justin paver's blog

interesting project, Aphid

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 06:57:00 +0000

Heys guys, just thought I'd give a shout out. A good friend of mine 'vastjuniper' is blogging actively about development of his little project Aphid over here:

http://aphidgame.blogspot.com/

Go check it out, and subscribe to the feed!

Resumption of normal blogging silence now continues.

noreply@blogger.com (Chelle) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 07:36:00 +0000

Eesh. We need to update this blog with:

- MAY: Trip to visit Justin's fambam in South Africa and the awesome safari we went on at Tembe Elephant Park where we were woken up at 5am by lions roaring at each other outside our tent. Simultaneously terrifying and AWESOME.

Ooh, elephant + lens flare from the jeep's antenna.

- OCT: Manny from Austria came to visit & the completion of our first half marathon! High Five!

Trip to Lick Observatory

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 04:15:00 +0000

It was warm and clear on the day that Michelle and I headed out on a road trip this last weekend.

For the last 4 years, we had entertained the notion of going up to Mount Hamilton in the Diablo range of mountains to visit Lick Observatory. This observatory was the first of the mountain top observatories, and has since contributed immensely to the field of astronomy and physics(*)

The drive took up into the hills to the east of San Jose. As we passed the huge houses and ranches of the area, we got a great view of the Silicon Valley.

And after we'd summited and descended we more clearly saw saw the building that is normally a white spec on the horizon when viewed from San Jose:

Then came the terrifying precipices and narrow roads of Mount Hamilton Drive.

It is common this time of the year for it to snow on the Diablo range, and this year is no exception. Within 25 miles of San Jose we have snow, but at just over 4000 feet elevation there is not as much snow as would be necessary for snowboarding activities.

The Lick Observatory was erected in the late 1800s, funded by wealthy Pennsylvania piano maker and craftsman James Lick.

Here is the 36 inch refractor built by James Lick in 1889 and housed in a dome weighing around 99 tons. The floor on which the telescope is situated was original rotated by water action, but is now hydraulic and is able to rotate, and adjust elevation about 5 meters. The redwood interior is a tribute to the craftsmanship of James Lick who, incidentally, is buried beneath the telescope.

The observatory "campus" also houses the Crossley 36 inch reflector, which was the first modern application of mirror reflection telescopy to astronomical studies. It was donated to the Observatory in 1895 and is still in active use today. We were unfortunately not able to see this telescope in person, but we did see the dome :)

The Shane telescope is a 120 inch reflector, and is a significantly more modern telescope design, and best of all available for public viewing.

The observatory is very much in active use, and supports a whole mountaintop community including a school. Moreover, many scientists sleep during the day, which makes public noise a nuisance, and observe throughout the night to maximize the usage of the telescope during low light conditions.

We both had a great time and the felt the experience was well worth the drive. I'd definitely recommend it for those wishing to get a more "hilly" experience outside of the flat topology in the valley.

More wonderful photos taken by Michelle over here

(*)The Observatory was involved in attempting to prove Einstein's general theory of relativity by observing the bending of the light of a star through the gravitational field of the sun. Since the effects of such space curvature of light would not be visible due to the brightness of the sun, the observations had to be made during the solar eclipse. The Observatory ultimately failed to prove this first, but not before spending a lot of effort on expeditions to optimal eclipse locations.

Tobey

noreply@blogger.com (Chelle) — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 07:40:00 +0000

Tobey with his pumpkins
Originally uploaded by J&MPaver

The newest addition to our family! Five year old Tobias Fünke was adopted from the San Jose Animal Care Center. He's a wonderfully sweet and quirky little dog and we're thrilled to be able to give him a good home.

Sculptris acquired

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 02:01:00 +0000

This is a little late, but the tool I mentioned previously (Sculptris) has been acquired by Pixologic, the makers of ZBrush. They've also renamed the currently downloadable (and free) version to Sculptris Alpha 5, download link is here:

http://sculptris.com/download.html

Congrats to Dr Petter!

Here's hoping that they continue to maintain a donation supported version of this software. It really is worth whatever you can scrounge up :)

Hawaii again

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 05:31:00 +0000

I took my beautiful wife Michelle to Waikiki on the island of Oahu in Hawaii for our 1st wedding anniversary. We got up early in the morning of the eve of our anniversary and flew the 5 hours across the Pacific into Honolulu airport. Michelle snapped some amazing photos from the plane:

We arrived around noon, checked in and got to our room, which sported a wonderful ocean view from the 6th floor of the Sheraton in Waikiki. We also had a direct view of the famous Diamond Head crater and Waikiki beach.

Our lunch on the first day consisted of the reasonably priced and fantastic portions of the "Cheeseburger Boardwalk" along with a tropical cocktail and a locally brewed ale.

We went back to our room and looked out on the balcony (lanai in Hawaiian), at which point I noticed there were sea turtles (Honu in Hawaiian) in the sea very close to the hotel's "infinity pool". We went down and rented some snorkeling gear and went to go swim with them. Michelle brought along her underwater camera and managed to get some video footage of them despite the visibility being poor. As you can see, we got extremely close to these large, magnificent creatures. At one point, Michelle nearly stepped on one that had settled directly beneath her feet. Luckily she spotted him in time to avoid this mishap and was able to take a video clip of the Honu.

We woke up the next morning on our anniversary and were thrilled to find a rainbow visible right outside our balcony. This was to be a frequent sight from our balcony for the remainder of our trip.

We then exchanged anniversary gifts; I had written Michelle a poem and made a card for her, and she had made a slide-show and video of all our moments together.
We went down for breakfast at the hotel's "Kai Kitchen" buffet, which had a good and delicious assortment of fruits, sausages, bacon, eggs, island bread, pastries, and sauces. We loaded up on mostly everything and rounded it off with incredibly fresh and sweet papaya, pineapple and grapefruit.

The rest of the day was spent on the beach and in the ocean, working on our tans and trying not to do anything too strenuous.

The early evening was spent cooling off at the Edge bar at our hotel...

... followed by a walk on the beach at sunset...

... followed by a great sushi dinner at the Kaiwa restaurant in Waikiki.

The next day we booked a snorkeling cruise on the Mai'tai catamaran.

It pulled up directly on our hotel beach (the photo was taken from our hotel lanai), picked us up along with other hotel guests and took us out to Turtle Canyon, which was about a mile off the coast and inhabited with lots of fish and turtles. The visibility was excellent, so we got some more great footage of these amazing sea turtles. You can see me swim by the turtle at the 9-12 second mark.

The rest of the day was spent in the hotel infinity pool with drinks...

...followed by another walk along the beach at sunset. The sunsets here were so exquisite that it really felt like a special event every day.

As the evening drew to a close, a Samoan fire eater lit the pool torches and performed his exciting fire-sword twirling ritual to the beat of tribal drum music.

The next few days were spent in similar fashion, with similar activities and similar excesses, until finally it was Independence day. The evening was spent on the beach, watching the July 4th fireworks shooting from the Ala Moana centre next to the water. The fireworks were about a mile off, judging by the lag of 4-5 seconds that the sound took to reach us, but they were no less spectacular for it.

The following days would see more lazing by the beach and the pool with more cocktails, nursing our tans, more romantic walks on the beach at sunset and finally racing around on jet skis in a bay close to the Honolulu airport.

The last day of our vacation came and, after a lovely breakfast by the ocean, it was with much happiness but regret at leaving that we packed our bags and boarded the plane, jetting back to San Jose in only 4 hours and 20 minutes.

You can see more amazing photos over here!

ZBrush, Mudbox, and .... Sculptris?

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 02:03:00 +0000

I was considering buying a license to either zbrush or mudbox until I found this free tool on the web today.

http://www.sculptris.com/

(for those interested, I found this great tool via this great blog: http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Reviewing-Sculptris)

This is such an easy tool to pick up and use, with similar key mappings to Maya. Within a few minutes I was sculpting away. It also offers texturing abilities. Here's something I whipped up in 20 minutes from a sphere just before going to bed:

I'd really encourage every digital artist to go and check it out and donate to the author (yes, 1 guy wrote this over the course of 6 months). As someone who has never used mudbox or zbrush, this is good enough for me and for my hobbyist/indie development purposes. I'd really love for someone to comment how it compares to the professional suites out there.

Vegas and Visit from Vincent.

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:56:00 +0000

A couple weeks ago, my brother Vincent flew in from London to spend a few days in New York and Las Vegas with his girlfriend Jos, celebrating Jos' birthday.
I was really looking forward to seeing Vinny again as the last time was about 2.5 years ago, so we were fortunate to be able to jet down to Las Vegas to meet up with them.

On the 1h15 minute flight, Michelle and I treated ourselves to a screwdriver to help get us in the spirit of consumption and pure hedonism that is so wantonly expressed in a place like Vegas.

We arrived shortly before Vinnie and Jos landed, grabbed our bags and found them by the baggage area. Vegas is awesome. The first thing you see when you get into the airport arrivals area are slot machines, and quite a few people tugging away hoping to change their luck before they leave Sin City.

We caught a short shuttle ride to the Marriott Grand Chateau on the strip. Our suite was lovely and very generously taken care of by Jos' parents' timeshare.

The first day saw us wandering the strip and having lunch at the HardRock cafe where we had nachos, salad and our first Vegas cocktails. The air was incredibly hot by this time, and within a few short minutes of being seated in the sun, we asked to be moved to a shadier spot that had just opened up.

We were later joined by Anna, Jos' Finnish friend, and her boyfriend Uje?

Over the course of the next week the general pattern of events was to sunbathe by the pool on the hotel roof, scrounge for breakfast and wander around admiring the many sights and sounds of Vegas. The fountains at the Bellagio were a favorite and particularly impressive.

Evening was filled with more wandering with drinks in hand on the strip, a pattern that was destined to become the regular activity.

On a nice evening out, Vinnie treated us to a hypnotist show which we all enjoyed immensely, mostly for the fools that people made of themselves all in good fun.

On another day, we were eager to go to the Grand Canyon, but decided against driving because it was at least a 2 hour drive each way added to the cost of renting a car, paying Native American reservation tolls and entrance fees and it all became a bit too inconvenient and prohibitive. Instead, we booked a flight on a 17 person twin propped light aircraft. We were picked up from our hotels, and taken to the tiny airport on the outskirts of Vegas.

The flight itself was rather bumpy, the plane being buffeted around by rather high winds over the Canyon. Despite this, we managed to get some great photos of Hoover Dam:

... and the canyon itself:

Unfortunately, the turbulence caused quite a few upset stomachs on the airplane, and by the end of it we were grateful it was only an hour and a half in the air :)

Another day, Dennis took us to "Old Vegas" on Fremont street where the gambling, drinks, food and ambiance were both cheap and fun. The highlight was the canopy of 12 million LED lights that lit up every hour on the hour with a music video show. The canopy spans the length of about 5 football fields, so needless to say it's very impressive.

There was also a fun hotel pool, which surrounded a tank full of Ragged Tooth sharks. To top things off, there was also a water slide tunnel that went directly through the shark tank. Unfortunately, it wasn't operating at the time of evening that we went otherwise you'd be looking at some photos from the inside :)

On another day, Michelle and I went to the Venetian and took a ride on a gondola. Our gondolier had a lovely voice and paused frequently to serenade us in italian.

Sadly, our visit to Vegas was over too soon and we had to say goodbye to Vinnie and Jos and make our way back home.

More photos here.

Lua interoperating with c++ for game developers

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 02:33:00 +0000

Lua is a scripting language that has been widely used in a number of Video Games. It's free for commercial use without being burdened by any cumbersome licenses that require a developer to open-source their game code. It is also lightweight in terms of footprint and particularly performant for a byte-code interpreted language.

Having worked with Lua on Final Armada for the last time around 4 and a half years ago, my memory was understandably hazy on the whole idea of getting it to work, and figuring out how it interoperates with C/C++ code. What really confuses me is that there doesn't really seem to be any canonical reference for us game programmer folk that doesn't try to get all wordy or try to explain about the Lua language/VM itself. I was really just looking for source code, and through reading it, understand how to extend it and/or apply it to my specific project.

So for the measely price of a few hours, I have dredged up enough info to workup this example that should help you get up to speed in no time at all. Those of you who are looking for a canonical reference on how to do the following are therefore in luck:
* load a text Lua script from memory.
* invoke a function within that script.
* have that script function execute a function defined in C/C++

I hope this saves time for someone:
luaSimpleExample.zip

If you want to know how to save non-text version of your lua script, and how to then load the binary version from memory, there is a simple way to do this. The Lua distribution ships with a source file called 'luac' which will convert your script from text to binary chunk form. Compile luac and consult this nominal reference on how to use it. You can call luac as part of your final build/packaging process and simply load your binary chunk exactly as you would've loaded your text script.

references:
* gamedev.net on: An Introduction to Lua (source code is down :/)
* devmaster.net on: Lua Scripting 101: The Basics
* Christian Stigen Larsen on: Using Lua with C++ — A short tutorial

Infinity Ward in the news

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:58:00 +0000

So it seems Infinity Ward (IW) and Activision have been in the news, the story being that there was some fracas between the heads of IW and the Activision guys over new IP and Activisions desire for IW to produce an annual installment of the Call of Duty franchise. Charges of insubordination led to the two top men at IW being dismissed, this all in the wake of the enormous critical acclaim and commercial success of the IW developed Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.

Now, while I don't know all the details I can certainly comment from what has been made public. If I were head at Activision, I would be coddling all the talent at IW and coddling hard. I wouldn't be squeezing every ounce of profit out of the folks responsible for this cash cow, and I certainly wouldn't be killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. The twittersphere is loaded with similar sentiments of disgust from well respected developers and game players alike. The industry has seen some remarkably bad publicity: EA_Spouse, widespread layoffs (EA laid off 1500 employees while acquiring Playfish for $400m), Rockstar_Spouse, and now this. Does the industry have any hope of being seen as symbiotic or will it continue to be seen as the parasite that feeds on the talent?

Jonathan Blow took this scenario as the opportunity to juxtapose the mainstream development model with the independent games model, and the result was a worrying conclusion for those wishing to be indie developers. If the folks making so much money were still having problems with their publisher, how much chance does an indie have? As he quite rightly put it, "If Infinity Ward can’t be treated with respect, then who can?".

Update 3/5/2010: The former Infinity Ward heads have filed a lawsuit against Activision. The suit details can be read here.

Update 3/9/2010: Another excellent analysis of the situation here

Blog & gaming catchup

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:26:00 +0000

I've been working hard on Fermi for quite a long time now - which has meant that a few areas of my life have dwindled - not due to unethical work practices on the part of my employer, quite the contrary, but completely due to my enthusiasm to dive into the deeper aspects of this powerful architecture. I stepped up and took greater responsibility on some key aspects of the Fermi DirectX driver and as a result, I have infrequently updated my blog and played less games. Consider this blog post the beginning of a correction to these shortcomings :)

I have just played and completed Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 which was an admittedly short experience, but an excellent one. Besides being just absolutely beautiful, Infinity Ward did their job well by keeping the experience focused and to the point and by leading with strong narrative and characters. The first person shooter gameplay, while generic, was made enjoyable by interesting and varied set pieces. If only the Farcry 2 designers had had half the vision of the folks behind MW2, we wouldn't have had to play through so much of a beautiful looking game (and I use this term loosely as applied to this product) to find out it has such little substance and replay value. In my opinion, MW2 richly deserves its 94% metacritic rating.

Having now completed MW2, I'm resisting being an achievement-whore, and I'll be trying the multiple player components of the game. I anticipate being pummeled mercilessly by all the prepubescent teens because, sadly, my gaming skills are not what they once used to be :)

Happy New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (Chelle) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:54:00 +0000

Intels Insides

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 03:04:00 +0000

In current news, Intel is the subject of investigations and fines related to their (alleged) anti-competitive behaviour.

The following website features cartoons that parody much of the news that Intel is the subject of:www.intelsinsides.com.

The following article puts some of those cartoons in context for those that are interested: http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/11/5/nvidias-intels-insides-site-parodies-intel.aspx

Los Angeles & Disneyland

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:54:00 +0000

Michelle and I went down to Los Angeles for a lovely 3 day weekend. We rented a compact and drove down early in the morning on Saturday. The heavens opened and provided us with some great scenery during the journey down.

Michelle had arranged for us to stay at her cousin Jennifer's place and that was our first port of call. We arrived shortly after noon and went straight to Jennifer and her husband Chung's place. We hung out with them a bit, their dog (read: first born) Jackie and their 10 month toddler, little Jesse.

We then slept off the weariness induced by the trip and then met up with my old friend Bruce and his girlfriend Bonnie. Bruce grew up in Pietermaritzburg, the same as me. They picked us up and we went out for Sushi and Sake.

It was great catching up with Bruce, and finding out what he's been up to - he's working in the film industry and involved in some pretty exciting stuff. We chatted probably a bit much about GPU technology and how advancements in that field mean exciting things for the film industry! Good times!

On Sunday morning, we went for breakfast at the Original Pancake House with Jennifer, Chung and Jesse. We parted ways and Chelle and I went off to Disneyland and the California Adventures theme park.

Disneyland was amazing! It was an absolutely thrilling experience and I wish I had visited when I was younger to have had an experience not dulled by the "adult fun filter". The animatronics were amazing, as were the rides. The Hollywood Tower Hotel, Pirates of the Carribean and the Indiana Jones rides were my favorite. If the queues had been less than 45-90 minutes long, I would've gone on these ones over and over!

Along the way, I met this pretty little thing:

Towards the end of the evening, we caught the amazing Phantasmic show on the lake and the fireworks, grabbed hot Churros and left for home well after midnight. We spent a long 13 hour day on our feet in Disneyland and my feet were feeling it.

The next day, we hung out a bit more with our gracious hosts, we gave Jesse a little gift we had picked up and then went on our way.

The normal duration of the 6 hour drive turned into a longer drive as it took us almost 2 hours to get out of LA. Lucky we got the rental car back in time and collapsed into our pillows, glad to have had the chance to get away for a bit.

Oliver Zappa

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:29:00 +0000

Oliver is getting rather large now, but that's not the only change. His round little cheeks are becoming longer as he gets older.

Eventually, I hope he'll end up looking like this:

So his informal nick name is now Zappa. Do you think it's a coincidence that we chose to adopt this bunny? :)

snippet: unsigned integer division trick

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:04:00 +0000

Ok, this post has been waiting since February for me to click "Publish" so I may as well pull the trigger now.

Ignacio has an interesting blog post on gpu DXT decompression that relates the implementation in H/W. His blog in general really is a very interesting read and contains many interesting snippets and insights.

On a someone related note, the DXT encoding + decoding algorithms require some colour interpolation within a DXT1 block, finding the 2 points in between your 2 end-point colours. The basic code looks like this:


  colour[2].R = (2*colour[0].R + colour[1].R) / 3;
  colour[2].G = (2*colour[0].G + colour[1].G) / 3;
  colour[2].B = (2*colour[0].B + colour[1].B) / 3;

  colour[3].R = (2*colour[1].R + colour[0].R) / 3;
  colour[3].G = (2*colour[1].G + colour[0].G) / 3;
  colour[3].B = (2*colour[1].B + colour[0].B) / 3;

Integer division is something we'd like to avoid because of it's traditionally high latency, so we can replace the unsigned divisions by the multiplication of a fixed point number. In the example above, we'd replace the 'divide by 3' by a 'fixed point representation of a number divided by 3'.

This is the macro that I've used in the past to perform this operation. This is generalized to N bits for the floating point number, so you can use it for lower-precision targets:


#define FixedPointDiv(a,b,N)   \
 (((((1<<(N))+(b)-1)/(b)) * (a)) >> (N))

  colour[2].R = FixedPointDiv(2*colour[0].R + colour[1].R, 3, 8);

Observations:
* b and N should be integer literals.
* The higher N is, the more accuracy you get. In general N should be log2(max_value_of_a))+1. If max value of 'a' is 255, then N should be at least 8.
* be careful of N>=32 cases; Intel's implementation: SHL A,B is actually SHL A,B%32. So 1<<32 will return 1 and not zero as you might expect in the lower 32-bits. You'll also need to make sure the multiply returns a 64-bit result.

In practice, clever compilers will perform the same trick occasionally.

eg. VC2005 has converted an integer divide by 3 to a multiply:


; 343  :  colour[2].R = (2*colour[0].R + colour[1].R) / 3;

 mov al, BYTE PTR [ecx]
 add al, al
 push ebx
 mov bl, BYTE PTR [ecx+4]
 add al, bl
 movzx edx, al
 mov eax, 1431655766    ; 55555556H
 imul edx
 mov esi, edx

In the case above, the compiler used a 0.32 fixed-point multiplication and grabbed the upper 32-bits of the 32.32 fixed point result.

In general the magic number can be computed like this:
M = ((1<<32) / (divisor)) + N

(for some constant N)

One should be aware that this technique may not work on the whole range of dividend values. For example; the code generated by the VC2005 compiler above will not work for a dividend of 0x80000000. The effectiveness for your particular scenario can be easily confirmed by exhaustively testing all required dividend values.

EDIT: *drat*, Charles has beaten me to the punch.

Half Moon Bay & Engagement!

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:28:00 +0000

On May 27th, I took Michelle out to Gumbo Jumbo- a great cajun fusion restaurant in downtown San Jose to celebrate the 2nd year anniversary since the day we met. We ate some great shrimp and gumbo dishes, and Michelle had her favorite: oysters! The place has a lovely atmosphere in addition to it's food. On fridays & saturdays, the restaurant has jazz and blues played live which adds even more to the ambiance and charm of the place.

Unbeknownst to Michelle, on that morning I had secretly asked her father for his blessing and her hand in marriage; which he gave gladly over tea with some very valuable advice about marriage. I intended to ask Michelle to marry me on the next weekend at sunset on the beach.

On the day, May 30th, I took Michelle away to Half Moon Bay, a lovely little town on the coast of California - situated between Santa Cruz and San Francisco - a little south of the town of Pacifica. Ostensibly we were going to celebrate our 2 year anniversary with a weekend getaway, but there was more coming!

We stayed at the Beach House Inn Hotel; and I had managed to procure us a penthouse overlooking the ocean. The penthouse had a fireplace, a lounge area, open plan bed area and a bathroom with plenty of space. Morever, we had a great view of the harbour, where the tiny boats drifted gently with the softly lapping waves.

We spent a great day, relaxing and enjoying each others company; we visited downtown Half Moon Day - visiting an eccentric "junkyard" called "Half to Have it" with many baubles, trinkets, wrought iron furniture, broken glass paving:

The place was literally full of eccentric and artistic items, like 20's baby perambulators, old clocks, gas stoves, tin cars, old wooden propellors, and masks like these:

We ate lunch at Crab Landing, an excellent seafood place, right on the harbor; the food was good and we had a nice Poke Tuna, Spicy Halibut, Oysters and Clam Chowder.

I had planned to ask Michelle to marry me on the beach at sunset, but alas, there was no sun on that day. So, when the evening came we picnicked on a blanket in our room and opened a bottle of Simonsig Vonkelwyn. I then I got down on one knee and proposed to her right there. Nothing can prepare one for the depth of emotions that one experiences at a moment like that - and neither myself or Michelle were prepared, but she said "yes!". After the swelling of joyful tears and a flurry of calls, we found ourselves grinning at each other and talking about the future - looking forward to our new level of commitment to each other.

The next day, I took Michelle to the Ritz Carlton for brunch. The standard buffet fee there is $88/person which puts it out of our range for frequent attendance, but we both felt like celebrating the occasion.

The range of food was fantastic - they had a sushi bar, oyster bar, desert bar, dimsum bar, fish bar, breakfast bar and meat bar (I'm sure I've left some out!). I only managed to try probably 20% of what they had there, and would've sampled the lot if I had 5 stomachs. Michelle sampled the oysters, while I concerned myself mainly with the sushi.

We left Half Moon Bay having enjoyed a wonderful time, and came away bethrothed and relaxed, ready for task of planning our wedding day.

Ouch.

noreply@blogger.com (Chelle) — Mon, 11 May 2009 01:28:00 +0000

Ollie just got neutered. Poor baby.

Send To Phone

Ollie.

noreply@blogger.com (Chelle) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 03:21:00 +0000

Our little scamp at 2 months.

Don't let this adorable face fool you...he's becoming quite a clever and sneaky little poop.

St. Patricks day + Blog2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:04:00 +0000

Happy St. Patrick's day to all those Irishly enthused at this time of the year!

After reviewing all my past blog posts and realizing how much I'd forgotten about those times, I've decided to make a better effort to make updates here. Many things have been happening, and I'd like to have some record of them that I can look back on and remember. I'll also try retroactively posting a few of the things that have happened during this recent period of "blog neglect".

So, lets get things started. A few days ago Michelle and I adopted a rabbit, a sweet little 8 week old Holland Lop, that we named Oliver.

Here's a video Michelle took of him eating hay and playing with his mobile:

The little guy is still getting used to our apartment, and has been experiencing the rigorous stresses of our potty training bootcamp :)

Not dead

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 02:18:00 +0000

...just boring.

Vincent's Visit

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 07:48:00 +0000

My brother Vincent came to visit me for a period of just over 2 weeks.

He arrived on the 23rd December, we got him settled and did very little on the first day.

24th December

Early morning, we left for Los Angeles - it was very foggy practically the whole way down (about 7.5 hours) - apart from the last hour or so. We arrived shortly before lunch time and went to Santa Monica pier. There was a 'protest' of sorts on the beach; a set of crosses for every man & woman killed in Iraq.

Somewhat disconcerting, was the uncomfortable reminder of continued death in Iraq; with the active carpentry of new crosses right there on the beach.

We also cruised around, found Muscle Beach:

and finally Venice beach, which is notorious for the bodybuilding gym right on the beach;

Later that evening, we attended a Christmas eve party with Michelle's cousins and participated in the exchanging of gifts. Fun was had by all and many great gifts were received - I got a Nintendo DS (w00t!) from Michelle and some great gifts from my family back in South Africa

25th December

After a continental breakfast, we drove to Hollywood for the day. We ventured up and down the walk of fame, finding the many greats: Angela Lansbury, Burt Reynolds, Chuck Norris ...

Michelle got the best girlfriend award:

The Chinese theatre (also known as Grauman's Chinese Theatre) is the one with all the hollywood stars' handprints and footprints pressed into its courtyard's concrete.
We also caught a movie at the famous Chinese theatre on Hollywood Boulevard: I am Legend - an okay film.

We stayed in Burbank for the night.

26th December

After waking up, we ate a Denny's breakfast in Los Angeles before going to Universal Studios. We parked in the 'Jurassic Parking' lot:

We basically wandered around the whole day, trying rides, waiting in line, buying stuff.

We also took a film studio tour, which involved getting on a tram and being driven around with a guide describing the various parts of the studio. The sets were fairly impressive and so were the interactive portions of the trip; these included: King Kong, the Mummy, War of the Worlds, Desperate Housewives(!) and of course... Jaws:

27th December

Early in the morning, we left for Las Vegas and it took us 4 hours to get there. The desert drive was beautiful, albeit not as desolate and unforgiving as I was expecting :)

Las Vegas was great, as was our hotel: the New York, New York hotel.

We basically spent the entire day walking down the strip, seeing the hotels and casinos The hotels hotels were mostly posh and lavish and extremely over-the-top. The enormous and imposing buildings battled each other for dominance of the skyline.

In Las Vegas, one is allowed to patrol the streets openly swigging an open bottle of your favourite alcoholic beverage. Vincent and I decided not to break tradition.

In the evening we went dancing at some club (forgot the name) in the MGM Grand hotel. The MGM Grand had a lion habitat in there; aparently the lions live on some ranch about 60miles away and are rotated into the habitat daily.

28th December

We went walking, drinking, and even caught a David Copperfield show which was nice. We would have attended the Cirque du Soleil if we'd been able to get tickets (even at about $200 a pop!).

Michelle and I watched the truly impressive water fountain display at the Bellagio one evening. It was very gracefully done, with the water shooting high in the air and synchronized to music; the effect is mesmerizing. The evening performances were super impressive because of the special lighting.

29th December

We drove back to San Jose (about 8 hours), enjoying the desert scenery as it went whipping by us.

31st December

We went to San Francisco and wandered a bit around Pier 39 again,

We had lunch at Bubba Gump on the pier. (Bubba Gump is a seafood restaurant franchise that seems to have sprung up in the post Forrest Gump film era. It builds it's vibe and ambience off that film, with many items of film memorabelia and quotes adorning the rustic interior. At one point in my past experience with this franchise, I had a waitress sit down at the table to administer a Forrest Gump trivia quiz)

We then took a boat tour to Alcatraz, the notorious island set in San Francisco bay, previously used as a prison housing inmates such as Al Capone.

The island itself hasn't been used as a prison since the 60's and many of the buildings have that rustic and ill-maintained look (kinda the way you would think of Cuba for example). We were privaleged to walk around with mostly free reign, taking an audio tour or just wandering as we pleased.

Upon returning, we checked into our hotel, a very cozy, small and utterly quaint little hotel operating close to Fisherman's wharf. It's been around a while, and was originally a bordello, and is rumoured to be haunted.

In the evening, we went for drinks on Pier39. I was introduced to my first Jagermeister; more specifically Jager bombs. This involves dropping an American sized shot glass (about twice as much as a South African shot glass) of Jagermeister into a beer and downing the whole thing. Much fun was had by all on this little diversion :)

We then went to Suede, a night club and partayed the new year into style.

Vinny made a few friends too:

1 January 2008

We woke up and ate an IHOP (International House of Pancakes) breakfast. Vinny seemed impressed with American-sized portions, although, they were really no match for him.

We ventured out to Golden Gate bridge, went for a walk on the bridge and then travelled back home to San Jose.

3 January 2008

Vinny and I left for a ski trip at Northstar Resort at Lake Tahoe, a 4 hour trip. Three storms threatened to descend upon us during the weekend, but we decided to risk it anyway. The first day was fantastic skiing. I was very impressed and Vincent's skiing skills, considering he hasn't skiid for about 5 years now.

In the evening, we went to a casino situated a few meters past the California/Nevada border. In California, casinos are illegal except on Indian reservations, so there were about 3 or 4 casino's situated right on the border :)

We caught a football game in the bar, had a few beers and a huge dinner at one of the restaurants there, then retired for the evening.

4 January 2008

We left for the resort, a 10 mile drive. The snow had built up enough overnight to neccessitate snow chains:

The whole day was pretty stormy, and there was quite a bit of powder.

After lunch, conditions became very uncomfortable, with lots of wind, wetness and reduced visibility and we decided to get off the slopes. So we grabbed some microwave dinners and went back to the motel, where I spent some quality time with Nintendo DS.

5 January 2008

In the morning, we got outside and found that it had snowed significantly and was still storming. About a foot of snow had accumulated on my car overnight.

The rest of the area at lake level was pretty much under snow too. This is a view from our motel room:

We also realized with some dismay that the I80 highway back to San Jose was closed.
When we learned during breakfast that the highway had just been opened and another storm would be incoming later, we decided to make a run for it and get out of the area considering that the conditions were still pretty bad up on the slopes.

6 December 2008

Vinny and I headed out to Big Basin Redwood Park, but unfortunately we got there and realized it was closed. We were still able to grab a few photos though:

I dropped Vinnie off at the airport 2 days later after 2 weeks of fun. I'm really gonna miss having him around here.

More photos here

Halloween + Earthquakes

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 04:18:00 +0000

Earthquakes

Today, there was an earthquake that registered 5.6 in the south bay area. The rolling vibrations hit my apartment at about 8pm and lasted about 20 seconds. It was with disbelief that I realized my whole apartment was rocking back and forth.

A few minutes later I found out that the epicentre had been about 10 miles east of where my apartment is and that the tremors had registered 5.6 on the Richter scale. No serious injuries were reported.

The experience of this tectonic event was truly a scary moment; I was frozen with shock if you'll excuse the pun. I have since been very sensitive to even the slightest tremors, which has prompted me to conceive an emergency exit plan in case one of the "big ones" comes along.

Halloween

On a more positive note, Halloween was good and I carved my first pumpkin. Michelle did the one on top:

Some people in the suburbs get *really* creative with their house decorations during this time of the year:

Birthday

I also just celebrated my birthday. I went with Michelle to "The Improv" comedy club, where we had dinner and caught a few comedy acts. I was very impressed with the comedian Gerrard who warmed up the audience and I was super impressed with the main act, a man called Aries Spears - truly a great talent.

I also got flowers and an i-pod from michelle. yay:

That's about it.

Hawaii

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 03:53:00 +0000

We departed on Thursday night and landed fairly late the same night in Hawaii. First thing upon landing we experienced our first Hawaiin "rain", a very short drizzle in the warm night. This was a regular thing I'd come to notice. The weather was beautiful, absolutely warm, with these brief and frequent showers of rain and occasional rainbows (we saw no less than 4 in our 5 days there!). My American friends had never heard the term "monkey's wedding" before too, strangely enough ;)

Hawaii was awesome. We stayed at the Sheraton Waikiki directly on Waikiki beach on the island of Oahu.

Day 1

McDonald's Breakfast never tasted so good as it did on Waikiki Beach. They even gave us deliciously sweet, fresh pinapples with our meals.

We went kayaking in the Kane'ohe Bay from the He'eia Kea Harbor on the east coast of Oahu.

We took 3 twin kayaks out in the very gentle waves; the idea was to paddle a mile or so out to get to a sand bar which had water only 3 feet deep. It was well worth the paddle, being in the absolutely beautifully warm water and swimming around. Occasionally, a patch of rain moved out to meet us, but nothing threatened to ruin our experience.

We went to Cheesecake Factory in the evening and I fell asleep almost as soon as I'd eaten, having been exhausted from the day's paddling. The Sheraton's rooms were very nice and comfortable - I'd definitely recommend them.

Day 2

After picking up some lei's from the hotel lobby, we ate a hearty breakfast at Denny's and spent this day mostly lying around on Waikiki Beach. I bought us some lilos and we were content to just lie out in the ocean, soaking in the sun. (That's the Sheraton in the background below)

We ate dinner at Paradiso Grill where I had a deliciously grilled Ahi and stuffed greenpeppers - with pineapple of course. We went to another beach to catch the sunset and take photos. That was followed by some exhilirating night swimming.

Day 3

We went snorkeling at Shark's Cove near North Shore in northern Oahu which is on the other side of the island. It took only an hour and a bit to get there, but it was well worth the ride. I was a bit apprehensive at the whole idea of snorkelling, since the last time I tried it I wasn't too successful. I'm pleased to say that this time I absolutely took to it and loved it. The scenery and coast was beautiful too :)

After a day of snorkelling and an impromptu lunch, we stopped at the Dole pineapple plantation on the way home. That evening I took Michelle to the Hanohano Room, a trendy restaurant on the 30th floor of the Sheraton: the view of Waikiki at night was gorgeous, the food was excellent and the entertainment was great (a very Sinatra'ish singer doing great justice to Ol' Blue Eyes songs)

Day 4

We had a buffet breakfast at the Ocean Terrace restaurant right on the beach. We noticed a proliferation of ABC stores in Waikiki, literally one or two on every block. We obtained some delicious kiwi gelato at Mondo Gelato on the Waikiki BeachWalk and spent most of the day lazying about on the beach again. We ate some sushi at the food area of one of the ethnic markets there.

In the evening, we went to Germaine's Luau. We went on a shuttle bus with a very charismatic escort, Travis who told jokes, had us sing and generally lifted all our spirits and gave advice about the food we'd encounter at the luau. At the luau were hula dancing girls, polynesian hula, tahitan hula, a fire dancing guy and the maori haka. We also managed to convince two of my co-workers to go up and shake their butts too, in the spirit of the occasion: Just hang loose!

I probably had a few too many Mai Tai's ;)

Day 5

We took an early morning swim and headed out to Pearl Harbour. We visited Pearl Harbour's USS Arizona Memorial, the site of the sinking of the vessel with over 1000 men on board on the first day of the attack on Ford Island/Pearl Harbour. The wreckage still leaks oil to this very day.

We also went onboard the USS Missouri Battleship, which held some fascinating insights into the life of men on board at sea. It was also the site of the surrender of the Japanese Empire at the end of World War 2 in 1945. The fore guns themselves are very impressive, capable of hurling 2700lb shells a distance of 24 miles. For more on this very impressive ship, go to Wikipedia

We caught a final swim & sunset on Waikiki Beach, wolfed down a delicious sushi dinner at Kaiwa Sushi on the Waikiki BeachWalk before running to the airport to catch our flight back out to California.

Our plane was delayed about an hour because they couldn't get an engine to start. It was with some alarm that I noticed the engine smoking when we finally landed the next day :)

More photos here:My Photos

Status Update

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Paver) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 05:29:00 +0000

I know you've all been eagerly awaiting my news and I must apologise for my lack of updates and my laziness. I have been quite happy these last few months and have been living it up a little. Life has ticked by incredibly quickly, but it has been packed with all sorts of events. I therefore present this somewhat belated batch of news.

I have met a lovely girl, Michelle, who I have been spending a lot of time with. She's a school teacher that I met through a girl that I met on an online dating website :)

Among the things that I've been doing...

5 May 2007 - Crab Catching @ Pacifica Pier

I went with some friends from work to Pacifica, a tiny town on the peninsula coast just up Highway 1 from where I am in San Jose. There we attempted to participate in the catching of crabs on the pier (the sea kind, not the "naughty" variety).

We used uncooked chicken drumsticks as bait, which was clearly the wrong thing, because we ended up with a whole lot of starfish in our nets. To be fair, we did catch one crab, but it was tiny and it had only one claw so we had to throw it back.

3 June 2007 - Day trip to Monterey

Michelle and I went down to Monterey; we visited Cannery Row and the Monterey Aquarium. We ate at Bubba Gump, a great seafood restaurant which serves great shrimp and Cajun fish dishes.

We later just hung out in the cold weather on one of the beaches.

10 June 2007 - San Francisco Pier 39

Michelle and I took a day trip to San Francisco. I bought a sweater because it was coldish. We ate some ice cream, watched the sea lions, went window shopping and ate some seafood. I had some american sized fish & chips with a pint. We also took some more photos:

26 June 2007 - Napa Valley Wine Train

Took a drive up to Napa Valley and boarded the Wine Train. It was nice ambling slowly through Napa and seeing the beautiful vineyards and having a lovely lunch on the train but it was, regretably, not as comprehensive a visit to the vineyards as I would've liked.

July 2007 - Drinking and partying in San Jose

Going out to town on several occasions. 'nuff said.

4th July 2007 - Fireworks at Hidden Beach Santa Cruz

4th July is a big celebration in America. We headed down to a beach at Santa Cruz, where we had a barbeque, played some football (!), built a bonfire and watched the myriad of fireworks going off all the way around us and down the coastline.

29 July 2007 - Linkin Park concert (Project Revolution)

Michelle, myself and a whole of other friends went to "Project Revolution", a concert where we got to see a lot of really good bands, including: Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, HIM, Placebo, Taking back Sunday and a variety of others

Me and "the guys". Andy, Doug, Alice and Paul.

12 August 2007 - Trip to Discovery Kingdom Marine World in Vallejo

We went to Discovery Kingdom where we participated in the visiting of some animals. We caught this show with Shouka, an orca born & living in captivity:

We also went on a variety of rides, including the longest, tallest and most dangerousist rollercoaster in Northern California. I believe the Disneyland rollercoasters hold the same title in Southern California.

I also won some computer game related stuffed-doll merchandise at the fair, indulged in some Candy Floss (or Cotton Candy as they call it here) and was bitterly disappointed with having to leave eventually:

So, that's about it, except to note that I will be going to Hawaii in a week for a nice 5 day sojourn in paradise with Michelle and some guys from work.

More photos here: My Photos 2007