Book of the day: The Rescue Artist

Just bought this book today. Its subtitle says it all: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece. The missing masterpiece in this case is one of the most famous modern painting: "The Scream" by Edvard Munch. I've just started. Should be a good read judging by the reviews.

BTW, I bought it at a deep discount from the iconic bookstore Stacey's in downtown SF. Probably my last purchase there since it's going out of business. It's really sad. I've read over hundreds of books and magazines there! (I bought about half a dozen) This bookstore will be missed by many San Franciscans.

Album of the day: Democracy is Dead

I have not been impressed by much new heavy bands lately but this band Dead by Wednesday deserves more listening because they make a good blend of hardcore and metal. The "Dead" in the band's name is probably inspired by Dead Kennedy? It's hard to imagine their music is not political! Check out the lyric of the title track. Definitely not subtle. Let's hope Mr. Obama will do a better job and these guys won't have a song about him.

Animal of the day: Hawaiian Petrel

Hawaiian Petrel is the reason why Hawaii is switching over from analog to digital TV today, a month earlier than the other states in US.

For those not familiar with the switch: starting Feb. 17th, all US TV stations that have been broadcasting analog over the air will switch to digital. When this happens, all analog transmission towers could be torn down. The government does not what this to happen during the nesting season of Hawaiian Petrel, an endangered bird species.

BTW, there have been talks from Obama's team about delaying the switch (not specific to Hawaii but the whole US) because (1) the fund for offering free digital-to-analog converter boxes has run out and (2) surveys show that a lot of people still don't understand the implication of the switch and won't be able to watch TV after the switch.

I have to disagree. This kind of "no one left behind" mentality is not always applicable! After all, it's just TV. No one will die from TV-less-ness. (For those who say people rely on TV for emergency info: have you forgotten something called radio?)

Tech of the day: how to surf web slower

You might ask if I am out of my right mind and who would want to do that. Answer: web application developers who want to make sure their apps work fine even when the connection is really slow.

Here is a Firefox plug-in for simulating a slow connection: Firefox Throttle

Topic of the day: prayer for the whole nation

There is an old saying "you can't please everyone" but as the US President-elect, Mr. Obama has to please everyone, I guess.

After inviting a pro-Prop. 8 (gay marriage ban) Reverend to his inauguration, he invited gay bishop Gene Robinson to offer a prayer at the Lincoln Memorial at an inaugural event. On one hand you could say he is trying to please everyone. On the other hand he might just pissed off everyone!

Anyway, I gotta praise Bishop Robinson for saying "I will be careful not to be especially Christian in my prayer. This is a prayer for the whole nation."

This is what I call open-mindedness, one thing that Prop. 8 supporter does not understand.

Album of the day: This meets that

Jazz great John Scofield is a guitar hero of mine. His straight-ahead album "Works for me" is one of my favorite but I have always enjoyed his live performances very much, whether he played straight-head jazz or more fusion/electric stuff.

For some reason I totally missed his 2007 release: "This Meets That," a primarily fusion album that also feature a horn section! Definitely an interesting album. I found the customer reviews on Amazon even more interesting: while most reviewers gave high praises, some are very critical. And the negative comments came from those who liked his prior releases, e.g. "A Go Go." Seems like the negativities have to do with his guitar playing being random or inconsistent, which as a big Sco fan, I do not totally disagree. I don't exactly get his 3 minute cover of Stone's "I Can't Get No Satisfaction"

Topic of the day: religious zealots strike again

If you condemn religious groups in California who pushed the passing of proposition 8 that takes away right to marriage from gay couples, you gotta be furious about what they do in Hong Kong: they are against extending the domestic violence law to protect gay couples.

So, why do they think homosexuals do not deserve to be protected from violence just like everyone else? One pastor from the Yan Fook Church said that such law will help spreading of AIDS! Can you believe this?

Tech of the day: The R language

Just read an article about R, a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics.

It reminds me of my days of studying statistics in college. Matlab was the popular software back then. Of course, it is a commercial product that must have cost my school some money to pay for the license whereas R is free. (Never get a chance to play with the famous SAS or SPSS software, which appears to be even more expensive)

An interesting quote from the above article comes from SAS:

“I think it addresses a niche market for high-end data analysts that want free, readily available code," said Anne H. Milley, director of technology product marketing at SAS. She adds, “We have customers who build engines for aircraft. I am happy they are not using freeware when I get on a jet.”

It makes no sense to me. Isn't statistics software just a tool for R&D and testing? It's the quality of the work that matters. One could do a worse job with commercial software!

BTW, if you want to play with R but found that it is difficult to Google because R is such a common term, try R seek.

Musician of the day: Al Di Meola

My impression of Al Di Meola was mainly influenced by his fusion/electric guitar work even though he's equally well known playing acoustic, for example, on the previously mentioned trio album with Paco De Lucia and John McLaughlin.

Similarly, for Astor Piazzolla, I am more familiar with his tango music. When I heard Al Di Meola's Diabolic Inventions and Seduction for Solo Guitar, Vol. 1: Music of Astor Piazzolla , that's a pleasant surprise! The most interesting thing is: the customer reviews are quite extreme on Amazon. The ones who diss the album thinks the percussions are computer generated loops (but the album gives credit to Hernan Romero!)

I would also recommend another album on which he appeared as guest: Black Utopia by keyboardist Derek Sherinian. Track #2 features him, Yngwie Malmsteen and Billy Sheehan. That's what I call All-Star!

Album of the day: Steelin' The Beatles

In addition to harmonica, another instruments that I try to get more familiar with is steel guitar. I mean the type that is played flat (on the player's lap, a table or a stand) instead of being held up. You hear steel guitar music almost everywhere in Hawaii but it also appears in other genre: blues, country and even jazz.

Steel guitarist Joe Goldmark's music is classified as "instrumental country" and his arrangement of Beatles is quite interesting (certainly to any Beatles fan)

Topic of the day: aggregation and copyright infringement?

For those who are not familiar with the term aggregation, let me show you an example: Doggdot.us, one of my favorite site. All it shows is a collection of summaries and links to articles from three other websites: Digg, Slashdot and Del.icio.us. The underlying mechanism is extremely simple: those 3 sites all provide RSS feeds, which contain the summaries and links. So Doggdot.us just need to read those feeds, format and display (and profit from those ads!)

In essense we have a Site A that is showing partial content from Site B and refer readers from A to B for the full content. This seems innocent enough that it's quite a common practice but finally we have a Site B suing Site A for copyright infringement: GateHouse v NY Times Co.

Naysayers claim that in this case Site A (Boston.com, owned by NY Times) is driving traffic to Site B (various smaller newspaper website owned by GateHouse) and that's beneficial to GateHouse too so why don't they show some love?

On the other hand, some argue the summaries are so well assimilated on Boston.com that it could be confusing to tell who is the originator of the content. Also, GateHouse has put in specific blocking to prevent Boston.com from reading the feed and it seems that the latter put in extra effort to circumvent that. Finally, GateHouse's RSS feed is under Creative Common non-commerical license and NY Times is obviously a commercial entity.

Topic of the day: ineffective use of a scapegoat

If the use of a scapegoat is so obvious, it is no longer effective as a scapegoat, isn't it? Oh well, people never learn.

RIAA had been using MediaSentry for investigating music piracy but it had just fired MediaSentry because the latter has been 'invading the privacy of people' Do you think RIAA didn't know that's what MediaSentry did all along?

Tech of the day: Ubuntu is not ready for everyone (yet)

What support my argument is of course purely anecdotal. Here is my story: I shot a video in 16:9 MJPEG and wanted to upload it to YouTube (which just started to support 16x9) I didn't upload it as-is because (1) even though it was only 2 min, it took 300Mb space and it would take forever to upload so I need to transcode it to something smaller, and (2) I need to trim the beginning and ending a little bit.

To perform this task, I have the following apps in mind
- Windows Movie Maker (WMM)
- Kino

WMM is pretty good for quick-and-dirty editing and transcode to WMV (let's face it. 99% of people whom I shared my family video with have computers that could play WMV. I can't say the same for other formats. BTW, another app I used frequently was Adobe Premiere Pro, mainly for building DVD from DV I shot. However, it didn't seem to recognize MJPEG.)

I was mistaken that WMM doesn't handle 16:9 (it does. Just pick 16:9 in the option window) so I googled for an open source solution and found that Kino was a popular one and was available as Ubuntu package. I have Ubuntu Feisty Fawn on my workstation and I was able to find Kino (0.92) in Synaptic package manager. However, when Synaptic actually tried downloading it, it wasn't available. I googled again and this particular version doesn't seem to be available from anywhere!

So I just give up on Kino. You Linux power users will of course think that I was lame because there are several options:
- package of newer version of Kino is available. I could have installed them and see if it is compatible with Feisty. If not, I could always upgrade to the latest Ubuntu.

- compile the source of 0.92. I actually tried this. When I configure, it couldn't even generate the Makefile properly because a library is missing (which Synaptic tells me I had installed already) 

Will I still recommend Ubuntu to my friends? You bet! Provided they are not "non-guru semi-power user" who do things beyond basic web surfing/e-mail, i.e., in the same boat as mine!

Musicians of the day: great harmonicists

I'm in the mood of some good harmonica music and found this playlist from Rhapsody. It features some of the most famous harmonicists ever:
- Larry Adler
- Toots Thielemans
- Sigmund Groven

Topic of the day: Facebook censored breastfeeding photo

And Facebook is standing firm on this ridiculous policy

There are only 2 possible explanations:
1) Facebook is too dumb to tell what is porn and what is not.
2) someone is really afraid of female breasts and Facebook is afraid of offending those people.

What do you think?

Album of the day: Passion, Grace & Fire

Any fan of guitar must have heard of the Guitar Trio album by the three legendary guitarists Paco De Lucia, Al Di Meola and John McLaughlin. The less well-known "Passion, Grace & Fire" is recorded by the same group and I actually like this album even better.

Topic of the day: prediction of the breakup of U.S.A.

It's a good thing that my daughter has just learned how to write her name in Chinese today. It's gonna be useful when California become part of China. Don't quote me on this though. This prediction is from Russian Professor Igor Panarin (see this Wall Street Journal article):

He predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in.

California will form the nucleus of what he calls "The Californian Republic," and will be part of China or under Chinese influence. Texas will be the heart of "The Texas Republic," a cluster of states that will go to Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an "Atlantic America" that may join the European Union. Canada will grab a group of Northern states Prof. Panarin calls "The Central North American Republic." Hawaii, he suggests, will be a protectorate of Japan or China, and Alaska will be subsumed into Russia.

Jump of the day: Robbie Knievel over the Mirage's volcano

Robbie did it!

Happy 2009! Let's hope all of us could jump over danger like Robbie did!

Star of the day: Juan Sebatian Veron

Congratulation to Juan Sebatian Veron, who just won South American footballer of the year!

Even though he didn't play that great at Man U, he's still one of the players I follow.

Issue of the day: invasion of privacy

I came across 2 news articles today and both have to do with invasion of privacy:
1) Georgia requires sex offenders to hand over passwords of online accounts.
2) Oregon governor proposes "mileage tax," which requires the use of GPS for tracking drivers.

Whoever says the big brother era hasn't arrived is in denial.