September 05, 2008
links for 2008-09-04
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Excellent animation on Adult Swim, just so happen to be on when I was flicking through channels in the hotel room. :)
September 04, 2008
Tis my B-Day!
It's great getting Facebooked with Happy B-day wishes from all my friends from my Sun, Propylon days and friends from college. It's great. Got the "old skool" HB wishes via emails, SMS' and also just saying it to me person to person. Got tweeted as well. Heehee. It's great to be connected to friends who I have not seen for a long time and who are in different parts of the world. Technology, huh! :)
Oh, and I purchased Photoshop CS3 (after Mick had problems with his VISA again, he forgot to tell them he is in the States for another week, VISA is getting annoying at this stage). One thing, I checked the receipt and they had my email address, it's so freaky. I got back and I got the receipt via email from Apple. Efficient and freaky...
links for 2008-09-03
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Alteil is a story-driven online card dueling game with art by Japan's most talented fantasy artists!
September 02, 2008
links for 2008-09-01
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"Animation needs man's drawing hand, which is why I will continue to use the pencil for as long as I can." - Miyazaki
September 01, 2008
Looking back at PAX 2008
From the overwhelming amount of people attending PAX this year to my utter disgust at Freezepop's inability to perform without your ears bleeding to immense pleasure of witnessing Gabe's artistic talents at work in creating Monday's panel (which unfortunately won't be seen till Gabe's machine is fixed, but that's ok as I have a video of it to remind me what it was like, and you can check out the photo of the final image at the make-a-panel). Who can forget the many, many DS' and laptops shining out during the gig, and Jonathan Coultan's act was fantastic, the Portal song and the Zombies were my highlights. Audience participation is a must for full enjoyment.
From phrases like "Whooo-oo" to "Yea-aah!" to "Awesome" was the main vocab for some odd reason. It's not like nerds/geeks are not educated or anything, it felt like they are either rednecks or surfer dudes (and yes, dude was mentioned somewhere out there).
The moment of Jerry tying the mic chord around Mike's neck to get the Pacman watch given by a fan was funny, Mick did not get a shot of that, we'll need to wait for the PAX 08 DVD to come out to see that again. Another thing I've never experienced before (apart from it being my first time at a gamers convention) was the use of PictoChat on the DS. It's fantastic up to a point where people were populating it with wangs and arses. Although I was happy when I drew (or tried to) a stick figure version of the portal slide and got Portal responses from the people around.
And finally some pics from PAX can be found at here
August 31, 2008
You know you are at a gamer's conference..
...when everyone played Rockband in expert mode!
PAX 2008 so far
It's fun reading what Kotaku has written from where they have been in PAX so far, but I'm surprise that they did not get into Fallout 3 demo. There are a few jerks milling around PAX, but you have to remember, that there are more than 60K wandering around the main convention centre and across the road where the table top games are. So it's the minority, but somehow it's the minority that sticks in some of what you remember. They normally heckle, draw wangs and arses in DS' Pictochat, and walk into you without apologising (my brother found that they think that they are larger than you that you will get out of their way, and yes). Mostly, people around are normal people having a good time, some dressed up in their cosplay finest (one as Yumi kindly took a pic with my brother in exchange for a badge, if you collect enough of these special PAX badges you get some free swag). Beanbags are everywhere, I have not succumb to sitting on these yet, or else I would not have moved at all if I did.
I think the main thing people will remember are the long queues. It's was over 5 hours accumulated on Friday, was not so bad on Saturday, 1 hour for Fallout 3. I did not bother queuing for Jonathan Coultan's or PA's signing.
Friday night's gig was good apart from the shagging Freezepops! They suck donkeys, the main singer, she was trying too hard to be a punkish, while the music was retro 80s. As Mick puts it, the music was cute... for the first 10 minutes. It was grinding after that, and we had to endure one and a half hours before Jonathan Coultan came on stage. It was so bad, people were leaving the gig, at least that meant we were able to shuffle closer for Coultan's gig (aside from the ears bleeding from FP). I'm glad Kotaku did not like them either. Oh, the first performers, Oneups were quite good, it's just funky, jazz covers of games music. They had vids of the games on either side of the big screens.
Now all I have to do is pick out some pics and post them up on Flickr (they are on Mick's account at the moment).
August 29, 2008
August 27, 2008
August 23, 2008
August 19, 2008
July 30, 2008
July 29, 2008
July 28, 2008
May 23, 2008
MT4.0 - What I think of it
Ok, I just installed MT4.0 to see what's so different on it, since I have not checked new blogging tools for awhile. The set up was painless, also thanks to Dreamhost for its easy-to-setup mysql databases.
What started this off was checking what the "export" does in MT2.6. It gave me a wee (or big enough) text file. So I was wondering what it would look like in MT4.0. So off I went to download it and copied to my server space. Ran the setup, as I said earlier, was a sinch. All in all, got my first blog post in, it was more automatically posted when I set up the blog.
I then imported the MT2.6 file, everything went swimmingly, and then realised that I needed to "publish" the site before anyone can see anything! It's that same age-old issue I had with MT, you have to publish everytime you did something, anything. Which is lame. In Wordpress, for example, I just post something and it publishes it (and can be draft if I wanted). The main thing is, it does not ask you to publish, republish every time you do something to an entry, templates, css, etc. In MT's case, it's publish, wait, check site, publish, wait... *sigh
Anyhoo, once I published some of my entries (as I have over 800 entries, and it kept timing out from the processing), it appeared fine when I viewed the site.
The admin interface has been vastly improved, they even have an editor that highlights the syntax and includes line numbers. Handy indeed. Erm, I wanted to include some code that is used to pull a list from a text file that is generated every few minutes or so, of posts from the Irish Born Chinese Forum. I figured out the widgets, nothing too taxing, and got it included (once I figured out where the widget goes). Published the templates, cos of the changes. Viewed the site, the latest entries from the forum appeared, huzzah!
The good news ends here, I noticed that the latest entries from the forum has not been updated, you have to republish the index pages for it to pick it up, which is not the point of pulling posts from the forum at all! It was find in MT2.6, it just pulls the file contents, but it seems to have changed in behaviour for MT4.0. I was hoping to switch to MT4.0, but this little setback is a little annoying. Maybe there is a way around it?
May 19, 2008
*sigh, now this is lame...
Subject line: Make Dad feel rad: $15 Mugs, shipping included!
That's right, "rad", who uses that phrase at all? I'm not a spring chicken, but I cringed when I saw that on the subject line. And which sp@m is this one from, Kodak Gallery, reminding people about the American Father's Day.
May 17, 2008
Ya "cyberslacker"!
Just came across this article about what's acceptable or not when it comes to internet usage during work. I agree that people should not be slacking off at work chatting to people on FaceBook/Bebo all the time, but that stands to reason. It's like you would get up to get coffee and bump into someone in the kitchen at work, you chat a bit, that is fine. I feel in moderation at work is fine, what annoys me are the games playing on the social networking sites more than anything else. Now don't get me wrong, I fall in the category of chatting people on IM, but I set my status to busy, so I don't get bugged all the time by friends, and I use it to look up stuff, mainly work-related. I do use it for personal banking (excuse of using part of the banking hour during work), quick check of my newsfeeds. I aim for lunchtime to do most of my catching up on news, if possible, that is why I sit at my desk eating lunch, and yes, on occassions, I do eat with my mates. Everyone has done it, check the emails their friends sends, and clicked on those links. I have learnt not to watch any videos, images sent at work, and made sure people I know tag the stuff as "NSFW" or "Not Safe For Work" on the subject line emails. I definitely stay away from those until I get home. It's the moderation, my excuse is that I need some time to ramp up when I first get into work. The main thing is, get your work done in time.
The last companies I worked in allowed the use of IM, it is really handy at work to get people's attention when it comes to asking questions, showing people how to do something,etc. I found using IM at work productive anyway. So according to the article,
[...] a ‘cyberslacker’, a term used for a lazy, unproductive employee who spends half the day checking Facebook and browsing eBay.
The report gave an example of a college graduate who was so use to being online 24/7, chatting to people, buying things, etc., that when she was in the work environment for the first time, she felt restricted. Ultimately she was banned from using the internet in the office and needs permission if she needs to use it for work-related tasks. What is interesting here is the transition of college to work environment. It was so different when I graduated back in '99, internet surfing was a pain at home and in college, it was dog-slow, so it was not a problem for me. Nowadays, I see students in the computer labs using Bebo and Facebook. It's so bad that some colleges have banned this usage. It's only fair for other people to use it to write their reports. If the students have their own laptops, which many do nowadays, they can go on these sites, so I think, surf on these sites on your own machine in college, don't take up space if you know many other people need it for their assignments. It's only common sense. How to get out of that habit when you go back to work? Is it any different to people travelling for a year and go back to work afterwards? I don't think so, it's just a different way for someone to adapt back to routine, and how to work in an office environment. If the contract stipulates it, obide by it, seek HR on what is acceptable. If manager warns you, take that into account. Use your noggin!
The report at the end suggests that maybe we are addicted to the internet.
So if you are logging on when cooking the dinner, or in the middle of the night, then you have crossed the line from internet abuse to full-blown addiction.
Well, call me an addict then. I use the computer constantly if it's nearby, for both browsing and doing personal projects. I'm not addicted to looking up porn though, I think that's another problem altogether. If I go on holidays, I can forget about the internet. The only thing is checking my email, I am worried that I miss some important emails. As long as I get to go online for a minute to scan my emails, I'm happy.
What about people who use their phones to go online to check the map, or where to go for food? Are they addicts as they thought of going online to look for information, or Twitter, blog, send Flickr pictures, etc? What constitutes to addiction to the internet? It's a tool we use constantly and has interweaved into our modern society and life itself. It's useful source of information, but please stop playing scrabble online with your mates at work, it bugs the living be-jaysus out of me, especially when I can see your screen!
May 12, 2008
May 10, 2008
links for 2008-05-10
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N. Dublin based business. Delivers fresh organic fruit and veg. Recommended by a friend.
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Fun puzzle
May 07, 2008
May 05, 2008
May 01, 2008
April 30, 2008
April 27, 2008
April 25, 2008
April 24, 2008
April 23, 2008
April 22, 2008
Twitter sp@m
Argh, I cannot avoid posting about this, it is so annoying. As some of you know, I'm on Twitter, but recently I have been getting followed by what looks like sp@mmers. Tell-tale signs, like names with 16xdvdmedia and its url links to a generic site with crap on it. At least there is a block option, but I wish Twitter will implement something to stop these people ruining another online tool. It's just like Reddit is going downhill as people are just posting digg-like or slashdotty stuff, and commenters are getting just as bad. It use to be so tecchie and nice folks are being pushed out. Now I'm reading Hacker News, just do a search for "Hacker News", and see what you think. 
April 20, 2008
links for 2008-04-20
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Enter Chinese, get Cantonese or Mandarin pinyin back. Great for reading Chinese articles.
April 19, 2008
Something's familiar
I don't work in the restaurant per sae any more, I use to help out yonks ago, but I came across this blog entry that sort of strikes a note from the stories my brothers would recount of the times when they dealt with customers in the restaurant. Cynical as the blog entry is, it's true about the beta-males, and the experiences of the cashier, definitely closer to the truth than the other parts of the entry. I wonder what prompted this person to write this though, he/she sounded a bit traumatised. Or just decided to ramble, just like what I am doing right now! :)
Aer Lingus ticket blunder
After their fiasco of not honouring 5 Euro tickets booked on Wednesday, Aer Lingus decided to honour them, but not the upgraded business seats, which was fair enough. What I found funny was in the Irish Independent papers yesterday, there was a Ryanair ad taking advantage of Aer Lingus' whoopsie.100,000 REAL (from) €5 SEATS. One-way, no hidden charges.I like it that they had the from (I put it in brackets) above the Euro symbol.
NO AER LINGUS "MISTAKES"
NO AER LINGUS FAKE OFFERS
NO AER LINGUS FUEL SURCHARGES
Oh, and here is their press release as well. They called Aer Lingus the high fares, way worse airline.
April 18, 2008
Tagging in the Indo
I've only just noticed that the Indo article pages look different, I'm seeing more links on the article pages. I moused over certain linked words, and realised they are tags. Here's an example, I clicked on "Menlo Park" and the link directs me to http://www.independent.ie/topics/Menlo+Park. Not sure when this happened, but it's not bad, great to see Irish news medias online are trying out new things.
UPDATE
Oh, so this is the crowd that handles all the linking of information, Inform.
Inform provides technology solutions for established media brands. We support editors and publishers by searching, organizing and linking content so your site can present even greater editorial breadth – and win more readers.
April 13, 2008
April 12, 2008
April 11, 2008
April 10, 2008
April 04, 2008
April 03, 2008
April 01, 2008
March 29, 2008
March 25, 2008
March 24, 2008
March 23, 2008
See, and friends say we were geek!
Guy proposes over Twitter. All we did was use Google docs and Google calendar to manage our wedding stuff, created our own wedding site with online RSVP (as well as the retro sending of invitations by snail mail).
March 22, 2008
links for 2008-03-22
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What cartoon characters would look like if they are really.. like Homer and Mario
March 21, 2008
March 20, 2008
March 19, 2008
March 18, 2008
March 17, 2008
March 15, 2008
March 13, 2008
March 11, 2008
March 10, 2008
March 09, 2008
March 08, 2008
March 07, 2008
March 05, 2008
links for 2008-03-05
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Woohoo, finally. Sun getting into Python
March 03, 2008
March 01, 2008
February 29, 2008
Tedfest
Tis mad, another Tedfest went by without me knowing! It's so windy out, I wonder have they taken in the roads. 
links for 2008-02-29
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Irish Web Technology Conference in Dublin, and Geek Girl's Dinner
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Scroll down and look for Geek Girl. Pity there is no proper link to the video.
February 26, 2008
February 25, 2008
February 20, 2008
If you want to be happy...
... just remember this little tune, it'll keep you smiling all day! I was extra happy yesterday with this in my head!
February 19, 2008
February 18, 2008
February 16, 2008
February 15, 2008
February 14, 2008
February 13, 2008
February 12, 2008
February 11, 2008
February 10, 2008
Just testing if the custom player works
...just the playlist of animations that will hopefully give me ideas for my own projects, both for college and personally.
Where did "whykay" come from?
I am not sure if I mentioned this before, but my nick whykay actually really means something. Why am I posting this now, well, after seeing What's the significance of your username?. Of course, I did not read 99% of the comments, the question itself was pretty obvious regarding my own one. It comes from my Chinese name, 韋岐, pronounced "Wei Kay". Initially I used I used "YK", since this was before the year 2000, my friends kept calling me "Y2K", it kind of got annoying after awhile, thankfully it stopped after year 2000, funnily enough! So I have adopted to using "whykay". I'm pretty sure if you do a Google search on that, you will find me. Unfortunately, I'm not the only whykay out there. Oh well, can't have everything, ay, at least I am the first on the Google search results.
February 09, 2008
February 08, 2008
links for 2008-02-08
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NSFW even tho it's only images of dolls!
February 06, 2008
February 05, 2008
February 04, 2008
February 03, 2008
Poor doggy!
Not sure why people do this to their dogs! See the piccie of the poor dog here, all I was doing was searching for "cute puppy" and one of the hits was this! Oh, the humanity.
