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A sleepy (but not quite torpid) hummingbird alighted on our feeder, and remained sitting there even as I opened the sliding door and crept up to her with my camera. I rather like this shot:
(Warning: the thumbnail above links to the full-size 12MP original.) More here.
How had I never seen this 1937 masterpiece? Katherine Hepburn, radiantly beautiful (and impossibly slim!); Ginger Rogers showing that she was a top-flight comedienne; Lucille Ball doing a wonderful job (but giving way to Ginger); Constance Collier, the great silent movie star (and playwright) as Katherine Hepburn’s coach; and Ann Miller, aged just 14, dancing beside Ginger Rogers. (She had claimed to be 18 when Lucille Ball discovered her a year earlier.) The one-liners crackle and zip, and you quickly realize that although there are several male characters, this movie is all about the girls: their dreams, their rivalries, their hopes and despairs. Unfortunately neither Amazon nor Netflix have it available for streaming, but TCM delivered the goods.`
One of the things implemented in Purple Rain (the new Feather in Songbird 1.4) was direct toggle buttons to select the current Media View. However, we only implemented them for the built in List View & Filter View buttons. Third party Media Views were still only listed in the arrow-drop-down menu button next to them. I’m happy to say that we’ve landed bug 18538 on trunk yesterday which will allow Media View developers to create and define icons to represent their Media View. They will be automatically inserted into the row of buttons to allow users to more easily switch to the available views.
All the Media View developer needs to do is create an icon file. It must be 22×80, with all four 22×20 states (normal, hover, active, and disabled) vertically stacked in it. Here’s a sample one I created for John M’s excellent Grid View:
All that’s left is to point to it inside the Media View’s install.rdf file. In the same <songbird:mediaPage> section we simply define a new <songbird:contentIcon> value, like so:
<songbird:mediaPage>
<Description>
<songbird:contentIcon>chrome://gridview/skin/mpIcon.png</songbird:contentIcon>
<songbird:contentTitle>Grid View</songbird:contentTitle>
<songbird:contentUrl>chrome://gridview/content/media-page.xul</songbird:contentUrl>
</Description>
</songbird:mediaPage>
That’s all there is to it!
I just committed an encoding fix for Songbird’s Concerts add-on that, starting with tonight’s nightlies on trunk, should mean you start seeing some updated European countries in the available locations list. The new countries include Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden.
While the concert data is now being included, not all localisations are up to date. Notably, out of that list, we’re missing the Danish, Finnish, Dutch, and Norwegian localisations entirely. The Swedish localisation just needs a few more strings translated.
If you’d like to help out and see the full localised Concerts add-on in all its glory, please go register with Babelzilla.org and help translate the Concerts add-on here.
My dad will turn 70 this year. In about a month. And he sent his first text message a week ago. They were all addressed to his grandson, of course, but they were obviously sent to my phone. I haven't had a chance to talk to him about the reason behind the text message (why now, for instance?) or the 2 messages that followed the day after. But today, he revealed to me why. He was explained by his good friend (who is ironically a total gadget geek -- by comparison, my dad does not know his way around a computer PERIOD...like you give him a mouse and suddenly your desktop is missing all sorts of things, your taskbar displaced, misplaced or altogether just gone) that text messaging is more or less replacing voice calls, particularly among the younger generation. My dad suddenly became convinced that in order to communicate with his grandson (in the very distant future, but still a concern to him) in any sort of meaningful way, he had better master text messaging RIGHT NOW. In fact, his 2nd SMS indicated "just practicing sending these", which now makes more sense.
I thought that was very cute.
So the potty training is in full force, and I have to say, I'm rather impressed with how quickly David has gotten the hang of things. As with all issues and milestones around parenting, it's very difficult to gauge whether one's child is early or late with anything since the absolute truth is hidden behind a need to compete or brag or over/understate in some form or other for reasons not clearly known.
If I were to be very honest, I'd say that potty training has been easier than expected. There was probably a month of set-up. The potty was purchased almost 2 years ago, just so that its presence in the bathroom would not itself introduce any anxiety from the sheer novelty. But the day I started putting him on the potty with clear expectations of what should happen (though still with the diaper on), I'd say that went on for a few weeks. Then the build-up of a reward (a Hot Wheels size monster truck, new in box) perched ever so visibly on a shelf from where he sits on his potty. The constant talking through the process. The grunting, the making of faces (all by me of course) to help out the product and to make the whole thing light and amusing (perhaps only for my own benefit).
It got to the point where he was sitting on the potty for 45 minutes, just playing with his cars, singing, reading, with no end product.
Suddenly, one day, not just any day, but the day after Christmas 2009, he sat on the potty for what I had assumed would be at least 15 minutes, and he said "poo poo comin' out!" And sure enough - it was a U-shaped humdinger that forced me to see right then and there that my baby made an adult sized poop. There was screaming, there was shouting, there was yelling, cheering, and since it was the holidays, everyone ran into the bathroom to tell David what a great job he had done, grandma, grandpa, ee-moh - there was no shortage of cheers.
Now that 3 weeks have gone by since that wonderful day, it feels appropriate to take stock of how much has been accomplished. He is now in underwear. Honest to goodness underwear - the kind that will soak through completely if he decides to pee in it - and thank goodness has only done that once (during a nap, which is totally understandable). He has upgraded to a seat attachment onto a real toilet - an unexpected development that occurred when he announced a week ago that he needed to pee while I was at a restaurant, totally unprepared (had plenty of diapers on me, though, as I was still in "that mode"). Now I no longer have to clean out a separate potty seat, since he insists on going into the toilet (this is usually a major next step that needs to be worked toward - but he nailed it early. Yay!) He will now ask to go to the potty when he needs to, signaling to me that he's actually paying attention the signals his body is giving him that he has to go. While on the toilet, he'll say "poo-poo comin' out!", sometimes following it up with "a BIG one!" or a modified "a HUGE one!" which is just so totally hilarious. He also understands that closing the seat, flushing, and moving his stepstool from toilet to sink to wash his hands is part of the process (btw: never too soon to connect the whole toilet - handwashing thing). He enjoys pulling his sleeves up, testing the water temperature, and pumping the soap onto his hand. The best part of this whole thing (other than the obvious no-poo-cleanup factor) is that he now only uses one diaper per day (at his peak, he used 15 diapers a day) and that is only for when he goes to bed, and more for my convenience in case he pees. Most mornings, we wake up and look at his diaper to see if he kept it dry (he usually does) and I'll celebrate by saying "look, no pee pee!!" and he beams with pride.
He is all set now to go to preschool (and the top choice has a requirement to be trained by the day he starts), and what started off as a potentially stressful experience turned out to be quite reasonable, and frequently amusing and enjoyable.
I am out and about using an application developed by Vodafone and Sun Labs on my cell phone that pinpoints my location at anytime. My location gets updated every 30 seconds and you can visualize that using the LivePlots from Sensor.Network! Visualization powered by sensor.network.com
So, I'm back on the road again. I didn't realize how strong my continued urge to save money was until I was in my hotel room, huddled under a faucet with barely any warm water dripping out of it trying in desperation to take a warm shower as the only guest in this place in 5 degree Celsius weather in Darjeeeling (NE India). Total cost: $4/night.
I'm actually too exhausted from 2 days of less than 3 hours / night sleep in three days, so I'm going to crash. Here's the "executive summary":
-Mumbai: Bye!
-Darjeeling: Cold, bad weather, but discovered that Makaibari teas are actually more famous & recognized than Darjeeling ones; confluence of Indian, Tibetan, Nepali, and Bhutanese ppl.
-Kolkata: Dirtiest city I've ever been in. Period. Breathing is a big effort. But the food (& gracious hosts, the Dasgupta Family) made it all worth while!
Currently in Yangon - liking it so far, but taking a flight north to Mandalay & working my way back down to Yangon. The temples are really distinct and beautiful! Ok, note to self: don't write when tired. Hopefully, the next entry will be more interesting. Zzzz.....
Recently I decided to pick up tennis again. I’ve always loved the sport and for some reason I just stopped playing. I think part of it was that over the past few years I’ve looked for activities that both Mara and I could enjoy together, but recently I’ve realized I have to pursue my own passions.
I can’t begin to describe how invigorating it is to be out there hitting tennis. I was a pretty decent High School player, but my peak was actually when I was at UCLA. A lot of people are surprised when I tell them that I got even better in college. I used to hit about 3-4 times a week and got really good. I was able to whip my forehand cross-court and inside-out whenever I got a short ball. I hit my backhand with heavy spin and good depth. And I was able to place my topspin second serve almost anywhere in the box, and disguise it with a slice as well. I controlled pace, spin, and angles effortlessly.
When Wendy recently wanted to learn, it gave me a great opportunity to do the two things I love… teach and play tennis. I needed to go out there with somebody who was just starting so that I could get my hand/eye coordination back. After some sessions with Wendy, Lawrence, and Danyel (a random that I found off CL), I’ve started gaining some control over my groundstrokes. It feels amazing to be out there. I find myself smiling halfway through each match.
I saw something that touched my heart tonight at Rengstorff. A Chinese father and mother were teaching their two boys how to play tennis. If I had to guess their ages, I would say one was 5 and the other 10. I actually see families out on the court all the time, but this family reminded me of my family when I was young. While those children probably need formal coaching soon, I deeply admired that both of their parents were doing their best to guide those two children. I almost wanted to walk over and tell the family how happy I was to see them out on the court.
It brought back memories of my father and mother exposing Jack and me to a wide variety of sports. While most Asian families usually didn’t see the value in sports, our parents gave us tennis, basketball, baseball, swimming, and skiing. My father even coached one of my baseball teams, despite the fact that he never had any formal training in baseball. The most important lessons I’ve learned in life came early on from the sports that I played. The importance of hard work, practicing to be perfect, consistency, patience, playing to win, losing gracefully, how to play nice with other children, having confidence in myself, understanding how to handle the spotlight, and many more lessons.
I hope that Mara and I will be able to give our children the same opportunities as my parents have given me. And more importantly I hope my children will find their own passions in life. And while it doesn’t have to be tennis, I hope that my children will find a passion in their lives that will fill that spot in their heart as tennis does in mine. I wonder what their “tennis” will be?
Left Shenzen hotel at 6:30 AM Saturday, planning to catch the 8:45 AM ferry to Hong Kong airport. However, they gave us tickets for the 7:45 ferry. We were sitting at breakfast when the ferry ticket clerk came running in to tell us we needed to catch the ferry right now.
This meant going through immigration and then dashing to the ferry. Ironically, when we got to the airport ferry terminal at 8:15 or so, we had to wait til 10 when the checkin for our flight began. In other words, almost 2 hours in a noisy ferry terminal.
But no matter, we caught our flight and are now doing a 5 hour layover in Vancouver. Due to time zone differences , we are about 19 hours into our trip, but it’s only 10:30 AM on Saturday, Pacific Time.
Will be glad to be back, and will probably sleep very well tonight.
On Saturday, I joined a team outing with a group from Huawei, the company that Geoff works for. We went out to some mountains about an hour and a half from Shenzhen. There were some pretty mountains, and the more energetic climbed the mountains.
Mountains outside of Shenzhen
We grilled food over open charcoal barbecues, which caused a lot of laughter. Chicken on skewers, and corn roasted on the grill. Very much a team effort, basting the chicken with honey, spices and oil.
One of the most interesting things for me was a farming family living at this amusement area. We were encouraged to pick vegetables to grill, but I snapped photos instead. A stark contrast to the very modern Shenzhen lifestyle.
Family Home
The stove was outside the building. A good idea because of heat and fire hazard.
Cooking area
A lonely Ford tractor reigning as the king of its fields while we were cycling towards Biei (Hokkaido, Japan). The lens flare is 100% natural (no artificial Photoshop additives or colouring).
Very exciting news! This weekend, my brother proposed to his girlfriend Ivy, and she accepted! I think Ivy is such a great girl and I’m very excited for both my brother and our family. I’m just so happy for Jack. I can’t help but feel a sense of pride to see my little brother growing up and taking the next step in his life.
Growing up, I always had a very strong support system. Without exception, I always felt that I had the full attention and support of my grandparents, parents, and my brother. As we grow older, I think it’s inevitable that we need to shift priorities a bit. As I start a family with Mara, and now Jack with Ivy, we may have to spend more time and energy focusing on our own homes. But I think that we’ll always do a good job keeping up with each other and helping when and where we can.
Congratulations to my little brother and his new fiancee!
Seriously though… TWO YEARS since I last made a blog entry??? That’s pathetic! Well, those two years have gone by in a flash, I must say! I recently finished my fifth semester teaching here at the Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (GUCAS), and I can say that it has gotten easier, compared [...]
upgraded to snv_109 in preparation for this weekend's datacentre move
after 263 days of uptime, i rebooted into a newly upgraded snv_95 build.
I was offered a position at UCLA, and I am taking it. I would have loved to see UCSF and UW first-hand, but that’s just the way things go when your specialty is not match. Even so, chances are very good I would have gone to UCLA anyway. I have been reluctant to define which program is my “first choice” (as so many have recently asked) simply because I haven’t had the chance to see many programs. But given what I now know, UCLA is a great program. Their faculty coverage is great and stable with a 3:1 student to faculty ratio, the clinic is modern and technologically up to date (with digital radiography and computers in each cube, plus a surgical microscope about to be installed), their faculty wrote the perio book that 80% of dental schools use, and the director is a level-headed, fundamentals-based periodontist who strives for clinical excellence and has vision for the program. Oh yeah, and one of the covering faculty just won the Master Clinician Award from the AAP, given to one periodontist per year. So you could say that things could be worse. 
There is no tuition, and stipend is a cool $20,000 per year.
Given that I will be in L.A. for the next 3 years and 9 months, I decided to go home, especially since I’m on break now. I brought my camera with me, and I spent the past couple of days surfing and photographing the coast. Here are some of my better pics (the proper gallery will be set up soon). Click for a larger image (trust me, it’s worth it).
Brown pelican in Half Moon Bay:
Pleasure Point in Santa Cruz (incidentally, the point break where I decided to become a surfer two years ago):
Shortboarder at Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz:
A bird at a beach just south of Ano Nuevo. There was a whole flock of these wading in the surf, and whenever a wave came they’d pop up and over the wave. I must have spent an hour trying to capture the right moment, and this was the closest I came. Not bad, eh?
Call me crazy, but I loved the overcast weather, the Monterey pines, the lack of crowds and the chilly wind. It just felt like home, and it was a great break from the ghastly heat that’s been afflicting most of California recently.
For the next few days you can download Bruce Springsteen’s new single, Radio Nowhere, free off of iTunes. It’s an awesome summer top-down-driving rocker with the full E Street Band backing the Boss; too bad summer is almost over. The new album is out October 2nd, and I’m psyched. Yes, I’m easy to please.
Today’s partial UCLA interview went great; I had three of my five interviews, with the next one on Friday and the final one next Thursday. I’m optimistic. I certainly enjoyed all of the compliments on how much better I look in a suit compared to my usual Smurf scrubs. I also submitted my SF application today. I just hope I’ll have a chance to interview before I get my first offer.
I blame that program’s six different essay questions for my last-minute application. Those were some of the most difficult questions ever - imagine trying to answer “please tell us about yourself” in half a page. Now do something like that six times. Sheesh! Every other specialty has standardized applications.
Other happenings this week: reviewing 1,086 powerpoint slides for one class, and writing a 15 page business plan without any instruction. Yikes! Oh yeah, and I have a morning and afternoon patient tomorrow. I can’t decide if I’m going to party like a rock star on Friday or just go to bed early.
we had a great time in spain for bren and merce's wedding.
pics up from our baltimore trip.
UPDATE: 03 Sept 2007. I finally got my photos online. Click these links for my SF photos and Wedding photos. ======== Well, it’s been a while since my last posting, and so I’ll try to get a few more up in the next week! It was great to see everyone again, even if only for [...]
The body of James Kim was found today in the Oregon wilderness. Though I have never met him in person, I have had the opportunity to read some of his columns and also listened to one of his podcasts in the past. I was really pulling for him.
It was heroic of him to set out into the wilderness to find help for his stranded family. Who knows if they would have been discovered if they all stayed in the car. They were missing for 11 days. It is not difficult to see myself get into a difficult situation similar to what he faced. Sometimes difficult circumstances and situations quickly get out of control and you find yourself trapped. In his situation, I probably would have done exactly what he did. Hopefully I will be able to stay away from situations like that.
Condolences to his family.
I caught “The Departed” with Mi last night at the Eastridge AMC. Really fantastic movie… possibly the best I’ve seen in the past year. I am also starting to realize that Leo DiCaprio is possibly the best actor of our generation. His performances in the “Gangs of New York”, “Catch Me If You Can”, and “The Aviator” were pretty good. But I feel in “The Departed”, he delivered his most charming and mature performance to date. I hope he makes some noise when the Academy Awards come along… probably the first time in my life I’ve felt that way.
I HATE LAX so much! urgh! Slow lines, annoying security staff, no proper shopping, no proper food, terminals far away from each other, i can go on for all day. Anyway, so I was at LAX McDonalds after battling through the 2 hour luggage bomb check line, and some announcement came in Korean “blah blah blah Kim Jung Il, Kim Jung Il”. May be that’s Bush’s new strategy to catch the guy, page him at LAX Bradley International Terminal cuz it seems like that’s where all the Asians are! And I wonder if Mr Kim ever made it to through security and get on the plane …..
I’m very sad to hear this news. Boeing is stopping its Connexion service, which offers highspeed internet service (well not cable modem speed, but not it wasn’t bad either) on selected trans-continental flights (http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2006/q3/060817a_nr.html). I’ve used it a number of times, and it’s just really really cool to stay in touch while flying across the Pacific, not to mention it’s a great time killer. I just cannot believe that this business didn’t survive while the stupid phone in the plane that costs 10 bucks a minute still exists! I could just get the internet, which is 20 bucks for the entire flight, turn on my bluetooth headset, launch Skype and I can talk for no extra charge until the batteries die or until the person sitting next to me punch me in the face. sigh……
After spending the latter half of the evening telling myself repeatedly that I could play just one more round of the game Tradewinds instead of doing my CS assignment (due at 6 am!), I was pretty impressed that I managed to finish everything on time and still feel like I did a pretty good job without having to cram. Of course, finishing my homework on time is not an indication that I will actually arrive at class on time, but I figured being fifteen minutes late for a 2 and a half hour class wouldn’t be too bad.
So imagine my surprise, upon walking into our small seminar classroom, of having the professor announce “Tammy, you have just won an award…” (pause for dramatic effect while I wonder if I might actually be called out for being late to class) “for being the person to turn in the assignment the latest at 5:48 am.” Oops, I guess he does pay attention to our email timestamps. Thankfully, he also presented me with a free cup of coffee (which I desperately needed…yay!) so I didn’t have to spend too long debating whether I was supposed to be embarrassed or amused, and instead just very gratefully accepted the free caffeine . Apparently, my work at school has not gone unnoticed…
So my group’s design project for our Comm class was asked to present at a poster session at the MediaX Conference at Stanford, a conference about interdisciplinary research. We created a PC tablet-like device that looks like an Etch-a-Sketch that can be used for storytelling to AIDS orphans in China. The monkey mentor character in the device tells Chinese fables and traditional folk tales in an attempt to teach children how to have a healthy attitude despite losing their parents. It ended up being well-received, which was pretty exciting, and we had a number of requests for prototypes (I see another technical nightmare looming).
Steve and Erik, you will be tickled to know that the character of the monkey was partially inspired by the Monkey King =D.
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