Sunday, October 30, 2011

Chicken wings for halloween weekend

Decided to take Saturday lightly after club hopping on Friday night... Studio nightclub then to Tila. So we decided to bake chicken wings... were they ever good :p

It's not as complicated as it seems...

Ingredients:
  • Wholesale pack at Costco of chicken wings - what you see here is only 40 wings, there is more in my freezer :)
  • Diana Honey Garlic sauce
  • BBQ Hot Wing sauce
Directions:
  • 25 minutes @ 425 degrees Celsius
finally... SERVE!! :)


Got your own recipe? Share it with me in the comments below :)

Thursday, October 27, 2011

25 things about ME!

Friend told me today that she read my note on Facebook... and laughed at few of the points I wrote... I went back and re-read it... and I laughed too! Brings back so many memories... thought I'd share this note here :) Please write your own and share!!

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you.

1. In my elementary years, I went to school forgetting to change out of my pink pajama pants. I didn’t stop crying until my teacher called my parents to pick me up.

2. My brother and I both have Chinese names sounding like our English names. So if you are saying my English name, you are 'almost' calling me by my Chinese name. :) No one ever knows the second character of my Chinese name. Probably because it doesn't exist.

3. I clogged the drain in a California hotel because I had to craziest idea of shaving off all the hair on my legs.

4. I have a scar underneath my right eye from a few years back when a skate knocked me in the eye after body-checking him down on the rink. *ouch*

5. I used to breakdance and was part of a group called the Southside Rockers.

6. I'm a Canadian Born Chinese (CBC).

7. I've never left the North American continent.

8. I'm very easily tanned and my tan takes forever to fade. (if ever)

9. The first concert I went to was Jacky Cheung's on December 15, 2007 at the ACC, it was an awesome experience! I later went to Leo Ku and Jay Chou's.

10. I never finished my Aqua Quests.

11. I'm easily scared and my reaction is very LOUD.

12. I have nearly perfect vision but my hearing is horrible.

13. My all time favourite games are SC, COD4, GOW2.

14. I love driving! 155km/hr is the fastest I've hit, so far.

15. Some people think I'm weird because I use both hands for everything. I eat, write and text with my left-hand, but use my right hand for sports, more physical activities. All I see is balance. :)

16. I used to wear a cap all throughout elementary school.

17. I can never fall asleep on greyhound buses, more so now.

18. I've owned 5 cellular phones in my lifetime and 3 of which were in 2008.

19. When I was really young, I always thought there were little people in the Kleenex boxes pushing tissues up whenever I needed one. That's what I was told from my cousins. Then the truth came...

20. The reason why I didn't go to Canterbury HS is because I thought everyone there was gay.

21. I used to never eat spice, now I love it. :)

22. I've ran 10km once. It felt good crossing that finish line after an hour of running!

23. I lined up for 2 hours on the release day for The Dark Knight in freezing cold rain. I sat through the whole movie drenched in water. I did this twice.

24. I took a comic illustration class at the Ottawa School of Arts one summer. There was no air conditioning.

25. I haven't met half my family who are living somewhere in China/Hong Kong right now.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Me, the ant exterminator, just this one time!

There is something up with the air, or maybe it's the weather. I've been hearing from many people that they are getting headaches and migraines in the middle of the day... not me... I just can't sleep at night and I have trouble waking up in the morning!

A few days ago, I discovered an ant problem in my unit (yeah... 26 floors up and I've got this issue, wonder how long it took for them to get here). This was noticed a day after my tenant left an open can of Chunky's on the counter top in the kitchen. A clan of ants were crawling around on the counter, around the can, and along the wall, eeekkk! I didn't know what to do except to grab a paper towel, wet it, and tried to kill them all! They were baby ants, so you know what that means... the queen is around!

I know what I had to do, find the queen, kill her, and kill the entire colony! I couldn't find them...

After I disposed of the cans, I didn't see any more ants, until the next day... my tenant (again) left a Subway sandwich on the counter, and waited until the next morning to eat it. Well... to his surprise... the next morning he found hundreds of ants swarming the sub (image that... gross... I didn't see it). He threw his sub away and I offered him breakfast (a bagel :)).

The following day, my co worker was kind enough to lend me his Ants-B-Gon, a substance that serves as ant bait, whereby the ants would bring the bait back to the colony, and eventually killing all the ants. One day later, I didn't see a single ant on the counter :).

I hope it stays this way... but to be safe I should go out and buy an ant trap...

Hope this never happens to you... it's not a pretty site... but call me the ant exterminator... not a long term career... just for this one time :)

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Saddened that Lytro does not ship to Canada

For those who don't know, Lytro is the first of its kind that allows you to reprocess a photo after it's already been taken. For example, if you increased your depth of field (DOF) and only focused on the foreground, you can later go into the settings of your camera and refocus the background to be in focus, taking the foreground out of focus... how cool is that!? It uses the light field technology to capture all the light in the space you're capturing... (it gets a bit technical, but remember that light is what creates beautiful pictures:). The camera is also f2 throughout, so it's mega sharp, but the DOF is also really big.

Here's what it looks like...
I'm saddened that Lytro is not shipping their products to Canada... as I signed up for their early bird notice... see the email I got below:

Here's a video and link to an article that illustrates how Lytro works (if you click on the link, click on one of the photos once to refocus the image... it's quick cool!):


Again... bummed out... but maybe in the next month they will change that... hopefully!

Monday, October 17, 2011

Weekend photos

This past weekend I decided to venture around downtown Ottawa with my heavy duty cam. I started in the OU campus where I saw a bunch of students playing, what it seemed to be, Quidditch. It was quite amusing... they were running around with a ball with a pole in between their legs. Each player took their turns and tried to steal the ball out of the other's hands (quite aggressively). You would think the girls might feel violated when she goes up against the guy, but I guess not, the game carried on. At that moment, I wished I had the 70-200mm f2.8... because that scene would have been perfect... mmm... someday...

On to the the photo taking now... walked around and in the OU campus area, I did find a spot with a bunch of leaves that had fallen from the trees. Here are some of my favourites after rendering them through Lightroom (why didn't I learn this program earlier!?):



Normally I render my photos in iPhoto and Photoshop CS5, but this past weekend I installed Lightroom 3 onto my desktop (Windows) computer, and so I decided I take a journey down its road. After a couple hours playing with the settings, it's quite intuitive. I'm happy that Lightroom opens NEF files (Nikon's RAW file types). I did all my editing in Lightroom and the both photos are ones that I rendered with a preset filter + some additional adjustments. And yes, I've started taking photos in RAW now, probably best if I'm going to take photography seriously now... well... still learning :)

Let me know what your thoughts are on the above photos :) thanks!

Oh! And check out this cool Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera - now know what I want for Christmas :)

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

R.I.P Steve Jobs

Today marks a sad moment for all. Steve Jobs, once seen as a thought later and innovator, a idol to me, passes away at age 56.

On the Apple website:
I first heard this news when my friend texted me while I was out after my volleyball game. Didn't believe it at first, but when I searched it up on the news, it said 38 minutes... "Steve Jobs passes away at age 56".

Jobs was one remarkable leader, one that was transparent and always fighting. He inspired me greatly over the past few years and I'd just like to say thank you for that!

My favourite speech by Jobs (everyone should watch and listen if they haven't).


"People sometimes have goals in life. Steve Jobs exceeded every goal he ever set for himself", Wozniak said.

R.I.P. Steve Jobs, you will forever be remembered!