Music of the day: Purpose Built

This is an album by jazz bassist/band leader Michael Janisch. This album reminds me of Dave Holland's recent works. I believe that is a big compliment. Here is the line-up:
Michael Janisch: acoustic bass (1, 3-7, 9-11), electric bass (2, 8, 12); Aaron Goldberg: piano (2, 3, 9, 10); Jim Hart: vibraphone (1, 4, 6, 11); Jason Palmer: trumpet (2, 7, 8, 11); Paul Booth: tenor saxophone (1, 2, 6); Mike Moreno: guitar (2, 8); Patrick Cornelius: alto saxophone (5, 11); Phil Robson: guitar (5, 9); Walter Smith III: tenor saxophone (1, 8, 11); Johnathan Blake: drums.

And to be honest with you, I have not heard of any of them before but they all played impressively on this album.

Tech of the day: My非佛

鑑於富士康近月接連發生多名員工跳樓事件，本人建議各位iPhone用家下載「非一般唸佛機」App，南無阿彌陀佛。

Music of the day: Rainbow in the Dark

RIP Ronnie James Dio. The legendary heavy metal vocalist and band leader died on May 16th. I did not realize he was 67 as he always appeared so energetic. His work with Black Sabbath and his own band were amazing as he never sold out to the mainstream.

Tech of the day: Slingbox and Pace TDC577X DVR

I was trying to configure my Slingbox to use the new DVR we got from Comcast. For some reason this model does not show up from Slingbox's list. Fortunately, with the help of the great Google search (and more importantly, its cache) I found that I could tell Slingbox I am using a standalone DVR, then choose Comcast as the brand and DCT34XX as the model. (I should have thought of this since Comcast uses the same remote for all boxes anyway)

Star of the day: Viswanathan Anand, the world chess champion

Anand has just successfully defended his title from challenger Veselin Topalov, a former world chess champion as well. They were all tied through 11 games. Anand won the 12th and final game of this title match.

Star of the day: Dallas Braden

Another no-hitter from Bay Area's baseball team (Giant's Jonathan Sanchez did it last year)! And this one is even better: a perfect game (where 27 batters are all retired.) I was happy to see Mark Burhle threw a perfect game for White Sox last year. This one is certainly more surprising since Braden was not as highly regarded as Burhle. I hope the A's and Braden do better than the Sox and Burhle did the rest of the reason though (basically they went downhill from that game on)

Topic of the day: Progressive Insurance lives up to its name

Kudo to Progressive for being brave enough to go against conservatism in the States by making a commercial that feature a gay couple (not explicitly stated but a lot of people think so):


It's sad that so many businesses either pretend gay people do not exist or bow down to the extremely conservative/religious groups. I would sing more praises for them if the marketing guy at Progressive admit that's a gay couple (instead, he said they are modelled after Joey and Chandler from Friends but Friends expert like me know they are not) Besides, I really find that Progressive ad lady very annoying (my buddy agreed with me too)

Topic of the day: It's hard not to like SF

The title sounds like an old jazz standard but it's not (That would be "I left my heart in San Francisco") For one thing, you could always count on hearing live music somewhere. I went to Fishermen's Wharf earlier this week. Saw a guy playing classic tunes on violin and another guy playing blues guitar and harmonica. It was good entertainment. And during one of my regular bookstore trip, a gentleman saw me skimming through Michael Lewis' latest book "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine" (about the current recession and its cause: sub-prime mortgage) and started chatting with me. He was a teacher and had met Lewis in person at his school and gave high rave about this book.

The only disappointment in SF this week was actually not its fault: my buddy, a visitor, wanted to buy a Sony product so Sony Store immediately came to our mind. The Metreon (a complex with shops and movie theater) had a big Sony presence. It was a "flagship"-type of store that showcase Sony's great products (like TVs, camcorders and most prominently, video games) Too bad they were all gone! What a pity! There was a time that people flock to Sony Store. That's when people ridicule that Apple was trying to open its own retail stores!

Sports highlights: Champions League semi, Stanley Cup playoff, NASCAR

Who would have guessed it is Bayern vs Inter in the final 3 months ago? Most of our friends didn't even give Inter a chance 3 weeks ago! In order not to jinx the team I root for (like I did so many times on this blog before,) I am not going to mention which team it is.

I haven't watched much of Stanley Cup playoff so far. So glad that our local team, the Sharks, at least made it to the 2nd round, unlike last year. They won the President's Trophy (best regular season record) but lost in the first round so unexpectedly. Well, this year another President's Trophy winner got eliminated in the first round. I am not a fan of the Canadiens but it was exciting to see them beating the high-powered Washington Capitals. (In fact, 3 out of the last 5 President's Trophy winner were ousted in the first round! I guess no one wants to win it in the near future >:)

Last but no least, what an exciting finish for the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Talladega last Sunday. As expected, there were a few big wrecks. And Kevin Harvick barely beats Jamie McMurray at the finish line, literally, at the 3rd green-white-checker restart. It is race like this that gets me addicted to NASCAR. For every boring race, you get something like this. Not a bad deal!

Tech of the day: HP bought Palm

In the storied history of Palm, one of the mobile computing pioneer, another new chapter has been written today: it was acquired by HP. As a gadget lover/user, Palm always has a special place in my heart. In the past I have owned 3 PDAs that run Palm OS (though only 1 was made by Palm. The other 2 were Visor made by HandSpring and the Watch PDA made by Fossil) Although many companies faded away quickly in the tech industry, it is still sad to see Palm going from having a really dominant product like Palm III, Palm V to having also-runs like Palm Pre (which probably has some good technologies but no one really cares) Almost everyone uses a Palm PDA 12 years ago. Now I do not know anyone that uses Palm Pre. The newest Palm I have seen my friends used was a Palm Centro! And Palm hasn't really have any game changing product since Treo 600, which was THE first successful smart phone with PDA and phone functionality integrated properly.

On the other hand, it seems fitting that Palm went to HP, who has made quite a few legendary mobile computing devices themselves, like the HP-71B, a handheld computer that runs BASIC and HP-200LX, a handheld that runs MS-DOS Even though HP seems to have lots its edge in building such devices, evident in the fact that they dropped their own Jornanda-line of Windows CE/Pocket PC in favor of the iPAQs from their acquisition of Compaq.

Will Palm ever be able to come up with another game changing/domainant device? Let's keep our finger crossed.

Movie of the day: Crazy Heart

I seldom watch Oscar but I did this year and saw Jeff Bridges won something for his performance in this movie. I like the Bridges brothers because of The Fabulous Baker Boys, a movie about a jazz piano duo (played by them) and drama caused by the addition of a female vocalist (played by Michele Pfeifer) It was one of my all-time-favorite movie. For some reason, I didn't realize Crazy Heart was also about music until I read about it from the cover story of the latest issue of Guitar Aficionado. From the same article I also learned that Jeff Bridges was actually a decent musician (he learned playing guitar for a long time) No wonder he was able to portray musicians so well in both movies.

Unlike the role of a jazz pianist from The Fabulous Baker Boys, Jeff Bridges played a country guitarist/singer in Crazy Heart. Country is not really my cup of tea so I have some doubts whether I would buy/rent it. Fortunately, it was available on my flight and there was no reason not to watch it for free. And I enjoy it a lot. I even enjoy the music to a certain extent. On the other hand, I'm not sure the movie is that great. For example, his relationship with his student (also a bigger star than himself) seemed a bit superficial.

Topic of the day: Cinderellas in college sports

From my experiences, college sports are full of upsets (well, at least I feel that it happens more often than pro sports. Maybe it's because pro teams are more consistent. Sometimes a heavy favourite is indeed much better than its opponents and thus no surprise. And the rest of the games are usually quite evenly matched and no surprise there either)

Butler, who made it to NCAA Basketball final as a #5 seed, was certainly the "Cinderella" that is getting a lot of attention this year. However, I would argue Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) was even more deserving because their hockey team went to final 4 as a #15 seed (among the 16 teams in the tournament) before losing to my Wisconsin Badgers.

According to this article, their players are "ordinary" science/engineering students (just like yours truly!) and didn't receive scholarship like the student athletes from schools in major sports conferences did. On the other hand, it actually helped the team to stay together longer instead of losing good players every years to pro leagues.

Sports highlights (and lowlights): MLB Opening week, Champions League, F1

Last weekend was not as eventful as the previous one but it was special because it was the opening week of the new baseball season, started with none other than Yankees vs Red Sox! The funniest thing was, the commentators mentioned this was supposed to be the year of defense but the offense exploded in the first game! Also on the next day, 3 games ended with winning teams scoring 11 runs (1 scored 16!) Another funny incident was that our own Giants, Eugenio Velez, made the news because his jersey has "San Francicso" misprinted on it :D

As far as boxing/MMA went, the "big" fight was Bernard Hopkins vs Roy Jones Jr and it was booooooring! Both of them looked way past them prime and have nothing left. None of them showed any stuff that could knock another down except low blows. I literally fell asleep during the final rounds, which was good for me 'coz I got some good sleep before watching F1 from Malaysia, which was not that exciting either but it was fun to see Alonso trying so hard to pass the car in front of him and ended up blowing his engine. BTW, the Taiwanese ESPN commentator was really good. He kept saying Alonso's car was problematic quite a few laps before the problem materialized.

Even though I tried hard not to watch the Man U vs Bayern Munich Champions League quarter-final 2nd leg, I got regular updates thru IM from my 2 friends (1 Man U supporter and 1 hater!) That's certainly heartbreaking to see them going from hopeful to hopeless for a Man U fan like me.

Caught a few minutes of NCAA Hockey Final 4 actions. Glad to see Wisconsin advanced to the final. Go Badgers!

Topic of the day: Cloud computing and pollution? Blame Apple!

A few years ago Greenpeace admitted that they picked on Apple so that more people were aware of the environmental impace of computer technology. You might think they won't do that anymore. Wrong! Here is a headline from AppleInsider: "Greenpeace criticizes Apple for carbon footprint of iPad cloud"

I am not trying to defend Apple/iPad but all computing "gadgets" (e.g. smartphones, netbooks) these days are constantly making use of the internet (call it the cloud if you insist)

However, I do agree that our world will be less polluted without the cloud. Consider this, if everything is stored locally on your HD:
1) it uses less energy since you have to pay your own electric bill and more likely to turn off your computer (and thus the HD) when you're out.
2) you would be constantly deleting unnecessary data instead of simply adding yet another HD. On the contrary, with all these providers offering high limit free storage in the cloud, you won't bother to delete the junk.

Trivia of the day: honey and golf

I learned this from radio yesterday: in the past, golf ball manufacturers used honey as the core of golf balls!

Sports highlights: GSP, F1, Hong Kong 7 plus more

Last weekend began with an NRL game. Then there were a couple of big events during the weekend: George St Pierre totally dominated in his UFC fight against Hardy. Gotta give some kudos to Hardy though 'coz he really defended hard and avoided submission (his arm was twisted really bad twice but he survived!) The F1 race in Australia was much more excited than expected, probably because of the rain. It was exciting to see Hamilton quickly catching up near the end of the race, which caused Webber to crash (and he couldn't pass Alonzo either) Of course, the home team winning the Shield in Hong Kong Seven Rugby was huge too. (It was not the Cup, but we were happy for the team no matter what)

Both the IndyCar race at St. Petersburg and NASCAR at Martinsville were delayed from Sunday to Monday because of rain. Both were exciting! My idol Danica Patrick had a decent showing by finishing 7th. And Denny Hamlin's surge from 3rd to 1st during the final restart (with 2 laps remaining) at Martinsville was simply unbelievable! Everyone thought he was done when he went to the pit and gave up the lead a few laps earlier in the race.

Also catched an Aussie rule football match, a bit of NLL and NCAA Hockey (Go Badgers!)

Tech of the day: turns off iPhone data

You might think the title sounds stupid: the whole point of having a smartphone like iPhone is for its data capability (i.e., web surfing) What's the point of having one if you turn that off? Well, some people (not me) unlock their iPhone to be used on other networks, which might not have an all-you-can-eat data plan like AT&T. To avoid being charge for data usage at all, it is a good idea to turn it off altogether. Unfortunately, phones like mine that are bought from AT&T, such option is not available. In this case, faking the APN would be your workaround.

To access a data network, iPhone uses something called APN (access point name) The idea is to give it a bad APN so that data would be "turned off." There is a website that allows user to download a profile for that purpose but I had a problem with it (no data access even after I remove the profile! I had to "Reset network setting" to have it back)

Fortunately, there is another tool called FakeAPN (available from iSpatio's Cydia repo http://ispaziorepository.com/) which is an add-on to SBSettings.

In case you haven't installed SBSettings, it is another great app available on Cydia. Basically it gives you a panel that you could access anywhere (simply swipe the top edge of your screen) The panel contains button for toggling 3G, Bluetooth, Wifi, Power/Reboot...... etc. So you don't have to go thru the tedious Settings anymore.

BTW, there is another useful SBSettings add-on called UAFaker, which allows user to toggle between Mobile Safari's default user agent and a custom defined one. I wrote about the need to switch user agent before. After it is installed, you will also need to put your custom user agent string in this file on your iPhone:
/var/mobile/library/SBSettings/Toggles/UAFaker/UAFaker.plist

Tech of the day: tells VLC not to fix your AVI

The video I shot with my Canon TX1 is in a unusual video codec: MJPEG. Whenever I play them in VLC, VLC will detect the index of the AVI file is incorrect and ask if I want to fix them. Of course I'd rather leave the file as-is. There is a way to turn this off:
In VLC, choose Tool->Preferences
Check the radio button for showing all settings.
Then choose Input / Codecs -> Demuxers -> AVI
And select "Never fix" from "Force index creation"

Topic of the day: Tai Chi or Christian?

Christians are not allowed to practice Tai Chi, according to this church. In fact, they have banned the Tai Chi class that used to take place at their church. My understanding of Tai Chi is quite limited but I thought it is more related to Taoism, the philosophy, rather than the religion with the same name. I had never worshipped any Tao deity while practicing Tai Chi! (Maybe that's why I was no good!?) Shaolin Kung Fu probably has more influenced from Budhism than Tai Chi from Taoism (the religion) Still, it's perfectly normal for non-Budhist to practice Shaolin Kung Fu. Once again it shows how ignorant and close minded these people could be.

Topic of the day: GoDaddy stop going in China

Another high-profile tech company (coincidentally, it also starts with a G!) is pulling out its business from China. GoDaddy is well-known for its racy commercials and hot spokeswomen (one of them is my idol, race car driver Danica Patrick) In case you don't notice, their main business is registering domain names (also sells cheap web hosting service)

I'm not sure how popular it is in China though. Maybe it does not hurt them that much by not offering .cn domain names? I don't know.

Musician of the day: John H. Clarke

I just came back from Pier 39 and saw Spanish/Classical guitarist John Clarke playing there. Very creative playing.

Even though it was just him and his guitar (a cool looking thinline nylon string acoustic guitar), it sounded like he has percussion backing him up. His trick was: in the beginning of each song, he will tap/scratch his guitar and "save" it to his Boss RC-50 looping station, which will play it back, controlled by the foot switches. He also used a Yamaha MagicStomp for acoustic guitar effect.

Musician of the day: Svend Asmussen

Mr. Asmussen is a 94 years old jazz violinist. During his long and still on-going career, he has played with the best of the best in jazz, including Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington! I have been listening to his albums (Still Fiddling, Makin' Whoopee!... and music!) and enjoyed them very much.

Joke of the day: What is a string quartet?

My teacher taught me today:

A good violinist, a bad violinist, a failed violinist, and someone who hates violinists.

Music of the day: The Melody of Rhythm

It was a collaboration between tabla player Zakir Hussian, double bassist Edgar Meyer, banjoist Bela Fleck, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Hussian and Fleck are both the most well-known players of their respective instrument but Edgar Meyer's playing is eqaully amazing. I forgot it's a double bass! This is refreshing music. Here is an interview by NPR (the public radio station)

Sports highlights: NRL, Pacquiao, IndyCar

It was the opening weekend of National Rugby League (Australia/New Zealand.) I watched one game, of course.

The biggest event was Pacquiao vs Clottey. Not a particularly interesting fight since the Clottey was blocking his head most of the time and did not try that hard to fight Pacquiao back.

The best one was Indy Car's season opener in Sao Paolo, which featured a whole lot of lead changes! And you seldom hear people praising sports coverage these days (see the comment section)

Musical of the day: The Phantom of the Opera 續集

讀了才子陶傑今天在《蘋果日報》的專欄，方知Andrew Lloyd Webber有新作，更是我至愛的The Phantom of the Opera 續集！本來想為本文標題《老貓燒鬚》，但怕人誤會我指的是Andrew Lloyd Webber，其實我想話陶傑！

以下節錄自原文：

新作是《歌聲魅影》的續集。戲名Love Never Dies，略嫌白了一點，不像《貓》（Cats）、《棋》（Chess）、《星光快車》（Starlight Express）一樣有遐想的餘地，但今天是網絡世代，八十後的觀眾，不喜歡咀嚼含蓄，只求一Q到位。......韋伯最叫座的音樂劇像顧嘉煇和黃霑，都由添萊思（Tim Rice）填詞。

看上文下理，相信你也會和我一樣，以為Chess也是Andrew Lloyd Webber的作品，其實作者是前ABBA成員Björn Ulvaeus 和Benny Andersson才對。

最後一句也有問題，Andrew Lloyd Webber最叫座的音樂劇是Phantom和Cats，但兩者都不是Tim Rice填詞；反而之前提過的Chess卻是。

我作為一名棋迷，竟然不知有Chess這部音樂劇，也多得他的錯誤，我才會去Wikipedia認識一下該劇！

Topic of the day: Weaponizing Mozart

When you see some teenagers gathering outside your place, what's the best way to drive them away? I've just learned of one way from UK.

Remember it has been reported that US blasted Metallica's music in Iraq? Lars Ulrich, the drummer of Metallica, even protested about it. I guess blasting Metallica to teenagers in UK won't work though. You gotta find some music they absolutely do not like. (Metallica got themselves disqualified by releasing their comeback album "Death Magnetic" last year) So, some UK cities are blasting Beethoven and Mozart instead!

What's wrong with those people?

Musician of the day: Gyan Riley

I saw guitarist/composer Gyan Riley's show at Yoshi's this Monday. What an amazing solo (classical) guitar performance! He played Bach's Suite for Lute and his own composition inspired by that piece. Followed by a piece by Agustín Barrios. Then he played 4 of his own etudes that addressed 4 different guitar techniques.

As a (no good) guitarist, I enjoyed his playing very much and liked the way he explained his techniques. Also, it's interesting to hear classical musicians playing their original compositions instead of the standard repertoire over and over again.

When I got home, I found from his website that he has played worked by Terry Riley so I finally realized he is Terry's son! Also listened to his non-classical (fusion/jazz) CDMelismantra on Rhapsody. He is one versatile player!

Finally, I want to mention this show is part of the bay area classical radio station "KDFC @ Yoshi's" monthly concert series. According to them, the goal is to bring live classical music into a more relaxed environment where people can have a drink and "don't need to worry about clapping in the wrong place." I think this is indeed an interesting idea. In fact, Gyan Riley did tell us we could clap anytime between movements and didn't need to wait 'til the whole suite was performed! As far as drawing new listeners to classical music is concerned, I'm not too sure. I mean, before I became a fan of classical guitar and was just your typical jazz fan, I checked Yoshi's schedule from time to time but I doubt I would be attracted by this show. On the other hand, any guitar player would have enjoyed this performance no matter what style s/he plays.

Game of the day: Kisei Game 5

It was actually played last week. Cho U (張栩) defeated Yamashita Keigo to win his first Kisei (棋聖) title, to complete his career grand slam (won all major Japanese titles in Go) Only Cho Chi-Kun (趙治勳) has done that before!

Topic of the day: alcohol, so what?

This is another story related to "moral police" and Olympics, after the foul language incident I wrote about last week: the Canadian women hockey team beat US in the gold medal game yesterday. Afterwards, they came back to the ice to celebrate with champagne, beer and cigar. They were criticized for disrespect to their country and the Olympic spirit. Take it easy, people! Let's not blow things way out of proportion. The only issue I have with this incident is that Marie-Philip Poulin, who scored both goals for Canada, doesn't turn 19 -- legal drinking age in British Columbia -- until next month. And she was seen with beer in her hand. Well, the legal drinking age is 18 at Alberta, where the team trains. Maybe she's not aware of the higher age limit in B.C.

Music of the day: O mio babbino caro

I know playing opera tunes on violin sounds kinda cheesy. Well, Joshua Bell did it (on his Romance of the Violin album) too so it feels a bit more justified. I gotta admit I like it a lot when I heard it on the radio yesterday. I've got the sheet music and this will be the song I practice next!

Animal of the day: Komodo dragon

My son taught me something new today: Komodo dragon is the biggest and heaviest lizard in the world.

Sports highlights: Super 14 Rugby, Winter Olympics plus more

My weekend began with Super 14 Rugby on Friday night. Saturday morning, Man U vs Everton was on ESPN. Then Inter Milan vs Samdoria. NASCAR Nationwide Series (yes, I watched because of Danica) UFC (What a quick knockout) NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. And winter olympics (curling and hockey) of course!

Life is not bad after super bowl.

Topic of the day: foul language, so what?

Nowadays media is ruled by moral police. There are so many things you can't say on TV, as if TV is the only place people could hear foul language.

So it is a rarity to see a piece from mainstream media (Yahoo) that is brave enough to go against this. Here is the story: NBC showed Shaun White, who won a gold in Winter Olympic's halfpipe competition, chatting with his coach. And the conversation involved lots of foul language. The writer of that piece said that it's not wrong for White and his coach to have that conversation. It's NBC's fault for showing it. I couldn't agree more.

Tech of the day: Windows Server 2008 and WiFi

I played with a Windows Server 2008 (64 bit) laptop today. It is totally vanilla without any driver installed (not even Ethernet!) So I got my hands full. The first thing to do is, of course, google "windows server 2008 wifi driver" And I found 2 useful links:

1) Convert your Windows Server 2008 to a Workstation
It introduced to me a useful shareware Lavalys Everest Ultimate Edition This tool was able to tell me which Wireless Controller I have. And I just googled and downloaded its driver for Vista 64 bit.

This link also showed me how to open up Server Manager (and then Device Manager) to pick the Network Controller device and install its driver from the previously downloaded file.

2) Windows Server 2008 and WIFI
This showed how to open Server Manager and "Add Features" to add the "Wireless LAN Service"

After that, viola, the familiar WiFi connection icon magically appears!

Topic of the day: teleprompter vs handprompter

Republican superstar Sarah Palin criticized President Obama for using teleprompter before. Now we all know why. She uses the more environment friendly handprompter instead! Please check out the picture in this link.

Topic of the day: Pac 12

Just read an article about the possibility of expanding the Pac 10 conference to 12 teams (i.e., Pac 12) The 2 ideal additions would be Utah and BYU. I guess it would be a good move for them as well as the stronger teams in Pac 10. They all could get more high quality opponents, at least for football. I would welcome our local TV showing Stanford vs. Utah and California vs. BYU!

Topic of the day: Boredom can kill you

Literally! It's not a joke, according to this study. Even if your life is full of mundane chores and you barely have any time left for yourself, there are still plenty of possibilities, for example, take an online class from your nearest college. Or it could be as simple as reading a book from a famous author you have never read. Don't let boredom kill you.

Topic of the day: Facebook and Hong Kong politics

The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) is a Communist China leaning political party in Hong Kong. A Facebook group named 《我相信可以召集１００，０００ 個厭惡民建聯的人！》(which means I should be able to find 100000 people who dislike DAB) was established in July 2008 to condemn the questionable practices of this party. Facebook removed this group this morning, when the group has over 84k members and inching closer to the 100k goal.

The membership of this group has been growing steadily since it was established and it grew rapidly from 30k to 84k since last October because of the hi-speed rail controversy.

A lot of Hong Kong netizens are wondering why Facebook did this. It would be absurd if it was pressured by the party itself or even the Chinese government.

A new group has been formed as a replacement.

Stars of the day: 2010 NFL Pro bowler

A lot of fans complained that it is dumb to have pro bowl a week before the super bowl because the players from the super bowl teams won't be playing.

Well, I have no complaint. In fact, I think I'll enjoy this pro bowl a lot because both Vince Young and Tony Romo will be playing! They were both selected to replace other injured QBs.

Topic of the day: Dictionary = book banned in school

And it happens in (Southern) California! The Menifee Union School District has pulled the Merriam-Webster's 10th edition dictionary from school shelves because it includes the term "oral sex" and a parent complained about it. What's wrong with you SoCal folks?

五千年文明古國?

無意之中見到一篇質疑中國為五千年文明古國的文章，是對是錯，我對中史認識不足以判斷，不過讀讀也無壞。

Topic of the day: Personal finance advices

Normally I don't read these type of articles. There are tons of "Top 10 things you should avoid to save money" articles flying around. Usually the no.1 has to do with not buying coffee from American's favourite coffee shop and make your own at the office instead (I don't even drink coffee myself. I just own their stock)

And I have just read the worst ever this morning, a Top 6 this time. Two of them are just plain obvious: avoid withdrawing from ATM that would charge you a fee and cancel your credit card that charges you annual fee. Come on! Who doesn't know that? Another "advice" is not ordering soda when eating out with your family. Assuming a family of 4, that amounts to $624 per year and I quote:

If you invest $624 at the market average of 9% a year every year, you would have almost $32,000 at the end of 20 years.

If your investment returns 9% a year every year, why bother about the cost of soda?

Topic of the day: Earthquake at Haiti

It is sickening that someone try to blame the disaster on the local people! Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson claimed the Haitians had made a pact with the Devil to drive out the French who occupied the country in 1791 and thus cursed. The earthquake was the result of the curse. This article gives more details on what happened back then and why Robertson's claim actually made his Christian god looks bad.

This is actually the third pieces of negative news related to Christian I read this week. It has been reported that World Vision, a highly regarded Christian charitable organization, discriminates against non-Christian job applicants but it receives $250 million grant from US government and thus different from other religious entities like churches. Finally, Vatican criticized the blockbuster hit movie Avatar for promoting human's love of the nature. To be honest, it really doesn't make much sense. Even for those believe in the Christian God, shouldn't they also love the nature, which is supposedly their God's creation?

50後阻住60後上位

最近常常聽見香港人談論50後阻住80後上位，新一代沒有機會云云。其實這個不是甚麼新鮮事，在位的如果坐得太舒服，又怎肯離開座位？美國電視界剛剛就有一單：話說NBC的老牌深夜清談節目The Tonight Show，自92年起由50後棟篤笑藝人Jay Leno主持，04年他和NBC續約五年，NBC當時已安排Leno約滿後該節目由60後的Conan O'Brien接任。09年六月，該節目按協定換人。滿以為Leno會退休或轉到另一個電視台，原來NBC已安排他主持一個較早時段性質相近的節目，並於九月啟播。不過三個月後，謠傳公司將再安排他重掌The Tonight Show。

坦白講，誰人主持和我關係不大，皆因我甚少看該節目。雖然以前Leno主持時期我會偶爾一看，但從不少網民的評價看來，Conan實在做得不錯。上位的機會得而復失，我想很多人會替他不值。

新晉小提琴家Ann Marie Calhoun

這位可能是繼Vanessa Mae後另一位將會紅起來擁有亞裔血統的女小提琴家。她有份參與荷里活大製作福爾摩斯的配樂，亦是Yanni及Steve Vai樂隊的成員。

和另一位小提琴家Samvel Yervinyan比試：


為搖滾結他大師Steve Vai的live performance伴奏：

Book of the year: The Rescue Artist

To be more precise, it's my book of 2009. It was not the best book I read last year but I spent almost the whole year to finish it! The subject itself is very interesting: it's about the theft of the famous modern painting "The Scream" Still, to fill up a whole book, the author had to pull in a lot of related and not-quite-related stories. The ones about the personalities/anecdotes of the detective who recovered it could get boring some times. On the other hand, the ones about other famous paintings that have been stolen before were mostly interesting. For example, I learned about Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 by its worker named Vincenzo. The theft itself was not as interesting as the scam related to it! Allegedly, an Argentinean con artist named Eduardo de Valfierno convinced Vincenzo to steal the Mona Lisa. According to Wikipedia, Valfierno commissioned the French art forger Yves Chaudron to make copies of the painting so he could sell them as the missing original! He actually made more money by doing this than selling the stolen piece. If you are interested in other famoust art theft, check out this link. Of course, you could also read this book :P

I just dug out my original post that I wrote when I bought the book a year ago. It's the 2nd and also the last book I bought from Stacey's. Can't believe this iconic bookstore has been closed for about a year! It will be missed.

Tech of the day: Windows 7 Upgrade

This is another rant about computer/technology (3 posts in a row!) My Toshiba Satellite P505 is qualified for a free upgrade from Vista to Windows 7. (I would not have bought it without the free upgrade!) I went through the registration process online and finally received my Windows 7 Upgrade disc. So I thought everything I need for the upgrade would be contained in the disc. Wrong! The first step, which is running a program on the disc from within Vista, simply brought me to a web page, where I need to download an Upgrade Advisor from Microsoft as well as an Upgrade Assistant from Toshiba! After I ran the them in this order, the latter downloaded a further couple hundred MB of Toshiba drivers/software/patches required for upgrade! I guess anyone without a broadband connection should forget about upgrading. With my slow broadband, it took almost an hour to complete downloading. That was 11:30pm already. The next step was to uninstall a bunch of drivers/software that are incompatible with Windows 7 (these were the ones that were supposed to be replaced by the downloaded bits) This was again a lengthy step that took almost another hour. Fortunately the uninstallation was kinda smooth (uninstall of Toshiba HDD protection hung and I had to stop and restarted it. I googled and saw people mentioned much worse experience. For example, some users went through the uninstall but the subsequent reinstall failed and they were left with unusable laptops. After all, who would like to use a laptop without a working wireless driver?) Finally the actual upgrade started. And that's when I fell asleep. I woke up a few times to check on the progress and saw the prompt to enter license key at 2:30am. With Windows 7's bits in place, the upgrade assistant proceeded to re-install the downloaded stuff, which rebooted the computer a few times (and required me to enter my password) It's after 3am when everything was done.

Some critics argued that Windows 7 is more like a patch on top on Vista. I can't say I disagree but I do welcome the UI enhancement (in fact, I also liked the UI enhancements M$ made in Vista over XP)

Tech of the day: Mounting Windows shared drive on Ubuntu

As I mentioned in my previous post, Ubuntu 9.10 didn't work on my Toshiba Satellite P505 "out-of-the-box" but there are fixes available. I've tried it and it worked like a charm. All ACPI related functions, battery indicator, suspend, even the volume buttons, are working!

Even though I'm using too many Windows-only application too often, I do still boot into Ubuntu from time to time (for burning CDs, ripping DVD, for example) It will be useful to mount my shared drive from my Windows server. I thought my prior (2 year old) knowledge of using SMBFS/Samba would be applicable. Wrong! The latest technology for this is CIFS. And the synaptic package that contains CIFS is actually "smbfs"! (containing both SMBFS and CIFS) However, I still needed additional component (winbind) and followed these steps so that CIFS could resolve my Windows hostname. Again, it's not that hard to figure out but I still felt I have better use of my time.

Tech of the day: Facebook photo upload sucks

I just want to rant about my horrible experience with uploading photo to Facebook. No matter what I use: my 4 year old XP PC, brand new Vista PC, Ubuntu, in combination with IE or Firefox, I would run into the dreadful "Uploading failed" error from time to time. (Well, I had great success using the simple text/HTML form based interface but it doesn't preview the photo so it's a pain to use)

Yesterday I even tried Adobe's AIR-based Photo Uploader for Facebook. It's a hit-or-miss as well. And previewing photo was very slow with this tool.

I can't imagine no one has come up with a good solution to this common problem on a popular service but unfortunately that's the case after I googled.

Topic of the day: the coolest show in Vegas

I can't tell you which one is the hottest but I could tell you spray paint artists on the Strip are way cool. This is probably not the same one I saw but the technique is similar (the background music is great, of course):

Music of the day: Let's have a new start

I am in the mood of some good old Hong Kong pop as well as violin music and this album is the perfect fit for me. It features 13 tunes that are among the most popular songs in HK during the 80s and 90s, rearranged as orchestral music and performed by violinist Takako Nishizaki (西崎崇子) Nishizaki is one of the most beloved violinist in HK as she lives there and put in great effort in promoting classical music locally.

Topic of the day: a trade that involves 2 former Cy Young winners and .....

the son of a former Cy Young winner! I'm talking about the trade that sents Roy Halladay to Phillies and Cliff Lee to Mariners. This trade also sends Kyle Drabek, the son of Doug Drabek, to Toronto. Doug Drabek won his Cy Young in 1990 with the Pirates. Those were the last glory years for the Pirates! (yes, they still had Barry Bonds then and they went to NLCS 3 years in a row) I also remember his days with the Astros. For the Phillies, it doesn't seem like a big upgrade but it certainly does for the Mariners! Lee was such a dominating pitcher in this postseason. The Mariners have also added 3B Chone Figgin to their roster. The rest of the AL West gotta watch out.

Topic of the day: throwing stones into a well when someone fell into it

For those familiar with Chinese, you know my title comes from an old Chinese saying.
For those familiar with sports, you know who I am writing about.

They overspent. Then things went wrong. And they abandon their guys and fail to support. Sounds familiar? Well, that has always been the image of certain consulting firms. Nothing surprising here.

On the other hand, it actually makes more sense for a watch maker to cut ties with Tiger. After all, no one wants people to think of adulterer when they see the watch he wears! And it is unlike the brand of the shaving razor a guy uses, which is not publicly displayed normally. However, I won't be surprised if some ultra-image-conscious guys start to hide their Gillette razor when they expect ladies visiting.

東亞運足球冠軍

身為香港人，作為足球迷，對於香港隊榮獲金牌，當然感到興奮。

最不以為然的是，在東亞運開始時，傳媒戲稱香港擊敗的南韓隊為A貨，皆因成員多來自當地乙組聯賽。即使港隊奪冠後，香港討論區仍有不少網友（估計不是香港本地人）貶低這項賽事，酸葡萄味濃烈。我想提出幾點：
1)從討論區可見，大部份球迷都很理性，不會以為一場勝利就令香港足球重現當年雄霸亞洲球壇的風範，只會視為港足在低迷多年後向正確方向發展邁出了第一步而已。
2)其實參賽的各國隊伍皆以奧運或U21（21歲以下）隊為⻣幹，香港隊亦是U23，算不上精英盡出。
3)二線球員的比賽是否毫無意義？如果是，球迷不應慶祝己隊贏得聯賽盃或南美國家盃吧？

Topic of the day: any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God...

Article 6, section 8 of the North Carolina state constitution says: “The following persons shall be disqualified for office: First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.”

Yes, it's the current constitution. Yes, separation of church and state is a myth.

Well, not many people are aware of this until H.K. Edgerton, a former Asheville NAACP president, pointed this out when Cecil Bothwell, an atheist, won a city council election.

Topic of the day: Obama's gift to Hu

As a Go enthusiast, I'm surprised that I didn't read about this earlier. During Obama's recent visit to China, he gave a Go set to Hu Jintao as a gift! According to American Go Association [emphasis mine]:

When U.S. President Barack Obama met with Chinese Hu Jintao this week, he presented Hu with a go set that included an American-made go board and a set of Chinese jade stones contained in glass bowls from the West Coast of the United States. Beyond the simple political symbolism of an ancient asian game seamlessly melding Chinese and American craftsmanship, the choice of a go set – rather than, say, a Chinese chess set – gently raises timely geopolitical issues. "Perhaps this gift expresses the president's respect for China's long history," suggests American Go Association President Allan Abramson. “And that the traditional Western competitive model has room for the cooperation and balance so prized in go and China.” Whatever the political, diplomatic and economic ramifications, the gift set the world go community abuzz as word spread this week. Invented in China over 2,500 years ago, go is the world’s oldest continually-played board game, played by nearly 30 million worldwide. Considered one of a handful of classic board games – along with chess and checkers – go was included in last year’s first-ever World Mind Sports Games in Beijing, and the high-profile presentation of a go set by an American President is seen as a watershed moment in the history of the game in the United States. The board was handmade of Hawaiin koa, selected and crafted by North Carolina master carpenter Frank Salantrie – a 3-dan go player and longtime member of the American Go Association -- and has the presidential seal engraved on the back, along with President Obama's signature. The jade weiqi stones included in the President's gift were donated by professional go player Feng Yun, the former a member of the China National Weiqi (go) Team, who is now a United States citizen. The stones were presented to her many years ago in recognition of her contributions to the team in China, and she said she was “honored to give them to the President to present to President Hu and the Chinese people as an expression of continuing friendship between the United States and China."

It is indeed an interesting choice. Some even think that Obama wanted to show off his knowledge of Chinese culture (I think it's just conspiracy theory)

大國崛起？

看完這個廣告，大家有甚麼感想？我想廣告的創作人多多少少受到朗朗的影響吧。「潮」鋼琴家的Stereotype已由白人變為亞洲人，時代的確不同了。

Topic of the day: what you think is good for your kids might not matter after all

A friend posted this on his Facebook: The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting To me it's pretty much commonsense. I mean, it is never good to overdo anything. However, this quote might sound a bit depressing (or relieving, depends on what you have done):

Freakonomics authors Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt analyzed a Department of Education study tracking the progress of kids through fifth grade and found that things like how much parents read to their kids, how much TV kids watch and whether Mom works make little difference. "Frequent museum visits would seem to be no more productive than trips to the grocery store," they argued in USA Today. "By the time most parents pick up a book on parenting technique, it's too late. Many of the things that matter most were decided long ago — what kind of education a parent got, what kind of spouse he wound up with and how long they waited to have children."

Topic of the day: Magic The Gathering

I just learned about this game because its world championship was won by a team from China. This was the first time an Asian team won the team competition. There might be some truth in this old saying: "With the vast population of China, you should be able to form a team that win at any event" Well, maybe the FIFA World Cup is an excpetion.

Tech of the day: Second day with Toshiba Satellite P505

I am not ready to live without ACPI (or recompile the kernel) yet so I've decided to stick with Vista for the foreseeable future and default GRUB to boot into it. I have tinkered with GRUB before and I thought this would be easy. Wrong! Most info floating around is about the older version of GRUB but Ubuntu 9.10 comes with GRUB 1.97 beta (for documentation, looks for GRUB 2) So, I couldn't just edit /boot/grub/menu.lst, which correspond to entries on the GRUB menu, because it doesn't exist anymore! It was "superceded" by /boot/grub/grub.cfg, which users are not supposed to edit manually.

I ended up changing /etc/default/grub by setting GRUB_DEFAULT=saved and executed update-grub. Then I picked Vista from GRUB once and it remembered my choice.

Now that I'm back to Vista, reluctantly. The next thing is to get sound output through HDMI. [Update: I've tried it. That link mentioned choosing SPFIF but I could actually choose HDMI as my default Sound Output Device and it works.]

[Update 2: I've found some fixes that could replace the acpi=off workaround but I've yet to try them.]

Tech of the day: First day with Toshiba Satellite P505

My goal is to dual boot this desktop-replacement notebook with Windows 7 and Arch Linux. It actually comes with Windows Vista Home Premium (M$/Toshiba offers free upgrade to Win 7 but for some reason Toshiba's registration system is down so I'll try again later) According to instruction I googled, Vista provides a "Shrink" feature in its Disk Management but some reported it didn't work for them. I tried it and it shrunked my Vista partition from 360Gb to 180Gb, which leaves ~180Gb for Linux. I was so glad it worked out (but my euphoria was premature) Next I used Toshiba's recovery disc creator to create the recovery disc immediately (it is very possible that a simple mistake could render everything unusable) Finally, I put my Arch Linux (64 bit) installation CD in and rebooted. The first thing went wrong was that the installation requires network (I opted for the CD that does NOT include everything) Second, Arch's installer used cfdisk and it complained about "bad primary partition 2 partition ends in the final partial cylinder" And nobody has offered any good solution except for wiping the HDD!

So there we went. I rebooted with my newly created recovery DVD. I chose the option "Erase the hard disk" which led to 2 choices "delete all data and partitions from the hard disk" or "delete all partitions and overwrite all sectors on the hard disk" The latter is supposed to take a long time so I picked the former. Well, it takes a long time too (2 hr 15 mins) And it doesn't seem to be absolutely necessary from reinstalling Vista! Anyway, I picked the option that allowed me to pick the size of my partition (and I chose not to create an extra partition for System Recovery, i.e., will rely on my DVDs from now on) After it slowly created the partitions, I was prompted to insert the 3 DVDs one after another, for it to slowly copy all the files back. That took another hour. Finally it rebooted with Vista! And as usual, Vista needs to slowly set itself up. Just when I thought it's done, another Toshiba program took over for "configuring system" then reboot. This cycle has repeated so many times that it seems never ending. I think what it actually did was re-installing all those Toshiba's drivers (noticed the screen went from lo-res to hi-res) Anyway, another hour of my life was wasted on this. I knew it's done when Vista asked me to create a new user account.

Now it's ready for another attempt to install Arch, using the "core" CD which does not rely on FTP to complete the install. And this time the installer (or cfdisk) didn't complain about the partitions and the installation went all the way 'til completion. Happy ending? Well, far from it. For one thing, networking required setup. I was smart enough to start with wired networking. Even that didn't work out of the box and after lots of googling (the Wiki suggests to use hwdetect, which wasn't installed and without access to the net I have no way to install it! The Wiki also suggested dhclient instead of dhcpcd. Again, no internet no installation!)

So it's time to try a different distro. Before that, I preferred to clean out Arch first by blowing away the 2 partitions (root and swap) on my HDD, and took out GRUB from the MBR. The latter was actually trickier that I thought on Vista: I had to reboot with my Toshiba Recovery DVD and choose Recovery Console from one of the Recovery Options. Once in the console, execute: bootrec.exe /FixMbr

Next, I reluctantly went with the popular and familiar, Ubuntu. (I think Canonical drops support on releases way too soon so users need to keep updating in order not to left behind. On the other hand, users who update too soon could run into their own problems, see below) Ubuntu 9.10 was right out of Canonical's "door!" Again, installation went well, as it has always been. And again, trouble started when I tried to get network working! To troubleshoot, I enlisted the help of Arch's Wiki (yeah, the same steps work for both Arch and Ubuntu) and found that my Ethernet adapter uses the module atl1c. Looked for this in dmesg and I saw a bunch of errors related to ACPI (also caused Wireless adapter to fail) So, the workaround is to disable ACPI (here is how) Or try compiling the newer kernel. After 12 hours of tinkering with it, enough is enough and I called it a night.

Tech of the day: Google Chrome OS

Here is the simplest explanation: if your next computer runs Chrome OS, basically all it has is a browser.

It might sound strange for those who are used to old-school computing. However, this is my daughter's perception of computing:



Yes, it's a full-screen browser with a Google logo. (She made this at school without any input from me. )

If you think about how you use your computer, what applications are running most of the time, in addition to your browser? Maybe an e-mail client if you're not using web mail already? Maybe a word processor if you're not using Google Doc already? Maybe a media player if you're not consuming your media through the Flash-plugin of your browser already?

Suddenly Chrome OS is making a lot of sense huh?

Music of the day: Songbird

I'm sure Kenny G's original version does not need further recommendation. This is an interesting cover version featuring Bonfiglio on harmonica accompanied by violin.

拳王再闖高峰

早幾個月提過來自菲律賓的拳王Manny Pacquiao，昨日再贏一場冠軍賽，成為第一位分別在七個重量組別奪冠的拳王，認真威水！


Fast forward此片5分鐘可見拳王如何技術擊倒對手。

Music of the day: more jazz violin

After the Regina Carter concert, I went to another jazz violin show: Mads Tolling Quartet at Yoshi's SF. I heard a tune from his latest album "The Playmaker" on the radio and was immediately impressed so I listened to his 2 albums on Rhapsody and went to his concert. It is not exactly the classic jazz violin sound that I enjoy so much (i.e., Stephane Grappelli) His sound is more fusion like, which I also found very interesting. For some reason I had a feeling he would end the concert with his Led Zeppelin cover, "Black Dog," and I was right!

I found it interesting that so many jazz violinist are from Europe, like Mads Tolling. Through the Jazz violin tag radio on Last.fm, I've also listened to other Europeans like Mateusz Smoczynski, Zbigniew Seifert, last but not least, the great Jean-Luc Ponty. I heard his live version of "Cantelope Island" on radio and it was fabulous.

I should also mention that Mads Tolling is a violinist of the most well-known jazz string quartet in the world: Turtle Island String Quartet. In fact, I have not heard of any other jazz string quartet until I heard Quartet San Francisco playing Dave Brubeck on the radio! If you like jazz string quartet, please also check out Basquiat Strings.

Book of the month: Stradivari's Genius

This book started with the history of violin making from the earliest days, with special focus on the greatest violin maker of all time: Antonio Stradivari. Then it traced the ownerships and famous players of six of Stradivari's masterpieces: 5 violins and 1 cello. One might think it must be boring to read such history but the opposite is true. This books read like a novel, with unexpected twist at the end! This is a must-read for all violin lovers.

Musicians of the day: The Power Triplets

The name of this band says it all: this is a trio that plays really powerful fusion and instrumental rock music, that reminds me of the work by Frank Gambale, Stu Hamm, Steve Smith, Joe Satriani and Billy Sheehan. That's a very good company! Here is a link to their tracks on Rhapsody.

Topic of the day: annoying commercials

Dunno about you but I really found that UPS Whiteboard commercial quite annoying because I don't like the way that guy tries to act smart. Well, it turns out that guy is probably quite smart 'coz he was actually one of the advertising agency executives responsible for coming up with that commercial! No wonder he looks natural when he drew stuff on the white board.

Music of the day: Classical and Flamenco guitar

I've just discovered this online streaming radio station from Sky.fm.

So far I've heard the usual suspects: Strunz and Farah, Jesse Cook, Lara and Reyes, Carlos Montoya. Well, more flamenco/new age than classical. Anyway, not bad for a Sunday morning.

Tech of the day: I hate time zone!

I have spent the past few hours on one issue: trying to insert a timestamp with time zone properly represented into Oracle through JDBC without success.

I started with using a DATE column in Oracle and a straighforward JdbcTemplate update method with Types.TIMESTAMP passed as the type. A timestamp like 2009-10-29 09:30 GMT+2 is stored as 2009-10-29 00:30, which is correct because my client and Oracle server both runs on PDT. Ideally I would rather store the timestamp in GMT, i.e., 2009-10-29 07:30. Alternatively, it would still be OK if I could store time zone into the database as well, i.e., using Oracle's TIMESTAMP WITH LOCAL TIME ZONE datatype (btw, I can't use TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE if I want to use this column as the partition key!) Unfortunately, JdbcTemplate update for some reason stores it as 2009-10-28 05:30 PDT (i.e., it treated 2009-10-29 00:30 as a GMT time!)

It drove me crazy until I found this article from someone who has the same problem and provided a solution:

The resultSet.s[g]etTimeStamp method has an overloaded cousin, that takes a Calendar parameter.

To use this, you will also need to invoke a different cousin of JdbcTemplate's update which takes a PreparedStatementSetter and override the latter.

Music of the day: RTHK2 Oldies

今日太太介紹聽香港電台第二台，我說這裡日間時段正是香港半夜，播的都是老餅歌，她說都可以聽啊。

於是我裝了iPhone App FStream，輸入了一堆URL，聽了：
關菊英-過客(無線同名電視劇主題曲)
葉振棠-勝利雙手創(亞洲電視劇「我來自潮州」主題曲，改編自紅極一時的台語歌「愛拼才會贏」)
張德蘭-愛的短箭(無線電視劇「家有嬌妻」主題曲）

的確好適合我這個老餅。

Topic of the day: Governator dropped The bomb

You have probably seen Arnold Schwarzenegger dropping bombs all the time in his action movies. This time he dropped the F-bomb, albeit a subtle one, in his message to legislators.

Interesting politics and politicians with guts? Yes! That's possible!

甚麼是好逸惡勞？

香港政府為協助大學畢業生就業推出「大學畢業生實習計畫」資助內地企業提供一千個實習空缺，但反應並不熱烈。居然有人批評這證明香港人好逸惡勞：

中原人力資源顧問董事總經理周綺萍批評，兩個月來僅吸引兩成畢業生北上實習，是反應冷淡，更反映本港大學畢業生好逸惡勞。她指內地工作機會相當難求，現時政府親自出馬拉攏內地大企業，大學生仍無動於衷，抗拒長時間駐內地工作，只求本地舒服安樂工作。盛智晉薈國際顧問公司行政總裁李彥樺指，香港大學生為怕辛苦，的確浪費政府一番心意。

我認為這是絕對不負責任的講法。為甚麼一個城市／地區的人不願離鄉別井去外地工作就等同懶惰？一家人想在香港齊齊整整就是罪過？觀乎世界各地，凡有大量年青人必須離鄉別井去外地工作方能維持生計的地區，經濟必定有嚴重問題，往往是政府經濟政策失敗之故。

再講，整個「大學畢業生實習計畫」背後的動機昭然若揭，無非是為美化失業率，為當權者面上貼金！

Topic of the day: pseudo-maternity leave for women without children

A survey in England found that 74 percent of women surveyed agree employer should give women equivalent of maternity leave even though they are not having babies

So, it's about fairness, right? Well, that should include men then.

To be honest, I think the result is kinda useless. After all, if you ask, who wouldn't want to have more paid time off?

Musician of the day: Jenny Scheinman

I am totally in the mood of jazz violin, after listening to Chris Church (from Jesse Cook's band) and Regina Carter last week. And I "discovered" Scheinman from Ben Allison's latest CD Think Free(BTW, Allison has always put out interesting music and this CD is no exception) Now I'm listening to her CD The Rabbi's Lover.

Music of the day: Rain Day

This song is the perfect description of the weather today. It came from new Flamenco guitarist Jesse Cook's latest album, The Rumba Foundation. I saw him playing with his band at Yoshi's last week. They sounded even better live. His music might not have a lot of depth. Even he admitted it was commercial stuff but all I care was that its beautiful music. I was surprised to see that his band featured a violinist, Chris Church. His playing fitted very well, by providing a whimsical atmosphere. Their show had lots of variety too: some songs are duet between two guitars, some are guitar + percussion. And there was of course a solo guitar piece by Cook.

Here is the Rhapsody link

Musicians of the day: Rodrigo y Gabriela

I missed their concert at Oakland a few weeks ago because of time conflict :( It's a group I really want to see playing live. Check out this NPR interview, about their special style:

Topic of the day: What's the IQ of your city?

Yup, you read it correctly. A web site called the Daily Beast came up with a survey to determine how smart people in all US cities are [via SFGate] SF Bay Area ranks #2. #1 belongs to Raleigh-Durham. Congrat to my friends living there! (You know who you are :D)

Topic of the day: Violin Hero

I was curious whether a Guitar-hero-like game exists for violin. I can't believe such thing indeed exists! However, it had been discontinued for a long time. I guess it wasn't that successful. There seems to be a market though, judging by Facebook having a Violin Hero group with 500+ members.

Album of the day: Endgame

For those who defended Metallica by saying they can't make any progress by staying true to their roots (and the spirit of thrash metal), they should look at what Megadeth is doing (or as a matter of fact, what Metallica was doing in their latest album "Death Magnetic") This is a perfect example of a great band that never sell out. It opens with an instrumental that reminds me of the golden days of heavy metal guitar shredding. And it only gets better from there.

Musicians of the day: Taylor Swift and Kanye West

This is a followup to yesterday's topic. So I found one interesting thing they did in common (besides singing, obviously) Both of them have a song named after a person. Kanye's song is "Barry Bonds" (in which he compares himself to Barry with both being arrogant) Swift's song is "Tim McGraw" (about an ex-boyfriend whom she hope would think of her when he listens to the famous country singer Tim McGraw)

BTW, Taylor Swift composed her own songs and wrote her own lyrics (and she played guitar too) I guess it doesn't mean much to Kanye, whose music is arguably much more mature with topics about current affairs and social issues. Still, she's better than those idols with zero ounce of creativity. I'm not trying to defend her but anyone should be allowed to create music, no matter how bad it is. If bad music ended up being popular, there is a problem with the listening (and paying) audiences.

Topic of the day: What Obama said about Kanye

It has been an interesting week for those who likes controversies (and things that people said near a mic) Let me recap: at last week's Video Music Award show, teen-pop/country singer Taylor Swift got the Best Female Video award. While she was accepting her award, rapper Kanye West jumped on the stage, grabbed the mic and pronounced that Beyonce's video was the best (i.e., more deserving of the award that Swift) Before an interview with the media, President Obama casually commented on the incident by saying Kanye was a jackass. Some in the media thinks that this should stay off-record but apparently some ignore the practice and tweeted this so now everybody knows. Fortunately, it isn't that big a deal because (1) most people would agree with Obama on this, and (2) Obama is a brother so his comment wasn't considered racist. Interestingly, you could look at Kanye's comment from the racial perspective too.

Anyway, what Kanye did probably helped Swift more than hurting her. If this didn't happen, I probably would not have checked out her award winning video on YouTube. I gotta admit it's really cheesy (both the video and the lyrics) Just like her other popular song "Love Story" Still, it was inappropriate for Kanye to do that on stage. I'd rather hear him analyze why Swift is no good in a rational manner off stage.

Tech of the day: Apple and security

Apple supporters always bragged about how secure their devices are. Well, that might not apply to the iPhone. After upgrading to iPhone's latest firmware (3.1), lots of Exchange users complain they can't sync with their iPhone anymore. It's because the latest firmware finally honor the "Encryption required" setting of Exchange accounts. Therefore, older models of iPhone that do not support such encryption (i.e., those prior to 3GS) are disallowed to sync with such accounts.

It also means that prior to the release of this firmware, users of these older models might think that encryption was enforced but it wasn't the case! No wonder why critics keep saying Apple is still not very adaptive to corporate/business usages.

Topic of the day: That Wells Fargo Foreclosure executive

By now most of us have heard about the story of a foreclosed property in the expensive Malibu neighbourhood being used by a VP of foreclosure department of the bank that owns the property, Wells Fargo. (She was fired by Wells Fargo) I suspected that came into light because the neighbours did not think she belong to the community. Apparently I was not alone (guess what's her race?)

Star of the day: Patrick Swayze

Patrick Swayze died of cancer yesterday. Most people will probably remember him for the movies "Dirty Dancing" and "Ghosts." These two are certainly among my favourite movies.

RIP.

Topic of the day: Who is Syko Sam?

According to news report, this guy is a fan of the horrorcore genre (a sub-genre of rap that is about, of course, horror) He was arrested for killing a female friend he made on MySpace.

Well, crime as a result of meeting people on MySpace is no longer news. What else makes this story more eye-catching? (1) He is portrayed as a rapper. I guess anyone who rap qualifies as a rapper, professional or not. (2) When he was asked how he committed the crime by a reporter, he responded, "Jesus told me to do it."

So, I am pretty sure there will be tons of comments condemning his musical preference and his religion.

Game of the day: China won Venice Cup

Congratulations to the Chinese Women Bridge Team! They have won the 2009 world championship, aka Venice Cup.

Topic of the day: Will Bay Bridge become Bridge City?

I've just read about an idea of turning the abandoned portion of the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge into a new neighborhood. It certainly sounds very futuristic (sci-fi!) but I wonder how practical it is. After all, that portion was replaced because of concerns about its ability to withstand earthquake.

Topic of the day: self-esteem and entitlement

I learned very early in my life that it is a competitive world. You study hard and you get ahead. You achieve something and you get rewarded for it.

These day, our world is no less competitive (if no more) but things seems to be taught differently: No matter you study hard or you slack off, you won't be left behind. Nothing seems to be more important than protecting kids' self-esteem (and their fragile little ego) If they play games, no one wins or loses. Everyone got praised for participation. As a result, I've seen kids got really upset when they lose in a game.

And I have seen a worse trend. Everybody thinks they deserve a lot before they have achieved anything. Cases in point:
1) American Footballer Michael Crabtree, the 10th overall pick in the 2009 NFL draft, refused to sign with the team that drafted him (San Francisco 49er) because he thought he deserved more money than the 7th pick (since he thought he was a better player) Well, I think I am a better player than David Beckham and some teams need to offer me better money than him to sign me.
Nevertheless, I hope this saga continues because (1) 49er is screwed by not having the player whom they need to contribute right away and (2) judging from players who made troubles before like Crabtree, they never live up to the expectation. I have a personal bias against him because his catch ruined Longhorn's season last year!

BTW, he reminded me of J.J.Stokes, another 10th pick by 49er, who was expected to be a great player (and wasn't close to becoming one) And I was not the only one.

2) Spainish basketballer Ricky Rubio, the 5th pick in NBA draft, also refused to come to the States to play for Minnesota Timberwolves. He is staying in Spain instead. Read what he said:

Going to Minnesota would have just complicated my life a lot. It was a risk and I didn’t see it so clearly...... My priority was the NBA and it was impossible for the Minnesota Timberwolves to pay my buyout clause, so I wanted to stay home......When the season ended, I entered the draft with the intention of going to the NBA, but some things happened that kept me from being ahead of the rest and I ended up No. 5, which I was happy with, but it didn’t allow me the chance to go to the NBA. I tried, but in the end it wasn’t to be.

Nothing happened that kept him from being drafted higher than No. 5 (except the 4 other players whom other teams considered as lower risks) If he really wants to play for the Wolves in the NBA, he would have found a way to pay his buyout clause. It just sounds like he wants to play for a better team and have more money! I don't really care if he comes to NBA or not. There are lots of exciting players to watch already.

Book of the day: The Dead Sea Scroll Deception

While I visit ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) in Toronto earlier this month, the main attraction was the Dead Sea Scroll exhibition. It was indeed intriguing to read about text written two millenniums ago. Of course we only skimmed through the exhibit (and managed to look at each of the scrolls in display) because the kids lost patience quickly. The first thing I did when I'm back home is to find some books about it. And I figured it would be more interesting to read the conspiracy theory about it than the official version. And indeed, this book was a good read. The official theory is that the community that created the Dead Sea scroll was a peaceful group that was isolated from the mainstream of Jewish society. However, the authors of this book argued (based on other scholars' research) that this community was very connected to the mainstream and they were armed to oppose the Roman, which ruled that region at that time. In addition, what they documented was the early history of the Christian community and the church. The most important point was what Jesus preached was not much different from the Jewish tradition. It was his disciples who broke away from the tradition and started a whole new religion in the name of Jesus. While I wasn't completed convinced by the way they came up with this conclusion, I totally believe this is a possibility. (Just like any religion. The founder is very unlikely to come up with everything. Indeed, the founder might not have realized s/he has started a new religion!)

Anyway, the authors did mention a noble intention of writing this book: they wanted to show that the Judaism, Christianity and Islam have more in common than we thought. Hopefully people will get this point and learn to coexist peacefully in the middle east. Sadly, the book was written in 1991 and there was no improvement after almost 20 years.

Game of the day: the finale of the Giants-Rockies series

By defeating the Rockies in this game, the Giants swept the series and tied with them for the wild card lead. I don't care if they could make the playoff eventually. Seeing them playing meaningful games in late August already made me happy enough.

It might not have been the most exciting sports competition during the weekend though. That title could belong to one of the 2 auto races: the indy car race in Chicagoland and the NASCAR Nationwide series race in Montreal. Both races featured winners who came from behind in the last seconds. Both were indeed dramatic victories.

On yeah, the MotoGP races in Indianapolis on Sunday morning was not bad either.

Topic of the day: Microsoft and the Photoshopped ad scandal

By now many of you must have read about this story(the linked article has both pictures): the US version of a Microsoft IT ad features 3 people: an Asian guy, an black guy and a white lady. However, in the Poland version of it, the image has been altered (most likely by using photo-editing software) so that a white man's head is put in place of the black man.

Is this racism? Some say yes and some say no. To me, it looks unprofessional to edit the photo if all you want is localize your ad. Is it that hard to find some Polish folks to create a new ad? And having the variety in the US version is simply for political correctness anyway.

The most interesting point to me though, is that they choose to retain the Asian guy. Why? Some say it has to do with the stereotype that Asian guys are good at IT!

Tech of the day: User agent

I have been a long-time (paid) subscriber of a popular newspaper and I have always used HTTRACK (the open-source website copier, ideal for offline browsing) as well as my browser to read the PDA version (which has a real clean UI to speed up browsing) even though the "official" way to access it is thru another closed-source website copier iSiloX.

My ways of usage have been working fine until yesterday, when the newspaper's website started to refuse access from any client other than iSiloX. Of course it is implemented by checking the user agent. And of course, this is very easy to defeat: (1) for HTTRACK, just add the command line option -F "iSiloX/4.37 Windows/32" (2) for Firefox, just install the user agent switcher plugin and add the aforementioned user agent string.

Even though it is so easy to defeat, I'm still not pleased. As a paid subscriber, shouldn't I be allowed to access the information in ways that I preferred (and these are ways that won't jeopardize their profit a single bit)? It wouldn't be long until I decide to cancel my subscription.

Stars of the day: Toronto Nationals

Congrat to the Nationals (not baseball's Washington Nationals) for winning the Major League Lacrosse Championship! I guess Toronto hasn't have a championship team for a while. The most recent I remember was the Blue Jays winning the world series 15+ years ago. They did it by beating the #1 seed so they certainly deserve every bit of the championship.

It also means that there won't be any pro lacrosse game until the end of the year when the indoor league resumes. Can't wait!

Tech of the day: Twitter spam

I was asked by a friend why all of a sudden he's got a bunch of people following him on Twitter. He has never updated his Twitter after he joined.

Well, the first thought came to my mind is of course: spammer! The twist is: by following you on Twitter, they can't spam you yet 'coz while they see your update as a follower, you don't see their update because you're not following them.

And the last part was the key! In the early days of Twitter, when you follow a friend (or just an acquitance), s/he usually follows you back as a courtesy. I guess the spammers are hoping that you would still do that. (Apparently PBS came to the same conclusion prior to I did)

So, don't just blindly follow anyone who followed you (of course you could always unfollow a user if you did it by mistake)

每週一噏：監人賴厚

今天拜讀何政協《零分見誰才是失敗者》一文，才學會平時大家口頭講的「監人乃後」應寫作「監人賴厚」。雖然我常常犯這個毛病（解作勉強別人做自己喜歡的事），我卻甚少用這個詞語，對其出處十分好奇。Google過不得要領，即管試試自己解解：「監人」指强迫人；「厚」可解作喜歡；只是個「賴」字有點難解，可能解作傾向吧。

順帶一提，這個詞語相信由來已久，且看這條1947年的片，薛覺先（著名粵劇老倌）的對白就用上了。

Tech of the day: Adding a printer in Arch Linux

We have a network printer which we identified using an IP address. There are quite a few steps to add this printer to Windows XP. One would imagine it would be much harder on Arch. Well, It can't be easier! Here were my steps (thanks to these instructions):
1) install the following using pacman
pacman -S cups ghostscript gsfonts gutenprint

2) start the CUPS daemon
/etc/rc.d/cups start

3) hit the admin page
http://localhost:631

4) add the printer
you just need to give your printer a name, location, description. Since this is a network printer, use the AppSocket Protocol, i.e., specify the Device URI as:
socket://[the printer's IP address]

So easy! However, this is the first time I agree with the people who complain about Linux using cryptic names. There's no way I could tell CUPS is used for configuring printing before I see what it stands for (Common UNIX Printing System)

Tech of the day: correct backspace in Emacs

I wrote about trying out Zile as my Emacs replacement the other day. For some reason Ctrl-K doesn't work so I went thru the pain of installing all dependencies for Emacs and finally got it running. Life is good except backspace is acting like Ctrl-D. Backspace is notoriously problematic for Emacs but the problem was usually that it acts like Ctrl-H! Well, I did find my fix. Just add this to .emacs:
(global-set-key [backspace] 'delete-backward-char)

Music of the day: Flamingo

What could be more inspiring after a violin lesson than listening to the works of some great violin master? That's exactly what KCSM (our local jazz station) did for me today, by playing Stephane Grappelli's Flamingo.