Toastypanda

Sorry for the delay on new posts. I just moved into a new apartment in Richmond VA where I will be living for the next 3 months while I work at an internship this summer.

I doubt the internet needs another review of Iron Man, but I saw it twice (once with my girlfriend and once with my parents on mother’s day weekend). Plain and simple, I loved it. I might be a huge tech geek and a even bigger comic geek, but I feel it was an enjoyable movie for everyone. My parents found it entertaining and my mom doesn’t know how to work her digital camera and my dad could care less who Nick Fury is (although I made them stay past the credits for that tid bit of awesomeness).

My only complaint (its minor, no worries), is that it could have used more of Iron Man kicking ass. And no, I don’t mean more scenes of him duking it out with the Iron Monger (Stane’s suit). I want like a good solid 10 min of him owning some non armored villains. Some puny humans that he can just stomp and throw around.

If you haven’t already, go see it. Its worth the money.

For mother’s day I returned to Northern Virginia and my family decided to try out this new Middle Eastern restaurant in Tysons II called the Lebanese Taverna. The atmosphere was amazing. I had no idea such a huge restaurant lived in that mall. Between the glass walls and the modern furniture, they kept it the scenery interesting while we ate.

Putting a Lebanese spin on things, the first thing served with drinks was pita bread. They are delicious, but watch out- they are puffy with the heat trapped inside, which can lead to some steam in the face or on hands when opened.

For appetizers, my family shared a Taverna Platter, which was a selection of their most popular appitizer dishes. This is where the pita bread I mentioned before comes in handy. The humus and the cilantro/tomato salsa are exquisite with real simple, but bold flavors (the later especially).

My main dish was a fish gyro off their lunch menu. My father ordered one of their pita pizzas and my sister and mother orders I do not remember. This is where the restaurant fails to impress. Don’t misunderstand, my fish gyro and the slice of my father’s pita pizza was good, but for the price we paid and compared to their appetizers, they failed to shine. The flavors were not as bold. From what I tasted of my mother’s and sister’s dishes, I have the same feeling about what they ordered. Good food, but not spectacular, again, especially in regards to the price (10+). I feel like you can get that kind of meal from a smaller middle eastern sandwich shop.

Desert, however, was extraordinary. We ordered the Turkish coffee cake with pistachio ice cream and some whipped cream. It was amazing how sweet the whipped cream was and how well the pistachio flavor mixed with the cake.

Overall, if you can spend the money, and want a nice place to eat/celebrate, this is a good choice. While the main dishes were by no means bad, I was unimpressed with my main dish. The appetizers and desert were amazing, however, so that might balance out your experience. Aside from the posh atmosphere, I feel like I could go to my local kabob shop and get more bang for my buck…but maybe I am just a poor college student.

I created a new page with links to my movies. as of now it has the wild west video (first big animation project), both version of my final project, and a silly snowboarding movie I made with video clips from this season.

For our final project for digital media 222, we have to create a surreal animation. This is my rough cut. I have two different background songs playing, the first (and one I am leaning towards is MGMT- Kids. Its just the beginning of the song looped over and over. The second song is Death Cab for Cutie- I Will Possess Your Heart, which had an awesomely long intro, so it needed no fiddling with to work with the animation.

….cept i just realized that wordpress won’t let me upload video till I buy a space upgrade. ownd.

so while i figure out when I can get to a campus library to upload these vids faster, check out my last big project for the class.

ARTS 222 Project

After some finagling, I finally got everything to look (somewhat) the way I want it to. Might change things later as more time frees up in between finals. Hopefully I can post some of my animation and digital work here.

All thats left for tonight is to drive a bus from 9:45-1am and then cram for the rest of the night for a cs test tomorrow.

Ooh, new avatar! Its taken from Paul Robertson’s blog (hope thats ohkay). I really enjoy his work and actually took inspiration from his pixel art for my digital media final project.

avatar:

Hope this blog works out.