Blockbuster Online in-store exchange: epic fail

I was going try out the Blockbuster Online in-store exchange today, but then when I got to the store, I was told that while I can get exchange movies for free, games were "half price" rental instead of free, which I thnk is lame.  By the way, I used the Blockbuster app on iPad, and found that even those out-of-business Blockbuster stores were still on the map.  That means just because you can find a store in the app doesn't mean the store is really available.

So at the end, I decided to cancel the trial subscription.

Closing

Ahhh!  The earring hole on my right ear closed way faster than I expected, which is within just one day!  This is way way faster than most people told me, which is something around weeks to months.  So I had to put in the placeholder stud at night before I go to sleep.  So annoying and troublesome.

Ah, one of my stud earring is missing

I had both of my ears pierced while I was in Hong Kong.  As the place holder of the holes, I got a pair of cheap silver stud earring, and I was wearing them since then.

Fast forward to this morning.  I was taking a shower, thinking about some computer stuff.  Suddenly I felt like something fell off from my body.  I was puzzled for 1 seconds, and then I touched my right ear, and found that the stud earring was gone.  I managed to find the pin side of the stud earring but couldn't found the other side.  After fustrated for 10 minutes or so naked, I gave up.

So now I have the my bare right ear and with the left ear still wearing the silver stud earring.  I heard that pierced hold on ears won't close up until after weeks, but I don't want to take the chance.  So I'll probably try to buy something cheap to "plug the hole" in the meantime, maybe from Ross or Marshall or such.

And come to think of it, I still haven't ordered the earring I saw on Amazon.com months ago, which was the whole reason why I got my ears pierced in the first place.  Maybe I should do it in the coming several days.

PlayStation 3 wouldn't suck if I don't have internet

After having PlayStation 3 for about a week, I found out that every single game I popped into it, there's always online update required.  I am not talking about some 20Mb here and there.  I am talking about hard core 1.3Gb update here and there.  In fact, even some PS3 demos I downloaded required update.  So now I am kind of expected that everytime I pop in a new game the first time, I will not be able to play it until 1 to 2 hours later.  (Did I mention that my home broadband connect is kind of lame?)

Google Doc on iPad: ok with document, lame for spreadsheet

I tried Google doc on iPad as I always like the idea of having one set of document on the cloud all the time. I tried editing some Word document and the experience was not that bad. However, creating and editing spreadsheet was such a painful experience. you have to edit cell content textbox by text box and row by row. Totally lame.

超低B崇拜事件

一件超低B的事情在今天英語崇拜進行的時候發生。某牧師的太太在崇拜兒童音樂演奏的過程當中要求我將台上的Drumset移走。首先，在崇拜過程中做這種動作會影響會眾，況且Drumset並沒有阻礙台上的運作和兒童進出的安全。但因為師母出口，自然要做，結果當然製造出擾人的聲響和情景。

也不想再多說，心裡只有一個結論: 超低B。

20 minutes

I woke up at 5:30 am this morning.  My brain told me that it's about time to get off the bed to do stuff, but my body told me that it's too cold to get off the bed.  The argument between my brain and my my body continue for about 20 minutes until I finally moved my lazy body off the bed.

Cold weather is one of the biggest enemy for me ... in term of being productive.

Notice to self: avoid going to shopping mall these days

I finished band practice and thought of getting something from Target at the nearby shopping mall.  Huge mistake.  The parking lot there was crowded, and people were seemingly ran out of patient.  I heard people honking left and right.  Interestingly, I had NO trouble finding parking space since I was willing to park a bit further away and didn't mind a little bit walking on a relaxing Saturday afternoon.  After I'd done with my shopping at Target, I relaxingly walked to BestBuy to try out Google TV, and found it kind of a joke to me.  I also played a bit GT5, and just as I expected, I didn't like it.

Still want to avoid shopping mall these days because of all those angry angry shoppers.  Glad that I've done with my Christmas shopping already.

So my bluetooth headset adapter is not just a POS

About a year ago, I brought a bluetooth headset adapter (Macsense BlueICE Headset) so that I could turn any regular headphone into a bluetooth headphone.  It was then proven that it was a stupid idea, because the dangling cable of a regular headphone connecting to this bluetooth headset adapter is as messy as directly hooking to the device (be it iPod Touch or mobile phone).  The biggest reason why people use bluetooth headset is to get rid of all the dangling cable, and this adapter does NOT solve the problem.  As the result, I have this adapter left in my closet, classfied under the group "gadgets that sounded cool until I actually use it".

But yesterday I found out a cool way to use this device.  I simply connect this adapter to my home stereo system, and then pair this headset adapter to all my bluetooth capable devices: iPod Touch, Android phone and iPad.  Now, whenever I need to playback something from my device, but want to hear better sound quality than the build-in speaker, I can turn on bluetooth and play to audio thru this headset adapter.  The best part is that there's no dangling cable between my device and the stereo system.

The sound quality was actually pretty good.  In fact, playing PacMan Champion edition on iPod Touch with home stereo system is much better an experience than using the build in speaker.  At last, this used-to-be-POS device has some decent usage.

Rav 4 and battery problem, again?

It was started at 2 am last night.  I woke up in the middle of the night, knowing that it must be the jetlag that caused me to wake up for no good reason.  Suddenly, my obsessive compulsive instinct told myself that I should throw away all the garbage even though garbage pick up was still 2 days away.  That didn't stop me wrapping up all the garbage bags and moved them all to my Rav 4.  I was ready to drive to the nearby dumpster and throw away the garbage.

So I tried to start my car, and the moment I turned the car key, electricity went out.

I told myself: I've seen this before.  The battery connected was losen.

But then I thought, that didn't make sense, since my mechanic already replaced the old negative connector with a new one.  How could the connection being losen again within months?

Nevertheless, I opened the hook, and have a tiny wrench ready.  The negative connector looked dead tight.  But how about the positive connector?  Sure enough, the connection was a bit lose.  So I tighten the screw, and everything was working again.

Still, how come I keep running into this kind of problem?  Anyway, hopefully both battery connectors are tight enough so that the same problem won't happen again (until I change battery next time).

Ah, this is why my next phone won't be an Andriod

Among all the things that I don't like about Andriod, this is probably the top in my list: internal phone storage restriction.  In fact, I hate this so much that unless Google changes this restriction, my next phone will absolutely not be an Android.  I also lost incentive to invest anything on my HTC Desire, including getting 32Gb microSD card for Desire to use.

Here's the deal: by default, all the application are installed in the internal phone storage, and once you used up all the internal phone storage, you cannot install anything anymore.  In fact, your phone may not even function properly without enough free internal phone storage.

So how much effective memory do my new HTC Desire have?  About 120Mb.  To me, this is like having a Porsche but can only drive it within Mong Kok area.

Granted, some new apps allows you to install in microSD card, but you don't know whether you can install it on the microSD until AFTER you installed the app.  The Android marketplace does not give you any indication about whether an app is microSD card install friendly or not.  Also Android is notorious on NOT freeing up all the memory after uninstalling apps. So the more apps you try, the less effective internal memory you have even after you uninstall those apps.  This effectively DISCOURAGE people from trying out new apps.  No wonder the Android marketplace is so inferior compare with the iOS App Store since Android developer knows that they are dealing with customers who don't want to try new apps even when they are free.

So from my on, my workflow on trying out Andriod application is like this:

• Find an app that I may interest in at market place.
• Download the application
• The moment I finish downloading the application, I will try to move the application to microSD card.
• If the application cannot be moved to microSD card, uninstall the application.

And even with this workflow, I have closely monitor how much memory have left (again because of the notorious memory free up problem).  Based on what I read, the sure way of reclaiming all the memory back is by a factory reset, something that I wouldn't do unless I got the My Backup Pro.

Another dead harddisk

I realized that I have yet another dead harddisk on hand when I came back from Hong Kong, arrived home, checked the home server, and found that the drive which used to host downloaded files was not showing up in Windows Explorer.  I leaned toward the hard disk, and heard clicking sound.  Yep, the classic click of death.

It was not such a huge lost since the harddisk is just 40Gb in size, and stored only the temporary downloading files.  As far as I remember, I wasn't downloading anything anyway, so I am good. 

Just for the safe side, I spent some time disassembling the hard disk and make sure the hard disk can never be used (or re-used) again. 

Guess it's about time to shop for another 1Tb harddisk.

That gift card's gone ....

So someone was nice enough to give me a gift card of a steak house last year as a Christmas gift.  I forgot the exact amount by I think it's around US$30.  I didn't use it right away since I wanted to use it with friends, and I didn't encountered a chance that I had a bunch of friends with me and wanted to go to steak house.

Flash-forward to 1 year later, or 1 hour ago to be exact, I was cleaning up the glove compartment of my car, and I realized that the steak house gift card was GONE.  I was first frustrated, and then felt mad, and then confused, and then felt mad again.  Who in the world took my .... oh wait ... did I really left the gift card at the glove compartment?  Or did I leave it at home?  When was the last time I saw it ....

And then it came to the worst part:  I actually FORGOT the name of that steak house.

So I told myslef, when you got a gift card, use it as soon as possible.  Also, I tell myself to get used to the fact that I will keep forgetting stuff, and maybe time to consider tattooing some important information on my body.

First tiny tiny application on HTC Desire (Andriod)

Writing and deploying application to Android is supposed to be easier than doing so on iPhone, but I did experience some problem developing application from Eclipse (on Windows 7) to my new HTC Desire phone.  It turns out that the solution is way easier than I expected.

I started by reading the Android Developers site about setting up device for development.  The article explained that once USB Driver for Windows was being installed, the Eclipse IDE should be able to deploy the application I wrote to my Android device.  However, my phone was not being recognized.  I double checked and found that USB Driver for Windows, REvision 3 was indeed installed.  How come it still doesn't work?

After being fustrated for a while, I finally came across this blog, and found that I need a special USB Driver, and that USB driver came with the HTCSync application. So I went to HTC Support site, find HTC Sync 3.0, downloaded and installed it, and then unplug and replug to phone to the computer.  Sure enough, Eclipse saw the device, and I was able to run my app on my phone.

Recap of my TaoBao experience

During this Hong Kong trip, I spent some time to order some dance related items from TaoBao.  I totally ordered 3 items, and at the end I received one item successfully, one item need to cancel because of size not available, and one item canceled because I changed my mind before I committed the payment.  So basically I went through all the possible combination. 

So far I think the shopping experience was relatively OK, and I learned some tricks about how to have a successfully transaction.  I'll probably order some stuff next time before I get back to Hong Kong, so that there will be less of waiting.

When I re-acknowledge that I am not

Tomorrow is my last day of my trip to Hong Kong.  If there's one phrase that can recaps my whole trip, it will be "when I re-acknowledge that I am not."

It may sound negative, or even melancholy, but after living in this earth for so many years, I learned that it's actually healthier to be honest to your own feeling, embrace it, and move on.  In fact, I am genuinely glad that I have a lot of capable friends who are capable to express their idea and feeling through all sorts of medium: their singing, their dance, their musical talent, their drawing, their financial skill, their make-up technique, their management skill, their social skill, their time management ability and so on.  I was never envy.  It's just that, for some strange reason, I have a bit sorrow and fear of being left behind, or being someone who hinder the "progress" of the rest of the world.  Come to think of it, the reason why I love the song "姊妹" (lyrics by 林夕, sung by 楊千嬅), that's because the song capture the feeling of someone who tried so hard (in that case, in couple relationship) and yet also failed so hard, and when she saw her best friend's wedding, the mixing feeling of happiness and sorrow overwhelmed her.  And finally she told her best friend:

若我說我願意誰在乎過 你知道那答案快提示我
分半點福氣給我 不准留低我一個

 I know it's kind of odd that I can associate things in such an odd way.  And I know it's so self-center, childish and native.  In fact, that's exactly why I am so thankful that after all these year, you still accept me as I am.  You are still my good sister (好姊妹).

Dinner with mom

Just had dinner with mom at home, and then I washed all the dishes.  This is probably the simplest thing I can do to mom, but yet to her the most important thing.  In fact, I wash dishes every time I dine at home, unless mom intentionally stop me.

There's another reason I had to wash dishes today after dinner: nephew was there.  For kids, seeing what you do is 100x more influential than what you say.

Divorce

Just overheard mom, once again for the million times, explaining to my nephew why she as a grandma needs to spend so much time to take care of him because my brother's divorce.  It makes me heartbreaking and also angry.

Dogs and my room

Here's the room I am living in while I am in HK (which I am still in now). 

And then there's my working desk.  Basically this is all I need to conduct my daily life:  a chair, a desk, a computer with Internet conenction.  That's all.

And then there's my sister's little dog.   She's kind of cute and loves following people around.

There's 2 bigger dogs belong to my younger brother.  They bark loudly but other than that they are pretty friendly.

And finally there's this stairway from ground floor to the second floor (where my room is).  I slammed my head at that spot a few days ago with a little "building" on my forehead. 

Camphor Ball everywhere

Mom put a lot of camphor ball within the blanket that she put on my bed.  So when I wave it, tens of camphor ball just flied everywhere, and I was like ... errr ... ok ....

Can't distinguish awesome food and so-so food

My Taiwan trip confirmed one important thing: I have no sense of taste.  Expansive and (suppose to be) delicious food taste pretty much the same as low quality and so-so food. This once again confirms that I should stay in US where I can continue cooking so-so food for myself to eat.

Long sleeve under cold weather

Once again I was puzzled at Taipei about how people kept wearing winter clothing like long sleeve jackets, hats, boots and so on when it was obvious so hot that even a short sleeve T shirt seems too much for the weather. I have a very strong feeling that this is just a fashion thing.

Energy level

I kept feeling sorry about being tired, sleepy and almost cranky starting from 5:00 pm every day at Taipei as I have hard time keeping my energy level up after a whole day of walking and visiting places and even more walking. I was totally impressed by my tour teammate being able to have energy all the way until after midnight. Maybe people living in Hong Kong are so used to the non-stop action lifestyle, while I am totally in the camp of taking it slow.

I sort of figured out the formula, that every 1 hour of quick nap will give me 1.5 to 2 hours of energy, but then the energy level will drop to almost zero after then, much like how those rechargeable battery operates.

Girl stuff shopping at Taipei

After being in Taipei for 3 days, I realised that this is a great place to shop ... for girl stuff. Sure, you can accomplish the same thing at Kwai Fong, Mong Kok, Causeway Bay and so on in Hong Kong, and I bet the price should be pretty much the same, but you'll probably find some unique items here and there, particularly at the Night Market(s).

My experience of using iPad one month no contract data plan in Hong Kong

I was always fascinated, frustrated and irritated by the fact that, as far as I know, there is No Way to get prepaid data plan for 3G mobile device in all the countries that I care about (US, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Canada). The best thing you can get is by getting a no contract monthly data plan for iPad. Still I will stay for 2 plus weeks in Hong Kong, I decided to give it a shot and get a one month plan for this month.

So I went to Smartone store at Tai Po, stated my intend, and a staff member handled my order. There are 2 plans provided by Smartone, one is the normal $168 30 days unlimited data access (by the way there is another 250Mb caped data plan, but I hate caped data plan and I always can find all the bandwidth that provides to me so I treat the 250Mb plan as not even existed), and then there is another one that cost $199 with some Smartone video streaming value add. The staff member there tried to sell me the 199 plan, but of course I don't care about that. So I picked the $168 one. One thing you should notice about the cost is that you need to pay $12 for some sort of activation fee. So as a whole I actually paid $180, which is not bad at all consider that I pay US$30 per month in US to AT&T anyway.

The whole process took like 30 minutes, including some wait time here and there. After the process, I left the store with a MicroSIM card with some information. I put the card in my iPad And swapped out my AT&T microSIM, and sure enough the system recognise the Smartone data access. One catch, however, is that you HAVE to connect the iPad to iTune desktop application in order to updating some profile information BEFORE you can use your iPad with the new 3G plan. So I couldn't use my new 3G access the moment I left the store at TaiPo. But then I went back home that night, connect the iPad to iTune running on Windows, and after a fast simple update, my iPad started to get data from 3G, which was totally awesome.

To further test the 3G access, I used the 3G access on a bus during my commute to the airport since I had a 4 days Taiwan trip. It's pretty awesome to be able to check location using map, update status on Facebook, check email, download apps, browse the web and write blog while I was having my long ride (it took 40 minutes to get from TaiLam tunnel to airport). The data is worth evert single penny.

Strange, a lot of iPad case, but none of the iPad

I was having a great time on the first day of my Taipei trip. Since I've never been this place
before, everything seem new and exciting to me.

I also found that my iPad can pretty much provide everything I need during the trip, except that typing it is still major pain in the butt.

Speaking of iPad, I realised that we saw a lot of stores selling iPad, and yet I have yet to see a real iPad being sold in any store in any ways of forms. Strange.

First touch in iPhone, then motion sensor in Kinect: how 4 years old and grandma can both access computer at ease

A lot of computer enthusiasts share the same dream as I have, that one day computer will become so easy to use and so intuitive that even a 4 year old or a grandma can use without much learning.  The dream was starting to materialize when Xerox created graphic user interface, and then later being popularized by Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows.  Then stuck with mouse and windows for many years, without much improvement on user interface experience. 

Then 6 years ago we started to have touch interface, and once popularized by Apple's iPhone.  Suddenly, kids can learn stroking letters on iPad while grandma use the exact same iPad to play mahjong.

Today me and my relative experienced Microsoft Kinect, and I instantly realize that this is going to be another major leap in user interface and experience.  As a 1.0 technology, there's still a lot of room for improvement, but seeing how our family and relatives, with totally 9 persons from age between 4 year old to ... well, grandama, get together playing on the same game, and that anyone can just jump in the center and instantly start participating the game in progress, I can see this interface can be used to do much more than just playing virtual bowling and hip hop dancing. 

Microsoft has a track record of release their technology into API so that others can write software on.  And if Microsoft can turn Kinect technology into easy to use library like XNA or something like Microsoft Motion Framework X.X, then we will soon seeing Powerpoint presentation started by waving a hand, 3D landscape visualization interface by moving hands in the air, or choreographer collaborate on dance through Internet. 

In good old days, technology tends to flow from military and academic  use to consumer world.  Now it's the other way round.  Consumer electronic like iPhone, iPad and Kinect popularize new interface, while the enterprise or even military world tries to catch up.

I am looking forward to see how our next generation interface with computer and information.

Short Review on 3 Kinect games: Kinect Sport, Kinectanimal, Dance Central

We rented 3 Kinect games today, and here's my quick review:

Kinect Sports: If you want a good sport based party game, this is a must buy for Kinect.  The feedback and game play are reasonably smooth and responsive.  The games are easy to learn and actually fun.  I won't say any of these games can replace real exercise, but I know I sweated a lot as I keep running, jummping and waving.  Great family fun, and kids should have no problem pick up those games.

Kinectanimal:  it's like mix of Nintendog and minigames.  I think this will be a great toy for kids to spend an afternoon participating all sort of exercise and petting virtual tiger.  Other than that .....  I think it's a bit too childish for adults.

Dance Central: Haromix did it again.  Dance Central is a soild dance game.  The dance moves are authentic and you can actually learn some nice hip hop and club dance moves.  The intro animation is so hip and well done that I still enjoy it even after watched it a few times.  The songs that comes with the game are a nice mix of dance songs.  I wish they have more hiphop songs other than Snoop Doggy Dog's Drop it like it's hot, though,  But then you can buy more dance through XBox Live.  Since I love club dancing, this is my personal must buy. 

Kinect: 2 songs in free demo, cool ...

Kinect Adventure (the game that comes with Kinect) comes with 3 demo games: Driving, Dance Central, and Aerobic.  The Driving game and Aerobic game are kind of lame, but the Dance Central game definitely worth trying.  The demo version comes with the 90s dance oldie "Poison" and Lady GaGa's "Poker Face", which should be enough for some family fun.

KInect - Second Impression

Henry (my cousin) and I tried Kinect last week at downtown Montreal shopping mall, and we were both impressed.  So we were both pretty excited by today's Kinect launch.  We went to Best Buy at 8 am, and found that there were already some people buying Kinect.  We grabbed one and went back home, and took last than 15 minutes to set it up with system software update.  No internet connection is required, so for those of you who got the machine modded, you can enjoy Kinect without risking being banned by Microsoft through XBox Live.

I tried the Kinect Adventures, which is the game that comes with hardware, and it worked exactly like how it was when we tried it last week.  It does require some space in your living room, and thus makes me wonder how good the device will sell in Hong Kong.  But in North America, it should have no problem gaining fans and provide tons of family fun.

I'll probably buy Dance Central just because I want to see my niece dance Lady GaGa's Poker Face.

Music streaming from home: Yay for OrbLive, Boo for Zumocast

I set up both OrbLive and Zumocast so that I could access music stored at the my home machine during my 1 month trip.  After 1 week being away from home, I found out that Zumocast failed miserably as it has problem accessing home machine, while OrbLive continues to work (which proves that my home machine is still up and running as of now).  Now I know what should I rely on.

Tried Playstation Move, and hated it

I had an urge to go to BestBuy after work today, and once I got there, I realized why: there were some new toys to mess with.

Playstation Move was available for tryout.  So I tried it, and hated it.  Maybe it's just that software title, but if Sony picked that WiiSport clone as their flagship launch title, then I doubt how good the other Move titles are.  The characters on the screen were a bit creepy, but it was the game play that disappointed me.  They were frustrating more than challenging, and I was simply not having fun with the game.  This is strange, consider how much I like WiiSport and WiiSport Resort. 

On the plus side, I tried an Andriod phone: Motorola Driod.  Yes, the very first one, with a keyboard.  And I have to say that I really enjoy using it.  Sure the phone was not the latest model, and some apps like "Piano" was not as responsive as the iPhone version, but overall the experience was smooth enough.  Of course I won't buy it since my prepaid phone service is much cheaper and more than enough to do exactly what I need it to do.  Still it's nice to know that there's a good iPhone competitor in this world.

Price of Nintendo DSi XL dropped to US$170.  I looked at the screen and really liked it.  But then I realized that I spent most of my time with iPad including gaming.  If I really want to play some NDS games, I can use my DS classic.  When I am on the road, iPad totally does the job.  So at the end, DSi XL doesn't fit in my life style.

dining decision

I realized that a lot of times my decision of what to eat at night was usually based on which item in the refrigerator would expire the soonest.

The car stopped working again .. in the middle of my trip from Dallas to Houston

The moment I headed out of my friend's house, I was tired and so wanted to sleep in the car.  But I chose to press on, and found that the audiobook "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" had the ability to keep me awake while driving in the dark at night.

Even if the audiobook couldn't keep me awake, the realization of the car stop working during the middle of my 4 hours driving certainly would.

It was around 10:30 pm and and I found that I was almost running out of gas.  At first I was too not concern about it, thinking that within 5 minutes there should be a gas station ahead.  Then 10 minute passed.  15 minutes passed.  And I started to panic.  Finally I saw a gas station, so I stopped my car next to a gas pump.  Get car filled up.  Once done, I started my car.

The car didn't start.

So I opened the hook, with almost certain that it's the it's the battery connection.  I twisted the connection, and sure enough the alarm started.  I thought, that should be it.

No quite.  I closed the hook and started the car, and the car still didn't start.

Once again I opened the hook, and tighten the connector one more time.  I got back to the car, started the engine, and the car started running again.

At that moment, I started to puzzle about why the battery connector kept being loosen, and most importantly, wonder what was the chance of the battery connection loosen while I was driving in the middle of interstate highway with many trucks driving at 75+ miles per hour.

Eventually, I decided to hit the road after one more tightening of the connection.  You probably realize that I didn't die in a traffic accident, or else I won't be able to write this blog.  But tomorrow I definitely need to go and see a mechanic to get that connector fixed.

hair Cut day

I had my hair cut last week. It was the exact same reason why I cut my hair the last thousands of time: my hair was long enough to irritate me. Funny how this time it was long than 2 months compare with the last. Maybe I finally stop growing hair. Ah, the sweet sweet final stage of my life :-e

My car stopped in the middle of the road

After band practice at Fortbend church today, I drove home on Hightway 6.  At a traffic light, my car suddenly shutdown.  There was no electricity.  Nothing.  Just died in the middle of the road.  I was totally in panic mode.  Luckily, a total stranger came by and helped me pull my car to a safer place, and suggested me to take a look at the battery connection.  It turned out that the connection was indeed kind of loose.

Since I was the one was changed the car battery like a month ago, so it was pretty obvious that I was the one who didn't tight up the connection enough.

With the help of that stranger, I was managed to get the car running again, so I drove to the near by Walmart (only 2 minutes of driving time), pay $8 to buy a set of wrench, and used it to tight up the connection. After all, I need a set of that kind of tool in my car in case something goes wrong anyway.

Mending > Recycling

I spent about 1.5 hours to mend various items: drum mallet, drum bag, here and there.  It's less about saving money (although it did); it's about turning something semi-useless into totally useful.  My sewing is not awesome, but good enough to get the job done.

Need

I had a very strong urge to satisfy myself tonight, an urge that I couldn't resist. So I gave in and have ...... a lot of ice cream and chips. Hmmm .. ice cream.

Another day messing with stuff at BestBuy without buying stuff

I just love going to BestBuy trying out various gadgets and then leave. If I do the same thing in Hong Kong, I would get killed.

I found out that there's a abundant of official iPad accessories in the store, including the once hard-to-find iPad Camera Connection kit. Darn it, I shouldn't had waste time driving miles to another BestBuy 2 weeks ago to get the same kit.

I finally got a chance to mess with the Nintendo DSi XL, but since they locked the device down, I couldn't experience how light (or heavy) it was. The screen was pretty OK, but still not good enough to justify me buying something that I already had (classic NDS).

I tried Livescribe, It seemed like a good idea, but not good enough to make me put down my money, plus I don't like the idea of forcing me to bring a special notebook with special paper. For that much trouble, I much rather carry my iPad.

I tried Microsoft's Arc Keyboard and seemed like a stupid idea. For $59, it uses the same old wireless technology. The keys were fine but not worth the price. I would consider if it did bluetooth.

Other than that, it was same old same old stuff. I will wait another 2 months and then come back and see if there's any new fun stuff.

Cleaning up my cyber closet

You probably had this experience before : you have a bedroom crowded junk, and day after day you just ignore them thinking that you are too busy to clean them up, until one day you just can't stand it so you spend a whole day doing nothing but keep cleaning and arranging your room until to get a point that all the chaos finally under control. I did that not for my physical room but for my iPad today.

Ever since I brought my iPad, I use it every single day for all sort of activities. In fact, all the Facebook puzzles I created these days are all completely done on iPad without exception. iPad is my biggest content creation and content consumption device these days. As time goes by, though, I found my iPad cluttered by applications that I WOULD LIKE TO USE but rarely use. This creates a big problem because until iOS4 arrives, there's only so much home screen space I have on the device. In addition, all these "good to have" application and content becomes a distraction to me. It's like preparing your final exam in a room full of Bluray players, video game console, HiFi and all sort of fun stuff. Those things distract you from getting your work done.

So, it's time to do a major clean up. But the problem is, how do I satisfy my crave of having those "good to have" application with me all the time? The iPad Camera Kit with my 4Gb SDHC card is the answer. In fact, I am getting a 16Gb card so that I can store even more stuff when I am on the road.

So after spending almost 9 hours, I have an iPad containing ONLY stuff that I will use daily, while having a 4Gb SDHC card containing all the iPad and iPhone apps that I care about in case I need them. Finally my "digital room" is clean and tidy now.

Connecting self-powered harddisk based MP3 player to iPad

I always find it interesting to connect my old gadgets to my new gadgets and see if that can generate new chemistry of new usage. Recently I brought an iPad Camera Connection Kit. The USB connector gave me an idea: what if I connect my iPod Classic 80Gb to my iPad using the connection kit?

The result: it's exactly like connecting the iPod Classic to a computer: I can use iFile app to access all the files that are in the general file partition. I cannot, however, access the song files on my iPod Classic. That is something I expected. Based on the same idea, I tried connecting my old iRiver H140 to my iPad, and find that I can access all the files on that iRiver player.

So there you go. Old harddisk based MP3 player can be used as portable harddisk for iPad.

iPad GPS Failed me

Here's one downside of using your iPad as your GPS: it could fail.

It happened to me during my way back from a resturant to home today. The GPS was working FINE when I used it to navigate to a restaurant near SugarLand, but then when I hopped back into my car, turned on the iPad, and tried to use it to naviagte back home, I saw the "searching ..." message stayed on. I tried all the GPS apps and they gave me the same result. I finally had to give up using GPS and instead using common sense to navigate around and eventually I got home.

When I got back home, I found that the GPS was still not working. So I gave the iPad a reboot, and after everything went back to normal. Strange.

iPad Camera Connection Kit : more that just SD card reader

The first time I read about Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit, I was like, "what a joke, and who will buy this overpriced pair of dongles just for transferring photos." But now that I have it, I found them amazing. That's mostly because this pair of gizmo does more than just what was advertised.

For instance, I am now typing on a regular DELL USB keyboard. I just plug the keyboard to the iPad, got a "not supported device" message, dismissed it, and also notice that light were turned on on my keyboard. When I enter whatever application that took typing, I found the keyboard just work. That's pretty sweet.

However, since this is not a supported feature, there's quite some gotcha associated with using regular USB keyboard. For instance, if you turn off your iPad while the USB dongle and USB keyboard still hooked up with your iPad, the next time you turn your iPad on, iPad WON'T recognize your USB keyboard anymore. I tried and tried, connected and reconnected, and still couldn't make it work again. The only way to get the USB keyboard working again is by hard restarting the iPad. It's not the end of the world, but still it's a bit inconvenient. Guess that's why this feature is not officially supported.

On the other hand, the SD Carder is more robust. Turning the iPad on and off doesn't affect the ability for the system to recognize the card as additional storage. And using iFile with the SD Card reader is simply awesome, since iFile allows you to open the files on the SD card with a large array of application existing on your iPad. So I can directly import a PDF file into iBook, directly open a divx movie in OPlayer, directly editing a JPEG in photo editing software. In fact, I am seriously thinking of getting a 32Gb SD card so that I can use it to store all the files that I don't want to store in my iPad, but want to be with me "just in case", like apps, videos, games and so on.

Finally, the official features, which allows you to import photos and video you took from digital camera, are actually done pretty nicely. When I got the video imported, I can do some minor video editing like trimming. It's no way close to iMovie on iPhone 4, but still a very neat feature in case you want to quickly capture something, and then put it online in minutes.

Overall, I like what I got. This kit expands the feature of my iPad and make it further more as a content creation device instead of a pure content consumption device.

New battery for my car

It started when I found that my I couldn't started my car this morning. I checked with my friend Daniel Yeh after the Sunday service. Based on my description, he concluded that it's probably my battery that's dead. So after I got back from church, I checked the battery and it sure looked like it's in pretty bad shape (just by the outlook actually since I didn't have the equipment to check whether it's dead or not.) I remembered Issac (sorry, wrong spelling, but I forgot the correct spelling of his name) told me that he got his battery from WalMart and it was pretty cheap and comes with 3 years warrenty, so I decided to go to WalMart.

Because going to WalMart, I had to yanked out the old battery since I didn't to find places to recycle it, and then I realized that the battery in my car was also came from Walmart, which was great since I got discount on battery even if the warranty has been expired.

Taking the battery out was much easier than I expected, especial when I found that my roommate had some wrenches that worked great with the screws used to connect the battery with the cable. The only catch was that the alarm would get kicked off when I attempted to disconnect the battery. I kind of solved the problem by plugging a pair of inner ear headphone.

The car battery was way heavier than I expected, and I had serious trouble holding it in single hand for more than 5 seconds. So I got a shopping cart when I reached WalMart and put the battery in it. By the way I was using my roommate's car. It's about time for me to drive his car around after being left idle for almost 2 months anyway.

So I brought the battery to the auto parts counter, and had the battery checked. Sure enough the battery was dead, and it was also out of warranty. But since I brought a new battery that is the exact same model as the one I brought back, I got a deep discount. So instead of payijng $80 for a new battery, I only had to pay $35.

So I got back home, hooked up the new battery, endured a few seconds of noisy alarm being kicked off from time to time, and eventually got the new battery set up. I started my car and everything worked normal again.

How to convert a collection of JEPG files into a PDF, on Windows 7, for free

I am not going to tell you why you need to do it. Instead I just tell you how to.

• Download and install CutePDF Writer for free.
• On Windows Explorer, select all the JPEG file that you want to convert to a PDF. And then right click on the FIRST page (001.jpg), and select PRINT.
• On the "Print Pictures" window, select "CutePDF Writer" as the printer, "Screen" as paper size and "600dpi" (default) as quality.
• UNCHECK "Fit picture to frame"
• Once done, select the result PDF file.
• If you find that the orientation of the page is messed up, you can correct it by: a. installing PDF-Excahnge Viewer , b. Run the app, and select [Document][Rotate Pages...], and select "All" for pages. c. Save the document

Happy PDFking (.....)

自揭私隱

剛下載的寫 blog 軟件有加入寫作地點的功能，所以用這個 post 來試一試。自願加入地點還可以接受，但如果軟件不徵詢過用戶而自行記錄下寫作地點，那就要不得了。

Location:De Moss Dr,Houston,United States

Another reason to cut fingernail

Found another reason to cut fingernail frequently: it makes my fingers work great with my iPad.

Here's why I should cut my fingernail

Every once in a while, I will try out some harmless "what if". Recently I tried not cutting my fingernail, just to see how long I can stand it. I survived for 2 weeks, but finally give in today because of a practical reason: it's extremely hard to take off contact lens with long fingernail without hurting your eye ball.

Merely 2.5Gb for a month

With only 16 hours left, my first month of unlimited wireless Internet connection for iPad will be expired. The plan will automatically renew itself, so unless I explicitly cancel it, I will continue enrolling in the unlimited data plan. Question comes as I always thought that as a super heavy iPad user, I may use super among of bandwidth each month, and thus will be quite painful an experience for me to use one of those new limited AT&T data plan.

So guess how much 3G wireless data I used on the first month?

2.5 Gb.

To me, that's really darn a low number judge by how much I use my iPad, and also that with my 3G only experiment on the first 2 days, my usage was almost 1Gb.

Od course, the number is low mostly because I turned on WiFi most of the time, and iPad will automatically use WiFi as much as possible. If I really want to abuse the system, I can simply turn off WiFi and keep sucking data from 3G network as much as possible. But then 3G is supposed to be a limited resources, which means the MORE I consume the 3G resources, the less is available for people around me. So I tend to think that I should conserve my usage, unless I am around ***k head iPhone users that really piss me off, then I will turn on my downloading app and continuously downloading games with 350Kb/s speed.





wonder how heavy I will use

Hair cut day

I just checked my record. Usually it will takes me 2 month to grow my hair long enough, and thus I have to have a hair cut. This time, it's a bit less than 2 months. Interesting. Anyway, about to go to get my haircut, since I will be in bad mood if there's long covering my ear, irritates me, and thus decrease my productivity.

Saving money on mobile internet

I figured out that my car cassette audio adapter was broken, which was really big deal to me since I listen to tons of podcast, audiobook, music and so on in my car. Without these information and entertainment, my driving will become very painful. So after practice for Sunday service service, I drove to the nearby Bestbuy, planning on getting a new car cassette audio adaptor. But suddenly something stroked me: I had iPad now, so I could access the web. Why not Just search the web and find out which store has the best price?

So I did, and found out that most store sell that piece of cheap plastic for more than $20. Target has the best price for about $12. But the best price online is monoprice. They sell the adapter for less than $2. Thus I stopped walking out of the car, and instead drove straight to home.

Another local business being stolen by online store, thanks to Internet on iPad.

Hate Cooking

Cooking wasted so much of my time from doing stuffing that really matter to me, like doing another drawing.

Firefox theme killed my Firefox

It's good that I always keep a copy (actually, a few) of Firefox portable, because just a while ago my Firefox was messed up after installing a stupid Firefox theme. So I actually won't mess with Firefox theme from now on. I really don't have time to mess with reinstalling shit.

So, that's why he's unpopular

I made a friend about half a year ago. He was a talented person but he kept complaining to how people around him didn't like him much. I felt sorry for him and for a long while didn't quite understand why he was unpopular among his colleagues.

Then, a few days ago, I was driving to a place with him. I talked about the meaning of certain lyrics, and mentioned the word "era".

"eeee- ra", he said.

"Hur?" I was puzzled.

"eee- ra."

So he's trying to correct my pronunciation I guess. "Era." I said.

"eeee- ra, not error, eee- ra"

"Era."

"eeee- ra"

"Era"

"eeee- ra"

"..... Eeeee ra"

And then he stopped correction me.

Don't get me wrong. I don't mind someone spend time to correct my pronunciation. But I can see how other people may find it irritating, and wonder if that's one of the reason why he's unpopular among his peers.

Stubborn

I was a bit tired after work, but I tried to continue practicing piano. So I went ahead and started the training video and followed along. In the middle of the session, I was simply too tired. So I paused the video, leaned on the bed and thought of waking up after a few minutes. By the time I gained back my conscious, an hour or more had been passed. I pressed on and finished the class nevertheless.

This is why self-paced learned works for me: I am so stubborn on getting something done with I started something out. Sometime my stubbornness gets me into trouble. This time it's in my advantage.

Inking on Lenovo X60 Tablet feels way better than on MacMini with bigger Tablet

I've been inking on my MacMini with MangaStudio 3.0 for a few days. It was OK, but somehow I found the workflow sluggish. But this morning I tried using my Lenovo X60 to do inking with MangaStudio 4.0 and it felt so much better. Maybe I should use my MacMini to do drafting, and then do the inking of my tablet PC.

So I like In-ear headphone better

At first I was not too happy with the sound quality of my US$33 in-ear headphone and thus get a slightly more expansive (US$99) over-the-ear headphone. After using it on-and-off for months, I have to say that while the sound quality is definitely better, I really can't stand wearing it for more than 2 hours. My ears will get cramped by the can to a point that I simply can't stand it. On the other hand, I can use my in-ear headphone for a whole day without much problem.

It nice that I have both so that I can pick and choose base on my need at the moment.

I think I censored my own dream

I dreamed again, and this time it's like a R rated movie censored into a PG movie playing on Sunday afternoon.

It was all fragments, but it involves me trying to clean up the dish washing machine, and a lot of black water flooded out of the machine. Notice that there was no roaches and crazy stuff like that flowed out.

And then I was very angry working at my mom's factory (come to think of it, it was like a snapshot of my childhood) but no curse word coming out of my mouth. It was like something mute my voice.

I walked into the "manager room", and I saw my young brother reading magazine while mom was NAKED. However, I only saw her back, and she didn't look like my mom at all. Actually her face was like blurred.

I also visited some crazy cities, saw some stores selling magazines and mangas. Again, it's kind of like a alternative version of childhood which I walked all the way to some street hawks to look for Doraemon manga. When I opened these magazines and mangas, they were all blurred.

So it seems like someone or something or whatever went into my dream and censored everything to PG level. What the frog is going on.

Reminder

Need to keep practicing drawing and inking everyday .... in order to remind myself that I am still far from being good enough to quit my day job.

Silence message

Wonder if you experienced this situation: you sensed that someone at your workplace tries to avoid getting eye contact with you or may be even avoiding you. What will you do?

Another podcast that I love goes away

Sad is hear that http://www.mobileorchard.com/ and the corresponding podcast is going away. Sigh. That after CoOp/CoOp Live is gonna be end ....

CS5

Spent/Wasted most of my time yesterday on setting up Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator CS5 under both Mac and Windows in order to work on a poster. The installation was ULTRA slow, but at least the Windows side installation was completed. And then I spent whole night just to mark up all the content and get the basic color right. Poster creation is so time consuming no matter how primitive the design I want to go for.

What, blue screen?

I tried to stop a Load Test running on Visual Studio 2008 Test edition on 64 bit Windows 7, and my M6400 office laptop suddenly went blue screen. Well, blue screen is part of my work life, but still, angry.

Research on wireless internet access

After finding out how crappy and restrictive the wireless access on iPad 3G (provided by AT&T) was, I started researching on whether there's a plan B.

First I came across Sprint's mobile internet. I hated it instantly when I saw that it required a 2 year contract. Also it's not cheap as it cost US$60+ each month. On the bright side, it's a 3G + 4G plan, meaning that while the 3G has 5Gb cap, 4G is unlimited. Still, I just hate committing on a 2 year contract. Another problem: the MiFi router thing doesn't have as long battery life as iPad 3G, and it also means another piece of device to carry. But the this modem is relatively lightweight, and 3 hour plus battery life should be enough to do my work. One good thing: based on the coverage map, the connection on my living place should be pretty well. I can also using it with at most 5 internet device, meaning that my iPod Touch, my tablet, iPad, Dell M6400 and Nintendo DS can all got mobile internet connection everywhere I go within Houston. That sounds pretty sweet.

Then I came across Clear. I liked the fact that I don't have to committee on a 2 year contract, even thought that means I have to have my own equipment, like a US$250 WiFi USB device and US$130 HotSpot device. US$40 for 4G only each month, or US$55 for 4G + 3G. But the biggest problem is the coverage. Based on the map on the site, my living place is barely covered, that means the connection speed will be terrible. NOT GOOD.

So I think I will still get a iPad 3G. After all when I use it in HK or other places, I am pretty sure the connection will be so much better than those in AT&T. Plus it's always nice to have a "back up plan" with me. I instead of using the slow and restrictive AT&T, I may just get Sprint 4G. It has all the benefit of MiFi but with much better speed. The thing is keep me from getting Sprint 4G right away is that many people report that the firmware for the modem is very buggy and require a lot of reboot. So I better wait for a while. Well, at least a 4G option is coming very soon.

Gotta continue monitoring the Sprint 4G forum.

BTW, still haven't decided which size of iPad 3G to get. 16, 32, or 64 .....

Continue messing with toys without buying

After reading a lot of OK review about 3G on iPad, I drove to Apple Store, only to find out that it was sold out. so in order to not waste the time I spent on driving, I played around with some Apple toys that I haven't tried before:

• Mighty Mouse: it's actually fun to play with, and work as advertised. I just wish that they put even more gesture on the mouse, or even make it support Traditional Chinese handwriting. For US$69, though, I am not paying it just for the gimmick.
• Wireless keyboard: work as expected, think it's OK, but price ... expansive ...
• Number (iPad app): very nice UI, Easy to use, I won't buy it though since I have no need to make or modify spreadsheet on the road. I tried some spreadsheet app on iPod Touch and found that I NEVER use them.
• Pages (iPad app): Fine. But again, no need to create doc on the road. NotePad is good enough for me.
• RealRacing (iPad app): Super fun. Too expansive though.

So as you can see, I continue being a cheap bastard.

It's all about good story telling

I was attracted to the comics Kick-Ass mostly because of the premise I heard from the review of the movie Kick-Ass (based on the comics Kick-Ass). So I started reading the comics. After 4 chapters, I had to stop, not because the comics was bad, but because I needed to sleep so that I have energy to work tomorrow.

The comics was very well written. I have to say that I don't find the drawing particularly awesome. It's not bad, but just not awesome. The story/script, on the other hand, is rock solid. The characters are very well developed. The plots are believable and interesting. And obviously the write did some homework on teenage lifestyle, and geek fans got a lot of geek treatment, like the reference on how "Heroes" season 2 being so much crappier than season 1.

My original plan was first the comics first and then rent the movie when it comes to DVD, but now I start to wonder maybe I shouldn't wait.

Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010: first 10 seconds impression

So Microsoft just released Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 to MSDN subscriber. As a moron who constantly tortures himself by installing the latest software so that he can answer help desk support question when his many bosses come by and ask how to embed a video in Word that links to a PowerPoint, I jumped on the bandwagon and installed it on my office laptop.

The first thing I realized was that now they have separate installation for 32 bit and 64 bit, which could mean that they put something special on the 64 bit version in order to really take advantage of the 64 bit OS, which is a good thing. I also googled a bit and found that I can have both Office 2007 and Office 2010 running on the same machine. Trouble came, though, when I tried to install the 64 bit vesrion of Office 2010. The installation complained that a 32 bit Office 2007 also exist, and 64 bit Office couldn't stay side by side with a 32 bit Office. I hesitated a bit, but suddenly the angry to a grade A ahole at work came to my mind. I was angry and needed something to convince myself that work can be fine despite that ahole haven't died in cancer yet. I need something to spike up my work life. So I went ahead, uninstalled the Office 2007, and installed Office 2010.

Since I have tons of other stuff to work on tonight, so I only spent 10 seconds to browse around to make sure that everything sort of working. Here's my 10 seconds impression:

• The UI looks very pretty
• Outlook 2010 installation picked up all my setting, so when I opened Outlook 2010, I already saw all the previous Outlook setting properly set up. In fact I saw a new mail pop up right away. Yet, the UI is much prettier. It's like going home on night, and find that all all your old furniture turns into luxury version. It's the same home, just darn it's prettier.

That's it for now. Maybe I'll change myself after using it. But whatever.

Sign of getting old

Another sign of getting old: I enjoy more of the things that I hate when I was young, and hate things that I love when I was young.

Cut the middle man

I was practicing compound arpeggio on piano a while ago, and then I suddenly realized one thing: I am doing to myself what my friends do to their children. Most of my friends push their kids to learn piano, drawing and dance, while I push myself to learn piano, drawing and dance. My friends put their hope on their children, while I cut the middle man and just do them myself.

I let you decide whether I am ultra selfish or ultra efficient.

Best free video content that shows off iPad video playback quality: Movie Trailer

I can't believe that I haven't thought of it before when I was looking around trying to find something that allows me to stress test iPad's video playback capability. Then, last night this idea stroked me: I should try playing back some 1080p HD movie trailer on iPad. If iPad can handle 1080p video just like a HDTV, then iPad's playback capability will become super awesome.

Turns out iPad cannot handle 1080p HD Trailer. That make sense since the resolution on iPad screen isn't even high enough to display the full resolution of 1080p. HOWEVER, it has no problem playing the second best: 720p HD trailer, and the result is amazing. If you are interested, you can use iTune to download tons of 720p movie trailer.

finally 100% battery on iPad again

So after charging the iPad using the AC adapter for less than an hour, the battery goes back to 100%. It seems like AC adapter is the best way to recharge the iPad battery back to the full capacity.

Charging iPad ... experiment continue ....

AFter charging on my MacMini for 3+ hours, I saw the battery life jumping from 75% to ... 89%. That's kind of lame. It's almost like 1 hours of usage requires one hour of charging! That's crazy.

So now I am going to charge the iPad with the "10W USB Power Adapter". It better gives me much better result. 89%, 2:25 pm. Starts counting ...

Making your own eBook for iPad ... errr, works, to a point

iPad was toured as ultimate eBook reader. Problem comes when you try to put YOUR documents in iPad. Can you take advantage of iBook reader for reading your Word document, PDF and text file?

The answer is ok ... to a point.

To test, I tried various documents converted using Calibre, a free and so called the most economic way to convert documents into ePub format.

Here's my finding:

• Converting PDF with mostly English text with some illustrators: works great. You can choose bigger font size, and the layout still being preserved (to a point).
  
  
• Converting PDF with mostly photos: you can still read it, but the problem is that you cannot ZOOM into the photos. For comics or photo gallery, this totally ruin the experience. You better look for other PDF viewer solution.
  
  
• Converting PDF with Chinese character: the result was a total mess, but this time I think the blame is on Calibre . It seems like it doesn't reformat Traditional Chinese characters properly. Someone needs to step up to write a tool that works for Chinese community.
  

So there you have it. Sort of working, but not quite. I'll stick with my Tablet PC for a little long while.

One tidbit: it seems like dragged .epub files directly into your iPad device under iTune can BLOW UP iTune. So remember to first put your .epub files in the Books area in your local Libray first, and then drag the ebook from the Books area to your iPad device section.

iPad Battery test: what happen if you watch video non stop , part 2

I stopped the test at 3:50 am because I was simply too tired to continue. So 5 hours passed, and the battery life droppe from 100% to 60%.

So unless the battery indicator lies with hell, I would say the battery life is very impressive.

Yeah, charging iPad is an issue

Just as Engadget reported, charing is an issue for iPad. For instance, I used my old iPod Touch charger (connect to the power outlet on the wall). After 9 hours (8 am - 11 am), battery increase from 60% to ....74%!!!! I am pretty sure that there will be iPad specific charger coming out soon. Actually I already recognize that charging with my old charger was kind of bad (charged for a while and it still stayed as 97%) but I didn't realized that it can be this bad.

So let me try charge the iPad with my MacMini and see if I get better result.

iPad Battery test: what happen if you watch video non stop ..

So here's the battery test that I wanted to do ever since I read about the iPad specification. The purpose is to see whether iPad is a good video watching device. This is particular important for those of you who want to use iPad as a video playback device during those ultra long trip, like a flight from Houston to Hong Kong.

So here's the setting:
WiFi : Off (dude, you don't use Wifi on flight, plus Wifi kills battery big time)
Sound: Max
Screen brightness: auto

It's started at 10:45 pm, and I keep playing podcast with it. Let's see how long it last.

Traditional Chinese fonts are SUPPORTED on iPad

Even though you CANNOT enter Traditional Chinese character on iPad (using handwriting recognition), you can still browse Traditional Chinese based web site, and even copy and paste content in Traditional Chinese. For instance, a while ago I copied some text from MingPao.com, paste them in NotePad, and everything works fine.

Reading manga on iPad ... so close ...

Back in the good old days when I first got my iPod Touch, I was trying to use Touch as a portable manga reader by loading JPEG files (scanned manga) in Touch using Apple's photo sync. That DID NOT work well because Apple decide to do some OPTIMIZATION on those JPEG so that they all have reasonably small file size. That totally mess up those Manag JPEG in a way that when you try to zoom those mange pages, instead of seeing cleaner lines, you see more JPEG compression noise.

Now that iPad is released, I tried to do the exact same thing. This time, the result is more acceptable. After all, the iPad screen is bigger. HOWEVER, iTune still optimize the file. So if you have a 2Mb detail scan of a page, don't expect that detail transfer to iPad. If you want to have a free jpeg/photo offline library in your iPad, look for those third party apps to do the job.

Another problem of using Apple Photo view as manga reader is that there's no guarantee of how the JPEG files are being ordered in the photo album. I tried syncing a folder of a book of manga. The file name of files in that folder are the order number (001.jpg, 002.jpg ...) After I synced to iPad, I found at least one file went out of sync, while the rest being ordered decreasingly. So I think eventually we need to wait for a better manga viewer.

This is just the first few days of iPad release, so I am sure that soon there will be much better app available. That's why I don't think people need to RUSH to get an iPad. Just wait til your favorite app release first, like wait for your favorite game release before you get a PS3 or XBox360.

Dreaming of LMF?

I had an interesting dream last night. I was hanging around with LMF the crew (however they looked more like the US hip hop group the Roots), watching their new music video, chatting a having a good time. There were some reporters there, and one asked a moronic question, "so what is the message this new song?" I was like, **tch, couldn't you understand Cantonese? This song is obvious ***king people who pretended to be what they were not, just like you **tch pretended to be well educated and did not understand Cantonese foul words and such. I looked at the bands, and they were all confused by that reporter's stupidity just like I did. So we were all laughing. It was fun.

And then I woke up.

Making sushi

Third attempt of making sushi roll worked out pretty well. Getting the right seaweed sheet and bamboo mat really makes a huge difference. I did a huge mistake though: I added the sushi rice wine BEFORE cooking the rice, and almost messed up my rice cooker :-m . Well, you learn something everyday :-m

Cleaning

It's time to do some cleaning. So I vacuumed my room and restroom, dust off places here and there, took a shower after then, and doing laundry right now. It's just nice to have the feeling of everything clean.

Possible because of digital

I recorded Saturday Night Live (musical performance by Pearl Jam) for my friend Alex (he's a fan) using my DVR (Windows Media Center 7). I set the schedule earlier today, and a while ago I just checked, and found that the show has been recorded. So I copied the 10Gb media file (direct 1080p HD signal) to my portable hard disk in 10 minutes so that I can bring it to Alex on Monday.

Suddenly I realized that to do the exact same thing 5 years ago was an extremely clumsy process. To tape a show for a friend back then, I have to set up my VCR with complicated programming setting, and when my friend watch the show on a VHS tape, it will be a lower quality video. Now I get the exact original quality in my DVR, with programming schedule extremely easy to be done, and I still have the show on my DVR after making a copy to my friend.

Digital technology makes it all possible.

Portal ... still love Portal

I just passed another level of Portal. 15 minutes spent, and I am putting it aside again.

Some may find my way of playing video game ridiculous. It's almost like watching Avatar 5 minutes every 2 months. But as much as I love playing video games, I really don't have time, and even when I get time, I usually only have 10 to 15 minutes to spend. And unlike movies and TV shows which SOMETIMES you can still have fun just listening to the content, you have to sit down and focus only on the game. It's like a commitment.

On the other hand, it also shows how great Portal a game is. Every time I pick it up after not playing it for long long time, I can still instantly get into the game and have some fun. Portal is the best hybrid of casual and hardcore gaming.

Finally the digital piano arrives

I realized that I made a smart decision NOT buying a digital piano at BestBuy and instead getting it from Amazon.com. The box arrived at 8:00 pm (the latest UPS delivery happened to me, ever) when I heard the UPS truck driver playing loud pop country music parking right in front of the front door of my place.

BTW, that truck driver has a pretty damn awesome audio system installed in the truck.

After signed the package, I tried to move the box to my room at second floor. I couldn't. The package was simply too darn heavy. So eventually I decided to open the box and move all the parts piece by piece to the second floor. Still, the piano (Yamaha DGX-630) was very heavy to carry around.

It took me about 30 minutes to set the piano up. And then, I found out that I underestimate how huge the piano is. So I had to reshuffle myself, like moving my digital drumset to the corner (sorry, V-Drum Lite), and such, but eventually got everything set up. I even installed the Mac driver and used the new piano to record some tunes in GarageBand. Neat.

So far I like the piano, and looking forward to spend a lot of time learning how to use it in optimal way. And also, use it to practice, like, lots of practice.

I only complain, though, is that it does NOT come with the USB cable. Sure any standard USB AB type cable will work, but if I already spent US$799 on a gear, why can't they just throw in a USB cable, which cost them less than 50 cents? Whatever.

Ate something bad

I think I sat something bad last night, and thus I went to the restroom twice this morning.

Carry my car around

In another part of my dream last night, I was driving back to HongKong, using some seemingly dangerous tunnel and underground road system. And when I reach the "destination", which was some sort of Chinese goods department store, I had to find a parking space, and eventually PUT THE CAR in a bag and CARRY IT. Staff was not that friendly there, but eventually a kind staff member (interesting enough, "played" by a member that I am not that familiar at the church I go to every week) help me to carry my car in a plastic bag.

The dream has some Doraemon feel.

Twins

For the first time in my life, I had a dream about working on a movie with a pop group Twins in Hong Kong. There was nothing spectacular about that dream. It's just a crew of production team walking from the basement of industry building to upstairs. The dream is just about everyone being friendly, supportive and helpful to each other. And Twins, as popular stars, are just like regular people, being friendly, and help carrying stuff and such. Really wonder why I had that dream.

Lost

I had a ballet class last night. After I went back home and unpack my stuff, I realized that I left my pair of ballet shoes at the changing room of ballet school. I am pretty sure that when I go back next week, the pair of shoes should be gone. It's not that the shoes are expansive that made me missed them. Quite a contrary, that pair of shoes, which was something I brought at mainland China, is pretty darn cheap. But it's pretty impossible to buy another pair this cheap in US. Plus I've wearing them for more than a year already, and felt a bit attach to it.

Glee, second try.

The second episode of Glee that I watched, "Wheels", seems different from the first episode I watched. It has more tension, slightly less singing and dancing, more like a teen drama. But then I found that there are too many dramatic plots running in parallel. And somehow characters seemed to merely a vehicle to deliver these plots, instead of responding to the situations in a more realistic human way. The conflicts resolved in very blunt way as "heck I don't know what the writer of next episode will do but at least I have to put a closure no matter what". The good thing is that each episode of Glee can to taken as a single serving dose of fun. The down side, though, is that such dramatic plots resolved-within-an-episode makes these characters become less realistic.

Maybe this is just how TV series works, but since I like the premise of the series, I hope it does better than just another comedy. It's just the first season, and based on the fan base, we definitely see more coming. There's still room to get better and better.

So that's Glee

Finally watched an episode of Glee. It's the "Mesh Up" episode, and overall it's entertaining. But ...

Yeah, but.

First of all I found it a bit too cliche. And then the musical part ... I mean, I don't have that much problem with lipsyncing, especially during a dance sequence. Even Janet Jackson can't perfectly dance without some help of audio technology. But I do have problem with extremely obvious musical instrument playing. Somehow it's just too distracting to me. The camera man tried his best to avoid shoting on people strumming on the guitar, pressing chord or doing roll on the hi-hat ... but still ...

On the other hand, I like all the dancing. They are vibrant and delightful. I wish they have more of that.

I do know that I am not the show's target audience though. The high school drama cliche in my eyes are probably what makes the show popular among young people after all.

Still, this is just my first episode. There are still more in my DVR, and maybe I'll change my mind after a few more dose.

Ah, here's the market place

Someone suggested me to look into http://www.deviantart.com/ or even some blogs to find manga artist talent. Good idea.

Maybe I am hiring

Do you know of anyone (probably young people or even teenager) who's good at draw manga (Japanese style comics)? I suddenly have a strange idea: instead of trying to learn to draw manga in order to turn my story idea into reality, maybe I should HIRE someone to do it for me.

The idea is inspired by successful people like Kelvin Rose (Digg.com) and even Steve Job. They have great vision but only have limited amount of time. So instead of spending time to learn and then implement their vision, they shortcut it by hiring smart people to do the implementation work for them.

And after thinking about all the different ways of implementing my idea, like video game, animation, short film, song and comics, I found comics the cheapest way and probably give me the biggest sanctification.

Plus I hate dealing with people, and comics is an art form that tells story and yet allowing me to deal with the LEAST among of people (probably only one person).

The trick is to find that right one person. With so many talented but angry 八十後, I think this is oppotunity.

Making of "What What What" (小粉臉)

I forget stuff that I learned before unless I keep using those skills once in a while. Music keyboard is one of those things, and so is digital music editing. So when my brain suddenly had a stupid tune came out of nowhere, I decided to capture it in a little audio project. Besides, I need an excuse to set up my home audio studio after I rearranged everything for the sake of my new TV.

So I took 30 minutes to set everything up. In fact, my that I have everything up, I can pretty much jump into making a 30 seconds song anytime I want. This is very important to me as I am extremely impulsive. If I need 30 minutes to set things up in order to capture my creativity, but the time I have everything ready to go, I may have loss my incentive to work on it.

The whole process took me about 2.5 hours. The recording and synthesizer are all done within Sonar 8 Producer Edition. The ultra lousy keyboard was done using my ancient 4 octave keyboard they I brought almost 15 years ago. The drum part was done using my V-Drum Lite.

The idea of the song came from ... nowhere. It just popped up in my brain. Maybe I intrinsically hate those plastic sweet sentiment. Plus, irony is always a great way to generate humor.

Another sign of being old

Just found out yet another sign of being old: I got more and more appreciation on eating utensil that are NOT made of plastic. I start to like glasses, clay bowl and such. Food taste better when they are served into my mouth using metal fork instead of a plastic one.

Strange. Why all the sudden.

TV

I realized this morning that the giant box that came with my 40 inch LCD TV was sitting at the corner of the living room for about 2 months already. Since I was pretty happy with my purchase, and see no reason of returning it what so ever, I put the box in my car, drove to the dumpster and dumped the box.

There's wasn't anything spectacular about the process, but that sort of reminded me my whole process of purchasing this TV. Just like buying any item that cost more than US$100, I spent a lot of time doing research on it (plus the time my friend spent on researching Samsung LCD TV, so thank you Alex.) I think I brought this device at the right time with the right price, and I am totally happy with it. This TV with the WinTV DVR dongle give me control on my TV viewing experiment in a smart way. I found myself watched a bit more TV, but not way a lot. Time shifting frees me from being a slave of TV schedule (well I never was since previously I solved the problem by totally skipping TV), and TV Guide recording allows me to experiment on shows that didn't know I would enjoy.

Of course, the TV is also a giant monitor my whatever laptop I hook up to it. So glad that I brought a TV instead of getting another computer monitor.

Good kind of sleeping

There can be 2 possibility when I went to sleep so early: I am either upset, frustrated or worried about something so much that I go to sleep right away to avoid facing problems, or I am really productive during the day and was genuinely tired by all the work that I've done, thus need to get tons of sleep to recover.

I am delighted that the later seems to be the case last night. I was really picking my brain trying to figure out how to solve some problems at work without compromising quality. Then at night I was trying out steaming food, something I never done before. I also need to update and repair my iTune library so that I can start studying French. So by the time everything settled, it's 10:00 pm, and I was extremely tired.

Still, I told myself, 10:00 pm seems early to me, and I was expecting myself waking up after a quick nap and then continue practicing keyboard.

By the time I opened my eyes again, it was 7:00 am already. I didn't remember having any dream at all, meaning that I had a very good sleep.

Piano Lesson

I just found a DVD based piano tutorial that is for my level. Hopefully I can finish it. The whole series contain 14 DVDs and I just finished the second DVD.

Dumb

Preparing lunch by washing meat and rice (saperately of course) with ulta cold water, and I kept asking myself: why don't I just grab stuff from KFC instead? But then I pressed on and finally seasoned all the meat I brought today. So the bottomline is, I can endure a lot of pain doing something I don't enjoy just believe it's the right thing to do.

Come to think of it, I did a lot of stuff like that in my life.

... nothing much, just a though.