ZumoDrive ate my homework

I was shocked, horrified and very angry about ZumoDrive, an online drive service. I just found out that all the document I put in that drive were either gone, messed up, or unopenable. Fortunately, they are all draft for the lyrics that I was working on, and I always have a backup somewhere else, otherwise I might tear all my hairs off as I have a deadline today. This both shows the importance of having backup and also how unreliable sky drives are.

Audio-Technica ATH-ES7

I test-drove my friend's spanking new Audio-Technica ATH-ES7 headphone. While the sound quality was very good (definitely worth the US$99 price tag), I found it pressed the ear on my head (even without the handle of my glasses) so much that I couldn't bear it after 2 hours. That makes me pretty concern about buying headphone online, as I wouldn't get a chance to try it before buying one.

Slightly twisted my ankle

I vaguely remember that I once twisted my ankle years ago while I was practicing Chinese dance. It must be a long while ago as my memory about that instance was totally blurry, and I wouldn't even recall it if I didn't get my ankle slighly twisted last Saturday when I stepped into my sport shoes in a hurry. It was painful for like a few seconds and then it's gone, and as usual, I ignored it.

And then when I went to see Houston Ballet that night, the nerve pain within the ankle came back while I was in the restroom (what an embarrassing moment to have your ankle hurt, right in front of the toilet bowl). This time it stays longer, but at least I managed to survive until I get home.

This morning the pain comes back again, and I realized that it's mostly because I didn't walk properly. Instead of using the front part of my feet, I tend to put pressure on my ankle when walking. So I started learning to walk the right away.

It's getting better now, and seriously, I am worrying that it will come back, particular during my ballet class. That would be very bad.

My digital camera healed itself

I found out that my Canon PowerShot SD880IS camera was slightly misbehaving since 2 days ago. Well I zoomed out to the max, the lens would be suddenly off focus. Other than that, the camera was working pretty fine.

To my surprise, yesterday when I used the camera, I suddenly heard a few clicking sound of some motor readjusting, and then found that the camera fixed itself. There's no more out of focus problem since then. Wicked.

I think part ot the reason that the lens or motor in my camera wasn't synchronized well is because I left my camera in my bagpack all the time, and I always treat my bag like I treat myself: slamming everywhere. So from now on I will leave my camera at home, and let the cheesy camera in my mobile phone does the job should I have a need to take pictures on the fly.

I might die this year

I dug up some of my historical stuff, like recording that I made, journal that I wrote and then some. I scanned through these materials, which included my prediction that I would die this year. It was a prediction I made and believed since I was seven ago.

I wasn't thinking about it since years ago, probably after I started dating my first girl friend. It's kind of interesting that I dug up this "prediction" right on the year which I was predicted to die.

So if I was correct, then I only have 4 months to live.

But then I predicted a lot of stuff before, and most of them didn't come true.

Nevertheless, it's always nice start preparing. Based on what I found out, I have an effective will, all I need to do is handwritten the will by myself. That's it. So let me start drafting ...

Am I supposed to like World's Greatest Dad?

Just watched the movie World's Greatest Dad, and it was a very odd feeling. In the first half of the movie, I somehow found it unbearable. And then something happened, and I felt my brain just got turned up side down.

I know what the story is trying to say and imply. And to a certain extend I thought I should love the movie because it's very pro-alternative, pro-geek and pro-individualism. After, this is what indie movie is about, right? We don't want to the same old formula Hollywood style movie. We don't have cheap emotion. We want something raw but poetic, beautiful in a bitter way, approachable but not compromising. Right? Well, this movie does all of that.

But somehow, deep down inside, I found this movie pretty hard to swallow.

Maybe, I think, the movie is too real to me. It's almost seeing my own funeral, something that was cool when in imagination, but unbearably painful when you actually look at it.

And for that reason, maybe I should watch the movie again.

How to get audio/music from YouTube

Many people asked me how to get audio/music from YouTube. Here's how you do it.

First you need to have the following software installed:

• Firefox 2.0 or above (because you need to install some Firefox plugin)
  http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.html
  
  
• Firefox plugin Video DownloadHelper
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006
  
  
• FLV Extract (open source tool to extract audio from flv file)
  http://moitah.net/
  
  

Here's the step of installing everything:

• Install Firefox
  
• In Firefox, Go to the Video DownloadHelper site and install the Video DownloadHelpler plug in, or you can select menu [Tools][Add-ons], click "Get Add-ons" and search "Video DownloadHelper". (Oh, and while you are there, search "Adblock PLus" for blocking all advertisement and "No Script" to stop JavaSCript from running by default. They make your web surfing life much safer)
• For FLV Extract, just expand the file and run the FLVExtract.exe

Finally here's the step of how to do it. Let's say you love the webcast 2KShow that me and my friend Mr.K do so much that you want to extract the audio (feel free :-D). Here's the steps:

• Using Firefox, go to the YouTube page, like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muNOOeWfjYQ
• On the toolbar, you can see the Video Downloader icon rotating. Click on the icon, and in the dropdown, select the file you want to download. Same video many have multiple version, just pick one. You should see the file being downloaded as ".flv" format, which is Adobe Flash video format.
• Open FLVExtract.exe. On the window, UNCHECK "Video" and "TimeCodes". You should be only "Audio" being checked.
• Drag and Drop the .flv file on "FLV Extract", and an mp3 file will be created with the same name and the same folder as the original .flv file.
• DONE. Enjoy the mp3 audio file.

By the way, if case some haters wanted to accuse me for "stealing music" or crap like that, here's the list of legitimate reason why some of my friends do this all the time:

• We have a Sunday worship team and we try to practice contemporary worship music close to the arrangement of the original performance. So we use YouTube to find the songs, extract the low quality audio out, put them in iPod so that we can get the groove down. After the Sunday service, we delete those files. They are low quality enough to not give us ultra enjoyment, but good enough for us to learn the arrangeemnt. In fact, I borught a few songs from iTune after finding the songs appealing.
• My Chinese dance friends use music from the Chinese dance clip on YouTube to practice dance.

Two totally unrelated things

First, I had a hair cut today.

Second, I was trying to convert some cassette tape into MP3, but the darn cassette player keep jamming my cassette tapes. I already lost 2 historical tapes because that brother ducking cassette tape player. I even start wondering if I should actually buy a Walkman just to finish the conversion job, which will cost me $30.