Saturday, August 18, 2012
Who is the longest-tenured player on the A's current 25-man roster?
If you follow A's talk on the radio like I do, it's a well-known fact that Kurt Suzuki was the one, well, before he got traded at the beginning of the month. After I watched another A's victory on TV last night, I'm curious to find out who the current one is and found the answer here. As the article mentioned, he is better than most people (including me) think.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Nostalgic Greenwich Village
During my recent trip back to NYC, I tried looking for all those places I used to hang out often in the village. Found a few of them. Also learned that many have been closed, including one of my favorite coffee house/bar with live music: Kavehaz. It seems that it moved from SOHO to Chelsea after I left and the Chelsea location has also been closed. Here is an article about Kavehaz (scroll to the bottom).
Saturday, August 04, 2012
冷飯重温: 1998 Euro 豬仔團 trip
Because of my recent trip, I dug out what I wrote for my first trip to Europe (10/8/1998 - 10/16/1998) It was hosted on Geocities which was taken out of service by its parent Yahoo.
Day 1 - London
This is actually day 2 on my itinerary 'coz I spent a day on the flight from SF-NY-London. I arrived in the morning and faced my first problem: finding a place to have lunch. Fortunately there's a train station nearby. I went to the food court and ate at the only fastfood joint where I couldn't find in the States: (McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Burger King had invaded most of the places I visited) I had a sandwich made of French bread (i.e. the really hard bread) and I had this kind of sandwich for lunch most of the time during this trip.
I visited the Tower of London in the afternoon. These towers were built by various emperor of England to defend against foreign invasion. The oldest one were 900 years old. They have witnessed many historical events, including the rise and fall of dynasties, kings and queens during the long history of England. The jewels of the royal family, including the crown jewel of the queen, were displayed there. And the famous London bridge is right next to the towers.
I took subway (called tubes by the local people) to Leicester Square, which claimed to be the hippest place in London, in the evening. It was very crowded, and surrounded by places like Odeon Theatre (where I witnessed the premiere of the movie "Mulan" in London), Fashion Cafe, Capital Radio Cafe (where I had dinner. They have a in-house DJ and DJ booth. Pretty cool) After dinner, I walked to the famous Soho area, which was full of bars and restaurant. It's a cool hangout place.
Day 2 - London
I took a city sightseeing tour and visited St. Paul Cathedral (where Prince Charles and Princess Diana was married. Many famous historical figures, like Winston Churchill and Duke Wellington who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, were buried there), St. James Palace (the official residence of Prince Charles), Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey (where Princess Diana's funeral was held) and most importantly, Big Ben!
I visited Windsor Castle, the largest inhabited castle in the world, in the afternoon. It was also 900 years old. It was magnificent both outside and inside. The interior was luxurious: decorated with paintings, tapestries, furnitures, chinas. I went to Soho again this evening to attend a jazz show. That was a cool jazz club with good atmosphere.
Day 3 - London, Dover, Calais, Brussels
I left London for Dover, a port at South England and took a cruise ship across the English Channel to Calais, France. The ship was big and comfortable. The scenes along the cruise was beautiful. It was an enjoyable experience. The "dummy" tour (i.e. the guided tour) officially begun in Calais. The tour bus took us across the border to Brussels, Belgium.
Day 4 - Brussels, The Hague, Amsterdam
I had a brief city sightseeing tour around Brussels, the capital of Belgium as well as European Union, in the morning. There were not much interesting places, except the Atomium, which is a building that looks like an enlarged molecule: with interconnected balls representing atom and containing restaurants inside. It was built for World Expos in the past.
I left Brussels for the Hague, Netherlands in the afternoon. It's the city where the Netherlands government resides (it's not the capital though) The Peace Palace, i.e. the international court, is in Hague. Then I went on to Amsterdam.
Day 5 - Amsterdam
The tour guide brought us to the first tourist trap of this tour this morning: a diamond "center." Amsterdam is supposed to be famous of diamond. We were shown a little bit of the diamond polishing process.Then we were brought to a room with sales trying to sell us diamonds after educated us with knowledge of diamond sizes and cuttings. They locked the door of the room for about 15 minutes. So we were literally trapped! I wonder who'd buy things that require careful examination and consideration like diamonds under such circumstances. Well, there are always people fall to these traps otherwise these places wouldn't survive.
Then I visited Rijkmuseum, which showed a lot of paintings of Dutch artists, including the famous Rembrandt's. Too bad the Van Gogh museum was under renovation at that time. I had a cruise on the canals of Amsterdam and it is one of the highlights of this trip. Netherlands is a country built on top of water. A third of the country is actually under sea level. Dutch reclaim the land by extracting water from the land using windmills. So water is an integral part of Dutch life. Most of the canals in the city of Amsterdam are constructed, only a few of them are natural. People uses the canals for transportation. The canals also provide spaces for living: there are house boats every where along the canals. Some of these house boats actually seem to be pretty comfortable to live in. There are lots of classic looking buildings, some dated back to 18th century, along both sides of the canals. It's a beautiful scene. A interesting note: some of these old buildings are tilted because wood posts were used to support the building when they were built in the old days and they become rotten by water as times goes by. People living inside need to deal with sloped table surfaces as well as floors. I enjoyed this cruise a lot because of the beautiful scenes as well as the knowledge I gained about the life of people living in Amsterdam.
Day 6 - Amsterdam, Cologne, Coblenz
The tour left Amsterdam for Germany in the morning and began the journey into the area along the river Rhine. The first city I visited is Cologne. One of the most famous thing about Cologne is, of course, Cologne the man's "perfume." The name of the famous brand 4711 actually came from the house number of the place where it was first manufactured. However, what impressed me the most about this city was the Dom, a old Gothic style catholic church. It looked magnificent. The next stop is the German Corner. It is the place where the river Rhine and Moselle meet. I stayed at a small and old yet beautiful country side motel on the river bank near the city Coblenz that night.
Day 7 - Coblenz, Trier
The Rhine journey continued on Day 7. I had a cruise on the river: there were lots of old castles along the river. I was told that the interior of most of these castles were not preserved as they were converted to hotels or prisons! What a pity. One of the landmark I saw during the cruise was the Lorelei rock, which was associated to a legend of mermaid. It was not really special. Then I arrived at the city Trier in the afternoon. Trier has a very long history. It was established by the Roman emperor Constantine as the capital of the western part of the Empire about 1900 years ago. I visited Basilika, the palace built by Constantine. It's a huge hall now became a church. There were also other remaining of buildings from the Roman era, e.g. a bath place, where the Roman people took bath (people did not have private bathroom those days) and an amphitheater, where the Roman watched the cruel games of man fighting against animals and each other. It is also famous for being the birthplace of Karl Marx, the father of communism.
Day 8 - Trier, Paris
I left Germany for France this morning. On the way to Paris the tour took us to visit a winery, specialized in champagne. I was surprised by the large amount of money and effort the winery put into the guided tour (which feature a Disney like train ride around the cave) as well as the decoration of the cave where the wine was manufactured. I wonder how much of these costs were added to the price of the champagne. I arrived at Paris in the evening. Then I went to a cabaret show, which Paris is really famous for. The girls at the show were pretty. The music was good. It was very entertaining.
Day 9 - Paris
I took a city sightseeing tour this morning. I saw the landmarks like Notre Dame Cathedral, Louvre and the glass pyramid, the Renaissance style City Hall, Concorde Square, the Eiffel tower, Arc de Triomphe, and lots of other classical style old buildings. I was simply stunned by the beauty of these buildings. It is difficult to describe the beauty using words.
I visited another palace this afternoon: Versailles. It was built in the 17th century and modified many times since and it was the residence of French Emperor Louis XIV, XV, XVI. I was amazed by the luxurious look outside. I was even more amazed when I saw the luxurious decoration inside! Like Windsor Castle, it is heavily decorated with painting, tapestry, furniture, gold painted ceilings. It also has lots of sculptures of emperors including Napoleon and other famous people (e.g. the scientist Laplace) The most magnificent sight in my opinion is the hall of mirror with the chandeliers. It was fantastic.
I went to a jazz club, Duc Des Lombards, and saw the performance of the Ricardo Del Fra Sextet. They played great hard bop jazz. I was glad to see that the place was packed with fans. The atmosphere was great. I guess the jazz scene in Paris must be alive and kicking.
This is the end of my Europe trip. It was a great experience.
Bonus coverage: Day 10+ - New York
I stopped by New York City on my way back home from Europe. I've been attracted to New York City for a long time because of its sports and music scene. I went to an ice hockey game, New York Rangers vs. Edmonton Oilers, at Madison Square Garden, which claims to be the most famous arena in the world. The arena and the crowd was not really special but the game was exciting (Rangers 3, Oilers 2.)
One of the must-see thing in New York is of course the famous Broadway musicals. I saw Jekyll and Hyde at Plymouth Theater. The songs are beautiful. Another thing that New York is famous for and what I'm most interested in is jazz. New York is THE capital of jazz. Lots of jazz musicians are working and living there. Most of the famous jazz musicians choose New York City as one of their tour stop. I think you can find one or more big name jazz musicians playing in NYC every night! Many legendary and prestigious jazz clubs, like Birdland, Village Vanguard, Blue Note, are in NYC. Many jazz masters, including John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Bill Evans have played and recorded live sessions at these clubs. I went to Village Vanguard to see the Lou Donaldson Quartet. I also went to a newer jazz club (any place is new compared to those legendary clubs) called Iridium, which books many big name musicians as well, to see the Pat Martino Quintet. The clubs were typical. The music was great. I visited the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown in upstate New York. It has exhibits about baseball history and it also displays lots of memorabilia items like gloves, bats, jersey...... from legendary players. It was a wonderful experience for a baseball fan like myself. This is the end of my vacation.
Day 1 - London
This is actually day 2 on my itinerary 'coz I spent a day on the flight from SF-NY-London. I arrived in the morning and faced my first problem: finding a place to have lunch. Fortunately there's a train station nearby. I went to the food court and ate at the only fastfood joint where I couldn't find in the States: (McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Burger King had invaded most of the places I visited) I had a sandwich made of French bread (i.e. the really hard bread) and I had this kind of sandwich for lunch most of the time during this trip.
I visited the Tower of London in the afternoon. These towers were built by various emperor of England to defend against foreign invasion. The oldest one were 900 years old. They have witnessed many historical events, including the rise and fall of dynasties, kings and queens during the long history of England. The jewels of the royal family, including the crown jewel of the queen, were displayed there. And the famous London bridge is right next to the towers.
I took subway (called tubes by the local people) to Leicester Square, which claimed to be the hippest place in London, in the evening. It was very crowded, and surrounded by places like Odeon Theatre (where I witnessed the premiere of the movie "Mulan" in London), Fashion Cafe, Capital Radio Cafe (where I had dinner. They have a in-house DJ and DJ booth. Pretty cool) After dinner, I walked to the famous Soho area, which was full of bars and restaurant. It's a cool hangout place.
Day 2 - London
I took a city sightseeing tour and visited St. Paul Cathedral (where Prince Charles and Princess Diana was married. Many famous historical figures, like Winston Churchill and Duke Wellington who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, were buried there), St. James Palace (the official residence of Prince Charles), Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey (where Princess Diana's funeral was held) and most importantly, Big Ben!
I visited Windsor Castle, the largest inhabited castle in the world, in the afternoon. It was also 900 years old. It was magnificent both outside and inside. The interior was luxurious: decorated with paintings, tapestries, furnitures, chinas. I went to Soho again this evening to attend a jazz show. That was a cool jazz club with good atmosphere.
Day 3 - London, Dover, Calais, Brussels
I left London for Dover, a port at South England and took a cruise ship across the English Channel to Calais, France. The ship was big and comfortable. The scenes along the cruise was beautiful. It was an enjoyable experience. The "dummy" tour (i.e. the guided tour) officially begun in Calais. The tour bus took us across the border to Brussels, Belgium.
Day 4 - Brussels, The Hague, Amsterdam
I had a brief city sightseeing tour around Brussels, the capital of Belgium as well as European Union, in the morning. There were not much interesting places, except the Atomium, which is a building that looks like an enlarged molecule: with interconnected balls representing atom and containing restaurants inside. It was built for World Expos in the past.
I left Brussels for the Hague, Netherlands in the afternoon. It's the city where the Netherlands government resides (it's not the capital though) The Peace Palace, i.e. the international court, is in Hague. Then I went on to Amsterdam.
Day 5 - Amsterdam
The tour guide brought us to the first tourist trap of this tour this morning: a diamond "center." Amsterdam is supposed to be famous of diamond. We were shown a little bit of the diamond polishing process.Then we were brought to a room with sales trying to sell us diamonds after educated us with knowledge of diamond sizes and cuttings. They locked the door of the room for about 15 minutes. So we were literally trapped! I wonder who'd buy things that require careful examination and consideration like diamonds under such circumstances. Well, there are always people fall to these traps otherwise these places wouldn't survive.
Then I visited Rijkmuseum, which showed a lot of paintings of Dutch artists, including the famous Rembrandt's. Too bad the Van Gogh museum was under renovation at that time. I had a cruise on the canals of Amsterdam and it is one of the highlights of this trip. Netherlands is a country built on top of water. A third of the country is actually under sea level. Dutch reclaim the land by extracting water from the land using windmills. So water is an integral part of Dutch life. Most of the canals in the city of Amsterdam are constructed, only a few of them are natural. People uses the canals for transportation. The canals also provide spaces for living: there are house boats every where along the canals. Some of these house boats actually seem to be pretty comfortable to live in. There are lots of classic looking buildings, some dated back to 18th century, along both sides of the canals. It's a beautiful scene. A interesting note: some of these old buildings are tilted because wood posts were used to support the building when they were built in the old days and they become rotten by water as times goes by. People living inside need to deal with sloped table surfaces as well as floors. I enjoyed this cruise a lot because of the beautiful scenes as well as the knowledge I gained about the life of people living in Amsterdam.
Day 6 - Amsterdam, Cologne, Coblenz
The tour left Amsterdam for Germany in the morning and began the journey into the area along the river Rhine. The first city I visited is Cologne. One of the most famous thing about Cologne is, of course, Cologne the man's "perfume." The name of the famous brand 4711 actually came from the house number of the place where it was first manufactured. However, what impressed me the most about this city was the Dom, a old Gothic style catholic church. It looked magnificent. The next stop is the German Corner. It is the place where the river Rhine and Moselle meet. I stayed at a small and old yet beautiful country side motel on the river bank near the city Coblenz that night.
Day 7 - Coblenz, Trier
The Rhine journey continued on Day 7. I had a cruise on the river: there were lots of old castles along the river. I was told that the interior of most of these castles were not preserved as they were converted to hotels or prisons! What a pity. One of the landmark I saw during the cruise was the Lorelei rock, which was associated to a legend of mermaid. It was not really special. Then I arrived at the city Trier in the afternoon. Trier has a very long history. It was established by the Roman emperor Constantine as the capital of the western part of the Empire about 1900 years ago. I visited Basilika, the palace built by Constantine. It's a huge hall now became a church. There were also other remaining of buildings from the Roman era, e.g. a bath place, where the Roman people took bath (people did not have private bathroom those days) and an amphitheater, where the Roman watched the cruel games of man fighting against animals and each other. It is also famous for being the birthplace of Karl Marx, the father of communism.
Day 8 - Trier, Paris
I left Germany for France this morning. On the way to Paris the tour took us to visit a winery, specialized in champagne. I was surprised by the large amount of money and effort the winery put into the guided tour (which feature a Disney like train ride around the cave) as well as the decoration of the cave where the wine was manufactured. I wonder how much of these costs were added to the price of the champagne. I arrived at Paris in the evening. Then I went to a cabaret show, which Paris is really famous for. The girls at the show were pretty. The music was good. It was very entertaining.
Day 9 - Paris
I took a city sightseeing tour this morning. I saw the landmarks like Notre Dame Cathedral, Louvre and the glass pyramid, the Renaissance style City Hall, Concorde Square, the Eiffel tower, Arc de Triomphe, and lots of other classical style old buildings. I was simply stunned by the beauty of these buildings. It is difficult to describe the beauty using words.
I visited another palace this afternoon: Versailles. It was built in the 17th century and modified many times since and it was the residence of French Emperor Louis XIV, XV, XVI. I was amazed by the luxurious look outside. I was even more amazed when I saw the luxurious decoration inside! Like Windsor Castle, it is heavily decorated with painting, tapestry, furniture, gold painted ceilings. It also has lots of sculptures of emperors including Napoleon and other famous people (e.g. the scientist Laplace) The most magnificent sight in my opinion is the hall of mirror with the chandeliers. It was fantastic.
I went to a jazz club, Duc Des Lombards, and saw the performance of the Ricardo Del Fra Sextet. They played great hard bop jazz. I was glad to see that the place was packed with fans. The atmosphere was great. I guess the jazz scene in Paris must be alive and kicking.
This is the end of my Europe trip. It was a great experience.
Bonus coverage: Day 10+ - New York
I stopped by New York City on my way back home from Europe. I've been attracted to New York City for a long time because of its sports and music scene. I went to an ice hockey game, New York Rangers vs. Edmonton Oilers, at Madison Square Garden, which claims to be the most famous arena in the world. The arena and the crowd was not really special but the game was exciting (Rangers 3, Oilers 2.)
One of the must-see thing in New York is of course the famous Broadway musicals. I saw Jekyll and Hyde at Plymouth Theater. The songs are beautiful. Another thing that New York is famous for and what I'm most interested in is jazz. New York is THE capital of jazz. Lots of jazz musicians are working and living there. Most of the famous jazz musicians choose New York City as one of their tour stop. I think you can find one or more big name jazz musicians playing in NYC every night! Many legendary and prestigious jazz clubs, like Birdland, Village Vanguard, Blue Note, are in NYC. Many jazz masters, including John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Bill Evans have played and recorded live sessions at these clubs. I went to Village Vanguard to see the Lou Donaldson Quartet. I also went to a newer jazz club (any place is new compared to those legendary clubs) called Iridium, which books many big name musicians as well, to see the Pat Martino Quintet. The clubs were typical. The music was great. I visited the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown in upstate New York. It has exhibits about baseball history and it also displays lots of memorabilia items like gloves, bats, jersey...... from legendary players. It was a wonderful experience for a baseball fan like myself. This is the end of my vacation.
Thursday, August 02, 2012
2012 Euro Cycling and Art Trip
I have been back from this trip for 4 days already and spent most of my free time blogging it. It's finally finished and published:
Prologue
Munich
Salzburg
Wachau
Vienna
Epilogue 1
Epilogue 2
Hope you enjoy reading it. I certainly will in a few years when I forgot everything :P
Prologue
Munich
Salzburg
Wachau
Vienna
Epilogue 1
Epilogue 2
Hope you enjoy reading it. I certainly will in a few years when I forgot everything :P
Monday, July 23, 2012
Squeaky disc brake on a mountain bike
I have been biking for many years but I can't say I'm familiar with bike maintenance (I'm as lazy as you could imagine when it comes to maintenance.) Mountain bike and disc brake are especially new to me. My 2 month old bike started squeaking when I squeeze the brake. It sounded really scary and I worry about not having braking power when I need it the most: going downhill on narrow trails. I wonder if I did something wrong with brakes (misaligned it by accident?) but it turns out disc brakes just need more cleaning than the V-brake and C-brake that I'm used to. Thanks to this article. I didn't even use rubbing alcohol but plain water and it worked like a charm.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Fantasy Symphony Contest
I am no stranger to fantasy sports, in which I handpicked a sports team to compete with others' teams. And I am pretty good at identifying lesser known talents, especially in football and baseball. However, when it comes to fantasy symphony, I'm no where near these guys. You might ask: what the heck is fantasy symphony anyway? Well, I just learned this term yesterday from the Stereophile magazine. Each fantasy player pretends to be in charge of a symphony orchestra and comes up with the program for a whole season (of 7 concerts), which cannot include works of the top 12 most popular composers (e.g. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms......) The editors have picked, subjectively, the winning programs. If you like to challenge your musical taste like I do, you should start listening to some of the pieces from these programs. Some are really "ear" openers!
Sunday, July 15, 2012
週末派對
聽起來就像青春片的名字，卻是我們這幾天的寫照，心境青春即可！第一個是西式：其中一位賓客是小提琴家（也是我們當晚弦樂三缺一重奏一位成員的老師），承蒙她指點了我們一二，一首貓王金曲總算玩得成個樣子；另一位是她從事樂器交易的男朋友，聽了不少他游走國際的趣事。第二個是中式：舊同事主人家兩位是青島及揚州人，嚐嚐揚州菜，再聽聽揚州話讀唐詩，十分攪笑！一席話題倒不止於唐詩宋詞，總之就是大江南北。最後一個是運動式：在泳池慶祝太太放大假，之後當然大吃一場補充消耗了的能量:)
Friday, July 13, 2012
Hard rock 101
I was listening to FM 96.5 on the car radio while taking my son to camp. It played its slogan: "Lite rock, less talk" after a Kelly Clarkson's song. My son asked me the difference between lite rock and hard rock. I figured it'd be easier to explain with an example so I switched to the next station on the preset: 107.7 and surely it was playing Led Zeppelin. Enough said.
Monday, July 09, 2012
Thursday, July 05, 2012
The Youk is the Man
I bet Red Sox managment has some regrets about trading Kevin Youkilis away to the White Sox. Man, he helped the Sox winning a few games since the trade less than 2 weeks ago! Red Sox was swept by the 3rd place A's while White Sox just swept the 1st place Rangers. I've been able to follow these games thanks to my newly paid subscription to MLB.TV :)
Sunday, July 01, 2012
MLB.TV Premium tips
Like every service, good ones or bad ones, there are always a few tricks to maximize your experience.
One big attraction of MLB.TV Premium (compared to the "basic service") is the ability to stream on mobile device using the At Bat App. There are actually two favors: At Bat 11 costs $9.99 while At Bat Lite is free. I was a bit confused. Turns out I could use the free version for streaming.
Next issue has to do with streaming in Web Browser (Chrome, fyi) on my PC. My internet connection does not have enough bandwidth for HD. I'm not too crazy about it anyway. I tried sliding the quality bar to the lowest and it kept resetting back to highest and the video kept buffering. In addition, it kept nagging me to use Nextdef (a browser plugin) I decided I couldn't do worse so I installed it. Now I have another slider that goes from "Standard" to "Nextdef." Once I slided it to "Nextdef." The quality setting would stay at the lowest, finally!
MLB.TV Premium
MLB.COM好勤力日日send e-mail俾我終於奏效：MLB.TV Premium這個棒球賽streaming服務，半季減價到$79.99；另一誘因係MLB.TV Premium可在新電話上用At Bat App觀看，我抵受唔到誘惑落左搭。
睇左幾場好波：星期五晚Mets出knuckle ball奇人再贏Dodgers，星期日Brewers在最後半個inning憑對方失誤險勝D-back。
The magical 1967
I just found out:
are all released in 1967. What a year!
- The Velvet Underground and Nico
- Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
- Are You Experienced
- Born Under a Bad Sign
are all released in 1967. What a year!
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
New phones on Olympic years
It seems that I'm replacing my phone about every four years. My previous phone was an iPhone that I bought around Beijing Olympics. I bought my new phone, the Samsung Galaxy Note, just before the London Olympics. My phone before the iPhone, a Sony Ericsson W800i, also lasted ~4 years. I don't think I'm qualified as a "gadget" guy that a lot of people think I am based on this frequency.
Anyway, the more interesting question is: why did I switch from iOS to Android? Well, updating a jailbroken iPhone was a tedious process and I only did it once so my iPhone was running iOS 3. I wasn't able to install any new App from the official or unofficial App Store anymore. I might run into the same issue with Android. Who knows? I'm like the people who vote for a candidate from a different party because of poor performance of the last one. You just hope it'll be better.
So, what were my top priority action items after getting the phone?
1) Sync contact from iPhone to Google
Android is tightly coupled with your Google account (well, everybody has one, right?) Basically the address book and calendar on your phone ARE the ones in the "Cloud" associated with your Google account. All I needed to do is to open iTunes and sync the contacts to Google. I think not every contact went through but it seems to have taken care of the majority.
2) Sync Yahoo Calendars
iPhone's builtin Calendar app allows you to sync with many different provider that uses CalDAV, including Yahoo. Not so for Android. There are 3rd party app that is supposed to work but I'd rather not risk my money. The solution? Export my existing Yahoo Calendars and import to my Google Calendar and stop using them for good. Yeah, it's more like a workaround. (Google has cut off yet another source of traffic to Yahoo!)
3) Add music
This is easy: connect the phone to any computer using USB and simply copy the files to any directory on the memory of the phone. The phone will automatically scan for the new files.
4) Customize ringtone
Once I have music files on the phone, I could open my Contact list and simply assign one of those files as the ringtone for a particular contact. However, I might not like to use the beginning of a song as the ringtone, for example, I prefer the chorus part in the middle of a song. For this, I downloaded the free app Ringdroid and pick the part I like. Ringdroid saves it as a ringtone file. (I think internally Android OS uses a particular directory for ring tones. It's hidden to un-rooted phone like mine) I wonder why the app is not banned by the phone companies who wanted to squeeze more money out of people. Some are willing to pay $3+ for a ringtone.
5) Whatsapp
It relies on your Contact list/address book. The only thing I changed is its Notifications setting: I turned off "Contact Ringtone" so that it won't play the ringtone of the person who messaged me. I'm confused 'coz I thought I got a phone call.
6) Cangjie input
I downloaded this popular Chinese input method app. I could have made it my default input method because when I type English, it will try to translate and I could pick either the Chinese word or the English word I typed. So it works for both Chinese and English without toggling "modes" like the other Chinese input method app (Go Keyboard) Its prediction is pretty accurate too. However, the reason it is so accurate is that it has generated statistics from keystrokes collected from user. Yes, it did warn user about it. I don't want my keystrokes to be collected all the time so my default is still the Samsung one.
Here is the list of other free Apps I downloaded. I learned about them from my Android tablet experience.
SlingPlayer is not free ($29.99) but I gotta take advantage of the big screen! In fact, the 5.3 screen is the reason I chose it over any other phone. The newer Samsung Galaxy S3 is supposed to have better spec (and running Android 4 aka Ice Cream Sandwich already) but I couldn't resist the BIG screen.
Anyway, the more interesting question is: why did I switch from iOS to Android? Well, updating a jailbroken iPhone was a tedious process and I only did it once so my iPhone was running iOS 3. I wasn't able to install any new App from the official or unofficial App Store anymore. I might run into the same issue with Android. Who knows? I'm like the people who vote for a candidate from a different party because of poor performance of the last one. You just hope it'll be better.
So, what were my top priority action items after getting the phone?
1) Sync contact from iPhone to Google
Android is tightly coupled with your Google account (well, everybody has one, right?) Basically the address book and calendar on your phone ARE the ones in the "Cloud" associated with your Google account. All I needed to do is to open iTunes and sync the contacts to Google. I think not every contact went through but it seems to have taken care of the majority.
2) Sync Yahoo Calendars
iPhone's builtin Calendar app allows you to sync with many different provider that uses CalDAV, including Yahoo. Not so for Android. There are 3rd party app that is supposed to work but I'd rather not risk my money. The solution? Export my existing Yahoo Calendars and import to my Google Calendar and stop using them for good. Yeah, it's more like a workaround. (Google has cut off yet another source of traffic to Yahoo!)
3) Add music
This is easy: connect the phone to any computer using USB and simply copy the files to any directory on the memory of the phone. The phone will automatically scan for the new files.
4) Customize ringtone
Once I have music files on the phone, I could open my Contact list and simply assign one of those files as the ringtone for a particular contact. However, I might not like to use the beginning of a song as the ringtone, for example, I prefer the chorus part in the middle of a song. For this, I downloaded the free app Ringdroid and pick the part I like. Ringdroid saves it as a ringtone file. (I think internally Android OS uses a particular directory for ring tones. It's hidden to un-rooted phone like mine) I wonder why the app is not banned by the phone companies who wanted to squeeze more money out of people. Some are willing to pay $3+ for a ringtone.
5) Whatsapp
It relies on your Contact list/address book. The only thing I changed is its Notifications setting: I turned off "Contact Ringtone" so that it won't play the ringtone of the person who messaged me. I'm confused 'coz I thought I got a phone call.
6) Cangjie input
I downloaded this popular Chinese input method app. I could have made it my default input method because when I type English, it will try to translate and I could pick either the Chinese word or the English word I typed. So it works for both Chinese and English without toggling "modes" like the other Chinese input method app (Go Keyboard) Its prediction is pretty accurate too. However, the reason it is so accurate is that it has generated statistics from keystrokes collected from user. Yes, it did warn user about it. I don't want my keystrokes to be collected all the time so my default is still the Samsung one.
Here is the list of other free Apps I downloaded. I learned about them from my Android tablet experience.
- Color Note
- Blogger
- Apple Daily
- Discuss(香港討論區)
- Rhapsody
- XiiaLive Lite
- Pandora
- cBook
- SpeedCar
- AirPenguin
- Google Drive
- HKBN 2b
SlingPlayer is not free ($29.99) but I gotta take advantage of the big screen! In fact, the 5.3 screen is the reason I chose it over any other phone. The newer Samsung Galaxy S3 is supposed to have better spec (and running Android 4 aka Ice Cream Sandwich already) but I couldn't resist the BIG screen.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
認真失威
IndyCar因為天雨遲左開場，到NASCAR Nationwide開場都未完，ABC電視台決定將前者掟去ESPNEWS台，轉為播後者。
IndyCar堂堂北美頂級open wheel賽事，竟然要讓路予只是次級房車賽的NASCAR Nationwide，認真失威。
其實IndyCar都幾好睇，不過太多非美國人當道，難怪美國人不支持。更不幸的是，Indycar似乎前路頗為坎坷：原本安排在青島舉行的賽事被取消（無端端學人想打入强國市場作甚？真的活該）少了該場，就低於贊助商所要求的場數；另一方面，贊助商合約還有三年才完成，有消息指IndyCar已在找下一手頂上的贊助商，實在有點耐人尋味。
Monday, June 18, 2012
陰晴不定
對上一次出三藩市辦公，已是十幾天前的事！今早離家時陽光普照，還在考慮穿不穿短Tee，不過深知三藩市天氣不能低估，感冒初癒，還是著件長袖Polo比較穩陣，果然，在SF一下火車，即見烏雲密佈，就像昨天電視直播SF Olympic Club上演的US Open高爾夫球大賽；踩車途中還覺點點雨粉撲面，決定不要「蛇」得太遠，就在Alcatraz Landing掉頭向office算了。
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Saturday, June 16, 2012
收放自如的熱情
家中兩個寶貝去年暑假最沉迷的是Pokemon，電子遊戲及figurines玩過不停，讀得最多的也是Pokemon指南。去年開學後當然繼續沉迷，我們於是嚴重告誡：只有週末才能玩，學年轉眼過去，他們也倒真夠定力，一個月只玩它一兩次。我還以為他們對Pokemon熱情不再，已經outgrown了？原來不是，一放暑假，兒子便把他的寶貝傾巢而出，他的熱情真夠收放自如，成年人也屬少見呢！
令我想起一位常常睇波的老友，觀看賽事過程當中他固然極之投入，但結果塵埃落定之後，從不見他為愛隊落敗而沮喪不已，或因愛隊成功而喜形於色。
其實近年自己多隊愛隊受挫（例如曼聯，UT，UW都僅敗）相對而言，不甚喜歡的如車路士，Kings，Cardinals，NY Giants等等就成功奪錦，的確不是味兒；不過想深一層，自己的愛隊之前亦屢獲佳績，似乎也無需為一時失敗而介懷。看看歐國盃看台上那些弱隊擁躉，很多都做到勝固欣然敗亦喜，真的是為了能夠參與而高興，實在值得學習！
到有一天能對愛隊的熱情收放自如，也許可以試試如何對人也能如此，現在只能以一句「我是熱情的rock友」來解嘲吧！
Thursday, June 14, 2012
What he does for a living
Today I read an article in American Airline's magazine about Metallica's drummer Lar Ulrich getting a side job as an actor in a movie about the Spanish Civil War starring Nicole Kidman. At this point in his sucessful career he could pretty much do anything he likes (including making music that suck badly with his band coz they made enough great ones to justify that.) The most interesting quote though, was when asked about his future acting plan, he said, "Actually all this music and acting isn't even what I do for a living -- on days like today, it seems my full-time occupation is driving children around." So both Ulrich and I have something in common in addition to making rock music!
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