Musician of the day: Lenny Breau

FM 91.1 (KCSM) is a SF Bay area jazz station and it is the top radio station in my car. FM 91.1 in Toronto also plays jazz and thus became my top radio station there! I listened to their show Jazzology when I was driving. That is a very interesting show: the host interviewed a guest, who is a jazz guitarist from Newfoundland studying at York University. They discussed the music they like and the approaches taken by those musicians. They also took the time to explain concepts like comping and II-V-I progression in layman's terms.

And I "discovered" a versatile Canadian guitarist named Lenny Breau. His approach to harmony was compared to pianist Bill Evans. The track they played came from Live At Bourbon St They also mentioned he played other styles like country and flamenco. I wonder how his flamenco playing sounds like!

Musician of the day: Matthew Applegate

Applegate is not your typical "electronic musician." He is creating new music at the National Museum of Computing in UK, using vintage computers, some dated back to World War II! Check out this video.

Topic of the day: commitment to blogging

I have not missed a day ever since this blog was started late last year but I am facing the biggest challenge so far: I'll be traveling. I am going to write whenever I can and upload whenever I get an internet connection. According to my buddy, Wifi is almost everywhere these days. I know it's hard to commit to writing when I don't even know if anyone is reading other than myself!

Topic of the day: story of another irresponsible mom

I think I have blogged too much about the mom of the octuplets already. More on her later. Breaking news from Hong Kong: a 14 year old kid is pregnant and photo-blogging herself. Her posts drew a ton of criticisms: some thought such act encourages more young girls get pregnant. On the other hand, some praised her being brave.

If you have been following this blog, you know I hate to sound like a close-minded conservative but I do have 2 problems with her thinking:
1) she claimed that the father of the baby as well as her parents urged her not to have the baby and that's a reason she's keeping it. Almost any reason is a better reason than that!
2) she didn't worry about not being able to take care of the baby when s/he is born because she could give him/her away. Again, giving away your baby should never be part of the plan!

Regarding the octo-mom, please please please follow her "blog" and videos. I am hoping the ad revenue generated will result in more companies sponsoring her and makes her less dependent on taxpayers like us!

Topic of the day: Stem cell funding ban lifted

What President Obama did was a no brainer: impeding scientific/medical advancement because of religious belief is simply ridiculous. Of course, there are always naysayers from the religious right. And some of them did raise an interesting question (see the comments on SFGate): when it was banned 8 years ago, the stem-cell research community in US has moaned about US would be lagging behind countries without such restrictions. So, what exactly have these country done in the last 8 years? According to those responded: progress has been made in Europe using cloning for liver tissue regeneration. One major advance in France was they were able to show that embryonic stem cells can regenerate heart tissue and other types of stem cells cannot. Well, it is time for US to catch up.

Tech of the day: the strength of DRM

For those not familiar with the term, DRM (digital right management) is what digital content provider put on their files to limit how users could use the contents. For example, the music files you bought from iTunes Store has DRM to make sure (a) you could only play it on Apple's devices and (b) you can't play it on more than 5 computers. Another example is eBook you checked out from libraries. The DRM on it make sure you can't keep the book forever (just like "physical" books)

DRM involves encryption for sure. Otherwise users could easily "edit out" the unwanted bits in the files and remove the DRM! And conventional wisdom related to encryption is that the stronger the better. When one encryption is scheme is broken, it is always replaced by yet another stronger one. One would logically think that applies to DRM too. However, I came across this comment on Slashdot that makes a lot of sense: the strength of protection is related to the values of the things it protects. It's all about opportunity cost. Petty cash doesn't need a million dollar safe. Likewise, DRM only needs to be strong enough so that enough users are not bother to remove them. After all, the contents are not that valuable. iTunes' DRM and Microsoft's "Plays for sure" DRM have all been broken before and those companies didn't seem to worry about that too much. (They did try fixing them but it has been a cat-and-mouse game) A lot of their users won't bother to use the tools to remove the DRM anyway.

BTW, the comment is a response to the story that a website hosting code that breaks Adobe's ADEPT DRM (a technology used by libraries) have been taken down.

每週冷飯﹕衝出亞洲﹐挑戰世界

摘自01年5月1號﹕

記得十多年前有人預言太平洋世紀即將來臨﹐不過隨著九十年代初日本經濟陷入衰退﹐以及九十年代末亞洲金融風暴﹐太平洋世紀的來臨似乎遙遙無期。

其實﹐雖然亞太區目前經濟方面實力如何尚需拭目以待﹐但在藝文界以至體育界方面的成績經已有目共睹﹐不少亞洲人經已成功打入以往由歐美人士壟斷的市場。

最明顯的例子莫過於荷李活電影圈﹐李安及其電影「臥虎藏龍」勇奪數項奧斯卡獎﹐反映其地位已被美國主流影壇所肯定。至於音樂界﹐日本指揮家小澤征爾(Seiji Ozawa)早於一九七三年起成為著名的波士頓交響樂團音樂總監﹐中國作曲家譚盾相信亦會因為「臥虎藏龍」配樂而更上一層樓。

今時今日的亞洲人不但能文﹐而且能武﹗早幾年日本棒球投手野茂英雄(Hideo Nomo)轉投美國職棒﹐掀起過一陣旋風﹐最近雖然沉寂下來﹐上月又投出一場No-hitter(即全場無人自其手中成功擊球上壘)﹐這已是他旅美生涯第二次作出如此難得的演出(不少成名投手一生從未投過一場No-hitter)。來自韓國的投手朴贊浩(Chan Ho Park)亦取得相當不俗的成績﹐現今是洛杉機隊的中堅分子。美國職棒最新的旋風則是今季才由日本轉投的外野手(Outfielder)鈴木一郎(Ichiro Suzuki)﹐此君是日本太平洋聯盟連續七年的冠軍打擊手﹗至於足球界﹐一九九九年楊晨加入德國法蘭克福足球隊﹐成為首位打德國甲組聯賽的中國人。目前在意大利的日本球星中田英壽更是公認的好波之人。此外﹐今年初王治郅成為首位進軍美國職業籃球(NBA)的中國人﹐而韓國女高爾夫球手朴世莉(Si-Ri Pak)則是美國女子職業高爾夫球界的前列分子。他們的成績實在令人鼓舞。

八年時間匆匆過去﹐全球經濟現正經歷一場破壞力比亞洲金融風暴厲害得多的金融海嘯﹐相對而言﹐日本"爛船"何止三分釘﹗中國更被視為救星﹐早已衝出亞洲。對筆者更有趣的反而是玩一次Where are they now?問答遊戲﹐藝術界生涯較長﹐以上諸君仍然活躍﹔體壇則較為殘酷﹐目前仍在高峰者僅鈴木一郎一人矣﹗(朴世莉於07年成為高爾夫球名人堂一員﹐可算功德完滿﹐如今比賽只是錦上添花)不過江山代有人材出﹐最新一期奧斯卡獎得主就有由印度人執導﹑主演的Slumdog Millionaire。至於音樂界﹐朗朗及李雲迪已是古典家一線的演奏家。體壇方面﹐投手王建民是紐約洋基隊的主將﹐中場姚明更是全美職業籃球最佳球員之一。只有足球較為遜色﹐歐洲四大聯賽僅得效力曼聯的朴智星比較搶鏡。

Musicians of the day: Slipknot

I'm writing this because I came across this comment by Slipknot's lead singer Corey Taylor: he thought the record industry made less money because of not just illegal download but also the poor quality of new music. I couldn't agree more. In fact, Slipknot are pretty much repeating themselves after their debut album! Well, this comment earned me some new respects so I might download their latest (legally)

BTW, I found the above 'coz it was linked to an article about Lars Ulrich (Metallica's drummer, who was very vocal against Napster) tried downloading Metallica's latest CD.

Topic of the day: what is in a name, Pt II?

This is about another name that has caused some controversies: netbook.

Anyone who is even remotely familiar with tech news would have heard of netbook, a term that became popular when ASUS released its EEE notebook computer two years ago. The common usage of the term refers to all notebooks with similar spec (low processing power and small size)

However, it turns out the term is trademarked by Psion, the pioneer in handhelds dated back to early 80s. Psion actually made a line of handheld named netbook until 2003 (now discontinued but remaining stocks and replacement parts are still being sold) They have sent legal letters to various websites to demand them stop using this term. In the mean time, big companies like Intel and Dell are pushing for cancellation of Psion's trademark.

IMO this case is very different from other cases where companies are sitting on patents, do nothing but suing others on patent infringement. Call me biased: I like Psion. It was a well-respected company when they were making some of the most advanced handhelds, like Psion Organiser. The technology they put in their handhelds from the 80s to 90s are quite innovative. I wish I could afford a Psion back in those days. In this case I sympathize with them. Psion is not even demanding compensation. Their trademark shouldn't be taken away like this. Besides, using netbook to describe EEE-like computers are kinda silly anyway. If it means a notebook on which internet-based applications are utilized heavily, all notebooks are netbooks these days! I just don't understand why people like these are so obsessed with that term.

Topic of the day: what is in a name?

The effort to recall (i.e., remove from office, for those not familiar with American politics) San Jose City Council member Madison Ngyuen failed. Part of the reason for the recall has to do with the naming of an area in San Jose: several blocks on Story Road which has lots of Vietnamese businesses. There are some very vocal proponent of naming it "Little Saigon" but Madison voted for "Saigon Business District" instead, which caused a lot of protests by the Little Saigon supporters. Eventually it was named neither "Saigon Business District" nor "Little Saigon" but businesses are allowed to put up banners that says "Little Saigon."

I was very confused when I read the news since I don't understand why "Saigon Business District" instead of "Little Saigon" made a big difference. It turns out the latter has special meaning to former South Vietnameses, who were driven out by the communist party (aka North Vietnam) The new community built (like the one in San Jose) can only be called "Little Saigon" 'coz the "original" Saigon, which was the capital of the country, no longer "exist" when it was renamed to Ho Chih Ming City by the North Vietnamese. Some argue that by choosing the name "Saigon Business District", Madison was pro-communist. I thought you could only accuse her pro-communist if she proposed "Ho Chih Ming Business District" instead!

Anyway, this is one of those things that outsiders (like me) never understand.

Topic of the day: the auction of the bronze animal heads looted from China

This is the 3rd time I wrote about this topic! (The first time was 9 years ago. The 2nd time was 2 weeks ago. Both were in Chinese though.) The latest news was that the auction was won by a Chinese collector but he has already announced he would not pay 'coz he needed to stand up for his country.

Again, this has caused a lot of controversy. Some praised him for being patriotic by sabotaging the auction and thus causing troubles for the auctioner and seller. Some think this is childish and did nothing good about the image of Chinese.

I gotta admit I'm biased: I think they should go back to where they come from, i.e., China. I am not sure how to make that happen though. If the Chinese paid a lot for it, I think it is a waste of money that could have better uses elsewhere in China. On the other hand, YSL bought it fair and square. You can't just ask his bf to give it up for nothing.

So, the question that I've been thinking is: what is the fair value of these 2 heads? Certainly not 15.7 million euro! After all, the garden where they come from was built 300 years ago so they can't be older than that. I guess some critics are right: Chinese should stop making a big fuss about them. Don't bid on them and don't talk about them. Then their values would go down a whole lot. The Chinese government could even build replicas of them and put them in the original place in the garden, not unlike how bridges were rebuilt after disasters. There is no need to get fixated on these relics (btw, many agree relic is a more accurate description than "national treasure")

Topic of the day: Lang Lang and Steinway

Lang Lang and Yundi Li are probably the most famous Chinese pianists currently. There shouldn't be any surprise that companies will seek their endorsements to promote their products. In fact, I saw an Adidas ad on Lang Lang's website. I doubt he wears Adidas when he performs though. Anyway, the more interesting deal to me is the Lang Lang line of piano from Steinway. I couldn't find much info in English but I did find a few articles about this in Chinese. According to that article, this line of piano is made in China and sold for ~RMB$40k (~US$5800) each. I think this line certainly has its appeal to the middle-class in China. After all, there is no bigger brand name than Steinway in piano. And it feels good to be associated with Lang Lang this way!

Some might say it's a good strategy for Steinway to expand its marketshares. On the other hand, some might argue a "cheaper" line dilutes the brand name as well as the profit margin. That is the reason a lot of analyst said why Apple has not entered the red-hot netbook market. Also, is it a good idea for an artist to associate him/herself to a "cheaper" line?

I am not familiar with piano at all but "signature" model named after famous artists are certainly very common in the guitar world. In fact, any famous player you could name will have his signature model already (Joe Pass, Jim Hall, John Scofield, Steve Vai, B.B.King just to name a few) And these signature models are not always expensive, for example, the street price of an Epiphone Joe Pass Emperor II is $600. Also, the artists do not necessarily personally favor the models bearing their names! For example, Joe Pass did not seem to have played the Joe Pass model made by Ibanez on stage that much. (Another interesting story was that Joe Pass was playing an Ibanez Joe Pass in his instruction video and in the middle of it he said "hey, it has 24 frets, I didn't know that...!")

Tech of the day: Arch Linux

I am by no means a Linux expert but I do play with different distros from time to time. One of my "mission" has been creating a portable Linux-based virtual machine, i.e., the files that contain the VM as well as executing it all reside on a flash drive. I have played with VMWare's Player and Server product before but they cannot be executed from a flash drive last time I checked. My latest hope is Portable VirtualBox. To try it out, I picked Arch Linux as my distro because it is supposed to be fast to start. In fact, it is more for advanced users compared to Ubuntu. I dive into it anyway.

The installer was actually quite straightforward. I went thru every step on the menu and accepted most of the default values. Here are the problems I encountered so far and the solutions:

1) It is defaulted to static IP. For my purpose (run as a VM), I'd rather use DHCP.

2) By default it doesn't install any "GUI" (i.e., Windows Manager in Linux terminology) unlike Ubuntu comes with GNOME by default. It doesn't install X windows either. Fortunately its package manager, pacman, is just as simple (if not simpler) than apt-get.

Step 1: Sync the repository (don't ask me why!)
pacman -Sy

Step 2:
pacman -S xorg

Step 3: Assuming you want to use KDE as your Windows Manager
pacman -S kde

However, when installing xorg, pacman always stucked at downloading libxau-1.0.4-1-i686, so I googled and found its .pkg.tar.gz. Used wget to download the file and then pacman -U the file to manually install it.

Another problem is that pacman always hang in the middle of downloading a file after several others are downloaded. I did 2 things:
(i) used the fastest mirrors by rankmirror
(ii) replaced the default download command with wget by uncommenting the XferCommand line in /etc/pacman.conf

One feature of pacman I found really cool is that if I hit Ctrl-C in the middle of downloading, it will switch to the next mirror and continue from there! (More Ctrl-C will interrupt pacman but it is OK. Just re-run pacman and it will pick up where it was interrupted. Isn't it cool?)

Configuring X has never been trivial for me but it has been made easy on Arch Linux. Use the tool hwd like this and it will automatically generate a /etc/X11/xorg.conf for you:
hwd -xa

I switched to JWM from KDE though 'coz I couldn't get the latter to work (maybe it requires more resources than I provide it through Virtualbox but I am not sure) JWM is really light-weight and start up real quick.

Two tips for running JWM:
(i) I had to configure X windows first.
(ii) run xinit /usr/bin/jwm
(iii) The "Start" menu of JWM is totally configurable. Simple copy /etc/system.jwmrc to your ~/.jwmrc and edit it. Most of these shortcuts won't work yet because the application hasn't been installed. For me, the minimals are xterm, Firefox and Pidgin (simply use pacman to install the last two.)

3) To get Flash Player and java working with my Firefox (better to have MS fonts installed too):
pacman -S flashplugin ttf-ms-fonts jre
Then reboot the VM. (Otherwise Firefox keeps complaining the plugin is not there)

4) If the instance is not properly shutdown, check disk will fail next time you start it up and it will put you in the maintenance mode. Follow its instruction to mount the filesystem as rw, then run fsck to fixed those bad inodes.

5) There is no sound by default.
On the host (the Virtualbox app), I chose "Windows DirectSound" as the host driver (and the only available controller is ICH AC97)
Inside the VM, I need to install amixer and then run it to unmute. From the ALSA Wiki entry:
pacman -Sy alsa-lib alsa-utils
amixer set Master 90% unmute
amixer set PCM 85% unmute

Now I could IM, surf web (even listening to Joy Division on Pandora) Call me a happy portable VM-er!

每週冷飯﹕奧運隨想--談民族自尊

摘自2001年10月1號

每四年一到奧運會﹐總覺得民族情緒特別高漲﹐大家焦點總是放在本國在獎牌榜的排名。香港傳媒報導中港運動員的情況時特別肉緊﹐沒有贏得金牌的都以“失手”來形容﹐擺明車馬地偏幫“自己友”。

可惜在奧運以外﹐香港人還是崇洋崇日多於崇中﹐君不見本地的時裝牌子取的總是扮歐洲的名字(有趣的是﹐國產名牌大地牌有一段時間為了趕時髦改了一個西化英文名字﹐因反應奇差改回原名Da Di) 不知道大家有沒有發覺﹐香港時裝店用的所有mannequin外表都是外國人﹗廣告或者歌詞也總喜歡加插一兩句英文(或其他外文)以示高人一等。香港人的民族自尊心實在脆弱不堪﹐這自然也是殖民地政府種下的禍根﹐不知道我們特首有何解決辦法﹖

對比起香港人﹐美國人的民族自尊心又似乎過份強烈﹐香港報導奧運偏幫自己友的程度和他們相比可謂小巫見大巫﹐他們簡直有一種優越感 (被稱為沙文主義chauvinism)﹐這在四年前美國NBC電視台評述員在開幕禮介紹出場各國時表露無遺﹐當年引發不少居美華人抗議。事實上﹐單從體育可見美國人對外來事物接受力很低﹐全世界最受歡迎的運動--足球--在美國始終未打入主流﹐全世界賽事迷最推崇一級方程式﹐美國人獨愛他們的三級方程式。

其實香港人和美國人各走極端﹐最理想的當然是既以自家事物為榮﹐亦以開放態度對待外來事物。

以上寫於00年悉尼奧運後﹐西人有云﹕the more things change, the more they stay
the same﹐現在看來當真不錯﹕各種惡習已由香港蔓延至祖國(香港唔學好﹐祖國學
更壞﹗)歌詞中加插一句不倫不類的We're Ready正是北京奧運主題曲。而劉翔因傷
黯然退出﹐無法衛冕金牌﹐跳欄項目對中港觀眾以至傳媒登時變得毫無意義。至於
美國足球界﹐碧咸由旋風式登陸至萌生去意﹐還不到兩年時間﹗

Tech of the day: EU demands MS to offer other browsers

As you all know, if you install Windows on a computer, IE comes with it. A lot of people think that is monopolistic behavior, including EU. EU thinks Microsoft should offer the user choices of other browsers in addition to IE. I doubt it is practical. What choices should Microsoft provide? Must it include every browser that exists in the world? If I write a browser that nobody use and Microsoft did not include it, can I sue them? It just does not make a lot of sense.

Also, some people suggests Microsoft should provide Windows without any browser. Well, given such a Windows installation, how does the user go about downloading the browser of his/her choice? After all, even though I seldom use IE, it used to be among the first applications I executed on new computers just so I could download Firefox! (Nowadays I always bring Portable Chrome with me on my flash drive so I don't need to do that anymore)

Topic of the day: luck, fame and career

My last post about Marc Copland, who IMHO is underrated as a jazz pianist, got me thinking: why wasn't he as well-known as Chick Corea or Brad Mehldau? To me, his music is certainly as enjoyable, if not more than, the above I mentioned. I don't really have an explanation.

Perhaps that's what showbiz is like. If you want to be famous, you gotta be savvy, be aggressive to market yourself. Then you can have the companies with big budget to market you. After all, there are tons of pop singers who sing better and look better than those "American Idols" yet no one knows about them.

Then there is the comparison with competitive sports, which seems more fair, isn't it? If you have the same level of talent as Lebron James, Lionel Messi, Tiger Woods or Lee Sedol, you would have been discovered by scouts in your sports or have won many amateur tournaments and be able to "make it." In fact, I doubt you could find a golf player as good as Tiger or Go player as good as Lee yet no one knows about them.

Then I gave it some more thought: what about the "luck" factor? If Drew Bledsoe was not injured in 2001, will Tom Brady's potential ever be discovered? He might have got bored sitting on the bench, quit NFL and become a successful business exec! (he majored in Organizational Studies at Michigan) You never know... If Go Seigen was not injured in that motorcycle accident, he might have won some major titles. (It's not like not having won any major titles diminished his accomplishment as one of the all time best Go players)

Album of the day: New York Trio Recordings, Vol. 1 - Modinha

This is an awesome album by the underrated pianist Marc Copland. It has the classic jazz piano trio sound, on par with the works by Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett! Check out its reviews by various newspapers, magazines and websites.

Game of the day: LG Cup Final, Game 2

To become the best of the best, you have to beat the best of the best. That's what Gu Li just did! He shutout Lee Sedol 2:0 in the best-of-3 final of LG Cup. Time will tell if Gu Li could continue dominate the world of Go like Lee does. If he succeeds, it will be a great achievement since no other Chinese has done that in the modern era except Nie Weiping and Go Seigen. Even though the game was invented in China, the quality of Chinese Go players went downhill around 200 years ago. At the same time Go became well established in Japan, where players improved generation by generation. Japan was the super power in Go until Korea took over 2 decades ago. Players like Gu Li and Chang Hao have given China hopes to be on top of the world of Go again.

Topic of the day: online rumors rebutted online

There are 2 cases happened recently. Both has to do with companies being accused of unethical business practices. Both tried defending their reputation by posting.

Case 1: Last.fm is an online music service with a social component. What it means is that you could listen to streaming music from its website, starting with an artist of your choice, for example, rate your music and it will find people who like the music you rated highly for you. And you could get music recommendation that way.

It all works fine for music streamed from its website. What about music you listen from your own collection sitting on your local computer? That's where audioscrobbler, a piece of software/technology owned by Last.fm come into the picture. Its job is to send what music you listened locally to Last.fm so that you could get better recommendations.

And audioscrobbler is in the middle of this controversy: an insider told tech website TechCrunch that Last.fm was assisting RIAA to find out who has listened to the leaked new album of U2 since it has the data available from audioscrobbler. And Last.fm denied it officially here.

Case 2: EastBayExpress, a local free weekly, has reported that Yelp's sales rep had approached businesses to indicate that if they buy advertisement from Yelp, their negative reviews could be taken care of. Of course this is serious allegation, for a website like Yelp that relies on being neutral. And here is its official response.

You could judge yourself who to believe. Moral of these 2 stories? whatever you hear from the web, be skeptical, including reports on business ethics, restaurant reviews, and software that is supposed to keep your privacy protected.

Star of the day: Sean Penn

Congratulation to Sean Penn for winning his second Oscar best actor award (for his role in the movie "Milk," a biopic of the SF gay politician Harvey Milk who was assassinated.) I remember the first movie that I watched starring him (and Robert De Niro) was "We're No Angels." That was a hell of a funny movie! I also enjoyed his other movies like "I am Sam" and "Sweet and Lowdown" very much.

Some people in the gay community think that this Oscar might help the cause of overturning gay marriage ban. I am not too sure about that. (Studying what effects movies have on real world issue would be very interesting.) In any case, it will provide a boost to the morale of the community for sure. And I am glad to see that.