This is like a dream come true for me.  Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve always fantasized of building my own PC. I can’t even count in my hands how many times I’ve spec’ed a gaming rig, only to be forgotten.  Why I still haven’t tried up to this point, I’m not sure.  Maybe because I didn’t have enough to actually go out and buy them.  Or maybe I was just to chickenshit about messing up and throwing all that money to waste.  I can still remember when I started replacing parts in my computer where you manually have to set your own DMAs and IRQs in the BIOS, while trying to figure out which jumper configuration you need to set your hard drive and whether to set it either as a primary master or slave…all of that while trying not to blow yourself up (confession: I’ve actually seen sparks fly during these occasions.).

Anyways, that was all in the past now.  These days, everything is like Lego.  You just stack everything up and hopefully all the fail-safes built into the motherboard kicks in. Everything is color-coded and labeled neatly, that the only way you could screw up (other than faulty components)  is if you read the manual upside down.

Another good thing these days is the pricing. Deflation on computer parts (and tech stuff in general) is already a given. However before, when you want to find the best prices, you literally have to walk through each store and ask for the price and compare it by hand.  Now, with price comparison sites like pricecanada.com or shopbot.ca (in Canada) there’s no excuse for not getting the best deals.  And then there’s the beauty of price matching where your local store can match the best deals online while saving yourself some hefty shipping fee.

So with all these reasons, I was really running out of reasons not to do it. I started fantasizing again last year, and built another spec sheet for that elusive build but started forgetting about it again.  Until a few months ago, when StarCraft II came out.  It ran fine on my laptop and was able to finish it but only using the lowest settings.  And one of the best things in any blizzard game is the cinematics – from the first WarCraft all the way to WarCraft 3. But this time, Blizzard made a lot of use out of their in-game cinematics vs. the pre-rendered ones, and that put the final nail in the coffin for me to upgrade to a “real” PC.

The most arduous task when building a PC is not how to put the parts together, but knowing which parts to get.  It’s really hard to find a balance between budget and power given the plethora of options available. So after months of research, here is what I came up with:

This comes with a hefty tag of $1200, $1400 including the IPS monitor (which is still a bargain).  I’ve started to purchase some of these when I can but it’ll take time.  It’s got a hefty price tag, but I think it hits that balance that I need, especially now that I’ve got a list of labor-intensive games I’m dying to play, including Crysis and Far Cry 2. With this list, I don’t think I’ll be having any buyer’s remorse anytime soon (unless prices dramatically drop).

I’ll do another post when I’ve finally gotten all of these together, and start to finally put them together.

November: marks the start of my quarter-century life crisis.

December: revisited the Big Apple (pics still not included), this time trekking the city on our own. Still did the tourist-y stuff but less huffing and puffing around like the last time. Hit MOMA, FAO Schwartz, The Apple store at 5th avenue, saw some guy propose at the Rockefeller skating rink while watching the christmas lights display at Saks, breakfast and “adventure” at Central Park. We also saw Chicago with Ashlee Simpson (which was surprisingly good) and got hustled at Times Square. Went to the apartment that John Lennon got shot, and then browsing through MET. Not much dining, but got to eat at Bubba Gump’s (eh) and TAO (loved the one in Vegas). Wall Street and downtown was not much to go around on.  Subway can be daunting but really straightforward after a while.  Next time around, I’d like to hit the other 4 boroughs and mix up with the locals more..and more museums and restaurants.  Never sleeps, that city does.

January: Attended a software conference in Montreal (out of my own pocket..oh the inhumanity).  Lots of French-speaking bagels and whatnot.  Learned how to say “no” in French (just drop the pitch a tad lower and pretend you’re angry at the world).  Hit up some of the clubs (since they’re supposedly reknowned in the world) till around 3am (which I’ve never done, and probably never will) and can tell how sexually desperate some people are.  Old Montreal could’ve been a nice visit, except for the fact that they’re close on Wednesdays for some reason.  Didn’t get the chance to go to museums, but had the opportunity to visit EA games slave labor factory.  Talked to THE only javaScript guru and heard from known (some controversial) hardcore sec guys. Next time I’m in Quebec, I should really hit the slopes.  I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

February:  work.

March:  I’ve finally started settling down and started doing some need-to-do chores.  I’ve started to get some of my teeth work done, start finishing off my G license, started playing guitar again and get some recording done, got myself a new phone, and start budgeting for the next trip.  After this, I think I’ll start buckling down and start saving up for that volunteer work that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.   Then maybe, just maybe, I’ll start thinking about what to do with my life.

Thus, while Facebook continually overhauls its policy, here are some tips on how to defend yourself against the seemingly losing battle for right of privacy.  Thus, you shouldn’t be surprised the next time you login to Facebook and  see a picture of yourself plastered in a dating advertisment.  You’ve been warned.  As for me, I’m still staying away from Facebook…but that’s probably because I’m just lazy.

Moral Lesson? Don’t dismiss it too quickly the next time that script-kiddie wannabe CS freshman or that know-it-all coworker brags about finding a bug in GCC. There’s always hope for everyone.

• It was directed by Gus Van Sant (same guy who directed Elephant…no? ok, how about Milk? still nothing? seriously, you need to go watch something other than a Michael Bay movie)
• Casey Affleck was there. (did you know he was in the American Pie franchise as well?)
• Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier were co-producers of this film.  Not surprising considering Kevin, Matt and Ben knew each other for quite a while now, but that the View Askew productions have this movie in their repertoire alongside Mallrats and Jay and Silent Bob The Movie is mind-boggling.
• The in-classroom shot in the first 5 minutes in the movie was filmed in one of the classrooms in Maclennan Physical labs at University of Toronto, specifically the same room where I spent time dozing off to Physics 100 and CSC373.   Apparently, most of the interior scenes of MIT and Harvard was shot at U of T as well.

• Get my G (and M) driver’s license
• Do volunteer work overseas
• Buy another guitar and amp
• Donate to Amnesty International
• Do the CN Tower climb
• Pay off my school debt
• Go back home
• Buy a house
• Gain 10 pounds (half-way there)
• Install OS X Leopard on a netbook
• Build my own PC
• Get your own host and domain
• Finish my personal projects
• Go to Las Vegas
• Visit (again) the new AGO and the not-so-new ROM

Let’s see how many I can cross off this list by the end of the year.

It’s something that I distinctively remember, opening my eyes for the first time to a whole different genre of music. Before that, all my music tastes were limited to only what my other friends listen to or what they play in MTV (which was still big back then).  Growing up on our household probably didn’t help either as hard music was considered “unfavorable”, to put it mildly. I even remember catching a glimpse of Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar, or Prodigy’s Firestarter, and I can feel my insides in a knot and almost wants to puke (sort of like the first time you played Doom for 3 hours).  Yeah I was that repressed.

Fast forward a few years when music was also evolving on the internet, when Shawn Fanning released Napster. That was also the time that I migrated to Canada, and with all that angst from separation, it was bound to happen.  I ended up being friends with two guitar players daydreaming of becoming a rock band.  I was also a (sort of) guitar player, but because it was rare to see a band with three guitar players and nothing else, I ended up becoming a drummer instead.  It was like Jack Black teaching rock history to the kids in School of Rock, and I was absorbing every minute of it.  Every weekend, we’ve watched DVDs of bands like Oasis, Black Sabbath, Sound Garden, Rage Against the Machine, Foo Fighters, Nirvana, Satriani, Page..you name it.  And it wasn’t just for the sake of watching, we were there to learn.  We were watching and admiring intently as to how they accomplish the harmonics on the strings, or how they use pentatonic scales on their leads, or as to how different the key they’ve played a song in.  School was in at that time.

Because we were piss-poor (probably still is), we started renting out music studios and commuted with guitars and amps on our backs riding the TTC. The good thing about being a drummer is you only need to carry your sticks with you.  Sometimes, it would even just become an impulse to us – one minute were eating at Tim Horton’s, the next minute we’re jamming at a studio, around 1am in the morning due to lack of decent studio schedule availability. We would also go down at Steve’s and Long and Mcquade every weekend drooling over the Epiphone Union Jacks and Les Pauls, and jam with $2000 electric guitars for hours. It was like a playground for us.

So why am I blogging about this?  Well, because it was something I was reminded of when I was watching Sam Dunn’s Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey.  It made me reminisce that thrill of discovering something musically and taking it to heart: understanding it from an outsider’s point of view, starting from the basics.  It was heavy metal 101.  I wasn’t really that big into heavy metal rock; some of it still scares me (which other metalheads admits to as well).  But from an anthropologist’s point of view,  it was more than just people wearing dark eye lashes and tights.  Metal, for some means social repression, gender and sexuality, and even religion. It doesn’t just break down metal rock for you, it scrapes underneath it. And if that’s not enough Dunn expanded more in Global Metal on the culture of heavy metal, a response to the overwhelming replies gotten from the first doc. It was interesting to see it on a global perspective, uncovering different agendas for each one of them.  I think this has spawned attention to the rockumentary genre, and it’d be interesting to see if Dunn can bring the same level of scrutiny for other genres as well.