Wednesday, May 30, 2007

So....this is what we're up against...



Cue the training music!

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

LOLCODE!!1

Since most of us have done some programming (or even do it for a living), you'll appreciate the hilarity of the LOLCODE language :P

LOLCODE link

Monday, May 28, 2007

Some short movie reviews for Memorial Day

Happy Memorial Day to all! This summer's been turning out to be the summer of movies for me as I've seen 28 Weeks Later, Shrek the Third, and Pirates 3: At World's End in the past three weeks. Without getting into too much detail (as I tend to forget certain details and names from movies rather easily if I only see it once), I'll give you my feelings about each one of them.

28 Days Later: I'm not a big fan on zombie movies, so this one got a big "meh" from me. There were definitely parts that were intense as you're watching the survivors try to get away from the "rage" plagued people, but I didn't like the way the "rage" virus was introduced into the quarantined city.

Shrek the Third: If you enjoyed the first two movies, you'll likely enjoy this one as well. There's nothing overly groundbreaking about it storywise, but there're plenty of jokes and silly references to laugh at :)

Pirates 3: This movie was long (2 hours and 45 min) but to me it didn't drag as much as the time would indicate (although others might disagree). The biggest thing that bothered me was the convoluted plot which featured more crosses and double crosses than a sneaker shoelace, but fortunately, this movie was a lot more fun than the second one. It felt weird to see Chow Yun Fat as an pirate though o_O

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Ticket Searching

I was taking my friend Conquistador and his wife to the Columbus Airport today when I saw a billboard ad near the airport about Skybus, which claimed that they had flights for $10. So I check out their website and quickly saw in their list of cities that Seattle was a possible destination! I price out a ticket, and it turns out to be around $245, which is roughly $100 less than everywhere else. At this point, I figured hey, I can deal with this. Unfortunately, I didn't look closely enough at the airport I would be arriving in Washington, which turns out to be in Bellingham, 77 miles away from Seattle -_- Ah well, the ticket search continues...

Saturday, May 19, 2007

WTFortuneCookie


I got some Tai's takeout yesterday, and in the tradition of most Asian eateries, it came with a fortune cookie. I guess the monkeys they're hiring to make these fortune cookies are running out of ideas because this one made no sense o_O

Sunday, May 13, 2007

The Guitar Hero Zone

Sometime when you play Guitar Hero so much, you get into a zone while you're playing the song, and your whole body gets into it. At the recent Guitar Hero tournament, David caught on video one of those moments...

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Just throwing this out there: Part 2a

Looks like an early arrival is a popular option, and being the generous host, Catnipped has said she'd take a few days off if need be :) So I guess now the question is when would everyone like to fly in? I'm pretty flexible (long as the tix price is reasonable), but everyone has their own work schedule and number of days off, so here's the time to let everyone know what works for you. Also, some ideas have been put on the table for activities in Seattle. Tochi has suggested the fish market and hiking and photography at Olympic National Park (note this will be about a 2.5 drive each way), and there also seems to be interest in conquering trivia night at "The Celtic Bayou". Hopefully with our combined knowledge, we can make a run for the first prize :P

Monday, May 7, 2007

Just throwing this out there: Part 2

Ender, Tochi, and I have been keeping in touch once in a while about invading Seattle for PAX. Airline ticket prices have been slowing coming down (I'm checking on Farecast and Kayak), and here are some thoughts from the two tarus. Both Ender and Tochi have shown interest in going a bit earlier to Seattle so we can take some time to visit the city it is, and I personally would have no problem of going up a bit earlier as well. However, this might present some issues as I'm guessing Catnipped needs to be working during the day, so access to a car might be a problem (unless we go the GTA route and hijack Catnipped's car, but I don't think she would appreciate it :P). But anyways, any thoughts from Velius, Kabitzin, or Catnipped about the proposed earlier arrival?

Sunday, May 6, 2007

Short Spiderman 3 review and other notes of interest (Some spoilers ahead!)

I went to see Spiderman 3 at the IMAX theater at Easton today, and maybe I had sort of a mental benchmark set too high, but I came out sort of disappointed since this movie didn't wow me like the first two did. As Catnipped has pointed out, there were so many things going on in this movie between two villians, the conflict between Peter and Harry, and the strained relationship between Mary Jane and Peter that you felt sort of rushed watching all of these plots progress. Although the action scenes were really cool, there were times I felt that the action was going so fast and furious (especially in the first fight between Spiderman and Green Goblin Jr.) that I couldn't really process what was going on. Maybe they intended it to be that way, but I felt that sort of detracted from the action scenes. Also, the "singing" by Kirsten Dunst looked pretty fake :(

In sort of a strange fashion, this movie was sort of like the 2nd movie, only with everything sort of inverted.

Point (SM2): Peter Parker starts off sort of depressed being Spiderman and gets more emotionally stable as the movie progresses.
Counterpoint (SM3): Peter Parker starts of happy being Spiderman and goes down being angry and vengeful as the movie progresses.

Point (SM2): Peter Parker and Mary Jane start off with a rocky relationship but get closer as the movie progresses.
Counterpoint (SM3): Peter Parker starts with Mary Jane happily in a relationship but slowly separate from each other (although they do make up at the end).

Point (SM2): The villain (Doc Octopus) has selfish intention for being evil.
Counterpoint (SM3): One of the villains (Sandman) has sort of unselfish intentions for being evil.

Point (SM2): Media portraying Spiderman as evil.
Counterpoint (Sm3): Media portraying Spiderman as good.

If you don't agree about my point/counterpoint or if they're a bit of a stretch, feel free to flame me in the comments :P However, I must say some of the cheesy funny moments in the movie were pretty funny :)

It's sort of interesting to note that the third movie based off of superheros/comic books seems to fall flat after the second movie has receieved either equal or exceeding praise compared to the first movie.

Superman: 7.2 rating on IMDB, 93% on Rotten Tomatoes
Superman 2: 6.6 rating on IMDB, 83% on Rotten Tomatoes
Superman 3: 4.6 rating on IMDB, 23% on Rotten Tomatoes

Batman: 7.5 rating on IMDB, 72% on Rotten Tomatoes
Batman Returns: 6.7 rating on IMDB, 80% on Rotten Tomatoes
Batman Forever: 5.4 rating on IMDB, 43% on Rotten Tomatoes

X-men: 7.3 rating on IMDB, 79% on Rotten Tomatoes
X2: 7.9 rating on IMDB, 87% on Rotten Tomatoes
X-men: The Last Stand: 7.1 rating on IMDB, 57% on Rotten Tomatoes

As for the Spiderman series...
Spiderman: 7.4 rating on IMDB, 90% on Rotten Tomatoes
Spiderman 2: 7.8 rating on IMDB, 93% on Rotten Tomatoes
Spiderman 3: 7.3 rating on IMDB, currently 62% on Rotten Tomatoes

So Spiderman 3 was semi-disappointing, but that's not going to (initially) stop moviegoers as it set a new one-day opening record of 59 million dollars. However, this record might not hold as there're a whole slew of summer movies coming out that could challenge it such as Shrek the Third (May 18th), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (May 25th), Transformers (July 4th), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (July 14th), and The Simpsons Movie (July 27th). Of those, I'm really looking foward to the new Pirates movie and hope it doesn't suffer the 3rd movie jinx that Spiderman has fallen into.

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Just throwing this out there....

Tochi and I were talking last night, and we figured it was time for a Veggie meet on the east coast. So I'm going to throw this idea out there and see what everyone thinks. As Tochi and Ender know, there's an awesome theme park about an hour and a half north of Columbus called Cedar Point, which can be described as the capital of rollercoasters since they have sooooo many rollercoasters smushed into a relatively small piece of land. So what I was thinking was everyone could find their way to Columbus, and I could show everyone around (OSU campus, COSI, etc.) for a day, and then we could take the next day up to Cedar Point. I have a minivan, so everyone should be able to ride comfortabley, and even Kabitzin has no excuse not to attend since he lives only about 2 hours away from me :P I guess the only thing now is to see whether enough people would be interested, and if so, which dates would work for everyone since we all have our own schedule. I was thinking maybe the July 4th weekend, but I'd also have to check to see whether I'll be free that day or not. Anyways, I'll throw the idea out there and see if people like it or not.

Update: Opps...sorry Kabitzin and Catnipped :( I didn't realize that not everyone was a fan of rollercoasters :(