… and it’s freezing cold. I’m already missing SoCal weather.
Thanks to Xyon for picking me up at the airport tonight. 🙂
Treasure Hunting
So for the past few days, I’ve been going through my junk inside my desk drawers and found a bunch of neat things.
First I found a bunch of missing Anime CDs which were missing from my collection for quite awhile.
Then I located a caricature someone drew of me a long time ago, when I had these Nike basketball shoes with a very large tongue. I forget why they drew me with a sword on my back, because I obviously didn’t go around carrying one on my back:
Then my grandma gave me this photo of when I was a kid, riding a turtle with my cousin.
My mom tells me this was when I was 1-2 years old and this was some zoo in New York.
I also located the ink stamp that I had custom made the last time I was in Hong Kong:
As you can see, I didn’t really have anything to stamp it on, and a CD envelope was nearby and it became my test subject.
Found some more interesting stuff, but didn’t really have time to scan or take photos of it. Besides, the main purpose of this post is so that I don’t post 2 “Weekly Top Posts” next to each other.
Free Outgoing Calls
So awhile back, I hit onto this page while searching for VoIP info: Zero Cost Voip Calls. The blog really only has 2 entries:
This gave me an idea on how to make free outgoing calls with my current setup: VoiceStick Replacement – IPKall with GrandCentral
I basically have unlimited incoming calls now due to IPKall + FWD + PAP2. But to make outgoing phone calls, I still had to use my cell phone, and what sucks about making phone calls to customer service and technical support is that you’re on hold typically for over 30 minutes and that drains your minutes quite fast.
Anyway, it turns out GrandCentral connects you with anyone in your address book on their dime. It’s similar to the function on Google Maps when you find the business you want to contact, and they have the “call” button which prompts you for your phone number and connects you directly to them.
So you just need to create an entry in your GrandCentral address book and then click call. What happens then is they’ll call you directly on your line and since you don’t pay for incoming calls, it’s a free call to you. Once they confirmed that there’s someone on your side, they’ll connect you to the other party. Simple as that.
What’s neat about this is that you can basically make any phone calls within the United States for FREE! I’m not sure about Canada, but it’d be sweet if you can make calls to Canada for free too.
These past few days I’ve been playing with GrandCentral a bit since I’ve set it up for my parents and there are some very neat things. One really neat thing is the ability to record a conversation. Even if you selected to not record initially, you can hit “4” in the middle of the conversation and it’ll begin to record immediately. However, they appear to have only enabled that for calls you receive and not calls you’ve initiated from their web UI.
Another interesting thing is RingShare, where you can customize the ring people hear when calling you. By default, it’s set to the American ring, but you also have the British ring and the Japanese ring. You can also go through the gallery and choose from a small selection of chimes and even people talking.
One thing I really want is the option to turn off the screening process completely. Even with Call Screening off, it still prompts me to push 1 to start chatting. I can definitely see it as a useful feature, but to my parents, it just complicates the process.
Oakley Whisker Photos
Had some time, so I decided photograph my new sunglasses:
Here’s a photo of it in action:
Something funny about that photo is that I noticed that the PUMA on my t-shirt looked like its left eye had a scar (like Scar from Lion King), but it turns out it was really my pony tail that created that illusion.
A Wizard of Earthsea
So Liam got a book when he came to visit me: A Wizard of Earthsea. Being not much of a book reader, I honestly doubted myself if I’d ever open the book. However, my trip back to LA gave me the opportunity to do just so, and before I knew it, I had completed 3/4 of the book by the end of the journey. I’ve finished the book since then, but wanted to share a few quotes that I really liked and you’ve probably heard of in different forms.
- What one does not know, one fears. – Lady Serret (in response to Ged’s fear of the Terrenon stone)
- You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man’s real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do… – Master Summoner
There was another great quote in regards to the fact that even though you may have power, if you lack the knowledge to control it, it’s not really any power you can use. So one can be born with great power, but it is knowledge that allows one to use it.
UPDATE:
Forgot to mention that I had already seen Tales From Earthsea, a recent animation done by Studio Ghibli. This is the 1st film directed by Miyazaki Goro, son of Miyazaki Hayao. Throughout the book, I would imagine Ged/Sparrowhawk to be this old man, but in fact I believe in this book, he’s really around 20 years old. I thought the animation was pretty good, but nowhere close to his father’s work.
Vacation Started 7 Hours Ago
I’m officially on vacation starting about 7 hours ago. I head for LA tomorrow afternoon and will be there for 3 weeks. See you guys soon!
The Voice of the Undergound Is Fired
Sorry for not posting in awhile. My Black Friday bounty has been coming in and doing all these rebates took a lot more time than I anticipated. Plus the fact I only have a little over 1 week before I go on vacation for the rest of the year, I’ve been trying to wrap up stuff at work.
Anyway, I saw this article a few days ago: London PA voice fired for slamming Tube:
The woman behind the gentle, even voice which warns London’s subway commuters to “Mind the gap” was fired after telling a newspaper she thought the transit network was dreadful.
Emma Clarke has been recording messages for London’s sprawling subway network, popularly known as the Tube, since 1999. In addition to warning passengers to watch their step in walking between subway cars and the platform, she also reads the trains’ stops, tells Londoners how long they have to wait until their next ride, and delivers service updates.
When I first read the article, it reminded me of the Voice of London from V for Vendetta.
Anyway, that’s pretty harsh to fire her just over a honest remark. If I was to be fired for every anti-Microsoft remark I’ve made, I would’ve been fired a long time ago.
I wanted to hear what these spoofs were. The link on the article pointed to her homepage: EmmaClarke.com, but it was down the past few days due to everyone linking to it. It’s back up now, but during that time, I found a mirror of the spoofs here: The Voice of the Underground is silenced.
If you’ve ever ridden the Underground (London subway system), you most definitely will recognize her voice. Here’s a few demos she has up on her page: Voiceover Demos / London Underground.
You can also listen to the Spoof London Underground Announcements:
- Do not drop litter on the train. Please use the tramps provided.
- Warning, this is an emergency. I’ve chipped a nail.
- Would the passenger in the red shirt pretending to read a paper, but is actually staring at that woman’s chest, please stop. You’re not fooling anyone, you filthy pervert.
- We’d like to remind our American tourist friends that you are almost certainly talking too loud.
- Passengers should note that the bearded gentleman’s rucksack contains the following items only: Some sandwiches, a library card and a picture of a bare ankle and is no cause for concern.
- Would the gentleman in the pinstripe suit and £1000 glasses who obviously works in the media, please take one step forward onto the track as the train arrives. Thank you.
- Residents of London are reminded that there are other places in Britain outside your stinking shit hole of a city, and if you removed your heads from your arses for just a couple of minutes, you may realize that the M25 is not the edge of the Earth.
- Passengers are reminded that a smile is actually a friendship signal, not a sign of weakness.
- Passengers are reminded that like all voice over artists, I probably look nothing like you’d imagine and may turn out to be somewhat of a disappointment.
- Would passengers filling in answers on their Sudokus please accept that they’re just crosswords for the unimaginative and are not in any way more impressive just because they contain numbers.
- Here we are again, crammed into a sweaty tube carriage. And today’s Wednesday – only two more days before you can binge drink yourself into a state of denial about the mediocrity of you life. Oh, for Goodness sake, if you’re female, smile at the bloke next to you and make his day. He’s probably not had sex for months.
Somethings to note, I did in fact have a mental image of her and what she looked like and of course she did not turned out exactly the way I’d imagined. I wasn’t exactly disappointed since I’ve gotten used to the face that most Japanese voice over artists aren’t that pretty/handsome, but they’re good at what they do and bring characters to life, I did imagine her to have a skinny face and look sexier. Haha.
Another thing to note is that she pronounced Sudokus like Sudukos, which sort of irked my head.
If those links are down again, mirrors can be found at: The Voice of the Underground is silenced
Squishables – So Cute!
So Tera first introduced me to this website: Squishable.com a few days ago. The stuffed animals on their site were really cute, but I was wondering why the price was so high. $38 for a stuffed animal. Then of course, based on the pictures on the front page, I had no idea how big they were. I clicked on the gallery and none of the pictures loaded. Turns out NoScript was blocking all the images from being loaded. Temporarily allowed squishable.com to run scripts and then came the pictures.
The size was a lot bigger than I had expected. I was expecting it to be the size of say giant fist, but this is like a giant pillow. Still not sure if it’s worth the full $38, I began to contemplate if I wanted one. My sister is fond of piggies, so I added a Squishable Pig to my cart to check how much shipping would be. Shipping was $6 extra, so that put me at about $44 shipped.
Some of these guys look funky, but some of them are so cute and adorable (see the cow). Ungsunghero questioned who would actually carry around big stuffed animals like that. I used to when I was small. I even lost a few of my favorites that way.
I asked my sister if she wanted a giant piggy for Christmas and she questioned me how big it was. As you may have noticed, I’m not good with describing sizes, so I said about 1.5 pillow sizes. She said sure, and then when I was about to place the order, I noticed it was out of stock. I thought I still had time before Christmas and added myself to their newsletter as they said that when new stock comes in, we’ll be notified via their newsletter.
However, later in the day, I noticed it came back in stock and I added it immediately to my cart. I think what happened probably was since I added it to my previous cart, my session had expired, but they didn’t increase the stock count. Anyway, I did a quick search for a coupon for squishable.com but didn’t find any, and decided to make my purchase. This was yesterday.
Today I received in my email box a newsletter:
In honor of pre-Solstice commercialism, we’re offering a discount coupon from now until Thursday, Nov 22nd for 10% off all our squishables! Use it yourself, or pass it on to a friend (or enemy)! Why? Cause we’re in a good mood! This one’s only good for Google Checkout – just enter SQNOV10 in the coupon field when you get to the checkout screen in Google Checkout. Nifty!
I’m like NOOOOOOOOOOOO! I just placed an order yesterday and now I get a 10% off coupon. Scenarios went through my head. Is it too late to cancel? Should I try to email them to see if they’ll apply the discount to my order. I went with the latter route and sent them an email:
Hi,
I just received your newsletter providing a 10% off coupon. Unfortunately for me, I had made my purchase yesterday. I was wondering if there was any way to retroactively apply the coupon.
Regarding how I heard of this site, my friend just IMed me a few days ago and said look how cute the animals are.
Thanks in advance!
They were really quick and replied:
Sure, no worries at all. We’ll refund you 10% later today!
It’s on one condition, though. You have to promise to email us and tell us how you like the little guy once he arrives!
Thanks,
Aaron & Zoe
squishable.com
I’ve already gotten my refund ($3.80 worth) and am a super satisfied customer.
Fighting Dance Moves
RayAlome sent me this video recently: Team Ryoko Canadá and the fighting dance moves were rather neat. The description says:
Arquivo bruto: “Capoeira break dance accidents ! martial arts brasil brazilian dancing fighting acrobatics gymnas.mpg”
I have no idea if it’s really Capoeira (a Brazilian dance/fight form), but it reminded me of Joe Eigo.
You can watch a bunch of Joe Eigo’s videos on YouTube. I first learnt of him back in high school. CrabyAple had sent me a rather awesome video: Matrix…. For Real. I wouldn’t say this beats The Matrix, but he had some really awesome moves.
If you liked the 2 videos, do check out more of Joe Eigo’s stuff.
Killer Bean Forever
If you haven’t heard of Killer Bean, then you missed out on one of the coolest CG animations I’ve see when I was back in college. I still even have a copy of the animation on my computer. However, you can check it out on YouTube: The Killer Bean 2.1 (Digitally Remastered)
This amusing 7-minute animated short film, Killer Bean 2, was made by Jeffrey Lew back in 2000. He spent more than three years making it alone, on his own computer.
Since then, Jeff has moved on, and is now animating for bigger movies. He was the lead animator for the movie Matrix Reloaded, and also did a great job on other movies, such as X-Men and Kung Pow.This enhanced version of Killer Bean 2, namely KB 2.1, has better video quality (tho I guess it’s hard to notice when watching through YouTube), and DoF (depth-of-Field) effects have been added. The rest of the movie is essentially the same as before.
Before KB2 begins, there is an advertisement, so be patient for it to finish (or just skip it), and enjoy Killer Bean 2, the way it was meant to be enjoyed – Digitally Remastered!
Say whatever you want, but I think this movie is just incredibly well made, and very funny.
For more info on Jeff Lew and the Killer Bean, check out these sites:
http://jefflew.com/
http://jefflew.com/news.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kill…
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0506703/
Turns out Jeff Lew, the animator of Killer Bean is planning to create a whole feature film based on the Killer Bean character: Killer Bean Forever
For the past 4 years, I’ve been working at home creating an 85 minute animated CG movie. I was formerly the lead animator for Matrix Reloaded, and this is the trailer to my feature film directorial debut.
The story continues where the the original left off. Killer Bean is being hunted by the police for killing all the beans at the party. I’m already looking forward to seeing this.