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.)

Happy Baby

Last night he was somehow very happy and was laughing for quite awhile. Allie took photos with her cell phone to capture the moment. See his photos at my Flickr album.

My Son Going Public

My son is on newspaper, sort of.

I got a request to share his photo from NowPublic, an online news agency that uses original, eye-witness photos, story accounts and videos as materials for its news source.

Here's the article and the page where his photo is seen.

Okay, it's not really about him. He's just one of the dozens babies drinking from bottles. But what gets me excited is the connectivity in the world of Web 2.0. I started my blog and photo album more like a personal log of my life, without the intention of being noticed or getting popular. As time goes by, I'm more comfortable as part of the community and is now enjoying as a member of the club.

By the way, I don't know why eastern Europeans are more attracted to my style. One of my photos was linked by a Czech, and this time the editor requesting my photo is from Hungary.

Weight Record

In the first three months, my son gained 3875 g, or 42 g per day in average. That's not quite a number to show off, but I can feel that he's getting heavier compared to the first months. Now he spends more time awake and playing, responds to voices and smiles more often. I know that all parents thinks their children are lovely even though others may disagree, but he is really adorable.