iPhone 中文聖經

我發現 iPhone 中文聖經中雅各書5章18節中，雨字變成了兩字。得找個方法通知有關方面去修正這個錯誤。

說起來，我對這個軟件也有點不滿。因為每次在tablet pc sync iPod touch 後，所有offline bible translation 都自動消失。不曉得是sync 的問題還是更新的問題。

My roommates' ex-roommate

I was working in my room trying to finish my blog, when suddenly my roommate's ex-roommate came in and asked me if he could use my computer for a short while.

That was like happening totally out of the blue. But then this thing happened a few times before as my roommate, which is actually the owner of this town house, trusted his friends and ex-roommates so much that some of them actually have the key of the house. He also welcomes them to come back and use his place while he's not in Houston, which is like a lot of times. So it's kind of common that someone may show up like this. It would be nice, though, to have some notification in advance.

On the bright side, that sort of woke me up and now I have some energy and incentive to finish some work.

Guilty Pleasure

I always have trouble forgiving myself for having too much fun. For instance, I spent last night pretty much doing nothing excepting playing PSP non stop. Then I start feeling bad this morning.

My theory is that I was using my brain at work too much that my brain tried to shut itself off not doing anything that involves using a lot of intellect. Playing LocoRoco 2, Tekken, Mortal Kombat and Space Invader Extreme surely doesn't use much of my brainpower, and thus I started to addicted to it.

Once again, it's good that my brain reset itself every morning. Now I am once again ready for work for the rest of the work day. And maybe tonight, because of guilt, I may continue studying one point perspective drawing. Who knows.

Economic down turn finally affected me ... no, it's not what you thought

I have a pretty long backlog of podcast to listen and watch, so I didn't realize the layout happening at Revision 3 until today when I listened to the podcast This Week In Media. It's just sad, and I hope that eventually those who was downsized by Revision 3 can find another outlet to do things they like while making a living at the same time.

:-I

My friend accidentally pressed her phone left me a super long voice mail message with nothing but noise.

喪

My Chinese dance teacher 鄒文輝老師 asked me to write an essay about him. I thought about it, and then I wrote this:

----------- Start --------------

喪


除了「喪」字，我想不到另一個更好的字或詞，更能繪形繒聲地形容鄒文輝老師。我想過用「傻」字，但是「傻」可以自顧自在一個角落去儍，「喪」卻是全攻型的，影響他人的，誓要在身處的四周製造震撼，挑戰既有制度。所以 Steve Jobs 是「喪」，「長毛」梁國雄是「喪」，鄒文輝是「喪」。

「喪」的人都有一套獨特的做人和處事手法，亦只可以接受唯一這套處事手法。曾經跟鄒老師一起製作舞蹈演出的人也知道，鄒老師的生產效率奇高，可以在極短時間內編出數個郡舞，重新編排整日節目流程，在表演當日重新設定所有燈光安排。只是，高效率流程的背後需要付出代價，而跟鄒老師一起同工的代價就是絕對的服從。他的立埸是，在演出前一小時的最後排練關頭，已經沒有空間去用一人一票的民主模式來決定在大群舞中誰人排前誰人排後，你需要就是接受指令，然後執行。假如你在這個時候還不識趣地問為甚麼這個舞從來沒有排過，你便會像承受了連環三次昇龍拳的春麗，被打到踤在地上，隱約聽到旁述的宣告：「K.O.」。

「喪」的人生存能力奇高，在逆景中他們看到轉危成機的空間，還反過來還擊，比BioHazard 4 的喪屍攻擊力還利害。不是每一個人也可以在一生中達到自己的夢想，但要達到夢想便需要非一般的鬥志。所以鄒老師自費在全港中小學介紹中國舞，玩轉一貫藝術推廣需要靠政府資助的生態環境，又利用互聯網作為宣傳平台，親自在留言站單挑各界人士，不用化名，不用鎗手，赤裸裸地用真誠打動你（或者打倒你，如果你來意不善的話）。回想當初筆者赤是在互聯網認識鄒老師的，時為二零零一年，由當時老董時代的經濟低迷，到如今煲呔時代的經濟低迷，人生的諷刺不斷循環。

從小在鬥室般的環境長大的鄒老師，不斷用自學的方法來自我提昇，亦養成了一種以批評為主導的態度。他可以指出一些其他舞蹈老師看不出的問題，就是由於他也是過來人，也一樣如此的錯過，掙扎過。你可以說他面對學生只懂批評，極少稱讚，但起碼他不會給你一個美麗而虛假的玫瑰園。

現在筆者身在美國，無法再上鄒老師的課。剛在電腦上看到明年推出的電玩 BioHazard 5中，喪屍的 A.I. 比BioHazard 4 的更強，更加打不死地往前衝。懷念之情，忽然擁至。

----------- End --------------

Exit interview

It's so strange that the HR person who did exit interview with me yesterday was also leaving the company yesterday. My colleague told me that she was let go because of cost cutting. If that's the case then it would be pretty sad, and I wish her the best of luck.

Mad at my .. younger brother

I haven't been written anything about my strange dream since I didn't even have dreams for a while. Last night, though, I had a dream about me being mad with my younger brother, and was not talking to him until the very end of the dream. This is odd because I didn't have any problem my young brother at all. My take on this is that I probably project my angry at someone on my young brother.

Still, strange.

Why, me angry?

My friend said the email I wrote to my friend (see last post) sounded pretty angry. That surprised me a bit. Frustrated and confused? Yes. But ... angry? May be I did realize how cynical I am (or in Hong Kong slang, "inch" ). So if whoever got my email, all I want to say is, no, I was not angry.

(Music fade in, "Jeremy" by Pearl Jam)

Hollywood Star

I was puzzled by my colleagues' response after I gave him a birthday gift. So I wrote this letter to him:

---------------------------- BEGIN -------------------------------

I forgot whether you will come in on this Friday or not. If you don't, by the time you read this, I should have been gone. In fact, my network account should have been inactivated or even erased. Your memory about me will also be erased, just like what happened to Jim Carrey in the movie "eternal sunshine on spotless mind", after you drink water coming out of the water cooler (don't drink water from the water cooler).

But all that doesn't matter. At least at this moment you still remember me. Catch this moment.

I hope you enjoy the birthday gift I gave you. I usually don't give birthday gift even to very close friends. Something very bad happened to me when I was young that has something to do with birthday gift. Since then I hate birthday and birthday gift, just like that girl in the movie "Gremlins" hated Christmas because her dad was found dead in the chimney on Christmas Eve dressing as Santa Claus.

But I thought giving you a birthday gift is a good idea. After all, you are the one who has the most geek credit in the office, yet I found it a bit frustrating that your geek credit didn't get you the respect you deserved. But don't worry. The rating of the show "the Big Bang Theory" is going up, and you reminds me a character in the show. That means you are going to be a TV star. Start packing up and go to Hollywood as soon as possible.

Plus I've never seen people give out birthday gift in birthday lunch in the company, as if "dude, you should be thankful enough that I come" or something like that. So I got the idea on Thursday while driving in the morning, and then rushed to BestBuy at 11 am, picked up something that was geeky and interesting: a gift card with a speaker. And I thought, dude, he might find it enjoyable.

Seems like I was wrong.

Because after you received the gift, you didn't say a thing. You didn't say a thing even after you got back to the office. You didn't say a thing even after you left and then came back again and then walked by my cubical and then saw me and then walked away once again.

So I was pretty puzzled.

I thought, maybe he hated the gift so much that the anger rendered him to speechless. Or maybe he actually hate receiving birthday gift because that reminds him something terrible, just like how I remember terrible things associate with birthday gift since my childhood. Or he thought getting a $10 gift card is so cheap that it's basically an insult. Or maybe he simply hates me, period.

Well all these things do not matter anymore, because I am already gone, and you shouldn't remember me by now.

In fact, why are you still reading this? Who are you? Are you the Nigerian prince who needs my check account number. It's 564346. I'll send you the credit card number later.

Peace, my prince (... this is what the sounds like, when doves cry ...).

DK
---------------------------- END -------------------------------

Long table problem

I've been attending more than a couple of the company lunch gathering. In most of those gathering, we usually go to restaurant, pick a long table, and people just fill up the chairs along the table.

The problem is that, because the table is so long, that usually only those who are sitting close with each other can hear and thus conduct conversation among themselves.

Things that even more awkward when the gathering is some sort of birthday celebration. So now we have those who sit close the birthday boy/girl chat among themselves, while the others are like "tell me why we are here again".

I appreciate the motive behind the idea. But the result does not seem to accomplish the objective.

I gave away my last free Newsweek

I didn't receive much mail in the office EXCEPT a few freebie magazine. So every week since 4 months ago I would walked by the mail box ....



.. check the mail box 1014 ....



... and grab the free Newsweek magazine.


I didn't know why I got that magazine in the first place. It could be some survey that I filled in. But the fact is that starting from next week I won't be able to receive this magazine. I delegated the job of collecting this magazine to my soon-to-be-ex-colleague George to take over. But I have a stronger feeling that the mailbox people will simply throw my magazine into dumpster after I left.

Candy Bowl

In the last one year, I kept pouring candies in these two plastic container. M&Ms, fruit slices, gummy bear, you name it. Rick and Jimmy were the major consumer, but others enjoyed the candies too. Interesting enough, I didn't get time to eat them in most case. It was just a friendly gesture in the very beginning, but later I even got complain about me not filling the bowls fast enough. "Where's the M&M?" they asked. And I was like "^%%#$%%^^&*(****&^%^"

All fun comes to an end tomorrow with my departure. These contains will be gone, and soon people won't even remember that they once exist. How sad .....

Strange feeling about farewell email

I have some uneasy feeling writing up the farewell email. In fact, I was originally thinking of simply sending out a message with one line saying "Bye" to everyone I know of and that's all. The way I see it, if I am real friend of you before I leave the company, I should already have you email address and/or phone number.

And if I didn't have your phone number and email address before, you probably will never email me or call me even if I put all my contact information in my email anyway.

Still, for the sake of not pissing off people unintentionally, I did the email anyway.

And then something totally unrelated: I am still support the production deploy at my second last day, which is good. The last thing you want to being force to go to workplace and have nothing to work on (but then for some people that would be heaven).

Birthday of a colleague

It's my second last day at my current workplace. It's also my colleague's birthday. I don't know him particularly well, but I wanted to do something nice before I leave, so I brought him a BestBuy giftcard with $10 credit. The best part is that the gift card itself is a tiny speaker, and I found it cute. My colleague didn't seem particularly thrilled when he received the gift during the birthday lunch. But then maybe it's because I didn't know him enough to read his emotion. Nevertheless, happy birthday!

BTW, I ordered a "Hong Kong Fried Rice" at the birthday lunch. It look like this:


It was ... errr.. OK. I won't pay $20 like I did to get a wok of fried rice, but at least it's decently done.

BTW, the spoon that came with the fried rice was pretty huge. Check it out:

Another song writing exercise

Actually it's more like an exercise to try out more feature of the song writing software Sonar 7. Again, tons of minor problems that I don't want to spend time to fix. It's like you won't spend time to correct grammar on your post it note anyway.

Here's the song: Bow Tai. Haven't rap talk for a while. This is fun.

Buying drum stick from ... Best Buy!?

I was pretty shocked this morning when I went to BestBuy and find out that they started selling musical instrument at the store. So I had sometime having fun messing with some electronic drum sets, keyboards and synthesizer. I was impressed by the amount of professional gear in the store, and even start to have desire I buy some stuff. Fortunately my self control kicked in, and as the result I only brought a pair of drumset from BestBuy.

I talked to the sales person and he told me that they just start selling musical instrument like 3 weeks ago, the time when I was still in Hong Kong. Amazing.

There were some keyboards that really impressed me, some of specifically designed for DJ in dance club. I found it so much fun to play with them. In fact, I spent always an hour there playing around. After I left the area, I started thinking, why was I so excited since a lot of these features are actually available in my home studio with Sonar 7. Then I realized the reason why it's so much fun to play at the store than at home: the sense of impulsiveness and instantaneous. When I play instruments at home I have to spend some time to set things up. But in the store I can just walk over to the gear, mess with it, and if I don't like it, I can just leave. There's no consequence, responsibility or any work associated with setting things up. You just play and that it. Man, things are always more fun if there's no consequence and responsibility >:-}

Back to my trip to Best Buy. The main reason why I went to Galleria Best Buy was because I saw from BestBuy.com, after a search, that MSI Wind is avaialble for pick up at the store. Imagine my surprise when I talked to the sales person and he told me that "no, the Eee PC is the only Netbook that we have". I told him about the BestBuy web site, and he still insisted that they don't have MSI Wind. I was like, fine. After all, I was just put myself into temptation, and try to see if the gear was avaialble at the store. I would be in much better trouble if the actually HAVE MSI Wind at the store for me to play with.

Next I went to check out speaker and boombox and see if there's any device that allows me to hook up with my other non iPod gear and still portable enough to carry around in single hand. I couldn't find any.

So at the end, I leave the store with only a pair of drum stick. Still, it was a nice visit.

Fight the temptation of doing things just because I can

Young hackers have an attitude of doing things just because they can. They exploit loop holes of systems, write bots to check whether there is new weakness on the Internet. They don't have the need to do all these except that they find satisfaction on doing so for the sake of their ego.

I found myself having the similar kind of attitude when I am deal thing things that I possess . I always have a desire to take advantage if the stuff that I already have and see if I can turn them into something cool and useful . But by doing that I distract myself from doing more important things, that I should do.

I found that one of the way to combat that kind of desire is by listing out everything I found really important to me. That way, whenever I start thinking about doing something adhoc, I will pull out that lust and remove myself what really is important.

聖經不見了

今天早上在教會祟拜，竟然發現在ipod 中的聖經譯本（英語及和合平）不翼而飛，令我今天早上沒有聖經用。我想大概是上一次ipod 聖經軟件更新的時候，更新軟件將譯本和舊軟件一拼刪掉。Sigh, thanks for nothing!

P.S. I just downloaded English and Chinese bible translation back in my iPod Touch. All is well now.

Rock N Roll Damn it

I was trying to test how good is my audio equipment put together. So I spent 3 hours recording the damn song that is playing below. I used http://www.zshare.net/ as the audio hosting because stupid Blogger doesn't supporting upload audio file yet. Unless you are tone deaf, you probably hear a lot of problem in the files, like vocal being out of sync, the whole mix is out of balance, and so on. But I don't care, because all I want to make sure is that I have an environment which allows me to impulsively crank some songs out, something shit like the one below. Yes, being impulsive is the key.

Click here to hear the damn song. I tried embedding the player, but it autostarts, which annoys even me.

遲到

每天公司的早晨會議，同事們都是「遲到飛起」，就像現在，我又再站著等運到，沒有一位同事在四週。超老土。

中文輸入

我依然覺得ipod touch 的手寫中文輸入有改善的空間。但從曰常生活中使用的角度來說，已經相當不俗。

Mind set change

I am switching from my current perm job back to contract work starting on Nov 17, and as thus my work style will have a big paradigm shift (like switch from my I-am-off-from-work-after-office-hour mentality to every-hour-counts-as-chargeable-hours mind set). For such, I'll probably not taking any side job for at least 1 to 2 months. After all, I need sometime to realign my expectation regarding to my free time and my work hours.

Talking when you sleep

I woke up this morning and found that several people tried to IM me while I was sleeping. Maybe they thought that I was awake as I left my machine up and running and thus my IM client was also running.

Pet Shop Boys - Flamboyant

I thought I watched every single Pet Shop Boys video already, but then I come across this at YouTube, and found it very funny. Enjoy.

Time to prepare my Christmas card email list

It's that kind of day again. Every year I will prepare a list for email to send my e-Christmas. Yes, I stopped sending actually Christmas card for years already, and I'll probably only send one physically Christmas card for a friend just because I don't have her email address. But I mean, come on, even my mom has an email address.

Being a bully is so last century

For some strange reason, one of my colleague at work started acting like a bully around me now that we work closer. He kept saying threatening stuff like "hey let's beat him together", "let's give him work and work him to death" or shit like that. I understand that he's trying to be friendly in a very awkward way , but acting like bully as a way of being friendly as being friend is so last century.

Still, since I am about to leave, I try to lay low and let him be. But it seems like he's just getting worse. In some way, he's kind of a confirmation that my leaving is a right decision.

Turning laundry white again: round 2

So my last experiment on making my socks white was failed. The Bleach was so strong that it turned one pair of my socks to yellow.



So this time I tried something new, called OxiClean.



After soaking my socks in OxiClean for a night ....



I got this, which is not particularly better than before, but at least it doesn't render my white socks into yellow.

Bleach not worked as I expected

I am so glad that I used some old socks to test the bleach I just brought instead of the expansive shirt I intended to use the bleach with. Somehow for all the socks I used bleach with, they all turned to some yellowish color. I read some web site and they explained that as "over bleached", which to me it sounds a bit strange because I only soaked them for a short while, and I already diluted the bleach before I put in the soaks.

Some site suggested using OxiClean to remove stink instead of using old fashion bleach, so I'll give it a try when I have time to get to Traget to get some OxiClean product.

My life on search

I realized that I spent a lot of time making sure things around me are as searchable as possible. That includes a closet that is organized, with all my disc labeled and categorized properly, with all my new bills and legal documents scanned and organized properly in my computer. That plus my whole virtual world in my computer and in the cloud (the Internet).

The older I get the more I rely on various search technology to help me find information that I need. If something is not serachable, I may better just not having it.

There's a cost for making my life search. In time and resources persepctive, a serachable lifestyle means I have to spend a lot of time to label, document and organize my physical and virtual possession. I also to discipline myself to continue the organize process, or else having partial of my life serachable while the other in a mess doesn't really do much to me as a whole.

I also need to concern about my privacy, figuring out how much I can give up on my privacy in order to make my stuff easy to serach. And on the top of that I need to implement various security infrastructure around those information that is sensitive. That includes putting passcode on my iPod Touch, making encrypted backup on my personal information and use Truecrypt on my portable harddisk.

Some may find such a lifestyle painfully complicate. Maybe it's a geek thing, But as long as I continue living alone, I still have the luxury to conduct myself in whatever way I like.

obsessive compulsive

I am feeling pretty productive now after spending an hour or so reorganizing my closet. Now every category of my clothing are grouped in it's own place. I wish, though, I can tag each category. Yes, I think I am getting obsessive compulsive, like Monk.

PSP, PSP and PSP

I spent almost half the day trying to figure out how I can utilize (or exploded, depends on your point of view) my PSP to the max. Here's my finding, in case you are also interested in it.

• Video Playback
  
  The best feature of PSP from my opinion is the screen, so I am very interest in using PSP as a video player. So I tried several different software and got various result. The ultimate goal to me is to find a way to convert video that can utilize the highest resolution of PSP, which is 480 x 272.
  
  The first software I tried was PSP Video 9. It does the job fairly well, but it failed to automatically recognize the native dimensions of the video and optimize it to fit on PSP screen with best aspect ratio. It does, though, handle DVD rip very well natively. It also takes a lot of time to do the conversion. At the end I gave it a pass.
  
  Then I tried WinAVI Video Converter, which is one of the portable software in my tool set. The application works fairly well and pretty fast. The biggest, though, is that it does NOT support the highest 480 x 272 resolution. Granted, the software hasn't been updated for years, and back then using older firmware you simply can't play video from memory stick using the 480 x 272 resolution, still it's kind of a disappointment.
  
  And then I tried sevarel other software, and it was extremely frustrating because a lot of them have spyware.
  
  Finally, I came cross MediaCoder, which is yet another portable software in my toolset. Surprisingly, the tool handles PSP native resolution very well, and yield awesome result. Here's the procedure for setting up MediaCoder to convert PSP video with optimization:
  
  - Open MediaCoder (I am using 0.6.0 Build 3905
  - Add (Or remove) files to the file list. (That way you can covert files in a batch) It supports drag and drop
  - Make sure Output Folder and Working Folder are correct. You can access them at the bottom left of the screen by selecting the tab "Output"
  - In "Picture" tab, make sure the Aspect Ratio is correct. I sometime need to readjust it a few times before I get the best result.
  - Select menu [Extension][Console][PSP], and PSP mock up scren will show up.
  - Uncheck "Transfer Files to PSP after done." I like maintaining files myself.
  - Check "Keep Transmitted Files on PC"
  - On Format drop down, select "MPEG-4 AVC (480x272)"
  - Click "Crop" button then select "Auto Crop to Fit"
  - Click "Start" button.
  
  Now just relax and see the awesome videos being created. Once done, put them in the Video folder of PSP.

• Photo
  
  PSP is a nice slideshow player on the desktop. I am photos loaded in PSP and start a slideshow. However, the slideshow feature of PSP seems very limited. It also didn't remember the configuration I set last time. In addition, there's no way to tell PSP to shuffle photos while doing slide show. It also does do any fancy transition like iPod Touch does.
  
  
• Music
  
  Music playback is OK, but it doesn't have Podcast friendly feature, namely the ability to remember bookmark or last listen spot. It's nice to have the feature, but no way can PSP replace my iPod.
  
  
• Playing PSOne games
  
  One great thing about PSP is the ability to play Playstation One game. One of my all time Playstation One favorite is Xenogear and I still hope that someday I can finish the game. PSP always me to continue my dream. However, I am still have trouble bringing in my PSOne save game. I already went thru the trouble by First converting my .psx (CheatFactoryFile) into Bleem format usng PSXGameEdit, and then converting from Bleem format to ePSXe format using the tool provided here. And then I get the correct ID for the game. But when I try to bring up CWCheat by holding SELECT button, it didn't work. I tried several times, and I finally gave up. So I guess I have to start to game all over again, which I don't think is way too bad.
  
  
  
• Play SNES emulator
  
  I was told that my modded PSP is capable to run SNES emulator. I tried, but it seems like it involves some steop of turn on/off certain firmware feature. Since I am still a little bit green on mess with PSP firmware, I am giving it a pass for now.