Mockingbirds Know Who You Are

Extremely busy nowadays - March is always the worse month, I find. I have been averaging probably 4-5 hours of sleep at night... Severe anime backlog too :(

I started drinking coffee for the first time recently. I had never before drank coffee, it was all just tea. I was surprised that it seemed to work as I was no longer dosing off every 5 minutes in lecture, but I don't want to become dependent on it so I'm trying to limit its use to midterm days or Tuesdays (the long day). And wow, Starbucks coffee really does taste burnt, I should have used more sugar... I also want to try McDonalds, which is apparently having a free coffee promotion until this Sunday. Stangely, there aren't any McDonalds nearby the St. George campus except the one up at Bloor, so I would have to make quite a detour to go there.

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Anyway, another Sporcle update! Rather science-filled~

Anime Blitz: Opening Themes (clips)
Rapid-fire Anime Name That Tune, can you identify the anime by listening to short clips from their opening song? There's also an overlying theme common to all the songs, did you notice what it was?

Eponymous Diseases A-Z
In most of these cases, although it's called X's disease, X never really sufferred from the disorder. It's more of meant as an act of commemoration.

Serendipitous Inventions/Discoveries
The quiz promised from a previous post, can you name the inventions or discoveries made by chance, by accident, and probably by improper laboratory etiquette?

Animals Used in Scientific Research
My tribute to all of those rats that I had to work with over the past year.

Distemper

I guess I'll just throw in a post with some links to my user-created Sporcle quizzes. I've placed a badge linking to the site in the Links section. In short, Sporcle is a site with a bunch of fun trivia quizzes on many topics. Popular ones include:
Countries of the World
NFL Teams
The Simpsons Characters
Periodic Table
Commonest English Words

They enabled the creation of user-made quizzes sometime around September last year. It doesn't have the full capabilities as some published quizzes, but a lot of pretty impressive and creative quizzes have already been made thus far by various users. Ones that are popular enough or really novel may get published by Sporcle as an official quiz.

I am already rather humbled that any of my quizzes managed to garner some level of popularity, but I'm not sure if any of them will be published. The most well-accepted ones so far are:

Shape-Describing Words
How would you describe in a single word something shaped like a cross, or a star? This quiz might help... Definite plus if you know some Latin or Greek vocab, but there are a lot of words whose meanings can easily be inferred.

Look-Alikes: Hidden Objects [pic]
I took a picture from the book Look-Alikes by Joan Steiner (amazingly creative, I read it when I was younger and loved it) and asked you to identify all the everyday objects Steiner used to create the picture. She uses objects in a way such that they "look alike" to something else, such as using slices of bread to create a sidewalk or a lemon juicer to look like a spinning carnival ride, all rather convincingly.

Pokémon Trainer Classes (Gen I)
Pokémon Trainer Classes (Gen II)
Hopefully if you played Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow back in the day, or even the Gold/Silver/Crystal versions, this might give you a nice nostalgic blast. Can you remember all those annoying trainers from the game who stop you in your tracks, walk up to you to say something completely non-sequitur, and then challenge you to Pokémon battles?

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Here are also some of my other quizzes. There is a bias on Pokemon-based quizzes since those were mostly the ones I started making first before branching out to other topics. I do have some more pending release, like "Accidental Inventions/Discoveries" which I'll release soon...

Classical Mythology Lovers
Identify the lovers from famous classical mythology couples. For example, the woman whose face "launched a thousand ships"...?

Common Drug Delivery Forms
You'll find examples of all of these around the local pharmacy or hospital somewhere. What common methods exist to deliver medicine/drugs into the body?

Pocky & Pretz Flavors
If only I was able to try all of these flavours...Mmm Pocky.

Pokémon by Cry I
Pokémon by Cry II
This was an interesting idea to put together. Can you identify the Pokémon based on the sound they make in the game? Too bad it's not what they say in the anime, since that would make the quiz rather easy. ;)

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And now, all the really niche quizzes/rest of the many Pokémon quizzes.

Non-Evolving Pokémon
These Pokémon defy the laws of evolution. Then again, so do the ones that do evolve since individuals do not evolve. Oh well.

Pokémon Supporting Characters (Game)
No single quiz would be able to encompass all those supporting characters from the anime, so I compromised with supporting characters from the games.

Pokémon Without Footprints
Pokémon by Footprint
Ever wondered what it's like to be a Pokémon forensic podiatrist? ...Me neither. Yet these quizzes exist!

Foreign Pokémon Names
It seems English Charmanders say "Charmander!" while French Charmanders say "Salamèche!". Weird.

Digimon Partners (anime)
Strange that all the world-dominating digital supervillains always seem to show up at Japan first.

Word Disassociation Lyrics
This quiz is flouncy, panicky redundant.

Esculent

In the past while I've dabbled in a bit of baking, mostly as a way to kill time. None of them are really all that impressive, but for things I just made for the first time they turned out pretty good. Luckily, they were all at least edible, some were even delicious! Most of them came from the same dessert cookbook so there are a lot of 'chocolate' recipes, not too much variety.

Chocolate Almond Cheesecake
The first cake I ever baked, it was actually pretty simple to make. Unfortunately since I didn't know the nuances of cheesecake-making, the cake came out of the oven looking wonderful but as it cooled it developed a humongous gaping hole across the middle. My sister then decorated over said crack using the almond whipped cream. It tasted good, in the end.

Neapolitan Cheesecake
This one was a bit of a failure. Although it tasted ok in the end, it was supposed to have three distinct layers on top of the crust. The bottom pink strawberry layer failed because I didn't drain enough water from the strawberries and the puree was too watery. This caused some of the layer to leak out of the pan when it was baking. The crust was also much too hard due to the recipe calling for the use of cocoa. If I ever attempt this again I'll use a crust from another cheesecake recipe.

Chocolate Amaretto Cheesecake
This one is my favourite of the cheesecakes I've made. It tasted the best and was probably the most easy to make due to the fact that it doesn't involve baking. It uses gelatin so after you blend everything together you simply let it set in the fridge. I hijacked the almond whipped cream from the Chocolate Almond Cheesecake recipe. Since I didn't have a pastry bag of any sort, I just dabbed the cream over the cake. It might've looked a bit neater if I had piped it instead.

Choco-Almond Fluff
The recipe for this one was really short, but strangely involved a lot more effort and surveilance than I expected. Admittedly it was supposed to be a Choco-Orange Fluff, but I couldn't be pressed to spend $5 on a tiny bottle of orange extract which I would probably never use again. I just used the almond extract we already had from making the previous cheesecakes. Not much variety to be had, but again it tasted ok, and was indeed fluffy.

Collector's Cocoa Cake
I decided to move on to a cake that was not a cheesecake! And luckily it still turned out ok, none of the sticking-to-the-pan problems I've heard of. There were two choices of frosting you could make in the recipe, this one being a 'buttercream frosting'. I was afraid the frosting would be too sweet but it was fine, and the cake ended up being pretty tasty. The cake didn't seem as fluffy as other cakes, but it might have been because the recipe called for baking soda instead of baking powder.

And here's a close-up on the frosting. Yum...

The cake slice reveals how the cake layers weren't very flat, but it definitely turned out better than I was expecting.

Cupcake Bouquet
My sister did most of the work for this one, as a Mother's Day gift. I just assisted with making the cupcakes. She then arranged it into a bouquet and hand-painted the pot. Turned out looking really charming. The cupcake frosting was actually pumped out via a Ziploc bag with a hole cut in the corner, again citing the lack of a pastry bag.

Ham and Spinach Quiche
This is not a dessert, but a quiche. Again, rather simple to make, with all the work coming from the prep where you have to cut up the ingredients. The recipe originally called for celery and onion only, but I found the celery didn't flow with the texture of the quiche so the next time I replaced it with mushrooms, and added ham and bacon too. If I ever feel particularly adventurous, maybe a homemade pie crust next time...?

Other undertakings included a pasta pie, chili con carne, and gazpacho.

Mochahontas

I tried a masala dosa for the first time (above) and it was humongous and delicious. And also humongous.

For Summerlicious I went to Quince and Pan. Quince had really good food, and Pan had good food with large servings. Favourites were the chill tomato soup from Quince and galaktoboureko from Pan. All in all a great experience.

Starting driving school related stuff next week.

Galaktoboureko

Yummmm...

Ended up going to Wonderland: Behemoth was very high but it somehow felt more secure than it looked. I think it's the highest coaster that I've been on so far.

Speaking of bird nests (from last post), while lining up for The Bat we spotted a bird's nest tucked on the supports directly under the roller coaster track. There was a robin settled in the nest, apparently unaware that a coaster cart is noisily speeding by 15cm above its head. Eventually the robin flew off, revealing that there were actually baby birds in the nest. Hopefully they won't have hearing problems later on.

Also, saw The Incredible Hulk. Yes, it is better than the first one.

Currently trying to make plans for Summerlicious. Winterlicious was great, so hopefully Summerlicious is ok too. It's nice getting a set dinner for $25 when the restaurant lists that a usual dinner for two people is $100-$150.

I found this fun tool called Wordle from Sandwalk (who found it from Expression Patterns). It takes a block of text that you enter and makes a little visual cluster out of the words, with the size of the words changing according to their frequency in the passage. I plugged some stuff I had to write recently:







It's addictive for a while :P

Finally, fun summer weather = hail

Blanc de blancs

Happy New Year's! I wish everyone the best of luck in 2008.

First thing eaten in 2008: Piece of Hershey's milk chocolate
First thing drunk in 2008: Martellini's sparkling apple-cranberry juice
First thing played with in 2008: Pokémon Diamond (Hatched Phione at 12:03am :D )
First thing resumed in 2008 after celebrations: Hatching Phione

Preproinsulin

Dec 4:
ANT253 Language and Society
- Midterm, Essay

Dec 10:
BCH210 Introductory Biochemistry
- Exam

CLA206 Ancient Astronomy
- Exam

Dec 12:
BIO250 Cell and Molecular Biology
- Exam

Dec 14:
CHM220 Physical Chemistry for Life Sciences
- Exam

Finished...really need a break now...and sleep. Started drinking a lot of tea in the past few weeks, but managed to not drink a single cup of coffee or can of energy drink.

Main thing I leave these courses with:
Anthro - Zipf's Law is the answer to everything.
Biochem - Blueberries are high in antioxidants. Eat them. Also, COX.
Astro - You succeed in science by stealing other people's works and theories. Sadly this goes back even to Ancient Greece. Nowadays you can even get a Nobel Prize if you pull it off well enough.
Biology - I still need to do this next semester. Lab nights suck because I get home at 11pm and don't feel like studying afterwards.
Phys Chem - Kill me if I need to take another phys chem course ever.

Time to catch up on animé and reading.

Lake Titicaca

Last Thursday I went to see 300. Yay 300!
It was in IMAX. Yay IMAX!
We sat in the second row from the front. Yay neck injuries!
I guess it was wrong to guess that going thirty minutes beforehand wasn't enough. If we went any later I wonder if we would've even been able to get in.

IMAX's little sequence thing before the movie was so hilarious. It felt like I was in some motion simulator ride in an amusement park.

Before the movie we ate at Milestone's, which was pretty good. More expensive than usual of course but it was rather filling too.

Today's weather is really nice, which is lucky because I had to walk over to Indigo's to get something anyway. On the way back I passed by some singing monks. They were pretty good.

Snow Night

It just started snowing like crazy an hour or so ago. So apparently all class after 5pm today are cancelled.

Urban warming got beat and we managed to get a quarter of a Snow Day. Oh burn.

Now about getting to the restaurant...

Bond of Freedom

Today we had a special Mardi Gras themed lunch in the caf, and it was really good. The reason we're having a Mardi Gras themed lunch at this time of year is unknown. I mean, it's definitely a Mercredi.

Slush! Luckily air pollution will keep us from having a Snow Day. :(

Northern Lights

Had sushi at Maison du Japon, which I found was actually pretty good. The restaurant was larger than I expected, and the meal includes drinks. Then saw Children of Men, which was a pretty intense movie.

I got a book called Human and it is rather complete about everything human. Goes from origins of modern humans, to the human body, human mind, life cycles, cultures, economy and power, society, religion and language, all the different peoples on Earth, and addressing future issues.

They even have a section of Communication. Now I know to never expose the soles of my feet to anyone in Thailand.

Historical Insults
Certain insults have ancient origins. One is the Greek 'moutza', in which an open hand is thrust in someone's face. This gesture dates from Byzantine times, when people used to push excrement into criminals' faces. Another is the British V-sign, thought to come from the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. French soldiers would cut off the first two fingers of the English bowmen; archers who still had their fingers would wave them in defiance.

Grape Shot

Had the New Year's thing at Saké. Lots of sushi before the countdown. Got sprayed by champagne :( There was also some fun four-way wireless DS-ing, followed by a lot of card playing.

Weather was dim and foggy, perfect for minimizing auto accidents on New Year's Day.

First thing eaten in 2007: Turtles chocolate
First thing drunk in 2007: Random wine thing that tasted better than champagne
First thing played with in 2007: Cellphone camera
First thing resumed in 2007 after celebrations: Playing card games

Tamago

Boxing Day! The day to post after a strangely long hiatus.

As well as a lack of posting, there is also a lack of snow. Not necessarily a bad thing, but a little odd nonetheless. It's like being stuck in November.

Had the annual Christmas ritual at my cousins' house. There was food, Wii, and off-tune karaoke. (D:) Sadly for me, there were also two dogs and two cats. By the time I left I was already starting to have partial laryngospasms. Currently, one of my nostrils is defunct, resulting in my not being able to sleep, and the reason I'm posting this early anyway.

Finally got a new cellphone. Not bad, but then again almost anything is better than my old one.

Hopefully you all had a fun break so far and good luck with any of your ambitious holiday shopping endeavours. o_.

Edit: Blue!!!

Metastasise

New College fell apart temperarily this week. First was the mysterious power outage on Friday. Then the replacement of regular plates and cutlery in the caf with plastic plates and cutlery. Then was the failure of two of the three washrooms on the floor, with the third one having 2/4 toilets working. Then the strange loss of cable and internet. Luckily, everything has been ameliorated now. (Except the T-Card system is still wonky)

Fix our window, you silly maintenance people.

Korean BBQ was delicious, and so is Baten Kaitos Origins.

Stanley Bing Is a Pussy

Oops where teh updates?

Well now I am equipped with tablet PC and mini fridge. Random stationary to come.
Jason's party was full of delicious.
VGL on Friday = will be awesome.

I've basically been watching lots of anime borrowed from a prolific anime archivist :o

Note: Sun Tzu > All

Press any button to begin, n00b! LOL OMG

Here -> Fabulous -> Calgarian* -> Here

* - Actually from Banff.

I arrived back in Toronto on Friday morning. Seeing as I'm unable to properly put together and organize a brief yet coherent summary of the trip, I'll give you random tidbits of it.

- My chance of getting lung cancer has probably increased 60% thanks to the casinos.

- NEVER bring put anything fragile into the Fragile cargo of Air Canada. While I was "deplaning" into Toronto I watched from inside the plane as our "fragile" box was jerked from the conveyor belt and tossed unceremoniously into the cargo trailer, where it landed on its side, and remained on its side even when we went to pick it up. Luckily the only casualties were a few slightly smushed cakes and muffins.

- And speaking of food, Vegas had lots of it. (The first pic was from Bellagio's buffet.) I was quite happy.





-Got some awesome books, including (finally): Eats, Shoots and Leaves. I even visited the Calgary Public Library, which has an unnecessarily phallic logo.

- I also picked up this pretty bismuth sculpture from Banff. You can't really see its true colour due to the orange light from the camera, but it's pretty and metallic.



- "The weather in Toronto is currently about twenty-two degrees, with a flu - Excuse me, I meant a few clouds." - Flight Attendant

Finally, a clip from one of Bellagio's fountain shows. It was really amazing, but we only watched two of them before we dashed off for some air conditioning to brush off the forty degrees celcius sweat. Although I heard it was pretty hot in Toronto too.



That's all I care to post about right now.

And also:

Unnecessary Censorship

Baby Got Bible

Signet of Recapture

PotC2 = strangely cheesy plot elements carried out entertainingly well.
Pickle Barrel = wtf crumble top apple pie
University courses = chosen, unofficially. Because the actual registration hasn't happened yet. Which brings up another problem, which is that I'll be on vacation during the registration day, so I'll need to find a computer and hope that I haven't left any information behind.

I ordered from Dominoes on the Dough Raising Night (Jul 13) and I'm thinking it wasn't as profitable as would have been expected. I spent quite a bit of time reminding the cashier what the Dough Raising Night was about, and he kept doubting my assertion that I was ordering the $23.99 combo from the Dough Raising Night specials and NOT the $22.99 special they had going on normally. At first he thought I was making up a combo. :( Oooh well, I'm sure MDHS has more than enough money. X_x

Player's Best Long

Monday's was Frankie's. It was very Italian-y, and it was generally agreed that the calamari was the best. As opposed to the singing Frankie on their website.

Yesterday was officially the last day of high school. Buuut nothing really special happened. Except maybe when Arthur showed up with a box of popsicles. Went to Zaheer's house afterwards.

Glasses Glasses

I just watched all the clips of the Breakfast Club episode of X-Play. Sooooo good. ._O

I started playing Kingdom Hearts 2, borrowed from Arthur.

Prom was on Friday:

It was decent. Food wasn't.
Spiffy formalwear.
Slideshow was decent. Stupid chandelier.

I didn't know why early on the DJ kept interrupting songs instead of waiting in-between songs.

*music playing -
DJ: EXCUSE ME, COULD THE OWNER OF A RED TOYOTA PLEASE COME TO THE FRONT DOOR, YOUR CAR HAS JUST EXPLODED, THANK YOU.
- best part of song finishes*

The Trojans never had any Wiis.

The Classic and Shooter Styles are both insanely breathtaking.

In other news, an editor decides, in a fit of angst against the "Wii", to do a humourous article where he changes the word "revolution" with "Wii".

The editor needs a Wii amount of practice in his grammar skills.

Some exerpts:
Chinese Cultural Wii
Chairman Mao's massive Wii forever changed the face of China.

The Industrial Wii
It may sound like an uncomfortable Wii, with its assembly lines and interchangable parts, but all Wiis are a little painful, and the Industrial Wii flooded the whole world.

#6 says: "...even though it sounded like a bunch of guys revolutioning on sheet metal."

Eeps.

Also, it was Mayday today, which was awesome. I had some good fruity smoothie O_O