Thursday, August 28. 2008
Wow, just came across this amazing clip of the Mythbusters making some art with paintballs.
Remarkable.
Tuesday, August 26. 2008
With work being fairly busy, I don't really have much time to do hardcore gaming these days. If I did, I'd probably always show up at work tired, and gaming would eat up massive amounts of time which I don't have. So, naturally I've been gravitating towards casual games, games that I can play briefly, and be entertained.
One of my favourites currently is Desktop Tower Defense, a free flash game. Basically, you have bad guys start on one side of the screen, and they're trying to make it to the other side of the screen. Your goal is to setup turrets to shoot them down before they make it to the other end. Simple premise, but highly addictive. The enemies get harder and faster, so you must upgrade your turrets, and try to make it more difficult for them to make it through your maze of death.
I can usually make it to level 32 with no problem. Time well wasted  . Enjoy!
Friday, August 22. 2008
A while back, one of my friends joined a start-up in Silicon Valley, and invited me over to their company for lunch because they had amazing free food. We tried to setup times on several occasions, but it just never worked out because something always came up. In either case, eventually our times lined up, and I made an appointment.
I got to their offices, and my first impression was, wow this place is really disorganized. They had networking cables all over the place, a bunch of people crammed around make shift computer desks, some contractor was painting their offices. Anyway, that was fine, since I was there only to see my friend, oh, and free food.
We head into the kitchen, and there's food sprawled across kitchen counters. There was a mix-match of Indian food, Greek food, and pizza. He was ranting and raving how they got free lunch and dinner every day and how delicious every way; however, the menu wasn't too appealing to me. I don't think I found anything of significant nutritional value. I guess I'm getting old, as pizza isn't all that appealing to me anymore; stereotype dictates that your average computer geek should be put on a strict pizza and coke diet.
Anyway, we start doing some catching up, and he starts talking about how great the company is, and how much power he wields. The red flag went up when he started asking me about what type of work visa I was on. This was odd because this is not a normal conversation piece. I had a suspicion that something weird was going down. Half way through the meal, the CEO comes through to the kitchen, and I'm introduced to him. My friend goes, oh you should talk to the CEO for a few minutes afterwards. I thought... why would I want to talk to the CEO? Oh crap, this is an unsolicited recruiting session. By this point, I have marked my friend as a hostile entity and the goal shifted to getting out as fast as possible. Unfortunately, there was only one exit out of the lunch room.
Continue reading "I Am Not A Mercenary Coder"
Tuesday, August 19. 2008
With TV mostly on re-runs during the summer, I began looking for video on the Internet, and stumbled across a treasure trove of documentaries at PBS. I just finished watching, " Frontline: Young & Restless In China." The documentary features, "an intimate look into nine young Chinese, coming of age in a society that's changing at breathtaking speeds."
It follows the life of a rapper, a migrant worker, a rural housewife, an owner of a tailoring company, an internet cafe owner, a public interest lawyer, a businessman, a doctor, and a marketing executive. I think this program does a fairly decent job of representing a cross-section of Chinese culture; both city dwellers, and rural villagers. It contrasts the clash between old traditional Chinese values with new modern values.
Here's a few observations that stood out:
- The Olympics has a huge human cost to it. Millions of poor people were forced to relocate out of Beijing. Their homes and neighbourhoods were destroyed to make way for Olympic construction.
- It was kind of depressing to see how materialistic that modern society had become. The educated professionals seemed to only care about making a ton of money, at the expense of family and happiness. It's ironic that the poor rural villagers often seemed happier.
- Empty materialism seems to be causing a great spiritual hunger in China, and Christianity is taking root.
- Corruption still appears to be a huge problem in China. The internet cafe owner was educated in America, and when he went back to China, he felt deeply conflicted over unethical business practices that were common in China, including bribing officials.
- I've always known pollution was bad in China, but wait until you see the public interest lawyer visit a village that's suing the government for polluting their lands. The rivers literally run red, and yet, people have to drink that water to survive.
- A common aspiration that a lot of these young people had was love. Interesting that modern thinking believes that the right person is somewhere out there. The traditional thinking (as highlighted by the parents in rural villages) is you should find someone who's good enough and just settle, because you're never going to find someone perfect. It was also interesting to see that villages had people who were matchmakers, who facilitated arranged marriages between families.
- It's amazing how sometimes husband and wife are forced to live in separate cities because of their jobs. One of the professionals hadn't seen his wife for three years. This is quite remarkable because I know some couples who can't stand being apart for more than two weeks!
- The story of the migrant worker, who works in an electronics factory really highlights the human toll caused by the West's insatiable appetite for cheap goods. These factory workers work 12 hour days, 7 days a week, and they're paid about $0.40/hour.
Anyway, that's just a small preview of the documentary. I definitely learned a lot about Chinese culture, and what China is becoming.
Frontline: Young & Restless In China can be viewed here in its entirety for free.
Thursday, August 14. 2008
A couple of weeks back, Yahoo had a world-wide all-hands meeting to rally the troops. At the end of it, they aired this video below. It was nice seeing it because after months of uncertainty and fighting over the Microsoft thing, we are still standing. A lot of people really thought that we weren't going to be still standing as an independent company at this time right now. In either case, there are still a lot of awesome people here, and it's a great place to work, and we will continue the fight. We are not down for the count.
For some background on the dancer, Matt Harding:
If you’ve never heard of Matt, go check out wherethehellismatt.com. He traveled to 42 countries in 14 months to make his most recent video, “Dancing 2008,” which has been viewed more than 8.5 million times since he posted it in June. His scenery included a tulip field in the Netherlands, the DMZ in Korea, the “Painted Ladies” in San Francisco, children in Yemen, Bollywood-style dancers in India, bushmen in New Guinea, and free spirits in Paris. - Yahoo Corporate Blog
Enjoy.
Tuesday, August 12. 2008
This last weekend, Georgia and Russia went to war over a piece of land called South Ossetia. If you're just becoming aware of this situation now, the BBC has an excellent Q&A article on this war. I'm not going to go in-depth by regurgitating the news, but I'm going to make some observations.
First, I'd like to note how poor the American media coverage over this event has been. For in-depth coverage, I've been relying on the BBC and the Times Online. These news outlets gave some really good analysis and information about the conflict, and background in it.
The other point I wanted to note was how seemingly useless the United Nations is in these kinds of circumstances. The Europeans and Americans wanted to use the UN to protest Russia's disproportionate use of force against Georgia; however, that never came to being because Russia is a permanent member of the UN, and is able to veto any statements. So, there's a bit of a conflict of interest there, and the UN can hardly be treated as a neutral broker in this case.
Another sad note is how impotent Europe and America seems in this whole situation. Their ally, Georgia, needed help, and all the Americans could do was give their soldiers a ride back home from Iraq. (Georgia had 2,000 soldiers fighting in Iraq, and they needed to withdraw them to help fight the Russians). It was said that Europe couldn't do much against Russia either, since Russia supplies 20% of Europe's oil and gas. It's situations like these where I think energy independence really makes sense, because it allows you to not be bullied around by the bad guy.
In terms of the actual fighting, it's interesting how warfare has evolved. There were reports that the Russians were attacking Georgia's websites; this is known as cyberwarfre. Wired is running an article entitled, " Estonia, Google Help 'Cyberlocked' Georgia.
Civil.ge, the Georgian news site, is "under permanent [cyber] attack." So they've switched their operations to one of Google's Blogspot domains, to keep the information flowing about what's going on in their country.
The attacks against Civil.ge are part of a larger set of online assaults, originating in Russia, against Georgian websites.
"In a sense," notes Jim Stogdill, "they must be saying 'we can't keep our sites up, but we don't think [Russian hackers] can take down Blogspot, given Google's much better infrastructure and ability to defend it.'"
It's quite interesting that they decided to move key sites onto the Google network. If there's anyone in the world that could survive a cyberwar, it'd probably be Google. What would be even more interesting is if Russia decided to attack Google, and Google retaliated. I'm thinking Google could probably send Russia's internet back to the digital stone age. Anyway, I think in any modern conflict now, going after information infrastructure is just as important as taking on military targets. I've seen reports of Russia attacking Georgian cellphone towers, radars, and phone exchanges.
Continue reading "The Georgian War"
Friday, August 8. 2008
I was reading through The USA Today, and came across this article entitled, " Missiles, 100K police on China's Olympic team."
China is mobilizing an anti-terrorism force of 100,000 to protect next month's Olympic Games that includes SWAT teams on Segways and officers who can shoot nets like Spider-Man at suspects.
An additional 500,000 volunteers will be on neighborhood street corners to watch for suspicious people. And there's a reward up to $73,000 for anyone who tips police to a major terrorist threat.
Vice President Xi Jinping told a "mobilization" rally held off Tiananmen Square last week that "a safe Olympics is the most significant symbol of a successful Olympics in Beijing and also the most important symbol to display the national image of China." [...]
"Once the Olympic torch relay started, it was obvious that China has opponents. So the government is determined to secure the Games," he says. "They are making a huge effort to ensure that not the slightest security failure takes place. They do not want China to lose face."
Protecting that image are the most well-trained and highly armed professionals in recent Chinese history. The government has placed surface-to-air missiles around the major Olympics venues. Beijing's SWAT team was launched in November 2005 and now numbers around 1,000 who will focus on anti-terrorism and riot control, according to the Beijing police department.
China also has the Snow Leopard Commando Unit, an elite police tactical force that trained at a secret camp for five years to be used if terrorists, hijackings or bombs threaten the Aug. 8-24 Games, according to the Beijing Review, a state magazine. And last month, the 120-member No. 1 Detachment of Beijing SWAT was renamed the Blue Sword Commando Unit.
The SWAT arsenal includes guns that shoot a nylon net resembling a spider web to ensnare anyone considered a threat. Beijing SWAT teams "have net guns among their weapons," says Zi Xiangdong with the city's police department. "They do not always carry them, but bring them according to the situation and will deploy them when necessary."
In recent years, each of China's 31 provinces have set up SWAT teams. On July 2, the Jinan SWAT team in eastern China's Shandong province held an Olympic anti-terrorism training drill that featured armed police riding Segways. Officers in precision clutched the vehicles' posts between their legs while aiming guns at cars and other targets.
Pictures of the drill provoked humor both in China and abroad, amid concern that the riders could lose their balance from the recoil of the gun.
"The Segway has a stabilizing system, and the police have undergone specialized training so that they will not fall over if they fire a gun," assures Liu Wei, a Segway spokesperson in Beijing.
I'll admit, it was seeing the SWAT teams awkwardly straddling their Segways that really caught my eye. There's just something really goofy about this. It's like something out of a superhero movie, and an arch-villain needed a gang of distinctive looking henchmen. Throw in the web guns as they describe, and yeah, they're henchmen.
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