And so ends Lion's Realm

It was fun writing in the summer... but I'm too busy as of now. So I shall stop here and maybe continue next summer! Thanks to all for reading! It was a blast!

Andy

MY GF ON YOUTUBE FINALLY!

I've been recently invited to join the Golden Key International Honour Society, which invites people based on their grades (top 15% in your class)throughout the world. Apparently, there are a bunch of famous people that are in the society (which is for life by the way) like Adrienne Clarkson, some former U.S. president, an Olympian... So they tell me that if I join, I get possible scholarships, job opportunities... I get to mingle with the high class and can have a great title on my resume... Wow, sounds great! I'd love to join!

Problem.

I need to pay $90. And I did say its for life right?

Okay, so from my point of view, they have access to our grades via McGill (I know a bunch of people, and everyone I expected to be invited were). McGill itself was the first to email me about this society, telling me they will invite me in the near future. And they shower me with praises and stuff like that. Must be legit right? And I get chances at scholarships! And join the ranks of high people!

But problem.

I need to pay $90.

Pay $90 dollars for what? So that they can acknowledge my academic excellence (when surely this should be free)? So that I can pool money for the top 1% (I highly doubt I am in that top 1%)? Put it on my CV even though I know I won't be doing anything in this society (as it is mostly just a prestigious title)? What are the clear advantages of this society besides bragging rights and out of reach scholarships?

Bah, I'll pass this one out. And from what I've read, a lot of people think its a scam also, just like poetry.com... Paying $90, not receiving anything, just a title on your CV. Clearly the GPA on your CV is good enough no?

Here's their site: $90 Worth It?

Anyways, first week of University is done. I'm kind of out of it right now. Having a hard time socializing as I used to (probably because a lot of things seems deja vue, redundant, repeated, almost boring... but most likely I need to push myself back into the whole university thing). Courses (six of them) seem easy enough.

Hold on.

Back to the me not socializing part.

I've always had a hard time expressing myself. And I always blamed it on the fact that I was raised in three different languages. First mandarin, then english, then french was thrown at me from school, and english and mandarin stuck at home, and english prevailed for me with friends... It this the right thing to blame? Or is there something else in my life that attributes to my lack of expressing myself? No idea... apparently I was a late talker also... This is something I've been working on since the last year of high school. I think I've improved. But I still have a long way to go...

Moving on, and after my 6-7 hours rockband marathon and beginning of term house party and hundreds of dollars worth of collectible coins from around the world found at a garage sale (1800 Great Britain, Morocco, Israel, China, Germany, France, Spain and s on)... I FINALLY GOT MY GF TO SING ON YOUTUBE! (although technically, I've already done it... but not officially). I'm hoping she'll hit views into the thousand(s). I will need to do more advertising and more promotion for her (even though she doesn't really want me to but kind of does but doesn't tell me kind of thing I'm sure of it). So RATE. COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, FAVORITE!


MY GF SINGING "YOU ARE MY LIFE" BY MICHAEL JACKSON!!!

And here are other vids I've been recently watching. Voila, the vids of the week:


This guy is a pure entertainer!


Looks good! Sings good!


Epic and Sad!


Looking for some good music? Check this guy out!

- Lionsword

Summer Ends

Today is officially my last day of summer. And tomorrow, I'm back to university! How do I feel? Quite excited in fact!

I just want to go through quickly my Summer List of Things To Do 2009 and check off what I managed to accomplish:

(NOTE: X means accomplished)
- Travel far far away X (Florida baby)
- Learn a neat trick X (Hmm, a few special knots)
- Learn something smart X (As much as one can learn about memristors, IC fabrication and other electrical devices)
- Learn something practical X (um, learned how ebay and paypal works recently...?)
- Learn something new about my close friends X (always always)
- Learn something about myself X (where i want to go in life and my ambitions)
- Spend quality time with best friend X (hmm i feel it has been pretty good, especially compared to the past 2-3 years)
- Bike to Laval (... grrr... oh well)
- Purchase hybrid bike X (quite happy with the bike :P)
- Get Gold in Dragon Boat (failed by 0.02 seconds)
- Make a YouTube Video (got sidetracked by mj... i have my eyes set on the Zi8 HD pocket camcorder though :P)
- Make a YouTube series
- Take mom for walks X
- Exercise with Jeannie X
- Make a UPPT 09 (hmm?)
- Read a book X (a book by Terry Pratchett for one)
- Finish Snow (hmm... never got around to ask my cousin in LA for some help...)
- Start a new time capsule X (YES! We'll have to wait another three years now aha)
- Spend some time with my sister X
- Beat Carmen's dad at Chinese chess (yea... no comment lol)
- Go to the beach X
- Learn to cook a meal (hmm, I forgot about this one XD)
- Have the most epic summer love ever X ( :P )
- Meet new people X (quite a few actually!)
- Discover something new X
- Help 10 people, in very specific ways X
- Help clean Jeannie's room (still on my to do list!)
- Improve the way my household uses energy (aha...)
- Play tennis X (with my new racket of course!)
- Learn to surf X (I love surfing... yes!)
- Learn the different types of fine wine (this should have been easy...)
- Surpass myself physically X (Upper body is starting to look meaty)
- Watch an epic movie X (LOTR 1,2,3 and the dark knight should do it :P)
- Learn to sing (rockband singing counts? probably not..)
- Go to the casino
- Play pool
- Finish movie script with Jeannie
- Learn sign language with someone (hmm, in the end, I don't want to spend time doing this)
- Learn to take professional pictures X (on a technicality)
- Finish the dance, once and for all (... sniff... i'm too lazy i guess)
- Learn to play the erhu
- Learn to play go
- Make something X (yay, a lamp!)

Anyways, I'm happy to say that my summer has been extremely productive! (Especially with my research! My supervisor says that even his PhD students don't produce as much good results as I do!)

IT'S THE END OF THE SUMMER! ENJOY YOURSELF!

And with that, the vids of the wtv time it is now:


Too awesome!


Catchy tune! Something very appealing in this vid :P


Funny lyrics :P


TenMinMix by good friend DJPhilipps!!


Probably my favorite song of the summer!

"There it is... with all its rage and glory..."

Okay, where to begin...

Chronological order will do:

SO CLOSE! HOW CLOSE? 0.02 SECONDS CLOSE!

So I failed to bring back Gold (or any medal in fact) from my first year as captain on the McGill Dragon Boat Z team. It's all good really, considering that I ranked one division higher than last year (comparing with my marianopolis team) and that in my final 250m, we went from being in 6th place to crossing the finish line 2nd, LOSING BY 0.02 SECONDS! I have never lost this close before... In any case, as the dragon boat season ends, I have a new wave of McGill teams planned (a men's Engineering team for one, affiliated with DBZ) and will be possibly joining my coach's under23 team, which would probably be the fastest boat I'll be on!

Quite unfortunately, as every year, a bunch of people say they will come and support the team, but end up not coming. It happens every year, and I've learned to expect it. Although, thank you Lee for actually coming! It made me push harder when I heard your cheers in the crowd! I'm serious!



FLORIDA BABY!

So I went down to Pompano Beach, Florida with my gf and her family (and my gf's sister's bf). Worst of luck was that our flight to get there was cancelled and they diverted us onto another airline, making a connecting flight through Toronto. We missed the Toronto to Ft. Lauderdale flight so they booked us to Miami where we had to take an hour train northbound, just to end up at an empty train station with no taxi or taxi information... Plus my gf was freaking out every single step of the way :p... actually that last one was the hardest to cope with XD

In any case, I was expecting rain everyday. And it ended up being sunny all the time! With the beach 100m away from my gf's mom's condo! Highlights of the trip were tanning on the beach, learning to surf, buying my first pair of pumas, finding souvenirs for the family and friends, seeing flamingos and peacocks, watching sharkweek on the discovery channel and then jumping into the ocean, doing poses in public, getting my first minor sunburn in years, riding a convertible audi to a swing dance night... I loved it!



So in the past three years, I've been to Toronto, LA, Vegas, New York, Boston, South Florida... Next up are Vancouver? Hawaii? Outside of the US/CANADA? Neverland? One step at a time!

RESEARCH TO THE MAX!

So, when I tell people I do research at McGill, there's a few that are impressed... and bunch others that are skeptical. As in, is it a real job? Research... does that really do anything? I'm a first year, can I really contribute to the scientific community? Well, I'm the kind of guy that would say YES YES AND YES (even though I never done it) while others, well, they would say probably no :P.

Unbelievably, and beyond any of my expectations, my research has been a great success. We've gone through 12 different samples of devices (fabrication and testing) and we've finally got the results we've been looking for! And they are extremely good. How good? My dad telling me not to show the results to anyone. My dad hiding our notebooks and spreading them around so that in case there's a fire, they won't all burn at the same time? Calling me 3 times in the row saying the same thing? Dunno, maybe he's just overreacting, but I do hope it's the real deal. The idea from here on forward is to get a scientific journal publication and a patent going on. I mean, finishing my first year of university and possibly having a patent is beyond anything I've expected!



NUMBER 20

So it was my 20th birthday. Blah blah, I don't feel any different... A custom I hold onto dearly is the happy birthday song :P. My gf takes me out to eat at Reubens diner and I finish half of her Rocky Top Chicken along with my Tuna Melt plus a cheese cake. I come back home, and there's ferrero rocher cake! I go eat OMG SO TASTY AND JUICY AND TASTY bison and shrimp called surf and turf at Les Trois Petits Bouchons on St-Denis with my sister Friday. And I ate pizza for the day after my official birthday D&D session, and pizza during the Saturday friend party, along with chips and soft drinks that day, and the absolute awesome noodle meat carrot soup thing my grandma makes and a strawberry shortcake my uncle got me for the family party. And a jumbo blue slush plus a popsicle during my bike ride Sunday... What I'm trying to say is that I AM FAT FAT FAT AND LARGE and I have never been this fat in my life (weighing at 165 lbs). Imagine all the abs I can convert that fat into :P. (well really, i'm not that fat... but wtv).



Anyways, I am incredibly happy to see everyone (almost) gather together just to have fun! I enjoyed the single tube ride at Bromont where you had to fight your way down (or to stay where you are to wait for your friends :P). I enjoyed opening up the Time Capsule after 3 years... and glad to have another time capsule set up for another 3 years. Thx Lee and Gab for the hot blue tennis racket, I really can't wait to try it out! Thx Kenny and poopoo for world Monopoly :P. Paying by credit card is just like the real thing where you have a hard time keeping track of your money XD. Thx to everyone really for everything! Love you all!!!

Random

Besides everything, I went Bixi biking with my sister. It's really cool, though It would be nice if there were shocks and seat suspensions... Anyways, really excited for school to start again. I've accomplished a lot of what I wanted to do this summer. I hope there's still time to do a few more...

and of course... VIDEOS OF WTV MONTH/WEEK/TEATIME!


It's times like these that I'm proud to be Chinese! Seriously!


This is gay also :P

Okay for the next two vids, you have to play them simultaneously. There's exactly a 20 second delay between both vids (let the first one play for 20 seconds then hit play on the second, if confused about the youtuber, its mychonny's second channel, yourchonny...). My gf showed em to me XD.




LOL at the 3:00 minute mark!

- Lionsword

3rd Anniversary, Lamp, HP and Moonwalker

Summer interest has gone suddenly exponential!

In short, camping with family at St-Mauricie, 3rd anniversary with my gf, dragon boat festival in a week, florida trip the week later, dboat team bbq the week later later, birthdays that same week, possible publishing of a paper in a scientific journal at the end of summer!



Yea, 3rd year anniversary with my gf! We booked a dinner cruise on the Croisieres AML at the Old Port of Mtl and it was pretty sweet. I was actually on the same boat last year for my birthday, but this time it was different. More high class, jazz music. I ordered the lobster (by myself for the first time!) and I was, how to say, scared to rip its head off? The lobster looked like it could be alive or it could have been cute if it weren't dead... Anyways, after unceremoniously ripping its head off, the rest came naturally. And damn was it good :P! Reminiscing with my gf on our good times and dancing swing on an empty deck were other highlights of the night!



Yea... she's hot!

So I finally finished my gift for poopoo! I made this custom lamp with her own choosing of an alhocol bottle. We used a Rexy Martin XO champagne cognac bottle, some fancy stuff I would suppose! Only real problem I encountered was how to drill a clean hole on the side of the bottle for the wire? Use a special drill bit, apply extremely low pressure, squirt with water periodically to cool the glass and avoid shattering? Well, seems like poopoo and my gf didn't trust me! So I ended up just back feeding the wire and taping it lol. I think it looks nice oh yea!





Saw the 6th Harry Potter in theaters a few days ago and by far it is the best movie of the 6! Lots of love and humour everywhere and just the way it was filmed made a lot more sense than any previous installment. It also helps that the movie was as faithful as it could be to the book. Only problem I have with it is that the end was obviously rushed, the concept of the horcruxes (and Voldemort's fascination with great magical objects) was underdeveloped, and there should have been a fight between the death eaters and the order and professors...

MJ beatboxing for Oprah!



Anyone remember keen? OMG brings back so many memories!



MJ's Moonwalker movie! Highlights are probably the second half of Part 2 "Badder" (the little kid is SO COOL), the second half of Part 8 "Come Together" (love his star quality! the song is actually a cover of a Beatles' song), first part of Part 4 "Leave Me Alone" (Love this song), and Part 6 "Smooth Criminal"! (Or just watch the whole thing!)



- Lionsword

Forever MJ

So it's been almost 3 weeks since the passing of Michael Jackson. Believe it or not, I'm still quite sad.



Since the past weeks, most of my major projects have been delayed indefinitely. No advancements in my flash movie... I am supposed to be done filming my movie with my sister this week... Photoshop has come to a standstill... I've listened to all of MJ's songs (and only his) multiple times over. It's hard to explain, but I've come to love every single song he ever came out with. Previously, there were some songs I found a bit 'noisy' such as "Invincible" and some lacking interest. But that was because I did not know the context in which they were written or sang. For example, I've only listened to the song "Smile" probably once fully and never bothered with it again until now and recently when I found out that it was a song written by Charlie Chaplin and is Michael Jackson's favorite.

A few days after his death, I found myself among the crowd of, oh what was it? 100,000 spectators? 150,000? at the opening of the jazz festival. Stevie Wonder gave an incredible performance and he gave a great tribute to the King of Pop. I was incredibly happy and slightly consoled to have a real life Motown legend giving his thoughts about MJ. As Stevie put it, "People will try to profit from his death. It's all bull. Just buy his music." He played "Shake Your Body", "The Way You Make Me Feel".. And even more incredible is that it stopped raining exactly when the concert started and started to rain again exactly when Stevie finished singing, leaving the crowd in the rain listening to a tribute medley of MJ songs and ending with "Man in the Mirror"...

Over the past weeks, I've reorganized my MJ album collection, purchased his "BAD" and "Dangerous" albums, collected newspaper articles concerning MJ, dug up his demo music... My gf (as well as friend and aunt) also purchased several tribute magazines which have great stuff about his life and music, watched my "Live In Bucharest: Dangerous Tour" and "Number Ones" DVD...

Last week I watched the Michael Jackson Memorial down in L.A. It was playing live during my work hours, so I'd listen and watch whenever I could, during my breaks. The story told by Magic Johnson about the KFC made me laugh. Once again, Stevie Wonder gave a great performance for his friend, his brother Jermaine blew me away... and MJ's daughter, her words and emotion did it for me...

Anyways, I have a few videos / songs I wanted to share with you guys. As I said, I collected his demo music which only come on his special edition albums and box sets. Here's the link to my youtube account playlist. From my understanding, the playlist is permanent and thus impossible to remove videos from it. Which is why you'll find one or two Jackson 5 songs and one from his HIStory album which are not demos... but still worthy nonetheless!

MICHAEL JACKSON DEMO MUSIC PLAYLIST

My favorite songs right now on the playlist are "Sunset Driver" (OMG SO GOOD), "Carousel" (Reminds me of the 'Girl is Mine' period), "Fly Away" and "On the Line".

Little MJ, Smokey Robinson couldn't belive his ears when he heard this:



"Smile" - Jermaine Jackson



"Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer" - Stevie Wonder



Another video I idolized when I was younger:



Andy

This Is It

This is it. It is as if a part of my childhood and a great part of my soul was taken from me. I never imagined a world without my one idol, Michael Jackson the King of Pop.



He was to me a true musical genius. He was my jam music, comfort in sad times... he was of my lifestyle, my daily routine, my dance inspiration, even my attitude. For the past 9 years, I've listened to his music... every cd, every song, every concert, every interview. And probably the worst of all is that I started liking him just about when he stopped doing what he does best, when he exiled himself from the continental USA. And I've waited so patiently for the past 9 years, hoping for a brand new album and more concerts, and it seemed like 'This Is It' was the start of a grand new beginning. One of my biggest dreams was to indeed see MJ live in concert... I'd like to take this time to go through my history with MJ in my life.

The first time I ever listened to Michael Jackson was in grade 6 when my mom got me his 2001 album 'Invincible' (which is still my favorite album of all, even though it sold the least). I love his songs "Unbreakable", "Whatever Happens" and "You Rock My World". "Unbreakable" was one of the first songs I learned to 'sing' (I still remember singing it in the shower). "Whatever Happens" became my study music in secondary 2 for my history final (I listened to it around 50 times). And "You Rock my World" most likely influenced my so-called 'romantic' poetry.

I then learned that my best friend also liked MJ. I still remember the day we were talking on the phone and he was asking me if a certain song was on my Invincible cd. I placed my headphones across the telephone and played all of the songs (the song he was looking for turned out to be Billie Jean). I found MJ's Thriller album (cassette form) not long after and I fell in love with practically all the songs on it! Except for the song Thriller which I found too long and unconventional. It was not until a little longer that I started to enjoy the song. An acquired taste.

I have other memories of me and my best friend discovering MJ's concert videos and his moonwalk! The most memorable videos I have of MJ is his "Billie Jean performance at his 30th Anniversary concert", his "Billie Jean performance at Bucharest", his "duet on The Way You Make Me Feel with Britney Spears at his 30th" and his "1988 Grammy performance of Man in the Mirror".

I remember kaka and poopoo giving me this awesome birthday card with MJ in it! I remember doing the moonwalk in secondary 1 during la periode d'etude for the surveillante, learning by heart the Billie Jean dance sequence, dancing MJ in religion class in sec 4 and 5 (which involved humping directly in front of the teacher), recording a song called Tesser which was a spinoff of Beat It for a sec 2 project (amz and chiu forced me to sing!), doing a dance off in Kenny's basement, redoing the Thriller video clip for a sec 3 english project (however, the video is lost forever...), having an MJ dance scene in both of my Halloween movies, teaching the moonwalk at my swing dance practices in Cegep, my gf and I buying the Thriller 25 album for each other without knowing so for Valentine's day...

I think MJ made me strong also in the sense that I've taken some insults towards MJ personally but held my head high. I've been intrinsically linked with everything that has to do with MJ. Whenever some new gossip came up, people would talk to me about it. Even more surprising is all the support I received from friends when they learned of the King's death. A lot of my friends tend to insult MJ, calling him a pedophile (probably the most common) and commenting on his nose or whatnot. And I know that most of them don't do it with anger or anything, but just to tease a bit. But in any case, I didn't let any of these comments ruin my image of him or destroy my passion for him. In fact, all of the hater comments probably made me stick closer to MJ, defending him as much as possible and trying to show people that even though he has a different (and perhaps weird) lifestyle, his music is of the greatest in the world. I've learned to defend what I love most in my life the hard and only way. Get knocked down here and there and just keep on coming back right up.

As of today, my two favorite songs of all time are "The Way You Make Me Feel" and "Break of Dawn", both by MJ. If you ever get the chance to listen to these songs, please do. I find that there's so much passion in his lyrics and his voice that it just blows me away every single time I listen to them!

Michael Jackson is my hero and will forever be the true King of Pop. I don't think there will ever be someone like him. His charisma, his charm, his voice, his moves, his sales, his global impact, they are out of this world. I can promise you that for the rest of my life, I will always listen to Michael Jackson's music. For me, his music is much more than pop, it's the elixir of creativity and love. And I will always look towards his music for inspiration in everything I do in life. I might feel that part of my soul has gone, but I know that bits of MJ's soul lies embedded in his music. And as long as I (and we) listen to his music, MJ can live on inside all of us. May you rest in peace. You will be dearly missed Michael.

Andy

D&D, update on summer and photoshop

Well, I've been keeping busy.

First of all, I had my first dose of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) at Tam's house the other day! Total nerdage to the max! I had never played it before, and trust me, I was not expecting what I saw that day.

First of all, the game is purely in your head (and paper). The players each come up with their own characters and their backgrounds and how the band of heroes came together (we were four players, me, kenny, pa and lee) while the dungeon master (tam) makes the story up and all the events. I was basically a slightly dimwitted 5'11 barbarian half-orc wielding a double orc axe who was abandoned and left for dead by his clan. The halfling rogue (lee) finds me by the road and the elf fighter (kenny) generously gives me a healing potion, and so it came to pass that I owed my allegiance to them. We met the gnome mage (pa) along our path while he was being attacked by a band of half-orcs. We saved him and he thus joined our fellowship :P.

Anyways, yada yada, Kenny and I were hard headed and wanted to attack a camp of 20 lizard like monsters. And obviously, we got slaughtered while lee and pa were able to run away... BUT yea, very interesting game, has its charm. It's really hard to get into because you have to constantly make up your story and all your events. Rules are a bit iffy, probably because the dungeon master doesn't tell you everything.


And yea, it's been a while but here are the Vids of the month!!!



man, love this guy, makes me laugh so hard




Interesting voice :P (if you get the chance to see her new music video with all the props moving around, I really really hate the last 5-10 seconds that fades out...)




Great story! Great voice! Great song!


And so a quick update on my summer: Played several hours of tennis and getting better at it, teaching my cousin to drive here and there, Princess caught a little mouse the other day, finally cleaned my room, reorganized my personal time capsule, started building the memristor in the lab, climbed mount royal with my research buddies, went to the Cat's Corner's masquerade, biked, started playing around with Flash and restarted working with Photoshop, one week before my first dragon boat competition and cant wait to kick some ass (and the team is getting closer together!), saw the fashion festival with friends (Fritz Helder & the Phantoms performed and damn they are great performers! Google them! They way they are formed reminds me of black eyed peas! also got a bunch of free yogurt there :P sweeet), gf left her car lights on all day and we had to boost the car (first time I saw this happen lol), finally started working on the script for my milk movie (hopefully it'll work out...), going to go gab's chalet in a week (cant wait!), Florida trip delayed till end of July, read a great book from one of my favorite authors Terry Pratchett called "Only You Can Save Mankind" (fantasy, please check out his discworld series!!!), have a potential dragon boat logo (THX TO VIVI HONEY), planning a camping trip with the family (lac Monroe, Mont-Tremblant, same old place), and... yada yada yada...

View from mont-royal

Author Terry Pratchett and his Discworld series

My gf photoshopped a la comic book style

And before you leave!!! Type "Tiga: in the search box on Facebook and click on the page with the musician (around 26000 fans). Scroll down and hit the play list. Some hard core techno music :p. "Lower State of Consciousness" is good. Kind of gives you a headache after a while though lol.

- Lionsword

TOUR DE L'ILE AND UPDATE ON SUMMER LIST

Well, another year, another 35000 bikers, another 52 km, another tour de l'ile.

I swear, I've been looking forward for this event ever since the end of last year's tour de l'ile! I went with Cod this time and we decided to take as many poses as possible and I have to say, it's fun being creative on the spot and in public :P. It's one of my thrills in life! I strongly believe that in life, you need to be spontaneous at times and not worry about being weird in front of other people. You just got to do it and think to yourself that everyone else wants to do the same, but they're just too shy to do so!

There's something about biking around thousands of people and passing them one by one that just makes me feel great! The wind in your hair, zooming past other bikers, speeding down hill and climbing up hill on first gear! Besides passing people, and doing poses, tour de l'ile is all about getting free milk and free soap! And as much as possible :P. Me and Cod got each 4 bottles of milk, and two bags of dial sanitary stuff :P. Yea, that's the good life.






Today, I visited my old Marianopolis dragon boat team (named Descendants of the Dragon, DOD for short). I was super happy to see a lot of the old members still on the boat! They make me so proud. My successor, the new captain, reminds me a lot of myself when I first started dragon boat, the way he leads his team and the way he encourages everyone, and the traditional hip rotations that he makes everyone do that has been passed down for 3 generations :P! Chances are, my new mcgill team is going to compete against DOD and I'm pretty confident we'll cream them. Didn't see very good timing at today's practice from DOD...

Anyways, update on my summer so far: played tennis with kenny, jessie, marty and i'm slowly improving :P, succeeded the tour de l'ile, had 3 hours of dragon boat practice on three different teams in less than 24 hours, started planning for a movie that i'll post on youtube if it works out (something to do with not having milk with cereal for breakfast :P), finally purchased a new school bag that I simply love (old one had holes in the bottom, and the new one has many many pockets :P), played drums and sang on rock band for the first time and loving it (need to get it for guitar hero...), saw terminator (terribly disappointing), taking care of mom, selling chocolates for fundraising, planning a flash stick figure youtube series, played penumbra (a horror video game)and yada yada yada...

And before I stop writing, wanted to share with you guys a video that is probably the most stunning and most epic nature/environment movie I have ever seen... might be even better than BBC's Earth! It's an 1h30, but definitely worth watching any day! Make sure to hit HD and full screen!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU&feature=channel_page

- Lionsword

Picture Time! & Summer List Update!

I am a professional photographer!







Okay, maybe I'm not a professional photographer... but the way I see it is I can become a professional/amateur photographer two ways. Either one, buy a damn good camera and take classes, or two, just go out there in the real world and take some damn pictures!

I pretty much know the basics like the rule of thirds, and exposure and how to focus right, how to keep the hand steady, and what girl looks pretty enough for my photos :p.

But yea, I've decided to merge two things I truly enjoy, BIKING AND TAKING PICTURES! Just bike anywhere anytime and whip out my camera every two seconds! And that takes care of "Learn to take professional pictures" :P.

On that note, I've successfully completed 9 out of my 43 objectives on my Summer List! Another 12 or so will be completed within, say, 2 weeks. After that... all the hard stuff are left (surf? erhu? a youtube series? beat carmens dad at chinese chess?...). I've actually considered asking a street performer to teach me to play for a few minutes... dunno if that's socially acceptable or not!?!

Love the concept in this dance!


Anyways, had a great weekend! It was my cousin's bday, my bros end of year concert (some rat ratted me out cz he thought I was filming the concert, when it was actually spinach girl :P lol), oversaw the french conquest of the 13 colonies and moscow, finished reading twilight (finally, under my gf's pressure lol), finished reading my first james patterson book (terribly simple, easy read, nothing more than a money making book), had some quality mom/son time, slept in, went to my gf's end of year house party, biked after the cool rain and... i have no idea???

- Lionsword

My GF is terribly obsessed... with my hair!

- "With all it's rage and glory..." Something my math teacher would say while pointing at the gibberish he wrote on the black board...


So here's a video I found on TED and my god it's so good and funny! I've watched it twice! The story of the dancer at the end really really inspires me!

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity


I've always noticed that whenever my gf ordered food at the counter (fast food for example), she'd always get nervous and tense up as if the person taking her order was testing her. She'd always prepare what to say and get irritated if I interrupted her. And whenever she actually starts ordering, she never looks at the person but always stares at the menu on top... So yea, I have fun making fun of her :p. I don't know, but I try as much to look at the person directly and give a smile at the end. Just trying to be polite I guess.

Anyways, went to get some ice cream with my gf Friday, and I challenged her to order while looking straight at the girl working there. Amazingly she succeeded! But she ended up cracking up and hitting me in front of everyone...

Had the most uneventful relaxing weekend in the longest time ever! Spent most of my time playing Empire Total War... I just conquered France, Spain and Russia all in one go (that's what they get for declaring war against me at the same time!). I've been trying to apply as much wisdom from Sun Tzu as possible, and it seems to be working. My empire has spread to pretty much all of continental Europe, North of India, and the Caribbean... All that stands in my way from global domination is the English, of course.





Anyways, enough of my 18th century achievements :p. Remember how I regretted showing that Big Bang video to my gf? Well, now I'm getting really worried about the sanity of my gf... She's been constantly watching the same video over and over again (and its her exam period!), trying to learn the exact movements of the dance (from the finger twirling down to the facial expressions)..., and she's been constantly eyeing my hair as if she's trying to imagine me with some real asian almost fob hair... then she corners me and has those huge puppy eyes... She probably played with my hair every day of the week! Anyways, just wanted to say she's obsessed :p.


So... the vids of the week:

This vid is terribly good! It gave me goosebumps when the razor started :p. Make sure you use earphones! Or else it wont work.



Still lover her voice!



And finally, KevJumba is back! In the form of another channel, but he's still back!



- Lionsword

I'm BACK IN IT !!!

What a busy weekend indeed. BIKING AND DRAGON BOAT!!!

First things first, I biked with the_poopoo and pa for the first of summer! We left at 7:30 - 8:00 am (freeezing! had to come back and dress warmer!) and we wanted to bike from Brossard to Chambly... but pa got a flat tire, so we had to stop short. We still ended up in st-hubert after getting a bit lost in Longueuil which ended up being a very big detour. We ended at around 1:30 after having done around 40 km. So with the large breaks that we took, maybe around 4 hours of biking. That's three short from last year!



The map is approximate since there aren't any bike paths on google maps... at least not to my knowledge.

My bike, finally tested, is terribly efficient. Compared to my old bike, at the same speed, I don't feel tired at all riding Mr. Bacon. And I can hit higher speeds and better acceleration with it :P.

On the same day as biking, I had my first dragon boat practice as the new co-captain of the McGill dragon boat team!!! It was still a bit chilly, but it ended up being a success, i think! The coach wasn't late, there was a good turn out from the team (about 16/20), the workout was demanding, and we even got a prototype for our team cheer which is basically all of us saying "kamehameha" in a crescendo and pointing the energy blast into the sky!!! Even my gf managed to enjoy it even after she was nervous for the past two months about not being able to survive the training :p. Anyways, I hope the team gets better and better and that we win gold when the festival comes!

And I was thinking about dragon boat... I think the reason why I love it so much is that I can be very good at it and be the leader of the team. I think I have this fascination for leadership... probably why I am considering a minor in management... dunno...

Anyways, this weekend has really pumped me up and has further made me want to accomplish the things on my to do list! And here's some a few vids that are really cool :p!!!

This one was sent to me by my dboat coach back in 2007... and I still look at it for inspiration! Probably one of the best inspiration speeches you'll ever hear!



And this is a vid from a korean group called big bang... I looked into their other songs... but only this one is good :P. (and i regret showing this to my gf... cz she's going crazy for the dude and wants to cut my hair herself so that it looks like the dudes in the movie! lol...)



And here's some real talent!!! Check out the channel also! A bunch of really good talent here!




-lionsword

Memristors, Lindy Hop, Totar War & VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

Well, my first week of research was a lot better than what I expected :p!

I think I must have read over 20 papers/articles on memristors (my research topic), another 20 wiki pages for more fundamental learning and a whole book on semiconductor properties... and I followed 2 weeks worth of a 5th level university course! I spent most of my time in the library so I discovered a few books during my small breaks. One is the USSR Math Olympiad book and another science book from Amir Azcel, a personal favorite author :p.

Anyways, yada yada yada, my goal for this research is to be the first team (we're three students in the same project) to build a memristor at Mcgill! That would be the such a great accomplishment. People would come up to me asking advice on memristors and then they would realize, oh shit, he's an undergrad!

(If you want to know something about a memristor, you can read this article. It's an easy read: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/dec08/7024 )


Anyways, last night I went back to Cat's Corner for the first time in a very long time. And it's been even longer that I danced so much in one night! I think I was picked up by 4 or 5 girls in a row lol... which has never happened to me! (yea... I should be the ones asking them for a dance... but they didn't give me a chance :P). Surprisingly, I felt very much at ease dancing and I think I might have even improved by not doing anything at all! In the past, I always felt I had hit the glass ceiling and that frustrated me very much...

My gf and the Marianpolis Swing Dance Club (MSDC) performed also last night!!! They were incredible! I'm still proud of MSDC.

Here are the vids from last weeks performances at the Marianopolis Swing Dance Show that I promised :P:






Besides swing and research, I've been playing Mirror's Edge and mostly Empire Total War! My god, its such a great game! Basically, you control hundreds of 18th century units and lead them across Europe, America and India for global domination. I even got my Art of War book out on my computer desk :p. Had a good friend of mine come over and help me install more memory and a used but much better video card than what I had before. My comp went from a 3.0 rating to a 5.0!




Anyways, besides all of this, still have yet to bike far (its raining all weekend... ARGH), finished reading the whole series of dragon ball with my gf (had to go out and buy the last one :p) , got my mom some flowers that you can plant outside and that comes back every year (im a good boy), finished my kung fu classes, ate sushi with my electrical friends (tokyo sushi, new place, on ste-catherine near concordia, great place!), excited for dragon boat in a week and of course the videos of the week!!!!!

Damn good song :P



Best cello song ever... never liked yo-yo ma till I heard this song!



"I'm not a pokemon! I'm Chaotzu! Chaotzu!"



And I bet you've never heard this song before! (and that's another good thing about youtube... instant music playlists :P)



- Lionsword

First Week of Summer Vacation

Well, score for my real one and only week of summer vacation!

First things first, I purchased the hybrid bike that I've been wanting since last summer! It's pretty sweet, 700c thin wheels, aluminum frame, front and seat suspension, great acceleration. It's pretty much a standard hybrid, but it still outclasses my 10 year old mountain bike any day :p. Too be honest, I have yet to ride with it on far distances... it rained the other day, and the other other day I had to go to downtown Montreal for some business... And yea, just had to take a shot of it in the sunset. Last thing to do is to find a perfect name. My old bike I baptized it Reg after my friend, and she called her bike Andy. Yea, pretty lame, but that was a long time ago... Either I keep the old name, because it kind of grew on me, or find a new one. Got a suggestion for Mr. Bacon which has something to it :p. Anyways, I will meditate on this.





Besides my bike, I learned the alphabet and the 10 digits in Morse code. I also learned to tie a bowline, an 8 knot and a 'knitters' knot which is the name my gf came up with. Why did I learn this? Bah, I was bored i guess... and now a joke!

.-- .... .- - -.. .. -.. - .... . ... . .-. --. . -. - ... .- -.-- - --- .... .. ... -- . -. ?
.. .--- .- -. - .-- .- -. - - --- ... - .- -. -.. .... . .-. . .- -. -.. .-.. --- --- -.- .- - -- -.-- .--. .-. .. ...- .- - . ... !

Yea, was practicing while my gf was trying to sleep lol. My skills are primitive because you can learn whole words instead of spelling them all out. (.-.. --- .-..)

Today I went to my old cegep's Swing Dance Party! There was like 14 performances (dance, song, random) but they were all mediocre besides the swing dance performances, of course :P. I'm terribly happy and proud to see the club me and a good friend of mine started back in 2006 still living strong. I think it might be the last year for the club though since there probably won't be anyone to take the reigns after our successor moves on to university. But in any case, the MSDC (marianpolis swing dance club) went out in a bang. Four solid original funny routines that just blew my mind away! I'm uploading them on youtube as I type, so I'll put them up on my next post.

Looking back, starting the club and meeting new people was definitely worth all the troubles. The thing I regret the most is being a lazy ass co-exec... i dunno if i ever said sorry to you amz... but anyways, I will never forget MSDC and the people that made it just that great.

Besides my new bike and swing, I started my Summer Research at McGill. I've already learned quite a lot on memristors (the newly discovered fourth fundamental circuit element, to be joining the resistor capacitor inductor trio. application of the memristor? think turning your computer instantaneously for one). I finally know what I'll be doing for the project (yes, finally lol) and that would be spending a full month documenting and learning everything possible about these memristors. After that would be to attempt to actually build a physical memristor. After that, do some valid critical tests on the functionality and distinct properties of the device... and so on... I simply can't wait. And it would seem I'll be working pretty close to two friends who are on a similar project.

Besides all of that... met up with some of my high school friends and had a long night chat with them :p.

Anyways, planning on having a great weekend, so we'll see if it comes out to be so!

- Lionsword