Jason Taking the Leap

So Jason finally did it. He finally got a Mac. And it’s not just “any” Mac… It’s an 8-core Mac Pro (as in 8 processors)! For someone who always tried to quarrel with me on the age-old issue of “Mac v.s. PC”, he certainly took a big leap of faith in a completely different direction.

In college, I always got calls from Windows/PC friends for support (we had no choice; the only 3D apps worth our time were all on Windows/Unix); but very rarely from Mac people. And then slowly, over the years, people started getting Macs. And the weird thing happened — Once I help them get over the initial “culture shock” of the way the Mac OS works, I rarely get any support calls from friends/families anymore… EVER! Sweet.

But I still miss the “support calls” sometimes… They also served as “what’s up” calls as we got busier with our professional lives.

Birthday Boy

I finally got a chance to process just shy of 300 images from Bryan’s birthday party last Saturday at Michelle’s. The boy has turned TWO! We’ve come a long way since my first post on Bryan’s big arrival.

Birthday Boy

Apple’s Aperture really rocks in optimizing my entire work flow!
Camera -> Aperture -> Post Production -> RAW Conversion -> Flickr/iPhoto

Bloating iPhoto Library

Digital photography has really changed everything for avid and armature photographers alike. We keep all of our digital photos on Grace’s Mac in iPhoto as the master library for storing and managing images. But today I noticed the photo library has really grown HUGE over the 4 years that I’ve owned digital cameras. We now have over 9000 images!!

Over 9000 images in iPhoto

This number is going to go up quite a bit now that I have access to a DSLR camera and continue to pack the memory card. Just for you geeks out there, 9000 images roughly translate to about 26GB in data storage. Amazingly, Grace’s Mac only shows signs of slow down when using certain iPhoto features. It’s quite a feat for a seven-year-old computer that still runs the latest Mac OSX without any hint of hiccups. But I look forward to a day when we can get her a newer machine so that she can just zip through those images like with the latest iPhoto ’08.

A Beautiful Mind

My friend Linda told me about this story. But it still amazes me to have seen a recording of it.

This is further proof of a theory I read about that stated human brain actually never ever forgets anything. But instead, when we “forget” something, our brain simply loses that connection to access that specific part of the memory that allows the brain to retrieve it to the consciousness. The brain also helps to keep “normal” individuals sane by purposely blocking out most of the information that it deems unimportant so our consciousness can actually stay focused on tasks that matter (i.e. running away from man-eating tigers). A recent study on Alzheimer’s disease has also shed some light to similar effect (heard it on NPR).

Note: The amazing guy profiled in the story is Stephen Wiltshire.

Unscientific Salary Comparison Charts

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time advancing my web development skills on various technologies such as Web 2.0 standards, Unobtrusive Javascripting, and object-oriented PHP programming. But all that self-education left me wondering how much I’d actually be worth in the job market today if I were to be eligible for a full time job knowing what I know today. So I did a little searching. While I am not sure how scientific the results are, I am pretty happy with what I saw (granted this is unscientific as hell; and they only take into account the title of a position).

Source [indeed.com]

(Note: I don’t really know Java that well. But the rest of the stuff in the titles I am pretty good at. Now guess which salary range I fall under? ;))

Who Are the Idiots Running the US Department of Homeland Security?

I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to get the college to which I was accepted for their doctoral program to issue me an I-20 (student visa). But it seems like the Department of Homeland Security has some rules in place making the whole process even more painful than it really has to be.

One of the stupid rules (really, an idiotic one) is that a student ABSOLUTELY MUST have his/her permanent address from his/her country of origin in order to have the student visa issued. Now, on the surface that sounds pretty fair. But for us International nomads, it highlights how the current (Bush/Cheney) administration are really just a bunch of monkeys children running the show… Think about this scenario: A family was originally from Taiwan but later immigrated to Thailand, making Bangkok its permanent home. I was told I can’t use an address in Thailand as a permanent address because it’s not my country of origin. How idiotic is that? Doesn’t someone get paid to think about scenarios like that in the great Department of Homeland Security? Whoever came up with this rule probably has never traveled outside of the United States or met someone who’s an international student!

Sure, maybe this rule is to better protect the US “homeland security” in some way. But I just fail to see how it can even be relevant in anyway for security purposes. First of all, that supposedly “permanent address” can be fake. Why? Because where the student visa is mailed to can be different from the permanent address. I know because I’d requested the college to send it to my address in California. Secondly, let’s assume providing a valid permanent address in someone’s country of original somehow does enhance the security in anyway, there’s no way any of the agencies under Homeland Security or immigration related departments has the resources to check for EVERY SINGLE address provided. I mean, seriously, how do they know?! Do they have the home addresses of all known terrorists in the world in a database somewhere to check against? Do those terrorists even go home to those addresses? Even if that’s the case, does anyone think they’d be dumb enough to use those addresses to apply to a US school with? Com’on… Let’s be practical. Someone needs to start using their brains in the Bush/Cheney government.

But then again, seeing how they’ve done pretty much everything without thinking about alternative scenarios in the past 7 years, I don’t know why I am so surprised and upset about this kind of idiotic decision. The lesson I take away from this ordeal is, it’s easier to be illegal. No wonder 12 million of them are doing it.