Men are hopelessly predictable
Jun0
After reading the Confessions of a Bachelor Party Stripper, it made me depressed after realizing men are idiots, and we’re too predictable. I wish there’s a guy that can prove to the world men can be resistant to sexual appeals, but sadly, I think all men are animals inside.
sigh.. but it’s good to know that “70 percent of bachelors are completely against having sex at their party, 20 percent are hoping that the women in the show will force it upon them so they won’t have to feel guilty, and the other 10 percent actively try to make it happen.” And the ones that try to make things happen argue, “There’s a price for everything.”
I found this anecdote hilarious (but at the same time, sad):
Guys make idiots of themselves in other ways too. At one party, the bride’s little brother was there. He was 18 or so, still in high school, and they got him totally wasted. All of a sudden, right in the middle of our show, he pulled out his penis and started playing with himself. In front of everybody! His father walked up to him and said, “Son, are you sure you want to be doing this?” The kid slurred “Leave me alone” and just kept going. He eventually passed out cold with it in his hand.
And also, today’s featured video: Would you do him outside? lolol
Nobody throws a tantrum like this guy
Jun0
So the (make-believe) story behind this is, a mom cancelled this poor guy’s World of Warcraft account, and his braced little brother taped his pathetic little tantrum. Highlights of this video are, somehow unclothing himself with bedsheets over his head, and shoving a remote up in his ass.
Doesn’t he look like there’s a monster inside his body, trying to wring out his body? And somehow this reminds me of Resident Evil, but I’m not sure why.
Seriously, wtf?
Jun0
Among the incredulous news I’ve come across today, and mind you, I am not exaggerating one bit. Read on.
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PETA wishes Obama hadn’t swatted that fly to death during his televised interview, saying that Obama should show more humanity to a pesky fly.
PETA is sending President Barack Obama a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, a device that allows users to trap a house fly and then release it outside.
…
Deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said the White House has no comment on the matter.
Yeah, I wouldn’t either.
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Microsoft is pushing hard for their new IE8. In fact, they’re giving out ten grand in an internet scavenger hunt. Oh, did I mention that you’ll only find it by using IE8? And I quote, “But you’ll never find it using that browser. (So get rid of it, or get lost.)” Thank you for that ultimatium, but I already know where the ten grand is buried.
On the same subject, Microsoft drew out a little comparison chart among the browsers: IE8, Firefox, Chrome. I’d say this chart is another good way to provoke a geek argument. Security? Please. Privacy? Just because Firefox’s Private Mode and Chrome’s Incognito aren’t called InPrivate doesn’t mean they don’t deserve the checkmarks. Reliability? I thought Chrome first came up with the idea of sandboxes and “tab isolation”??? oiasjdofjwa r blahhh arg
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But what really blew my mind is the following. Really, this left me flabbergasted.
15-Year-Old Texting Champ Wins $50,000
what. the. hell.
LG, in a nod to texters’ dangerous tendency to multi-task, forced contestants to run an obstacle course while sending difficult-to-type messages, and compose tongue twisters while being taunted by a giant emoticon.
Life’s definitely good, LG.
-edit-
Geek Technica busts IE8 myths. and…
Microsoft’s future vision on technology
Jun0
Microsoft, as everybody knows it, the company who love to hate. A few months back, Microsoft showed a clip from a presentation given at the Wharton Business Technology Conference. In Microsoft’s belief, the technology advancement will be so rapid that this is a world we’ll live in in a decade.
Included in the video was their idea of Microsoft Surface. Though it’s still too expensive for the average consumer to buy, it’ll become a reality. Here is the video of what Surface is
Anyway, Project Natal is something the XBOX team has been working on recenly, and it’s basically a controller-free gaming system. Though I have my doubts in this (i.e. how well it works), the concept video is undoubtedly mind-blowing.
Sony toyed with this idea a few years back (remember EyeStation or Eye-something? The little webcam you hook up, and you calibrate it by standing inside the body outline shown on the screen) I guess Sony marked it as a failed attempt and never went forth with it in R&D.
Project Natal: good concept, pain in the ass to implement. Mainly because the input is a variable, and not a defined button. Everybody’s living room is going to look different, and dogs would be walking by (though that can be fixed with facial recognition). But hey, we have progressed through static HTML pages to PHP to websites built entirely upon user inputs (namely, facebook)
-edit-
Sorry, Project Natal is a reality. Microsoft explains:
Compatible with any Xbox 360 system, the “Project Natal” sensor is the world’s first to combine an RGB camera, depth sensor, multi-array microphone and custom processor running proprietary software all in one device. Unlike 2-D cameras and controllers, “Project Natal” tracks your full body movement in 3-D, while responding to commands, directions and even a shift of emotion in your voice.
In addition, unlike other devices, the “Project Natal” sensor is not light-dependent. It can recognize you just by looking at your face, and it doesn’t just react to key words but understands what you’re saying. Call a play in a football game, and players will actually respond.
More info on Gizmodo.
my life is…
May0
I remember a few months back, I started seeing people’s facebook statuses as “FML”. After a minute of trying to guess what the acroynm could logically stand for, I sighed and gave up. Few weeks later, my friends shared me a link to fmylife.com (My life sucks, but I don’t give a f***), and that’s when I made the connection.
Anyway, I’m guessing people found that site too depressing or something, a new site popped up. MLIA, or MyLifeIsAverage (Life is pretty normal today). They weren’t kidding about being average.
But that’s not all.
Today, I found out another site – GivesMeHope (Life is beautiful today!). What. The. Hell. I won’t be surprised if I start seeing GMH on facebook statuses.. = =
However, I would say I found this post to be funny:
Today, I lost my virginity. I’m an avid WoW player and spend most of my time on Digg.com. GMH
On a related note, mydadisafob, mymomisafob
Disclaimer: aforementioned sites can be a great time waster.
Movies list
May0
Suggested movies list (by my friend).
Bolded titles denote watched
- grease 1&2
- dirty dancing
- breakfast club
- breakfast at tiffanys
- sabrina
- sound of music
- pride and prejudice
- tale of two cities
- pretty woman
- princess bride
- knotting hill
- you got mail
- sleepless in seattle
- Armageddon
- when harry meets sally
- con air (nicholas cage)
- braveheart
- overboard
- ghost
- bodyguard
- you love me, you love me not
- crash
- city of angels
- gone with the wind
- west side story
- fiddler on the roof
- american beauty
- august rush
Book list
May2
I have two lists: one is Strand 80, the other is books suggest by my girlfriend
Strand 80 (bold is I’ve read)
- To Kill a Mockingbird , Harper Lee
- Pride and Prejudice , Jane Austen
- Great Gatsby , Scott F. Fitzgerald
- Catcher in the Rye , J.D. Salinger
- Atlas Shrugged , Ayn Rand
- Fountainhead , Ayn Rand
- Lord of the Rings , J.R.R. Tolkien
- One Hundred Years of Solitude , Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Jane Eyre , Charlotte Bronte
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone , J.K. Rowling
- Lolita , Vladimir Nabokov
- 1984 , George Orwell
- On the Road , Jack Kerouac
- Gone with the Wind , Margaret Mitchell
- Anna Karenina , Leo Tolstoy
- Brothers Karamazov , Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Crime and Punishment , Fyodor Dostoevsky
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn , Betty Smith
- Slaughterhouse Five , Kurt Vonnegut
- Ulysses , James Joyce
- Kite Runner , Khaled Hosseini
- Catch-22 , Joseph Heller
- Grapes of Wrath , John Steinbeck
- East of Eden , John Steinbeck
- Sun Also Rises , Ernest Hemingway
- War and Peace , Leo Tolstoy
- Hobbit , J.R.R. Tolkien
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , J.K. Rowling
- Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay , Michael Chabon
- Wuthering Heights , Emily Bronte
- Prayer for Owen Meany , John Irving
- Count of Monte Cristo , Alexandre Dumas
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass , Lewis Carroll
- The Stranger , Albert Camus
- Brave New World , Aldous Huxley
- Little Women , Louisa May Alcott
- Middlesex , Jeffrey Eugenides
- Moby Dick , Herman Melville
- The Alchemist , Paulo Coelho
- Les Miserables , Victor Hugo
- Tale of Two Cities , Charles Dickens
- Anthem , Ayn Rand
- The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles , Haruki Murakami
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , Mark Twain
- In Cold Blood , Truman Capote
- Cat’s Cradle , Kurt Vonnegut
- Love in the Time of Cholera , Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- The Little Prince , Antoine De Saint-Exupery
- The Time Traveler’s Wife , Audrey Niffenegger
- Invisible Man , Ralph Ellison
- Unbearable Lightness of Being , Milan Kundera
- Bell Jar , Sylvia Plath
- World According to Garp , John Irving
- Middlemarch , George Eliot
- To the Lighthouse , Virginia Woolf
- The Poisonwood Bible , Barbara Kingsolver
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , J.K. Rowling
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix , J.K. Rowling
- Old Man and the Sea , Ernest Hemingway
- Ender’s Game , Orson Scott Card
- Bleak House , Charles Dickens
- Beloved , Toni Morrison
- Great Expectations , Charles Dickens
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius , Dave Eggers
- Fight Club , Chuck Palahniuk
- Sound and the Fury , William Faulkner
- Mrs. Dalloway ,Virginia Woolf
- The Giver , Lois Lowry
- The Master and Margarita , Mikhail Bulgakov
- Blindness , Jose Saramago
- Life of Pi , Yann Martel
- Madam Bovary , Gustave Flaubert
- Where the Wild Things Are , Maruice Sendak
- Chronicles of Narnia , C.S. Lewis
- Odyssey , Homer
- The Da Vinci Code , Dan Brown
- Franny and Zooey , J.D. Salinger
- A Wrinkle in Time , Madeleine L’Engle
- Everything is Illuminated , Jonathan Safran Foer
- The Picture of Dorian Gray , Oscar Wilde
- The Handmaid’s Tale , Margaret Atwood
Suggested reading list:
- The Iron Dragon’s Daughter , Michael Swanwick
- Hammered, Scardown, Worldwired, Dust , Elizabeth Bear
- Interpreter of Maladies , Jumpa Lahiri
- The Great Gatsby , F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Lady Oracle , Margaret Atwood
- Memoirs of a Geisha , Arthur Golden
- Hannibal , Thomas Harris
- Typical American , Gish Jen
- Dragons of Babel , Michael Swanwick
- Wicked , Gregory MacGuire
- His Dark Materials series , Phillip Pullman
- Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister , Gregory MacGuire
- Jane Eyre , Charlotte Bronte
- Rebecca , Daphne du Maurier
- poems , T.S. Eliot (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and The Wasteland)
- Replay , Ken Grimwood
- Scar Night , Alan Campbell
- The Invisible Man , Ralph Ellison
Summer ‘09 to do’s
May0
There is a ton of things I’d like to try, do, and finish.
Academics
- understand UC Berkeley’s CS70 Discrete Mathematics and Probability Theory notes
- watch Stanford’s free iTunesU iPhone coding lectures
CS related
- go through Facebook puzzles, USACO challenges
- study for Microsoft’s Dreamspark free certification testing
- get comfortable with vim
Readings
- read Nanshi
- read through my book list
Misc.
- watch through my movies list
- get started with learning Japanese
- build an iPhone app
- learn how to play a guitar
- read Strobist’s Lighting 101
- play around my new 2-umbrella set
DreamHost for $10 a year
May0
With the code “777″, I switched from NearlyFreeSpeech.net to DreamHost today. You might remember my rant a few months back about running my 10 or 20 MB blog for 3 cents a day (or $10.95 a year). Now, I have unlimited storage and bandwidth for $9.24!
Woot!! Thank you, Memorial Day.
A Different Perspective
Apr0
Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if you’re someone else? Sergey Brin, Victor Gonzalez, President Obama?
Well, the White House launched an official collection of photos depicting Obama’s first 100 days in office today, and Pete Souza, the photo journalist for Obama, tells a really good behind-the-scene story, so to speak. It’s really interesting to browse through those photos, and they also made me wonder what Pete’s life is like. I kinda envy him – one for getting paid to take pictures, two, for owning a 50D Mk II, three, for getting so up close and personal with the most important person in the world, and lastly, for getting a free ride on Air Force One.
Damn you, Pete, haha.