No More SkyDome

It's really a sad sight when one sees that one of Toronto's former landmark the "SkyDome" has been bought out by Rogers and renamed the "Rogers Centre". This might be old news to some but for a guy that's been out of Toronto for about a year now I'm completely flabbergasted.

When was it that our national landmarks could be sold to the highest bidder? What are we gonna lose next? Ontario Place gets renamed Bell Canada World?

Really seeing Rogers centre at the side of the building really doesn't fit in my opinon, I guess I've been so used to seeing SkyDome that it is really out of place now. Everyone I know of in Toronto still refers to the place as the SkyDome so it's not a surprise that this little detail slipped right by me.

Well enough of a rant for now going to meet up with some old friends this evening, should have something more interresting to post then.

Why We Play Games

I was just reading this ever so interresting article that analyzes the human psyche an why games are so appealing (the original article can be found here). Anyways basically some of the key thing stated was mainly intuitive but one key re-occuring theme is games satisfy a human need of accomplishment.

Now I personally find this a really interresting statement, and would go to show why some people will sit on hours doing menial tasks just to finish an objective in a game. However to that respect upon analysing my own situation I don't heavily play games to this degree, and when I think about it it might be due to the fact that I already have preset rewards set in the "brain" so the need to suppliment this is drastically reduced.

The other might be value system. I view games as a form of entertainment and anything that is accomplished in games can be accomplished by anyone without much skill. I've notice that some view games as a challenge and will talk hours about how they beat a certain level or gained a certain high score. To me doing such a thing is useless since it doesn't take a really skilled person to learn and play a game.

So games it seems after reflecting seem to be able to capture a very specific audience I guess I'm just lucky that I'm not part of the addicted audience.

(Although I waste alot more time programming, or ripping open electronic toys)

Canada, bought out again!

Today I was in the Eaton's Center in Toronto, and I've noticed that Radio Shack is gone! Admittedly I didn't like the store and I used to call it crappy shack. This does show that Canadian companies are dropping off the map like flies.

First there was Business Depot that became staples.ca (US version is staples.com), then shortly after Futureshop was aquired by Best Buy. Now Radio Shack is bought out by Curcuit City which makes this Canadian Shout "Is there any Canadian Business capable of surviving?"

Finally Back in the T.O.

Well finally back in the T.O. I guess this is what is considered "Vacation time" nothing really to do here aside from my 3 computers humming happily.

Decisions Decisions

I got a tough decision to make in the comming week. I had an interview with a co-op position on the 22nd and they said they will get back to me next week, however I also just recieved word that on of my Prof's also wants me to work for him, for a pretty good salary I might add.

Unfortunately I need to tell my prof if I'm unable to take the position by Monday at which point ifire might not have made their descision yet. However, I will ask about my status on Monday and if they have declined or if the cost / benefit of going with ifire can't out weigh working for Dr. Wassyng then I will pic Wassyng's position.

Landed an interview

I finally landed another interview, this brings the magical interviews with Eng Co-op up to 2 now. The pending interview is with ifire, don't want to say too much right now as everything is still kind of up in the air.

Glenmount Site Update

In efforts to calm myself down I updated the look / feel for the 5 Glenmount message board.

Looks like most of my sites are getting a facelift now that I'm a guru of CSS stylesheets, which only leaves one site left for me to fix my portfolio site. The primary reason I'm procrastinating with fixing this one is that I didn't initally plan to do it with CSS sheets and thus it will be pretty hard to get all the styles in place. Plus that site was built from the ground up with various php scripts and thus it isn't as robust as a CMS system since I didn't orignally intend on putting one into place.

However if I am to convert it I think the next revision might use SQL, and include a built in editor seeing how I don't like updating as much as I used to.

The main obsticle is the stylesheets however, and the fact that I need to decide what stylesheets I will need in the final product, all else should be simple afterwards.

Also might want to know if I want to use PHP include or should I just use PHP's built in SQL calls to get my articles, the only issue here is that articles will be in plain text html anyways and I might not want to complicate my life by having to use "insert into articles..." commands.

I think though this is probably a summer project along with probably using some new tools like image-ready and dreamweaver to do the next layout format.

I don't want to fail, I don't want to fail, I don't want to fail....

Today much to my dismay while studying for Statistics I decide it might be a good idea to know what mark I'm going into the exam with. Well here it is:

Test 1: 10 out of 25

Test 2: 7 out of 33

Eeek!

That really doesn't look good even though this means I'll be going to be offloading 90% of the mark towards the final I really don't think I got what it takes at this moment to do much better than 40% on the final which definetly won't cut it.

So should I go to thode and examine past finals? Or should I just go on a useless self-study session?

Well can't do much for now thode opens tomorrow at 10:00am if I intend on saving the tatered remains of hope for passing this course, I will have to continue on examining how the solutions where done for the first two tests (and inadvertently how I did so damn poorly on them). Only tomorrow will I be able to get a glimpse of the up comming final. I might as well examing the solutions to the assignment as well but I think since I've been doing everything basically wrong it's time to learn by mimicking the Prof rather than making a foray to understand what's going on.

I love how Profs always put good luck on the exams on their homepages, in this case though I think I will be needing it.

Here we have an anime character in the making Amber Fox. (I couldn't resist putting a giant sweat drop) 

As with all birthdays it's traditional to have the birthday boy with cake all over his face :-), Brian's some character though as he never stops smiling. 

You two win the best picture of the night award congratulations Jay and Sahar! :-) 

Here's Christina and her pouty ways. (She's actually stealing Brian's cake) 

And here we have the Software Engineering crew. Who says software engineers have no life? 

Here's a pic of the birthday boy with his girlfriend Amber. 

Some people are a bit too tired, here's Chris and his constant refusal to take a good picture for me. (I think he was a movie star or something his past life and got alot of paparazzi training)