i was going to rant about itunes but....

instead of ranting about mac programs that don't seem to hit the mark. i scanned through a review of an anime movie that i also saw awhile back. this has to be one of the few reviews where the hammer hit the nail right on its mark.

i'm a huge fan of anime. yes, i'm one of those 26 year olds who hasn't accepted adulthood because i still enjoy watching cartoons. c'mon there is nothing wrong with watching cartoons. i know you all saw the animatrix and that little short in kill bill. don't deny it!

anyway back to the movie. lets see, i was a huge fan of the first episode of the evangelion series. i thought it was very well done, featuring a character facing internal and external challenges, forced to pilot a robot against his wishes by his own selfish father and a drunk penguin for a roommate! alright, i lied! that penguin is more into the 3rd or 4th episode. apparently, the series lost funding somewhere half way through its making. that's where the story gets confusing.

so i turned to the internet and looked for some explanation of the episodes because anime like this seem to have some sort of deeper meaning and philosophy. that or the fact that the director must've been smoking something laced with something else while rubbing crack cocaine on his gums. err... don't do drugs! so after some reading, i find out that it does have some greater meaning which i also didn't understand.

so what did i do? well i bought the first movie at some chinese flea market in san francisco. a movie where they just take the first and last 5 minutes of every episode and pepper it with cut scenes of the main characters playing musical instruments in a circle with bad sub-titles isn't exactly the best place to look for an explanation. but of course that didn't stop me, i'm one forgiving guy when it comes to anime. i dismissed it to the terrible sub-titles and was convinced that the dvd with the english dub would offer a better explanation so i bought a different version of the dvd with bad english dubbing. i'm still scratching my head after another hour and a half wasted.

well, long story short, the 2nd movie (yes, they still had enough money to put together a 2nd movie) was more confusing than the series and the 1st movie put together. after you sit and watch the end of the world. you get to watch robots eat each other (nope, that isn't a typo), a big creepy head hovering over a blood soaked earth and the main character whining to himself in a long monotonous dialogue. after the 2nd cut scene it's quite tempting to figure out if the director or the writers were smoking something in an enclosed space. humm, must've been good.... err... don't do drugs! drugs = bad, drugs = screwed up movie plots and many many confused audience.

anyway, this is just my way to say that: i just didn't get it.

let the geeking out commence!

my weekend was spent hopping up and down the stress spectrum. i spent a good deal of the weekend setting up a secure mail server so i can check my mail from my two computers and when i'm out of town. it took a little bit of fuzzing around with fetchmail, php, ssl and apache but i finally got the imap server and squirrelmail working together this morning. i'll be putting a walkthrough together for all you geeks out there with a computer to spare.

i had a work emergency to deal with which caused me to sell-out (once again) on col and heather. i really wish i didn't miss it, judging by the pictures and comments left of their respective sites.

meanwhile on the music front, i've been listening to an insane amount of hiphop lately: kanye west, mos def and dilated peoples. i feel like putting on some orange cross-color jeans and wearing my shirt backwards. ssl and kanye west in the same post; i'm the reason why valid search results on the internet is a myth.

i've joined the darkside

yes folks, i've made the leap to steve job's camp. bill gates lynch me, i dare you! i bought a 2nd hand ibook today from a good friend of mine who gave me a good price on it. i had to jump on it since my poor hp laptop was dying dead and beyond repair (at least that's what futureshop tells me).

but this is not the point of this blog entry. the scary part is that, rumors of my ibook purchase have spread quicker than wildfire. i've gotten at least a few congratulations and some pats on the back for "joining-in" the community. i've even been given a secret handshake (which looks very similar to some klingon ritual involving hand gestures and screaming). i'm guessing that they mean the apple community cult collective. i think it's cool that it's such a close knit group of people. i think the propaganda is starting to set in because i'm starting to get an itch for an $800 colored ipod or a subscription to ilife. kidding!

the canucks rock!

really, i have nothing interesting to blog. if the canucks win tonight, the band-wagon jumpers are going to explode with excitement. seeing as how they're already this excited with them being in the first round of the playoffs. i should know, i'm one of them!

tonight, i'm teaching in downtown but trust me, if i could, i would be wearing full canucks battle gear: multiple flags on my car, white blue red and black (with a little bit of silver) face paint with the old school jersey tied around my head all while screaming like an escaped mental patient on new years eve. go canucks!

caffeine dependency

i am unable to function in the morning without a good dose of caffeine - by good dose, i mean enough to keep an elephant awake for a year. i realize how bad this is that even when i get a good amount of sleep, i still need to inhale coffee grinds like it's cocaine.

i can't be the only person who has this much trouble functioning in the morning. the first instinct is to search on the net to try and figure out if i do have some other sleep disorder. and according to this test i might have narcolepsy and insomnia. if i drank blood, i could be categorized as some sort of vampire. but my logical conclusion is that i'm not getting enough sleep at night which is leading to my non-functioning brain during the day.

so besides medication (because i'm already over-medicated), is there anything else that i can do to get a good night's rest? i should just see if it's possible get caffeine fed to my body intravenously.

new design! wait.... it looks the same!

so the new design isn't as striking as i expected. it almost looks like the last design with the obvious change of the color scheme and navigation. i've also removed the color switcher, i found a lot of people liked the green and stuck with it.

so what did change? well, to be honest not much. it's xhtml strict, table-less design (although it doesn't quite validate yet). i followed the css zen garden's layout html code quite a bit. the asp code is tighter and more efficient. i'm sure my host will thank me for not crashing his server because of database connections i should be closing. i re-wrote my about page and added the title to my posts (something only the rss readers got till now).

so just to play around, i tried to apply ernie's design to this site. well they say imitation is a form of flattery, i don't think they ment blatantly stealing site design from it's mother's arms.

its a nice day outside. i'm going to brave the allergen ridden world and go for a walk or something.

creativity = border:1px solid #000

i've been in the process of coming up with a redesign for this website. it will come, really it will! the hard part is that, i'm not really that creative. read: ritchie can't use a graphics program properly. most of my designs come out looking like a bunch of boxes exploded onto the screen. read: style="border 1px solid #000" is ritchie's bestfriend. which is partially why i get credit as being a minimalist.

the scary thing is that the next redesign actually involves some photoshop work. gasp! no, not photoshop! the one computer program that actually intimidates me, actually it doesn't just intimidate me, it gives me nightmares of being naked in a crowd with nothing covering myself but few layers and unintuitive toolbars.

my point is, the redesign is coming. i'm just trying to figure out how to create a few backgrounds in the right colorshade.

only a part of me...

this blog is unfortunately only a part of me. i understand that it's quite hard to think that this blog isn't all me, it is only just a single area of my life. this is where i vent, complain and make fun of things that i find amusing. i don't vent, complain and make fun of things constantly throughout my day. i am more than just a 2 dimentional person who likes to keep readers in suspense by infrequent updating or someone that vomits at the thought of being in a church group again or even a workaholic.

there is obviously more to me than what i write here. now excuse me, i just saw an old lady trip while crossing the busy intersection outside my building, i have to go outside to laugh and point.

20 questions

i will be participating in an interview process.

it's simple, take 20 questions and answer them by taking a photograph. photographic interviews have been completed by many online journalists in the past, but it's time to get the biggest photographic interview started! read more

the palm will be useed and my newly discovered moblog to get myself started.