"Wait
for... Everything evil in you comes out / I'll stay when we'll only motivate
sound instead, Sergeant. Make for the table... In hopes that I won't be
afraid again / call when enabled, And send the leader out against... I
will /
Stage a reenactment in a false pretense / Exist, inflict, Unworthy unconsciousness
/ Why debate when the actions suppressed? "
30/05/2008
14:29
++ This summer course I am taking is certainly keeping me busy. I've spend a great chunk of my week working on our first problem set, and it really doesn't help that I have taken calculus four years ago. Anyway, besides that things are going well. My grandma just had a surgery done due to a lumbar disc hernia, she had been in quite a bit of pain in the last few months but hopefully everything will be well now. It's not an easy operation for an 80 year old woman.
++ A couple of weeks ago I picked up the new Coheed and Cambria album, which grew on me quite a bit. They are a very unique progressive/alternative band, also a theme band. Basically their music is based on a story which the singer, Claudio Sanchez, wrote in the form of a graphic novel together with the songs. So every time a new CD is released a new chapter of the saga comes out as well. I haven't really got a chance to read much of the story, I'm trying to find it still, but I know it involved the two characters Coheed Kilgannon and Cambria Kilgannon. It is a sci-fi called the Amory Wars. If you have never heard of them I definately recommend giving it a try. The vocals might be strange at first, I know the first time I heard the band I thought a 10 year old girl was the lead singer. His voice really grew on me, and I find it perfect for such a unique band. It's perfect on songs like Favor House Atlantic. Here are a few videos if you are curious to know what they sound like:
Favor House Atlantic
(acoustic)
Three
Evils & Everything Evil (live)
Welcome Home (video)
++ After I started reading more about the concept of the band and watching a few live videos I decided to check when they would be coming to Canada. Turns out they are playing a few blocks south of my apartment this Saturday. Carlin and I are going : )
"This
city is not built with concrete and steel; it is built with ideas."
12/05/2008
10:15
++ Hey all, I just went home to visit my folks this weekend which is always nice. It was mother's day as well, and we had this awesome pork meal yesterday, it was freaking incredible. After lunch I got the chance to watch a movie I had been meaning to watch for a little while but I don't think it is a very popular title. Anyway, the movie is called "The Science of Sleep", it is a very unique french movie. It is interesting as the main character is trying to get this girl he likes, but he has a bit of a problem. He often can't distinguish being sleep from being awake. His dreams are very vivid and this makes things for him very hard to handle at points. All in all I recommend the movie to anyone interested in a different movie that includes some interesting concepts at different points such as chaos and parallel synchronized randomness. It's not a thought provoking moving in any way but I like how they just throw these things out there to explain things that happen in the movie.
"A
gun in every home, peace on every street."
04/05/2008
12:55
++ Only one more exam to go and I will be technically done university. Unfortunately that doesn't mean that I am really done. I'm taking a summer course and likely I'll got back for a few more next year, maybe raise my grades a bit. Well this weekend I pretty much spent in the library studying. Carlin went back to Barrie so I didn't really have much else to do anyway. In the last little while I've also picked up a new game, FIFA manager 08. Basically it is a management game, where you are supposed to be a soccer club manager. The game can involve transfers, scouting, taking care of sponsors, expanding the stadium and even going golfing with your boss. The game is fairly good and complex, but it's a challenge that pays off once you start seeing your club get better. It is not a very popular game, specially in North America, so not only it is hard to find support and information, but the little you do find is either in german or some eastern european language.
++ I also watched a movie this weekend that I wanted to see for a while. It is a Brazillian movie called "Tropa de elite" (Elite Squad) which I had seen trailers before and looked very good. After watching it I would definately agree that it is a good movie. A little too much violence which may turn some people off of it but overall very good. I haven't been to Brazil in 5 years so I sort of forgot how some things are down there. This is not even something people would pick up from watching the movie I don't think, but just how people behave, interact and think in a general sense. It only took me this long to start forget so much of a culture I was exposed for the majority of my life. Overall, I recommend the movie if you can find it. Even gave me some insight on the police, I mean obviously everyone knows they are corrupt, but the movie shows different ways in which they are corrupt and how come the system doesn't really work.
"Take
two made them MADD"
02/05/2008
11:51
+ The fun never stops. The North American-based "anti-alcohol organization" known as MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) is up in arms over Grand Theft Auto IV, claiming that the game's ability to let Niko get behind the wheel while inebriated makes GTA IV worthy of an Adults Only rating. To step their publicity stunt and up a notch, MADD claims that they have appealed to the "game's manufacturer" to halt production of the game out of social responsibility, "out of respect for those who've been hurt or killed by drunk drivers".
++ To me it's just funny that in a game that you are awarded money for killing people, which can be done with a conventional gun, but options such as molotov cocktails, granades, exploding vehicles and even RPGs are available, there are folks that think the manufacturer of GTA are immoral for making a game that allows for drunk driving.
"Now
I lay thee down"
01/04/2008
12:10
++ I just decided to take a break from studying to post over here. I've had a few busy weeks with school, and surprisingly I'm actually doing fairly well this semester. I've been having a lot of midterms and assignments lately too. Anyway, I just got a few new albums on the past few days just out of getting sick of much of the same music on my MP3player. One big surprise was the newest Machine Head album "The Blackening" which is very good, and some tracks are amazing. The impression I got from this CD is that they finally stopped trying to shape their music to new trends. Since"The Burning Red" they attempted to put influences of rap metal, and electronic music and melodic catchy songs. While I can still listen to those albums, my general opinion was that they were going downhill a little more every time they released something new. With "The blackening" I see an album that is very true to what real metal should be, and since I think they are talented making metal it really worked out for them. While the new songs sounds new in terms of the quality of the instruments and the production I feel like I'm listening to unreleased songs from "Burn my eyes", extremely heavy and angry. Great music to listen to when you feel like it, works great for me between study breaks. If you are curious I recommend two songs in particular "Now I lay thee down" and "Clenching the fists of dissent". Below is a picture I found of Haze for PS3 that to me looks hawt. I haven't really heard much about this game, but the graphics look amazing as you can see, reminds me a bit of Crysis, which if I haven't mentioned is very good.
"A
new kind of gear for a new kind of athlete"
11/03/2008
12:10
++ My exam schedule just came out, and it turns out I only have 3 exams, two of them on the exact same day right in the beginning of the exam period, and one at the very last few days of exam. Despite having two in one day I shouldn't have any reason to complain as we have a whole week to study prior to the exam period. The weird thing is that I checked my exam schedule and right after I looked up my graduation schedule. It feels really weird, I always imagined people being very happy about graduating, but I unfortunately don't feel that way, as the uncertainty of what follows graduation is not a comforting thing. Although, if I do receive good news from any of the programs I applied for next year I am sure that this would change.
++ On a more positive note, yesterday Carlin found out that once again she has been given an NSERC award, however this time she'll be working on thin films rather than leaf litter. That should be very exciting for her, I know I am really happy that she got it.
"A
beleza de uma mentira"
23/02/2008
20:02
++ One of the ways I often procrastinate is by surfing the Internet for completely random thing/topics. Wikipedia is one website I have on easy access because it is simply amazing. Anyway, I often end up in websites with room for user feedback, and I can't stop noticing how obnoxious people are in general on those things. As I play WoW (Online game for those that don't know) I come across a lot of people chatting in a fairly anonymous way, and the one thing I always see, more often than not, is the horrible way people talk to each other. I initially thought it was just a local thing, and the great diversity of players created this hostility. Now I don't think that this is a local phenomenon anymore, I often find myself reading people's response to others, and it's horrible. Few people really respect others, most of the time a single word that has been misspelled is enough to trigger others to bash and insult the original poster. I'm starting to think it's the way Internet is so anonymous, since no one really knows who you are they feel like they can just say what they want, and unfortunately that is usually not a positive thing. Oh well, I should go back to studying, posting here is another way to procrastinate, just don't leave any nasty comments if I misspelled something.
++ On a completely different topic, today I have been studying for a midterm I'll have this week on Motor Control, and I was at some point looking over some notes on the pathway for cutaneous sensory input, which goes directly to the somatosensory cortex to be redirected to the motor cortex later on, I might make a nice PDF on some of the topics of this course that are actually extremely interesting. Anyway, I came across a picture of a representation of the Sensory Homunculus of a human. Basically what that means is a picture, or in this case a statue, showing a human(oid) using 1:1 ratio between each part of their body to how much it is represented in the somatosensory regions of the brain. So this ugly little fellow below basically shows what is represented the most in terms of sensations in our brains. The actual statue is found in the Museum of Natural History in London, I hope no one minds that I borrowed the picture.
"Green
destiny, I just seem to be unable to get away for the master of puppets"
12/02/2008
14:22
++ Here I am again procrastinating on a Tuesday afternoon, when I have many many hours to be productive and somehow I just seem to be physically unable to do it. I have spent the last four hours doing absolutely nothing, so I figured I might as well update my website which is at least something. I often assume that what I go through, a lot of people go through if not most people. So, right now, my inability to sit down and do work is probably something many many people are facing right now. Is there a way to do something about this (Besides actually doing what I would like to be doing?) I'd really appreciate some feedback on that as it would really help me out.
++ So anyway, I watched the new Rambo a couple of weeks ago, Carlin actually made it happen as she knows that Rambo goes way back for me, and for my great surprise she had never seen any of the previous movies. (Spoilers ahead) So we went and the 18+ rating given to that particular film was there for a reason. As I was expecting the movie was a blood bath delivered by an elder. As funny as the crowd in the theater found Silvester Stallone, I do believe that the consensus was that even though he's old he still kicks ass, and plenty of it. The other aspect of this new experience for Carlin was the audience. As many would expect, the theater was composed of about 90% males, you could practically smell testosterone in the air. The movie started with some Burmese soldiers killing innocent civilians for pure enjoyment, it was gory and shocking already at the beginning. A little while later, while Rambo is still just chilling and dropping his 10 lines of the entire movie, some pirates approach his little boat and Rambo basically murders a dozen of them in a matter of seconds, the theatre loved it. It was interesting to see how much the audience loved seeing Rambo kill, who by the way drew first blood this time. Carlin was amused and slightly disturbed by the cheers after Rambo massacres the entire Burmese army with no mercy, I have to say I myself got into the swings of the crowd and enjoyed the movie to its fullest. Overall watching the new Rambo in the theater was really fun, and if it was not due to the loud explosions, or the vast amount of died corn syrup splashing on the silver screen, it was because of the cult like audience to the series. It made the experience something you can't buy DVD. The week after I actually bought the old Rambo trilogy, and it was really fun to go back to when I was a kid playing with plastic machine guns.
"1-12--111-1311-99931-911731-9193719-71317731"
29/01/2008
11:46
++ I has been a long time since I last updated. But I figured it would probably be a good idea to start posting again, all I had to do is not be so lazy. Anyway with so much time in between there was obviously a lot of stuff that happened. Christmas was great, I had a good time doing very little which is really what I was looking forward to doing anyway. Carlin on the other hand went to Paris for Christmas, and she seemed to also have really enjoyed herself there. In school not much is new except I have new classes and that I missed an exam last semester. I ended up passing the course anyway but now I'm waiting to see if I can write that exam still, and hopefully by reading week I'll know that.(*I just found out I will be writing the exam*) Carlin is doing great in school, despite term marks always being a bit on the low side in her program it seems that in the end she always does well. This is very likely my last semester in UofT, and finally I am taking mostly courses that I actually wanted to take with one exception. I'm in a respiration course that seems fairly easy so far, a sleep physiology course that will probably be challenging but its one topic I really enjoy. I am also taking a motor control course, that I have no doubt will be the hardest course, but at the same time the material is different than anything I have taken so far and it should also be very rewarding. Besides that I'm taking a Marine Biology course that is a bird course and a Cardiovascular Developmental Physiology course that I'm not crazy about but it actually seems like an Ok course. This week it's also Carlins birthday, so last Saturday we went o a restaurant called "Red Violin" here in Toronto which is a Brazilian Churrascaria (Steakhouse). It was a bit on the pricey side, but the food was pretty incredible. It was pretty much as good as the ones back in Brazil, tons and tons of meat. They had a great variety of cuts and animals, my personal favorite was obviously the Picanha. They also had an amazing selection of salads to start with, varying from avocado salad, mango salad, different cheeses, prosciutto, salmon carpaccio, amazing shrimp, palmito and some "Pao de Queijo" on the side, which Carlin loved. Overall a great meal.
++ On WoW I joined a new guild last year, they are much more organized and it was a good move for me cause I have no responsibility now. Since then I've been doing a lot of 25-men instances. After 2 months on Vashj we downed her in November I believe, and since then we attempted Kael'thas which proved to be a big challenge specially with the holidays to slow us down. Well he finally went down on Jan21, on the same day we entered Mt. Hyjal and killed Winterchill. This week after clearing SSC and TK we went back and we are now 3/5 in MH.