First Tooth

As a proud (recently initiated) papa, I feel obligated to post a picture of my son's first tooth:

It took me enough tries to finally get a good photo, so I need to validate all of that work by sharing the result.

For historical reference, the tooth first reared its head on Thursday, August 21 2008.

This is My Life

I wish that I knew the source for this little gem, but I ended up at some non-English site and lost the trail.

I need to get out more.

Caffeine and Espresso

After looking at this chart, I guess that my extra "energy" after a grande mocha from Starbucks is probably more from the sugar than the caffeine!

BTW - I never realized that such a simple question could have so many answers.

"The Office" Extras - For Americans Only?

I am a big fan of the US version of the TV show "The Office". (disclaimer: I never watched the original UK version - I believe it when people tell me it is great. I have no opinion on which version is "better" - I just watch the US version.). So I was quite excited to hear that NBC was posting "Producer's Cuts" versions of some of the episodes, which included a bunch of content that simply didn't make it into the original broadcast episode for whatever reason. Unfortunately, I was extremely disappointed to see the following message when I actually went to view the video on NBC's "The Office" website:

Apparently, the video is only available to US residents and NBC uses your IP address or something to guess where you are accessing the site from. Now I am sure that there are plenty of reasons why NBC believes that restricting access is necessary - but this kind of thing just drives me crazy and flies in the face of Net Neutrality. So, I can watch the show on broadcast TV, but some extra content is unavailable just because of where I happen to live?! The sad part of the story is that this kind of approach doesn't even work - there are plenty of alternative means to find the content online.

More Winter Weather

Honestly - this isn't a weather blog - but with all of the "significant" weather that we have been having around the Greater Vancouver area this winter, I can't help but take some quick snapshots. I found this small plant looking rather cold just outside our front door.

(Did you notice how I conveniently didn't mention the fact that I haven't posted anything to the blog in over a month! There are a dozen excuses, so I will save some space and just move along)

Halo Movie

At the risk of becoming a one-trick pony before finishing up my first official month of blogging - here's another Halo related post.

Recently, there has been a few minor news items concerning the making of a movie based on the Halo games. Apparently, some good preliminary work was being done, but then there were some disagreements amongst the studios and producers, etc. so the project was put "on hold".

Since it is probably inevitable that a movie will get made at some time, I am wondering if, with the recent releases of some great Halo trailers, Halo isn't a great fit for an entirely CGI movie? It's been 5 years since the last big-budget CGI movie: Final Fantasy. And while that movie is largely considered a flop due to it's poor showing at the box office, I believe that the problems were related to 2 primary things that a Halo movie could avoid:

1. Weak and confusing plot.
2. Too many "human" characters.

The first point is pretty self-explanatory (I hope), but the second point may deserve some further explanation. You see, I remember when the Final Fantasy movie came out there was a lot of talk about how realistic the characters would look (I seem to recall something about the animators modeling all of the female, main character's hair strands individually, in order to make it move more naturally). While the results were amazing, I still think that were not good enough to not distract the viewer during the movie. Additionally, it seemed like the quality of the character modeling varied with the level of importance of the characters - i.e. the main character looked more "real" and natural than some of the less important human characters.

With the Halo movie however, this would be far less of an issue. Part of the Halo mystique is the fact that the main character (the Master Chief) doesn't ever remove his helmet - and therefore we never see him. I am no CGI artist but I am pretty sure that the amount of effort required to create a character who is basically covered from head to toe in some fancy armoured jumpsuit is a lot less than the work to model human facial expressions and individual hair movements.

Also, since the Halo world is occupied by a large variety of alien species, you know that there is going to need to be a large amount of CGI work done for the movie anyway, so doesn't it make things a lot easier - especially for visual continuity - for the entire movie to be rendered inside a computer-generated environment?

On the good side, at least the news for Halo isn't related at all to Uwe Boll being the director ;)

Stunning Halo Trailers

I am a sucker for both movie and video-game previews. I think that it's the sheer intensity that the creators manage to cram into such a short clip. Inevitably, the full version of the move/game can not realistically live up to my expectations, mostly because you can't keep up that same level of intensity for more than a couple of minutes.

Even with all that being said, I am still drooling over the latest Halo 3 trailer. (Make sure to download and watch the hi-def version).

Whoa!

Bonus - Another cool video from the Halo universe is the trailer for an upcoming real-time strategy game called Halo Wars.

Self-Improvement

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, has a great personal blog where he writes about all sorts of things that enter into his mind. I got a real kick out of his recent tips on "Acting Smarter Than You Are".

It's funny because it's true.

Active Vancouver Weather

The Vancouver area has been getting some wild weather recently. There were some heavy rains a week or so ago that resulted in a boil water advisory that has lasted over a week for some people. Now on the heels of that excitement comes a major snow storm!

I went for a walk in the evening and snapped a couple of pictures. I wanted to capture the natural look so I turned off the flash and slowed down the shutter speed on my little point-and-click camera. The results were very bad... this picture is the only one that is even moderately acceptable:

From Snow - Novemb...

Us Vancouverites are typically pretty inept at dealing with snow - especially when it comes to driving which should make for an interesting drive into the office tomorrow.

Update: The boil water advisory has finally been lifted. And I didn't have to battle the morning commute in the snow because I am working from home today.

Hopefully Late *is* Better than Never.

I have been reading and participating in blogs for a few years now, but seemed to never bring myself to actually start one of my own... so here I am, late to the party.

I guess a short introduction would be worthwhile. My name is Jeff Smith and I am a software developer in the Greater Vancouver area of British Columbia, Canada. I expect the content of this blog to run the gamut of topics including hockey, software, technology and miscellaneous personal ramblings.

I apologize in advance since the quality of the posting is going to be pretty erratic until I start to get the hang of it, so bear with me (notice how I am writing this as if someone is actually reading, I never really considered myself to be such an optimist!).

Now that the proverbial ice is broken, let's get going. It feels good to finally join the conversation.