Apartment unpacking update

Well I actually did pretty well today. I've been putting this off for so long, it's pretty nice to actually get to it. I unpacked a huge box today, one of the ones which has a ton of small things which I needed to sort really carefully and stuff. So that went really well. I also went for a nice sandwich, a slice of cake which the girl at the coffee shop suggested, and a glass of milk (also a suggestion by the girl at the coffee shop, it apparently was a good choice to go with the slice of cake) :) When I was at the shop I busted out the Maya Programming book so I could refresh on some details, I wanted to study how the DG works and stuff, and it's been a while since I've been deep into that stuff, so it's always good to refresh the 'ol brain on stuff. It was pretty fun!! Kinda like being back at Waterloo, studying on my weekends?!?!?! Haha except now it's fun and not painfully stressful, haha.

I did a big organization of the stuff on my desk at home so I moved the boring stuff (bills, papers) off to the side table, and so the top of my desk can just be for displaying cool stuff, toys, etc. Sweet. I also unpacked all my photo albums, and put them in a pile ready for a small bookshelf I am going to have to buy. And I organized all my electrical stuff into the corner so it's not a mess and I can sort that out without having wires all over the place. I also decided to sell a few things at work since I don't need them and they are just in the way, a 100ft Cat 5e network cable I don't need anymore and a 50ft Cat 5e crossover cable that I used way back to network the computers before I had wireless or fast flash memory cards.


Getting more organized now


Unpacked a few more things, photo albums unpacked


Haha I'm ready for when I decide to buy a car

Apartment unpacking

Well man I've got a lot of stuff to go through. Managed to get through some stuff I've got sitting around from Australia, old jobs, postcards, etc etc. Got some desk decorations up to make my desk at home a little nicer. :)


Nice random desk stuff


And... still tons of stuff.


Random electronic stuff I need to go through


Hey, I finally unpacked my router!

Bye Bye Ruth, Eddy's Party, Matt and Orion

Wow, lots of stuff going on yesterday. In the morning I headed downtown to meet Ruth, her Visa is expiring next week and so she has to head back to England. She is pretty sad to leave I think. We chatted a bunch about what our plans are for the rest of the year and chilled out at what is becoming the "usual" spot there at the Ferry Building. Good times, but sad to see Ruth off. I hope she has a good time back at home.

Then it was off to Berkeley. Eduardo from work had his birthday party way up in the Berkeley Hills (Tilden Park), and I headed over there to meet some of his friends. Awesome!! It was really fun, lots of nice people (pretty much everyone was in the tech industry) :) Fun times. One couple had a really hilarious dog who was overexcited and running around a lot, which was pretty funny. I tried some Venezuelan guacamole which was reaaaaaaaally good.

Then back to San Francisco with the plan of doing some work in my apartment, continuing this insane ongoing unpacking effort that stilllll isn't done. I was 2 min from my apartment and I got a call from Matt and his brother Orion, who were at my apartment!! Sweet. So we got some Indian Food, went to this random tiki bar near my house, and then came back here, played some guitar and chatted about Dave Matthews Band lyrics, life in general, charity, working hard, girls, sound boards, kosher laws, the video game industry, car repair, coffee and about 700 other random topics for like 3 hours. Those dudes are awesome!! Orion has just moved to Sacramento from Boston so I assume we'll be seeing much more of him around here now, which is great.

Ok. So now, I'm putting on some Dave Matthews, cranking it up, opening the curtains and spending all afternoon on my apartment. My mission is to get this place sorted out, clean the floor, put down my new carpet (that's a month and a half old and is still waiting for me to unroll it), and finally be "moved in." I'm going on a massive throwing out spree today, I've got some high school notes around here somewhere that I know I don't need to keep. I gotta chuck all this stuff out, and get my place a little bit more put-together. This evening I'll take a coffee break, watch The Simpsons and buy my plane tickets for this winter break.


Another glorious coffee day at the Ferry Building


Haha this dog was nuts


Beaaaaaautiful lake in Tilden Park


Eduardo looking happy on his birthday!!


A pensive moment


Matt and Orion


Workin' it


A Paul Frank monkey and a guitar, what else could you want?!

Friday night madness

Friday night we had some drinks and then I was going to head home but Matt and some of the LucasArts boys were headed to Pres A Vi, this fancy place in the Presidio. So we headed over there and it was awesome!! Really slick place, lots of people, and very "Marina" neighbourhood style, but still cool. So we had a great time there and then Matt and I took off to the Marina area in search of Pizza. It was a fun time and nice to chill with some more of Matt's friends!! The Marina is a nice spot, pretty bustling with activity and stuff. We walked by the place where the one apartment was that I was looking at. I really do like the bustle and excitement over there, but it was pretty nuts, that was the apartment that was $100 more per month than mine, and 2/3 the size!! Crazy. So I definitely made a good choice. :)

Oliver Stone thanks Ari Gold

One more thing I forgot to mention about the Oliver Stone talk that was absolutely hilarious.

So turns out that Oliver Stone is doing a movie about Pablo Escobar, sounds familiar eh? Well this is a biography film about the same person that the fictional film "Medellin" is based on. This is the movie that Vince and E were chasing down on the show "Entourage"!!!!! Haha crazy.

Anyway based on this Variety article (http://www.variety.com/VR1117973662.html) and what Oliver Stone said tonight, I guess Oliver Stone also likes Entourage. He said, "This is a great project about a fascinating man who took on the system. I think I have to thank 'Scarface,' and maybe even Ari Gold."

Haha. Awesome. The lady interviewing didn't get the reference, but there were a few people laughing in the crowd when he said this. Yeah, another example why Entourage is so awesome.

Oliver Stone talk

Tonight was freakin' awesome. I went to the JCC again to see Oliver Stone in discussion with Ruthe Stein, the Sr. Film columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. It was just mindblowing. This guy is SO intense, but SO laid back and relaxed at the same time. It was amazing to see and hear such a legend of filmmaking so "up close and personal." All in all in was an amazing talk, but a few silly leading questions like "So who do you support in the upcoming election?" Kindof a silly question to ask someone who obviously has clear views and is not here to discuss politics and his opinion of the candidates. I thought that went a bit too far, but otherwise the rest of the questions and answers and general discussion was just amazing.

Oliver Stone has done some amazingly powerful films, "Platoon", "Born on the Fourth of July", "Nixon", "JFK", "Natural Born Killers", "World Trade Center" and a bunch more. He seems like an incredibly serious guy when it comes to filmmaking and he seems like he pours all of himself into his films. When asked why he didn't follow through with Mission Impossible 2 (which he had an early role on), he said that filmmaking these days, especially action films like Mission Impossible 2 are so so so much work to do, and there are a lot of professionals you have to work with to design the movie, keep people's attention, make the action scenes believable... and so on. He was implying that all of this work is not worth it if your heart isn't in it. He said that he only does things he really cares about. Pretty awesome.

Then the best quote of the night, which really sums up his philosophy on life... Ruthe Stein said,

"So, with all these Hollywood Blockbuster movies out there, you know, big exciting action summer popcorn flicks, do you think you'd ever want to do one of those?"

His answer...

"No."

... and the crowd laughed and cheered.

This crazy Dave Matthews "lost recording" from 1989

How in the world did I not hear about this until today??

I was looking up the DMB concert in Mountain View on Antsmarching.org, this awesome download site for free (and legal) Dave Matthews concert recordings. It's really cool cause Dave encourages people to record his shows and share them online, so I found the show there and it's currently downloading. Looks like probably quite a good recording.

So that rocks. But more excitingly, I was looking around on there and it turns out that Dave recorded a show waaaaaaaaaaay back in 1989 with this guy named Mark Roebuck who was a fellow bartender in Virginia with Dave! It was recently re-released (in 2005), and it's called "Tribe of Heaven" - this is amazing!!!!!!!!!! A new, old Dave album?!?!?!?!

Check it out!!
http://www.antsmarching.org/tour/ViewShow.php?ShowID=3535

Dave Matthews Band
March 1, 1989
Greg Howard's Studio, Charlottesville, VA

Simple Thing
In God's Country
The Song That Jane Likes
Imagine We Were
Touch
Waves Drift Ashore
One War
Half The Time
Subway
Stillborn Child

Notes:
This was the first recorded Demo done by Dave, with Mark Roebuck. The album was called Tribe Of Heaven. The commercial release in 2005 did not feature the song Stillborn Child. Dave shared writing credits on the unreleased Stillborn Child, and also Imagine We Were, Song That Jane Likes, and One War. Mark wrote the rest of the tracks himself.

This date is an estimate of the first part of the Tribe Of Heaven sessions. Greg Howard played keys on Imagine We Were and Half The Time. Mike Rosenski played guitar on Touch.
There were two seperate sessions for this album, but no one is exactly sure which songs were played when. It is possible that all songs were played at both sessions.

So that is pretty amazing.

Looks like you can listen to some of the tracks from "Tribe of Heaven" on CD Baby here: http://cdbaby.com/cd/tribeofheaven

Man I gotta buy that album. That is amazing, it's pre-Dave Matthews Band style Dave. Amazing!!!!!!!!!!!! What I didn't realize is that "The Song that Jane Likes" is actually from these days and is on this album?!??!?!?! Whaaaaat!!!!!!!!! Man this is sooooooooooo cool.

Trying to get my audio recording set up

Tonight I watched some Sarah Silverman Program (man that chick is crazy), and finally paid off the rest of my bed, then I had a nice dinner of tortellini mixed with canned corn, pesto, herb bread from the Ferry Building with Olive Oil, and some Ceres Apricot Juice mixed with San Pellegrino frizzante water. Fancy!!!!!!!!!! Haha anyway yeah I love this Italian food situation, I think I'm pretty much hooked on the stuff.

After that I spent some time trying to get my audio recording to work correctly on my laptop and didn't really get all that far. I managed to figure out how to use the Phantom Power in the mixer, which is really the reason I bought the mixer to start with. Then I realized that my electric guitar needs a clean SO badly, and the metal is really tarnished and gross, and I need new strings on that guitar more than I have ever needed new strings before. Fortunately I have some, I just need to find a free afternoon some weekend to re-string everything.

Ok, so I got the mic to work, and the Monster Cables I got from that dude on Craigslist are pretty awesome. But, I was getting a lot of buzzing/hissing noise out of the mixer and into the laptop and then into my headphones. So I need to isolate where the hissing is coming from. My feeling is that it is most likely the connection to the laptop rather than the signal coming from the mixer. If it's coming from the mixer, that kinda sucks. But we shall see. If it's NOT coming from the mixer, then either I need to play around with the EQs a lot, or I need to get a better input device for the laptop. Seems to me like the Griffin iMic thing I got from the dude on Craigslist is a good idea in theory, but in practice it seems to create a lot of extra background buzz/hiss noise which I really don't want in the recording. Maybe I can filter it out somehow. I tried some of the Sonic Foundry ACID filters so far, but they didn't do a great job really. We shall see.

Anyway here's the setup.


My Laptop, Mixer, and a lot of cables

A few things from high school

I got on the cleanup and unpacking train again tonight and unpacked some more books and CDs and came across my high school yearbooks and a bunch of other stuff. I came across a couple of things that really were nice to see...

I read my high school graduation year yearbook and I had a note in there under the Student Council page to all the students at my school, and it was nice to read. But the coolest part was the graduation section where we all had our photos and a little bit about what we liked to do at school and so on. Get this - under my "future ambitions" section: "Australia, Waterloo, ILM/Business" :) Haha well that sure makes me feel good and that things are pretty much going just as planned!

The other thing I came across was a really really sweet photo scrapbook/present that my friend Angie made for me waaaaaaaay back before I was going to Australia as a present and a send off before my trip. It brought back so many nice memories of high school and leadership conferences and all the cool people I met there and how much they all meant to me as I was growing up. Pretty amazing stuff.

Ahhhhhhh. So yeah, I got a fair bit unpacked, but then just stopped and started reading a bunch of stuff that reminded me of all the steps I've taken to get to where I am now... I even saw my Waterloo Acceptance Letter and it reminded me of how happy I was on that day... wow. What a nice feeling it is to see all this stuff. Now I just have to find a good place to put it all in my new apartment. :)

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, Boyd Tinsley sighting!!

This weekend was the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival here in San Francisco, a free outdoor Blues festival in Golden Gate Park. I had a really busy day yesterday, met Ruth from Pixar who is actually headed home to England in about a week and a half. Did the usual Saturday morning Ferry Building coffee/bread/cheese combo, and it was great. Earlier though I headed to the bike shop to pick up my bike, and they did a lube and tune-up on it and it's looking great. The gears seem to be changing a bit smoother now so I bought some of the oil they used and looking forward to riding some more next week.

In the afternoon Ruth and I headed to the Bluegrass Festival to see Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, and we stuck around for Los Lobos which was really good too. The craziest part was that I was like 2m away from BOYD TINSLEY, the violin player from Dave Matthews Band!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He just showed up I guess to come watch Bela Fleck (since they play with Dave Matthews Band sometimes, so I guess they must be friends), amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bela Fleck was amazing, and Victor Wooten (their bass player) was just nuts. It rocked.

Lots of people around here last night and we had a great time.

Today I am on a mission to clean up some of my apartment here, it's a real mess and really nuts. I haven't had much time lately where I feel like unpacking more stuff and cleaning so I want to get it together a bit more today. I also REALLY need to do laundry. So I'm going to take a little walk and then try to get some of this place sorted out.


A bird on the bay


Bela Fleck and the Flecktones


Awesome!!!!!!!


Victor Wooten (far left) was amazing


The sax player was playing both an Alto and a Tenor Sax at the SAME TIME at one point. Insane.


Um, yeah. That's Boyd Tinsley from Dave Matthews Band!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Ruth and I bustin' a move in the crowd


Los Lobos on stage, very awesome

Bill's Housewarming Party

Friday night was great, I headed off to Bill's apartment in Menlo Park near Palo Alto for his housewarming party!! It was really fun and it was cool to meet all of his friends from work. He has a reaaaaaaally cool place and the setup with their TV and PS3 for playing music was sooooo cool. After the party I took off with Sarah and Diego (who it turns out is good friend with Landis from LucasFilm Animation) to a bar called Zeitgeist near the mission district. It was fun there and we got some Tamales from the famous "Tamale Lady" who walks through there selling mexican food. Good times.


Tasty goodness


Sarah bustin' a move


Meghan and Bill's new roommate


The two coolest people at the party, haha


Bill's new apartment and his friends from work


Sweeeeeet PS3 playback of music


Nice ambiance!!

More awesome swag, parties, work is awesome

Today again was just fantastic. I made some new friends at work too which rocks. Today it was just awesome, had an interesting meeting about upcoming plans, and then went through the work I have been doing for the past 2 months with my project leader!!!!!!!! Pretty sweet and really exciting that I am going to submit my work now and someone on the team is going to use it for something next week!! This is my first major contribution so far and I am really excited to see where it goes from here. Awesome. When we are allowed to say (which I am sure won't be until the movie/movies come out), I'll let you all know which movie my work was used on!!

This afternoon our team had a party and it was SO fun, lots of food and ice cream and so on, just amazing. Pretty fun to hang out with everyone too!! We also had an "egg toss" for fun, and turns out that apparently Canadians ROCK at egg toss! :) I teamed up with another guy on the team and I kept missing the egg and it was bouncing on the grass and we couldn't get it to break! So we kept going and eventually we were the last team left and we still hadn't broken our egg! So I launched it across the field, and it still bounced off the lawn. Crazy. Eventually one last throw made it break and we were crowned the winners of the game, and I got a prize, a crew shirt for Evan Almighty!! Sweet!!

So another amazing day of awesomeness. Man I love my job!!!

Here's a few pics of more awesome work clothes I bought a few days ago when I was up at the ranch...


Sweeeet Skywalker Sound new zip up I just got


Skywalker Ranch shirt that is awesome


Cool Evan Almighty shirt I won today!

Matt and I in the Annecy 2007 Video

Check it out!!!!!!!! We are at 2:50 into the video. Sweet deal!!!!!!!!!!


Annecy 2007 Video

We're in the Annecy 2007 Video!!

Check out the Film d'ambiance, a collection of footage from the Annecy Internation Animation Festival which was in Annecy, France this past June (and Matt and I were there!!) Our friend and awesome French Film student buddy Axel Cretinon emailed Matt and I today and told us WE ARE IN THE ANNECY 2007 VIDEO!!!!!!!!!! Crazy!!!!!!!! I totally forgot we made a face at the camera and they filmed us!! Haha, Matt is wearing a Shrek hat that we got when we got a poster signed by the Art Director of Shrek 3!!


Whatt upppp!


AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can see the video in all of it's glory here!
http://www.annecy.org/home/?Page_ID=1736

How cool is that?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!!

Facebook Personality test

Haha this is pretty cool, I love these things.



Trait Explanations

Openness
You are much more intellectually curious and sensitive to beauty than most. Your beliefs tend to be individualistic and frequently drift towards the unconventional. You enjoy your imagination and the exciting places it takes you!

Conscientiousness
You are a perfectionist. Everything is planned to the last detail, and consequently you have been very successful. Your pleasures are long-term ones, through seeing your plans come to fruition. You are extremely reliable.

Extraversion
You are constantly energetic, exuberant and active. You aim to be the centre of attention at social occasions and to assert yourself when in groups. You are someone that says, "Yes!"

Agreeableness
People get along with you easily. You are considerate and friendly, and think that other people are generally honest and decent.

Neuroticism
You are generally calm. Although some situations can make you feel emotional, your feelings tend to be warranted.

Also it says...

"Your theatrical language makes everything sound a bazillion times more exciting than it really is!" hahaha sooooooo true.

More videos from Europe!

I finally copied some of my photos to my hard drive here, and realized that I never blogged the first round of videos I made while in Paris! So I've found quite a few cool ones here and just posted them all to YouTube. Enjoy!! It's really awesome to remember back to all the exciting stuff from my trip. I loved it!!


First day in Paris, Accordion on the Subway from the airport to the hostel


Outdoor concert at Sacre Coeur in Paris, during the daytime


Chillin' out on the Siene River with some friends, Paris


Raining in Paris


Moulin Rouge at night, Paris


Modern Art Museum in Paris


Climbing the Eiffel Tower in Paris

Post-Dave show, toys, DVD

This morning we woke up really late, at about 12:30 or so and headed out to get some Pizza for breakfast?!?! Crazy. Then off to Wal-Mart and Target where my usual search for new Cars toys doesn't work out so well, but today it was great! I got 3 of the 4 new Wal-Mart Cars toys, TJ the Hummer, Cactus McQueen and the Lightyear Blimp!! Sweet!!

Then back to Matt's apartment, and we played some Wii for a while. Then off to meet Yaron and Dmitry who were at a San Francisco 49ers game and we got some spicy Chinese food before I got on the CalTrain to come back up to San Francisco. It was a great weekend, seeing my friends from Pixar on Friday and then chillin' with my Waterloo boys all weekend. Good times. Oh yeah, I also finally bought Ghostbusters 1 and 2, I figure I should own it since 1) It rocks so much and 2) ILM did the effects and the effects are so legendary and awesome. Pretty much means that I had to get it eventually!!


We walked by this car and the frame around the license plate is hilarious


At California Pizza Kitchen


Matt and Dani at lunch


Matt and I in another amazing photo


Waterloo crew!!!!!!!


Dinnertime in Mountain View


Word!


A good pensive photo taken by Yaron, haha


New Cars toys!!!!!!!!!!!!! Booyah!!!


Aweesssssssssssome new Ghostbusters DVDs, it was only $8.99 for both movies!! Amazing!!!

Dave Matthews Band concert in Mountain View

Seriously, one of the best Dave Matthews shows I've ever been to!!!!!!!!!!

They were ON THE BALL last night. It was INSANE. I don't think I've ever heard them jam so hard and just bust a move sooo fierce on all of the songs. It was intense. Their version of Jimi Thing was the usual 15 minute situation, but they played some other stuff reaaaaaaally well and jammed stuff I've never heard them jam before like the new song Eh Hee, and also the jam of Louisiana Bayou was unbelievable!!!!!!

The stage was just AWESOME!! 3 separate screens in the middle that were focused on the main people playing instruments, big screens at the sides, and I definitely think it was the best light show I've seen at a Dave show yet. Just amazing.


Amazing lights and screens

They played a whole lot of new stuff which ROCKED THE HOUSE and also Dreaming Tree was soooooo sweeeeeeeeeeeet and Dream Girl and Sister and Grey Street were all soo amazing too. The encore was absolutely fantastic, with Dave playing So Damn Lucky from the solo album, and followed by a freakin' amazing jam version of the American Baby Intro. This rooooooocked cause I didn't know what it was, I thought it was "just a jam part of a song" and I was right, it was just the American Baby Intro, not the whole song, and it must have been 10 minutes long. Amazing. They ended with the most intense version of Ants Marching that I've ever heard and all in all I think it was one of the best Dave shows yet. It was so on the ball that I had a feeling they might be recording it for a CD, I guess we'll have to see. But they were spot on. There was even some skat singing by Dave and also by Butch Taylor, the piano player!! Rawshawn Ross, the new trumpet player was on for most of the songs, and he added a LOT of new sound to the band and I loved it. Amazing, amazing, ammmaaaaaaaaaaazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's the setlist.

Saturday Sep 29 2007
Shoreline Amphitheatre

Sugar Will (tease)
A Dream So Real *
Two Step *
Eh Hee *
You Might Die Trying *
Everyday *
Dreaming Tree *
Grace Is Gone
(Black Water) *
Louisiana Bayou *
Sister +
Granny *
Corn Bread *
The Idea Of You *
#27 *
Dream Girl *
Jimi Thing *
Grey Street *
Stay (Wasting Time) *

__________________

So Damn Lucky ~
American Baby Intro *
Ants Marching *

Show Notes:
* Rashawn Ross
+ Carter, Butch and Rashawn: Back-up vocals
~ Dave Solo

(song name) indicates a partial song
indicates a segue into next song

And... that was awesome.