Far East

Company Of Soldiers

Available at pbs.org free. Watched the first three (of six) parts, and was befuddled by the whole offensive language thing; mostly they said shit, or goddammit, and when a soldier was hit by shrapnel the XO said the f-word. It's a war zone, and the 'moralists' are worried about language? Just don't get it. Is this some Masonic/Knights Templar/Neocon plot to control all speech? Sheesh. As far as the documentary, the soldiers did seem like pretty good guys, put in an impossible situation. And this was a fairly calm area, that of South Baghdad. Only a tiny view into the Iraq war, and even there it looked hopeless. Hate to see what Anbar province (Ramadi, Fallujah, et al.), where I lost a cousin in the Marines, looks like. And now we're going after Iran? Talk about hubris. Let's finish up in Iraq first, mkay?

Broadcast Flag

As a regular reader of slashdot and boingboing, I see that the hated broadcast flag comes into effect this July. Apart from the fact that this won't affect me directly, I have a hard time getting too worked up about it. Not being able to record your favorite tv show or movie and then burn it to DVD without the Studio's permission, or the MPAA, or whomever is not a sign that corporations are trying to own us; they already do. Just embed the broadcast flag in our synapses at birth and set it to wipe our memories clean if we see something not studio-approved. Get it over with, already. And to all the people who have to PVR everything, how about watching less tv, and picking up a book or something. If there's a really great series (a rarity these days) that I want to own, I just go out and buy the DVD/collection. Slightly better production values than some pan and scan from someplace in Thailand that somebody downloaded off the net. Yah, it's free, but it's also unwatchable. Taiwan seems to be going in a different direction in that respect; as most cable boxes have a video-out jack on the back of them, you don't need to go to the internet. Just hook up DV cam to the box, and hit record. DV cam to iDVD, and voila! Six Feet Under, season two. Too bad I'm too lazy to go for this scam, and usually head down to the local DVD-mart to buy it.

Half-Baked

One of the things I miss most about living in the States is the ability to bake. You rarely see ovens here, and if you do happen to find one, it's a really tiny affair. It's great to do stir-fry, very convenient and all, but there's nothing like making a thin crust pizza, or some homemade Chex mix. I'm eating some Kraft brand Chex mix as I right this post, and it tastes like those little silicon keep fresh bags they warn you not to eat. And the pizza here is either Domino's or Pizza Hut, in other words, crap. Now people can argue whether it's New York or Chicago-style pizza that's the best, but back in the day I could whip up some thin crust pizza that had most friends and relatives agreeing it was close to. or better than what local Chicago-area pizzerias had on offer. And being able to choose your own toppings, and not getting the generic 'seafood pizza', or 'five-meat stroke-inducing pizza' is a plus. Many Taiwanese are shocked (truly shocked) when I tell them that you can choose your own toppings at real pizza places. My fave has to be spinach, garlic, and black olive on whole wheat thin crust. As it's a holiday weekend (don't feel like cooking), I'm stuck with ordering the stroke inducer.

Cool Widget

The newest widget I've added to my desktop is Butler, a much more robust version of the late, lamented Drag Thing. Actually, Drag Thing is still around, but when they wanted another $15 for an upgrade from 4.0 to 5.0, it went into the bin. Butler puts a search field in your menu bar, lets you browse through entire volumes (with infinite recursion), move files, and do so much more. And it's free. I plan on donating, of course; it's just nice not to get that nasty pop-up window every time you launch it.

Hustled

Stephen Chow (周星馳) is perhaps the greatest living actor on the planet. Not a bad director or screenwriter, either. His film Kung Fu Hustle (功夫）is one the best films I've even seen. He spent three or four years making it, and it truly shows. I'm a huge fan of his, mostly from his comedic work; he's sometimes referred to as the 'Chinese Jim Carrey', but that's something of a misnomer. He's so much more talented than Mr. Carrey, whose only serious role to date was in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. This film may become as influential to today's Chinese as Bruce Lee's JinWuMen was to his generation. If you see only one foreign film this year, make it this one.

Whew!

One step down, now for the next. Finally got my third party base station to sync with my (existing) airport-card enabled laptop. This is officially my first wireless post. Of course I'm still sitting next to the base station, haven't tried to test the range, speed, or whatnot, but still a victory of sorts. Turns out you have to use your browser to set it up, and be able to read Mandarin (of course). The next step is to get my old desktop to recognise the third party wireless card in it, which it has signally failed to do so far. If I could get airport installed on it, then I could pull the browser trick, totally by-passing Apple's preference pane, but in order to install airport software, it has to sense a card installed, and it won't even recognize that there is a (now functioning) base station, 'cos it don't have the 'Apple id'. And of course the vendor is windows only software; not only that, but it's all in a foreign language! Oy Gevalt. I may have to buy a slower, original 802.11a(or b?) 'airport' card, just to get the crummy software installed, then swap in my newer, faster 802.11g PCI card and do it that way. Mighty pricey software install.

This Is Getting Ridiculous

Just checked my gmail account, and am up to 50 invites! What do I do with all those? I've handed out half a dozen so far, but 50? That's insane.

Chain Gang

As in 'back on the'. You never really know how tired you are until you get back to doing what it is was you were doing before you had the break. Well, I must have been exhausted. Another two weeks of vacation would have suited me just fine. Of course, time (and cram school managers) wait for no man, so nose, meet grindstone.

Real Fast Food

You get home late from work, and the last thing you want to do is to cook. So you pick up some crap from the local eatery and go to it. After a while, you feel run down, thus enforcing the whole system of being too tired to cook and eating a take-out. In fact it's not all that fast, and cooking doesn't take that much time. I got caught up in that awful loop, and was much the worse for the wear. I whipped something fresh up at home today, and kept an eye on the clock, to see how much extra time I actually spent doing it, instead of eating a take-out. The result: no real time difference. And the benefits of eating freshly cooked veggies stir-fried in a light oil are immeasurable. No heavy feeling in the pit of your gut, making you want to take a nap as soon as you've finished. And so much better tasting. In terms of time, from putting the rice on, cleaning the veggies, and cooking, it took a grand total of around 12 minutes. Granted, the rice took longer than that to cook, but I was off doing something else while the rice cooker was doing its thing. And I can heat up the leftovers for another couple of meals, so no time involved there, maybe a couple of minutes is all.