Ach...here's just some stuff that was interesting.
New Xbox Look for the holidays
Rock-Paper-Scissors Champ Crowned
Mon Nov 18, 7:52 AM ET
Give Pete Lovering a hand for being the world's best Rock, Paper,
Scissors player.
The job-hunting Web site operator has won the World Rock Paper Scissors
Society's first open international championship. He was among more than 250
grownups who took part in the competiton over the weekend in Toronto.
While Rock, Paper, Scissors is usually a kids' game, not this time. He won
more than the last slice of pizza. First prize was $1,200, a video game
system and a gold medal. Lovering says the secret to winning is maintaining
a clear mind and judging each opponent individually.
Internet Mahjong
http://www.mahjongluck.com/download.htm
http://mahjong.real-time.com/Documentation/Introduction/introduction.html
PS2 Mahjong Game Video
http://ps2media.ign.com/media/news/video/japanisodd/konmah/konamimah1.mov
http://ps2media.ign.com/media/news/video/japanisodd/konmah/konamimah2.mov
http://ps2media.ign.com/media/news/video/streetmahjong_1.mov
Love Hina Downloads
http://www.rtilanime.com/
http://www.intensive-ryvius.com/lovehina/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=1
http://www.in4.pl/~anime/
http://radiokampus.ee.itb.ac.id/komik/LoveHina%20-%20dr%20Banzai/
PASS: LHscans.cjb.net
Game Boy Advance Hardware
http://www.newwise.com/
http://gbaroms.gbxemu.com/
Amidst all these changes I forgot to mention that over the weekend, Adam, my roommate got sick. When he told me that he felt stomach pains that weren't going away, I immediatly thought appendicitis but I didn't want to scare the guy since it's invasive surgery and I'm not a doctor. When he called me at the hospital though, he confirmed that the doctors thought it was appendicitis. Not sure if he got the open appendectomy or the laparoscopic appendectomy but he felt not so good afterwards anyways. I think they checked for elevated white blood cells but I think they probably should have shelled out the extra buck for the test for CRPs. An elevation of white blood cells could mean a ton of different things. However, CRP tests (which see if there are elevated levels of C-Reactive protein, something that the liver produces when bacterial infections occur) only come up positive within 12 hours of the symptoms. I think Adam had beared the pain for more than that. He seems to be fine although at the hospital he complained about how 3 hrs after surgery, they had him try to walk around and stuff. Adam was walking around like an old man. Hehe. All the humilation. Peeing into a cup, having a guy stick his finger up his ass to look around (enlarged prostate?). Poor guy. When the nurses asked him if he felt like going to the bathroom (lots of liquids was recommended), Adam said no and the nurses told him that they would have to then stick a catheter into his you-know-what. Adam then decided that he could go to the bathroom. Adam also has rubbery skin cause it was really hard to stick an IV in his arm. hehe
List of good
Xbox titles.
Can you believe that there are so many to choose from? Aargh...feel like a Pokemon Trainer.
Steel Battalion
Fatal
Frame
House of the Dead 3
MechAssault
TimeSplitters 2
Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance
Shenmue II
Splinter Cell
JSRF
Whacked!
BMX XXX
Ghost Recon
Rally Fusion
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance
James Bond 007: NightFire
Battle Engine Aquila
Dead
or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball
On another note, Here are some shots of the Steel Battalion (Tekki) controller and pedals.
Movie of Tekki
Shows off some of the cool stuff...not much gameplay though.
Movie of Tekki Startup Sequence
Cool!!! like EVA...well not quite but close.
Movie of Tekki taking down a radio tower
This is what I call completely interactive environments!!!
Steel Battalion Simulator
Instructions
Select top option for onscreen instructions
Select bottom option for no instructions
If you do the bottom option, here are keys you need to push to start up
the mech...
z, x, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, space when full bars(kinda like eva sync ratio).
Finished my round of changes. Scratcher was changed. Images were changed. Also redid the really old entries from way back so the archive section is now up. You can also access them by scrolling to the bottom. The links will be there as well. I couldn't help but read some of them as I moved them and I was amused by some of them. Can't believe that I've been at Berkeley for so long.
I must remember to lay off on tendon for beef stew in the future. Need to buy neck meat, carrots, tomatoes, and napa cabbage. I think I've had enough tendon to last me a few lifetimes.For some reason, Leah, Michelle, and Wai-Lin are all into the tv show "The Bachelor". Leah maintains that she predicted that Helene was going to win all along. This is of course the speculation that the bachelor's home town already knows who won. Little scandal about them making bets online in the max amount and all for one person. The company that made those bets stopped taking them anyways.
Instead of a new laptop, I've been looking at Tablet PCs. Microsoft has been more seriously pushing them as alternatives to laptops for businesses and a few of them (esp the Compaq one) look pretty sweet. I'm still used to the keyboard though for writing and stuff.
I'd really like to make updating the website easier with all the entries located on the database but I have reservations about querying the database for every single thing which is what more and more websites are doing now. I think what I should do is maybe write some server side scripts to create cache files based on database entries and serve those instead. This would take a lot of the burden off of mysql but still allow the content presentation to be more dynamic. ehhh...I still haven't completed the exact schema though for the tables. And that stuff is no joke since once I commit to a structure, it's like a painful process to change. I'm learning quite a bit from even just the scratcher board about web applications. It looks easy and simple but in order to stop accidental multiple entries, the interface and code need to be changed in many different ways. If only I had more time!!!
After Bolshoi ended, they had a reception with good food. Apparently, someone took quite a few plates of food but thankfully some was left over for the staff. Salmon with Black Caviar and Tobiko. Makes me wonder what the other food was if they left that behind. Went to Hilltop on Saturday. Saw so many Xbox games that I wanted to get but I was able to hold myself back from getting them all. hehe...I'm not sure if I want to get the Xbox version of Shenmue 2 cause I already have it on the Dreamcast. I'm still on Disc 3. Most likely I'll just wait for it to go down in price before getting it. Xbox Live is going online on the 15th for the rest of the world. This week, I'll probably go get MechAssault cause it's really the only game for Live that I really want at this point. Ghost Recon (which I previewed at IGN), was pretty good but I'm really not interested in playing fps games on Xbox live unless the communicator really bowls me over (which it does). Without a keyboard and mouse for Xbox, it really hinders good playing and you tend to rely too much on auto-targeting. I've pre-ordered Steel Battalion with the huge controller and pedals. Gosh I'm excited. Splinter Cell is coming out too! But my OXM (Official Xbox Magazine) still hasn't come yet. I'm convinced either there's a conspiracy against me or someone has taken my issue. AARGH. Pissed off.
BBC recently put out a survey on the top 50 places to visit before you die. Here's the list...The bold entries are places that I've been to. Looks like I've got a lot of visiting ahead of me.
|
1 The Grand Canyon 2 Great Barrier Reef 3 Florida 4 South Island 5 Cape Town 6 Golden Temple in India's AmriCzar 7 Las Vegas 8 Sydney 9 New York 10 Taj Mahal 11 Lake Louise in Canadian Rockies 12 Uluru 13 Chichen Itza - Mexico 14 Machu Picchu - Peru 15 Niagara Falls 16 Petra - Jordan 17 The Pyramids - Egypt 18 Venice 19 Maldives 20 Great Wall of China 21 Victoria Falls - Zimbabwe 22 Hong Kong 23 Yosemite National Park 24 Hawaii 25 Auckland - New Zealand |
26 Iguassu Falls 27 Paris 28 Alaska 29 Angkor Wat - Cambodia 30 Himalayas - Nepal 31 Rio de Janeiro - Brazil 32 Masai Mara - Kenya 33 Galapagos Islands - Ecuador 34 Luxor - Egypt 35 Rome 36 San Francisco 37 Barcelona 38 Dubai 39 Singapore 40 La Digue - Seychelles 41 Sri Lanka 42 Bangkok 43 Barbados 44 Iceland 45 Terracotta Army - China 46 Zermatt - Switzerland 47 Angel Falls - Venezuela 48 Abu Simbel - Egypt 49 Bali 50 French Polynesia |
Pictures of the Day
1. That ad for PETA is just disgusting. But so are fur coats I guess.
2. Isn't that the cutest little car. Of course, it's Japanese.
3. Dell's new handheld. Could be a great stocking stuffer.
Went to 99 Ranch this week and bought some beef stew meat (tendon and whatnot). The stew that I made was really good. Really surprised that it turned out so well the first time I made it. Went to breakfast at Ann's Soup Kitchen on Telegraph for the first time. The prices and food were very good. Yesterday, went to Japantown. Almost went to Benihana's for dinner but Leah's TMJ started acting up so we went elsewhere where I got my first Okonomiyaki that I've had in years.
The Bolshoi Ballet is in town this week. All these Russian people walking around in Cal Performances. All the signs are in Russian. Yesterday there seemed like a rally in Union Square. Some band was playing, I'm not sure which band but it was pretty impressive. Therefore, it really couldn't be the Stanford band since these were an organized bunch not the motley bunch of fools the Stanford band are.
Supposedly DOOM III has been leaked!!! It's very very rough and supposedly won't run very well even on high end systems. Once you've downloaded it from "somewhere", go here to find out how to get it running. Then go here to read the Slashdot on it. Man is Carmack pissed or what?!!! Hmm, they may be pissed at ATI but with ATI as the market leader now, what can they really do?
Pictures of the Day
1. Cool satellite photo of Italy's Mt Etna eruption.
2. Nokia's N-Gage seeks to supplant the Game Boy Advance with this nifty phone/game console gadget. Without cool games though, this'll just fizzle
away.
3. You think the guy will actually make it? I think he'll kick it but I don't think he'll pass over his buddies without taking a few with him.
Couldn't wait to post this...it's a new trailer for "Finding Nemo" by Pixar. I saw the entire movie in storyboard format and I'm really liking the animated version. I'd say that this movie is going to recapture the "mature" audience that was lost from Monster's Inc. Nemo isn't exclusively entertaining to children this time around.
Here you go!!!
Finding Nemo - Quicktime MR
Finding Nemo - Quicktime HR
Finding Nemo - Quicktime RHR
Finding Nemo - RealPlayer LR
Finding Nemo - RealPlayer MR
Finding Nemo - RealPlayer HR
Finding Nemo - RealPlayer RHR
Finding Nemo - MediaPlayer LR
Finding Nemo - MediaPlayer MR
Finding Nemo - MediaPlayer HR
Finding Nemo - MediaPlayer RHR
So on Halloween, we planned on going to the Castro District to see what all the stories were about. I made some omelets for dinner while me and Joe waited for Wai-Lin and Leah to get ready. Michelle went with another group of friends. She actually drove to the Ashby BART instead of the Berkeley one which turned out to be one of the smart things to do. When me, Leah, Joe, Wai-Lin, one of my friends from awhile back Alan and his gf got to the Berkeley BART, it was jam packed. It was like a Halloween party in there just without the disco lights and drinks. Everyone must have had the bright idea to go into the city on BART instead of driving. After waiting there endlessly (there were rumors that there were only 2 operating machines and close to 200 people waiting with more coming in by the minute), I got a call from Chris and Adam wondering where I was. I told them that I was still at the BART. I was then informed that they were already in SF, parked and getting to the Castro. I then got my group convinced that this was a better way to go so we went back to the apartment to drive to SF instead. Parked in the underground structure near the Civic Center and started heading west towards the Castro District along Market St. Hundreds of people were walking in the same direction. Tons of different and original costumes. Quite a few people went as laid off office workers. I saw a vagina, a penis, various giftboxes etc...even the monster from Sen to Chihiro. Got to see people strip ala Mardi Gras. Unfortunately with hundreds of cell phones around, we couldn't get through to Adam or Chris and so never met up. A fight broke out next to us and it was amusing to see how fast a circle formed around them. One of the guys got pushed right into me and Leah (she kinda got elbowed) and I got some of the action on camera. After walking for what seemed to be an eternity we decided to head back. As we were walking by, I passed a couple who were dressed like French royalty. All I could think of was them being squashed in the crowd like we had just been. It wasn't like shoulder to shoulder standing room it was more like nose to nose. As I mentioned to Leah, it could be a cure for claustrophobics whereupon she replied, "Or they could go crazy!"
On Friday, spent most of the day working. Had Carl's for lunch. I just love those Double Westerns. Did go to Great China for dinner though for some more Shredded Pork with Spicy Garlic Sauce.
Today, I started watching the DVD rips of Meteor Garden. Can't wait to see MG2 on CTS when it comes out this month in Taiwan. I spent a lot of the day with the vacuum and a thing called the Rug Doctor which I rented from Safeway. It's supposed to take out stains with a steam cleaning process. Leah brought dinner and we went to see Sen to Chihiro in the theaters. I just made some Oyster with Pork and Basil. Yumm...I tried not to talk about food but failed. Oh well.
Yesterday night was crazy in the Castro District. More info and maybe pics
later.
Pictures of the Day
1. Guess which one's Regis and which one's Kelly. Then again, don't even
look at the picture. It's too disturbing.
2. Rubio invents new dance style during concert.
3. Look at the Referee. He's just standing there! Gotta love that Third
Man rule.
