Starting Fresh

2009 June 21
by Tim Lee

Freshbooks
It’s official, starting tomorrow, I will be the newest member of the Support team at Freshbooks. I’m thrilled to be invited to tag along on thier adventures, and ebullient to be meeting and working with a cast of aces, I’ll also be working with my fantastic friend Jon Spenceley again, as he would say — Oh snap!

I also made a little funny/cheesy self-promotion video when I applied for the position (available after the jump). Freshbooks wanted, as an option, a video to be sent in describing why you’re interesting and how you enjoy helping people. I thought the “call for video”-video that they made set the tone for a less serious self-promotion, and encouraged a more fun and wacky submission. So I started brainstorming ideas with some help from friends, wrote the script, shot the footages, and edited. It turned out to be a fun little project for a weekend, not to mention a chance to revisit my media roots from high school and PTS. Special thanks goes to Dan T, Dan K, Amanda, Heather, Howard, Peter, Wilfreda, Alex T, Alyssa, Shanan, my sisters, and my neighbours for either starring in, or helping me in the making of the video.

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Busy as Dolphins

2009 June 13
by Tim Lee

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve returned from my glorious Taiwan / Hong Kong trip, and it’s been a while since I’ve updated this place too. I’ve been pretty busy with interviews, friends and family’s graduations, and not to mention photos and all sorts of little ‘to-dos’ here and there. The trip itself was very much an adventurous one. We went along the East Coast of Taiwan, which is something I have never done before. It was all very out-door and non-urban. I was also delighted when I got go on a whale sighting trip. Though no whales ever showed up, we did run into a huge pack of dolphins, they really are fascinating creatures:

Dolphin leaping out of water

Let this image serve as a preview of the photo-set to come. Speaking of photo-set, I’m quite stoked to be finally gutting my dust-collecting desktop and refurbish it with some brand spankin’ new parts tomorrow. Then hopefully I won’t have such a hard time processing photos.

Things are finally looking up a bit, hopefully it will get better as this year unfolds.

Taiwan / HK Bound

2009 May 4
by Tim Lee

三孤將

Well, it looks like I’m headed for another trip to my beloved hometown of Taiwan, with a stop in Hong Kong on the way back. My grandpa is turning 90, which is quite an incredible feat if you ask me. I can only wish that when I’m 90 (if I even get there) I’ll be as fun and loving and mobile as he is.

The not-so-fun part about flying standby is that there’s no such thing as “connecting flights” if you’re flying between two airlines that are not in the same “alliance”. Therefore, I spend hours and hours usually somewhere if I fly the Vancouver to Taiwan route. Last time I did that, I spent 6 hours in the Vancouver airport waiting for a flight back to Toronto on a return flight. Thank goodness there was the 2004 summer Olympics, or else I would’ve died from boredom. Today’s journey will see me at the airport from 8:00pm Vancouver time all the way to 1am — a grand total of 5 hours; a thought that has “tired” plastered all over it.

So wish me a pleasant journey! If anything, the prospect of eating a bowl of authentic Taiwanese beef-noodles will make the long hours flying all worth it.

TD Canada Trust Toronto Jazz Festival ‘09 Lineup

2009 April 19
by Tim Lee

TD Canada Trust Toronto Jazz Festival
I don’t know how it slipped my mind, but I missed the announcement for the TD Canada Trust Toronto Jazz Festival lineup by about three weeks! Thanks goodness today I had a memory jolt and cursed myself for not remembering.

This year’s headliners features some of the best and brightest in Jazz. Tony Bennett is obviously one of the highlight and will be closing the festival this year. If you’re looking for some retro funk, don’t miss Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings. Grandmaster Dave Brubeck and awesome saxophonist Sadao Watanabe will be making an appearance as well. So get your tickets today!

Strangely the one performance I’m looking forward to the most (and thus, has bought a ticket to) is the British Jazz pianist / singer Jamie Cullum. I’ve bought his past three albums, and so far they haven’t disappoint. I find his style in jazz so interesting and different (to the point where sometime it offends some jazz crowds) that I even wrote a final paper on his performativity to jazz and popular music in my fourth year course Music and the Body.
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Dell UltraSharp 2408 Monitor

2009 April 15
by Tim Lee

Workstation Setup

Well, after saving up for a while, and under the recommendation of my friend Alex, I decided to grab myself a Dell 2408 WFP Monitor. So far, it has been amazing. I have not plug a computer into it yet, but I have plugged my PS3, and it looks fantastic. I’m glad I made the purchase when it was on sale too! ($200 off!)

I haven’t had time to play around seriously with the calibrations yet, and I probably won’t till I have my new computer built. But from the reviews online so far, it’s a great set. The inputs are plenty and 1920×1200 at 24 inch looks so pretty. I pop-ed in Wall-E in 1080P earlier today and just sat there and drooled.

Can’t wait until the end of this month / early May when I have my new computer up and running.