Birthday Wishes a New Distraction and Getting Edumacated

Sorry about the lack of updates. It’s been pretty…umm…busy around here. Let me fill you in…

Birthday Wishes…

First off, it’s been over two years since I started up this blog. And as I said in my very first post, it was put together to allow me to ramble on about stuff that’s important to me. I’d like to wish my blog a happy belated birthday and I hope that it will continue having them till I’m too senile to blog anymore. This year my blog will be getting a facelift. Maybe a tuck, some botox, and some bigger knockers. If someone thinks they can do a great job, please give me a shout.

Speaking of birthday wishes, Leo Chiang just celebrated his “fourth” annual 29th birthday. The funny thing is that “33″ is what he does at his day job and was also one of the episodes of Battlestar Galactica where he was overfeatured quite prominently. It looks like he had a really good time. Please note the NSFW warning

Also on the January birthday wagon this month is Ed Lau. Ed thinks he’s getting old. He’s pondering getting tattoos and a motorcycle. I wonder when Leo will turn that ‘Stang into a Hog. Personally, I’m taking a different route dealing with the “old thing” this month.

Rock On!

 

OK, so I’ve been busy playing RockBand. I got it a few days ago and I’ve been going at it non-stop. I’m so addicted to the drums. I’ve been pounding on those things every night with the headphones on and I can’t remember having so much fun rocking out to my favourite tunes through the rock of ages. Since CES, I’ve been pre-meditating the purchase of this game. Now I’m going to need to get a projector because if playing GH3 on a Huge Ass Screen is fun, RockBand will be…twice as fun! It’s easily the best deal of any game out there right now. I mean, just look at all the stuff you get!

Getting Much More Edumacated…

This past Xmas, I gave myself a gift of some new camera hardware. A Nikon D200 and D80 made their way into my life. With all the hundreds of features contained in both cameras, I decided that taking a photography class wouldn’t be a bad idea. For the next ten thursdays, I’ll be taking a course with Vancouver Photo Workshops to improve my command of these two beasts. One of the problems with my picture taking skillz right now is that I tend to take too many pictures. You could call me a “Rapid Fire Whore” with the 5 FPS capabilities of the D200.

Processing so many pictures takes a ton of time and when I do find a good picture, I couldn’t explain to you how I got the shot. I have no real photography background so hopefully by bringing up my knowledge of the basics (White Balance, Shutter Speed, ISO) and how they work together, I’ll be able to take my photography to the next level and be more consistent in getting great shots more freqently without peeling off all my available frames. Not to mention, my D200 has no magic “Green Button” to get me out of trouble anymore.

It’s also time for me to get back to learning Mandarin. With COMPUTEX creeping up on us, I’m going to need to brush up on my language skillz.

Are any of you folks getting much more edumacated in 2008?

Hot Language of the Moment: Mandarin Chinese

As some of you know, I’ve been taking Mandarin Chinese lessons at Langara College. I just completed Level One over the holidays and will be going back this Saturday for Level Two. My whole reason for taking it was to allow me to communicate better with my contacts in Asia. During my trip to COMPUTEX in Taiwan, I felt pretty useless. All my non Chinese friends would look at me for guidance when it came down to lay down the native tongue. I would just look back and shrug. I figured that it was a good idea simply because of my travel and my business. Turns out that Mandarin is now one of the hottest languages to learn.

I was reading in the paper the other day that even as far as Alabama (what the hell?), people are learning Mandarin, and there is a shortage classes and instructors. Today, in the local paper, I read that even the local government is sending officials with the most likely chance of interacting with Chinese VIPs to Mandarin crash courses put on by UBC. The crash course not only covers common phrases, but also culture and customs so that they can best interact with Chinese officials. This is likely in preparation for the 2010 games and to fix relations with China that were botched by the current Canadian Federal Government.

Looks like I better concentrate and pay attention in class. Otherwise, my non Asian friends will be translating for me in Taiwan this year
English Dictionary for free. For English, German, French and Latin.

Eating Books

One of the New Years Resolutions that I’ve decided to start early is to read more books. I was never a readaholic in school. In fact, the only time I ever went to the library was when I HAD to go with the class. Even during College and University, the library just wasn’t a place that I gravitated towards. I was always drawn more to the resources available on the web. As a result, I now make all my income from it.

I went out to the local Chapters bookstore to find some good reading material. I also wanted books where I could learn something from. I’m not a fluffy fiction guy, though I did get into reading Harry Potter at one point. I read the first three books on my PDA. Someone had leaked it onto the web and I came across a copy while looking for free apps for my Palm. Anyway, I started thinking of subjects that interested me and personal finance and investing was one of them.

The first book I picked up was “Why We Want You To Be Rich”: A collaboration between Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki, the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” guy. I love the show “The Apprentice” and I had read The Donald’s book “Art of the Deal”. I really got nothing out of “Art of the Deal”. I don’t even remember it.

“Why We Want You To Be Rich” is basically like a long interview as Donald and Robert weigh in on subjects like the world economy, investing, and common questions asked of them like “I’m a Baby Boomer with without much money. What should I do?” It also had a lot of “Edumercials” that sold their education services. After the read, I think I’m going to stick with watching the show “The Apprentice” rather than reading more of Trumps books. I didn’t like the first one, and I didn’t really care too much for what he said. Kiyosaki on the other hand I felt contributed much more to the book. That’s why the next book I picked up was “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Updates and Stuff

I thought I’d just do a bit of housekeeping and update you folks on stuff that you may or may not want to know about. To start, I mentioned that I was going back to school to improve my writing and learn Mandarin. Both classes are finally done, and I learned quite a bit.

My writing course was taught by a successful independent writer by the name of Brian Payton. Brian has written for a number of publications such as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Globe and Mail, and Canadian Geographic. Brian is currently promoting his new book “Shadow of the Bear - Travels in Vanishing Wilderness“. Since my background was never a writing one, I learned a lot from Brian’s lectures and the real world knowledge that he imparted. He’s given me a new found respect for print media and the inspiration to improve my craft. It was hard for me to believe that it was his very first time teaching.

My Mandarin class went both good and bad. I was the bad part. I never studied. When I studied, it consisted of me listening to the lesson on CD before class. By the end of the class however, I must have retained something because words all of a sudden began to mean something. After our final oral test, the teacher encouraged me to go to level two. She said that I had the confidence, but I need to practice more in order to retain it. I will be going back to school again in January for level two. Hopefully by the time COMPUTEX rolls around, I’ll be good enough to survive in Taiwan.

AGLOCO added a new feature that tells people what percentage of top users you are in. I nearly popped a plug seeing it say “You rank in the top 0.72% of all members”. This means that 99.28% of people aren’t doing as well as I am. Come on! Haven’t I scared you people away already?

My daily and often multiple daily updates have increased my blogs value to the point that Text Link Ads was able to sell a link on my site. They have me listed here. I’m only $40 bucks a month! That’s a bargain! However, they take 50% of the cut. That’s pretty high, but it’s free money so I’ll take that for now. Seven spots left folks. Better hurry!

That’s all I got for now. I’m sure I’ll think of more later.

Freebies and free stuff at GoFreebies.com

The Worth of Workshopping..

I mentioned a little while ago that I went back to school to learn Mandarin, and to take my writing up a notch by enrolling in a Magazine Article Writing Class. The Mandarin course is going so so, but I think I’ll at least be able to talk like a Preschooler.

The Magazine Writing course has been quite a surprise. Led by a talented writer by the name of Brian Payton, the class flows easily like his prose. I’m finding that the course is really pushing me to adjust my writing and the way I look at articles. It’s quite different from the blogging that I do and from the articles that I write for Futurelooks. I’ve always wanted to open up the writing I do, to include a wider audience. I think this course is getting me off to the right start.

One of the activities that we do in the class is called Workshopping. Essentially, we read eachother’s work, and tear it apart after, to make it better. I personally, had never done workshopping till this point. I know this is something that my writing needed because I tend to be a horrible Editor of my own work. Since I am the Editor, who do I pass it to?

This week, we had our first workshopping session, and there was some surprising, but not unexpected behaviours during the session. For one thing, what I noticed is that everyone was afraid of offending eachother. We would all start off with phrases like “I liked it” or end with “It was Great”. I felt the critiquing was a held back. I guess we all wanted to push gently for our first couple sessions.

While critiquing an article for one of the participants, we somehow got away from addressing the group, we started to address the writer. The writer got really upset, started to defend his work, and really was not into any of the comments or suggestions. I think I got the worst of it because when I commented on taking down the intensity and angle of attack of his article, he got really angry. Brian quickly pointed our attentions back to addressing the class, and defused the situation somewhat.

The problem with his article was that he wrote like he spoke, and it was tiring to listen to this level of intensity without a bit of contrast. It was very “David Chalk” like, but even Chalk knew that he had to have peaks and valleys througout his keynotes, though when he ramped up the intensity, you could feel the rage. The story didn’t have a good balance between the contrast that he was trying to portray. It was so intense in the first half, that the last half in the counterpoint or contrast was lost and kinda fizzled in comparison to the first half.

As his article got commented on, he just closed up in the back of the room. If you’re going to put your work out there, you are going to get feedback, good or bad. If you can’t handle getting your work picked on, poked, and prodded, then getting it workshopped is clearly not something you’ll be able to handle. As we went to workshopping the work of others, he really didn’t have much to say anymore. If you want to write better, you’re going to have to take in the experience. Instead, he punched out.

The worth of workshopping is based on the quality of feedback and what you get out of it. If you bottle yourself up in the back of the room and consider every comment a personal attack, then the session becomes worthless. This is a course about publishing your work and writing for others, and writing for others means listening to others. No one is asking you to agree, but you do have to listen as this is the audience that listens to you.