Protocol Snow

My brother printed this awesome Star Wars: Force Unleashed poster for me recently. I might frame it at some point, but it has some awkward dimensions so I’ll have to order a custom made frame that would probably be more trouble than it’s worth. In the meantime, I taped it onto the wall.

If you’re wondering about the eyesore behind my chair, no, I didn’t make a giant hole in the wall. Not yet anyway. The covering is there as a preventive measure for chair damage since I like to lean back and don’t want to pay damage fees when I move out of this apartment.

I’m not much of a decorative person so all the walls in my apartment are pretty much plain white, but in the past couple months I’ve put up posters of Casino Royale (James Bond), Hitman, The Dark Knight, and Lost in Translation to make it a bit more interesting. I also have these Penny Arcade comic prints still sitting in my closet that I have yet to find frames for.

2nd year of med school is no joke. This is the last preclinical year and the amount of material we’re cramming in is ridiculous. Adding to the pressure is the ominous USMLE Step 1 looming at the end of the school year that is pretty much the most important test in my life. Forget SAT or MCAT, this is the big one.

Still, I got this awesome keyboard a while back and have been meaning to take pictures so here’s my first post in a few weeks.

Read the rest of this entry »

A big happy birthday to the Sega Dreamcast, which launched on September 9th, 1999 and is 9 years old today. It is to this day still my favorite console, and I’m still buying Dreamcast games every now and then to add to my collection. Cheers to the good times, and I can’t wait till Christmas break when I can go home and play Napple Tale. I actually don’t know anything about this game except that the soundtrack is phenomenal. Good enough for me.

Image from a NeoGAF thread.

Retronauts, one of the 1up.com podcasts, did an episode last week dedicated to the Dreamcast. You’ll have to skip about 40 minutes into the show before the discussion starts, but Tycho from Penny-Arcade and the Player One Podcast crew were featured guests.

My brief summer is now officially over as I start my second year of med school tomorrow. I never did get around to posting my Tokyo vacation photos, but honestly, after spending so much time looking at them to create my Blurb photobook, I’m not too eager to go back through those and pick out photos to upload. Maybe I’ll do it… someday, but for now, the pictures of my book will have to do. You’re not really missing much, I just did typical touristy things in Tokyo that you can find thousands of photos of on Google Images.

Since I volunteer at a free clinic every Monday and I was already dressed up, last week I did a little imitation of my personal hero, Dr. McNinja.

Summer’s over, it’s gametime. Time to show the world how it’s done — with ninja-like intensity.

The archery events have truly been the highlight of the Olympics for me so far. The excitement came to a boil today with the medal rounds for women’s individual archery. Zhang Juan Juan of China (seeded at #27) ran the dominating South Korean gauntlet and smacked down the #3, #2, and #1 ranked archers in the world (all South Korean) back-to-back-to-back. This is the first time a woman not from South Korea has worn gold in any Olympics archery event since 1984!

Quarterfinal: Zhang defeated Joo Hyun-jung (#3 seed) 106-101

Semifinal: Zhang defeated Yun Ok-hee (#2 seed) 115-109

Final: Zhang defeated Park Sung-hyun (#1 seed) 110-109 for the gold medal

The sequence of matches was like the conclusion of a Final Fantasy game with a multiple-form final boss fight. After Zhang defeated a couple tough forms, the South Korean final boss revealed the formidable final form: Park Sung-hyun, the imposing instrument of destruction with an aura of invincibility. Zhang looked a little shaky initially, but recovered to trade blows shot-for-shot with the defending Olympic gold medalist. Zhang triumphed with a strong finish to shock the world and take the gold! The text commentator was flipping out: UNBELIEVABLE!! ABSOLUTELY UNBELIEVABLE!!

Just to make it even more epic, the rain was pouring during these matches while the archers did battle. I’m so impressed with the incredible atmosphere at the arena, with the best crowds at the Olympics. The South Korean fans and the Chinese fans showed up in droves, braving the rain in colorful raincoats and belting out very synchronized chants and making raucous noise. It’s unreal how everybody at the arena is yelling their lungs out, the South Koreans fans trying to one-up the Chinese fans, then literally a second later they become dead quiet as the archers get ready to shoot.

Too bad archery concludes tomorrow with the men’s individual finals. Archery looks so fun that I’ve been inspired to see if my university has an active archery club that is beginner-friendly.

While the rest of the U.S. has their eyes on Michael Phelps, I’ve been more interested in following a much less heralded star: Park Sung Hyun of South Korea. She is the silent assassin of the Olympics, coolly dispatching her opponents with a flurry of accurate arrows. Pressure doesn’t get to her either because she has ice in her veins. Just look at her, I wouldn’t be surprised if her nickname was the Ice Queen. She is all business.

I am surprised by how entertaining archery is. Matches move quickly and are almost always tense. I particularly like the duel nature of individual archery, where competitors take turns shooting arrows.
“Take that, a 10!”
“My turn: 10! Boom!”

The announcer on the PA is also awesomely entertaining. He roars out “10!” with such gusto that I leave the archery stream running in the background with the sound on even when I’m not directly watching it at the moment.

The online streaming of NBCOlympics.com has forever changed how I view sports coverage. It is so refreshing to be able to watch sports events without annoying commentary. I am not stupid, I don’t need you to tell me what I’m seeing. The occasional interesting piece of trivia is not worth all the rest of the inane banter. Without commentators, you can even hear what the basketball players are yelling to each other on the court (USA swears a lot!).

I’ve mentioned this before already, but man, having all these live streaming sports at my fingertips is amazing. I am currently watching fencing, archery, and table tennis simultaneously. Mmm, a sports buffet. Table tennis at this high level is intense.

The Olympics are totally awesome. While NBC’s TV coverage is annoying with needless commentary, lots of commercials and human interest pieces, I have been very impressed with the NBCOlympics.com coverage. I have been live streaming a bunch of less popular events like archery, fencing, and judo. Picture quality is decent/not bad, but the best part is there’s nobody talking over the action so you can watch the events like you’re actually there and get a better sense of the atmosphere. Also, live footage of these events in their entirety are archived online to play and rewind at my leisure.

None of the mainstream events (swimming and gymnastics, track and field to come) can be streamed online. That’s no big deal for me, I can catch those live when NBC airs them primetime. People on the West Coast, however, can’t watch live, despite the controversy of NBC forcing these events to be held in the Beijing morning so that they could show them live primetime in this country. West Coasters are appropriately outraged, as evidenced by the 3000+ angry comments on the linked Yahoo article.

Here’s my setup to watch the Olympics. I don’t even want to go to sleep at night since I have a lot of cool events at my fingertips. It’s like a non-stop sports buffet. Archery last night was awesome. The South Korean women are arrow-shooting robots; in the semifinals, they were shooting 10s literally in the midst of a thunderstorm. You can watch that on the NBC archery page.

The real highlight for me will be taekwondo, which won’t be competed until the last week of the Olympics. My taekwondo coach in college was internationally ranked and an Olympics hopeful, but he got injured and as far as I know, isn’t in the 2008 Olympics. Still, taekwondo is flashy and a crowd favorite, should be a lot of fun.

UPDATE: I was wrong, the big events like swimming and gymnastics can be streamed on demand after they air on TV.