Just finished watching two very different movies on DVD. Both are not very well publicized when they came out, but are well worth watching. One is set in London looking at lifes of illegal immigrants, with a murder mystery.. The other one is set in California looking lifes of Asian teenagers, with a murder...
ACDSee 6.0.3 Review
Great news -- ACDSee fixed their 6.0 version with a free upgrade. I mentioned before about how bad 6.0 was, and I gave up and downgraded back to the 5.0 version after purchasing the upgrade. Finally they fixed the slow start up and it works great now. I hvae the powerpack, which include the PhotoSlate and PhotoCanvas software. The PhotoCanvas editing software is surprisingly useful for simple photo processing. I use it for resizing and cropping, which is what I do 80% of the time to clean up my digital pictures. The photoSlate software let you print photo calendars and cards, good for Mothers Day and Birthdays.
One tip -- during viewing or editing, the four numeric pad keys: + , - , * , / let you change the zoom level quickly.
Highs
- The built in screen saver (a picture viewer, of course) is very nice. It is a little better than the Windows XP default screen saver. It allows you to show pictures from any directory.
Problems with the Software
- The image basket feature seems useful, but I cannot use it to add pictures to the screen saver. Poor integration.
Opera's Add Page Here
I tend to not use bookmarks in browser because I switch between machine and browsers a lot. I keep my bookmark online on my own site. However there are times a quick bookmark saved is useful. Opera is my browser of choice. Their bookmark interface is, well, brilliant: To add a bookmark to a sub folder in your set of bookmarks, you navigate to the folder, and at the top of that folder display is a Add page here... item. If you click on that your current page is added to that folder. Brilliant ! So they are mixing data with action in the same window, but it makes perfect sense.
Guinevere
This is a surprised find on Netflix. You should put this on the must view list for any maturing teenager. I won't give the entire movie away, but the following quote from the movie is one of the best momemts from the movie.
Jean Smart plays the mother of Harper, who started a relationship with Connie a much older man:
mother to Connie: For starters, I don't really think that your young girl predilection has much to do... with their firm, young flesh.
I mean, when someone like you is out with someone like Harper; you must invite all kinds of comparison and ridicule, which can't be much fun... for either of you.
Right, honey? (look towards daughter)
So then, what is... a man of, uh, your age.. doing with my 21 year old daughter?
It'd be easy enough to say you're afraid of mature women, but that's so glib.
Afraid of what, exactly? So I kept thinking.
And then it hit me.
I know exactly what she has that I haven't got.
Awe.
That's it, isn't it? I mean, no real woman -- no woman of experience would ever stand in front of you with awe in her eyes....
and say, "Wow, Look at that man, Look at that bohemian wedding photographer... with holes in his jeans. Gosh, isn't he something?"
No.
I mean, it takes a naive girl for that. It takes Harper for that.
(long pause, comment matter-of-fact like) So what do you think? Am I right?
Connie: You're are some woman, Deborah. Mother: Mrs. Sloane, I'm Mrs. Sloane.
Hybrid Synergy Drive
My other car is in the body shop to replace its front bumper. Casualty of parking downtown. For a rental, Hertz offered me a chance to drive the Toyota Prius. Why not? This is a quick review of this car. It drives very nicely. I cannot tell the difference under normal driving, city and highway. I have not put padal to the metal on this thing yet, but for normal driving it is as nice as the GS. From what I can gather by watching the adictive energy display, the car will use the electric motor in low speed driving. That means parking, searching for parking space in a parking lot, etc. Save gas. During start up acceleration, it seems to start with the electric motor as well, then the gas engine kicks in. On normal driving the engine charges the batteries. When slowing down, esp when the brakes are applied, energy is fed back (recharging) to the batteries.
One thing about driving this thing -- the Energy LCD display is adictive to watch. Driving is now a little like a video game. Dangerous.
The 'gear/shifting' is different in this car then a "normal" car. I think they make it a little unnecessarily different. Maybe they want the owners to feel special. But it does prevent anyone unfamiliar with this car to drive it. I think it is a bad idea.
Organizer Software
With my new Sony Clie TH55 PDA, I need to re-open the issue of finding a good piece of organizer software for the desktop and the palmtop. The top choices are Life Balance and ShadowPlan. Unfortunately neither are perfect. I have been playing with Life Balance desktop for awhile. Their desktop software is much better than the desktop version of ShadowPlan.
Currently I am focusing on making Shadow Plan work. Here are my work in progress:
- I have to decide to whether to link or not to link items in the SP (ShadowPlan) files to the native ToDo's, DateBook, etc in the Clie. Problem is that SP does not have a good calendar view of items. So I am now optionally linking items to the Sony Organizer DateBook application when I want something to show up on the Date Book view. I am not sure this is workable yet. Strangely SP offers a default automatic linking to the ToDo app, but not to the DateBook app. I guess because the ToDo app does not have a time portion for the target date, just like SP. Where as DateBook have time part.
Tonicware Messenger Bag
I live with my laptop. I carry it everywhere. Everywhere meaning home, car, office, planes, trains, asia, europe, all over the world. I put all my essential stuff in a bag with my laptop -- that becomes my life support system. I am a big fan of the Trager USA's cross country laptop backpack. You can buy it from Ebags. However that bag is not perfect, and my second one just broke. So I decided to try something different. A messanger style bag. I always carry the backpack using one strap only anyway. So why not try the messanger bag style.
These are the things that I carry with me each day:
laptop
paper, and folders, up to A4 size
electronics, adaptors, cords, camera, MD player, MDs, small boxy items that need to be protected
personal supplies -- cough drops, aspirin, tissues, glasses cleaners, some of these I store in a clear plastic pencil box
travel paperwork, tickets, passports
disposible reading materials
My requirements are:
space for laptop, padded for laptop protection
back outside pocket for newspaper/magazine, while waiting for the plane
larger front zip pocket for air tickets and other stuff that I can get to but remain secure
strong but light material, water resistant
lots of inside pockets
wide strap
good handle
Medium sized
After much research I found that there are no bags that fits my need perfectly. There are a few that come close. I decided to try the Clyde from Tonicware. I bought it from Design Object, a web only store that sells well designed product. (My last purchase from them was a moyapak).
Good points about the Clyde:
Bag is really well made. Material is strong but soft. Just the right mix.
The size is good, it is on the larger side, but does not look too big. i.e. I think it can carries more than it looks.
It has just the right number of compartments. Too many and things get lost. Too few and you cannot organize things.
I fit these in the clyde as follows:
laptop -- laptop area in main compartment
paper, and folders, up to A4 size, rest of the main compartment
electronics -- inside main zip pocket
personal supplies -- some in the inside main zip pocket (pencil case)
other loose personal supplies -- inside small zip pocket
travel paperwork -- outside front zip pocket
disposible reading materials -- outside back pocket
Size Matters
Last Saturday I had to bring my shuttle PC to the office, with all the accessories, to build it. The extra room in the clyde made it easy. I just threw all the extra cords and cables, booklets and CDROMs into the main compartment. I would not have been able to fit them in the Trager. Then on Sunday I scheduled a phone conference in the middle of my weekly table tennis practice. So I took my sports stuff out of my table tennis bag, threw them into the Clyde, and carried basically my work stuff plus my sports gear all in one bag into the gym. Normally I have three bags -- work bag (Trager), sports bag (a small bag from LL Bean), and my Tai Chi bag (a very old backpack). Now I can see that I can fit one of the other bags' content into the messanger bag if I need to. This may matter if I had to carry this stuff while walking or taking the bus/subway. Since I have been driving most of the time it was less of an issue to have two bags at any one time with me.
Blogging from Starbucks in Frankfurt
It works ! I am sitting in a Starbucks in Frankfurt, logged onto my American t-mobile wifi account. Since I have a monthly wifi add-on plan with t-mobile, I get unlimited wifi access in Europe as well. Global access is here. Hurrah !!For more info, see my original attempt earlier this month.
Infernal Affairs
I watched Infernal Affairs One and Two back to back for a second time. These films are wonderful, International level films. Score one (or two) for Hong Kong Cinema. But first thing first. The song that they play to audition the expensive hi-fi equipment is an old song by Cai Qin or Tsai Chin. The title of the song is something like "bei yi wang de shi guang", or "the forgotten times". You can find it on some CD's from Yes Asia.com. She is a well known singer by audiophile. If you don't know Cantonese or cannot read Chinese, the title of the song may not make sense to you. You thought it was a typo, should have been "Internal Affairs" since the movie is set in the police force etc. Actually the title is a clever but probably never understood word play. The actual title is better translated to be "eternal hell". The title reference buddhist text's description of hell, where there is no concept of time. The characters in the movie are stuck in eternal hell. Hell -- infernal... get it? Hence infernal affairs.
Another note on language. The dialog is full of double speak. You have to have some understanding of Cantonese (the actual spoken language in Hong Kong) to fully appreciate it. If you listen to it in Mandarin, the words are there but the dubbing lose the actor's vocal styles. If you read the English subtitles, much of the fine points are lost.
The movie is very Eastern.
... it's getting late, more to come...
IBM Thinkpad X31 Review
Out of box experience
The system arrives in a small double boxed carton. It was light enough that it could have been just the media slice. Openning it turn out to be a good surprise -- it is the laptop itself. The box came with a top package that contains the battery, the AC adaptor, and some documentation. The laptop is below that package, held by a pair of foam inserts. First inpression is that the thinkpad is really light. Much lighter than my T21 (26478EU) which I carry arround almost everyday.
to read the rest of the review, please go to the permanent page here.
New Year Organizing
A whole list of web stores that will help you organize, from NYTimes:
Civility
Just finished reading and taking notes from The Ice palace that Melted Away, restoring civility and other lost virtues to everyday life, by Bill Stumpf. He is better known as the designer of the Aeron chair. You can read my notes here.
Fountain Pen
I bought a new fountain pen yesterday. I spend a lot of my time listening, thinking, reading, typing, and writing. Writing instrument is one of the very important human-machine interfaces I use. For the last few years I found a very good pen, a cheap gel pen, the Sarasa made by Zebra. I used to bring these back from Tokyo. Recently Staples started selling them.
However, I keep hearing that a good fountain pen writes better then even a gel pen. The trick is to find the right one. After a chance discussion with a pen shop owner, and subsequently doing some research on the web, I found the perfect (for the time being) pen for myself. The trick is that I needed a pen with a fine and firm nib. This pen is the Namiki (Pilot) vanishing Point. On top of a very smooth feel, the retractable point also score big on the technie/geekiness scale.
Rhapsody -- listen.com
I just signed up for the Rhapsody music streaming service. This is adictive. The collection of music is adaquate. The more esoteric stuff is not on there. I hope they will add more artists soon. However it is great for browsing and trying out new CD's. For $10 a month or $25 for three months, seems like a fun thing to try.
Misc Finds
A few misc finds on the web:
- Scott eVest -- a jacket with 40+ pockets and wire network for your headphones
- Visionaire publishing -- limited edition designer books
- Architectural Patterns re Christopher Alexander's The Timeless Way of Building.
- Mirra personal/home file server. I do this myself, but for the less technically inclined, is this the solution? Imagine hacking into these machines...
- Mobile Phone Games available in Japanese. Make the American mobile phones look acient.
New Cool Boutique Hotel in Toronto
Try the SoHo Metropolitan Hotel in Toronto. It is brand new, first guest arrived April 1st 2003.
lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life
This second movie is not as good as the first one. Most movie reviewers seems to think that this movie is better. It is not. Don't get me wrong. Both are good movies. If you don't have the first one on DVD, you should get it now. The extra materials on that disk is well worth the money. The beginning sequence and the bungee ballet sequence in the first movie are great. Compare those to this second in the series, the beginning is lame and slow. Does not grip your attention from the start. The motor cycle scene seems contrived. The ending is too simple.
So, what is good? The location shots in Hong Kong is good (at least for me). The mandarin dialog is funny. Angelina Jolie's Mandarin (if it is not dubbed) is pretty good. Gerard Butler's is pretty bad. The arial sequence and the end of the water sequence are innovative (I am not going to give the movie away).
So go see it, but don't get your expectation too high!
Bye Bye Audi
My Audi A4Q was my first luxury car. Upgraded from my Civic. Thought I finally deserved something a bit nicer. That was about six years ago. The Quattro (all wheel drive) works wonder in the snowy weather. German Engineering. The car was a better deal then the BMW's and also a better balance between a sport car and a comfortable car. The BMW's fit and finish and creature comfort was not as good as the Audi's. Although they do drive much better. They are the altimate driving machines. So, what's the problem? How about ball bearings front and back, brake pad noise, and other minor but annoying problems? Top off with the fact that my dealer, while nice people, were always having problem scheduling repairs. They have to wait for a part, they are very busy, always take forever to get anything repaired.
The final blow came Summer time, a few weeks ago. I realized tha my AC is not working anymore. Took it in. They said the condenser is broken. It is a $100 part. However it is behind the dash board and would take about $2000 to fix it because of the labor required. While I was comtemplated to pay for the repair, since I am spoil now, how can I live without AC, they told me that they would not be able to schedule the repair until end of August. That is the end of Summer. What were they thinking?
Turned out I was not alone on this. At least one person I know that has a same model different model year Audi has similar horrible experience. Two other person have the same AC/condenser problem and expense with European cars. So one week of intense test drives, BMW's, Mercedes, and I found a great deal on a Lexus GS300. Bye Bye Audi. No more German cars for a while.
Lexus GS300 Review
Well, I did it. Gave up on the 6 years old 63K miles Audi and switched to a Lexus. It was a difficult decision, but I am glad. The Audi was just too unreliable after the warranty period. Do you think the car is designed that way? This is the full story. The Lexus is, well, near perfect. So instead of listing what's right with it, these are the little things that I do not like about it, yet:
Bad points
- The pockets in the doors are too small for anything useful.
- Parking brake is the foot activated kind. I don't like that.
- The center console storage is a bit strange. A two level arm rest storage area is cool, but I need some open space storage for my phone, and parking cards, without having to open the arm rest.
- The cover to the moonroof feels cheap. The Audi one is solid plastic.
- Engine bay is not as neat as the Audi -- probably mean easier to get to the components. The audi is very well covered.
Good points
What's good? Some of this is just 2003 technology, but good never the less:
- Auto headlights -- come on when it is dark. Never have to worry about it again.
- Auto dim rear view mirror and side mirrors.
- glove box mount CD changer, easy to get to.
- e-shift -- shift buttons on the steering wheel, now I can pretend to be a F1 driver.
- dual zone AC -- passenger can be comfortable warm while I blast the AC.
- dual memory driver seat -- If the valet moves the seat position I can recall it back with the touch of a button.
- The steering column moves away on key off, make it easier to get into/out of the driver seat, not that I really need that since I am so flexible.
- twitchy engine and accelerator (drive by wire) -- fun !
- very well design trunk -- remote open via key, easy lift open, handle on inside to close trunk, no need to get hand dirty or scratch the outside trying to close the trunk lid.
Some unusual stuff
- When you enable the childproof lock, it is not just for the backseat, but all three doors and windows are locked. So if kids are in the back and spouse is on the passanger seat, the spouse cannot get out either.
- childproof lock again -- when it is enabled, the little green lights on the other three windows button turn off, telling you that they are locked. Nice touch.
- On the glove box CD changer, there is a storage space on the right of the changer for you to put the CD cassettes in. However it is too tall for just one cassette, but too short for two cassettes.
Tips on using the remote door entry
- Press the lock button once and it will lock the doors, if the headlight is on auto it will stay on for 20-30 seconds.
- Press the lock button twice will turn off the auto headlights immeidately
- Press the unlock button twice (quickly) and it will unlock all the doors. Otherwise just the driver side door will unlock
Lexus Care
On a snowy New England Sunday night I had a chance of using their road side assistance service. I found out I had a flat tire Sunday evening, with the car parked in my garage. I called the 1.800 number at 7 pm. The phone rep was very nice and told me the ETA of the service truck is 1 hour. They call me after 45 minutes and the truck is waiting at the gate. It is a AAA truck. I guess they sub contract the service out to the same people. The guy was very nice and swapped the tire with the full size spare (I did not realized I had a full sized spare). The phone rep called back later to check that everything was done right, and I got a survey in the mail a few weeks later for me to rate the service.
Linksys Wireless Ethernet Bridge Review
I broke down and bought a Linksys Wireless Ethernet Bridge. My office is at the wrong end of the Loft and I want to connect all my work computers to the cable modem. Now all my work machines share a local 100mb hub at the office end, and the hub is wirelessly connected to the wireless router connected to the cable modem.
The bridge comes with the following:
- ethernet cable
- small power brick -- look at the picture, it is the vertical kind that does not block other sockets at the powerstrip. Very nice
- setup CD (see later)
- the unit itself
- the antenna separately in the documentation bag
It is quite obvious how to wire the thing up so I got everything plugged in under 1 minute. One nice touch -- next to the ethernet port is a switch to set the port to either cross over or direct. You will use the cross over if you can connecting it to another ethernet port directly (for example, to an X-Box).
Thinking that the unit does not need any setup, I fired up the browser on the connected PC, and nothing happens. A quick look at the documentation implies that I need to configure the device. I pop the setup CD into my system, and the setup program runs -- note: The setup program runs off the CD, no software installation onto my PC. I love this thing already.
I can either use DHCP or give the bridge a static IP. I went with the static IP because then I can easily access it's web interface. I am still a little unclear as to why setup is necessary. My other SMC access point is transparent. It just bridge the ethernet with the wireless net electrically, so to speak. But the setup was painless, and I am up and running in less then 2 minutes.
As a side note, what do you think of my mobile computing platform? Two shuttle PC's, one tower PC, LCD screen, printer, on an anthrocart with a UPS that will power this whole thing for a few minutes, while connected to the net via the wireless ethernet bridge. Pretty nice don't you think? These last two pictures show that I have added a top shelf and now my printer is sitting on top, even tidier then before. The anthrocarts are not cheap, but they are very well built and can hold a lot of equipment. I used to put a pair of Sun E250's on them. That's about 400 pounds of servers.
Summary
Pros:
- No install softwar setup
- web control panel
- Small size, two axis rotatable antenna
- small AC brick that does not take up extra room
Cons:
- Price -- $100 for a wireless bridge, when you can buy a wireless router for $80.
Conclusion: Recommended.