blog.erwintang.com

Well, I never claimed I was timely in my updates, but nearly after a year since the event, I have put up my pictures from Nic and Marcia’s wedding.

Nic and Marcia were the two very first people I met at St. John’s College. Less than after two weeks of knowing them, we were at Koerner’s Pub having some drinks when Marcia joked about inviting me to their wedding. During the school year, I became close friends with both of them, and I indeed did get invited to their wedding.

They’re both in Ottawa now, Marcia works for the government and Nic is doing his PhD. I will always be indebted to them for their friendship and kindness.

Click here for their wedding photos.

I’m hungry right now. I have this ripoff box of Kraft Dinner. I really want to make it. The problem is, I don’t have any milk, which appears to be required for the making of the pasta.

No one seems to be up at this hour to give me milk either. Looks like I’ll be having a Snickers bar instead.

Whoa, I’m really tired, but my dedication to providing entertainment endures. I’d like to write something really witty and funny here, but we both know that’s not going to happen right now. In the meantime, look at this mildly funny picture below.

I must admit, I got on the BitTorrent bandwagon late, but now I’m a firm believer in it. It’s an excellent way to get a multitude of different files, anything from full-length movies to computer applications. The legality of it is highly dubious, but there is a certain convenience factor that can’t be beat.

I jumped on the bandwagon this weekend, when I decided to start going through my taped episodes of 24. I was busy during the fall and winter and attempted to tape as many episodes I could. Unfortunately, I missed a few episodes early on and completely missed the last several hours of the day.

I went through my tapes quickly and got to my first gap in the season. A few clicks of the mouse later and I was downloading four consecutive episodes. It look several hours to complete the nearly 2 Gb file transfer. When I played the first episode, I was amazed. This wasn’t some cheap grab off a regular cable feed, someone had taken the time to produce a high-quality transfer from a HDTV feed. It wasn’t quite DVD quality, but it was sure close. Because it was the HDTV feed, the video came in widescreen format! I’ve never seen 24 in widescreen, so that was a nice bonus.

I can see why hard drives can be filled so quickly these days. Eight episodes of a TV show can take up 4 Gb. Add a couple of movies here and there, and a 250 Gb drive starts to look pretty tiny.

Though I am currently resisting the temptation, I’m interested in seeing how good the movies look off of BitTorrent.

I wasn’t aware of this until today, but the UBC Main Library lends out laptops for free for up to four hours. Isn’t that convenient? Read more here.

I’m kinda bored at work right now. A few minutes ago I went to go recycle a bottle and I saw this super hot girl in the hallway. I think I might go get a mocha frap or a chocolate bar now.

Ever done your business in a urinal while wearing slippers? Neither have I, until I moved into SJC. It’s a liberating experience.

I’d like to publicly thank Chris Conklin for giving me a dish of his mother’s lasagna even though it was earmarked for his consumption and not mine. I won’t be hypoglycemic for much longer. Well, what I mean is that my blood sugar won’t be low for much longer. It’d be silly to think that eating lasagna would be a cure for hypoglycemia.

In any case, Nona, you raised him well!

Tonight I went to my very first Vancouver Canadians baseball game. I haven’t been to a professional baseball game since I was a kid when I saw an Expos game in Montreal.

It was a fabulous night for a game. The weather was clear and the sun shining. The tickets were quite reasonable compared to a Canucks game. The concessions, however, were a tad expensive. I paid $6 for a bacon cheeseburger! A cup of fries were $3.

The crowd at Nat Bailey was very family-friendly. I can see why moms and dads would like to bring their kids there. It’s a relatively low-cost way of entertaining the whole family for a few hours in a fun environment.

The Canadians wound up losing the game but I had a great time nonetheless. Many thanks to Dana for organizing and driving people out to the game!

I just got back from Spider-Man 2 and it is the best movie I have seen all year.

Before watching it, I did hear a few reviews where it was declared better than the first movie, but I truly did not have any expectations going in tonight.

I’m pretty sure though, even with expectations in mind, they would have been all surpassed. Roger Ebert wrote in his review that this is “a superhero movie for people who don’t go to superhero movies”. He is completely right. While the action scenes were fantastic, I think this is the first superhero movie where the character development outshined the action.

Even if you knew nothing about Spider-Man, knew nothing about where he came from, knew nothing about his relationship with Mary Jane, the story brings it all together for you. Peter Parker has always been a popular character because everybody can see a little bit of themselves in him. Despite being Spider-Man, he still struggles to pay the pay, he still has to study, and he still has trouble with the ladies. Spider-Man 2 did a phenomenal job in showing the audience that even superheros have emotions and failings.

If you’ve never seen a superhero movie before, this is the one to see. Put it this way, this is a great movie with deep character development, it just happens that one of the characters is Spider-Man.

One final note, actor James Franco did an amazing job as the Harry Osborn, the brooding son of Norman Osborn (the villain from the first movie). He spent most of the movie being angry and vengeful. He was so good at it that I now think he probably would have been a better Anakin Skywalker. Sorry Hayden.