I, Dickolas Wang

Note to self

2011-12-01T23:13:00.001-08:00

It's "I, Dickolas Wang"'s birthday.

Happy 7th birthday, blog. I wish I were making better use of you.

Note to self

2011-07-13T10:53:00.000-07:00

It's Ian's birthday.

Note to self

2011-07-12T10:31:00.001-07:00

It's Adam's and Megan's birthday.

Pet Peeve (or, What's Wrong With Wang) #9

2011-06-15T21:20:00.004-07:00

(Disclaimer: look, just for the sake of having a little perspective, riots happen, and they happen for stupid reasons, because the people causing them are stupid. Before anyone says anything about Vancouver, just look honestly at any other city of comparable size and think about what would happen there. What would have happened in Boston tonight? Okay, now that that's out of the way, here's something that's so earnest that I'll regret writing it tomorrow.)

You know what really sucks? Hoping beyond hope that people you have no real connection to, and that you know deep down are probably assholes, will come through for you, even when you know they won't. (No, I'm not talking about the Canucks.)

You know what really really sucks? The law of averages. The law of averages dictates that some people must be below-average intelligence. Also really really sucking: systems that amplify the noise and drown the signal.

You know what really hurts? Missing, for five years, a home you love desperately enough to write the disclaimer above.

You know what else hurts? Deep down, one of the biggest reasons I wanted the Canucks to win was just because I knew riots would happen and I want so much to be proud of the city I live in.

You know what really, really, really sucks? I'm glad I'm not there right now.

Currently looking for actors to play the French-speaker roles

2011-06-05T15:32:00.005-07:00

Disclaimer: I've watched the video a number of times and still agree with the league that there isn't conclusive evidence of Burrows biting Bergeron. I just don't see any actual chomping happening. However, if I were to guess what the NHL hearing might have been like...

Mike Murphy:

So let me get this straight. You [points at Burrows] bit him [points at Bergeron]?

Alex Burrows:

No, it was just a scrum and I didn't bite him...

MM:

But basically, yes you did.

AB:

No, I don't know what happened but...

MM:

Shut up. And you [points at Bergeron].

Patrice Bergeron:

[blinks]

MM:

You stuck your finger in his mouth?

PB:

Um... uh...

MM:

What the fuck did you think was going to happen?

PB:

Well, I didn't... uh...

MM:

Shut up. [facepalm] You are both so fucking dumb. [leaves]

Current Music: Adele - Rolling in the Deep

Note to self

2011-03-06T16:19:00.001-08:00

It's Jess' birthday.

Note to self

2011-02-21T11:57:00.002-08:00

It's Théa's birthday.

Note to self

2010-12-17T15:29:00.000-08:00

It's Cameron's birthday.

Naming conventions

2010-12-14T22:12:00.004-08:00

I've always named my computers after guitars. Windows computers have generally gotten named after Gibson guitars; Linux/BSD/Mac computers get named after Fenders; laptops get named after acoustics. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but as time has passed and the computers have gone out of date, I'm finding that I'm running out of good names, and my brand spanking new computers -- vastly superior to the old in every respect -- get worse names. My first PCs were ES335, LesPaul, Telecaster, Stratocaster, but then it was on to SG, Jaguar, and Jazzmaster; fine guitars all, but no ES335 or Telecaster. My current desktop is Starcaster, which is really starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

Apple probably had this same problem with their operating systems, but they wisely started with Cheetah, went on to Puma, then Jaguar, then Panther. When 10.4 came out and they called it Tiger, I thought "What the hell are you doing? You have nowhere left to go but Lion." But they said screw it and went back down to Leopard, which is clearly an inferior cat. I understand that 10.7 will be called Lion, though, after which they may have to go to things that can beat a lion, such as Drought or Desert Hardship or Two Lions.

Though I already have a naming convention for my guitars, I think maybe it's time to augment with a second one; a second name that can go in parentheses, like the songs on Hail to the Thief. From here on, I shall be naming my guitars after computers. Look at my new guitar, Cray-2. Sorry, Thinkpad T60 is in the shop. Excuse me, I've got to go restring Deep Blue.

It's probably a good thing I don't have children.

Current Music: Mr. Mister - Broken Wings

Note to self

2010-12-02T11:11:00.002-08:00

It's Eric's birthday.

Current Music: Wolf Parade - Cloud Shadow on the Mountain

What's Wang This Week

2010-12-01T23:36:00.002-08:00

A 6th birthday for this blog!

And a bunch of other boring stuff.

Regardless, happy birthday, blog. I still love you.

Current Music: Camille - Ta Douleur

Note to self

2010-10-01T12:38:00.000-07:00

It's Victor's birthday.

Note to self

2010-09-08T10:59:00.000-07:00

It's Thomas' birthday.

Revelations about my friends (or, Random paraphrases from recently, provided with some context)

2010-08-30T15:44:00.006-07:00

me:

How old are racehorses typically?

Regan:

Usually about two or three years old.

me:

That's it, eh? So for the rest of their lives are they just put out to stud?

Regan:

Yeah, basically.

me:
What about show jumping horses?

Regan:

A little older, like 7 years old.

me:

Oh, so they last a little longer?

Regan:

Yeah, well they're not worn out so quickly, right.

me:

And do they use the same horses for both? Like, after a racehorse is retired, does it ever go to show jumping?

Regan:

No, I don't think so.

me:
How do you know so much about horses? Oh that's right, you're a girl.

Victor:

[steps to the tee wearing a pair of bright purple Converses, takes a practice swing]

me:

That is a striking pair of shoes, Victor.

Victor:

I know. They're my groomsman shoes.

me:

Your brother had you wear those at his wedding? Oh that's right, your brother's a hipster.

me:

So we're decided on sushi then?

Megan:

Yeah, someplace with good rolls.

me:

Oh that reminds me, we should really go to Posh, they have a deal right now with non-stop sukiyaki and sashimi.

Megan:

But not sushi.

me:

Yeah, the sashimi is all-you-can-eat too.

Megan:

But not rolls. With rice.

me:

But... oh that's right, you're all white.

Whitey:

[looks on]

Current Music: The Black Keys - Next Girl

Note to self

2010-08-21T16:06:00.000-07:00

It's Steve's birthday.

Current Music: Wolf Parade - Expo 86

In conversation with Dickolas (or, Non-random quotes from just now, provided with context)

2010-07-18T23:45:00.002-07:00

Eric:

birthday?

Eric:

oh. soon

Eric:

there's still time!

me:

still 20 minutes of being 27

me:

what should I do with those 20 minutes??

Eric:

Two women at the same time.

me:

man, I'd settle for one

me:

even just half of one

me:

either half

me:

provided it is halved latitudinally

Current Music: Van McCoy - The Hustle

P.S.: Yes I had to look up "latitude"

In conversation with Dickolas (or, Non-random quotes from yesterday, provided with minimal context)

2010-07-16T00:08:00.004-07:00

me:

fortunately I have a Mickelson-esque short game

me:

it helps that I carry four wedges

me:

like Mickelson

me:

basically my goal is to be like Phil Mickelson

me:

in retrospect I should probably have picked a role model who isn't basically known for being an underachieving lovable loser

Jim:

to be globally admired yet still have man boobs? I'd take that too

me:

good call

Current Music: Paul Simon - 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover

Note to self

2010-07-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

It's Ian's birthday.

Note to self

2010-07-12T00:24:00.000-07:00

It's Megan and Adam's birthday.

Current Music: Sloan - At The Edge Of The Scene

Random quotes from my past, provided without context #43

2010-06-14T18:37:00.002-07:00

MAKE ME A BUTCHER! FUCK!

-- Richard Liang

Current Music: Beck - Debra

Random quotes from my past, provided without context #42

2010-06-12T01:05:00.002-07:00

I'm trying to decide if a band called National Calves would write this song, but I think the answer is "probably not".

-- Graham Pollock

Current Music: The Box Tops - Soul Deep

Potent Quotables (or, Non-random quotes from last month, paraphrased and in context)

2010-06-05T13:21:00.003-07:00

Ian:

[seeing my desktop background] Did you take this picture?

me:

I did, yeah.

Ian:

Is this your view from the window?

me:

Yeah. I just took it from out on the balcony.

Ian:

... This is a nice picture.

me:

Oh, thank you.

Graham:

Wow. That's high praise, coming from Ian. He doesn't usually give such high praise.

me:

I know!

Ian:

... Maybe it just looks good because of your monitor.

Graham:

See?

Current Music: Neon Neon - Belfast

In conversation with Dickolas (or, Random quotes from last week, provided with paraphrased context and an accurate punchline)

2010-06-01T23:25:00.004-07:00

Friend #1:

[describing a pro-life rally in Ottawa] ... but there was a stage and a band and everything.

Friend #2:

Whoa really? A band?

Friend #1:

Yeah.

Friend #2:

But what kind of songs do you play at a pro-life rally, anyway?

me:

"All That She Wants Is Another Baby"?

Current Music: anything but

Here is some music

2010-02-09T00:09:00.002-08:00

I've been working at updating my musical tastes the last couple of weeks; mostly this just means new stuff by bands I already liked, but hey it's a start. Here is a taster of what I've been listening to:

Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal

Vampire Weekend - Cousins

Neko Case - People Got A Lotta Nerve

Neon Neon - Dream Cars

Neon Neon feat. Cate Le Bon - I Lust U

St. Vincent - Marrow

Current Music: one of the above

A glacier's patience

2010-01-19T02:37:00.004-08:00

I can't stop listening to this song:

Neko Case - This Tornado Loves You

Note to self

2010-01-18T21:03:00.001-08:00

It's Graham's birthday.

Current Music: Fleet Foxes - Sun It Rises

Has anybody noticed

2010-01-18T01:55:00.002-08:00

that Stephane Auger's defence in the Burrows/Auger saga hinges on the fact that no neutral third party can corroborate that he said "I'm going to get you"? And that both sides of the argument agree on everything else that Burrows alleges Auger said?

In other words, has anyone noticed that Auger's defence has boiled down to "If the glove don't fit, you must acquit"?

Isn't that awesome?

(I'm going to resist spelling this one out for the Americans, non-French speakers, or people who are otherwise pronouncing Auger like "augur". Well, I guess there's a hint for you.)

Current Music: Super Furry Animals - The Very Best Of Neil Diamond

Statistics indicate...

2010-01-17T13:15:00.006-08:00

... that Super Furry Animals was (were?) the 3rd best band of the aughts.

Juxtaposed With U

(Drawing) Rings Around The World

Venus and Serena

Moped Eyes

The Very Best Of Neil Diamond

It must be true. Statistics said so!

Current Music: Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years

Conan the Barbedwitian

2010-01-12T00:33:00.002-08:00

It's a real shame that apparently people aren't watching Conan on the Tonight Show. I for one like him there a lot. Just think: when someone says the name Conan to you, do you think of Conan O'Brien or Conan the Barbarian? I'm guessing you probably think of Conan O'Brien. That alone is a feat! That's like someone named He-Man Smith becoming the preeminent He-Man in our culture!

Anyway, it's also a shame that apparently none of my friends watch The Simpsons anymore either. Because of that, many of you will have missed this little pearl from Conan, writer for the Simpsons from 1991-1993, right at the end of their 20th Anniversary Special:

interviewer:

[If] you had to write the... the ending of the Simpsons, how would it end?

Conan:

Marge is gonna take a good hard look at Homer, and say he's so stupid, and he's... screwed us over so many times.

It'd be humourless, it won't be funny, it'll just be her looking at Homer and saying, "You are such a stupid sonofabitch. I... you're endangering my children, you've destroyed the town six hundred thousand times, you're... you... you're a threat to mankind. I'm leaving you. I'm leaving you forever."

Current Music: Vampire Weekend - Contra

Classic gag, approximated with multimedia (or, the real joke is in subverting both the convention and the form)

2009-12-22T01:43:00.006-08:00

I got a dishwasher.

Her name is Roxie.

I actually really did get a dishwasher.

Also OK yes I named it Roxie.

Current Music: The Beatles - Hey Bulldog

Pedagogy 101 (Random quotes from a few hours ago, provided with context)

2009-12-11T22:59:00.007-08:00

me:

I did my second mini-lesson today

me:

it did not go as smoothly

me:

I tried to do a problems lesson where I gave people a sheet with a problem on it and then I had them work in groups

me:

this is pretty difficult when you only have 10 minutes, it turns out

Tanya:

Yeah

me:

still, I wanted to try it

Tanya:

Were you supposed to do something interactive?

me:

you don't *have* to, but I wanted to try

me:

people got confused with the notation I used on my exercise

[snip]

Tanya:

What was your exercise?

[snip]

me:

it was on integration by parts

me:

I had them calculate \int_0^1 x e^x dx

me:

in three steps: first, let u = x, let v = e^x

me:

oops

Tanya:

Hah

me:

let u = t, v = e^t

me:

oops

Tanya:

Hah

me:

man, this is harder than I thought

me:

no wonder they got confused!

In conversation with Dickolas (or, Random quotes from yesterday, provided with paraphrased context and a more-or-less accurate punchline)

2009-12-05T17:44:00.008-08:00

Derek:

I think Team Canada should just dress a bear in hockey equipment and put him in goal.

Victor:

[excitedly] Have you seen that?! Bears playing hockey?!

Derek:

Wait, what?

Victor:

Bears playing hockey! Have you seen the video?!

me:

Wait... are you talking about the animal or the archetype?

Current Music: Squeeze - Another Nail in my Heart

P.S.: First person to provide a Photoshopped picture of Alec Baldwin playing hockey gets a reward
P.P.S.: Bonus points if you can make him a Cal Golden Bear

What's Wang This Week (special five-year anniversary edition)

2009-12-01T21:26:00.003-08:00

Against my better instincts, I decided to start watching Mad Men. Mainly I did this because I felt like I was becoming a bit too attached to light and happy comedic entertainment, and was becoming especially uncultured. Mad Men seemed easier than reading a book. Despite my initial indifference, I quickly became hooked and powered through all of it, finishing last night. Some of it was not that pleasant -- I'm not very attuned to drama anymore, I guess -- and I watched too much, too quickly, but I had to get through it as quickly as I could so I could Google "I hate Betty Draper" without worrying about spoilers. Man do I hate Betty Draper.

Me and the rest of the LUGs bought Settlers of Catan a few weeks ago. I don't know why we didn't buy it sooner, since Jowen and I were playing online probably four times a week a few years ago. Jowen and I were so addicted we would play two-player Settlers, which is about the dumbest thing you can do. He beat me all the time, and I wish I'd saved some of the numbers, because the number of times he rolled 7s more than I did must be statistically significant. I used to half-jokingly accuse him of cheating by altering the random seed on his computer, which he would always deny. Since we've been playing the real board game, though, I've noticed that his dominance has all but disappeared. Now, I've noticed that now when I say "Not so good when you don't fix the game, are we?" to him, he doesn't seem to reject the notion quite as quickly, and there might even be a hint of embarrassment.

So, as the reigning King of Catan (having won all five real games we've played so far, as well as being 2-1 in two-player Jowen-Richard grudge matches), despite the fact that I'm clearly going to jinx my current run of success by just saying this, eat it, Jowen. I am your Catan daddy. It's good to be King.

A few days ago I was sitting in my apartment eating lunch with the slide door open to get some fresh air when I heard a rustling in the kitchen. Without thinking I started to worry that it was a skunk, but then I remembered that I don't live in Berkeley anymore and there's no way a skunk could get in a tenth floor apartment without me noticing. I also don't live in Port Coquitlam anymore, so it probably wasn't a raccoon either. No, it was probably a squirrel, I figured, and sure enough, it was. This is not a good thing, though: I've been afraid of squirrels ever since I was 18. I saw a squirrel chase another squirrel, and when it abandoned its pursuit, it stood there, staring at the fleeing squirrel, chest heaving up and down, with pure malice in its eyes. Ever since then, I've known that squirrels are far more man than me.

Anyway, I managed to direct it back out onto the balcony, but before I could close the door on it, it put its hands onto the sliding door track, stared right at me, and growled at me. What could I do? I couldn't close the door on its hands; this little bastard climbed up ten stories of concrete to get at my stuff: if I even made a move to hurt its hands, there could be some serious hell to pay. I tried not to soil my pants and stared it down, and finally it relented. I closed the door on it and resigned myself to losing the mandarin oranges I was keeping outside on the balcony. Now they're yours, squirrel. Please don't harm my family.

Today my blog is five years old, and what a five years it has been. I toyed with the idea of getting on Twitter a few weeks ago, because I'd be more likely to use it since it's much quicker to Twitter than it is to write a blog post -- and also I wanted to follow Big Ben. I decided against it because I feared I would end up never blogging again, and I'm very fond of the medium- to long-form blog format. I couldn't have written a paean to all-you-can-eat sushi on Twitter. I couldn't have written about my lost youth on Twitter. On the other hand, though, there's Big Ben. Regardless, I've made my choice. Long live I, Dickolas Wang.

Current Music: Dwight Twilley Band - I'm On Fire

The creative process

2009-11-20T22:18:00.003-08:00

8PM: decide that it's been too long, and set down to write a song
9PM: after an hour of being too lazy to open a text editor to brainstorm, decide to record an old song that I'd never actually recorded
9:05PM: realize that not only had it never been recorded, it had never actually been played anywhere outside of my mind, so set down to play the song
9:15PM: after futzing around with the bass part, realize that I don't have the lyrics memorized and set out to write them down
9:30PM: open that text editor
9:45PM: after remembering a grand total of two lines, start rifling through old backed-up files from my old Linux partition in search of the lyrics
10:15PM: continue rifling through old backed-up files, this time from my old Windows partition. They've got to be here somewhere
10:30PM: try using Spotlight to find it by typing in the few lyrics I remember. Find a link which once pointed to the file, but now points to nothing
11:30PM: time for Conan
12AM: set it down for tomorrow and pat myself on the back for a productive and creative evening

Current Music: something that is not my song

What's Wang This Week

2009-11-20T00:19:00.007-08:00

I went to Berkeley last weekend for a visit (DW Fun Fact: I graduated in May and am back living in Vancouver for the next couple of years as a postdoc at UBC). When I first moved to Berkeley, it was right at the end of what had been a gorgeous Vancouver summer, and so moving to the sunny climes of the Bay Area was actually kind of a letdown weather-wise. This is California? Where's the sun? What's with all this fog?

Anyway, because of this bad start I never fully appreciated the weather. Sure, I was aware that December in Berkeley isn't really much worse than August in Berkeley, and I was wearing shorts in November, but still, it never really sunk in how great the weather is in Berkeley. Well, all of that changed this weekend. Damn it is sunny there. And warm. And dry. And not windy enough to make me fear that my windows will blow clean off my building. So, although I may have said all sorts of things about Berkeley -- it's crazy, it's unfriendly, it's dirty, it's dangerous, the people are mean, Americans suck, the food is overrated, and so on -- in the past, I now have to finally admit that Berkeley is a beautiful place. Oh, and also, you can access Hulu from Berkeley, which is a major selling point right there. So thank you, Berkeley: you may be a bit of a bitch, but at least you're hot.

I've been playing a lot of pitch-and-putt golf for the last few months. It's past the season (read: it's cold, wet, and windy -- I would be playing so much golf if I were still in Berkeley), so I'm currently stuck at driving ranges. This works for me though because I'm entirely re-working my swing. I was playing pretty well for a while, but then during a round, just when I had pulled ahead of Jowen and put myself in birdie position at the 11th hole, he goes and hits a hole in one, which caused me to seize up and bogey the hole. Since then I've been psychologically shattered and have completely sucked every time I've played.

No matter: I've got the whole winter to watch instructional YouTube videos, improve a little bit, have a friend take a video of me swinging, and then completely start over because I don't look right in the videos. People say to take golf lessons, but the next person I pay $75+/hr to better also get me acquitted of some serious criminal charges¹ or at least provide delicious food, so that's out. Instead I think I will continue to watch YouTube swing instruction videos, and watch myself try to mimic it. I haven't seen this much of myself in videos since my videoblogging days. In related news, man am I fat.

Lately I've been completely obsessed with Community, the new show on NBC. From the moment I saw the commercial, I was interested: Joel McHale is on it! While some of you might know him as the host of The Soup!, or from any one of a number of commercials, or from The Informant!, I know him as the young guy from a Seattle sketch comedy show called Almost Live! I can't stress enough how important this show was to me growing up: it was one of my favourite shows through most of my teen years, and a great deal of what I know about being funny was learned from Almost Live!² (DW Fun Fact: the name of this I,DW feature was taken from this Almost Live! segment:

(link for those of you on Facebook).)

It gets better: the creator of the show is none other than Dan Harmon, who some of you who are not me might know and admire as one of the creative forces behind The Sarah Silverman Show (man I can't stand that show). However, those of you who are me will know him as Doobie Brothers and Van Halen producer Ted Templeman from Yacht Rock!

(link to the video for those of you on Facebook)

Anyway, this show Community is really great, it's really funny, and also I think I love Alison Brie:

Oh come on, go to CityTV's website (or Hulu, if you're American) and watch the scene in "Debate 109" where she lets her hair down and tell me that you didn't fall in love just a tiny bit. She's also in Mad Men so I thought I'd try watching it, but I watched the first episode and decided that I'll stick to Community. Maybe I should keep watching until I get to an episode that she's in. I also saw an episode or two of My Alibi, but decided that I'll stick to Mad Men. Also I got about two minutes into Hot Sluts, which is not what you think it is, but decided that I'll stick to My Alibi. Also, and I cannot believe I just did this, Googling "Hot Sluts" is not the most efficient way to find the URL for the show's website.

On that note, I leave you with a classic Almost Live! sketch³.

(link, you lazy Facebookers)

Current Music: ELO - Evil Woman

1. There's a joke here about criminal charges stemming from paying $75+/hr for services, but I'll leave that to the reader.
2. Which is why I went into math, I guess.
3. Non-DW Fun Fact: if the guy sounds familiar, video gamers, it's because he's the announcer in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Culinary idea of the day

2009-09-15T23:37:00.003-07:00

I read not so long ago that beekeepers sometimes feed bees plain sugar water and get really crappy honey on the cheap. I'm guessing that this honey doesn't have much subtlety or complexity to it, without the floral notes that you might get in the honey from proper nectar-fed bees. Also, at the PNE I saw some bees in a glass tank that had a tube going out of it so that they could have at flowers, but there was also a little jar of sugar water on top for them to eat, since the tube wasn't big enough for the bees to get through unimpeded and because the flowers were kind of far away. (Really, I'm guessing it's just so that they can pad their output volume with some plain-sugar-water honey.)

But then it hit me: why not take this seemingly lame practice and turn it on its head? Sugar water might not have much flavour, sure, but there are plenty of things that do have flavour. Why not feed the bees Coke? What would the honey taste like? I'm guessing Coke.

(Actually, my first thought was root beer, as I think that would turn out a pretty interesting result. Plus the caffeine might do bad things to the bees and make them all aggressive.)

If anyone out there keeps bees and wants to try this, please do and tell me how it goes. All I ask is a free jar of the resulting honey if it's good. Also a mention on your website when it becomes the next big thing. Also a cut of the profits.

You're welcome.

Current Music: The Replacements - Kiss Me On The Bus

I don't remember how to do this

2009-08-06T15:07:00.002-07:00

I realized the other day that I now have way too much stuff to do, not much of it important. I find myself in a new (old) place, starting a new job, living in a new apartment. I have, shamefully, bought myself a few new toys -- and I didn't even spend enough time with the old toys. Some of the new toys give me motion sickness; I actually have toys that literally make me physically ill. Soon work will pick up, too, which is important, and I'll have less time even to play with any of them.

But my favourite toy of all was this blog, at least for a few years there, and I certainly haven't played with it enough. I think I stopped using it when I decided that I should probably try and make some music, which was defensible. Why expend what creative energy I have on a blog, I thought, when I could be working on music? Now, though, I'm doing neither. I should change that.

How do I work this thing again?

Note to self

2009-07-12T00:00:00.001-07:00

It's Adam's birthday.

Current Music: Metric - Fantasies

In conversation with Dickolas (Random quotes from a few days ago, provided with some context)

2009-06-04T00:11:00.005-07:00

Chris:

That's really cool, about the hockey... I don't have anything I'm as passionate about as you are about hockey.

me:

Yeah, but one day, you wake up, your team is out of the playoffs, and you own the world's ugliest jersey, and you think to yourself, "How did I get here?"

Current Music: A.C. Newman - Get Guilty

P.S.: Worth it

Note to self

2009-04-26T19:46:00.001-07:00

It's Galen's birthday.

Current Music: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps

Random quotes from my past, provided without context #41

2009-04-10T15:18:00.002-07:00

Ivan:

What is it that you do for Passover?

Asaf:

Well, we gather round the table, and we sing the songs, and we tell the stories, and then we eat a Christian baby.

Note to self

2009-03-26T21:36:00.001-07:00

It's Divyesh's birthday.

Note to self

2009-02-20T19:40:00.001-08:00

It's Théa's birthday.

Note to self

2009-02-18T14:17:00.001-08:00

It's Rachel's birthday.

Occam's razor

2009-02-10T12:55:00.003-08:00

From this article by Shelley Fralic in today's Vancouver Sun:

If you're Bryan Adams, for instance, and you sell millions of records over three decades, get nominated for three Oscars, become a social activist and respected photographer with Queen Elizabeth as a subject, you can expect to be largely ignored by the local media.

If you're Celine Dion, and you sell more records than just about any other female singer alive, and are the most lucrative act to hit the Vegas strip since the Rat Pack, and have one of the most glorious voices on the planet, you can expect to be be ridiculed by artistic purists.

And if you're Nickelback, whose trophies could fill a semi-trailer and whose song How You Remind Me received more airplay than any other single in 2002, you can expect to be compared to an overrated garage band.

They may be three of the most successful Canadian musical acts, ever, in the world -- selling more than 250 million records combined -- but they sure can't get no respect at home.

Why? She goes on to posit:

One theory is that success, whether intentioned or accidental, carries the aura of the crass, as if one has sold his soul or trampled babies to achieve all that unseemly fame and fortune.

And we're Canadian, don't forget, inhabitants of a country that makes no waves, draws no attention and prefers quiet achievement over a raving fan club.

...

... they're all just too successful, too radio-friendly, too middle-class and mainstream for our prissy colonial comfort.

Just FYI, Ms. Fralic, that's probably not the main reason.

Note to self

2009-01-22T14:26:00.001-08:00

It's Mike's birthday.

Note to self

2009-01-18T12:12:00.000-08:00

It's Graham and Jowen's birthday.

Note to self

2008-12-18T12:29:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was Cameron's birthday. Sorry I suck, Cameron.

Note to self

2008-12-02T12:19:00.001-08:00

It's Eric's birthday.

What's old is new again

2008-12-01T17:13:00.003-08:00

Happy 4th birthday, blog. I still love you.

While I have neglected this space, I assure you it's not because I'm all of a sudden less of a blowhard, but because I've been really busy with being a TA and other work. It's not so easy to write posts when half of the interesting stuff that you do is off limits because it's about students.

Also, when the other half involves either getting Guitar Hero: World Tour, improving at the drums in Guitar Hero: World Tour, breaking the kick pedal on Guitar Hero: World Tour, replacing the whole Guitar Hero: World Tour package, or awaiting the imminent collapse of the replacement Guitar Hero: World Tour kick pedal, there's bound to be a whole lot of repetition, and I decided to just skip that.

As a token of appreciation to my blog though I have decided to finally join the atom age and pick a "new" template that has the "new" Blogger features, including a much improved Archives system. I say "new" both because this stuff all got introduced, like, three years ago, and also because I've basically just gotten lazy and went back to the original aesthetic design. So it's a blend of old and new, and the new isn't that new, and that's the way I like it.

In conversation with Dickolas (Non-random quotes from a couple days ago, provided with context)

2008-11-27T13:46:00.003-08:00

friend who is new to hockey:: I thought it was funny that Detroit got beat at GM Place.
me:: [laughs] Why didn't I ever think of that?!
me:: ... [thinks about it]
me:: I guess because Detroit never gets beat at GM Place.

Current Music: Squeeze - Tempted

Note to self

2008-10-31T01:12:00.001-07:00

It's Regan's birthday.

Note to self

2008-09-11T10:55:00.001-07:00

It's Frances' birthday today.

Current Music: The Band - Music From Big Pink

Note to self

2008-09-08T01:00:00.001-07:00

It's Thomas Nguyen's birthday.

Current Music: Sloan - The Other Man (live)

I heart Achewood

2008-09-06T11:57:00.003-07:00

Yesterday's Achewood was one for the ages.

Background: Ray was working with his annoying ex-girlfriend Tina on a new project when he accidentally punctures something in his bellybutton and it starts leaking clear fluid. Boy can I relate!

What's Wang This Week

2008-09-03T00:15:00.016-07:00

I'm writing this in Google Chrome. Neat.

I'm back in Berkeley now. My trip home this summer was a whirlwind of chasing after my nephew, spending time with family, spending time with visitors from Berkeley, going to concerts, and attending weddings. Then it was over, and all of a sudden I was in front of a classroom trying to explain some of the finer points of conditional probability to a bunch of new graduate students. People have been asking me if it's good to be back in Berkeley; ask me again after I've had a minute to catch my breath, as I don't think I have since before I left Berkeley.

Once I do find a second to catch my breath, you'll probably find me practicing on my very own brand new banjo. I'd call it an encounter with GAS, but besides the possible acronym issue¹, this wasn't an unplanned impulse purchase. This isn't the first time I thought about getting a banjo for myself, which you may recall ended in me deciding to buy a mandolin -- which I ended up never getting, but that's a different story -- but after borrowing one from Kyle all of last year, I decided that banjo really is cooler (I use the term loosely) and that I should get one for myself. Since Guitar Center was having their Labour Day sale and they had really cheap starter banjos in stock, I jumped. What better time than now to learn to play more kinds of, as Brad said, "really bad music"? Anyway, I'm spending my practice time learning to play some basic rolls following some lessons that I found on the internet. Once I finish that, I'm going to work on convincingly chewing on a long piece of straw while sitting on a porch.

My nephew is two and a half now and boy is he a handful. When I was in Paris this summer, he recognized me right away, but didn't know how to say my name, as R's give him some trouble. I wasn't that insulted, given that he couldn't say his own name either. A couple of times, he called me Artus, because one time he played with an 8-year-old boy named Artus and thought that Artus just meant "older boy that I play with". Anyway, now he can say his own name, and more importantly he can say my name... sort of. He calls me "Oucha". So long as he doesn't start calling that kid Artus "Oucha", I have no problem with that.

Also while I was at home, I did the Grouse Grind with some friends from Berkeley. We were so unprepared. I had been told by my friends Tung and Zara that if you take the Grouse Grind slowly, you can do it in 50 minutes. After about 1h15m, I remembered that Tung once did about 150 pushups in one minute. Anyway, we made it up in 2h15m or so, hampered in the first third by Shankar, the fittest member of our squad, having just eaten a large spicy meal, and then hampered in the last third by the rest of us being unable to keep up with him post-digestion. At least we made it up; Wikipedia tells me that the Grind's difficulty is "often underestimated" and that North Shore Rescue has to actually rescue people who are unable to finish it. It was an accomplishment, made sweeter by the fact that I never have to do it again ever.

Earlier on in the summer Allan also visited from Berkeley, and I spent a weekend showing Allan and Shankar around Vancouver a bit. We walked around the Seawall on the first day, and they're not the type to complain, but I started to suspect they were getting a bit tired of walking when they started to slow down a bit. My suspicions were confirmed when they suggested that we sit down after about 7K and they never suggested that we get back up and keep walking. That night we did more walking to get to and from the fireworks, and the next day both of them were sore and really tired. I'm a little worried that my friends from Berkeley are just going to remember Vancouver for being really tiring and difficult, and not for the amazing all-you-can-eat Japanese food, which is how I remember it.

A good friend of mine back from the good ol' days of the Math Club got married right at the end of my time at home. It was a great wedding and I'm really happy for her and her husband. The wedding was great fun and it was a fantastic time catching up with the old Math Club folks. I've been to a couple of weddings in the last year and a bit, and both times, instead of the couple kissing when glasses are clinked, they require you to stand up and sing a love song. Both times, now, I've sang "All Out Of Love" by Air Supply. That was an even more fantastic time. The other Math Club folks suggested I sing some "Roxanne", but I felt it was inappropriate to compare my friend to a prostitute on her wedding day.

I also played quite a bit of Rock Band over the holiday. I was already looking forward to the next generation of Guitar Hero/Rock Band games, but this actually had me considering spending $140 to buy the crippled Wii version of Rock Band just so I could practice the drumming. Guitar Hero is great, but even though you might be honing some skills that could help you in actually playing the guitar, at the end of the day you're basically wasting your time. (Albeit in the best way possible.) With the drumming on Rock Band, though, you're potentially actually learning to drum, so it's educational. Right? Right? Right? Anyway, that didn't materialize on account of spending the money on the banjo, and also as I figure one annoyingly-loud-for-my-landlord-and-neighbours hobby was good enough.

My parents had a food processor that they never used, so I packed it here to Berkeley. I was so excited to use it that I spent most of last week thinking of things to make in it. I decided to try making mayonnaise, since I figured that it would be impossible to make without a food processor. Ever seen it done? It's like frickin' alchemy or something. Anyway, apparently it's not that easy to make it in a food processor. That was a complete failure, and a waste of 500mL of oil and four eggs. I was so pissed off that I decided to conquer Mount Mayo with no oxygen tank, and I took up mixing bowl and whisk. Surprisingly, this actually worked, wasn't very hard, and was much more fun than watching oil and eggs sloshing around in the food processor. It really tastes a lot different from store-bought mayo (more French somehow), and now I understand how people might serve mayo, and only mayo, as a sauce for fish.

Some guys work on their car, or bench press 350 pounds. I'll take my banjo and my mayonnaise. My banjonaise, if you will.

Current Music: Blue Rodeo - Casino

1. Actually the G in GAS is for "gear", not "guitar", so this is not an issue at all.

I always got my brother to do that part

2008-08-13T17:26:00.002-07:00

(link for you Facebookers)

I think I only conclusively decided that this was fake when the Ghost of Kurt Russell appeared. Also, I don't have a brother.

Current Music: The Band - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

What was that sound? Was that 2008 Chinese drummers or something?

2008-08-08T20:08:00.002-07:00

Nope, it was the sound of VANOC crapping its collective pants.

What's Wang This Week

2008-08-04T22:12:00.003-07:00

I'm home now and will be here until the 26th. Wanna hang out?

My sister and her family are here right now too. Thomas is here and has so far been really excited to see me, which is a pleasant change from our previous meetings. He's right smack dab in the middle of the terrible two's, so it's a big operation keeping up with him. As a result, I think my parents are sleeping about 11 hours a day.

This weekend Allan was in town, and with Shankar now a postdoc at UBC, we got together and had a grand old time about Vancouver. I took them around the Seawall and to Granville Island, as well as to the fireworks. Yesterday we went to Deep Cove and walked around Robson a bit. Good times. The most important parts for me though were taking them to Jiro, so that they can describe first-hand the experience to our friends in Berkeley, and taking them to Japadog, which was also my first time. I had a great time, and they claim to as well, but I wouldn't be surprised if they later look back on that weekend as just eating a whole lot of Japanese food. Which, honestly, is how I prefer to think of Vancouver myself.

Current Music: Coldplay - Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends

People people -- this is a poll

2008-07-18T15:00:00.006-07:00

(I considered not making this so lame, but then I did it anyway.)

It's been a long time coming, but my dreams have come true: a Sloan show is just on the horizon. They're playing San Francisco on September 30. The show will be at the Independent, and tickets go on sale this Sunday for $16.

I saw Sloan last year at the Independent and it was a show I'll remember for the rest of my life. Their new album is pretty good, but even if it's left you underwhelmed, I'm sure they'll play all those songs you grew up listening to on the radio down in the basement.

I'll be there with bells on. C'mon c'mon: who will come take it in with me? Can I coax you, cajole you, into joining me? Anyone who's anyone will be there. Don't keep on thinkin' for too long: suppose they close the door Monday, then we'll have to get tickets on Craigslist.

Penpals.

Note to self

2008-07-13T14:20:00.002-07:00

It's Chunky's birthday today.

Note to self

2008-07-12T15:01:00.001-07:00

It's Adam's birthday today.

Maximum strength GAS relief

2008-07-10T23:55:00.003-07:00

Fortunately for me, my bout with GAS coincided with Guitar Center's 4th of July sale weekend. Now, I know I've previously said I hate Guitar Center, but I'm willing to shop there if they're not making much profit off me. Come to think of it, I never got that mandolin... I guess they decided it wasn't worth it to sell me a mandolin at 20% off sticker price, like they said they would, so they just never called me back. It's What Jowen Would Do.

Also fortunately for me, the Fender Classic Player Jazzmaster doesn't seem to be that well-regarded by those who love Jazzmasters. The Mexican-made Classic Player model has some changes that make it not so much a Jazzmaster as a real guitar that looks like a Jazzmaster. The Jazzmaster, as I understand it, isn't exactly a real guitar so much as it is a conflagration of eccentricities in the shape of a guitar, and to fix a number of its flaws risks robbing it of its real essence. Even more fortunately, the store didn't have one because the one they got shipped was defective and they sent it back. So a fool and his $800 are not so soon parted after all.

I did, however, turn my attention to a low-end acoustic 12-string, which I might actually get some good use out of in my increasingly theoretical singer-songwriter role. After trying a couple and a night's deliberation, I decided on a very nice Yamaha FG720S-12 which I got at $270, $60 lower than usual. Eat it, Guitar Center. I played it and played it until my fingers couldn't take any more, which wasn't very long because I hadn't played much in a while and 12-strings are a bitch to play. Then I played some more. I would have written this post sooner, but I was too lazy to take a picture of it, and then once I got around to it I found that I had no batteries new enough for my camera to turn on.

This is the first guitar I've ever bought entirely on my own. All of my previous guitars were either chosen for me by my dad, given to me by my dad when he got better ones, or bought after much consultation with my dad. Because of that, I feel like this is the opportunity to teach myself to do a little guitar maintenance. Adjust the truss rod, make a new saddle, file the nut. Maybe install a pickup someday. It might make it seem a little more personal.

I've always been a packrat. As I get a little older, I'm starting to look at all of the crap that I've hoarded over the years and evaluate each piece on how much I'd miss it if it were gone. In the past I've said that guitars become like your friends, and each one is a beautiful and unique snowflake, blah blah blah, but I'm feeling a little more pragmatic about it these days.

For example, my first proper guitar was a white Fender Strat. It was real sharp, but it had a duff neck and it wasn't getting any better no matter how much we tried to adjust it. We traded it in on an amp, and I don't miss it at all. On the other hand, we had another old beater acoustic that we thought sucked for a long time. One day, though, my dad made some adjustments and it transformed from an unplayable bastard to silky smooth. As the years have passed, this cheapo guitar -- which was already about 12 years old -- sounded, played, and held up better than at least three other more expensive acoustics. I'd be really choked if I lost it.

The one guitar that I miss the very most, though, wasn't even my guitar. When we first started the band, Graham didn't play guitar. He proved to be a quick study, though, and before long the time came for him to buy his first real guitar. He got it second-hand before the age of Craigslist, without someone with him to tell him if it was good or not. Fortunately, he got really lucky.

We dubbed it New Wings, as was our custom. (My guitars were Wings and Acoustic Wings.) New Wings was, on paper, an unremarkable stock Mexican Standard Stratocaster, but two things made it special. First, the previous owner was a smoker, and because of that there was a cigarette burn on the headstock and all of the plastic parts on the guitar had yellowed and given it a cool, aged look. Second, it had the single nicest neck I've ever seen. My better judgment tells me that it must have had the same shape as every other Mexican Strat out there, but in your hand it felt wider across the nut than usual. Because of that, the neck gave the impression of being thinner than usual, which made it really comfortable for leads, yet with a solid enough depth and heft to make chords easy to grip onto. It had absolutely perfect action: low enough to make playing anything a breeze, but with just enough fight in the strings to keep things from bending all over the place.

Graham played it most, of course, but I played it plenty and used it on at least a couple recordings. We both loved that guitar, and when it got stolen we were both really choked. Graham replaced it with guitars that are nicer on paper and, to be honest, better sounding, but they'll never be New Wings. If anyone sees a sunburst Stratocaster in a pawn shop somewhere covered with UBC/Riverside school paper/Radiohead stickers, buy it. We'll pay you back.

I think that every time I look at a guitar, I'm hoping to find another New Wings. I feel like I've got a few now -- Wings II, Wings III, and Wings IV -- that are really great and cover all my bases, so I think I've done pretty well. If I'm being really honest though, although I wouldn't trade any of them straight up for New Wings, none of them will ever be New Wings either.

So will this new 12-string be New New Wings? Probably not. But I can hope.

Current Music: Ron Sexsmith - Exit Strategy of the Soul

Attn: Mike Gillis

2008-07-10T19:40:00.003-07:00

If you pull this off, I will personally buy you a Jam Session. I'll make it for you, Mike Gillis.

You choose the flavour.

Current Music: Sloan - Never Hear The End Of It

The sexualization of our my nephew (or, That's my boy)

2008-07-06T01:18:00.002-07:00

[Setting: at the daycare.]

Thomas' three girlfriends:

Thomas est beau!

Teachers at the daycare, wishing to spread the love around:

Mais [Thomas' best friend] Romain est beau aussi, non?

Thomas' three girlfriends:

Non. Romain n'est pas beau.

Thomas, somewhere else:

[points excitedly] C'est une balle! C'est une balle!

[Exeunt.]

Current Music: Sloan - Parallel Play

I should hope so

2008-07-03T16:32:00.014-07:00

For about the last six months I'd been concerned that I was losing my hearing because I kept having to turn my iPod up louder and louder to listen to music. This didn't seem likely because I'm not any kind of headbanger, so I did a little more testing and it turned out that my iPod earphones were probably just worn out. They had served me well, but alas, they had lost a tonne of volume, and the bass response was almost nonexistent. I kept telling myself I should get new ones, but earphones are exactly the kind of little hidden expense I absolutely hate, like guitar cables and light bulbs. I also didn't want to find out that no, I really am going deaf. Besides, I was very proud of those earphones because I kept them in good enough shape that they wore out before I broke them by sitting on them.

I finally did something about it before I left for Paris and ordered a cheap pair of Sony earphones on Amazon. I toyed with the idea of getting both a noise-blocking pair and a non-noise-blocking pair (for the bus/plane and for walking, respectively), but in the end I decided to go with just the non-noise-blocking pair. It seems like it's not too hard to find a decent-sounding pair of cheap earphones if you're willing to forego the noise-blocking aspect. Also, they'd lead me into a lot less traffic.

Unfortunately, the Amazon order was delayed and I really didn't want to get on a long flight with only my worn-out iPod earphones, so I went to Target and bought a simple pair of Sony noise-blocking earphones. Happily, they confirmed that I wasn't going deaf, and they really were great to have on the plane. The box they came in also proudly proclaimed in capital letters on the front that these earphones had "RICH SOUND", which I was happy to hear (literally) after months of my tinny old earbuds.

Sony make good earphones. One thing I noticed as I walked through Harrods in London is that all Sony earphones come in a box with a short description prominently displayed on the label. For example, each box might say things like "SURROUND SOUND", "CARRYING CASE", "FOR MP3 PLAYER", or "GREAT INSULATION". But they only say one such thing, so the marketing people and engineers must have to choose which one would be most flattering to say about their top of the line earphones, which I assume satisfy all of the above descriptions. I have no reason to doubt them: mine do sound rich.

Anyway, when I got back to Berkeley the Amazon package with my regular earbuds had arrived. I opened it up and the earphone box said "GOOD SOUND".

It's true, they do sound good.

A post-Canada Day question

2008-07-02T15:39:00.004-07:00

Mike Gillis became the general manager of the Canucks promising big changes and talking about making bold, smart moves.

So far as GM of the Canucks, his most visible changes have been picking up an overweight underachiever off the waiver wire in Kyle Wellwood and picking up a cheap enforcer in Darcy Hordichuk.

He passed over Kyle Beach in the draft in favour of a guy considered to be much more of a team player, but also way smaller. Not exactly bold, but perhaps smart.

He also got shot down on an RFA in David Backes and offered $10M/yr to Mats Sundin, which would make a slightly better than point-per-game 37-year-old player -- who doesn't seem to even be sure about wanting to play at all next year, let alone in Vancouver -- the highest paid player in the league. Bold? Sure. Smart? Um... maybe? Incidentally, Sundin is so blown away by this offer that he has announced that he's just not ready to make a decision on his playing future right now. Perhaps he has to wash his hair.

In addition, he's stocked the front office and coaching staff with inexperience in: Dave Gagner, the father of his former client; Scott Mellanby, who retired in 2007 and spent last season on TV; and Ryan Walter, hired based on his skills as a motivational speaker.

So, my question, and it's one that I may have to eat if all does really work out: is this really an improvement over Dave Nonis?

Tin and rubber

2008-06-30T20:48:00.009-07:00

Ten years ago today, Graham and I got together with some friends to record our very first song, "Edible Rubber". This group -- Graham, Jesse, me, and whoever else was at Jesse's house at the time -- was a nascent version of the unfortunately named Pirkinweed, our band.

About eight "members" came and went before we wrote our third song. About ten songs later I was almost ousted by everyone in the band who wasn't Graham, which I turned around by booting one of them. About ten more songs and we got Eric to play bass for us; about a year passed before my attempted ouster was avenged: our drummer was booted, and Eric became the drummer.

We changed our name to The Asbestos Concern. We thought we were good. We couldn't hold down a bass player. We never played a show. About twenty more songs got written; probably a third of them got recorded before the band bit the dust.

Yet for all those changes, "Edible Rubber" changed remarkably little from its original form, beyond Graham learning how to play guitar on all six strings instead of the top 3 he had been using (in hindsight, the lower three would have been a lot more useful). It was perfect already.

To celebrate the tin anniversary of our band, here's a video of a cat eating rubber:

We still think we were good.

New for 2008: the Fender Classic Player GASmaster

2008-06-29T14:14:00.003-07:00

Ohh yeah... come to papa. Your little sister can come too.

Current Music: My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges

Murphy's Jaw

2008-06-28T16:36:00.003-07:00

Here's a snippet I caught in the National Post on the plane to Paris with quotes from Chris Murphy of Sloan. He really does seem to come off as a huge asshole if you just read the quotes, but I imagine that they just seem that way out of context; if you've seen his interviews, it's easy to imagine him just tossing these lines off without any malice.

Chris Murphy is one of my heroes. Just look at how he rocks those double-bridged glasses -- it's intense. Sadly it's looking more and more like I won't end up being his west-coast counterpart, for lack of media savvy and musical success. At least I have two of his autographs now.

As for Sloan's new album, it's good. Sometimes really good (Jay), sometimes not so much (Andrew). What it is not is 2.5 stars, which is what Spin gave it in the very same issue that they give the new Coldplay 4.5 stars. Now, I'm not even through the new Coldplay yet, and I think it's pretty good, even, but let's just say I disagree with the assessment.

Current Music: Coldplay - Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends

YYZ

2008-06-27T13:33:00.002-07:00

(I originally intended to write this post yesterday in the terminal at YYZ, but the signs proclaiming "wireless internet everywhere in the terminal" failed to mention "for $5.50/hr".)

Yesterday I flew back to Berkeley from Paris, where I spent a great two and a half weeks visiting my sister, along with a three-day excursion to London. On my way back home, I passed through Toronto Pearson airport and used what may have been the very same moveators used by Feist in her My Moon My Man video -- I never miss a moveator opportunity. I considered jumping up and sitting on the handrail the whole way down, but I just didn't see myself doing it without also falling off the other side headfirst.

I love Toronto and almost wish I had scheduled a couple days there on my way home. That's part of why the waiting area after the US customs and security check is always my least favourite part of the airport because it's like you're already kind of in the US. Well, I don't want to be in the US right now, I want to be in Toronto, thank you. There was at least a Tim Hortons near my gate, but they didn't take debit and there were no cash machines around that provided Canadian cash. At least now I can pay for things with USD and not feel completely screwed on the exchange.

I also find it a little funny that Toronto Pearson, probably the single most important airport in Canada, got saddled with the callsign YYZ, almost the very last callsign in the book. I had thought it's because it's relatively new amongst Canadian airports, but a visit to Wikipedia says that's not the case, having existed in some form or another since 1939. Even Toronto City Centre Airport (YTZ) has a better callsign, and you need a frickin' ferry to get there. Montreal-Trudeau (YUL) doesn't make much sense either, but at least there's an L in Montreal (and, I suppose, a U in Trudeau).

Finally, I considered including a Rush joke in here, but I just can't find the appetite to listen to the song now that Wikipedia has told me that it's an instrumental. From what I know about Rush, this means it's bound to be like 9 minutes long.

Current Music: Sloan - Parallel Play

Foux da fa fa

2008-06-15T02:25:00.002-07:00

Bonjour from Paris, where I have been since Tuesday. I'm staying with my sister and her family and have been playing lots with Thomas. My limited French is getting me through; I can at least communicate with most boulangerie workers, so I'm assured that I won't starve.

The thing I enjoy the most is the architecture. I've never seen anything like the old stone buildings here, like Notre Dame. I guess that's the beauty of such an old culture. What really amazes me, though, is that every church is just gorgeous. I'll get lost and sit down in a park to get my bearings, and there'll be another church, not a famous one or anything, and it's really incredible to look at. I still haven't seen an ugly church since I've been here. When I find one I'll take pictures.

Tomorrow I head off to London and I'll be there until Wednesday. Good times.

Current Music: Flight of the Conchords - Foux Da Fa Fa

What's Wang This Month

2008-04-30T21:17:00.007-07:00

I'd meant for an entire week after the Canucks' season was over to write my own take on their season and how they missed the playoffs. I thought this was a pretty self-serving and douchebag thing to do, but then I read a post by Matthew Good about the Canucks which I disagreed with greatly, and I decided that dammit, if Matthew Good can do it, then so can I. Matthew Good has always been an inspiration to me musically, in that listening to him emboldened me in writing songs because I refused -- and still do -- to allow him to be the biggest musician to come out of the Coquitlam area; the same principle holds here.

I never got around to it, of course, but the long and short of it was this: the Canucks were never good enough or deep enough (although this was changing, which we should thank Dave Nonis for), even when healthy, to win the Cup anyway. When healthy, they were definitely good enough to reach the second round, but the injuries they suffered were ridiculous. Besides, it always seemed clear that the plan was to hold on to their assets until this offseason when they finally rid themselves of $9M in salary tied up in Naslund and Morrison. It had to be this way given the absolutely insane prices people are asking for rentals these days at the trade deadline (Kesler, Edler, and Schneider for Brad "$7.8M" Richards¹?!) and Dave Nonis was wise to not make any deals.

The Sedins are facing all kinds of questions about whether they have enough grit in their game to succeed in the playoffs, but people tend to forget that the Sedins, despite some dry spells this season and their illness-affected 2007 playoffs, had always been solid playoff performers and are extremely effective when they stick to their cycle game. They finished the season off strong, as well.

People were calling for Vigneault's head because the team was playing boring defensive hockey, but I thought he was a good coach and made do with what he had. Let's not forget -- let's not forget, dude -- that the offensive juggernaut Canuck teams of the early part of this decade tended to evaporate in the playoffs, with the West Coast Express line consistently underperforming in their three playoff rounds. Having said that, you cannot convince me that Trevor Linden should have been sat in favour of Rick Rypien and Byron Ritchie.

Then Nonis was fired. So much for my opinion.

Much has been written about Francesco Aquilini's decision to fire him, and I tend to side with those writers who consider it a really bad move made by a meddling owner who doesn't know as much about hockey as he thinks. Having said that, new GM Mike Gillis' first press conference indicates that he might not be a total clown either, so I'm cautiously optimistic. His interest in improving scouting is something I am 100% behind, and yes, I also think the Canucks could use some more grit, because those are the kinds of players that succeed in the playoffs. Unfortunately, there's no tree where you can pick Jarome Iginlas, so it'll be interesting to see what happens this offseason.

Despite the constant stream of crap coming out of Canuckville for the last month, this was a beautiful moment:

(link for you Facebookers)

I'm really excited about the new Sloan album coming out in June. Surprisingly, I learned about it from their American label first. I've already pre-ordered it in the hopes that I get an autographed copy like I did with their last album. I've also already listened to it a number of times on their Yep Roc website, and I really like it, with the disclaimer that I've only repeatedly listened to Jay's and Chris' songs. I've decided that I like Yep Roc, although according to the interviews on this CBC Radio 3 blog they were previously on the same label as Berkeley's own William Hung.

I've recently been watching clips on YouTube from the original British version of Whose Line is it Anyway? I never realized until now how much it influenced me. It was the first time I really thought "I grew up watching this" about any show. When I was a kid, I didn't always want to be Trevor Linden, or an astronaut, or a rock star: I wanted to be Tony Slattery. If you've only seen the American version, check out the original, because you're in for a real treat.

Some highlights:

Stephen Fry's "worst things to say to the Royal Family" -- for those of you keeping score at home, he's a longtime comedic partner of House himself, Hugh Laurie:

(link)

Tony Slattery's "There's no free lunch":

(link)

Tony Slattery's "Pecking order for fruit":

(link)

The American version wasn't without highlights either. Here's Robin Williams guesting:

(link)

It's been a big month for video games. Between Smash Brothers and Mario Kart, I think I've got enough game to last me for the next year. I still haven't finished Guitar Hero 3, though. On the plus side, I've been playing more actual guitar, which is nice. Thinking about Matthew Good reminds me that I should be playing that right now instead of blogging, so I'll go do that. After Mario Kart.

Current Music: Sloan - If I Could Change Your Mind

1. Also, Brad "I had sex with Drummond's 17-year-old cousin whom I met in a bar shortly after winning the Conn Smythe" Richards, which is a story for another day.

Note to self

2008-04-26T17:35:00.001-07:00

It's Galen's birthday.

Note to self

2008-04-07T22:31:00.001-07:00

It's Peter's birthday.

Fffffffffffffff

2008-04-04T01:55:00.001-07:00

fffffffffuuuuuuuck.

Note to self

2008-03-27T00:59:00.002-07:00

Yesterday was Divyesh's birthday.

(Sorry, Divyesh, I was out all day.)

Spring break

2008-03-20T14:43:00.001-07:00

I'm going home for a week -- actually the 21st until the 31st -- for Spring break. Who wants to hang out?

The Iceman Cometh

2008-03-20T01:18:00.005-07:00

(link to the video for Facebook)

A couple summers ago when I was at Cornell for a couple of weeks, one of my roommates was a very quiet Swede. About a week and a half in, during a soccer game, someone said "So you're really quiet. What's with that?"

He just shrugged and said "I am Swedish."

What Wang Watches

2008-03-13T01:22:00.004-07:00

The Daily Show, in Berkeley:

(link for those of you reading this on Facebook)

Over the years I've been known to get excited any time I see Vancouver on TV or the movies, in places like: Smallville; Hockey Night in Canada; X-Men 3; and most notably Juno, which gets extra points for including lots of scenes in Port Coquitlam and Coquitlam. This is the very first time I remember getting really excited about seeing Berkeley on TV.

Bonus! In conversation with Dickolas (Random quotes from my past, provided with some context)

me:

[walking by the Army recruiting booth outside the basketball game] So this is the Army's recruiting effort: a Hummer painted with Army logos, a single inflatable free-throw game, and a covered tent? That's like something Pepsi would use... and it's not as good as what Pepsi would have.

Allan:

Well, it's an inferior product.

Vampire Weekend, on SNL:

(link for those of you reading on Facebook)

I'm sure there's all kinds of Vampire Weekend backlash ("more like Vampire Asshole"¹) but hey, I only just found out who they are -- I think I've heard "A-Punk" on the radio but didn't know who it was -- and I love this shit so far. It really appeals to my inner XTC fan, as well as my inner part-that-wants-to-like-the-Police. My first instinct, actually, was that it sounds a bit like what I remember of the bits of Paul Simon's Graceland-era concerts they show on PBS pledge drives. It made me want to check out Graceland-era Paul Simon, but I clicked on one link on YouTube and didn't have the patience to get through the whole thing. I'll keep trying.

Aw heck, more Vampire Weekend on SNL:

(link for you excellent Facebookers out there)

Hawksley Workman's new single:

(link for everyone, because embedding is disabled)

Note to self: buy Hawksley Workman's new album over Spring Break.

Hawksley Workman's old single, featuring an Oscar-winning actress:

(Knock knock. Who's there? link²)

A sporting massacre:

(You know what, Facebookers, that "View Original Post" link at the top isn't there for my health.)

I fully expect the Americans to say I'm an idiot, but the Canadians will appreciate.

Current Music: Vampire Weekend - Mansard Roof

1. also, Vampire Weaksauce
2. Link who?

Duh (duh) Duh (duh)

2008-03-06T02:38:00.002-08:00

On Saturday I found myself lamenting -- as I have done before -- how none of my American friends have ever heard of The Odds, or of "Heterosexual Man". It's a damn shame, but maybe it's fitting. I'll always think of Vancouver and my teenage years when I hear this song. To me, it's always going to be a purely Canadian thing, even though I can't think of anything particularly Canadian about the lyrics or the music, and I don't mind keeping it that way.

But then again, maybe not. It's a damn good tune. The video featuring the Kids in the Hall -- another purely Canadian despite not being particularly Canadian-y thing -- isn't bad either.

Current Music: The Odds - Heterosexual Man

Season 1 of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" synopses

2008-02-28T01:49:00.006-08:00

Episodes 1-6, 8-10:

Larry David does something semi-moronic and/or neurotic. Everyone around him is a total moron and overreacts, causing Larry to fail at everything he tries. His wife is a bitch.

Episode 7:

Larry David does something semi-moronic and/or neurotic. Everyone around him is a total moron and overreacts, causing Larry to fail at everything he tries except getting oral sex in his car from his bitch wife.

God I can't stand that show.

Current Music: Jason Collett - Here's To Being Here

What's been Wang this academic year

2008-02-28T01:48:00.001-08:00

Okay so I think the reason I haven't been posting very much is because last semester I was a TA. Since my life revolves around the statistics department to the point that I actually smell like Evans Hall when I'm not there, and since I couldn't (and can't) write anything about my students, I had very little to write about. Also, my blog is now read by my parents, and has been brought to the attention of the faculty in my department, including my advisor (due to the time I ate ketchup on my chocolate cake), not to mention being imported onto Facebook, so I can't just go around talking about people all willy-nilly on the internets. When you take away work and friends, I find myself lacking in material.

I suppose that's also indicative that I'm working more effectively and don't have as many little tidbits to share about the things I read, watch, play, and eat. I only get about 8 hits a day on this blog, so I also might as well just share them with the 8 of you individually, and you're all my Facebook friends anyway. Then again, it's possible that if I wrote more, I'd have more than 8 hits; it's a vicious cycle.

I'm realizing now, though, that this was a bad idea. With the writers' strike on for the last four months, I could have totally tried to build my brand and become the iconoclast I've always dreamed of being. Hell, had I been more on the ball, I might have started Stuff White People Like before whoever started it did. I could even have taken a turn writing about American politics (long story short: Clinton), although my contribution to the political discourse goes no further than what I learn about on The Daily Show. Since TDS was heavily affected by the strike, my contribution might have consisted of me finally looking up Obama Girl to see if she was hot. Verdict: yes.

Instead, I've spent my free time playing video games, spraining my wrist, suffering from hives, eating popcorn, learning about proxy servers, and trying to SOCKSify Windows Media Player. My chance to reclaim readers and become a conversation piece amongst my friends is gone. I'm okay with that, because that's how I do things here at I,DW. There's something romantic about wasting opportunities and continuing on anyway. Plus, Guitar Hero is really fun, proxy servers are interesting, and popcorn is delicious. The wrist thing sucks, and don't get me started on hives.

After much work, I beat the entire Hard career on Guitar Hero III and am now onto the second-to-last set of songs on Expert. Unfortunately, I don't see myself getting to the last set anytime soon. I think I've been able to get this far because up until now all the songs have been within my abilities on the actual guitar, which are wasting away because I'm spending all my time on Guitar Hero. Now, though, I'm up against things I am incapable of; this hump will take longer to overcome. I really believe that once I get past this stuff, I will truly be a better guitar player. The danger is that I'll actually want to play Raining Blood.

I've decided to complete my Garfield and Friends collection. I bought volumes 4 and 5 on a whim and now I'm hooked, so my current plan is to buy a volume every time I need something from Amazon that isn't expensive enough to get free shipping on. Volume 3 came with a package of four electric toothbrush heads, and I suspect volume 2 will come when I decide to check out The Jam's "All Mod Cons" or Japanese sci-fi flick "Tetsuo II: Body Hammer".

Last week I went to my first ever rugby game: the "World Cup" between UBC and Cal, named after the long-defunct Vancouver World newspaper. Apparently I unintentionally chose to attend the two biggest powerhouses in North American college rugby, and they meet up every year for a two-game series. I went in not knowing who I'd end up cheering for, now that I've been at Cal for four years, but on the first tackle I found myself cheering for the T-Birds. You can take the boy out of UBC, but you can't something something something. I figure this is sensible because I could conceivably still get kicked out of Berkeley, while it's far less likely that UBC would strip me of my Bachelor's degree.

Rugby, it turns out, is a beautiful game (who knew?!) and I enjoyed watching a sporting event that isn't completely big business. Without commercials, an actual sporting event can be held in under an hour and a half (who knew?!). In the end though Cal won 35-17, which was a disappointing result for me, but I took pride in knowing that this was the least lopsided game Cal has played all year. To put things in perspective, their season opener was won on a score of 99-3, and the week prior to the UBC-Cal game, they had among their weakest second halves of the season, only winning 78-22. Beside the UBC kicker missing four straight kicks, the biggest difference as I saw it was that every time a UBC player got tackled, he went down and lost about 7 yards -- pardon me, metres; rugby is such a civilized game -- while all the Cal players could have four T-Birds hanging off them and still leg out a 5 metre gain. So aside from all of Cal's team being totally on the juice, it was a really close match.

Funny, though. I'm so used to only following hockey in Vancouver that I kept almost mistakenly calling the T-Birds the Canucks. This lasted until the Golden Bears opened up a 10-point lead; after that I started almost mistakenly calling the T-Birds the Grizzlies.

The Canucks' failure to land Brad Richards, as a person named Richard

2008-02-26T16:47:00.002-08:00

I for one am disappointed that the Canucks have passed up the opportunity to have more Richards on the team.

The Canucks' failure to land Brad Richards, as a hockey fan

2008-02-26T16:45:00.001-08:00

Thank God. $7.8mil/yr? You must be joking.

Note to self

2008-02-21T13:45:00.001-08:00

It's Théa's birthday.

Also, 500th post!

Note to self

2008-02-18T14:24:00.001-08:00

It's Rachel's birthday.

Note to self

2008-01-22T20:31:00.001-08:00

It's Mike's 26th birthday.

Note to self

2008-01-18T13:46:00.000-08:00

Today is Graham's birthday, Jowen's birthday, and Paul's birthday.

How likely are YOU to eat your friends if trapped and starving?

2008-01-07T23:21:00.000-08:00

44%

Find your Match at JustSayHi

Note that this is contingent on my buddies already being dead and probably safely preserved -- in ice, say.

True story

2008-01-06T18:07:00.001-08:00

Steve Downie, former Canadian World Junior Hockey Championships hero, has landed himself in trouble again with a sucker punch on Toronto's Jason Blake. Downie was in only his fourth game back from what was then the 5th-longest suspension in NHL history for a big ol' headshot on Dean McAmmond.

A few summers back, when I was flying from a summer school at Cornell to Toronto to visit with Mak and Jim, I had a stopover in Philadelphia. I was sitting in the airport at the gate waiting for my plane when a pretty big dude walks up decked out in all Team Canada gear and looking like a guy who would give me many wedgies. It took me a minute to realize who he was (at the time, he was the guy who scored the winning goal in the 2006 World Juniors). He had been drafted in the first round by the Flyers, so it made sense that he'd be flying from Philly to Toronto. I considered asking for his autograph, but thought better of it, because of his even-then-existing reputation for on-the-ice violence.

He was doing word searches.

What's Wang This Week

2007-12-24T21:51:00.000-08:00

If I haven't talked to you already, I'm home for the holidays. If you're around and want to get together, let me know. I'm looking forward to the following:

Jiro;

Memphis Blues;

Top Gun (the Japanese restaurant, not the movie);

LUGs poker; and

LUGs Risk.

And if you drop me a line, I'll look forward to seeing you too!

I've been home for a week now and I haven't been to the gym in two. I've also been eating, and not in a healthy way, either. For example, I've been snacking on mixed nuts. I discovered that instead of eating the nuts individually, there's a whole bunch of taste possibilities that come from mixing and matching. This has made me far more willing to eat the hazelnuts. I'm feeling fat and sassy, and I haven't even been to most of my favourite restaurants around here. This could be epic.

The other day some of us were at Mike's place playing Guitar Hero. During one "solo" part, Graham started striking rock poses and in doing so pulled a muscle in his leg. He fell on the floor, but swiveled around so he could see the screen, and tried to keep playing. It was reminiscent of the scene in Spinal Tap where Nigel gets on his knees during a solo and can't get up. He did this for maybe 20 seconds and I considered getting in there like the roadie in that scene and propping him back up before he said that he may have pulled a muscle in his leg and was in pain. I laughed so hard I wasn't able to breathe for 2 minutes.

I've done some things other than eating and playing video games, but I'll spare you the details of my outbreak of hives and bring you the rest as I remember them, since another thing I've done is decide I need to blog more.

Current Music: Various Artists - Seriously Westcoast 2

Note to self

2007-12-17T19:48:00.001-08:00

It's Cameron's birthday.

Current Music: The Strokes - Reptilia

Note to self

2007-12-05T16:33:00.000-08:00

It's Jim's birthday.

Note to self

2007-12-02T13:58:00.001-08:00

It's Eric's birthday.

Current Music: The Strokes - Juicebox

In conversation with Dickolas (Non-random quotes from the last hour, provided with context)

2007-12-02T01:27:00.000-08:00

Steve:

The Wii has a LOT of low-rated games

me:

you don't have to buy them, you know

me:

it's okay if you don't

What's Wang This Week

2007-11-21T13:34:00.001-08:00

I don't know how I got so neglectful of this blog. It doesn't seem right, given that this blog is about the most notable thing I've ever done.

The second most notable thing I've ever done is score over 16,000,000 points on Tetris Tournament. I did that about a month ago, and I've barely played since. I felt, at that point, like I'd proved my point. I also upgraded my laptop to OS X 10.5, partially because I hoped it would speed up my computer, but also partially because then I could run Quinn, which I'd heard described as the best Tetris client ever (although they can't say that themselves as the Tetris people brought down the hammer of litigation).

After this success, I relented to peer pressure and agreed to give a talk in the Statistics Student Seminar about Tetris. Here was my abstract:

"All work and no play make Jack a dull boy", as they say, and perish the thought that grad students are dull. A pleasant diversion can take many forms; one of the most common is the almighty video game. Recently a wave of interest around one particular game has swept through the department: that elegant evergreen, Tetris.

However, the frustration of a bad game of Tetris often leads one to play again, and again, and again, until you achieve what you consider to be a "good" game. In my talk I will discuss and demonstrate general strategies and give some tips to make your game more consistent and improve your scoring, hopefully cutting down on the wasted time of a second (and third) game.

Time-permitting, I will discuss some results about a couple of subproblems of Tetris, including the proof that it isn't possible to play a single game of Tetris forever. This will be followed by a demonstration; in this demonstration I will discuss the relatively new "infinite rotation" rule and how it affects gameplay. I will also field questions about strategy and offer the insights of a Tetris player formerly ranked 20th in the world*.

* assuming Facebook rankings are world rankings.

You'd be surprised how much there is to say about Tetris.

Last week Jowen's friend Albert and Albert's friend Alpha passed through town and they stayed with me. We did the customary trips to Sizzler and In-N-Out, and they in return gave me food. They also invited me along to visit the Googleplex on Saturday, which was pretty awesome. Notably, they both beat Jowen in visiting me here. They were great guests and as such I'm happy to call them both my friends too. Awww.

This weekend is the Bacon and/or Chocolate Experiment of '07. I ordered a turducken from a local butcher, but I realized that we had the wrong date (he and I both thought American Thanksgiving was next week), so I called on Saturday to confirm. Turns out he didn't have my name written down at all, although this could have been because he couldn't make out my last name over the phone and was looking under "Leanne" or "Liane". Maybe I should call back and make sure he didn't write my first name down as "Rachel" this time.

I booked my flight to Vancouver for December 17. Book your calendars. This is no thanks to Adam, whose assholery had me planning to fly with him to Sea-Tac to save money until he found out -- after an Air Canada sale had ended, mind you -- that he had to stay right until the end of exam period because he has to help grade an exam. Fortunately, there were still ridiculously good fares available after he let me know, so he's off my shit list for the time being. Adam: what a douche.

I also finished Metroid Prime 3 in the last month. While it was good, I can't help but feel like my time would have been better spent playing Mario 64 before Mario Galaxy came out. Actually my time would have been even better spent eating more brown rice, which is cheaper and also nourishing.

I'm posting this from inside Google

2007-11-17T15:34:00.000-08:00

I'm not just in two tabs in my browser, with one on the blog and one on Google; I'm actually in the Googleplex.

Seriously, the Google.

I'm less curious about "Gitaroo Man"

2007-11-05T22:13:00.001-08:00

I wonder if there's a cover band out there that plays nothing but songs from Guitar Hero. They would have started by learning the easy songs and then moved on to the harder ones just like in the game, so that depending on when you saw them over the course of a year (or release cycle, I suppose) you'd be hearing different songs. After they went through the whole list of tunes, they'd have gone back through and started over on a higher difficulty setting. Maybe that means the second time through they got the second guitarist to start playing the lead parts instead of both guitarists just playing the easier rhythm part.

Then they'd have had to do it all over again when Guitar Hero II came out.

When development shifted over to Neversoft, I wonder if the band fractured into two, with one half learning the songs from Guitar Hero III and the other half devoting their efforts to Rock Band.

I wonder if an analogous band exists for Dance Dance Revolution.

Current Music: Crowded House - Time On Earth

Potent Quotables (Non-random quotes from this summer, provided with context)

2007-10-14T14:35:00.000-07:00

[In my car, listening to Air Supply's Greatest Hits]
Jowen:

Air Supply are so good!

[Later...]
Jowen:

Were Air Supply considered, you know, a good band?

me:

No.

[Still later! As we are listening to a song that is not "Lost In Love", "All Out Of Love", "The One That You Love", "Even The Nights Are Better", or "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All"...]
Jowen:

Maybe Air Supply weren't that good a band.

Current Music: Air Supply - Lost In Love