Family Christmas Extravaganza 2012

This past Saturday, we had contemplated visiting Orange Lake resort once again, as Uncle Subrata was gracious enough to authorize my family to use it in his stead again this year. However, with Cherry's aches and pains seven months pregnant, we decided that we would stay in town this year and try to find some local things to do.

Fortunately, I came across this wonderful event - the Family Christmas Extravaganza!

This incredible free event featured free music, bounce houses, pony rides, exhibitions from local law enforcement and services and free food and drinks!

And, it took place literally right in our back yard, at Max K. Rodes Park! We'd visited the front part of this park many times in the past - the playground we usually take Fifi to is in the front of the park - but we never knew about the huge back part of the park. I recall that the city recently acquired the park, so I suspect many of the facilities are very new. The sports facilities certainly looked new, and the youth basketball game we watched during the event seemed to confirm the new-ness as the signs up on the wall of the gym declared that this was the inaugural season of the league!

As always, I managed to take quite a few photographs of the occasion. Today, per a suggestion from frequent Grant's Pad patron Karn, I've decided to try embedding a slideshow of the event instead of forcing you readers to scroll all the way through the post! See below:

Enjoy!

Movie Night at Grant's Pad Kickoff: My Sassy Girl

Once upon a time, I held a weekly movie viewing at my apartment in college, taking advantage of Blockbuster's (R.I.P) rent-one-get-one free program while simultaneously providing an opportunity for exchange students to get together and socialize. This tradition went on for a few years, and now, I would like to revive it once again, in virtual form (although probably not as regular as the original Movie Night), thanks in no small part to recent developments in YouTube!

Back when YouTube first appeared in the Interwebz, it was limited to tiny clips (typically 10 minutes or less), and the video quality was horrendously shoddy, approximately 240p, which looks awful even on cellphone-sized screens. Nevertheless, it was video, that you could watch ONLINE, for FREE, without downloading anything at all! TEH AMAZNG!!one!1!

Over the years, the service has made several improvements, especially as competition from other sites, such as DailyMotion, emerged and offered different (and in some cases, better) content at higher playback quality. Notably, Google added HD playback resolution, which is quite impressive, integration with what is quickly becoming my favorite social network, Google+, playlists (making it possible to essentially replace the defunct music engine imeem as users could now string music videos together and set it up to play it back automatically), various automatic enhancement tools to take jitter out or improve the lighting of your uploaded videos, and, last but not least, the ability to upload videos of virtually any length, which of course, provided users the opportunity to... wait for it...

Upload full length feature films!

Now, this isn't really that new of a feature on YouTube. Previously, I exploited this feature primarily to find more obscure foreign films that don't usually get released in any form here in the U.S., such as Hong Kong comedy flicks or obscure documentaries. But recently, I've noticed more and more mainstream films are becoming available. I'm not sure why these videos don't always get removed, but I figured that I would take advantage while they lasted. And so, without further adieu, I present to you the first Movie Night at Grant's Pad with one of my favorite, yet still somewhat obscure to American audiences, film of all time, the film that introduced me to the so-called "Korean Wave", My Sassy Girl!

This romantic comedy features high production values, slapstick comedy, and a touching love story that is typical of modern Korean drama. It holds a special place in my heart, and I'm pleased to be able to share it with my readers today!

Who Needs a Smart Phone?

I recently missed out on getting my very first smart phone for the fantastic price of FREE. However, since I had already gotten my Samsung SHG-t349, it didn't make much sense to get another phone, especially since I am not quite ready to make the jump to pay an extra $10-$30 per month for a data plan.


That said, I still did what all men (and women) do - covet what I didn't have. Namely, the convenience of being able to look up information on the Internet on the fly and having GPS in your pocket at all times (a convenience that I admittedly scoffed at less than two years ago but have since grown to understand and appreciate its indispensability).


As I coveted, I decided to try to make the best of it with my SGH-t349, which, by the way, gets a both thumbs way, way up from me in spite of the fact that it isn't a smartphone by any stretch of the imagination. As it were, my new phone (also acquired at the fantastic price of FREE) has full e-mail support for non-business e-mail (which is both a curse and a blessing), full support for chat using AIM, MSN, and Yahoo! chat networks, a music player (made especially cool with the ability to assign songs individual ringtones and alarm tones), SDHC support (making storing music/photos/other media a breeze), a Blackberry-like TruType quasi-QWERTY keyboard that makes texting super easy, and contact list syncing with the T-Mobile website, making it very easy to update and manage my contact list.

Still, I wished deep down for the cababilities of the snazzy smartphones my co-workers and classmates sported. And then, I discovered the enormous capabilities of text messages. As the article below states, text messaging is not just for teenagers to OMG their way to the mall and back ROFLMAO the whole way. No, it has evolved (and for quite some time, I might add - I'm just slow to the party) into a very developed information system, rendering the economically driven decision of not going with a smart phone even better.

Take, for instance, that AT&T commercial where Luke Wilson touts their network's superiority over that of Verizon because of their service's ability to allow their callers to look up the capital of Peru whilst on a phone call. Well, believe it or not, with just a plain ol' texting phone, I can do the same thing! While on a call, I can send a text to GOOGLE (466453) that reads "Capital of Peru", and within seconds, Google will send me the same reply The Godfather got, and even tell me where its source was (in this case, Wikipedia - go figure!)


What about synced scheduling? Plain-Jane text messaging has got that covered too! Just text "Next", "day" or "nday" to GEVENT (48368) to pull your next appointment, the appointments for the day, or the appointments for the next day from your Google Calendar. You can also create events easily - just text a message stating time, date, and place, to GEVENT and Google Calendar will create an event for you on the spot! Want reminders? Set up your Google Calendar to send SMS alerts and you're golden!


All fine and dandy, but then you say, oh yeah? What about directions? Once again, Google comes to the rescue. Text your starting and ending destinations to GOOGLE and Google will text you back turn-by-turn directions in seconds.

Wondering if it's raining at your destination? Text "w" followed by the city and Google returns a brief forecast. Looking for a restaurant? Text "Italian" followed by your zip code and it will text you back a list of nearby Italian places.

And this is all just using Google-related texting tricks. Social websites like Facebook allow you to receive status updates in the form of SMS messages and update your own status through text messages. Blogger has let me post photos and blog entries by text for years. The article below goes over several other tricks that can hold you over in case you don't yet want to spend hundreds of dollars on a data plan and a smart phone! Check 'em out if you're a dinosaur like me!

Killer SMS Text Message Tricks

Grant's Pad Super Store Grand Opening!

Coming to a blog near you, it's the Grant's Pad Super Store! Get all of your Nintendo games, electronic gadgets, Gator Gear, and Kung Fu/Fitness equipment here! Keep an eye out for new products by visiting the store from the Grant's Pad Links in the sidebar!


For those of you asking, yes, I do get kickbacks when you buy from my Amazon Associates store. But if you were planning on getting things like this anyway, please buy from me!

Thanks to Karn for the heads up on this awesome new feature! Visit his store here!

Perry's New Blog

Thanks to Ed's websurfing prowess, we've come across a new blog from one of our friends from the old days of kung fu club. I will refer to him as Perry, the way he refers to himself on his new blog, In Search of Adventure. Perry was Ed's first roommate in college, and I met him when he first came to UF. He was a budding kung fu student at the time, blessed with excellent athleticism (he was/is BLAZING fast), though not so much upper body strength. Still, he was one of the better kung fu artists in our club at the time.

Perry also has a bit of a case of "yellow fever", or a non-Asian's love for all things Asian (that is typically driven by an attraction to an Asian member of the opposite sex, but that's story for another day). I came across quite a few of those over the years at UF, but Perry has legitimized his yellow fever beyond typical cases. His Mandarin Chinese is quite good - among the best for non-Chinese I know, and I do know quite a few. This is largely in part to the many adventures he has taken in Far East Asia. Back in 2006 or 2007, Perry embarked on a long trek that took him from Vietnam to Korea, stopping in places such as Hong Kong and China along the way (and possibly Japan, too). He kept a blog at the time, but it was not regularly updated and eventually went the way of the dodo. You can read up on some of his very interesting adventures on that trip here: The Grand Adventure.

By now you've doubtlessly recognized a common theme with Perry - his sense for adventure in the Far East. Circling back to the original purpose of this post, Perry has recently embarked on a new adventure. To log his Asia traipsing and keep us entertained, he's started up In Search of Adventure. Thus far, he's been pretty good about updating, and his writing is quite good as well - he's very insightful and makes a strong effort to immerse his readers into his experiences, which range from mundane but interesting to flat out incredible:

Yao Ming and Lebron James Commercial

Yes, it's another YouTube cop-out, but it's still sort of relevant! I think this commercial ran during the US vs. China basketball game at the Olympics on Sunday. What is that thing Yao Ming is riding near the end?

Keen-eyed readers will also notice a new toy in the Grant's Pad Sidebar. That's right, it's a Medal Tracker so you can see who's leading the way at the Olympics!

Some Updates to the Sidebar

I've made a few changes to the sidebar (the thing on the right with all the links and toys). Since I'm going to China for a few weeks starting next week, I thought it would be appropriate to change the playlist off of the soundtrack of The World Ends With You, despite how awesome it is, and instead put up a playlist of one of my favorite Taiwanese bands, Nan Quan Ma Ma. Please enjoy!

The second update to the sidebar is the addition of an interesting blog I came across while I was doing research on the earthquake in Sichuan, China, called The China Beat. It's writers are mostly from the United States, most of them members of Academia specializing in Chinese studies. I think the blog really presents some of the most educated looks at Chinese media and external media about China, thus doing something that I have always found to be very valuable - presenting an issue from both (or even all) sides of the discussion. There's still bound to be a little bias in the blog, but I've found them to be very objective in terms of presenting information - something that can't be said for many news outlets today. I highly recommend checking it out!

New Music Player!

Gasp! A second post in the same day! That hasn't happen in a while! What awesomeness must have occurred to justify this extra blog attention?

Over the weekend, I tried a new DS game called The World Ends With You. It's an RPG by Square-Enix, the famous RPG makers of acclaimed series like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. The World Ends With You, known as It's A Wonderful World in Japan, is different from those games in a number of ways such as the huge difference in gameplay (a very action intense gameplay compared with the typical turn-based gameplay of most of the other RPGs that have come out of the company). One of the other major differences would have to be setting of the game, which, unlike most other Japanese games which are usually placed in some medieval or "steampunk" imaginary world, sets up in the Shibuya district of modern Tokyo. In turn, the soundtrack for this game is a very awesome mix of hip-hop and urban rock music.

I happened to be looking around for the soundtrack of The World Ends With You on the streaming media site imeem when I discovered that you can actually embed your imeem playlists on your blog. So, in one bold swoop, I've made a big upgrade to the "traditional" sources of music on Grant's Pad, namely "Grant's Music", which just listed a few songs that I happened to remember at the time, and the "Media Player", which has perpetually been linked to Taiwanese radio station 91.7 Hit FM for the last year or maybe even longer. Both of these, as you can see, have been removed from the sidebar, replaced with my imeem playlist, which is currently playing the soundtrack of The World Ends With You.

And so, this post comes full circle, beginning and ending with... You! I mean, The World Ends With You. Check out the playlist, and keep an eye out for updates to the Grant's Pad playlist in the future!

New Photo Flipper: 2005 Southwest Vacation

Nothing really new today, just hanging out here in Gainesville again.

I did, however, spend a little time putting together a new photo flipper for Grant's Pad. These photos are from a family vacation that we went on together in the summer that I finished graduate school. Places visited: Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon, Wupatki Canyon, Antelope Canyon, Las Vegas, Hoover Dam, Canyon de Chelly, Sunset Crater Volcano, Dixie National Forest, Red Canyon, Walnut Canyon, Petrified Forest, and Lake Powell.

It's pretty amazing how one country can have so many different landscapes. The open air of the Southwest United States is unlike anywhere else in the world - it is such a gratifying feeling to just cruise down Route 66 and take it all in. Much different from the subtropic environment of Florida! Of course, I suppose I have nothing to complain about either... those poor people in the Midwest are still stuck in feet of snow, from what I hear!

Anyhow, these photos have thus far not been posted anywhere in my photo albums! To check out the full album, just click on the photo flipper.

There's still about one week left on my Stereotype poll, so if you haven't yet, vote on it! Read about the poll here!

Introducing the Grant's Pad Poll!

Wow, it's been more than a week since my last post - incredible! This kind of thing usually only happens when I'm away - either on vacation or on a business trip. Even then, I usually find the time to get to a computer to blog for my loyal and new readers!

To be honest, I'm not sure what happened this past week to keep me from blogging. I didn't go anywhere, I didn't even head out to the homesite to check on my (now nearing completion) new house many times. I think I'm just becoming old and tired. That sounds about right - when we get older, we get tired...er. Plus, the other day, my good friend and faithful Grant's Pad reader Pablo read my blog post on our trip to the zoo and commented that I look fat in my photo! We all know that we get fat when we get old!

Anyway, on to more blog-worthy writing. This past week, amidst my tiring work (despite a day off for Independence Day), I started toying around with Pandora: The Music Genome Project, to help me get through that tiring work. It's a very cool netradio software that asks for your input and populates a playlist based on your tastes. It's very organic, learning your tastes as you give it feedback to the music it plays. On the negative side, there's currently primarily American or otherwise Western music on Pandora. When they start including some music from my beloved Asian artists, I'll be a true convert! Still, Pandora is very worth your time to check out, and if you're not as much of an Asian music fan as I am, it will help you get through your work days even better than it does for me!

I got word today on Blogger.com that we Blogspot bloggers now have yet a new toy to let our readers enjoy. It's a poll feature that allows us to add a poll into our sidebars, letting our readers vote on all sorts of cool topics, whatever tickles the whim of our blogging spirits. And so, without further adieu, I give you the first Grant's Pad Poll! Make sure you check back often to participate in future polls!

Return of the Radio Station!

It's incredible. I haven't written in almost a week - in fact, I haven't written so far in this entire month of June - and yet, Grant's Pad has had a steady influx of visitors for the past seven days! I imagine part of the high traffic is due to the exposure of Grant's Pad on the Travian game that I have been playing with Karn. Our alliance, the Super Alliance (Karn has an inclination to refer to everything as "super" - very retro, very cool) has been at war for the past few weeks with the Wolves Empire, who outnumber us by some four to one. However, we have held our own against the mass attacks and Grant's Pad even garnered the attention of one of the generals of Wolves Empire! See the comment Havokk posted in the post "Life of a Mentee". Nice, but a little creepy...

In other news, the sharp-eyed reader will notice that there is now a new gadget in the sidebar, under the awesome analog clock. That's right! The Grant's Pad Radio Station has made a valiant comeback! This time, it's courtesy of Hit FM, a Taiwanese radio station that streams using Hitoradio.com. I'm guessing that this station won't be pulled off the air by the new government taxes that forced Mandarin Radio to go "premium" and thus deprive Grant's Pad of its tunes, since the station is not based in the U.S. In any case, Hit FM is probably a better station anyway - it features songs in Mandarin, Cantonese, as well as English - I heard some R&B, Beyonce, and even the parody song Pop Goes My Heart from the movie Music and Lyrics that I saw a few months ago! Hopefully, that will make the station a little more accessible for my non-Chinese readers. Plus, the new embedded player is Windows Media Player, which is included on most everyone's PC, so that will make it more accessible to people that don't feel like downloading additional software! The only downside to Hit FM is that, since it is an actual radio station based out of Taipei, Taiwan, there are actual DJs that kind of go off on tangents for a while. On the other hand, it does make you feel kind of like you're actually in a cab somewhere in Asia! So, don't delay, hit Play, and listen to 91.7 Hit FM: 只想听音乐！

Before I sign off for the day, for kicks and giggles, enjoy the original music video of Pop Goes My Heart. It's quite fun, and actually, the song Way Back Into Love is also very nice. Check it out!

Return of Wednesday Movie Night

Depending on either (a) how long you've actually known me, (b) how regularly you read Grant's Pad, or (c) you don't read Grant's Pad that often but for some reason happened to read the Sophomore Fall Semester post (which has a bunch of broken photos that you can no longer see in the post but are still accessible through the photo album), you'd know what Wednesday Movie Night is. Of course, it is a pretty descriptive name all by itself, so I guess even if you are (d) none of the above, you probably still know that Wednesday Movie Night, not surprisingly, is where we watch movies on Wednesday Night.

At the time, it started mostly because I didn't have class until the afternoon on Thursdays, so we would throw a small party every Wednesday which featured one or two movies, courtesy of my Blockbuster Rewards account. As the semesters went on and we got busier, however, Wednesday Movie Nights became a thing of the past. That is, it was a thing of the past until yesterday!

To celebrate my birthday, Cherrie and I went to see 300 yesterday using the movie tickets I bought from Debbie last Friday. 300 has been proclaimed as the first major blockbuster of the year, and it's not hard to see why. We saw it at a theater that featured DLP and Dolby Digital, so the picture and sound were awesome. I might have been trying to convince myself that it was actually noticeable, but I really do think the picture was almost flawless. As for the movie itself, it featured blood in the liters, a little bit of nudity, and stylized combat - all essentials of a great action movie. The story was straightforward but seemed to emphasize corruption more than I remember reading about in historical accounts of the Battle at Thermopylae - the story itself was not really the movie's strong point, in my opinion. In fact, I think the most incredible thing about 300 is how they were able to find that many men in their 40s with perfect physiques. Amazing.

After the movie, we decided to do something that we'd joked about doing a few times - and that was jump into another theater to watch a second movie! It so happened that Music and Lyrics, with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore and her lisp, was just about to start in the very next theater! Interestingly, I found this movie to be surprisingly entertaining, albeit a little sappy at the end. But 80's style music videos are the bomb, and the music in the movie was actually quite catchy! "I didn't think I could ever fall in love again, but then 'POP', goes my heart!" Awesome.

Oh, one last thing! Thanks to all the folks who either called me, left a comment on my Facebook, or best of all, left a comment right here on Grant's Pad! I don't want to name any names, but I was pleasantly surprised by the birthday comment from my classmate of several classes in high school, Lia. Lia is apparently also an avid blogger. She runs Adventures in Lia-Land, and apparently her job and life allows her to run into big celebrities all the time, which in turn means that she probably has some pretty interesting things to say. I've added her blog to my new list of blogs (separated from non-blog links), and it appears that she updates it like clockwork, so check it out sometime!

Grant's Pad is Worth...

In anticipation of our 3000th guest, I've gone ahead and assessed the value of Grant's Pad, as calculated by a link-to-dollar formula apparently used by AOL. When you're done reading this post and any other posts that draw your attention today, scroll down to the bottom of the sidebar and you'll find that, today, Grant's Pad is worth $1,129.08!

Any takers?

New and Improved Grant's Pad

I'm not sure how many of you have looked at my profile before, but if you have, you might know that I've been running Grant's Pad for a whole year now (even though the first post didn't appear until December). If you've been here regularly throughout the year, you might also know that I try to add cool little features from time to time, to make it more worth your while to come and visit Grant's Pad. Well, today is the day Grant's Pad gets a total makeover!

The folks at Blogger have recently released their new version of Blogger, which at this point in time simply goes by the descriptive name, "Blogger in Beta". As with most beta software, it had a few bugs in it, and as a result, it took me a long time to switch over to the new platform. But I decided to switch to Blogger in Beta yesterday, and I like it quite a lot. The interface is a breeze to use, and it's now easier than ever to add and edit so-called "Page Elements". In the past, it was a pain in the butt to change those little lists and stuff because I would have to actually, you know, edit HTML!!! I know, I know, it's horrifying. But that's how it was. For every change that you saw on Grant's Pad, I had to entrench myself in the jibberish HTML code. But I did it anyway. For you.

But now, with the new Blogger in Beta, each list, set of links, radio station, clock, photo-flipper, and what have you, can be dragged and dropped where I want to put it. Plus, since each element is self contained, I can change the look of the blog in a snap without having to go back and put each and every element back in - Blogger remembers all of the blood, tears, and toil I put in and preserves the element, allowing me to change my template whenever I want!

So, in celebration and anticipation of the first anniversary of Grant's Pad, I've not only changed the look of the blog, but I've added some more features as well. I know that some of you come to Grant's Pad each day to see if I've posted any funny jokes or videos. Others of you come here to get your daily fix of Gator sports news. Others come to soak in my vast knowledge of kung fu and fitness. And still others come to Grant's Pad to actually just read about the Life of Grant. Well, now, every post has labels attached to it, which lets you find other posts that have similar content. For example, this post is labeled "New Features" and "Journal", since they are about new features on Grant's Pad as well as some noteworthy occurance in my life (in this case, giving Grant's Pad this major upgrade). So, those of you looking for just the jokes can go to the list of labels, click on "Jokes", and voila! All posts with jokes appear at your service!

I've also revamped my profile a little bit, separating my "Vital Stats" and "Quotes" from the "About Me" section. Lastly, I've added my little "Wishlist" of things that I would really, really like to have. Granted, most of these things I will probably just get myself sometime in the future, but don't feel obligated to not get me any of those things!

So, Welcome to the New and Improved Grant's Pad! Comment and let me know what you think of the new look and new features!

NBAA 2006 Convention

I had a pretty good weekend - Cherry and I went roller skating and we cleaned the house for the first time in a few months. But today's post is about something way cooler than cleaning the house - though it might take a little persuasion to convince me that it's cooler than roller skating!

Last Tuesday, I went to my first trade show as a working professional! I went to the National Business Aviation Association Convention, which was held in Orlando this year. The location rotates from year to year, and this year's was actually supposed to be in New Orleans, but due to the hurricanes last year, the facilities couldn't handle the event, and so the event moved to Orlando, which made it only a hop and a skip away from us here in Melbourne!

Our group bought only five tickets, so I had to go to the show as my mentor guy, Mark, which was sometimes awkward when I was introducing myself or when other people at the show called me Mark. The show itself was huge - it took place at the new building of the Orlando Convention Center, and there were full planes and helicopters inside the building, in addition to all the models and displays. Some of the models were really awesome - they showed planes that had complete living rooms and bedrooms inside - literally they were two bedroom apartments inside a business jet! Must be nice to travel like that!

In addition to the plane displays, vendors were selling just about anything imaginable - from plumbing systems to carpets to noise and vibration damping material. Of course, most of othem do have applications in the aircraft industry, but some of them, like the Ferrari in the picture, were there just to see if some of the rich folks who own their own private planes would like a car to go with their jet!

Of course, no trade show is complete without booth babes, and NBAA 2006 had its fair share of them! Many of them were in mock-up flight attendant uniforms - you know, the ones they always wear in the movies. Of course, in the US, real flight attendants usually aren't the fine young things they used to be (what's up with that? Asian airlines still use fine young flight attendants!), but the booth babes sure were!

As you all should know, I'm an electrical engineer. To be honest, electrical engineering isn't a really cool profession for exhibits - looking at a bunch of components on an FR4 PC board isn't that much fun. Mechanical engineers, on the other hand, get to show off cool stuff like the jet engine to the left. Now, that looks really cool. Much better than an RC filter circuit on an RF amplifier card, anyway!

There were also some bizarre exhibits too, like a rope-the-mechanical calf exhibit demonstrated here by Marlene. I guess her ride must have left an impression on us, because after the convention part of the show, we went out for some Tex-Mex (I think - it might have been just regular Mexican food). There was only one chef and one waitress, but the food was pretty good. I had a burrito that could put Moe's to shame, and the company paid for it, so that made it even better!

After lunch, we headed over to Orlando Executive Airport, where a boatload of business jet companies had static displays (read: real airplanes on the ground) for convention visitors to see. This was actually pretty awesome, because you could see for yourself how posh some of those business jets really are. Polished wood cabinets, leather seats, fancy dashboard and HUD displays (much nicer than the ones on commercial airliners) - I would love to have that kind of stuff in a car! There were also a number of incredibly futuristic looking private jets, which would also be awesome to have. I'm told you can get them for between $200,000 to many, many millions... Any takers?

I'm pretty sure the little photo flipper I added a few weeks ago to the top of Grant's Pad is flipping through photos from the show, but make sure you check out all of the pics in full size in the NBAA 2006 Convention Photo Album!

Milestones! And Check Out the New Radio Station!

Running off at the keyboard again...

A number of milestones will be reported in today's post.

First, a great representation of successful Chinese Martial Arts occurred on Friday Night in California, as Sanshou icon Cung Le defeated Mike Altman in his MMA (Mixed Martial Arts, e.g. Ultimate Fighting) debut in the first round by knockout! Unfortunately, this event wasn't on TV, or pay-per-view, or anything, but the news said he did it mostly with spinning kicks and finished him with a right hand. More details in this article.

Also on Friday, Grant's Pad welcomed its 1000th visitor! A first time visitor whose IP address hails from Sugarland, Texas, visited Grant's Pad at 4:22 PM on Friday, March 10th was the lucky recipient of today's recognition. Keep those visits coming! To celebrate, I've updated the music player on Grant's Pad to play music from Square-Enix games (e.g. Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, etc.), courtesy of SquareSound, keeping in spirit with my late video game craze. These games all have great instrumental soundtracks, so press Play to listen now! Remember to make sure that you have Realplayer installed for the player to work.

Next up, today, March 12th, marks the second Consecutive SEC Championship for the Florida Gators, as the Gators defeated the USC Gamecocks (U-S-C... U Suck C---! Get it?) in what could have been the Rose Bowl all over again, as the final score was a scrawny 49-47. Still, it's a great accomplishment, beating one of the teams that swept them in the regular season for the Conference title!

Last, but not least, Saturday, March 11, was me and Cherry's first Official Anniversary! Hooray for us!

Photo Album Link

Quick post today!

I've added a link under the "Links" section of the sidebar to the only place on the web you can get a collection of photos of me and/or taken by me, or simply photos that I've endorsed with my Seal of Quality. It's my photo album, courtesy of Facebook.com. You can get to the photo albums here as well, if you don't feel like scrolling down to the "Links" section.

In other news, it appears that my visit peak might be slowing down, as we have seen a dip in visitation today here at Grant's Pad... hopefully it's only temporary. I'll be working on new cool things to read/listen/look at soon, so get your visit on!

Super Hot New Feature!!

Thanks to Ed's tireless research yet again, I've added another super sexy feature to Grant's Pad. See the top of the sidebar there? That's right, it's a music player. And it plays whatever station I want to feature. I decided to keep it simple and just stick with Mandarin Radio this time, since Ed is using that too. I've made a few improvements to the implementation - it's a little slicker, and it doesn't blare music into your headphones or your office speakers as soon as you enter Grant's Pad - you have freedom of choice to either turn the player on or off, and even adjust the volume! So go ahead, hit "Play," and listen to some Chinese pop while you catch up on your reading!

* Update at 11:37 AM on 03/06/2006: It would appear that you need to have RealPlayer installed on your PC for this streaming player to work. If you don't have it, you can get it free at Real.com!

A New Blogging Toy, Whee!

If you've looked at Ed's Blog lately, you'll notice he's put up a bunch of videos over the past few days. Mostly they are Jackie Chan commercials, since we both loved that Diet Pepsi commercial from the Super Bowl. He's got one up of Jay Chou's music video for Jet Li's newest period Kung Fu film, Fearless, which is about Chen Zhen's sifu, Huo Yuan Jia (霍元甲). You do remember who they are, right? I made a post about them back in January. His latest video post is a pretty awesome video of a full-contact bout between a Chinese sanshou fighter and a Thai Muay Thai fighter. The Chinese fighter dominates the Thai fighter with superior throws. Sanshou, by the way, is the format of Chinese Kickboxing that I trained in back in kung fu school. I'll post about it one of these days!

Moving along, Ed's also got a video of himself doing Choy Lay Fut's Sup Sam Cheurng (13 Spears) form, which was actually noticed by the folks on the Kung Fu Forum! Strangely, no one had anything to say about his video. Usually, when people post videos of them doing forms, they either get tons of critique or a lot of somewhat condescending "You're pretty good, really," type remarks. A common trend, however, is that most of the forms are, to put it nicely, un-good. So, maybe Ed's form was so bad-ass that there simply wasn't anything to say about it, which would be awesome because my forms are vastly superior to his (LOL - j/k), or maybe they're just being nice because it is so horrifically bad. Maybe even though our forms look prettier, faster, and more powerful than theirs, their form is actually the "true" way, since most of the people on the forum have been training for some ten years or more, compared to my own eight. Maybe their form has massive amounts of qi and can completely blow us away with their high stance, slow moving techniques. Or maybe not - personally, I still think prettier, faster, and more powerful is better than not-being-able-to-sink-into-low-stances, slow, and clumsy.

So anyway, I decided that I would try this newfangled video-posting today, by posting up this video of a goofy looking white kid who uses Choy Lay Fut in a street fight. The kid completely lays out his opponent with some pretty nice gwa-kum-sow combinations, but I have to laugh at the pose he strikes. Still, he kicked that guys ass, and seems to know his sh*t! Check it out:



Speaking of masters of their art and people knowing their sh*t, I called Tien, one of my Ph. D friends from school, yesterday to ask him to clear up some things for a project I'm working on at work. It turned out that most of my design ideas were on the right track, but what amazed me was that he didn't even have to look up the answers to any of my questions! He answered them without missing a beat and putting the phone down even once! Keep in mind that it took me the better half of two days to figure out what I did (which was mostly right), and he spat those design techniques out on command. That's knowing your sh*t.