王平建事件

又一單以訛傳訛的網聞：早一陣子在FB見到人人鬧爆一位王平建，皆因這位祖國政協委員在會上發言：不要鼓勵農村的孩子去上大學，網聞還提及其他王平建貶低農村學生的言論。幸好有人查證，算是平反了此君的名聲：首先，名字是攪錯了，王委員實名為王平；其次，她對她這個主張作出了更深入的分析：農村學生入城讀完大學，就業不容易，亦要面對高房價的問題，反不如留在農村。如果一味指農村人進城才叫幸福，實在有點誤導。其實她的講法也不無道理, 這是王平接受南方都市報訪問的節錄：

王平：先实践过，你再去读书就有目的，就有的放矢。比如说，你了解到你的专业和特长以后，你不就知道该去补什么了吗？我们现在闭着眼睛去读大学，而且整个教学方法都是向钱看——老师看钱，学生也看钱。浪费了时间，浪费了青春。所以，我认为不应该鼓励农村孩子都去念大学，告诉他们什么现在读大学，你们以后就会和别人平等了，你们就得到了一切。我认为这是骗了人家。

南都：可是很多农村孩子，都指望进城用知识改变命运啊。

王平：我也听到了一些说法，有的说“我农村的好不容易有个希望进城，你还不让我来”。我想说你不知道，现在整个社会是金钱社会，我们没有一个价值的核心，到底人应该追求什么？在中国的传统文化里面，三百六十行，行行出状元。有些领导人不也是先从农村锻炼出来的吗？依我说，干吗要这样子，把所有的农村孩子，都诱惑到大学这条独木桥上来？

我们现在提城镇化，好像城市越大越好。但也不想想，农村年轻人进城了，小孩、父母都丢在那边呢，家庭也是悲剧。就算城里再好，我们又能够把13亿人，全部弄到城里来吗？

Guitar heroes

I am a big fan of magazines, especially guitar magazines like the Guitar Player. It takes me a long time to finish reading one though. Usually it takes 2-3 years to go from my mailbox to the living room to the bedroom to the bathroom and finally the recycle bin. Just finished reading one issue from 2013 which recommended the instrumental albums "Sound of Innocence" by Kiko Loureiro and "Unfinished Business" by Dean Brown. I enjoyed both a lot as I am a big fan of shredding guitar instrumental (think Vinnie Moore, Joe Satriani) as well as fusion. The funny thing is that I have never heard of Loureiro until this but I'm sure I'll hear more of his work as he just became the new guitarist of Megadeth (replacing Chris Broderick)

I am sure these two guys, Kevin Eubanks and Stanley Jordan, appear in guitar magazines much more often, especially after they collaborated on a new release named "Duets" It's not your "normal" jazz guitar duo album though. They actually took turn to play piano on some of the tracks (with bass and drums) And like the previous releases by Jordan, it included a few pop covers. I enjoy their fresh reinterpretation.

Last but not least, I learned about the new release "Rush" by guitarist Tom Guarna from the "In the Groove, Jazz and Beyond" podcast. And I agree with this review very much that Guarna is in the same league as the "next gen" jazz guitarists that I have seen performing in NYC in the past years like Kurt Rosenwinkel and Gilad Hekselman.

Sports highlights: MLB opening week, IndyCar at NOLA, F1 at Shanghai, the Masters

I took my son to his first A's game at Oakland last Fri (got a decent deal from Groupon) It's also the first game he saw after he really learned the rules and played in little league so he enjoyed it a lot. I did too as it was a 12-0 beating of the division rival Seattle Mariners (featuring superstars like Robinson Cano and Nelson Cruz. And Oakland lost the next 2 games by 1 run each!) A's offense reminded me of some of the little league games in which batters keep getting on bases!

The next one I want to write about was not a very-enjoyable event: the IndyCar Grand Prix of Louisiana. The track condition caused by the rain was so bad that basically most of the race in under caution. The early race leaders: Montoya and Power got shuffled back for their pit strategy (or I should say bad luck) The sad thing is: it's actually the 2nd race of the season and I had no idea the season has started already even though I work for the title sponsor! Can't believe I miss all those commercials for the season opener as I watch so much sports on almost every channel every day!

The F1 race at Shanghai was also something I should have missed as nothing really happened during the race. The 2 Mercedes (Hamilton, Rosberg), and the 2 Ferraris (Vettel and Raikkonen) went P1,2,3,4 respectively. The only surprise was how well the rookie Verstappen drove (Saw him in Macau GP last year). Too bad his engine broke near the end of the race.

After a disappointing NCAA title game (my Wisconsin Badgers lost) earlier in the week, finally came some good news. It's regarding my other school: fellow Texas Longhorn Jordan Spieth won his first major, the Masters, in record-breaking fashion. The UT Tower went orange to honor his victory! Coincidentally, I also witnessed another Longhorn and former Masters champ, Ben Crenshaw, playing in his last Masters. Very emotional moments! It almost feels like Crenshaw has found a successor in Spieth. Check out this article comparing Spieth to other well-decorated Longhorn athletes!

The f-hole on string instruments

These days we almost take the f-hole for granted: all instruments in the violin family use this shape for sound hole, which is optimal. Some smart luthier must have figured out the science way back. Well, it might be less "scientific" than I thought but rather a result of natural selection: according to a recent study, it evolved from many other shapes, including a C-like shape. The designs that makes the instrument louder were chosen over the others and eventually all luthier use the f-shape.

I also found it interesting that not only violin magazine mentioned it but also the Economist! I guess the economic Darwinism aspect suits its readers. One question remains: why does flat-top acoustic guitar still use one big round sound hole in the middle? Maybe the f-shape is only optimal for arch-top.

More strange listening experience

I wrote about some unusual experience with the radio the other day. This time it is even more strange. I picked up this book called "The Jazz Ear: conversations over music" from the library because I had nothing better to do the other day. The author asked each interviewee to pick some music to discuss. I usually try finding them on Rhapsody while reading. When I got to the chapter about pianist Andrew Hill, I was too lazy to search for the exact tunes and simply switch the TV to Comcast's Jazz channel on Music Choice just to listen to some jazz to accompany the book. It was playing Dave Brubeck's "Blue Rondo A La Turk" from the album "Time Out" Guess what? In the paragraph I was reading: Andrew Hill was commenting on this exact tune! Man, it's a bit scary, isn't it?

News from Napa

Read 2 pieces of "big" news related to wineries in Napa 2 weeks ago. First, a bunch of wineries were sued because their wines allegedly contain toxin (arsenic) Most of these are cheap wine. You could find the brands from these links: Link 1 Link 2 Link 3 I guess I will have to start drinking more expensive wine from now on.

The other story is a murder: a winery investor was shot and killed by his business partner. It's really unfortunate. Sometimes you think you're dealing with a smart businessman and good opportunities but the reality is so much different.

Sports highlights: 2015 AMA Endurocross season opener

IMO Endurocross is one of the most exciting form of motorcycle racing. Riding a motorbike across the difficult surfaces (with rocks, logs, tires and all those obstacles you can't think of!) is a feat in itself. Let alone riding as fast as you can to beat other riders! I followed it for a few seasons on NBCSN prior to 2013. All those seasons were dominated by the great Polish Taddy Blazusiak. He was simply better than his competitors. Even when he made mistakes (which were rare), he could recover from them like no one else. He won 5 straight titles 'til 2013. Too bad I missed the 2014 season completely as he finally had a challenger in Cody Webb who narrowly beat him to win the 2014 championship. And Blazusiak decided not to race in the 2015 AMA Endurocross season so it's really a changing of the guard. I'm glad that this season is broadcasted by CBS Sports Network. Comcast's TV guide mentions Endurocross explicitly (in info section) under the title 'Motorcycle Racing' for CBSSN unlike what it was with NBCSN (it was lumped into the "general purpose" Motorsports Hour program. I record every episode and won't know what it was until I watch! I really have 0 interest in many of the recorded races, like the tractor pull championship and drag boat racing. On the other hand, the late-modified and sprint car racing on dirt tracks are kinda cool) The most memorable moment of the 2015 Endurocross season opener doesn't have anything to do with the eventual winner though. Before I go into the details, let me explain the usual format of auto racing in US: there's a main event at the end of the day, which determine the winner of the race. (Some motorcross races have 2 main events, moto1 and moto2, and the combined points determine the overall winner.) And racers need to qualify to the main event. (Even for NASCAR with 43 cars racing in the main events, some of those spots are determined by the qualifying race results. Of course there are guaranteed spots reserved for the big names in NASCAR) For motorcross (supercross and endurocross), the first round of qualifying races are called Heat races (heat1 and heat2). Sometimes there's a 2nd round called Semi. And the last round is LCQ (last chance qualifier) So basically if a rider failed to reach the Top N, he will try again in the next round and finally LCQ. For the 2015 AMA Endurocross races, there are heat races then LCQ. Two of the participants are father and son: Destry Abbott (42) and Cooper Abbott (17). Both of them happened to be in the same heat and ran near the top of the qualifying position. When it was near the end of the heat race, Destry got the last qualifying position and was about to cross the line, but he stopped and looked back, saw his son Cooper and let him passed! I guess Destry didn't want his son to take the risk of not qualifying via the LCQ. And perhaps he's very confident that he could qualify for the main from the LCQ and indeed he did. Classic example of the older generation looking after the next one! Oh BTW, the race was won by Cody Webb. Taddy has successfully passed his baton to Cody, figuratively speaking.

From the news

90% of the time I am on SFGate I read the TV schedule for sports and nothing else. Well, it's an exception today. Quite a bit of eye-catching business news:

• Facebook ads boost condom brand in Indonesia This one actually sounds more like an ad for Facebook then a news report. Turns out FB ads boost other brands too, as mentioned in the article, like Nestle. So, FB is smart enough to show a still image on dumb phone and an animation on smart phone. That's really news-worthy. The most interesting (and sad) quote is this: "Companies like Nestle are seeing sales flag in developed countries like the United States, as people get more health conscious, analysts said. The growth areas for those businesses are in developing countries" You can draw your own conclusion here.
• Port of San Francisco bears down on Sinbad’s Looks like the SF waterfront area around the Wharf and the Ferry building is going through quite a bit of changes. Sinbad's might be gone next time I'm in that area (Well, I've never tried it). And I heard that the pier for Alcatraz ferry might move too.   
• Yahoo closing China office According to the article, the Beijing office has served as a research and development center for Yahoo. Yahoo is looking for new ways to trim expenses as it comes under pressure from investors who have called for cost-saving measures. I thought offshoring R&D IS the way to save cost! No?

Career day and DiSC

I work for a very large company. People move in and out and around a lot. This week the HR department organized a career day for the IT folks. Maybe they think a lot of us are not very mindful about our career development while focusing on technology too much. I don't know. The workshops on interviewing skill and resume writing come at the right time though. I've learned a few good terms/concepts:

-Elevator pitch: it's how I could describe to a stranger (like the CEO I might run into at the elevator) what I do in 60 seconds.

-STAR: situation task action and result. That's how I should describe my work experiences in terms of projects I did.

-List accomplishment instead of responsibility 

-prep matrix: for each requirements in the job I apply for, relate it to one of my previous projects.

-DiSC are 4 behavioral styles. D is dominance. This type of person is strong-willed, like challenges and take risks and be competitive. Their activity to relieve stress is sports. I is influence. This type is very sociable and optimistic. Their activity to relieve stress is socialize. S is steadiness. This type is loyal and tolerant. Their stress activity is rest. C is compliance. This type is perfectionist and like things to go by the book. Their activity is to be alone. If you know me well, it's pretty obvious which type I am :D Each job also has its behavioral style. So it comes down to whether I could be flexible enough to match mine with the job. Of course it's easier if they match.

Strange radio experience

For those who drive a lot like I do, there are plenty of interesting experiences with different radio broadcasts for sure, like hearing the same songs back to back on different stations. Or hearing music from a CD you just played at home before you leave. What happened last Sat was kinda unusual: we were on our way to the Math show at Foothill College and my son said he enjoyed rock and roll so I switch from my "default" Jazz station to the next preset, which is rock, and the DJ played Guns'N Roses' "Patience." It is an interesting single, the first one off "Lies," an half-fake-live and half-acoustic album as the followup to the hugely successful "Appetite for Destruction," a metal instant-classic. The racial message in the song "One in a million" from the same album caused a great deal of controversy back in the days. When we came back to the car from the show, guess what was playing on the radio? "I Used to Love Her" from "Lies!" And it's another controversial song from the album. The reason was pretty obvious: the next line after the song title was: "... but I have to kill her" :P Anyway, I don't think it happens too much all these times I listen to the radio.

SF's #1 radio station in 2014

I bet not many people would have guessed it correctly: it's KDFC, the classical music station, who is supported by listeners and beat out all those corporate-owned stations (soft rock KOIT at #3, news KCBS at #4, and sports talk/Giants baseball KNBR at #5). Personally, KDFC is #2 behind my beloved jazz station KCSM. I am happy for KDFC. It went through some tough times (it was previously owned by Entercom and the mothership decided to drop the classical music format so the folks working there formed a new station and had to find new radio frequency and financial supports from listeners. For the record, its music selection was way better than its commercial days) Looking back to 2010, the top 5 stations were KCBS, KGO, KOIT, KQED and Wild 94.9. (KDFC was close to the bottom of Top 10)

A breakup caused by a violin

It's not a breakup of 2 partners in a romantic relationship but a string quartet. And it's not any violin but a Bergonzi violin worth US$900k before Y2K. I wanted to write about the story of the Audubon Quartet way back. Basically, three members of the quartet wanted to kick out their first violinist David Ehrlich because the latter promised the services of the quartet, free of charge, in order to secure donations to pay for a $900,000 violin without consulting or notifying them. The quarter is not a no-name either: They were the first American string quartet ever to win a first prize in an international string quartet competition, starting with the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France in 1977. The issue ended up in court. The first violinist won, with a $611k judgement. The bankruptcy court almost had the cellist and the violist sell their instruments to cover it but then a settlement was reached to reduce the amount and an investor stepped in to pay that amount and become owner of the instruments. He then loaned them back to the musicians for 10 years (this is the 10th year!) Audubon actually continued with a new violinist until 2011 when they disbanded.

Baseball weekend

As a UT alum, I receive a few email newsletters and was told months ago that the Texas Longhorns would be playing the Stanford Cardinals here in Palo Alto last weekend. I was well prepared to go, taking my kids and meeting a few other alumni over there. Coincidentally, it's also the pre-season opening weekend for my son's little league (his first) We planned to go to team practice at 11 and bike over to Stanford for the game at 2. Too bad our bikes got flat tire and wasn't able to make it there at 2. It's already the end of 2nd when we finally returned home. Fortunately I remember from Stanford's website that it would be streaming their games live! So we started watching and relaxed in our comfy sofa (with drinks in our hands!) It was a 4 game series and Texas already lost the first 2. However, they had a big 1st inning and got a 3-0 lead and hung on to its lead 'til the bottom of the 9th. Both teams made lots of good plays. Glad to have watched it, even though it would have been better live. We watched the Sunday series finale as well. Texas got a huge 1st inning again (including scoring twice on bases-loaded walks!) and won the game easily.

The GIMP User Experience

This could be the name of a blues rock band but I'm talking about the actual GIMP User Experience here, which for most are not that great. I have been using GIMP for years. I actually learned Photoshop from college and have been using a licensed copy until it's too old and I don't bother to install on newer machines. So I applied everything I know from Photoshop to GIMP and that kinda works well except the UI of GIMP is really quirky. Just read this article about GIMP's UX maintainer has stepped down and there's hope that the new guy will advocate a better UI. Let's keep our finger crossed.

The K-Cup controversy

Most of my friends know I'm not a coffee drinker and I would have no idea what K-Cup is if they didn't install a K-Cup machine at work. (The sign above said clearly that purchasing K-Cup is the responsibility of the employee. Well, do I still have the responsibility if I don't drink?) Anyway, as a curious guy, especially for tech, I fulfilled that responsibility and bought my own K-Cups. It's easy to use for sure. The ones I bought tasted not bad (though I put in a lot of condensed milk :P) However, I read quite a few negative pieces of news about it lately. First, the technology is proprietary so other coffee companies tried to "reverse engineer" to come up with compatible "cartridge" of their own brand of coffee. Of course the original K-Cup maker is trying to defeat this. Second, the inventor was recently interviewed and said he regretted about inventing something so environmentally unfriendly (the plastic is hard to recycle) He doesn't even use it! He thinks it's expensive and he could make better coffee without it anyway :P

Got the blues

With the moods at work these days, the best suited music would be the Blues. Previously I mentioned the newly available (on Rhapsody) Led Zeppelin, whose music was rooted in the blues. Another British blues band which was much less well-known (doesn't even have a Wikipedia page!) but I enjoyed a lot was The Hoax. I "discovered" this band after I got hooked with Stevie Ray Vaughan's electric blues. Like SRV, these guys are all-white but they got the blues. I bought their critically-acclaimed debut "Sound like this" but then they kinda dropped off the radar after 1999, until their reunion later in the next decade and finally put out 2 new albums. (I just read about them on the latest UK Guitarist magazine)
Their music is kinda hard to find but thanks to Youtube:
At the end of the song, the singer reminded me of the legendary Hong Kong singer Johnny Ip (葉振棠)
P.S. This is my 800th posts on this blog. Another milestone reached :)

Sports highlights: NASCAR@Daytona, Pirelli World Challenge

I guess among all these different sports, it's the best to be a junkie of auto racing because I've got races to follow all year long. Even in December there's Race of Champions. And I still got to watch re-play of the Global RallyCross races which finished a month before. And of course some races that I recorded but didn't watch until I have nothing else. Those included the races from Pirelli World Challenge. Its "selling point" was races being ~1.5 hour long without the need to refuel and change tires so it's all about driver's ability to drive and pass without pit strategy involved. I agree and that's why it's one of my favorite series. And you get to see the fastest and most expensive sports cars in the world, like the Ferraris, the Porsches, the Maclarens, the Bentleys, the Audis and the Cadillacs, as well as the more affordable Kias, Ford Mustangs and Chevy Cameros, which race in a different class but on the track at the same time. And the road to championship is simple: the point leader wins it all. Even with the simple rule, the champions were decided in the last race with lots of drama, which is totally different from NASCAR who tried very hard to tweak its system to "generate" drama.

Speaking of NASCAR, believe it or not, we're already 2 weeks into the new 2015 season. I guess the biggest change to the Sprint Cup cars is the reduction of horsepower, which is supposed to make the races more competitive. It's still hard to tell after 2 weeks 'coz the Daytona 500 (at least in the recent years) features tons of lead changes no matter what and Jimmie Johnson had no trouble holding his big lead towards the end of the Atlanta race. I guess the most memorable scenes from NASCAR's season opening weekend at Daytona were still the crashes: Kyle Busch broke his leg and foot during a hard crash in the Xfinity race and polesitter Jeff Gordon's car were doomed on the last lap in the Cup race (his last Daytona 500 before retirement) which gave Joey Logano the win under green-white-checker rule. (Logano deserved the win to a large extent 'coz he ran well overall) Joe Gibbs Racing has to use a replacement driver in Matt Crafton (the reigning truck series champ) to drive Kyle Busch's #18. As unpopular as he is, I think most fans are still sad to see him getting injured so bad. And his older brother Kurt also lost his seat because of domestic violence related suspension. There hasn't been a Daytona 500 without either of the Busch brother for a long time!

高雄暢想

在我那堆好像永遠讀不完的舊雜誌中,不時都會發掘到意外驚喜,例如兩年前的台灣古典樂刊MUZIK就介紹了這首由新加坡作曲家羅偉倫為高雄市立國樂團成立廿周年時寫的作品:

還見識了排笙這件我相當陌生的樂器呢.

Music discovery

I wrote a post about Podcasts recently. That got me interested in subscribing to a few and started listening to them, which I haven't done for a while. The Cool Jazz Countdown has a good combination of smooth jazz and traditional jazz. I have many sources on the latter (e.g., Downbeat magazine, KCSM radio) but not the former. It really experienced a sharp decline. I discovered Eric Darius (who played a sax version of the mega-hit song "Happy" on his album "Retro Forward")

The metal podcast MSRCast introduced me to these 2 bands:
Triosphere

The melodic death band Mors Principium Est has a name that no one can pronounce on the podcast. It's actually Latin for "death is the beginning."

It might sound strange that I "discover" Led Zeppelin just now. Well, my beloved Rhapsody music streaming service just have the entire catalog of Led Zeppelin available! This is huge 'coz I think the band has resisted this for a long time but finally made the deal (must be lucrative) Rhapsody is heavily advertising their latest "crown jewel." This band is definitely among the Top 4 most influential bands (along side the Beatles, Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones) IMO. However, I don't own a lot of their music and only know their biggest hit songs. Why? Here's the story: I became interested in rock ~1988 via hair metal. Believe it or not, some cited Led Zeppelin as their influence. So naturally I bought arguably their most famous album Led Zeppelin IV, which contains their most famous tune "Stairway to Heaven." And guess what? I was hugely disappointed: I expected every tune to be as hard rocking as "Rock and Roll" but the only other tune rock enough was "Black Dog." I barely like Stairway since it took forever to reach the climax, i.e., the electric guitar solo. I couldn't stand the even-more-acoustic "Going to California" at all. It will take a few years until I was actually going to California for good. I finally revisit this album on Rhapsody after more than 25 years, and could appreciate the bluesy and acoustic side of Led Zeppelin. I guess my exposure to acoustic jazz/electric blues and finally acoustic blues during all these years helped. I especially enjoyed the 2 DVD set of live performances titled Led Zeppelin from 2003. Yep, I have definitely become a fan after watching that, even though I still couldn't remember the names of their songs. Now I'm "digging deeper" beyond their greatest hits with Rhapsody's "Deep Cut" playlist and I realized Led Zeppelin's sound was actually closer to the Beatles and the Stones than the harder rocking Deep Purple or Black Sabbath!

Guitars made with wood from Detroit's abandoned homes

Just read about these guitars from the latest issue of the Acoustic Guitar magazine. And found that the magazine has already posted a video about this last year. It seems that the guitars made with wood that came from Reclaim Detroit, the non-profit that dismantles Detroit's abandoned housing stock for re-use actually sounded pretty good. And you can't beat playing instruments with such history behind it! According to this source, another company/luthier has been working on electric guitars using such wood and priced at ~$2000. It would be a perfect match playing music from Detroit Rock City!