Wall-e

I really like Wall-e. Wall-e is in love in Eva, but there is not that much conversation between them, and the audience realize what is going on. Very successful. Some thoughts:

* Eva looks like just like an Apple product.
* It's cool for the lady to be the powerful one.
* It's heart breaking to see Wall-e treat his collection as trash and compress it in cubes after Eva uses the spare parts to restore it.
* It's hilarious to hear Mac's boot sound after Wall-e absorbs enough solar energy and 'boots' up. However, I think Eva should be the one to make that sound.
* Artifical insemination should be the norm on the space ship. *sigh*
* It is good to be the robot to do space trip. No need to worry about air supply.
* I'd like to have a Wall-e toy.
* Eva looks like a perfect design for mouse.

Dream Car, Again

Same car, same location this morning. That's when I took this photo. Kind of blurry. I guess I was in a hurry. This afternoon when I walked home, again, same car, same location. I am sure someone in that neighborhood bought this new car. I looked at it feeling that it was whispering to me "buy me buy me". How can I resist you?

Dream Car

I saw this Sirion on the way to work. It is my favorite model as of now. Though my favorite color is green or red, blue color still looks nice on this model. I took the photo when the owner got into the car. Not sure if the owner heard the noisy shutter from my cell phone.

Protect Marriage

There is a stupid article (click here, in Chinese) in today's online newspaper saying that US president's marriage is in danger, divorce is imminent, and the one who steps in to the marriage is Condi Rice. Come one, Condi is lesbian (why am I so sure of that?), so my first thought is, ok, these bad lazy reporters probably took something from National Enquirer again and made a deal out of it without using their brains. So I decided to goggle if it is said in any of the major US newspapers by using keyboard "bush rice marriage'. Hmmm I did not find anything, OMG I can't believe I just proved President Bush innocent, however, there is an interesting link about how to protect the sanctity of marriage. Read it. I love it :-)

Interesting Outcome from Politics

A friend forwarded me this interesting article on same-sex marriage vs Republicans, how Governor Schwarzenegger plays a delicate role in this political dynamics.

I especially like the citation from Ward Connerly in the last paragraph: “If you really believe in freedom and limited government, to be intellectually consistent and honest you have to oppose efforts of the majority to impose their will on people.”

And of course I'll keep my fingers crossed that prop 8 will be defeated.

l'Heure d'Ete

I am sure this movie was shot pretty much at the same time as Red Balloon. Juliette Binoche is the leading acttress of both, however Summer Hours is so much better than Red Baloon, at least so much easier to understand (Is it more artistic to make movies hard to understand for the general public? I just don't understand.)

The story starts with grandmother celebrating her 75th birthday. She wants her oldest son to carry out her will. However she also knows that, with her second son working in China and her daughter living in US, the kids will definitely have to sell the old house.

The mother dies, the kids get together again to discuss what is happening in their life, what they'll do with the antiques (some to donate and some to sell), the house, talk what the house means to them (the secnod son and the daugher believe as they spend so much time in other countries, the house and even France will mean less and less to them), taking what they like with them.

At the end of the movie, the old is sold, but they are able to keep it for some more time. The kid gets permission to invite her friends to the house and have a party. Before the kids start the party, the movie shows a consistant feeling of calm, quietness, well, it is a story about old house, antique, artist anyway, so I was really confused why there is a loud party of teenagers trying to tear the house apart. But when the girl takes her boyfriend to the garden and tells him about the time she spent with her grandmother, and what her grandmother said, and the camera moves away, all of a sudden it gives a complicated feeling of a story with 3 generation, and generation by generation.

Why I Hate Vista Part 2

I was trying to save a file, and got no response from the computer. The hard drive ran on and on, and then, you know what? Blue scree of death! I did not retrieve my Mistress to take photo of the blue screen sooner enough, but after the computer dumping some data and rebooted, this is the screen that I got. It is very frustrating to see this at work. It just broke my good working mood.

Outlive

My first impression of ‘outlive’ was when I watched the movie ‘the Hours’. At the end of the movie, old Laura Brown visited Clarissa that evening when Clarissa wants to give a party to Richard, Laura’s son, but Richard jumps to his death earlier. She tells Clarissa that she has outlived her family, which gives her a sense of worthiness. She is a tough lady, and knows exactly what she wants. Because of this movie, outlive always gives me an impression of sadness.

Sad until I read Charlie’s blog that says Willie Nelson made a smart comment on his 75th birthday that he has outlived his dick. That just gave me a good laugh. Good job, Willie, Love ya.

Old Photo, Chung-shan Park

Same 'boat' as the background. It was my dad, my brother, and me on the old photo. When I went to Chung-shan park again last month, I happened to take photo of the same 'boat'. My dad was 37, had a wife, 3 kids, paying mortgage, trying all he could to feed the kids. I still vaguely remember that trip, although Chung-shan park was just 20 minutes' walk from where we used to live. Why was it special when we were all dressed up? Maybe we just bought our first camera? Maybe it was Chinese New Year? Maybe it was hard for the whole family to go out to something together. When I was this little, the dad I saw was always sleeping. He had to work as many shifts as he could to put food on the table. Now I am 37, have nothing, barely even dreams.

Why I Hate Vista

When Windows wants you to wait, you used to get an hourglass. Now with new, better-than-ever Vista, you get a little circle. Same thing. Just different visual effect. But how long can you wait before you lose your patience?

This is my new laptop from the new company, a sleek Dell Latitutde XT model, expensive, 84000NTD, which is close to 3000USD. The only software I have installed now is office 2007, and after having tried a few hours, I was so disappointed with the performance of Windows Vista.

Normally when I read emails, I like to manually set emails read when I am sure this email does not need additional attention from me. And that is what I did on this sleek Dell, and OMG, you can see from the video that I had to wait from 9th second to 15th second just to wait for Vista to bring up a simple popup window when I right clicked the mouse.

Sorry you'll need to turn your head 90 degrees to watch this video. The video quality is not good as I used my cell phone to take this video. I could not find a way to rotate the video by 90 degress with existing software I have.

This is a simple reason why I hate Vista. The time it takes to bring up the popup window ranges from 3 seconds to 5 seconds. It will be a disaster when I have many emails to read, and mind you, this is not the only place when I have to wait for the response. Vista is just a piece of crap.

To Make Up for My Camera

When I bought this camera, I only took her pic with my cell phone. How well can a cell phone take photos? Not bad to shoot with enough sunlight, but may be disappointing in the evening when the light source is only from the incadescent light on the ceiling.

I always feel sorry that I did not really capture her beauty.

Bro just recently bought some nice accessory for his camera (really nice. more later). Well, let me just jump to conclusions here for now. Don't ever allow a man to start playing with camera, car, or audio. It is a never ending journey, I can tell ya. But click on this photo. See how that little short string turns blurry at the back of her, and her crisp beauty against the dining table. That will be good investment to capture the beautiful moment of the kids (and kids are always the best excuse to get the budget approved).

On Board

On board at the new company today. I got up at the usual time, enjoy a full episode of Heroes, and walked to work. The new office is in a strange position. After careful evaluation, I have 3 options to commute:

1. I can walk to the office. It takes around 20 minutes, and I get to stop at any breakfast place to pick up some food.
2. I can walk 1 minute to a bus stop to wait for bus route 'red 3', which runs every 20 minutes. The bus will take a route that requires a lot of left turns, and you know how long it may take to make a left turn in rush hours.
3. I can walk 10 minutes to another bus stop, and hop on pretty any of the bus there, and get off at the VERY NEXT stop, and walk another 3 minutes.

It is in such werid location from where I live that makes walking the best option of them all. With this sweltering weather that reaches 90F at 8am, I was sweating all over when I got to the office. Not a very nice thing to start a day feeling stinky all over, I'd say.

It is funny to be on board today. My bro's office is not that far down the road from my office. It is my first day today, but his last day with his company. He will have 2 weeks off before he starts his new job.

Quiet day today. Small company. No complicated orientation. I walked in the office, and saw pretty much everything. Guess how long I can survive here?

Photo was taken on the way to work. The street is Ruiguang road.

Tea Factor

Many people talk about Latte Factor: for people who go to starbucks for a cup of coffee latte every day, how much money they can save 20 years from now if they quit going. Simple fact can be found here, which is just the result of simple goggling.

With the temperature reaching the 90's (hmm), all I want is something cold. For me, it is tea factor! I can get one of the tea for around 1 USD, and finish a half on the way home. It really cools me down very quickly, and tastes so good. My favorite flavor is lemon-plum-green tea. I always ask for only 30% of sugar. It is sour, sweek, and cold. So good. Not a good idea to get one in the mid afternoon though, cause I'll end up getting another one in the evening. That's significant spending!

Red Cliff

I think most people with Chinese cultural background should know something about this war at Red Cliff. They either read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, or play computer games, or know some of the major players in the story from TV, other movies.

Well, the movie starts with intensive war when Liu Bei retreats from Xin Ye, and although that is the beginning of marvelous things that Zhuge Liang does. Too bad, this is not a story about Zhuge Liang. The war scene is quite good, with blood flying around. I sat at the fourth row, so close that I had shut my eyes at the beginning when the spear stabs at the body. This is a bit too much for a nice person with a mild heart.

Anyway, minor complaint. We went to the matinee show at 9:30am, and only got seats at 4th row, and the room was pretty much packed. Come on, 9:30! Are these people not supposed to be in bed still?

Much anticipated Lin Chiling, a famous model, does not do very well in this movie. When she leans her head on Tony Leung's shoulder, she does not appear tiny or delicate or anything. I love her, however, she was not given a chance to perform. She was just pretty.

Some other thoughts:

* It is great to see how Cao's knights were tricked, and how the war layout was visualized, as I have read about it all the times, but can only use my imagination to picture it. The director should, however, spend more efforts to show how desperate the trapped soldiers are, and wherever they run, they see no way out. It is not as exciting to be just an onlooker, watching the whole thing from aerial view.

* I don't like the way that each major general (Zhao Yun, Zhang Fei, Guan Yu) comes out and charges the enemy. It looks like a joke, and tedious.

* Tony Leung is good. I like his performance very much.

* The dubbed pronunciation is very accurate, so the subtitle (and why do we need English subtitle in Taiwan) could be well removed. Though some of the dialog sounds like a mixture of ancient and contemporary style, but those who have read the book know should all know too well about it. The font of the subtitle is so huge that it actually distracted me.

* The major war at Red Cliff is to be continued. That is funny. The name of the movie should be something like Prologue Red Cliff.

* Generally I enjoyed the movie.

Last Day

Last day at work. I left home at the usual time, and took some photos on the way, knowing I may not walk on this street anymore, at least not this particular stretch, in this early morning, hungry, getting myself ready in every way to face another new day.

There were only few usful emails to answer. Things have wound down this much. I quickly answered them, without giving any instruction but kindly referring the emails to associated persons, and closed the lid. I had sent out farewell email the day before with my contact information. That looks like a routine thing to do for people who are leaving the company. I did not try to erase any personal information from the computer, because IT will simply wipe out all the data on the computer and install clean system before he hands this fine Lenovo T61 to another employee.

I talked to few coworkers, went out for coffee with one. Some have found internal transfer opportunities. Some are still looking, but have given up foreign companies, and will focus on domestic corporates. Some shared their gloomy prospect for people who are going to join the company that acquired my division. Some complained about the manager. Everyone was willing to share upon approached.

I felt nothing though.

I seemed to be very accurate on all this divestment thing. Well, I guess whoever has been through such a thing could know better. I knew all along that I would not get offer from the new company. With the local potential competitors all pretty much having gone under, I knew finding another job would mean change to a different field, which will not be easy. Luckily, I have an offer and will be on board next Monday. I tried to stay away as much as possible from the gossip about the new company, about disscussing what the next step of each engineer will be, and focused on what I want. Fortunately, I think I have done that gracefully.

Exiting process is like a breeze. I had already cleaned my cubical very well, so when the Corporate Services came to check, there was no much for them to clean up. I left at noon and enjoyed the very last free afternoon time. Starting next week, it will be a different battle.

Photos

Tainan Kai-yuan Temple

Early June when I went back to Tainan, we went to Kai-yuan temple together.

I went to Kai-yuan temple for the time when I was 6. That year my grandfather died, and the funeral was held there. I was too little to went to the cemetery, so was left there playing around the garden, chasing my cousins. There was so sadness or anything.

Then after I joined elementary school, Kai-yuan temple was also the first place we visited as a one-day tour in the very first semester. We walked over, and it was a bit too much for first graders.

Then Kai-yuan temple became just a landmark in my mind. I know where it is, I know I've been there, but going back again to look around? No. Not until grandmother passed away in April, and we placed her urn in the temple. And my dad said few years ago, he picked up grandfather's bones and place his urn in this temple too. Now grandfather and grandmother can live side by side.

It was a hot summer afternoon. We stayed in the temple and took photos until the incense burned out. I rarely feel so connected with Chinese tradition.

Tainan Chung-shan Park

I took those photos when I went back to visit my folks in early June. It was hot, and I tried to stay cool in the park, and also to take some photos with my new camera. This park has been around for a long time, at least since my mother was a kid. There are so changes, but the general layout has not changed a bit. Hill has always been there, the pond, and the kids' playground. Of course we used to play on sand, but now kids step on some chemical composition that is supposed to serve better than sand. I also roughly mark where I took the photos in Google map, so you can get some idea where those photos were taken in the park.

The Free Dictionary - Online Reading Made Easier

Prerequisite Reading: Firefox Plugin

I love online dictionary. It is so quick and instant. Although if I read a physical book, I still need to change my focus from the book to the computer, but I am afraid unless I opt for online reading, or get an electronic book from Amazon, I need to live with it. Well, dictionary.com is good, but could do a little bit of improvement.

And in fact, I found the Free Dictionary while I was clicking around dictionary.com

English is not my first language, and I do look up online dictionary a lot, either when reading or blogging. An English-English dictionary works great when I get a better understanding of its usage or/and when it can be used. Most of the times a English-Chinese dictionary does not provide that much detail. However, we are always frustrated when a dictionary use one word to explain another, and we do not understand any of them.

In dictionary.com, whenever I encounter a new word, I can select the word, right click the mouse, and choose to look up the word directly from the pop-up menu. It works great the first time from the article I read, because Firefox opens another tab, and the lookup result shows in the tab, which leaves my reading intact when I read the dictionary. However, if I need to look up another word from the dictionary, then I'll need to open another tab. That becomes tedious for a lazy person like I am.

TFD uses a different approach. Although I need to do the same right click to bring up the first lookup in the tab, however, when I encounter another new word in the dictionary, I can simply double click on the word, and the dictionary looks up the word right in the same tab. Oh, it feels great. Try it!

Some other thoughts:
* Dictionary.com shows the result right away, however, TFD shows advertisements first, which sucks. TFD should show the advertisement in the column on the right, at least, not to distract readers this much.
* On the top right corner of the screen shot, you can see "text" in different font size, with t the smallest and T the largest. People can change font size directly by clicking on the text. This is cool.
* The icon on the very far right of the top right corner is where you can click to install plugin to your Firefox browser. After you do it, you can right click on the word when you read the website, and look up in no time.
* Why am I writing this review in English when I should be introducing to my friends in Taiwan?

New Mouse

The current Logitech mouse I use at home is going bad. It may work well sometimes, but some other times when I click the button and drag the cursor, then nothing happens. It will not be so bad if I do work processing, however, if I am in the game trying to heal my teammates, my teammates could die easily from this hardware failure.

Hard to imagine bluetooth is quite popular now, and it is still not easy to find a mouse with bluetooth technology. Most wireless mouse still requires a dongle to be connected to the USB port on the computer to transmit wireless signal to the mouse. I do not like that when my computer has built-in bluetooth, and when the dongle has to use one of my precious USB ports all the times (like I really plug in anything else a lot anyway).

I tried to go to computer stores for bluetooth mouse few times, but could not find anything. Should have thought of doing online shopping earlier. Last week I was home and decided to check online stores. I found one, and ordered one right away. It took at most 5 minutes to finish the whole search process, decision making, and the purchase (it sounds complicated, is it really for a mouse purchase only).

Today when I got in the office, there was a voice mail for me to pick up the package from the reception. Beautiful white mouse. Do you notice it says "Designed for Mac"? I love it already!

Beautiful Sunday

Beautiful day today.

I went out to get some breakfast, read for half an hour, and decided to go to the gym. Nice thing and bad thing about being single is that there is lots of time to kill on weekends when there is no one to hang out with, and I start to love the routine to spend few hours to make a trip to the gym.

I went home after lunch, so it was early afternoon. I was on the bus, looking up at the sky with my head rested on the chair. It is such a beautiful day today. I quickly took out my mistress and took this photo, and then the bus ran on Mingquan bridge, and I see the whole river view against the beautiful blue sky. Nice to be alive.

Kung Fu Panda

I did not intend to watch this movie at first, as am getting a bit fed up with talking animals, that are trying to be cute and behave like human beings. Well, so many people recommended it, and there was not that much to do anyway, so I went.

It turns out to be an interesting movie. Here are some thoughts.

• The turtle dies, turning into air with the pedals flying around and away was truly beautiful.
• How Dalong shoots the arrows on the wall and uses them as the stairs to run up, and the whole columns collapses and he tried to run his way up was breathtaking.
  
• The Five goes out to meet Dalong. On the way out, when the 4 meets the tiger, the camera does not not move in an interesting way. I love the camera movement when Shulien chases Jen for the first time at night in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
• Tiger, mantis, serpent, crane, and monkey are all part of kung fu. It is interesting to see them represented by animals, instead of human beings. It gives a different imagination.
• Nice to see there are 2 females among the five.
• Five vs Dalong on the bridge is great, and gives a strong impression of Dalong.
  
• Panda seems to get the kung fu out of nowhere. It is all about talents. It's good for entertainment, but I'd still appreciate hard work in real life.
• After the movie ends, and all the acknowledgments, panda actually gets to eat the pork buns. Those who see "the End" and can't wait to leave the theater do not get to see that.

Overall, I like this movie, and also recommend it.

Favorite Starbucks in Danshui

I have one last floating holiday from work, and cannot cash out this floating holiday when I leave next Friday, so I take today off as the last chance to go somewhere. I went to Camille Pissarro's exhibit one more time, ran to Shilin night market (during the day when not much was open) to have some shaved ice with red beans. I always love the shaved ice from that particular place, and would go back there again and again, and go to the night market just for the ice and then go somewhere else. For me, it is must-have food in Taipei.

Then I ran to Danshui.

The main purpose is to visit my favorite Starbucks by the river front. Danshui is always full of visitors on weekends. I never came to this Starbucks on weekends, as I always imagine it would be so packed, and why would I want to spend almost 1.5 hours each way, just to come here and find no table?

I got there at about 3, read for a while, then S came, we talked for around half an hour, then F showed up, we talked until sky became completely dark.

It is truly amazing to find a table on the balcony on the second floor, and enjoy the whole river view and see the mountain and the sea. And the sunset, truly amazing, and I was sipping coffee, sitting comfortably in the chair while enjoying the whole beauty.

Here are the photos
. Although I did go somewhere else before I headed for the Starbucks, but nothing compares with the sunset, which is the whole purpose of the trip!

Midsummer Fire Festival

We are celebrating Midsummer Fire Festival in WoW. A lot of things to do during the holiday, and the toy I like the best is this Blazer of Dancing Flames. When my character dances with it, my character turns into a flaming Draenei woman. Quite cool.

Firefox 3 Crashed on Vista

I've been a long time happy user of Firefox. How long... I think I still have their 0.4 version somewhere when it was still called Phoenix. But that is not the point. The point is, the laptop from the new company has Vista installed, and the latest release of Firefox 3 keeps crashing on Vista. Although the popup windows shows that I can click the button and restart Firefox, but oh boy, it kept crashing on me more than 5 times today, and finally I decided to download older version. Sure I don't know if that is the bug in Firefox and there is something wrong with Vista, however, as a biased and opinionated person, I'd say, I HATE VISTA!

Sex and the City

Long wait. Well, long week actually. Since MM was sick for a long time, we did not watch this movie until last Saturday. It was the second weekend, we went to the matinee, which in Taiwan means the very first show in the morning, normally at 10am or 11am, and it was very busy. We were surprised to see such a crowd in the early morning, and of course, most of the audience are girls.

The story started out very fast. Some of the conversation did not appear very natural for me though. I feel the conversation is there just to make the movie look happy and does not exist in real. After Big chickened out of the wedding, the story goes into a slower tempo, and then I start to feel the cohesion among the girls.

Samantha appears to be the most attractive woman of them all. The way that she was there for Jerry, and the way she realized she wants to love herself more, and the way she decides to leave to be herself, are inspiring. She is giving, confident, and knows exactly what she wants and she pursues. Miranda is a bit over reacting in my opinion. Not that I am a chauvinist pig, I'd say the same thing to a man. Charlotte, she is happy, too happy. I guess that's why she needs to have that hilarious accident.

About the guys, Steve outshines the others, at least he is brave to be honest to tell Miranda the one night stand. Most men will opt for hiding and repeating. Big is an asshole to run away. If he does not give any opinion or objection when Carrie plans all the wedding, he should just get his ass to the library to say his vow, as simple as that. Jerry is more attractive to me after all these years, but MM has the opposite opinion. I always think Harry is the best man and husband in Sex and the City, but maybe being good does not give enough conflict in the movie, he does not stand out at all. And his pink tie is so wrong against his pale skin and bald head.

Glad to know the latest news about the girls. They should have done the same thing to Golden Girls.