Uncle Albert's Puzzles

After our day-long Manhattan walking tour, we relaxed at Uncle Albert's house where Auntie Anita spent the day preparing a nice home-cooked meal. Besides the eating, there was the usual picture taking and playing with Wesley. The highlight of the night was problem solving though. Uncle Albert gave us 2 puzzles to solve. The first is depicted to the upper left of this post. There are 9 dots and it's possible to connect all 9 with 4 straight, consecutive lines (4 strokes w/o lifting your pen). It took about 30 minutes, but Jeremy put us on the right track and I ended up finishing it off. In the second puzzle, one person had a string tying both wrist together. Then a second person would have the same setup except his/her string would be looped through the first person's. Supposedly, there's a way to maneuver out without untying the wrists. Jeremy sort of solved this one, but I'll explain both of these puzzle answers in a future post. I want to give you guys a chance to solve these before I spoil it!

59th to 34th Walking Tour

Last Friday, Uncle Mariano mentioned wanting to see Trump Tower. So we took the 1 train to 59th St. and made that our starting point for the day. We then made our way down Broadway to take pictures of all of the theaters, shows and fancy stores. We stopped at the M&M store, Times Square, detoured to the NY Times Building, Midtown Comics and ended at Manhattan Mall.


We then headed back to Queens to pick up the van and drive over to Uncle Albert's for dinner.

DVDeals 3/30 - 4/5

DVD Tuesday
Sweeney Todd will be the feature title for this DVD Tuesday. Again, Circuit City has the best price for the regular edition at $15.99. The special edition is the same price in Circuit City or Best Buy at $22.99.

Best Buy Deals
- Pursuit of Happiness for $7.50
- DaVinci Code for $7.50
- Matix for $7.50
- Top Gun Sp. Edition for $7.50
- Forrest Gump for $7.50

Circuit City Deals
The way it works this week is... you buy one of these at $9.99 and you can get another one off this list for free:
- Italian Job
- Ocean's Twelve
- Forrest Gump
- Die Another Day
- Ronin
- S.W.A.T.

Swan Club Reception

Our group, comprised of 2 cars headed out right after the ceremony knowing it would be a challenge to find our way back to Northern Blvd. and then find our way to the secluded Swan Club for the reception. We had 2 sets of maps/directions and Jeremy's precise distance calculations, but all of that combined couldn't tell us that an unlabeled exit was the correct path to take. We passed it at first, then entered from the other direction based in the distance. Through many turns and u-turns, we finally made it. One funny thing about our road trip was... another guest decided to follow me and my dad and didn't consult with us beforehand. So when I noticed a car driving in between me and my dad's car, I actually tried to lose him!


The reception was original... no alcohol and no dancing. I think that's the first one I've been to of that nature. It didn't really bother me since I don't do either anyway! But Andy & Evelyn's friends came up with some original, creative presentations to keep the guests entertained. I was afraid that the whole thing was going to be a Christian rock concert, but they made use of modern technology and added some video, animation and slideshows. Most importantly, the skits were comedic.

Andy & Evelyn

Congratulations, Andy & Evelyn!

Red Mango

Location: 136-53 Roosevelt Ave., Flushing, NY
Cuisine: Korean, Dessert
Hours: 10am-10pm
Phone: (718) 886-1916
Website: www.redmangousa.com
Prices: About $5 per person
Credit Cards: All major

Food: 9
Service: 8
Value: 8
Environment: 7

Frequency: Unique

After the post-rehearsal dinner, I was able to get most of the cousins to hang out at Red Mango for some Korean frozen yogurt. This is a store that opened a couple of months ago and I pass by it all the time. I thought nothing of it until I read Lisa's post. It came at the right time too because it gave me a nice place to take my family.



The procedure is pretty straight forward. You choose a cup size, then pick either regular or green tea flavor. And then add whatever toppings you want. The staff was friendly and helpful. Since it was our first time there, all six of us probably looked a little confused and overwhelmed with the topping choices (most of which are healthy). The frozen yogurt tasted great. Each of us ordered a variety of combinations and everyone seemed to enjoy their creations. Emily had Pinkberry before and gave it a thumbs down. I'll have to try that myself one day just for comparison. It's actually just a few stores down.

The space itself is surprisingly clean given the amount of traffic that goes through Roosevelt Ave. each day. It has a nice modern, artsy look and feel. It's lit by slightly dimmed halogens that look great on the red walls.

Be sure to click on the slideshow to access the Picasa Web album as I have written comments for individual photos.

An Eventful Friday

Lower Manhattan
Jet knocked a couple of items off his agenda in the morning as he made his pilgrimage to Ground Zero and then checked out the New Museum of Contemporary Art at noon.



Midtown to Union Sq.
We got up early and headed towards Midtown Manhattan. Matt did some shopping at the NBA store on 5th Avenue while the rest of the family checked out designer clothing. I had to run some errands, so I went off to my apartment as they looked around and met up with them again 30 minutes later. Our next stop was the 23rd St./6th Ave. area. We covered some stores on Matt's list such as Tekserve & Best Buy. We took a lunch break at New York Burger Co. and then went shopping for clothes between that area and Union Sq. Everyone ended up buying something at the end of the day, so... success!

Post-rehearsal Dinner
After a short break at my parents' house, we went to meet up with the rest of the family for the first wedding event... the post-rehearsal dinner at Northern Manor. We met up with pretty much everyone else from my Dad's side of the family and were introduced to the bride's side. All of the cousins got a chance to catch up with each other since we had our own table to ourselves. I haven't seen Jennifer & Jeremy since the last wedding... Cindy and Wil in 2002. Matt & Margaret were at Christine's last December. I also haven't seen Greg in over a year... and he's a local!

Tangers Outlets

Location: 1770 West Main St., Riverhead, NY 11901
Phone: (631) 369-2732
Website: www.tangeroutlet.com
Hours: SUN (10am-8pm); MON-SAT (9am-9pm)


This was the first vacation day I spent with my visiting family members and we knocked off one of their agenda items... the Tanger Outlets in Riverhead. I planned for this trip to be on a weekday, knowing how crowded and chaotic it always is on weekends. We had a nice comfortable drive there just after the rush hour traffic, easily found a strategically placed parking spot and browsed the stores without crowds.

I Am Legend

Story: 7
Action: 7
Acting: 9
FX: 9
Durability: 8
Special Features: 7

Just the idea of a sole human left in New York made I Am Legend an interesting story. How did it happen? What's he doing every day if there's no one left to save? How can this all possibly end positively? I Am Legend is an excellent balance between sci-fi, action and drama. The sci-fi element gives us a sense of reality because it takes place close to present day and the idea of a mass epidemic is something that has happened before in human history. This also wasn't a cheesey horror movie with a dark motif. The daytime scenes looked like regular sunny days with perfect weather, again adding to the realism. The special edition DVD contains 2 versions of the movie... the one we all saw in the theater and and alternate version with "controversial ending." I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say that both stories are interesting. Only the ending is different, but it changed everything. I can't say which one is the better one without having read the original book.

The action consisted of exciting stunts involving cars (including a 2008 GT500), complex contraptions and fights between Robert Neville (Will Smith) and the darkseekers. The special fx were very clean in this movie... hard to tell between live action and CGI. Recreating NYC as if it was long abandoned was fun to see, especially since I live here. Some of the scenes were actual shots of NYC, dressed with lots of props. Those were blended with CG wild animals and darkseekers.

Naturally, the acting was great as Will Smith had to perform most of the movie by himself. As usual, he displayed a good variety of emotions. His character was both physically strong and scientifically sound. His co-star was the German Shepperd, Abbey, who played Sam. Sam acted as Neville's hunting partner, friend and balance in life. Abbey had similar challenges to Smith. She also had to display a variety of emotions in an empty world. There were action scenes where she had to fight CG creatures and growl at things that weren't really there.

The one odd thing about this DVD set was they didn't squeeze all of the media onto the 2 discs. nearly all of the special features are web links, so you need a broadband PC to access them. I enjoyed the informative "Making Of" videos... around 20 of them. There was one dedicated to Abbey as well. My special feature rating was a 7 because I would've preferred all of the videos to actually be on the media rather than Online. Also, this set didn't have an audio commentary, something that should be required for I Am Legend as every scene was detailed and interesting.

NYC March 2007 Cast

Joining us around my cousin, Andrew's wedding events are:

Uncle Mariano: Dad's 2nd youngest brother from Manila
Auntie Susanna: Uncle Mariano's wife
Matt: Their son
Margaret: Matt's younger sister
Jeremy (Jet): Cousin from LA

Matt's goal is to find electronics here that are cheaper than parts back home in the Philippines. Jeremy's has a list of architectural/historic sites on his list. Uncle Mariano & Auntie Susanna have unknown motives! And Margaret is here to find good clothing bargains.

Stargate: The Ark of Truth

Story: 9
Action: 9
Acting: 9
FX: 9
Durability: 9
Special Features: 9

Faced with the abrupt decision by Sci-Fi channel to end the longest running sci-fi series in history, the makers of Stargate SG-1 were not able to close out the Ori saga of seasons 9 and 10 in proper fashion. Thus, the spawning of the direct-to-DVD movie, Stargate: The Ark of Truth. With the pressure of Stargate SG-1 being a cinematic quality TV series, a movie version had to step things up a notch and they did that successfully. Stargate: The Ark of Truth closed out all of the open-ended mini-stories related to the Ori saga... the priors and their armies of followers, the escaped/ascended Adria, Tomin's inner struggle, etc. There was a lot going on, but it never felt like a rushed ending. It was clean and flawless.

The acting was great as in the series. Amanda Tapping, Ben Browder, Michael Shanks, Christopher Judge and Claudia Black, who were virtual unknowns 10 years ago are now the biggest stars in sci-fi. What's even more amazing was the cast of secondary characters. They were able to get every single minor character back for this movie, which was great for continuity. I've always hated when a sequel is unable to cast the original actor and get someone else to play the same character.

The CG, as expected was great, but the digital artists on the team had 10 years of practice already. Besides the usual explosions and CG characters, the camera shots were very epic and detailed. The prop design mixed ancient art history with futuristic looking technology, which is a mix of the earlier seasons which were more artsy and the later seasons that were more techie.

I was happy with the special features included on the DVD as well... very complete. There was a commentary, full footage of the Comic Con and several "Making Of" featurettes.

I can't wait for Stargate: Continuum, coming out later this Summer. There's even talk of this becoming a regular thing... 3rd and 4th SG-1 movies.

DVDeals 3/23 - 3/29

DVD Tuesday
Stephen King's The Mist is coming out this Tuesday. I never saw this one yet, but it look interesting and they did a good job of marketing it as it played in the theaters, never revealing too much in the trailers. If you're looking to add this to your collection, Circuit City has the best price for the regular edition... $15.99. Buy.com is you best bet for the 2-disc collector's edition if you plan to buy something else... $21.99 (FREE shipping with orders of $25 or more). Otherwise, Best Buy has it for $22.99.

Circuit City Deals
- Underworld Unleashed for $5.99
- House of Flying Daggers for $5.99
- A Knight's Tale for $5.99
- Once Upon a Time in Mexico for $5.99
- The Fifth Element for $5.99

Best Buy Deal
- Casino Royale for $9.99

Happy Easter!

Bryce's Birthday

I just got back from a nice big lunch as Ben & Clovy hosted Bryce's 3rd Birthday party @ Century Diner Buffet. Since it was a large group, we had the private room to ourselves, which allowed the kids to run around and the adults to take lots of digital pictures. Here's my collection:


I took some generic Century Buffet shots because I didn't get a chance to last time when I did my full review. The rest are party pictures. Be sure to click on the slideshow to access the Picasa Web album as I have written comments for individual photos.

A Great Wall

Story: 6
Action: 4
Acting: 6
FX: 1
Durability: 5

Auntie Janice passed along this DVD to my family after hearing about our last trip to China. A Great Wall is an old movie from 1986 about a computer programmer (yeah they had those back then), Leo Fang who quits his job because they promoted a less experienced colleague based on race. With the time off, he decides to take his family to visit his sister in Beijing. With the two families living together for an extended period of time, there were a lot of comedic scenes and misunderstandings depicting the melding of the 2 cultures. What amplified the humor even more was watching the movie in this day and age because of the additional layer of how far we've gone in 22 years. Short shorts and funny 80's hair always make for a good laugh. I say that knowing that in 2028, we'll look back at 2008 and laugh.

It was a good family movie that we all related to, although the cultural differences were much more extreme in 1986. I felt the story was building up to something very interesting, but ended abruptly without a strong resolution. The acting was OK. The action consisted some well-shot ping pong matches. There were no special effects.

DVDeals 3/16 - 3/22

DVD Tuesday
This week's highlight is I Am Legend. For the regular edition, there's no contest. Circuit City has it for $13.99. They also have the special edition for $21.99. Best Buy has it for $22.99, but in an exclusive steel box (limited to 15 per store). I'm definitely going for the special edition with this movie. The "making of" and commentary should be very interesting. I'd also like to find out more about the acting of Abbey, the German Shepherd.

Circuit City Deals
- i, Robot for $4.99
- Men in Black for $4.99
- Patriot for $3.99
- Die Hard for $3.99
- Die Hard 2 for $3.99
- X-Men for $3.99
- X2 for $3.99
- XXX for $3.99
- Contract Killer for $3.99

$400 Monitors Through the Ages

This afternoon's project was swapping computer accessories between my room and the basement of my parents' house. I recently purchased a 24" Samsung LCD for my primary desktop system. I found this Online for about $400. When I think back to all of the monitors I've used through the years, I realized that I've always spent $400 on them.

MAG 17" CRT (1994 - 1998)
I had this one for most of my college years. It's hard to believe, but this was the best model at the time. I researched only the 17" models because there was a huge price jump at 19", the next size up. The 17" monitors were also sufficient for my 3-D and multimedia work. We often needed the 1280x1024 resolution for application interfaces, but the animations and interactive projects often had final dimensions of 720x480 or lower. This was one of the most durable monitors I've owned. After college, it was moved to my dad's office where it served another 5 or 6 years.

CTX 21" Flat CRT (1998 - 2008)
As systems and graphics cards got more powerful for the consumer, I had to upgrade to a larger monitor. With the rise of the Internet, it also became more common to have multiple windows open. A 1600x1200 resolution made multitasking more efficient. Th hi-res was also useful for my new duties... hi-res still graphics, photos, long pages of code, etc. The flat CRT also made a difference because there was no distortion. My research actually led me to a Sony model, but further searching revealed that CTX made one of the same specs as Sony for much less and it also had an integrated 4-port USB hub.

Samsung LCD (2008)
The CTX didn't actually die out yet, but it was starting to get blurry at 1600x1200 and the Samsung 24" was on sale for a limited time. Many time when I research monitors and LCD TVs, it leads me to Samsung. The best LCD monitors are probably the Dell Ultrasharp and Apple, but those are both very overpriced. The Samsungs have pretty good quality. I've been using a 17" one at work for about 3 years now. I needed a 24" model because I couldn't go lower than 1600x1200 if it was to replace the CTX 21" CRT. The new one goes up to 1920x1200. The wide format allows me to have 2 browser windows side-by-side + a side bar for my messenger applications. It also looks great for those 16:9 movies.

Note: Although I removed the CTX from my main system, it's not ready for the trash bin quite yet. I moved it to the basement system and have it set at 1280x1024, a resolution where the text is still readable.

SFIV: Li vs Viper

Another Street Fighter IV video has ben released. It's likely an alternate intro. video. This time it's Chun Li vs C.Viper in the middle of a Chinese parade. The video styles are somewhat consistent. There are still inks splashes like in the Ryu vs. Ken video, but more vibrant colors are used.


There are updated video all over YouTube now. Sagat and Balrog (M.Bison in Japan) have been confirmed as they can be found fighting Zangief in some gameplay videos. It looks like they made Sagat smaller than Zangief this time around.

DVDeals 3/9 - 3/15

New Releases
It must be geek week with Stargate: Ark of Truth, Hitman (Unrated) and Tin Man all coming out this DVD Tuesday. Ark of Truth is cheapest at Amazon... $16.99 ($1 lower than everywhere else & no tax). For Hitman, Buy.com is the place to go for the regular edition. For the 2-disc special edition, check out Amazon. Go to Best Buy or Amazon. if you're looking for Tin Man. They have it at $15.99.

Circuit City Deals
Beowulf - $13.99 (a rare low price for the 2nd week of release)
Shrek - $8.99
Shrek 2 - $8.99
Man on Fire - $6.99
John Q - $6.99
Speed - $6.99
Top Gun (Special) - $6.99
Spawn - $6.99
Blade - $6.99
Legend of the Red Dragon - $6.99
Team America - $6.99
South Park Movie - $6.99
Stargate SG-1 (Season 1-10) - $19.99 each

Grendel (Sci-Fi Original)

Warning: This post is a spoiler if you plan to watch this movie.

Story: 5
Action: 3
Acting: 3
FX: 3
Durability: 1

I was flipping through the channels and landed on Sci-Fi, thinking this was the Beowulf & Grendel movie from 2005. It was actually a new movie from 2007 made for the Sci-Fi channel. It's a completely different interpretation of the original. There are more characters and it doesn't follow the sequence of the original. It starts out the same way with Grendel terrorizing the Danes, but the battle at Heorot with Grendel was a loss. Grendel was instead defeated in a second battle in the forest. Instead of a hand-to-hand fight, Beowulf defeats Grendel with an exploding crossbow (in other words, a rocket launcher) that stuns him. Then he charged forward with his sword to finish the job. Unferth in this version was Hrothgar's son and not as cowardly as he was supposed to be. He died heroically against Grendel's mother. There was no Wiglaf. Instead, Beowulf had an apprentice, Fin.

Grendel was a poorly integrated CG character that looked like a large gorilla with decorative tentacles sticking out. His mother looked like the Manbat from the Batman comics. Animation on both characters was stiff. The battle scenes consisted of a series of cuts between one of the monsters making a move and a live action actor swinging a weapon. There was no moving around. It looked like one of those RPG games where the player characters step up, swinging a weapon then step back and let the monster take a hack.

So far, so bad and the acting couldn't save this movie either. Emotions were over-emphasized rather than built-up. I guess bad acting works great with bad fx. And durability? Well, Beowulf running around with a rocket launcher doesn't do it for me. Watching this once was enough!

This is already the 4th Beowulf post, but it's just a coincidence. I'm not a huge fanatic. I just liked the 3-D animated movie.

MetroCard Fare Hike

I'll be entertaining a lot of out-of-town family members this Spring and Summer, so much of our NYC adventures will have to be well planned. Part of that will deal with which MetroCards to buy. Here are my tips for the recent fare hike:

Unlimited Cards
The "fun pass" @ $7.50 is really not that fun anymore unless you ride 4x within a day. The 7-day pass is $25 (must use 13x per week) and the 30-day is now $81 (must use 41x per month). There's also a new 14-day pass for $47 (must use 24x in 2 weeks). The monthly pass still has the best bang for buck, but 41 uses in a month is pretty high. If you're a regular commuter and you work the full month, that's about 20 rides ($40). If you take one day off and don't go out on weekends, then you'll lose out. The other 2 are even worse. If you buy the 7-day pass, 10 uses for the work week amounts to $20. You have to ride 3 more times for it to be worth the money. For regular commuters, the monthly is the only way to go unless you have a long vacation coming up. The 7-day pass is good for tourists who plan to stay in NYC for a week or so. You'll surely get 13 uses out of it.

Pay-Per-Rides
The base fare remains at $2, but the discount was reduced from 20% to 15%. So if you buy a $10 card, you no longer get the free ride. Instead, you get a $1.50 bonus... an odd balance that forces you to refill the card. A $20 card has a $3 bonus... a free ride + an odd $1 balance. If you don't want to deal with the hassle of refilling cards and dealing with odd balances, then it's best to just spend $40 to get a $6 (3-ride) bonus. This is the card for you if you only use the subway once in a while. Another option is to buy cards from a store or street vendor for $17.39 (10 rides) or $52.17 (30 rides).

DVDeals 3/2 - 3/8

Circuit City Deals
Ong Bak - $5.99
i, Robot - $5.99
Matrix - $5.99
Terminator - $5.99
Die Hard - $5.99
Harold & Kumar - $5.99
Romeo Must Die - $4.99

Best Buy Deals
Blade - $4.99
Bloodsport - $4.99
Space Balls - $4.99

Beowulf: Director's Cut DVD

Story: 7
Action: 8
Acting: 8
FX: 8
Durability: 8
Special Features: 5

The recent, fully animated version of Beowulf was an interesting interpretation of the original. All of the major events happened in sequence, but the characters were connected differently. The original epic poem was more about symbolism and allegory than relation of the characters to each other. In the movie, Hrothgar is connected to Grendel and his mother. Beowulf is connected to the dragon. The dragon is connected to Grendel's mother. Beowulf is connect to Wealthow. All of those relationships were a little strange and some a bit of a stretch, but it goes along with the theme of the "cycle of kings."

The 3-D modeling and animation were both well executed. Beowulf, Unferth, Wiglaf and Grendel's mother were some of the best human 3-D models I've ever seen. The motion was also accurate. They motion captured everything, including the horses!

I was a little disappointed with the special features on this disc. For a movie that was so well-crafted, one would expect a full 2nd disc of features. And there was no commentary track, something I was looking forward to. Usually movies like this have at least 2 commentaries... one for the actors and one for the directors & fx people.

Related: Mr. Hobbs' Beowulf, Official Site