Went to Robson Square for the “Meet the Mascot on Ice” show where the Olympic mascots (Quatchi, Miga, Sumi) will be skating in the ring and apparently there was a story that went with it. We got there too late and it was packed with people and kids, we had no way of seeing the characters at all. After some scrambling we managed to get a really tight spot to sort of be able to watch the show. After that we went to check out the Olympic rings that were lit up near Stanley park, took some nice photos with my flash and my star filter, and then went to the Vectorial Elevation ground zero to take some more pics. It was raining pretty hard by the time we were done, my lens and camera were all wet..

I’ve been working on my kitchen PC for a while, finally got everything set up and it’s running quite well. Pentium Core 2 Quad, 2GB ram, built in wi-fi…etc with my 7″ Lilliput touchscreen LCD screen that I bought few years ago for my car PC. Rest of the pics are on Facebook.

I had a happy Valentine’s Day on the 14th, had home made dinner with Wendy and wine and dessert. Tried out some squid ink pasta that we bought from La Grotta Del Formaggio, and had Ikea’s smoked salmon, and White wine (Jackson Triggs Sauvignon Blanc), and chocolate foundu desset even though the clay bowl broke apart . I got home-made muffins from Wendy and a Snoopy 2014 pieces puzzle, and she got the remote light switch she wanted and a Biotherm facial mask, and Quatchi hat.

And then yesterday night we went over to downtown via skytrain, to check out all those Olympic events and stuff. Went the the Olympic cauldron or whatever, I’d just call it the fire. It looked pretty cool at night even though it’s a huge waste of energy (feeling bad for the environment). The other stuff around Robson were pretty cool, lots of people wearing red/white combo and some of them yelled at my face and into other people’s face which was kind of annoying. They had loads of blinky lights and musics which turned the Robson Square area into a noisy, colorful celebratory place. We still have to check out the two “LiveCity” areas on another day.

So apparently my bar was really dark and it was begging for some sort of lighting system. Since I couldn’t really run wire through the ceiling without some massive destruction of the drywall, I went to Ikea and bought the Norrsken wire lighting system for about $80 plus two hanging lamps for $20 each. It was pricy but I thought it’s cool and fun to set up a cable system.

I knew it was going to be difficult but really it was worse than I thought. It took me 2 hours just to do the measurements (while watching Olympics on TV), and 6 hours to do the installation. At one point I sort of screwed up one of the wall anchors and was so freaked out, as you really only have one chance and if you fail to install it properly you’d be screwed forever. Somehow it turned out okay, I think it the anchor was 20% screwed but I was able to screw it in quite tightly. There were a total of I think 1 + 1 + 3 + 3 + 1 + 1 = 10 wall anchors that I had to install, and the measurements had to be 95-100% accurate otherwise it’d look like shit later. It was scary drilling the holes for that reason. After all the measuring and hole drilling, I got the wire system installed and the wires tightened up. It was a “wall to ceiling” set up which was not recommended by Ikea apparently as it was not noted in the manual - one end of the wire was set up on the wall, and the other end ends on the ceiling, in a 45 degree angle. I saw a picture online of the installation so I thought it may work with this Ikea one.

I stumbled across this cool thing called “Vectorial Elevation”, which was basically a bunch of high powered xenon spot lights that were placed at the English Bay area, and anyone in the world could “design” a beam pattern online and have it shown there at night. I designed mine (for Wendy) using Google Map this afternoon, after 6 hours of wait it was my turn to show! Design on Google Map on the left, actual light show on the right:

Here’s my actual design pattern before submission. The other image was captured during the show. Here’s a link to the actual archive, not sure how long this page will exist though.

I was trying to think of a way to light up the “bar” area. As I couldn’t really install any light fixtures at the ceiling where the bar-top was (no in-ceiling wiring for the spot immediate above the bar-top), I thought I could install some lights that aim towards the floor and therefore would somehow illuminate the area a bit. I started by getting a brand new drill bit that allowed me to open up a couple holes at a couple different locations. Had to be very thoughtful as it was tricky to determine where to drill the holes - I need to be able to wire these lights to the existing under-cabinet lights, so that they could all be switched on/off at the same time. There was a place where I need to “fish” the wire behind a drywall, I did it by slowly fishing down a thread with a tiny metal paperclip attached to the end (acting as a weight) from a hole inside the cabinet, all the way to the bottom where the other hole was. I then was able to see the thread from the hole, and I taped the wires from the light fixtures to the thread, and slowly pull it up so that it went through the dry wall and reached the hole inside the cabinet. It was quite a risky approach as there was no way to know in advance whether it would work, but I guess I was in luck and it worked like a charm. The next day I bought some “epoxy glue” and clamps to mount the lights to the underside of the granite countertop. The glue was composed of a “rasin” and the “epoxy” (I picked one that can withstand up to 93C since the lights would get really hot), and you have to mix them up prior to application. It was basically a mixture of very sticky goo, but it was fun playing with it. After applying the glue I clamped everything in place, and let it sit for a day for it to completely dry up. Last step was to apply white caulking to one of the holes that was exposed to seal it up. I think it looks awesome

And I got my first espresso machine (Cusineart Espresso Maker EM-100) from Canadian Tire today! I had been wanting one so much but couldn’t really afford it. This one was on sale today so I couldn’t resist and took it home. Tried to make an espresso and this machine was able to create the “crema” with my crappy Starbucks beans, which was a good sign! The milk frother / steam wand was kind of hard to use though, I still wasn’t sure how exactly to steam the milk in order to make the best froth, I guess it’s going to take some practices…