I went to the Deutsches Architektur Museum, German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt. A new show called "secret of the shadow" just started, and it was very interesting. One particularly note for myself, being such a Starwars fan, is that they used this Episode I poster in the exhibit to discuss our perception of shadows.
Sony is at it again. There are now several different NetMD related model of desktop sound system. They are called SoundGates. The basic NetMD is a MD (Mini Disc) recorder/player that has a USB input. So you can record from your PC. Two new models are much more interesting, one is a HD + CD + tunner + amp + mini-speaker system. It will rip CD and stores it on the local hard disk. It also has USB input and optical output so that you can record to a MD recorder. The other one is a CD + tunner + MD + amp + medium speaker system. So you can record from MD or USB to MD. Basically the one without the HD requires a PC to make it really useful. It is the cheaper of the two units of course.
I have seen these advertised in Asia magazine, and in store in Tokyo only.
I have seen these in the States, bu Bose now have audio component systems in a Tokyo audio show room, pushing Bose speakers, of course. What's the most interesting part is that there is a MD player as well. Wonder if the MD unit will be available in the United States? Does this mean that MD will never go away? Personally, while if I get my hand on an iPod I may think about just use that instead of my MD player, MD is just too darn convinient. Such a small player (my new E707) and there is some satisfaction in poping out and poping in a new MD, or flipping through my pile of MDs. Scrolling through a menu is just not the same!
I always liked Richter after seeing Lesende several years ago. Just read an article on him on the NYTimes magazine, probably because MoMA is having a show onhim right now. Only now I realized that Andreas Gursky and Richter like each other's work. Which explain why I like Gursky as well. Many of his photographs are at the Tate Modern in London.
This is nice. After signing into ebay, one of the option is to go to the last item I looked it. More and more sites are very smart about not loosing your sessions after you have been browsing as a guest and then switch into logged in mode.
Yup. I bought an XBox. After visiting Chris in NY and playing Halo, I just have to get one. Full review will follows...
right now it is, give or take a few minutes: 02/02/02 20:02
What does Christmas means to me? It means that I can take some time off, put away the work/biz/mgmt hats for a week or two, and do some catch up on hands on technology and reading.
My eye glasses are 0.4 oz, my watch is 1.4 oz, my phone is 3.5 oz, two potato chips weight just about 0.1 oz.... We have a postage metering machine.
Sat 8th. Finished writing all my Christmas cards. Back to organizing my Music CD. After a long search, I found a reasonable storage system for (large amount of) CDs from Boltz. These stainless steel, very high tech looking, storage shelves do the job, if you like the high tech look.
This was a home work weekend. Since I lost my MP3 harddrive I have to re-rip all my CDs. While at it I thought I would hack up a Python script to get to the Chinese song titles on CDDB. However I discovered that CDDB is no longer free in that sense that even non commercial developers has to obtain a license to use the service !
We were talking about how some programmers get confused with certain technical details and made some seriously invalid assumption. Masa commented: People should be able to distinguish between things that are inherently so, verses things that happened to be so It then occur to us that this applies to everything ! It would be great if everyone has a clear understanding of their world around them. I am still trying to work out the implications. Need a QL Thinker to help me.
P2P at its best? What's the net is all about? A new form of "chain mail" emerging? see DaliWorld
Just discovered that optical mice do not work on glass table. Arggghh.. And, at least at the Frankfurt airport, at the baggage pickup, the conveyor belts are smart. They have sensor to stop the feeder conveyor when there is another bag coming through at the bottom. So one bag will not crash down onto the other. At least that is what it seems to me.
I think each project should have a project reporter that records/film/blog a project's progress, decisions, in real time. Of course there could be hugh legal issue with this.
This is the environmentally friendly, politically correct way to deal with PC crashes.
Bought this at a flea market in Frankfurt last week. It does computation, it has a stylus...
This is a Hollywood buddy cop movie happens to be starring Jackie Chan. This is not a Jackie Chan movie.
The best action scene is the knife and the apple. The best scene is right at the end of the outtakes. Make sure you stay for it. There is really only one classic Jackie action sequence that is worthwhile, I am sure you will recognise it when you see it. No, it is not the bamboo skeleton scene.
While all Jackie fan will be glad that he is still making movie and slowing down to take care of himself, surely he can do better than this one.
A side benefits of this movie is that you get to take a liitle tour around Hong Kong, especially the new airport.
I don't like IDE's. I don't like syntax highlighting in editors -- i.e. use different colors for different syntatic elements in a programming source file. Use green for keywords, brown for operators, etc. It is like having verbs, nouns and other element types in English high lighted when you do word processing [ That feature is available in MS Word XP 2002 version ].
Someone that uses syntax highlighting commented to me that he switches it off sometimes because the color contract is bad for his eyes.
Two days on the Cape, no work, no email, no phone calls. Water, fresh air, grass, sleep. Much needed rest for body and mind (Thanks: Dave, Anne). I remember in one of my MBA classes, a guest speaker told us that she always reserved Sunday evenings to be her personal time, no matter what happens. She time is spent getting to bed by 7pm, watch TV and rest. I was closed to practicing that a few times but never succeeded. Maybe it is time to start.
