kismetism

BRANDON. YOU DIDN’T SHOW.

;x

So more badminton anecdotes for you, since I’m doing such a good job failing to write about anything these days. You know that lady I ranted about some time ago who plays badminton at the same place as us. Well I’m not totally over that dislike, but she was doing a pretty good job of not inspiring it since I got back… until today. When she and her partner played two matches against my dad and I (1-1) and we were lined up for a third when a court opened and her son and his friend went to it.

There were no other people lined up to play on the court (people often avoid the younger players.. because… well, they suck >_> ) and my dad spent a short while calling for other players to take up those two positions rather than having the two kids rally by themselves.

So with no other people, my dad was like, fine, let’s go. Because he’s more interested in just playing (and in me getting exercise >_> ) than anything else. So we went and played with them… and they wanted to play together, so it was me+dad vs them. ::lol::

We went easy on them and my dad was, as usual, kind enough to give them good shots that would stretch their abilities while not being too difficult. (I gave a pointer about returning serves to the left-handed kid, too. :X )

After a full game, my dad went to put his cards down for a new match and the lady (whose son we were just playing with) had the nerve to get mad and scold him for disrupting our planned match-up. I nearly choked on my own fury. We were playing with HER son! How can she get angry at us for doing something for her OWN KID.

ARGRRGLKHGKHLFEKJRLQ. Horrible mother is horrible.

• Write bot
• Database population
• PHP pages to edit database for TA use only (so it doesn’t have to be … super pretty)
  • Student edit and reset
  • Student inventory lookup (public)
  • Automatic calculation of credits / credits remaining
• Store pages with descriptions of everything
• Badge/achievement system descriptions / implementations
  • Comes with its own bit of database pulling that would have to be implemented in bot
• Come up with a name (>_>)

Gonna say straight out that Toy Story 1 and 2 were only “meh” in my opinion… I’ve liked other Pixar films much more. Having said that, TS3 has definitely ingrained itself as one of the better Pixar films… I absolutely liked it more than 1 or 2… though I don’t think it quite topples Ratatouille as my favorite.

Aggravatingly enough, the whole film was either soaringly hilarious or heartbreakingly rueful… there wasn’t a whole lot of middle ground to tread. I think I ended up enjoying it so much because of the ending that came about. Is it weird that I found Andy’s maturation to be the most fascinating and entrancing thing about the entire storyline? I was totally flooding tears when he was making his final decision.

Hmm. Not much to add. Oh, except … the short at the beginning was really amazing, if unorthodox. Definitely my new favorite Pixar short, by far.

And I’m definitely crying at movies too often. wtf is wrong with me. ::lol::

Saw this with my parents the other day. Thought it’d make a good Father’s Day flick, since both me and my dad are closet (or not-so-closet maybe) Jackie Chan fans and we’ve both seen the original. He also reacted positively to the trailer when we went to see… uh… oh, How To Train Your Dragon.

Summation? I quite liked it! Sure there wasn’t a whole lot in terms of originality, when compared to the original… but I thought it was an incredibly decent remake overall. Moving the film to China made a lot of sense and gave the filmmakers a lot of awesome scenic stuff to shoot, that’s for sure. :P

There was a great amount of humor balanced with a fair amount of drama and tension and action. You could definitely tell that Jackie Chan’s team had most of the say in terms of choreography, as I saw a lot of throwbacks to his original Chinese films, especially in the early chase scene.

I suppose I might complain about the camera work when it came to the fighting scenes; there was too much jolting and jilting around that you couldn’t always make out the movement of the characters so well. Obviously this is deliberate, but I know that at least in Chan’s older films, they kept the camera still as often as not, just because his motions were so impressive to watch without the extra ‘dynamism’ of a wobbly camera.

My mother thought the scenario was unrealistic; she didn’t think a bunch of Chinese kids would dare strike an African American. But I rather think that kids are kids, no matter what color or creed.

I’ve read a lot about how people are annoyed or offended at the idea that Jaden’s parents are uh… so well situated to boosting their kid into the limelight. And while that’s certainly true, I have to say that I can’t really complain when he does a pretty decent job of holding up to the standards set to him. He looked pretty good doing all his own fighting; apparently he trained for months with Jackie Chan’s stunt coordinator.

It was also pretty amazing to see Jackie Chan in a dramatic role. Again, referring to his older films… they had plotlines, but the acting was pretty hammy in general. So seeing him as this sort of desperately broken, widowed husband was an incredible shock. I totally cried. >_>

Anyway! I enjoyed myself greatly and that’s about as much as I would have asked of it. (And my Dad gave it an “A+”.) Plus it was the first film I hadn’t seen in 3D for a while now. XP

Not going to write much, since I’m quite tired and I still have to wake up early for badminton.

First day of ATDP, first time in many years where I was only teaching one section. Felt really weird breaking for lunch and not feeling the pressure to be back by 1:00pm. First time eating at the Brazil Cafe.

First time giving a placement test to students, first time working with two co-instructors, one from a freaking ‘nother state who has been working as hard as, if not more than, me at getting everything to come together.

First time since the first TIC that the Evlan server had a total meltdown when we were instructing students to sign up for accounts. Not the first time ever, but I was stressed when the problem turned out to be more severe and more cryptic than anyone was able to figure out. We managed to “fix” the problem by restoring to an earlier state, but it’s kind of skirting the issue.

Did I mention, we’re not doing points or grades for TIC this year? Inspired as I was by all the talk of games improving student motivation, we decided to try a leveling system for this year’s TIC. They get XP for doing assignments (quests) instead of grades.

Definitely was a first hearing the reaction from the students when we revealed this little tidbit to them; I’d like to think it was excited. :x I’m definitely surprised by how many of them have already done the next couple of quests without prompting for the second time, because their first submissions were ruined by the IoCM server crash.

More on the whole system later… I wish I could find a good way to document this upcoming insanity…