Month: January 2004

HE’S NO JEDI

Well, I’m about 4/5 my way through this paper that was written in 1983. It describes how they made the cool Genesis effect in the movie Star Trek II : The Wrath of Khan.

It’s an interesting read and I’m glad that after all those years, I know how they did it. Unfortunately, I’m not ready to re-create the same effect on my computer tonight. As far as academic papers go, this one was pretty light.

Also, as interesting as it is, I still got the urge to nap and eat something. Having bought bread today, I decided to make some toast. As I went to get the bread out of the plastic sleeve, I noticed the bread was made by Venice Bakery. I thought to myself, someone had to deliver this bread to the store. It was probably someone driving a bread truck.

Maybe it was because I was tired, but I began thinking, “What if I had become a driver delivering Venice Bakery products around the Lower Mainland?” Like I started doing it right after undergrad. I’d have about seven years of delivery experience underneath my belt, probably a few raises, some seniority, and a two or three week vacation every year. I’d get all my bread, bagels, and other baked goods for free. I’d probably have a one bedroom apartment either in Burnaby or Surrey. Maybe my car would be a Camaro or a Mustang or something. Maybe I’d be dating a Safeway checkout girl and we’d go hot-tubbing on the weekends. I’d get her to tattoo my name on her lower back and she’d get me to put in beads in the doorway to my bedroom. Maybe…

I’ll have that nap now…

SNOW DAY

I’ve never been at UBC when there has been so much snow. When I woke up this morning, I was hoping that classes would be cancelled. At 8:30am, things were still normal on campus. That meant I had to go to my Animation Physics class. Boy, will that class be a doozy. The prof talked about particle systems today. He showed a few clips from the second Harry Potter movie that featured Dobby the House Elf. In one scene, Dobby snaps his fingers and disappears in cloud of dust. The prof told us we’d be able to do that by next week… well, not disappear in a cloud of dust, but be able to make a cloud of dust in computer graphics. He then went on to discuss the mathematics behind such a cloud. The concepts came fast and furious. If I had taken this class after my second-year I’d be just dandy, as it stands, it’s been almost ten years. I’ll have to work my ass off for this class.

After class, I went back home and had some lunch. My next class was at 12:30pm, so I decided to take a nap. When I woke up, I received several e-mails that classes had been cancelled for the rest of the day. The word had come down around 11:45am. Not trusting good fortune, I decided to show up at my 12:30pm class. As predicted, the prof did show up and we did have class. Damn it!

When it ended, I made my way to the Village to deposit some cheques. On the way there, I passed by the bus loop. I have never seen so many people wait for the buses as I did today. The lines were so long, that people were standing on the roadway. I didn’t see a single bus in the loop and that is a rare occurrence during a weekday afternoon. I sure felt glad that I lived on campus.

On the way back from the Village I saw three buses leaving the loop. Each bus was packed beyond total capacity. People were standing in the stairwell where you get on the bus. Normally, the drivers don’t even let you stand in front of that yellow line let alone in the stairwell. With all the coats, snow, slush, and moisture, it must have been gross in those buses.

Well, I think there might be a snowball-fight related event at the courtyard later, so I’m going to prepare for that.

LITTLE BOY TRAPPED WITH TOYS

I saw this on another site. Too funny.

The best comment I’ve read about this story so far:


” I saw Michael Jackson putting quarters in that machine all day”

NEW YEAR’S EVE PHOTOS

The work here at erwintang.com continues without stoppage. I have my New Year’s Eve photos up now. Click here for them. I did it quick and dirty, so they have no comments.

If you’re hankering for more, you can visit my friend Sarah’s site. She has exclusive pics of me being whipped on the ass.

Well, on that note, good night.

A NEW YEAR, A NEW TERM

So it’s a new year and with that brings a new term. For grad students like me who are taking classes, it’s a whole new schedule with a whole new set of classes. Change is good I suspect, but I sure had my last schedule down pat.

My biggest concern at this time is whether or not to add another class to my schedule. If I did, it would sure make my next year easier. Then again, I’ve been told if I take one more class my life would be very busy and not so enjoyable. I’m weighing my options right now. I won’t know for sure until next week when I go to a few classes.

I’m also a TA again this term. I’ll being TAing the same course as last term. I’m happy about that since I’ll be much better at it. I was just thinking about how nervous and clueless I was the first day I walked into my tutorial. On Wednesday, I know I’ll much more confident and ready to go.

As it stands now, I have Mondays off. Well, to be more correct, I don’t have any classes on Monday. I’m pretty sure I’ll be doing work on Monday, but it’s still nice not to have to be anywhere.

The biggest challenge that I can see so far will come this class I’m taking, CPSC 533B Animation Physics. First, it starts at 9:30am in the morning which is pretty early for me. Last term the earliest I had to get up for was 10am. Second, it seems like it’s a course that uses a lot of differential equations. I haven’t done that since second year. Though you can’t argue with the results of using DEs, just look at some of the videos on the course site, they look pretty amazing.

Well, I have to go take down my Christmas lights now. I want to keep them up, but I’m not sure if that’s socially acceptable past the beginning of January.

CAROLYN RETURNS

My fellow Sea-monkey owner and resident down the hall, Carolyn returned from Arizona tonight after a 30 hour drive! Whoa.

Anyways, before a much needed sleep she came by to tell us about her holiday and she did not come back alone. She has some new friends! As a disclaimer, she is not keeping these new friends, as we are not allowed to keep pets here at SJC, she is simply holding them for a friend until the end of the week.

I’M BACK

I’m back with a new hard drive and I’m again publishing to my blog. The hard drive installation didn’t go so smooth. I’ll get into that later. I’m working to re-post the series of non-blogger posts I made earlier. I just need to take care of a few things here at the ranch first. Stay tuned.

ROOM TO PLAY WITH

I took advantage of a boxing day sale and purchased a much needed second hard drive for my system. It’s 40 Gb, not the biggest drive on the market, but it’s four times more than I have now.

I’m going to install it as a slave and not the one I boot off of. I’m hoping that will make the installation easier and faster. You can never be too sure of things when it comes to computers, so if you don’t hear from me soon, you’ll know why. I’ll be archiving some important files right now and then I’ll put in the new drive.

I’ll see you guys on the other side.

FUNNY

I saw this over at The Onion. I suppose it’s funny for movie geeks only, but hey, I got a laugh out of it. Here’s my favourite part from it:


“Tyler’s got very specific tastes,” Bernie said. “He told us he likes those foreign films. What did he call it? The Criterion Collection. Well, Hannah and I tried to find those, but they didn’t have them at Target. We sure didn’t want what happened with the wizard movie to happen again.”