Arriving in Toronto

I met up with Matt and his Mom in London last week and then took the train with Matt to Toronto. That was totally sweet and we had a bunch of time to catch up well about everything that is going on lately.

Also Matt broke the news to us... Matt and Kim are ENGAGED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Amazing!!!!!!!!! I am so happy for them and hopefully more details soon about when and where the wedding will be. Super awesome.

We had a nice long talk on the way to Toronto and then chilled out in the afternoon, eventually going to the Eaton Centre, Swiss Chalet for Dinner and watching a bunch of movies at Alex's place. Good times!

Tuesday morning I went out with Dana from Waterloo Frosh Leading for a nice breakfast before she left Toronto for New Years. That was super fun and great to catch up! Then off to get poutine with Matt Phillips and (finally) I got to meet Patrick, one of Matt's good friends in Toronto. Awesome!

Tuesday afternoon I had the best shopping experience of my life. :) Seriously!! It was quite glorious. So... I have had my eye on a SWEEEEEEEET double-breasted black peacoat jacket from RW&Co. since last winter. I tried one on, it was amazing, and then I DIDN'T BUY IT. Big mistake. I have literally been thinking about it for a year, and so I thought I'd try my luck at the Eaton Centre. They didn't have what I wanted, and what they had was sortof cool but the wrong size. D'oh! So we went to Yorkdale and it was GLORIOUS. They had 1 LEFT! It was just PERFECT. Exactly what I was looking for, exactly my size, perfect fit, AND on sale. It was absurd how awesome this was!! Then I found a couple of pairs of jeans which looked nice and were on sale. And the rec Canada toque with earflaps that I wanted to get at Roots? They sure didn't have it in London, Waterloo, or at the Eaton Centre... but I walked into Roots at Yorkdale, walked right up to a sale rack that had the coolest Canada toque on it (also on sale), tried it on, freaked out, a cute girl laughed at me and said, "Hehe, it looks good! You should buy it!", and then I walked straight to the counter and bought it. DONE! So yes, best shopping day ever.

Then some lady at Tim Hortons told Matt and I that we looked "artistic" (and I said, "thanks"), and asked us where to get a comic book calendar for her son. Hilarious.

Then back down to Matt's place to drop off all my stuff.


Matt and I in London


Breakfast with Dana


Lunch with Patrick and Matt


Books I got with my Chapters Gift Certificate


My amazing peacoat!!!!!!!!


CN Tower at night

OSSSA reunion

Last week we met up at Nina's apartment in London for a little OSSSA reunion. It was gloriously awesome - tasty food, lots of chatting, and looking at a bunch of old photos and reminiscing about the sweet OSSSA days.


H.K. and Craig!!


Ezra and Nina


Haha, good one of Bizz, Andrew and Ezra


Nina!!

Article from Father Murray about our Jewish-Catholic Chanukah celebration

Here is the incredibly sweet article written by Father Murray, about our "Jewish-Catholic Chanukah celebration" last week.

Who knew that deer were Jewish? Or that Apple iPhones could sing in Hebrew?

Those were just two of the wonderful discoveries on Monday, December 22, when the Sisters joined with their friends to celebrate Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish festival of lights.

Over the years, the Jutans and the Sisters have become good friends. This year, they decided to celebrate their friendship in a very special way: by a shared celebration of Hanukkah. Since the Sisters’ cloistered way of life meant that they could not all travel to the Jutans’ home, the Jutans kindly offered to bring Hanukkah to the Sisters—and what a beautiful and memorable celebration it was!

December 22 was the second night of Hanukkah this year, and the monastery’s dining room was decorated in festive style, with Hanukkah plates and napkins. As the sun set, the Sisters gathered with Cheryll, Arthur, their California-based son Mike and their Waterloo-based daughter Norma, for the lighting of the first two candles on the menorah. The Jutans explained the historical background of the festival, and joined in a beautiful sung version of the Hanukkah blessings as Norma lit the tapers. Then, as the (real) candles burned, Mike (a computer graphics designer) introduced us to one of his recent inventions, the iMenorah—a computerized menorah application designed for the Apple iPhone, which allows those away from home on Hanukkah evenings to light the appropriate number of “virtual” candles, and to listen to Mike’s chanting of the blessings we had just heard.

To begin the meal, Arthur led us in the Kiddush (blessing) over the bread, and Mike led us in the blessing over the wine. Cheryll had obviously been busy in the kitchen for several days, judging by the rich buffet of festive foods awaiting us—salads and antipasto, vegetables, chopped herring, cheese, crackers and (to everyone’s delight) the traditional Hanukkah treat of latkes, grated potato pancakes which are absolutely scrumptious with applesauce! The meal was a wonderful time of sharing, and allowed everyone to get to know each other better.

As we were going through the buffet line, we caught a glimpse of them: a family of five deer who had appeared in the Sisters’ back garden, just a few feet from the window where the menorah was burning. No doubt they were attracted by the flickering flames in the window, and they grazed around, apparently unfazed, for several minutes as we snapped pictures of them. Tradition says that the menorah should be placed in a window so that it can be seen by everyone passing by—and apparently that includes the neighbourhood’s “Jewish” deer! It was a very special surprise for all of us.

After dinner, we retreated to the Sisters’ common room, where tables had been set up for the dreidel game which is traditional in Jewish families during these eight days. A dreidel is a small, four-sided spinning top, with Hebrew letters on each side: nun [“n”], gimel [“g”], hay [“h”] and shin [“sh”]—the first letters of the Hebrew phrase Nes gadol hayah sham [“A great miracle happened there”], referring to the victory of the Jewish Maccabee family and their supporters over the Syrian Greeks in 164 B.C., which allowed the Jews to restore and re-dedicate the Jerusalem Temple (the story is told in the two Old Testament books of Maccabees in Catholic Bibles); it is that re-dedication that Hanukkah commemorates, when the one tiny flask of kosher oil—enough to burn for a single day—burned for eight days instead. A true miracle, and a sign of G-d’s pleasure as worship was restored to the Temple!

The letters also stand for Yiddish words (nicht, ganz, halb, shtell), which roughly translate as “nothing,” “everything,” “half” and “put in”. The game began with a bowl of hazelnuts and chocolate coins (“gelt” in Yiddish) in the centre of each table, and each person’s spin suggested an action: do nothing, take all the “pot,” take half the “pot” or add a hazelnut or gold coin to the bowl. Needless to say, some people seemed consistently luckier than others, and we often needed to replenish the bowls (even the lucky players were generous with their spoils!). The evening was filled with laughter as we shared in this ancient (and fun!) game, admiring the truly skilled among us who succeeded in spinning the dreidel upside-down, on its stem, and wondering whether perhaps some dreidels were weighted to always land on one letter or another! Fruitcake, dreidel-shaped cookies and cups of delicious festive tea added a special flavour to the evening.

All too soon, this special—and historic—evening was over. The Sisters gathered and sang a beautiful rendition of the Aaronic blessing (“May the Lord bless you and keep you…”; Numbers 6:24-26), which is common to both our religious traditions. With an exchange of gifts and warm hugs, we all wished each other joy and blessings for our respective holidays, with a hope that the Sisters’ first Jewish-Catholic Hanukkah celebration would not be the last.

In a world where religions can so easily—and tragically—divide people and promote prejudices, this sharing of a special holiday tradition demonstrated once again how friendship, respect and understanding are far stronger than our differences. As Jews and Christians, we have much to celebrate in common, and particularly the gift of G-d’s light, which leads us toward Him—and toward one another—in faith, peace and love.

Father Murray

Multi-faith Chanukah... with the Nuns!

We have a close family friend who is a Nun here in London, and this year for one of the nights of Chanukah, my Mom made tons of amazing food and we brought it to the Nuns for an amazing multi-faith dinner with the Nuns!! Father Murray, who is completing his Ph.D. on Jewish-Catholic relations, called our evening a fantastic "Jewish-Catholic Hanukkah Celebration", and said that our interest in sharing our culture (and in turn, learning about theirs), "reaffirmed the importance of the kinds of interreligious dialogue and education" that he is so deeply involved in. Amazing!!

It was a very unique and interesting experience for both the Jutans, the Nuns and Father Murray, I think! It was a great opportunity to share our culture and traditions, and to learn about theirs in return.

Father Murray wrote a great article about the evening, so I will leave that for another post as his descriptions of the dreidel games and food are excellent. Here are some photos from our evening of cultural enlightenment!


Lighting the Menorah


Lighting the iMenorah :)


Me pouring the kiddish wine, and describing it's significance


Dad talking about the challah


We're ready for dinner!


Me describing the iMenorah, and how it is a modernized approximation of an ancient tradition


Teaching the dreidel game


Come on... "Gimmel!"


More driedel game


Everyone enjoying the chocolate money, or "gelt"

Waterloo for Chanukah

For part of Chanukah we went to Waterloo, stayed at Norm's and then went for a great dinner at Grace and Harry's house. The food was amazing!!!!


Mom and some silly socks


Benny getting into the gifts


Adam being a cat


Dinner at Norm's


Great photo of Adam


Dreidel at Grace and Harry's house


Grace and Harry's tree

Back home for Chanukah 2008

This year Chanukah started on the night of Dec 21st, so for the first time in years I've been home in Canada with my family for the whole holiday!! That is so awesome, and we had a great time.


Back home!!


Dad checking out Wall-E on my iPod


Mom showing me the Chanukah tablecloth!!


Me and my Thomsie :)


Norm and I lighting the candles


Norm and I lighting the iMenorah!!

Bubble Tea on Christmas Eve

What is open on the evening of December 24th, when the majority of people are at home preparing for Christmas with their families?

Asian Bubble Tea restaurants!!!!!!!!!!

Ans, Vaishali and I again had the predicament of "there's gotta be SOMETHING open on the evening of December 24th, when the majority of people are at home preparing for Christmas with their families..." and we solved it with a new Bubble Tea place which was open in London. And yes, it was amazing.

A few other photos from early in my Canada trip here too.


AMAZING home cooked food on my first morning back in Canada :)


Out at Prince Al's in London with Tim


Cleaning snow of Alex's car


Me and Big-V


Slamma and Vaishali


Sweet Star Wars mask at Ans's house... nicccccce.

Back in Canada!

I've been back in Canada for a few weeks for the winter holidays and it's been totally amazing already. Prepare for a whole bunch of blog updates, including a very different Chanukah celebration than you have ever seen before... and lots of good times with friends here in cold, snowy, awesome Canada.

Lucasfilm Holiday Party 2008

Alrighty! Finally time to catch up on some blogging from the past few weeks. I'm still in Canada on vacation, but finally had a chance to do some blogging... so here we go!

About 3 weeks ago, we had our work holiday party and it was again, UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!!!!!!

As you might recall from last year's post, this is the most amazing party ever. It was SO much fun. This year the theme was "Winter Carnival", and there were caricatures, photo booths, a sleigh and a winter ice chair to get photos in, and tons of hilarious and fun carnival games: wack-a-mole, those water spray balloon ones, a cotton candy machine... everything! Gats and I busted some sick dance skills, and met up with Frizzle, Stephan, PhysB, Cabernet and all the rest of the G-Moneys. It was glorious. The employee art exhibit showed off the talent of our colleagues, and the food was fantastic, and the dance floor was rockin'. How could it be any more amazing?!!!!


Getting fancy


Carnival tickets!


Gats and Jutes


Wack-a-mole!!


Yes, a carnival ride, inside!!!!!! This was amazing.


Frizz hittin' up the food


Catsin' it


Gingerbread Man


Then, due to the wintery conditions, we had trouble getting the car to start

Check out Nathan Matsuda's Hangar No. 5 short film!

Check this OUT. Holy moly, this is amazing.

This is a short film which my old Pixar colleague/roommate/absolute freakin' genius friend Nathan Matsuda directed while at Northwestern University. Yes... this is a STUDENT FILM. The production quality is so far beyond anything you could ever imagine - it is INCREDIBLY hard to believe that this short was not made by industry professionals with decades of experience. :) Well, you better believe it! Nathan and his filmmaking crew put this unbelievable short together, Nathan directed and wrote the story, as well as leading the 3D work as the Visual Effects supervisor and animator/modeler/compositor... man! Nathan is a man of incredible talent, his work on Pixar's Wall-E is visibile in a huge amount of shots. His technical and 3D art skills are not only world-class, but his passion and clear talent for Directing is something that I surely hope come across the desk of Michael Bay one day.

In terms of the work itself, the "reveal" of the monster is great. I love the character design, and the spider-like shape is nice and creepy. The metal texturing is just perfect, and the smooth and seamless blending of the 3D animated character into the scene attest to the clear fact that Nathan's computer graphics and 3D art skills are actually THAT GOOD. :) The smoke, and explosions alternating (possibly?!) between practical effects and 3D are also so well integrated that it's pretty darn impossible to tell what is real and what was added in post. The monster kicking the oil drum into the door is probably one of my favourite parts. The monster falling onto the floor shows some great character animation skills, and I love the falling/kneeling/collapsing motion that it goes through.

The 3D isn't the only thing to watch, though. The storyline has some excellent suspense and action (which Nathan is especially good at - if you've seen his "zombie short" called Dead Silence, you'll know what I mean). The lighting and music are really well-chosen, and the shot layouts are just totally solid too. There is so much clear planning and execution here that totally comes through in the quality of the final product. Be sure to check out the "Making of" movies on Vimeo as well.

Keep your eye on Nathan's work... Hangar No. 5 is an amazing feat, and it is truly amazing how insanely professional this work is. :)

See the video here, or click on the embedded video below. http://www.vimeo.com/1118299


Hangar No. 5 from Nathan Matsuda on Vimeo.

Happy New Year!

Wow, 2009 already?!!! Crazy times. :)

I had a great New Years with my buddies in Toronto, I've got lots of photos, just gotta sort through all of them. Happy New Year to you all, and I'll finally catch up on blogging and photos soon.

Canada Blog updates coming soon

Hi all,

Things have been super busy over the December break here in Canada, and I'll post some photos soon of my antics over here. It's been super snowy, then rainy, then foggy, and apparently soon it'll be back to snowy!! This country is nuts!

All is well, Chanukah has been awesome and going to see some old school OSSSA friends tomorrow night which is going to be AMAZING!!!!!

More details soon.

iMenorah international crash / wrong number of candles: FIX

NOTE: For international (non-USA) customers of iMenorah:

We have just (12/23/2008) realized that due to SDK internationalization problems, iMenorah may be crashing on load or displaying the incorrect number of candles if your Region Format is not set to USA. Please accept our apology for this bug.

Please do the following before running iMenorah:
iPhone -> Settings -> General -> International -> Region Format.

Set this to "United States" and the app will work as expected, with the correct candle number for the current date.

I don't expect our fix will be available until after the holidays.
Please use this as a workaround until we can update our app.
We hope you have a very Happy Chanukah!

Mike and Matt
Developers, iMenorah

"How to prevent the App Store from becoming the Crap Store"

Interesting article from iPhone developer Tap Tap Tap, discussing trends on the App Store and how they think the market needs to change to prevent an overrun of 99cent "crapware".

http://www.taptaptap.com/blog/how-to-prevent-the-app-store-from-becoming-the-crap-store/

iMenorah on TMCnet and USA Today

More great press today!

• http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/technology/imenorah.html
  
  
• http://content.usatoday.com/topics/article/Religion+and+beliefs/Holidays/Hanukkah/02q59VF0CL5nb/1

And this following video is not our app, but a great little video from the Ha'aretz Newspaper from Israel. Looks like some people in Israel wrote a similar application for Chanukah and they have it running on a Nokia SmartPhone. Great stuff!

• http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1047983.html

iMenorah giveaway #2

Thanks to Dan from whatsoniphone.com.

• ALREADY OVER:
  http://www.whatsoniphone.com/blogs/giveaway-2-imenorah
  
  
• STILL in progress - Day 2 of giveaways:
  http://www.whatsoniphone.com/blogs/day-2-giveaway-6-imenorah
  

An iMenorah holiday story to warm your heart :)

Environment Canada was calling yesterday "Snow-mageddon" due to huge gusts of wind, snow storms and some insanely bad weather. I'd seen reports of hundreds of flights being delayed and canceled... but who could have ever guessed that this could lead to a beautiful iMenorah story!

We really wanted to create more than just software with our first app. Our original goal was to create a meaningful cultural experience:

“We wanted to make something culturally relevant... we wanted to provide a ritual experience, rather than just a piece of software... we wanted it to feel like you’re really lighting a menorah."

-Matthew Parrott, quoted from our interview for the Jewish News Weekly of Northern California

Now this is amazing. THIS is why we created the app. I couldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams that we would be getting in stories like this. :)

Hi-

Our flight was delayed out of Newark & we missed our connection to Cabo, so we ended up in Atlanta overnight. As our menorah is in our still-checked luggage, we dimmed the lights in our airport hotel room and lit our menorah with the app & sang the blessings together; what a memorable Hanukkah! Thanks so much!

A kind thank-you to Dan Cohen for his support, and for his help in creating this amazing Chanukah moment. :)

Oy-Bay giving us props for the ZDNet article :)

Thanks to Tomer at Oy-Bay.org for giving us some props for the article on us in ZDNet. :) We are so excited, and it's so mind-bogglingly amazing to be in ZDNet, I can hardly talk.

http://oybay.wordpress.com/2008/12/21/imenorah-now-on-front-page-of-zdnetcom/

iMenorah posted on ZDNet! This is nuts!

The press train continues!

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=2676

Tonight we were graced with an article from the famed ZDNet.com - part of CBS Interactive. I believe way back in the day, these used to be combined companies with Ziff-Davis, such a legendary and highly respected publisher. Ziff-Davis Publishing rocks, and also owns PC Magazine and PC Computing, 2 magazines I used to read as a nerdy teenager who was quite obviously obsessed very early on with computers and going to the University of Waterloo. :)

This is so, so cool.

We are getting in lots of stories of people who are enjoying our app - I'll post some of those if I get permission from the authors. This is why we created the app. As Larry Smith once told me, "Remember, the ultimate goal of entertainment is to inspire!" I feel like we've hit the nail right on the head, and it makes me SO happy.

iMenorah press for today!

Lots of press today!

• iPhone News: "Celebrate Hanukkah, er Chanukah, er you know what I mean, with iPhone"
• Spring Awakening: New Media For Chanukah 5769!
• Make Use Of Podcast #50: The Hanukkah Show
• iMenorah - 8 Nights of Hannukah in your Pocket