megaman rock opera

hoooly shit, this is awesome. part 1

hong kong and macau pictures

late but...

orchestral final countdown

differences

in taipei, people have a higher level of common courtesy and are generally non-confrontational. they'll say excuse me, sorry, etc. in manhattan/philadelphia, people will do that most of the time or sometimes. in hong kong, they'll throw you an elbow, keep going, hock a loogie and spit, and then kick your dog.

jumbo kingdom

we ate dim sum on a floating restaurant boat. we had to take a boat to get to the boat. for reals.

final taiwan youtube blowout

• SYS Memorial Hall Honor Guard Change Ceremony: the two honor guards that are stationed in front of the sun yat-sen statue remain absolutely still for an entire hour. they get relieved every hour by two fresh honor guards in a very elaborate military drill ceremony.
• Classical Chinese Music Played in SYS Memorial Hall's Upper Art Gallery
• Louise is sassy and tells it like it is

taiwan photoset is now complete

oh yeah

the wedding on saturday was fine too. it was held in the international ballroom in the taipei 101 (5th floor).

what happened

on our last day in taipei, we went to brunch at a japanese buffet at the taipei 101 called wasabi. before that actually, we passed by city hall again where the 2007 ing taipei international marathon was in its 4th hour. i stood about 40 meters from the finish line on the side cheering on runners for about 20 minutes. a few of the runners were jarred to hear english words of encouragement being shouted at them.

after brunch, we went down to the taipei zoo to ride the maokong gondola. if i had known that waiting to get on the gondola would take an hour and a half, i wouldn't have gone. if you would've told me that you have to line up again for another hour to return after you get off in maokong, i definitely would've done something else. but hey, you know because of my suffering. and there is really nothing in maokong to see.

this morning, we jumped on an early flight to hong kong and landed after about an hour and a half in the air. the airplane had personal headrest entertainment units where you can watch a movie, select music, or tool around on the gps map. i watched the first half of superbad. after clearing customs and etc, we took the airport express into hong kong station. like taipei, it was really clean, fast, and efficient.

initial impressions: it's very much like manhattan. it's way more western than taipei.

here in hong kong

it's like manhattan but with chinese people. also i'm sitting here watching a show on tv called "quake republic." a show about quake 3. for reals.

subway

oh boy it is clean over here. the subway doesn't smell like urine either. according to the billboards, the taipei mrt is the most reliable in the world, 3 years running.

you can read more about it at the wiki page. all you really have to know that it is super-modern, clean, reliable, and well designed and laid out. i have to wonder if philadelphia had the same hardware, what would we do with it? can we actually have nice things and not ruin them?

danshui, for reals this time

so the day before, i thought i was in danshui but i was really in taichung. and i'm not so sure i was really in taichung anyway.

anyway, i checked the map and i really did go to danshui today. it was a 40 minute subway train ride down the ride line or something. we took a bus down to fisherman's wharf which was closed and empty because they don't really open during the work week. oh well. we saw some fantastic scenery though.

after that we got back into danshui's night/day market where wares were sampled and consumed. i tried this ginger tea that opened up my sinuses. we got back to the danshui train station and rode back into town.

pretty quiet day, relatively.

it's pretty scary at first

getting swarmed by turning mopeds while crossing. the below is taipei, a few hours past rush hour.

patrick danshui-zy

UPDATE: i wasn't in danshui afterall. i think i was in taichung and whereabouts.

i went running around the park this morning. i think one lap is close to a mile and i did about 5 laps i think. i'll be sure to take some video of what a taiwanese park looks like in the morning.

we went up to taichung today. it's nice and very touristy. we went to the national palace museum which was almost just as good as the nyc met. one of its most well known exhibits is the jade cabbage. the garden also had some of the biggest koy that i've ever seen. you can feed them too.

after that, we went into taichung proper to the shin kong mitsukoshi department store for lunch (fried breaded pork with cheese inside?). the weather started turning hostile then, so we caught a bus back. the bus we ended up taking however was a department store sponsored bus that would ferry people between the subway transfer station and the department store area. i also spotted my second chili's.

we ventured back out later to the cks memorial hall which was super huge. also nearby was taiwan's presidential office building, like the white house but red. we went a little bit into the night market-ish area and got dinner.

mayo

today, we started the day with a common local breakfast: coffee and bread. of which yonghe city is apparently known for.

we went down the northern coast of taiwan to see the coast on our way to the gold ecological park in jinguashi. the coast is quite magnificent and an imposing defensive predicament for any attacking force (i'm looking at you china!). a small force can execute holding actions in the mountains until reinforcements arrive, but i digress.

we also visited the night market in keelung where i ate and sampled a lot of weird food that i had no idea what it was. we also visited another night market but i don't think it was a night market because we were all up in there around noon (updated: actually, it was jioufen).

we also visited a fish market that was pretty neat. there's a row of restaurants adjacent to the fish market that has solicitors out front trying to get you to patronize their establishment. they're rather persistent in an annoying way.

i'm working on getting pictures uploaded... my upload rate is slow over the hspda connection that i have. tomorrow, we're supposed to be going to danshui.

here

i survived the 20+ hour flight. it helps when you break it into two halves and it becomes more manageable. i didn't have a watch on me so i lived in a realm outside of time and space for a while. fading in and out of consciousness and getting fed every x hours. that sony portable dvd player that i picked up on a whim the day before i flew out was a godsend. so far i watched the new futurama movie, and the british office seasons 1 and some of 2. anyway, i got to go up to the observatory deck in the taipei 101 building. the lower level is a shopping mall that is nearly unrivaled in the high-endedness that they are offering. and the elevator gets you 90 stories up and down within 32 seconds.

itinerary

• SUNDAY (12/9) 9:55PM @ JFK TO TPE @ 6:30AM TUESDAY
• MONDAY (12/17) 10:00AM @ TPE TO HKG @ 11:45AM MONDAY
• SUNDAY (12/23) 1:35PM @ HKG TO TPE @ 3:10PM SUNDAY
• SUNDAY (12/23) 4:25PM @ TPE TO JFK @ 8:30PM SUNDAY

jeez

what happened to this place?

dmx verus... ghostbusters?

not work safe cause x gonn give it to ya.

chuck norris approved?

posting this

just to push that purple octopie/rock band video off my front page.

just because

if you've grown up in philadelphia and turned on the tv on a lazy sunday afternoon...

well this is kindof cool

let's talk about what i want in rock band dlc

the slow buildup and climax of only in dreams, and the frantic wall of sound and group shouting of laika. harmonix, you can already have your way with my credit card. just make it happen.

novemberfest and das boot

unaired 24 pilot from 1994

the cosi at 4th and chestnut has the worst wait staff

putting this contact information down in my post so google will index it so maybe somebody will be deterred from going. you're better off going to the pagoda inn by the ritz on second street. or eulogy. or national mechanics.

4th & Chestnut
325 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Phone: 215-399-0214
Fax: 215-399-0216

i don't want to get into typing about what happened now, but service on a monday night with only a handful of patrons should never be this horrendous. how bad? like genocide-level bad. i'm surprised that THE COSI ACROSS THE STREET FROM THE RITZ AT THE BOURSE hasn't caught on fire and burned to the ground due to employee neglect. this place should be avoided like VD.

purple octopie

maybe you should watch more 30 rock

alec baldwin doing... everything.

arcade fire, before they were famous

While cleaning out his archives, Gawker's Jim Lehnhoff unearthed some video that he shot of the Arcade Fire all the way back on April 11, 2004, at the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia. (They were third on the bill, playing behind the Unicorns and freakin' Chromeo, and in front of The Ponys.

in honor of robert goulet

stolen from ksk

new michael cera movie

a minor part in a movie called juno.

24 season 7 premiere

wait... i thought he was dead?!

so...

i can't wait for stop-and-frisk

"Shooting, stabbing, killing, whatever it is -- whatever you gotta do to survive," he said.

"Anything goes -- anything."

yup. can't wait to get these jackasses off our streets.

12 player online mario kart on the wii?

hell yes.

well if it wasn't weird, then i would be concerned

neon bible interactive music video.

another crazy halo grenade stick

ignore the awful music.

touring here and soon

• Architecture in Helsinki - Oct 10 2007 8:00PM Starlight Ballroom
  
• Of Montreal - Oct 11 2007 7:00PM Trocadero
  
• The Stars - Wednesday October 24th, 2007 Philadelphia, PA - Starlight Ballroom
  
• Menomena - Nov 7 2007 8:00PM First Unitarian Chruch (with Illinois)
  

the phils are so un-clutch

top to bottom.

now, this is what you call a stick!

halo ds

4 reals

these mile splits can't be right

finished in 25:56 according to my watch. my second and third mile split can't be correct though...

1. 9:05
2. 10:09
3. 6:41

halo 3?

never heard of it.

oh you're talking about this medal around my neck

yes i did run and finish the philadelphia distance run this past weekend. thirteen point one glorious miles in 1:57:23 (go here and search for bib 10150). three months of training and about three hundred total training miles. here are my mile splits that i kept on my stopwatch:

1. 9:52
2. 9:20
3. 9:22
4. 9:08
5. 9:07
6. 8:55
7. 8:35
8. 8:35
9. 9:02
10. 8:45
11. 8:35
12. 8:24
13. 8:31
14. 1:12 (0.1 mile, also this is probably off because i forgot to immediately stop my watch after finishing)

i'll post more about it later. i need to get to bed now that this phils game finally wrapped up in the 14th inning.

a review of my blog!

"Clean and simple. Its so understated that it screams in your face," raves Anthony of Anthony Heisler.

UPDATE: "willvuong.com... too much manliness for my wireless router to handle!" proclaims Anthony Heisler.

god, the eagles suck

so much.

so i heard that there is a game called halo

summaries of the story so far: halo 1: part 1 and 2; halo 2: part 1 and 2.

giant interactive halo3 diarama

Activision Reports Sluggish Sales For Sousaphone Hero

Activision Reports Sluggish Sales For Sousaphone Hero

SANTA MONICA, CA— "I played in career mode for hours and kept feeling like I was playing the same annoying circus tune over and over," complained a disappointed gamer.

god, the phillies suck

so much.

halo 3, a slurpee, and a big bite

yeah, i reserved my copy at the 7-eleven down the block this morning. surreal.

his face got totally pranked

click and watch the video

the best part is when the arm extends for the goal line

ban hammer

Taking advantage of an exploit that allowed an unidentified friend to deliver to him the Halo 3 "Epsilon" test version, former Xbox Live user "Scar" found himself on the receiving end of the Live banhammer. After six hours of Halo 3 heaven, his brief flirtation with the unreleased game came to an end. He was hit so hard, his account won't wake up until the year 10,000 AD, at which point, he'll have fallen so far behind in his achievement grabbing that he'll... well, he'll probably be dead.

liebot

chaos theory

the office summer vacation

wii beer pong

The object of ping cup is to use the Wii remote to throw a ping-pong ball at a pyramid of cups.

so that's how they got danny devito for season 3...

not work safe video

cool

tracing over a video clip to generate 3d models

first guitar hero, now jam sessions on the ds

don't say cocaine ideas near this kid!

oldie but a goodie

play the video. it gets crazy awesome in the second half.

comments on the internet

first

bioshock

• Game Informer (100/100): "Even if you play games strictly for the difficulty that they bring, BioShock is a title that needs to be played, simply because you will never look at an FPS the same way again. Of the 15 to 20 hours of gameplay that it delivers, there isn't a second wasted. Once you finish the game, there's little chance that you'll take it out before playing it again to see the second ending."
• IGN (97/100): "To call this game simply a first-person shooter, a game that successfully fuses gameplay and narrative, is really doing it a disservice. This game is a beacon. It's one of those monumental experiences you'll never forget, and the benchmark against which games for years to come will, and indeed must, be measured."
• 1UP (100/100): "The sounds of the vending machines, the demented rants of a housewife who has long lost her sanity, the ability to craft your own ammunition, the level design based on some beloved touchstones of horror (medical experimentation, a garden of evil, the performing arts), the optional photography research, the color palette, the scratchy rendition of "Beyond the Sea," the fire and lighting and water effects...everything is in its right place."

i wasn't planning on picking this one up but damn...

it's always sunny in philadelphia special preseason episode

four chapters online up on myspace

seven

'Gays Too Precious To Risk In Combat,' Says General

lol

Al Qaeda Also Fed Up With Ground Zero Construction Delays

Add to My Profile | More Videos

a roman legion settled in china?

Roman legion that was "lost" ended settling in China where their descendants still live today.. in a place called Li-Jien (which sounds in Chinese as the word "legion" and is the name by which the Chinese called Rome). Source

Nation To Ken Griffey Jr.: 'We Wish It Were You Hitting 756 Home Runs'

remember how ken griffey jr used to be so cool? i still have his rookie card somewhere....

CINCINNATI—Overcome with a mixture of distaste at the almost certain future and a wistful sense at the way things could and should have been, baseball fans across America took time to address veteran Reds superstar Ken Griffey Jr. yesterday in order to let him know that they sincerely wish that Griffey, and not Barry Bonds, was on the verge of hitting his record-breaking 756th home run.

"Don't take this the wrong way, Mr. Griffey, because the last thing we as a nation want is for you to think you've disappointed us by not breaking this record," the country's message, which was read to a quiet and humble Griffey by retired Seattle, WA–area mechanical engineer and lifelong baseball fan Robert Colgrave, began. "America knows you did everything you could, and we couldn't be more proud of you. In fact, that's the whole point—we think you're a man who is actually worthy of this record."

Are we playing Assault? Cause I'm pretty sure you are the bomb.

Top 10 Halo Pick-Up Lines

pros only

smash bros advanced techniques 1 2 3

lol

retrospectives

final fantasy and metroid. absolutely fantastic work by gametrailers.

i forgot to post this a few weeks ago

UPDATE: i also liked this one below from this week:

zomg

4 player halo campaign coop over xbox live or system link!!

stevie wonder drum solo

for reals.

shame

i haven't been updating as much as i've wanted to really. and i apologize to my readers for that.

i'm going to try my first craigslist experience this week. i'm going to try to sell my ps2 and guitar hero game+controllers up on there. hopefully it'll turn out well and i won't be robbed. weeeee!!!!!

worst ever

super dent dental floss, distributed by darby group companies inc of jerico, ny 11753 is the worst dental floss that i've ever used.

marathon 2 for xbla

hell yes

i think this tops geoff's wedding thriller

japan, are you serious?

This is Rose & Camellia. It's set in the 19th century. You play a woman. You slap other women. That's it.

gameplay video.

UPDATE: and the flash game itself.

call of duty 4 is looking pretty hot

looks like i'll have to pick this one up.

half marathon update

finished an 8 mile run tonight. i'm exhausted. i have 10 weeks to add 5 miles to this and make it faster.

greatest (turkish) action movie of all time

but i was going to send my kids to college with baseball cards

I make this post as one makes a PSA. Because honestly, I think most people have no clue. People think their unopened factory sets of 1986 Topps are going to send their kids to college someday. I'm not exaggerating.

ps3 price drop

to $499. that's getting closer to the sweet spot ($400). still needs some actual games that i would be interested in that i wouldn't be able to get on the 360 though.

rock band premiere

holy shit. this is like 3x guitar hero's awesomeness.

edit: i call bass. eddie's got lead. who's got drums and vocals?

edit2: only for ps3 and xbox360.

well that sucks

they might as well just give him his old job back since they're rewarding "compromising our national security and the secret men and women that protect us while we sleep and then covering it up" today.

President Bush commutes the prison term of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby was sentenced to 30 months after his March conviction on federal charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators.

responses from other talking heads. my response:

this is lame. man, fuck all of you guys in dc.

better late than never!

geoff and melissa's wedding thriller

paypass is the best thing ever

i carry my paypass card with me when i go running so i can pick up a sandwich and half gallon of tea from wawa afterwards without any hassles.

reggie bush and david beckham

america has a chance this year

Jaw arthritis for hot-dog champ

Takeru 'Tsunami' said he can only open his mouth to make a gap the size of a fingertip after being diagnosed with jaw arthritis.

In an entry on his blog entitled Occupational Hazard, Kobayashi said: "My jaw refused to fight any more."

The injury occurred only a week after the slender 29-year-old started training to win his sixth straight title at the annual July 4 Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating contest on New York's Coney Island.

shins music video for australia

a spectral bride situation

live streaming webcam today

To kick off the national launch of Accelerade, Dean Karnazes will aim high. On June 21, his goal will be to break the world record for a 24-hour distance run on a treadmill (currently set at 153.76 miles) as well as to raise awareness for Athletes for a Cure, an organization dedicated to finding a cure for prostate cancer. The treadmill will be located on a platform attached to the Reuters building in Times Square.

facebook

i'm working on a facebook application written in java for mobile phones. so far, it's a pain in the ass to write non-web-applications using their facebook session api. i've been able to work around it (generated infinite session keys), but it's still hacky and confusing.

cool pix of comcast tower's iron workers

etch a sketch lebron james

small world: ryan claims to have lived across the street from him.

i'm getting it back

i finally felt good enough to put in some sub-9 and sub-8 min/miles tonight. this is the first time in about a month where i felt like i was actually running.

oh hay guys

A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsquently rejected, building the so-called "Gay Bomb."

a simcity game that's not by maxis?!

inconceivable! looks kinda lame too.

a goon plays through castlevania 3

a series of 18+ videos at video.google. (link goes to forums thread.) oh boy!

thursday post

i had a mobile phone in 1998. that was back when two-way pagers were new. using my phone in public drew attention because mobile phones were relatively uncommon. my carrier was omnipoint, which later became voicestream, which later become t-mobile. my plan was about $40/month for local 150 minutes per month. extra minutes were 15 cents and roaming outside of my region was about 30 cents (i remember getting absolutely raped for surcharges when i was in san francisco for business). text messaging was extra. my job at the time subsidized most of my phone bill. i had a phone from siemens, which was like the size of a folded original nintendo ds.

wednesday post

i never played final fantasy 7. for real.

tuesday's post

i was once a mac user. i had a mac performa and a powertower pro from power computing, which was a licensed mac clone. a mac clone! i even had a job where i maintained and wrote for a 20,0000 daily reader web site about mac laptops and imacs for a couple of years. i was even part of the local user group scene at one point.

now? my last three home workstations have been windows boxes. my htpc is a windows xp box. and i make fun of the guys at work that own them. what happened? a few things actually. the mac os at the time was horrible for c++ development; no protected memory or preemptive multitasking. imagine learning and working with pointers and pointer-pointers in that environment... one bad pointer and the whole system needed to be rebooted, unlike windows 98se. i don't pc game much anymore but half-life and rainbow six were enough to keep me from booting up the mac box for weeks at a time back then. and i like building my own pc from parts i bought and hand picked from the internet.

will i ever buy a mac again? i doubt it. windows xp is good enough and my next workstation will be a vista box.

the perfect golf swing

The Perfect Golf Swing - Funny bloopers are a click away

for reals

in order to inspire others to post to their blogs, i will write something about myself every day this week that not many people know about. it's on.

edit: some of these "secrets" may be very stupid, obvious, and tangential. they're probably not secrets at all. but they will be posted on the internets.

they tried to make me go to rehab

well, sorta. i've been rehabbing a hamstring injury for the past two or three weeks. i think it bit me during my 24:01 5k and i haven't been able to run a pain-free 2 miles since. hopefully i'll be able to start running a bit more and test it out this week. i have to remember that these things take time to heal but i always end up rushing back too fast and too soon. :(

michael cera is fired from knocked up

Michael Cera gets fired from Knocked Up
Uploaded by TstarV

posting to complain about lost

what?

africacraft

buffalo versus lions versus crocodiles

weakest season of 24 yet

i heard that next season will take place outside of los angeles so that might breathe some much needed fresh air into the series. and what was up with that ending?

the office

that season finale was pretty sublime. creed's blog is kinda rad too.

Today in my office where I work as Director of Quality Assurance, we went to the beach for some reason that was never adequately explained. When we were there, our manager told us to eat hot coals. I thought that was a little bit untoward so I ate a fish. Then a woman I have literally never seen before in my entire life started talking very loudly about something involving Halpert. She was agitated, I’d say. From what I could guess, she was definitely on drugs of some kind, perhaps cocaine, or maybe ‘drines. Also, she is a knock-out. She reminds me of a young Daphne Du Maurier. Also, I stupidly ate the fishbones. I told myself “never again” after the last time, but then you turn around, and bam, they’re in my mouth. I also ate 55 hot dogs in 15 minutes, which is a world record.

you can relive the final minutes here and be all :D. and this is from a goon.

superbad is super awesome

not work safe for language

yup, i'm taking september 25th off

We said Fall 2007, but did you expect Halo 3’s release date to be just two days into the Fall? On September 25, 2007 (just two days after the Autumnal Equinox), players will be able to finish the fight they started in Halo: Combat Evolved and continued in Halo 2. Halo 3 will release in Europe on September 26, 2007. Worldwide dates may vary slightly depending on local rules and conditions.

do you remember mario paint?

title link goes to youtube page with much much more!

congratulations!

to geoff-melissa.

side note: joel, are you going to upload the thriller dance to youtube?

jane fonda flusters colbert

rarely happens but when it does, it's hilarious.

fuck your tickets, move on up and get closer

when win said that after "black mirror", entire rows in the back of the theater vacated into the aisles and turned the arcade fire concert into a small block party in front of the stage (glad there wasn't a fire marshal present).

win: "i love philadelphia. only city where you can park in the middle of the street. right in the middle of the fucking street."

fan yelling out: "it's more convenient!"

holy shit, it was a fantastic show. the national opened for them and they were also very good. check them out.

so you want to buy a tv

for geoff.

why hello there

dead center, six or seven rows from the stage.

ovarian cancer race results

46  10/47    24:01  7:44

this race was advertised as flat and fast... totally not true. it was curvy and hilly. i did pretty well until mile 2; i crossed mile 2 at 15:30 but i completely fell apart like a chinese bicycle not too long into it. overall, i still finished at 24 minutes which i'm pretty happy about. i think i could've definitely taken it down to 23:30 if i had more steam going into the last half mile.

<3 herbert kornfeld

not work safe language

i don't like the look of that elevation profile...

title link goes to a map i made of the university city 5k run

4.88k

some drama in the philly runners message board that i didn't really run a 24:21 5k this past weekend:

Using Sheila's assumed course length of 390 feet short, the course was 16014.1944 feet instead of 16404.1944 feet (5280 feet per mile, 5K=3.106855 miles). Therefore, racers ran 97.6225593% of a 5K (short course divided by 5K), a 4.881127965 K.

To extrapolate your time for a 5K, multiply your time by 1.024353395 (5K / short course). First, convert your time into seconds, multiply by above, then convert back.

24:56 would be my extrapolated time.

incoming paradox

Emilio's mother, Catarina Gonzales, on the other hand, is fighting to keep her son on the ventilator, allowing him to die "naturally, the way God intended."

i also found this quite ironic:

The law, signed in 1999 by then-Gov. George W. Bush, gives Texas hospitals the authority to stop treatment if doctors say the treatment is "inappropriate" -- even if the family wants the medical care to continue.

and then we have the bush of today, "The children here today are reminders that every human life is a precious gift of matchless value." delicious.

listening to

menomena's "friend and foe" (title link goes to their myspace)

co-op anti-zombie play

title link goes to zomg

still waiting for the official chip time

but my guntime was a little bit over 25 minutes! mile splits were something like 9-8-8.

UPDATE:

352   1198   24:21  7:52   25:06  56/105  M25-29  278/632  M 

zomg.

waiting for the starting gun

the spring 5k season starts bright and early tomorrow morning at 9am with the clean air run. there will be tons of hippies. i could care less about the clean air, i just want to run. i'm not as hill-climbing strong as i was last year but i'm probably consistently faster over 2-3 miles this year.

i had to dump the broad street run 10 miler for this year. instead i will try my hand at avenging my getting destroyed last year with 31:02. i had targeted the bsr at the end of last year but it didn't come together health-wise for me until two months ago. and it was much safer to focus on the spring 5k season than to push myself and potentially over-train for the bsr. i am still targeting a half-marathon in the fall though.

here's to trying to best my personal 5k record of 26:48 tomorrow!

grindhouse-esque movie posters

title link goes to sa thread. probably not work safe.

arcade fire in a freight elevator and in-audience performance

i love how the crowd explodes at that part of wake up.

#41 - Arcade Fire - Neon Bible & Wake Up
Uploaded by lablogotheque

bulboff covers the decemberists

not voting for fattah

His comments were an oblique response to U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, who stunned a mayoral forum devoted to urban design last week by saying planning projects would take a backseat to antipoverty programs if he were elected mayor.

Fattah suggested planning was a niche issue of interest mainly to affluent Center City residents, and said he preferred to focus on education and housing for the poor. "I'm interested in rebuilding the lives of people and not just the skyline," Fattah told the forum audience.

...

In yesterday's remarks, Levy observed that it had been easy for politicians to overlook Center City's needs because only 5 percent of the electorate lives there. But he argued that downtown is the beating heart that keeps the rest of the city alive. Despite its small geographic size, Levy said, the business district generates 47 percent of the wages Philadelphians earn.

he forgets that we can also vote with our feet.

making jfk a two way street is a decent idea

Among the cooler ideas:

A light-rail transit line, à la Dublin, Ireland, running down Market Street, connecting 30th Street Station and burgeoning University City with all of Center City. The line would then branch out north and south along the Delaware.

A concerted effort to soften and animate the dead, concrete civic spaces left by another era. Imagine, next to City Hall, a green Dilworth Plaza, home to movie nights in the summer and a skating rink in winter. Imagine the City Hall courtyard as a city crossroads full of things to do. Similarly, visualize a Benjamin Franklin Parkway liberated from the tyranny of the car, some of its grand sweep reclaimed for pedestrians and pastimes, with smoother connections among its cultural treasures.

A saving injection of green and color for the seedy dead zone of West Market Street and JFK Boulevard between the office towers and the Schuylkill: linear green parks, flowered medians, a Brooklyn Heights-style promenade along the Schuylkill from JFK to Chestnut Street.

Development of an academic district on North Broad Street, akin to the cultural district of the Avenue of the Arts, linking the learning institutions lining that raggedy stretch of the city's spine.

An East Market Street with attractive retail, and a streetscape that soothes pedestrians and links them smoothly to Chinatown to the north, and the residential blocks to the south. Some smart public investments might unlock the long rumored, never realized private investments in East Market's underused tracts.

These ideas would cost money, but not fortunes. They mesh well with the separate Delaware riverfront planning process being led by Penn Praxis (which is exploring an ambitious, project-of-a-generation idea - sinking Interstate 95).

Paintball welt

Paintball welt
Originally uploaded by mechakoopa.

at least nobody lost an eye.

mario game from hell

click on the title link

film festival update

Friday, April 06
10:00 PM The Bothersome Man The Bridge: good premise. good, could've been better. thinly veiled jab at consumer culture. 8.3/10

Saturday, April 07
2:45 PM Paprika The Bridge: over-napped, did not see.
7:30 PM Exiled The Bridge: decent and entertaining, full of cliches. gun fights could've been shot better (did you see the pun there?). 7.72/10

Sunday, April 08
4:30 PM Cruel Winter Blues The Bridge: pretty good character-driven story. not your typical revenge movie. 8.74/10
7:15 PM The Boss of It All Ritz Five: hilarious comedy for those that like office space and the office. 9.22/10

Monday, April 09
7:30 PM The King of Kong The Bridge: hilarious. "the rocky of gaming movies." 9.06/10

i love art

stolen from joystiq

this season of 24 has been disappointing

after the awesomeness that was season 5 and the first four episodes of this season, this abrupt drop in awesomeness is baffling. wtf!?

david cross and gavin something goes to china

found in the forums. not work safe for language. also for the squeamish, dog meat is eaten.

Part 1: http://www.vbs.tv/player.php?bctid=626899396

Part 2: http://www.vbs.tv/player.php?bctid=662859626

Part 3: http://www.vbs.tv/player.php?bctid=663334066

"So you push Mao out of the way and the fires of capitalism ignite."

i win the pool!

i called west philadelphia, for the win!

Temple doctors had cut open the chest of George's 21-year-old companion, whom police have not identified, and were massaging his heart when his younger brother began to tell police what happened.

The boy's mother cut him off and loudly warned her son " 'not to say a f-ing word,' " according to an officer who was at the scene.

" 'Don't talk to the f-ing cops,' " the officer quoted the woman as saying. " 'We handle this our own way.' "

"I couldn't believe it," said the officer, who asked not to be identified.

Moments later, four young men ran up to the victim's brother and told him to "say nothing to the cops."

The scene quickly grew even more surreal.

The mother of a third shooting victim arrived and told police: "I know who did it, and he's in this crowd."

As the woman looked around for the gunman, the crowd berated her and told her to keep silent, the officer said. "People were telling her to be quiet and saying, 'We'll get you, bitch.' "

Police called for reinforcements.

"How are we supposed to end this when we're up against these kinds of societal values?" asked the officer.

"It's discouraging and an absolute disgrace," said Homicide Sgt. Anthony McFadden.

the pool is starting for the neighborhood of #150.

peanut butter analogy disproves modern science

homer evolution

peyton manning throws a deep lol

washington was awesome

geoff, where has zombie friday been?

where else am i supposed to hear about the latest unliving adventures?

it's on now, eddie

they've developed a robot to battle eddie in guitar hero. they even gave it five fingers to better match up against eddie.

your sentences are songs sung in the key of lie

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

i do declare

Friday, April 06
10:00 PM The Bothersome Man The Bridge

Saturday, April 07
2:45 PM Paprika The Bridge
7:30 PM Exiled The Bridge

Sunday, April 08
4:30 PM Cruel Winter Blues The Bridge
7:15 PM The Boss of It All Ritz Five

Monday, April 09
7:30 PM The King of Kong The Bridge

Tuesday, April 10
7:00 PM The Cats of Mirikitani International House

Wednesday, April 11
9:30 PM Triad Election Prince Music Theater

Sunday, April 15
7:00 PM Fracture Ritz East Theater 1

Monday, April 16
7:15 PM Fair Play Prince Music Theater

and people say we aren't related to monkeys?

i just realized my blog is practically a youtube blog now. :(

whistle goes woo wooo

play this video here:

then, go to this ytmnd. solid woo wooo gold baby.

this is quite lols

itsa me

really digging the new mario.

super nintendo, sega genesis...

when i was dead broke, man, i couldn't picture this.

larry west for mayor!!

guys, he's got a mohawk. title link goes to his website.

will arnett cracks me up

lol

v is for virtualization, sucka

i pity the fool who doesn't use hitachi system virtualization!

metroid art

One Girl in All the World by =transfuse on deviantART

others: 1, 2, 3, 4

michael cera is snarky

just when you think the borat fun has ended

click the title link to check out the dvd packaging.

mcdonald's: i'd hit it

it's like a message board for unlisted phone numbers

i don't pick up phone calls from numbers i don't recognize (leave a voicemail!) and i like to google the phone number to see who or what it might've been. i've found this whocalled.us website that apparently does this sorta thing. (p.s. i'm totally onto you, drexel university!)

i own a blackberry now

living the digital lifestyle... or something.

new portishead?

"After a couple of hours [spinning] eclectic sadcore classics from the likes of Tom Waits and Joy Division," wrote the reader, "Geoff and...Adrian Utley began to play 'Wandering Star'-- Geoff playing bass. A few bars in Geoff picked up the mike and asked 'Anyone here know how to sing?' At this point Beth walked on stage and started singing."

...

"The second song was brand new," the reader continued, "presumably from the forthcoming (if you believe the rumours, sometime this year) album. Rarely have I seen a room full of people all wear exactly the same facial expression, but when I looked at the crowd everyone had their mouths gaping and eyes wide open as if they were witnessing an alien landing. It was wonderful. The new song was completely gorgeous, carried by Beth's vocals and with very low-key instrumentation."

bread experts are weird

derek's birthday party

title link goes to flickr pix. click here to see eddie and derek's pictures.

i don't know. have you checked the Conservapedia?

A conservative encyclopedia you can trust.

Conservapedia has over 3,400 educational, clean and concise entries on historical, scientific, legal, and economic topics, as well as more than 350 lectures and term lists. There have been over 190,000 page views and over 14,500 page edits. Already Conservapedia has become one of the largest user-controlled free encyclopedias on the internet. This site is growing rapidly.

Conservapedia is a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American. On Wikipedia, many of the dates are provided in the anti-Christian "C.E." instead of "A.D.", which Conservapedia uses. Christianity receives no credit for the great advances and discoveries it inspired, such as those of the Renaissance. Read a list of many Examples of Bias in Wikipedia.

Conservapedia is an online resource and meeting place where we favor Christianity and America. Conservapedia has easy-to-use indexes to facilitate review of topics. You will much prefer using Conservapedia compared to Wikipedia if you want concise answers free of "political correctness".

fyi: "CE is usually used in academic circles to avoid the confusion inherent in AD since there's no real way Jesus could have been born in 0AD."

IT HAS BEGUN

Chimpanzees 'hunt using spears'

Chimpanzees in Senegal have been observed making and using wooden spears to hunt other primates, according to a study in the journal Current Biology.

:O

chatty

hey geoff, how are you doing these days? how was the ice storm in soso?

download saturday night's npr arcade fire concert

click the title link to find the whole thing as a 71mb mp3.

speaking of will arnett

title link goes to "blades of glory" trailer.

what a lost episode!

the ending was quite delicious. i think lost got its groove back.

perfect for valentine's day

new pbf comic

arcade fire in philly on may 5th

05-05 Philadelphia, PA - Tower Theatre

WHO IS GOING WITH ME?!!!

the office

fyi, i'm still on team karen. i wavered slightly but i'm still rolling with the tk.

jesus camp is up on google video

prepare to get freaked out.

Levi: At five I got saved...
Becky Fischer: Yeah?
Levi: ...because I just wanted more of life.

... holy shit. :o

imdb
link to movie

you know you're big when you've got your own ice cream flavor

title link goes to stephen colbert's americone dream.

mario gone mad!

title link goes to awful forums mspaint thread. not work safe. probably not mind safe either.

wincing the night away

(title link to youtube video for "phantom limb")

i gotta tell ya, the new shins album is fantastic.

arcade fire to play live show on npr

The Arcade Fire's 2004 debut Funeral, was one of the decade's most remarkable rock albums. Now on the eve of releasing Neon Bible, their highly anticipated follow-up, the band visits New York's Judson Memorial Church for a full concert, webcast live on NPR.org Feb. 17. Hear The Arcade Fire perform selections from Neon Bible online beginning at approximately 8:30 p.m. ET.

i need to hear about what happened when derek watched old boy

wow

that was one crazy awesome episode of 24. wow. and next week's episode is two hours long!!

hey scott

you left one of your scrabble player pieces here last night. for realz.

super bowl potluck pix

wii madden is a ton of fun

i find myself gestating like an idiot. fun for everybody.

superbowl preview in tecmo bowl

stolen from joystiq:

bonus bo jackson:

center city nomenclature and division instigation

i want to bring noma (north of market st) and soma (south of market st) to the center city lingo. i haven't figured out how to designate west and east of city hall yet. the barbarians in soma would probably want it that way.

geoff, it's been decided that you live in soso (south of south st).

splinter cell 3 for ps3 to have boobs

(see title link for pix) i still don't understand their futuristic armor. not that i'm complaining.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH?!

i tell ya, rush hour movies are a guilty pleasure. chris tucker lives quite the life.

running update

i'm still fighting horrible knee pain and trying to train through it. somehow, i've been getting runner's world magazine for the past few months as some sort of introductory offer. well, they ended up hooking me into a subscription like a dumb fish. i like the magazine though. i've picked up a few exercises in the past few issues to strengthen my lower body so i'm hoping that'll help me with my knees.

believe it or not but i've been training in shorts at least once a week. outdoors. the coldest i've ran in was about 35 degrees wind chill. once you get warmed up after a mile, it's not too bad as long as you have the right layers going. i'll add some extra insulation in the form of running tights this week. unlike the infamous adam legend, i'll be wearing shorts on top.

these aren't normal tights though. the cw-x tights have 40 patents to them. i'm hoping the extra support will help with my knees and lower back. and they make me look like a superhero.

first race is coming up in a little over a month. considering where i am at today, it's going to be a stretch to be ready for 10k.

there will be no joy in the apartment this year

did my taxes. i owe the feds $12 and the state $1. i made out like a thief in the night last year when i was in a lower tax bracket and could claim higher educational tax credits. le sigh.

24 parody

what's up with those match.com webcam ads?

i noticed them at ytmnd. it's like you can't not look away.

i don't think ghostface killah is gay

see title link for list of gay bands.

future warfare doesn't make sense to me

why are her boobs not protected?

arcade fire plays live show in high school cafeteria

title link goes to pitchfork media article

well, i'm not buying another symantec product

my ghost 9.0 backups have been failing for the past week because it claims that the target disk is full. actually, windows says that my 200 gig drive has 113 gigs of free space. i'm backing up to a 150 gig disk. that should work. but apparently, symantec's code monkeys somehow fucked up the calculation of disk space in the lower-right corner (13.9GB!?!!). it's like they dropped a zero or something. so my backup won't go through because it thinks there's not enough disk space (150 gig disk is reading as 49.1GB!).

ok, maybe they have a patch or fix online.

The versions of Norton Ghost listed below have been discontinued. Phone, email and live chat support are no longer available.

fuck that, i'm not paying $49 to upgrade to ghost 10 because they don't know how to divide properly. i hope this post gets indexed by google.

ratm reuniting for one show

Rage Against the Machine, the seminal L.A. band that made heavy music into political manifesto, will reunite after a seven-year lull for one show as the headliners at the 2007 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Sources say Rage, which played the main stage at the first Coachella in 1999, will be joined by other familiar faces for the eighth edition of the festival, which covers three days this year and begins April 27: Red Hot Chili Peppers, which headlined in 2003, are back, as is Björk, who topped the bill in 2002. Organizers were mum this weekend and it was not clear which day Rage or the other acts were slotted to play; that announcement is expected in the next few days. Other acts expected in the eclectic lineup: Arcade Fire, Interpol, Willie Nelson, the Roots, Manu Chao, the Decemberists, Arctic Monkeys, Sonic Youth, Crowded House, Air, Tiësto and Kings of Leon.

that's quite the lineup. i used to like ratm when i was young and full of piss and vinegar. now, the 'machine' signs my paychecks and allows me to buy all sorts of cool stuff and live in a nice apartment in a nice part of town. i guess i am the machine now. :/

what a football game!

wow, the colts overcame a 18 point deficit to win. good for peyton manning. he's been due for a few years now. he played a great half of a game.

p.s. fuck the patriots

ninja restaurant in new york

more eight year old playing guitar hero on expert

title link goes to all of this kid's videos. below is freebird on expert:

career-summing movie posters

from sa forums. not work safe.

my blog is becoming a youtube proxy

colbert quits

after the democrats took control of congress last november. this is amazing.

Tommorrow you're all going to wake up in a brave new world. A world where the constitution gets trampled by an army of terrorist clones created in a stem cell research lab run by homosexual doctors who sterilize there instruments over burning american flags, where tax and spend democrats, take all your hard earned money and use it to buy electric cars for National Public Radio and teach evolution to illegal immigrants. Oh, and everybody's high.

why does derek have a phone anyway?

if he never picks it up. :<

those crazy japanese

passed along from geoff. tagged under japan.

well japan is the world leader in robotics

we figured they would overtake us in robotics and automobiles, but nobody suspected we'd lose break-dancing too.

updated: colbert on the bill o'reilly show and vice versa

i lolled. every single bill o'reilly attack on colbert was turned right back around on him like some sort of kung fu grip.

Colbert on The O'Reilly Factor
O'Reilly On The Colbert Report

there's a trekkie in congress

george takei is awesome.

arrested development's michael cera's youtube parody

original:

parody:

WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME! TELL ME WHERE BARBIE IS!!!

by way of geoff

eight year old kicks ass in guitar hero on expert

eat your heart out, eddie

last night's 24 upped the awesome

and then topped it five minutes later. :O

season six of 24 begins

it began without the rock & roll of season five's debut... with a much different jack bauer. this is going to be interesting. if kiefer keeps this up, he'll be up for an emmy.

got wood for sheep?

bulboff's roast

DSC01293
Originally uploaded by mechakoopa.

yeah he got pretty bad last night.

brian dawkins is fucking awesome

godfather on the wii

play the video. it looks... violent.

graw2

i dunno about you but this game is looking hot. i think it's supposed to be out in march.

i can't wait to play team coop elimination with scott.

i think i just read a huge spoiler for the beginning of season 6

if this spoiler is true...

oh. my. god.

our country

chevy's "our country" television ads that play every goddamn commercial break are the worst thing to happen to our nation since that anthrax scare a few years ago.

goddamn. at least it's easy to parody (onion, youtube).

yay eagles

man, they sure let it come down to the wire... probably to build suspense. they're going to get creamed by the saints though. :(

everything has been imported

it took a few attempts but all of the old posts with categories converted into labels have been imported into blogger. i hope google doesn't ban me for totally spamming their api this afternoon.

science!

added more sets

dave's 23rd birthday

my 22nd birthday

stupid hat night

the college years

uploaded a megaton of pictures from 2001-2003ish. the time frame for these pictures are from the first ever super-friends happy hour at mad4mex (september 2001) to graduation (june 2003).

there are pictures of the apartment i shared with dave in west philly. there are a lot of pictures of friends (eddie and derek are in there and so is crazy pete back when he was crazy). i think dave ended up borrowing my camera and taking some of these pictures.

there's a few more albums in this time frame that i'll get around to posting separately later.

will the programmer

it's like ye olden days where your name described your function in life.

like cedric the entertainer. who are you?

12 DAYS UNTIL 24 SEASON 6

johnny five not only alive but also fabulous

linked to clip 1. clips 2-8 should be easy to find.

apparently this was a pilot for comedy central that was passed on.

baked chicken

baking chicken has to be the best thing ever. not only is the chicken still tender and moist, cleanup is really quick and easy. just bake it on top of tin foil and throw it out afterwards.

arcade fire's intervention performance

why didn't i go looking on youtube earlier?

more videos from that session.

new years eve

geoff on the slide whistle

UNCLAIMED FREIGHT!!