New Toy

My Muvo came in today, so here're some pics to share of it :)

Front of the Muvo
Side buttons on the Muvo
Splitting the Muvo apart
Comparing the Muvo's size versus the Razr

This is the first MP3 player I've bought for myself, and I'm hoping it makes those long 6 hour drives back home a lot more bearable. The blue "sleeve" part of the Muvo contains the casing for an AAA battery, and I'll probably pick up some recharable AAA batteries down the road. Some other nice features that came along with the Muvo were a belt clip and a arm band. I was debating between this and the Nano, but the Nano cost quite a bit more than I wanted to pay for (but then again, I only paid $65 plus change for the Muvo thanks to a gift certificate :P), and now people have started to complain about how the Nano's LCD screen cracks easily. I guess Apple has to iron out those version 1.0 bugs out. But anyways, two thumbs ups from Kungfucius for the Muvo d_(^_^)_b

Now THIS is how programming should be taught :P

I thought this was a rather creative way of teaching kids the simple fundamentals of programming. The only thing is that the game seems way to expensive for its own good ($21.95 + $7 shipping!!!), and it takes way too long to have it shipped to you (4 to 6 weeks??).

Sneak Peek

Ok, it's not really a sneak peek, but my friend Ryan managed to get some free tickets from one of his friends for an advanced screening of Serenity, and he asked me to tag along with him since his roommate was busy. For whatever reason, I expected the theater to not be full since, hey, it's an advanced screening, but when we got there about 15 minutes before the show, the entire theater was pretty much packed, so I guess these tickets weren't so exclusive after all :P What was sort of interesting was that some rows were reserved for the reviewers of the local newspaper. But anyways, as for the movie, it's based off a Sci-fi show, and I personally don't follow sci-fi shows that much or care too much for them, so the movie on a scale from 1 to 10 was about a 5.5 to 6. The one thing in the movie which I just sort of shook my head was the fact the movie forced itself to be funny too much. There would be random jokes and comments inserted here and there, which the audience must have been sniffing some laughing gas because they ate it all up, but Ryan and I just looked at each other and shook our heads. But I guess if you follow the series the movie is based on and if you're a sci-fi junkie, you'll probably appreciate this movie more than I did.

Update: I had forgotten to mention that there were a lot of "bloggers" out in the audience. Apparently, as I understand, this was suppose to be a new method of promotion to have bloggers post their opinions and reactions to the movie. But as you can see by my reaction, the reactions probably aren't all positive :P You can find more opinions about Serenity at this link here.

Videos of the Day

Cosplaying: Some are just outright creepy o_O
ATX Jackhammer: When pimping your ride isn't enough, you need to put a 300+ pound woofer in the back of your car!
Lion vs Bear: Place your bet on who'll win!
Bell Ringing: Is this guy really ringing a bell? o_O :P

While we're still on videos, if you're an iTunes user, here's a link to learn how you can use iTunes to d/l music videos.

New MP3 player coming...

It's not an iPod Nano, but it's pretty small, you can use it as a flash drive, it has an FM radio built in, and you can change out the AAA battery if you need to :) Plus with a $25 certificate, it was mine for $65 :)

Stickman Puzzle Game

Click here to play! I haven't figured out the solution yet, so if you manage to figure it out, I'm open to hearing it.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, and more!!!

Check out this interesting graph of an expanded version of Rock, Paper, Scissors

I guess that's cute...

Here's an animal quiz I took from Kabitzin. Actually this is the 2nd time I took the quiz, and I think a bear cub is cuter than a monkey :P

You Are A: Bear Cub!

Bears are strong and independent creatures who roam in the forest in search of food. Bears are usually gentle, but anger one and be prepared for their full fury! You won't back down from a fight -- a classic attribute of bears. Intelligent and resourceful, though lazy at times, you are a fascinating creature of the wild.

You were almost a: Duckling or a Duck
You are least like a: Turtle or a ChipmunkWhat Cute Animal Are You?

We used how much gas????

For the past week, David and I have been trying to resort out a $94 gas bill that we received. Our apartment utilizes gas for water heating and for room heating in the winter, and given the fact that it had been rather hot in August and that both of us weren't even in the apart for the last week of August, we were sort of suspicious how we managed to use so much gas in August. Anyways, the gas company'll be sending someone in tomorrow to check out if there's any leaks, so hopefully this'll be resolved by tomorrow.

Update: Despite our best efforts, the gas company still believes that 2 college students can somehow use 120 cubic feet of gas per day over the summer from showering and washing dishes. They took $10 off the bill, but that's not much of a compromise as far as I see. Oh well, we'll be monitoring the gas a lot more closely now. Still, it's been a frustrating week trying to get this resolved and not go your way...

The end of the world...

Apparently a "chao cloud" is headed towards Earth. The good news is that some theoretical physics ideas will be confirmed, while "the bad news is that the total annihilation of our solar system is imminent." Great...just more bad news we all need...

Would you work for this company?

Check out the goofy photos of the people working at M&H incorporated. I guess they really enjoy their job there :P

And remember: September 19th is Talk like a Pirate Day!

Dang September is flying by...

You know September is flying by when you go to the supermarket and already see the Halloween merchandise being laid out, pumpkins are being sold, and Halloween candy is advertised everywhere. When I think back about it, the last time I remember dressing up for Halloween was probably in elementary school when the entire school had every class from kindergarten to 5th grade dress up, and the teacher played along as well. I just remember I was wearing a latex pumpkin face with orange flashing eyes, and the mask had an attached hood to it, which made it difficult for my 5th grade teacher to pick me out when he went around to guess who was who, but it also was the world's hottest mask to wear :( Anyways, David and I were shopping at Walmart this past Saturday, and I saw that they had a little section with these huge hairs in the costume aisle, and there was an afro on display! So immediately, I began thinking how funny it would look if I could dress up like Ken with the afro, black shirt, and jeans :P So what do you think? Can I pull it off? :P

Our football team bounced back from their tough loss to Texas with a win again San Diego State. However, I think they'll have to get better offensively as the Big Ten schedule starts next week. The team put up only 27 points against a San Diego team that let two lesser teams put up 30+ points the previous 2 games. And the QB controversy supposively was settled as Troy Smith was named the starter for the rest of the season, but he looked shaky at best passing from the pocket and missed a couple of easy throws to wide open receivers during the game. Hopefully, these bugs'll be worked out against Iowa next week.

David, my friend Ryan, and I went out for a bit of Frisbee golf on Sunday, and I'm glad to say I'm steadily getting better at it as I'm beginning to shoot under par over the entire course. Today I finished up at -3, but I borked up on either hole 13 or 14 with a triple bogey, so my score probably could have been a bit better. My approach to the game I believe is sort of how Tiger Woods approaches his game. We both hit (or throw in this case) the hell out of the ball off the tee and play it from wherever it lands. Although this strategy might seem haphazard, it's been working most of the time since I usually get my frisbee in position out of the reach of most tree hazards and get an easy second shot to play. However, my middle finger joint has taken a beating off one of the edge of the frisbee since I chuck it pretty hard, but it'll heal up :P

Controller revolution?

Here's an interesting review/preview about Nintendo's new controller that'll be used on their Revolution system coming soon.

Still alive here...

To my 6 fans out there, sorry about the lack of updates lately. I've been trying to catch up on research since coming back on vacation, and there isn't anything interesting like cold fusion or anything in my research involved that's interesting to talk about :P But I wanted to let everyone know I'm alive here...just not posting as much.

However, I will ask this. I have a $25 certificate to Amazon.com, and I can't decide what to spend it on. Any suggestions?

Sigh....so close :(

Matching up the #2 and #4 teams in the nation under the lights with 105,565 screaming fans this early in the college season is rare, but we here at Columbus had a chance to show that our team deserved to be up in the talk for the national championship as we went up against the University of Texas. Unfortunately, we just came up short as a couple of plays here and there didn't go our way, and a costly turnover at the end of the game basically took time away for our team to come back. Our defense played their hearts out and forced Texas into numerous turnovers, and although our offense were able to put up points from these turnovers, the points weren't touchdowns, and with the game so close to the end, one touchdown was all Texas needed to squeeze it out at the end. The only positive I think that came out of this was it now gives all the players a bit more motivation for the rest of the season to go out and make every play count, since you never know when it could help you out at the end. One of our players juggled a potential touchdown catch that probably would have kept us ahead of the game, but he couldn't hold onto the ball as one of the Texas players came and knocked him over just as he had the ball in his hands. Guess we'll see how the rest of the college season goes, but we're pretty deflated here at the moment in Columbus :(

Back from the desert!

Yup Kungfucius has returned back from Las Vegas! I'm working on uploading the 200+ pictures that I took, so I'll have a visual report for everyone to see :)

Update: Thanks to Tochi for showing me some software to create some quick webpages to display the pics :) I'll post some more commentary later.

Vegas/California Photobook

Update 2: Since JAlbum doesn't preview the videos (at least I didn't find a setting for it), here's a small description of each of them.

Video 127-128: White tiger at the Mirage in its den (19 megs each)
Video 201: Bellagio Water Fountain show (58.7 megs)
Video 202: Mirage volcano (39.7 megs)
Video 203: My brother riding on a small pink scooter (9.5 megs)
Video 204: More scooter riding action (4.6 megs)
Video 205: My brother playing with a dog (11.9 megs)
Video 222: My gambling highlight :) (6.3 megs)

Overall, the trip was a blast despite the amount of driving we had to go through to go to California and back. As usual, the weather at Vegas was in the 100's during the day with 10% humidity, but luckily we were indoors most of the time in the casinos. I didn't play as well as I would have liked in poker, but most of it was my fault in not knowing how the house handles the poker games. When I signed up to play ($50 buy-in), I was under the impression that they would put you in a new table with everyone starting with the same amount of chips. Unfortunately that wasn't the case as I went into the game where people had been playing for a while, and I started with $48 in chips ($2 goes to the casino for playing), which basically meant that I was short stacked for most of the game. Ah well, I'll remember to bring in more $$$ the next time I buy into a game.

We saw the show "O" the night we arrived, and I can't really put into words how incredible this show was to watch. There was syncronized swimming, acrobatics, ballet, singing and dancing, and all sorts of amazing visuals that you probably need to see this show at least 3 times to see everything that goes on. The stage itself had at least a 10 foot pool built into it (since there were acrobats that were at least 100 feet in the air jumping into the pool), but it had a special meshed surface that can rise and lower into the water. So if you ever need a visually stunning show to see while you're at Vegas, definately check out "O".