Daryl Tay.net

Welcome back to this blog, which hasn’t been updated in over half a year! I really hope I’ll be able to blog more in 2012 (I say that every year), but minimally, I really want to keep track of my monthly resolutions.

In January, the resolution is simple. I want to keep 3 lists current every day:

1) My “stuff” list – this is everything that needs to be done but hasn’t been done yet. Currently it’s just over 50 items long.

2) My “this week” list – every Sunday, I’ll look through my “stuff” list and transfer no more than 9 items to the weekly list.

3) My “daily” list – I’ll move 5-7 items from my “this week” list to this list and tackle them every day.

At the end of the day I need to at least scan my “daily” and “this week” list and either strike stuff off, add stuff in or both.

Some rules: The “this week” list cannot have more than 9 items on it at any time (this is following the data that humans can’t focus on more than 7 items at any one time, +/- 2. I’m already assuming I’m in the upper tier (a risky assessment, I know).

The daily list cannot go over 7 items ( to keep me focused) and no items may be added until the list is at zero or the remaining item cannot be done at the present time. For example right now I have “change appointment on work calendar”, which I can’t do because I’m not at work (and forgot to do it before I left the office today).

I’ll check back in just under a 3 weeks to let you know how the process goes.

No resolution in June – I had one in mind but my trip to Hong Kong pretty much derailed anything from happening, so that’ll be my “rest” month for the year.

In May though, I resolved to exercise three times a week and I delivered on it solidly. Some stats from 12 May to 10 June:

• Fat% – down from 15.9% to 14.7% (down 1.2%)
• Metabolic rate – up from 1308kcal to 1352kcal
• Overall fat mass – down from 8.8kg to 8.3kg (down 0.5kg)
• Overall muscle mass – up from 44.4kg to 45.9kg (up 1.5kg)
• Weight – up from 55.2kg to 56.3kg (up 1.1kg)

In other words, everything moved in the right direction and the net effect was up about 1kg of muscle. Good deal for a month’s workout and this is one resolution I’m sticking with for as long as I can. Can’t wait to see my July report.

I’ve really fallen off the writing bandwagon in recent months, last posts on both blogs were more than a month ago. So this month, I’m just going to sit down at a keyboard for 20 minutes a day and generate some content. I don’t really care if I end up publishing it on either blog or I delete it at the end of the time allocated. My goal is just to write and get back in the habit of writing. Hopefully, that’ll lead to more content both here and on my professional blog.

What’re you doing this month to make your life better?

My relationship with X-Men: First Class was a weird one. I heard about the movie, got excited that it would feature the original X-Men, found out it wouldn’t and got disinterested, saw some early shots and thought it looked boring, watched the most recent trailer and thought there was some promise, heard early good reviews and was hopeful and then watched it for myself and was satisfied, but not blown away.

Let’s start with the good:

Magneto
I don’t think I’ve ever felt for Magneto’s plight. But seeing his torture at the Nazi’s hands and how he knew the humans would turn on them and them doing so, you really feel for him and his cause. I think Michael Fassbender does an amazing job and needs to be signed for a second film immediately.

Professor X
Equally impressive is James McAvoy as a young Professor X. None of the stately Patrick Stewart Professor X here. McAvoy’s Xavier has fun and has a youthful exuberance about him that is actually quite refreshing. The two characters definitely have chemistry with each other and play each other’s foils perfectly.

The amount of stuff they tried to pack into it
From Mystique appearing at Xavier’s at a young age, to finding mutants with Cerebro to Hank’s struggle with his mutant self to Moira MacTaggert playing a more prominent role – it’s clear that Matthew Vaughn decided to deviate from the source material quite early on and in some ways the show feels fresh because of it, in other ways it’s a worse movie because of it.

What I didn’t like

Sebastian Shaw
With no offence to Kevin Bacon, Sebastian Shaw was a weak character. In fact all the villains were poorly fleshed out. They try to build him up as a badass by killing Aaron Pierce (sorry, Colonel Hendry) and Darwin (which shouldn’t be possible), but then he’s just owned by Magneto. Weak. Also, the visual representation of his power was just unimpressive.

The other baddies
I had to Google to find out who Riptide was. He didn’t do anything worth mentioning and special mention to Azazel, your son, Nightcrawler, already did the whole BAMF in and out of a guarded facility in 2003 for X2. And it was better.

Team Selections
I think as a comic book fan, one big disappointment was the selection of the mutants who made up the teams:

• Beast (original X-Men)
• Banshee (2nd batch from Giant-Sized X-Men)
• Havok (who appeared along the way)
• Angel (from Grant Morrison’s run in the 2000′s)
• Darwin (from Ed Brubaker’s “Deadly Genesis” series in the late 2000′s)

And then of course you have Mystique, Azazel (from Chuck Austen’s terrible run) and Riptide (who does nothing). There’s no rhyme or reason for these particular mutants, none of the chemistry that existed between the original team or any of the later teams simply because these characters have never interacted with each other and there is no source material to base them on. None of the mutants get any screen time worth shouting about and Havok really looked lame using his powers like he was playing with a hula-hoop.

Continuity
I’m not HUGE on continuity but I like to know that my characters exist in the same universe (or that they don’t). This was touted as a prequel to the X-Men movies, yet clearly it exists on its own. I would have gotten a bigger kick seeing the layers peeled away in the Mystique/Magneto relationship to find out how she ends up on his side. Unfortunately, that never quite happens. It’s these little things that could have made the movie so much more, but didn’t.

I guess in closing, X-Men: First Class is a very solid movie. It could be a great movie about super-powered humans/mutants, but it is merely a mediocre X-Men movie.

Bruno Mars is becoming quite the featured artist, last appearing on Music Mondays 85 for Just The Way You Are and on Music Mondays 72 for Nothin’ On You with B.O.B.

Well the man is back with a song that has a little bit of a Jason Mraz vibe called “The Lazy Song“, which I’m sure we can all relate to, especially on weekends!

I’ve heard Dancing Crazy many times on the radio and each time I keep thinking it’s Avril Lavigne but end up being unable to find the song!

Turns out it’s another girl called Miranda Cosgrove, but the song is indeed written by Avril Lavigne. Check it out and listen out for similarities!

Wow it’s been awhile. Hopefully I can get this back on schedule soon.

But still, any update is good, right?

I’ve been checking out the Barenaked Ladies’s newest album, All In Good Time and one song really stands out as being fun, quirky and weird all at the same time. Meet: Four Seconds.

I posted the live version first because they are obviously just having so much fun and I love it when bands perform that way. And seriously, it’s a guitar, a drum, a cello and an accordion. What’s not to like?!

Here’s the album version for better audio:

Sometime last year I got into playing Tropico 3 (loved the original, didn’t play Tropico 2) and it’s certainly much more challenging than the first game.

(click for full-sized image – and to be able to read what it says!)

Although I didn’t post a resolution in April, there was one: to clear up my internet clutter, mainly my 80-90 bookmarks stored on Read It Later (my app of choice – even paid money for it!) and the 500+ notes on Evernote.

Short story is I didn’t quite succeed at the resolution, mainly because my job is way too mobile to give me the luxury of sitting at my desk to access the content, and a lot of the content was very heavy (ie I need to be able to digest it) so I couldn’t read it on the go or on the iPad. I have to come back to this sooner or later.

In May though, it’s a straightforward resolution: to simply exercise three times a week. I’ve actually already accomplished twice a week for the last couple of weeks, but I wanted to really ramp it up a notch in May to provide some challenge and commitment.

To make things slightly easier, I’m going to count swimming and walking the dog (longer route) in the resolution. It’s the 3rd of May and I’ve already gone twice this week, so that’s encouraging.

I’ll check back in towards the end of the month with my progress report.

Meanwhile: What are you doing in May to make your life better?

A couple of weeks ago we were playing Guitar Hero and one of the songs was One Way Or Another by Blondie, which brought back fond memories of watching music videos featuring the Muppets back in the day.

Here’s one featuring Debbie Harry from Blondie singing One Way Or Another.

ps: Is it me or does it seem like the freaking muppets want to eat her?!

Also: Leo Sayer sings When I Need You with the Muppets

I had another post slated for this week. Then I realised it was the 108th post and thought “I can’t let the 108th post go by without making it about Lost.”

Why 108? Well it’s the sum of the Numbers on the show you can read about 108 on Lostpedia if you’re interested.

So I’ve chosen to post the final music scene of the show both in its full musical form and the one that was played during the episode. The music really is quite amazing so I hope you like it.