Category: Uncategorized

Over the weekend I saw the new Batman movie and ahead of it was the first teaser trailer for Man of Steel, the second attempt in the last ten years to reboot the Superman movie franchise. I’ve adopted for a ho-hum attitude for Superman movies for many, many years now so I was very skeptical of this new movie. This trailer was really well made though and it caused me to have some hope that it might actually be a decent film. It used a really great piece from Lord of the Rings for the music. I also liked how it showed Clark as a normal, average Joe doing things we’ve never seen do before, like working on a fishing boat and hitchhiking. So many films have shown Clark to be nothing but a suit wearing and bespectacled dude outside of the costume. It was really refreshing to see him look completely different when not being Superman.

The movie won’t be out for another year so there’s lot of room for it to go completely off the rails but I have a tiny bit of optimism now. Oh, and don’t tell anyone but here’s the longer and much more juicier trailer shown at Comic Con this month. It’s a bit fuzzy at times but you see Superman in his new suit in much more detail. Boo! The link was taken down.

I am posting this to pander to the almost universal love of kittens.

This week the city of Vancouver was the host for a conference on Alzheimer’s. I saw a few of the conference delegates walking downtown in the evenings. One of the reports presented during the conference stated the perfect amount of sleep, as it pertains to cognitive function, was seven hours. Any less or any more, led to a decline in cognitive abilities.

If this is indeed the case, I’m going to be screwed later in life because I often get less than seven hours of sleep. I sometimes get about seven hours on the weekend but I’ve read that you can’t make up sleep debt like you can with a monetary debt. I really should try harder to get more rest during the week day. Let me start by ending this post here. Get to bed early tonight folks!

The guys at Simple Pickup went back to Comic-Con this year and the above video is the result. It contains some naughty words, so if you’re sensitive to that stuff you might want to put on earmuffs.

So my Blu-ray player is dying on me. It will play a disc for about an hour and then pause, skip, and then eventually just refuse to play any more of the disc. I need to shut it off and then wait about 20 to 30 minutes for it to cool down. It then might play the disc properly again. You can see why this might be a problem when watching a movie when most films are about two hours in length.

I’m not sure what the best course of action. Blu-ray discs are still the most common source of my HD entertainment and the most cost effective. I could go buy another player and they are pretty cheap now, less than $100 from any of the larger manufacturers. I could also buy a PS3 which is widely believed to be the best Blu-ray player on the planet. The cheapest PS3 is still $250 though. Yes, I’d also gain another gaming console but I already have an Xbox 360. Is it worth it to spend $250 just to play PS3 exclusive games and replace my Blu-ray player? I’m not so sure. Maybe I will just get another cheap player.

Oh hey there loyal readers! I heard some of you wanted to see several hundred pictures of cosplayers from the 2012 Comic-Con in San Diego. Is that true? If it is, click here and you’ll find what you’re looking for. It’s difficult to pick a favourite amongst all the slave Leias but this guy is certainly in the running. Which are your favourites?

On Saturday evening I was at a social gathering at a friend’s home. My friend is quite the sociable chap so he knows quite a few people. As such, there were many different groups of people who were invited to said gathering. I was sitting with another friend when I noticed three people show up. One of the gentlemen of the group looked over to where we were sitting and there was a flash of recognition on his face. I did not know he was so I went back to talking to my friend.

A few minutes later, the new gentlemen came over and excused himself and asked me a few questions. He wanted to know if I was at UBC in 2005 and if I was a TA for a first-year engineering course. As many of you, my loyal readers, know, I was indeed a graduate student at UBC who was a teaching assistant for most of my studies. I was a TA for a first year applied science tutorial section and I did that for about five semesters. I really enjoyed running that tutorial because there was a tiny bit of teaching involved, as well as answering questions.

I told my former student that yes, I was his former TA. He introduced himself as Javier but I unfortunately did not remember him. Each tutorial had forty plus students so it was very difficult to keep track of any one individual student. Javier told me he eventually got into mechanical engineering (like myself) but then abandoned it (like myself) for another area of study. He decided to get into physical geography and that is what he is doing now.

I’m not sure if he was just being nice but Javier said that I was a pretty good TA. I replied he probably thought that mainly because I could speak and write fluent English. He laughed at that but admitted that might have had something to do with it. It maybe a sensitive subject, but over the years, I’ve heard many complaints about TAs because they had trouble communicating with their students.

Javier is the first student from my tutorials that I’ve met since I left grad school. I didn’t receive any teaching evaluations during my time there so I had really no clue how I was doing. I marked fairly easy so I’m guessing students had no complaints there. I wonder how many students have seen me on the street and recognized me but never said anything. I applaud Javier for having such a good memory and recognizing me. If the tables were turned, I’d have a difficult time remembering any of my TAs from any of my classes. Those people are just a blur in my memory now.

The above video features over four minutes of “that’s what she said” jokes from The Office. Is it juvenile? In all likelihood, yes. Is it funny? To me, it is.

Today was July 11, or 7/11 or 7-11 in other terms. 7-11 just happens to be the name of a global chain of convenience stores. In honour of this, they gave away free samples of their iconic Slurpee drink from the hours of 11am to 7pm. I just happened to be at my local 7-11 next to my workplace right after 11am.

I was there to buy a bottle of water and some chocolate bars but noticed the giveaway so I partook in the promotion. They had placed out all these smaller cups specifically for the free samples. I took one and then stuck it under the Coke Slurpee spout and pulled the handle. I instantly noticed how lightly coloured the product coming out of the spout was. Normally, the colour of the Coke Slurpee is a deep brown. The amount of colour in a Coke Slurpee indicates how much of the syrup is in the product and accordingly, how sweet it will be. The light brown indicated to me that there wasn’t much syrup in the machine. Leaving the store, I began to sample my Slurpee and my suspicions were correct. This was least sweet Slurpee I’ve had in memory.

There was no doubt that the store had significantly reduced the amount of syrup in the machines as a cost-savings measure on a day they were expecting a significant amount of customers to come and grab their free Slurpees. It’s a shame they decided to do this because my Slurpee tasted terrible but I understand these are tough economic times. I bet the machines will be bursting with syrup tomorrow when you gotta pay!

I think I did this before but it’ll be fun to do again. If you visit this site, you’ll get a random YouTube video. In the comments, tell me about the video you were presented with.