The word game

Here's a fun game spawned from a conversation I had the other day.  I love ragging on my dad about the way he mispronounces words, and we all know there's some common ones like

'erb vs H-erb

or

tomayto vs tomahto (but really, do you know anyone that pronounces it that second way?).

But then... there's some that fall into a grey area... So how do YOU pronounce the following?

PRAWcessor vs PRO-cessor

CON-tribute vs con-TRI-bute

DEE-fense vs de-fence

Care-a-mel vs Car-a-mel

anahl-a-jus vs anahl-a-gus

ban-ahl vs banAL

com-pair-able vs comp-or-able

and then of course...

ur-an-us vs Your-Anus.

Trivial?  Yes.  Waste of time?  Yes.  But that's what a blog is often for, right?  (Or should that be, that's what a blog is Off-en for?)

Golf

Man... this is possibly the worst designed golf trophy ever...

...or maybe the best.

Sense: This post makes none

Well, I was about to write something about the pumpkin I made for halloween this year...


...but this image was just too good not to share instead. = D

On Good Friends and Good Food

Well, I guess I held the event so I might as well write a few words about it.

First off, I won't recap how things went.  There are plenty of blogs attached to this one that you can find that stuff out.

First thing's first, HUGE amount of thanks go out to Yukiko and Paul for their immense help.  I suspect I may have reaped much more of the thanks than perhaps I myself deserve, but I assure you we all put in a huge amount of work (not to mention days and dollars) to make this something special, which I really thought it was.  And I'd be lying if I said I didn't have fun for the 3 days we tackled this thing.

Second thing, thanks for everyone who showed up and pitched in, be it via food (I was blown away by everyone's ability to cook well!) or money.  Obviously without attendees, this would've been a pretty lonely event.  And not a SINGLE person complained about the food I assigned them.  That was incredible.

So, with those two "administrative" points out of the way, I just wanted to say a little bit about why I did this.  Since before I could remember, Thanksgiving has always been about family.   My mom always did the whole turkey, potatoes (though strangely no stuffing), and pie thing.  It got to the point where it was automatic.  More importantly though, it was always a time to see everyone.  But with expectation came an inevitable level of "taking it for granted."  

In university I kind of discovered that Thanksgiving was NOT this huge thing for most people.  In fact, I found it quite stunning to realize my family was probably in the minority.  At first, being the ass I am, it offered me great opportunity to stick my tongue out at others and tell them "a bar?  f- that, I'm having turkey and pie at home bitch!"  But this year, with my parents gone, it gave me the opportunity to share something with everyone that was/is commonplace for me, but perhaps something unusual for them.  

So why not?

So that was the reason I wanted to put this little shin-dig together.  The only other thing I really want to say is that I know I looked stressed out during the planning period and even a bit during the party.  God knows, there were a few times I thought about 30 people in my house and just wanted to cancel the whole thing.  Furthermore, I appreciate everyone who told me to sit down, take a rest, etc, etc.  I'm grateful for all the thanks I got from people constantly.  I definitly thank everyone who asked how they could help out (and especially those who basically forced their way into the cleanup process).  I know it seemed like I ignored your advice/questions a lot of the time.  It was because, above all else, I wanted you all to be able to take the party for granted.  I wanted everyone to enjoy Thanksgiving, without worrying about all the remedial little things, if only for one night.  And I only ever saw smiles, so I think we did alright in that respect.  If I wanted everyone to take away one thing from that party, it was this:

It wasn't about me, just like it wasn't about Paul or Yuk.  The aim was to make it about everyone else.  It was about extended family.  

That is how you do Thanksgiving the right way.  That is the right way to be thankful.

I hope that for the people whom Thanksgiving was just a "long weekend" before, that it's something a little more now.  

- Matt

On childhood memories

So who remembers this guy? Hands anyone? Everyone? Right, so the majority of you probably know Piccolo, the badass alien from the Dragonball saga. So, now do you recognize this guy?

What? No? CLEARLY it's the same guy right?

So when I heard there was a new film coming out in 2009 based on Dragonball, my first thought was FAIL. I mean, how would that even work? There were no living people that looked like any of these characters, and the Matrix Revolutions already gave me a sour taste for the kind of fighting we'd probably see from Hollywood's incarnation of Goku's adventure.

But then I heard that Stephen Chow was attached to it, and suddenly there was a glimmer of hope. I loved Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle, and his style of film making fit the notion of a living cartoon better than anyone I would've thought of. I was cautiously optimistic.

Until now.

For those of you that don't know, that's James Marsters underneath that horrible generic alien costume. Yes, the same James Marsters who was in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Now I've got nothing against the guy, but Piccolo he is not.

Oh right, and this guy is Goku.

I don't really need to say anything else here, do I?

Did I ever mention how much I love my job?

I WANT ONE. But since I can't have one, I figured I'd do the next best thing and build one.

Two failed attempts later, I finally get something that looks... well, relatively accurate. As I work towards the inner layers, this thing is getting harder and harder to do right though...

While I was building this, it just occurred to me that the Tumbler really does look like a bat... well kind of... if you squint, you can kind of see one stretching on the floor.

On Giant Robots

So about a year go I was working on this and then inexplicably lost the file. Well I found it again (albeit an older version) so i thought I'd share.

I built this after only about... 2 months experience using Maya. If that's not a testament to usability, I don't know what is.



The character is EVA-01 from the show Neon Genesis Evangelion. This is based on WETA's movie concept art.