Check out more of Secret Asian Man here.

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Holy crap it gets hot in the upstairs portion of my apartment. If this is any indication of how it'll be in the summer, I might move my bed downstairs.

Original Star Wars trailers! Thanks Paul.

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Current and former SJC residents, I invite you to join me at the spring graduation reception today at the Fairmont Social Lounge at 5pm. You were supposed to RSVP, but I'm sure no one will notice if you slip in a few minutes after it has started.

There will be refreshments, alcoholic ones as well. A rumour also exists that they might be serving shrimp dumplings too.

In any case, be there as I transition gracefully from grad student to an unemployed bum with an advanced degree.

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I am sure at least some of you are familiar with Kevin Smith, director of movies like Clerks, Mallrats, and Dogma. I like his work and from what I've seen and heard, he seems like a cool, down-to-earth type of guy.

He's had a website for a while now where he would occasionally make a post on a messageboard telling his fans what he was up to. Smith has finally made the leap to a more formal blog and it's been a treat to read. He's an interesting subject to begin with, but he posts so frequently, it's hard not to get hooked.

While his life would be blog-worthy normally, the blog has recently taken on a local Vancouver flavour. Smith is in town shooting Catch and Release, in a rare take as an actor instead of a director. He drove his entire family up from California for the shoot and most of his blog for the month of May is about working in good old Van-city. You may not know it, but Smith actually lived in Vancouver for six months many years ago as a student at VFS. In one blog entry, he drives his wife around the old neighbourhood showing her where he used to hang out.

From reading his blog, you get the feeling Smith is still a regular dude. He writes about going to Safeway to pick up peanut butter and London Drugs to buy a fan. Could you imagine Jennifer Lopez doing that? No way. In one entry, he writes about taking his daughter Harley to Denny's for the first time. Which Denny's? The one on Broadway near the Toy'R'Us. I think it's pretty cool that Smith isn't above just being a regular dad taking his kid for greasy breakfast.

I think Smith is still in town for a few days yet, but he strangely hasn't posted to his blog for a few days now. If you think you've seen Kevin Smith in town, that very well maybe him. His posts in Vancouver start here. Have a read.

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From what I see on the server logs, there's a fair amount of visitors who come to this site daily, looking for whatever string of words I've managed to bash out on the keyboard. Because of the frequency of visits from some readers, I do my best to post at least once a day. Though some of you out there have your own blogs, have you ever wondered how a post comes to be? Well, in this very special installment of erwintang.com I'll take you on a never seen before behind the scenes tour!

After arriving at the glass and steel adorned headquarters of erwintang.com, I usually spend the first hour of my day reading my e-mail. I then spend an hour and a bit in a meeting with the various department heads of the site. We discuss possible post ideas and flesh out the more viable ones or ones that have caught my attention. I then leave the staff to firm up one or two ideas so that they'll be in postable form by the afternoon. By then, it's time for my daily fried chicken break...

Actually, that's not how the process goes at all, but wouldn't it be cool if it was like that? In reality, ideas for posts can come from anywhere and at anytime. Over the years, I've realized my posts can be more or less put into several categories. The first is the "life" post which is common among most bloggers. This is simply a post about what happened to the blog author that day or in between the last post and the current one. Usually, the event or events I describe I hope will be of some entertainment value to my readers. It could be humourous, but it could also be something which causes me to vent plasma frustration. For example, the first time Woba and I checked out a suspicious car is a "life" post. It is these types of posts that keep most of my readers up to date on my life, so much so that friends of mine who I haven't spoke to in weeks will have no questions to ask me when we finally talk in person.

The second type of posts I have are what I called "set" posts. This type of entry have no reliance on current events nor do they necessarily have to involve me personally. Most often, I am presenting an opinion on something. These set pieces might have been drifting in the back of my mind for days, weeks, or even months. For whatever reason I'll feel the need to solidify my ideas in the form of a post on my blog. These entries are rarer than the previous types of posts. An example would be when I confessed I was a noob at pumping my own gas.

The third type of post I have is something I call "what I had for lunch" posts. Though I literally post what I had for lunch sometimes in a short one or two sentence entry, this type of post has expanded in meaning over the years. Any short post that really has no substantial meaning falls under this category. Examples include a single picture with a caption, a short tirade about being tired and/or hungry, a link to a news story (usually involving wang flies), a link to a funny video, or a link to another web site. When all else fails, I rely on this type of post to inject at least something onto the blog for people to read. At least for me, my philosophy about blogs is that frequency of posting is a hair more important than quality.

Well, there you have it, a small peek at how we do things here at erwintang.com. I hope you enjoyed it. I must take my leave of you now as I've arranged for the entire staff to see Revenge of the Sith later this afternoon. Bye!

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I've lost Internet connectivity at my apartment for some reason. I've been forced to trek over two minutes to the CS labs to write this.

The issue appears to be network-wide for a large majority, if not all Resnet users. I hope everything will be back to normal some time in the morning.

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