The GIMP User Experience

This could be the name of a blues rock band but I'm talking about the actual GIMP User Experience here, which for most are not that great. I have been using GIMP for years. I actually learned Photoshop from college and have been using a licensed copy until it's too old and I don't bother to install on newer machines. So I applied everything I know from Photoshop to GIMP and that kinda works well except the UI of GIMP is really quirky. Just read this article about GIMP's UX maintainer has stepped down and there's hope that the new guy will advocate a better UI. Let's keep our finger crossed.

The K-Cup controversy

Most of my friends know I'm not a coffee drinker and I would have no idea what K-Cup is if they didn't install a K-Cup machine at work. (The sign above said clearly that purchasing K-Cup is the responsibility of the employee. Well, do I still have the responsibility if I don't drink?) Anyway, as a curious guy, especially for tech, I fulfilled that responsibility and bought my own K-Cups. It's easy to use for sure. The ones I bought tasted not bad (though I put in a lot of condensed milk :P) However, I read quite a few negative pieces of news about it lately. First, the technology is proprietary so other coffee companies tried to "reverse engineer" to come up with compatible "cartridge" of their own brand of coffee. Of course the original K-Cup maker is trying to defeat this. Second, the inventor was recently interviewed and said he regretted about inventing something so environmentally unfriendly (the plastic is hard to recycle) He doesn't even use it! He thinks it's expensive and he could make better coffee without it anyway :P

Got the blues

With the moods at work these days, the best suited music would be the Blues. Previously I mentioned the newly available (on Rhapsody) Led Zeppelin, whose music was rooted in the blues. Another British blues band which was much less well-known (doesn't even have a Wikipedia page!) but I enjoyed a lot was The Hoax. I "discovered" this band after I got hooked with Stevie Ray Vaughan's electric blues. Like SRV, these guys are all-white but they got the blues. I bought their critically-acclaimed debut "Sound like this" but then they kinda dropped off the radar after 1999, until their reunion later in the next decade and finally put out 2 new albums. (I just read about them on the latest UK Guitarist magazine)
Their music is kinda hard to find but thanks to Youtube:
At the end of the song, the singer reminded me of the legendary Hong Kong singer Johnny Ip (葉振棠)
P.S. This is my 800th posts on this blog. Another milestone reached :)

Sports highlights: NASCAR@Daytona, Pirelli World Challenge

I guess among all these different sports, it's the best to be a junkie of auto racing because I've got races to follow all year long. Even in December there's Race of Champions. And I still got to watch re-play of the Global RallyCross races which finished a month before. And of course some races that I recorded but didn't watch until I have nothing else. Those included the races from Pirelli World Challenge. Its "selling point" was races being ~1.5 hour long without the need to refuel and change tires so it's all about driver's ability to drive and pass without pit strategy involved. I agree and that's why it's one of my favorite series. And you get to see the fastest and most expensive sports cars in the world, like the Ferraris, the Porsches, the Maclarens, the Bentleys, the Audis and the Cadillacs, as well as the more affordable Kias, Ford Mustangs and Chevy Cameros, which race in a different class but on the track at the same time. And the road to championship is simple: the point leader wins it all. Even with the simple rule, the champions were decided in the last race with lots of drama, which is totally different from NASCAR who tried very hard to tweak its system to "generate" drama.

Speaking of NASCAR, believe it or not, we're already 2 weeks into the new 2015 season. I guess the biggest change to the Sprint Cup cars is the reduction of horsepower, which is supposed to make the races more competitive. It's still hard to tell after 2 weeks 'coz the Daytona 500 (at least in the recent years) features tons of lead changes no matter what and Jimmie Johnson had no trouble holding his big lead towards the end of the Atlanta race. I guess the most memorable scenes from NASCAR's season opening weekend at Daytona were still the crashes: Kyle Busch broke his leg and foot during a hard crash in the Xfinity race and polesitter Jeff Gordon's car were doomed on the last lap in the Cup race (his last Daytona 500 before retirement) which gave Joey Logano the win under green-white-checker rule. (Logano deserved the win to a large extent 'coz he ran well overall) Joe Gibbs Racing has to use a replacement driver in Matt Crafton (the reigning truck series champ) to drive Kyle Busch's #18. As unpopular as he is, I think most fans are still sad to see him getting injured so bad. And his older brother Kurt also lost his seat because of domestic violence related suspension. There hasn't been a Daytona 500 without either of the Busch brother for a long time!