Hung Truong: The Blog!

Jazz Song Currently Stuck In My Head: My Romance

So every once in a while, a jazz standard just gets stuck in my head and I have to listen to every version of it ever. Right now, that song is “My Romance” by those Rodgers and Hart guys. Some background:

So after hearing of the death of Maynard Ferguson, I decided to listen to some of his music. Y’know, like pay tribute or something (even though I downloaded the music! Sorry Maynard!). I put “Swingin’ For Schuur” in my car, and when I got to “My Romance” I was like, “yeah!”

I’d heard the song before, but sometimes these things need words for the whole package to click. I like memorizing words to standards for phrasing issues as well as trivia issues. One of the things I like about the song is that it’s totally self aware. Like it’s referencing other love songs that have sappy stuff in ‘em. Check out the lyrics:

My Romance

Rodgers & Hart

My romance doesn’t have to have a moon in the sky

My romance doesn’t need a blue lagoon standing by

No month of may No twinkling stars

No hideaway No soft guitar

My romance doesn’t need a castle rising in Spain

Nor a dance to a constantly surprising refrain

Wide awake, I can make my most fantastic dreams come true

My romance doesn’t need a thing but you

If I ever sing this song in a karaoke setting or something, I want to replace “soft guitar” with “girl from mars.” That’ll be so awesome!

The Maynard version is actually a pretty cool arrangement. The Bill Evans one is also really good.

Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories First Impressions

So I got my Disgaea 2 preorder in the mail a few days ago, and I’ve already played about 8+ hours. Yeah, my semester is really going to hell. Anyway, I thought I’d write about my impressions of the sequel to probably the best game ever.

So far, this game is pretty much like the original Disgaea. That’s a good thing. The story is different, but almost everything is the same as the original. For example, the grid based movement system is back. The lifting and throwing system is still there. The geo panel stuff is also still present. Basically the only thing that has changed are the characters and the setting.

As for the story, it’s ok. It centers around a human, Adell, trying to summon a powerful demon overlord into changing his family back into humans. They were turned into demons a few years back. He ends up summoning the overlord’s hot daughter, Rozalin instead. The story can get a little heavy sometimes with Adell being emo, but for the most part it’s pretty funny.

The only new feature I’ve noticed so far is the felony system. I didn’t really look into it that much, but commiting crimes basically means that your demon has certain advantages in the game. The crimes I commited so far are “Geo Vandalism” and “High RES.” They seem kind of random.

I might write about Disgaea 2 some more once I’ve gotten more into it. For now, I think I better regulate my playing, or this might not turn out to be my last semester of college after all!

Notecentric.com Is Open For Business!

Hey everyone! So I finally finished (kind of) my second web app called “Notecentric.” It’s basically a note taking webpage where you can do access your notes at any time and share notes with your classmates easily.

Right now it’s in beta, because there’s still a lot of stuff I want to add to it. Also, it’s trendy to be in beta!

Head on over to Notecentric.com if you wanna check out what’s up, or go to the Developer Blog first for more explanation on what Notecentric is.

To Prove To Dad I’m Not A Fool

Yep, it’s time to go back to school! I actually finished signing up for classes like, an hour ago.

This semester I’m doin’ 14 hours! The classes are: Marching Band, Jazz Band, Software Engineering, Beginning Chinese, International Politics, and an online version of Technical Writing (because I’m lazy). I need to take a full time load, even though I only need Software Engineering to graduate. Why? For like, health insurance.

Chinese should be cool, because then people won’t ask my why I’m Chinese, yet don’t know the language. International Politics just sounds kind of interesting to me. Plus it’s at 11AM, which is not too early. Technical Writing should be okay, since it’s online, and I need to get better at that kind of writing anyway.

I’m also TAing a CS class. It’s just an applications class for Business majors, so it probably won’t be too hard. Mostly stuff in Word and Excel I think.

Hopefully I’ll pass Software Engineering, and graduate in December! Then it’s off to (Job/Grad School/Slacking Off)!

T-Shirt Grab Bag at Thinkgeek.com

Man, has my blog become the T-Shirt Blog or what? Anyway, Thinkgeek.com is having a clearance of sorts on their shirts. You just pick how many shirts you want and they send you random ones.

I like most of their shirts, so this is sort of a no brainer for me. I ordered 3. Hopefully they’ll all be unique, and not 3 STFU shirts.

Get the geekitude here.