Tech of the day: Windows 7 Upgrade

This is another rant about computer/technology (3 posts in a row!) My Toshiba Satellite P505 is qualified for a free upgrade from Vista to Windows 7. (I would not have bought it without the free upgrade!) I went through the registration process online and finally received my Windows 7 Upgrade disc. So I thought everything I need for the upgrade would be contained in the disc. Wrong! The first step, which is running a program on the disc from within Vista, simply brought me to a web page, where I need to download an Upgrade Advisor from Microsoft as well as an Upgrade Assistant from Toshiba! After I ran the them in this order, the latter downloaded a further couple hundred MB of Toshiba drivers/software/patches required for upgrade! I guess anyone without a broadband connection should forget about upgrading. With my slow broadband, it took almost an hour to complete downloading. That was 11:30pm already. The next step was to uninstall a bunch of drivers/software that are incompatible with Windows 7 (these were the ones that were supposed to be replaced by the downloaded bits) This was again a lengthy step that took almost another hour. Fortunately the uninstallation was kinda smooth (uninstall of Toshiba HDD protection hung and I had to stop and restarted it. I googled and saw people mentioned much worse experience. For example, some users went through the uninstall but the subsequent reinstall failed and they were left with unusable laptops. After all, who would like to use a laptop without a working wireless driver?) Finally the actual upgrade started. And that's when I fell asleep. I woke up a few times to check on the progress and saw the prompt to enter license key at 2:30am. With Windows 7's bits in place, the upgrade assistant proceeded to re-install the downloaded stuff, which rebooted the computer a few times (and required me to enter my password) It's after 3am when everything was done.

Some critics argued that Windows 7 is more like a patch on top on Vista. I can't say I disagree but I do welcome the UI enhancement (in fact, I also liked the UI enhancements M$ made in Vista over XP)

Tech of the day: Mounting Windows shared drive on Ubuntu

As I mentioned in my previous post, Ubuntu 9.10 didn't work on my Toshiba Satellite P505 "out-of-the-box" but there are fixes available. I've tried it and it worked like a charm. All ACPI related functions, battery indicator, suspend, even the volume buttons, are working!

Even though I'm using too many Windows-only application too often, I do still boot into Ubuntu from time to time (for burning CDs, ripping DVD, for example) It will be useful to mount my shared drive from my Windows server. I thought my prior (2 year old) knowledge of using SMBFS/Samba would be applicable. Wrong! The latest technology for this is CIFS. And the synaptic package that contains CIFS is actually "smbfs"! (containing both SMBFS and CIFS) However, I still needed additional component (winbind) and followed these steps so that CIFS could resolve my Windows hostname. Again, it's not that hard to figure out but I still felt I have better use of my time.

Tech of the day: Facebook photo upload sucks

I just want to rant about my horrible experience with uploading photo to Facebook. No matter what I use: my 4 year old XP PC, brand new Vista PC, Ubuntu, in combination with IE or Firefox, I would run into the dreadful "Uploading failed" error from time to time. (Well, I had great success using the simple text/HTML form based interface but it doesn't preview the photo so it's a pain to use)

Yesterday I even tried Adobe's AIR-based Photo Uploader for Facebook. It's a hit-or-miss as well. And previewing photo was very slow with this tool.

I can't imagine no one has come up with a good solution to this common problem on a popular service but unfortunately that's the case after I googled.

Topic of the day: the coolest show in Vegas

I can't tell you which one is the hottest but I could tell you spray paint artists on the Strip are way cool. This is probably not the same one I saw but the technique is similar (the background music is great, of course):

Music of the day: Let's have a new start

I am in the mood of some good old Hong Kong pop as well as violin music and this album is the perfect fit for me. It features 13 tunes that are among the most popular songs in HK during the 80s and 90s, rearranged as orchestral music and performed by violinist Takako Nishizaki (西崎崇子) Nishizaki is one of the most beloved violinist in HK as she lives there and put in great effort in promoting classical music locally.

Topic of the day: a trade that involves 2 former Cy Young winners and .....

the son of a former Cy Young winner! I'm talking about the trade that sents Roy Halladay to Phillies and Cliff Lee to Mariners. This trade also sends Kyle Drabek, the son of Doug Drabek, to Toronto. Doug Drabek won his Cy Young in 1990 with the Pirates. Those were the last glory years for the Pirates! (yes, they still had Barry Bonds then and they went to NLCS 3 years in a row) I also remember his days with the Astros. For the Phillies, it doesn't seem like a big upgrade but it certainly does for the Mariners! Lee was such a dominating pitcher in this postseason. The Mariners have also added 3B Chone Figgin to their roster. The rest of the AL West gotta watch out.

Topic of the day: throwing stones into a well when someone fell into it

For those familiar with Chinese, you know my title comes from an old Chinese saying.
For those familiar with sports, you know who I am writing about.

They overspent. Then things went wrong. And they abandon their guys and fail to support. Sounds familiar? Well, that has always been the image of certain consulting firms. Nothing surprising here.

On the other hand, it actually makes more sense for a watch maker to cut ties with Tiger. After all, no one wants people to think of adulterer when they see the watch he wears! And it is unlike the brand of the shaving razor a guy uses, which is not publicly displayed normally. However, I won't be surprised if some ultra-image-conscious guys start to hide their Gillette razor when they expect ladies visiting.

東亞運足球冠軍

身為香港人，作為足球迷，對於香港隊榮獲金牌，當然感到興奮。

最不以為然的是，在東亞運開始時，傳媒戲稱香港擊敗的南韓隊為A貨，皆因成員多來自當地乙組聯賽。即使港隊奪冠後，香港討論區仍有不少網友（估計不是香港本地人）貶低這項賽事，酸葡萄味濃烈。我想提出幾點：
1)從討論區可見，大部份球迷都很理性，不會以為一場勝利就令香港足球重現當年雄霸亞洲球壇的風範，只會視為港足在低迷多年後向正確方向發展邁出了第一步而已。
2)其實參賽的各國隊伍皆以奧運或U21（21歲以下）隊為⻣幹，香港隊亦是U23，算不上精英盡出。
3)二線球員的比賽是否毫無意義？如果是，球迷不應慶祝己隊贏得聯賽盃或南美國家盃吧？

Topic of the day: any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God...

Article 6, section 8 of the North Carolina state constitution says: “The following persons shall be disqualified for office: First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.”

Yes, it's the current constitution. Yes, separation of church and state is a myth.

Well, not many people are aware of this until H.K. Edgerton, a former Asheville NAACP president, pointed this out when Cecil Bothwell, an atheist, won a city council election.

Topic of the day: Obama's gift to Hu

As a Go enthusiast, I'm surprised that I didn't read about this earlier. During Obama's recent visit to China, he gave a Go set to Hu Jintao as a gift! According to American Go Association [emphasis mine]:

When U.S. President Barack Obama met with Chinese Hu Jintao this week, he presented Hu with a go set that included an American-made go board and a set of Chinese jade stones contained in glass bowls from the West Coast of the United States. Beyond the simple political symbolism of an ancient asian game seamlessly melding Chinese and American craftsmanship, the choice of a go set – rather than, say, a Chinese chess set – gently raises timely geopolitical issues. "Perhaps this gift expresses the president's respect for China's long history," suggests American Go Association President Allan Abramson. “And that the traditional Western competitive model has room for the cooperation and balance so prized in go and China.” Whatever the political, diplomatic and economic ramifications, the gift set the world go community abuzz as word spread this week. Invented in China over 2,500 years ago, go is the world’s oldest continually-played board game, played by nearly 30 million worldwide. Considered one of a handful of classic board games – along with chess and checkers – go was included in last year’s first-ever World Mind Sports Games in Beijing, and the high-profile presentation of a go set by an American President is seen as a watershed moment in the history of the game in the United States. The board was handmade of Hawaiin koa, selected and crafted by North Carolina master carpenter Frank Salantrie – a 3-dan go player and longtime member of the American Go Association -- and has the presidential seal engraved on the back, along with President Obama's signature. The jade weiqi stones included in the President's gift were donated by professional go player Feng Yun, the former a member of the China National Weiqi (go) Team, who is now a United States citizen. The stones were presented to her many years ago in recognition of her contributions to the team in China, and she said she was “honored to give them to the President to present to President Hu and the Chinese people as an expression of continuing friendship between the United States and China."

It is indeed an interesting choice. Some even think that Obama wanted to show off his knowledge of Chinese culture (I think it's just conspiracy theory)

大國崛起？

看完這個廣告，大家有甚麼感想？我想廣告的創作人多多少少受到朗朗的影響吧。「潮」鋼琴家的Stereotype已由白人變為亞洲人，時代的確不同了。

Topic of the day: what you think is good for your kids might not matter after all

A friend posted this on his Facebook: The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting To me it's pretty much commonsense. I mean, it is never good to overdo anything. However, this quote might sound a bit depressing (or relieving, depends on what you have done):

Freakonomics authors Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt analyzed a Department of Education study tracking the progress of kids through fifth grade and found that things like how much parents read to their kids, how much TV kids watch and whether Mom works make little difference. "Frequent museum visits would seem to be no more productive than trips to the grocery store," they argued in USA Today. "By the time most parents pick up a book on parenting technique, it's too late. Many of the things that matter most were decided long ago — what kind of education a parent got, what kind of spouse he wound up with and how long they waited to have children."

Topic of the day: Magic The Gathering

I just learned about this game because its world championship was won by a team from China. This was the first time an Asian team won the team competition. There might be some truth in this old saying: "With the vast population of China, you should be able to form a team that win at any event" Well, maybe the FIFA World Cup is an excpetion.

Tech of the day: Second day with Toshiba Satellite P505

I am not ready to live without ACPI (or recompile the kernel) yet so I've decided to stick with Vista for the foreseeable future and default GRUB to boot into it. I have tinkered with GRUB before and I thought this would be easy. Wrong! Most info floating around is about the older version of GRUB but Ubuntu 9.10 comes with GRUB 1.97 beta (for documentation, looks for GRUB 2) So, I couldn't just edit /boot/grub/menu.lst, which correspond to entries on the GRUB menu, because it doesn't exist anymore! It was "superceded" by /boot/grub/grub.cfg, which users are not supposed to edit manually.

I ended up changing /etc/default/grub by setting GRUB_DEFAULT=saved and executed update-grub. Then I picked Vista from GRUB once and it remembered my choice.

Now that I'm back to Vista, reluctantly. The next thing is to get sound output through HDMI. [Update: I've tried it. That link mentioned choosing SPFIF but I could actually choose HDMI as my default Sound Output Device and it works.]

[Update 2: I've found some fixes that could replace the acpi=off workaround but I've yet to try them.]

Tech of the day: First day with Toshiba Satellite P505

My goal is to dual boot this desktop-replacement notebook with Windows 7 and Arch Linux. It actually comes with Windows Vista Home Premium (M$/Toshiba offers free upgrade to Win 7 but for some reason Toshiba's registration system is down so I'll try again later) According to instruction I googled, Vista provides a "Shrink" feature in its Disk Management but some reported it didn't work for them. I tried it and it shrunked my Vista partition from 360Gb to 180Gb, which leaves ~180Gb for Linux. I was so glad it worked out (but my euphoria was premature) Next I used Toshiba's recovery disc creator to create the recovery disc immediately (it is very possible that a simple mistake could render everything unusable) Finally, I put my Arch Linux (64 bit) installation CD in and rebooted. The first thing went wrong was that the installation requires network (I opted for the CD that does NOT include everything) Second, Arch's installer used cfdisk and it complained about "bad primary partition 2 partition ends in the final partial cylinder" And nobody has offered any good solution except for wiping the HDD!

So there we went. I rebooted with my newly created recovery DVD. I chose the option "Erase the hard disk" which led to 2 choices "delete all data and partitions from the hard disk" or "delete all partitions and overwrite all sectors on the hard disk" The latter is supposed to take a long time so I picked the former. Well, it takes a long time too (2 hr 15 mins) And it doesn't seem to be absolutely necessary from reinstalling Vista! Anyway, I picked the option that allowed me to pick the size of my partition (and I chose not to create an extra partition for System Recovery, i.e., will rely on my DVDs from now on) After it slowly created the partitions, I was prompted to insert the 3 DVDs one after another, for it to slowly copy all the files back. That took another hour. Finally it rebooted with Vista! And as usual, Vista needs to slowly set itself up. Just when I thought it's done, another Toshiba program took over for "configuring system" then reboot. This cycle has repeated so many times that it seems never ending. I think what it actually did was re-installing all those Toshiba's drivers (noticed the screen went from lo-res to hi-res) Anyway, another hour of my life was wasted on this. I knew it's done when Vista asked me to create a new user account.

Now it's ready for another attempt to install Arch, using the "core" CD which does not rely on FTP to complete the install. And this time the installer (or cfdisk) didn't complain about the partitions and the installation went all the way 'til completion. Happy ending? Well, far from it. For one thing, networking required setup. I was smart enough to start with wired networking. Even that didn't work out of the box and after lots of googling (the Wiki suggests to use hwdetect, which wasn't installed and without access to the net I have no way to install it! The Wiki also suggested dhclient instead of dhcpcd. Again, no internet no installation!)

So it's time to try a different distro. Before that, I preferred to clean out Arch first by blowing away the 2 partitions (root and swap) on my HDD, and took out GRUB from the MBR. The latter was actually trickier that I thought on Vista: I had to reboot with my Toshiba Recovery DVD and choose Recovery Console from one of the Recovery Options. Once in the console, execute: bootrec.exe /FixMbr

Next, I reluctantly went with the popular and familiar, Ubuntu. (I think Canonical drops support on releases way too soon so users need to keep updating in order not to left behind. On the other hand, users who update too soon could run into their own problems, see below) Ubuntu 9.10 was right out of Canonical's "door!" Again, installation went well, as it has always been. And again, trouble started when I tried to get network working! To troubleshoot, I enlisted the help of Arch's Wiki (yeah, the same steps work for both Arch and Ubuntu) and found that my Ethernet adapter uses the module atl1c. Looked for this in dmesg and I saw a bunch of errors related to ACPI (also caused Wireless adapter to fail) So, the workaround is to disable ACPI (here is how) Or try compiling the newer kernel. After 12 hours of tinkering with it, enough is enough and I called it a night.

Tech of the day: Google Chrome OS

Here is the simplest explanation: if your next computer runs Chrome OS, basically all it has is a browser.

It might sound strange for those who are used to old-school computing. However, this is my daughter's perception of computing:



Yes, it's a full-screen browser with a Google logo. (She made this at school without any input from me. )

If you think about how you use your computer, what applications are running most of the time, in addition to your browser? Maybe an e-mail client if you're not using web mail already? Maybe a word processor if you're not using Google Doc already? Maybe a media player if you're not consuming your media through the Flash-plugin of your browser already?

Suddenly Chrome OS is making a lot of sense huh?

Music of the day: Songbird

I'm sure Kenny G's original version does not need further recommendation. This is an interesting cover version featuring Bonfiglio on harmonica accompanied by violin.

拳王再闖高峰

早幾個月提過來自菲律賓的拳王Manny Pacquiao，昨日再贏一場冠軍賽，成為第一位分別在七個重量組別奪冠的拳王，認真威水！


Fast forward此片5分鐘可見拳王如何技術擊倒對手。

Music of the day: more jazz violin

After the Regina Carter concert, I went to another jazz violin show: Mads Tolling Quartet at Yoshi's SF. I heard a tune from his latest album "The Playmaker" on the radio and was immediately impressed so I listened to his 2 albums on Rhapsody and went to his concert. It is not exactly the classic jazz violin sound that I enjoy so much (i.e., Stephane Grappelli) His sound is more fusion like, which I also found very interesting. For some reason I had a feeling he would end the concert with his Led Zeppelin cover, "Black Dog," and I was right!

I found it interesting that so many jazz violinist are from Europe, like Mads Tolling. Through the Jazz violin tag radio on Last.fm, I've also listened to other Europeans like Mateusz Smoczynski, Zbigniew Seifert, last but not least, the great Jean-Luc Ponty. I heard his live version of "Cantelope Island" on radio and it was fabulous.

I should also mention that Mads Tolling is a violinist of the most well-known jazz string quartet in the world: Turtle Island String Quartet. In fact, I have not heard of any other jazz string quartet until I heard Quartet San Francisco playing Dave Brubeck on the radio! If you like jazz string quartet, please also check out Basquiat Strings.

Book of the month: Stradivari's Genius

This book started with the history of violin making from the earliest days, with special focus on the greatest violin maker of all time: Antonio Stradivari. Then it traced the ownerships and famous players of six of Stradivari's masterpieces: 5 violins and 1 cello. One might think it must be boring to read such history but the opposite is true. This books read like a novel, with unexpected twist at the end! This is a must-read for all violin lovers.

Musicians of the day: The Power Triplets

The name of this band says it all: this is a trio that plays really powerful fusion and instrumental rock music, that reminds me of the work by Frank Gambale, Stu Hamm, Steve Smith, Joe Satriani and Billy Sheehan. That's a very good company! Here is a link to their tracks on Rhapsody.

Topic of the day: annoying commercials

Dunno about you but I really found that UPS Whiteboard commercial quite annoying because I don't like the way that guy tries to act smart. Well, it turns out that guy is probably quite smart 'coz he was actually one of the advertising agency executives responsible for coming up with that commercial! No wonder he looks natural when he drew stuff on the white board.

Music of the day: Classical and Flamenco guitar

I've just discovered this online streaming radio station from Sky.fm.

So far I've heard the usual suspects: Strunz and Farah, Jesse Cook, Lara and Reyes, Carlos Montoya. Well, more flamenco/new age than classical. Anyway, not bad for a Sunday morning.

Tech of the day: I hate time zone!

I have spent the past few hours on one issue: trying to insert a timestamp with time zone properly represented into Oracle through JDBC without success.

I started with using a DATE column in Oracle and a straighforward JdbcTemplate update method with Types.TIMESTAMP passed as the type. A timestamp like 2009-10-29 09:30 GMT+2 is stored as 2009-10-29 00:30, which is correct because my client and Oracle server both runs on PDT. Ideally I would rather store the timestamp in GMT, i.e., 2009-10-29 07:30. Alternatively, it would still be OK if I could store time zone into the database as well, i.e., using Oracle's TIMESTAMP WITH LOCAL TIME ZONE datatype (btw, I can't use TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE if I want to use this column as the partition key!) Unfortunately, JdbcTemplate update for some reason stores it as 2009-10-28 05:30 PDT (i.e., it treated 2009-10-29 00:30 as a GMT time!)

It drove me crazy until I found this article from someone who has the same problem and provided a solution:

The resultSet.s[g]etTimeStamp method has an overloaded cousin, that takes a Calendar parameter.

To use this, you will also need to invoke a different cousin of JdbcTemplate's update which takes a PreparedStatementSetter and override the latter.

Music of the day: RTHK2 Oldies

今日太太介紹聽香港電台第二台，我說這裡日間時段正是香港半夜，播的都是老餅歌，她說都可以聽啊。

於是我裝了iPhone App FStream，輸入了一堆URL，聽了：
關菊英-過客(無線同名電視劇主題曲)
葉振棠-勝利雙手創(亞洲電視劇「我來自潮州」主題曲，改編自紅極一時的台語歌「愛拼才會贏」)
張德蘭-愛的短箭(無線電視劇「家有嬌妻」主題曲）

的確好適合我這個老餅。

Topic of the day: Governator dropped The bomb

You have probably seen Arnold Schwarzenegger dropping bombs all the time in his action movies. This time he dropped the F-bomb, albeit a subtle one, in his message to legislators.

Interesting politics and politicians with guts? Yes! That's possible!

甚麼是好逸惡勞？

香港政府為協助大學畢業生就業推出「大學畢業生實習計畫」資助內地企業提供一千個實習空缺，但反應並不熱烈。居然有人批評這證明香港人好逸惡勞：

中原人力資源顧問董事總經理周綺萍批評，兩個月來僅吸引兩成畢業生北上實習，是反應冷淡，更反映本港大學畢業生好逸惡勞。她指內地工作機會相當難求，現時政府親自出馬拉攏內地大企業，大學生仍無動於衷，抗拒長時間駐內地工作，只求本地舒服安樂工作。盛智晉薈國際顧問公司行政總裁李彥樺指，香港大學生為怕辛苦，的確浪費政府一番心意。

我認為這是絕對不負責任的講法。為甚麼一個城市／地區的人不願離鄉別井去外地工作就等同懶惰？一家人想在香港齊齊整整就是罪過？觀乎世界各地，凡有大量年青人必須離鄉別井去外地工作方能維持生計的地區，經濟必定有嚴重問題，往往是政府經濟政策失敗之故。

再講，整個「大學畢業生實習計畫」背後的動機昭然若揭，無非是為美化失業率，為當權者面上貼金！

Topic of the day: pseudo-maternity leave for women without children

A survey in England found that 74 percent of women surveyed agree employer should give women equivalent of maternity leave even though they are not having babies

So, it's about fairness, right? Well, that should include men then.

To be honest, I think the result is kinda useless. After all, if you ask, who wouldn't want to have more paid time off?

Musician of the day: Jenny Scheinman

I am totally in the mood of jazz violin, after listening to Chris Church (from Jesse Cook's band) and Regina Carter last week. And I "discovered" Scheinman from Ben Allison's latest CD Think Free(BTW, Allison has always put out interesting music and this CD is no exception) Now I'm listening to her CD The Rabbi's Lover.

Music of the day: Rain Day

This song is the perfect description of the weather today. It came from new Flamenco guitarist Jesse Cook's latest album, The Rumba Foundation. I saw him playing with his band at Yoshi's last week. They sounded even better live. His music might not have a lot of depth. Even he admitted it was commercial stuff but all I care was that its beautiful music. I was surprised to see that his band featured a violinist, Chris Church. His playing fitted very well, by providing a whimsical atmosphere. Their show had lots of variety too: some songs are duet between two guitars, some are guitar + percussion. And there was of course a solo guitar piece by Cook.

Here is the Rhapsody link

Musicians of the day: Rodrigo y Gabriela

I missed their concert at Oakland a few weeks ago because of time conflict :( It's a group I really want to see playing live. Check out this NPR interview, about their special style:

Topic of the day: What's the IQ of your city?

Yup, you read it correctly. A web site called the Daily Beast came up with a survey to determine how smart people in all US cities are [via SFGate] SF Bay Area ranks #2. #1 belongs to Raleigh-Durham. Congrat to my friends living there! (You know who you are :D)

Topic of the day: Violin Hero

I was curious whether a Guitar-hero-like game exists for violin. I can't believe such thing indeed exists! However, it had been discontinued for a long time. I guess it wasn't that successful. There seems to be a market though, judging by Facebook having a Violin Hero group with 500+ members.

Album of the day: Endgame

For those who defended Metallica by saying they can't make any progress by staying true to their roots (and the spirit of thrash metal), they should look at what Megadeth is doing (or as a matter of fact, what Metallica was doing in their latest album "Death Magnetic") This is a perfect example of a great band that never sell out. It opens with an instrumental that reminds me of the golden days of heavy metal guitar shredding. And it only gets better from there.

Musicians of the day: Taylor Swift and Kanye West

This is a followup to yesterday's topic. So I found one interesting thing they did in common (besides singing, obviously) Both of them have a song named after a person. Kanye's song is "Barry Bonds" (in which he compares himself to Barry with both being arrogant) Swift's song is "Tim McGraw" (about an ex-boyfriend whom she hope would think of her when he listens to the famous country singer Tim McGraw)

BTW, Taylor Swift composed her own songs and wrote her own lyrics (and she played guitar too) I guess it doesn't mean much to Kanye, whose music is arguably much more mature with topics about current affairs and social issues. Still, she's better than those idols with zero ounce of creativity. I'm not trying to defend her but anyone should be allowed to create music, no matter how bad it is. If bad music ended up being popular, there is a problem with the listening (and paying) audiences.

Topic of the day: What Obama said about Kanye

It has been an interesting week for those who likes controversies (and things that people said near a mic) Let me recap: at last week's Video Music Award show, teen-pop/country singer Taylor Swift got the Best Female Video award. While she was accepting her award, rapper Kanye West jumped on the stage, grabbed the mic and pronounced that Beyonce's video was the best (i.e., more deserving of the award that Swift) Before an interview with the media, President Obama casually commented on the incident by saying Kanye was a jackass. Some in the media thinks that this should stay off-record but apparently some ignore the practice and tweeted this so now everybody knows. Fortunately, it isn't that big a deal because (1) most people would agree with Obama on this, and (2) Obama is a brother so his comment wasn't considered racist. Interestingly, you could look at Kanye's comment from the racial perspective too.

Anyway, what Kanye did probably helped Swift more than hurting her. If this didn't happen, I probably would not have checked out her award winning video on YouTube. I gotta admit it's really cheesy (both the video and the lyrics) Just like her other popular song "Love Story" Still, it was inappropriate for Kanye to do that on stage. I'd rather hear him analyze why Swift is no good in a rational manner off stage.

Tech of the day: Apple and security

Apple supporters always bragged about how secure their devices are. Well, that might not apply to the iPhone. After upgrading to iPhone's latest firmware (3.1), lots of Exchange users complain they can't sync with their iPhone anymore. It's because the latest firmware finally honor the "Encryption required" setting of Exchange accounts. Therefore, older models of iPhone that do not support such encryption (i.e., those prior to 3GS) are disallowed to sync with such accounts.

It also means that prior to the release of this firmware, users of these older models might think that encryption was enforced but it wasn't the case! No wonder why critics keep saying Apple is still not very adaptive to corporate/business usages.

Topic of the day: That Wells Fargo Foreclosure executive

By now most of us have heard about the story of a foreclosed property in the expensive Malibu neighbourhood being used by a VP of foreclosure department of the bank that owns the property, Wells Fargo. (She was fired by Wells Fargo) I suspected that came into light because the neighbours did not think she belong to the community. Apparently I was not alone (guess what's her race?)

Star of the day: Patrick Swayze

Patrick Swayze died of cancer yesterday. Most people will probably remember him for the movies "Dirty Dancing" and "Ghosts." These two are certainly among my favourite movies.

RIP.

Topic of the day: Who is Syko Sam?

According to news report, this guy is a fan of the horrorcore genre (a sub-genre of rap that is about, of course, horror) He was arrested for killing a female friend he made on MySpace.

Well, crime as a result of meeting people on MySpace is no longer news. What else makes this story more eye-catching? (1) He is portrayed as a rapper. I guess anyone who rap qualifies as a rapper, professional or not. (2) When he was asked how he committed the crime by a reporter, he responded, "Jesus told me to do it."

So, I am pretty sure there will be tons of comments condemning his musical preference and his religion.

Game of the day: China won Venice Cup

Congratulations to the Chinese Women Bridge Team! They have won the 2009 world championship, aka Venice Cup.

Topic of the day: Will Bay Bridge become Bridge City?

I've just read about an idea of turning the abandoned portion of the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge into a new neighborhood. It certainly sounds very futuristic (sci-fi!) but I wonder how practical it is. After all, that portion was replaced because of concerns about its ability to withstand earthquake.

Topic of the day: self-esteem and entitlement

I learned very early in my life that it is a competitive world. You study hard and you get ahead. You achieve something and you get rewarded for it.

These day, our world is no less competitive (if no more) but things seems to be taught differently: No matter you study hard or you slack off, you won't be left behind. Nothing seems to be more important than protecting kids' self-esteem (and their fragile little ego) If they play games, no one wins or loses. Everyone got praised for participation. As a result, I've seen kids got really upset when they lose in a game.

And I have seen a worse trend. Everybody thinks they deserve a lot before they have achieved anything. Cases in point:
1) American Footballer Michael Crabtree, the 10th overall pick in the 2009 NFL draft, refused to sign with the team that drafted him (San Francisco 49er) because he thought he deserved more money than the 7th pick (since he thought he was a better player) Well, I think I am a better player than David Beckham and some teams need to offer me better money than him to sign me.
Nevertheless, I hope this saga continues because (1) 49er is screwed by not having the player whom they need to contribute right away and (2) judging from players who made troubles before like Crabtree, they never live up to the expectation. I have a personal bias against him because his catch ruined Longhorn's season last year!

BTW, he reminded me of J.J.Stokes, another 10th pick by 49er, who was expected to be a great player (and wasn't close to becoming one) And I was not the only one.

2) Spainish basketballer Ricky Rubio, the 5th pick in NBA draft, also refused to come to the States to play for Minnesota Timberwolves. He is staying in Spain instead. Read what he said:

Going to Minnesota would have just complicated my life a lot. It was a risk and I didn’t see it so clearly...... My priority was the NBA and it was impossible for the Minnesota Timberwolves to pay my buyout clause, so I wanted to stay home......When the season ended, I entered the draft with the intention of going to the NBA, but some things happened that kept me from being ahead of the rest and I ended up No. 5, which I was happy with, but it didn’t allow me the chance to go to the NBA. I tried, but in the end it wasn’t to be.

Nothing happened that kept him from being drafted higher than No. 5 (except the 4 other players whom other teams considered as lower risks) If he really wants to play for the Wolves in the NBA, he would have found a way to pay his buyout clause. It just sounds like he wants to play for a better team and have more money! I don't really care if he comes to NBA or not. There are lots of exciting players to watch already.

Book of the day: The Dead Sea Scroll Deception

While I visit ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) in Toronto earlier this month, the main attraction was the Dead Sea Scroll exhibition. It was indeed intriguing to read about text written two millenniums ago. Of course we only skimmed through the exhibit (and managed to look at each of the scrolls in display) because the kids lost patience quickly. The first thing I did when I'm back home is to find some books about it. And I figured it would be more interesting to read the conspiracy theory about it than the official version. And indeed, this book was a good read. The official theory is that the community that created the Dead Sea scroll was a peaceful group that was isolated from the mainstream of Jewish society. However, the authors of this book argued (based on other scholars' research) that this community was very connected to the mainstream and they were armed to oppose the Roman, which ruled that region at that time. In addition, what they documented was the early history of the Christian community and the church. The most important point was what Jesus preached was not much different from the Jewish tradition. It was his disciples who broke away from the tradition and started a whole new religion in the name of Jesus. While I wasn't completed convinced by the way they came up with this conclusion, I totally believe this is a possibility. (Just like any religion. The founder is very unlikely to come up with everything. Indeed, the founder might not have realized s/he has started a new religion!)

Anyway, the authors did mention a noble intention of writing this book: they wanted to show that the Judaism, Christianity and Islam have more in common than we thought. Hopefully people will get this point and learn to coexist peacefully in the middle east. Sadly, the book was written in 1991 and there was no improvement after almost 20 years.

Game of the day: the finale of the Giants-Rockies series

By defeating the Rockies in this game, the Giants swept the series and tied with them for the wild card lead. I don't care if they could make the playoff eventually. Seeing them playing meaningful games in late August already made me happy enough.

It might not have been the most exciting sports competition during the weekend though. That title could belong to one of the 2 auto races: the indy car race in Chicagoland and the NASCAR Nationwide series race in Montreal. Both races featured winners who came from behind in the last seconds. Both were indeed dramatic victories.

On yeah, the MotoGP races in Indianapolis on Sunday morning was not bad either.

Topic of the day: Microsoft and the Photoshopped ad scandal

By now many of you must have read about this story(the linked article has both pictures): the US version of a Microsoft IT ad features 3 people: an Asian guy, an black guy and a white lady. However, in the Poland version of it, the image has been altered (most likely by using photo-editing software) so that a white man's head is put in place of the black man.

Is this racism? Some say yes and some say no. To me, it looks unprofessional to edit the photo if all you want is localize your ad. Is it that hard to find some Polish folks to create a new ad? And having the variety in the US version is simply for political correctness anyway.

The most interesting point to me though, is that they choose to retain the Asian guy. Why? Some say it has to do with the stereotype that Asian guys are good at IT!

Tech of the day: User agent

I have been a long-time (paid) subscriber of a popular newspaper and I have always used HTTRACK (the open-source website copier, ideal for offline browsing) as well as my browser to read the PDA version (which has a real clean UI to speed up browsing) even though the "official" way to access it is thru another closed-source website copier iSiloX.

My ways of usage have been working fine until yesterday, when the newspaper's website started to refuse access from any client other than iSiloX. Of course it is implemented by checking the user agent. And of course, this is very easy to defeat: (1) for HTTRACK, just add the command line option -F "iSiloX/4.37 Windows/32" (2) for Firefox, just install the user agent switcher plugin and add the aforementioned user agent string.

Even though it is so easy to defeat, I'm still not pleased. As a paid subscriber, shouldn't I be allowed to access the information in ways that I preferred (and these are ways that won't jeopardize their profit a single bit)? It wouldn't be long until I decide to cancel my subscription.

Stars of the day: Toronto Nationals

Congrat to the Nationals (not baseball's Washington Nationals) for winning the Major League Lacrosse Championship! I guess Toronto hasn't have a championship team for a while. The most recent I remember was the Blue Jays winning the world series 15+ years ago. They did it by beating the #1 seed so they certainly deserve every bit of the championship.

It also means that there won't be any pro lacrosse game until the end of the year when the indoor league resumes. Can't wait!

Tech of the day: Twitter spam

I was asked by a friend why all of a sudden he's got a bunch of people following him on Twitter. He has never updated his Twitter after he joined.

Well, the first thought came to my mind is of course: spammer! The twist is: by following you on Twitter, they can't spam you yet 'coz while they see your update as a follower, you don't see their update because you're not following them.

And the last part was the key! In the early days of Twitter, when you follow a friend (or just an acquitance), s/he usually follows you back as a courtesy. I guess the spammers are hoping that you would still do that. (Apparently PBS came to the same conclusion prior to I did)

So, don't just blindly follow anyone who followed you (of course you could always unfollow a user if you did it by mistake)

每週一噏：監人賴厚

今天拜讀何政協《零分見誰才是失敗者》一文，才學會平時大家口頭講的「監人乃後」應寫作「監人賴厚」。雖然我常常犯這個毛病（解作勉強別人做自己喜歡的事），我卻甚少用這個詞語，對其出處十分好奇。Google過不得要領，即管試試自己解解：「監人」指强迫人；「厚」可解作喜歡；只是個「賴」字有點難解，可能解作傾向吧。

順帶一提，這個詞語相信由來已久，且看這條1947年的片，薛覺先（著名粵劇老倌）的對白就用上了。

Tech of the day: Adding a printer in Arch Linux

We have a network printer which we identified using an IP address. There are quite a few steps to add this printer to Windows XP. One would imagine it would be much harder on Arch. Well, It can't be easier! Here were my steps (thanks to these instructions):
1) install the following using pacman
pacman -S cups ghostscript gsfonts gutenprint

2) start the CUPS daemon
/etc/rc.d/cups start

3) hit the admin page
http://localhost:631

4) add the printer
you just need to give your printer a name, location, description. Since this is a network printer, use the AppSocket Protocol, i.e., specify the Device URI as:
socket://[the printer's IP address]

So easy! However, this is the first time I agree with the people who complain about Linux using cryptic names. There's no way I could tell CUPS is used for configuring printing before I see what it stands for (Common UNIX Printing System)

Tech of the day: correct backspace in Emacs

I wrote about trying out Zile as my Emacs replacement the other day. For some reason Ctrl-K doesn't work so I went thru the pain of installing all dependencies for Emacs and finally got it running. Life is good except backspace is acting like Ctrl-D. Backspace is notoriously problematic for Emacs but the problem was usually that it acts like Ctrl-H! Well, I did find my fix. Just add this to .emacs:
(global-set-key [backspace] 'delete-backward-char)

Music of the day: Flamingo

What could be more inspiring after a violin lesson than listening to the works of some great violin master? That's exactly what KCSM (our local jazz station) did for me today, by playing Stephane Grappelli's Flamingo.

Star of the day: Barry Zito

The Giants have a pitcher who beat the reigning World Series MVP, Cole Hamels. In fact, he has won as many games and has a better ERA as Hamels. Who would that be? Our former Cy Young winner of course!

Topic of the day: it's not your fault when you left your kid behind

A family took a taxi from the Boston airport to home. When they got home, they left their daughter who was asleep on the taxi. The taxi driver got a call from the taxi dispatcher and drove the kid back to her home.

Next? He got suspended by the police, which was changed to a warning later.

Yeah, let's blame it on the driver, not the parents.

Tech of the day: 1984 and Animal Farm

These are probably the 2 most well-known books about dictatorship. And they were in spotlights again. Here is the story: as I have previously written, Amazon is selling an e-book reader called Kindle, on which their customers could buy e-books from Amazon wirelessly. Recently some Kindle customers found out some of their purchases were deleted from their Kindle by Amazon (Amazon did refund the purchase price)

1984 and Animal Farm would probably be the worst books for Amazon to "showcase" their ability to delete any of your e-book anytime, and ironically, these were indeed the books that were deleted by Amazon!

Topic of the day: pretty model and mini-Weiqi

Teen models have made a big fuss in Hong Kong recently because they were planning to appear in a signing event for their photo collections at the largest book exhibition in Hong Kong. Some HK netizens have organized protests since their appearance would attract a big crowd of guys (many with cameras and related equipments) and cause a big scene, which annoyed attendees who only care about books quite a bit.

Oh well, it seems that models have a different image and ways of promotion in Korea. According to this article (in Chinese), two Korean models are invited to be trained and to participate in the preliminary rounds of World Mini-Weiqi competition.

Tech of the day: Zile Is Lossy Emacs

Among the sea of vi-ers here, I'm the sole emacs-er. Naturally no one bothers to install emacs on the Solaris boxes here (except for an old box.) I have been using that lone box forever until it was taken away. So I've finally decided to do it myself. After all, I did it with 1 line (pacman) on Arch. I'm probably 1 pkgadd away from having it on Solaris. WRONG! This monster has so much dependencies! I have installed 5 of them and when I failed to download the jpeg library from Sunfreeware.com , I gave up and install Zile instead. It turns out all of its dependencies have been installed already. We'll see if it will make me forget about emacs completely.

每週一噏：再談封神榜，商紂王

早幾個星期提過的劇集封神榜終於大結局，我雖然喜歡該小說，但對書中（及劇中）一味强調商紂王為奸，周武王為忠，十分有保留。早一陣子讀的歴史書指那個時代所謂天子並非直接統治全國，實應視為各部落的共主，商周之爭其實是一個集團取代另一個的地位，並非那麼忠奸分明。

再上網搜一搜，找到更多有趣的文章，原來毛主席也曾為紂王平反，指出紂王伐大國東夷，從此以後東夷與商不斷朝聘往來，商文化源源不絕地傳播到東夷，而東夷的一些農作物的種植技術和一些手工業的生產技術也傳入中原地區，經濟與文化得到了廣泛的交流，紂王把東夷和中原的統一鞏固起來，在歷史上是有功的。

但也因為伐東夷大大消耗國力，主力部隊難以調回，被想取而代之的周武王有機可乘，紂王以70萬東夷戰俘及奴隸臨時武裝起來應戰，最後兵敗自焚。

紂王被指控的罪行，如施酷刑炮烙，如闢酒池肉林，與夏桀的罪行同出一轍；西諺有云："History is written by the victor" 周朝史家有心抹黑，砌紂王生豬肉，大有可能！

Tech of the day: Upgrade to Firefox 3.5

Normally I don't upgrade my browser until something went wrong and made it unusable. FF 3.5 is an exception though. I really like the ability to tear out a tab its own Window. So I've upgraded my Windows FF to 3.5, and finally, the Gran Paradiso (Firefox 3.0) on my Arch Linux VM.

However, the latter is more complicated than I expected. First I tried the most straight-forward way: pacman -Sy firefox. That broke my installation in several ways:
1) it upgraded libreadline.so.5 to 6 but bash still depends on 5 so pacman starts giving error.
2) it didn't upgrade sqlite3 (might be caused by (1))
3) Arch won't boot anymore (because of readline)

Fortunately it's a VM so I just rolled back. Tried again. These are my steps:
1) pacman -Syy
2) pacman -S readline bash
3) pacman -S sqlite3
4) pacman -S firefox

Voila! now I am blogging using Shiretoko.

Topic of the day: parity - good or bad?

This is a topic that comes up again and again in sports. I guess it really depends on how good your team is. If you're a Yankee fan or a Cowboy fan, you don't care about parity and you just want to see them win it all again and again. On the other hand, if you root for a smaller market team, e.g. Milwaukee Brewers or Arizona Cardinals, you know there is no way for them to be winning year after year. The best you could hope for is that once in a while they could go all the way. Parity would be your cup of tea. It does seem to be going that way for football and baseball.

Chess, an individual sports, is going in that direction too. I've just read an article about world chess ranking. It seems that the No. 1 player (Topalov) or the world champ (Anand, who currently ranks No. 2) doesn't win tournaments all the time, unlike their predecessor, Kasparov, he won or tied for first in 15 consecutive tournaments from 1981-90! According to the columnist, this is because of the advances in overall chess knowledge (i.e., everyone could learn from internet and studies game records)

Well, as a fan, it seems to me that it's more fun to have a dominant player you could worship. I hope that columnist is wrong.

Star of the day: Jonathan Sanchez

He is the first Giant pitcher who pitched a no-hitter since 1976! And he is not among the top 4 pitchers on the team. What a confidence boost for him! Go Sanchez. (And his dad should come visit him more. This is the first time he saw him pitching here.)

Tech of the day: the Power button on SlingPlayer Mobile

I'm talking about the iPhone version here. I wasn't able to find that button under "Remote." It turns out it just doesn't show up at first. Swiping to the left and you will see more buttons and "power" will be one of them.

Musicians of the day: Strunz and Farah

I have always been a big fan of guitar music. If there is one thing I want to complain about the SF bay area, that would be not having enough great guitarists touring here. But I guess I'm spoiled by having premier jazz clubs here so I could see great jazz musicians almost year-round. Ever since I fell in love with the sound of nylon string guitar, I try to attend to concerts with it as much as possible. And I'm glad that I didn't miss Strunz and Farah's performance at Yoshi's tonight. Their style is best described as fusion, with elements of flamenco, jazz and middle Eastern music. I heard a little bit of everything of the aforementioned at their show. The two guitar masters were backed by a flutist/clarinetist, a bassist and a percussionist, who were great instrumentalists themselves. It wouldn't be wrong to call their music new age but it is definitely not your typical soft/relaxing elevator music. On the contrary, it is full of energy and emotions.

Topic of the day: how to explain this to kids

It is about a DVD that was given to grade school kids by their teacher which is supposed to contain the kids photo/video but she accidentally slipped in a video of her having sex with her man.

It is a big mistake by her for sure. On the other hand, look at the reactions of those parents: one said he wanted the school to help explaining this to his kids since he didn't know how to. Come on! He is an adult and certainly know what sex is (otherwise he won't have kids)

If I were him, I'd explain like this: (1) this is a video of your teacher having sex. (2) In order to have children, you need to have sex. (3) your teacher has provided her video by mistake so we shouldn't watch it. That's it! How simple is that?

Star of the day: Steve McNair

Another one left us this week! I'm talking about the great quarterback Steve McNair. Who could forget his performance in the superbowl? What a game he played (even though his team didn't win)

RIP.

Topic of the day: bike messenger

I was told that biking up and down hill is a great way to lose weight. Even though I'm no good at biking, I love doing it. So I figure it might be a good idea to get a bike messenger job if I get laid off. Well, it is a very dangerous job according to studies. And the job doesn't paid that well.

I still dunno why a lot of messengers ride road bike rather than mountain bike though. I thought the latter is easier to get up and down hill and ride through uneven surfaces in the city. If anyone knows the reason, please comment.

Star of the day: Billy Mays

RIP, Mr. Mays.

I am an informercial junkie. Of course I've seen many of Billy Mays' commercials, of which the most famous is Oxiclean (too bad I couldn't find a good YouTube link of that) I'm sure I'll be watching re-runs of this and many other of his great works. He will be missed.

Another icon from our generation has left us in the past few days :( When the radio station played a couple of Bon Jovi's songs in a row this morning, it scared me!

Musician of the day: Ottmar Liebert

I saw new flamenco guitar master Ottmar Liebert playing at the Rrazz Room inside SF's Hotel Nikko tonight. I was totally amazed by the complexity of the music coming from his solo guitar. His music truly embodies the "global village" spirit as its root is in Spanish while played by a German like him (his father is actually Chinese-German!) And the background slideshow of photo from places he traveled enhanced the whole experience too.

He also spent some time answering questions from the audiences. He told us he started playing when he was 13. He paid merely $20 to take weekly 30 minute guitar lesson for the whole semester!
About his guitar, it's made by luthier Lester Devoe. Even guitarists from Spain buy from this California luthier so it's a testament of how good his guitars are. He said flamenco guitars usually don't last longer than a few years because of the "abuse" they received from the guitarist (e.g. the percussive tapping on the top) so flamenco guitarists usually spends less (~$7500) whereas classical guitarists would paid $30K or more!

每週一噏：巨星殞落

講的當然就是Michael Jackson！無論你喜歡他的音樂與否，也不論他的私生活是否有問題，無可否認，他是流行音樂界一代巨星，82年一張Thriller，九首歌中有七首出single，全部都能打入Billboard十大，實在架勢堂！

不過，我認為MJ最值得被紀念的，是由他和Lionel Ritchie為非州旱災帶來的饑荒賑災，合寫We are the World一曲，該曲及相關的Hands Across America活動總共籌得一億美元善款。

最後想提一件個人的MJ小插曲，話說小時候有朋友問我最喜歡聽甚麼音樂，我說MJ，其實當時對外國樂壇一竅不通，只知有MJ，一首歌也未聽過；她即時嗤之以鼻，因為她喜歡的是巴哈！

Tech of the day: iPhone 3.0

I haven't upgraded my firmware for a long time. I am the type of users that refuse to upgrade unless it provides me features I could use immediately (that's why my Ubuntu install became totally obsolete with no upgrade path available) for 2 reasons: upgrades are risky. You are taking risk of destabilizing your gadget/system. Also, some companies use upgrade as a way to put more control/limitation. However, there are a few features in the 3.0 firmware that I couldn't resist:
- Bluetooth Stereo support (aka A2DP): finally we could go wireless when listening to music.
- Copy and paste: not sure my friends missed getting my e-mails that I wrote by copying and pasting interesting news from websites I visited. I used to do that a lot before iPhone replaced by my trusted Dell Pocket PC.

Here I'm re-posting instructions to upgrade a jailbroken iPhone 3G with 2.x firmware to a jailbroken iPhone 3G with 3.0 firmware (NOTE: NOT 3G S) written by someone (and executed successfully by someone, not me DISCLAIMER: use at your own risk)

1) Backup backup backup! For example, if you have stored some local files on your iPhone's filesystem, make a backup using SCP (assuming you have OpenSSH running on iPhone) That includes data and config (e.g. lighttpd.conf, sshd_config, ... etc) Of course, sync your phone to iTunes, which back it up. Also, some recommend installing Cydia's AptBackup and backup your Cydia settings.

2) Upgrade iTunes to 8.2 from within iTunes. It is a 80Mb+ download. Might take a while.

3) When iTunes 8.2 sees your phone, it will pop up a box telling you there is a new firmware available, click the "Download Only" button (not "Download and Install"!!!!!!) Then you will get a pristine firmware straight from Apple and no need to worry about downloading from dubious source. It is a 200Mb+ download. Might take a WHILE.

4) Put your iPhone in recovery mode (follow Apple's official instructions)

5) In iTunes, hold down the shift button on your keyboard and click "Restore" with your mouse. It will open a file dialog. Choose the file you have just downloaded in (3), under c:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Updates (to be safe, back this up somewhere else too)

Your iTunes/iPhone will go through the lengthy process of restoring (i.e., upgrading) the 3.0 firmware on your phone as well as resync-ing the settings/data (e.g. contacts) to your phone.

Now you're ready for jailbreaking it again. Follow these good instructions on how to use redsn0w for that purpose.

[Update: iPhone has problem with using some bluetooth headphones and streaming through WIFI. Hopefully yours is not on the list.]

Star of the day: Tim Howard

USA's goal keeper has made a bunch of great saves and played a huge role in the upset defeat of the #1 team in the world, Spain. Even though Spain was known for underachieving but it usually had to do with losts to the elite teams. The current Spanish squad is even more exceptional. Well, every good thing must come to an end. There goes Spain's 15-game winning streak. It proved once again that anything could happen in soccer.

Go USA!

Topic of the day: Clear's future is unclear

Just heard from the morning news that Clear, the program that allows paid users ($199 per year) to get through airport security faster, has suddenly stopped its operation. Users who already paid are not getting refund. While I feel bad about people losing their hard earned money, I was not a fan of this program from the beginning. Why should rich people has extra privilege when it comes to airport security? Apparently I'm not alone. See the comment section in the linked article. It's interesting to see some commenters seem to have valid reason to use such service (frequent travelers who is going to pay more than $199 to replace a ticket when they miss the flight on a tight schedule)

Topic of the day: Bozeman is in the news

Not sure if no news is bad news in this case. The Montana city became famous all over the world last week when the city government requested job applicants to handover their passwords of social networks (e.g. Facebook, MySpace) The purpose is obviously for finding out if the applicants have done anything improper and disclosed through social networks. When the news first broke, their official still defended it and said they did not violate privacy, which caused even more uproar. Finally they decided to abandon that practice, but I'm afraid it's already too late for damage control. The damage has been done!

每週一噏：美國精神

「美帝」一向被指責扮演國際警察，最近又孭上引發金融海嘯及輸出H1N1的新罪名，形象可謂每況愈下。

不過今日一場波，又令我再次感受到美國精神：永不言敗，戰鬥到底（當然仍要靠少少運）

講的正是洲際盃，早兩日提過美國兩戰兩敗，在小組包艇，出線機會渺茫。誰知最後一場，面對僅敗於巴西及小勝意大利的非洲勁旅埃及，竟然一洗頹風，越戰越勇，最後以總入球數字趕過同樣一勝兩敗的意大利打入準決賽！

Star of the day: Sir Paul McCartney

I thought today is his birthday when I heard the local classical version played a classical version of Penny Lane this morning and mentioned his birthday. Actually he turned 67 yesterday. He's way passed "When I'm 64!" He should probably start writing "When I'm 80"

Topic of the day: Confederation Cup

So far I have not watched any of the matches on TV. None of them are that interesting anyway. It's sad to see US lost both games. Both of them were not close game! I am not too optimistic about our chances in the game vs. Egypt either. I'm looking forward to a Spain vs. Brazil game at the later stage!

Movie of the week: Up

It's the movie I wrote about 2 months ago in the post titled Animation and age discrimination. Now that I've watched this movie, I call what the analyst said BS (my previous post was criticising the criticism of the analyst. That remained unchanged) First of all, the main character (the old dude) is not that grumpy. I mean, when you run into obstacles and having a cranky kid by your side, you are bound to lose your patience, just like he did. Second, that kid, the big bird and the dog are more than capable of moving merchandises. Disney didn't need to count on the old dude for that.

Those people should just open their mind, even though they will never have great imagination like the guys at Pixar do. Once again, Pixar did a great job in breaking the mold.

Game of the day: No Stress Chess

I am a chess lover and always wanted to spread the love to my kids. I have been thinking of ways to introduce them to the game ever since they were borned! Previously I have tried Quick Chess, which features a reduced-size board and less pieces. Still, there are too many possible moves to choose from for young kids like mine. So I decided to try No Stress Chess, which claims to be so easy that anyone could play. I didn't get much details from the descriptions/reviews on exactly how to play it. All I knew was that it has a set of cards and the players take turn to draw from these cards and play according to whatever the card says. Well, it turns out the cards merely tells the player which piece to move (legal moves of that piece was also explained on the card just in case the player can't remember the rule) On one hand, I hope it's more "precise." For example, on a relatively opened board, a queen could land on many squares if you drew a queen card. So there are still too many choices for young players. Maybe it could include two dices to indicate the direction to move and number of squares? On the other hand, I understand limiting the choices like I suggested will make the game hard to finish.

Another drawback is that there are a few things that won't happen in a real game: (1) checkmate only happens when the king is actually captured. So if you're in check but your opponent didn't have the card to move the piece that checks your king, you're still alive! (2) when you draw a card but you don't have that piece anymore or that piece can't move, you lose a turn. (3) because of the previous rule, sometimes I make unorthodox move like advancing the side pawns as early as possible so that I don't have to waste the turn when I get a rook card.

Anyway, my kids enjoy playing it. That's all I care. I won't worry too much about them learning bad habits yet. Exposure is a good thing!

每週一嗡: 十面埋伏

早兩日介紹過一個西樂中彈的錄像﹐今日掉轉過來﹐中樂西彈﹗

Game of the week: Stanley Cup Game 7

Any game 7 in the final series gotta be exciting regardless of the outcome. In the case, I'm even happier because it was won by my favorite NHL team, the Pittsburgh Penguins! I was asked how the Pens become my favorite team. Well, when I started watching hockey, there was no team in my area. (The Stars was still in Minnesota, then known as the North Stars!) And Lemieux and Jagr were simply the most amazing duo at that time. 16 years later, we have another dynamic duo in Crosby and Malkin (hope they will win another cup together!)

This is simply a fantastic series: the two same teams, Penguins and Red Wings played in the final last year. Even though the Pens were more mature by a year, most thought that the Red Wings was even more improved. They looked so correct when the Pens were down 0-2 after 2 games into the series. However, just like the series against Washington Capitals, they bounced back, which showed great characters!

When Lemieux got the cup again, this time as a owner (he was a player 16 years ago), I knew this gotta be one of the sweetest moment in sports this year.

Music of the day: Flight of the Bumblebee

This is a video of the virtuosic classical piece being performed on the Ruan (中阮), the Chinese version of guitar:


Amazed? I am!

Tech of the day: what is wrong with Twitter?

Well, I don't know but this blogger came up with this lengthy article about a non-issue (btw, he used to write for TechCrunch. See the connection?) Basically he claimed Twitter's developer are not Twitting much and not following a lot of people. He worried that by not using the product they developed, they won't be in tune with what users expect.

Not sure if he knows anything about software development. There is a thing called "testing environment," which is separated from the production environment he has been doing his so-called analysis! I'm pretty sure Twitter's development team uses Twitter a lot, in the testing environment!

Star of the day: Conan O'Brien

Conan made his big move last week: from the Late night show to the Tonight show. Well, I haven't watched any episode yet since I am not a big fan of him and the show even though Tonight Show was pretty much the only talk show I bothered to watch once in a while because of its band (featuring jazz guitarist Kevin Eubank!)

I did hear one of his joke on the radio and it was a good one: the 3 most time wasting websites, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, will be combined into one: YouTwitFace :D

Topic of the day: online textbook, good or bad deal?

I've just read about California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing online textbook to save cost. I expected lots of "old school" commenters will ridicule this plan just because it is different from what they are used to. It turns out they do have a point: the online textbooks might not be that good a deal for students because it is not gonna cost much less than the paper textbooks and they are not resalable!

Topic of the day: 95% of blogs are abandoned

It's according to this article. It also says most blog has an audience of one. Oh well, I don't want this blog to be part of the former but most likely the latter applies. You would think writing a 3-liner like this everyday is easy. I could tell you it's a bit harder than you think because sooner or later you realize there is an audience of one and you will lose your motivation!

每週一噏：抗議裁判官陳家昇歧視旺角

今週讀到一則新聞：涉嫌賣淫女子上庭衣著性感，被裁判官陳家昇指責：「你當呢度係旺角」

換言之，該官認為衣著不莊嚴的人士只能到旺角？除旺角外全香港其他地方都是上等人？筆者建議旺角區議員聯同居民上街遊行抗議，直至該官道歉為止。

Musicians of the day: The Beatles

I heard Penny Lane at A&W this morning.
Then the radio played Blackbird (big band jazz cover) in the car.
Next, I practiced Lucy in the Sky with Diamond and Hey Jude at home.
Finally, Dear Prudence was played at Boston Market at dinner time!

What a Beatle day!

Topic of the day: slow news day

Techcrunch has stated the obvious (again): it is more likely for Twitter users to follow others then being followed. And TC called the former sheeps! At first I thought I should stop following TC on Twitter. But then, these type of garbage posts are perfect to blog about when I am having my own slow news day (like today!)

Star of the day: Randy Johnson

The Big Unit won his 300th game in the San Francisco Giants uniform today. That is a BIG milestone. He is also one of the few pitchers who has beaten all 30 major league teams! More interestingly, he won his 300th against the team he started with! (Washington Nationals was Montreal Expos) And he has won 2 more games than the Washington Nationals have ever won (since it was moved from Montreal!) as of now.

There are also ~150,000 people who deserved to be the star of the day: the ones who attended the June 4th memorial march in Hong Kong.

Magazine of the day: Guitar Aficionado

With all these book stores (Stacey's, B.Dalton) disappeared near where I work, what I missed the most was browsing through their magazines (the former has a great selection!) Now my first priority whenever I'm in a book store is going through the magazine section. That's how I found this new magazine Guitar Aficionado last weekend.

It is not your typical guitar magazines, i.e., those with lots of instructions, transcriptions, reviews. It is more like other magazines of luxury goods (e.g. watches, boats, cigar......) In fact, it does have sections about luxury goods! The cover piece is about a famous chef who is also a guitar enthusiast. So, you get the idea. I'd say it's an interesting approach. The subscription rate is $24.95 for 4 issues (per year.) I guess it's not a bad addition to anyone's coffee table (which I don't have)

Music of the day: Eleanor Rigby

I have listened to as many jazz cover versions of this song as I could find and I just heard another one this morning on the local jazz station KCSM (this member-supported community station has almost reached its fund raising goal so I hope it survives, unlike KKSF)

This version came from an album called "Work to Do" by Carl Allen and Rodney Whitaker, who lead a group including big names like Vincent Herring (alto sax) and Rodney Jones (guitar) I gotta check out the whole album!

Tech of the day: "Using Prompt Commands" May Be a Sign of Criminal Activity

A Boston College computer science student whose computers, cell phone, and other property were seized as part of an investigation into who sent an e-mail to a school mailing list identifying another student as gay.

What made him suspicious? According to the police, he uses 'two different operating systems for hiding his illegal activity. One is the regular B.C. operating system and the other is a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on.' Oh yeah, he also 'jail breaks' cellphones.

DISCLAIMER: every post I wrote regarding Linux on this blog was fake. I only use what the government allow us to use.

每週一噏：封神榜，姜子牙

相熟的朋友都知道我視電視連續劇為「師奶玩意」，其實我亦是一個超級電視迷，只不過主要看半小時一集的處境喜劇及卡通(Southpark, Metalocalypse)

我平均每年才看一套連續劇，國內製作的可算絕無僅有，記憶中只有環珠格格（及風雲）。無獨有偶，最近開始追的封神榜也由林心如主演！

吸引我看該劇的倒不是林心如，而是封神榜原著！那是我小時候最喜歡的小說之一，被書中種種神奇的法寳深深迷倒。這個版本「例牌」亦有更改原著，暫時尚未算改得太離譜。小時候歡樂今宵那個版本不知有否更改原著？當年只看了少少，不過余子明飾演姜子牙實在印象深刻，看到現在這個英明神武（像雄霸！）的劉德凱，有點不慣。

以我從小說中認識的姜子牙，是一個修仙無望，轉為以道術為民服務的「公務員」，助武王伐紂，是師尊交帶他的任務，無需太多軍事才能或神機妙算，只是領軍一路向東打便行；軍中助陣的全是他的師侄，亦無不服從之憂；遇上他本人道術未足以解決的難題，派師侄找來比自己强的師兄出馬即可！總的來說，姜子牙的形象似乎不應太英明神武，不過電視製作人自有他的見解。

Topic of the day: how to write a headline

There is an old saying: "A picture worths a thousand words" And I might add: "A good headline worths even more" This is the case of a Slashdot article titled: Mars Robot May Destroy Life It Was Sent To Find. At a first glance, I thought this is what it meant (quoted from an excellent writeup by another slashdotter)

it destroyed all life on the planet (the "life it was sent to find").

What actually happened was:

its life detector destroyed signs of life in the samples it's testing.

The latter is obviously much less attention catching!

Tech of the day: Bing Is Not Google

Those who follow tech news have probably heard of yet another search engine from Microsoft: Bing.

Why Bing? The secret has been deciphered by this Slashdot commenter: Bing Is Not Google

And I couldn't agree more with another commenter about Google's page being no-nonsense. When I visited Bing.com, I got a huge coming soon graphic and then a video! Not a good sign.

Topic of the day: sports in US

Most people would think US is probably the most sports crazed country in the world. After all, we have many 24 hour sports TV network (4 from ESPN alone) Behind the glory though, you will find many struggling franchises. Even among the so-called Big 4 sports: baseball, basketball, (American) football and ice hockey, there are teams in financial trouble, like the Phoenix Coyotes (hockey team) Whenever I saw many empty seats in televised games, I always think how come teams could afford those big salaries of big name stars. I guess the answer is: they can't. Of course, teams that sold lots of tickets could still make bad financial moves and got themselves in trouble.

I guess the ones that got hit the hardest during the recent economic crisis were non-mainstream sports. Arena Football is shutdown for the 2009 season (god knows if it will be back in 2010) Major League Lacrosse has folded 5 of the 10 teams from last season (and added 1 back) I promised to take my kids to a Lacrosse game but sadly our local team was among the folded ones. I guess we will have to wait 'til the indoor league (NLL) begins this December!

The more I thought about this, the more I appreciate the management/owners who put winning teams on the field on a regular basis.

Topic of the day: The New Yorker pulled off a publicity stunt

I bet the New Yorker's website has got a ton of hits lately thanks to this story: New Yorker Cover Drawn Entirely on an IPhone using an App called Brushes.

The first thing I did was, of course, trying to find out what the cover looks like. Initially I was quite dissappointed when the New Yorker link only shows this video:


However, I agree it's a brilliant idea to show how the cover is made rather than just the end product.

I don't think Adobe should be afraid of the maker of Brushes (who has got a ton of publicity from this too) yet but the latter did open up a lot of new possibilities.

Music of the day: Castelnuovo-Tedesco Works For Guitar

The name of the piece is Variazioni Attraverso I Secoli for Guitar, Op.71. The composer was Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco

What I found interesting about the composer was that he was a pioneer in movie music and influnced the likes of Henry Mancini and John Williams. To me, that is a great achievement.

Stars of the day: the "My Name Is Earl" gang

This is one of the very few TV shows I still watch regularly. It's sad to see it get canned by NBC. This is yet another unexpected move by a media company in one week (smooth jazz was ousted by Clear Channel from its KKSF radio station) Apparently it is less popular than I expected. I know I tend to like non-mainstream stuff so maybe I shouldn't be so surprised to see them go. I bet I wasn't even counted as a viewer by NBC's standard as I skipped all commercials.

Once this show is gone, my 17+ year streak of watching at least one show on NBC's must-see TV lineup is over. I'm actually quite amazed by this fact. Those shows included Wings, Mad About You, Seinfeld, Friends, Joey, The Office and of course My Name is Earl. These are some awesome shows!

Will I miss it? Probably not much. To me, TV shows are for killing time/filling gaps (mostly during commute) Nevertheless, I would be glad to see it being revived on another network.

每週一噏：老闆vs打工仔

最近在香港討論區發現幾個經常出現的話題，其中一個是新一代（尤其是大學生）對選擇工作非常挑剔，對人工及工作性質要求太高，寧可失業也不願屈就，以至不少空缺請不到人；吊詭的是，另一個常見話題卻是求職者無論如何降低要求也找不到工作，僱主理由是怕他很快會另謀高就！

真相到底如何？只有當事人才知！恒久不變的是：老闆永遠希望以最低人工請到最能幹又忠心的員工；打工仔當然希望負出最少辛勞得最大收獲。最終雙方只能meet somewhere in the middle.

有不少網友就指出：那些久久請不到人的空缺很多都是待遇太低，這個我有理由相信。另一方面，新一代心態有問題亦是事實，曾經有一個post指她新上班當會計，但不喜該工作，考慮辭職，其中一個原因竟然是工作需要每天致電銀行查詢利率，覺得很煩！

Games of the day: Super 14 Semi and Heineken Cup final

This is a great weekend for sports fan. The list goes on and on: NHL Stanley Cup semi-final, NBA semi, Baseball's interleague games. And outside of North America, it's also semi-final for Super 14, the Southern hemisphere's premiere professional rugby competition, and the final of Heineken Cup, the top rugby competition in Europe (rugby's version of UEFA Champion's League) Finally, everybody is looking forward to the mid-week matchup between Manchester United and Barcelona, fighting for the crown of the UEFA Champion's League.

It has not been a great one for fans of teams named Hurricane though. Both the Super 14 side (from Wellington, New Zealand) and the NHL team (from Carolina) have lost. The former is eliminated and the latter is down 0-2 in its best-of-7 series. Both teams have put up great fights though.

The game I look forward to the most is another Super 14 semi between the Bulls and the Crusaders. These 2 teams were winners of the last 2 Super 14 titles. The latter is Super 14's version of NFL's Pittsburgh Steeler. And they overcame a poor start earlier this season to make it to the playoff. The winner will take on the Chiefs (from Hamilton, New Zealand.)

Even though the European rugby matches are lower scoring, the matchup between Leinster and Leicester will be interesting as the Magner league side (representing Scotland/Ireland) and Guinness Premiership side (England) will fight for its bragging right.

Topic of the day: the forbidden prom

This is one of those story where I don't feel anyone is on the right side: a private (Christian) school student was told by his principal that going to his girlfriend's prom (kinda like graduation party outside US) was against the rule of the school, which forbids dancing, rock music, hand-holding and kissing (some of all of which were likely to happen there!) And he still went and had to face the consequences: banned from his graduation ceremony. On one hand, rules like that are just way too conservative (it's not the Middle Ages!) I always think a student's behavior outside of school should be none of its business. On the other hand, the rules were known before the student's parent enrolled him in and he agreed to abide by that. I don't see how he could complain now.

Topic of the day: more on KKSF

I just wrote about KKSF has switched from smooth jazz to classic rock. You could read about it from its website As you could see, many listeners have left comments mourning the "death of smooth jazz on air"

I googled it and found a few articles about this change:
- a sarcastic one by San Jose MetBlogs
- another sarcastic one by SF Examiner
No one knows why it wants to compete with the existing classic rock stations. The playlist is not bad though. It will probably stay on my radio's preset.

If you still need your smooth jazz fix, just visit ClearChannel (the parent of KKSF)'s online smooth jazz stream. It's playing Sade's "Your Love is King" (isn't that so true for smooth jazz lover!?) It feels just like KKSF. I remember it played "Is it a crime?" a few days ago (Yes, killing off the smooth jazz station is indeed a crime!) BTW, there is no ad on ClearChannel's player so you won't be giving additional revenue to the company who killed off your favourite station! Sit back, relax and enjoy the music!

BTW, I came across this forum while searching for articles about KKSF and a lot of the posts seems to be written by people who know the radio business.

Music of the day: Riders On The Storm

It became my pick not because I like this song particularly (a pretty good song though) but because I heard it on the local Smooth Jazz station KKSF (103.7)

Wait a minute! The Doors didn't play Smooth Jazz, did they? Well, it's because the station has been changed to classic rock.

I'm really surprised because:
1) I thought smooth jazz has a good-sized market. IMO, nothing is better than smooth jazz when all you want is some relaxing background music.
2) smooth jazz listeners are perceived as high income ones. So it's perfect for selling ads of luxury products.
3) there are already quite a few classic rock statons in the area but KKSF was the only one that plays smooth jazz.

As much as I hate the term "smooth jazz" (if it's smooth, it's not jazz), I do listen to KKSF from time to time in the past 15 years, just for some Kenny G, David Sanborn, Acoustic Alchemy, Kirk Whalum, Jesse Cook...... (and they have a weekend "real" jazz program that coincide with the hours that KCSM plays "weird" jazz) It's sad to see this change.

Their website mention they still have a smooth jazz streaming link. I couldn't get it to work on the office computer though.

[FYI: the classic jazz program on KKSF was called "The Jazz Cafe" and was hosted by jazz pianist Dick Conte every Sunday]

Topic of the day: Lies, damn lies and statistics (Transportation edition)

A study showed that using public transportation instead of driving could save people $11,713 per year in San Francisco. To me, all it showed is nothing new: when people want to advance their own cause, it's always possible to come up with some statistics.

I wonder how realistic that number can be. Assuming I drive to work everyday, the parking, gas, maintenance, depreciation pretty much add up to that amount. Are they saying I could take public transportation for free as my alternative? I would love to do that! (In fact, it doesn't even have to be free, just come up with a system so that I won't be woken up by those train conductors in the middle of the ride just to make sure I paid, which I did)

Oh yeah, the association who did the study includes public transportation agencies as its members. Surprised? NOT!

Tech of the day: improve Chinese fonts in Arch Linux

Arch Linux could display Chinese out of the box (well, sort of, some of the characters are missing and they are not sized uniformly) And you could do even better!

I read a lot of Chinese pages in Hong Kong, which uses an extended set of characters. Hong Kong Government actually provides a "supplementary character set" on its website for users to download. And it even supports Linux, only for Red Hat, Mandrake and SuSE though (BTW, that's one argument against having so many different Linux distro. It is difficult for developers to satisfy every distro out there!)

Fortunately, it is not too hard to make it work on Arch (note: the following instructions only cover font installation but not the input method)
1) Visit the above page. Follow the Linux link, then the Red Hat link and download the setup.bin
2) Remove all the readable code (i.e., anything before exit) and save as setup.tar
3) tar zxvf setup.tar
4) it will create a package_rh subdirectory, which contains the imfont-1.0-0.i386.rpm
5) install rpmextract thru Pacman if you don't have it already (pacman -Sy rpmextract)
6) rpmextract.sh imfont-1.0-0.i386.rpm
7) again, it will create this directory structure: usr/share/inputmethod
8) copy the ming_uni.ttf in the above directory to /usr/share/fonts/TTF
9) recache the fonts (fc-cache -vf)
10) restart X

Voila! The Chinese text looks so much prettier now!

每週一噏：曾蔭權要惡補中文

心水清的讀者都知我所指是何事：話說上週曾在立法會回答有關六四的問題，又搬出那套老掉牙的「經濟繁榮」歪論（即六四鎮壓後，穩定帶來繁榮，因此不應完全否定）相信港人對國家發展會作出客觀評價云云。議員吳靄儀窮追不捨，要曾就個人良知及原則， 是否同意國家可為經濟殺人。

曾蔭權就在此出事！他所說「我的意見是代表香港人整體意見，他們的意見亦影響我的意見，剛才我所說是我感覺到香港人對這件事的看法，這也是我現時的看法」實在大錯特錯。事後他承認用字有問題，並就此致歉。當然無法補鑊，繼續被抨擊自大兼無良知。

筆者想提出兩點：
一、有理由相信他的確錯在辭不達意，即使曾真的自大兼無良，也不會在此場合公開，以我揣測，他本來的意思可能是：

『根據他的認識，很多香港人認同「經濟繁榮論」，而他個人的意見也是這樣。』

平心而論，很多香港人認同「經濟繁榮論」的確是事實，不然民建聯如何能在普選屢屢獲勝（總不成全靠蛇羮！）說這是具代表性的意見不算過份，如他說他的意見和這具代表性的意見一致，這說法亦無問題。只不過他的用字令人覺得這是cause and effect，即是因為這是他的意見，所以具代表性，那就很令人反感。

二、要特首發表其個人意見，其實亦是多此一舉，皆因作為特首他必須和中央同一口徑，就算他心底裡真是支持平反六四，他亦絕無可能講出口！

打個譬喻：如果有記者要身為煙民的奧巴馬就食肆禁煙發表個人意見，即使他心底裡希望在食肆抽煙，他亦絕不會如此說！

Tech of the day: software nostalgia

I've just read that software company Borland was sold recently. That name certainly brought back a lot of good old memory. Borland was the developer of the DOS utility SideKick, which was highly raved by reviewers back in the 80s because it allowed user to quickly open or hide it, pretty much like multi-tasking on Windows but that's before the days of Windows. I have almost completely forgotten about it.

I think the most famous software made by Borland is probably Turbo Pascal. Every computer enthusiast from the 80s have played with it! I bet it introduced a lot of them to programming. And that was not lame programming (read: BASIC) but real programming with a speedy compiler/editor and a real language! Borland sold off its compiler business and it is now owned by Embarcadero. You could download Turbo Pascal for free from them.

Another product I almost forgot was Paradox. That's the database software I taught in college for a living.

BTW, there is another article about old-school programming techniques. Fortunately I haven't done much of those at work. I am not qualified as old timer!

Topic of the day: South Park mocked Disney

Whether you like "South Park" (the animated TV series) or not, you gotta admit these guys "get" pop culture. They know what buttons to push to create controversies. Their parody of Tom Cruise and his "religion" is certainly legendary. The episode that made fun of High School Musical was also hilarious. And the latest one that I couldn't stop laughing was about Jonas Brothers and the stupid purity rings that they wear to symbolize the fact that they won't have sex under marriage. It was said in the episode that the purity rings were pushed so that the company could sell sex to teenagers! You might wonder why it isn't the opposite. I thought so for a second but then I understood! Let's face it. All these teen boy bands have was their good looks, in other words, sex appeal (don't tell me it's their talent) What could make them more acceptable to parents than "purifying" the appeal? It was a clever idea but it is also too superficial. Just think about what happened to all those teen idols who vowed for no sex until marriage. How many of them got pregnant before marriage?

And I want to give more credits to South Park by putting the blame on the company rather than the performers (Jonas Brothers in this case. They don't look that bad in that episode) You could watch it on their website. It is the first episode of the 13th season.)

Topic of the day: Journalism today (and the story of Japan town)

This article named "S.F. searches for solution to Japan Center woes" appeared in San Francisco chronicles yesterday. If you read the article (and it's pretty obvious judging by the title), you might think something is really wrong with Japan Center (the name of the shopping center in Japan town) The articles portrayed the place as having an outdated look. It even used the word "dead zone" to describe the neighborhood.

However, I could tell you such descriptions couldn't be more wrong (and most commenters agreed. In fact they were outraged!) I just went there this Sunday (my first visit in 3 years.) The stores and restaurants were all busy. The iconic Kinokuniya Book Store has been expanded to a 2-floor operation!

It seems to me all that needs to be done was rebuilding/reinforcing the parking garage so that it meets the current earthquake standard. That makes me wonder what the motivation of the writer of that story was. Do you think he is unbiased?

BTW, on the topic of quality of journalism today: it sank to a new low when it was discovered that a student's Wikipedia hoax quote was used worldwide in newspaper obituaries! The quote was:

One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear

It was made up by a student who added it to French composer Maurice Jarre's Wikipedia page. So apparently journalists are using Wikipedia as their source these days. Laziness? Incompetence? or both?

Tech of the day: My VM has lost its voice

As I previously mentioned, I run Arch Linux in VirtualBox on my Windows machine. I could playback audio after I installed the ALSA tools and made the adjustments (see my old post) However, it stopped working after I moved the VM to a new HP notebook. When I try adjusting the PCM channel through amixer, it was simply not there. Again, I found the solution from the same ALSA entry on ArchWiki (thanks!) The section was about making sure the sound modules were loaded.

Basically I found from lsusb that my sound module is: snd_intel8x0

So I modified the MODULES line in /etc/rc.conf to this:
MODULES=(snd_intel8x0 snd_pcm_oss)

And reboot, unmute and adjust the channel volumes through amixer again. Voila! I got audio back!

To make the Amixer settings permanent, follow these steps.

And I have found a post about getting EMU 0404 USB (my external sound card) to work in Linux. Guess that's something I should try in the future.

Tech of the day: Duke Nukem Forever

Duke Nukem was a very popular first-person shooter game in the 90s. (Even a casual gamer like me knows about it!) Duke Nukem Forever was supposed to the latest and greatest version of the series and was supposed to be released in 1998, but it was never released, to this day. And it has become a joke in the industry and a synonym to vaporware (software that was promised but never delivered)

Nevertheless, there was still hope among Duke Nukem fans that it would be released someday as long as its creator, 3D Realms, is still around. After all, subject of another perennial vaporware joke, Guns 'N Roses' new album Chinese Democracy, was finally released last year. Well, that last hope was dashed because 3D Realms has just closed its door.

Music of the day: Exposures - In Retrospect and denial

This was a double CD released by melodic death metal band Dark Tranquillity in 2004. The second half contains live performances. I've been to their concerts twice and they never disappointed. I could hear the same kind of energy from these live tracks. And the first half contains previously unreleased or "B-side" material. I wonder why they were left out of the previous CDs 'coz these are pretty good stuff.

Topic of the day: teacher appreciation week, cinco de mayo and mother's day

What do they have in common? For one thing, they all happened in the past week. More importantly, I believe they are celebrated/promoted/marketed heavily because of business interests! I am pretty sure a lot of flowers, cards, beers...... were sold for them. I gotta admit I am not a big fan. All these pressure to appreciate your teacher, your mom and Mexican culture is just a little bit too superficial. Cinco De Mayo is not even celebrated in Mexico! And how come there is no software developer appreciation week during which our clients sent us flowers/gift card/breakfast? I know why: they have paid our employers already! Back in my days (I know, my "good old days" talk again) we had one "official" teacher appreciation activity for the whole 6 years of high school. And of course, great teachers' efforts were always appreciated with or without such activity. In fact, one of our favourite teacher told us we should have been more frugal when we picked the place for celebration because we were just students.

每週一噏：棋壇喜與悲

今週發生了一件中國圍棋界十分振奮的事﹐指的當然是古力奪得首屆BC咭世界圍棋賽的冠軍﹐原來此前中國棋手從未在任何世界圍棋賽的首屆奪標。而古力本人亦保持另一個驚人的紀錄﹕就是六次打入世界圍棋賽決賽均成功摘冠﹗

而日本棋壇一代怪傑﹑榮譽棋聖藤澤秀行今週病逝﹐全球棋迷自不然感到失落。藤澤老師在92年以67歲高齡衛冕王座﹐成為史上年紀最大的大賽奪標者﹐是一項驕人的紀錄。相信中國棋手對藤澤老師會特別懷念﹐皆因當年他帶領一班日本棋手訪華﹐該年代的中國棋手獲益不淺﹐藤澤老師這種無分國界地熱心推廣棋藝的精神﹐實在令人肅然起敬。

Music of the day: Tsar's Bride: Overture by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

I am blogging this for my son. We heard this on radio this morning and this is the first piece of music that he told me he liked. He liked the fact that "it had a lot of instruments," which is consistent with his philosophy of "more is more!" I guess I need to play more orchestral music in the cars.

Book of the day: Graded Go Problems for Beginners Vol.2

This is part of a well-prepared series of problem books (or tsumego in Japanese) by Kano Yoshinori 9 dan. While the Vol.1 could be found on Amazon, the rest are not as readily available. I bought Vol.2 and 4 from Powells.com back in Jan. The goal was to finish 327-problem Vol.2 6 weeks ago. I started doing 10 problems a day, then 5 a day, then 5 every other day but I finally finished it last week!

Before proceeding to Vol.3, I am going over Vol.2 again. This time I should spend less time and get less wrong. (That's how we're supposed to study tsumego according to the experts)

Music of the day: Venezuelan Waltzes, Antonio Lauro

In the bad old days sometimes I heard a great piece of music on the radio but I missed it when the DJ told the name of the piece.

Well, not any more! From the local classical station KDFC's website, I could easily find out that the great guitar piece I heard on 5/3 1:57 pm was Antonio Lauro's Venezuelan Waltzes performed by Eduardo Fernandez (and the link to buy it)

Topic of the day: Social networking may harm your job prospect

...... or maybe not.

I have read all these comments about what you say/post on social network will be used by future employers for making decisions when you are trying to get hired.

Well, I won't like it if my private life is being probed for employment. On the other hand, it is not a bad idea to be a bit more careful at what you do on social network. It is the same as saying things in public.

Then I came across this story: a bank in Texas has mandated its hiring managers not to look for info from social network. This actually makes some senses. There are a certain things employers are not supposed to find out from candidates because of discrimination laws (in some states, for example, the age, the race, whether she is pregnant...... etc) If they can't ask about those during interviews, why should they be allowed to find those out from places like social networks?