steve kwan user experience designer

West Coast Express Update

(November 25th, 2003)

Hey, all!

This is the first update I've done on my PDA! I'm on the West Coast Express right now, heading home from work. Some lady sitting across from me was eating chips; they really stink.

Anyway, some cute girl is sitting next to me. I should be talking to her, but am I? No...I'm blogging on my PDA. :)

Oh well.

PDA

(November 23rd, 2003)

I have a new PDA!

I settled on the Hewlett Packard iPAQ 1940. It took me a while to make a final selection; the one I settled on was actually the third in a series of PDAs I experimented with.

The first was an HP iPAQ 1940, just like the one I have now. I picked it up from from Future Shop, Metrotown. Unfortunately, the headphone jack was what we call a sub-mini headphone jack (it was 2.5mm wide instead of the usual 3.5mm), so normal headphones wouldn't work in it. At the time, this was unnacceptable for me, as I'd purchased this to use as an MP3 player, among other things. I'd also like integrated 802.11b in a portable device, but the ones with that feature are VERY expensive.

The second was a Palm Tungsten T-1. What a piece of shit that was. Avoid Palm OS. It's crap. Anyway, this one was selected from the London Drugs by Metrotown. I returned it, though...although it had a normal-sized headphone jack, it didn't seem to have stereo sound! What a pile of junk. Anyway, the salesperson who I bought the PDA off of (and later returned it to) was a complete jerk. DO NOT SHOP AT THE LONDON DRUGS BY METROTOWN.

I finally realized that the HP iPAQ 1940 was a good PDA, so I got the same model as I first had, this time from Staples. It wound up costing me more money due to a different price for the extended warranty; not a real problem though.

On another note, I went out on Saturday and partied with Dean, Margaret, Sarah (we're on speaking terms), Uma and Sadie. Was fun. The booze led to a big headache, but I'm fine now.

Code Monkeys

(November 18th, 2003)

A man walks into a pet shop and sees a bunch of monkeys on display. He walks up to the first monkey, which has a $5,000 price tag on its cage.

The owner walks up to the man. The man asks the owner, "Why is this monkey worth $5,000?". The owner replies, "Well, sir, this monkey can program in C."

The man sees another monkey in another cage, and this one has a $10,000 price tag on the cage. The man asks the owner, "Why is this monkey worth $10,000?". The owner replies, "Well, this monkey can program in C++."

The man sees another monkey, this one with a $100,000 price tag on its cage. The man asks the owner, "So why is this monkey worth $100,000?". The owner replies, "Well, this monkey can't program in C or C++...but the other monkeys call him the project manager."

The Matrix Revolutions

(November 8th, 2003)

Hey, kids. Saw The Matrix Revolutions on debut night. I really, really enjoyed it...a lot of people have complained about the movie (and in particular, the ending), but I liked the entire thing. Sure, there were sappy lame moments between Neo and Trinity, but that's to be expected. It's just the style of the movie.

This movie in particular reminded me of Japanese anime. Because much of this movie took place in the real world, where everything had pretty much been exploded, there was a strong post-apocalyptic theme that was missing from the first two, where most of the goings-on took place in the modern-day Matrix.

Another thing: there were a lot of religious references in this movie. I understand that The Matrix has religious undertones, with Neo being Jesus and all, but in this movie they laid them on pretty thick.

Overall, I think The Matrix Revolutions was a very strong movie and definitely better than Reloaded, which I will probably never stop hearing complaints about. So go see Revolutions. Now.

Hallowe'en!

(November 2nd, 2003)

Howdy folks!

I suppose this message should have been posted sooner, as it's two days past Hallowe'en right now, but oh well. Went out to the Cat & Fiddle with Rod, Pavan and some other folks for Hallowe'en. Was great fun, with lots of drinking and so on. Some pictures of the Hallowe'en party, as well as a picture of the Port Alberni folks I dealt with, can be found in my gallery.

I dressed up as The Punisher for Hallowe'en; for those of you who don't know who The Punisher is (and there sure seemed to be a lot of people who didn't), The Punisher is a comic book character. For more information, go to the Marvel website and look him up. Most people seemed to think I was supposed to be Neo from The Matrix.

Below is a picture of me as The Punisher, with a picture of the real Punisher. Good costume, eh? Guess which one is me!

Was a great party, though. Had a lot of fun and met some nice people. Anyway, it's good to be doing a real update. Hope you all had a good Hallowe'en as well!