Daily misery

photos shamelessly ripped from Brett’s iphone.

I just have to post the love up.

Note: I arrived safely in Toronto. I will post a more detailed write-up when I get my internet service set up. To those who facebooked, emailed and IMed, thanks for the lurv.

a big hello to all my fans and admirers:

i arrived safely in Toronto last monday. Been spending the better half of past week trying to find a place to live, and thereafter, moving in, cleaning and unpacking, taking care of banking stuff and all the other shizzahs.

things have settled down a bit around here, which is good. I will start working on Monday and will try not to get myself fired on the first day of work.

a big thank you to those who called and tried to reach me via the interwank channel over the past few days. Your concern and good wishes reaffirm my belief that you did not befriend me just because of my good look and wealthy status.

anyway, i will update my facebook profile soon so that everyone can reach me conveniently. Doubtlessly for those in Lincoln, life is not the same without Alvin but I am sure you all will learn to cope with such tragic lose.

my love,
Alvinator

the apt come fully furnished. dont blame the fugly sofa and wall paintings on me.

edit note: it does get lonely here sometimes. I’ve forgotten how to make new friends.

I thought I will only see Windozz’s error message on UNL student union lobby’s LCD. Apparently it’s everywhere!

that’s what we used to call it before ‘Phoenix’ and ‘Firebird’…

now you won’t have trouble navigating your remote with your toe!

there are several debatable UI decisions on their calendar app but here’s something which I think is wicked sweet.

Go to http://calendar.live.com (need MSN account). Click on month view. Scroll. Be amazed.

So simple, yet so functional.

wish i was there.

if that does not tell you the state of current political and civil climate in Malaysia, maybe our Minister of Information can enlighten you with his TV commentary about the demonstration, if you can understand his English that is. I would rather have Larry Craig over him any day.

$35

It’s been a while since i last posted SoW.

For Emma - Bon Iver
FM Radio - Joshua James
穷开心 - 花儿乐队
Old Girl Back - Dave House
陽光宅男 - 周杰倫

and last but definitely not least, the ever so uber cool The Mae Shi’s Run to your grave.

In a weird, sort of masturbatory way of thinking, I have came to a conclusion that in order for me to control my seasonal material lust, as long as I blog about it, chances are I probably won’t buy it.

so from now on I will just dump all the stuff that make my eyes go bling bling here.

note: this is not my wish list. Don’t buy me these stuff. Seriously!

Stumbled across this article in NY Times via boingboing just now.

Violence and discrimination against women, during war time or not, is not something exclusive in Africa only. It’s widespread everywhere. You hear about things like rape victim in Saudi getting sentenced to additional punishment for appealing previous court ruling, or even worse, rape victim in India being killed by her own family members for being, uhm, raped. And if that doesn’t make you lost faith in humanity yet, a political figure in my beloved country, a slightly more civilized country you might say, once said this and this is a direct quote: If you cannot fight rape, better lay down and enjoy it. It is after all, the women’s fault.

Don’t just feel bad. Do help.

Sometimes I wonder whether things will be different if Jesus is a woman, Led Zeppelin is a girl band or if Cleopatra/Mark Anthony beat Octavius in the Battle of Actium. When one traces back to the timeline of human evolution, or the theological history of ones own religion testament, when exactly did any knowable occurrences even remotely state or merely suggest that a man is more superior than a woman?

Dear friends,

Facebook has connected us in so many ways it has became a vital part of my daily routine. The things we can’t do without facebook, I can’t even begin to imagine.

Some say social networking sites are created because everyone loves to flirt, some say to reconnect with old pals and there are some others who just want to share their naked pictures while posing in such a way that would make their moms wish they had an abortion earlier.

All are fine with me. Thing is we all want to know *real* updates on our *real friends’* life. Now, when you do an imaginary vampire bite on one of your/my friends, that’s not a real update. When you bitch slap someone with an imaginary application hand coupled with an imaginary, virtual giggle sound, that’s not a real update. When you do that 100 times a day and populate my newsfeed and make me miss some of the more important, *real* updates on my friends, that’s not cool. And when you want me to go to a biting adventure with you, like this:

that’s not cool either. I don’t want to bite my friends.

When I started FB, I told myself: this is going to be just for *real friends*, people I’ve actually met in real life and enjoyed the company with. See I already have a terminally dysfunctional friendster account where it’s filled with people I *want to be friends with* and who *wants to be friends with me* and I have no idea who they are except that they are armed with the notable ability of taking kawaii pictures of themselves from a downward angle coupled with a strategically-placed peace sign next to their cheek. Facebook is a fresh start. I want to keep my profile clean and hopefully, application free because when it really comes down to it, I know getting a real love bite beats any finite amount of vampire bites I can possibly get.

So, seriously, lovingly, with all due respect, please stop sending me application invites. The ‘ignore’ button is one of those button I press one too many times, and feel terribly awkward afterwards because I don’t want you to feel like I don’t want to play with you. It brings back bad memories from my childhood and yours.

You and me, we can be together. Without vampire bites.

waiting for your imaginary gift,
AL

surely you’ve listened to one of those songs where the starting makes you go ‘hmmm, this is nice’ and then somewhere in minute 0.34, it starts to show symptoms of a sad bastard song, morphing slowly into a grungy, screaming, emo-itic, ‘i want to die’ crescendo, before dying down literally to a mellow and long expired finale. Then you go ‘what the fuck just happened?!’

I call those PSTGFUH. It stands for perfect songs that get fucked up halfway.

Here are some of my recent finds, your mileage might vary.:

The difference in the shades (Bright Eyes)
minute it starts to fuck up:1.57

The light & the glass (Coheed And Cambria)
minute it starts to fuck up:2.48

I’ll Do Anything (Jason Mraz)
minute it starts to fuck up:1.22

Smile (Remy Zero)
minute it starts to fuck up:0.44

I am sure there are worse jobs out there but this one is pretty rough.

the height, wind, sub-zero temperature and muscle power involved. I feel blessed.

continue from my previous posting.

Attackers are now identifiable by their manner of attack: one group, after raping the woman or girl, inserts the barrel of a gun into her vagina and shoots.

My father was the founder of the National Park in Rwanda, which is home to rare silver back gorillas. During the war here, just one silver back was killed. And when it happened, within 48 hours millions in funding was sent to ensure the rest of the gorilla population was protected. Why isn’t the same done with our women?

The world continues to look away

Don’t look away. You can help.

sometimes, about half of my working day is spent on meetings, emails and IMs to discuss project specs, wireframes, mockup revisions and screen designs. Coupled that with multiple sessions of usability research, design brainstorming and well, arguing with my boss, communicating about design is becoming, at least in my case, as important as doing the actual work of design itself.

And I think I might have found the book that will help me improve in that area. I just finished the first chapter of Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning and this point made me chuckled and nodding in agreement.

Send materials around before the meeting. Perhaps this seems counter-intuitive to you, but sending materials around in advance of the meeting means you can dig into the meat of the documents without having to spend much time on background … Some people think that sending the materials around can backfire by revealing the punch line to some elaborate story. Keep in mind that you’re designing a web site, not telling a joke.

Can’t wait to finish it. Special thanks goes to Hui Nee and Amazon’s wish list :).

Chris is one of my favorite etsy’s seller. His artwork is amazing.

frown upon the gas mileage but great ads nevertheless.

one of these days I’m going to write a ‘Dear Katie’ post. Look at she oh so gorgeous she with her oh so lovely hair and that cutie mini Katie she’s holding. I long for the day Katie and I stroll along the beach with Suri, and swim with dolphins deep in the ocean of our heart.

Everyone hates Tom Cruise and everyone loves to hate him. The placenta and sofa jumping incidents seem to be the jokes of the century.

But honestly, if you ask me, I think he’s the luckiest sonfa bastard in the world. and *that’s* why we hate him.

I know I do. God dammit I do.