The Other Side

Vork Vork Vork

Chris — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:14:45 +0000

This week was too long. And that’s considering the fact it had only 4 days (since on Monday I just got back from Canada). On Tuesday I found a pile of work with my name on it and it only got bigger throughout the day. Long story short, I had a demo to put up by Friday and that turned some of those days into 12-hour marathons.

Now I’m not complaining. Every once in a while work picks up and I have to crank things – and it’s still a good time. The only crappy thing about this time was the fact that I got sick on Monday evening – just a cold, nothing more serious – and I had to spend these intense working days with a hazy brain. So much for focusing. Alas, the demo turned out OK.

The weekend weather didn’t help much – it rained like hell most of the time. Spring can’t come soon enough.

Canadian Weekend

Chris — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:37:39 +0000

I’ve spent this past weekend up north, with Mark – my godson – and his family. I got there on Friday night, the usual way: driving with Roxy’s father from NYC to Waterloo (it’s a 10 hour drive, if you’re curious). I wish I could say we did more than sleeping, playing with Mark and eating, but that was pretty much all we did the entire weekend. Not that I’m complaining, of course, I enjoyed seeing my favorite Canadian family and my godson I came back with Roxy, Mike and Mark today – by plane from Buffalo to JFK – and they continued their journey to Seattle.

Adorable little scoundrel All the pictures can be found at the regular place.

Launch Party

Chris — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:34:58 +0000

Last night I went to check out a launch party for one of my friend’s websites: Bellaga.com, an online boutique for fashion designers. I expected the usual tech-crowd – most of our gatherings are geeky on the extreme, with a M/F ratio of about 99%. So I was very surprised to see last night a lot of women – even models I assume – plus a live DJ and open bar. In retrospect, the site is about fashion, and parties with free unlimited drinks are like catnip for fashion industry people.

We didn’t stay long – I’m leaving for Canada today so I had to pack – but enough for my friends to almost get me drunk. Almost.

Empire State of Lego

Chris — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:11:34 +0000

I was in a Barnes & Noble this evening – looking for gifts for my godson (which I’m going to see this weekend) – and I ran into some sets from the LEGO Architecture series. I got myself the Empire State Building, which you can admire below:

It has a pretty small brick count; I guess they wanted to make the buildings look simplified. It works though, the end result looks less like a kid’s toy and more like something you could keep on your work desk.

Tales from The Golden Age

Chris — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:55:33 +0000

On Saturday evening I attended the New York premiere of Tales from the Golden Age, the latest Romanian movie to win a bunch of awards – and therefore to open here. It was a great comedy made up from 5-6 vignettes showcasing different urban legends from the last decade of the communist regime. Gotta love the moronic political activists, kiss-ass aides and overall sheer incompetence and absurdity. After all, only in Romania someone would think of killing a pig by gassing it in his apartment’s kitchen A must see.

Snowy Central Park

Chris — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:56:58 +0000

Snow-covered Central Park, this Saturday:

Another Place for Photos

Chris — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 04:49:11 +0000

Found this website yesterday (via Twitter), another place to store your photos online. It was recommended by one of the best designers out there and you can tell from the start that it was built by someone with a lot of artistic style and attention to detail. Basically, it’s pretty.

I uploaded a few random pics I took with my GF1 over here. Enjoy!

Snow Day

Chris — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 04:42:48 +0000

Woke up this morning to find this outside my window. So I grabbed my camera and on my way to work I snapped a few pics on my block:

Steaming

Chris — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:40:58 +0000

Last night Steam informed me that they have a new UI coming up and if I want to try it out as part of their beta program. The list of changes seemed pretty enticing, like better games management and a new browser rendering engine (WebKit instead of IE).

A few minutes later I was gazing upon the new interface. Which looks like crap. I was never a fan of oversized text-only tab headers, but hey, to each his own. The game list window has a couple of improvements, mainly you can view details about the games or see them as huge, easy-to-click buttons. The downloads section is much better now, with bandwidth graph and everything.

And there’s where I started noticing the problems. For some unknown reason, Steam decided that some of my games (Modern Warfare 2 and Company of Heroes) need to be redownloaded… At first I thought it was a patch (Steam downloads and installs patches automatically) but then I noticed the size of the downloads: 6 and 8GB! A quick search on the forums for the beta UI found a lot of people that were complaining about the same thing: games being erased from the hard drive and redownloaded. What the hell, Steam?

Oh, and one more thing: I have a Steam account, which I use to purchase and play games. Then I have a Steam Community account, where I can manage my friends, see achievements, etc. And yesterday I realized, in order to post on the forums (Steam forums that is, not some third party) I need another account??? Are you serious? Haven’t you people heard of single sign-on? Or shared user database? Argh…

Back at the Writing Table

Chris — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:16:35 +0000

Yup, it’s been a while.

Mostly because I… errr… ah, fuck it, I just didn’t feel like writing, ok? Been busy at work, busy at home – either playing games (it’s that time of the year again) or just plain relaxing with my new Netflix subscription.

But I’m all good, healthy and happy. Pictures from recent events can be found at the usual place