NASCAR's new championship format

Yes, NASCAR has come up with yet another set of changes to its system (a.k.a. the Chase) that determines its champion (at the highest level of racing, i.e. Spring Cup) It's controversial, as usual. Feedback on various sites are mostly negative. A lot of long time fans still prefer determining the champion simply by points (just like most other auto racing competition!) Well, I didn't start watching until the Chase has already in place so I am not clinging to the past like these folks. One thing interesting about this system though (and it makes very interesting conspiracy theory): the most popular driver in NASCAR, Dale Earnhardt Jr (who won exactly 1 race in last few years) would have been the 2013 Champion under the new system. Wouldn't NASCAR just want that to happen in 2014?

The History of the Eagles Tour

I drove down to San Jose yesterday and the traffic was worse than usual when I was near the exits for SAP Center (formerly known as HP Pavilion or Compaq Center) My teacher told me there's an Eagle's concert and we joked about how old bands like them declined. I mean, what have bands like Rolling Stones written lately? They keep recycling the old songs and charge a leg and an arm for concert tickets. BTW, I think the guitar solo on Hotel California is a bit overrated even though I won't switch channel when I hear it.

Still I'm curious what the critics said. Then I found out the Eagles actually play twice at San Jose (with a George Strait concert on 1/30 sandwiched in between! How strange.) Here is a review by the local paper. Well, once again, the name of the tour alone confirms my point that these bands are about the past, not now nor future.

Shock rock/metal pioneer Alice Cooper will open for Motley Crue's "Final tour"

I heard it on the radio last night and read it on the Rolling Stones just now. First of all, what's deal with signing an agreement not to tour again, ever? That's BS to me. They could probably change one member or the name of the group and get away with touring again, when they run out of money. Second, Alice Cooper should NOT be opening for them. It should be the other way around! A lot of comments here said the same. It's not because I like AC more than the Crue. I actually enjoy the latter's music a bit more but from the grand (musical) scheme of thing Alice Cooper > Motley Crue, period!

香港人用香港語

早一陣子發表過反對香港中文用詞強國化的意見，後來在網上找到有人轉載一篇《香港人用香港語：秒殺匪語一百例》，出發點不是一味反共，就我個人而言，強國式中文一大缺陷是放棄固有合適兼意義明確的詞語不用，夾硬新作一些直譯外文的語句，例如：一籃子因素不如寫為多種原因、加大力度即是加強、所謂地標實為名勝。

後記：後來看到有人link去新華網一篇文章批評「重中之重」一詞被濫用。其實論點有少少不同，畢竟作者認為該詞也有其意義，只是使用者常常誇張其事。

The Jimi Hendrix Strange Experience at Miami

今日有空檔去圖書館刨雜誌，照例睇屋企無訂的Guitar World，其中一篇鱔稿味甚重但我都照讀，講一個幾乎失傳的The Jimi Hendrix Experience live performance，那是一場在Miami賽車場內舉行的一個音樂節，舞台就在兩架貨車上搭成，Jimi Hendrix這個三重奏已推出第二張大碟（亦將於一年後拆伙）合作得相當緊湊，雖然開show前hi了不少野；那是原本為期兩天的音樂節的第一天，第二天卻下起雨來，只得彈木結他的Acoustic blues高手Mississippi Fred Mcdowell有得演出兼收得酬金，此外財政處理一鑊粥：連負責保安的也收不到錢，與負責運錢的護衛公司職員持槍對峙！錄音和錄像失踪也和演唱會員工收不到酬勞有關：該名員工拿走母帶一走了之，幾十年後其後人才將之賣給Hendrix公司，今天終於重見天日：收錄上述演出錄像的PBS Jimi Hendrix傳記DVD及錄音黑膠均在最近推出，該文宣傳頗為成功，搞得我心癢癢想入貨！

後記：近期和Hendrix有關的新聞的確不少，以其生平為主題的電影All is By My Side（Hendrix由Outkast的Andre 3000飾演）將於九月上映。

Grammy and jazz

I was trying to check out the nominations in the jazz category of Grammy 2014 using Google. Well, one of the links I got is a British newspaper article moaning the lack of European Jazz artists being nominated. Ironically, the article didn't mention any European jazz artists who the journalist think deserving of nomination. And the photo chosen for the article is American pianist Fred Hersch, who the journalist totally agree deserving nomination, which is totally irrelevant to the point he is trying to make! Oh well, good journalism is scarce on the other side of the Atlantic as well. The only relevant article I found so far has to do with the jazz vocalist category. I guess I will have to write another one after the results are announced.

Palm and Qualcomm

It was April 2010 last time I wrote about Palm, the handheld computing pioneer. HP acquired Palm back then. Too bad it was not a success as I hope it would be. HP did release a tablet called TouchPad based on the webOS developed at Palm but it was a flop and was discontinued 49 days after it was announced in 2011. HP opensourced webOS and transferred its team to LG. The latest move by HP was selling off Palm's patents to Qualcomm. Qualcomm is certainly capable of making good use of the patents to create new products. On the other hand, they might just use them for legal purpose only. :(

Unfamiliar territory

I suppose one of the least understood country (especially to the west) would be North Korea. NBA great (and the notorious) Dennis Rodman has organized a few trips and playing games over there, which generated a ton of publicity, not all of them positive to say the least. However, I've just read an interesting article about a scientist who were with Rodman there (translating for him). There are few things I wanna mention from the article: he found that North Korean people were genuinely friendly to him, in spite of the propaganda against Western people (especially American)  Trips like the one made by Rodman would make North Korean understand the outsiders more (and vice versa) And the understanding could only be a good thing. Regarding his own activities there (researching genetics and teaching science,) he found the students were really interested in the scientific methods and ideas he taught and appreciated his efforts. It's good to put politics aside.

The "epic" Windows 8.1 upgrade

If you bought a PC that was released more than a few months ago, it's likely to have Windows 8 instead of 8.1 installed. And since the 8.1 upgrade is free (for most version of Win 8), it would be a good idea to get it. But how? Well, the update is supposed to be available at the "(App) Store" (i.e., the one on the "Start" screen) However, it is only available when your Win 8 has the KB2871389 patch/update installed already. And this patch is supposed to be automatically "discovered" by Win 8's Windows Update. In my case, it was indeed suggested to be applied but that did not happen. And for some reason the PC won't download any update even if I requested it to. So I ended up going to Microsoft directly to download the update installer and ran it. For a long time it was "copying packages to the windows update cache" and I was worried it hang but fortunately it completed eventually. Upon restart it actually pulled 60+ other updates, which took about an hour to complete. Once it was done, the 8.1 update is finally available in the Store and I chose to install it. However, downloading was stuck at 0% after 15 min. I googled again and found another KB article by Microsoft. I ran the "troubleshooter" which seems to fix something and not fixed something. Oh well, it doesn't hurt to try installing the 8.1 update again! And it did slowly made progress downloading. The whole update is ~3-4Gb and of course I didn't wait for it to finish before heading to bed. I guess it took 2-3 hr to download. When I got up, I finally see the "Agreement" screen. Next, it asked me to confirm the hotmail address I provided when setting up the PC the first time. How? It's tied to another e-mail addr which I have to check on my other PC. Man, these days people are expected to have multiple e-mail accounts and multiple internet devices. Anyway, it's finally done! And I am one happy 8.1 user.

Next project: install a SSD. Found this post from someone who did it.

HIMYM is officially over the hill

I was a big fan of the show "How I met your mother." I have always found Cobie Smulders ("Robin") very attractive but I gotta admit my passion for it has waned some what and stopped watching every episodes religiously after the first few seasons. It's because I found sometimes the writers just tried too hard to be funny and "beat the horse to death" so to speak. However, the show went from "sometimes boring" to bad taste when the 1/13 episode was aired. This episode continued one of the show's more boring theme: the slap bet. One of the character went on a journey during which he met 3 Kung-Fu master-like characters who taught him the art of slapping. The problematic part is that the Kung-Fu master wore costumes that were stereotypes of Asians (e.g., the Fu Manchu moustache, the yellowface) These might have been acceptable a few decades ago but it's generally regarded as racist these days and caused an uproar in social media. The creators came out to apologize afterwards but the damage has been done. It's probably not gonna stop me from watching the show completely 'coz it's the last season anyway but it just dropped out of my list of all-time favorite sitcom.  

US education system

I guess most people won't take a close look or try understanding the education system until they have kids (unless they study education at college?) I was told the charter movement was a good thing years ago but then I've also heard some skeptical opinions. Anyway, none of our kids ended up going to charter schools. Just came across a post on Slashdot about it. It links to a few articles, including one that criticize it heavily. There are always 2 sides on every coin: new form of schools brings new way to educate kids. Sometimes things could get out of control though. For example, one of the operators mentioned in the article use computer-aided classes heavily to reduce the cost of hiring teachers. It's a good thing to bring down the cost but you can't sacrifice the human touch too much. Another example is about teacher's union disallowed at those schools. We all know what powerful teacher's union could do. It's always difficult to strike the balance.

Jazz playlist

There are quite a few interesting jazz albums released this year. I put together this play list:

• Charnett Moffett: The Bridge
• Ron Carter Golden Striker Trio: San Sebastian
• Frank Vignola & Vinny Raniolo: Melody Magic
• Lage Lund: Foolhardy
• Jim Hall: Fame and Fortune

And there are quite a few common themes among these albums:
1) guitar/bass centric: there are albums for fans of guitar and bass (like me :) Charnett Moffett and Ron Carter are among the biggest names in jazz bass. Bass lovers certainly won't be disappointed with the amount of bass solo. All 5 albums features guitarists except the first one (solo bass!) And as a bonus for fans of violin, guest violinist Zack Brock played on 4 tracks on Melody Magic.  
2) small groups: there were solo, duo, trio and quartets. That's all. Very intimate. You could clearly hear the on-going (musical) conversations.
3) If you are a fan of Beatles, you would enjoy the covers on both "The Bridge" and "Melody Magic"
And if you are a fan of Jacques Loussier, THE master of arranging Bach's work into jazz piano trio format, "Melody Magic" has that kind of magic. You will find the classical melodies very familiar yet refreshing with the new arrangements.

Finally, the world of jazz guitar has lost one of the icon: Jim Hall, in 2013. This Fame and Fortune album seems to be a compilation by the "mysterious" Jazz2Jazz label (aka JEI records) from earlier releases featuring Jim Hall playing with different pianists. Too bad there's very few info about the label (and the album!)

She Rocks

That's the name of an award ceremony. Gotta admit it sounds kinda cheesy but I dig the idea: paying tribute to women in the music industry. Many female rock musicians are household names. However, it's interesting to learn about the ones "behind the scene", like Dinah Gretsch (CFO of Gretsch guitar) and Maricela "MJ" Juarez (pickup expert at Seymour Duncan) Yes, they rock!

「大陸詞匯」vs「正宗港詞」

剛在高登看到關於春節一詞的爭論，Google一下才知有網民反對香港中文用詞強國化，有議員提出

「本土語言清洗論」（按：即香港原本常用詞語被取代，需撥亂反正），他們稱「適當」不能寫成「適切」、「推出政策」不能寫成「政策出台」、「最重要」不能寫成「重中之重」、「改善」不能寫成「優化」，「質素」不能說「素質」、「趨勢」不能說「勢頭」、「新年」不應說成「春節」、「功夫」不能說成「武術」

對我來說，從小已習慣農曆新年及春節互通，不過可能因為家人多和台灣及星馬人溝通，讀的又是右派報紙，所以我的經驗對判定春節是否外來語，實在作不得準。

至於功夫及武術，兩者實無抵觸。我認為功夫是武術的subset，專指傳統中國武術例如太極詠春少林等等，外國的武術如日本空手道或巴西柔術，甚至中國本身的摔跤及散打，稱之為功夫都不恰當。

除了以上兩項，我十分贊成必須堅持香港原有的寫法。

2014 Class of MLB Hall of Fame

I'm so happy that one of my favorite baseball player of all-time, Frank Thomas, was just voted into the Hall of Fame on the first year he was eligible. He totally deserved it. His bat could really hurt the opposing team, whether he swung it or not! He's called the "Big Hurt" for a good reason. He was part of the reason I became a fan of Chicago White Sox. And I was glad that he spent a season with the local Oakland A's late in his career too. You always learn something new everyday: I just learned why he was so motivated from the linked article. Too bad Craig Biggio was a few vote short of getting in. I'm looking forward to seeing him (and Bonds, Piazza, Kent) in some day.

對德國學前教育認識之謬誤

早一陣子看過網上廣傳一文指出德國法例明文禁止兒童六歲前接受學前教育，即香港大行其道的各種「不要輸在起跑線」課程在德國均屬非法。本人雖然不支持虎爸虎媽行徑，倒也無法想像德國會這樣，要知道德國出了不少傑出音樂家，很難相信他們全在六歲後才開始學音樂（翻查音樂家生平也否定這一點）

再看看維基百科介紹德國教育及相關法律條文，意思也不像是禁絕學前教育。果然，找到一篇深入分析德國教育的文章，指出原本網文之錯處。其實，該條文針對的是德國史上一種「貴族」先修班，並非泛指學前教育。

Sports highlights: college football and supercross

It was the first weekend of NFL playoff. I watched a bit of those 4 games without high hope (the only team I rooted for was the Packers and didn't expect them to advance) However, the bowl games were better for me. I enjoyed watching Oklahoma defeated Alabama (not that I was a fan) The 2 bowl games on Friday night were also highly entertaining (Ohio State lost to Clemson and Oklahoma State lost to Missouri)

And the biggest highlight was the 1st race of the 2014 Supercross season. The races were really competitive. Too bad both the rookie Eli Tomac and veteran James Stewart crashed out. The former champ crashed while challenging for the lead! Ironically, the 450 race was won by another rookie: Ken Roczen. I saw a few of his 250 motorcross (outdoor) races when he first came over from Germany after winning the MX2 World Championship but still adjusting to the environments in the States. I guess it doesn't take long to learn for those with great talent.

Finally, I came across an article about 10 years of Endurocross competition in the States. I'm surprised that it's doing relatively OK during the economic downturn because of its ability to promote the sponsors inside a stadium setting compared to the outdoor version. I hope I could watch it live in Vegas some day!

Sports lowlights: football and more football until autoracing

It has been a few years since last time I watched this many football during the weekends and holidays near New Year's day. I was sick the last 3 days of 2013 and had WatchESPN on most of the time while listening to the (college bowl) games lying in bed. The results were mostly disappointing: Texas Longhorns lost (as expected by ESPN's stat dept, by > 3 TD to the pretty good Oregon Ducks) Dallas Cowboys lost (as predicted by me. In the recent years, the team almost always got a chance to win the final game to get into the playoff and lost) Wisconsin Badgers lost (ESPN predicted a 3 pt victory, not with high confidence though. The winner South Carolina ranked 10 places higher for a reason I guess) Man U lost (to a team in coaching turmoil like the Tottenham Spurs) I didn't even watch any of these games (so not watching didn't help the teams but helped my sanity) Instead, I watched NHL's Winter Classic (Maple Leafs vs Red Wings) played outdoor in U of Michigan's football stadium (nicknamed "The Big House") It was snowing real hard. Great atmosphere. I think it slowed down the puck movement and action a bit though and hurt the entertainment value somewhat. (I just found that there'll be a few more outdoor games, including one in Dodgers stadium on Jan 25th between the 2 So Cal teams! No snow for sure.) I also watched quite a bit of the Rose Bowl (first time not featuring the losing Wisconsin side for a long time!) My Stanford friends please don't hate/unfriend me but I was mildly happy that Michigan State won (for some reason I like this team better. Maybe because it's a Big 10 team and a public school :P) Hopefully the same vibe infects the NFL matchup between the bay area 49ers and the midwestern Packers this Sat! BTW, Aaron Rodgers WAS the man. It's the first game he came back from a broken collarbone and he led the team to a last minute comeback to win the game, the division, and a chance to challenge the defending NFC champ 49ers.

Now that the new year has started. It means the new AMA Supercross season is starting very soon. Can't wait! Here is the complete TV schedule:

• 1/4/2014, 10 p.m. : Anaheim, Calif., Angel Stadium – Fox Sports 1
• 1/11/2014, 9:30 p.m.: Phoenix, Chase Field – Fox Sports 1
• 1/18/2014, 10:30 p.m.: Anaheim, Calif., Angel Stadium – Fox Sports 1
• 1/25/2014, 10:30 p.m.: Oakland, Calif., O.Co Coliseum – Fox Sports 1
• 2/1/2014, 10 p.m.: Anaheim, Calif., Angel Stadium – Fox Sports 1
• 2/8/2014, 10:30 p.m.: San Diego, Qualcomm Stadium – Fox Sports 1
• 2/15/2014, 8:30 p.m.: Arlington, Texas, Cowboys Stadium – Fox Sports 2
• 2/16/2014, midnight: Arlington, Texas: Cowboys Stadium – Fox Sports 1
• 2/22/2014, 7:30 p.m.: Atlanta, Georgia Dome – Fox Sports 2
• 2/23/2014, midnight: Atlanta, Georgia Dome – Fox Sports 1
• 3/1/2014, 7:30 p.m.: Indianapolis, Lucas Oil Stadium – Fox Sports 1
• 3/8/2014, 7:30 p.m.: Daytona Beach, Fla., Daytona International Speedway- Fox Sports 1
• 3/15/2014, 7:30 p.m.: Detroit, Ford Field – Fox Sports 2
• 3/16/2014, 1 p.m.: Detroit, Ford Field – Fox Sports 1
• 3/22/2014, 7:30 p.m.: Toronto, Rogers Centre – Fox Sports 1
• 3/29/2014, 8:30 p.m.: St. Louis, Edward Jones Dome – Fox Sports 1
• 4/5/2014, 8:30 p.m. Houston, Reliant Stadium – Fox Sports 1
• 4/12/2014, 10:30 p.m.: Seattle, CenturyLink Field – Fox Sports 1
• 4/26/2014, 7:30 p.m.: East Rutherford, N.J., MetLife Stadium – Fox Sports 2
• 4/27/2014, 4 p.m.: East Rutherford, N.J., MetLife Stadium – Fox Sports 1
• 5/3/2014, 10 p.m.: Las Vegas, Sam Boyd Stadium – Fox Sports 1

Daniel Snyder says Redskins will never change name

That's the title from USA Today, which is totally misleading! When I saw it, I found it odd 'coz never is pretty strong and he won't have a say when he doesn't own the team anymore (maybe he will sell it someday or die, who knows?) It turns out he said 'We will never change the name..." which makes more sense (Still, I think the name should be changed because of the racism concerns) Poor reporting by USA Today!

Sports highlights: Dallas Cowboys

It's yet another up-and-down, drama-filled season that is almost over for my team. The loss to the Packers after leading by 23 at the half was extremely mindboggling. Oh well, fans should not have high hope on the current team anyway. Still, there is one feel-good story I could write about: former Cowboys QB (mostly backup) Jon Kitna may play the same role again this Sunday (The starter Tony Tomo was injured. They might start Kyle Orton and have Kitna backing them up) He planned to donate his salary from that game to school. I posted another story (forgot where, probably FB) about him contributing to the community after he's done with NFL. A real class act!