The Zereps

Well, Candices’ and my big adventure today was a trip into Manhattan.. unfortunately for us, the subway trains run a lot slower on the weekend than they do during the week and we spent a lot of time just sitting around. We went to H&M, a ‘Goodwill’ store, had an early dinner at a Thai place, and then headed on to K-mart. Then Candice was rushed to get back because she didn’t want to miss the season premiere of ‘Desperate Housewives’ on tonight. Anyway.. at random times during the day I pulled out my ‘crappy camera’ and took pictures of nothing in particular-and here they are:

Some apartments in Astoria:

Some strange billboard:

A blurry shot of the street:

On Friday evening, Candice and I went and saw Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. We got there pretty early because Candice wanted to get a good seat. Little did we know, there wasn’t a huge demand to see this movie and they wouldn’t even let us into the theatre until 30 minutes before the show. And since we got there early, we even got to see the extra 20 minutes of commercials, aptly dubbed ‘The Twenty’ in addition to the 15 minutes of previews before the show. Of interesting note is something that Candice mentioned to me–apparently, ‘Corpse Bride’ is the first stop-motion movie to be shot using digital cameras. We enjoyed it, and if you liked Tim Burton’s other films, you’re sure to love this one too.

Hmm.. maybe I’ve just been to busy lately… or maybe it’s just that nothing of interest has happened lately, bit I haven’t blogged anything for a while here. So, howabout a picture. Not too interesting, but it’s the best I could come up with (all the other pictures I took with this crappy little camera came out too fuzy..) This is a shot of the street outside the building that I work in…

And one of the company fish tank.. wow!

Actually.. I did find something interesting on Slashdot yesterday, which most people don’t probably wont care about, but I’ll talk about it anyway.. 😉

A long, long time ago.. in a galaxy far, far away, there was an online service called Quantum Link.. little beknownst to anyone back then, this tiny online service company would turn into a behemoth we all love to hate–AOL. QL was exclusively for Commodore 64 computers (which happen to be a favorite of mine..) This service operated at a blazing speed of 1,200 bits per second (comparitively, today’s modems are approx 56,000 bits per second, and broadband is over 1.5 million bits per second.) Somebody, in their spare time, recreated this entire network from scratch and enabled people with C64s (or emulators) to connect to this ressurected network, just like it was in 1985. So, tonight I set up WinVICE, a C64 emulator and signed onto the service. This stuff was way ahead of its league–can you imagine instant messaging, email, news, & graphical multiplayer games in 1985! It was pretty fun to play around with (for me anyway.) Reminds me of Prodigy and the BBSs from back in the day. w00t.

Wow–this is funny. And, sadly, only a few of my geeky friends will actually be able to appreciated it: http://www.getinternetexplorer.com/

As a side note, please don’t get Internet Explorer–it already comes with Windows anyway and it sucks. Please Get Firefox instead. Have a nic day.

This is pretty interesting. And here I thought in the last 20 years there have been no major breakthroughs in speech synthesis. But long gone are the days of Dr. Sbaitso and Max Headroom–enter AT&T Natural Voice. Try it out, it’s pretty cool. You just type anything you want into the text box and it will convert it to speech as a .wav file that you can listen to. They even have Spanish, German, and U.K. English accents. P.S. If anybody can find a link to a Max Headroom video (such as the infamous ‘New Coke’ Commercial) please post a comment or email me. Thanks! -ep

::bling bling:: :clink clink:: ::boing boing:: ::bling bling:: ::boop boop boop:: ::beep beep beep::

eric’s playing sonic the hedgehog on our grand spankin’ new sega genesis. and he’s playing the music/soundeffects *way* too loudly. geez…the music makes me want to swallow a bottle of ibuprofin. now he’s starting shenobi 3.

it’s the weekend! very exciting. we went to see our neighboor dj last night at a cute little ‘boho style’ cafe/bar. it was fun. today i think we’re going to swing by freezepeach for some much-needed caffinated beverages. and then maybe do something else followed by something else and then possibly dinner? we’ll see…

oohh…we saw a preview for another movie to add to the list of ‘movies we’re willing to pay money to see.’ it’s called wallace and gromit: the curse of the were-rabbit and looks pretty cute. that’s two good clay animation movies coming out this fall. corpse bride is the other one, just in case you missed the super-cool snipits on tv, movies, and billboards. i am in eager anticipation to see it.

oh! i would like to say happy late birthday to my brother, shawn, too. good ‘ol number two zero. i hope you got your card on time! ::bow wow:: [jabba says happy birthday too since we forgot to include him in the card signing]

i’m hungry!!!

that draws people to this city. I thought the worst of it was over, but today was another insanely hot and humid day in New York City–topping off at 97% humidity.

I want to write more, but unfortunately, I’ve been on the computer all day long and my wrists are starting to feel sore. Hasta Manana.

i just want to say thanks to eric’s aunt winona for the scrumdiddlyumptious recipe for perogies. they were a big hit here. i made a double recipe so i could slice up some pasta noodles with the extra dough. my dough was a bit tough since it was the first time i’ve made pasta, but things worked out very well. 🙂 i think next time i’ll put some fat-free sour cream on mine, just ’cause i like it. thanks winona for the recipe! 🙂 i’ll definately make them again sometime.

omg…it’s so muggy here today because of that darn hurricane whatever-her-name-is. PLEASE COME AUTUMN!!!

ooooohhhhh…..i am eagerly anticipating halloween this year, and not just because i love halloween, but because i have a doggy now! here’s the costume i would like to get for jabba, it’s called ‘the suit’. isn’t it too cute? we watched that movie last night, too, actually. jabba is much cuter than frank. frank the pug from mib2 is an older dog. you can tell because he has grey and white facial hair. hehe 🙂 speaking of facial hair, we need to give jabba a ‘shave.’ he’s getting a 5 o’clock shadow with all those whiskers. but he’s not a big fan of personal hygene, believe me.

maybe i’ll be pathetic enough to take a picture of jabba in the bathtub next time, like parents who shamelessly snap pics of their toddlers splashing around in the tub. next thing you know i’ll need a minivan and be living in suburbia. i’ll suddenly start getting my nails done every week, spend hours at the salon, buy only expensive department store makeup, go to day spas, shop exclusively from ‘whole foods,’ and spend massive amounts of money on therapy, vitamins, botox, and moisturizer made from cut-off foreskins. -shiver- well, the botox doesn’t sound too bad….

i guess i’m already pretty bad since i bake birthday cakes for my dog and dress him up. 😉