An interesting movie?

Watched some Mr. Show tonight, oh man it is soooo insane but it's still pretty sweet. Paul at work today mentioned the movie "Everything Is Illuminated", Elijah Wood stars in it and it sounds pretty interesting. I'd like to see it when I get a chance, it sounds great.

Today I got a sweet Pixar at MOMA shirt from the Pixar Exhibit that is now on at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It is awwwwwweesooooommme. I really wanted one and I missed the order for them, but someone at work today had an extra that was too small for him so he sold it to me. Sweeeeeeet!! It comes at a good time too because I really need to do the laundry and I don't have any more shirts for tomorrow except for my new one. Perfect.

Matt Lausch called me today (what up brotha) and he sounds like he is doing very well at school. He is taking Compilers which is known to be an insane course, but him and Matt Philips are writing their compiler in Python which is pretty impressive. Rock on. Matt's taking a Coding Theory class too which I thought was Programming Theory, but turns out it's "Coding Theory" as in how to encode data and add redundancies to data that you send across a network, or something of that sort. Sounds pretty cool. A bit like that insane Networking Assignment I had to do, just much crazier. :)

Well I gotta run, I have to read some more Harry Potter cause it rooockks.

More good Chinese food

Well today we decided to go to the same place again for dinner and it rocked. I took my camera and took a bazillion sweet photos. Rock on.


Taylor asking me something

Katelyn reading something

Sweet sky action

And the same but blurry

Sweet Berkeley vibe

Mmm... crepes

Nathan and Katelyn rockin' out

Me

More me

Check out these sweet caustics!! I, uh "rendered" this myself.

Frank lookin' like I wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley

Taylor really confused

Katelyn looking at her phone

Kevin checkin' out my hat cause we are wearing the same awesome hat

Playing with SLR camera

I took some sweet photos again today with my Mom's new Canon Rebel XT Digital SLR camera. Check it out.


Nathan chillin'

Frank about to jump

Frank in mid-jump

Frank pullin' a matrix in the air

Cool light

Nathan

Nathan chillin' again

Nathan and Frank

Manish coming home

Manish with all his stuff

Me making faces

Sweet camera closeup action

UV Mapping mania and some tasty Chinese food

Working hard and reading a lot lately thus the lack of sweet sweet bloggin' posts. I have been reading a massive amount of Harry Potter #6 and it rooooccckkkks. It's really awesome and I love being on work term and actually having time for fun stuff like reading books. Awesome.

Yesterday we all slept in until like 12:30 and then did nothing for a while until Taylor called us and we all went to Chipotle for burritos, man that place is sweet. After that the guys dropped me at work and I continued doing some UV Mapping stuff, I am working hard to learn UV Mapping quickly and get a good feel for the new tools in Maya 7. It's kinda funny because I wrote a few of the new UV Mapping features in Maya 7 but until now I haven't had a chance to really use them in a more practical sense. So this is wonderfully awesome and I am really enjoying spending a lot of time in Maya as a "Maya User" rather than just a "Maya Programmer"... good times!!!!!! By the way for all of you that don't know what UV Mapping is, it is a method that can be used to texture or paint a 3D object. The UV Mapping is essentially a set of coordinate points that define a mapping between 2D (texture) space and 3D (model/object) space. It's pretty cool and once you have a good UV map defined, you can then texture or paint a 3D object nicely without seeing lots of seams, and with a nice uniform texture that does not have lots of distortion or discontinuity. Good times for sure, this stuff rocks.

I have been watching some Gnomon Workshop DVDs on UV Mapping and they are pretty decent for learning some of the tools and techniques needed for UV Mapping. Good stuff.

So other than learning UV Mapping this weekend I am also going to get some more moolah for my Pay-As-You-Go phone. Last night was pretty sweet, after Chipotle and after I spent some time at work, we all went to a really nice Chinese restaurant in Berkeley and got some sweet Mongolian Beef and Chicken Noodle stuff and maaannn it was awesome.

Tonight I think we are actually going back to the same restaurant for more tasty food, so I am definitely excited for that. :)

Oh yes also one more thing, my old friend Kristen's sister Andrea just had her baby and that is really exciting. Congrats Andrea and Kevin!

Disney buys Pixar

Today was quite a busy day at work as you can imagine from all the news and press!! Pixar was all over the news this evening and there were tons of reporters outside of the Pixar campus all day today. Big big big big news. It was really exciting to be in the midst of all of it, and from the news reports it sounded like something was going to happen today. Of course as you all know from the reports, Disney has bought Pixar Animation Studios.

I am sure that I cannot discuss more details than are already in print, so I will outline a few of the details that are already available to the public in the following articles, and put some links here for you all to check out the deal in more detail if you'd like to!

A few points about the deal:

• Disney announced today that they are purchasing Pixar Animation Studios, in a deal worth $7.4 Billion US dollars.
• Steve Jobs, C.E.O. of Pixar and Apple now becomes a major shareholder of Disney stock and has a seat on Disney's board of directors.
  
• John Lasseter, creative genius and director at Pixar is now the Chief Creative Officer at Disney Feature Animation and at Pixar's studio, and will also oversee the development of new attractions for the Disney Theme Parks.
• Dr. Ed Catmull, President of Pixar now becomes the President of the combined Disney and Pixar studios, i.e. Disney Feature Animation and Pixar Animation Studios.
• The two companies will remain separate, with Pixar keeping its brand name and headquarters in Emeryville, near San Francisco. Maintaining Pixar'’s unique creative character was a priority in the talks, executives said. (source: MSNBC)
  

And a few quotes from Bob Iger (C.E.O. of Disney) and Steve Jobs (C.E.O. of Pixar and Apple).

• "With this transaction, we welcome and embrace Pixar's unique culture, which for two decades, has fostered some of the most innovative and successful films in history," Disney C.E.O. Bob Iger said in a statement. (source: sfgate.com)
• "Disney and Pixar can now collaborate without the barriers that come from two different companies with two different sets of shareholders," Steve Jobs said in a statement. "Now, everyone can focus on what is most important, creating innovative stories, characters and films that delight millions of people around the world." (source: sfgate.com)
• "“Most of the time that Bob and I have spent talking about this hasn'’t been about economics, it'’s been about preserving the Pixar culture because we all know that that's the thing that is going to determine the success here in the long run," Jobs said on a conference call with analysts. (source: MSNBC)
  

Here are some links to articles about the deal.

• CNN - "Disney buys Pixar"
  
• CBC News - "Disney to buy Pixar Animation for $7.4 billion US"
  
• MSNBC - "Disney buying Pixar for $7.4 billion"
  
• MSNBC - "Disney-Pixar: It's a wrap"
• SFGate - "Disney buying Pixar for $7.4 billion"
• USA Today - "Jobs has a knack for getting his way"
• LA Times - "Fabled Film Company May Get a Reanimator"

It was a very exciting day to be here and I feel like I was just part of a small slice of history. What a great time to be in the Computer industry. :)

Website update, links and photos

Just a quick update of my website today. I added some more Links to my new roommates and also some new photos to the Photography page. Check it out at: http://www.mikejutan.com sweeeet.

Jon's birthday at Jupiter in Berkeley

Last night was sweet, we all went to Jupiter in Berkeley for Jon's birthday and chatted for ages. Lots of good times as usual!! :) As expected we got Gelato ice cream afterwards and yes, it was awesome.


Jon, Eric, Jamie, Me, Liu, Frank and Nathan at Jupiter

Liu, Frank and Nathan hangin' out

Eric rockin' the Freebirds hat

Me workin' the Monster's Inc Hawaiian shirt!!

Best picture ever of Frank

Jamie, Eric and Paul eating some sweet sweet Gelato ice cream

Pictures with Digital SLR Camera

Tonight we watched the start of this cool space show called Battlestar Gallactica, it was pretty good. Usually I don't really like Science Fictiony stuff as much as other types of shows, but it was pretty good and my roommates really like it so we watched about half of the starting episode (about 2 hours) and it was pretty good.

I have to read some more Harry Potter tonight cause I haven't been reading enough of that lately and it rocks. Anyway onto more interesting news!! I am going to LA in a few weeks, it's all sorted out and I am really excited for it, now I just need to book my flight.

Here are some super cool photos I took tonight with my Mom's new Canon Rebel XT Digital SLR Camera, it is really amazing and it takes some awesome photos. I got a Sandisk Extreme III 2Gb card today which really is quite impressive. I can take photos continuously, about 3 per second or maybe more, and the buffer doesn't fill up! So I took about 50 photos within maybe 20 or 30 seconds and they were all instantly saved to the card. It does a great job and I am excited to take a lot of photos outside with this camera, it is going to take some amazing photos I bet!!

Here are a few photos I took tonight.


Green Tea bottle close up

One of my favourite pics of the night

Alternate focusing points

Trying out ISO 1600 inside at night

Focus on the DVD and then move the camera

Focus on specific keys on my keyboard

Cool

More water bottle photos

Readin', Scrubs, going to LA!!!!!!

Well lots of awesome times here lately. Monday was a bit of a slower day at work but today was super awesome, I got tons of stuff done and I really enjoyed it. I mailed off my ballot for the Canadian election which is next week and will be kinda crazy to see who wins since apparently the polls have changed a lot over the last few weeks.

Just a quick one tonight cause I want to do some reading and it's already 12:15 and my roommates are all asleep so I am going to read some Harry Potter on the couch here. :)

Scrubs was on again tonight and I love it, it is slowly becoming one of my favourite shows... ok not so slowly, I kinda loved it instantly. Anyway it roooccckks.

In other great news, I am going to LA!! I am going to visit in a few weeks and I am really excited for it, I am going to tour somewhere really cool (more details on that later) and hang out with my buddy Tracy and it is going to be an awesome time. Hopefully I'll have time for Universal Studios which is the greatest place ever, so if I get there I will be sure to take tons of photos.

I am making lots of new friends with the other new Interns too and they all seem really nice and excited to be here, so once again it's a great group to do stuff with. I hope we can get together another camping trip this term, that would be great and we had an awesome time last year camping in Big Sur.

Mr. Show, 24, roomies, Canadian Election!

I'm having a suuuuppper awesome time with my new roomies, oh man how could 3 roommates possibly be this awesome?!?! Well, it sure is marvelous. We are all instant best friends, it's really quite awesome/perfect. Frank said a bunch of times how happy he is that we are all "good times" and I must certainly agree. This TOTALLY and undeniably rocks.

In other news, after seeing David Cross and Bob Odenkirk yesterday, the awe/wonder of the situation made me, uh, "re-evaluate" why in the world I didn't own the Mr. Show DVDs. I scored a wicked price and got a set of all of them today which rooooccckkks.

We went back to Jon and Angelique's apartment tonight with a whole bunch of the Pixar homeys for more junk food, Red Vines (see significance from New Year's post) and to watch the rest of the season premiere of "24" - I haven't seen this show before but it's pretty intense and awesome. It's fun to watch it in a big group where everyone is booing the bad guys and cheering when the good guys come in and take down the jerks/bad guys. It rocked pretty fierce. Oh yeah on that note, we "rocked pretty fierce" on Guitar Hero again tonight, man I love that game.

I signed up for a mail-in ballot for the Canadian election which is next week. I just got it so I need to send it back asap. In Canada we just vote for the person in our riding, and there are about 4 or 5 big parties (Liberals, Conservatives, NDP the New Democratic Party, the Parti Quebecois and the Green Party) plus a whole bunch of smaller ones. Generally the election is expected to go mostly to votes between the Liberals and the Conservatives and a fair bit of NDPs as well, but no one is in clear majority so it looks like it will be a minority government anyway which is probably good to keep everyone in check. It's going to be reasonably close so it's important for me to vote even though I am away from home.

Otherwise all is good. Having an awesome time at work and working hard on some really interesting stuff. I am doing lots of fun stuff with my Intern friends from the summer and also lots of new Interns started today (including my roommates) so it was great and I have sooooooo many awesome new friends here, oh man it's marvelous. I love it here!! :) I'm not sure what the plan for this coming weekend is, probably just the usual kind of stuff. Tomorrow night is Scrubs which is quite important, hehe I love that show and it is almost too awesome for words.

Oh yeah, did I mention I saw David Cross yesterday?!?!?!??!??!?!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was soooooooooooo cool.

Bob Odenkirk and David Cross show

Ok this was amazing. These guys were hilarious in person and did an amazing show. Nathan came with me but unfortunately tickets were sold out, so I was there by myself... so I got FRONT row seats as they just put me at a 5-person table which already had 4 people at it! I had such an amazing view and these guys were awesome.

Bob was hilarious and everyone talked about how they came up with ideas and then they didn't work and then Bob and David tried to fix them and sometimes it worked and sometimes the ideas were so bad that they had to throw them away and just make new ones, it was SO cool. Bob talked about how it was cool to have his own sketch show because he used to write for SNL and it's a lot harder to get your ideas through in a big place like that, and he really liked the way that on Mr. Show the writers could pretty much do anything they wanted. He also talked about his other experiences on SNL and that was SO cool. I guess those guys all worked on the Ben Stiller Show too which is cool, I should watch some of that.

Anyway it was SO cool and David Cross was just as hilarious and awesome in person as you'd expect. It ROCKED!!!!!!!!!! I couldn't believe it, these guys are such amazing movie stars, comedians, writers, etc and I was sitting like 5 metres away from them. Amazing!!

Here are some pictures from the show.


Bob Odenkirk and David Cross from Mr. Show, host Paul Gilmartin from TBS's Dinner and a Movie and crazy Brian Posehn and Paul F. Tompkins

A close up of everyone

This is how close I was to the stage!!

Paul

David Cross reaching for his beer

David Cross walking off stage

North Beach in San Francisco

Sweet

More pretty pictures

NBC Sports Diving Dog competition!!

Ok this is totally insane. This morning we were watching TV and this was on NBC Sports?!?!!!!
It was a Diving Dog competition which seemed to be trainers throwing a toy off a ledge while a dog ran for the toy and then jumped off the ledge into water in a sort of long jump type activity. It was SO weird and hilarious. Here are some pictures.


Haha "NBC Diving Dog"

Get ready!!!!!!

Caught the toy

"So, how did your Chocolate Lab/Pointer do today?!!!"

In mid jump

Haha