168 Japanese Food

Today we had a meeting with people of our major investing venture capital and two other partner companies. After the meeting, my boss took my colleague and me to a Japanese restaurant which is located in the first floor of the same building. He's been expecting to go there again since last night. Why? Because they have an all-you-can-eat program for just 168 RMB each, and you can order from over a hundred items on their menu. Every dish was prepared as if you ordered regularly in a Japanese restaurant, which means nothing was compromised because you chose the all-you-can-eat. Besides, drinks were also included in the program, even alcoholic drinks. We had grilled fish, beef steaks, lamb chops, sashimi, sake, and even uni and foie gras! What can you expect more for $23 dollars and no added tax or service fee?
The restaurant is called Shi Shan (Stone Mountain), located at #726 Yan An West Road, Shanghai, China.

Access Blogspot in China

I just had a new post in my blog but I could not read it, because I'm in China. Fortunately there's a web site called pkblogs.com which can redirect the contents on blogspot so that they can be viewed from China, India and Pakistan. Basically just put the name of blog (such as $NAME$.blogspot.com) behind the address of pkblogs to make it http://www.pkblogs.com/$NAME$ and you're done. So, here's my blog for China readers http://www.pkblogs.com/rwcutter. There's only one problem: I don'e have any reader in China because none of them can read this post in the first place, ha!

Arrive at Zhang Jiang, Shanghai

I'm on a business trip to Shanghai -first time with my new company and last time for the year 2007. It's been over an year since my last business trip to China. This time my destination is the Zhang Jiang Tech Park in Pudong, and I finally had a chance to take the Maglev train (or magnetically levitated train) which is kinda expensive for me unless someone else is paying. It was not as smooth as I expected, but not bumping , either. The feeling was just like on a regular train -except the top speed reached over 400 km/h in a short ride for less than 15 minutes.

Merry Christmas

First Tooth

Yesterday my son showed me his first tooth. He's been chewing his toys hard for a while, and sometimes he seems feeling some pain in the mouth. I could feel some sort of sharp edge under his gums, but nothing visible until yesterday. There is a tiny white edge in the lower gum now which is visible if looking closely. I tried to take a photo but was not very successful. Maybe later when the tooth grows bigger and more obvious, I'll be able to capture it with my camera.

Pissed Off!!

Really pissed off. Tonight Allie received a phone call about Ellen's shit again. Ellen is still nowhere to be found, and those gangsters kept harassing her families. I grabbed Allie's phone and shouted at the guy on the other end, and he got angry, too. In the end, he threatened Allie to take care of it in three days, just like what he said last time.

I'm really angry about the whole shit because there's nothing we can do about it to stop them from harassing us. We don't know how far will they go, and we can only wait and see. I wish they find Ellen soon and do whatever they want with her to teach her a lesson. Just leave us alone.

Flashback - Car Crashed

Found this old picture in my web hard disk.

It was a rainy summer night on July 14th 2005, and I was driving home on the freeway from my office. I was very tired, and the traffic jam made made it worse. The average speed was less than 5 km/h. Suddenly, I felt a severe impact that my glasses flew away from my face. I didn't realized what happened until maybe ten seconds later. I hit the car in front of me because I fell asleep. My car was completely crashed in the accident. Luckily there was an exit in 200 meters because my car could not move anymore when I got off the exit.

What made it even more dramatic was that my cell phone was out of battery. I shake it to sqeeze some power out of the battery to call for help. My cousin finally found me one hour later, and we ended up in a restaurant to recharge my phone and had free food on some kind of banquet. Anyway, it was a weird long story.

I paid around $20,000 NT for the car hit by me, and my own car was trashed because the cost to repair it (with cheapest recycled parts) was much more than the money I bought it. This picture reminds me how lucky I was. Drive safely.

44th Golden Horse Award

The 44th Golden Horse Award was like a welcome-home party for Ang Lee. Lust|Caution was the biggest winner as expected. It was quite emotional to be there to listen to what he said when Lee received the award for outstanding Taiwanese filmmaker of the year.

Despite the glamor seen on TV, the ceremony was very poorly planned or executed in many ways. Most of the staff in charge of guiding the audience were part-time students who apparently did not received clear instructions. The ticket said the seats on the 2nd floor were open for everyone and asked people to arrive early for better seats. However, it turned out that some of the seats were registered. As the ceremony was to begin and the TV live broadcasting was counting down, those who found their registered seats taken called security guys to dispel people who arrived two hours ago to get their seats back. Of course there were lots of arguments everywhere, and I think the nominees were confused why there were suddenly so many security guys inside and so many people shouting.

Not just the audience lost their way, even the guests to deliver the awards were lost on stage. Some ran to the center of the stage to find out that they were supposed to be on the left corner. Some winners went directly back to their seats after they received their award while they were supposed to go to backstage for interviews.

Despite all the flaws, it was still a great experience to participate in such event. I think it was also a great experience for Josh to be nominated and to be officially introduced to and recognized by the industry, although it would be much better if he won.

Great Movie

Last night I finally saw Temptation. I managed to left my office early and go to theater for the only public event of this film. Set aside the fact that I know the director, as a pure movie viewer, I like this film a lot.
The story itself was pretty common. Two young lovers were set apart on the way to seek their dreams, and when they met again unexpectedly, how they tried to communicate without saying each other?
Colorful scenes and creative dishes, accompanied by the music composed by award-winning musician George, the film successfully told a small story in a tempting way. It's the first time I saw Josh's work on a big screen, and it was awesome!
After the movie, there was a small event for the director and two actors to meet the audience. Josh seemed very nervous on stage. I wonder what it would be like if he stands on the stage of the Golden Horse Award this Saturday?

End of a Week

It's been the hell of a week. Lots of work, and turbulence at home. I only had time to read about ten minutes in the entire week. On the other hand, it made me feel very productive and meaningful. By the way, the past week was also the beginning of my fourth month in this company.

I want to say hi to a new reader of my blogs, an old friend who's now 7577 miles away. Nothing compares to good friends, even when they are not around.

More About Ellen

As I said in previous post, Allie's older sister Ellen is now hiding somewhere. She called her mother last Friday asking for more money, but her mother told her to come out to solve these crap first. What's making me really upset is that, Ellen told those who lent her money that she borrowed for Allie and gave them Allie's phone number. Now, the gansters call Allie ask threaten her to pay. I'm worried about Allie's safety when she travels between her office and home.

Ellen Ran Away

This evening my mother-in-law got a phone call saying that her oldest daughter, Ellen, might have committed suicide because no one could find her. Everyone was very worried and prepared to face the worst while hoping for the best. Even the police were notified and went over to investigate. Fortunately, later on Allie got a call from Ellen and proved that she's still alive.

What I know now is that Ellen took off and is now hiding somewhere in southern Taiwan. She borrowed lots of money from "underground banks", which means she loaned from illegal companies supported by gangs. We all knew that it's going to happen someday, because Ellen always had problem controlling her expenses. she would came home and ask her mother, brothers and sisters to lend her money and threatened to kill herself if they didn't help her After she got the money, she would get back to her life as if nothing happened--until the next time she needs money again. Over the years, she has "borrowed" millions of dollars from her family, along with other debts from banks and friends which added up to tens of millions.

We always argue whether to keep "lending" her money, because the hold she dug seemed bigger and bigger each time. Every time her mother always insist to help her out, despite I doubt that it's rather an indulgence and would prohibit her from taking responsibility of her own actions. Finally, it happened. Her entire family is now gathering together, trying to help the oldest but most irresponsible child. I wonder how will this end. Not tragically, I hope.

Going to Golden Horse Award Ceremony

Josh asked me if we want to go to the Golden Horse Ceremony. He is of course going to the ceremony because he's nominated this year. To tell the truth, Allie and I have not go to movie theaters for quite some time, especially since she got pregnant last year. The most I did to support Taiwan movies was to buy original DVDs of Taiwan movies, so basically we have not seen any of the film on the list yet and it's embarrassing for me to join the ceremony this way. But, who cares? If my friend Josh going to his first major film award as a nominee, and I'm going with him. Now I'm worrying all my formal suits are too small because I gained *a little* weight since I got married...

Leopard Running

My Mac Mini decided to freeze while starting up. I tried every method described by the troubleshooting guide but none of them worked. So, the last choice was to reinstall my system. I thought since the OS was to be reinstalled, it didn't make sense to install OS X 10.4.2 on the DVD which came with my computer because there's 10.5 already.

With the help of Rex, Sonia and Ranhan, I finally put my mini back to work now-- on Leopard! I guess I won't be using all the new features due to hardware limitations, but it does make me feel great to think that I "upgraded" my system rather than reinstalled it.

New CF -wePresent

My company released a new commercial for our wireless projection server. Three of the actors in the film are actually my colleagues. If your company is located in Taiwan, register for a free trial. Find more details at http://www.wepresent.com.tw

Kimochi Warui

Allie and I had a really big fight last night. Lack of sleep and different viewpoints of taking care of the baby led to numerous argues already, and the frequency and intensity seemed to be sky-rocketing. You can blame it on me, of course, for my bad temper. However, I really don't think that raising a baby should be as complicated or precise as making a space station. I don't believe Allie or me or most people in the world was raised by the same restrict rules, especially those below poverty line. People have too much tools or choices for nursing nowadays, and most of them are just fake needs created and promoted by companies making them. It's all my bad. I should have just do what people do without asking why. If you ask why we didn't have such rules and choices but still grew up fine, you're NOT thinking for the BEST of the baby, which makes you a lousy parent and should be exterminated. That's me. All my fault.

Congratulation to Josh

One of my best friends is a movie director. His latest film "Temptation" is nominated in the Best Short Film category for the 44th Golden Horse Award. Personally I'm hoping that he will become as huge as Ang Lee, and then I can make a living by selling his signed posters. Ha! Seriously, congratulations to Josh! Wish you win your first major film award on the 8th of December.

Six Month Old

My son is now six months old. Very energetic, and is trying everything he can imagine to tell us he wants to have "normal" food like us instead of his baby milk.

BubbleShare

I tried another photo sharing site called BubbleShare. The biggest difference from Flickr is that this site is album-oriented ather than user-oriented. Anyone can create a photo album with no limitation and no registration required. When an album is created, you'll receive an email with the link so that you can share it with your friends. Of course, you can also post it to your blogs. This site is more useful for people who wants to share photos with others from time to time, but not frequent enough to pay for Pro service or to learn how to use all those complicated features on Flickr.

Qing Jing, the Tranquil Fields

Last weekend Allie and I joined my company travel to Qing Jing Veteran Farm. Last time I went there was over ten years ago. It was a very beautiful place to visit, although there's some dispute over the developments and constructions of resorts and villas in recent years.

RealPlayer Problem

I was troubled by RealPlayer for about a week. For no reason (or it seemed this way to me), my Mac Mini had no sound output when playing media files with RealPlayer. I've been using it frequently if not daily, so it was a real puzzle to me why all of a sudden this problem occurred. I tried reset settings, reinstall RealPlayer, searching preferences and settings, comparing RealPlayer with VLC, and of course searched Real Networks and Apple. All my efforts were in vain. I could not find any reason for the problem nor a solution to fix it. I could not remember when was the last time I felt so frustrated on my computer. I was giving up on it and was even thinking of reinstalling the whole system.

As a last attempt, I searched the web again by typing "no sound in RealPlayer OS X". Guess what I found? A solution with explanation here!! It was fixed right away after I followed the instructions in the document. Thank God! I wonder why it never occurred to me to use these words...

Baby Sad When Mommy Away

My wife Allie accompanied her mother to China for five days. To our surprise, my son seemed knowing his mom was to be out of town for more than one or two days. He cried loudly and sadly at the hour when he's supposed to be in mommy's arms, not even my mother who he spent most of the time with could comfort him. A few weeks ago my wife had a business trip and was not home for one night, but he did not react so dramatically.

MSN Video Supports Klingon Language

This one is funny. I saw that last time but didn't pay much attention. On the language selection page of MSN Video, there's one called tlhIngan Hol (Qo'noS) [Klingon], listed in the Intergalactic region. If you're a Star Trek fan, you know what it is. Select this language/region and see what you get!

I would be as amused but less surprised if this appears on any site other than a Microsoft family site. So it seems that people in the evil MS Empire are not so evil at all --or these guys are spies?

MLB Post-Season, No TiVo

Today I brought the TiVo to my office because we're having a demonstration for proposal this Friday. Actually I could've keep the TiVo at home for the post-season games, were it not that my colleague who tested the other TiVo had a traffic accident on his way to work last Friday. Since he got some bruises and scratches and is not as agile as usual, I have to bring mine. Habits, easy to acquire but hard to get rid of. I need a TiVo!

Papaya Salad

Papaya Salad, originally uploaded by rwcutter.

I made this papaya salad last Sunday. Yes, it's yummy.

The Swarm

Recently finished a great novel by Frank Schatzing called The Swarm: A Novel. The scientific facts were perfectly wrapped in an exciting adventurous story in which some top researchers tried to solve the mystery and save the world before it's too late. Sound like cliché, right? Not after you read the first chapter. I was so into the story that I read it until three or four o'clock everyday, and almost couldn't get up for work the next day. It's better than Prey or State of Fear if you have read them. Here is the Traditional Chinese version.

SlideFlickr

Found a site which generates a slide show for photos on Flickr with specified user, set, group, tag, etc. When you move the mouse into the photo, an "i" icon appears and let you turn on the info display while viewing. I created one for my own Menu set as below:

Unbelievable Ben Underwood

Best Video Of The Year - For more amazing video clips, click here

I found this one on Metacafe. Take a look at this video and you won't believe it. Ben is totally blind since the year of two, but look at him! He can do anything better than me.

TiVo Time!

Because TiVo is interested in working with my company, I got a TiVo last Friday for testing and evaluation purposes. We demonstrated our new product conceptual prototype to the co-founder of TiVo (now CEO & President of TGC Inc.) last week, when a typhoon stuck the island and most people got an day off. He was very excited about it and sent us two test units two days later. As a result, I spent most of my time on TiVo during the holidays (when I was not cooking or washing disks).

It was not very easy for an ordinary user to set up the whole system, since it requires knowledge not only for audio/video equipments but also network environments. No wonder they hire people to do it for you when you buy one. When the painful part is completed, the device itself and the accompanying service is quite easy to use. Suddenly I found that there's so much to watch in my cable system, but I can't find enough time to watch the programs after I recorded them.

Grandfather Meets Yoshi

My father came to my home for the first time since my son was born. By the way, my son is going to be 5 months old this Friday. It's not easy for my father to come because he suffered from poor eyes which got worse drastically after he got Dengue Fever some time ago. I knew that he can't see well, but this time I found that he can't even see his own footsteps in bright daylight. He seems enjoying time with his grandson very much and asked me to take photos for him and my son. He arrived Saturday evening and returned to Kaohsiung at noon today. It was kinda sentimental because he might not be able to travel along next time.

rainbow

rainbow
Originally uploaded by rwcutter

On Sunday morning, a beautiful rainbow showed up in the clear sunny sky of Taipei. It was not raining before that, so it was a surprise to me. The rainbow lasted for only a few minutes later, and about 15 minutes later a smaller one appear closer to the horizon.

Apollo Fake?

This is hot recently. You can access NASA photos from the past moon-landing missions on Google now, as part of the campaign to encourage private moon projects sponsored by Google. As a result, this picture got people's attention because it reminds us the long-time debate whether the United States of America cheated on the Space Race against the Russians?

Here is the famous picture that everyone has seen before. This photo shows a flag of USA on the Moon, from the mission of Apollo 11 which was the first manned mission to land on the Moon, or was it?

One of the photos shows the pole of the flag was not connected in the middle. In other words, it was not in one piece. Could it be that Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were best actors of the year?

Google Earth Flight Simulator

Google Earth has an Easter Egg in the new version 4.2 to let you play flight simulator. I'm a big airplane fan (although not too comfortable flying) and was really fond of Flight Simulator games. Now that there's a free one here!

Playing with HDR

Tried manipulating different exposure photos in Photomatix to create HDR image. I took my original photos with bracketing setting quickly this morning at home, and drop them into the software to process. With afew trial-and-error attempts, I was able to produce acceptable results. Since I do not have any photo processing software such as Photoshop, I used a freeware called VCW VicMan's Photo Editor to do post processing like noise reduction. The one on top is normally exposed, and the bottom one is the HDR image. Not bad for a quick experiment. Ah, I need a good camera...

Peace on Earth

Found this great photo on Flickr. Great light and tone, and above all, great message. Somebody should send George Bush this picture. Oh, and of course Bin Laden and most political leaders all over the world.

Weitai and Monica

My cousin Weitai returned to Taiwan from his 3-month-stay in Japan working for UMC, and came to my home last Sunday with his mother. He was coming when my son was born, but it was two or three days before he took off to work in Japan so he couldn't make it. I haven't seen him for a long time.

Two days earlier, my sister Monica brought two pairs of socks she bought for my son. The socks are designed in the way that they look like tiny shoes when worn. Aren't they lovely?

Long Time No See! Ha!

Wrong guess. It not about an old friend. It's a number I have not seen on my scale for a long time. I was almost 90 kg about a year ago, then the number began to drop gradually. This morning it reads 80 on the scale -actually if flashed to 79 but then decided to stop at 80 :D. Thanks to my diet plan and Wii Sports.

New ID Received

This Friday I received my ID in the new company, which means to me that I'm now officially a member of this team. One minor reason of my leaving last company was that I always felt I was an outsider. Part of the reason was that atmosphere or culture of the company that people tend to do their own business, not spending much time chatting or making friends. The other reason was that I did not received my ID card for about a month. Now in this new place, it feels like back to schools with classmates because most people in my team are from NCTU, and their English names are more like their BBS IDs. When I say classmates I do not mean that they are not professional; in fact, they are very self-disciplined and focused on team goals. It surely feels good to work with such a team.

Wang 17 Wins

It fells great to watch him win. He's recognized as the ace in the rotation with at least 15 wins in the two consecutive complete seasons, and the 44-17 record in the first 76 starts is the third in NYY history. Who's number 1 and 2? David Cone and Ron Guildry, both famous Cy Young winners.

Ridiculous Media

Watch this remix video to see how the news channels "produce" news in a typhoon. Can't believe these so-called "reporters" or "professional news channels", looks more like lousy actors. Kill me please, or take these junk back!

Joost

What's Joost, Quicktime (9.79 MB)

I joined Joost beta test program to check out this new thing from the founders of Skype and Kazaa. A P2P-style video watching experience sounds cool to me. To learn more, check out the official site. Unfortunately I can't get pass the firewall in my office, and my Mac back home with broadband connection is not Intel-based which otherwise would allow me to run Joost on OS X. So what's left? I have invitations for you! Ha!

4-Month-Old CEO

My son turned four months old yesterday. On this day, I found an interesting company in the same building as my new office. The name of this company is exactly the same as my son's name. How about that?!

Spider Wins!

Click to see this video on soapbox

A spider (Nephila clavata?) decided to stay on my balcony. We didn't know where it came from -probably ride with the wind from nearby some hill. It just appear with a tiny web one day. As time goes by, the web grows both in size and complexity. Very soon it has become a very complicated and strong structure hanging 30 meters above ground.

And then here comes the biggest challenge -Typhoon Sepat. With heavy showers and strong winds at 50 mph, the category 5 storm did cause some damage. The spider tightly hung to its net and tried to fix or reinforce it whenever possible. In the end, the spider won.

Kim DiVine

(Her live clip on YouTube)

I found a young female singer and songwriter when I was browsing YouTube. Kim DiVine is her name. Her music is fresh and lively, and her voice is just great. You've got to listen to this!

Sepat Typhoon

This weekend my son experienced his first typhoon. Typhoon Sepat was category 5, the third typhoon to hit Taiwan directly. Fortunately it couldn't resist the deadly attraction of the rivers on the east coast, so when it hit the island, it was rapidly weakened by the 10,000-feet-high Central Mountains.

BlogLive認證碼bc75-3358462bb52b

Joined a new service called BlogLive. The idea seems interesting, but with my experience losing interest quickly on CyWorld, let's see how this new service suits me.

Video of My Son

Finally put a video of my son on web. I tried uploading to YouTube several times, but it always stuck at 6% and never finished. So I switched to Wretch, it worked! For more videos to come, go to my wretch video page.

Hello to Brenda's Son

Brenda delivered a healthy boy last Wednesday, the very first Father's Day for her husband. The expected day was last Monday, and Brenda went to the hospital one day after that to seek help from the doctor when the boy was still reluctant to come out. With some help of medicine, the baby was born; 3750g and 55cm. Congratulations to the new parents, and to the boy, welcome to the world.

RSS Mixer

I found a cool stuff to manage multiple RSS subscriptions -RSS Mixer. I tried it with my three sites to produce this single RSS feed for all my stuff, and here's the resulting link: http://www.rssmixer.com/everthing_rwcutter.rss. The resulting mix can be saved for web pages, iPhone and widgets. If you're subscribing RSS feeds or you need a simple RSS address for your friends, try it.

Cool Sony Bravia Ad

(wait while the video is loading)
Like the fireworks of Taipei 101? Watch this! A Sony Bravia ad using real paints and realbuildings for a spectacular version of water dance and fireworks.

Resigned

Today I resigned from my current company. The main reason is that I'm going to another company where I can get a better package. Actually my current job is not too bad - 20 minutes from home, moderately paid, nice colleagues, leaving office on time - not much to complain about. However, I joined this company at a wrong time. It seems that I can do more at another place. So, in two weeks I'll start over again in another place.

My previous boss who interviewed with me said he has lots of plans for me, and promises me for promotion and raise in a few more weeks, but I guess it's a bit late since I've made up my mind. My new boss is a very nice guy, but he's too NCTU-style for me (a negative word in my school). He's kind of unsure whether to ask me to stay because we haven't begun to know each other yet.

I'm not complaining, because people here are really busy working on plans for the impact from the merger of our biggest customer. If I were not leaving, I'll be traveling to USA early September to knock on the door of HP, the buyer in the merger. Now my last job is to help prepare the materials they'll need for the trip, and hope that things will go well.

Father's Day

It's my first and my father's 24th Father's Day. There was nothing in particular for me, but my father might be having his worst one ever. He's been having unknown fever for one week, and went to a nearby clinic twice. The diagnosis was common cold, and his blood test for Dengue Fever came out negative. Yesterday he got a call from the health authority that he's got Dengue Fever. Luckily he seems to be getting better already.

As for my sister Monica, it was not a day she would've expected, either. She ordered a pizza delivered to my father to celebrate the day. My father, however, doesn't like pizza at all and perhaps in a bad mood with the fever, gave the pizza to some neighbor and called Monica never to do it again. Happy Father's Day to you, too.

Foto-Mosaik

Trying and interesting utility called foto-mosaik, and freeware from a German. This is something to try when you have a large pool of photos to play with. As suggested by its name, this utility analyzes your photo pool and picks best matches to be used as tiles to make a mosaic of any photo you choose. I used a relatively small pool with about 1000 photos in my test, and the result turned out pretty good.

(Click on the image for bigger size.)