Come March 9th, I’ll be flying down to the beautiful city of Austin, Texas for South by Southwest 2006. It comes at a good time - I really need to recharge my creative batteries and get in sync with the brightest and best out there.
It has been 3 years since, and I look forward to seeing familiar faces.
Ok I know this is turning out to be the Anne show, but I can’t help it.
She spoke her first words tonight! Sorta…
May you have music wherever you go, dearest Anne.
For no apparent reason, the larger videos I encoded for my iPod video would freeze for a bit, then continue without sound. I was almost about to send the iPod in for repairs, suspecting some damage to the cache, then I found that it was the new iPod update that sucked.
Given that I used iSquint, rather than buying Quicktime Pro for the encoding of videos, it might seem a little Bill-Gatesey to note that videos encoded by QT Pro continued to work after the new update while 3rd party encoded videos did not.
Did Apple bite more than just a chip of Intel’s block?
PAP bankrupts him months before the election. Do the people actually have a choice, or even a chance to hear these guys out? (76kb .pdf)
Continue reading Chee Soon Juan's statement at his bankruptcy petition hearing.
Anne. 10 months old. Catching and passing a basketball.
You got to see it to believe it.
If Mother Teresa took time to blog, would she have lived a life as inspiring? Or would she be spending too much time behind the computer screen trying to capture the moments that just passed?
It is one of those times - where I feel I’m stretched a little too thin in too many directions for too many people. I’m tired, but happy.
Just wish I had more time to write, to think, to live.
Was it John Lennon who said “Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans”?
Anyway, Tribolum turns six today. There were thoughts of a redesign, a realignment, a re-something. Then there was no time, except for a short reminisce of these six glorious years.
Thanks for being here. Whoever you are.
If it ends with a pedia, it’s got to be the whole truth and nothing but the truth, right?
Wikipedia is turning into the world’s proverbial magic mirror. US Congressmen edit Wikipedia biographies in a bid to make themselves look better. Because if you read it from the internet, it must be true.
Even local bloggers are putting up Wikipedia entries of themselves. I guess it’s one way to get into the history books.
We’re barely toe deep in 2006, and we’re already starting to kill each other.
Freedom - the right to do whatevere I want, let no one stop me. When will the west learn that you can’t trample on others without repercussion? Yes they say that they merely drew offensive cartoons, nothing compared to the retaliatory arson, kidnappings and murders. But don’t they understand that words move the heart? Don’t they believe that their art affects people? Or do they pen their works, believing daily in the impotence of its form, such that they are now so appalled that anyone could have taken their life work so seriously?
What other purpose did the cartoon serve, except to put down the beliefs of a multitude different in skin colour, different in upbringing, different? Was it necessary to utter the ink-strained sound, merely to justify one’s existence in the world? Do you talk just to be heard?
Then you have the sell-outs. Google censors itself for China. Google, by its censorship, warps time and space, rewrites history books. Google essentially makes itself a search engine to a parallel universe - a communist disneyland (such a strong oxymoron) in order to gain a foothold in China. Data integrity? Zilch. Integrity? About as empty as a Google search page without data.
Then you have the over-eager ones. Yahoo allegedly provides China information leading to the arrest of a journalist. It almost reads like a real-world remake of Star Wars. Is Yahoo!’s right to divulge this information? Isn’t it Yahoo!’s freedom of speech? Why should they keep quiet when there’s a gadzillion dollars at stake?
We should all do well to go back to the basics.
Don’t talk with your mouth full.
Anne is growing up so quickly. It doesn’t seem so long ago she was little more than a foot long cotton wrapped package in our arms. These days, she’s a bundle of raw energy that scours faraway horizons for new sofas to climb, new cabinets to open and new medicine bottles to put in her mouth. Faith and I see her everyday, but the changes happen so fast nothing is ever in stasis. By the time we acclimatise to her new habits and behaviours, thinking she’d finally learned some novel trick we’ve been trying to teach her, she moves on. Where once she’d hi-five us whenever we offered an open palm, she now laughs and turns away, turning back occasionally to see if you’d play peekaboo.
Now that she’s babbling a lot, mornings are punctuated by what sounds like her version of singing. Ok, so it sounds a little more like Buddhist chanting, but you forgive her if she doesn’t yet know the words.
Being a parent reminds you of how old you are. I take a quick glance at my life to find many things changed as well. With the hyperactive thyroid, I’m visiting the hospital for regular checkups - something I once thought, not too long ago, was meant only for the elderly. Even right now as I type this I’m typing at the waiting room of Singapore General. Lst time I checked I’m classified as “borderline obese” and still clinging on to the belief that my metabolism can handle whatever amounts of chocolate I throw at it.
Last night, I sat in my computer chair feeling bloated. It’s probably due to the water-retention side-effects of my new medication. But there I was, feeling too fat to want to play basketball - a feeling I never ever thought I’d have. I can now better emphatise with women who feel fat. It is a vicious cycle. Chubby Hubby, while really very good, doesn’t help. But take my word for it, it is very good.
There are times, like tonight, when I’m so thankful for the people in my life right now, right here. I’m really blessed to have such a marvelous bunch of nutcases to surround my family with.
Then I turn on the computer and see a photo of the moon over Old Main at the University of Arizona, taken a few days ago. Then I remember that the me you see today was forged in a land so far away, in red brick buildings, sitting on mountainsides lit red by the setting sun, with a different church and different people. And I wonder how they are.
My heart can scarcely reach them so far away, so long ago.
The most innovative FTP program I’ve ever used just got better. Much better.
Continue reading Transmit 3.5.
Ok, so three cups of mountain dew at 1130pm wasn’t such a great idea.
A real flying F14 Tomcat remote plane, powered by jet engines and all!
Continue reading Coolest Toy Ever.
It is exciting to hack away large chunks from a giant block of marble, seeing your David take shape. But there comes a time you need to put away the sledgehammer and pick up the soft brushes for the more intricate work.
And then there are times you’re expected to hack away large chunks with your soft brush because it’s been so long, and people have become accustomed to the huge rectangular chunk of marble standing in the middle of the Louvre.
Tagged by CC, so I’ve to give four answers to every question.
Continue reading Four Things.
Anne’s first time to the zoo.
Another photo-journey.
Continue reading Annemals!.