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: