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.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
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.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
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]
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]
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
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!
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!
Monday, May 18, 2009
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!
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!
Sunday, May 17, 2009
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！
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！
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