Vincent Cheung

Vincent Cheung's Blog


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Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Feline Narcotic Water

Tiki was not impressed with the water quality in her water fountain.


What happened was that Tiki knocked her catnip pillow into the water and the water turned colour because of the catnip in the pillow. That pillow is super gross too because it is covered in the saliva of probably half a dozen cats...

Tiki didn't drink the water, but she's not that crazy about catnip. Wonder if other cats would've liked it though...

Monday, March 22, 2010

You haven't missed much

Seems like my wheels are spinning in the sand. I really thought that I'd be farther in my life at this age.

Since I was last blogging regularly, nothing has really changed. I am in the same chair in the same apartment. I'm still in Toronto. Still doing my PhD. Still playing volleyball. Still single.

I'm definitely feeling old now since I keep meeting people in their late teens and early 20's through school related events. This has been the pattern for the past 7 years. I get older, but the girls stay the same age. I feel that I am the creepy old guy now.

Seems like life is passing me by. I guess I just thought that things would be a lot different when I was about to turn 29. Different city? Different relationship status? Different number of dependents? Different job?

Sure, career-wise, things are technically pretty different now since I'm running my own company (happy 1 year anniversary to my company 2 days ago!), but it doesn't seem that big of a change since it's actually quite similar to grad school in that I sit in front of my computer and do whatever I want. The difference now is that a lot more people go to my website, I make money when I dick around on the Internet, I meet with different people for advice, I receive different types of awards, and I do media interviews.

Is this a third-life crisis? You probably won't see me in a sports car, but I might skip out of the country.

P.S. If you don't know what's been going on, i.e. you're not on Facebook, here are some things you can read:

Toronto Star

Globe & Mail Podcast

Globe & Mail Interview Chat

U of T Article

Return of the Blog?

I think that I'm going to start blogging again. Or at least try to. I was thinking recently how I felt disconnected from long distance friends and that I didn't have my blog to have a discussion with them anymore. Then, Florence told me today that I should blog more. So, I am obeying her command.

This blog has been around for almost 6 years now! I don't think that I have any readers left since I haven't really blogged in a while, so we'll see what happens. I think I'm going to go back to using this as a personal journal.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

1 Million Downloads of Shape Collage

Shape Collage has now been downloaded over 1 Million times! Crazy.

When I started playing around with the algorithm which would eventually become Shape Collage, I had no idea that this was going to happen. I thought maybe a few people would use it, but I had no idea that it would be this big.

I'll continue to fly by the seat of my pants, take things as they come, and see where this goes. Hopefully this is just the beginning :)

Thursday, September 03, 2009

Last Day in Beijing

  • I'm not ignoring you to be rude, it's because I don't understand you

  • Snuck into the science museum and there was no one inside except a sleeping security guard. It was cool except that most things were turned off.

  • Pissed that my camera ran out of battery

  • Disappointed by the lack of animal cruelty at the Beijing Zoo

  • Had dinner with "very handsome" and Don

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

One Day In Beijing

  • girls here look at me and then blatantly look down to my feet and back up, am I dressed funny or something?

  • broke my flip flop and limped around a UNESCO site

  • gave up on trying to take the subway that hasn't been built yet, even though it's on the maps and ticket machines

  • pointing is my main form of communication

  • snuck onto a boat

  • realized I was lost when I was in a tourist site and no one was around

  • grabbed a pine cone for some cute girls

  • hopped onto a bus without a clue where it was going, but lots of people were taking it, so it seemed like a good idea

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Happy Birthday Tiki!


It was Tiki's 2nd birthday yesterday! I made this video of her from the many clips that I've taken of her...

Included in the video is Tiki playing fetch with a ball, jumping super high, running up a door, falling off a table, playing with toy mice, spiking a ball, drinking out of a glass, fighting with other cats (and me), drinking out of a glass, and being dressed up in different costumes.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Summer Travel Plans

June:  Hawaii
July:  Winnipeg
August:  China
September:  LA

Leaving tomorrow for Hawaii. Hopefully my gps device works this time...

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Quotes

I keep a list of some of my favourite quotes on Google Documents and I add to it as I come across them. I quite enjoy reading through these quotes periodically and here are some of my favourites:


I won't pretend fun things aren't still fun out of fear of looking silly
-- xkcd 219



It's easy to regret your awkward conversations but hard to regret the ones you didn't have.
-- xkcd 235



We live trapped in loops, reliving a few days over and over, and we envision only a handful of paths laid out ahead of us. We see the same things each day, we respond the same way, we think the same thoughts, each day a slight variation on the last, every moment smoothly following the gentle curves of societal norms
Pound for pound, one of the best verticals
-- xkcd 137



Grad students aren't bad people, they just make terrible life choices
-- Bart Simpson



I think for the most part, if you're really honest with yourself about what you want out of life, life gives it to you.
-- Ted Mosby, How I Met Your Mother



If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original
-- Sir Ken Robinson



Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication
-- Leonardo da Vinci



When you're with someone you love, the most mundane things suddenly become wonderful
-- Hidden Leaves by V.C. Andrews



Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.
-- Polonius, Hamlet



The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
-- Hamlet



Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
-- Arthur C. Clarke



When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
-- Arthur C. Clarke



Penny: "I'm a sagitarious, which probably tells you way more than you need to know."
Sheldon: "Yes, it tells us that you participate in the mass culture delusion that the sun's apparent position relative to arbitrarily defined constellations at the time of your birth somehow affects your personality."
-- Big Bang Theory



Penny: "What time is it?"
Leonard: "Almost 6:30"
Penny: "I slept all day?"
Leonard: "Oh no, it's 6:30 in the morning"
Penny: "What the hell is your problem?"
-- Big Bang Theory



There's always the possibility that alcohol and poor judgment on her part might lead to a nice romantic evening.
-- Sheldon, Big Bang Theory



100% of the shots you don't take don't go in
-- Wayne Gretzky



Animals are such agreeable friends. They ask no questions and they pass no criticism.
--1857 British novelist George Eliot



I screwed up
-- Barack Obama



The truth is told by whoever is left standing.
-- Tom Zarek, Battlestar Galactica



I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing.
-- Warren Buffett



Computer nerds are the sex symbols for the 21st century
-- CBC, Starcraft Documentary



Thinking that other people might be better than you is what makes you Canadian
-- Steven Colbert



Man and woman are born to love, marry and beget children. Woman is so physically constituted that she is the one who bears the child. Man, on the other hand, is given the duty of being the protector of his wife and, after they are born, of his children. Therefore, he must always be the one who takes the initiative. He must be strong, he must be willing, he must be physically able to take care of his charges, He must be the aggressor.

It is, therefore, necessary that the man be taller than the woman. The psychological reason for this is that he must always give the impression of being his woman's superior, both mentally and especially physically. The physical reason, with which we are more concerned, is that if he is taller that his woman, he is better able to kiss her. He must be able to sweep her into his strong arms, and tower over her, and look down into her eyes, and cup her chin in his fingers and then, bend over her face and plant his eager, virile lips on her moist, slightly parted, inviting ones. All of this he must do with the vigor of an assertive male. And, all of these are impossible where, the woman is the taller of the two. For when the situation is reversed, the kiss becomes only a ludicrous banality. The physical mastery is gone, the male prerogative is gone, everything is gone but the fact that two lips are touching two other lips. Nothing can be more disappointing.
-- Hugh Morris, The Art of Kissing (1936)



Ted: "What you and Tony have, what I thought for a second, you and I had, what I know that Marshall and Lily have, I want that. I do. I kept waiting for it to happen and waiting for it to happen and... I guess I'm just tired of waiting."

Stella: "I know that you're tired of waiting, and you may have to wait a little while more, but she's on the way Ted, and she's getting here as fast as she can."
-- How I Met Your Mother

Friday, May 08, 2009

Phone calls from Internet companies

Bizarre.

I just got a phone call from godaddy.com. It was a courtesy call just to welcome me to godaddy and to see if everything was ok and if I had any questions. I joined within the past week and transferred one of my domain names to them.

I don't expect phone calls from Internet companies unless something is really wrong, so I was really shocked when they called. I bet their call centre gets a lot of deer in the headlight responses. I suppose they are making an effort to show that they have good service, but from a domain name registrar, it's kinda weird...

Friday, April 24, 2009

Right on Schedule

Happens every year. April 24th between 2:07pm and 2:12pm, the sun reflects off the ROM right through my window and into my eyes as I sit at my computer.

It's remarkable how accurate it all is. The accuracy of our calendar and clocks are remarkable and how steady the rotation of the Earth and its revolutions around the sun are pretty amazing when you think of it. Few things of what we understand as humans are this consistent.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

RIP Geocities

The plug has been pulled on Geocities.

I found the files for my old Geocities site on my computer and I uploaded it to my website:
http://www.vincentcheung.ca/geocities/

I made that site back in 1997 and it's pretty hilarious!

Things I love about it:
  1. "You have come to the Best Web Page on the Internet. With great background music and hundreds of links to the best web pages throughout the World Wide Web, how can you go wrong?"

  2. MIDI background music! (You can even change the background music and there's a great selection of 90's music!)

  3. JavaScript pop-up on the homepage

  4. Frames!

  5. Ghetto logo

  6. Link and banner exchange galore

  7. Most of the links don't work anymore because the websites have been closed down

  8. The instructions for adding the site to your bookmarks and setting it to your homepage is for Netscape 3.0 and Windows 95

  9. "Page me by ICQ"

  10. Google is not listed under "Search Engines"

  11. Beakman's World in the TV section

  12. The website predates Starcraft as it's not listed under "Video and Computer Games"

  13. The selection of "Free 'Must-Have' Programs" is rather amusing

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Dangerously close to summer

9-man volleyball practices started today. Afterwards, I went for lunch in Chinatown and walked around buying fruit off the street, Chinese buns, and bubble tea, all the while with the sun brimming in the sky. If only it wasn't so windy, making it a little chilly, it would've been so close to summer...

Monday, April 06, 2009

Smells like poop

I just found a dried up piece of cat poop on the floor in the middle of my room. That explains why my room smelled like poop a few days ago. It really smelled like poop and it was bad. At the time, I couldn't find the source and I didn't think it was Tiki because I know that she took a poop in the litter box that morning and it didn't smell the same. I thought maybe b/c it was windy that the bathroom vents were flowing the wrong way.

My worry now is that the poop I found was a broken off piece and I still don't know where the rest of it is. Also, how did it get to the middle of my room?...

Friday, February 27, 2009

Shape Collage 2.1

Shape Collage 2.1 has been released!

There are a couple new features, some performance tweaks, and some bug fixes. The coolest new feature is the ability to add photos from the web. Just give it *any* webpage that has pictures on it and Shape Collage will automagically download the pictures from that webpage for use in the collage! This does not however, work for sites that require you to login, like Facebook, but that's what FaceDown is for.

Other new features include the ability to adjust the rotations of the photos and the drop shadow. The program settings are now saved between sessions so if you like the settings a certain way, you don't have to set them every time.

I promise that this blog is not becoming an advertisement for Shape Collage and VincentCheung.ca. I will be blogging about my vacation (eventually) :p

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Shape Collage Around The World

Think of a language.... got it? Well, it's probably in the list below.

Shape Collage has been written about in at least 22 languages! Here's a small sampling of sites from around the world talking about Shape Collage. I arbitrarily chose sites that either had nice collages or gave me a lot of traffic and they are ordered under each language approximately as to when the page appeared, with the oldest first.

English
Spanish
Portuguese
Italian
Chinese
Japanese
Korean
French
German
Russian
Polish
Romanian
Hungarian
Turkish
Dutch
Finnish
Malay
Serbian
Swedish
Arabic
Icelandic
Latvian

Friday, January 23, 2009

6 weeks, 14 planes

Here's some of what you missed. I'll do a proper blog later with the rest of the photos.

A monkey riding a hippo!


Bears boxing!


 

The Asian squat!


As seen in a restaurant (Hint: this is not a fish)


Some other restaurant


Yet another restaurant


LEE KUM KEE!!!


Grandma's childhood home with almost all of her grandchildren


Disneyland!

Friday, December 19, 2008

Hong Kong, China, and Australia

Bye! See you in 2009!

Talk amongst yourselves.

Random observations 2

  • There are *way* more asians in Winnipeg then there used to be. It used to be that you'd go to a bar and you could literally count the number of non-white people on one hand. I don't know where all these people came from. It seems that the generation just a few years younger than mine is a lot more multicultural, even in Winnipeg.

  • Girls definitely dress a lot skankier here than in Toronto. Even with a windchill of -40, girls wear super short skirts and dresses. Girls in Toronto seem to dress rather conservative in comparison.

  • Tonight it'll warm up to -18 with a windchill of -28. I think we've finally seen the end of this cold snap! (This is *not* a sarcastic statement, this is the actual view of people over here)

Oh, and here are some amusing photos showing how cold it is:





Oh wait, these aren't actually pictures from Winnipeg where we've seen windchills as low as -49 in the last few days and there's permanently 2 feet of snow on the ground. My friend in Seattle took these and it was -3 outside and it had snowed a little overnight.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

No more orthodontist!

I got my braces back in Grade 6... 1992! My orthodontist is in the Medical Arts Building on the 15th floor and I clearly remember the elevator being a novelty because it was the only time that I would ride the elevator. Nowadays, I ride the elevator every day in my apartment, but my elevator manners have Winnipeg roots.

I got my braces off after maybe a year and a half, but ever since then, I've still been going to my orthodontist every 6 or 12 months just for him to check on my teeth and how my retainer fits, which takes a whole 2 minutes. He tells me to just pop it in overnight once every few months or so just to make sure things stay where they are. The only reason I keep going to see him is that I haven't had to pay for the visits for the past 14 years! I don't know anyone that still wears their retainer, let alone still visits their childhood orthodontist!

I just went today and he told me that he's letting me go! After 16 years, I no longer have to go to my orthodontist!
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