For a blogger, I actually don’t read many blogs. Most of the ones I frequent are friends’ to keep up with what they are up to…

One of the few blogs I do follow though is The Dilbert Blog. Scott Adams is one funny man. While most of his writing is laced with his unique humor, it’s not always about silliness. Some of his posts are very thought-provoking and usually with very unique & interesting perspective.

Check it out if you haven’t, it’s one of the most entertaining blogs in cyberspace!

Technorati : dilbert blog

Cowboy Junkies is an alternative rock band from Toronto with their down-right depressing lyrics, nice blend of guitar and harmonica, subtle rhythms and of course the original voice of Margo Timmins. Their melancholic music is a mix of blues, country, folk, and rock. With a lot of depressing with titles like “To Love Is to Bury”, “‘Cause Cheap Is how I Feel”, “Lonely sinking feeling”, their style is a bit off-beat, which to me is appealing. In fact, the band makes a point of evading mainstream: quitting major record label and starts distributing their own music with their independent label. How cool is that?

I first heard their music during my college years; my room-mate Minh had a copy of The Trinity Session. The album was recorded live in a single day in a church in Toronto and basically launched the band, an early album that remains one of their best work. At first, I didn’t think much of the music after casual listening. But during a late night study, I was hooked on their tunes! Guess it’s got to do with ambiance and the undivided attention from a pair of headphones. I found their music captivating and they became one of my favorite bands. I’ve been following their works ever since that one late night.

So I was looking forward to their concert all this summer. Last Wednesday, after the kids were done with their swimming classes, we got them ready to spent the night with their cousin Malia. After their aunt Betty drove them off, Suzanne & I headed to the Mountain Winery. It was our first time there. There were obvious signs of renovations everywhere. But it has a breath-taking view of the valley. The venue is small, intimate and beautiful with the valley below on one side and the back-drop of wineries on the other. I wish I had a chance to take some photographs during the sunset. We arrived as the opening act started playing, so no chance to stroll and tour the place. I lugged along my camera but had to hide it in my jacket as I was scared away by the posted signs banning non-consumer cameras. I was able to sneak in a few clicks though.

The Bittersweets opened for the Cowboy Junkies and they were very good by the way. The band even blogged about that nite. The lead singer Hannah Prater seemed very down-to-earth and had very nice voice. Not sure the title of the last song they performed but it was a beautiful song that starts with “Good night San Francisco…” (can’t go wrong with lyrics like that). I’ll probably order their debut CD; very talented band and I have no doubt we’ll hear more of them in the coming years.

This was the 3rd time I saw The Cowboy Junkies’ concert and I’d say it was as good as the 1st concert I saw them during the Lay It Down tour (Lay It Down was an amazing album). I was hoping for more numbers from Lay It Down and they didn’t get around to their own rendition of Lou Reed’s Sweet Jane as I’d hoped. But they did a few songs from their old album The Trinity Session including Blue Moon. They closed the night with Margo’s masterful rendition of Misguided Angel– it was best of the night.

The Cowboy Junkies are a type of band that is perfect for small venues like Mountain Winery. The ambiance was great. Suzanne & I enjoyed the evening. What’s not to like: good music, starry night and beer in our hands!

Corporation for Public Broadcasting was created in the ’60′s to ensure means for independent broadcasts. Now, the Bush administration is trying to eliminate the federal subsidy to CPB. This funding normally is distributed between the public TV stations and NPR. But in a vote of 357-72 last week, the House overwhelmingly rejected President Bush’s proposal. Here’s the official recorded tally.

The funding for public broadcasting has been threatened by conservatives the last few years. Unfavorable coverage and views on the Bush administration on many programs broadcasted on PBS & NPR have a lot to do with that, no doubt.

As frequent readers of this blog knows, I’m a big fan of public broadcasting. Say what you will of Congress, they did at least something right last week.

Wow…

While channel surfing last nite, I caught an episode of a new series on PBS called Travels To The Edge with Art Wolfe.

The 13-part series shares the most majestic places in the world with the viewers through Wolfe’s camera lenses. But it’s not just a travel or wild-life program with video of harsh deserts, imposing mountains or lush rain forests. Wolfe actually talks about photography: equipment and techniques!

Tonite, the episode follows Wolfe to The Altiplano in Bolivia where he photographs the giant cacti and the largest salt flat in the world. It was a HD broadcast on KQED and it was breath-taking. HD is the perfect format for this type of series, and I’ll definitely be following the rest of the series.

The episode was simply awe-inspiring for a shutterbug and a hack like me!

Our government hatched this great idea of turning the clocks forward by an hour on March 11 rather than the usual early April date will result in energy savings. The first time I heard this is when I received emails at work about how our machines need to be patched for this. I went to the corporate meeting and it was apparent to me that this was a big corporate effort just to comply with this change. It was Y2K all over again. I was wondering about thousands of man hours and how this would cost Yahoo!

I had doubted the saved energy is worth the troubles. Sure enough, no utilities have claimed any measurable impact from this bonehead flop. For the same effort spent this past spring, I’d rather see DST abolished altogether!

This blog mentions a pending deal to convert a dozen 7-Elevens into Kwik-E-Marts as a promotional effort for the Simpsons movie this summer. Available to buy: KrustyO’s cereal, Buzz Cola, and iced Squishees.

If you’re a Simpsons fan (and who isn’t), how ultra cool is that?

I’m hoping there’ll be one nearby in the Bay Area…

I was watching The Kid the other day with my girls. Bruce Willis plays a spin-meister whose job is damage control for ill-behaving famous figures. Well, it seems to me there’s a trend of damage control in real life of late…

First, rep. Mark Foley and Mel Gibson blamed alcoholism and entered rehab. Then Michael Richards, Mike Tyson & Isiah Washington both entered rehab for “psychological counseling” for whatever blame I don’t even understand. Now SF Mayor Gavin Newsom blames his affair on alcoholism and enters rehab. How convenient…

The first thing these guys do is announcing something like “I take full responsibility…” and then follow up with “I have a problem and I will seek help by checking myself into a rehab.” Makes you think if they’re all using the same image consultant. You can’t help but chuckle every time this same old tactic is employed by somebody famous.

These are desperate attempts to drum up public sympathy. I for one do not have any for these characters. They cannot be excused of their behavior just because they “acknowledge” they have a problem. There’s virtually no courage in this kind of “acknowledgment.” The majority of them are not even “owning” up to their problems– they got caught, for Pete’s sake! Plus, owning up to one’s behavior does not automatically means sympathy. They are adults, not kids…

Furthermore, using “going to get treatments” shifts the emphasis on the behavior from a character flaw issue. To a degree, these are attempts of distancing oneself from one’s own demons– a behavior is more treat-able than a character flaw. So ironically, this “taking responsibility and getting treatment” tactic actually removes the responsibility of the act itself in my opinion. Ultimately in the above cases, rehabs were used by these individuals to get a handle on their images and avoid the consequences.

Psychological counseling may help with behaviors, but how does it or anything else help with something inherent as a character flaw? Is that possible? Treatment is a way of getting help, not a convenient excuse for bad behaviors or character flaws!

Okay, these are a bit geeky, but can’t argue that they are anything but uncool:

• Video of demo of a digital drawing board @ MIT.
• Here’s cool video of the inner workings of a hard drive. Amazing machinery.
• 3D bump desktop

KTEH started running a pledge drive this past week. On Saturday evening, the station aired a concert by Celtic Woman, a group of 5 lovely Irish women artists with amazing talents. Suzanne tuned in and an unexpected thing happened. We left the TV on and when we returned a bit later we discovered Allison sat quietly on the couch intently watching the concert– I’ve never seen her watching with such concentration. When I tried to change the channel, she made me turned it right back. She told us that she liked the music.

Her favorite seemed to be Máiréad who’s petite (perhaps that’s why Allison took a liking?) & plays a fiddle.

…to our commie.

<rant>

When our 5 years old projection TV went kaput last December, we got it fixed by a local TV repairman. Recently, the Sony unit decided to get creative and started rendering the picture all in hue of blue or sometime of green. Other times, it’d paint several long red arches across the entire screen. And once it is on long enough, the unit would decide that some napping is in order by flickering a few red flashes and turns itself off. The darn thing is starting to develop a mind of its own. But I digress, this entry is about the Commie!

Anyway, I decided to cancel our subscription to Comcast HD cable TV a few weeks back. I mean what’s the point, when my HD shows are in monochrome! While we’re watching analog TV now, it does feel great not living under the control of The Commie. I had discovered that some users began to call the Comcast DVR, The Commie– appropriately I thought.

You see, the Commie sucks. In fact, it really really really sucks! There had been many occasion that I came close to throwing its ass out of my window. I’m not exaggerating. The darn thing infuriates me! I’ve never had a worse user experience with an electronic gadget in my entire life.

Here are some of things that bug me:

1. Slow as a 2000 years old tortoise. You change the channel or clicking any of the button on the remote, you wait for a delayed response. Unbelievably annoying.
2. Search sucks. It seems I’d have to “type” a lot to search for anything. Entering a letter is a pain since you scroll through the entire alpha bets, one letter at a time. Hello? These Commies are built by Motorolla, couldn’t these geniuses learned a thing or two from the phone engineers in terms of keypad input?
3. Long boot time. Whenever unit is unplugged, it means we’d have to wait for a few minutes before rebooting completes. It’s worse than my 2 years old Windows desktop PC.
4. Crashes and freezes. The unit would sometime crashes or freezes– fixing it requires you to unplug it, which leads the problem above: long boot time. Argh!
5. Unresponsive. Often, I have no idea how to get the sucker to respond to me. Not infrequently, it would freeze, but not really! :0 This happens a lot. I’d press Channel Up and nothing happens because the unit freezes up, so you press the button again, again, again… but nothing happens, until the Commie wakes itself up and executes the last 12 commands queued up. It ends up jumping 12 channels. As I noted, this happens a lot with my unit. I had to deal with this almost everyday. One minute, it’s unresponsive and the next minute, it runs 10+ commands. This is the most horribly infuriating thing about The Commie.
6. Stupid warnings. Some of the warning messages are so brain dead. For example, if my unit is low on empty space, it’d warn that “Your unit is low space: 10%”. Why tell my percentage? I’d have to do some math to figure out that means I have 8 hours of recording left. Give me a break! Why not just say that!
7. Dumb UI. Too many instances, but I’ll point out just an example. The unit has 2 tuners which the unit makes them too painfully obvious. The user has to aware which tuner he’s using. If I starts a recording and then attempting to change the channel, it wouldn’t let me. I’d have to hit a button on the remote to swap to the other tuner. Why doesn’t it switch the tuner automatically? Why require the user to be so aware of which tuner he’s using.
8. Repeats. Even though I specified no repeat, my unit kept recording repeated shows; we’d have 6 recording of the same South Park episodes each week. Wassup w/ that?

The Commie was crap. It’s the Fidel Castro of DVRs. These Commies are bad for TV experience, bad for your blood level, bad for your psychological health & sanity. The Commie can shorten your life span. I can’t believe Comcast is pushing thousands of these crappy units out to their customers.

I have acted: out with The Commie! Let freedom rings again in our living room…

</rant>

I hadn’t really looked forward to it. I usually dig comic-based flicks. But I rolled my eyes when I first saw the preview of Superman Returns, thinking “oh great, another remake.” I had thought it would have to tediously rehash the story over again, establishing where he comes from and how he learns of his power, blah, blah… And Lex Luther, again? Please…

hen Suzanne took the kids to her friend’s house to give me some quiet time, I had some free time and so I thought “what the heck, I’ll bite.” I took off to AMC20 to catch it (with low expectations of course). I thought it was awesome, most enjoyable flick for me so far this summer. Liked it more than X-Men 3. The plot although not solid, was refreshing enough to move things along. It didn’t take a lot of time establishing the characters. The special effects were great– the flying scenes were breath-taking. I kept comparing them to the old green-screen effects. Of course, I thought those effects were great then too when I first saw Superman in the 80′s. Kevin Spacey was great, of course, as Lex Luther.

For me, Christopher Reeve was Superman; no doubt about it — Reeve owned the role. Compared to Reeves, this new actor Brandon Routh is a light weight. One positive thing though, when as Superman, he sounds awefully like Reeves. But as Clark Kent, Routhed basically sucked. He doesn’t put on the glasses the same way. I mean, you remember Reeve’s bumblingly pushing his glasses back or the geeky smirk? Classic! Reeve’s stamp of Superman was definitely there, as I find myself constantly comparing the two actors. As Superman though, I thought Routh did okay.

By the way, I really digged the new uniform with the ribbed S logo.

As I was driving back, I was wondering how sad it would be for Reeve’s son when he watches it. Poor kid, lost his Superman dad and his mom in a span of 2 years. Tough! I wonder if Routh believes in the curse of Superman…

When it comes to music, I’m like an old dog– set in my ways and sticking to familiar tricks. Thanks to hip hop, country and artists like Mariah Carey and N’Sync, I kinda gave up on popular music scene some years ago and stuck to “old” artists. Even with widely available MP3′s, I find that I rarely sample new music. Yes, I am a hermit musically– old school, un-hip and unplugged in many ways.

However once in long while though, I do “discover” new artists. Artists like Sinead Lohan, Coldplay & Norah Jones provide the optimism that there are still good stuffs out there if you look hard enough. I guess it’s reassuring. Lately, I find some of the up & coming female artists to be very good.

Recently, I recently “discovered” another great female artist. I heard Katie Melua’s new album “Piece by Piece” for the first time this week. Great stuffs, jazzy feel similar to Norah Jones. The young British artist is beautiful, awefully talented and has a great voice. I especially like the 2 selections: “I Cried for You” and “9 Million Bicycles“. Her music videos for those 2 songs are awesome too, very innovative. And I’m usually don’t get into music videos…

I can’t help but to feel hip, all of sudden… NOT!

This video chronicles the many faces of Michael Jackson, morphing his faces from age 5 to today. All I can say is, “what a freak!”

Doesn’t the PC guy in the running Mac ads look like Bill Gates to you?

Somebody cleverly recreated the new movie trailer for The Shining, as a romantic comedy! Funny…

This video of the juggling act to the beats of The Beatle’s Golden Slumber is simply incredible. I’ve never seen a juggling act this entertaining. The juggler is Chris Bliss, a stand up comedian, writer and one of the “world’s most famous juggler.” His act openned for Michael Jackson, Duran Duran among others. A very interesting fellow…

I thought it’s interesting that after 10 years, singer Isaac Hayes quits doing the voice for Chef on South Park. Apparently, he objects to an episode ridiculing Scientology & Tom Cruise. Imagine that: somebody accuses South Park of being un-PC.

I guess it’s alright when he pokes fun at everything and every other religion but he can’t handle it when his own religion comes under target. It’s so uncool when one can’t takes on what he doles out… What a bad sport & a hypocrite!

Gabe Pruitt, starting guard for USC, got spanked bad this past week. It was a brilliant prank by some Cal students who posed as “Victoria” online and seduced him with sexy chat & pictures. Pruitt totally bought it, line & sinker\; he made plans to meet up with “Victoria” at Westwood after the game against Cal. Imagine Pruitt’s total horror when chants began by Cal fans when stepped up for his free-throws: “Victoria, Victoria!” Then comes “Who’s he going to call? Victoria, Victoria, Victoria….” Pruitt’s expression pictured here is all too funny as some started chanting out “Victoria’s” phone number. Hard copies of their chat transcripts of their chats were even handed out at the game.

The poor guy went on to have a miserable game: shooting 3 for 13 as USC lost the game to Cal. Classic! Even Pruitt admitted later that it was a good prank…

A live version of the intro to The Simpsons, with original music score of course… it’s great…

I don’t watch Nova religiously anymore, so it’s nice to find that some episodes are now available on the web.

The coming episode (airing 1/3) is an investigation of a mummy (pictured here) in a museum in Niagara Falls, whether it could be the remains of an ancient Egyptian king. Sounds awefully intriguing…