but soft, what light through yonder window breaks? i woke up super early this morning and felt both relieved and empty at the same time. i'm not even talking about poop.
second practicum has concluded.
i have been stretched and pulled and spun about. flitting back and forth between excited-to-learn english students and i-hate-school science students was a mental hurdle too high to jump in one go. it took several tries.
i already miss them all.
navigating between existence as a teacher and as a student is a cobblestone road to tireless wheels. it is a bumpy, noisy ride and that coffee you thought of drinking is now making its way through your pants, but it does not invigorate you down below.
i have so many assignments awaiting my attention.
feelings are so much more multivalent now: there is joy and pain in love; there is fulfillment and frustration in teaching. i don't know whether to laugh or cry, leap or laze, fly or fall.
the finish line approaches and it is time for the rest of my life. parting is such sweet sorrow.
i was printing something today when i noticed a notebook off to the side. i peeked inside. they were my high school notes from grade 12! sweet! free teacher resources! and look! doodles!!!!
i had a bit of trouble in science class today. the lesson was fine, according to my associate teacher, but i felt like a bruised apple. it was very frustrating to have the students i've worked so hard to earn the respect of fritter away class time by disrupting things because i didn't know how to chorale them or focus their attention. hello, feelings of inadequacy. thanks for dropping by and ruining my life!
the educational assistant in the class (because it's a class that needs one) came over at the end of the period to debrief me on the guys who are the behavioural issues. usually, she tells me a bit about their backgrounds, and those stories are the ones you don't want to hear; they're really good kids and it kills me that this is their lot in life. today, she told me about a conversation she had with them because of today's antics.
"guys, you like mr. chan, right? you're smart; you know what effect your behaviour has and you know when you're crossing the line, so why do it? you're making him think it is his fault. this guy is brilliant and could be doing just about anything he wants, but he is choosing to be here to help give you guys a running start in life. don't you think he deserves a bit of your respect?"
placemarker post for the time being. i will decorate it with words and so on when i has have the time. see the wonderful labels for a brief taste of things to come.
[REALLY] i went to the Ishskwaday 08 conference last weekend at TKPC. note to self: try to avoid conferences the weekend before school starts up after a march break holiday because you will be completely thrashed for the rest of the week. there was going to be a writeup with commentary and anecdotes, but who would read that? point-form play-by-play it is!
Friday:
got there early (2:40 pm) for a 7:30 pm start because i was told they needed volunteers and moyee was supposed to be there for worship team practice at 3. way too early.
saw Pastor Rolland for the first time since Longlac, and learned that his name had 2 l's.
so it turned out they had enough volunteers. commence loafing about and developing mental map of church. it is shaped like a Superman crest.
got a name tag. the registration desk was covered in Macbook.
listening to Broken Walls practice their set and struggle through trying to communicate with the AV team. the band was used to AV teams that understood the lingo (EQ, 128 Hz, monitors, drum sample, etc). it was pretty painful for me to watch and hear.
went for a walk. snowballed some geese. hopped a fence and trespassed through a snow-covered schoolyard on closed-circuit camera wearing aforementioned name tag. brazen!
Jaffray attendees arrive, hungover from TC. weird stories and giggling ensues.
program starts and everyone wants to wait for the bus from Longlac to arrive, but they're behind schedule.
speaker is hilariously candid and remarkably learned.
who hates colonialism? everyone.
who knows what colonialism is? i do, thanks to Early American Literature
looks like someone is not a fan of legalism and is not afraid to name names. they're like prescriptive linguists.
Longlac friends arrive!
Justin remembers me: "hey! it's robot man!"
man, they sure love their Koreans. who wouldn't?
Saturday
it's not as early as school, but it is still early. i wonder if i'll survive workshops (3 of them!). i should go pick them.
the first workshop was led by the keynote speaker. more elaboration on why colonialism is not the way to go about evangelizing.
"missions shouldn't be like putting a potted plant into the ground; it should be like planting the seed of the Gospel into the native soil and letting the nutrients of the culture feed the Word and allow it to blossom the way it is supposed to."
you can't have unity without diversity
lunch! settled for McDonald's. played Contact for way too long.
nothing much of note in other workshops, unfortunately
apparently, someone else out there came up with a cracked jar story.
final keynote message: repeat of first workshop. oh yay!
friendship circle dance = longest sideways conga line i've ever participated in
some people danced all night while others stood to watch.
there was a little 6 yr old girl in full regalia gracefully dancing her heart out. she was like a beautiful wind, twirling and flitting about amongst the legs of other dancers.
the rink is 200 ft long and the goal lines are 11 ft away from the end boards. Davison took the shot about 3-4 ft from his goal line. distance travelled by the puck: 174-5 ft. official distance: 174 ft.
i heard about an excellent discussion that was held in a math class today. technically, it was a private conversation, but who's counting?
anyway, the issue up for discussion was this: is it okay for a 16 yr old girl to date a 27 yr old guy?
knee-jerk answer says: EW.
but it's math class, so it should have a mathematical answer. fortunately for everyone who doesn't want to look like a skeevy perv, there is a simple equation people use to determine the Socially Acceptable Dating Age Range:
y = 0.5x + 7,
where x is Your Age and y is The Other Person's Age. this equation determines the lower bound (the youngest) that you can date and still be considered socially acceptable. conversely, the upper bound can be found by inverting the function:
y = 2(x - 7).
for those of you with low Mathema-logical aptitude, here is a lovely graph i whipped up for you: therefore, it is pretty sketchy for Peter Petrelli to be dating Claire Bennett, and extremely sketchy for a 16 yr old girl to be dating a 27 yr old guy.
some of you may have seen this before (like two years ago?). if you have, forgive me, for i am slow at internet.
my favourite part is the Zen Master Wood Flute Motif of Englightenment.
in British:
my favourite part is the girl that folds the shirt.
i tried it immediately after watching the first video twice and pulled it off without a hitch. if someone as domestically incompetant as i am can do this, you can do it too. i just spent ten minutes trying to determine the correct grammar for the previous sentence; i had to edit 5 times with different word combinations before settling on the least awkward.
one period into Wednesday night's tilt against the Philadelphia Flyers, the Leafs' captain, leader in all offensive-output categories, was felled after 8 shifts by a muscle strain and pulled himself out of a must-win game. this was probably the best news ever because a) if we lose two games, the season will be done and we can work our way down to a higher draft pick; b) if we win without the captain, we'll develop the character and grit required for high-stakes games; c) younger players have a chance to step up and build up some NHL experience. win-win-win.
i posted earlier about who i felt which players should be considered the core of the team to build around in the upcoming off-season. my sentiments were echoed a few days later by Damien Cox, a prominent sports columnist for the Toronto Star.
with Sundin out of the lineup, we were given an excellent opportunity to see which players would step their games up. lo and behold, the ones who gave us the win were the ones i listed. click for box score of the game.
note Matt Stajan's stats for the night. with the captain down, who shouldered the heavy lifting? he led the forwards in ice time (21:34), played in every situation (powerplay, short-handed, 5-on-3 shorthanded) and was called upon to take the key faceoffs that Sundin (NHL leader in faceoffs taken) would have, going 17-12 on the night. the previous night, back in Toronto, Stajan went 12-3 in the faceoff circle. when he first cracked the NHL lineup, the faceoff was his weakness. he may not have registered a point in this game, but he was instrumental in the game-winning power play goal by Kubina early in the third period. after winning the draw and gaining the zone, he cycled the puck to the point and went to the net, screening Biron on Kubina's slapshot from the left circle. all Biron could see was ass.
to the eventual GM of the Leafs: if you know what's good for you, keep Stajan.
as was my custom, i got to the room half an hour early and mentally prepared for the class by staring blankly at the wall.
about 20 minutes later, she plopped down into the seat beside me, a seat which was normally occupied by someone else; i felt a twinge of resentment because i was a big fan of the person who normally sat next to me. but wait, you say, girls don't plop; they alight gracefully into their seats and do not burp or fart or commit any bodily function that is unbecoming. actually, i know girls who burp and fart and they can do it pretty darn well. she plopped down into the seat; she was the perennially tired-for-class type of person. for sitting beside me, you get a brief nod of acknowledgment, so that was what i gave her.
she pulled out a soup.
"ugh, the line up downstairs was so long." it was the begining of a story. i like stories; it meant that i did not have to contribute much to the conversation.
"it was weird. there were two pots of soup: barley and beef; and vegetable. the barley and beef one was almost down to nothing, but the vegetable one was almost completely full."
"and you got the vegetable one because there was more?"
"no, i got the vegetable one because i love vegetables!" i must have made a face because she followed that up with, "don't tell me, you're one of those people that don't like vegetables..."
i shrugged and made the conscious decision to make a face. "no, not really," as in, i don't like vegetables.
she shook her head and gave a sigh of exasperation.
"ugh, herman! we have nothing in common!" this was a baffling statement; i wondered how i was supposed to interpret it.
"i like potatoes?" was all i could offer while my upper mental faculties spun up their engines to decipher what she was talking about.
she did not speak to me for the rest of the class.
under the right conditions, your mind can wander to exotic places and ponder irrelevant things ad nauseum and ad infinitum, like at the top of mountains, where nothing happens. in such meditative states, we often ask the questions that would stump the common man. we reserve them for God, who being the Creator, knows all things down to the finest detail. in His infinite wisdom, God sometimes answers immediately. it is in these moments that we encounter the sublime and the ineffable.
speaking of ineffable, what would you consider the most ineffable animal? by this i mean, when you see a baby of this species, you think, how'd they do that? what are the logistics? the angles? the procedures?
the animal that comes to my mind is the porcupine; porcupines look pretty ineffable. and one day, at the top of a mountain, i asked this very question, to which i was provided an immediate answer. here's a more thorough answer.
and now you know too, and can share this powerful knowledge with your friends.
ancient dragons fighting each other in LA? how did i miss hearing about this movie completely?!
TRAILER
yes, i embedded the higher quality mp4 version; you need to add '&ap=%2526fmt%3D18' to the src url in the embed code, but only '&fmt=18' if you're going directly to the url.
this is the biggest blockbuster movie to come out of South Korea since My Sassy Girl. of course, it flopped this side of the Pacific, and flopped hard; it might have had something to do with the inane plot and the overuse of CGI. if that is the case, why do Michael Bay movies make money? can you answer me that? perhaps it should have been a cartoon instead. looks like Darryl (Craig Robinson) from the Office is in it! here's a clip from the final showdown in the movie. i think i lost about 3500 brain cells just from watching it. make video game please.
EDIT: i've gone and done you all a solid on this one: i watched the movie to spare you the tremendous suck. the acting was substandard and the writing seemed to have been written by a grade 10 student (i.e. Eragon level). the dialogue was worse than Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and nearly put this movie out of the B range and into a solid C (for crap). the sole redeeming quality of the movie was the action, the most noteworthy of which was the final battle between Good Dragon vs. Bad Dragon. yes, it was obvious and cliched to a fault, but it was well executed by whoever choreographed the CGI. see for yourself:
background: every 500 years, a heavenly power is incarnated into a girl who, at the age of twenty, must be presented to an imugi (proto-dragon) for it to ascend to full dragon status (and power). the girl has been assigned a protector who is to ensure she does not fall into the wrong hands, i.e. the Bad imugi. Throughout the entire movie, the Bad Imugi and his army of Lord of the Rings rejects has been tailing her, sowing mayhem and destruction about. to make a long story short, they catch up with her, strap her down to an altar for the Bad Imugi to eat and the Good Imugi finally shows up in the last 10 minutes of the movie, only to get OWNED but good. in this scene, incompetant-Protector and Girl are facing down Bad Imugi, who has just knocked out Good Imugi, now lying on the ground. i totally called the ending, down to the finish. i totally did not expect the KO to be so awesome though. you don't have to watch past 3:20. it is reminiscent of WarGreymon vs. Metal Seadramon (but i could only find it in Spanish).
in case you missed the memo, YouTube has been testing out higher quality videos.
just append a video link with '&fmt=6' or '&fmt=18' and you will see a significant increase in video quality, provided that the source video was of greater quality than the standard flash video quality that YouTube uses.
regular: 320 x 240, audio sample rate: 22050 Hz
&fmt=6: 448 x 336, audio sample rate: 44100 Hz
&fmt=18: 480 x 360, H264 video encoding (MP4), AAC audio encoding
this means that the higher quality videos (&fmt=6) carry twice the information (which also at least doubles the filesize and download time). &fmt=18 uses video and audio encoding that is significantly more efficient, so for nearly the same file size, they can pack in more than twice the information. this is the same encoding being used on YouTube videos that are being converted for viewing on iPhones and iPod Touches.
however, audio is still being converted to mono (single channel), even if videos are recorded in stereo (multi-channel). uploaders can circumvent this restriction by converting their files into flash video at the correct resolution (and in stereo) before uploading so YouTube will forgo the conversion process. not every video has been converted for higher quality yet; recent .wmv uploads seem to be the first batch. if a video does not have an HQ version, all you will see is the black loading screen.
Sample Video: regular; higher quality; MP4. it's easy to see the difference in video game videos.
this does not refer to the plan in which i get married off to a cute, very nerdy girl with a deceptive wrist shot and the hand-eye coordination of a ping pong champion by the time i'm 24, but to the plan in which i purchase a Macbook Pro.
i will purchase one late Q3 '09, just before the holiday crush. incidentally, i will be 24, so the following is dependant on that first plan. if plan 1 (wife) does not work, i will have the funds to follow through with plan 2 (MBP).
Apple's notebook lineup was recently updated (last Tuesday) with the latest Penryn processors being dropped onto the Santa Rosa chipset. some time in June 08, the Montevina chipset will be released by Intel and the second iteration of even more efficient Penryns CPUS will coincide with that release. the Montevina chipset will require quite a bit of hardware tweaking due to different architectural requirements, so it would be the prime opportunity for the Macs to undergo redesigns. the Macbook Pro chassis has been around pretty much since Aluminum Powerbook G4s (2003), with only minor modifications to keep pace with new technology.
as is always the case with 1st Gen hardware, there will be flaws and issues and hiccups and burps, so i'm waiting until the next chipset (Calpella) is implemented with the second generation Nehalem CPUs. by then, SSDs will be fairly reasonably priced, the redesigned MBP chassis will have matured reasonably and the operating system will have hit 10.6 by then (18 month revision rate, ideally).
Cosmopolitan recently published a list of locations that desirable single men will congregate. at the top of the list was Apple Stores, followed by gyms, steakhouses, sports bars and Jacksonville, North Carolina. this was echoed by a TUAW post, which is how i caught wind of it. i would not have otherwise (i read YM instead, but only when friends subscribe to it on my behalf without telling me).
while it's hard to take anything that comes out of a magazine that spouts softcore sex slogans seriously, there is a morsel of truth to their asinine and alliterative assertions this time. the premise is that most guys gravitate towards gadgetry, computer gizmos, meat and sports. so chances are that Apple Stores, replete with gadgetry and computers, would boast a bumper-crop of male representatives. of course the same can be said for Best Buy or something like that, but i suppose that demographic is not quite as desirable (i.e. married?).
of course, Apple Stores will now see an influx of vapid Cosmo subscribers and desperate Mac geeks hoping to score on said influx of vapidity, on top of the beleaguered parents who've succumbed to their children's wheedling for a new iPod.
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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marveling at the ingenuity of the U2410's adjustable stand. The stand's monitor holder is spring loaded on a tilt axis as well as on a vertical slider. They have just the right amount of spring force that the mass of the monitor itself puts the system into an equilibrium at whatever height or angle desired, obviating the relics of monitor adjusters like screws and knobs and position locks.
