Absurd Singularity

Morgan Spurlock's new show, 30 Days, is quite compelling. Worth catching (or Tivo'ing in my case).

Finally getting around to putting up the pics we took while in Taiwan. Just two new albums to start off:

Meet the Folks - Part I





Meet the Folks - Part II

More hopefully later tonight.

I'm really churning these suckers out now... ;-)

Chi Jin Island & Shi Je Wan





Dinner Reception - Part I





Dinner Reception - Part II

I have a ton of pictures to go through. Man, post-processing pics takes such a long time. When are they gonna invent the camera that takes the perfect picture every single time? Grrr.... anyway, 2 more galleries:

Lunch Reception - Part I





Lunch Reception - Part II

Luckily these are the last two galleries of wedding-related pics. *whew*

How is it I add a couple of cookbooks to my wishlist, and I get recommended this?

There's enough pressure coming from Mom and Dad. But now, Amazon thinks I need help?

Apparently they do a good enough job by themselves.

whittling down my pics cue.

Guang Yin Mountain





Dragonboat Festival





Lin Bien & Da Pung Wan - Part I





Lin Bien & Da Pung Wan - Part II

So I'm browsing my Amazon recommendations when this catches my eye. Jou dan de ba! A little more digging brings me to a picture here. Browsing through the site reveals more replicas of other famous swords amongst other things. ;-)

I don't remember taking THIS many pictures when we were in Taiwan. And I'm not even putting up all of them. Urgh.

Da Pin Din - Part I





Da Pin Din - Part II

Just thought I'd give a few more thoughts on the Crumpler Sinking Barge backpack now that I've actually went on a trip with it. But first, as requested, two pics of the backpack being worn:

More notes after the break...

Was perusing CNN and ran into this article on the ol' comic strip, Blondie, celebrating its 75th year. 75 YEARS!!!!! Holy cow, how do you write that many strips for so many years without things getting stale? Granted the current writer took over from his father back in 1973 but that's still 32 years of material. Damn. That's really impressive.

Anyway, the article brought back some memories for me. Years back my mom used to take me to Taiwan every summer. At the time it was nowhere near as Westernized and entertaining (for a US kid at least) as it is now. However, my aunt had a set of like 10 Blondie comic books which were Chinese-English and I would read through them all (sometimes multiple times) every... single... time... I was in Taiwan. I think those were the only reading material that I could understand besides my mom's even older Reader's Digest magazines (Chinese edition) which would have one English story at the very end of each issue. I must've read those things a couple of hundred times. They were quite entertaining to me back then and taking a look at the recent ones now, even though the family's life has been modernized, the type of humor remains. Great job by Mr. Young. Here's hoping the strip goes on for another 75 more years. =)

I know Ben and company aren't into Asian dramas, but I found the first two episodes of Densha Otoko ("Train Man") hilarious.

It's about a geek who rescues a young woman from a belligerent drunk on the commuter train. It's love at first sight for him, but not knowing how to woo her, he turns to internet chat for advice. Eventually, he abandons his anime, games, model figures... his otaku-ness... for love. It's one of the most talked-about dramas of this summer season.

If nothing else, its portrayal of otaku during the first half-hour is worth the download.

On our way back from Taiwan last month I picked up two books to read and finally got through the second one last night. Both dealt with the Holy Grail, the Templar Knights and numerous other secret societies and rumors related to both. But besides that, they were on completely different levels.

The one that I finished last night was the famed/notorious The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I don't know what the whole ruckus was about. Why in the world did other authors feel the need to write entire books refuting things written IN A FICTION NOVEL!!!!!! Hello???? Does "FICTION" not mean anything to anyone anymore? If Dan Brown meant it to be taken seriously he would've released it as a non-fiction or something. The hell is wrong with people? Apparently the little blurb at the very beginning on the Fact page that reads, "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.", confuses people. Just because he uses and describes real items, places and groups in the book doesn't mean his interpretations and discussions of them should be accepted as truth too. Hell, he even says the exact same thing in this interview. Either some people out there just want to jump on the Da Vinci Code bandwagon or they're being a bit too sensitive about their beliefs.

It's not like the book was all that great to begin with, not really all that well written. It's typical mass fiction: extremely easy to read, everything is explained clearly, very fast-paced, pretty trite and cliched dialogue, liberal use of flashbacks during current events (relative to the book) that don't make sense. It wasn't as clever as his earlier work, Angels & Demons, which had much more interesting clues and the villain in this one was much easier to discern. It's strong point is Brown's idea of what the Holy Grail is and how he links together the existing people, items and places to develop that idea. But in the end it's just a story, nothing to be taken so seriously. It does make me want to visit all the places that he mentions in the book though.

On the other side of the spectrum there's Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum which apparently was written for an entirely different crowd. It's like comparing an elementary school book to a PhD dissertation. Reading through this thing was like walking in knee-deep mud. While both books are thrillers, it's extremely evident that Eco writes for a much, MUCH more scholarly audience than I. Either that or he just doesn't give a shit if his readers are puzzled by his writing. He explains things as little as possible, just barely enough to keep the reader moving forward, and often throws in (well known I'm assuming) phrases in foreign languages with no translation. His interpretation of the Holy Grail though isn't as interesting as Brown's but I think Eco was much more focused on secret societies, the people that believe in them, and what makes them tick. It took me what, 5 weeks to get around to finishing this book. The Da Vinci Code took me 4 days (probably 2 if I had read it straight through).

Anyway, if the Holy Grail, Templar Knights, Rosicrusians, and other assorted secret societies are your thing, then these 2 are the books for you. The Da Vinci Code is your summer blockbuster while Foucault's Pendulum is your mentally-stimulating (or crushing) art flick.

Just a tiny batch of pics taking during the preliminary dragonboat races.

Dragonboat Races

Especially if you're innocent. This is rather disturbing on so many levels. What in the world was the guy doing that required 5 shots point-blank to the head? Either the guy was a beast or the officer was amped up like crazy.

from putting this sucker together. This Gundam Fix Figuration 0025 kit was probably the toughest one yet. Especially putting it together as the RX-104FF Penelope configuration. Lots of pieces to exchange and snap off and on. Packing a beam saber, mega particle cannon, vulcan gun, funnel missle rack, beam rifle, shield and Minovsky barrier.

Front

Left

Back

Right

Closeup

Even though I am a little late on this but Palm FINALLY released a software update for the rest of their branded and non-branded Treo 650's. Sprint users had their Treo's updated months ago and it wasn't until the middle of June that Palm made the update available for everyone else.

What's so important about this update you might ask? Mainly it fixes the one giant flaw that's plagued the Treo 650 since it first came out: the crap-ass memory handling and NVFS. Prior to this update, any lil' file that you uploaded would take up 512K of memory, even if it was actually only like 2K. Gargantuan pain in the ass cause the 650 doesn't have that much built-in RAM to begin with. Granted Palm did give out free 128MB SD cards to people in the know but still, much better to actually fix the problem.

So now I have about two and a half times more free space in my internal RAM than before. NICE!!

Unfortunately, the installation process requires a hard reset first which wipes out all your data (which one should have backed up first anyway) but I didn't notice until afterwards that I never had the Memos conduit set up so none of my notes were ever backed up. So I lost a bunch of lil' notes that I used to help remember stuff. Argh!!! But oh well, no use crying over spilt milk.

that I'm not a terrorist! Got flagged down at the 53rd & Lex subway station while heading home today to have my bag checked. Actually, it would've surprised me if they DIDN'T check me cause my computer bag was bursting at the seams, about 6 inches deeper than it normally is cause I had crammed my new Canon Digital Rebel XT box (more about this later ;-) into the bag and was in the process of smuggling it home.

So there was basically 3 police officers hanging around a little to the side of the turnstiles. One (the checker) was standing behind a small table while the other 2 (the herders) stood about equidistant on either side, funneling people to the checker. Above them hung a sign saying that they were doing random bag checks. Of course when I came into view, the herder closest to me immediately said, "Check this guy." Was pretty much a quick and painless process. The checker really went out of his way to be friendly. Just asked that I set my bag down on the table and open it. Upon seeing the camera box, asked that I lift it out so he could see what was under it. And that was it. Less than a minute and the guy was quite cordial all the way through.

They were also checking bags down at the World Trade Center PATH station but they didn't bother stopping me then. Probably cause I slipped past on the extreme right side while the checkers were stationed more towards the middle of the rather expansive middle area between the two turnstile rows. Anyhoo, glad to see that the system works. Sorta. ;-p

design for the new PATH station at the World Trade Center. I'm not sure what it is. Half an eyeball? Some sort of mollusk? The interior looks nice although is that main slit covered by glass? What happens if it rains?