Props for the Family

This has been well deserved for a while, but I want to give props to William Lemke for all his hard work in film making in the last couple years. You guys need to buy his DVDs when they hit the shelves. He not only makes good DVDs, he films well, has cool ideas and knows his subjects, so you know his content will be real.

I also want to give props to Josh Sidell in Cancer Rising. Their music is really good and has been playing on KEXP for a while now. Buy their music!. (It's only $11, don't drink coffee for a week and you will have more than enough money and I guarantee the tired feeling will go away once you start listening).

MS XBox Release

Here are some photos taken on the Microsoft campus during the week they released the new XBox 360. Check the cool green water. If I had not known I would have thought they had a wicked algae problem.

bBoy

I had to make an artifact (image) with some software that I wrote for my computer vision class. Unfortunately I did not have enough time to do what I really wanted because of time, but I am still happy with what I did. See for yourself.

If the image is too choppy, then just download it and watch it on your own computer.

This animated gif was created from a popping sequence from Will's DVD Dansk Stil (not available quite yet, but get it when it is). He was kind enough to give me some frame sequences, which I then opened and manipulated with the software I wrote to make masks of Kim popping. Once I was done with that I used a little scripting magic to change the colors of the mask (to resemble everyones favorite mp3 player advertisements) and blur them a slight bit.

This is Hilarious!

I could not stop laughing when I watched these videos introducing Windows Vista.

Introducing Vista 1
Introducing Vista 2
Introducing Vista 3

I knew I had seen something like this before. What will they come up with next, fast user switching? Wait, wait, maybe they will make a music store or a video search. Oh wait, sorry they already did that ... just like Google.

Even though I laugh it is great to see these developments. It seems like it has been a long time coming to get some nice changes to a widely used operating system. It will make using a computer fun for people who don't normally use computers for anything other work. It will also be nice for features that have been in OS X for a long time now to be in Windows. I don't think this will hurt the sale of Macs, it will probably just show Windows users what Mac users have been talking about. Lastly, I think it will now push Apple to make some more developments to their OS to keep them ahead of the pack.

Oh yeah, my one feature request for Windows is to make it as easy as a Mac to type in other languages. I don't want to have to install all sorts of language packs. I don't want to have to install extra software for MS Office. I also want it to work with all pieces of software written for that operating system. I don't want to live and work in such a English centric domain.

Thank you Ars Technica

Ars Technicas new Intel processer Mac review shows the Barnyard poster in the image for Videos. Check it out!

朋友们，你好！我要跟你们玩儿在一起。

As a person interested in China I tend to read most articles about China I come across. Usually I will find them on CNN, BBC and other news sites, but I was surprised to find an article on slashdot regarding China. And it was not one regarding Chinese/American companies mergers or restrictions on free speech on the internet, but this time it was about Wow (World of Warcraft). This is a MMORPG that my brother enjoys playing quite often.

Every so often my brother or one of his friends will ask me how to say something in Chinese or how to translate something said to them by a Chinese player. By the way, I think this is really cool. First, I get to use some Chinese and it is nice to see these international gaming communities growing. What I didn't expect was the response of non-Chinese players to Chinese players playing on non-Chinese servers because of gold farming. Slashdot linked to a short article about this today. You can also read people's comments on the issue as well.

In other (older) Chinese news, Google has stake in China's most popular search engine www.baidu.com, a site known for its mp3 search capability.

That is about it for now. For more technical stuff, check out my codespace.

Here we go again ...

With the end of Christmas vacation comes the beginning of winter quarter. I will be taking some more CSE classes along with a geography class this quarter, see schedule. I am stoked about the 12:30 start times as well as never having to go to a building that is not near Drumheller fountain.

My break was relaxing and pretty uneventful. I spent my time in Seattle, at one point Sandra and I were thinking about going to Hong Kong, but we decided not to. We may go to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos next Christmas. You will have to stay tuned for updates on that.

Christmas day was spent at home with Sandra and Eric. I think we watched 2 or 3 movies before making dinner. The day did not have much of a holiday feel to it, but it was nice because I didn't get to spend last Christmas with Sandra, although I still had a nice time in the Forbidden City.

New Years was one of the more exciting than anything over break. Sandra and I started the day at her house. It was nice to see her family again. Hopefully I can get over there again sometime soon. In the evening we ended up going to Jun's condo on Capitol Hill since it overlooks the Space Needle. Needless to say, the fireworks were not impressive (Also, the space is not a hotel). Afterwards we had some more to drink and then watched some movies. We also said Shengri Kuaile to each other before we left.

So, now that I am 3 days into the new year I haven't gotten off to a good start with my resolutions. I want to wake up earlier since I woke up on some of my vacation days in the afternoon. I also want to do Yoga more, which I still haven't done since the new year started. I also haven't rode my bike yet either. I am pretty much batting zero here. I guess I should take Steven's outlook and do things on whims, without planning. I guess that means if I do yoga once a week, then it will be because I am spontaneous and not lazy. Thanks Steven!

On another good note. Jun gave me a great mix / pirated music cd from China. It contains the cover of Superstar by Skye Sweetnam. This is one of Taili's favorite songs. You can listen to it below, Thanks to mp3.baidu.com, China's Google (with MP3 search).