PAX reinforcement!

Let me extend the invitation to the Veggies to come hang out during Penny Arcade Expo 2007! It is the August 24-26th weekend. You probably read Velius's post about early registration, etc. Personally I think the difference really isn't that much. I didn't pre register last year and there was plenty of room. But just to keep it on everybody's mind. Here are all the reasons you should come:

1) I have lots of space for people to stay (well not as much as Veliu's but enough).
2) Free car rides everywhere + tour guide
3) tons of cool stuff including the Guitar Hero tournament and Game music concerts.
4) Seattle is like the best around August with sunny weather everyday.
5) This is going to be the biggest PAX since its start.

You only have to take one day off if you like, get here early Friday and leave Sunday. Think about it people!!! :)

amazing technology

Recently I noticed M is watching chinese tv on the computer all the time. I was curious since I know she doesn't do all that p2p downloading stuff that I do so I asked her. Apparently she has discovered this software called UUsee from just surfing on random chinese websites. It is really an incredible thing. It is a FREE online streaming television network that uses the p2p technology. So basically you download a client that acts like internet tv. It has a bunch of channels like a real cable network with schedules of various tv shows, movies, anything you can possibly think of. Basically you can watch it immediately just like watching real tv, of course the more people who are watching the faster the stream is. I tried it out tonight and there was almost no lag. The only time I noticed lag was when we were watching the overly popular Chinese New Years Show, and that was only about 20 minute buffering. It has a DVR like option also. The quality is not bad either. I am so impressed that this exists and is completely free. It indicates that the piracy industry in China has climbed to an awesome godlike state. Look, one channel is playing the wide screen format of "300" with appropriate chinese subtitles as I am typing this.

Triumphant!

We finally climbed our way out of loser valley yesterday at Trivia Night after hours of hard study and memorization...... ok ok, not really. We asked Plop (See media 1001 blog) to join us and he was totally helpful ;). We finished about middle of the pack with 59 out of 90 points. The winner of the $1 pitchers got 33 muhhahahaha! There were actually quite a few interesting questions this round and the rounds were very exciting. The categories ranged from Broadway shows, the Year 1999, one named celebrities, and best supporting actors from the Oscars. Some of the highlights:

1) What was the real name of the song usually called Teenage Wasteland (Velius! you should know this one)!
2) The full definition of the acronym NASDAQ - we were totally clueless
3) Bonus: name the 10 plagues of Egypt from the Bible - We got pretty close on that one

All in all, an extremely satisfying night! :)

Answers:

1) Bubba O'REilly- This is the song House was finger playing in one of the first season when Vogler was still there.
2) National Assocation of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations
3) Fires from the Sky, Lice, Beetles, Cattle Death, Death of First Born, Locusts, Darkness, raining Frogs, Water turned to Blood, Flies, Boils. Those poor Egyptians.

WE rock!

Completely within expectations, we were again LAST PLACE at yesterday's Trivia night despite an herculean effort. There were no sports questions but we were totally stumped by obscure movie quotes and text quoted from books. How can I possibly remember passages from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest? There was also an entire section about obscure coffee beans *headdesk* Well anyway, we were again the proud recipient of the $1 loser pitcher. Everybody in the pub cheered for us !:). The good thing is that we got 22 points, 5 more than last week!! Next week the saga continues as we courageously try to climb out of the loser valley.

St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day!! Now I don't really have much feeling attached to this popular Irish holiday with an green obsession. But it is a good excuse as any to go do some partying. K really wanted to go to an authentic Irish pub with some Irish music and beer so the three of us drove around downtown Seattle looking for a happening pub. We finally ended up at Fado in Pioneer Square. It seemed pretty cool as it says "Irish Pub" on the front underneath the name and there was a long line with lots of green covered people so I figure we were at the right place. Only on St. Patrick's day that pubs can charge $15 for cover but as K said, we must have the authentic experience! The line was actually pretty long but entertaining as they had the Seattle Firefighter's Pipes & Drums group doing some traditional bagpiping out front. They also had a beer stand outside for the poor souls waiting. The bagpipes definitely brought some party atmosphere. It is a weird combination as the club next door is pumping some heavy tech beats in between. I felt like doing some riverdancing but it was too cold =P. After about an half hour wait we finally got inside. The pub is actually pretty big with multiple rooms. It is too dark to really make out anything but I liked the fact it is roomy. In the second room, they had the McKinley Brothers doing some acoustic jamming. That was fun as they played alot of oldies like Brown Eyed Girl and I Love Rock and Roll (man I hear this everywhere now since GH). So we spent the rest of the night jumping around and having a good time. All in all, it was a very cool "Authentic" St. Patrick's Day celebration complete with Bagpiping and drinks and some weird old guy who keeps trying to give K a back massage (>_<)

beer and trivia night

Tonight my friend and I went to trivia night at a local pub "The Celtic Bayou" which as the name suggest, is a mix of Irish and Louisiana food. A very weird combination if you ask me. We didn't really go in with much confidence since we are by no means trivia kings. But it was a fun way to spent a night. The prizes goes as follows:

1st place: 35 dollars
2nd place: 25 dollars
3rd place: 15 dollars
last place: $1 pitcher of beer

Since the top 3 is pretty much out of our grasp, we figure it would be pretty cool to get last place, (with proper effort of course). The quiz had about 60 questions, ranging from current events to sports to weird deaths(Edward II was weeeirrd.) As expected, we were able to sweep the entertainment news and completely miss all the sports questions. The bonus round was TV theme song trivia and we failed terribly at that as well. So in the end, we have achieved our lofty goal of coming in last at 17 /60 points. The graders had to make sure we didn't try to deliberately throw the game. -_-. Since we were only two people and I don't drink we ended up giving the $1 loser pitcher to a group of 10 sitting next to us. We plan to come back next week as well, if we can keep our current record pretty soon we will be the most popular losers in the pub ;)

Impressive...

And this is why Dukies are awesome ;)
Article on MSNBC. Also I didn't know you can earn money from Metacafe?? is it like Googel Ads? hmm..

Tooting my own horn for a bit :)

This is probably going to be the only 15 seconds of fame in my life. Laughing at silly names are not allowed! Well ok, It is totally a groaning party whenever we have meetings to talk about this stuff. Because people can't stop snickering at me. I was totally embarrassed but at the same time, when will I ever see my name on a commercial website again?. Also for the record, they totally picked the name without telling me first. These are meant to be samples for beginners so of course they will continue to put up better and more worthy games but mine was the smallest and simplest so it made the deadline. :) Yay me!

Also, if you are just dying to make your dream game, they are hosting a competition for the best game developed in 4 months with some nice prizes.

A totally different sort of party

In the continuation of my social experimentation, I went to a totally different sort of party this Sunday. I was invited to a "Pride and Prejudice" viewing party. It all came about quite accidentaly as I was having lunch of my coworkers and some of her friends whom I never met. One of them mentioned that they are doing this party and I guess I squeaked in excitement, forcing them to invite me =P. Anyway, for those who don't know, the quintessential edition of "Pride and Prejudice" adaptations is the BBC/A&E miniseries starring Colin Firth. It is close to 6 hours long and officially brought about the revival of Jane Austen fever in '98. I already seen this like 10 times but it is always fun to see it with a group, kind of like a LOTR sitting (but much shorter haha).

So anyways, I was a little nervous since I have never met any of these people before and my coworker wasn't even going to be there. But anything for Jane Austen! There I met about 30 other people. They turned out to be extremely nice and interesting people. Most of them belong to this Christian Fellowship mailing list so that is how they know each other. All the guys there pretty much worked at The Company. We had scones, cream puffs and tea and watched English gentlemen and ladies flirt on a big projection screen in the basement. I had a great time. This is a totally different sort of party from the one I went to last week. There was no drinking, people were extremely nice and polite. The conversation was stimulating. The only downside is most are introverts like me , which makes starting conversations even more difficult than talking to drunk extroverts. In the case of latter, you just have to stand and let them speak. So more practice to be had to have good conversation that does not always start with "so where do you work" especially since I was the only stranger there. But I am glad I made that leap there. And for those that are thinking "P&P, eww girl cooties!", I have to report all the guys there liked it. Even the ones that were reluctant to watch it :).

and I thought I was the only one

I was just coming to do a post on this Akon song I heard on the radio yesterday and how I think it is exactly the same as the R kelly song Ignition. I was all prepared to delve deep in analysis to prove my point until I saw this. Why do people have to get ahead of me like that hmmph. Now I saw in one of the post that Akon supposedly "sampled" the R Kelly song to make his own song. But seriously, if Vanilla Ice can't get away with Ice Ice Baby (Under Pressure by Queen). Why should Akon get away basically singing the exact same song as R Kelly but with different lyrics. At least Vanilla Ice tried to do a totally different song.

ETA: 30 second survey for a friend at school.

Jumping On the Bandwagon

We all know that "The Departed" is the newly minted Oscar's Best Film of the Year, giving Martin Scorsese his first oscar after more films than can be counted. He actually jokingly said this is his first movie that actually had a plot. The ironic thing is of course that "The Departed" is basically a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong movie "Infernal Affairs". I thought it was funny when the script writer won for "adapting the other movie". Is that really a huge accomplishment to take a movie that was made just a couple of year ago and switch around the actors and add more bloody scenes and call it best film of the year? To add insult to injury, the announcer lady said it was a Japanese movie when doing the introduction. I feel like it is such a ripoff. It saddens me to think the audience in America will never see how great the original was (which by the way I actually saw at Velius' during a party, good times :)).

Anyway, I was just discussing this with my cousin in China when she mentions that there is a rumor going around of Hollywood buying another Andrew Lau movie "Confession of Pain" featuring the awesome Tony Leung. Anyway, I haven't seen the movie yet so I can't comment on whether it will be good *runs to download*. This gets me thinking though, does this mean that there will be a whole slew of remakes of Asian movies now that one has earned the prestige of an Oscar? I think I will be both gratified by the recognition and annoyed at the fact the original will never be seen. Although I hope that if this does happen, it will jilt the mainland movie scene out of their ridiculous pseudo kung fu epic movie trend they got going on. They all suck! When are they going to realize nooexistent dialog, extravagant costumes and no plot does not a movie make?

ETA: I really shouldn't post after midnight, I had to edit this like 10 times cause I was writing nonsense