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?