Fantastic Weekend: Part 1

So, with a 3 months hiatus. I'm coming back with 2 part posting! Lucky you!

It actually began more like 2 weeks ago when I received an email and a voicemail that I won a pair of Toronto Maple Leafs tickets from a radio station. That's awesome part 1. Then it was winning 2 free coffees from Tim Hortons. Sure, coffee is only work about $3 but a win's a win! And then I find out that I was a draw to be part of a pre-show for my new favourite show Lost Girl.

So Saturday, March 24th was to be good day but then we (me and Septicor) found out there was a free skate PLUS autograph with Leaf's legend, Darryl Sittler. So, I'd figure why not? It's going to be a full day of event.

And so it began, we went to Mississauga for skating and lined up for autographs. And I am much closer to my goal of getting who ever is still alive on the poster signed.

What you see there is a banner poster of "All-Time Leaf" greats. Completed signatures include: Johnny Bower, Borje Salming, Frank Mahavolich, Doug Gilmoure and now Darryl Sittler. I am missing just 2 that was still alive: Lanny MacDonald and Dave Keon. Anyone know where I can find a "Tim Hortons" signature stamp? He's in the poster!

So we did some skating and Septicor has not skated since he was in elementary school - to put it in simple terms, it's been a LONG, LONG time. But considering it's been that long... this video is him after 20min.



After an hour of skating, we drove down to downtown and went to the Spaghetti Factory for food. We really didn't know what to eat... not really sure WHY we went to Spaghetti Factory. Maybe just one of those days.

I went with the Blue Cheese Farfelle with Chicken. First, blue cheese is an acquired taste because it's strong and second, it's not cheap (but not overly expensive). AND it was with bow-tie pasta. I found the blue cheese a bit stronger then I wanted... oh well, still good and washed it down with Mill St. Organic.

We proceeded to the Air Canada Centre for the game. Leafs lost in shootout but it was an entertaining game. We had these 2 (1 guy and 1 girl) who disappeared after the 1st period. The girl kept complaining about something. Septicor tried to explain the game to her and she asked him if she was annoying him. Then she asked me for a girl's opinion which automatically alerted and "uh oh... what does she want??" And it turns out she wanted to know if she should go use the toilets now or wait for the period to be over to avoid the line up. But they never returned.

On the other side, I had a father-daughter together at the game. I thought that was cute. It's too bad she couldn't get on TV.

The greatness of Mats Sundin honoured beside his hero, Borje Salming.


Anthem time.


Powerplay time!


Now who doesn't like Timbits hockey? This time it was actually girls. There was this one girl who was slightly better then others and everyone cheer for her when she scored.


A little close up shot.


And Leafs scores!!


Mr. Nifty Mitten, Nazem Kadri in the shootout.


Part 2 will be coming soon...

How do Yu do?

Have a look at Richard Griffin's blog regard the latest Japanese sensation, Yu Darvish.

Now, it has been reported that the Toronto Blue Jays have won the posting bid for his services.

I am agree completely what Griffin said and here's why...

1) The Blue Jays have gone Back to the Future with the jerseys and they are HOT and SEXY! The Blue is back in BLUE Jays!

2) Darvish is only 25 years old and he will fit in perfectly with the young Blue Jays core of; Ricky Romero, Brett Lawrie, JP Arencibia etc. Win together, lose together but most importantly, building a winning team together.

3) Impressive record in the Japanese league; 93-38... Now, I don't expect Darvish to actually pitch something like 20-5 in 2012 but I think if he pitches 15-10 with an ERA of 3.45 and finishes somewhere in Top 15 in statistical records in AL. That is a win. A rookie of the year award would be the cherry on top.

4) The Blue Jays needs some stability in the 3rd or 4th pitching slot. Ricky is Ricky; defacto numero uno. Brendon Morrow (if he can find consistency) fits nicely right behind Ricky. Then we had Brett Cecil and Kyle Drabeck who both struggled and sent to triple-A. I do hope these guys will be better in 2012. Out of nowhere came Henderson Alvarez and in a short audition looked really good. You can't forget Dustin McGowan. You hope 2 shoulder injuries are behind him and he can regain to 2008 form. If Darvish can be a consistent 3rd starter and get around 15 wins. The Blue Jays may find themselves in the wild card hunt.

5) The most important part is getting the fans back into the seats. The regular 20,000 fans will show up every game but now with Darvish, the Jays can market the team like Seattle Mariners did with Ichiro Suzuki. But the most intriguing part of this is that not only can the Blue Jays capitalize on marketing Darvish to the young Asian community; Japanese, Chinese (including Taiwanese) and Korean, it's possible to even market into the Persian community. Two birds with one stone. It's the perfect opportunity to capitalize on the Blue Jays young and exciting core. Homerun king, Jose Bautista. Home-grown Canadian talent, Brett Lawrie. Home-grown drafted talent, Ricky Romero. So forget the 80s or 90s night, let's go with cultural night. Toronto really is such a vibrant city with many cultures; Japanese (or Asian) Night, Persian Night... There is a large Japanese community that will go and support. Darvish Night special... 10 tickets in the lower bowl for $450 + tax that includes an autograph photo or photo-op. (You say photo ops? Trust me... with his mixed heritage, there will be plenty of girls at the stands! Remember the Eric Hinske commercial?) Hey Rogers!! Are you listening? I've got plenty of ideas! Hire me! Send me a private message on twitter!!

Last year was the wait the Brett Lawrie's arrival... This year is seeing how quick Darvish adjust to MLB and possibly dominate. If the Blue Jays staff manages the way they have been in these past few years, 2012 edition of the Toronto Blue Jays will be quite exciting!

Play ball!

NHL Alignment... Four Conferences. Really?

This new NHL realignment is really a joke. Four... FOUR... conferences??

Ok, I admit, I think it would be pretty awesome to have a possible Leafs-Habs Stanley Cup final but still... 4 conferences? What were they thinking? What are they going to name them? Revive those old names? Smyth? Campbell? Wales? Or new names? Sittler? Richard? Yzerman? Something just doesn't sit well with four conferences!

So, here are some of my previous realignment solutions...

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3


It's great to have every team play each other twice. Frankly, as a Leafs fan... I would like to see more Leafs vs Wings or Hawks and we don't see enough Columbus or St. Louis.

I don't think there's any problem with East and West Conference and 2 divisions each set u[... Really, the simple solution should be this

East Conference
Great Lakes (or keep Northeast): Buffalo, Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto
Atlantic: Carolina, Florida, New Jersey Devils, New York Rangers, New York Islander, Tampa Bay, Washington

West Conference
Central: Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Detroit, Minnesota, Nashville, St. Louis, Winnipeg
Pacific: Anaheim, Calgary, Colorado, Edmonton, LA, Phoenix, San Jose, Vancouver

So, if Phoenix gets moved to Quebec or wherever, they can be placed into the division with Toronto and Montreal.
0)
Each team play it's division team 6 times, (35 games for East and 40 for West), they play teams in the other division within the conference 4 times (28 for East and 32 for West), play each team in the other division once (16 for East and 14 for West). With the 3 games left for the East, they can be randomly for rivalries. So teams like Leafs, Habs, and Bruins would get the opportunity to play one more game against Hawks, Wings and one team.

Or

Each team can still play each other twice (58 games) and play 1 more game against team in the other division in the conference (7 or 8 games, total 65-66 games) and the rest of the games are left for division play (17 for East and 16 for West).

The playoff format would be like this. In each conference, the division winners will be placed 1st and 2nd accordingly to points. From 3rd to 8th, will be positioned by standing. And in each round, home ice will be determined via point standing in regular season.

Now, an alternative solution could be top 4 team in each division head into playoffs. They play within division playoffs and then winner of each division within the conference play each other and winner of that will play for the cup.

See? Easy simple solution...

iPhone vs Blackberry and a dash of Android: Who wins?

Where do I start... I am a Blackberry user aka a Crackberry. And obviously, I'm going to say Blackberry but with my admission out of the way, I will tell you why Blackberry is still cooler.

Let's start...

AppStore vs AppWorld vs Android Market

Well, this one is sort of a no brainer... with a gazillion of mindless, useless apps... iPhone wins hands down.

iPhone 1 Blackberry 0 Android 0

I used to sell cellphones to people. The company made an issue of selling smartphone first since it's where it generates the most commission and revenue. So, when I sell phone to people, you need to know who will be using, why they need it and for what.

For easy of use, iPhone wins again. Seriously, how hard is it to use your fingers to poke and pinch? Android is a close 2nd...

iPhone 2 Blackberry 0 Android 0

So what about texting and emailing? What sets Blackberry apart from other phone is the keyboard. Once you go Black(berry), you can't go back. The keyboard is bread and butter of the phone. Forget the Storm or the new touchscreen Torches... The Blackberry Bold is the standard. Unfortunately, Android phones are made by 3rd party (HTC, Samsung and Sony Ericsson). Therefore, it's up to those company to make a nice keyboard... nope, that doesn't exist. Blackberry FTW!

iPhone 2 Blackberry 1 Android 0

Keeping you entertained... iPhone wins... barely. iPhone has an mp3 player as do Blackberry and Android. iPhone takes pictures. Blackberry and Android do that too. iPhone has games to keep you entertained. Sorry, Blackberry. Point to iPhone and Android.

iPhone 3 Blackberry 1 Android 1

Keeping your data safe. Blackberry wins. There is a reason why the president of the US uses a Blackberry and most executives use Blackberry. Because it is secure! It's also a reason why India and Saudi Arabia threatened to shut down RIM servers. Those countries know a revolution can be started via BBM without being spied on by the government. I know KiK and WhatApp exist but it just doesn't live up to BBM.

iPhone 3 Blackberry 2 Android 2

Virus... Hello, Android! Have a look at this video. Point for Blackberry and iPhone.

iPhone 4 Blackberry 3 Android 2

Next on the list is something that make me go facepalm way too much and this only happens to iPhone...

Please... click on THIS and THIS. You can't google this for other phones... Point to Blackberry and Android.

iPhone 4 Blackberry 4 Android 3

Celebrity sitings! They use blackberry...

iPhone 4 Blackberry 5 Android 3

I'm not sure about you... but iPhone (and iPad) is the ONLY phone I see people trying to destroy. Just click this. I wonder if these people were looking for a bulletproof iPhone... and seriously, you shot the phone with a .50 rifle and expect Apple to make an exchange for you? Really?

iPhone 4 Blackberry 6 Android 4

Songs about the phone...

The iPhone Song?

It apparently it's not just about iPhone...


This is not catchy...


This is funny...


LOL!


Soulja Boy & Sean Kingston


Some Swagberry, baby!

But THIS song TOP them ALL


Blackberry wins hands down!

iPhone 4 Blackberry 7 Android 4

And to finish this blog with some UK humour!

WET, bloody wet

A few days ago, I finished the game called WET. The game came out in 2009. Yes, I know it's 2011 (and it's almost over) and I am playing the game 2 years old. So? I just bought my ps3 last Christmas (awesome present for myself!) and have been looking forward to buying WET and then I saw it for $15. Seriously, why pay $60 for a game when it will be reduced eventually? But that's a different subject.

WET is a game about a woman named Rubi Malone, a hired gun, who was used by a drug lord and now wants revenge or justice. I'm not going to tell you what the game is about... you can click here instead.

It's unfortunate that the game is a bit short. However, I thought it was very entertaining but in some level a bit frustrating (damn falling down and car surfing!).

First, check who does the voices...
Eliza Dushku as Rubi Malone[9]
Malcolm McDowell as Rupert Pelham
Alan Cumming as Sorrell/Ze Kollektor

What is quite enjoyable was the soundtrack! Two songs that I think is quite awesome are:

Chinatown Hustler by Notorious MSG (Yes, MSG! As in monosodium glutamate!)


And

She's Lost Control by The Arkhams


Another cool thing is, there's an option to trigger the "film" effect. Although, there were these annoying "commercials" that appears after a level. I think they try to make it like you are watching a film and sometimes when your health is low, the film effect gets in the way but effect is cool.

Monkeys... what's up with the toy Monkey?!

I was impressed with the background though. When you are in Hong Kong, the background harbour is of the Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong. However, whether it's Chinatown, San Fransisco or Hong Kong... some of the Chinese were backwards.

Another awesome part of WET... is Rage Mode. Rage Mode happens if lots of blood get splattered onto Rubi's face and the whole fight sequence is now in this red, white and black screen. I think it's funny.

Now, I was actually disappointed by the game ending... so, if you have no played don't read on!





Are you sure???




So, the ending of the game was a button minigame... instead of an actually fight boss.

But hey, in the end, Rubi kills everyone that needs to die and wins.

Some games are just lame to the max!

Last week, I was at a store and picked up a ps3 games for $15 then I saw "Invizimals" and went to check the price - $19.99 - not bad.

What I was really interested in was the camera. Since the PSP now support Skype, I wanted the camera for skype but did not want to buy it off ebay. I did ask someone to pick up the psp-300 in Hong Kong but they forgot. No problem. The reason for getting the psp-300 was because my psp was running 5.03 Prometheus 3 custome firmware (CFW) and the new psp-450x required official firmware (ofw) 6.00 and above. I was hesitant with upgrade to newer ofw since at that time (5 months ago), there weren't much support for cfw on the new ofw.

Now months later... psp ofw is 6.60... prometheus 3 obsolete... the need to use the camera... must update! I contemplated in updating to 6.60 but decided to use 6.20 instead.

Now, the price of the original Invizimals game with camera was $39.99 and the camera that comes with it is psp-450x model and it looks sleeker (even though it has lower grade pixel). I didn't care for the game so I kept putting off buying it. Now that it's $19.99... I can buy it and sell the game.

Today (about 3 hours ago), I finally got around to updating my psp and now I am running on 6.20 PRO B10 (just released this past week) and it was a simple update. You don't have to deal with any HEN!

Now with updated cfw, I tested out the camera et voila! Works! And then I thought, "why not give this invizimal a try... can't be that bad."

Oops...

First, I get the point of the game of "capturing" these invisible animals... and the concept is pretty neat. However, it must be my age and the type of game that I play, Invizimals seems to be geared towards the much younger crowd - say, children at like 5-10 years old? The kind of age that thinks everything "is so COOL!" The age where Pokemon is awesome... And this game is like Pokemon on steroids... and I never liked Pokemon to begin with.



I really tried... I spend like 30min playing it, "capturing" these invizimals. But there was a level of lame that screamed "stupid game." You know, I get it... children will like it. They have a "whole world" to discover. But I thought the video tutorials were a bit lame. You can actually tell they are acting for the 5-10 years old.

"There is this world of invisible animals we can capture."
"Oh, you found the Porcupain! He is very shy so you can't let him see you."

Hence why this is a CHILDREN'S game... Still, the lameless of the acting is just a facepalm for me.

If you have kids that is like 5-10, the game is perfect... any children older then 12 will see it as stupid.

Maybe I'm just too old for these kinds of games...

But then, people must love this game... there's a sequel...

NHL Re-Alignment, Part 3

And hopefully, this is the last time my brain does this...

So, here we go...

First, there will not be 4 Canadian teams in the same division as written by Bob McKenzie.

So, this is the current division.

East
Northeast
Boston Bruins, Buffalo Sabres, Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators, Toronto Maple Leafs

Atlantic
New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders, New York Rangers, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins

Southeast
Carolina Hurricanes, Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightnings, Washington Capitals, Winnipeg Jets

West
Central
Chicago Blackhawks, Columbus Blue Jackets, Detroit Red Wings, Nashville Predators, St. Louis Blues

Pacific
Anaheim Ducks, Dallas Stars, Los Angeles Kings, Phoenix Coyotes, San Jose Sharks

Northwest
Calgary Flames, Colorado Avalanche, Edmonton Oilers, Minnesota Wilds, Vancouver Canucks


So, the first possible solution (as previously stated) is to move the Winnipeg Jets to the Central division and swap places with Nashville Predators. Because this is the only possible solution that helps team cut down travel cost. However, since Detroit stays in the Western Conference, I think then Detroit should have a say in their game's start time. For example, all weekend games that Detroit plays in the Pacific time zone will start at 4pm OST, 4:30pm PST or 5pm PST at the latest and all weekday games will start by 6pm PST.


Solution 2
The "geographically correct" divisions (because Vancouver is really on the Pacific coast and Dallas is nowhere close to Pacific Ocean)

East
Northeast
Boston Bruins, Buffalo Sabres, Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators, Toronto Maple Leafs

Atlantic
New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders, New York Rangers, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins

Southeast
Carolina Hurricanes, Columbus Blue Jackets, Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightnings, Washington Capitals

West
Central
Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, Dallas Stars, Nashville Predators, St. Louis Blues

Pacific
Anaheim Ducks, Los Angeles Kings, Phoenix Coyotes, San Jose Sharks, Vancouver Canucks

Midwest
Calgary Flames, Colorado Avalanche, Edmonton Oilers, Minnesota Wilds, Winnipeg Jets

This moves Columbus to the Southeast division and Detroit stays. So, Detroit will again have a say in their game's start time.

Solution 3
The "Detroit in the East" Solution

East
Northeast
Buffalo Sabres, Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators, Toronto Maple Leafs

Atlantic
Boston Bruins, New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders, New York Rangers, Philadelphia Flyers

Southeast
Carolina Hurricanes, Florida Panthers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Tampa Bay Lightnings, Washington Capitals

West
Central
Chicago Blackhawks, Columbus Blue Jackets, Dallas Stars, Nashville Predators, St. Louis Blues

Pacific
Anaheim Ducks, Los Angeles Kings, Phoenix Coyotes, San Jose Sharks, Vancouver Canucks

Midwest
Calgary Flames, Colorado Avalanche, Edmonton Oilers, Minnesota Wilds, Winnipeg Jets

The only problem is I had to break up Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

I think the most simple and less headache is to swap Winnipeg and Nashville and give Detroit the autonomy on game start time.

I am done with the realignment issue...