Time to meet E.T

This would be so cool if it were true! I hope to see this happening in my lifetime!

Earth-Like Planet Discovered!

Harry Potter Trailer

Will someone please go to this movie with me?

The Newest Racket in Tennis

If you still can't hit the ball with this racket, then I suggest just use it and swing it at your opponent's head. That's one way to beat him.

April Snow

Last week the temperature got up to 80 degrees. Today, it's snowing. It's also April 3. Welcome to Minnesota!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Cover Art

A picture says a thousand words

Spring Break!

It's that time of the year again. You know the time I'm talking about....the time when you see women wearing next to nothing smearing whip cream on some guys on MTV. Or better yet, jingling their A$$ like jello. Well, that's what the cool people will be doing at least. That leaves the rest of me and my clan of nerds who call the CSCI/EE building "home". What will we be doing on spring break? We can't go to Cacun Mexico because we're terrified of the sun. In fact, the only interaction with any form of light we get is the radiation from our computer screens. It's amazing that not more of us get SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Maybe the flashes of color from playing WoW count as light therapy. Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about spring break, and about what I want to accomplish in a weeks time. I could

1) Read (many) novels that I have bought
2) Watch (many) movies I have from the hub
3) Get a start on homework
4) Catch up on readings from my textbooks
5) Do two extra credit reading assignments (I can't believe that extra credit still exist.....I thought they had become extinct with the end of middle school)
6) Sleep 12 hours a day
7) All of the above

I will choose lucky numero seven. Some people call me an overachiever, especially during break when no sane person would consider studying. But hey....since when did being a overachiever become a bad thing? After all, it raises my nerd-esteem.


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For the love of learning

Big money from liberal arts?

A liberal arts degree may be the ticket to a high paying job . If a liberal arts major can earn $100,000 a year......then count me in!!!! I do have to disagree on the point that "a degree in the liberal arts, some might say, is an education undertaken purely for the love of learning." You think IT degrees aren't taken for love of learning? Then people have never met my roommate...... If economic returns is all IT people cared about on their college education, then we should all become doctors or lawyers, or even business majors because they make a lot more than engineers. Seriously, sometimes the challenge of becoming an engineer is enough motivation to do it. My counselor once asked me: "Why are you studying computer engineering?". As a sophmore who had little idea of his direction in life, I answered: "Because it pays the bills...." Now after 3 years of work, I've come to realize there are lots of ways to pay the bills, but the true satisfaction that I will take away from my college experience is that I accomplished something that I didn't think I could.....

Robert Louis Stevenson said it best: "We must accept life for what it actually is - a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature."

Let it snow, let it snow!

You know you are Minnesota when weather is 80% of your conversation. When the weather produces 2 feet of snow, it becomes 100% of your conversation. On March 1st, it started snowing so much that the University decided to close all classes after 2:30pm. I was sorely disappointed because I had already finished my classes for the day. Nevertheless, I had high hopes that Friday classes would be canceled as well since it was reported that the snow would continue all the way until Friday evening. Alas, the University figured that 2 feet of snow was enough.

Always hold onto your racket

This is probably the most bizzare point in a tennis match I've ever seen.....and I've seen many. Watch the whole video to see =0)

Groenefelds racquet ! lol
Uploaded by stefff92

Somewhere only we know

Life is too hectic to include blogging....well, at least to blog regularly.....and that was certainly the case last week. Four exams in one week and two home assignments due. I love it how IT professors comment they like to spread these out every two weeks. What they don't realize is that when they space it out all into the same week, it does the students no good! So yeah, it sucked to be a computer engineering major during the week of Feb 19 through Feb 23. You were guaranteed a minimum of four test, or five, if you were taking biology this semester too. As good students, we would never cram for an exam (hint: sarcasm).....which only meant staying up until 2 am and getting up at 8 am the next day to study some more. When exams came, I was extremely disheartened to find them to be so long. My stats exams has 7 questions, each with parts a - d. There's no time to double check my work. I was so physically drained afterwards that I felt my knees were shaky. It is a condition called ITritis. If you want ITritis, just include a combination of the following into your life: 5 hours of sleep, empty stomach on exam day, onerous exams that ask you to decode 32 bits of hexadecimal opcode, and voila, what do you get? One exhausted person who's wondering seriously if he shouldn't become a Chinese major where he's genetically programmed to do well.

On an absolutely unrelated note, I enjoyed wasting four hours to watch the Oscars. It raised my IQ by many points to hear these fashion critics on E! whose only form of communication is of the following structure: Oh my god, (insert actress name) looks so (insert adjective: eg, hot, sexy, gorgeous, slutty, and the list goes on). The Oscars event was actually really good, and Ellen was funny, especially when she said: "And America did vote for him (Al Gore)....but it's complicated."

I was glad that Helen Mirren won for the Queen, because it was such a hilarious movie (although I'm not sure if it was suppose to be a comedy). I did, however, shout at the TV when the stupid announcer say The Departed was based on the Japanese movie Internal Affairs. Hello!!!!!!!!! It's Hong Kong!!!!!!!! Get it right, especially when it won best picture.

Achooooooooooooooooooooo!

Celebrity Look Alike

http://www.myheritage.com

I'll take it. Beckham isn't too bad, right? LMAO.

July 2007 Harry Potter Month

Utada VS Beckham

Beckham can't really sing, and Utada doesn't play football. So, how do they compete? They eat!



The nattou looks delicious.

Hollywood dreams

I went to a rather small high school. It was only a year old when I first attended there as a freshmen. The benefits of a small school is that everyone knows everybody else. Thus, I've a clear memory of everyone, especially people in my year. A group of people who I clearly remember are the movie geeks. You've probably met one in your high school. They are the aspiring actors/directors/film makers. They always have a camcorder in their backpacks, ready to record everything they see. They are the creative people, who love film so much that they started their own class on video production at my high school. They became teachers to kids of their own age. Who says you need a degree to teach? The Scotts Valley High School Video Production class is still going strong. You can see some of the students works here .

One of the founding members of the class is Dan Hollister. He is now in Los Angeles, chasing his dream of becoming a director. Another originator of the class is Drew Mylrea. He filmed the only movie/video I've ever starred in, playing, what else, a nerd who knows all the answers. Apparently, he's now in UCLA, no doubt going for a film degree of some sort. These talented people have made a feature length film. I'm amazed by their talents, and everyone should take at their film: Phenomenon Jon

Trailer:



The school scenes are filmed at Scotts Valley High

Deal or No Deal

I just saw a guy, who has been living in his sister and brother-in-law's house in Arkansas turn down $200,000. Instead, he eventually walked away with $10. This is the lowest amount that I've seen someone walk away with. The truth is, you can always walk substantially richer than when you came on this game show. You've just gotta be less greedy. However, like the wise say, no risk, no gain. He had a shot at $500,000. What a quandary! If he had just gotten rid of the $100 case, then the next bank offer would have gone up considerably. Following the show, the host of deal or no deal appeared on CNBC. He said the most heated part of the show is when the driver drives the contestants back to the airport after they've finished playing. If I were a lawyer, I would call up a lot of these contestants after the show. Divorce, for some, are imminent. Poor guy, I bet his sister is not really happy with him right now.

Children of Men

This new movie by Alfonso Cuaron is a testment that critics aren't always right. The movie has gotten raving reviews everywhere I checked. Rotten tomatoes has reported a 91% freshness rating. Everyone seems to like this movie, except me. Not only did I not like the film, I started feeling nauseous in the theater because of it. The battle scenes used a shaky filming technique (almost documentary like), which is used to put the audience in suspense. Think of the filming technique used in Saving Private Ryan and you'll know what I mean. I can understand such cinematography and its purpose, so that's no reason to dislike the movie.

(Beware of spoilers below!)

The setting in futuristic London shows a world of upheaval. London, for whatever reason, maintains minimal order through the use of extreme police force. The year 2027 brings about an age where women are no longer able to conceive babies. It seems like the end of Earth has come. Utter desolation, abject poverty, and any adjective that relates to chaos can be applied to the setting. Even in London, there is great unrest, especially between a terrorist group called "The Fishes" and the London police. Inexplicably, a woman named Kee becomes pregnant. In order to ensure the world's last baby's safety, Kee must be delivered to The Human Project, a group of scientists working on a remote island to try and solve the world's infertility problem. To get to the The Human Project, Kee needs travel permits to the coast. Theo, the protagonist of the story, is captured by "The Fishes" and bribed with $5000 if he could provide the necessary paperwork. Once captured by "The Fishes", Theo realizes that his ex-wife, Julian, is head of the group and finally agrees to help. However, on the road to the coast, Theo, Kee, Julian and a midwife named Miriam were ambushed. Julian gets shot to death and the group narrowly escapes. The remaining group return to a Fishes hidden place only to overhear that the assasination of Theo's ex-wife was conducted by The Fishes themselves. The Fishes want Kee's baby for themselves and use him/her as a rally point for their revolution. Theo, after realizing their sinister plan, escapes with Kee and the midwife and try to bring Kee to the coast. Dodging through showers of bullets while trying to keep Kee and her baby safe, Theo must escape with Kee to the coast.

All this sounds great on paper, nice plot, plausible ending. What gets me to dislike the film is the setting and the eclipse it casts on the audience's mood. Throughout the movie, I was desparately searching for the remotest glimmering of any good to be derived from the birth of Kee's child. By the end, the faintest hope of a bright future is quenched, even with the arrival of the ship to the Human Project, because of the ubiquitous disarray. Futuristic London is a sea of pale and haggard faces. Brooding doom permeates the setting. The overcast skies siphons its effects into the mood of the audience. The abject hopelessness evinced by every scenery left me in despair that it was almost too hard to continue watching. Perhaps I'm still too attached to movies with colorful tones, and happy endings, but when the movie ended, I had given up hope. The world had collapsed and her pregnancy's will just be a futile attempt for humanity to redeem itself. That was my lasting impression as I walked out of the theater. Perhaps this is a movie of acquired taste, and that I became too emotional disturbed by the setting to focus on the story. Nevertheless, although I thought the movie's final message failed, the strong emotions invoked by this movie is commendable. I said that this year I needed to watch darker movies, and this one is just about as dark it gets.