steve kwan user experience designer

Nahoa

(April 30th, 2004)

I finished the first version of Chris Weltens' website! His company, Nahoa Custom Paddles, was looking for a website so I whipped one up for him. Doesn't look too bad. Click here to see the Nahoa website. If anyone has any feedback, please let me know by posting on the message board.

ARGH

(April 29th, 2004)

Well, I was having a great day until just now. I spilled my Starbucks latte all over myself. There goes $5.

Everybody's working for the weekend

(April 26th, 2004)

What an uneventful weekend. It was fantastic. As Peter Gibbons once said, "I did nothing...and it was everything I thought it would be."

I went out to the Shark Club with Ryan and Divyesh on Friday night (to raise money for Tory's dragonboat team), but on Saturday and Sunday, I didn't leave the house for any reason except to do the garbage. I basically sat around and played video games.

I finished Max Payne 2 and came close to finishing No One Lives Forever 2. Good games. Might post more thoughts on them later.

Tomorrow is my first class for Critical Reading & Writing at BCIT. I have some reading to do before I start; I'll try reading the textbooks while I run on the cross-trainer at the gym. Think that'll work?

Class tonight

(April 22nd, 2004)

Well, I have class tonight. The class is COMP 7081; its more meaningful name is something like "Advanced Topics in Software Engineering." You're supposed to learn good practices for managing software and ensuring quality. Hooray, I get to go to spend four hours of my evening learning about what I've done wrong all day. And it only cost me $650. Thanks, BCIT!

Matt Good, video games, and the Vancouver Canucks

(April 21st, 2004)

A few things to post on today...

I was excited to hear that Matt Good's going to be releasing a new single in May, followed by a new album in June. Go to Matt Good's convoluted website for more information.

I installed BitTorrent yesterday - yes, a bit behind the times for a software engineer, I know - and downloaded a few games. I have yet to try them out. This is big for me, as it could save me lots of money if I download games instead of buying them.

It's a bit dated to be posting about the Canucks, I know...I was at the gym when I watched game seven and saw Calgary knock us out of the playoffs. I spent most of the game at the gym. Now that was a long workout.

Additionally, if your resolution is greater than 800*600 pixels, you'll be able to see my mysterious face to the right of the screen now. Eerie.

Strange...

(April 20th, 2004)

A while ago, I witnessed something odd that I thought I should mention here.

I was at Starbucks by the counter, and a homeless man wandered in. I recognized him; he was one of the regulars and I see him around all the time. He went up to the front and made a move for the tip jar. Now, the Starbucks tip jars are frequently raided, and so as soon as I saw him move for it, I got a little mad. But then, instead of taking money out of the tip jar, he put money into it.

Odd, isn't it? Now, I think the local homeless get along well with the baristas at this branch. I suspect that this was the man's way of thanking the baristas for the free whipped cream they give out (the homeless people always ask for it). But even so, I find it strange that a man who lives on the street and owns almost nothing is tipping the baristas, when many of the bank executives next door and software engineers down the street likely don't tip at all. Kind of puts an interesting perspective on society and the homeless.

Saturday, hooray!

(April 18th, 2004)

It's Sunday now, and man, did I have a great time yesterday.

I spent the day with Michelle and Shereen. We went out for coffee, caught The Punisher, had some Thai food, then watched the Canucks game. It occurs to me how truly lucky I am to have two hot, single women hanging out with me for coffee, action movies, food and hockey. How am I going to top this?

Kill Bill

(April 16th, 2004)

Well, tonight is release night for Kill Bill 2, Quentin Tarantino's latest blood-soaked crapfest.

Personally, I don't understand why everybody is so excited about this stupid movie. The first one was bad. Really, really bad. It was a painful, pointless bloodbath. But yet, everybody loved it. Except me, that is.

Now, I understand that I'm not always right, but Kill Bill was an awful movie and didn't deserve the praise it received. Sure, it had some style and some neat perspectives, but for the most part it was thoughtless violence and a thin storyline. I don't see why it was a critic's favorite.

Ebert and Roeper gave it two thumbs up; not a surprise. Quentin Tarantino could put out a movie called "Roger Ebert is a Big Fat Pidgeon" and Roger Ebert would still give excellent reviews. I can just see them now: "This movie is a masterpiece! I am so thrilled that my name is a part of this cinematic achievement!"

Even though this movie is sure to be as shitty as the first one, and I think it's going to be a cinematic grossout, I suspect that I'll probably wind up seeing it anyway. I may be right, but I'm not necessarily smart.

New games!

(April 14th, 2004)

In part of my continuing quest to replace women/dating with computer games, I've purchased five new games and thoroughly played them all. I'll post my thoughts on 'em here.

Call of Duty:
Wow...what an awesome game. Now THIS is a World War II shooter. I'm generally not a big fan of the whole WWII shooter thing, having avoided the Medal of Honor and Battlefield series, but I'm having a lot of trouble finding fault with Call of Duty. The graphics are amazing, the game seems to run fairly smoothly, the single-player is engrossing, and the multi-player is a load of fun. The only negative thing I can say about Call of Duty is that the multi-player portion seems like a watered-down version of Counter-Strike. But overall this is an excellent game, and it's no surprise that it won Game of the Year.

Unreal II: The Awakening:
I saw this game on sale for $9.99 at Electronics Boutique, and at that price, how could I turn it down? Now, I'm wary of games that come with a price tag of $9.99...after all, that's what I paid for Daikatana. But I was generally impressed with Unreal II. The graphics are astounding. I don't know if I can name another game with graphics like Unreal II. My only real complaint is that the game just doesn't seem to reach its potential. Most of the game is pretty bland and not horribly interesting. It gets far, far better near the end, but the middle of the game is pretty boring. Despite the awesome graphics and diversity of the levels (each takes place on a totally different planet), you more or less shoot at boring marines throughout a large part of the game. Considering the amount of effort put into developing the different worlds in this game, it's a shame that they spent such little effort on the enemies you encounter. But overall, it's a decent game, and for $9.99, why would I complain?

Unreal Tournament 2004:
While this game is not bad, there's nothing about it that really stands out about it either. It's basically the same as the old Unreal Tournament, except with sharper graphics, a more sophisticated single-player mode, and a few new features. The most noticeable additions I've seen are the Onslaught game mode and the vehicles.

Onslaught is kind of a neat mode of play where you have to conquer individual nodes to progress toward an enemy base, and then eventually conquer their headquarters. It seems to make your game seem less like a frantic gunfight and more like an epic war.

The other noticeable additions are vehicles. In Unreal Tournament 2004, you can ride around in various vehicles - an idea which seems to have been adopted from Halo. Personally, I don't find driving around in the vehicles all that interesting or fun, but then again, I don't drive in real life either, so I might not be the best person to ask.

Halo:
What an uninspired, overrated game. Halo has a few good points...little innovations like the recharging shield that allows you to recover from enemy fire, and the two-weapon system that only permits you to carry two guns at a time, making you think harder when picking up new weapons.

Unfortunately, the rest of the game is more or less crap. The story line, while slightly interesting, is pretty standard fare. While the game has great enemy AI, the gunfights and levels get extremely repetitive after a while. Also, people have ranted about how great the graphics in Halo are, but I just don't see what the fuss is all about. The graphics in this game are decent, but the colors used are just awful. In particular, the pink alien spaceship levels were the worst.

This game is a complete computer whore as well. I have a brand new computer with a 2.0GHz processor and a 128MB video card, and this game STILL ran choppy at 640 * 480 resolution. Another thing: this game reminds me of Daikatana for some reason. That's not good.

Enter the Matrix:
This game was another Electronics Boutique deal. I picked up Enter the Matrix for $14.99. One good thing I can say about this game: it has style, and lots of it. I also like the polished tie-ins with the movie; they add a neat depth to the game.

Unfortunately, the rest of this game is shit. The physics are laughable, the AI is retarded, the controls are awful...there are few good things I can say about it. Much like The Matrix Reloaded, this game is a waste of $14.

Here's what I don't get.

(April 12th, 2004)

So I update this site less often and put up less thoughtful, less interesting posts...and my site visits go up.

What's going on here?

Either Googlebot is getting a little more active with stevekwan.com, or you people are telling your friends how great this site is. I'm not sure why you'd do such a thing, because this site is crap...but whatever. More coverage for Stevie K.

I guess I should really start posting meaningful and entertaining articles from now on. Maybe I'll do that. Maybe.

New pictures

(April 8th, 2004)

I've put up some new pictures. They're available on my gallery page.

Here are the specific links below:
20040121: A picture of me wearing a tie that Christopher got me for Christmas
20040213: Pucca with a dog biscuit
20040214: My hot date(s) on Valentine's Day
20040330: Tory's goodbye party
20040401: Mary and Baseer's Employee Recognition award
20040404: "I heart Elisabeth"