...milk duds...

and WHY was the blog spam in the first place?

2006-08-11T11:24:00.000-07:00

Hello, Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and cleared for regular use so that it will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger and sign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for your patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. Sincerely, The Blogger Team

blog moved to

2006-08-11T09:51:00.000-07:00

for now, we'll see how it goes.

I just found the good tea at work

2006-08-08T14:46:00.000-07:00

After figuring out that all the teabags are undrinkable. The green tea teabag which I was drinking all through the all-day-until-now meeting (yes, again, but with a lunch break. Apparently at microsoft they work through their lunch) was barely tolerable. Anyway I just found this can of loose jasmine tea at work that actually has real pieces of chinese jasmine in it. I love chinese jasmine and osmanthus...btw...smells so good.

I think the CEO is addicted to settlers

2006-08-04T13:30:00.000-07:00

For the third time in the past week, we're going to play settlers after work (or cutting work hours short to play in one instance). Too bad I can't play today, but I will be going to a concert (Bloc Party @ Greek Theater), so yay! I'll try to get some more games in before my internship ends.

eternal (fourth and cedar)

2006-08-01T12:51:00.000-07:00

yes, I love my new camera (canon eos 50e/Elan 7e) and lens (Canon 50mm f1.8). So sharp...

I bet no one has/will have the resources to monitor

2006-08-01T12:26:00.000-07:00

all the Chinese BitTorrent forums, which probably has half a billion members (alright close enough) and where you can download everything in the world. CSI: BitTorrent Well I can't BitTorrent from my home computer anyway, which is probably for the best.

currently suffering from yogurt addition

2006-08-01T11:48:00.000-07:00

I go through a lot of individually packed cups of (plain, not with strange fruit/other random flavoring) yogurt in a week...

Hair Soy Sauce

2006-07-30T00:22:00.000-07:00

EEEEeeewww

The Chinese Shrimp Camp

2006-07-28T14:27:00.000-07:00

at historic point richmond... Apparently it's the web site of the little kiosk of a house ("Point Richmond History Association") in Point Richmond that we pass by whenever we "go to town" to get lunch at work.

why people snipe on eBay

2006-07-26T10:16:00.000-07:00

So, the question is, when is sniping worth the risk of not getting your bid in? There are lots of reasons it might be. The easiest case to think about is of a bidder who has some expert information about the item being sold, information that might affect how much other buyers are willing to pay. For example, suppose that a dealer in Persian carpets sees a desirable one on eBay. Many bidders may not be able to tell the difference between valuable carpets and cheap imitations, and so if they can identify that a dealer is bidding on a particular carpet, that will tell them that it is a good one. So, the dealer can try to conceal who he is, to avoid starting a price war, but for a dealer who bids a lot, it is hard to have lots of different usernames. A simpler strategy is for him to snipe, so that others can't piggyback on his expertise. But even without special expertise, a bidder may feel that an early bid will inspire others to raise their bids, and in such a case, sniping may be a winning strategy.

They also have some other interesting articles (I didn't notice at first that it was a Harvard Business School site).

我們的歲月

2006-07-23T14:11:00.000-07:00

I've been listening to the song in this post for the past hour. It's so nice, and surprising because apparently it's by some guy who writes songs and posts them on his blog. It's really pretty. also, a sweet article/story It's so hot today. I'm afraid to go outside the house because inside my room with the window fan (which blows air from the outside in) having been on for the past who-knows-how-many-hours it is barely tolerable. Once I get in the sun for more than a few seconds, I can see how nothing short of a cold shower will get me back to a normal temperature. I bet the darkroom is untolerably hot today too, because it usually is about 10 degrees hotter than the normal outside temperature, with its large magical developer machine (which eminates sweet yummy bread smell from its cancerous chemicals) and windowless darkness. I guess this means no darkroom today.

What Chow Yun-Fat Looks Like in PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 3

2006-07-20T12:59:00.000-07:00

oh please tell me that's photoshop... also in the news, Ang Lee's new movie's cast list has just been released.

Lust, Caution through a press release article. Not surprisingly, they are Tang Wei (last name: Tang), Tony Leung Chiu-Wai (last name: Leung) and Wang Lee-Hom (last name: Wang). Based on the same name short story by late woman writer Eileen Chang, the story of Lust, Caution is set in the Japanese occupied Shanghai in the 1940s (more precisely, sometime between 1941 and 1945). Leung will play Mr. Yee (Yi), a powerful political figure within the Japanese-controlled puppet government and Tang will play Wang Jiazhi, a young woman assigned to approach Yee and to lead him into an assassination trap. Wang Lee-Hom will play Kuang Yu-Min, a young student involved with Wang Jiazhi. 27 year old Tang Wei was born in Beijing and was graduated from China's Central Drama College (aka. Central Theater College). Basically unknown, even in her homeland, her career as an actress is only limited to several TV series and stage productions. She will make her big-screen debut with Lust, Caution.

Ang Lee likes to cast relatively unknown actors, my general impression. Oh and good for Wong Lee Hom... Eileen Chang is really really famous. In other randomness, the new pepsi photo things. Rain is in it for the first time. Yay Jay gets clothing and Rain doesn't! (entirely meaningless statement). I didn't get the pictures at all until I caught on to the circus theme (jay = magician, edison chen = clown person???). I bet Jay wanted to be the magician (I just know). I can't imagine why edison chen would want to be the 'clown person'...Rain's glitter is so tacky, and it's the most unflattering picture of him I've ever seen (apparently if you're a good photographer for these sorts of things you know that people with wide-set eyes are not happy when pictured from the front directly. It's all about hiding flaws, accentuating jay's nice 3/4 chin angle, and photoshop...) 'City of Golden Armor' has changed its english name to 'Curse of The Golden Flower' after Sony acquired it, because it sounds better? These pictures look to me like the papparazi ambushed the set with a helocoptor and took some birds-eye view pictures of the cast working. When I first saw some of them I thought they were screenshots from a video game (bottom row.) When I saw this picture I was happy at first that they said it was Chow Yun-Fat (whose image in my mind has been forever tarnished unfortunately by photos mentioned above, already, anyway). Until I saw the comments below the post, that is, my fear was confirmed ('It's not Chow Yun-Fat. It's Jay Chou'.) Does being a prince in a mythological China mean you can't shave? Darn.

Kanebo Hadabishi Mask Super Moisturizing

2006-07-18T12:17:00.000-07:00

Apparently it was really cheap in that market in Japantown ($5 something for 3 pieces instead of a lot of money for 5 pieces), at least as far as Kanebo Hadabishi masks go. It felt really nice when I had it on though...the mask was really, really thick and really hydrating. It was kinda scary because when I was taking it off my face turned a (noticable) shade lighter than before I put it on (kinda like that one time I used this shiseido whitening mask sample). I think it's only temporary though...

free 'mentha lip product' from bath and body works

2006-07-18T10:13:00.000-07:00

if you sign up for their email list.

FREE C.O. Bigelow Mentha Lip product (up to a $7.50 value) with any purchase. Limit one per customer. While supplies last. No substitutions. Offer may not be combined with any other offers, coupons or discounts. Offer not redeemable for cash, gift certificates, gift cards, or sale merchandise nor is it valid toward previous purchases. Change will not be given for product with less than a $7.50 value. Cash value 1/100th¢.

But what does that mean? Any purchase except for purchases under $7.50? What does 'Change will not be given' mean?

how sad

2006-07-18T10:08:00.000-07:00

CogSci Majors: Though no one informed me, as of Fall 2005 NO CREDIT will be given for MCB 64 if you have already taken MCB 61 and vice versa. If you enroll in the second course you will see study list units, but they won't add to your overall units. This problem came to light as a student graduating in Spring 2006 was told he may have to take another class to complete his degree. He ended up with 119.8 units so when you're told that you have to have 120 units minimum, it's very serious business. I've written a letter for him explaining the problem but they still may not waive the fraction of a unit. -- cog sci mailing list which I'm still on

.2 units? L&S is so beauracratic...and inflexible. I wouldn't be surprised.

hmmm....cult cream puff recipe

2006-07-16T00:01:00.000-07:00

2006-07-13T00:17:00.000-07:00

celebration with anniversary chicken (!)

2006-07-13T00:14:00.000-07:00

yay for 2 year anniversary!! (june 30)

2006-07-13T00:11:00.000-07:00

homeless man in SF

2006-07-13T00:02:00.000-07:00

cream puffy @ beard papa's apparently they have one at puente hills mall. Puente Hills Mall!! (local once-dying mall in Rowland Heights that somehow made miraculous comeback a few years ago but still have many cheap-ish clothing stores)

2006-07-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

the best cream puffs ever

according to live.com weather forecast

2006-07-12T15:29:00.000-07:00

Pittsburg is going to have a high temperature of 98 degrees on Saturday. solution? hang around berkeley, or even better, san francisco, where it is never hot!

you know how they say every company has a distinct culture

2006-07-12T10:07:00.000-07:00

like at microsoft supposedly you work 60 hours a week or you're stuck doing the 'boring stuff' Like where I work where I think the company culture is where people bring food and leave it in the kitchen and send an email to everyone. Since I've been here there has been chocolates from belgium, chocolates from sweden, strawberries, german milk duds (as I like to call them, mentioned in an earlier post) and misc. european candy, mint patties from England, a box of fruit (gift of company), and baklava (this morning apparently). But I overslept and the baklava was gone by the time I went to the kitchen :(

How to break Windows Notepad

2006-07-07T15:26:00.000-07:00

I bet with enough trial-and-error (or a smart program), you'll be able to find a string that makes sense both in english AND chinese by unicode...even something cleverly related, by laws of probability (like how anagrams work).

Whole Foods vows more small-farm support

2006-07-07T14:05:00.000-07:00

yay(?), more small farms supports = more good carrots.

The letter was part of a public argument with Michael Pollan, a food writer who recently published "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Pollan, a professor at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, has said Whole Foods has sacrificed some of the ideals of organic farming while boosting the industry. The Web site also posted Pollan's original letter to Mackey. "After visiting a great many large organic farms to research my book, many of them your suppliers, it seems to me undeniable that organic agriculture has industrialized over the past few years, and that Whole Foods has played a part in that process — for good and for ill," Pollan wrote.

Hey, it's the author that was giving a talk at that bookstore close to La Mediterranee. After looking at the Amazon page for "The Omnivore's Dilemma," it seemed a lot more interesting than the talk by the author at the bookstore made it seem. Although it does explain how there were so many people that day (aside from it being in Berkeley). Maybe the author is famous. decisive moment -- photo of the day. Aww...

PARIS—Place de l’Europe, Gare St. Lazare, 1932. Photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson writes, “There was a plank fence around some repairs behind the Gare St. Lazare train station. I happened to be peeking through a gap in the fence with my camera at the moment the man jumped. The space between the planks was not entirely wide enough for my lens, which is the reason why the picture is cut off on the left.”

I've always wondered about that picture (and still do). What fortutious chain of events must have come together for him to capture that image? Interesting fall class

7A. Introduction to Premodern Japanese Literature and Culture The Tale of Genji and The Tale of the Heike will be read in some depth. Other prose texts include early poem-tales of romance, personal journals by both men and women from both the High Classical and Middle Periods, and stories of romance set in the “floating world” of premodern Edo pleasure quarters. For theater we will read several major plays of the Middle Period’s noh drama theater then plays revolving around romantic trust written for the puppet theater during the premodern era. Reading the texts will afford discussion of the culture and history of the various eras as well as an exploration of aesthetic values.

Aww...they're reading Tale of the Genji, which in my mind is categorized with Dream of the Red Chamber, or I could be expecting too much... I could take this class to fulfill my stupid last breadth requirement, haha. I think a long time ago they had a class just for Dreams of the Red Chamber (which they called Story of the Stone, as the book has many different names in English). Too bad they don't offer that anymore (cry). But then again reading Tale of the Genji in English is very different from reading it in Japanese. Chinese translations might be a bit better. Even the best translation loses the language aspect when you're translating between languages and cultures that far apart.

coffee!!

2006-06-27T10:40:00.000-07:00

I have never worked at a tech company (history of employment -- tech company: 2, non-tech company: 0) where people don't crowd over the coffee machine to make multiple pots of coffee per day, fight over the extra-strong coffee, complain that pot of coffee is not brewed early enough in the morning (7am), that the coffee not made enough frequency (4 hour-old coffee is ancient), etc., sometimes heavy usage leads to multiple coffee machines falling apart, which leads to more complaints that there is no more coffee, followed by worker rebellion if coffee supply does not resume immediately...it is as if the entire company runs on caffeine (which it does) Actually coffee here is really good. It's especially good if I add half of the hot chocolate packet to it.

2006-06-26T22:53:00.000-07:00

2006-06-26T22:50:00.000-07:00

my blog is boring (tilden park lake)

2006-06-22T13:39:00.000-07:00

2006-06-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

It was really strange this morning when I started smelling a very familiar scent...soft and pretty like some perfume, yet it was so faint I couldn't make out what it was. But I didn't put on perfume this morning, so I started suspecting my neighbors (lets see, guy to the left, guy to the right, guy in front...etc.) Then I suddenly realized that it was a perfume I owned (thus the familiarity) ('amazing grace' by philosophy) and at once deduced that it must be coming from my shirt from the last time I used the perfume... btw, it smells nicer than I remembered it smelling. maybe I'll start using it again.

When I first heard the name of this movie I thought:

2006-06-21T10:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.thepeacefulwarriormovie.com/ Can there be a more stupid name for a movie? It sounds so cliche...'the peaceful warrior' blah. But now three things appeal to me about the movie: 1. trailor looks not too bad 2. appears to be shot at least partially in Berkeley (I don't think there is another university campanil that looks like the campanille). 3. appears to have a cult following (that or the grass roots promotion campaign makes it appear so)

2006-06-19T21:00:00.000-07:00

floating

2006-06-19T20:54:00.000-07:00

flower

2006-06-19T00:18:00.000-07:00

lawn

takeoff

2006-06-18T23:54:00.000-07:00

I'm going to try to come up with names for my photos from now on, even though I don't think I can come up with clever names. I never bothered naming my photos before, but recently I've realized that sometimes giving a random photo a name helps make sense of it...and helps people see what it was intended to be in the cases where there was something that the photographer saw...or at least make it less random...or otherwise make it seem like a better photo than it really is...

2006-06-18T23:51:00.000-07:00

german milk duds, or so i'd like to think. photo by nick.

2006-06-18T23:46:00.000-07:00

my new shirt from express. apparently i'm returning the jeans and the white shirt. For some reason whenever I get their jeans when it's on sale it never fits me very well.

ya...

2006-06-17T23:39:00.000-07:00

johari nohari when i first saw this, I really seriously thought it might be me. I was sitting in the same seat studying for finals with the blinds down that much the same day i saw some guy with a camera walking around taking pictures or something. but the date doesn't fit...anyway this person have some pretty nice photos. I think the person is german as shown by blog. I don't think it's a coincidence given his style.

Wait...how did this happen??

2006-06-16T11:16:00.000-07:00

You scored as Biology. You should be a Biology major! You are passionate about the sciences, and you enjoy studying cell growth and evolutionary concepts which enable living organisms to survive. Pursue that!

Biology

100%

Philosophy

92%

Psychology

83%

Mathematics

75%

Engineering

75%

Chemistry

58%

Journalism

50%

Sociology

50%

Anthropology

50%

Art

42%

Theater

42%

English

42%

Linguistics

33%

Dance

25%

What is your Perfect Major? (PLEASE RATE ME!!<3)
created with QuizFarm.com

this doesn't make any sense! I voted AGAINST chemical interactions at the cellular level...blah blah. Animal watching is fun though...I think it's just a phase...It does reflect how I am biased against linguistics, however little I learned of it in various cog sci & AI classes.

ms visual studio 2005 'intellisense'

2006-06-14T15:12:00.000-07:00

works like eclipse's autocomplete, but not as well. Yeah, sometimes eclipse is stupid too, and its stupiditiy is not limited to its autocomplete function (it sometimes parses code wrong, refuses to make a breakpoint, crashes and won't reopen, permanently, etc.), but its autocomplete works better than intellisense IMO. With intellisense I get the feeling I have to rebuild the project before fixed errors go away (annoying and time consuming), and it refuses to work if you have other problems in your code or for no apparent reason. So yeah, my point is that they are both stupid sometimes, but you have to wait less with eclipse because it continuously parses code for errors, whereas Visual Studio lazily parses code for errors...

There is this Greek cafe close to work

2006-06-13T23:29:00.000-07:00

in Point Richmond where these (touristy, only in the sense that they are pictures only a non-native would take, because natives would be so used to their environment and not notice any of these things) really nice photos (of greece?) all over the walls. Most are 5x7 and framed with a mat. There must be 60 or 70 photos in that little cafe (a bit more expensive than what I would like to pay for lunch, but that's where my coworkers like to eat...). They are really nice photos of insignificant things that even tourists would overlook, the wine glasses on a table, a shot of half a colorful old bike, and my favorite, some old metal chairs arranged in a pattern. On top of everything, the photos are so pretty and colorful (I rarely like colorful photos, even color photos, but I really like the colors in these), and so well framed/composed. Just stared at the photos I did, hoping that a bit of them would rub off onto me and one day I can take pictures like that... Unrelated, but I think I react to certain images emotionally. I don't know if this happens to other people. Like certain patterns/images make me feel uncomfortable, you like, like how vampires can't look at the cross, except not the cross... I don't really remember, just sometimes, say when I look at a tree with a certain textured bark or a certain shape I feel really uncomfortable looking at it, and I have to turn away... I'm reading the Dream of the Red Chamber again, although not for very long each day. I don't think there is much writing in the world that can be more poetic and dreamy than it is. The story and the descriptions/narratives in the book make very observant, even poingent, critiques about the society the author lived in. Each main character (all female except one) in the book are distinctive/archetypal characters in Chinese society (they are created by the environment they live in), presented with their own faults and strenghs, and the author reserves judgement about their actions (unlike Jane Eyre, urg, I don't know why that book is so famous). It's not at all idealistic/wishy-washy writing, but the language is so lyrical...even the mandarin vernacular from the 18th (17th?) century that they speak. But then again I think I have a thing with old Chinese style of writing (pre 1960s or so, Jin Yong's writing is at the tail end of that period, his writing combines the best part of 白話文 and 文言文, clean and concise like good traditional Chinese writing, yet understandable). I think there are very good reasons that 紅樓夢 is considered one of the masterpieces of Chinese (and world) literature.

2006-06-13T23:28:00.000-07:00

Telegraph hill (just noting what an incredibly nice view that home office on top must get)

2006-06-13T23:26:00.000-07:00

there were seagulls who were fighting for this piece of fish head (of unknown origin) at some pier in SF

2006-06-13T23:04:00.000-07:00

pier

hmmm

2006-06-13T15:44:00.000-07:00

You are a Social Liberal (68% permissive) and an... Economic Moderate (41% permissive) You are best described as a: Democrat

Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Yeah I think I ended up (just a little bit) more socialist leaning (according to graph) than previously expected. I'm not sure why...flashbacks of high school debates in (AP, ha) Environmental Science where I'm pretty sure I caused the teacher to believe I was communist (and from China). I don't know which misunderstanding came first. I have this theory that there are more or less two types of people in the world, those who hold extreme views and those who do not, and the specific beliefs/leanings don't matter so much. Being centrist just means that you're more calibrated to the current norm (which is always adjusting itself too). Kinda like when you go far enough to the left and right you end up with the same people who were predisposed to have extreme views for their own reasons (personality? early influences? self-rightousness? insecurity?). Often this happens to entire societies, possibly because of insecure national psyches (another theory of mine), like how in an interview I read of Steven Hawkings he speculates that Americans are attached to Christianity because America is insecure because it has less history compared to Europe and thus need something to differentiate/define itself.

wait...that's not fair

2006-06-11T00:27:00.000-07:00

When I didn't have my id southwest wouldn't let me fly! (well I had an expired ID because I couldn't find my new id which I found later but I don't see how it makes a difference. an expired id should be better than no ID, not worse). How come he got to fly? and apparently this is what happens to you if you don't show your id to random people...so there is no way to win and if you raise questions you (me) are probably automatically labled potential 'terrorist' because of the assumption that if you don't comply, you must have something to hide. I also get really annoyed that I have to take off my shoes... I think there is something wrong in America, like checks-and-balances inbalance, in that the government has ever-encroaching power with no limits. I just hope this doesn't go on forever.

yummy tahini recipes

2006-06-08T19:54:00.000-07:00

gingery miso tahini spread bulgur lentil pilaf with tahini olive salad pasta with tahini I made this and it came out pretty good =D...garlicky...yum

2006-06-06T02:00:00.000-07:00

"One of the great ironies of Dan Brown's book is that it assaults you with its greatest piece of idiocy before you've even picked it up. The man's name is Leonardo, please. 'da Vinci' (note the lower-case 'd'), is NOT his family name, it's his hometown. He was born in Vinci, Italy, in 1452, in a time before Europeans had started surnaming themselves. Brown's error is on par with writing a book on the life of Christ called The Of Nazareth Code, or assuming St. Joan was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. 'Of Arc.' It's amazing that anyone could take seriously the historical claims of a work whose title screams out, 'penned by an historical ignoramus!'"

source it's kind of hard to take seriously the type of pple who take the da vinci code seriously...i think a lot of people actually do though...

I'd watch this movie if I had time

2006-06-06T01:55:00.000-07:00

Gore says that although there is "100 percent agreement" among scientists, a database search of newspaper and magazine articles shows that 57 percent question the fact of global warming, while 43 percent support it. These figures are the result, he says, of a disinformation campaign started in the 1990s by the energy industries to "reposition global warming as a debate." It is the same strategy used for years by the defenders of tobacco. My father was a Luckys smoker who died of lung cancer in 1960, and 20 years later it was still "debatable" that there was a link between smoking and lung cancer.

yeah and their commercial for CO2...i posted a link to something that talks about this a while back...soft music and lighting, little kids playing in slow-mo, couple walking on beach holding hands...voice over: it's everywhere. carbon dioxide, they call it pollution. we call it life. Talk about propaganda...i don't really know what the whole "debate" about global warming (and lung cancer) is either...americans seem to be the only pple confused about this...

2006-06-05T14:52:00.000-07:00

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=47&aid=78683

2006-06-05T14:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.400plusdifferences.com/

2006-06-04T23:12:00.000-07:00

you could have wedding pictures that look like this! (hello is finally working) or like this (taken in some forest in central taiwan apparently)
or in a red forest or in a lavender field
or in a lavender field or somewhere purple, somewhere blue, in Bali, in a green forest, somewhere white with all sorts of colors...and a whole lot of other places too. Anyway I don't think the prices are that high...you can pay that much easily for American wedding photography on-site during the wedding...tho those are nice too...and they have special accomodation for people who live overseas too apparently (just add plane ticket...)

today is june fourth isn't it?

2006-06-04T23:09:00.000-07:00

slate.com has pictures from Tiananmen square, June 4, 1989.

A pretty insightful article on blink.com

2006-06-04T14:15:00.000-07:00

A.k.a. the ex-del.ic.ious, and why it failed. It points out some important ideas in software (webapp?) design, especially its user-interface. The main themes were to start small, establish a niche [I wonder why the first time i tried to type 'niche' it came out 'nick'] (do something specific and do it well), make changes based on feedback, and really think hard about usability in the customer's perspective. It's interesting that one of the comments said that their mistake was having too much money:

If blink.com had 1.5 million users, it could hardly be considered a failure. It seems to me that it was done in by having too much money. I worked for three startups back then with the same problem. All issues were quickly solved with money. Just add more staff, equipment, marketing budget... Then the people handing out the money start looking for their quick payback. If you didn't look like an IPO/takeover candidate, they pulled the plug, and the business which could have worked with fewer people, less equipment, etc. suddenly was unsustainable.

On the other hand I think you did have to wait until the invention of flickr-style tags for social bookmarking to be easy and powerful enough to really take off. I think it was Hackers and Painters which claimed that people exhaust most new innovations in a new medium the first one or two generations that it was invented, for example, theater in Shakespeare's time and film photography in the 20th century. So new techniques and ideas for that medium will be clustered in the first two generations since its invention, although I think that timeframe is growing shorter too. Web 2.0 (yeah, blah-blah) is such a new medium (although it is the offspring of traditional applications and the internet) that a lot of the models and techniques are just being discovered and established with the new startups that are popping up every other day or so (which is what I noticed recently). I think the market is still very competitive, however, so this new wave of startups probably won't lead to another crash. I'm enjoying it anyway, since many of them are free and useful, or at least fun to try out. Tribewanted -- this is the most interesting and innovative idea I've heard about recently. I'm sure people would have dreamed about this sort of thing, because it's such a cool idea, but to actually to carry it out requires a lot of optimism and, I donno, bravery, as I can imagine there are about a million things that could go wrong. The idea seems very well fleshed out, all of its social, business, ideological aspects. They seems economically and socially feasible yet retains their idealism -- their ideas of building an (almost utopian) community, among other things. Normally I'd say that this sounds like lord of the files, but the difference is that people are bringing their current social mores with them (from the u.s. or wherever), if not the exact structure (their 12 chiefs system?), laws exist and are enforceable, etc. However I still think there are a million things that could go wrong, any one of which could potentially esculate and bring down the whole system. So we'll see how it goes. My hello is not working! Every time I try to upload a picture to the blog it freezes. This prevents me from uploading pretty (idealistic and colorful!) wedding photography and making myself look stupid.

planting stuff

2006-06-03T22:32:00.000-07:00

i planted some seeds today: fragrant sweet peas (white), french Larkspur, creeping (does this mean it's creepy?) thyme, scented lavender (!) hidcote, and thai basil. I also planted like six green onion ends/roots in a pot that i chopped off (they already grew long roots). I found a useful website with "useful recipes for poor students" which had an article on growing green onions (see, there are lots of people other than me who think green onions are very expensive in America). urr....so scary.

lunch

2006-06-02T13:27:00.000-07:00

I slept so well last night that I woke up late this morning and got to work 20 minutes late. Fortunately most people arrive more than 20 minutes after 9 anyway. I got my own can of silly putty today from the official company silly putty distributor (someone who lives in big cube), and it's heat-sensitive color changing. That stuff is unexpectedly addictive, like trying to think of stuff to make out of it (currently working on pretzels), and just playing with it with one hand while doing stuff. Ate pho for lunch at 99 ranch just now. I still don't really get how to eat soupy noodles, I always only finish only about 30% of the noodles in any bowl of soupy noodles. I like the broth and other stuff though...

yeah!

2006-06-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

Tilden Explorers A nature adventure program to learn about racoons and skunks from 3:15 to 4:45 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area. For 5 to 7 year olds. Fee is $6, $8 for non-residents. Registration required. 525-2233. kayaking at brooks island! When I came back to my cube from going to the kitchen today i found a can of 'tangerine sours' altoids on a piece of paper that says 'for throwing at [cube neighbor on my right's name].' I'm pretty sure it's from cube neighbor on my left. other interesting things: east bay open studios 2006 is this weekend kiteboarding looks so fun (but expensive) Saturday and Sunday, 12 p.m.-3:00 p.m. or 3:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m. $170 each for group land or water lesson including equipment and wetsuit

natalie portman is pretty

2006-06-01T00:46:00.000-07:00

that's all. berkeley kite festival! some of those kites are not kites, they're so large & they look like hot balloons!

ug's post on the mud run is so hilarious

2006-05-31T23:55:00.000-07:00

if it weren't so far away (San Diego), I'd go cheer you on, UG!

2006-05-26T23:44:00.000-07:00

park next to my house : |

2006-05-26T23:43:00.000-07:00

park next to my house

2006-05-26T23:42:00.000-07:00

the frame that comes ofter it, not quite as funny...but still

2006-05-26T23:41:00.000-07:00

an especially interesting photo of a random korean drama on tv...I like how when I take a picture there are like manga lines or something. Yes the guy does look that weird in real tv...

2006-05-26T23:39:00.000-07:00

It's hard to take bad pictures of korean food because the little plates are so picturesque...but then it's hard take bad pictures of food in general,

2006-05-26T23:33:00.001-07:00

more chick pooh

2006-05-26T23:33:00.000-07:00

chick pooh

2006-05-26T23:32:00.000-07:00

my sister inside

2006-05-26T23:21:00.001-07:00

guess what? (who?)

2006-05-26T23:21:00.000-07:00

the little kids are sooo cute, except that the little boy forgot part of his routine at some point and the girl was trying to tell him what to do

2006-05-26T23:20:00.000-07:00

person who is really good at chi-gong (note the bottom of the bottle came off when he hit the top...Don't know how you can do that. Later he demonstrated bending steel bars with his throat or adams apple...). Also note the adorable cutout of Taiwan in the background

2006-05-26T23:18:00.000-07:00

and women who look very happy selling...

2006-05-26T23:15:00.001-07:00

and nick the poster child of taiwanese tourism

2006-05-26T23:15:00.000-07:00

and the cute Taiwan tourism mascot

2006-05-26T23:14:00.000-07:00

with representatives from the Taiwan Tourism Bureau

2006-05-26T23:13:00.000-07:00

and we found a big 'taiwan cultural fair' or something or other going on at union square

2006-05-26T23:12:00.001-07:00

near where we parked...

2006-05-26T23:12:00.000-07:00

photos from SF (saturday after finals ended)

fine-art photographers generally

2006-05-26T17:16:00.000-07:00

make their living (day jobs) as wedding photographers don't they? seems to be my impression. you could be...a commercial photographer, like shoot for catalogs and buildings, and maybe try to sell some stock photos, but that's not nearly as interesting and doesn't offer flexiblity in style and creativity as wedding photography does....(note instructor for the photography class is a wedding photographer that takes nice wedding photos). maybe that's why nice wedding photography costs so much, because they probably all went to art school and such...

if anyone needs a bed and desk....

2006-05-26T16:55:00.000-07:00

in exchange for food...

How to Pull an All Nighter

2006-05-18T02:37:00.000-07:00

# Bring your work to a 24-hour restaurant. Tell the waiters to hit you if you fall asleep. # If you feel your eyelids drooping: pinch yourself, rub your face with a piece of ice, stand up, run in place, and do a few jumping jacks to get an adrenaline rush, or, if at worst, take a 10 minute nap. Be careful with naps! (See below for how to nap in an all-nighter.) # Napping: Take them for about 10 minutes. Set a loud timer to wake you up, and stay half-awake. Short naps refresh you. Long naps will tend to interrupt the REM cycle and only make you more tired. # Cold air keeps you awake. # So does cold water or ice. # Work with good lighting. You don't want anything too bright, but too dim and you'll doze. # Don't nap! Eat high-protein foods on a regular basis through the night: smoothies, cheese, a sandwich, a plate of stew will all keep your energy levels as high as they are during the daytime. # If you can't skip the caffeine, don't stop drinking it till you have time to crash more here

i don't think i'm sleeping again tonight

2006-05-17T16:24:00.000-07:00

it's interesting how my finals sleeping schedule has been 24 hour days alternating with 12 hour sleeping periods...

wanna read this book

2006-05-16T16:21:00.000-07:00

apparently it's not available in english time for nap

2006-05-16T16:00:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why...this is incredibly funny to me I think they're saying that the fried chicken has no bones

takeshi's lips

2006-05-16T13:48:00.000-07:00

+ leonardo di caprio's nose + brad pitt's eyes +... (at about 2:00 of the video) yeah hear what they say about his lips...hahaha looks kinda funny. random thought of the day: If I were an animator/artist I want to draw like the illustrator of juuni kokki. Actually I would make anime out of 天龍八部 if I could...ok fine it doesn't matter who made it as long as someone does, like the person who illustrated juuni kokki...or me drawing like the person who drew juuni kokki. In my opinion any live action rendition of 天龍八部 is doomed to fail, just because it was never meant to be live action and realistic. Mostly the book has a very Chinese buddhist parable/mythology air to it, because that's basically what it is. another random thought: I probably shouldn't have drank so much wine + pomogranate juice yesterday night, it probably made me sleepier than I would have been otherwise, although it probably doesn't make too much of a difference seeing how i just noticed that cs170 is not a class where cramming does you much good anyway.

Vienna Teng is coming to Berkeley

2006-05-16T12:48:00.000-07:00

Thursday, May 18, 8pm, 5 hours after my last final... I don't know how how I've heard of her, I think I assumed I heard it from nick, since it's where all musical influences of unknown origin comes from...yeah... apparently she majored in CS at stanford and worked at Cisco for two years, but not anymore... orange lip balm looks like it would be really interesting to read: 食物戀, although I'm still not really sure what it is, it appears to be a recipe book and a photography book, with some writing. The author is from 澎湖, which are islands off of coast of taiwan (yeah i know, islands off of islands, see the dot?, close enough to swim to from China I'm sure.) It's probably incredibly pretty, as coasts in Taiwan are as a general rule, and there are lots and lots of temples and historical buildings on it...which means good picture-taking opportunities. Many temples because most people who lived there depended on the sea for livelihood, which is very dangerous, so people worshipped 媽祖, whom saved people from the sea. I heard the story of 媽祖 when I was little...I don't really remember, but I think it's a girl/woman whose family all drawned in the ocean from a storm or something...and turned into a goddess after she died, and saved people...could have been some other random story I've heard, not sure. anyway in my impression 媽祖 is the most often worshipped (buddhist? i don't even know) god in taiwan, there's temples everywhere and each year there are big parades/ceremonies for her birthday or something like that. yeah, like so.

wow, big splash on slate over death of Cody's

2006-05-15T22:19:00.000-07:00

2006-05-15T10:28:00.000-07:00

recent pictures. from, urm, birthday

2006-05-15T10:22:00.000-07:00

From a display window at moffitt. I think it's about travel or something, so it has random things in it, specifically the can of lychee, because it belongs there...Why doesn't whoever put it there just eat it? I can imagine someone going to asia (Hong Kong???) and saw a can of lychee and thought, wow, this is so cool, I'll lug it back back with me so I can put it in a window case at moffitt. Or, they just got it at 99 ranch.

2006-05-15T10:18:00.000-07:00

have you been to the main stacks recently? like, in the last year or so.

2006-05-15T10:17:00.000-07:00

guess where!

2006-05-15T10:16:00.000-07:00

windows in the doe library reading room (don't remember if it's the east reading room or north reading room...I think it's the east one...yeah it faces the crane...which means....urm, north). I think I was studying for stat 134 while looking outside the window and thinking what a beautiful sunset it was and how I wanted to go outside and take pictures, but decided against it and took a picture of the windows without getting up...

pass/not pass

2006-05-15T04:56:00.000-07:00

"Does a Pass/Not Pass grade affect my grade-point average? A course in which a grade of Pass (P) or Not Pass (NP) is received is not counted into your GPA (similarly, graduate courses graded on a Satisfactory [S] or Unsatisfactory [U] basis). A course in which a grade of P or S is received is counted toward degree requirements. A course in which a grade of NP or U is received does not count toward degree requirements."

basically it doesn't do squat if you don't pass, as long as you're not using the class for anything important....which is really, really good to know because I think I'm going to be failing my final in 3 hours...

the best thing in the world

2006-05-14T14:39:00.000-07:00

is going to sleep for 12 hours and wake up to find that someone else has fixed the deadlock in your code. well, next to sleeping for 12 hours and waking up to find that the project has been done by someone other than you anyway. one of the scariest things in the world might be going to sleep for 12 hours and finding out that the project has been finished by you, but also it might be the best thing too...lalalala

2006-05-13T20:45:00.000-07:00

Mediterranean cuisine is the cuisine of the areas around the Mediterranean Sea. Given the geography, these nation-states have influenced each other over time and the cooking evolved into sharing common principles. The Mediterranean Cuisine is characterized by its flexibility, its range of ingredients and its many regional variations. The terrain has tended to favour the raising of goats and sheep.

This is why i can't tell the difference between greek/turkish/middle eastern food. Well not like any of the things I've had are totally authentic (non-americanized) anyway (is La Med to authentic Mediterranean food same as Manpuku is to authentic Japanese food?)...I think it has to do with the ingredients you use. I was reading recipes on some website...like site of recipes for poor taiwanese students when you're abroad...or something...and whoever wrote them kept on warning you about how pork tastes really bad in America, since they don't castrate the pigs...errr yeah...yeah my main gripes are 1) how most brands of milk smell bad (growth hormones?) and 2) how meat tastes kind of bland and 3) how the same actually goes for pretty much everything else...like gigantic but less flavorful for some reason...

i'm stressed out

2006-05-07T23:08:00.000-07:00

again. whenever i'm stressed out I can't stop surfing the web....

2006-05-06T19:44:00.000-07:00

but he looks so nice that...he looks like 林平之 (urr, currently re-reading that book)

2006-05-06T19:43:00.000-07:00

otherwise the movie doesn't seem worth watching

2006-05-06T19:41:00.000-07:00

nicholas tse looks nice in 'the promise'

the lettuce girl

2006-05-05T22:57:00.000-07:00

the lettuce girl....hahahhaa

56 tribes stamps

2006-05-05T22:35:00.000-07:00

56 officially recognized ethnic groups, to be sure. Notice that the 'north korean tribe' is included. what is a north korean tribe? the russian tribe is included too. I can't find a tibetan ethnic group however. I did find that the native taiwanese tribes got lumped together into a 'mountain tribe' I did eventually find the tibetan one, since I figured that there is absolutely no reason it's not there (being one of the 5 main ethnic groups that the stars represent...actually doesn't filo from American Tails have a star hat doesn't he. what's his name, filo right? maybe he doesn't wear a star hat either...) Also there is a Han one (the first one, with the sashes, and the guy with a sash around him that reminds me of the sash in 1984 that Julia wears) I think it would be cool to go to hami (apparently it's called Kumel) still...and we can follow the silk road nick, for the.... anyway I still think the stamp set is really cute, i wonder where you can get it. It seems like the stamp set is not new...it doesn't seem like it would be new since even with the low level of political correctness sentiment in China now it doesn't seem like it would be quite politically correct enough... japanese monk...umm...repents at 盧溝橋 (I don't know what it's called in english, no one seems to care...) Amy's comments: he is obviously sincere. (and thus likable in my opinion). I don't know about the people who took pictures of him and wrote an article on him tho, they don't seem...I don't know how to put it...they don't seem to have very pure intentions, more like a gloating manner...as if they are morally superior. no one is morally superior or inferior just because of what their ancestors did or did not do.

昨日中午，天空飄起小雨，僧人岩田隆造來到中國人民抗日戰爭紀念館內。在日軍侵華暴行展區，岩田隆造跪在一幅幅被日軍殘害的中國人照片前，28次跪地叩首，不肯起來。一名6歲的東北小男孩認識“謝罪”二字，他問媽媽老爺爺為什麼“謝罪”，媽媽解釋後，小男孩跑到跪著的岩田隆造身旁說“知錯就改就是好孩子。”

I like the little kid. The interview with him reveals that the 'japanese monk' grew up in Taiwan, and he says his family doesn't support his trip. What kind of monk has family? Ok fine monks can have family...