New Zealand: Mauri Haka

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A long time ago when I was a wee youngin and still playing soccer in a league, I played against a team that did a dance before the game. At the time I thought it rather comical. I don’t remember what they did or what was said, but I don’t think it was anything like the Haka that the New Zealand rugby team, the All Blacks, perform before every match.

My brother sent that video to me earlier today and said it reminded him of when he went to play soccer in New Zealand and Austrailia. Watching it I noticed a guy in an Adidas ‘film crew’ jacket, so I looked through the associated videos of the previous one and found this commercial, which uses footage from the dance in the video above.

Ubuntu

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Ubuntu LogoI installed Ubuntu a couple weekends ago to see what all the hoopla was about. I was unimpressed. I couldn’t even install a video driver. At first I tried the 32bit version, and then I thought, hey I have a 64bit processor, let’s try that out. My conclusion: no 64bit flash support. How can I live without flash videos?

So last weekend I was trying to install apache + php + mysql in windows and was having a hell of a time (3+ hours). I was having a bad enough time that I went out and bought an external HDD, moved all my valued files to it (pictures and videos), and reformatted. After that I reinstalled the 32bit version of Ubuntu and quickly installed apache + php + mysql with relatively little pain (10 min). And then after thinking about what a pain it would be to edit files in Photoshop (windows) and then code in Ubuntu, I tried installing apache + php + mysql again in windows. This time I had great success (<1 min). I used XAMPP just like I did the first 3+ hour time, except this time I used the “I want to start XAMPP without setup” technique which worked like a charm. I unzipped the files into c:/xampp and everything works. Now getting imagemagick to work on the other hand, has proven to be quite painful and I’ve switched to GD Library for now.

Anyway, today I stumbled upon Envy for Ubuntu which automatically installs and configures an up to date video driver for you. How cool is that?!? It also worked like a charm. So I’m proud to say that I’m posting from Ubuntu in full 1680×1050 resolution. Woo hoo!

And one last thing. When I reformatted XP I forgot that it doesn’t have a generic ethernet driver that works with my motherboard. So that meant no internet when I reformatted. That was awesome…….. However, I was able to boot up in Ubuntu and it had no problem using my ethernet port. So I downloaded the appropriate driver (nVidia nForce4), stashed it on my thumbdrive and transported it to XP. And Linux is supposed to have poor hardware support. Ha! HA I say!

Rock Climbing

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So today, Stanley, Mike, James, and my coworker Grace went to Ironworks for a fun day of indoor rock climbing. I straggled in later, having been guilted by James to show up because my coworker was there, while I was not. But it ended up being really fun.

First, I had to go through the belay test before I could use the ropes to climb up the walls. James, the expert of the group, took me through the basics, which I fumbled through. However, he neglected to tell me that when the test giver says, “Belay?”, I’m supposed to say, “Belay on!” or some such. So I just stared stupidly, and went, “uhhhh” as the test giver said that twice, and then james goes, “Oh, I forgot to tell you that part”. Gee, thanks >_> But all in all it was really fun. I only climbed walls between 5.5-5.8 difficulty though. Hopefully next time I go, I’ll get better. Weeeee to chalky hands! Next time I’m going to bring my camera so I can take lots of pictures of mike scaling the wall. *clicky clicky*

Riding and Talking

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It’s not hard to imagine that it would be difficult to communicate with others when you’re riding your motorcycle. The only time you can talk to someone else in your group is when you come to a stop somewhere. And who likes to stop when you’re riding a bike? Other forms of communication like hand signals and such really don’t convey such messages as “your turn signal is still on.” And looking for signals takes away from concentrating on the road.

So last month I bought two FireFox throat mics to go with my motorola walkie talkies. Throat mics work by transmitting the vibrations of speech straight from the throat, instead of capturing them after they leave the mouth. This cancels out any background noise (like loud motorcycle engines).

FireFox Throat MicWearing FireFox Throat Mic

The mic comes with a remote PTT (push to talk) button and the mic itself. So when I’m wearing it I have my walkie talkie in my jacket pocket with the remote cord going up my sleeve and the button on the side of my index finger on my left hand. This makes it easy to push with my thumb when I want to say something.

So yesterday I went for a ride with my brother down the coast starting at ocean beach. We made it down to half moon bay before turning back. As you can imagine I was excited to use these mics for the first time. But of course as it turns out one was broken. *sigh* So after the ride I went back to REI and exchanged it for a working one. Can’t wait for my next ride.

Going Posting Crazy

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Wahh, mike is getting a little crazy with his posting. Must be the new format.

Today’s topics of discussion:

1. I got accepted into the department of Plant and Microbial Biology at Berkeley for graduate school! Wahooo! I would hazard to say that I am the most excited person to hear this news (in this case, sent by email). I should be receiving an official letter through snail mail in a few days. It is such a relief to know that I got in. I’ve been stewing in anxiety ever since submitting my apps. Now it’s time to call up Davis and see if I can pressure them to hurry up their admissions process. But considering that they recently asked my boss to resend her rec because they lost it again, I don’t know that my efforts will speed the process up much. Yay to having no monies again. And cheers to another five+ years of schooling.

2. To celebrate, mike and I went to Mijori’s to eat sushi. We ordered mike’s requisite rainbow roll, and miscellany including oyako donburi (eggs, chickens, onions and sweet sauce over sticky rice) and it was quite tasty. Mmmmm… chicken rice… and forgot about buying ice cream, which was our original celebratory feast goal. Ah well, I left full and happy.

3. I have worked an insane amount of hours at work due to a meltdown emergency at work. To date, no less than 11 hours per day since monday. Whew. Almost to the homestretch. But at least I get to enjoy the three day weekend. I think I would have gone crazy if I had needed to work through the weekend. I also took a walk around the work campus, which I haven’t done for awhile. It was really beautiful, with the sun, the breeze, and the bay. Hopefully I won’t dream any more disturbing lab dreams (last night, I dreamt that I spilled acetic acid all over myself while trying to making a dilute solution to stop a protein silver stain reaction. It’s no good when dreams about work invade my off time. Must relax!)

4. I watched nacho libre tonight, which was actually kind of entertaining, though I think Jack Black a complete doofus.

5. Mike is currently wrestling with the “New” Super Mario Bros for DS.

6. And now I am sleepy. Time for bed. Goodnight!

GameSpot is falling behind, technically

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Below is a trailer of Battlefield 2142: Northern Strike, a game I might play if I had someone to play it with and a better graphics card. Unfortunately I had to grab the trailer from GameTrailers.

I think trailers can do wonders for game sales. I don’t know why more companies don’t focus on making amazing trailers. Sometimes, after seeing a trailer for a video game I get so excited by it that I already know I’m going to buy the game. Even if it sucks. Haha. Maybe one day I’ll make a list of my top trailers.

I don’t know why GameSpot doesn’t have embeddable videos yet. I think the GameSpot live team is one of the greatest assets to the site and we’re really losing out by not only lacking the ability to embed out videos but not even being able to link directly to them. If I see an awesome video on GameSpot and I want to share it with someone I have to download it and then upload it through the user videos section on GameSpot and then link to that. It’s pretty annoying. Get it together GameSpot (and TV.com and MP3.com and FilmSpot!).

Happy V-Day

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“I’m an Open Source kind of girl.” (Young woman at Ramada Inn on Market Street, overheard by Rick Kleffel.)

“I don’t care if someone has M.D. after their name. OK, so she’s a neurosurgeon. But is she hot?” (Man to his parents, overheard at AT&T Park by The Chronicle’s Heather Knight.)

“I’ve been faking orgasms for a year; the least you can do is fake listening to me.” (Woman to man, overheard at the Drunken Fish Restaurant in Oakland by Victor Miller.)

“How could he not know that pretty girls do not eat dessert? . Then he ate ice cream in front of me. I am so not going out with him ever again.” (Young woman in financial district office, overheard by co-worker.)

“She dumped me for the Lord.” (Man at Starbucks near the Tower Market in San Francisco, overheard by Frank Evans.)

“Dude, she was so upset that she called me an intellectual.” (Punk rocker on cell phone describing his blind date, overheard at Muddy Waters Coffee House in the Mission by David Ryan.)

The SF Chronicle article full of evesdropping goodness.