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?

Musicians of the day: The Tardy Brothers

Just heard them on Music Choice. If you followed death metal, you'll of course recognize the last name Tardy immediately. That's John Tardy, the vocalist of Obituary. The song was from their album "Bloodline" which was just released! Of course it reminded me of Obituary (In fact I thought Music Choice was playing Obituary before I looked at the song info :P) which is not a bad thing. I haven't had enough of their music!

The funny thing is: I read some comments on Blabbermouth.net and some says the band name doesn't sound metal at all. (The Jonas brothers, anyone?)

Tech of the day: FaunOS

I'm in the mood of playing with another Linux distro (see my previous post about Arch Linux) The motivation this time is to improve boot time on my various PC. I am in search of a distro that I could put on a USB flash drive and boot from there faster than booting from the HDD. Because of my good experience with Arch, I picked the Arch-based FaunOS.

The first challenge is to write the FaunOS image (btw, the official download link doesn't work. Use this mirror instead) to my Flash drive. The instructions given was to use dd (a Linux/Unix util.) I do have numerous *nix environment to choose from and I picked Cygwin. The documentation is a bit hard to find but eventually I figured out (by trial and error) Cygwin sees my USB flash drive as /dev/sdb (FYI, I have a HDD with a single partition on that PC and I've unplugged other USB drives)

After I dd the image to the drive, it now contains 2 partitions (a 5Mb FAT show up as sdb1 in FaunOS and a 1Gb boot partition sdb2) I don't want the rest of the space go wasted. So I fire up GParted in FaunOS and create a new FAT32 partition on space left. However, Windows only maps the first partition it could use on a flash drive to a letter drive, which is the tiny 5Mb one in this case. The solution is simple: remove that 5Mb partition using GParted again. Then the big partition became usable in Windows!

So, will FaunOS end my search of my perfect USB bootable linux distro? I'm afraid not. Here are things I don't like:
1) The boot time (from turning it on 'til I have a usable Desktop) is around 1.5 min, compared to 3.5 for XP. It's definitely a improvement but I think I could still do better if I build from the scratch (and use JWM instead of KDE)
2) Even those I choose to "Save" my session before shutdown but it does not remember my Wifi setting after re-boot so that adds another 30 seconds to the boot time
3) Audio does not work out-of-the-box.
4) FaunOS is an orphaned project.

My next step will be trying out larch, a utility for building "Live" Arch Linux. I'll be rolling my own, so to speak.

[Correction] Audio does work. I just need to open the mixer and unmute PCM.

每週一噏：拳王之國，德先生

今週最熱門的話題莫過於豬流感，不過已有太多人噏過，當中更不乏專家，筆者講多無謂，反而想講另兩個話題：

早前香港首席才子陶傑寫遊戲文章玩出火，戲稱菲律賓為僕人之國，掀起一場種族歧視爭議，才子亦不得不認低威。其實如果要恭維菲國，大可稱之為拳王之國，皆因來自菲國的Manny Pacquiao已取得四個重量級別的拳王寶座，自去年戰勝金童Oscar De La Hoya，已被視為拳擊界最好打之人，昨天又擊倒英國拳手Ricky Hatton，再次見證Pacquiao實力之强。從直播可見，不少白人觀眾難掩失望之情，如果和白人優越感破碎毫無關係，筆者實在難以置信。

明天是五四運動九十週年，傳媒例牌又把五四精神德先生（democracy）賽先生（science）大講特講，可悲的是，年復一年，兩者仍和大眾緣慳一面：科技不是沒有，只不過太多被利用造假（如毒奶粉），談不上已具備科學精神；而對民主抗拒的民眾大有人在，從藝人成龍日前中國人要管之論可見一班。 提到後者，他雖然力踩中國廠商，指國內製造的電視機會爆炸，不過仍然被選用為上海博覽會形象大使，可見其後台之硬！

Topic of the day: Roll 'n Roll Power!

Next time when you hear people blasting the music by Led Zeppelin or Rolling Stones, don't just tell them to turn it down 'coz they might be using the music to drive crickets away! That's what people in Nevada use to defend against the onslaught of crickets.

Topic of the day: animation and age discrimination

Political correctness police striked again! Here is the story: Movie critics have been singing praises for the new Pixar animated movie "Up," which breaks the tradition by featuring an old guy as the main character. However, some analysts suggest investors to dump the stock of Disney (owner of Pixar) because it is hard to sell merchandises related to this movie. (Believe it or not. Kids fall for merchandises related to animations BIG TIME! Toys, clothing, lunch bags, cups...... the possibility is limitless) And those analysts were accused of age discrimination! I think that's BS. Do you think senior people will really get offended by such comments?

Topic of the day: Boycott Pocket God

Imagine you are a minority in your country and there is a game of which the object is to kill and torture people of your race. Will you be offended? I would be furious!

And that's what the iPhone game Pocket God did to Pacific Islanders. I thought Apple has a high standard on approving apps to be sold at their App store. Well, probably not.

The sad thing is: the maker of this game is going to make even more money because of this publicity (for example, idiots like this are encouraging people to buy and try the game.) It proves once again no publicity is bad publicity. Shame on them!

Tech of the day: ex-Facebook exec replaced departed MySpace CEO

I don't have the experience of being a top dog and then slowly overtaken by another up and comer (I went out on top! :P) but I could imagine it gotta hurt. Think IBM->Microsoft. Or more recently, Yahoo->Google. Add another from the tech world: MySpace->Facebook. I still remember when MySpace was king, many commenters think Facebook only appeals to the college crowd and being too elitist. When MySpace fell behind Facebook in US, people still said MySpace was the worldwide leader. Well, MySpace has lost that crown too. Perhaps it's time to play the game my son likes: "Follow the leader" Or better yet, hire someone who used to work for the leader/competitor! Is this desperation act? I won't call it that 'coz MySpace is still THE place for bands to promote themselves. On the other hand, it is hard to reverse a trend in the tech world. Just ask Yahoo.

Tech of the day: Fate of a cloud pioneer

Before I talk about this pioneer, I gotta admit I hate the term "cloud." It has become yet another hype like "Web 2.0." Running Web application and storing data on the internet are nothing new. Case in point: GeoCities was started 15 years ago. And that's what they did (well, they are more well-known for offering free website hosting.) Ironically, it will be shutdown later this year even though the hype of cloud is higher than ever.

Recommended by a friend, I started using GeoCities one year after it was launched, i.e., 1995, because I need to migrate my old web page hosted by my grad school's computer science department (they were not going to host my page much longer after I graduated!) Like most people of that generation, that's where I honed my HTML skills! One thing unique about GeoCities was that it organized web pages into "neighborhoods." Users could choose the neighborhood that represents the contents or reflects the personalities. I still remember my neighborhood was "Broadway!"

The memory associated with GeoCities was not all great though: after hosting my personal web site for 7+ years, it was lost all of a sudden and Yahoo couldn't bring it back. Not a big loss for me 'coz I left it outdated anyway. I had "outgrown" static web pages and spent most of my energy on 00zine.com those days.

Still, it is really sad to see it go. With such a brand name and large number of users, I just don't understand why Yahoo couldn't make a ton of money out of it. In fact, this is just one of many cases where Yahoo was unable to take advantage of its vast user base (those uses Yahoo mail, My Yahoo, Yahoo Answers......)

Musicians of the day: American Idol, classical edition

That's basically what the KDFC Classical Star Search is about. They are cutting down to 3 finalists in the 2 groups (adult and youth) Check out the videos of the 10 semifinalists in each group. All are so impressive that I have no idea who to vote for!

每週一噏：千人諾諾，不如一士諤諤

本文標題的意思，相信大家不難理解，諷刺的是，令筆者想到這標題的人和事，竟與之完全相反！所講的當然是上週提過的港大學生會長陳一諤為當權者六四暴行開脫，或者應說：一諤大言炎炎，不敵千人投票罷免！

平心而論，今次陳一諤成為眾矢之的，坊間的報導其實算不上客觀，不信的話且看看此博客轉載陳全部發言，不難發現傳媒的確有斷章取義之嫌，不過陳偏袒政府也是無庸置疑。

發生這件事亦非全無正面影響，首先，此事激發起一向政治冷感甚至對學生會也極冷淡的港大生不再沉默，而六四事件發生於二十年前，被淡忘也是無可避免，更遑論深入探討，這次風波倒令大家激辯一番，真相越辯越明，陳如果一心想偏幫政府恐怕是越幫越忙，難怪有人質疑陳並非官方欽點的打手！

[按：舊零零誌的冷飯已炒得七七八八，留下一些待將來適當時候再翻炒！取而代之的是每週一噏，靈感當然是來自不喜歡鬥噏的香港特首煲呔曾！]

Topic of the day: Arnold and the new Terminator

We might see Arnold "the Governator" Schwarzenegger in the next Terminator movie! He is not going to act in it. Instead, the movie studio will make a digital model of him and use that in the movie! Isn't that cool?

Terminator II is still my all-time favourite Sci-Fi movie (probably tied with the Matrix) However, when I watched it in the movie theater for the first time, I actually fell asleep! I think I watched it during Summer break. I forgot if it was because I had a jet lag or I stayed up all the night the night before (or both!) Those were the good 'ol days.

Book of the day: A Romance on Three Legs

Does the title remind you of "The Romance of the Three Kingdom"? Well, it's a complete different topic. See sub-title: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano

You might wonder how interesting a book could be if it is all about a particular piano. I am with you since I quit reading a somewhat similar book ("A Devil to Play," in which the author covered his personal experiences learning French horn, interspersed with history of the instrument. It would have made a good blog post but I think he drags on too much about the former. And his writing styles, which tends to jump around a lot, did not help.)

I have skimmed through this book at the bookstore and found it really interesting. The first chapter is your typical musician (Glenn Gould's) biography: what kind of genius and how weird he was. It gets more interesting starting the 2nd chapter, which is about the blind piano tuner Charles Verne Edquist, who worked with Gould on his "Perfect Piano." This piano was actually one that has been owned by the Eaton Department store in Toronto for a long time and played by many. Eaton was about to return it to Steinway and exchange for another one! I definitely want to find out more.

Game of the day: the 6th Ing Cup has a new winner!

The 24 year old Choi Cheol-han has defeated the former champ Lee Chang-ho in Game 4, coming back from losing the first game in the best-of-5 series. Ing Cup is the highest paid Go competition in the world (winner takes home US$400k)

Another interesting fact is that the losers of the past 2 tournaments (2000, 2004) all become winners next time. Is this an indication that Lee Chang-ho will win again in 2012 (after winning it in 2000)? On the other hand, there has not been a repeating winner in the short history of this tournament. Oh well, it will all make the 2012 Ing Cup even more interesting!

Tech of the day: no demand if Apple does not make it

The title pretty much sums up whatever Apple has to say when asked about new products on the market. I still remember Steve Jobs said that people didn't want to watch video on their portable player when everybody else is making such player except Apple. Of course he sang a different tune when Apple released the video iPod.

Apple's Tim Cook claimed that Apple is not going to make a netbook because iPhone and iPod Touch do a better job. Typical arrogance from Apple. And it just doesn't make much sense to me! Can you watch flash video on an iPhone/iPod Touch? No! Can you type at full speed on them? No! Watching streaming video and blogging are 2 of my top activities and I can't do them on my iPhone. There are some reasons that netbooks are selling like hotcakes. I gotta admit these days I leave my notebook at home while carrying the iPhone all the time but I am knowingly making a sacrifice.

Topic of the day: Susan Boyle, Oracle and the beauty of the web

The hottest topic in showbiz right now gotta be the Susan Boyle phenomenon while the hottest topic in tech biz is Oracle buying Sun. What do they have in common? Read on!

If you pay any attention to the news, you would know that Susan Boyle was a participant in a British talent contest. A YouTube video of her singing got amazingly popular (over 12 million hits!) You could read about people singing her praises almost every where! And not surprisingly, there are backlashes: tons of comments about her being overrated could also be found (and I am in this camp. For those who think it's her true talent (without good look) that leads her to her current success, I hate to burst the bubble: the brilliant one here is the producer of the show, who is so masterful at manipulating the audiences! She may have a nice voice, but it can't be THAT great.)

The beauty of the web is that you could find comments from every different angle. The same can be said about Oracle buying Sun too: I have read a lot of positive ("good fit") comments thinking as well as negative ones ("what are they thinking?") IMO, the most ridiculous one said Oracle wanted to be like Apple. Gimme a break! Surely Apple dominates the digital music market but they have a big mountain to climb in the computing market! I think Oracle is doing better than that already.

Well, this is the web and everyone is entitled to his/her opinion!

Tech of the day: Arch Linux full update trouble (Part II)

Remember I forced installation of Xorg in my last post? Turns out this new version (1.6) of Xorg is causing more trouble!

My X windows, which uses vboxvideo driver (from VirtualBox Guest Addition, aka GA), refused to start (from /var/log/Xorg.0.log):
(EE) module ABI major version (4) doesn't match the server's version (5)

This time the solution is a bit harder to find (under the responses to this post) but if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense: we need driver files that is compatible with verison 1.6 of Xorg. One source that include them gotta be the Guest Addition installer! Indeed, here is the command to tell the installer just dump the files to a target directory without installing:
sh VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run --noexec --target [directory name]

The target directory will contain vboxvideo_drv_16.so and vboxmouse_drv_16.so

Simply replace /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/vboxvideo_drv.so and /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/vboxmouse_drv.so with the above. The driver versions won't mismatch anymore where X starts!

Tech of the day: VirtualBox shared folder

I run Linux on my XP box as a guest OS using VirtualBox and prefer to use the guest more than the host (XP.) Still, sometimes I need to move files between the guest and the host and VirtualBox's shared folder feature comes in handy. Here are the steps to set this up:
0) create the shared folder on your host (or skip this to use an existing one.)
Also create a mount point (a unix dir that will be mapped to the above) on the guest.
1) Choose the Shared Folder option from the Devices menu on your VirtualBox. Use the folder from (0) as "Folder Path" and enter a "Folder Name" you like.
2) install VirtualBox guest addition by:
- Choose the option from the Devices manual on your VirtualBox, which makes the guest addition installer available as a CD
- mount /media/cd (to mount the CD rom)
- cd /media/cd
- sh
- shutdown -r 0 (reboot)
3) mount -t vboxsf [the folder name from (1)] [the mount point from (0)]

Note: for some reason mount gives me "Protocol error" after I used it for sometime (I've performed a full-update, i.e., pacman -Syu, and move the files to a new PC in the mean time) The solution was to performed all of the above steps again.

Tech of the day: Arch Linux full update trouble

One thing I like about Arch is that it uses rolling release, i.e., components within the OS are updated and released continously, instead of having a fixed release like Ubuntu (BTW, I think Ubuntu drops support way too soon. Feisty was released on 19 April 2007 and support was ended on 19 October 2008! Now I have a completely unupdateable installation sitting on my workstation waiting to rot.)

And it could be done with 1 command: pacman -Syu

However, I tried updating just now and ran into this:
error: could not prepare transaction
error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files)
xorg-server: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/libdri.so exists in filesystem
xorg-server: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libwfb.so exists in filesystem
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

The solution (courtesy of this Arch Linux forum post) is so simple:
pacman -Sf xorg-server

Then run pacman -Syu again.

每週冷飯: History Repeats Itself

摘自2002年:

筆者是一個超級金庸迷﹐不停地重覆閱讀金庸所有作品是我的「癖好」﹐最近又輪到第N次(N>10)重讀「鹿鼎記」這本筆者心目中金庸最出色的作品-- 皆因他成功地把實在的歷史和虛構的創作世界融成一體。不過每次重讀「鹿鼎記」﹐其中有些片段總是令筆者「慘不忍讀」﹐惻隱之心油然而生﹐最甚者莫過於吳之榮興起《明史》文字獄這一段。

可能對不少朋友而言﹐韋小寶的風流搞笑故事遠遠比《明史》文字獄一案印象深刻得多(某些所謂改編自「鹿鼎記」的電視劇索性把這一段完全省略﹐認真不知所謂。這些編劇難道以為自己的創作本事比金庸更高嗎﹖) 據筆者在網上查閱清朝歷史﹐《明史》一案真有其事﹕話說康熙年間小人吳之榮窮途末路之際﹐發現由富商莊家公子編輯的《明書輯略》多處用了前明的年號，於是到京師向權傾朝野的大臣鰲拜告狀﹐謀求升官發財。
『鰲拜以軍功而封公爵、做大官，向來歧視漢官和讀書人，掌握大權後便想辦几件大案，鎮懾人心，不但使漢人不敢興反叛之念，也令朝中敵黨不敢有甚麼異動，當即派出欽差，赴浙江查究。這一來，莊家全家固然逮入京中……在明史上列名的文學之士，無一不鋃鐺入獄。』
『最慘的是，所有雕版的刻工、印書的列工、裝釘的釘工，以及書賈、書鋪的主人、賣書的店員、買書的讀者，查明後盡皆處斬。據史書記載，其時蘇州滸墅關有一個李尚白，喜讀史書，聽說蘇州閶門書坊中有一部新刊的明史，內容很好，派一個工役去買。工役到時，書店主人外出，那工役便在在書鋪隔壁一家朱姓的老者家中坐著等候，等到店主回來，將書買回。李尚白讀了几卷，也不以為意。 過了几個月，案子發作，一直查究到各處販書買書之人。其時李尚白在北京公干，以購逆書之罪，在北京立即斬決。書店主人和奉命買書的工役斬首。連那隔壁姓朱老者也牽累，說他既知那人來購逆書，何以不即舉報，還讓他在家中閑坐？本應斬首，姑念年愈七十，免死，和妻子充軍邊遠之處。 』(節錄自金庸小說原文)

今日重讀這一段﹐感受尤其深刻﹗不知各位有否如筆者一樣立刻想起香港特區基本法第二十三條中的煽動叛亂及隱匿叛國罪﹖這些封建時代的不合理惡法竟然會在廿一世紀自詡文明先進的香港特區政府出現﹐又怎能不叫筆者慨嘆一句﹕"History repeats itself!"

不幸的是，此等惡法可能越來越有市場！
且看看兩則近期新聞：藝人成龍指香港及台灣太自由，所以變得很亂 ，認為「中國人是需要管的」。
較早前又有在港讀大學的內地生為當權者六四暴行開脫，居然有網民附和，指當年學生和市民參與六四乃係叛國及顛覆政府。
對於以上言論，已故偉大領導人鄧小平有一名句，我可以贈他們，那就是：「胡說八道」！

Topic of the day: Secession of Texas?

You might think this Russian Professor Igor Panarin was crazy when he talked about "The Texas Republic" (see my earlier post) Think again! Breaking news: Texas governor Rick Perry suggested that Texans might at some point get so fed up they would want to leave the union.

And if you are still not convinced, this idea does have its supporters (check out these comments) You might be surprised how much Texans are proud of their state. I'm not 'coz I used to live there.

Well, maybe next time Houston Astros (or Texas Rangers) play in the world series, it will indeed be a World series! (We haven't had one for a long time, after Toronto Blue Jays won it all in 92 & 93) Or maybe not (according to this, Texas does not have the right to secede.)

Tech of the day: Pidgin and Yahoo IM

What is not to like about Yahoo's Instant Messaging? The client! (a.k.a. Yahoo Messenger)

I use Pidgin, an open-source universal IM client, instead. In fact, I carry a Portable Pidgin on my thumb drive all the time!

However, it stopped working since a few days ago. Here is the solution (courtesy of the Ubuntu forum): Modify your Account setting in Pidgin, choose the Advanced tab and change the Pager Server to 66.163.181.173.

Topic of the day: YouTube Orchestra

Most people would agree one could find the worst in music on YouTube. Even people who could barely sing and make sound out of their instruments post their crap on it (including yours truly!)

However, no one could deny among all these crap there are still quite a few gems. I bet one of your friends must have sent you some links to some virtuosic performances that completely blows you away.

Apparently people in the music biz agree and utilize YouTube to discover talents. A YouTube Orchestra is formed by musicians who posted on YouTube and auditioned for a spot on the orchestra. And they just performed at the prestigous Carnegie Hall!

So, that's my motivation to put more craps on YouTube!

Topic of the day: race and political correctness

A famous Hong Kong columnist/talk show host got into trouble when he made a joke that involves Flipino recently (ironically, the column is named "Politically Incorrect"!) Well, he might feel better if he knows a Texas Representative, Betty Brown, has also made a politically incorrect comment regarding Asian and had to apologize: she suggested Asians living in US to change their names to more "Western sounding" ones so that it is easier for the voter registration office to process them.

For any person who has any familiarity with Asian culture, s/he will of course know that a lot of Asians are very proud of their heritage, of which their names are an integral part. However, I am gonna cut Brown some slacks, considering she is from a town in Texas where the closest metropolitan area (Dallas) is 1.5 hour of driving away. She probably hardly knows any Asian, let alone their culture. Of course, ignorance is not a permit for being naive. Let's just hope that she has learned her lesson and stop being a joke herself.

Tech of the day: What if AOL...

Once upon a time, AOL has its own proprietary software that allows its subscriber to access its own content, a "walled garden" if you will. And that's before the time Websites and web browsers became popular! AOL was hugely successful back then.

And of course today's AOL is nothing like that. It is no longer a walled garden. Anyone could visit AOL.com, which is just like any other internet portal (Yahoo, MSN, you name it) In fact, I couldn't tell what is special about AOL today. And according to an AOL old-timer, who supposed to have written this, this is exactly AOL's problem. He suggested AOL would have been better off if it has kept its walled garden. I am not sure if his strategy would work but I'm surprised to learn that AOL's client software still has 28.6 million users!

Star of the day: Nick Swisher

How did Swisher qualify as star of the day? First of all, he played in the game of the day (according to this Yahoo blog) Second, he pitched a scoreless inning and strucked out 1 batter but most importantly, he is an outfielder/first baseman!

I have been following Swisher's career since he started with Oakland Athletics and then traded to Chicago White Sox, both are teams that I root for! Glad to see that he did something that will guarantee him being mentioned in future trivia quizzes.

每週冷飯: 強權鎮壓公理的時代

摘自2002年11月1號:

筆者一向有一個天真的想法﹕就是隨著時代大輪轉動﹐人類會越來越文明--尊重生命價值以及人性自由。翻看歷史﹐自十八世紀啟蒙運動(The Enlightenment)以來﹐人類日漸重視個人的存在價值﹐崇尚自由民主的意識萌芽﹐尋求從封建時代被君主或宗教盲目支配中解放出來。

不幸的是﹐筆者的想法實在太一廂情願﹔事實上人類社會正在走回頭路﹗以往世界大戰前惡勢力抬頭的先兆都已出現﹕獨斷獨行的政府力圖擺脫人民監察﹐以籠統的民族主義掛帥﹐把所謂國家利益淩駕於人類基本權利之上﹔更嚴重者藉此侵略別國﹐危害世界和平。亦有宗教狂熱份子走火入魔﹐以聖戰為名亂施暴力﹐草菅人命。恐佈活動有如野草燒不盡﹐春風吹又生。

這些現象實在不容忽視。支持國家民族（以至宗教）驟耳聽來似乎是理直氣壯，但具體行為不能違反自由﹑和平等大原則，否則不論政府還是恐佈分子都是橫蠻無理。

愛自由﹑和平及公義的群眾力量不容小窺，例如當年印度聖雄甘地堅持以非武力的公民抗命方式成功爭取獨立﹐美國總統尼克遜因被傳媒揭發水門事件而下台﹔說明真理只有越辯越明﹐而真相越禁越禁不住。極權政府﹑極端分子應好好反省﹕任何高壓或暴力的行為最終只有失敗﹐開放的對話或談判才是解決問題的方法。

以下是出自曾為和平作出努力的神父Martin Niemoller 關於納粹黨的名句﹕
"First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't
a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a
Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up
for me."

活在這個動蕩的時代﹐我們還可以沉默下去嗎﹖

後記﹕我們學識淵博的保安局長(這希望不是國家機密)指民間某些反對香港政府基本法二十三條立法諮詢文件的意見太情緒化﹐不值得深入研究云云﹐令筆者想起 George Orwell名著《動物農莊》(Animal Farm)中的一句話'All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others'此話葉太以前曾經引用來批評傳媒﹐何其諷刺﹗

該文出版後不久保安局長葉太亦因二十三條立法為政府"食死貓"下台﹐六年後(2008)捲土重來﹐竟成為監察政府的尊貴議員﹗最近批評入境處優待權貴亦毫不手軟。只是有中央作後台的葉太是否小駡大幫忙，還是未知之數。

更令筆者灰心的是以支持國家及宗教為藉口的惡勢力好像變本加厲：由內地到港成為大學生會長的竟然全無血性地為政府開脫血腥鎮壓的罪行，宗教團體在加州亦成功推動通過剝奪同性戀人士結婚權利的法案。筆者還是這一句：不能沉默下去!

Tech of the day: dotcom business models

Remember back in the hay day of the dotcom bubble (around 1999) if you build a website that could attract eyeballs, you could get rich? Well, it turns out it's still necessary to have a business model!

This article analyzes and breaks down all the existing models out there. Quite an interesting read. Not surprisingly, most websites out there still rely on ad dollars. I guess one could say it's no different from the dotcom bubble era. Just that the web ad market is more mature, especially after Google emerged.

Animal of the day: House Swift

This is another post about bird after I wrote about Hawaiian Petrel a few months ago. And I learned about House Swift because the Chinese University of Hong Kong has a construction project that requires to take down old nests of these birds so they are building new ones as replacements.

The interesting thing about House Swift (according to Wikipedia) is that it never settles on the ground. I started getting confused since its name means "without feet" (even this Mingpao article uses that phrase in the title!) but that is not a factual description! It does have feet.

Furthermore, does house swift indeed flies in the air all the time (again, that's what the Mingpao article and this implies)?The latter is conflicting about this. First it mentioned:

Swifts ... roosting only at night

Then it said:

Swifts can't perch because their feet are small and weak.

Well, I guess it does rest in its nest after all. Otherwise there is no need to build replacements for them.

Topic of the day: 10 years ago

Microsoft sent me an e-mail thanking me for using Hotmail for 10 years. (Isn't it amazing that I stick with them for that long?)

Well, the funny thing about that e-mail is that it mentioned "back around the time I started using Hotmail":
- Windows 98 was the hot new operation system!
- Titanic broke every box-office record imaginable.
- The Spice Girls were rocking stadiums from London to LA!

Do you still remember? I surely don't.

Oh yeah, I was 10 years younger then. :(

Topic of the day: What's wrong with America?

There were 8 mass murders in 4 weeks that took 50+ lives. That is very very wrong with this society.

Is gun control the answer? I am not sure. After all, this type of things do not happen in other "gun free" countries as often.

It might have to do with the illusion of so-called "American dream": people work hard and could do better than their previous generation here. Look at people around you and me. We are all afraid of losing our jobs (and the house and our kids' education that depend on them) This expectation is just too high. Nothing could keep improving forever. Sometimes it gets better. Sometimes it gets worse! For one thing, I don't think I could do better than my parents. Will my kids do better than me? Surely I hope so but it will be a challenge. When such a high expectation is not met, I could see some people become depressed and think of themselves as failure.

Maybe it's time to rethink and try not to reinforce the illusion.

Commercials of the day: Jazz trumpeter vs square pants

The 1st one is a Crown Royal commercial. The story line is about an old jazz trumpeter found a talented young musician on the street who also play jazz trumpet and reminded him how he got started. So he brought the young guy in the jazz club and jam with him.


Find more videos like this on AdGabber


I think it's a nicely done commercial (I'm biased though 'coz I love jazz) and suits Crown Royal's image perfectly.

I am not as certain about the 2nd one. It's for promoting Burger King's kids meal. Remember the controversial song "Baby got back" (was condemned for treating women as sex objects)? The lyric was rewritten to talk about square pants (as in the hit cartoon SpongeBob Squarepants) And in one scene the "king" was measuring the "back" or the pants of the chicks. I'm pretty sure it would draw criticisms and I indeed found some.



I could understand people who know about "Baby Got Back" would find this offensive and worry about sending kids wrong messages (women being sex objects) but I doubt kids would get that message at all.

Star of the day: Ken Griffey Jr.

The sporting event of the day is supposed to be the NCAA Basketball championship but I couldn't care less. I care more about baseball's opening day (it was opening night yesterday) Even though he is not on my team, I gotta give it to Griffey, for hitting a homer on his first day back as a Seattle Mariner. Junior: you are THE man!

每週冷飯:戰爭啟示錄

以下摘自2002年5月1號:

自從美蘇冷戰結束﹐除了生活在依然戰火連綿的個別地區的民眾﹐世人大都鬆了一口氣﹐以為戰爭的威脅不再存在﹔不過去年「九一一事件」卻把這個和平的假象狠狠的撕破﹐令我們不得不重新面對現今世界種種隱藏的危機。

事實上現今世界各地都埋藏著隨時可被宗教﹑種族以至政治理念衝突「引爆」的「火藥庫」﹐以巴(Israel and Palestine)﹑印巴(India and Pakistan)﹑波斯尼亞(Bosnia)等地的戰火皆由宗教以及種族分岐所引發﹐這些僅是全球「火藥庫」的冰山一角而已﹔更令筆者憂慮的是一股潛力巨大的極右化暗湧。

相信對歷史略知一二的朋友都知道在二次世界大戰前夕﹐全世界各地民眾皆面對不同程度的經濟困境﹐把責任推到新移民的排外思想﹐和以對外擴張勢力為解決辦法﹐在這種情況下最有市場。回顧第二次世界大戰前﹐德國納粹(Nazi)政權以及日本軍國政權皆以類似歪理取得國民支持。

不幸而且可怕的是﹐近日類似的思想在世界不少地方皆有借屍--全球經濟不景--還魂的跡象﹕日本首相小泉純一郎企圖藉著參拜供奉包括第二次大戰甲級戰犯在內的靖國神社提高支持率﹔法國極右翼政黨國民陣線黨魁勒龐(Le Pen)以主張排外打入總統選舉第二輪﹔奧地利公開讚揚納粹主義的自由黨在兩年前的大選中獲兩成七選
票﹔香港政府為阻止港人在內地所生子女移入製造危言慫聽的言論。他們都成功地挑動社會某些對現狀不滿﹑對前途不明階層的人士的情緒以取得支持﹐由這股極右化力量可能引發的全球戰爭危機實在不容忽視。

面對這些危機﹐作為無權無勢的小市民到底可以做些甚麼﹖我認為個人力量雖然微弱﹐但我們可以不平則鳴﹑口誅筆伐﹐向惡勢力說不﹐不作沉默或盲目的羔羊﹐以理性打倒成見﹐挺身而出捍衛公義﹕例如日本老兵篠塚良雄親身指證日軍七三一部隊當年侵華的暴行﹔法國三十萬名學生舉行示威聲討勒龐﹔ 耶路撒冷「希望之花學校(Hope Flowers School」藉著教導一班猶太以及阿拉伯學童合作種菜而播下和平種子等等﹐他們的做法均值得借鏡。筆者深信只要大家用心用力﹐我們還是有踏出戰爭陰影的希望。

七年後的今天﹐以上所述的「火藥庫」完全沒有降溫﹐世界只有變得更加不和平﹐
實在教人灰心﹐無論如何﹐筆者堅持繼續以一支筆桿捍衛公義﹐不會向惡勢力低頭。

Eat of the day: Midnight truffle vs Chocolate Extreme Blizzard

If I have to pick an all time favorite dessert, it's gotta be Blizzard from Dairy Queen. And if I have to pick 1 flavor, it would be chocolate extreme (with brownie pieces, chocolate fudge......) Still, I have been looking forward to new flavors for a while. And I found it this week: a brand new flavor called "Midnight truffle." The funny thing is the poster of "Midnight truffle" looks very similar to chocolate extreme. I studied the ingredient carefully and it turns out the difference is the former has truffle while the latter has brownie. The rest is basically the same. And the winner is...... Midnight truffle!

Musician of the day: Tomonori Nishimura

I was looking for the music of the popular new age pianist Yukie Nishimura and ended up finding this album
Fritilaria
by Tomonori Nishimura. Interestingly this is also new age but at the other end of the spectrum, compared to Yukie's music.

I cannot find any info by Googling his name though. If you know more about this artist, please comment.

Tech of the day: FLAC and MP3FS

The company who owns the patents of MP3 is pushing a new format, MP3HD, which combines both losslessly compressed audio and the original (lossy) MP3 in a single file for backward compatibility (the lossy part is playable on all existing MP3 players) This idea was bashed heavily by Slashdotters. And they mentioned a very interesting alternative: rip your music to the lossless (and open source) FLAC format. Then mount the directory using MP3FS. The files will be "seen" as MP3 (transcoding is performed on the fly whenever the files are accessed) so they could be transferred to devices that could only play MP3. And you could play the FLAC files directly through applications like Foobar2000. No double-ripping and wasted storage!

Topic of the day: how to suppress freedom of speech effectively?

Learn the Hong Kong way: tell the protesters they won't get hired.

Here is the background: Hong Kong government is planning to subsidize companies to hire new HK college grads as interns. The monthly salary will be HK$4000 (~US$516.) This has caused an outrage in the college community because it artificially surpress the wages to a unreasonable level (I made HK$4000 per month as an intern 15 years ago. Does the government think there is no inflation for the last 15 years?) Some students are organising protests because they think the government is only doing this to drive down unemployment and make the officials look good. They would be better off without it.

Hong Kong legislator Priscilla Leung has made some comments about this (link to video in Cantonese) and drew heavy criticism by some HK bloggers. Those blog posts were titled "Leung says protesters won't get hired." Well, the whole context was that Leung worked in a college and was told by business owners not to recommend students who were protesting to them. So, it's not her who suggested to businesses not to hire protesters. Still, she did mention she was against the protests. She indeed suggsted students to accept the low wages for now and expect better things in the future.

BTW, Leung was backed by a church who was (in)famous for its anti-homosexual stance and in return she was against a proposed domestic violence victim protection law to include homosexuals.

Music of the day: Taranta, Estudio

I have not listen to much music during my trip. So of course I have to make up now that I'm back. Found this gem by the previously mentioned Lenny Breau in which you could hear clearly his classical influences:
Taranta.

While in the mood of classical, here is another beautiful track, written by Tarrega and performed by Liona Boyd:
Estudio in E. And it is easy enough that even I could play it (the TAB could be found in Fifty Easy Classical Guitar Solos)

Game of the week: Hong Kong Sevens

It was actually held last weekend and it is the biggest sports event in Hong Kong every year, which is interesting because rugby (or the seven men version of it) is far from the most popular sports in Hong Kong (that honor belongs to soccer) I think it does have its appeal: what other team sports tournaments that feature teams from 24 country could complete in a weekend?

Most importantly, Hong Kong won 2 big matches (against Portugal and Tonga, which was the eventual silver plate winner!) and was the only Asian team that qualified to play for the silver plate. (The top 8 of 24 teams played for the highest honor, silver cup, while the bottom 8 played for the silver bowl)

每週冷飯﹕安樂主義

摘自01年12月15號﹕

早一陣子從朋友處學到「安樂醒」這個新名詞﹕即是早上不用鬧鐘﹐順其自然地起床的意思。靈光一閃﹐覺得這種態度其實可在日常生活很多方面派上用場﹐為了實踐這個想法﹐筆者數月前和友人到加洲優山美地(Yosemite)搞了一個「安樂Camp」﹐包括以下活動﹕安樂行山(不設定任何目的地﹐略為疲倦立即折返)﹔安樂食(任意進食﹐隨時加料)﹔安樂飲(各適其式﹐可醉可不醉)﹔當然還有安樂醒﹐因為基本上整個行程並無特定節目﹐因此全無時間限制。至於安樂駕駛﹑隨意停車更不在話下﹗

想深一層﹐「安樂主義」其實是和中國道家傳統一脈相承﹕無求﹑無為﹐在充滿矛盾和節奏急迫的現代社會﹐這個不失為一個取得平衡的生活態度﹐從個人層面可令人心平氣和﹐從社會層面更可能達致世界和平﹗各位朋友﹐不妨一試﹗

當年順其自然的生活實在令現在有兒有女的筆者感慨良多﹐所謂此一時彼一時﹕
1) 行山不可能設定任何目的地﹐小朋友略為疲倦立即折返。
2) 不能任意進食﹐小朋友食飽方為大前題。
3) 飲酒不可醉﹐否則無人照顧小朋友。
4) 早上不用鬧鐘﹐視乎小朋友何時要起床。
5) 開長途車必須將就小朋友的如廁時間表而停車。

想深一層﹐現在以安樂來形容生活倒是貼切﹐此樂不同彼樂﹐乃係天倫之樂也。