Epiphone artists interviewed

I received a ton of newsletters in my Inbox everyday. Other than the ones from online stores I shopped from, I also got a few from guitar or effect pedal manufacturer of which contests I entered (and I never won any free equipment :( ) I actually enjoy the ones from guitar maker Epiphone quite a lot. My first guitar was an Epiphone SG Junior (that I still play whenever I am with it) And I did "win" something from them back then: it's a promotion with guitar instruction video (yes, in VHS!) that they gave away gig bag ("official" one with the Epiphone logo!) So you may say I'm partial to the brand. Their newsletters usually feature interviews of musicians who play Epiphone guitar. You might be surprised by the big names (not playing the "big brother" brand Gibson instead!) Jazz/blues master Robben Ford is one of them. Jeff Waters of Canadian thrash metal legend Annihilator is another. The part I found especially interesting was when he talked about running into musicians influenced by him. Personally I have run into a guy who listened to my band before without knowing I was the one in the YouTube clip. And I have also found a cover-version of our song on the internet before! And Robben Ford's interview got me really interested in the 1966 Epiphone Rivera he plays. He actually recorded an entire album, "Bringing it Back Home", with just this guitar, hoping to capture that one sound.

皇后大道東

羅大佑真係未卜先知，當年一首「皇后大道東」己經預言:

知己一聲拜拜遠去這都市
要靠偉大同志搞搞新意思
照買照賣樓花處處有單位
但是旺角可能要換換名字

有了屍爬及自由行之後，偉大同志們都說香港沒有他們早已玩完。
旺角火車站的確被改了名字。題外話：其實兩鐵合併，應該兩站一齊改名，不然只改歷史較短的地鐵站名才對！

Sports highlights: F1, MotoGP, NASCAR, T20 World Cup

Many sports competitions have started their 2014 seasons finally. Formula 1 started two weekends ago in Australia, which translates to a 3:30 am start time. I was not sure if I was gonna watch but I woke up without an alarm so I guess I wanted subconsciously. And it was not a bad race. To me, the major reason NOT to watch was that the 4-time defending champ Sebastian Vettel seemed to win every race. Not this one though 'coz something was wrong with his car early on. So did Lewis Hamilton's car. That left only 3 former champs competing with the rest of the field. Still, not too much competition up front: Nico Rosberg won for Mercedes easily. The local guy Daniel Ricciardo finished behind Rosberg and got the crowd really excited (However, he was disqualified because the fuel flow exceeded the rate allowed by the rule and his team refused to change after receiving warning from the officials. The owner of his team seemed really upset when things don't go in his favor. Oh yeah, his other driver is Vettel. To be honest, it's not fair when the governing body came up with rules against your team: e.g, favoring engine power over aerodynamics, which has been Red Bull's strength, but as a spectator I don't wanna see the same guy winning all the time. Anyway, saying things like this sounds just like a cry baby) And a rookie, Kevin Magnussen, finished third (bumped up to 2nd after Ricciardo's DQ) It's too early to tell if there's more parity this new season but I'm keeping my finger crossed.

Compared to F1, NASCAR seems like it's mid-season already with 5 races in the books, one exciting finish after another. Maybe the rule change was a good thing: it made the already-competitive drivers battled even harder for the win. And the normally nothing-goes-wrong #48 team got a flat tire late in the race while leading at the Fontana race. It ended with a Green-White-Checker finish: the same Toyota driver, Kyle Busch, won on Toyota's "home track" 2 years in a row.

MotoGP just had its first race of the 2014 season at Qatar last weekend. It was a duel between the young defending champ, Marc Marquez, and the legend, Valentino Rossi, at the end.

I didn't know it's a world cup year (Cricket Twenty20 that is) until my friend told me Hong Kong defeated Bangladesh during the last first-round group match. It's kinda like Australia upsetting England in the soccer world, I guess. And the result didn't affect which team advance to the next round (the latter did) Still, a win is a win. Looking forward to watching more 2nd round group and knockout stage matches!

Last but not least, the 2014 MLB season has also started, again, in Australia (Sydney Cricket Ground) with the Dodgers vs the D-backs at 1am PDT Saturday. This time I did set an alarm just to watch it and had to endure a ~40 min of rain delay! Since I was up after the game anyway, I ended up watching the Arsenal vs Chelsea game too. However, it's too sad for me to continue after the gunners went down 0-3 (the last one involved a red card that should not have been given. And it was given to the wrong player! How bizarre!)

Real Disasters

It seems like sad news of disasters came one after another: first it was Malaysia Airline 370 went missing. Then 100+ were missing after the mudslide in the Washington state. That really puts things in perspective. Losing 0-6 to Chelsea didn't seem that bad any more. The media misuses the word disastrous a bit too much.

霸氣十足的中國電視觀眾

據報導，南韓首爾大學一篇研究中國電視觀眾品味的論文，被指提到「低收入和低學歷觀眾喜歡看韓劇」，引起大陸一群韓劇迷不滿，集體在南韓報章登廣告，要求撰寫論文的教授道歉。

學術自由也不懂尊重，是否正反映其水平呢？

這篇文章詳細介紹該教授及其他批評韓劇的觀點，值得一讀。

IndyCar has got a new title sponsor

Can't believe I missed this piece of big news all weekend and only learned about it on the intranet on Monday! This is very exciting: IndyCar is now Verizon IndyCar. (Some news reports keep mentioning Verizon Wireless. Hey, Verizon still has wireline business! It's the "mothership" who got the title!) Among all title sponsors in recent years, Verizon has the biggest marketing muscle and IndyCar has got a much needed lift. To be honest, at this point IndyCar has nowhere to go but up (not my opinion. I read from a comment on this piece of news) I believe it's a win-win for both parties: it's reported that Verizon will be contributing 10 millions (half in cash) Most major sports sponsorships cost more than that! In fact, Nationwide insurance pays double that to sponsor the 2nd tier series of NASCAR! And of course, the top tier of NASCAR's title sponsor is none other than Verizon's competitor: Sprint. I think that motivates Verizon to step up its game. After all, Sprint forced Verizon out of NASCAR completely with its exclusive deal (Verizon used to sponsor #12 team of Penske at Nationwide. When Verizon was forced out, the victim was Justin Allgaier who lost his Penske ride and ended up with a team with less resources) Another thing interesting about this deal is that team Penske has been sponsored by Verizon for the last few years. The #12 car driven by Will Power was so close to winning the championship a few times but fell short. For the 2014 season Verizon will also be sponsoring the #2 Team Penske car driven by former F1 and Indy 500 Winner Juan Pablo Montoya. I expect him to be very competitive and a favorite to win the championship as he's still one of the best driver in the world. Oh well, no matter who wins, Verizon will get the spotlight being the title sponsor. I'm looking forward to a successful IndyCar season, which would benefit motorsports in US in general! (The third important motorsports series in US is already sponsored by Tudor so I don't think AT&T could join the party soon :P)

培正和舊金山

一直以來都知兩者頗有淵源：不少培正校友移民或升學之後定居該地。作為培正人，小時候不知在勝利道一帶甩掉多少腳毛，竟然到最近巧合在維基百科看香港街道名，才知那裡有一條舊金山徑。以下摘自報章：

勝利道一帶的街名別具革命和外國色彩，何解呢？這要從梭椏（Soares）先生講起。Soares是葡萄牙普遍的大姓，於1925年一位名為Francisco Soares的葡萄牙開發者，用其姓氏為「梭椏道」命名。他更以自由、勝利、太平幾個與第一次世界大戰有關的詞語，作為此區的街名。另外，因其名字部分與美國城市「San Francisco」相若，於是採用了當時中文「舊金山」的翻譯，將梭椏道與勝利道中間的小巷稱做舊金山徑（San Francisco Path）。而他的太太Emma和女兒Julia同樣榜上有名，譯音後化身成梭椏道旁的艷馬道和棗梨雅道。

 如此翻譯地名，的確有點馮京作馬涼的味道（麻雀館英文譯作mahjong school一樣耐人尋味）

A day-ful of Ingrid Jensen

It's the international women's day so it's perfect time to play music from female jazz musicians. I prefer instrumental music and one of the biggest name in big band yet I seldom listen to is Maria Schneider (she decided not to license her music to streaming/download services)

Found this video of her band performing Ivan Lins' composition, Lembra de Mim
The first horn soloist appeared in the video was Ingrid Jensen. I actually first learned about her today! And coincidentally the local jazz station KCSM played a few tunes she played on, including Vernal Fields from her album with the same title at 11:51AM, and Hope Springs Eternally from Helen Sung's album Anthem for a new day at 5:14PM. (KCSM also played an Ivan Lins' tune Comecar De Novo from the album Juntos at 12:40PM too. Things certainly came full circle today!)

Data Cruncher Uses Code to Solve NYC’s Problems

I read this article from the Wired magazine while having my froyo break. I was fairly impressed even though there wasn't much detail about what that female programmer did exactly. In any case, it was a good thing done by our profession and definitely deserved some credits. I guess I'm really easy to please 'coz judging from the comments on the linked articles, a lot of readers were not impressed. I do agree with one of them: some mission critical systems (like the ones used in hospital) could be so buggy that a whole team of programmers are dedicated to fixing bugs and basically performing the heroics mentioned in the article all the time!

現今的地下黨員應汗顏

蒲開油麻地的朋友可能見過「實用書局」的名字，原來創辦人龍良臣上世紀三十年代已支持共產主義，被指為共產黨地下黨員，他開辦書局賣共產書籍，又將大宅改建學校貢獻社會，當然不容於當時執政的國民黨，其後南下香港，1947年在廣東道創立「求實出版社」，五十年代遷至當時書局林立的西洋菜南街易名「實用書局」，他在書店開闢小室，供書生住宿，方便寫作又印書，30年前遷至油麻地彌敦道麗星大廈的樓上舖，可惜近年生意慘淡，今年六月將結業。

龍良臣及「實用書局」的故事十分具傳奇性。他比起今時今日的親共媚共或所謂地下黨員只知揾著數，人格高尚得多。

Links: 1, 2

劉星中阮

為打發時間上討論區，讀的十之八九為無聊帖，不過偶爾也會因此讀到一些好文，得到一點有用資訊知識，也就不算浪費了時間。有個很少上的中樂版，有名為HKCO（莫非HK Chinese Orchesra官方?）的版友常常發帖連結到相關文章，例如這篇提到以中阮作品《雲南隨想》聞名的作曲家劉星改編自己作品所面對的挑戰，實在有趣。其實中阮這件彈撥樂器可算冷門（和二胡琵琶等相比），著名作品當然不多，自不然就想到劉星。最後，發表原文的頭條日報值得一讚。

旺角行人專用區與街頭文化

旺角女人街一帶是我從中學年代開始已經常蒲的地方，熟悉有感情，從來都是人頭湧湧。成為行人專用區早期，更覺那裡好行。之後由週末擴展至七天，但隨著易拉架推銷黨、影相黨及各樂隊樂團入侵佔領，反而變得嘈吵又難行，非常擾民，最近當局終於取消該區七天行人專用，只餘週末，又成為一個具爭議性的話題。

趕絕推銷及影相黨相信反對意見不多，剩下來值得討論的，是應否支持樂隊樂團？作為業餘音樂人，我也感到有點矛盾。我親身及在網上電視聽過看過不少他們的演出，有些唱老餅國語歌，有些翻唱廣東流行曲，例如SMS樂隊唱Beyond名曲，算是頗有名氣；都不覺得怎樣出色，對於老餅歌有大班粉絲更是不以為然。（BTW，看過電視節目訪問成員威哥才知SMS是解作Sing My Songs，可是只見到他們唱別人的歌！可能也有原創作品只是無人留意？）但那只是個人主觀意見，坦白說沒有甚麼準則，若說翻玩別人作品我不支持，也不成立，皆因如果有Flamenco結他手或中樂團表演傳統樂曲，我必定舉腳贊成。

講到尾，這個層次的音樂，縱然稱不上藝術，也總算是街頭文化，在音量不至擾民的情況下，警方也無謂太過打壓。希望他們能找到一個平衡點，玩的有得玩，聽者有得聽，居民有得耳根清淨，那就皆大歡喜。

Sports highlights: Daytona 500, UFC 170

I was really looking forward to this weekend because it's NASCAR's season opener, Daytona 500, which happened to be the biggest event of the whole sports. Among all sports, NASCAR probably has the shortest off-season. Still, I had waited for 3 months! The other big event for me was UFC 170 featuring Rhonda Rousey vs Sara McMann as the main event. It has been a little less than 2 months since Rousey's last fight. I am happy about the winners of both: Daytona 500 won by Dale Earnhardt Jr and Rhonda Rousey successfully defended her title. However, the road to victory cannot be more different between them: Junior hasn't won a race since two years ago. And before this victory, he had exactly two W since 2008! Yet he was the most popular driver among fans 11 years in a row, mostly because of his last name. Anyone could see how much pressure was on him. The amount of frustration must have been through the roof! On the other hand, Rhonda Rousey has been undefeated in UFC. She dominated her opponents most of the time and scoring 1st round victory one after another (until her Dec 2013 fight in which she needed 3 rounds) She TKO-ed her opponent (who was well-rested compared to her) in the 1st round again this time. Junior had to "fight" really hard among all those great drivers who were front-runners towards the end of the race: Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Brad Keselowski, Danny Hamlin (they were either former Daytona 500 winners, former NASCAR series champs or driver on a hot streak!) Even though he was leading the race late, he had to restart perfectly to hold off the competition several times after wrecks/cautions. It's certainly no fluke as Junior finished close to the top many times during the past few seasons which showed how good he was.

I also watched a bit of Winter Olympics (mostly hockey and curling) but certainly nothing as dramatic as the above.

RIP Helen von Ammon

I attend the (free, Classical) Noon Time Concert at Old St. Mary near SF China town from time to time. Just learned that one of the long time supporters, Helen Von Ammon, has passed away recently. RIP. People like them made this a wonderful community to live/work in. Case in point: the concert today is fantastic: it featured pianist Sophie Xuefei Zhang and violinist Solenn Seguillon (yes, she is attractive. Check out the previous link to her pictures) Both had superb techniques and were perfect for playing modern pieces like the Debussy and the Ravel.

Schindler's list music chosen by skater at the Olympics

I was surprised when I heard it during Russian figure skater Yulia Lipnitskaya's performance. It was great music and she did a pretty good job (except for a few mistakes) The first thing came to my mind was that the movie was about a brave person acting against dictatorship. Isn't it ironic considering where the skater came from (and it's the host country too!)? Anyway, I don't think using the music for figure skating performances trivialized the Holocaust. Some journalists agreed while some disagreed. See this. One comment said it best: the music was NOT used in concentration camp and if the controversy made more people pay attention to the movie and the topic, that's a win.

港鐵不勝負荷 左報落力抽水

最近港鐵多次發生故障導致服務中斷多小時，我目睹火車滯留在吐露港公路對開路軌，慶幸我不在內。眾所周知，由於自由行氾濫，港鐵已不勝負荷，連局長也不得不承認（雖然他的反應是叫港人忍耐多等幾班，完全是無能的表現）

從工程角度看，一個長期負荷過重的系統，出現故障是必然發生的事。加大承受力可作為長遠計劃一部份，短期若不能減低負荷，至少也要遏止增長。左報文匯社評卻不提後者，反而強調港鐵需更新，以及向港鐵管理層問責，兩點都可能有政治因素：傳媒報導過早前港鐵引入祖國製新車，不知港鐵高層是否有人不是西環朋友，文匯乘機摑一巴。

之後報告指原來導致港鐵故障的是絕緣體零件，文匯再度抽水，強調零件來自歐洲供應商。誰不知一天後其他媒體踼爆(港鐵不得不證實)劣質絕緣體實為內地製造。


今次港鐵固然要俾幾個dislike，不過更大罪的是混淆視聽的左報文匯。

Overpaid executives

Just read an article about people shouldn't just complain about Wall St executives being overpaid because Silicon Valley executives are too. I just think the article sounds like sour grapes and probably written by someone from Wall St. For all these years (especially the past few), the banking industry has accumulated enough ill will: Manipulating the market. Getting bailed out by the public. Just to name a few. How could it even be compared to the tech industry? Disclaimer: I have worked in both. It's definitely not so black-and-white that one industry is evil while the other does no evil (Well, that was Google's motto) In fact, most workers like myself are at too low a level to do any evil :P

員工離職的原因

今早才討論過這個話題，之後即在FB看到朋友link阿里巴巴馬雲的文章。老實說我一向覺得馬雲名大於實，講得太誇張，唯有今次我就十分同意，他說只有兩個原因最真實：
1)人工太低
2)感到委屈
HR做所有exit interview，其實只要這兩個checkbox就夠了。講其他甚麼做得久想改變環境接受新挑戰之類，大多是讓大家好過一點而已。(當然，也有私人原因例如搬家或創業等等，兩者都是個人經驗:)

Movie time

We had a vacation last week. And it's time to do something I don't usually do: watching movies (6 on the flight, 1 off the flight!) I'll talk about them in the order of my preference:
1) La Grande Boucle (Tour de Force)
The movie is about an amateur cyclist started his personal Tour de France after losing his job and wife. Basically he rode one day ahead of each stage of the "real" tour. Lots of interesting things happened during his tour. I don't wanna spill the beans here 'coz I think every cyclist should watch it. Here is a review with more details about the movie.

2) Rush
I am a huge fan of auto racing but I gotta admit I'm rather disappointed with the current state of Formula 1: there is one far superior car in the field which either qualified for the pole and lead from start to finish or simply make one less pit stop. Having one car winning half of the races and cruising to the championship every year ruins it! I remember it used to be more competitive when I was a kid. Well, I was too young to know anything about the 1976 season described in the movie Rush, which is even more dramatic than anything I could remember: Austrian Niki Lauda was the defending champ. British James Hunt was the flamboyant driver hoping to unseat the champ. His aggressiveness caused him a few races and points in the standing. However, Lauda was injured (seriously burnt) in an accident during the Grand Prix of Nürburgring. He missed the next few races during which James Hunt was closing the point gap quickly. Lauda decided to came back earlier than recommended by his doctor to defend his title. And it all came down to the last race of the season. Fast forwarding ~40 years, 2008 was the last time F1 championship being decided by the last race of the season. Regarding the movie itself, the actors did a great job portraying these larger-than-life characters. And the gf/wives were pretty! There's nothing not to like about the movie.

3) The Lego Movie
Lego sets were toys I played the most when I was a kid (I still play because of my son) So, when the movie came out, it's a must-watch for me. There were sets that I built according to the instructions and never broke apart while other sets were mixed to create something brand new. And these are the themes of the movie: the "dictator" (dad) wanted the former while his kid wanted the latter. Don't we have the same conflicts in the grander scheme of thing too? THE man in the real world do want people to watch the same kind of dumb TV drama/sitcom over and over (e.g. the HK government encourages CCTVB to monopolize the market by trying to eliminate upstart competitors like HKTV) The title of that "theme" song, Everything is Awesome, is so ironic too.

BTW, we watched the Cantonese version (no subtitle) and worried the kids might not be able to understand but so glad they did. And it was so funny when the movie made fun of people drinking expensive coffee sitting next to my sister who does the same :P

4) Thor 2
I would not have admitted watching mainstream blockbuster like this when I was younger :P The comic book-based genre actually has a pretty good reputation among movie critics. Case in point: movies from the Batman franchise were usually quite deep. It seems that I watch at least one movie based on a Marvel comic every time I fly these days: Captain America, G.I.Joe, Wolverine, and this time, Thor 2. Natalie Portman looked gorgeous in it, especially in Asgardian costumes (all handmade by a craftsman in the workshop in London!) And the actor who played Thor was the same guy who played James Hunt from 'Rush.' Man, he was everywhere, just like a real superhero. And the action scenes seem more exciting than the first Thor movie, in which the bad guy was too easy to beat. The plot was also a bit more complicated with Thor needing Loki's help to fight the enemies. 

5) Last Vegas
This belongs to the "old man movie" genre in my book. Oh well, I watch those once in a while too (For example, the Oscar nominated "Crazy Heart".) Very simple story here: 4 old guys going to Vegas for an old friend's bachelor's party. Of course there were lots of history between them. And the old friends got involved in a love triangle. Man, I could totally see this happen to my friends in 30 years :P

6) Escape Plan
Just realized this movie was the first pairing of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger in leading roles. I thought there were prior cases. Regardless, 2 things for sure: (1) this gotta be my type of movie, (2) reviewers would diss it because the guys have passed their prime. Well, there were indeed a lot of cliches: A prison security expert (Stallone) was wrongfully put in a maximum security prison, which operated so secretly that no law applied there. Needed help from a fellow prisoner (Schwarzenegger) to break out. I found it very enjoyable.

7) The Expendable
I watched the Expendable 2 on DVD recently. It's another movie with both Stallone and Schwarzenegger (and a whole bunch of action starts like Jet Li, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Chuck Norris and Randy Couture. Stallone was the main character though) Very straight-forward story (good guys and bad guys fight for info about material for weapons. Bad guys won and tried to obtain the material. Good guys went prevent that to happen) and old school actions. That means I liked it. Usually the original movie would be better than the sequel so I watched this on the plane. This was an exception: it was rather boring and certainly worse than the sequel. The story has something to do with the American wanna take out a dictator ruling some sort of island. I didn't really watch it except for the "blow'em up" scenes. 

I guess I won't have another movie-watching-spree for a while. 

Analysis of commercials during NFL playoff

I don't know much about advertising. My work is not related to it at all but I still find this article very interesting (and the sarcasm makes it more fun to read) The strangest thing is: I got the link and summary of the article from the daily newsletter I receive from MLB! I guess the guys at MLB think it's a good idea to trash another league/sport. Basically, the article pointed out not only that the whole 3-hour broadcast of a NFL game actually contains 11 minutes of real action (from analysis by Wall Street Journal), but also a really high amount of commercials (112 on average and 60% of the broadcast) per game!

So, what are these commercials? Beer is probably the first thing came to my mind as beer commercials are very high profile and generated a lot of conversations. Well, it turns out there are not as many as I thought: only 8%. Car commercials double it at 16%. And there are even more tech product related commercials (18%. Verizon is the top company that pays for ~50 ad per game!)

Talking about beer commercials in NFL, I recently read an analysis from Charles Wheelan's book "Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data" about the famous 1981 campaign in which one beer company (Schlitz) challenges supporters of its competitors to do a blind tasting test. One would think it's tough to produce an outcome that makes Schlitz looks good. However, if you understand the statistics behind it, it's really a gimmick. From the book:

Let’s assume that Schlitz would have been pleased if at least 40 of the 100 tasters picked Schlitz—an impressive number given that all of the men taking the live blind taste test had professed to be Michelob drinkers. An outcome at least that good was highly likely. If the taste test is really like a flip of a coin, then basic probability tells us that there was a 98 percent chance that at least 45 of the tasters would. In theory, this wasn’t a very risky gambit at all.
So what happened to Schlitz? At halftime of the 1981 Super Bowl, exactly 50 percent of the Michelob drinkers chose Schlitz in the blind taste test.
There are two important lessons here: probability is a remarkably powerful tool, and many leading beers in the 1980s were indistinguishable from one another.