Chan's Personal Blog

I got this awesome e-mail from Pam two weeks ago, about a cylon encounter in Vancouver. She met Grace Park who plays Lt. Sharon "Boomer" Valeri on Battlestar Galactica. I just had to blog about it. Here's the e-mail:


If I saw a Cylon in a Chinese restaurant, I probably would have tackled her down and yelled to someone to get the SWAT team down here. I guess this kind of ruins season 3 of Battlestar Galactica; clearly the Cylons have found earth.

Anyway, a lot of the episodes of Battlestar Galactica are filmed in Vancouver. There's a site that talks about some of the scenes that were shot in Vancouver for season 1. I would also like to point out that in the BSG mini-series, we see Lee Adama land his viper in the hanger deck of Colonial One. That hanger deck is actually the car deck of the BC Ferries.

Thanks for the story Pam

Today was the launch of Blizzard Entertainment's first expansion pack for World of Warcraft (WoW) which is called The Burning Crusade. For those who do not know, World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) where thousands of players play the same game online. The game also never end; what you did yesterday will impact your future. In either case, MMOGs are fairly addictive and people get pretty obsessed about the game.

Currently, WoW has 8 million players, and they pay $14.95US every month to play the game. That equals almost $120 million in revenues every month for Blizzard. Astonishing. (I actually tried to invest in Blizzard's parent company, Vivendi Entertainment, but unfortunately their stock isn't traded in Canada or the U.S. anymore. You can only buy their stock at the Paris Stock Exchange. I don't have any euros to buy that stock )

Anyway, gamers of all race, gender, and age flocked to their nearest EB Games last night at midnight to get their hands on The Burning Crusade. Since all EB Games are inside shopping malls, they had to keep the mall open so customers could come into their store. So, each EB Games had to hire their own private security in order to keep the mall open at midnight.

My co-worker, Patrick, walked all the way to Hillside Mall to pick up his reserved copy of WoW. They started selling the game at exactly midnight, so he decided to arrive early. He got there at 11:30pm and there were over 100 people already in line apparently. Unfortunately, the lines took forever because EB Games only had two employees working, and they kept trying to upsell the customer with crap like WoW strategy guides and such. He got out of there by 1:30am, and there were still a lot of people in line. He then walked all the way back home to install the game, and played it until 4:00am.

Some of his friends went to the EB Games at the Bay Centre downtown. Unfortunately for them, they only let 10 people into the mall at a time, so hundreds of people were waiting outside in sub-zero temperatures.

Another one of my co-workers pre-ordered the collector's edition of The Burning Crusade which was $100. You get the game on a DVD rather than several CDs, and you get a special in-game pet which doesn't actually do anything. Anyway, he heard that the collector's edition might not be available by the official launch date. So what does he do? He goes on to reserve a normal copy of The Burning Crusade for $50 just to ensure that he can play the game today. So he's got two freaking copies of the game even though you only need one copy to play it. I think this shows how addictive this game is. The game is also a huge productivity sink at work because everyone at work just keeps talking about the darn thing. So, I'm a bit predisposed to hating the game now.

My friends kept bugging me to play the game, but I'm glad I didn't. Honestly, I probably would not have been able to finish my Master's degree in a timely fashion if I got hooked on the game. I've seen far too many students fail courses because they spend all their time playing WoW.

Don't get me wrong, I love to play video games. Also, not everyone who plays WoW or MMOGs are game addicts. If you play them in moderation, they can be great fun. But if the darn thing is consuming your life, then it's no good.

If you want to learn more about what it's like to be with someone who's addicted to WoW, check out this Time article I found entitled, "Confessions of a 30-Year-Old Gamer." The article talks a bit about the guy's wife, and it's interesting because she describes herself as a gamer widow. Her husband provides for the family and helps raise the kids, but he spends all of his remaining time in WoW, so she has no relationship with her husband.

Anyone got similar stories to tell about massive multiplayer online games? We'll accept stories about World of Warcraft, Everquest, Asheron's Call, Dark Ages of Camelot, Lineage, etc.

Yesterday during the Macworld 2007 keynote address, Steve Jobs announced a huge line-up of new Apple products. The show stopper of course was the much anticipated iPhone.

It is a smartphone that acts as a cellphone, digital camera, iPod, video player, e-mail client, photo album, web browser, instant messenger, and more. Looks like they partnered with Google to bring Google Maps to the iPhone, and they partnered with Yahoo for e-mail. They used Mac OS X for the phone's operating system which is quite smart because they gives them a lovely user interface for their iPhone, and people who already use Mac OS X will be familiar with the iPhone's interface.

Here's a video that shows off some of the features of the iPhone.

I've always hated the idea of lugging around a crapload of devices and cords to get all the functionality that you need. It doesn't seem mobile at all. I recall a friend in grad school who carried a pager, cellphone, iPod, laptop, and a palm pilot. That doesn't seem very mobile. The iPhone does it all in a sleek and sexy form factor. This could be the killer device of 2007.

The 4gig version of the iPhone will go for $499 while the 8gig version will go for $599. If I was in the market for an iPod, I think I'd pay a bit more to get all these other features that the iPhone offers. The price wouldn't be that bad considering I'd be buying it as a cellphone as well (which I don't have) and as an iPod (which I also don't have). So paying that much for an all-in-one device isn't all that bad. Maybe this is just me trying to rationalize getting one.

Wall Street has handsomely rewarded Apple's stock price as you can see here (+14%):


Apple's competition in the smart phone arena (such as Research in Motion) got absolutely slaughtered as you can see here:

The other interesting news is that Apple Computers Inc. is dropping the word Computer from their company name. I guess they're just reflecting that they're not exclusively a computer company any more. They have a huge ecosystem of both hardware devices and software applications.

You can read more about the Macworld 2007 keynote address here. They go more into other announcements such as the AppleTV.