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.