Post- Halloween update

"awesome!!! cupcakes and cookies!!....aw crap. can't eat them with these cursed teeth!" - moi, Monday evening @ Jamie's party.

back from a few day-hiatus. Things have started picking up again as far as work is concerned. Although some good news! Got stellar marks from my 3D object assignment (which was honestly a surprise) and my Pixel art tutorial. A sigh of relief was definitely had :D. That and I begin doing some work for EK3 later this afternoon. Looking forward to it. Seems like a great team and the atmosphere is quite nice.

Anyway, this'll have to be a quick post, so this'll do for now. more to follow when time permits.
oh yeh, Jamie's Halloween party was good times. lots of great costumes...lots for dancing to Thriller.

good ol 80's nostalgia...

Josie's on a vacation far away
Come around and talk it over
So many things that I wanna say
You know I like my girls a little bit older
I just wanna use your love tonight
I don't wanna lose your love tonight

I ain't got many friends left to talk to
No one's around when I'm in trouble
You know I'd do anything for you
Stay the night but keep it undercover
I just wanna use your love tonight
I don't wanna lose your love tonight

Trying to stop my hands from shakin'
Somethin' in my mind's not makin' sense
It's been a while since we were all alone
I can't hide the way I'm feelin'

As you leave me please would you close the door
and don't forget what I told you
Just 'cause you're right - that don't mean I'm wrong
Another shoulder to cry upon
I just wanna use your love tonight
I don't wanna lose your love tonight

- The Outfield, "Your Love"

Dental Plan Is So Key...

"you look so different!!!..lol...you look like you've got a big overbite!" - Elaine, on Euge's Pre-Halloween Costume test.

its that time of year again...yes...Halloween. man was it ever insane trying to find something original to dress up as, especially when time isn't a luxury. me and Elaine went to a couple of costume shops and boy were they ever busy. On the upside, its nice to know that the spirit of Halloween is still well and alive in most people. At the end of the day, I opted for the classic vampire option while Elaine opted to be the vampire's victim. lol. yep, should be good times at Jamie's party.

anyway. the weekend's been fairly good, while having its crappy moments occasionally--mostly due to my inability to cope with stress and work, which kinda gets me in a weird mood where I unintentionally snap at people...le sigh. Yep, definitely need to work on that. But other than that, its been pretty good. Made Garlic Cream Shrimp Rigatoni for dinner Friday night, followed by a movie (watched Kinsey...not bad. always good to watch a movie with historical value, especially when dealing with the development of society's views on the topic of sex. lol). Yesterday (Saturday) was mostly spent on hunting down a costume. Managed to scrape a few hours during the day to do some work (tackling some revisions to the LRS 4 Website for Western) and then went out to see the Legend of Zorro...which I must say was really entertaining! Such a feel good movie. I totally recommend it to people looking for a movie with laughs, action, adventure, and a decent storyline (has a couple of twists).

And here we are...Sunday morning. Today's agenda: STUDY STUDY STUDY! I gotta get my ass in gear and hit the books for my MIT 371 midterm this week...oh joy. oh bliss.

With that said, time to do up some notes.

EK3 Technologies Inc.

Just a quick post. i received some great news that I may have a possible internship in development with London-based EK3 Technologies Inc. As an intern, I will be involved in the development of media products and promotional work. According to my program director, there's a strong chance that upon graduating, and fulfillment of my internship, that I could be hired on full-time!

Anyway, again, nothing is solidified yet, but this is all certainly great news and a step in the right direction as far as preparing the first steps in jumping into my career/field.

More on this as I receive more news...

Before the Firing Squad

"so...what are your intentions with Elaine?" - Tout Le Gang member, Sylvia - October 22, 2005.

Well, I must apologize for falling behind on the blogging. The last few days have been just craziness!

Anyway, without further a due, let me bring you up to speed on my activities:

Well, as noted previously, I attended a wedding in Toronto this past weekend. All in all, quite the weekend! Lots of fun and filled with surprises I must say! A friend of the family's was getting married (the daughter of Toronto's Anglican Church Bishop) and it was a beautiful ceremony. The choir was phenomenal. Hearing such wonderful music always triggers something inside me...call it my form of spiritual cleansing. Anyway, the family of the newlyweds were very kind and welcoming and threw a nice reception.

The wedding wasn't the only event that would be taking place that day, as it turns out that I'd be the target of questioning from the infamous "Tout Le Gang"..aka the close friends of Elaine's parents. I guess word had got round about me and had caught the interest and curiosity of the members. So in their traditional manner, they proceeded to lynch me with questions. lol...all in good fun of course. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. For the record, all of them are really nice people. I'm really glad I had an opportunity to get to know them.

So yeh, weekend was definitely good times. Sported the new suit, which fished in a lot of compliments. And in addition, the relaxing time was very welcomed.

As for this week, its been chock full of stuff. Last night saw MIT's first coffeehouse and Zine Launch, which went over really well (cheers to Christine for making the event happen). Lots of great performers last night. After last night's event, there are talks about forming an MIT supergroup of musicians...why not right? seeing as most of the performers were from student council. lol. As for the Zine, the vibe has been pretty positive so far. a few hiccups here and there that i had to deal with, but other than that, its been pretty good. Finally got our stand back in the North Campus Building...which means all that's left for me to tie up is getting our stand back in the UCC building and getting our Advertising team off the ground.

Today's events have been a little minimal. Had Actionscripting class with Ramon as per usual for Tuesdays---new news though! got asked to do presentation duties for Fanshawe's multimedia program for next tuesday. that'll be good...again, something to put down in the resume. On the Zine front, had to address some emails concerning material omissions..alas the crappier side of being an editor, but part of the job nonetheless. Tonite saw our first official MIT pub night at Joe Kool's. While the event was well publicized and organized..the turnout was a little less than stellar. About a handful of people showed up, most of which were members from student council. At the end of the day though, i must commend Christine. Its a tough job being VP Events, especially trying to find the right time to schedule events. I still had fun though. Got a chance to chat with my fellow council members and get to know them a bit, so that was good.

Anyway, that about wraps it up. I gotta go and finish reading "Sleepy Hollow" for class tomorrow. Until next time.

hell week ends with the comforting glow of a cellphone

"dude...there's not a lot of pictures that i can find of just 'a bra'...there's lots of pictures of girls wearing bras though!" - kailey, searching for bra images for moi for my interesting "ad campaign" for Motorola.

Well...it is finished. The project that has kept me captive in my room for the past few weeks is finally complete and out of my hands. There are still some areas of my cellphone that I'm not too happy with, but I managed to recover from a few of them with my Photoshop layout skills.
Out of the 4 rendered layouts I had to design, the above photo is one of my favourites. Initially there was no bra present in the layout...but it felt like the layout was missing something to tie to the connotation held in the slogan. Not exactly how i had envisioned it (wish i could've found a better image of a bra to utilize)...but it worked nonetheless.

As for the rest of my day..yeh. twas' quite the day! earlier today, the stress levels and the lack of sleep just got to me, and regrettably, i was quite moody. unfortunately, Elaine had to experience some of it. Definitely not at my finest...I was just so overwhelmed with the things I needed to accomplish (student council stuff, zine material, completing the cellphone project, finding pants to match my coat for the wedding). Anyway, I think i crossed my breaking point when I found out I had to essentially go for a total upgrade from just shopping for dress pants--to buying a whole new, full-fledged suit! Definitely was not expecting to spend that much money today, but on a more positive note, I now own a proper suit--which i can reuse for the next several years (provided I don't get super fat out of the blue :P ). I must admit, all i could see at the moment was the short term "holy crap i just shelled out a lot of money today"...but in the long term, it was really worth the purchase, not to mention I'll look pretty sharp at the wedding tomorrow (correction: its not Elaine's cousin who's getting married, but rather a friend of the family's).

Anyway, so that matter was taken care of. Got my picture taken for the MIT Student Council composite that's being put together as a sort of keepsake --which is such a nice idea :) Council meeting was as entertaining as always. Definitely looking forward to the next meeting and beers following right after--yep. gotta love academia life.

Today saw my first offical attempt at driving in the city all by myself. Yeh yeh...i come from a small town, so shush! Elaine let me borrow the car to pick up the October Issue Zines downtown. Rest assured, no accidents happened and no damage was incurred on the car :). All in all, it was pretty enjoyable being able to drive around London and not worry about public transit. The whole experience reminded me how much I enjoy driving...being able to get away at a seconds' notice. Anyhoo, ended up wrapping up some loose financial ends with the Zine so all is well--meaning to say that a good chunk of stress has been lifted off my shoulders.

Fast forwarding a bit: upon finishing the cellphone project, I decided to pay Ashley a visit tonight. Good times all around. It was nice to just sit and chill with one of my best friends and not do any work. Laughs were definitely had by all. Out of the 3 or so years we've known each other, I think this year so far has been the most fun we've had. Definitely the amount of time hanging out together has been upped a lot, which has been great for the two of us. So far, we haven't killed each other. lol. "its a good thing" as Martha Stewart would say :)
(note to self: borrow "Branding Nation" from Ash, and burn her a copy of the Fiona Apple "Tidal" LP)

So yeh, in summary, its been one hell of a day. It had its rocky start, but over the course of the day it all smoothened out nicely. The only thing left on my agenda for this week is to enjoy the wedding and have a great time....shit..well...that and i think i'm gonna try and head over to the car wash early in the morning and get Elaine's car cleaned...sigh. Well, i guess its only fair right? She does put up with a lot of my shit and does drive me places...its the least i can do :) Such a sweetie she is. MUAH!

Alrighty. I will return with a full report from the weekend sometime Sunday.

-peace and love.

deadline imminent...but I at least got a haircut

its a thursday morning. just came back from an early scheduled haircut. I am convinced that as i grow older, wishing death upon mornings will become more frequent...what can i say? I'm a big fan of sleep, and these days I'm just not getting my required dosage. le sigh.

in anycase, today's my tutorial presentation in Labreche's class. My one day to play teacher and teach the class the ways of pixel art--isometric pixel art to be more precise. Plan of attack: wing it. lol. At this point in time, everything kinda fails in comparison to my cellphone assignment in 3D. On that note, I gotta give everything I've got tonight with regards to working on it. I've got one more button to gloss over and then its a matter of prepping the 3D environment for lighting and placing it on a nice surface. I figure i'll layout the images in a sort of mock advertisement for Motorola in Photoshop. hopefully that'll save my ass. lol...sigh. yep, definitely need to get this project off my hands.

as for the Zine, I'm hoping that i'll hear back from the printers ASAP regarding when the issues are ready for pickup. once that's taken care of, i can finally relax...at least for a few days.

Folding party for the Zines is scheduled for Sunday night. I'm hoping that'll go over well. I know that i'll at least have a few people ready and willing to help out with all the folding and shtuff..not to mention, I'm looking forward to getting to know my staff a little better.

Anyway, that's about it for now. Weather has significantly improved as far as sunshine is concerned, but it is still pretty chilly. I'm curious to see what the price of gas is now. I won't be surprised if it spiked up 10 cents again...but then again, i could be wrong.

i thought i'd never see the day

a quickie post before i run off to my night class at Western (boy am i ever looking forward to that...ugh).

GAS IS FRIGGIN 85.9 cents/L!!!! wtf. that's craziness...and by craziness, i mean in a good way. Lately gas prices have been all over the board, seeing fairly decent dips in price and then in a span of a couple of days, get jacked up to an increase of 10 cents. While consumers rush to the nearest pump to take advantage of these prices it makes me wonder, "what the hell is really going on here? what are these gas companies up to?"

Some would argue that increasing gas prices is a good thing, that consumers will curb their consumption and seek alternative means of transportation that's lighter on their wallet. Some say that declining gas prices are a good thing for commuters far from their workplace that need a vehicle to travel to and from work on a day to day basis. At the end of the day it all boils down to one thing: the almighty dollar. When it all comes down to it, its all about who's making the profit, and who's losing (or in some cases, keeping) money out of/in their wallet.

Crap, so much for a quickie post. Anyway, gotta get ready for class and then a lovely continuation of my 3D project tonite.

Note to self: GET SOME SLEEP TONIGHT!

stress is slowly decreasing...

3:09pm...in the middle of Haaf's webdesign class. more javascript. key shit.

after receiving some answers to questions of mine from Reichhardt, I'm a little calmer with regards to my 3D assignment. i realize that i will never eliminate all of the rough edges of my object, but i can "gloss and shine" them inside Photoshop, which to my advantage is my forte.
So with that said, i'm a little relived knowing that piece of assuring information.

on other news, got an extension on the Flash assignment, which is fantastic. Althought i am 95% finished the assignment, I should take the extended time available to really shine it up.

on a random note, i forgot my friggin backslash in my javascript code in class at the moment...oy vey. sleep is definitely in order.

night class awaits tonite...oh joy oh bliss.

mmmm...must get another ice cap (yes...another addiction of mine) :P

Elisha Cuthbert and Weezer...fuckin beautiful

"Actress portrays band's fictitious original leader in 'Perfect Situation' video." - MTV news, on Cuthbert's role in new Weezer video.

Just when the storm seems to get shittier and shittier every passing minute, occasionally one will get glimpses of the sunlight...

...well, finally cleared up my financial shtuff, or at least most of it, relating to the Zine. Definitely something I wanted off my plate--I have far too many things on my agenda at the moment that need dire attention. I must say, I didn't get too much sleep last night...goddamn anxiety just throws my sleeping cycle out of wack. ugh. I gotta thank Elaine though for allowing me to vent to her last night. Lord knows that I swear too much when I'm angry, and boy did i need someone to hear me swear out loud. lol. I'm almost certain the caffiene helped elevate my anger, with all the energy coursing through my body at the time.

Anyway, switching gears, the weather is fuckin shit. its raining, its cloudy, and its fairly dark...which doesn't have a great effect on me, since i have SAD (that seasonal disorder shit, where the weather affects mood). But like opening analogy states, one does get glimpses of sunlight breaking through. While the overall day is about as great as getting shit on in public by unsuspecting seagulls, I did discover great news that one my favourite actresses (fellow Canadian, Elisha Cuthbert) is starring in the new Weezer video for "Perfect Situation"! Yeh, jaw definitely dropped on the floor. To be the typical, stereotypical guy...fucking smoking :D To even add to the great positive vibes, I just sat myself down to one stellar lunch of chicken parmesan made by Elaine...mmmmm. what a fantastic cook! :D

While the imminent deadline for the 3D project looms around the corner, and the lack of sleep taking its toll on my body, there is no doubt that sunshine is right ahead. All i need to do is weather the storm a bit longer. When you have good food, great music, and loving people close by you, what you have before you is one hell of a proverbial umbrella to get you through the dreary stressful days.