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﹗