Dec 11, 2011

The Comedians That Canada Deserves

Jon Lim Canada, comedy, Real Professional, sketch comedy Canada, Video

This is “A Very Office Christmas”, made by Katie Uhlmann and Claire Stollery, also known as Real Professional. Take a look, let me know what you think.

Personally, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the video. It’s a great little story, and it’s clever, but I guess I expected to laugh a lot more than I actually did. That is fine, not everything tickles everyone the same way, and I hope Katie (who sent me this video!) wasn’t offended by the fact that I wasn’t the biggest fan of it.

However, I would like to point out one thing: they are a breath of fresh air for comedy in Canada.

Since the (good) days of Royal Canadian Air Farce or This Hour Has 22 Minutes, I have seen plenty of Canadian comedy shows show up on The Comedy Network, and they have all been disappointing. They would take the awesome sketch comedy formula that made the aforementioned shows so successful and tried to replicate it, except they wouldn’t be as smart, they wouldn’t be as intelligent, and they absolutely blew when it came to comedic timing.

It was like watching a really bad, half-hour commercial for a shoddy product. Without Billy Mays.

What I really like about Real Professional is that they’ve made a really great comedy short: it’s beautifully produced, it’s got just the right amount of cheesiness in it, and the actors and actresses don’t make me want to immediately claw my eyes and ears out. That said, the acting does fall short in a few places and the overall idea for this short just doesn’t do it for me, but there is definitely plenty of potential and I appreciate that.

I’m really looking forward to more videos from Katie and Claire over at Real Professional. I am hoping that this is a direction that many more comedians take when creating their content, it is an absolute breath of fresh air.

Cheers, ladies!

Dec 10, 2011

A Year at The Working Group

Jon Lim The Working Group Business, Life, Startups

Today is the big day: I celebrate one year of flying The Working Group banner!

(Pictured above: my first day. Seriously.)

It has been an incredible year for me at TWG. I’ve grown a lot as a person, learned a hell of a lot, and made many, many friends. I love The Working Group, I love the brilliant people I work with, and I love what I do.

Thanks for an awesome year guys (and gal!) Let’s keep kicking ass and taking names.

Dec 6, 2011

Calvin & Hobbes Christmas

Jon Lim Calvin & Hobbes, Christmas, lawn ornament Life

As some of you may have noticed with my Christmas countdown page, I am a Calvin & Hobbes fan. That said, how awesome is this lawn decoration?!

I would love this.

Dec 1, 2011

Definitely Worth Reading: Zero Sight + Zero Sum by B. Justin Shier

Jon Lim Amazon Kindle, B. Justin Shier, books, Zero Sight, Zero Sum Books

I discovered Zero Sight and Zero Sum by B. Justin Shier by accident: I needed a book to read on my commutes to and from work, and I looked on the Kindle recommended books. On the third page, I found Zero Sight and read the description and my interest was piqued:

Meet Dieter Resnick. Dieter is the sole child of an abusive single father, a perennial schoolyard brawler, and Ted Binion High’s number one academic prospect. Dieter is terrified of staying poor. He has few friends and is absolutely obsessed with earning a college scholarship. He’s also a latent mage–one of the few humans left that can bend the manaflows to their will.

Too bad no one told him. Now a boy is dead.

Meet Rei Acerba Bathory. Rei is a second year student at Elliot College, the premiere magical training academy in North America. She’s also on an all-liquid diet. Rei acquired her odd speech and mannerisms living among her centuries-old kin–strange vampiric creatures that have carved out the Midwest as their playground. She can kill a man without blinking, but has a serious weakness for puppies. Thanks to a childhood spent living cloistered from the public, Rei knows little of modern society. She’d do well to make some friends, but her fellow trainees despise her. Rei is the first of her kind to be admitted, and many hope to make her the last.

Dieter was raised in the grimy outskirts of Las Vegas. Rei was homeschooled in a Chicago mansion. Both are on their way to Elliot College. Both believe the other is a creature of idle fantasy. In ten hours, they’re going to be at the center of a war fought by shadow actors. In eleven hours, they’re going to become a weft-pair, bound together by the most sacred spell in the magic canon. And in twelve hours? Well, in twelve hours, they’ve got to get to class…

With a description like that, who wouldn’t buy this book, right?

Here is why I absolutely loved this book:

Strong cast of characters. They’re all young, they’ve got their own opinions (and powers!), and they’re distinctly different from one another.
It’s hilarious. I laughed out loud on the bus several times thanks to these books, and it was worth the funny looks from other passengers.
Fantasy mixed with realism. People are casting spells and slinging magic in the modern day. It’s as awesome as it sounds.
Couldn’t put it down. I missed my stop SEVERAL times while reading these two, and I blasted my way through the books in days. It made me really excited to read!

Both of these books were an amazing read, and I couldn’t help but throw some extra support behind an independent author who has done an excellent job with these books.

I can’t wait for the next one!

Nov 19, 2011

Bring Something to the Table

Jon Lim code, design, Startup Weekend, startups Business, Startups

Last night, I watched dozens of people pitch an idea to the gigantic crowd of Startup Weekend. I had a front row seat and I was filming the whole time, so I was paying close attention.

Here’s what I was thinking the whole time: if you aren’t a coder or designer, you better bring something amazing to the table.

No offense to anyone who was pitching, but chances are that if you can’t build it or you can’t design it, you better bring some other extraordinary skill to the table. Hell, at least be able to sell me on the idea so I’d want to help you build it!

People have been saying this over and over again in the startup world, but it rings true: ideas are a dime a dozen.

If you can’t execute, your idea is worthless.

Nov 15, 2011

Soon-to-be Real Life

Jon Lim job search, networking, university Life

I attended an event today as a panelist at the University of Toronto Scarborough for soon-to-be graduates, separated by industry/stream.

I was lucky to have a very outgoing panel who had plenty of knowledge to drop all over the students. During the discussion, several points kept coming up that I feel I should share:

Work hard. Your entry level job isn’t going to be your dream job, but you’re going to have to be persistent and tough it out until you have the skills and knowledge necessary to get there.
Take small steps. You can’t go from student to super-star CEO of a company immediately, you have take a look at where you want to go and create a strategy on the steps you need to take.
Don’t be afraid to look dumb and take risks. You’re going to have a lot of naysayers if you’re not following a traditional path. Ignore the haters and carry on.
Have something to say. You need to have the knowledge to speak with your peers in your industry, and what better way to show that you have that knowledge by having opinions on important matters for that industry?
Network, network, network. It’s easier said than done, but you have to hustle hard and create meaningful relationships with people and create that repor that establishes credibility.

The session had many more gems from the super intelligent people I was sitting next to, and in my opinion, these are the important ones.

I would love to hear any tips they would give to soon-to-be graduates from university. Leave them in the comments and I’ll add them to my list!

Here are some of the additional tips I have received:

Know what you want? Chase it and be aggressive. If you have an idea of exactly what you want, you should actively chase it and aggressively ask for related responsibilities. (by Wendy Kwan)
Learn to think outside the box, and be proactive. It shows that a person is analytically inclined, and capable of solving problems in new and innovative ways. (by Slxia1215)

Nov 13, 2011

The Millenium of Coffee

Jon Lim Coffee, Mikael Blomkvist, Millenium, Stieg Larsson Books

I’m reading through the Millenium series by Stieg Larsson, and it seems like everyone drinks coffee all the time. Suddenly everyone in the book is a shaking, raving lunatic in my imagination.

Coffee. Not even once.

EDIT: Apparently, the book isn’t that far off:

Nov 13, 2011

Secrets of Grindea

Jon Lim Action RPG, Pixel Ferrets, RPG, Secrets of Grindea Video Games

I found this gameplay video of an up-and-coming action RPG called Secrets of Grindea from Pixel Ferrets, showcasing their 4-player co-op. It reminded me of Secret of Mana in terms of art style and gameplay, so I was immediately interested.

I can’t wait to give this a play with my friends.

Nov 13, 2011

Creating an Image with Dynamic Text in PHP

Jon Lim dynamic image, GD, image function, PHP Coding

As Christmas approaches, many of my friends have begun their countdowns to that wonderful holiday at the end of the year.

One of my friends started her countdown back in August, when she opened up her calendar and had to count the number of days until Christmas and continuously keep track of what day it was and where her count was. I told her that I could spend the 5 minutes to help her out using the power of the internets, and that’s how my Christmas page was born.

Today, I spent a bit more time spicing up the page. It now has a Calvin & Hobbes image that has a bunch of static text, but will update the number of days dynamically.

To preface: I had no idea how to do this, and found out that PHP has a rather sizeable GD and Image Function library. I used this example to start:

<?php
 
header("Content-type: image/png");
$string = $_GET['text'];
$im     = imagecreatefrompng("images/button1.png");
$orange = imagecolorallocate($im, 220, 210, 60);
$px     = (imagesx($im) - 7.5 * strlen($string)) / 2;
imagestring($im, 3, $px, 9, $string, $orange);
imagepng($im);
imagedestroy($im);
 
?>

Unfortunately, you can only use some LATIN2 font with imagestring(), and did it fit the style of the Calvin & Hobbes comic I was using, but it was a good start.

In order to load your own font and dictate its size, we can use imagettftext(). I had to include the Comic Sans (Don’t hurt me!) font file in the same folder as the PHP file.

Here is the complete code for my dynamic Christmas image:

<?php
// Filename: christmas-image.php
 
header("Content-type: image/png");
$string = $_GET['days'];
$im     = imagecreatefrompng("calvin_resolutions.png");
$black = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 0, 0);
$font = 'comicsans.ttf';
 
$initialX = '153';
$initialY = '35';
$increaseY = '23';
 
$fontSize = '16';
$fontRotation = '0';
 
$firstline = 'What do you mean';
$secondline = 'there are ' . $string . ' days until';
$thirdline = 'Christmas?! What am';
$fourthline = 'I supposed to do until';
$fifthline = 'then? WAIT?! I am';
$sixthline = 'not a patient man!';
 
//imagestring($im, $font, $px, 20, $string, $black);
imagettftext($im, $fontSize, $fontRotation, $initialX, $initialY, $black, $font, $firstline);
imagettftext($im, $fontSize, $fontRotation, $initialX, $initialY+$increaseY, $black, $font, $secondline);
imagettftext($im, $fontSize, $fontRotation, $initialX, $initialY+($increaseY*2), $black, $font, $thirdline);
imagettftext($im, $fontSize, $fontRotation, $initialX, $initialY+($increaseY*3), $black, $font, $fourthline);
imagettftext($im, $fontSize, $fontRotation, $initialX, $initialY+($increaseY*4), $black, $font, $fifthline);
imagettftext($im, $fontSize, $fontRotation, $initialX, $initialY+($increaseY*5), $black, $font, $sixthline);
imagepng($im);
imagedestroy($im);
 
?>

The positioning of the text is specific to the Calvin & Hobbes image I used, and I made it easier on myself by creating a variable for the X and Y positions as well as the amount I wanted to push the next lines down.

All you have to do now is refer to the PHP file and pass the variables through the URL.

<img src="christmas-image.php?days=<?php echo $remainingDays; ?>">

The PHP file will create a PNG that has the updated text. That was pretty simple, no?

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