Being Dave To

being dave to is having a scraped elbow that hurts October 31st, 2006

Went for yoga this morning with Ally and forgot how painful it can be when you’re doing it but also how nice it feels once you’re done. Unfortunately, my muscles couldn’t fully recover for Volleyball that happened tonight in which we got our asses handed to us 3-0. My play was definitely not at its prime as I was hitting balls against the far walls and missing some other things. But our whole team didn’t really show up today so I don’t feel too bad. I also scraped my elbow. ouch!

Other observations made today: CSS layouts are not as hard as I expected, this japanese izakaya place on Davie serves a lot of msg in their food because my mouth is very dry right now, Ally rented out her apartment at 1010 Howe! (not really an observation), there are many different techniques to roasting pumpkin seeds, I have a shitload of pumpkin seeds.

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Mocks Done!! October 30th, 2006

Today I finished all the mock-ups for Unbius. Damn, i’m so friggin excited i don’t know if i’ll fall asleep tonight. There’s 8 in total. If all goes well, this site will be so pretty and usable. Tomorrow, I dig into the HTML and CSS. This will be my first serious foray into CSS layouts so i’m keeping fingers crossed. So far, working on this site has been good times even though it’s meant a lot of hours in front of the computer. The Ruby On Rails coding was simple and sweet and photoshopping the mocks was not nearly as bad as I had imagined. Nate should be back from England soon so it’s almost time to kick back into Booksprouts gear. No jet-lag for you Nate! Back to work!

Went to the Vancouver snow show today to talk to some store owners to see if my latest idea has wings. It was very interesting to learn that a lot of gear manufacturers hold their resellers under strict licenses of where they can sell their product. Not just any store can setup a website or even post a product on eBay without getting direct permission from the manufacturer. Fortunately, that rule doesn’t apply to the previous year’s inventory so that’s hopefully where we can plant our stake. I’ll tell you more about this idea in time. Oh yea, the Snow Show sucked ass this year. It’s mostly just ski resort reps stuffed in a small room at Canada Place hocking their shit. Hope you didn’t go waste your time.

In other news, check out this video of this guy getting PWNED. I shouldn’t laugh at another’s misfortune, but LOLOLOLOLOL and get a haircut too

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Pumpkin-Carving Wind-down October 29th, 2006

The pumpkin carving contest at the Villa Cathay carehome was a huge success! I really wasn’t expecting anything because Gisella Oh, our contact at the carehome had said that only 4-5 families had confirmed that they were coming. But we ended up packing the cafeteria with seniors, families, friends, and nurses. I think we really did something special yesterday and i think that everyone involved had a lot of fun.

I had an amazing team of volunteers that really took charge of the event and made it their own. I didn’t have that much to do when it was all happening because these guys were so awesome. Here is a list of the people that made all the difference.

Ally, Amelia, Sandro, Andy, Danny, Er, Julie, Bonnie, Troy, Wancy, Nicholas, Julia

Also, credits go out to Villa Cathay and their staff, especially Gisella Oh, and Johnson Lo

Finally, thanks to all the pumpkin adopters out there. Your pumpkins went to a very good cause and made a lot of people smile. Now we’ve got tubs of pumpkin seeds that we’ll roast for you and the pictures I promised are below. Please excuse the shoddy focusing. One day, i’ll get an SLR.

Pumpkin Carving Event

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Being Dave To is being super tired October 29th, 2006

Today was a super long day that started out with me driving to the pumpkin patch with Andy, Danny, and Sandro. We picked up all 25 pumpkins, went to the care home, emptied them, and carved them. The event was an awesome success thanks to all the volunteers who pitched in. You guys were incredible. Pictures coming and we now have 5 buckets of pumpkin seeds that we have to somehow bake. After that, it was a dinner at hapa izakaya then poker, videogames, and drinks at Sandro’s. As usual, I was the first out in Poker so I got to spend some quality time with baby isabella and dog molly. oh soo cute. Now it is the end of this super long day, which also happens to be Ally’s birthday. So without further ado, Happy Birthday!!!

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Being Dave To is being totally amazed that your actually getting the hang of Photoshop October 28th, 2006

I completed 3 mocks today for Unbius. Peanut Butter Jelly Time! it’s looking pretty good IMHO. I’m purposefully making everything HUGE because, well, i’m sick and tired of tiny design after working with Blast Radius for 5 years. Maybe if I had my monitor set at 800×600, i wouldn’t have to squint to read the text. Besides, there isn’t a mishmash of features on the pages so I can keep things relatively clean, freeing up more space to make things big! Below is a mock for an article detail page.

In other news, Ally and I had a really tasty dinner tonight at the Cannery as a precursor to her 30th birthday tomorrow. Salmon Wellington, bouillabaisse, lobster bisque, pavlova, wine, coffee, and tea. I think the last time we dined out in a fancyish place like that was for her birthday last year when we went to Perigee, this really shi-shi place in the distillery district in Toronto. After that dinner, I can say I’ve had enough Sweetbreads (aka calf thymus) and fois grais to last a lifetime. What’s even more interesting is that the Cannery is where I arranged Ally’s birthday party three years ago, right before this whole couple lovey-dovey relationship began. awwww.

I was just reading that Youtube has removed all Comedy Central clips, including clips of Colbert, John Stewart, and ….. South Park!!!! arghahgh! Damn you DMCA! A lot of people probably wouldn’t even know who Colbert or Stewart are if it weren’t for Youtube. Just because I watch 5 minute clips doesn’t mean I don’t watch the full-length show on TV, commercials and all (ok i’m a channel flipper but hey who isn’t). I can see how torrents and other forms of piracy involving full-length media can cost the networks and studios to lose money, but in my opinion, Youtube clips only serve to promote these shows. Not only that, they promote them virally through email and people like me embedding them in their sites. Now, instead of embedding satirical political vids into my blog, i’ll have to start embedding this sort of content (ok, this dog is damn cute and I admit I was just looking for an excuse to embed this video).

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Being Dave To is singing Peanut Butter Jelly Time in your head all day October 27th, 2006

It won’t go away. It’s peanut butter jelly time with a baseball bat all day. I forgot how dreary and depressing the weather in vancouver can be. In Toronto, it’s 1 degree right now but at least there is sun in the day. Then again, I’m definitely not sad to say goodbye to -30 degree days in the dead of winter. Woke up really late today. By late, I mean close to noon. As in by the time I was done breakfast, it was lunchtime already. Lunch was at Hi Genki, a cheap and tasty japanese place in the lobby of a japanese retirement home sitting on top of the land that use to be my high school. Last time I went, they gave me a giant rice ball wrapped in a piece of seaweed. No such luck this time. Of course not much work got done in the daytime. At 5pm, we rolled out to show Ally’s new condo to potential renters. they never showed up! bastards. Then we had a landmark class till 10pm, went for wonton at a place we never been to on kingsway. Came back, did more photoshopping for my unbius mocks, now blog, then bed. Throughout all this, I was humming peanut butter jelly time in my head. I think i’m going nuts.

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Being Dave To is eating lots of chocolate meant for kids October 26th, 2006

Puttered around the house today trying to avoid doing any sort of design for Unbius. I did the laundry, fixed the carpet, cut my fingernails. I read an article once by Paul Graham about good and bad procrastination. It’s a long article so to save you from reading the whole thing, the basic point is that bad procrastination is putting off the things you really should be doing (fulfilling goals, dreams, etc.) and doing meaningless busy work that seem to have a short-term purpose that people don’t necessarily equate with procrastination, example, doing laundry. Good procrastination on the other hand is putting off all these smaller menial tasks and devoting your time to achieving your longer-term goals. Who really gives two shits if I don’t cut my nails, or don’t pick up my drycleaning, etc. on the grander scale of things. You won’t be remembered on your epitaph as the guy who always did his laundry. Well, this is good advice to a degree. I have a limited underwear supply. So I eventually got Ally to help me with the design work, even though she’s super busy setting up Food For Thought. I put in a few late-night hours as well, most of which was spent figuring how to select and unselect things in Photoshop (BTW, Paint.net is nice except for the fact that you can’t easily move objects once you’ve drawn them. kinda important feature). Here is the initial mock…..

so what do you think? I stole the search bar from msn! I like it so far. Thanks Ally! In other news, today was a very wet day. Forecast? more wet tomorrow, and the day after, etc. etc. So we went to the mall to get some things from the dollar store for halloween and the pumpkin carving contest. We bought a giant bag of rockets and a huge box of chocolate bars. I’ve had more than 5 mini coffee crisps and several kit kats, aeros, and one mini-box of smarties. I don’t know if this candy will last till Saturday at this rate. I was very tempted to buy an inflatable costume of a country hick at the superstore. It was awesome! It could fit someone up to 6′1. All you do is strap in, push a button, and you’re ready to go, flannel shirt, suspenders, cowboy hat and all. Unfortunately, it was $25. I’d be wearing it right now if I had a job. *sigh*. But i did get this really disgusting squishy ball filled with squishy eyeballs. I felt like throwing up when I first squeezed it so it was a must-buy at the loonie store. I think it’ll be a good conversation piece at parties.

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Being Dave To is sitting in front of a computer all day October 25th, 2006

Yes, I sit in front of my computer all day. I can’t even say that I socialize using msn or webcams, etc. No, I just sit in front of the computer, surf the web, compose the email, write the code, etc. Today, I finally took the time to subversion the unbius project. It’s been awhile since I used it and forgot how sweet it is. So nice to tag and diff at will. I also added a cool feature for editor picks and refactored some of the code. I think what i’m really doing is putting off doing the actual design for the site. According to my plan, I should be done a lot of the design and CSS by now already. I just have had really bad experiences with Photoshop and I don’t want them repeated. Ugh, how I dread shit like color palettes, dithering (wtf is that?), and cmyk vs. rgb (huh?). Hopefully, this new program, paint.net, made by a couple of MS interns, can help me get over my photoshop blues.

On the Booksprouts front, I tried to run the project locally but the database migration is out of date with the code. I thought about sending an email to Nate but after some thought, I figured I should just let him enjoy his vacation in London. Hope you’re enjoying your fish ‘n’ chips my friend.

Downloaded Firefox 2.0 today. f*k ya! Some great things i’ve noticed so far: spellcheck-as-you-go, links offsite open in a new tab, more streamlined menu, auto-complete search! damn, I heart firefox 2.0. Well ok, i’m really in like with it.

Last but not least, thanks to all pumpkin-adopters. So far, $95 has been raised with more to come. Here’s a list of the new pumpkin parents! More to come!

• Bonnie Lau
• Derrick Tzau
• Chris Wren
• Roy Quan
• Leeann To kid sister
• Mom & Dad
• Ray Sum & Vanessa Ng
• Jay & Michelle Spittel
• Candace Cheung
• Angela Leung
• Alicia Chia

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The Google! October 24th, 2006

George W. Bush referred to Google as “The Google” in an interview. It’s pretty funny yet scary when you think this man is the leader of the free world. Let’s face it, the internet has changed the way the world works, from business economies to the politics of information (spell ex-congressman Foley). It’s also changed our language. We now have words like email, spam, wireless, website, URL, and Google. I kind of expect the people who are making the decisions to be up-to-date with these things, at least somewhat. Maybe if George W. Bush went online and googled public opinion on the Iraqi War, he would learn something, instead of pulling up satellite images of his ranch. Check out the video here. Quote taken from site:

George W. Bush: One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see

On other news, Ally is doing the 30-day Bikram’s yoga challenge beginning tomorrow! Go Ally Go! I may even do it a couple times just as a show of support.

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My hair is thinning! October 23rd, 2006

I guess it’s inevitable when you get to be the ripe old age of 30. damn you baldness genes! The weekend’s come and gone. Went to see Half Nelson on Friday night. Some really good performances by Ryan Gosling and especially Anthony Mackie, who plays a coke dealer. Nobody’s good or bad, everyone’s somewhere in the middle. And like artsy films, they don’t tie up loose ends, which is not that bad this time. Not like some other movies where the credits roll and you’re like WTF?

Saturday was spent helping Bonnie move to her new townhouse in Port Moody. It wasn’t too much stuff but her new place has 6 levels! (not full floors but still). But it was fun and we ended up painting her main living room. Congrats on the new digs bonnie and troy. Then it was to Ed’s for the last party at West One. I lived there for a few months in his spare bedroom. That place had a pimping gym, with lap pool, squash courts, and weightroom. Club Viva, you’ll be missed.

I’ve heard some good things of Barak Obama, dem. senator of Illinois. I even saw him on Conan once. He announced recently that he would run for the primaries in 2008, likely against Hillary. Check out his speech at the 2004 democratic convention. America should have a leader that comes from a place of inspiration, not from fear or sheer might. Of course, he could just be all talk but nonetheless, it’s a lot better than the rhetoric coming from George W. He’s also got such a sweet name..Obama! What would it be like if this guy was the next person to lead the most powerful country in the world?

Part 2 can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56-m8wx1mwo

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