Tag: Journal Posts

Today I had a specialist appointment to fully quantify the damage to my vision from my accident last year. The appointment was about an hour of waiting in the waiting room, twiddling my thumbs, and an hour of experiments. They were forced to dilate my eyes, which means not only am I totally sensitive to light right now, but I’m having a very hard time reading anything. Not sure the verdict, but it’s looking pretty likely that my double vision in my upgaze is probably permanent. I can potentially compensate for this by changing my eyeglass prescription to have a slight upward taper in the lens, but since it doesn’t really interfere with my job, I’m ok for now I guess. While another surgery might be able to fix everything, I was told that at this point there is nearly as much risk as there is potential reward, so it’s […]

For some reason, I seem to get a lot of flack for getting ready for Christmas this early. There are those who can’t possibly believe that someone would put their decorations up in November, instead waiting until the last minute to put theirs up. For me, I love Christmas. I love coming home and flipping on the strand alongside my main window. I love being curled up on the couch with my duvet and a good movie, having no lights on except for the dim glow of my tree. My Christmas setup last year I guess part of the reason is that while in university, Christmas always went too fast. By that time, you were also extremely homesick, and putting up a few lights and some decorations somehow seemed to make studying in late December that much more bearable. Unfortunately for me, I always had exams on the last possible […]

So, I’m not sure if this is a good idea or not, but whatever. I’ve been messing in garage band for about six months now, wanting to record something but just not sure what to record. I used to be in choir over 20 years ago, and I can sort of carry a tune. I know I need to have a ton of practice to get anywhere close to where I used to be as a kid (and most of my practice was pre-puberty, so I have to re-learn a deeper voice), but I decided to get over the hump and just quickly record something and take my beats for it. When I was out in Toronto visiting everyone, Raymi pointed me at this song called Mad World by Gary Jules. I decided to cover it quickly in Garage Band using an acoustic guitar. I recorded everything using a shitty […]

So, something happened tonight that kind of irked me a bit. It was completely offset by the fact that I went out and did a pile of Christmas shopping, but all the same. When I was 17, I was at a summer party in Chilliwack at this guy Geoff’s house. Of course, being in a small town, we were all drinking our faces off at that point. Thankfully, most parties back then were in houses and everyone just spent the night, so for the most part we were all safe. Anyways, in walked these two girls, one of which completely caught my eye. I spent a bit of time talking to her and her friend, and ended up leaving with a really great impression of them both. They went to Chilliwack Senior, whereas I went to Sardis Secondary, so I had never met them before. This one girl, and I […]

I don’t think it’s really possible. Clearly a $5 Santa hat is what I was missing in life. Normally I’d just leave it as that, but I just did a semi-buzzed iChat with Rebecca and John, and we all just laid the smack down on the word CUTE, so I’m gonna post it here. Yah, you might as well logoff now because you got nothing on that.

I’m pretty beat, having spent a good portion of the day traveling again. The flight from Montreal to Vancouver, with the strong head winds, was almost six hours long – thankfully it was extremely bearable up in business class, thanks to my hot towel and my tasty meals. Despite all the perks associated with business class (and there are many), I think the main one I enjoyed is that the flight attendants and people you encounter all automatically treat you with respect. If you have a problem, they’ll help you solve it. If you don’t like your seat, they’ll help you move. Worried about your luggage? No problem — you get a fancy “PRIORITY” tag put on it. Try any of that in steerage class, and they’ll just laugh at you usually, at least on Air Canada. I don’t make enough to afford business class on my own, but it […]

Today I made the trek out to Chilliwack for a mini-BBQ at my sister’s house in honour of father’s day. It was great seeing my family again, and I hung out long enough to play a few board games. My dad and my nephew, Derek Happy Father’s Day buddy.

I’m not up to writing a full blog entry, but just wanted to let everyone know I made it home and that I’m recovering. The whole hospital procedure was far harder on me this time than last time, and I still feel really shaky. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll feel alot better.

Last night we had a mini drinking event at work where we said goodbye to Chris and Hanh. After consuming a few beers, we sat down and started to watch a bit of the hockey game. After the second period, Hesty and I ventured down Robson street on our way home and met up with John and Rebecca for a drink at a local restaurant. This morning I woke up around 11am (and man, was it nice to sleep in), had a quick shower and hopped into the car headed for Chilliwack. It seems like it’s been a really long time since I’ve been back home. My dad and I went halfers on some homemade wine a while ago, and today we got to head down and bottle it all up. So I now have 15 bottles of some really tasty Syrah to consume, in addition to the 20 or […]

I’ve had a few requests lately from people asking if I could send them a copy of my master’s thesis. So in the interest of saving time, I’m throwing it up here in case anyone wants to download it and read themselves to sleep. My research was primarily in the area of high definition video compression, specifically on a new codec called H.264 that is used in the new HD DVD formats such as Blue-Ray and HD-DVD. I proposed a novel scheme to combine concurrently broadcoast MPEG-2 standard definition (SD) streams with H.264 spatial difference information to create a HD broadcast stream at a reduced bitrate. So, here it is. Enjoy.