Movie trailer of the day

I think the best news I've had all day so far is that the trailer for The Hunger Games movie came out. I'm a huge fan of the books and I'd recommend them to anyone. But, I know not every is a fan of reading so here's the trailer:

I can't wait 'til March 2012! I really hope it doesn't disappoint but from the trailer, it seems they've kept fairly true to the book. Anyway, gimme a hollah if anyone wants to watch it with me :p

iPhone humour

So I've been extremely busy as of late. So much so that I haven't read any books in the last couple of weeks... and that makes me sad :(

As a result of this, I seem to have developed another hobby, one that takes my mind off of more serious things, and it's quick (though I can spend hours doing it). The last couple of days, I've been browsing www.smartphowned.com. The auto-corrects and awkward parent texts are funny, but after a while, they're all a like. But you do get one's that stand out. These are some of my favourites:

Yay! Another Button!

I just picked up another batch of pins we just had made. Here they are, fresh off the [button] press:

I think it's cool coming up with a design and then seeing it somewhere tangible, like a shirt, or pins! :D It makes me feel all nice and tingly... especially on this very rainy Friday. And I do believe what the buttons say... and that fact makes me feel that much happier today :)

Spare a sock?

My second post on this blog ("So Far...") referred to a bunch of Glove Squirrels that I made one weekend. Last week, the high school student I tutor showed me the photocopy of a project they're working on in HomeEc - a sock animal named Penny Penguin. I Googled "Penny Penguin" and came up with the book it came from, plus another book from the same author.

Today, I went to the public library and actually borrowed books for the first time in possibly 6 or 7 years.

You know... I'm not a huge fan of sewing. I don't think I'm very good at it and I think it's quite time consuming. But I must admit that it's a good way to past the time. This is what I did today:

With it being the long weekend, and my inclination to procrastinate when it comes to studying and homework, I might just make another sock creature or two in the next couple of days. Of course, I don't have to return the books for another month, so no rush for me to add to my army of stuffed, unpaired clothing animals...

A GoPro Weekend

I bought a GoPro on Saturday night. Since then, I've used the GoPro for these...

Oh, TV, how I've missed you... I still do

Being so busy, I don't watch much actual tv. I don't follow too many shows anymore because I eventually get so busy and I get so behind in the show that I eventually forget to catch up (or lose interest but not necessarily because the show is not interesting). Basically, what I'm saying is that the extent of "tv" that I watch is whatever I remember to record on the PVR, or whatever I download. Anyway, there's a long list of shows that I'd like to follow but I find myself switching between the following three shows the last couple of days:

I've occasionally caught episodes of Mutant X here and there on Space and I've always found it interesting (I'm a big Sci-fi fan) but never watched it consistently enough to actually learn anything about the characters. I downloaded all 3 seasons of Mutant X years ago and am only just watching it now.

I followed NCIS:LA when it first came out because I'm a fan of the original NCIS. I love the humour on the shows, the crime solving, and the science. But yet again, a couple weeks into the show, I eventually got too bust to follow it consistently. I caught a episodes once in a while but I hate it when I watch and I have no idea what happened to some of the characters because I missed previous episodes. Anyway, I downloaded season 1, and am probably gonna download the next two seasons too.

I got to talking about Sailor Moon with someone a couple of weeks ago and I got all nostalgic. For the sake of... authenticity... I downloaded all 5 seasons of Sailor Moon in Japanese and not English dubbed as I grew up watching.

I like making connections when I watch shows. What I mean is I like looking up the actors (on IMDB, one of my favourite sites :p) and seing what other shows/movies they've been in. And watching these shows have inspired me to watch a couple of other shows that I never quite caught up on:

Tru Calling - a show with Zach Galifianakis before he was famous - a show I actually watched on tv. I even have the first season on DVD, but sadly I can't find the 2nd (and final) season on DVD. So I'm gonna download it when I get the chance. Vampire High is a show I caught on late night YTV during my later high school years. I don't think I ever watched the whole series (a single season) and I doubt that the episodes I did watch were in order. So, this is high on my list for shows to watch. Bleach, the more age-appropriate anime that I kept up with [sort of] for the last couple of years. Of course, I'm a hundred or so episodes behind, which is why it's on my list of shows to catch up on. :p

Happy watching to all! :D

A Weekend Well-Spent

With school (and school work) comes the need for more distractions - a.k.a. "hobbies" - at least for me :p

This weekend, I learned a few things and re-discovered some old hobbies.

I learned to make an animated gif on photoshop. It wasn't so hard. I used 4 pictures, and put them all on the same canvas on different layers. Then I chose "Animation" in the menu, and added each layer to the timeline and adjusted the time delays for each layer. The result was this:

(Click image to see animation)

Puzzle Bobble, oh how I've missed you! I haven't played since High School and here I've gone and downloaded it again. I've had my MacBook Pro for a little more than 6 months now but I'm only just starting to enjoy using it since I have a few "new" old games :) :

and

I had a couple of minutes in between other activities and ended up looking through my cell phone. I began to play with the Paint app, which I haven't done in ages and found some old pictures I made:

Rediscovering the Paint app on my phone, let me come up with an idea for a new pin. And speaking of new pins, here are two latest Fronda Farm pins that we're released at the Conference in August:

It's over! Oh, how bittersweet...

One of the big reasons I haven't been blogging much in the last couple months was that the CFC Singles for Christ Canadian Conference was to be in Whistler and SFC Vancouver were the hosts. So... I've been a busy body, like many from our area. But, with the conference over, I'm feeling a sense of withdrawal. Not just because all the new friends I've made are all flying back to their respective cities, but now I'm kind of sad to think that we don't have another conference to plan. Just yesterday I said "That would be awesome for Conference" and then immediately thought "Awww... we're not planning it anymore". I'm glad I have relatively more free time to concentrate on school and my service to SFC locally, but the last couple weeks have been so awesome and now that things are starting to die down a bit, I feel a bit lost. But no worries. I'm sure God has plenty in store for me. I should just soak in my last couple days of vacation and recharge my batteries before school starts once again. Praise God! It's been a month full of blessings! :D

Here are a few of the more entertaining things I've been working on and/or have been a part of in the last couple of months:

Chimps on a Seesaw

With it being Summer, I want to get into shape... or at least be healthier. So we went to work out at a park. We had medicine balls and elastics and we were doing sprints and stuff. When we took a break, a Doberman tried to take the 6 lb medicine ball. It was kinda funny... I mean the medicine ball was as big as its head. It eventually got a good grip and ran off with it. It took a while for its owner to give us back the ball. But after that, we ended up doing this:
*Note: Video accompanied by one of my personal favourite songs, "Chimpanzee Riding on a Segway" (Watch the video on YouTube if you haven't yet!)

So much for exercise... I guess you could still consider this "exercise" though not as rigorous as I would have liked. The day ended with us eating at Duffin's Donuts. :D

It was a good day.

This is not Grand Theft Auto

So, as I mentioned in my last post, my next couple posts will be about what I've been doing the last month and a half of so...

One night, we had to break into my friends courtesy car because she locked the keys inside (genius!) and because it was the weekend, the shop was closed until monday. All we had was a coat hanger and the stuff in the back of my car that's supposed be used to change a tire. Anyway, this is how it went...

We never did get the door open. We poked at the lock a bit and were able to pull the door handle quite far back, but weren't able to pull with enough force to open the door. We were also able to pry the door open far enough to stick a finger or two inside but not far enough to do anything useful. Too bad I couldn't record the more eventful parts of the "break-in" but we had to use my phone as a flash light. It was fun though. Especially when the security guard came over and asked us what we were doing then after we explained the situation, he tried to help us. An interesting night all in all...

A blog-tastic past month

Wow! I haven't blogged in a month. It's been a really busy month, yet it has also been eventful as far as my blog is concerned.

I'm essentially blogging now to say I'll blog later about what I've been up to the last month :p

Until a bit later...

A Riot of a Final - pun intended

The Canucks lost the Stanley Cup Finals. It's too bad... But that's not what's making the news.

RIOT!!! Everyone knew it was coming... It's funny because we googled "Vancouver 2011 riot" right after the game and we came upon a wikipedia entry on it that was posted at 3:00pm - 2 HOURS BEFORE the game even started! Of course, now there's a proper wiki entry on the whole event.

Despite all the crap that went on that night, what's standing out is the good that came out of all this. How the public is helping to identify those who started the riot and the looting, the good samaritans who bravely faced down mobs to stop more vandalism, all those who came out to the post-riot cleanup of downtown - a demonstration of social networking at its best - and my favourite, the kiss-heard-round-the-world:



People are thinking "who are the retards making out during a riot?". I think it's sweet :p (ahh, the hopeless romantic in me), especially after you hear their simple story: Vancouver Riot's Kissing Couple Revealed

After everything, watching hockey is still a hobby of mine. Perhaps I should add riot-watching to my list of hobbies? Not! I'm still a Canucks fan. I still love Vancouver. And the Stanley Cup... well, it'll come (hopefully in my time :p). I'm hoping for next year!

Canuck Feeeee-ver!

It's Game Day! Game #5 of the Stanley Cup Final. Vancouver and Boston are tied 2-2. We welcome Boston again in classic Vancouver fashion - with a sea of green, blue and white, and messed up weather.

Commuting home today was absolutely CRAZY! Canucks fans everywhere and it was awesome! It's great walking down the street and having friendly conversations and getting random high fives to other people wearing Canucks jerseys. It reminds me of when the Olympics were here in February, minus the random singing of Oh, Canada. It just goes to show, especially in a city as culturally diverse as Vancouver, that sports fanaticism can transcend even racism... too bad it's not like this all the time.

The weather was very Vancouver today.  It was raining over here, sunny over there, and cloudy everywhere else. It's hot, it's cold - just the Canucks as of late (there! I said it!) - and I feel good about today's game. I'm not exactly sure why... but have you noticed that the last two games at Boston, the two that Vancouver lost horribly, it was bright and sunny over here (i.e. it was very un-Vancouver weather)? Now, I'm not superstitious, but I'm just saying... And as I'm writing this Canucks score the first goal!!! BOO YEAH! ... and I did wash my jersey after game #4. Anyone see any double rainbows today? :p

The Canucks haven't won the Stanley Cup... yet. But EA predicts that they will...
Check it out here: http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=564128

The child in me...

No, I'm not pregnant.
...

It was a warm and sunny weekend. On Sunday we ended up at a park after dinner just hanging around. When we realized we were the last ones in the park, we took over the playground.

The more rational and adult part of me was like, "Ewww... a playground? But there's probably bugs there. And it's covered in dirt." But the child in me - the part of me that still likes the smell of a new box of crayons, likes to lick ice cream off my fingers when it drips onto them, the part that likes to run through puddles when it's raining - was ecstatic! Where to go first??? The slide? The swings? Yes, the swings first as they used to be my favourite. It felt so good to go higher and higher, the wind in my face, and sand up my butt.

Then running around the playground, I wished that the playgrounds I frequented when I was a kid were as fancy. Yes, this play ground had some sand but a lot of the ground was covered in some sort of rubber padding.  In one of my childhood playgrounds, I swear there was more feces and garbage than actual sand. Then there was my school playground. No sand, just a small pebbles, which always filled my shoes and made running on regular concrete quite scary because there was always small pebbles everywhere. Also, when it got cold out, pebbles would stick together to form big, cold clumps, which sometimes was no better than landing on concrete and kids used to throw the clumps at each other. But I'm not complaining about my childhood. I was happy to have  any playground to play in.

I'm just kinda glad I didn't have this in any playground I played in: (hilarious!)

Divergent

I love to read... it's one of my favourite hobbies. So naturally, I always have a book to read. And I read several books a week. I read Divergent by Veronica Roth about a month (and about 10 books) ago but I can't stop thinking about it!!!

***SPOILERS AHEAD***
Now, I am no book critic... I just write what I think. I absolutely loved the book. It was paced really well and not boring at all. Of course, in the beginning, I had no idea what was going on and it took a while to get the faction names straight. But after the ceremony, things really picked up and you really got to know the secondary characters quite well. Some of the story was a bit predictable, like I totally guessed that Four was Tobias and that Tris would have fewer fears than average at the fear landscape. But I did not expect Al's betrayal. Some parts of the book were so heart wrenching but it ended hopefully.

I want to read it again. But I resist and settle for recommending the book to everyone :p I'm itching for the next book!!!

Band practice #1, Bass take #2

Okay so learning to play the bass wasn't as painful as I thought it would be. My finger-picking is still a bit stiff but I found it quite fun to play. On top of the song we were practicing for Battle of the Bands (B.O.B.), I learned to play the bass riff for "Stand By Me" (Thanks Marco!).

My homework for next week's practice:

• Practice B.O.B. songs
• Master "Stand By Me"
• Learn bass part for "Play That Funky Music (White Boy)" (See below for tabs and video)

--------------------

Play That Funky Music (Bass Guitar) 
  by Wild Cherry

Main                        Pre-Chorus
g-----------------|        g---     -------|
d-----------------|repeat  d--- out -------|
a----5-7------5-7-|        a---     -------|
e-0-------5-7-----|        e-0-     -0-1-2-|
  1 2  3  4                          pick ups to...

Chorus
g---------------|---------|-----------|
d----3-5-----3-5|----%----|-----8-8\--|
a--------3-5----|---------|-----------|
e-3-------------|---------|-6---------|
  1 2  3 4        4 times   1  2  3 4

LAY DOWN AND BOOGIE and play that funky music till you die
g--9-7---7-----------------------------|
d-----9----9-5-7-5-7-9-7-5-------------|    
a--------------------------7-5---------|
e------------------------------0-------|

If at the end of B.O.B., I might even consider buying an acoustic bass. Ha! :D

My fingers are made for walking... or not?

I mentioned in my previous post that I play guitar... not well, in my opinion, but I play nonetheless. So for SFC, we're doing a Battle of the Bands at the end of June. We've got vocalists, a drummer and [maybe] a keyboardist. There's a bunch of guitarists, but sadly, no actual bassist... Which is where I come in. We have a bass electric guitar here at home but I don't think I've actually ever touched it. So... our first band practice is tomorrow afternoon. And here I am, at 10pm the night before, picking up the bass for the first time ever! Thank God for YouTube:

Intro - Hand position, etc. 

Finger-Picking:

Open Strings:

Chromatic Scales:

Hopefully my previous guitar experience will help me shorten the learning curve. But for tonight... PRACTICE!

So Far...

Where to start? I've picked up a couple of hobbies along the past couple years...

1. Snowboarding - I took up snowboarding after my first year of university and fell in love with it almost instantly. Yes, it felt like I got hit by a train after that first day, but with persistance (and ample padding), I can now confidently say I'm no novice. Anyway, our first big snowboarding trip was to Big White (Kelowna, BC). It was such an awesome trip, we went back the year after that. And since then it became an annual thing. After the first year, I made a big cardboard number for each year, which we took on the trip and frequented in our pictures that weekend (See pic below). Sadly, this past winter would have been "Big White 5", but due to unforeseen circumstances (i.e. I got into a car accident), my snowboarding season ended before it even began. I'm not sure what this year is gonna be... Big White 6 or 5.5? (BTW, the cat in the pic is Farnsworth)

2. Guitar - I began to learn to play the guitar after my brother picked it up when he (and I) joined Singles For Christ. This was in 2007. It wasn't until 2008 when I started to consistently practice and learn to actually play songs. Now, I personally have 3 guitars. I believe my guitar playing is a constant work-in-progress...

3. Reading - This isn't really an unusual hobby. As a child I never really did like reading and as a teenager, though I read the occasional mystery novel, I never considered it a pastime. I don't think it was until I began to read Harry Potter did I really begin to like reading. And now my partial collection:

You can really only see the books in front. But on the 2 shelves, I estimate there are about 90 books. Also, I've leant out a bunch of books to my friends (If I didn't do this, all the books wouldn't fit on my two shelves). And I can't even count how many eBooks I have on my computer. Needless to say, I really like to read now...

4. SFC Theme Art - This one is hard to explain. The first one was supposed to be a trophy for a competition in a Singles for Christ (SFC) event. The year after that, it was more like a diorama. But for the past 3 years, I've made some sort of art work based on the SFC theme for that year.

2009 was "Moving forward in Christ": (It recently broke so I drew in the missing piece... can you find it? :p)

2010 was "The Good Life" (Fullness of Life in Christ):

2011 is "I Stand".... I'm actually working on this right now. Stay tuned for a future post! :p

5. Video Games - I like to play video games. I'm pretty awesome at Mario Kart and Bomberman (humble much?). I also like first person shooter games... Doom, Duke Nukem, Counterstrike, Call of Duty. After a long day, sometimes it feels good to blow things up :p

6. Candy Apples - This, I believe, was one of my more brilliant ideas :p My mom's been making a carmel by boiling a closed can of condensed milk (for three hours) since we were kids. Normally, the carmel would be used as a spread on bread or some other pastry. But one day earlier this year, I used it on apples (I don't know why I never thought of it before). The caramel is a lot softer than the stuff you get when you buy candy apples commercially (or if you use melted sugar). This caramel is more like a soft paste. Spread it on the apple, roll it around in crushed nuts, drizzle with melted chocolate (milk AND white), and add whatever else tickles your fancy that day (sprinkles, marshmallows, etc.). Yum!

7. Glove Squirrels - You might have noticed that I like arts and crafts. But since I started university, I never had much opportunity to do crafts anymore. Last Christmas break, I made stuffed squirrels out of unpaired gloves. My brother had sent me this link a couple weeks before that: Recycled Glove How-to: Make a Chipmunk Softie. I may like arts and crafts, but I've always sucked at sewing and, thus, disliked it. But I ended up making two squirrels over 2 days (the two on the left in the pic).

8. Directing/Film-making - This came out of nowhere. I had an idea for a teaser for the Creative Competitions for this year's SFC National Conference (in Whistler, baby!!!!). Next thing I know, they're asking me to make it. I made this story board (note: I can't really draw :p):

We filmed the whole short in one [really, really, REALLY long 14-hour] day. It took us less than 3 weeks to edit it. Here's the final product:

I couldn't have done this without the awesome cast and production team. This was fun, but tough work...

9. Kwek kwek - I'm not much of a cook, but sometimes I get cravings for the randomest things. A couple months ago, I wanted some Kwek Kwek, a filipino dish of deep fried, breaded quail eggs dipped in vinegar or a sweet sauce. Anyway, I used the following recipe:

FILIPINO RECIPE ~ QUEK-QUEK (KWEK KWEK) ~

PINOY QUEK-QUEK INGREDIENTS:
48 pieces quail eggs, hard boiled then shelled (You can also use small chicken eggs)
2 cups oil for frying


FOR THE BATTER:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 egg white
2 tbsps. atsuete oil
1/2 cup water
1 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp. salt

• Combine all the ingredients for the batter in a bowl. Mix well.
• Heat oil in pan. Dip each hard-boiled egg in the batter, then fry till golden brown. Serve with vinegar or sweet sauce (see below) or sweet chili sauce.

FOR THE SAUCE:
1 pc. corn starch (Liwayway in paper packaging)
4 cups cold water
5 tbsp soy sauce
pepper
sugar
salt (optional)

• Mix all in a saucepan then heat the pot and continue mixing the ingredients.
• Before it boils you will then notice that the mixture starts to be sticky. Continue mixing until you got the right stickiness.
• Add pepper before turning off the heat.

10. Volleyball - I love volleyball. Enough said.


11. Buttons (A Fronda Farm Production) - The past two years, my brother and I have made buttons from local inside jokes from SFC.

We referred to "Jesus Loves BBT" in the video we made, too :p (see #8). I think we've already got an idea for this year's button. But it probably won't get made 'til the end of the year.

In the Beginning...

I started this blog hoping to document my various (and often random) projects, as well as my attempts at learning new things.


I realize that I can get pretty intense when I work on some of these project, which is exactly why I started the blog... to keep things light and fun. My hobbies are meant to de-stress and escape from life's "hard stuff", not to add to it.


Anyway, my first project to be documented will be up in a couple weeks.... but in the meantime, perhaps I'll blog about some of my past projects and new-found hobbies... I guess blogging would be considered as a hobby but blogging about blogging just seems redundant.