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It’s hard to imagine why people keep using Microsoft products when the alternatives are obviously so much better (except for the poor souls who are locked in to the platform because their preferred software vendors, ahem, Autodesk, don’t know any better). Here’s another reason why Microsoft is really, truly, incredibly evil.

Worst yet, the U.S. government is playing into Microsoft’s hands for something that is clearly a punishment for Microsoft’s own antitrust behaviors. Double standards?

Grace also took the “movie character” test and was determined her personality most resemble to that of Mary Poppins…

What jolly…

One interesting note: When I took Bryan out to run errand this morning, the children’s CD was playing exactly that song! Talk about jolly coincidences.

It’s very clear to me

That a…
Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
The medicine go down-wown
The medicine go down
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
In a most delightful way

UPDATE: Grace wasn’t convinced that she was Poppins. So she did the test AGAIN deliberately choosing certain answers differently….
.
.
.
.
She ended up with Mary Poppins AGAIN.

HAH HAH HAH HAH…

If you ever wondered if a movie plot is ever written about you, or that you think a your story ought to be brought to the silver screen to inspire others, now you have a venue to prove it.

This is a website that matches you with a movie character based on 10 simple questions.

I ended up being Hannibal Lecter…

Yum.

So Safari does suck (a little)… A serious flaw has been discovered.

And I thought I was the only person crashing it like Bush is crashing the U.S. national debt.

I have written about using Firefox and how to solve its memory leak problems. The trick I wrote about by limiting the “history” of previous pages on any given tab has been working magics in reducing the memory sneak-up on Firefox. Ever since I reduced the recorded history, the overall memory usage on Firefox has stayed at around 70MB to 150MB, mostly somewhere in between. But it is slow like a dog despite of me turning off many of the unused extensions.

After having used Firefox fulltime for the past several months, the occasional trip back to Safari makes Firefox feel like public transit, slow and dirty. I have been pondering on going back to Safari, but the fact that there are NO remedies to combat its memory leak issues makes me feel reluctant. Having 10 tabs opened at any given time all the time is not a small feat for just any browser, and Firefox has been able to handle it rather gracefully. If it were Safari, the damn thing would have blown up in 3 days, taking the Finder with it sometimes.

Maybe I will give Camino another shot now that I know how to control memory issues…

Blah…

Just another rant on browsers…

It turns out that 42 is the answer to life and the universe.

An excerpt…

There is an important sequence of numbers called “the moments of the Riemann zeta function.” Although we know abstractly how to define it, mathematicians have had great difficulty explicitly calculating the numbers in the sequence. We have known since the 1920s that the first two numbers are 1 and 2, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that mathematicians conjectured that the third number in the sequence may be 42—a figure greatly significant to those well-versed in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

It would also prove to be significant in confirming the connection between primes and quantum physics. Using the connection, Keating and Snaith not only explained why the answer to life, the universe and the third moment of the Riemann zeta function should be 42, but also provided a formula to predict all the numbers in the sequence. Prior to this breakthrough, the evidence for a connection between quantum physics and the primes was based solely on interesting statistical comparisons. But mathematicians are very suspicious of statistics. We like things to be exact. Keating and Snaith had used physics to make a very precise prediction that left no room for the power of statistics to see patterns where there are none.

via [Slashdot]

I have not done a “Geek”, I mean, truly dorky geeky, entry for weeks. So here it goes…

Apparently Google has been working on a new user interface for its famously simple (read: bland but fast) user interface. For months, I have noticed Grace’s Camino browser always produces a different Google UI. At first I thought that’s one of those perks Camino offers as a browser. But now I know it’s probably some kind of deal struck by the Camino project and Google to test out the new UI.

If you are anxious to try out the new Google UI, Ars Technica has a hack, which I will go over below.

This is the new Google UI I have been seeing on Camino.

This is the new UI after a one-line tweaking on your browser…

Here’s how you will get the new Google UI according to Ars Technica.

1. Go to Google using any browser
2. In the address bar of your browser, copy/paste the following code in ONE LINE with no spaces (this could mean copy/paste 3 separate times):

javascript:alert(document.cookie="PREF=ID=fb7740f
107311e46:TM=1142683332:LM=1142683332:S=fNSw6ljX
TzvL3dWu;path=/;domain=.google.com")

3. Hit enter and click on “OK” on the message that appears.
4. Start searching and enjoy the new UI!

Sometimes I wish there was a Zagat for absolutely everything and for everywhere. Zagat was great for New York when we didn’t know what the hell to eat because there were so many damn choices. If we ate at a different restaurant for each meal, I am sure it’d take Grace and I a long long time to really completely try just 60% of all the restaurants in NYC. Unfortunately, that’s the opposite for the Bay Area (or, at least for the South Bay where absolutely nothing happens). Everything is so far apart from each other here that it’s very hard to discover new “hole in the wall” places. I mean, it’s not like in NYC where you walk by somewhere and go, “WOW, I have walked by this corner of my daily routine a thousand times but never saw this place!”

Luckily, there’s Jason and Terry’s Bay Area Review (or JatBar.com for short) for this activity starving place. I look forward to actually using this site once in a while before Grace and I dare each other to eat at the same places again!

As of today, there are 600 some odd restaurants reviewed and listed on the site. That’s like… one-tenth of a thousandth of restaurants in Brooklyn Heights where we used to live! WOW! Sweet! Choice has become an exciting option again… Or is that an oxymoron?

Aw, shoot… Did I mention I miss that stinkin’ New York City?

Today was Grace’s birthday. Instead of having a formal celebration, Grace and Bryan went over to Nikky’s birthday party instead (I had to stay home to catch up on some freelance work). When they came home, I made some sushi for Grace since she’s been bugging me about making more since my fluke in making it so good last time. But I think I got the rice to sticky today having cooled the rice for a bit too long. Or maybe I just poured the sushi sauce into the rice too early, making the rice soaking in all that sauce…

So maybe last time was really a fluke…

Jasson showed me a pretty freaky link a couple of weeks ago. I promised to post it but never got the time to. So here it is…

ARTNATOMY is a website that combines wonderful and amazingly detailed layers of skeletal, muscular and facial expressions through a system of sophisticated yet simple to use controls. Basically you can make any kind of face and see the underlining muscular structure for that particular expression. Jason thinks it’s great for artists to reference in their drawings or models. I wish I had this when I was studying for my human anatomy exams at SCAD.

Tip: Go to “Level 2″ via the buttons on the top, left hand corner for the advanced expressions I just wrote about.

An expression with the superficial layer.

The same expression with some muscular transparency.

Again, the same image with some muscular transparency plus the skeletal structure.

I know I will probably get angry messages from parents against sleeping with babies, but I don’t care.

Bryan has been sleeping with us since birth. But it’s gotten to a point now where he is basically taking over the bed. Or… more accurately, MY side of the bed.

You see, ever since he was a tiny little slob of meat baby, Grace had him sleep in a certain position that soothed him best. Now at almost 8 months, he continues to look for “the zone” when he sleeps. And “the zone” usually is turning his head (now his whole body) towards me and hold on to my pillow. But as of yesterday, his arms are no longer the only “intruders” to my own “zone”… He has now crossed both of his legs over! So my 1/3 of this dinky Queen size bed has effectively been reduced to 1/4.

I think it’s about time to move him to his own stinking bed…. He can have all the space he wants THERE.

In other news, Bryan also just started to take baby cereal (I know… new pictures will soon follow). It’s very funny to look at his face when he tries new food in his mouth. We never know what to expect from his expressions. Babies are most fun to observe when they start to externalize their experiences as they begin their physical exploration of the world.

Another not-so-recent news, Bryan graduated his first class — baby sign language. I am sure he didn’t learn much (I only see Grace doing all the studying), but a “team achievement” is one of the same. I will be proud of him later when he signs “milk” (or, “stop shaking me” ).

Bryan looks “stoned” like a deer caught in the headlight. He has no idea why someone’s taking a picture of him with a piece of paper which he tried but failed to eat. And no, he’s not a pot-head (yet).

The Chinese media has been heavily covering Mayor of Taipei, Ma Ying-Jeou and his visit to the United States for the past few days. The sheer volume on the coverage of his speeches, people he met, his schedules, and… practically anything and everything about this man, has been unprecedented. If foreshadowing reveals anything of the future, this could signal the newly elected Chairman of KMT will be a serious contender for the 2008 presidential election in Taiwan.

Ever since DPP’s double blow in the past two presidential elections on KMT, Taiwan has been at its most polarizing point between different “ethnic groups” in recent memory. The political atmosphere in Taiwan has reached a point where the Pro-Blue (KMT) population of Taiwan simply can’t communicate with the Pro-Greens (DPP) and vice versa. Whenever Pro-Blue and Pro-Green issues arise among friends and family, you can literally feel the tension in the air.

While George Bush and the Republican Party in the United States are busy covering their lies about the war in Iraq, President Chen and his DPP simply live their lies out in the open with no one daring to prosecute him or members of his party — lies about scandals, money lundarying from public projects, purposely pitting one Chinese ethnic group against another, driving the Taiwanese economy to the ground… etc. I thought I’d never say this, but THANK GOODNESS China has been acting like a true world power in the matter of DPP’s thoughtless push for “formal” Taiwanese independence (yeah, like it will EVER happen). Like an adult irritated with a child’s annoying pranks, China simply yells at the little one to shut him up. The day when it stands up and takes Taiwan for a good spanking, there’s really not much anybody can or will do anything about*.

Now that I have painted a gloomy picture of Taiwan, let’s look at the silverlining… Chairman Ma (not MAO) has a pretty good grasp of world affairs and what they pertain to Taiwan as a whole (I am sure having a Ph.D from Harvar didn’t hurt). He’s not just another frog in a well who sees world affairs narrowly and carelessly. The Pro-Greens don’t like Ma because they think he’s pretentious** and has a track record of doing the “politically right” things. But hey, at least he’s not going to rock the boat and put the lives of the Taiwanese people on jeopardy against an enemy Taiwan simply can’t win fighting.

Having laughed at the Americans for having elected a dumbass president twice, now I have to laugh at my own dumbass people for putting a clown in the presidential seat two times in a row as well. But at least when an ant is run into the ground, nobody will notice, whereas when America is run into the ground, the world might explode (literally)***.

* China is a permeant member of the UN, that rules UN intervention out; US forces are too tied up with N. Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, “war” on terror and other things; Japan and S. Korea just want to watch Taiwan burn; the rest of the world would be too afraid to lose their investments in China to do anything. Sure, they will issue “statements” on how disappointed they are on China’s actions. But what is boils down to is this: there are no true friends between nations, just buiness as usual. In other words, Taiwan will be f*ucked within a week when China spanks.

** He CAN’T be more pretentious than Bush or Chaney!

*** And it has been “exploding” daily in Iraq.