Music of the day: Folk Art by Joe Lovano

I can't believe this album went completely under my radar when it was released in 2009. Fortunately Stereophile magazine mentioned it recently. Lovano was backed by a new band (including bassist Esperanza Spaulding,.before she won her Grammy ) and he wrote new tunes (all of them) on it. I just listened to this ballad "Wild Beauty" which lived up to it's title. Lovano's ballad always impresses me.

The RAZR Fit Driver vs. The Bellagio Fountains TV Commercial

This is a cool commercial. A lot of us are familiar with that lake. Having a golfer hitting a ball over it with a new driver is a great way to promote it for sure. I wonder if he did it so perfectly with his first shot though.

Keep on rockin' in the free world

Just read this story about Apple's ambition to improve the fidelity of music downloads has diminished since the death of founder Steve Jobs, according to singer-songwriter Neil Young. The most interesting part though, was that Young embraced illegal music downloads. "Piracy is the new radio," said Young, whose music has long had a rebellious streak. "I look at the Internet as the new radio. I look at the radio as gone."

I can totally understand. A lot of musicians made money from live performance (the drinks and the merchandises) Their cut from "legal" download or CD sale were small. I heard that some musicians signed contract that doesn't even include the cut from download, i.e., the record company keeps all of that.

The Chairman and the controversy

"Chairman" is the name of a food truck I saw at Folsom and 2nd St in SF the other day. Definitely a flashy sounding name! I didn't try the food though so don't know how good it is. I did google about it afterwards and found that it was involved in a controversy: the truck was originally named "Chairman Bao", which is the same as the top-selling item by a NYC shop called Baohaus (another great name BTW) Baohaus' owner was really upset that someone took that name. Looks like the truck owner gave in and changed the name! Not sure who to side with on this one but I guess both party should be happy that lives go on.

Contador banned

"This is just a very sad day for cycling." I'm quoting pro-cyclist Andy Schleck here and I agree with him (for me personally, it's more sad yesterday because I got 2 flat tires during my ride) For a casual cyclist like me, watching Alberto Contador climbing up hills like they are nothing was simply amazing. To me, he's superman. Oh well, using banned substance tarnishes his reputation forever. Just like my other favourite sports star Barry Bonds. Andy Schleck who finished 2nd to Contador at 2010 Tour De France will likely to be declared as champion instead. What if the same happened to US Sports? USC should have been taking away their football national championships on the years that Reggie Bush played (And the Heisman he won should have been given to Vince Young!) How about New England Patriots' "spygate"? Are they guilty of cheating by spying other team's practice during the years they won the superbowl? How long will the curse of spygate lasts? Patriots have lost 2 superbowls after that controversy already!

二月了

除夕開party的記憶猶新，原來眨下眼2012年已過去了12分之一！整個月好像沒有做過甚麼，事實上有半個月是活在jet lag之中，認真過份。由去年十月底萬聖節開始的holiday mood，好像一直無停過；農歷新十五將至，還等著和一些朋友吃開年飯呢。跟著情人節又到，之後又有Spring break，暑假還遠嗎？

Open house

It's open house at my kids' school again. Obviously it happened at normal class time, which means regular working hour for those parents with day jobs. Fortunately the American society values family activities highly. Not sure how working parents in Hong Kong could do the same though. Today I saw the digital white board in action for the first time. We should have one of these at work! Well, I guess my company has to cut cost to pay my salary so I could pay tax to school district so they could spend on fancy gadgets. That's how money moves around.

In the 3rd grade classroom, there is a list named "Ways to choose books." #2 item on the list is: "cover looked interesting." And #4 is: "interesting title." Now you know how to be a successful book writer! The outside is as important as the content! I guess these apply to how people choose phones too.

Another poster teaches how to deal with boring moments. #1 thing to do is keeping your body and eyes turned towards the teacher. Yep, that also works when you're with your wife or boss.

The last revelation is what our next generation want to be when they grow up. Doctor is still the most popular choice in spite of the ongoing medical reform for which reports claim doctors are going bankrupt. A few wanna be teachers. The most ambitious one wanted to become the best tennis player in the world. Good lucky girl! Just need to adapt to the grunting standard in the future :P The one that's really puzzling says he wants to "adlt". He either just wanna be an adult (hopefully without too much effort) that doesn't care about "u" or an auditor.

帝王之路

皇帝有座山，叫做皇帝山；上山果條路，就係King's Mountain Road；這條路在灣區單車界薄有名氣，僅稍遜於附近的Old La Honda Road（OLH），卻比後者要長，在MapMyRide屬Category 1 Climb，難度不低。
早幾天（住老遠的）同事說起會去，我亦有此意。昨晚大吃大喝，也夾了一會Canon，不忘叫培正老友今早一起上King's Mountain Road消滅點卡路里。六時起床匆匆出車，天仍全黑！倒是小事，最難頂的是雙手涷到僵，真後悔沒有戴上次熱到全是汗的fleece手套，到Sand Hill Road時已比原定時間遲了廿分鐘！正不好意思，但竟然不見老友，連忙取出電話check check。老友留了VM說昨晚飲太多所以肚痛不能出車，時為7:20am，雙手幾近全無知覺，內心掙扎要否打退堂鼓？邊掙扎邊踩，不久就到Tripp Road及King's Mountain交叉點，向左走向右走？再check email，見同事回覆confirm晚點會來，大家在路上見吧。此時有點騎虎難下，想想再過一會應更暖，而上山的風反而不如下山般勁吹雙手，加上面子攸關，上！後來也覺得這是明智決擇：天氣好得不得了，山上風景宜人。之前的折騰盡拋諸腦後，不當一回事了。(BTW，最後也沒有碰上應比我踩得快的同事們，唯有立此存照:P)

十五分鐘，陰與晴

今早早餐後望望窗外，無雨但灰濛濛。內心掙扎了一會：是否出車呢？按早兩日的觀卦，似乎不宜出，但觀望態度很快被搏一搏心態蓋過！馬上全副裝備上身，一踩到街口，即見濃霧籠罩，感覺頗為不妙；但出了車就很少回頭，開燈硬著頭皮上吧。幸好十五分鐘後，天氣豁然開朗，踩到上山，不但霧已散，雲也剩下不多，實在是踩單車的理想天氣！難道有時真要信信gut feeling，衝一衝再算？

Good books 好讀 2011

閱讀一向是我的頭號興趣（雖然花在看電視的時間亦不少，但我媽媽好proud的說她兒子之所以近視是因為小時候太多時間在光線不足情況下閱讀！）去年尾開始讀的是入選好讀網世紀百强的白先勇《台北人》，尚未讀完，容後再談（題外話：記得那些年追女仔扮文化人就是送她一本白先勇作品）之前寫過This is Your Brain on Music的讀後感；今次也介紹一本小說、一本音樂書。

小說是近年我追捧的日本推理小說作家（作品包括《白夜行》《嫌疑犯X的獻身》）東野圭吾的《使命與心的極限》。日本推理小說的案情佈局奇詭不在話下，不過其真正特色是借奇情剖白人性及社會現象等等，這本小說是最佳示範：本來各不相干的名醫及電機工程師，但作者就有本事巧妙地把他們拉在一起，探討醫者醫德，大企業社會責任等等。

另一本則是我在2010年第一次買的Amazon Kindle電子書，Tim Brookes寫的《Guitar》。 讀了年多才讀完，倒不是因為內容欠吸引，只是書在電腦電話入面，通常都是在無法上網的情況才會打開解悶。其實對於結他迷是一本相當有趣的書：本書的形式是兩條主線梅花間竹，一是結他幾百年歷史，由發明講到今時今日；二是作者本人訂造一支結他，專訪師傅製作過程，由零開始講到完成。兩者我都讀得津津有味；雖然聽結他音樂多年，有很多細節還是令我大開眼界。

風地觀

今日初三赤口，本地無車公廟，要占卦，唯有DIY，找來三個洋紫荊香港一元，起了一課，得風地觀：盥而不薦，有孚顒若。全卦均無變爻。僅一個「觀」字已經很有啟發，明顯就是要抱持觀望態度，謀定而後動。

Warrior (the movie)

One "behavioral change" for me in the past decade is definitely that I watched much less movies. Most of the movies I watched are at movie theater to bond with my kids (ok. I mean killing time when they have breaks from school :P) There are very few movies that I really want to watch instead of spending the precious 1.5-2 hour on other more "worthy" activities. For 2011, the must-watch movie for me was the Transformers: Dark of the moon. (and to a lesser extent, 那些年，我們一起追的女孩) However, there are occasions that watching movies was the best thing to do. You know what I'm talking about? Taking a long flight of course! I would not have been to the theater or even borrow from the library for the 2 movies I watched during my flights between US and HK! However, to my surprise, they turned out to be very entertaining. I picked Warrior near the beginning of the flight and I fell asleep quickly. Nevertheless, I gave it another chance when I woke up and I glad I did. You might think it's a typical movie about fighter, who begun as an underdog and became the unlikely champion eventually. Warrior is kinda like that except the story has 2 main characters who were fighters. So each of them had his unique backstory and obviously they can't both win so the ending was still a suspense. A couple of interesting points:
1) these 2 are MMA (Mixed Martial Art) fighters instead of the more familiar boxer (i.e., Rocky) I am a huge MMA fan and this is the first MMA related movie I watched. Of course there were many fights in the movie. Those were pretty good fights.
2) The school Physics teacher turned fighter theme actually happened in real life: Rich "Ace" Franklin was a Math teacher before he turned professional fighter. (He has a Bachelor in Math and a Master in Education!) I read that another movie will be made based on Franklin's life story.

The other movies I watched was Captain America. Again, the plot was your good old superhero vs superevil but it was still fun to watch the superhero struggled in the beginning (being used as a promoter of the US government bond propaganda) It's ironic.

Day 1 of the year of Dragon

In the age of Facebook, everybody posts greetings to others regarding Chinese New Year. I'll try to write some other feelings on this blog post instead. To be honest, there isn't really much CNY atmosphere here in the Bay Area unless you try hard to look for it. This New Year day is a Monday so it's a work day for me. I won't have anything special to do if I take today off anyway. However, I was told that it's a Chinese tradition to take off New Year day. The purpose is to prevent one from working all year long! Well, there's something new to learn every day! And my Chinese New Year resolution is to try updating this blog more often. For some reason it gets pretty good traffic so I gotta put up something new more often so as not to disappoint my readers!

My Android 4.0 Experience

As I mentioned in my previous post about my Android tablet, my plan was to upgrade it to 4.0 after using it with 2.3 for a while. I found the post about Android 4.0 beta on the forum on Teclast's official website and there's a link to download the RAR file. Un-rar the file and it contains instructions as well as binaries for the upgrade.

So, what do I like about Android 4.0 (beta)? To be honest, this doesn't seem to be a "must-have" upgrade for the time being (However, I could imagine a few years down the road, new apps won't run on 2.3 anymore. Just like a lot of iOS app these days requires 3.1 or even 4.0 or above.) The browser seems smoother and supports tabbed browsing (it's harder to switch between opened "windows" in the 2.3 browser) In addition, it doesn't require another app to turn on Airplane mode like 2.3. It is part of the "Settings"

The biggest problem with this beta upgrade though, is that it doesn't include the Market (where we download Apps) The closest "replacement" for the Market is freewarelovers.com. I found quite a few APK (App installer files. Simply double click in File Manager and it will install the corresponding app) I got other APK by Googling. And here is what I have installed:
-Youtube
-Chinese News Online
-PalmBookReader: 直讀中文(cBook) for some reason doesn't work even though I found its APK. This is its replacement.
-Amazon Kindle
-Rhapsody: it is the official app for the music streaming service. At first, playback always fails after playing a few seconds of each track and will skip to the next one. The problem kinda went away after I checked the box Advanced Settings->Disable track pre-loading
-Pandora
-GoKeyboard: this is the input method that replaced "Baidu input" that came with the tablet originally on 2.3. Not an exact replacement though because it uses Cangjie (倉頡) instead of hand writing recognition.
-XiiaLive Lite
-Facebook

Hopefully Teclast will release an "official" non-beta Android 4.0 upgrade that includes the Market in the near future. In the mean time, I'll keep using the beta (unless there's an app I need so bad that I have to revert back to 2.3, which could be done by downloading the firmware from Teclast)

A few good Apps

Talking about Android Apps here, this is a followup to my previous post. I've tried many free Apps in the past 2 weeks, a lot of them are just so-so or simply doesn't work, here are a few useful ones:
1) BBC News Reader: an "unofficial" BBC News app that could download articles for offline viewing.
2) CNN News: another "unofficial" app that works offline
3) Chinese News Online (HK): this app offers many different Chinese newspapers.
4) MoboPlayer: this is for playing back video in MKV format, which the built-in movie player cannot handle.
5) XiiaLive Lite: this is for listening to free streaming radio from ShoutCast. To make it work, I have to change Settings->Advanced Users->Internal stream engine from 'Off' to 'On' though.

Finally, there are a few games I like:
- 麻將天下
- GoldMiner
- SpeedCar
- AirPenquin

聖誕書展2011

今次是連續兩年逛大眾書局攪的書展，地點同樣是在灣仔的會展，不同的是去年收入場費，今年則是免費。另一點有所不同，我認為比去年做得較差的是書籍分類，記得去年少部份是以出版公司分成一個個檔位，大部份書還是按題材類別來排，所以我輕易找到要看要買的單車書及音樂書。今年卻全部按出版公司來分，個別題材如旅遊要逛足每一檔才看得全。去年我買了四本書，今年？零！除了找書難，可能也和收入場費與否不無關係。

那麼這是否一無收穫？我又不覺得。記得數十年前香港和美日台相比，被認為不存在甚麼閱讀文化，書店一般都把書排得密密麻麻，工具書參考書經典作品再加一點通俗讀物就是一切；還記得爸爸說，和香港人不同，坐長途機的外國客都是人手一卷，外國機場書店生意很好。今時今日，從書展及書局可見，香港人感興趣的題材廣泛了很多，已培養出健康的閱讀文化。今天讀了介紹腕錶、單車遊青藏等書，均是本地作品，水準甚高。

一千港元樓下Android tablet使用報告

雖然不是Apple fans(對於此品牌過份及不合理地受歡迎簡直相當反感)不過一直以來卻是Apple iOS的用家。皆因在美國比Apple便宜很多很多，但功能夠用的電話及tablet，十分難找。回到香港情況很不同，一下機就看到由Twins做封面的E-Zone，介紹一千港元左右的7吋Android tablet。結果我買了最平，$899的Teclast P76ti，之後一期由官恩娜做封面的E-Zone正是用這部機示範升級Android 4.0。我已計劃升級至4.0，不過還是想使用2.3一段日子，將來可以作比較。

使用Android我是零經驗，一開始最不解的是最頂的Status bar，那些icons不是每個按下去都有用，每下載及安裝完App後出現的icons又不會自動消失，Googled才知可以把這個bar向下拉顯示icons代表的notifications，可按Clear清除 icons及notifications。另一個問題是輸入繁體中文，三個預裝的輸入法均找不到如何手寫並出繁體，想從Market安裝倉頡輸入法也找不到合適的。結果還是從預裝其中的Baidu輸入法入手，選取了常規設置中的簡繁轉換，即可手寫出繁體！（本文有一少半是在該tablet上手寫的）

尚未有解決辦法的問題還有一大堆，最嚴重的是battery life流失得頗快，不過幾小時已跌破15%出Notification，在Notification可打開Battery Usage，顯示75%用於Cell standby，問題是這是一部全無流動電話／上網功能的tablet，根本無需費電力於Cell radio之上，更麻煩的是除了該Notification無其他途徑打開Battery Usage！第一樣改的是關掉所有Mobile network的Data相關選項，下一步是嘗試幾個不同的App/widget，包括Juice Defender, NoBars, Battery Widget, Free Power Widget。Battery Widget能顯示Battery Usage頁；而Free Power Widget則可以將機轉至Airplane mode。雖然如此，電池還是流失得比期望中快，更令我失望的是Cell Standby維持在75%左右。

最後想提的問題是有些知名App，例如Rhapsody及QR Droid等，均無法在Market找到；即使裝了Market Enabler這個任用家選擇不同國家／電訊公司對應Market的App，還是找不到以上。裝了幾個免費QR Code Scanner都不能使用，可能和這部機只有一個前置鏡頭有關吧。

短短數天，也發掘了不少好App，讓我介紹／表揚下吧：
1)MapDroyd：可下載各地地圖，在機上離線(offline)使用。
2)ColorNote：簡單易用的寫note軟件。

至於Facebook, Yahoo Mail, GMail, Hotmail, Google Docs, YouTube, Amazon Kindle這些官方App，基本上都符合對那些公司的期望，沒有太多驚或喜。

東涌逸東村來回迪欣湖

「唔踩唔知身體好」繼年初在香港和老友踩單車來回大圍及大尾篤，年尾再接再厲，原班人馬encore轉戰歷史遠不如吐露港悠久的東涌逸東村來回迪欣湖路線。其實此路線比較起上次的要短，對單車技術要求亦不高，只是最後有一小段斜坡，其難度及挑戰性在於路線很迂迴曲折，不是一條單車徑踩到盡，幸好有心的發燒友把發掘出的路線透過網站（本連結）公諸於世，包括沿途拍照，圖文並茂（租車店本身亦有照片），大家既可以按圖索驥；更可以預先下載座標數據至GPS。當然，好勝的我們不願完全依賴前人，走點冤枉路又算得甚麼？

不過我的好勝心比起驚青感還是有所不及，事前曾盡力記憶路線特別蹊蹺之處，無耐歲月不饒人，能記得上的實在有限，迷路自是少不了。

該網頁作者說他邊踩邊拍照，共花了六小時；我們則是邊踩邊吹水講古，亦花了六小時！（其中一秒望到蒙嘉慧，我見到鄭伊健隨其後，所以頗為肯定那是Yoyo）

讓我也分享一點點經驗吧： 1)第一個關鍵，就是要走中石化油站旁那條極不起眼，勉強算是路的路。
2)到達那條橋，只能爬上，推，再爬下，低頭推車穿過橋底，最後再爬上；用勁抬車吧。
3)見到欣澳站，要使用和汽車相同的路線入迪，要踩馬路，見到第一個迴旋處，轉入迪士尼的方向和迪欣湖相同；到第二個迴旋處，迪士尼的方向和迪欣湖完全180度相反，請注意。

Music of the day: Dusty Porch by John Williams

This John Williams is not the famous composer (most well known for his movie soundtrack), not the famous classical guitarist but an acoustic blues musician. I am trying to learn as much as I can about acoustic blues and found his album Dusty Porch on Rhapsody. He has the classic acoustic blues sound.

Music Evolution

I have been reading a new book called "Raggin' Jazzin' Rockin': A History of American Musical Instrument Makers" and watching the documentary "Metal Evolution" recently. It's true that when you think you know a lot about certain topics, there are actually so much more than you don't know. I have listened to drums/percussions in rock/jazz/classical music all these years and just learned that cymbal was originated from the Asia Minor area years ago (i.e., modern Turkey) and was related to the goddess Cybele. The famous cymbal brand Zildjian is the last name of the Turkish alchemist, Avedis Zildjian. He applied his alchemy knowledge into making the loud sounding cymbal. Classical composers started making use of this instrument and its unique effect more and more. His descendents emmigrated to the States and worked with jazz drummers like Gene Krupa to make cymbals suitable for their needs and thus had a big impact on jazz music. I'm still reading the book. The other chapters are about other American instrument makers like Steinway, C.G.Conn......

Before watching "Metal Evolution", I've never thought of the connections between metal and classical/blues/jazz. Most metal fans know Black Sabbath was the forerunner of metal but I'm not sure how many people know the first few notes from their song that bears the same name as the band, Black Sabbath, were inspired by a theme from "Mars" of Holst's "The Planet" suite. Bruce Dickenson from Iron Maiden and Rob Halford from Judas Priest both said they got the high pitch singing and those dramatic moves they made on stages from opera. Also, virtuoso like Paganini could be considered as forefather of metal guitarists. Just like blues, a lot of metal music is based on riffs. And those screaming from blues men paved way to metal vocal. Finally, Bill Ward (drummer of Black Sabbath) cited hard pounding jazz drummers like Buddy Rich as his influence. Looking forward to the rest of the series.