認識香港2014

過去幾次返港都有特地遊覽一些有獨特色彩的地方（例如去年一月到過多間藝術博物館，去年十一月到過港島東區），今次由於和同學聚會眾多，加上不宜過度行走攀爬，本來沒有甚麼目標，結果反而到了不少新地方！

今次香港之旅第一個星期晚晚夾band，上午比較多時間和爸媽活動。住得離粉嶺不遠，正好參觀該處兩間道觀(蓬瀛仙館, 雲泉仙館)及食齋（在前者）。蓬瀛仙館我較欣賞其堂皇的建築，供奉三位神祇（包括全真七子之首丘處機）的大殿及六十位太歲的樓層均極有特色；雲泉仙館我則欣賞其外所種之花卉，包括很雅緻的菊花，雖然今次不合時賞荷花，還是可以想像那大荷池在荷花盛放的景況,即使是枯枝也頗有意境！

至於位於荔枝角醫院舊址的饒宗頣文化館則是爸爸介紹我去的（可能因為大師和我們是同鄉,其中一項專研的科目正是潮學），也是約了在附近工作的朋友午飯局「順道」而去（BTW，多謝朋友在D2請食西餐，感覺和當年在那裡工廠區做暑期工的年代很不一樣。）本館有別於大部份為開設博物館而起的建築，而是保留具有歷史價值的舊建築，因此展覽室分得頗散，山腳的第一室介紹大師生平及展出部份他的書畫作品，再上是另一群建築，包括餐廳、大堂以及更多展覽室：當日分別有（現代南方）水墨畫、昔日香港照片以及介紹該址歷史（由海關到賣豬仔宿舍到傳染病醫院）三個展覽。

今個假期有幸得兩位同學當嚮導分別帶我參觀了港島區的幾處古蹟，包括現為餐廳及店舖灣仔的和昌大押，及位於半山曾是名門望族何甘棠府第及教堂的孫中山紀念館；還有原是警察宿舍現有售賣設計師產品店舖的元創方。

最後想提看過一場精彩的爵士音樂會，演出者是由口琴手Cy Leo帶領的樂隊，當晚演出多首我們熟悉的名作包括Cantaloupe Island及Bluesette等等，蘭桂坊當年的The Jazz Club and Bar我去過數次，自其結業後也沒有在那裡聽過jazz，所在的大廈California Tower由拆卸到現在差不多重建完成我也沒留意，今次的場地Orange Peel離那裡不遠，這是我首次去，希望有下次。（事隔多年，現在方知The Jazz Club and Bar的歷史）

後記：上次逛銅鑼灣誠品，得知那裡有大量雨果唱片公司新舊出品，今次買了2014新出的潮州二弦作品集，正！

Autosports highlights: WTCC finale, NASCAR finale, F1 finale

The biggest races during the 2-day Macau GP were the WTCC finale and F3. WTCC rookie Jose Maria Lopez has been dominating all season by winning 9 races before coming to Macau and has already won the series championship. Then he won 1 more (from the pole): the first race at Macau, to break the all-time single season win record of 9, previously held by Muller, who was also the defending champion, ousted by Lopez. I think he could have swept both races given how strong his car was if not for WTCC's interesting qualifying rule: the top 10 starting drivers in race 1 start in reverse order in race 2 (i.e., #10 in race 1 starts from the pole in race 2) That gave another former champion and Macau "specialist" Huff a chance. He climbed up to P2 shortly after race 2 started and eventually passed the leader (whose power steering malfunctioned) after a late restart. The other WTCC highlight was 9-time rally champ Sebastian Loeb showing off his drifting technique on the famous hairpin of the Macau street course. Not sure if WTCC will come back to Macau in 2015 (I'm pretty sure I'm not coming back to Macau GP in 2015 though :( ) The F3 race featured future F1 driver Max Verstappen (who will be the youngest ever at the age of 18)  The race didn't start well: a big crash in the front collected many cars, including the 2 frontrunners. Vestappen didn't get a chance to show off his ability. Rosenqvist was not challenged much after the restart and won easily.

The 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup series finale started a few hours later on the same Sunday in Miami. The 4 remaining drivers eligible for the championship: Harvick, Hamlin, Logano and Newman, were up front for most of the race. Harvick, Hamlin and Gordon all looked strong. However, Hamlin faded after a late restart, leaving Harvick up front with Newman chasing in P2 but the challenge was too late and Harvick won his first NASCAR Sprint Cup championship. Newman almost completed THE "mission": winning the championship without winning one race all season long prior to this final race (He would have won this race if he passed Harvick on the last lap) and thus proving how ridiculous the current chase format is (but he didn't. So this chase format is safe for now :P Ironically, the 1-win Kenseth winning the cup over Newman, the winningest driver in 2003, was the reason that NASCAR started its 1st chase format) Check out how ESPN ridicule this 2014 season with its "awards"

Then we had the F1 series finale one week later in Abu Dhabi. It took me a while to find a bar that showed the race live (found in East TST) The pressure was on the point leader Hamilton and the 2nd place Rosberg, who could have leapfrogged if he won and Hamilton finished worse than P2 because of the double-points rewarded to this final race. Rosberg started from pole while Hamilton from 2nd but trouble with Rosberg's car dropped him all the way outside top 10 and Hamilton kept his lead over a strong Massa to win the race and the 2014 championship for the 2nd time in his young career His previous championship was won in 2008. Coincidentally, Massa won the final race of that season but lost the title by 1 point. That was the last season that the championship was decided on the final race prior to this one! As much as people hate the double-point rule (and likely to be abandoned,) that's the only reason this last race matter :P Let's hope for a more competitive 2015 F1 season!

The Movie Post

As usual, I have a lots of movies to write about after watching them on the long US-HK round trip. This time I watched:

- Lucy: obviously Scarlett Johansson was the draw for this one. They didn't even try to make her look pretty in this but it doesn't matter. The sci-fi story is good enough. Most of the special effects were done well to show her special power after the drug accidentally got into her body which forced her brain to develop to an unprecedented level. 

- Captain America 2: This is another movie with Johansson, who is even more attractive as the Black Widow here. I am a sucker for super-hero movies and enjoyed the first Captain America movie quite a bit (I liked the part about using the Captain as a propaganda machine) It's mostly predictable: the people with the most political power being the too-ambitious bad guy. The heroes had to fall from the grace before their triumphal return. Still, it's entertaining.

- Hercules: This is yet another movie with ties to comics, as well as Greek Mythology. Actually, it's more about de-mythicize the legends of Hercules: he didn't fight alone and the monsters he defeated were actually human foes. The centaurs he battled were actually cavalry. Again, it's kinda predictable like Captain America in the sense that the ones who were supposed to be good guys turned out to be bad guys.

- Million dollar arms: Sports movie is another of my favorite genre. This movie is about a once powerful US sports agent needed new blood to revive his career and decided to harvest talent from India, where there's a huge population of cricket players, whose bowling motion is kinda similar to pitching in baseball. He organized contests over there and the big prize money eventually attracted players with potentials. He brought them to US for more training and try out with MLB. I am not gonna give out the ending here. What I like about the movie is how relationship between people are portrayed: e.g., mentors and the students, family members, agent and the players he brought into this foreign country.  

- Draft day: a movie about American football is of course a must-see for me! And this is familiar territories for Kevin Costner, who has starred in a baseball movie before. He played the role of Cleveland Browns' GM in this movie. The plot is about how he handled the NFL draft: trading picks with other teams and evaluating talents. It's also about how he dealt with the existing players, his mom, his girlfriend, the owner and the head coach who didn't necessarily agree with his decisions. 

- 分手100次: 老實說我不像是會看港產愛情片的人，但我的確看了不少，尤其是坐飛機時，以及由鄭伊健主演的，以前有百分百感覺，近年有我老婆唔夠秤，我老公唔生性，還有本片。男主角伊健飾演一個kidult，女主角周秀娜（性感女神，片中不乏吊帶熱褲等養眼鏡頭）飾演對伊健照顧無微不至的女友，但常常會用分手威脅對方。雖然劇情頗有犯駁（伊健錢從何處來？），但相當成功帶出戀愛關係的無奈：必須包容對方缺點。這個網誌詳細介紹了本片，大家可以參考下。

And there were 2 movies from 2012 that I didn't get a chance to write about:

- Rock of ages: this is the big-screen version of an 80s hair metal themed musical (that's why everything is sung in the movie.) Fans of the genre would immediately recognize this as the name of a big hit from 80s hair band Def Leppard, even though the song itself wasn't used in the movie. The whole movie is pretty much an elaborated version of an 80s metal MV: a girl chasing her dream to Hollywood and had to struggle (working as a stripper to survive) Of course that's not enough for a 120 min musical/movie so a struggling male character was added (a rocker who had to join a boy band to get signed) The writer also threw in a larger-than-life primadonna (played by Tom Cruise) Don't get me wrong though 'coz I enjoyed the movie a lot, as an 80s hair metal fan myself. Each actor/actress actually sang their own parts. I'm surprised that Tom Cruise could rock! He has definitely earned more respect from me after this.  

- Batman Dark Knight Rises: this movie got famous for the wrong reason: a gunman opened fire at a movie theater on its premiere night :( I have never been a big fan of the Batman movie "franchise" so I've watched only a few (the "classic" one by Tim Burton came to my mind) This one is definitely better than expected. Again, the story is a typical super-hero one: Bruce Wayne was beaten and locked up and eventually escaped and revenged. The ending really got people talking: did he really sacrifice himself to save the city? Well, it can be interpreted in many different ways.

棋聖仙遊

一代圍棋巨人吳清源於11月30日仙遊，享年一百歲。各地棋界早前為他百歲壽辰舉辦了不少活動，令新一代棋友認識大師生平及對棋壇的影響。

2014培正同學日

(註：本文大量抄考去年為同學日所寫一文)

今年是母校培正建校125周年，同學日格外隆重，正日前一晚是禮社同學在TST富豪酒店搞的謝師宴，大部份同學廿幾年沒見，可喜的是大家「無穿無爛」，縱有昔日恩怨，隨著當晚我們樂隊演出，越玩越high，也即置之不理。（再之前四晚都在旺角先達Studio 310練歌）

同學日一早老友到我家攞Lego，並載我回培正，十時多行上中學部，同學仔帶領校友參觀新大樓，家政班示範雞翼去骨的學生有板有眼（雖然有點擔心她手中那把刀不聽話），拍片的學生使用器材看起來相當pro. 之後觀看禮社校友對教師的籃球比賽，戰況激烈（新電子計分板由本社捐出）。到了午飯時間，我們在中學小食部吃自助餐，味道真不錯，尤其是那杯奶茶！又和舊同學高談闊論，更是高興。

飯後在小學至中學樓梯來個大合照，然後到勝利道的Starbucks繼續吹水（不好咖啡的我首次在港光顧）。之後就是在當日才開幕的新小學禮堂舉行盛大的加冕儀式，主角當然是銀禧的禮社。儀式後到校友之家幫忙搬他慷慨解囊提供的紅白酒，再向大公宴會場九龍灣展貿中心進發。

九龍灣展貿中心乃係全港最大的晚宴場地之一，才能容納得了百席的大公宴，我們禮社訂了十一圍！這一席有我們校花，多年不見，美貌更勝當年。

大公宴表演節目包括魔術及校友胡渭康表演多首名曲。還有「培正姑爺」陳百祥主持的獎門人式乒乓球遊戲，兩位同學代表我們禮社上台，球技相當不俗！

後記：用了current affairs的label，皆因名人陳光明上報, 文中提到他順利搵番當年一班同學仔也包括我呢。

Random things

每週貼幾篇已成為生活習慣一部份，也是打發時間不錯的娛樂。這篇帖子有點特別：在2009年「響應號召」寫寫關於自己的25 random things，可是一直都未有完成，直至今天也只想到18件：

1. 我不喜歡隨波逐流，正好解釋了我五年後才發表my "18 random things" :P
2. 我在幼稚園低班曾經獲頒寫字獎（當年應該是人人有一個分豬肉獎）可惜小時了了，現在寫的字實在慚愧。（幸好不會像某雷大教授般自鳴得意，說甚麼樂於見到人們因為簡體字流行不再留意自己不行的書法一道）
3. 我小時候在母親鼓勵下和姐姐投稿《兒童樂園》這本兒童刊物，可惜現已忘了題目是甚麼。
4. 我不喜歡幼稚園美術堂上畫畫，還記得各種大樽顏料一樽樽充滿乾了的痕跡，和一樣顏跡斑斑的圍裙。今年竟然參加了數次PaintNite。
5. 我11歲左右開始讀金庸小說（第一套是射鵰英雄傳，我媽在旺角樓上八折書店買的），28歲寫了我唯一一篇短篇小說。
6. 我10歲左右開始對電腦產生強烈興趣，讀了不少雜誌書籍（當然只是一知半解），然後爸爸給了我幾百港元（人生首次拿這麼多現金）到黃金商場買下第一部電腦(Apple ][ clone)之後鍵盤部份接觸不良，還跟一位Uncle去買了IBM PC的殼來改裝這部Apple呢！
7. 我玩了一年電腦後，在該部電腦上用BASIC寫了一個打字練習程式，並參加了雜誌舉辦的程式設計比賽！
8. 我的第一部「音響器材」是給電腦作external storage的卡式帶機（數碼資料轉為模擬聲音記錄在卡式帶，還記得很多當年沉迷的好玩電腦遊戲都是儲於卡式帶）順理成章也用來聽音樂。
9. 我人生第一盒從唱片舖買的卡式帶是和姐姐夾份的《聽不到的說話》（呂方首張作品）
10. 在那之前我並不怎麼喜歡音樂，尤其是學校音樂課，樂理完全無心去理解，吹牧童笛永遠只是跟大隊作個樣子（正式濫竽充數）除此之外倒是媽媽買了一個（東南亞流行的複音）口琴給我教我吹音階。第一件自己要求學的樂器其實是二胡，不過卻學得一塌糊塗，一星期一堂group lesson，基本上不知老師所云。
11. 中學時代同學在背後說我是體育白癡，而我的確是我校少數體育科考試不及格（唯一一科）的學生。不過其實我不是不喜歡運動，打高球扒獨木舟等等，都是在大學畢業後愛上。
12. 至於踩單車，則是中學時代跟父母朋友兒子在元朗錦繡花園學識的，幾年之間爸爸買了一架BMX及一架RB給我呢，雖然當時我完全不明白轉波有何用。
13. 我小學時當過幼童軍（和我兒子一樣！）考過銅及銀箭章，不過最複雜的反而覺得是由各隊隊長輪流負責的升旗儀式（現在我兒子的隊伍由家長提場，跟著在手機上顯示的文稿宣讀！），小六那年我終於升上隊長，不過印象中沒有甚麼負責升旗儀式的經歷，可能因各種原因總是輪不到我那一隊呢:P
14. 我在中學時代曾經醉心下棋（中國及國際）每逢午飯時間（甚至短短十分鐘的小息也不放過）必定開局。
15. 在1989-2009年間我搬了14次家。
16. 1993年元旦香港蘭桂芳發生人踩人慘劇，我和其餘七個朋友（五男三女）在現場，其中幾位親身目睹事發經過並幫忙救人。
17. 我不算電影迷，雖然也曾經一支公去Angelica看藝術電影。看得最多的一套是在電影院看過三次（包括一次在UW Madison重映）的《英雄本色》
18. 我在十六歲前絕少做家務，遑論煮食，連公仔麵也不會；記得有一次媽媽病了，我要代她煲粥，完全不知要洗幾多米，結果洗了四五杯，多出幾近十倍！出國留學前才被迫學識煲飯（及蒸雞）

STEM hysteria

I have subscribed to TechRepublic's newsletters for a while. (The place I work for has a learning-hour requirement and these newsletters did a great job in recommending tech webiners or white papers. I am not reading as much this time of the year 'coz the quota has been met :P) It does have its fair share of poorly put-together articles like "the Photo of Alan Turing" (the comment section of which is actually more interesting: some criticized TechRepublic shamelessly plugging Google's technology and Android all the time. Some defended the British government's harsh treatment of Turing for his homosexuality) On the other hand, I found one article argued that "not everyone needs to learn to code", which I completely agree. From the article:

some of the fundamental concerns expressed by the "learn coding" movement are legitimate. Skills such as breaking a complex problem into component parts, rapidly learning and applying new tools and methods, synthesizing a complex series of tasks to accomplish an objective, integrating disparate elements designed by multiple teams, and "debugging" a system when it doesn't work correctly are critical for success in a variety of professions. While coding checks all these boxes, so does woodshop, cooking and baking, advanced mathematics, or designing a house. "Debugging" a failed soufflé or a mortise and tenon joint that doesn't quite fit uses a similar thought process to debugging some pesky JavaScript code, but each content area likely appeals to different sets of people.

I also learned the term "STEM hysteria" from the comments (Yes, I do have friends who think STEM education is not enough in US and is hurting US economy in the long run) I tend to agree with another author, Michael S. Teitelbaum, who wrote the book “Falling Behind? Boom, Bust, and the Global Race for Scientific Talent." He urges that we continue to strengthen math and science education in K-12, because educated citizens should have an understanding and knowledge of math and science, not because there will be lucrative careers awaiting them. There will be for some, but not for all or even most.

I noticed one comment from the post linked above suggested engineering jobs are higher paid so if more students major in engineering, it would solve the problem with inequalities in the US economy. I cannot disagree more: wouldn't having more graduating engineering students drag down the salaries of engineering jobs?

Free software challenges

I am actually writing about 2 unrelated stories in 1 post:
- To me, the term GNOME in the context of IT immediately refers to the Linux Desktop (see my earlier post) Indeed, it was trademarked for such since 2006. However, the online coupon giant Groupon wanted to name its Point-Of-Sale system Gnome too and trying to register its own trademarks. Well, there are always 2 sides of any issue. Some denounced Groupon's act as bullying the open source community. On the other hand, some pointed out that the two applications are not exactly the same and the names should be able to co-exist. After all, GNOME has its fair share of detractor after all these years fighting the "Linux Desktop war" Anyway, GNOME requested $80k donation to engage in legal battle against Groupon. And they apparently have enough supporters to cover that. At the end of the day, it's all moot point though as Groupon conceded. (GNOME promised to use the money in other ways to benefit the community)

The biggest problem I see though, is the flaw of the copyright system: why does the party in the right (presumably GNOME the desktop organization) still need so much money to defend the copyright it deserves? 

- When talking about free software in the context of the likes of GNOME, the word free means "free as in free speech" Of course, another meaning is "free as in beer" That applies the Microsoft's new strategy to promote Microsoft Office to mobile devices. The author of this post thinks it makes sense as a way to lure more users to Microsoft's online service Office 365. I had an urge to install Office since it's free but then I realize I have Google Doc. I agree with one commenter that "the ship has sailed": a lot of users like me have already been using Google Doc, which probably has less feature than mobile version of Office but good enough for us.

後記：本來個blog有752個帖，我見到想起香港7俠52警察，很不安，快快多寫呢個帖。

How much money do NASCAR drivers make?

I was chatting with my co-w about sports (which is our favorite topic 'coz you can't do no harm with it) and was trying to convince them to follow the Chase for the Sprint cup. I was asked whether it's a big deal to win the chase (i.e., the overall championship) in terms of prize money. For comparison, the overall championship for golf (FedEx Cup of PGA) pays $10 million. And for baseball, each player on the 2013 World Series winning Red Sox got $307,322.68. I have no idea how much the prize money for winning the Sprint cup was! It doesn't seem to be well advertised: I googled and found the money comes from what is called a "points fund" (the term is used for NASCAR's lower-tiers too) When Brad K won it in 2012, he got $5.7 million from it. Not sure how much the runner-up gets these days. The only number I got was from 2002: the runner-up got a bit less than half of what the champ got. And of course, top drivers got a lot of endorsement deals and high base salary from team owners too. Check out Forbe's list of the world's highest paid athletes. Top golfers do make a ton: Tiger at #6 and Phil Mickelson at #8. The top of the list also features a lot of soccer, football and NBA stars. For the whole motorsports, F1 star Lewis Hamilton made it at #19, Dale Jr at #28 and Jimmie Johnson at #42. It's a bit surprising to see the top baseball player was Cliff Lee at #30. Don't get me wrong: he's a great pitcher but not the biggest name out there today.

Back to the topic of NASCAR, so how much does a "below average" driver makes? Here's the story of Landon Cassill: From his stats at NASCAR.com, he finished between 28th-32nd (out of 43) on average for the last 4 Sprint Cup seasons. He made ~$300k from each of his 2011 and 2012 season, which I think is pretty good (double the annual salary of a Python coder!)

Linux Desktop

To be honest, I never have much opinion on such a controversial topic among Linux users (it's kinda like emacs vs vi) I basically use whatever come with default install like your typical dumb user. I have no problem with GNOME or KDE. And if I have to pick one, I picked JWM. I have no idea what desktop I got when I installed Ubuntu 14.04. It turned out to be yet another controversial desktop called Unity, which I saw a lot of negative comments. What is so great about the open source community is that people are actually passionate about the technology. This guy wrote a looooong post to compare GNOME, KDE and Unity!

Sports highlights: Texan football sweeps

These teams from Texas played during the weekend and won:
- University of Texas: defeated #23 West Virginia 33-16. First victory over ranked team under Charlie Strong!
- Texas A&M: upset #3 Auburn.
- Baylor: defeated #15 Oklahoma fairly easily.
- TCU: defeated #7 Kansas State.
- Dallas Cowboys: defeated (unranked :P) Jacksonville Jaguars in London 31-17.
(The Houston Texan has a bye)

Smart music

The title is the name of a piece of software for practicing music (which I used for my jazz class at Stanford)  but this post is not about it. According to a new study, smart people listen to Radiohead and dumb people listen to Beyonce. (The "smartness" was based on SAT scores) Well, I don't listen to either. I found both boring. Some people who claimed they are Radiohead fans are actually kinda pretentious. Beyonce looked great when she was younger and had a few catchy songs earlier in her career but that's pretty much it. Well, people listen to System of a Down is also smarter than those listen to Bon Jovi (For the record I listen to some of both) The ridiculous part of the chart though was that Beethoven was rated way high while "classical" as a whole was way low. WTF? My conclusion: smart people diss the chart while dumb people created it.

Retroactive product placement

Just learned this new term from this Rolling Stones magazine article: old music videos were edited to feature "new" products (i.e., brands who signed up after the video came out) For example, a billboard of Grand Marnier liqueur was digitally "inserted" to Darius Tucker's MV of "True Believers" from 2012 (Coincidentally, I saw/heard the song for the first time a few nights ago! He looked familiar and I was wondering if he was the guy from the Hootie and the Blowfish) I guess the songs chosen for retroactive product placement gotta be somewhat successful to begin with. Hopefully the musicians earn a few more $ than getting their songs streamed by Spotify (the streaming service which just lost Taylor Swift's catalog. Taylor said "We're not getting back to together again. I know you were trouble") 

2014 deja vu moments?

I wrote this in 2010 about certain teams and athletes. Then I wrote this in 2012 about the same group. Here is the 2014 version:
1) The University of Texas football team lost to Oklahoma in 2010, 2012 and 2014. Well, this is a rebuilding year under 1st year coach Charlie Strong. In fact, it's unlikely the team will have a .500 season :(
2) The University of Wisconsin lost to Michigan State in 2010 and 2012. They won't play against each other in 2014.
3) Will Power couldn't win the IndyCar championship in spite of a good chance entering the final race in 2010 and 2012 but he finally overcome his last-race-jitter and won it in 2014.
4) US lost to Europe in Ryder Cup in all 3 years. US had a huge lead before the final day and blew it in 2012 but we are not even close in 2014. Looking forward to a new generation of young players picking up the slack.
5) Tiequan Zhang lost his UFC fight in Macau in 2012 and that was the last time he fought. Li Jingliang was another Chinese fighter signed by the UFC and appeared in FOX Fight Night 54 but lost.
6) Last but not least, SF Giants won the World Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014!

Sports highlights: two races in Texas

As a big fan of auto-racing who used to live in Texas, last Sunday was an awesome day: F1 in Austin and NASCAR in Fort Worth. Both were the 3rd last race of the season and the results would have big impact on the championship (It also helped that UT beat Texas Tech the night before) Rosberg won the pole of the F1 race and his car looked unbeatable in the first half of the race but Hamilton was able to catch up lap by lap and eventually passed Rosberg and went on to win his 5th consecutive race and 10th race of the season. Obviously there were many more lead changes at the NASCAR race ~200 miles north on I-35. Both Jeff Gordon (points leader entering the race) and Jimmie Johnson (eliminated from playoff already) had strong cars and Brad Keselowski used strategy to get to the front towards the end of the race. Too bad Brad K turned Jeff Gordon which resulted in a flat tire for the latter during a late restart and ruined Gordon's chance for a good finish (if not a win) So, after 2 races in the Eliminator round, no team has clinched a spot out of the 4 for the final championship race yet (Gordon went from 1st to 4th in point) 4th-8th were really close so all 8 drivers are still in contention! It was announced in the broadcast that the grandstand at Phoenix (next race) was already soldout. In addition, NASCAR got the Monday morning shows talked about them too, not because of on-track but off-track activity though: Brad K once again was in the center of controversy. He was pushed by Kevin Harvick post-race towards Gordon's team and resulted in a brawl.

The next 2 races are gonna be even more exciting!

Sports highlight: the Giants won it all again

Hopefully writing about this topic will become my every-other-year ritual. I posted this two years ago and this four years ago. Once again I am linking to Peter Gammon's writeup for the 2014 victory. Similar to last time, the Giants' great pitching was a key. Madison Bumgarner wrote another chapter in playoff history since 2010: 2 Win (Game 1 and Game 5, a complete game shutout) and 1 Save (Game 7, with 2 day rest and pitched as reliever for 5 innings!) in the World Series. And Tim Lincecum struggled as a starter in the regular season, too bad he was only able to pitch 1 2/3 inning as a reliever in "garbage time" (Giants was behind by 5 runs) and left because of injury in game 2 of the World Series. There were quite a few key hits from unexpected players in 2010, like Cody Ross and Edgar Renteria. In 2012 they have Marco Scutaro and Ryan Theriot. In 2014 they have Travis Ishikawa and Juan Perez. And of course great defensive plays from the rookie Joe Panik and the stud Brandon Crawford helped. I guess more things change, more things stay the same. The management has proven they know how to run the organization the right way. Both Brian Sabean and Bruce Bochy will join the hall of fame someday for sure. I gotta admit I have doubts in many of Sabean's decisions during his earlier days as the GM. I felt that he tended to sign over-the-hill/over-priced players like Barry Zito (yeah, everybody could cite this one) Randy Winn, Aaron Rowand, Armando Benitez ...... and hang on to older players for too long, like Ray Durham (see this analysis of the 2008 team and this 2010 breakdown of Sabean's success and failure, before he won the 1st WS) That's why I was so skeptical when the Giants signed Edgar Renteria, Pat Burrell, Aubrey Huff, Andres Torres and Cody Ross. Well, turned out they all helped with winning the 2010 championship, one way or the other. Now I become believing in whoever they signed, like Angel Pagan, Michael Morse and Tim Hudson (the last 2 were the only "big names" signed before the start of the 2014 season) They have certainly contributed a lot to the early season success (team W-L record for the first 60 games) which piled up enough wins to make up for the poor showings later and barely made it in as the last wildcard! Morse even had a few key kits in the playoff! The mid-season signing of Hunter Pence (and Jake Peavy to a certain extent) almost made me forgotten about Carlos Beltran.

I would have enjoyed this year's WS even if the Giants didn't win. Why? Their opponent Kansas City Royals certainly qualify as a Cinderella: one of the least likely team to make it to the WS in years IMO. (Check out this list of unlikely winners) Some pointed out this Giants-Royals matchup as the worst ever. In fact, the TV rating of game 1 was the lowest ever, which is understandable given the small size of the KC TV market (However, Game 7 had pretty good rating.) My friend who dislike baseball cited the low rating to support his argument that baseball is boring. Well, does it really matter? Parity in MLB was actually good to the business overall speaking. It's because more fans are likely to tune into broadcasts of the local team, which are making $$$ for all these regional sports network (this model is different from NFL's) I guess it all comes down to the fact that there are just not enough superstars in the games these days. Some say there are way too many teams (30) to compete for the talent. 

I can't wait for the 2015 Spring training!

Resuming Ubuntu from sleep makes thick black borders around windows to appear

This is an annoying bug of Ubuntu 14.04 but I found the workaround here:
1. Press the "Ctrl+Alt+F2" key combination (Warning: you will be sent to a text console where you won't be able to read this).
2. Press "Ctrl+Alt+F7".

聶衛平評李娜

看到老一輩棋王聶衛平一則新聞：大病初愈後露面，不改一貫意見多多的本色，對中國體壇指指點點，說不喜歡剛退役的網球名將李娜，因為她比較自私，國家隊不好好打。我驟耳聽只覺有點跟隨政府體育部的口徑，但也可能是老人家個人偏見，不妨一笑置之；想來內地網民也許會同意他呢。誰知看看評論，竟然有大量網民指聶不應信口開河，對他個人操守亦甚不以為然，真是始料不及。

Metal musicians on mainstream shows

Just read that Mastodon appeared on David Letterman's show. I was kinda surprised even though Mastodon's sound has become more mainstream these days but it is still a prog-metal band. Is it an act of selling out? Doesn't seem so judging by the comments but I found one interesting comment: these hosts may not really care or choose the musical acts on their show. For example, Slash once appeared on Jay Leno's show wearing a Team CoCo pin (for those who forgot or don't know the back story from 2010: NBC initially put Conan O'Brien on the Tonight show to replace Jay Leno but later on it brought back Leno, which angered a lot of Conan O'Brien's supporters, i.e., Team CoCo)

The Apple post

I am writing this as part of my effort to cleanup my long-forgotten-unpublished draft posts. Before talking about old news, I will start with a new one: RiteAid and CVS (two popular pharmacy chains in US) blocked Apple Pay over the weekend in thousands of stores. My first question was: wasn't Apple Pay become usable very recently? Why would a business reverse its decision so quickly? Well, it turns out: (1) RiteAid and CVS have installed NFC (near-field communication) terminals at some stores some time ago, not for Apple Pay. (2) RiteAid and CVS are NOT partners of Apple Pay. It just happened that the existing terminal works with Apple Pay, for a few days before being disabled. The "casualty" also included Google Wallet. Some Apple supporters were very vocal about this and claiming they will not buy from those stores anymore. Well, is it that big a deal? Currently only iPhone 6 owners could use Apple Pay anyway. Do you think it's a high percentage of the drug stores' customer base? And, most people shopped at a pharmacy when they really need the stuff (e.g. medicine) quickly so they just go to the closest one or the one they know will have the stuff. Do you think people will do otherwise just because it doesn't accept Apple Pay? Is it so much more troublesome to pay with (gasp) cash? And one news article brought out another point to support Apple Pay: iPhone users are richer than Android users. I can't argue with that ('coz it's true when it comes to my friends) but is that relevant?

An old news from August 2012: More than $60,000 worth of computers, jewelry and personal items have been stolen from late Steve Job's home in Palo Alto. A report in the San Jose Mercury News says that the burglar made off with iPads, iPhones, Macs, Tiffany jewelry, Beats headphones and Cristal Champagne, among other items. He also took Steve Jobs' wallet, which contained his drivers' license and $1. McFarlin, a former San Jose State football player, has confessed and has written a letter of apology to Steve Jobs' widow, Laurene Powell, the Mercury News reported. Maybe he could write about his experience later. I'm sure a lot of people want to know more about what the house is like.

Finally, I commented on a report from July 2012: ABI Research recently predicted that in coming years, smartphone users around the world will be downloading and using fewer and fewer apps. What will they be doing instead? Using the mobile Web more and more, according to senior analyst Aapo Markkanen. Do people still remember when iPhone first came out, no app developer kit was available and Jobs was pitching software would be available on the phone by 3rd party (non-Apple) as Web application? Once again it proved he was such a visionary. I am no iOS expert but read that some App are actually "wrapper" on top of browser-webapp-based library. Anyway, as of 2014, I found most businesses still prefer users to download their own apps on iDevices, like Yelp or Groupon (the links from emails actually won't work with mobile Safari for me)