4-Time NASCAR champ Jeff Gordon's retirement

The 43 year old Gordon just announced 2015 will be his last season. I'm surprised 'coz he's still very competitive in 2014 and could easily race 10 more years. Well, I guess he prefers to go out when he's still that good. For a moment I wanted to write going out on the top but to be honest the years that #24 dominated the field have been behind him for a while even though he's still winning races. I expect to see him winning a few more this season.

The GRAMMY Museum Went Metal

I was at the GRAMMY Museum last X'mas. Took my daughter to see the Taylor Swift exhibition on the 2nd floor. It would have been "Golden Gods: The History Of Heavy Metal" if we went in 2012! Well, when "GRAMMY" and "metal" appeared in the same sentence, the first thing I thought of was the inaugural GRAMMY metal award debacle: given to a band (Jethro Tull) that didn't even play metal.

Action camera pioneer, and Apple

Did Apple computer invented the first smartphone, the first MP3 player, and the first Windows GUI? Some people would like to make you think so. Add action camera to the list. Apple has been granted patents for wearable camera. It's a matter of time that you see GoPro listed alongside Handspring, MPMan and Xerox.

肯肯定

我在香港的朋友很很喜歡用這一句潮語，已有大半年，我也不為意，起初還以為是輸入錯誤呢。原來這話大有來頭，乃係經典金句王鍾樹根博士2013之作。

French Music at Noontime concerts

I went to St. Mary cathedral 2 weeks in a row. January is French Music fest for Noontime Concerts. I skipped the first one because not too interested in music that featured recorders. However, last week's spotlight was clarinet while this week was viola. These 2 rank high on my favorite instrument list! I enjoyed the French clarinet sonatas a whole lot last week and this week we got to listen to "Harold in Italy," probably the most famous viola-centric piece ever. Since it is program music (which has a "story" behind unlike the "abstract" ones), the violist Jennifer Stumm spent a lot of time explaining it, including the Harold motif. She did a great job. It was originally an orchestral piece as composed by Hector Berlioz (who was French and thus "qualified" this piece for the French Music fest) but the great pianist/composer Franz Liszt transcribed it for viola + piano (It was the orchestral version that I've heard before.) And guess who "commission" the composition in the first place? The great violinist Paganini! He got a Strad viola but didn't think there was any suitable piece for him to show it off so he asked Berlioz to write one. After it was written, Paganini was not happy because of too much rest in the viola part! However, his attitude changed 180 degrees after hearing a performance of the piece and started singing its praises (and paid Berlioz :)

The mystery of a 132-year-old Winchester rifle

It was found in a National park in Nevada recently, after leaning against a tree for years untouched! Check out the pic in the link. It looked so "blended" in to the surrounding (i.e., the big old tree) Amazing huh?

Yet another dramatic finish for a football game

Even though the NFC championship game played between Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks last weekend didn't qualify as the "comeback of the year" (so far, 3 weeks into 2015. That belonged to the Houston Cougars who came back from a 25-pt deficit to beat Pitt in the Armed Force Bowl 2 weekends ago) The Packers are my #2 favorite team after the Cowboys. Didn't have high hope on them after them beating the Cowboys a weekend ago (They kept their perfect home record vs the Cowboys who lost their first road game of the season then) as the Seahawks had the home field. I was surprised they got to a 16-0 lead (in a hindsight they missed several opportunities to score TD instead of FGs, which would have given them a 20+ point lead) I actually felt bad for former Wisconsin QB Russell Wilson's poor performance (multiple interceptions with a QB rating of 0 in the first half) and was rooting for him to make a few good plays in the 2nd half. Well, not just him but the whole team made more than a few good plays (including a recovered onside kick) to get ahead of the Packers by 3. The Packers tied it with another FG at the end of the game to force OT. And the rest is history: Wilson threw another long TD to take the team to the Superbowl.

The AFC championship was the complete opposite: the Pats were so dominating that I switched to a NHL game before it's over. Andrew used up his good luck for Indy this season, I guess. The most exciting part of the 2014/15 season was over before this game started (Superbowl games are usually more hype than substance compared to the previous 2 rounds of playoff!)