Blog

Updated as often as I can manage

Thursday, May 29, 2003
You know, Tuesdays are bizarrely empty without my weekly dose of 24. Call us obsessed (note the use of "us" here), but it was a rather significant chunk of life around here.

For those not acquainted with the show, it stars Kiefer Sutherland as CTU Agent (think FBI/CIA/MI6, depending on where you're from) Jack Bauer. The first thing to note is that a season takes place entirely over the span of 24 hours, with 24 hour-long episodes laying out the story in (close to) real-time. This brings up the second thing to note: Where most TV shows bring up a different storyline for each episode, 24 stretches a single plot over an entire season, each episode unravelling more and more of the story while the danger kicks up a notch. 24 also specialises in superb twists and cliffhanger endings. As such, when the clock ticks down to the end of the episode, you want to see the next one and you want to see it now.

Season 2 started airing in the UK in March, and it only took a few episodes before we -- being myself, my cousin Kavi and his housemates -- demanded to see more, and see it now. With the US at least half a season ahead of the UK, we took to the Internet to find new episodes, and it wasn't long again before we caught up. Or before we figured out that at precisely 11am London time on Tuesdays the latest episode would be unleashed to download. And so our routine was set. Every Tuesday morning I'd wake and anxiously reload the page, waiting to snag the episode that macrosecond quicker. After starting, I'd go about my business and by the time I got home in the evening, the download was complete. I'd burn it for them to pick up, finish off my work, and retire to my bedroom to watch it on the laptop. Wednesday would be dominated by talk of the episode (usually along the lines of "OH MY GOD DID YOU SEE THAT?!") and ruminations for the next. Thursday would similarly be dotted with various 24-themed conversations, usually with a tinge of "Damnit, it's still only Thursday". On Sunday, the BBC would show the UK's latest episode, and despite having seen it, we'd usually watch it anyway. Monday would revert to feverish talks and predictions for the next episode, with a side of "Isn't it Tuesday yet?". And then, at 11am, the cycle would begin afresh.

And now I have to wait another nine months for them to bother to film and show Season 3.

In other news I clearly don't want to talk about (though don't take that as an indication that the above 24 chatter was forced in any way; I can talk at excessive length about all things 24, and note that I haven't even mentioned the great plot or cast yet), my grandfather's cancer was diagnosed as terminal lung cancer. He has six months left, at the most.

As much as I'd like for him to stay around for as long as possible -- forever, even -- another part of me is hoping that it ends soon, because I don't want him to suffer. I can't really reconcile my thoughts on this properly. It's natural to hold on to and not let go of those you love, and I feel that. I don't want him to go, ever. But I also know that he's also suffering a LOT. I'm starting to get really affected by reports relayed from my mom that he screams about the pain at night, and I'm still some 6000 miles away. I don't know what I'll do when I'm there. And so, a more rational part of me is saying that, well, perhaps it's better if he goes as soon as possible. There is no hope anyway -- doctors confirmed they won't do anything about the main cancer because it's spread too far, too fast and it's beyond hopeless -- and so why prolong his suffering? He's confined to a bed as is. But yet, when you think about it... I'm effectively wishing that my own grandfather dies, and soon. Do I really mean that? I don't. But I do.

Like I said, I can't think this through clearly now. All I know is I just want what's best for him.

Posted at 12:11 AM

Tuesday, May 27, 2003
Amusing note from home... my little cousin, Naomi (the cute little tyke in these photos) started Kindergarten yesterday. It's always a traumatic day for parent and child alike -- it was for me, anyway -- and it seems it wasn't any different for her. She came back with only one thing to say: "She left me! My mommy left me! She left me!"

I did a bit of cleaning and updating around the site and I'm currently tracking two issues that I hope to squash soon. The first is that I will soon be moving away from BlogSpot to my own server. For the end user, this doesn't mean too much unless you've bookmarked this page; for me, it means a ton of crawling through HTML to change all the links and the removal of the annoying advert. The other issue has to do with the WAP page, accessible only to mobile phones, being that I can't seem to split the gigantic wallpaper download page into two -- the server doesn't seem to allow it. Don't know why, and I doubt I'll find out why for a while, so sorry about that.

By popular demand -- yes, believe it or not, not only do people come to this site, but they actually demand more from it (I'm as shocked as the rest of you) -- I added two new categories to the phone wallpaper. One will house the (growing) collection of Hong Kong-themed wallpapers, for the homesick, and the other is the ever-popular Girls (mainly for the Kavi demographic). Britney is currently the only resident, but that's not a bad thing, is it?

Posted at 12:47 PM

Monday, May 26, 2003
I love it when there's nothing to do and nobody's willing to do anything. Actually, that's a lie. I hate it. Saturday was looking to be another one of those days. After a mass call-around, Herbert bravely answered that he too was willing to do... something. Good enough for me.

So we ventured out to Leicester Square, the UK's unofficial home of movies, to see The Matrix Reloaded. With six or so cinemas within a couple of minutes of each other, you'd figure that we had plenty of choice. You'd figure wrong. Just one cinema was showing the Matrix. Even better, the cinema that hosted the Matrix PREMIERE just a few days before wasn't actually showing the movie, but X2 instead. So we watched that. And then ate a lot of sushi. So while it was hardly exciting and eventful, it was at the very least an enjoyable day, so a big thanks to Herbert for bothering to do something. Which is more than I can say for the rest of you, eh?

Don't expect much upcoming excitement, either: Yesterday was a Sunday and today is a Bank Holiday Monday. Didn't we just HAVE one of these? I can't believe I'm complaining about having too many public holidays, but...

Posted at 6:51 PM

Saturday, May 24, 2003
I hate it when I leave the TV on for ages and suffer through a rubbish movie because I'm too lazy to change the channel... and then when you finally change the channel, you get to watch the ending of Spaceballs. I love Spaceballs! And I missed it!

Anyway, just a couple of fun things today... fun for me, anyway. Given that I grew up under the flight path of one of the busiest airports on the planet, I do like planes, and Airliners.net sucks up way too much of my time. It's one of those sites you rediscover on the net every few months, spend the night pouring through it, only to forget about it the next day.

Aside from checking out a bunch of pretty wild pictures -- examples here, here, here, here and here -- I also like looking around the Hong Kong pictures for pictures of my neighbourhood. And I did actually manage to find one of my house. It's hard to spot, but with a little help from Photoshop, it's pretty clear. You can click the image to go to the full-size version. Maybe later I'll find and tag shots of school and my cousin's house, both of which are also visible in other shots.

The other fun link (I guess I'm making up for the lack of Interesting Links of the Day, eh?) is from the BBC, and it also involves photos of my home. Kinda. Rather than from 50 metres up, these are from... 139 million kilometres up. From Mars, to be precise. Check out the story here, and also be sure to check out the rather cool image at the bottom -- another shot of Earth, but this time from Neptune.

(Incidentally, if you liked all that, the original link for the Earth-from-Mars pictures are here, and aside from more detail, they also show Jupiter and three of its moons in the same shot)

Posted at 2:21 PM

Friday, May 23, 2003
Not that I want to be a gloomy-puss, but I'm going to have to talk about more bad news today. News from Hong Kong is that my grandfather (on my mother's side) has cancer, and it's apparently very serious -- serious enough that my mom is flying out tonight for Australia.

I really don't know what to think or how to feel. It hasn't really hit me yet. It's not that we're not close or anything... it's just that my paternal grandparents have either lived with me or very close to us, so comparatively speaking I'm not really too close to my maternal grandparents.

It's also been hard because he has Alzheimer's, and that obviously makes phone calls very difficult. He's my grandfather, and so... I kinda feel bad doing what everyone else does and "talking down" to him, you know, slowly and simply, as if he was a little kid... but yet when he forgets everything (not through any fault of his own, mind you, Alzheimer's just does that), you can't help it. And it makes you feel more distant because in effect, you're always starting every conversation from scratch. Sometimes he can't remember that I'm in London, or why, and so we have to go through that before we can even attempt anything further, or deeper.

And so now... it hasn't quite hit me. It's easier because he's quite literally halfway across the world, and in the absence of details (other than "he has cancer" and "it's bad"), well, you just don't want to imagine someone you love in that condition. When my mom arrives there sometime in the next day or so I should know more, and all I can do is hope for the best... or at the least, that it's as painless as something like this can possibly be.

Posted at 9:43 AM

Thursday, May 22, 2003
di·chot·o·my n
1. a separation into two divisions that differ widely from, or contradict each other

To describe the last two days as a dichotomy would probably be accurate. In doing so, I can also reveal one of the exciting projects I've been alluding to over the last week or so. I've been wanting to "spread my wings" so to speak with my writing career and try and get work with non-gaming magazines. Given my interest in technology in general, and gaming's growing prominence among the mainstream, I figured this would be a good time to make the jump by pitching a gaming piece to a magazine. With help and encouragement from Kristie, an old colleague from CNN in Hong Kong, I pitched it to TIME magazine. And they expressed an interest in it... except it clashed with another piece they already had ready to run, so couldn't take it up. And that, I thought, was the end of that.

Roll on Tuesday morning, when I see another email from TIME. They didn't want to revive my pitch, but instead had something else for me to work on... the caveat being that it had to be done within the next two weeks. Great news! I replied to say I was interested, and left feeling rather good about myself. A potentially great break here.

I was about to go down to hang out with my cousin at this bowling alley (I despise bowling itself, but they have the only decent arcade for miles and it's within walking distance) when I got a message on the computer. A fellow gaming journalist -- and fellow football nut -- from Finland, Thomas Puha, was urgently looking for me. Because Thomas had two tickets for next week's Champions League Final. And none of his fellow Finns could get a flight down here in time. Given that the venue is Manchester, a three hour train ride for me... he offered me the ticket. VIP ticket, courtesy of Sony, to the biggest football game of the season, starring one of my favourite teams, AC Milan. Too good to be true, right? So I braced myself for his price. He could have said £100 and it would honestly have been a reasonable price (though whether I could afford to pay that price is debatable). Instead he says he'll give it to me if I pay for half the cost of the hotel room. My jaw hit the floor. I agreed, and he said he'd confirm the details tomorrow.

Then... I went to McDonald's.

To finish it off, by the time I got home, the last episode of the brilliant second season of 24 was ready and waiting for me on my hard drive. I watched it and enjoyed it immensely. Tuesdays will always feel a little different now that I'm not scrambling to be the first to download the latest episode of that show (and the way it's structured, you WANT to see the next episode as-soon-as-possible), but that won't hit me for a while. Great episode and a fine end to the season.

Needless to say, that was a very good day. What was to come over the next 24 hours wasn't.

First up, email from TIME. Where they drop the bombshell -- "sorry, I misjudged my deadlines, this had to be finished YESTERDAY, not in two weeks." Whatever work they had planned was effectively snatched from me before I even knew what it was. Which, you know, sucks.

As it's getting later in the day, I notice that I haven't had a message from Thomas yet. I haven't booked my train tickets for Manchester because I said I'd wait for him to confirm the details first. Bit odd that he hadn't come in yet. I managed to get a message through to him to get online, and I probably should have realised that he had bad news. It seems Sony screwed up with their ticket allocation, and Thomas won't have two tickets -- only one. So he's going, and I'm not.

He said his apologies etc, but it didn't make too much of a difference. I don't especially blame him, it's just... well, I'm a football nut, and it's my team in the biggest club football final in the world, and it's one of the things I've always wanted to see while in Europe (in my first year, I tried to get tickets for the 2000 European Cup Final in Paris, but was rejected by UEFA's "random lottery"). So you know, I can't really help but be disappointed, particularly because it came up so suddenly. Just minding my own business and then... hey! You're going to the Champions League Final! And then... hey! You're not!

It's also disappointing when allied to the second TIME rejection. I did feel that it probably wouldn't happen, but it was worth a shot nonetheless. And though it ultimately came to that in the end, again you can't help but feel disappointed by the nature of it. I'm generally pessimistic, but when two great breaks come up at once (which they did)... even I figured that at least ONE would pull through in the end.

I'm probably whining too much. Ultimately, the sum of the last two days is that nothing happened. I wasn't going for the Final or getting any work from TIME before Tuesday, and hey, I'm not getting any now. I guess I can't shake the feeling of disappointment because it's really been quite quiet recently, and there's not much to get me up and excited anymore -- nothing to "drown my sorrows in", so to speak, and I guess that's also bothering me... possibly more than the dual disappointment.

Either way, here's to tomorrow being an uneventful day.

Posted at 2:20 PM

Saturday, May 17, 2003
Continuing the food theme from last time: I really miss good Chinese food. Despite a vast selection of Chinese restaurants all over London offering "authentic" Hong Kong food, there are only a handful of places that even come close. So when my uncle and aunt visited and decided to take us all out to a Chinese restaurant, it was with some relief and much celebration that they took us to one of the only good places. And then proceeded to stuff all of us -- "us" being myself and my five London-based cousins (Kavi, Haneal, Krsna, Reshma and Shaman) as well as a visiting uncle -- with course after course after course. I don't think I was alone in being full after the appetizers.

It was good to pig out and see my uncle and aunt... or should I say grand-uncle and grand-aunt? The family tree is too convoluted to explain it properly, but either way my grand-aunt is like a grandmother to me, so it was good to see her. She's also having her driver bring over a bundle of chocolate tomorrow. How can you not love that?

(Speaking of which, that was typical me, really. "I'm going shopping to get foodstuffs for you kids tomorrow. What do you want?" she asks. "Ooh, how about noodles?" someone says. "Can you get me some Indian cooking ingredients?" another asks. Me, cook? Noodles? Yeah right. "I want... chocolate.")

After saying our byes and with their car safely around the corner... the men in the group spontaneously decided to go out drinking. Don't ask how, or why, we just thought it was a good idea at the time (though the official reason was something like "Last time before exams!" or something). Cue three drunken hours at Leicester Square tourist-y joint Tiger Tiger, full of 30-somethings and far too many men. Seriously, the man/woman ratio there was something stupid like 80/20. Still, since we were ostensibly there to spend time with each other, we just stuck to our drinks and conversation, and it wasn't a bad night overall. I don't tend to enjoy nights out anymore -- not entirely sure why really, but it's not a London/HK thing since I feel the same in both places. Maybe I'm looking for something new?

I heartily recommend everyone check out the film Old School, by the way. Incredibly funny movie with the ever-brilliant Will Ferrell (as well as a couple of bit-parts for two 24 actors, bet you can't find both!).

And nobody talk about the Lakers, please. Thanks.

Posted at 2:54 PM

Wednesday, May 14, 2003
Pop-Tarts are heavenly. This is a fact. Kellogg's greatest creation, toaster-ready pastries with various fillings like my favourite, cinnamon (not apple cinnamon, just cinnamon) are the perfect breakfast treats. And they're easy to make, too: Dump them in the toaster oven for 2-3 minutes, remove, eat. Still, I can mess that up. To prove how god-awful my kitchen skills are, I managed to set one on fire (told you I can't cook). It wasn't a house-threatening fire, thankfully, just a "oh-no-I-only-have-seven-pop-tarts-left" fire. This is a problem because they don't sell the incredible cinnamon Pop-Tarts here in the UK, just chocolate (ugh) and strawberry (ugh-er), and so these had to come in from America. Damnit, I only have seven Pop-Tarts left.

It looks like I'll get a reprieve and an extension on that work. I say "looks like" because they said they'd go tell the editor about the problem, and that it should be left for the next issue... but I haven't heard anything back yet. Why am I expecting a "Where's the piece?" email on Friday morning?

Everything else is dominated by video game news from E3; since nobody cares, I'll sum it up as such: Microsoft looks solid, Sony looks dominant, and Nintendo is doomed. In other news nobody cares about, AC Milan won despite a nervy last few minutes, and the Lakers lost despite a nervy last few minutes. LA had a chance at the buzzer to drain the game-winning shot. Last year in a Game 5, Robert Horry hit the shot to win the game. This year in a Game 5, it bounces in and out of the rim for the loss. A sign?

Lastly... looks like I have two exciting upcoming projects. I don't want to say too much yet, lest I jinx both, but... I'm pretty pumped for both, and I think they'll be really cool. Hopefully I can mention more about one soon, though the other isn't until mid-to-late-summer. Wish me luck.

Posted at 12:13 PM

Monday, May 12, 2003
Sorry for the lack of updates, because (as things have a habit of doing) after so little happening that you're lulled into a stupor of boredom, suddenly everything kicks off again.

Like work. This week is the annual E3 Expo in LA, where the entire gaming world converges to drop various bombshells that nerdy gaming types like myself get excited about. So I'm expecting a week without work, where I just get to watch what's going on. Instead, I get an email from the EIC of WestEast Magazine in Hong Kong, a friend of my parents and someone who helped me out somewhat (he's the one who got me in to his party to meet Hidetoshi Nakata), asking me to do a story on videogames for his new issue. Great, I get a chance to increase my portfolio (and earn some cash, ahem). Then the penny drops: It's due on Friday. And they need images. By Friday. When everyone with anything to do with games (except me, I guess) -- any developers to interview, any PR folk to send me print-quality images -- are all sitting in LA. Uh oh.

Things exploded too in a sporting sense... in more ways than one. Despite my Lakers pulling the Spurs series back to 2-2 with a couple of outstanding wins, Liverpool lost their final match of the season and miss out on the Champions League, and so I don't want to dwell on this for too long. But it does allow me to segue into my Interesting Link of the Day from Friday's Lakers game involving Jack Nicholson, who's just moved up a few places in my Favourite Actor list.

Ah well, here's to the week ahead not being an insane, stressful mess.

Posted at 1:20 PM

Thursday, May 08, 2003
Not too much today, ran into town to grab a wireless Internet card for my sister's laptop and watch the big Champions League game. The good news is AC Milan didn't lose, and a 0-0 draw going into the "away" leg (which is somewhat of a misnomer given that both matches take place in the same stadium) is the best possible result after a win. The bad news isn't football related atall, but from the NBA: The Lakers got totally, completely and utterly demolished by the Spurs, and now face a mammoth task (one which I don't think they're up to) if they want to retain the NBA title.

So let's forget sports. Instead, let's move on to something else. Idly browsing the beverage list on the 7-11 website (extreme boredom and some nostalgia for my HK days -- don't ask), I noticed something rather amusing. Clicking on the "Beer" or "Wine" tabs brings up a pop-up window that asks to confirm whether you're 21 before proceeding. What, you need to be 21 to even look at a website with a picture of a beer? Americans...

Posted at 2:30 PM

Wednesday, May 07, 2003
Monday was apparently a bank holiday. Shops shut early, the post office was closed, as were banks. Yet Kingston University still saw fit to schedule lectures. No, I don't get it either.

On the bright side, with the resumption of postal service on Tuesday came a couple of packages and NO (!) bills. Sam K kindly sent me the monthly consignment of ZD magazines from the States (of which I'm only in two this month, sigh), and I finally received my birthday present -- a pair of adidas Climacool sneakers -- two weeks late from Foot Locker. I haven't been able to get shoes in my size for years in Hong Kong, and unfortunately the same is now true of London. There's nothing more frustrating than going into five or six stores and seeing them stock sizes that just so happen to be one size to small.

And now for something completely different... I highly recommend to anyone who hasn't seen it: Pick up the Beatles Anthology DVD set. Great stuff, lots of genuinely funny moments of interplay between the four of them.

Tonight's the big game in Europe, the Champions League semi-final derby between AC Milan and Inter Milan, and I'm going into town early to do a bit of shopping before watching it with a few friends. Should be good fun, and to support my side I've added a new AC Milan wallpaper (and a bunch of Laker wallpapers) to the Phone Downloads section of the site. Check it out if you've got a colour Nokia phone. Hell, try it even if you don't -- I want to know what it looks like on other phones.

Posted at 2:50 PM

Monday, May 05, 2003
Sundays really highlight why I miss home so much. The UK is still fairly backwards when it comes to a 24-hour way of life. Yeah, sure, you'll have some stores right in the centre of town that are open 24/7, but other than those or gas station Kwik-E-Marts, everything shuts early. Especially on Sundays. Of course, the same is true in Hong Kong... except shutting "early" there means 9pm. Here, it means 5pm. This is all the more frustrating when daylight lasts until about 8 or so, and TV consists of slow family-time shows. And Songs of Praise, a show where various choirs belt out Biblical hymns. I wish I were kidding when I say that it's a prime-time show, but I'm not.

And so it's been a very quiet day here. Not much happening and not much about to happen, especially since Monday is a public holiday... and thus, all the Sunday rules apply. Frustratingly, this also means two packages I was hoping to receive are now also delayed by another day. Such is life...

So to while away the time, I've been chilling out and playing a few games. Aside from the perpetually entertaining Winning Eleven 6 FE, there's also NBA Street 2 to play with. Given that basketball is one of my favourite sports, and that I've been deprived of watching any NBA action since moving to the UK, that's taking up a lot of my PS2 time right now. The fact that my all-time favourite player, Magic Johnson, is unlocked from the start helps too.

Interesting link of the day from the BBC. It's a new type of scanner that can scan a 3D object... and then use it as a "key" to unlock certain bits of information on a computer. The interesting thing here is applying it to stuff like pictures. I'm a selective snapper -- I don't take pictures of everything -- but in the last year or so I've accumulated thousands of photos with my digital camera. If everything goes digital, as people are suggesting, it'll be impossible to search through all your pictures accurately. So here's where this idea comes in: Put a baby shoe on the scanner and be presented with baby photos. A medal brings up photos from the day you won a sports tournament with your team. A diploma finds graduation photos. Linking treasured items in the "real world" with the photographs (and movies?) that accompany it is a great and intuitive idea for bringing technology to people. Now what's the bet that this DOESN'T take off and is forgotten within a month? :-)

Posted at 3:36 PM

Sunday, May 04, 2003
I think, after months of stress and Javascript and HTML, I can officially declare this site open. About time.

Not much today -- I'll start with the "official" daily updates tomorrow -- just a few random notes. There are still a few bugs and kinks to work out, like the site URL (for some reason, http://homepage.mac.com/ravih/ doesn't take you to the homepage, but to a completely different page, go figure!), and I still have to work on a few other things, like integrating the Downloads page into the site navigation, and figuring out how to get that ugly BlogSpot ad moved under the menu bar. I've got a lot of space on this server, so any suggestions as to how i might use it are more than welcome.

Aside from updating the blog, the other updates I have planned for the near future are a Gadgets Gallery (I love my technology) and a webcal of family birthdays, which will definitely make life easier for those in my family (and remember, that's over 100 people) who need to keep track of who's birthday is when...

Right now I'm exhausted though, so enjoy the site and remember to email me with any comments or complaints!

Posted at 4:05 PM

Saturday, May 03, 2003
...OK, so it took me a little longer than expected to throw together a less-than-snazzy design and learn DreamWeaver. And, thanks to BlogSpot, I can't quite control the positioning of that advert you see above the title bar (which is a pity, I'd have kept it up there... just below the title bar).

Still ironing out the kinks, but otherwise the site is good to go. Expect more regular updates starting tomorrow!

Posted at 2:00 AM