Life is a paradox...
Ends are beginnings themselves....and vice versa....
Events are effects of causes and are causes themselves...
So...don't take anything serious...
Stepping back is not necessary a defeat....
Marching ahead is not equal to an advancement....
I've not blog for a while cuz I've been busy with lots of stuff since my last blog. Works are getting hectic a bit and family as usual demands time. Anyway, I was still able to squeeze time to see this movie. Yes, it is a bit late, but it is worthy seeing.
Actually, I bought my wife and my 4 years old son to this movie and my son seems to enjoy this one much more than Happy Feet 2. However, my wife just thought this movie is so so. I asked her why, she said this movie is not as good as Toy Story! Oh, dear! how could she compares this one to the classic!? Anyway, going back to this movie....
Comparing to Shrek series, this movie is relatively straight forward. It doesn't have much sarcastic humor or plenty of references to other kiddy stories. Basically, the whole movies has 3 main characters: Puss, Kitty Softpaws, and HumptyDumpty (the Egg). The human characters are kinda forgettable. It does have some funny moments here and there, and the actions are very good. However, the story is just a bit..... weak. It would be a much better movie if it can further strengthen the love between Puss and Imelda - his adopted mom, his days in the orphanage, and all that. Having said that, the relationship between Kitty and Puss, and the friendship/betrayal between Puss and the Egg are well written. To my surprise, I really don't have much to say about this movie. I just feel this movie is decent, worth-seeing, but not great....
Just got this pair of headphone via DHL over the weekend. Still trying to 'warm them up' by more usage. Comparing to my existing in-ear Ultimate Ear Mi 200vi, so far I found the Bose one is more comfortable wearing it. However, I'm not sure if I should try to larger or smaller plastic tip to give me better fitting, the downside is that I think the filtering is not that good versus the UE one. Thus, I need to turn up the volume a bit more on the go. Anyway, I hope this one is a good buy for the longer run, since the purchase is more an impulse rather than a calculated one. Cuz, I don't usually buy this kind of stuff unless the existing one is broken, and my UE is working fine so far. Anyway, my previous testing at Bose store was a good experience and sales on Apple Store doesn't come often, that just drive me to make this purchase out of the blue....
The catch for me is that I lately listen to podcast much more. However, this Bose purchase somehow drives me to listen to music more as a good headset should be used to listen to music of different genres. Anyway, I hope this piece of purhcase would give me more audio enjoyment for times to come.....
I’ve not been an active radio listener for many years, particularly after I discover podcast about 5 years ago when I first bought my iPod Classic. Many years ago, when TV first became popular, it was said that TV would kill radio. Of course, that didn’t happen.
For me, podcast basically replace what 95% what radio can offer. I know there are still many people listening to radio, old habit lives. However, I think that with the popularity of internet and smartphones, the traditional way of media consumption is being changed which actually applies to both radio and TV.The change is permanent and there is no turning back. That’s why I’m very susceptible of some announcements in the last few years about some rich folks investing in digital audio broadcast, additional TV channels, etc. Those are lateral development of traditional media. The quality of sound would be better and there would be more choices in terms of content. Those things are fine. However, I hope their media development plans would consider the factor that I wanna talk about here: ‘real-time broadcast’ vs. ‘on-demand’ content. If they don’t, they better going back to do some brain-storming and go back to their drawing board.
Traditional media dictates what is being broadcast at what time. I don’t care you watch the shows on old CRT TV or new OLED screen TV or oniPad/smartphones, the channels are different, but what you see is the ‘live’ stuff that the media company is broadcasting. That’s fine for important live events, such as breaking news, sport games, stock market programs, etc., i.e. anything that’s time critical. However, for the rest of stuff that’s not time critical, I don’t think the new generation of viewers and those, including me, riding on the tech enhancement train, would still be willing to abide the broadcasting companies’ fixed schedule to access those non-time critical programs. In other words, we all want ‘on-demand’ contents; we want to watch what we want when we want it. Such concept has actually been well-known for decades. Just think about LD, CD, DVD, video tapes, etc, all these are recorded media for our consumption at our convenience. Now, things are just being changed to digital form without any physical media. Namely, that would be files for download or via live streaming. That’s what podcast and video/audio archive can offer.
Since my data plan for my iPhone is not unlimited, and there are still spots in the city that connection may not be good, I still like to use Wi-Fi to download files that I wanna listen beforehand and enjoy them at the time that I want. Also, harddisk is not expensive; I still like keeping my personal archive of stuff that I really like for my future access. I would say that 95% of my time with my iPhone with earpiece on is for listening podcast. Actually, I’m quite surprise about that as I always consider myself a music lover. I do have tons of music stored at home as well as in my iPhone, but podcast becomes my favorite pastime currently over music.
My podcasts library includes a few different genres: news, news critics, tech news, paranormal stuffs, comedy, talk shows, etc. I usually listen to those time critical one, i.e. news-related podcast first, then move on to the rest. Also, I prefer to listen to them on my iPhone rather than using iTunes at home. Cuz, I find the X2 feature (i.e. playing content at double speed) surprisingly useful for podcast consumption. Some people would worry that it may sound funny or the words would be said too fast to be heard clearly. Indeed, that’s not true at all. X2 is not X4, the voice of speakers are totally listenable without any issue. The best part is that I can finish listening the podcast in half the time that I suppose to spend. For instance, for a program of 90 minutes long, after skipping about 10 minutes of commercials by sliding the program bar and using X2, I can finish the whole program in about 40 minutes. That’s very efficient. I still have a backlog of programs pending to be consumed on my iPhone, also, the continuous finding of new programs and new episodes of existing favor programs keep my backlog growing day by day, that’s why they eclipsed my music listening time in recent months.
Anyway, going back the on-demand nature of audio/video archive, I think what the traditional media companies have to do for sure in order to stay relevant in these days and future would be:
Making sure you have an archive of your old programs if you don’t have one. Better be in iTunes Store or else.
Making sure you have an app in iTunes and Android Marketplace to access your programs. Cuz, I don’t think your content would be widely distributed if they can only be access via some specific standalone purpose device, e.g. TV, satellite radio, digital radio, etc. They are doomed to fail in terms of cost and hassle.
Be interactive with your audiences by using Facebook, chatroom and forum.
Designing your programs in a way that fit the new way of consumption. E.g. truncate them in tranches for easier digestion, more intact content on episode basis, etc.
As this new form of media content consumption trend is here to stay and it is very likely to replace the old format, I think media company better sit tight and prepare if they still wanna be in the game in coming years.
The following are by no mean all that I wanna say about this topic. I'm sure I will have reprise of that in future. But for now, here we go. Sons, I hope you can pick up something here that would benefit you somehow.
Don’t expect return when we are able to help someone.
Don’t forget the kindness that we receive from the one who helped us.
Just because we are able to do certain thing doesn’t mean we are defaulted and be responsible to do that thing.
We should keep an opened mind to learn whenever we can.
Knowledge is only one of few things that can’t be taken away from us.
The world doesn’t owe us anything. The world will still function with or without us. So, don’t exaggerate our importance to the rest.
Just because we can do something, doesn’t mean that we should do it.
Purely good or evil people are very rare in our society. Most of the people are no different from us. It is our tendency to be with people behaving nicely. So, be nice to people if we want to make friends.
We can’t please everybody, particularly if we know a lot of people. We should be true to ourselves, try not to do things that we will regret later. So, if we can do things that please ourselves as well as those close to us, most of the time would be good enough.
Lying is a difficult act. You need to have very good memory and logical sense. Sweet white lie once in a while is fine. But, being an honest person is more honorable and admirable than being a skillful liar. Rather than continuing telling new lies to cover your previous lies, it is better to try harder to get things right in the first place.
Once a person is found out to be a liar, it is extremely difficult for him/her to be trusted by others. One of the foundation of personal reputation is creditability, we don’t make friend with a person that we don’t trust.
The most admired persons throughout history are those that did great things to others, either through passing knowledge or inventions.
Don’t be fool by a person’s appearance. A person with beautiful attractive appearance could be result of plastic surgeries, makeup, or lucky combination of genes from his/her parents. There is no doubt that appearance would be helpful in social activities or opening to various opportunities. However, there is always other ways that would work as well. The most important thing is that most of those beautiful people in the world are control by someone who are not physically attractive at all. So, don’t lose hope for being less attractive.
Personality takes time to be constructed. It is easy to set goal to tell ourselves to be an XXX person, but it would take a time and effort to achieve that.
These are the two new ‘toys’ in my household in the past month. I got the camera after chatting with my colleague at work who has a NEX-5 himself. After just talking for about a day, I made the decision of getting that camera in the following 2 days. Originally, I didn’t have any intention to buy a new camera, cuz my Canon has been working fine for my household. However, being a very attentive dad myself, I’ve been playing with my younger son everyday and see him growing up in front of my eyes. As he gets older, he began to express himself more and looks really cute as he loves to smile. I didn’t wanna miss the good moments of his development. Also, thinking back in the days with my older son, the best pics of him were actually filmed by a friend of mine who used a DSLR. Thus, I wanna to improve the quality of bb pics and also to get a new toy myself. I hopped into a store and got the camera. I was a bit desuaded by the sales that the Sony camera was made in Thailand, in contrast to another popular one, the Panasonic GF3 which was made in Japan. However, I further spoke to my colleague and tried the GF3 myself. I finally settled with the Sony one. GF3 is nice, but it is a bit too ‘plastic’, no wonder I found out afterwards that that camera is actually marketed towards girls. Anyway, I’ve been taken my new camera with my sons few times. The quality of the pictures is indeed much better. I’m not that big a camera person myself, but I would still hope I can find time to play with this toy and able to really use more of its functions, so as not to waste the money that I spent on this purchase (US$900 or HK$6,990). The good thing is that it is a kit set with 2 lens, an extra battery, cleaning set, and a bag. So, all I did was getting a filter to protect the lens. That’s all. It is not cheap, but with the quality, function and all that being taken into consideration, it was a good buy.
iPhone 4S is actually belonged to my wife. I’m still fine with my 3GS. As my wife felt that her 3G is too slow and can’t view the viewcams at home clear and fast enough. We went to her telecom service provider to get a 16GB white 4S last week. There’s no surprise for this phone as I’ve known about what I need and interested in this phone for months. However, the really cool thing for me is to play Siri first hand. It is really a cool feature, as I’ve believed all along, we are only scratching the surface of this killer feature at this stage. I’m sure we will see much more with this feature with more languages being supported and SDK being released to developers in the coming years. The only shortcoming of Siri is the natural shortcoming of spoken words itself. Namely, it strives and dies with your language/spoken skills, and whether you want to say certain things out loud or not. I don’t know how others view it. Sometimes, we do wanna keep our words private. For example, when I’m in an elevator with strangers, I don’t wanna use Siri to call someone by yelling the person’s name. There are things that I just don’t wanna say out loud in public. Anyway, I still quite enjoy Siri and think this function is here to stay. It will not replace text input, but just as a nice complimentary function or option for us to interact with tech gadgets.
Well, that’s about it. Oh…just one more thing, I’ve order a pair of Bose earpiece on Apple Store. Can’t wait to get a hand on them, will review that in future for sure.
I read the following article and like the content a lot. Just wanna share with anyone can read Chinese. If you can't, please feel free to Google translate it. Though it may not be 100% correct, I think you will get the points more or less.
I don't think it's because I'm getting old or what, I've grown to appreciate old music while I'm still open to listening to new stuff. Cuz, the contrast of the new versus the old is a way to deepen my appreciation of how the old affects the new. Also, music is like wine, the good old stuffs shows their staying power by the test of time. The following is by no a mean a top 10 in any order or anything, I would just say they are easily many people's and my favorites as well. They were tasted good back then, they are tasted good now, and I'm pretty sure they will still be tasted good for years/decades to come, as long as there is still music!
Frank Sinatra - My Way I didn't listen to 'the Big Blue Eyes' until I was told by a female friend of mine more than a decade ago that, if you wanna have a romantic evening with a female guest, you can do that with a bottle of wine, candle light setting, and Frank Sinatra's music in the background. Then, I dig into a beat about this legendary singer, I got to say that, she is right!
Barbra Streisand - The Way We Were I'm not a fan of her, but you gotta admit that this song is very good. I think I heard this song long times ago when I was really young, but didn't really get that in my head till Leslie Cheung sang that in his farewell concert back in 1989. Since then, I've linked this song with the concept of growing up and time passes.
Dusty Springfield - Look of Love There are many version of this song. I learn this song from Diana Khrall. However, I've been seeing Dusty Springfield's name popping up here and there in some all time favorite list. After I listen to Dusty's version, I gotta say that I like that antique kind of sound quality in this song that those more polished one with modern recording technology. Just like old wine.
Louis Armstrong - What a wonderful world
This song is just timeless! When I was really young, I always thought good singers should have a clear, relatively high-pitched voice, like those 3 Tenors. However, since I opened my ears more, I listen to more kind of music, that changed my mind. Louis Armstrong's voice is old and rough, but man, how powerful and warm it is. This song is a prime example of how a great voice capture your mind with every words. I always think this song is a 'song of hope'. It is a very uplifting song to tell us that our problem is nothing, things will take care of themselves. Look, the world is beautiful, we just gotta look around.
Judy Garland - Over The Rainbow This song, similar to the 'What a wonderful world' above, has been a favorite in singing contest. I didn't care too much about the original movie. But the original version of the song by Judy Garland is another story. I also regard this song as another 'song of hope', but this one has a bit more child's hymn kinda feel to it. Anyway, I love this song, so does my 4 years old son.
Nat King Cole – Unforgettable I first got to know this song was already the hi-tech synthesized duet version of Nat King Cole and his daughter Natalie Cole. It was a nice duet in augmented reality. But, after digging in Youtube, I like the solo version by Nat much more. He is by no mean handsome, but with the great smile when he sang this song, how can you not like him and melted by his voice with lyrics?
Eagles - Hotel California This song is one of the newest in this list. There are so many stories about this songs that I'm not gonna cite them here. You can google them if you want to. For me, I just love the guitar outro of this song and the feel of 70s in this song.
John Lennon – Imagine Well, I like the lyrics of this song, but to me the best part is the piano sound which is so hypnotic. This song is regarded as 'song of peace', being a peace-loving person, this song can be a national anthem for any peaceful nation.
The Beatles - Yesterday Beatles have so many good songs, it's hard to pick one. I can easily pick 'Let it Be' as another favorite. However, I think Yesterday sounds not only good, but only on a more personal way of expressing the passage of time and the missing of the good old days. The kind of young innocence that Paul sang is just priceless.
Elvis Presley - Love Me Tender Same as Beatles, the King has so many good songs as well. However, I don't know why, whenever I think of his love songs, it will either be 'Always on my mind' or this one. Perhaps, the tenderness of this song that make it a bit stand out. I don't really like Elvis's image that much, but I've to say that his voice is magical.
Over the Christmas holidays, I was able to squeeze few hours to go to see ‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’ (aka. “MI4”). It is the fourth movie of Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt MI franchise. This time, it is directed by Brad Bird, the director from Pixar who made theIncredibles.
I saw all four movies of the MI franchise, I didn’t like the first one for the trailer was giving out too much of the movie, even the ending was shown. Also, MI is supposed to be a team movie, but Ethan Hunt’s team died too early in the movie. The sequel which was directed by John Woo was bad. I love John’s movies and actually there are few good scenes in MI2. However, Tom Cruise was too much of himself in that movie and I think John let him to do so to an extent that John lost his control in the movie to make it great. MI3 directed by JJ Adram was the best in the series from my standpoint. First of all, there was a team to be around Ethan Hunt and the script was tight to get audience excited. If you don’t care much about Ethan Hunt, at least you would care about his wife. Also, Philip Hoffman as the villain was a wonderful choice. Now, after few years when Tom Cruise’s career took nosedive, here comes MI4.
I honestly quite enjoy this movie, surprisingly the series of this franchise is actually getting better and better. Tom Cruise looks old but still very convincing in performing his role in the movie. He has a team of 4 and they all have their own shinning moments. The script is old fashion, but the actions and pace of the movie are good enough to make up for the lacking part. There is simply no dull moment in the movie for audiences to space out and look at their watches. I think, perhaps it is because it is directed by Brad, there are many funny moments in this movie, much more than the past 3 combined. I think that’s a good distinction from not only the past movies but other similar franchise like Jason Bourne or James Bond. Also, the sceneries in Dubai, India and Moscow as well as the hi-tech gadgets are all being used very well without creating any unnecessary distraction.
As an average movie audience without any particular expectation going into the movie, I would say that it is highly recommendable as a typical Hollywood popcorn flick.
I saw In Time few weeks back. The premise of the movie is about sometimes in the future when time is our currency. Everyone can only live up to 25 years old and people either stay the youth look by working hard in order to stay alive or just die. It is a relatively low budget sci-fi movie which is something that I actually like more than those Star Wars type of movies that with lots of CG and explosion. In Time can be classified as a ‘thinking-man’ sci-fi that reminds me of other similar movie like ‘Gattaca’ which is quite similar in genre.
In Time is full of your actors as they have to be able to play the roles at the age of 25. I don’t really like Justin Timberlake, but he has a fine or I should say ‘fit’ performance as the leading role in the movie. Amanda Seyfield as the main actress in the movie is kinda wooden in performance. I can’t recall any of her look being stunning or memorable. The whole movie is more about Justin and Amanda going heist from being pursued by authority. The only few scenes that left some kinds of imprint in my mind are:
The ‘bank account in terms of time’ on everyone’s forearm to tell how long life is left
The scene when Olivia Wilde (as Justin’s mom!) and Justin runs towards each other as Olivia’s clock is winding down and she died in his son’s arm with seconds late. That’s kinda cheesy but touching.
The bank account of the rich man (Amanda’s father) in the vault was a time device that worth an ‘eon’.
The rich man introduced 3 chicks who are all young and hot as his mom, his wife and his daughter.
Another rich man gave his ‘time’ of more than 100 years to Justin and committed suicide as he found life is just too long and meaningless for living that long
I would say this movie is bad, but it can be much better for sure. Nonetheless, I have to say that using the concept of time as currency is definitely the most intriguing part of the movie that I like very much. I saw Margin Call last night. It is a low budget movie that reportedly filmed in 17 days. There is actually not much to be seen in the movie. The premise is an office in Wall Street. So, most of the scenes in the movies you will see desks, chairs, Bloomberg terminals, conference room, elevator, and restroom with few outdoor scenes in a bar, in a car, street in a suburb, and the entrance and the roof of the office building. That’s about it. Also, there is no fighting, killing, kissing, love scenes, explosion, cops, guns, any kind of comedy or horror in this movie. So, what is good about this movie? There are two: acting and story.
The cast of this movie is superb! Jeremy Iron played the top boss of the ibank as a smiling wolf. Kevin Spacey played as a sympatric head of traders. Stanley Tucci played a senior risk analyst with dignity. The others like Zachary Quinto, Demi Moore, Paul Bettany and Simon Baker all played their part well. The lesson of the movie is basically all about everybody tries to save their own ass before the others. I think the pace of the movie is tight in spite of the lack of actions. Just watching the time lapse throughout the movie and see how actors interacted with each other is just entertaining. I strongly recommend this movie.
It is Samsung Flexible AMOLED concept being used as an e-reader, a camera, a video chat system, and an interpreter that being reported in news earlier this month. Certainly, the clip make the technology really amazing and I'm sure some people would jump on buying the first products that gonna use this technology. To tell you the truth, I'm amazing by this technology too. However, it took me less than a minute to think of a whole bunch of questions and concern about the 'practicality' of this technology on the proposed usage as it is widely reported in news stories - on tablet or smartphone. It got me to recite one of the memorable line in the movie Jurassic Park that I remember all these years: 'Just because you can do it, doesn't mean that you should!'
There are two aspects about this technology that I wanna talk about: Transparency and flexibility.
It has been the development trend of consumer tech products in the past decades that products are getting more powerful, lighter, smaller and stay affordable. However, the progress has been slowed down by many factors, one thing is the cost of producing certain parts of the product which would make certain good products unprofitable in the market, thus they aren't being produced. Another key issue that has been dragging the advancement of consumer tech product is the battery issue. That's why Apple has been amazing in the evolution of its products that they became powerful but were still able to stay the same length of battery life if not longer. I think battery technology is certainly lacked behind the development of the rest of other aspects of tech products. Going back to this new technology, you can make the screen as thin as light and as transparent all you want. What about the battery? We don't know how much energy this display will consume, even if it is 50% or more energy efficient, where do you put the battery with the transparent display? At the edge of the screen? Cuz, if the display is thin, transparent and flexible, but the other 'things' including the battery aren't, what is the point of make such ugly hybrid product? I mean...like roll the display around a solid rod of battery with chipset and other stuff like camera lens, unroll it when we use it. Is that the concept? I just can't imagine that being very consumer-friendly and cool-looking!
In addition, the flexibility of this display will not be much useful if the other parts are not flexible, again the battery, chipset, lens, sensor, etc. We consumer can accept things getting small and light, but still need a lot of education on accepting tech products being flexible, particularly on the durability part. We would think that bending such product will damage it. We have been told long enough of not bending our credit card, sim card, SD card, or other cards that using NPC technology. How would we be convinced to fold our new mobile phone or tablet even it is shown to be ok to do so? It will take time.
Secondly, about the transparency of the screen. It looks like a good concept, but not for phone or tablet! Why? Because we took our phone and tablet on the go mostly. We don't just put them on the table with a white background when we use it. Namely, we will always able to see other color in the background while we are using the transparent display. Can you imagine how 'messy' and 'eye-hurting' to look at things on the screen and behind the screen as the same time? I'm not talking about augmented reality which could be useful. But, while we are reading a book, playing a game, looking at pictures, etc. We don't wanna see other 'visual noise'! Thus, I would think that such new transparent display technology would be more practical to be on glasses or helmet screens or windshield in cars as 'supplementary' tool to provide information 90% of the time, rather than taking over the need of transparency of the screen. For instances, this new display technology can help us using augmented reality, as we can see some supporting information through our glasses, like seeing the prices of houses, profile of a person walking towards you, etc. Otherwise, the transparent property of this display is not much useful. Why I mentioned 90% of the time? The only 10% time that I think this technology will be great to be used on helmet or windshield is when this is combined with camera to provide an alternative view to help us understanding our surrounding when we are visually blocked somehow, like in fog, darkness, or else. If our car has infrared camera on, then we can see through the fog or darkness by displaying objects on the new display when we are driving or flying, that would be very helpful!
Thirdly, the only thing that this new display technology that I think is relatively practical is the thinness of the display. It means that I can be mounted on a thinner body to reduce the thinness of the phone or tablet overall. Since the body itself is not flexible, the display alone being flexible is no-use. In fact, there is only so thin our phone and tablet should be, particularly our phone. It is too uncomfortable to hold a phone as thin as a credit card. For example, we worry that we may drop it and fall into the crack on a sidewalk or in a pool of dirt water, or the product may overheat or something. Most of us do feel that we need 'something' to hold on to. So, I guess there is only so thin that a mobile phone that we 'should' make. As a side-track issue, the issue of earphone is also a concern for now. If the jack of earphone is thicker than the phone itself, it would be quite awkward! Though wireless headset exists, it is still not as good as the wired one in terms of sound quality, battery, and comfort issue, etc. On the tablet side, I guess that it is more practical to accept thinner model, even if it is as thin as credit card, that should be fine, because of the way that we hold our tablet.
Well, that's my brief take on this technology. I'm sure there are other ways to use this display technology more efficiently than on mobile phone and tablet, it will be up to the genius and the market to decide. However, I really doubt that we will see such products in use on phone or tablet in 2012 as some reports suggested, cuz other issues that I mentioned above woulds till take a lot of works to do before the product become financially feasible to make. Let's wait and see.
I've not blog for a while cuz I've been busy with lots of stuff since my last blog. Works are getting hectic a bit and family as usual demands time. Anyway, I was still able to squeeze time to see this movie. Yes, it is a bit late, but it is worthy seeing.
