linterry's blogger

 

After devouring my latest literary interest about Quantum Computers in less than a few days, I've already found my next sweetheart: Prime Obsession: BERNHARD RIEMANN and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics. 

This book talks about the zeta function:

 
 
and a really strange hypothesis that follows:

---

If a complex number z produces a value of 0 for the zeta function, then it's real part has value 1/2 (except for the trivial values z=-2, -4, -6, -8...) 

---

Yeah I know, you're like going "huh" and "who gives a shit" at the same time.  Actually, since you're probably reading in a low-attention-span state, you probably didn't even bother reading the math.  I forgive you. 

Believe it or not, the proof of this hypothesis, also known as the Riemann hypothesis, is the current "holy grail" of mathetmatics.  If you come up with the proof, you're a hero, at least in the mathematics world.  Won't get you any chicks though.  It would also prove a lot of other shit, even though I can't recall exactly what on the top of my head (has to do with prime numbers though).

The book, like the other one on quantum computers, has the remarkable trait that it's a really fun read even though you would be scared shitless of a page that looks like this.  It explains all the periphery surrounding this Riemann fiasco in plain and simple English.  One thing I hate about real math papers is that I would much rather decipher the original Koran than try to mentally navigate through all that gibberish.  Real math is intimidating and makes you feel stupid.  It feels like you're reading something written in another language, and then scrambled using DES encryption.

But for this book, all you need to have in your mind is high school math, with a little bit of university calculus.  Complex numbers, prime numbers, infinite sums, convergence and divergence... the book even provides a quick explanation on these concepts which is quite sufficient for the average reader who paid attention in math class.  Using this "rudimentary" math, it goes on the explain the zeta function and Riemann hypothetsis in a really fun and digestible way.

Mathematics?  Fun?   NO fucking way!

But really, it is fun... mostly because you're like "hey, I can actually understand what this Riemann Hypothesis is all about" - ie, this book makes you feel smart.  In fact, I even came up with a fascinating hypothesis of my own:

---

Mathematicians are the smartest fucks in the world

---

It's one thing to read an idea and understand it, it's exponentially harder to come up with it.  In computer science terms: understanding an idea belongs in P, coming up with the idea is in NP.  You should see some of the magic mathematicians pull off with prime numbers... it's quite amazing.  When you read a neat idea, you're like... "hey that's cool", but then you're like "how the fuck did anyone come up with that?"  All I can think of is superhuman brain cells and a shitload of caffeine. 

Just thinking about the thought processes these mathematicians must have went through to generate all these theorems is enough to make everyone I know, myself included, look like retards.  Seriously, how many of you really understood university math.  With the increasing number of averagely minded but super-competitive kids coming into school thinking they are the real deal... how the hell can you teach real mathematics?  You can't.  You won't get past the second lecture before they start flooding your office hours with complaints about how the material is unfair and how nobody in a class of 50 understands it.  Eventually, math gets reduced down to relatively brain-dead calculating - which is in my mind the least interesting aspect of mathematics.   (it however has the desired properties of being easily testable and teachable to any group of 50 students who got fair marks in high school)  When I read this book, I pretty much skimmed over the calculations as fast as possible, because I'm lazy and I pretty much take it on faith that with some arithmetic manipulation, you can get from expression A to expression B.  What IS fascinating however, is what the expression means, what is represents in an abstract sense and its meaning in this world.

Well, not all calculating is dull - as long as it involves some kind of neat trick:

eg. a simple and elegant proof that 0.999... = 1

          (0.999...)* (10-1)
0.999...= ------------------
                (10-1)
 
 
         9.999... - 0.999....
        = --------------------
                  9
 
                  9
        =        ---
                  9
 
        = 1  

 
Anyhow, it may have been some time since most of us have even looked at mathematical expressions, so this book might be fun to read simply because it's nostalgic.  However, if you absolutely despised math, stay away from it.

Azureus + Torrentreactor.net Section 108 = Holy Fuck

God bless P2P

My vote for the two most attractive Asian stars on this planet:

Takeshi Kaneshiro
 

Zhang Ziyi
 

both of whom can be found starring in the recently released movie "House of Flying Daggers".  I give this movie 10/10.  Here's why:

Base score:                                  7/10

Zhang Ziyi gets felt up once:                +1 bonus
Zhang Ziyi gets felt up twice:               +1 bonus
Zhang Ziyi tries to feel up Takeshi          +3 bonus
... but then Takeshi blows her off:          -1 penalty
Zhang Ziyi nearly gets raped by Andy Lau:    +2 bonus
Zhang Ziyi has full blown sex with Takeshi:  +5 bonus
Takeshi makes Legolas look like a vagina:    +1 bonus
Made me cry at the end:                      +1 bonus
-------------------------------------------------------
Total Score:                                 20/10

But since you can't get over perfect (at least not in my world) the score gets rounded back to to 10/10.  Wow it feels like I'm back in Mr.Kwan's physics class!

Most people who know me think I'm not superficial.  But when it comes to Takeshi and ZhangZiyi, I'm as superfical as the next guy on xanga bragging about his new ride and how he went to better parties than you did.  These people are hotter than hot.  Even though I really enjoyed the scenes where Takeshi and ZhangZiyi were going at each other, secretly in my mind I was saying "motherfuckin' lucky bastard". 

Did you know that Takeshi's dad is Okinawan and his mom Taiwanese?  So if Shinobu and I have a son, he might turn out like Takeshi.  Yeah right.

Oh yes, about the movie itself.  It's a love story, and sort of a cinematic exploration of this famous chinese saying that a beautiful woman can destroy a nation.  Takeshi plays the role of the slick playboy who steals girls hearts for a living, Andy Lau plays the masochistic "nice guy" who does everything for the girl but still loses her to aftermentioned playboys, and ZhangZiyi of course is the girl who fucks everybody's life up.  Some convoluted political setting ties them together.  The whole movie, I thought Andy Lau was a prick.  Two reasons: 1. His english subtitle name is "Leo", which is not even halfway as cool as "Jin" (Takeshi's name) and 2. He's not as good looking at Takeshi. 

So what did I learn from this movie?  When you're as good looking as Takeshi, you not only win the girls hearts, you also win the guy's hearts as well.  Hell, he me made me think Andy Lau is a prick, and Andy Lau ain't so bad looking (as long as you don't put him side by side with Takeshi). 

Takeshi's a fucking bastard.

This guy's xanga site is pretty cool, despite being without nary a visual image.  I really like his classifcation of girls as HGN (hot girls who happen to be nice), and NGH (nice girls who happen to be hot).   Let me develop his idea further.

As you all might know, I'm a big NGH fan.  I have realized that from a very early age that going after NGH's has several advantages.  One: you don't have to deal with the entourage that a HGN will undoubtedly have.  The entourage comprises of all her pseudo-friends who follow her around like beady-eyed puppies (I really want to add a "for superficial reasons" here but some kind of fear is gripping me....oh shit, I just wrote it... haha).  Even if you're super lucky and somehow manage to hook up with a HGN, you'll have to face the entourage on a daily basis.

For example, imagine going out for dinner with a HGN.  You can't even have 20 minutes of peace before some psuedo-friend calls her asking if she wants to go shopping together tomorrow "as friends" (what he really wants though, is to steal your girl)  If you're like me and have a healthy (excessive?) amount of testosterone, this will likely lead to a heated interrogation of your HGN girlfriend on why the fuck this entourage member wants to take you out shopping.

Over time, your HGN girlfriend will most likely accumulate a wealth of material presents from her entourage, which serves as a healthy reminder to you that "if you don't treat me right, there are that many other guys who will."  Of course, the HGN girlfriend probably won't leave you just because you forgot to buy her a present on her birthday, but when she tells her entourage that you didn't, you'd better have an umberlla ready, cause here comes a shitload of criticisms!  You'll be scrutinized like Beckham... every small mistake you make with your HGN girl will be circulated, discussed, and publicized for the world to see.  Sounds like fun eh?  The entourage is like a labor union... they band together under a common cause: to make your life a living fucking hell for having what they can only dream about.

The other great advantage of an NGH is obviously the accessibility.  It's much easier to hook up with an NGH because competition is far less intense.   From my experience, all NGH's require a certain point of view in order to perceive them as "hot".  In other words, while everybody would agree that a HGN is really hot, not everybody would say a NGH is just as smokin.  So if you happen to like a NGH, you should take that as a gift, because you're seeing something in this girl that a lot of other people don't.  Not only does that reduce the competition, but that also emphasizes the point that both of you seem to be made for each other.  Another way to put would be: HGN=globally attractive, NGH=selectively attractive.  What's even more interesting is that just because a HGN is globally attractive, it doesn't necessarily make her more attractive than a NGH to a particular person.  Eg: I find chynadoll18 more attractive than pk_girlo, even though pk_girlo is undeniably a HGN and chynadoll18 a NGH.

I have a very amusing story to tell you that involves a real HGN: Jennifer Wong.  Even though I knew very little about this girl as a person, I knew a lot about her reputation in our Computer Science department: The Best Looking Asian Girl, hands down.  Entourage?  You bet.  It was huge.  No matter where I saw her, she was always surrounded by a fairly large group of males.  It was like watching a program on Discovery Channel: Hormones and their Behavioral Effects on Homo Sapien Males.   It also didn't help that the percentage of good looking girls in CS was the same as Engineering (read: very low).

What was intersting was that a good friend of mine Bob (no, that's not his real name) one day came up to me and told me that he had this thing for a really hot girl in CS.  Although he was in a different program, he met this hot babe called "Jennifer" at a party and found out that she was also in CS, like me.  1+1=2.   Anyways, for weeks Bob kept talking about the many ways he would improve himself and get her attention.  For instance, one night we played basketball together and he said that if he could make 11 shots in a row from the perimeter, he'd be good enough to win Jennifer over.  He made 11 shots in a row.  I always admired my friend's ambition; in situations where I would just instantly give up, he would perservere. 

I forget the exact circumstances, but he told me to relay a message: "Bob says hi" to Jennifer the next time I saw her.  So like a good boy, the next time I saw Jennifer in the CS lab I approached her using Standard Diversion Tactics: "So, how's the assignment going?"  Then, after a few banal exchanges, I got to my real purpose:

Me: "My friend Bob says hi"
Jennifer: "Oh... okay... sorry, who's Bob?"
Me: "You know, Bob, you met him at a party a few weeks ago"
Jennifer: (thinks carefully through her list of 500 guys who talked to her in the last 2 weeks)
"No, I'm sorry, I don't know who he is"
Me: (chuckles silently) "That's okay, don't worry about it, I won't tell him"

Of course, I told Bob what happened, and he was disappointed of course.  Maybe if he made 21 shots in a row, she might have remembered his name.  Anyways, he soon forgot about Jennifer and later hooked up with a NGH.  I'm sure he's much happier.

Recently, I've been hooked on this book:

A Shorcut Through Time: The Path of a Quantum Computer

I've already read it 1.5 times (the extra 0.5 is reviewing the parts I thought were most interesting a 2nd time), and it's really one of the best reading experiences I've had in a while.  For those of you who've been through a Computational Complexity course in university, you might recall that in computer science, there are two types of problems, NP-complete and P.   (here's a randomly chosen explanation for those who've never heard of this before).

Now, here's an obscure fact you may not recall... NP-complete problems can actually be solved  in polynomial time by a non-deterministic computer (the title itself seems like on oxymoron).  That is, at each decision point, the non-determinstic computer would be able to examine all possible branches simultaneously and locate the correct path.  While this would be considered voodoo magic on a classical deterministic computer (like your pc), on a quantum computer, it would actually become a thing of reality.  In other words, if a quantum computer could be built, then you'd have your non-deterministic computer that could solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time (albeit with a small, bounded chance of error).  This would be a miraclous achievement in the world of computer science.

What is a quantum computer?  Well, quantum computers would be made out of atoms which would utilize quantum properties such as spin to simulate the binary 0 and 1.  These would be called qubits - and through a series of laser pulses, you could perform calculations with these qubits.  In fact, there already exist several algorithms designed for these theoretical quantum computers... such as Shor's Algorithm, which can factor any number into its primes in polynomial time (goodbye RSA security), or Grover's Algorithm, which can search an unsorted list in O(sqrt(N)) time.  Nobody's actually implenented these algorithms yet, because there are many technical issues involved in building an actual quantum computer that can actually survive past a few seconds (imagine trying to suspend 7 atoms in a vaccum and trying to manipulate them).  But theoretically, the applications already exist.

One of the other great things about this book is its excellent explanation of the rudiements of quantum mechanics.  Without even reading a single mathetmatical equation, you can actually get the gist of what quantum physics is all about... the idea that in the subatomic world, things can actually be in two places at once, or spinning one way and the other way at the same time.  It's really a fascinating thing... that our universe seems so concrete and logical, and yet the moment you go deep enough into the atom, everything seems to break down into chaos and disorder. 

I've tried to find further information on the web about this subject but believe me, nothing seems to be as understable and lucid as this book.  The author writes for the layman, and that's what makes the book so special: it's super accessible and actually gives you the general "feeling" for this new and exciting world of quantum computing.

Wrote a review on the PS2 port of SF3:First Strike and submitted to Gamefaqs.  This will give you some insight as to how anal retentive I am when it comes to "preserving purity". 

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/review/R76668.html

I just found this word document in my "My Documents" folder.  Dated April 5th, 2002.  Which would put me in ... err... 4th year university...

Dissertation on My Life
 
It is so hard to start writing about something that it so complicated in nature.  I believe I have evolved into something that I shouldn’t have, and that I have become something that will end in disaster.  I cannot understand exactly how I ended up here, only that I am here, and that there is no escape from my inevitable future.
 
Put simply, I don’t care about anything anymore.  I don’t care about my career, my schoolwork, or even if my family is gone tomorrow morning.   In fact, I don’t even care if I’m not here tomorrow morning.  I have simply lost all purpose in life.  I wake up everyday and the only thing I can think of is how I can entertain myself for the next 12 hours that I am conscious.  If there are any obstacles to my entertainment, I find the easiest and most convenient path to avoid it, regardless of whether it is right or wrong.
 
I have also become extremely cynical of pretty much everything, especially people.  I truly believe that everyone in this world is at heart extremely selfish and self-serving.  The only difference lies in how the present it.  Some people blatantly show it, some people hide it, and some people look like they’re trying to hide it, but it shows anyways.   The more I understand people, the more disgusting filth I see underneath their daily facades.  I have adopted a new motto, “behind every human action, there is a selfish motive”, and it holds true for everyone.  When someone buys you a birthday present, it’s really because it makes them feel better about themselves.
 
When I look at things this way, it seems that the world is beyond salvation, myself included.  I only wish I could see things differently.  I wish that I could be deluded to believe there is still something inherently beautiful in people.  As it stands it is too late to adopt any kind of religion, too late to reconcile with my family, and too late to love anyone or to feel loved by anyone.  I don’t believe in anything anymore, except selfishness and human sin.
 
With this thinking comes an incredibly profound feeling of loneliness.  It’s not the physical loneliness that bothers me so much.  It’s the fact that it’s impossible to find anyone who can truly understand how you feel.  People are extremely limited in the ways they can communicate with each other.  Thus, your own private thoughts and feelings will never be felt in the same way by anybody else except yourself.  
 
The only thing I can do now is simply live life with indifference to anything that happens around me.  
  
For some reason, I just think that was well written.  In fact just reading it brings back the essence of living in Toronto - particuarily the "how to entertain myself for the next 12 hours" bit.  My life was really nothing more a repetitive sequence of fairview food court, chapters, and jerking off on the computer until 6am.    Now in Taiwan, it's pretty much the same, just add a girlfriend and an interesting job (not to discredit those two things, they are very important).  Still, I am not very optimistic about the future.  

I can't believe caffeine is actually legal.  I had a medium Pepsi at KFC and holy shit, I was totally high. At one point I kinda wanted to smash the window next to me cuz I was feeling so energetic and hyper and wanted to do something crazy.  Actually, I know why caffeine is legal.  Because to mega corporate beverage companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi,  more caffeine = more sales.   Just check this chart out:

http://www.nsda.org/WhatsIn/caffeinecontent.html

Anyways, during my caffeine high, I got around to venting my anger at the education system. This afternoon at tutoring, I was having a hard time undersatnding why the mother was being so harsh on my student a few simple mistakes on an english test.  I soon got my answer:

In Taiwan, a single mistake on the English portion of the high school entrance exam automatically disqualifies you for the top 3 high schools. 

This is not opinion, it's statistics: Not a single person who entered these schools last year had a single mistake on thier english test.  In other words, if you make just one slip-up, the chances of you getting into these"elite" schools has dropped to: 0%.  Exception: you're rich and can bribe your kids in, or you're a sexy whore willing to give the bald headmaster some head.

So, does this mean that those who score perfect on these tests have flawless English?  Like my mom likes to day: "that's would be the biggest joke of the century".  I've seen the english test.  It's all multiple choice.  Basically, you get a shitload of questions in this format:

"Yesterday, I saw someone ______ into my dog"
a) bumped  b) bump  c) had bumped  d) jizzing
 

or something along those lines.  There's also reading comprehension, where you read a passage and answer multiple choice questions about the content of the passage.  As expected, "gray" aspects such as essay compostion  or pronounciation and articuation are obviously not tested, because imagine the pressure the marker would feel on giving one kid an 85 and the next one an 86.  Angry mothers + knives/bludgoening weapons = not a pretty sight.
 
Anyways, I got to thinking... how could I prepare my students to ace this kind of test?  There are two ways of course.  The first way - the right way -  is to send them to the States or Canada and have them spend one or two years on exchange.  When they come back, they'll answer these retarded questions like I would: without even thinking.   They'll also speak proper English (unfortunately this ability isn't really in high demand compared to knowing how to pass English tests).  Anyhow, this solution has two major drawbacks: 1. it's expensive and 2. it ain't going to happen.  The other solution, I'm afraid to say, is the one that gets used in Taiwan... just cram a shitload of grammar rules into poor kids' heads.  Then, using sophisticated testing techniques developed by the corporate bushibans, meticulously apply these rules to each question in order to root out the correct answer.

Um... can we just stop here for a second and ask ourselves why we are testing English?  If people are going to circumvent the testing process like that, you might as well be teaching the culture of cowtipping.  These kids are putting all their effort into structuring their minds on how to beat a specific system.  The material doesn't even matter anymore.  Because at the end of the day, the kids still can't write or speak proper English.  So should we not stop and ask ourselves: why bother putting all that effort when you get such poor results?  Well, you do get results, just not the ones that education was originally based upon. 

It just goes to show how schools are becoming less and less about education, and more and more about establishing some kind of quasi-social pecking order.  Basically, it's a massive competition of who can grind the most shit into their kids in the least possible time.  The material is totally irrelevant.  Independent thinking... who the fuck has time for that?  This is about the kids' future... about their security and financial wealth.  What about the future of society?  What's the world going to become if we continue to breed out system-beaters and walking databases of information?

The trend has already begun.  The 21st century will mark the disintegration of art and passion, and the installment of systematic business practices that serve only to accelerate the economy to an even more frenzied pace.  I mean isn't it really something when all the great movies are only shown at film festivals and weirdo cinemas no guy would take their date to... and all the unbelievably horrible "sequel-itis" passionless flicks get multimillion marketing and big screen treatment?   You tell me with a straight face that this has nothing to do with the fact that the art of movies has been commercialized by MBA suits trained in the divine art of buzzwords.  The same trend is happening with video games.  Notice how almost every game nowadays is being simulatenously released on every single system?  For christ sakes, both sequels of Splinter Cell have been released on 6 different platforms, including the GBA, and even cellphones!  Yes, folks, some really bright business manager who took an internet MBA course and knows jack shit about games (but knows a lot about profit) - decided to force his game development team to port a 3D stealth game to your cell phone, while keeping the exact same name.  Pardon me but... that's just not right.

Okay, my caffeine-fueld rant is about to come to an end.. time to chill out with another Rags2Riches session with NBA Ballers.

I'm seriously hooked on this game.  I generally hate button masher arcade basketball games,  but Ballers is special.  I wrote a review and it was posted on Gamefaqs:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/review/R76524.html

 

This was rather interesting:
 
http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt6/html-email-fonts.htm
 
Like the author says, I was also led to believe that serif fonts were always more readable than non-serif fonts.  My blogger has been using Verdana for the longest time now, and for a good reason: I found it easiest on the eyes.  The site's survey seems to point the same way, although at 12pt, people seem to prefer Arial, but below 12pt everyone likes Arial.  In the serif category, Georgia beats out Times New Roman, but he notices that a lot of people don't have Georgia installed.
 
Well, I tried 12pt Arial and 10pt Verdana, but I still prefer the current font.   I think many people don't like 12pt Verdana because it's too large for lower resolutions.  Also, I'm pretty sure that the presence of Cleartype has an significant effect on people's opinions.
 
Boy that was some serious geek.  But do you know that have always been extremely sensitive to font apperances.  Ever since High School, I could visually recognize every Windows System font (System, FixedSys, MS Sans Serif, MS Serif, Times New Roman, Courier, Courier New etc.) at EVERY single size within milliseconds.  Like, off the top of my head, I can tell you that 9pt Courier New is much narrower than 10pt Courier New which seeems to be unattractively wide.  Tahoma is attractive at 8pt but sucks at large sizes.  Weird huh?  Don't know why these kinds of details get into my head so easily but they do.
 
What I've always liked about Windows over other operating systems is that their Truetype fonts are really good looking, especially at small font sizes.  I remember OS/2 had the UGLIEST fonts, they used Adobe PostScript rendering and at 10pt or less they were simply horrible!  IIRC, Truetype fonts something called "hinting" which makes allows them to rendred far more attractrively at small font sizes.
 
Anyways, ClearType is by far one of Microsoft's greatest inventions.  When I got my first LCD, I turned it on and it really gave me geek orgasms... it took a little while to get used to, but now my eyes can't stand non-cleartyped fonts.  It's just so... jaggy.  However there are times when jaggy fonts look really good, particuarily with extremely small  fonts (ironic in a sense).  Verdana 9pt and Arial 9pt are used extensively on the web and IMHO they look far better without Cleartype.
 
That's it for today!
 
 

4am, still can't sleep.  I'm tired, but for some reason, I can't sleep. 
 
I recalled something that I read on one of my best friend's homepage 

Simplicity leads to a peaceful mind

I think this applies to me.  I have a simpler life than most, yet somehow my mind automatically makes it more complicated.  Even though there is nothing to worry about, I will worry about something, and then if I'm in the mood, I'll bitch about it on my blogger.   I think this has to do with using the computer all the time.  Yes, it sounds ridiculous, but hear me out... using a computer puts your mental system under constant stress and movement.  A few minutes won't do much harm, but several hours in a row, and your nerves will force themselves to adapt to this new level of mental activity.    Unfortunately, this probably causes a lot of negative side effects such as: low attention span, irritablity, hyperactivity, and of course, insomnia.
 
My girlfriend sleeps within seconds, every single night.  She barely uses the computer, except when she plays warcraft with me.  Most of the time she's just watching tv, or cooking, or doing the laundry.  You know what's scary.  I can't do what she does.  Eg, I can't just come home, watch tv, wash the dishes, drink a glass of water and go to bed.  My mind will thrist for a high level of mental activity that can only be satisfied by.. yep... you guessed it... the computer.
 
After my contract's over...maybe it's time to really unplug... and I mean for good this time.  I think teaching english might be a good option to extend my "limbo" status in life... and also restore my mental health.

Just some other things I would like to add about this movie, after a quick 2nd viewing...
 
I like one thing that Moore said: that everything was really just about preserving the structure of society.  It's a pattern that has recurred throughout history since the beginning of civilization: class struggle.  The ruling class (aka bourgeoisie) dominates over a working class (aka proletariat).  The working class tries to overthrow the ruling class, the ruling class tries to oppress the working class and preserve the status quo.   In America, the ruling class would be best stereotyped by the white trash capitalist exhibiting male pattern baldness at the age of 30 and who can't stop talking about golf and the top 10 secrets of investing.  The working class would be none other than the black dude who picks up your garbage every Tuesday and can't even speak proper English.
 
Fahrenheit 911 is of course a movie made for the working class.  It paints every joe blow nickel and dimed family in America as a victim of the war, and all those in corporate suits as the nefarious profiteers with no sense of ethics whatsoever.   You know what?  I think that's fair.  It's about time sometime somebody said something about this whole fishy business on this kind of scale.  Corporate suits have too many weapons at their side: financial resources, media resources, goverment connections.   Who's there to protect the working class from exploitation?  The government is the one you would think of first, but now they are becoming nothing more than Corporate America's sidekick.  Anything the working class tries to do to gather power and resources to fight the ruling class is met with clever subterfuge.  You should see what lengths corporations like Wal Mart go to in order to prevent unions from even coming into existence.  The worst part is, these companies aren't even honest about their sleazy practices... they cover it up and use attractive ads to make you think they're benevolent saints instead of malevolent assholes.
 
Before I forget... the other day I was flipping through some business magazine, and in the middle I saw this massive 6 page color ad.  Every page was a full color photograph of some golf course, with cheesy one liners like "Today's weather: Gusty, with high chance of bogies", and "This bunker, right here, could mean the difference beteween the title and an early exit".  On the final page, you see a Rolex watch, and another stupid one-liner like "At Rolex, excellence is the only option we have."  Basically, the ad was 5 pictures of a golf course, 1 picture of a watch, 6 cheesy sentences, and it probably cost Rolex millions of dollars to get it printed, on top of the hundreds of thousands they paid that oh-so-clever advertising firm who thought of this "brilliant" ad.  At the same time, people who slave away in slaughterhouses so that you can eat all that wonderful meat, people who endure backbreaking work so that you can have a house - get paid jack shit for their labor.  They live in shitholes, work like animals, and Rolex is getting the capitalists hyped up about golf while selling a stupid watch that costs like 1000 times more than what it's worth in practical value.  Who contributes more to society?  Who gets all the money? 
 
Okay.. that's it for now.  I'm going to bed.
 
 

Holy fuck, this shit is controversial.  If Moore tried to pull this shit off in China, he'd be dead by now.
 
You know, I couldn't watch the whole film before pausing it and checking on the web where the popular opinion stands.  Most of it was positive, but I did see references that pinned this movie as retarded, heretical, and that Moore was just a stupid fat ass.   One guy even went so far to say that the movie was actually a Rorschach test for idiocy - in other words, if you liked the movie, you're an idiot.  Guess there was something about the movie that really pissed him off.  
 

 
Well, I finished the movie, and you know what I think?  It was good.  It was far more entertaining the the average movie.  Yes, it was dramatized and at times extremely emotionally manipulative, but let's face it: humans are not logic machines that can operate solely on facts, they need to feel something.  The other thing that appealed to me was that Moore offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could disprove any fact in this movie.  So at the very least, while you may doubt the importance or interpretation of the fact, you certainly can't doubt the veracity of it. 
 
Well, I'm no student of politics, but let me just say this: it's no big secret that governments have strong ties with corporations, and when you inject corporate interests into the sovereign state, well, you get the shit you see in this movie.  I have read from more than one source that during World War II, an American corporation none other than IBM sold mainframe computers to Hilter because the Nazis needed help in calculating how many Jews they were exterminating.  Type in "ibm nazi" into Google and you'll see what I mean. 
 
The Bush administration seems to behave just like a company.  In fact, after watching the footage shot in the movie, I had a hard time distinguishing between them.  They mislead the public, get them to believe stuff that's not exactly true, and then guess what... the richer just get richer, at the expense of the poor and the working class.   When you see the Bush family having so many monetary ties with so many corporations (nicluding Saudi Oil)... it's just that much harder to imagine that the war was really about freedom or justice.  Selfish agendas of select individuals of the ruling class sounds way more likely to me. 
  
Here 's a well written anti-Moore article: http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723.  Isn't it coincidental that this article is hosted by MSN...  the Microsoft Network.  Wasn't Microsoft featured in Fahrenheit 911? 

The electricity bill just came in for the last two months.  2500NT.  Yowzers.  Gotta economize on air-con usage.   But then somewhere down the line I'll ripped off for 1000NT, and there goes our saved money.  So might as well just continue as before. Yep, I like illogical justifactions for the sake of my own comfort.  I'm damn good at it.
 
The more I think about it, the more I think renting this place is a bad idea.  We basically pay 25K base rent + 5K bills =  30K/month.  It would've been some awesome if my dad had some like unusued property in this area.  I'd just pay a flat fee to get it renovated, and then I could do all sorts of things to upgrade it without fear of having to move out some other time.
 
I guess the whole idea of money going down a black hole is a lot easier to swallow if you look at yourself as a traveler through life.  We like the idea of permanence... eg permanent wealth, permanent status, permanent property, permanent happiness... kinda like how in RPG's... we also prefer items that give a constant boost to our stats, instead of investing in cheap potion that would only boost it for a short while.  Funny thing is, by the end of the game, you'll probably find you have a huge stash of unused potions, pretty much leaving you wondering why the hell you worked so hard for all those permanent stats.
 
But real-life permanence is so unstable, so thin, it can be shattered so easily by the slighest of reality's whims... and it isn't guaranteed to bring you long-term happiness either.   Well, just look at my parents.  They've got everything "permanentified"... mortgage paid for, retirement plans, etc. etc.  But my dad still needs Prozac.  Go figure. 
 
It all goes back... again.. and again... to the dy/dx > 0 theorem.  Endorphin production is directly related to the value of dy/dx, and not y itself.   This means: you feel good going up, but not staying at any fixed point, even though that fixed point can be very very high.   You think that owning a downtown penthouse will bring you eternal bliss?  Try 2 months.  Then it's back to ... whatever you were feeling before you bought the penthouse.  Could be even worse, if there's nothing else to buy after that.  Scary isn't it?   It's about the trip, not the destination.   I mean look at NBA ballers, having salaries in the millions... and they still bicker over contracts.  Won't take a paycut for the team n' shit.  Stars expect 100 million contracts or they won't even look at you.  Seriously,what's there to bicker about?  You already have your own yacht, five mansions in different countries, and 300 different cars and you still want to bicker about money?   Of course they do.  When your dy/dx is 0, you can bicker about anything, even though your y is already like 10 fucking trillion.  I'm starting to think that for some people jaded by constant improvement, their happiness is starting to get assocaited with d2y/dx2. 
   
I think the best analogy of our insatiable desire to keep dy/dx>0 is that bastardly game Diablo.  This is a game that lives and dies by dy/dx>0.  If you couldn't keep leveling up or keep getting better items, nobody would play this game.  The interesting thing is, if you plotted the average player's endorphin production throughout the game on the y axis, and his character's level on the x-axis, where do you think the euphoria is the highest?  I'd say probably around level 18.  That's when you can look at your character and say... shit... look how far I've come... I've got all these wicked abilities, I can freeze monsters and cause explosions... and I still have all those other level 24/30 skills to look forward too!  I seriously doubt a level 80 character is feeling as happy.  He already got like a shitload of high level skills, and a whole armory of uber gear.  But he's used those skills and the uber gear on the same area like 500 times already, it's getting old.  So now all he has to look forward to is playing with weakling characters, to remind himself of how far he's come.   And sometimes he has to ask himself.. what's the point really?  He can kill every monster in less than 3 seconds... if he gets the next uber item then holy shit... he  can kill it less than 2.8.  Big whopitee-fucknig-doo. 
 
That's what it's like to be rich.  You have everything... but so what.  You still need to create a dy/dx>0 for yourself like every other chump out there.   Your average happiness is still no greater than people who make thousands of time less.   And it's a lot harder to go higher when you're already at the ceiling.

This is the pattern:
 
Someobdy, somewhere, creates something that's useful for people, that makes people happy.  The demand for this thing starts to grow.  Soon, it seems that every second person has some kind of involvement with this thing.  They use it, enjoy it... whatever.   The creators also have fun making whatever it is they make, because it's like their own child.  They nurture and develop it with a fiery passion that is characteristic of the most human of human beings.
 
But then, the businessmen come in.  The great capitalists, all dressed the same, all imbued with the same purpose: use other people's creations to make money.   They don't create.  They own.  They use.  They exploit.  What gives them this power?  Existing capital and lawyers.  Stuff written on paper.  They come in, and like hungry dogs, they sniff around for the stupidest ideas to make money.  They don't care whether it's useless, or whether it will even harm society.  It's totally irrelevant.  As long as they make money, they are satisfied.  Lawyers will cover the gray areas.
 
Is this okay?  Some smart guy invented e-mail.  Capitalists come along and decide to spam the shit out of it.  Some smart guy invented the web.  Capitalits come along and smear their instrusive, annoying advertising shit on every page, and even go so far as to using the web as a mechanism to install pop-ups on your computer.  Newest trend: sprinkle "sponsored links" on every keyword on a useful page.  (example)  Disgusting.  Are ads by nature evil?  No.  When presented in a delicate, non-instrusive manner, they can actually be a fun expereince.  It's an art really.  But joe-blow capitalists lack the intellectual capacity for art.  They're the kind of guys who'd use a cannon to shoot the mosquito, just because it's quicker than trying to catch it with your hands.
 
Video games, at least back in the SNES days, used to be real fun.  Why?  Becuase game developers had real fun making the game.  They weren't held at financial gunpoint to rush the game to meet unreasonable deadlines.  But now video games have gone the route of the movie industry.  Make anything as quick as possible, take the profit, and cover the holes with marketing.  If the employees groan, replace them.  If the gamers complain, pay certain publications some of that extra profit and brainwash them.  Marketing usually stops the sheep gamers from complaining anyhow.  If someone acutally comes up with a successful game idea, milk it for many sequels until it ends up sucking.  Anything can be solved with money and power. 
 
In the end though, all of suffer.  Global stress is on the rise.  I dont' need a huge table of statistics to back this up, I just have to go through the list of all the people I know.   People who are happy with their job and family are now few and far between.  Actually, they're almost non-existent.  If this was some kind of a Sim-World game, then the player is playing like shit.  He's put too much emphasis on GDP and now everything's feeling the negative repercussions. 

It has occured to me that if I ever dream about a particular girl (in a positive way of course), I'll have lingering crush on her for at least a few days after the dream.  It's weird.  Last night, I had a dream about Carol - yes the same Carol I went out with last month - and when I woke up... all I could think about was her.  I just wanted to see her, or talk to her... anything. 
 
This isn't new.  A few weeks before, I had a similar dream about this girl on my xanga stalk list.  I've never even met this person in real life, and yet I somehow had a dream about her.   As expected, after having the dream, I was temporarily infuated with her... hitting her page with thrice the frequency, thinking about the various means we could possibly meet, etc. etc.  But she has now been relegated to the sidelines, until I have the next dream about her.
 
I've even had dreams about my girlfriend's sisters, my friend's girlfriends... etc. etc.  Basically, it doesm't matter who it is, as long as I find the girl attractive, there's like a 2% chance she'll be in any one of my dreams.  There are no rules in the deepest recesses of the human psyche.  Anybody is fair game, even your sisters and cousins, if that's your cup of tea.  Funny thing is... as obsessed I am with sex, none of these dreams involve actual sex.  I'm just one unlucky bastard.  Instead, all my dreams involve dating... the insecure, exciting process of trying to meet and talk to each other on level terms.
 
Whenever I ask Shinobu why she ended up liking me, she can never avoid telling the story about how she had an erotic dream on the night she came over to my room in Guo Qing.   That was the "turning point" in our relationship.. the day she decided that I was real boyfriend material.  I could sense it too.. in the way she would want to stay close to me all the time.  It was all because of that dream I think.
 
So, if dreams have THAT much effect on who our animal instincts are trying to target... what does that tell you about love?  It's a fickle pickle.  It's like a lottery.  Of course, you have to at least be attractive in some way to the other person to at least have a ticket or two into your dreams... but at the end of the day, it's still a lottery.  I mean it's possible that if Shinobu did not have that dream, she wouldn't have been so crazy about me that she'd start a relationship with me behind her ex's back. 

I've finally received the final 10 songs for my CMUSIC contract.  I haven't counted 'em all, but I must've made about 80 MIDI's for these guys.  That's a hella lot of MIDI data being pumped out... and I'm proud to say it's all good quality too (of course, cuz I made it).   Here are some samples, because I know you care:
 
Imitation Guy by Kome Kome Club
http://members.rogers.com/jigen-ongaku/imitation.mp3
 
Breathe by Prodigy
http://members.rogers.com/jigen-ongaku/breathe.mp3
 
Double Lovin by Baha Men
http://members.rogers.com/jigen-ongaku/double.mp3
 
Well after the contract, I have no goddamn clue what I am going to do for money.  I could get a real job, but the idea of 9 to 5 is just... well... terrifying.  I just realized today for the first time that I have never actually woken up early the morning and felt good about it.  If you were to plot my sleep schedule on some kind of graph, you'd find that the equilibrium point probably stablizes along the lines of sleep at 3am, wake up past 12pm.    Any effort to deviate from the equilibrium (such as when I was in high school) results in a very cranky n' groggy Terry, or an absent Terry.  Plus I find idle mornings EXTREMELY depressing.  There's just something about the combination of morning light and having nothing to do that gives me the instant blues.
 
I think I'm part of this new group of hyperactive spoiled new generation kids who just can't adapt themselves to fit society.  I look at Shinobu and it's incredible... she can sleep and wake up almost at will.  How does she do it?  I have no fucking clue.  I try to sleep at a normal time and all I get are endless thoughts circulating through my head.  My brain just won't stop when I tell it to.  It has to decide for itself when it's time to shutdown.  It's a pretty fucked up operating system. 
 
If I had a buffer body, I think I'd try to be a porn star for awhile.  But I'm skinny as skinny can get, so that's pretty much out of the question.  Plus my gf would probably object. 
 
I want to get into the music industry in some odd backdoor way.  Like publishing songs for children or creating very industry specific MIDI's... maybe for cellphones n' such.  I don't want to make "real" music, because when it comes to music production and mastering techniques I really suck compared to the competition.  Compare any modern song this last decade to the 80's songs.  Everything just sounds crisper, punchier, and hits hard.  Lots of voodoo sound engineering techniques there.  Not saying anything about the quality of the actual music though. 
 
I realize I like writing music for crippled sound synthesizers.  For one thing, you can focus more on the music itself and not the technology.  Cuz if you write a string part for instance, and you can use ANYTHING to sound it... then you could literally spend years trying to develop the perfect string sound.  It could involve a combination of various samples, EQ'ed in various amounts, enhanced in various amounts, etc. etc.  The possibilites are both mindboggling and terrifying.  Take Hans Zimmer produced music for instance.  He admits that he adds synthesized sounds to live orchestral performances to give it extra punch.  But where?  How?  In what amounts?  Only the guru, with years and years of music production expereince, would know
 
Sound quality is a lot like graphics quality or cpu speed.  Everyone notices the improvements, but hear the new quality for too long and it normalizes.  This is really unfortunate, because it means all the old stuff becomes that much more unlistenable.  I mean who can forget all those wonderful melodies from the SNES days... Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Gradius III.  If you listen to them on using the Winamp SPC player... it's like... whoh... cheap synth dude!  But back then, did you even care?  You were probably too absorbed into the music to give a shit.  This all ties in back to the idea that quality improvement euphorias only exist when the dy/dx > 0.
 
Anyways, I sorta have an idea right now for a mini-project to do on the side.  It involves MIDI and some Java programming (which has pretty damn good MIDI I/O support I must say)... I've already started a rough prototype and already I've gotten some pretty cool stuff... but it's hard to appreciate in the form it is right now.  More development and I think it'll turn into something really fun for anybody to play with.

Oh, and before I forget... thanks to Matt and his suggestion to use bittorrent instead of emule, I was able to try out several PS2 games.  Let's some quick reviews, shall we:
 
NBA Ballers: 7/10
Man oh man, this game could be so off the hook if they didn't use another one of those brainless "mash 3 turbos and shoot, mash 3 turbos and crossover, mash 3 turbos and pass" control schemes.  Christ, why don't they tell us to mash all 3 turbos with the controller in your pants while standing upside down?   The models and animations are totally awesome, the extras are really cool, but why is the control scheme so DUMB?   The only real fun in this game is to pick Yao or Shaq, camp in the paint, and swat everything away.  Blocking is hella cool.  I stayed up until 5 am last night playing TV Tournaments and racking up 6-10 blocks/match.
 
Silent Hill 4: 3/10
Don't waste your time, unless you you're some kind of otaku fan of the series.  This is another one of those games where the controls are super-sluggish and killing enemies is nothing more than a chore.  Basically, you play this game for the graphics and atmosphere.  Sorry, but I"m not THAT bored.
 
The Way of the Samurai:  6/10
Controls a bit sluggish, but the idea is kinda cool.  You play some kind of ronin samurai, and you walk around town getting jobs and kiling people for money.  Too bad the load times are really killer.  You need to be fairly bored to lose yourself in this one.
 
Freedom Fighters: 4/10
This one gets a low mark because

1. The version was 50Hz PAL so I had patch the image file and reburn it = waste of 1 cd 
2. It was in spanish, which made me feel like I was working for a Mexican drug lord or something
3. It was a CD Rip so a lot of sounds were missing
4. I've seen this kind of game before
5. FPS Aiming with a Dual Shock Controller?  No Thanks!

Gran Turismo 4: Prologue: 0/10
This one gets an ever lower mark because

1. The version was 50Hz PAL and even though I patched it and reburnt it for some reason it still ends up showing a 50Hz display
2. You can't play 50Hz PAL games on a 60Hz NTSC TV.
3. Therefore, I wasted 2 DVD-R's for a game I can't play

Basically, all the games I got except for NBA Ballers were pretty much a waste of a blank DVD-R.  But the best part about downloading games is not playing the game, it's the idea of getting something for free to add your collection.  So I had my DVD burning jollies and that was that.

 Okay, that's it for now.  Good night!

Wow!  The blogger editor has been updated!  WYSIWYG Rich text editing and keyboard shortcuts!

Not sure if any of you have noticed, but Google's front page now includes a link to a image viewer Picasa (that seems to have been developed by another company entitled by the same name).  I'm excited with anything that google endorses with such enthusiasm, especially when it's smack dab on the main search page.  So I downloaded it, and once again, they have proven that they are probably one of the very few software development houses that KNOW what is super-useful for the end user, and what is just complicated useless fat.

You start the app, and it asks you to pick folders to watch.  Amazingly, everything it defaults to is great: the C and D drives are scanned only once, the Desktop and My Pictures folders are watched carefully.  Somehow (and I don't know how), it also added my downloads folder to the watch list, and that's a good thing, because that folder changes on a regular basis.  The background scanning thread is unintrusive, causes minimal hard disk thrashing, but BEST of all, there's a wondeful icon on the bottom left that indicates to you that Picasa is actually scanning.  I totally hate Winamp's Media Library "Scan in background" becuase there's a complete lack of feedback as to how it's doing.  This is what Google is all about... to the end user, everything it so SIMPLE, but the work that is done in background is extremely complex.

The other great thing I've noticed is the great way it organizes your albums.  It uses the year embedded your digital photo's meta-data to organize everything by year (useful), and then under each year, uses the folder names they are stored in to subcategorize them even further (very useful).  Amazingly, ACDSee cannot even do something like this.  I never even noticed the Calendar feature, but when I tried it, well it totally sucks.  Not only does it look like shit compared to Picasa, but you can only filter your pictures by Year, Month, or Day.  There is no feature to further subcategorize these pictures by the stored folder.

The only feature that I thought sucked was the slideshow.  It seems to use an overlay display (the same used in video players), becuase all my pictures showed very blue and somewhat blocky, and since my PowerStrip shortcut couldn't change the color temeprature, well it must be overlay.  The only reason they used overlay was probably for the extremely smooth 60fps vertical synced fade out fade in effect.  But to sacrifice image quality like that... no thanks.

Also, no apparent way to enter full screen mode.  Hrm...

 

You know that every month or so I get this bout of anger and frustration inside of me for no apparent reason. Well, I guess it could be because my so-called "vacation" is about to come to an end, and I have to face reality sooner or later.

The other day, I went to Shin Kong Mitsukoshi at ZhongShan St. with Shinobu because we really had nothing better to do that day except for visit places we've never been to before. As always, whenever I pass by the cosmetics section, my stomach turns around 5 times and my testicles flare up. In world where people are so saddled with loneliness, depression, and angst, why the FUCK is so much of our combined human efforts allocated to this total bullshit industry. It's so fucking FAKE, for lack of a better word. It's full of lies, deceit, and marketing hype. 99% of human effort is devoted to all the "miscellany" surrounding cosmetics... ie... the booth design, the packaging, even the goddamn NAMES of the products probably take like a $100,000 focus group to create. The remaining 1% - the part that matters - is merely an afterthought: whether the chemicals inside the cosmetics actualy do anything to improve your apperance.




You notice a pattern with almost any cosmetics ad nowadays. They show pictures of beautiful women who probably got that look using other products than the one they're selling... and then somewhere midway, some colorful cartonny "scientific" diagram comes up explaining how this magical ingredient (with a preppy marketing name, like Pitera, Activa, etc.) will transform you into a gorgeous beauty that will stop traffic and cause accidents. Either the target audience is completely retarded, or the producers of these commericals have some serious nerve to treat their customers like they haven't even come out of elementary school. Who the hell would would even BELIEVE the bullshit they spew on those commercials. If you want to know the truth behind cosmetics, talk to a chemist, not the salesperson behind the Anna Sui counter.

Take for instance, all these ads nowadays for hair products that promise to keep your hair smooth and shiny. It seems that every shampoo/conditioner nowadays promises to give your hair the "Super healthy and shiny look". Then you see a picture of a girl whose hair is so smooth and reflective it would probably blind you on a sunny day. Now take a walk in any crowded area and you notice one thing: not a single person has hair that looks that good. What... nobody in crowd of 200 people uses these "super healthy and shiny look" products? What bullshit. If shampoo products did what they keep saying they do, I wouldn't be seeing the "Dried Up" look on every 2nd girl out there. My girlfriend has used a plethora of different shampoo and conditioners upon my request because I thought it was always too dry... and guess what! Nothing has fucking changed! Because shampoo, no matter how it's marketed, is still shampoo... and conditioner, no matter how it's marketed, is still conditioner.

Okay, now that we're done with cosmetics, let's move on to the retail superstore - the holy grail of the systemization and dehumanization of the original concept of a "store". It's owned by businessmen you'll never see, run by nickel and dimed employees who work there because they can't find a better job, and it's always overstocked with a billion items nobody would ever buy. If it's a chain store, then you're in luck, because no matter where you go, it's exactly the same. The other day I was at FNAC, this computer/electronics/CD/books megastore, and it occured to me that given their ridiculusly high prices combined with a ridiuclous large inventory, these guys only move like 5% of their total store volume every month. I went to their CD section and upon casual browsing I found the Chemical Brothers: Dig Your Own Hole CD selling for 479NT. It just made me sad. I actually thought of buying the goddamn CD (even though I have every song on my computer in MP3), just so I could save it from the torture of sitting in this soulless store for the next 10 years. But since I could think of a hundred better ways to spend 479NT, I passed on that opporutnity.

Like I've said before, it's pointless to tell me just to stop complaining and "get on with life", because well, when's the last time you told someone to just "get on with your life" and they actually did? I'm just a completely pessimist and cynic at heart ... full of negative energy. How the hell can I feel good about a future in such an absurd world? I have no dreams to speak of. If someone offered me a 2 million CEO position tomorrow at one of the largest tech companies, I would sure as hell decline. My life would turn into endless corporate meetings talking about irrelevant shit, and at each shareholder meeting I have to sugarcoat every stupid mistake the company made with buzzwords so that they don't get angry and call a vote to replace me. Sorry, but being pretentious and acting like a big hot shot when you're just another slave of the corporate machinery is not my strong suit.

Truthfully, I would like to keep things simple and just make music or be a writer for a living, but my dad would probably disown me if I did. Plus, I don't have any real credibility in these markets, and all the existing competitors have a huge head start becuase they've already learned how to lie on their resumes. It's no longer about the passion or love for your work, it's about knowing how to best fuck people over.

I just read on TeddyP's site that she moved into Universty of Taiwan residence (does that mean NTU?)... which kinda made me reminisce of the WONDERFUL days I had living at the Guo Qing residence. Here are a couple of pics of my room (209) when I was still there...





As you can see the place was very small, but it's amazing how low expectations can turn anything into a bearable experience. Actually, it wasn't bearable, it was great. The whole floor was a beehive of activity, and that's what I miss most about living in res... that feeling that you're surrounded by other people your age. It also helped that I was a lucky bastard and got the whole room to myself while practically everyone else had to share with a roomate. So that meant Shinobu could sleep over in my room even though that was against the regulations. I nearly got a roommate but I actually "coerced" him to leave, believe it or not. It was a moral low for me, but if it comes down to a choice between morals and sex, I pick sex.

On to the people who I lived with. The floor was co-ed, and some of the exchange students were really pretty, like the Vietnamese girl Trang (whom I had a devastating crush on, until Shinobu came along and brought me salvation).



This girl was an absolute knockout, and the ill-effects were felt by about 80% of the male population. Guys left and right were anxious to perform all kinds of favors for the dorm princess, and she didn't feel guilty about it at all. Can't blame her, I'd say she could've been a lot worse. To my knowledge, she didn't have sex with anyone that semester. So let that be a lesson to all you brownie point collectors - this is not like a Mister Donuts promotion where if you collect enough points you get a stuffed toy... with girls, brownie points get you nothing but fake smiles and indifferent gratitudes.

There were a lot of other interesting characters on my floor that year. There was Oscar, this strange Dutch guy who according to my friend Charlie "looked like he was perpetually high":



Can't say I'm surprised though, coming from Holland, he probably smoked a little too much pot for his own good. However, this guy had like perfect skin and a good body (boy do I feel so gay saying this)... so he made a lot of good money thru commercials and modeling. Good looks bring good fortune anywhere on this planet.

Would you want to have this guy operate on you?



That's Wu Fang, genetically Chinese, born and raised in Holland. Like Oscar, he seems be on a constant high, never taking things seriously, and always coming to class late. BTW, this guy was just about the most indiffierent person I've seen...in class, this guy would be half asleep and slouching right in front of the teacher. Oh, he's also a doctor. Crazy huh? Well, good thing he wants to stick to dermatology, and not something more life critical like surgery.

There were so many other guys I met on that floor that year, but I'm too lazy to describe everybody - plus I bet most of my readers don't give a rat's ass anwyays. But can you believe I got all this fun for only 1000NT/month! That's how much it costs to live in res at NTU (if you're an exchange student), so it boils down to about $40CDN a month for a reasonable living space, unlimited water, unlimited electricity, unlimited air-con, and even a super-fast ethernet internet connection. Yes, that's f*cking unbelievable, becuase 1000NT/month is practically how much I pay on my ADSL+phone bill each month now. I pay up to 30 times of what I did at NTU res, but I don't think I'm getting 30 times the fun. In fact, I'd say I had more fun at res, but unfortunately, like TeddyP says, it's really hard to "downgrade" living standards. Plus, it's not feasible.

I think those days at Guo Qing were probably the best times of my life. Yep, it even beat 2nd year university when I first starting going out with my ex-girlfriend and was crowned the "Java King" by all my peers. Everything about it was to fresh, so new, so exciting. Now it seems life has nowhere to go but downhill from here. Marriage, kids, 9 to 5, mortgage, retirement plans... ohhh... so... much... fun!

My contract with CMUSIC expires at the end of August. My correspondant at CMUSIC, Matusda-san, told me the comapny has no plans on continuing the current outsourcing project, thus I'll pretty much be out of a job by next month.

It's a bit distressing, but my gf thinks it's a good thing in many ways... for one thing we've actually had too much spare time recently... to the point where we would often wonder "what should we do today?", which would then lead to "it's like we don't even exist". Well, I guess that's a good thing, after all, what is life about other than sex, good food, and chilling with people you enjoy being with.

So I'm back to the same question I asked myself like a zillion times over the past year... what the hell is my career going to be about? Wow, I'm now part of the early-life crisis group... which according to xanga is pretty much like 80% of people out there.

I think I really want to do something with MIDI. I've gotten so much better at manipulating MIDI data... knowing what parts go where, etc... it would be shame to just leave this skill unusued. Besdies, it's a fairly niche market, and competition is probably bit lighter than... say... programming... which every 2nd person I know is capable of.

Only problem is finding some kind of job in this field that pays decently. And something a bit more stable... so that my gf and I can start making bigger plans for the future.

This last week the Electronic Sports World Cup was being help in France... the game was none other than Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne 1.16. I follow the Warcraft Progamer scene somewhat on a daily basis, and it was a great surprise to me that the former #1 Korean player SK.Sweet (formerly Sweet[SAINT]) ended up 4th place, after losing to the Swede SK.HeMan.

This is what the dude looked like, post tournmament. Time to bust out the Zoloft, baby.



The final match was between the other Korean pro on the tournament, aT-FoV, and Swedish born SK.MadFrog




Besides being the chubbiest player on the tournament, aT-FoV was also the best... he beat both Sweet and MadFrog (two of the world's best players) to take the grand prize of US$10,000.



Anyways, I'm happy that at least an Asian emerged victorious, even though I was hoping Sweet was going to win. Strangely, all the world's best players seem to be concentrated in Sweden and Korea. I wonder why....

The other day I went with my girlfriend to play some basketball at NTU. We were just shooting the ball around when all of a sudden, at like 11:30pm these two taiwanese dudes just came up to us and asked if they could shoot around with us. I'll skip the details, but we played 2 on 2 and then my gf got tired after 3 or 4 points, so she sat down while the 3 of us played American. Thanks to my better-than-the-average-Taiwanese shooting, I won 11-5-1 or something.

The moment I told these guys that I was born in Canada, and the moment they realized that I could speak decent Japanese, they started asking me questions non-stop, like I was a goddamn star or something. Common questions like

"do you speak taiwanese?"
"how is it that you can speak good chinese?"
"what did you study at ntu"
"is it easy to get into u of t?"
"do you need to take a gre for canadian universty post-grad?" (I don't even know the answer to this one)

It's understandable in a country where everybody seems to be the same that I'm sort of a rare breed, but holy shit the questions would not stop coming, WHILE we were playing no less. It was so weird, to see this guy trying to pull off some fancy dribbling and in the middle asking "so what language do you use with your gf"? It was almost creepy really, at one point I felt that the interrogation was part of some ploy to sneak up behind me, tie me up, and rape my gf while I sit helplessly in the dirt. Guess that happens when you watch too much fantasy porn.

The reason I bring this up is becuase after 3 or 4 questions, I just wanted these guys to disappear. I like making friends but ONLY when it's a bit of a challenge. It's strange, but if people are TOO friendly with me, then I don't want anything to do with them. Conversely, if people give me the cold shoulder, but I think they are physically attractive, I fall in love completely. Kinda like Shinobu's younger sister, Rino. I can tell she doesn't give a rat's fuck about me, and that's why I like her so much.

Isn't that disgusting? But it feels so natural to operate like that. For instance, at one point while I was taking a break, I thought to myself "maybe I should be friendly to these guys too, after all they are putting so much effort to be friendly towards me", BUT... it's like my muscles wouldn't listen. It seems I had subconsciously labeled these people as losers, not because they were really losers, but because they were too forthcoming.

I remember back in high school, there was this song by Ben Folds Five, "A Battle of Who Could Care Less"...I never actually listened to the song, but the title itself was golden. This is the motto by which attraction operates. Attraction is very fickle and sensitive to seemingly random conditions. In romantic love for instance... Step 1 is usually noting something very attractive about somebody, like, their skin, tits, or ass. Okay, personality can sometimes count too. Step 2 is after you're hooked, the person gives you the cold shoulder. I don't mean that they snarl at you... I mean they'll smile and everything but they seem to be "keeping their distance" from you at the same time. That's when you're pretty much fucked, unless you're a professional macker of sorts.

The same principle also applies to so many small things that nobody wants to talk about. Like e-mails for instance. You write e-mails to friend, at first the response is very quick... like 1 or 2 messages a day, then all of sudden 5 days pass and you haven't heard a reply. For some stupid reason, it seems that this suddenly aloof person has a much greater value, not because they have improved as a human being, but becuase they have made their conversation material more rare and unavailable.

People (like me, but less nowadays because of my gf) can sometimes try to beat this system by "faking" unavailability - that is, they may want to smother a person with questions or reply instantly to an e-mail, but becaause they are very image-conscious, they purposely delay their instinctive actions. Unfortunately, while this may work at the beginning, over time small slip-ups here and there will reveal your true colors. Increasing your value by unavaliablility only works if you're really unavailable. Then, when the person is question finally contacts you, you don't sound like a dog who's been starving for weeks.

I just saw that my review of Splinter Cell:Pandora Tomorrow was posted on Gamefaqs website. Yes I know I exaggereated the "it's all capitalism's fault" but, but that's what makes the review fun to read. Anyways, I didn't bullshit on the mark or anything, the game really was a waste of 4 CD's, for christ sakes it's the EXACT same game as the 1st one. Just different levels. Even the way Lambert keeps saying "Details on your OPSAT" was so annoying and repetitive.

Re: Video games. You KNOW that this whole graphics industry is a goddamn scam. Since starting playing GunBound today, I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a game so much. Do you know why GunBound is so fun? Because it's SIMPLE. Does it use pixel shaders? No. Does it need a overheating 2Ghz computer paired with an overheating 500Mhz graphics card to run properly? No. It's essentially a 2D game based on sprites, even though it might use 3D particle effects for some of it's gfx. It runs on "shit" computers that don't need big fucking heatsinks and noisy fans to operate.

Games, at the end of the day, are about making people happy. So if the correlation between better graphics and happiness is non-existent, why the hell do we care about these pixel shaders and all this fancy schmancy technology? Because (drumroll please).... that's the only way the economy of the PC market can keep on running. Yes, people do WANT these things, but only because market forces render OLDER systems obsolte. Who the fuck would want to buy a state of the art card if all it did was add a few colors and increase the frame rate from 60 to 100,000? Exactly. As consumers, we don't want new cards per se, we just don't want our games to be unplayable.

Nearly every computer purchase I have made in my lifetime (except for monitors), was coerced. Eg I get sick of seeing games run at horrific frame rates or looking like shit. I used to try doing all the small things to optimize my older system, but it's really depressing to spend like 10 hours researching all these tweaks and getting like less than 10% difference. New systems usually bring like 200-300% performance differences, and that's what counts.

The thing is, most of the latest games nowadays just don't satisfy me, despite all the great advances in graphics technology. Every trend in the game indstury reminds of the movie industry: there's a SHITLOAD of both, but only like 1% can be considered real art. The rest: profit-oriented media.

Wow, this game is super-addictive. It was ranked #6 I think on the Gamefaqs PC Top 10 games list, so I checked it out. Unbelievably, it's also totally free. The software download went at a blazing 200k/sec, no bullshit ads or whatever, I sign up, verify my email and I'm playing a real game within minutes. Not bad for a way way way way way way over-commercialized internet.

Get it here:
http://www.gunbound.net

If you played the original Artillery back in the 8088 days, you'll love this game. It's like Worms except way more fun. It's simple too. Just 4 directions (arrow keys), and the shoot button (spacebar). That's it. The only other thing you should know is that each "mobile" has 3 different weapons, a light attack (#1), a strong attack (#2), and a super attack (SS), each with varying powers but also various delays (your next turn will come much later if you use an SS attack over a light one. for instance). Just go into a game, and shoot at other players. It's hella fun.

I haven't checked the ethnicity of the authors of the game, but judging by the FANTASTIC color balancing on every single graphic (from the website to the game itself), and of course the cute anime-style characters, it looks really... Korean. Japanese and Korean web sites are truly the best looking - for some reason the graphic designers in those countries are just top notch.

Having being... privileged... over the last few years to fairly unrestrained access to sex, I would like to post a few observations of mine about this taboo subject. For some people, especially in North America, this stuff might make you feel a little uncomfortable, so you might as well just not come back until the next post.

UNEXPECTEDNESS = THE KEY TO GOOD SEX

It seems almost natural that anything that applies to masturbation also applies to real sex. Unexpectedness is certainly one of those things. Like if I I open one of my porn clips by accident, or I suddenly see a good picture of Zhang Ziyi... it's a huge sexual turn on. Likewise, if my gf suddenly comes into the room wearing nothing and gives me a blowjob without notice, the ensuing sex will be many times better.

If sex is "expected", and this can happen in many ways (eg telling each other "let's fuck tonight" on the way home)... it's just not as fun. Same thing with porn... if I mentally expect to watch a certain clip, it won't have that mindblowing effect that I want. It's even worse when I've seen the clip 20 times already, I've pretty much memorized the whole damn thing. Expected sex usually leads to expected results, which will never be as satisfying.

Come to think of it, unexpectendess is HUGE with sex, for both males and females. It's not like appreciating fine art - you don't need to TRY to appreciate unexpectedness... it's deeply ingrained within the human psyche. Unexpected timing, unexpected positions, unexpected locations... they all serve to bring fire to the emotional impact.

There have been many times when sex has been reduced to nothing more than physical pleasure. Some people may describe sex as just the physical sensations, but good sex is far more than that, especialy for females. A large part of it is emotional release and excitement. But if we do it everytime the say way, in the same room, at the same time... the emotional impact is nearly zero. We can still enjoy it on a certain level, but it's like bread without the jam.. it just doesn't blow your mind, even though you might feel full later. Sex cannot be made into a routine, otherwise it loses the bulk of it's potential.

I have never been so privileged as to have unexpected sex with a female friend, but I'd imagine that would be un-FUCKING-believable... you know, I'd have her over at my place, we'd start talking like friends, but then a few casual touches, escalates into apprehensive groping, then clothes start coming off... holy fucking shit, that would just be incomparable to anything else - the nirvana of unexpectedness in every possible dimension.. I can think of a few girls right now with whom this would be like the ultimate fantasy, some of whom I've never even met in person....

Pheromones: believe it or not, this shit is actually true. I'm not selling you pheromone seducers like those junk mail scam artists, so I have no reason to bullshit you on this one. But I am 100% certain that if my girlfriend takes a shower before sex, it is will be that much harder for me to come. Humans really do produce a natural scent that is most intense around the neck/ears, and smelling this during sex intensifies the experience. It's my expereince that pheromones are usually the strongest in the morning - that's when humans smell the most like themselves. Sweat, outside dirt, tobacoo etc...are very unwelcome.

Positions: Pretty much what I've heard/read from various sources... the missionary is truly the backbone of all positions... it is the most comfortable, the most natural, and the easiest for both to come in. In any routine, the missionary usually comes last... I would say roughly 50% of sex time is spent in missionary, that's how important it is. Any other good positions are usually strictly dependent on the the couple's personal preferences.

Visual stimulation differences between genders: This difference is very apparent in almost any asepct of sex... males go by visual stimaulations, females go by more of a touchy-feeling emotional stimulation. Guys like to see everything during sex, but girls always close their eyes and try to lose themselves in the moment. Like unexpectedness, this is not something people try to do, it's ingrained into the human psyche. The only girls that open their eyes are professional Western porn stars who probably can't even feel anything down there anymore after being fucked thousands of times.

Post-coital: I think humans resemble cats. After sex, they just don't want to be near each other for awhile.

Seen a bit too many of these "Now playing: Thievery Corporation" on Xanga recently, so I checked out their music. Well, if I ever open a cafe, I know what to play for background music after the sun goes down. It's sonically pleasing but all their shit (7 albums I think) sound more or less the same. I guess that's not a bad thing, really.

Chilled out at Shake House today.. then all of a sudden had the urge to play a little basketball. As usual, when I go alone (or with my gf, who doesn't even want to touch the ball), I never get to play a pickup game. It just seems that no matter where I turn, everyone's already got their team of 3... and I'm certainly not the "leader" type who can carry a team to victory, so recuirting my own team is out of the question. I mean if I recruited a team and ended up being the worst player, how embrassing would that be? Very.

Anyhow, I just borrowed a ball, practiced some dribbling and shooting. I think my dribbling has reached the point where it's just plain fun to pick up a ball and dribble freestyle - nothing like AND1 or EBC stuff mind you... just simple things like between the legs and behind the back.

I think my inferiority in the game of basketball will always be one of those things that will haunt me till the day I die. There have been moments, mostly in Taiwan, where I have actually rose the occasion and dominated very particular games (mostly with hot shooting)... but for the most part in Canada, my role on most teams can be best described "wait, is he actually playing or just watching?" Well, it was never that bad... like I said in a post long ago, I have a good shot and can drive fairly quickly to the right. But it feels like I will never be that player that gets the crowd's attention with flashy moves and no-look passes. And that's sad, becuase I can only imagine how FUCKING good it must feel to pull off some wicked move and having everybody around you going "oooh". Like Alimoe said in the EBC Second Season - if you can make the crowd go "oooh" 7 times, you're the man.

It's weird, watching all these AND1 clips or EBC stuff from Rucker Park inspires you to be the next king streetballer. But pick up a ball, step on the court, and BAM! The lack of experience and physical conditioning brings you back down to earth real quick, and it's so depressing as you end up doing the same shit again. I think it's actually bad for most people to watch too much streetball highlights because it takes away the satisfaction from developing more practical skills like off-the-ball movement. I mean who gives a shit about cutting across baselines and give-n'-go when you can make your defender look the other way? The thing is... anyone can learn good off-the-ball movement, it's just that nobody cares to.

Unfortunately, to practice off-the-ball movement, you need to be in a situation to move without the ball, so that rules out solitary practice. Damnit I wish I had like 5 friends who all lived close to me and love to play ball. I'd play 3 on 3 everyday with them and for sure these skills would develop so much faster.

Sorry for loading up on the inlined avi's... but it's just so much more functional when it's played in the browser:



This was from the AND1 MixTape Vol 6. H-O-L-Y F-U-C-K. That is poetry in motion. I am going to play basketball tomorrow, rain or shine.

Two things I really like about this short clip:

1. The dude is driving LEFT, and yet his body form is so perfect! It's beautiful, something that I want to emulate

2. You'll notice on the second dribble, he plants his right food HARD in order to stop his entire body. Shortly after, despite having practically zero momentum going anywhere, he can elevate to such a height for the jump shot. It doens't look hard, but try shooting a jump shot without bringing your dominant foot forward before the jump. It's very hard to get any kind of distance. I think he does a quick "replant" of his dominant foot, but it seems to be going backwards instead of the normal forwards. It reminds me a bit of Kobe and his ability to pull up very unexpectedly (his favorite is using his left foot as the plant foot for the jumper)

Sigh, it's been pouring and pouring here in Taiwan. I really wanted to play a bit of basketball this weekend, but instead I did nothing special except for go to Breeze centre with my girlfriend. Did I mention that I hate shopping? Yeah I think I did... anyways...

I'd like to offer my two cents about breakups because it seems that's the latest topic of discussion on my xanga stalk list. I've been through only one breakup so far but I think that's more than enough for my lifetime. Actually, in deeper retrospect, I've had two, but the 1st one doesn't really count. Anwyays, that's another story.

If there were any word I could pick to describe a breakup, it would be PAIN. I'm not going to dignifiy this kind of event with some great philosphical sugar coating... breakups are mostly about... suffering... and pain. If it weren't that way, nobody would give a rats ass about breakups. It goddamn hurts, almost to a physical level, to not have that feeling that you are no longer "emotionally connected" with a significant other. It's like a stomach ache that won't go away... even when you're on the toilet bending over, or trying to sleep, or watching tv... it's still stabbing at you, bleeding you mercilessly without repose.

The one thing you get a lot of during breakups is advice. Friends and family will try to help you all they can with wise all-knowing advice... the problem with the advice is not that it's wrong or misinformed... it's that it does very little to reduce the PAIN, at least on a long term basis. Unfortunately, that is what everybody going through a breakup wants to alleviate... PAIN(unless you're some kind of emotional masochist). I heard a SHITLOAD of advice when I broke up... a lot of it from my dad... and the best it could do was give me maybe 30 minutes of relief. Advice is kinda like cough drops... while you're sucking on it, it works, but once it's gone from your mouth, the cough (and the pain) creeps back into your system. And nobody wants to give you advice 24 hours a day.

I suppose the most common human response to a breakup is probably to enact some kind of major change into one's lifestyle, in an attempt to erase all semblances of the life you once had with your significant other. This in fact is MUCH better medicine than listening to more advice, but it depends on the scale of the change. I've noticed a lot of girls like to cut their hair really short after a breakup, so that when they look in the mirror it doesn't remind them of what they looked like with their boyfriend. Not being a girl, I can't comment on how well that works. But one thing I think works real well for both genders is to take an extended vacation to another country, maybe work abroad or something. Unfortunately, this is not always possible due to social restrictions (work, responsibilities, etc.), but if there's a will, there's a way (a little bit of immaturity helps too). I actually threw away my summer job at Lucent so that I could go back to Taiwan after my breakup. Don't regret it at all. It did exactly what I thought it would, made me forget about my ex exponentially faster. When I came back for 3rd year university, the emotional burden was pretty much cleared off the table.

Finally, the one thing that will make a breakup almost child's play: get hooked up with someone else. Now, here's where a lot of people will unholster their advice guns and shoot you with a big-ass label that says "immature". They're probably right, but I guess it all depends on what your value system is... do you want to stop the pain, or do you care more about being labeled "mature" by your peers? In my case, my market value was a little too low to conveniently latch on to the next emotional vine, but let's be realistic... if another girl just as wonderful as the one before suddenly appeared into my life, I sure as hell won't pass it up for the sake of maturity. In fact, being the arrogant bastard that I am, I'd probably send a picture of us together to my ex, just to rub it in. Okay, maybe I wouldn't go that far, but I'd be laughing like Butters when he dons that Dr. Evil suit.

In conclusion, the only thing I really have to say about breakups are 1. they really hurt, 2. use practical effective measures to alleviate the pain. That's the Virgo way!