative title for the culminating movie project of my group (tentatively named Pointy Hat Grp./Ltd./Wtf.). It’s a story that revolves around two brothers, one older and essentially the generic blessed and admired older sibling and the other one who is younger and conventionally jealous of the older brother’s success and good reputation.
One summer day, after some harmless sparring in the park (both brother conveniently happen to be martial artists, go figure), the older brother (played by Darren Guo, superstar in queue) suggests that they go for food together. The younger brother (Henry Leung, my doubles partner) brings them to a restaurant he heard about from a friend nearby.
Upon exiting the shady cafe, the two brothers happen upon two mobsters (played by my good friends Kishon M. and Jonathan L.)headed the opposite direction. Some short bursts of dialog follow ending in the older brother fending off the two mobsters and a third one in hiding (played by Alex K.) with a sledgehammer while the younger brother makes a run for it. He is soon gunned down just as the older brother is beaten unconscious.
From here, it only gets better, but you’ll have to wait until the final product is out (via Alex K.’s editing). To say the least, there’s a lot of revenge and sword busting-out-ing.
I received a (pardon my French) fucking cool gift today from a school friend as a way early birthday present. Amy happened to be at Anime North, an anime convention of epic proportions I’m told, and I had originally asked our friend, Queenie, to pick up something in my stead for ~$20. Neither found anything totally awesome on the first day (past Saturday) of AN. On Sunday, however, Amy had to make a judgment call. Either get for me a bookmark with Fuu (from “Samurai Champloo”) on it, a huge pin-up poster of Haruhi (from “the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya”), or a mystery gift. The bookmark, she said, was too girly, even for my tastes. And she feared what I might do to the life-sized Haruhi poster, so she ended up buying a wooden sword for me because it was expected that I’d appreciate something so (pardon my French again) fucking cool. She was totally right.
Here are the pics (click for a larger view):

The sword has some pretty sweet detailing etched into it’s smooth black finish (it’s wooden, remember?). Click here for a video groping of it.

Note: If you’re wondering why, the sword came originally wrapped in gift wrap paper and then plastic cling wrap under to prevent scratching. I didn’t wrap it in a huge latex–nevermind.

info @ the P.Pole 05.27.07

Today I woke up with a sharp pain in my right wrist. It felt like the tendon was off or something (like a cracked knuckle gone wrong, if you know what that feels like). I thought it was nothing but I soon found out my grandfather had actually fallen and broken–i.e. completely snapped–his wrist. i think the radius was what snapped. Anyway, this was, without a doubt, many times worse than my fractured wrist in grade eight. I think it was sympathy pains that I was feeling.
The whole family headed for Scarborough Grace Hospital and had him admitted. During the time that I would’ve otherwise spent at church, I kept my grandfather company as he went through the normal paces of a hospital patient. It was particularly sickening (yet undeniably cool) to watch the doctor and nurse literally pull my grandfather’s wrist apart (lengthwise, don’t be scared) and put it back together. What was awesome was that my grandfather took it like a man and never made a sound. Or maybe the localized freezing was just that good… Either way, it looked Fing painful. Cool and painful.
That was my morning. I’m sure my grandfather’s going to be okay (he’s home now, probably watching TV). What was awesome was that moments after getting it wrapped in a cast my he started swinging his arm around exclaiming “Hey! It doesn’t hurt anymore. Let’s go home.” I think that doctor did too good of a job freezing the arm.

I know I should be studying but…

I just found this game, Echoes, thanks to Kotaku and I gave it a whirl. I have a tendency towards games with simple and beautiful graphics (see Torus Trooper and fl0w) but Echoes is out of their league.
Essentially you’re a small ship taking down killer asteroids via process of reduction and elimination. You’ve got 100 hp to get nailed with before you die. There are small health bubbles to patch you up if you need it. Shot boosters also float out after blowing stuff up which power you up to take down bigger, badder asteroids. Sounds simple, but lemme tell you, it gets nuts. It’s a lot like Asteroids (as the creator himself admits) but… You need to play this for yourself. I think I’ve found my new time killer.
My current high score is a little bit into level 10 (~1000000 pts).

This Day Has Come

The wait is finally over. It’s almost been ten years but Blizzard just released info about their upcoming game (their newest “OMG!”), Starcraft 2. If you’ve played the first one (and chances are you probably have or have at least heard of it), this is a continuation of that golden formula that got the world addicted (to this very day) in 1998. I’ve never been a hardcore player but I’ve always had a place in my heart for this awesome game now turned series. I’m just drooling in anticipation for when I can get my greasy hands on a copy… Click on the title for the official SC2 website (make sure to watch the cinematic movie).