Can't believe that I've cleanly forgotten to complain about the abysmal state of affairs in X-Men 2. Literally, affairs. Love affairs. Romantic relationships. You get the idea, sugah.

Call me pedantic, but I don't believe that there was ever any romantic innuendo about Storm and Nightcrawler in the comics. Cyclops, err, seeing red and blasting Jean in a jealous rage: we all hold Scotty to higher standards than that. And the worst bit - Rogue dating Iceman. Gao Xiang appropriately points out that Iceman was part of the original 5, instead of a student at Xavier's Mutant College, but that's not really the issue here. Rogue's supposedly involved in this impossible relationship with Gambit, and you know how we root for couples-that-would-never-be! Come on, if we have seen flying poker decks in the barrage of King of Gamblers movies from Hong Kong (and some cheap imitations from Singapore), I am sure Hollywood can manage the special effects for kinetically charged poker cards too. *grumps*

BTW, your loss that I am too lazy to scan a copy of Rogue in her new red hot spandex uniform. Duly compensated, though, by Remy "Cajun" LeBeau.

I may make myself look like a know-it-all, but honest to goodness, things people do amaze and surprise me all the time. Someone who cheated me of $15,000 actually asked me to be his housemate.

No, please don't misunderstand. Money is only money, and generally I try not to get hot and bothered about moolah. I was mildly miffed that I had to work the graveyard shift for two whole months, and all that someone else did, was to pull a fast one on me, but that is still okay. I don't want to sound too good to be true, but I think I can still look past all that.

What nags at me, is the fact that said person actually has the audacity to issue an invitation into another partnership. It may be just me, but even if I had zero integrity, I would have the good sense to act suitably embarassed and just run away with the money. I am quite insulted that one should think of me as a gullible fool, trusting and receptive all over again. Thanks, but no thanks. Forgive, but never forget.

But I don't let shameless swines get me down. In fact, it has been a pretty good week thus far. 7 rooms in 2 days. And somehow, the landlords seem to like me enough to give me priority over other tenants, so I actually have choices now. Even when I pretty much fell in love with the very first room I viewed. Oh, and someone actually ran 80 metres after me to tell me that she gave me the wrong directions. Wow. Even I wouldn't do that for myself.

In Chiew Hong's words, "Everyone should have a bit of sense knocked into them. And can someone please tell me why I need to be stamped like some cow every single day so the powers-that-be can assure themselves they're doing their bit for society." Personally, I would appreciate it if the mainstream press would abstain from regurgitating every little tidbit about the outbreak and stop terrorizing my parents into believing that I should simply imprison myself in my hostel room. In these difficult times, we need some cheer, dammit. Definitely not two news conglomerates trying to woo viewers by seducing them with paranoia: you know what I mean if you have ever failed to tear your eyes away from a B-grade movie so bad that you continue watching it in fantastical horror.

Oh. The T-shirt. Eddie, my neighbour, printed quite a couple of these T-shirts. With money out of his own pocket. $10 per piece, proceeds going to charitable causes. While stocks last.

On axioms:

"A database is a set of axioms. The response to a query is a theorem. The process of deriving the theorem from the axioms is a proof. The proof is made by manipulating symbols according to the agreed mathematical rules." - Hugh Darwen

"I think it's important not just that the axioms be well chosen, but that there be few of them. Mathematicians have always felt this way about axioms-- the fewer, the better-- and I think they're onto something." - Paul Graham

Funny how fast your words catch up with you. It's barely 12 hours since my last entry.

I need to whine! What sort of moron am I to attempt the wrong question at exams? I thought that's something that happens to primary school children or something. So we had 30mins of reading time allotted. I had all the facts and issues underlined on my question paper. I had all the cases and principles highlighted on two of my reference books. I had the outline of the essay scribbled out. And come starting time, what do I do? Spend 30 minutes on the sub-question of the wrong question!!!

Okay. I am sure you despise me now. If not for being a hypocrite, then for a total dweeb. Dunce. Bird-brain. It's okay, I would agree with you whole-heartedly. I truly deserve to be thumped on the head with all 5kg of my law text.

Anyway, 9 down, 2 more. Ack.

It is my personal belief that when you do get lucky, the best thing to do is simply to shut up, stop whining and go keep a low profile. Nothing against over-achievers, just those who feel obliged to conjure some petty peeves in order to blend into the symphony of laments. Only to stick out like a very very sore thumb, which was probably the sub-conscious intention anyway. False humility is really just bragging.

Hmm. Hope I am not guilty of double standards here.

It was finally impressed upon me that, if I were really to pursue graduate studies, I may have to spend the dinner parties of the rest of my life explaining my academic slant. Either that, or listen with raptured attention as relatives, friends and acquaintances classify a corporate billing system as "database research" and wonder aloud at why I am not out in the real world making real money. What do you say to well-intentioned advice like, "trade your IT skills in for something more marketable"? Explain the hierarchy of Mathematics :: Computer Science :: Information Systems :: Information Technology?

Comparatively, it was pretty easy being a geek in the late 90s when people pay you a certain measured sense of grudging respect, in the event that you have actually been building something of commercial value in your garage and turn out to be the next *shudder* Bill Gates (that's the only poster child nerd lay people can ever conceive). When tech stocks tanked bringing down the entire economy down with them, websites became alot less sexy overnight and CS professors fade back into the obsolescence they have always have been in (just like all other academics).

...

That did not even sound like coherent whining. Hmm. Maybe I am just mixing issues up. Ah. The wonders of an injured ego.

Day-by-day newspaper accounts of violence in Israel are constructed to provide entertainment between advertising, not to illuminate. [...] This article's primary practical value is intended to be in freeing you from the tyranny of the daily news. If there is a big news story from Israel, feel free to watch The Simpsons.

Philip Greenspun on Israel, or, A Crash Course on The Arab States / Israel Conflict. Alternatively known as An Additional Hour That My Contract Law Needed (But Did Not Deserve As Much). To yt, also known as What Was Holding Me Up From Beo-ing Esther.

I do not know why you should be trusting a programmer on international conflicts. It is just that, personally, I do not see the reason trusting the average anchor-man or journalist with my education on state politics and current affairs. After 4 years of CS education, I have still yet to find much to find fault with Greenspun's point blank sypnoses that I read way way back in Year One. That is more that what I can say, for PC Magazine or *shudder* Computimes. If I can spot so many inaccuracies in journalism on my profession, what makes me think that I can trust newspaper journalism on areas I have not a clue about?

"Every picture tells a story, but the picture should tell the story of what happened and not what the photographer thinks it should be." Since when?

Old news. A photographer from the LA Times was given the boot when it was discovered that he combined elements from two photographs that were taken only moments apart. I certainly do not envy the editor who had to make the tough judgement. But the real moral of the story? If you must Photoshop, please please learn how to do it properly.

"Alteration of news photographs are against the LA Time's policy and the photographer was fired for his actions. It is a challenge for photographers to get the perfect shot." Right. And you bet the challenge is of orders of magnitude higher, when you are in an active warzone taking cover from enemy fire.

Emphasis mine. Quotes from Ars Technica

I hear so much concern for the people inside Iraq. Come on. You right wing guys don't really care about them, do you? If so, why only Iraq? Why not take on civil strife, starvation and disease where ever it happens. I don't believe you really care about the people of Iraq. Sorry.

[You know,] the teen movie where the girl with "[inner] beauty" is really a stunner if only she would take off her glasses? The inverse is that if you take any attractive girl, dress her in frumpy clothes, dye her hair jet black, give her dorky glasses, and let her profess a love for "alternative" rock: she'll be intelligent.

• FAQ on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)
• Cumulative counts on cases and deaths

The No U-Turn Syndrome, or "NUTS". Whats is NUTS? NUTS is when you want to do something and you seek approval of a higher authority. When there is no rule saying that you can do such a thing, then the standard answer is NO ...

And the (only) poster child of Singapore entrepeneurship speaks out. Pretty interesting read actually, though if one finds it refreshing, or even enlightening, I would seriously suspect that he is already very much enshrined in a NUT-case. To that, my sincere sympathies. We are very much a function of our immediate environments, contrary to the best of our denials. My humble advice is to get out of the country for a while. Heck, even Malaysia would be good. I promise you that you would find more enlightenment in JB drivers, who do not give two hoots about U-turn signs.

My main bone to pick is that the No U-turn Syndrome did not manifest out of the blue. Or simply, it is more of a symptom than a syndrome. Why are people in a hurry to follow rules, finding the nearest rule that fits the situation, instead of using their initiative? Two words: job security. Which in turn, is also a symptom of the top-down authority so prevalent and persistent in Singapore, that the government is trying to do something about it. Ironical, isn't it?

I understand Mr. Sim's frustration, and I certainly do not envy his position in a government initiative to promote creativity and entrepeneurship. In my humble opinion, however, forming a committee to do something about it is the least likely solution to the root syndrome. The most you can do, is to teach people how to break rules. And to surrender your authority. Keep clear, let go and stay away. Seed that little bit of chaos which has been all but obilerated. We notice that while Mr. Sim is frustrated about NUT-cases in his own company, he is none too quick in asserting his position as CEO in an attempt to set records right. Sim-on says... I personally would not too surprised if his exertion of top-down authority merely resulted in another entry into his employees' rule books.

No pixie dust here. Though entrophy is the law of the universe, I fail to see how chaos can break through the strong clasp of order and control here. You heard about the Short Man Complex? Small man, big ego. Likewise here. Small country, big government. Recipe for disaster.

They say: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step".

I say that it depends on your perspective. Implicit within the statement is the assumption that inaction is the status quo, which need not necessarily be the case. There are times when we rush brazenly and blindly into action, dreading the inconsequence of inactivity. There are times when we decide that just another project on the backburner would not break our backs. There are times when we decide that one last all-nighter would not hurt. These are times when the status quo is a long stretch of habitual activity.

Take a look beyond the first step. In the other direction. The zeroth step. "A journey of a thousand miles begins first with rest." A little gestation period, a little fallowing interval goes a long way towards your journey.

Of course, I was not thinking all these while I was procrastinating on my work. Really.

I guess we are all guilty of romanticising a tad too much about our tools. It all depends on what tools you have in your era. Back in 1984, Bill Joy (of Java and Jini fame, later in the 90s) talks about ed, em, en, vi and be. Of particular note,

I think editors have to come out of a certain kind of community. You need a cultural context.

Nonetheless, every generation of geeks need a generation of toys to play with. Hopefully someday we would have progressed sufficiently for someone to wonder why we could have ever obsessed about the database vs. filesystem dichotomy. But until then, I would probably be so in bed with indices, metadata and XML.

The inventor of vi actually switched to Emacs. Shhhh. Then again, Bill Joy did not have vim in his era. Ha.

Drama in Taman Tasek! Home alone granny set a pot of soup on boil, but quite forgot about it. The concerned neighbours rang up Balai Bomba (the Fire Department), but the fire-fighters arrived only to see a sleepy-eyed sarong-clad granny opening her kitchen door to clear the smoke. Needless to say, the firemen were pretty pissed at us. But hey! When you see alot of smoke, it is pretty natural to imagine smelling gas too. And apparently, the nice ol' granny could not be woken up by neither the awful burning smell nor the innumerable neighbourly phone calls, but chost to wake up at the precise moment to greet the firemen climbing over her fence. All in all, a nice little episode to break up the monotony of the second day of the Lunar New Year.

Photo was taken through our kitchen gate. The short man is my dad. He ran alongside the fire truck to show the firemen the backlane to our kitchens. Oooh.. my sisters and I are so proud of him *swoon*.

怎样的心情，看出怎样的电影。

看《英雄》时很投入，如果看电影能比拟剑法，仿佛进入了感动的意境。焚情红颜，青涩蒙然，白皙透悟：绚丽中戏服颜色有点儿辅助小朋友的味道。传统的，不是剑矛盾枪，不是将臣宫殿，不是琴棋书画。是气节。自我苦难的挣脱，探索“天下”的深广。手中无剑，心中也无剑。生死决斗都能于意念之间，又有什么不能升华至无我忘我的意境间，成为不朽的永恒。

意念中，彦婷陪我看了三部戏。圣陶沙度假屋重看《我的野蛮女友》、《夏日莫莫茶》。这是第三部。有人会说我在和自己谈恋爱。不知道。现实太复杂了，能在瞬间把自己映射在故事，是生活小小的幸福。能耍白滥写一些每个人会看到，却又看不出所以然的文字，是生活小小的空虚、无聊。有一天，和你看戏的人不是座位旁的朋友时，也许你也会有同样的意境。

I like passionate people. Or specifically, people who are so dogged and persistent about what they like to do, that their sheer energy dissolves away all their seemingly bizarre quirks. Weird traits like unrepentant fussiness, incessant tinkering and sometimes, just plain anal retentiveness.

Okay, I am sure you find that oddly familiar, but honestly I am not referring to myself. I fizzle. Halfway through, then psssst. It would be as if the Law of Conservation of Energy decided to step in at the right moment, decided that I expended too much energy right at the start, and promptly took the air out of my sails. Hmm. That is actually too many words for saying that I give up too easily. I am like my hair. It does not stay curly. It is not exactly straight either. It just lazily curls up, but only at the ends, into some form of half-hearted twirl. Yet, it is bloody defiant about staying that way. I hate my hair.

I was actually thinking all these when I watched Mostly Martha a while ago on the plane. Martha is definitely compulsive obsessive, charming only because you are seeing her on screen instead of working with on a daily basis. Yet there is still something endearing about that unyielding demand for precision and perfection. Closer to blogging world, there is Dave Winer who really does go on and on and on and on about blogging. Hey, I know of people who would readily dismiss blogging as just some exhibitionistic perversion to put your diary online, and frankly I cannot even write three paragraphs on the subject. But Dave Winer, he just goes on and on like the proverbial Energizer bunny. Very curious. Irritating, but I am on his side.

The Right to Read

Someone has to fight our battles. I wonder how much conviction they need to soldier on, in spite of being dismissed as alarmists and looneys. I guess I have always been sympathetic to such people. I mean, you really would not expect language any milder from evangelists, do you? Look past the presentation and evaluate the actual substance instead.

That said, even though the petition on the NUS Computer Resources Accceptable User Policy was some success, I seriously doubt if even a quarter of the number of students who signed understood what was the issue at hand. Sometimes, apathy is not so bad after all when you are armed only with ignorance.

And just so you do not have to hear my voice the whole day, here is a female one telling you How To Become An Alpha Male In 18 Easy Lessons. Explicit language, unacceptable from guys, okay from girls. (Don't you love sexual hypocrisy?) Now that I have whet your appetite...

You get Lessons 1, 2 and 3. Get the other instalments yourself.

Such a bummer. Forgot to wish my mum happy birthday on her lunar birthday, even though my sister came all the way to Singapore to remind me. Anyway, that's not the issue here. She's over cloud nine regardless because her brother gave her a big bouquet of flowers yesterday. Said that it's her first ever bouquet. *audience gasps.*

Sigh. You know how most people grow up to learn that their folks were pretty wild and funky in their days? Not for me. Well, the upside of it is that I can blame my genes when my girlfriend complains of me being boring or insensitive.

Oh. When I get a girlfriend, that is.

Q: Why don't we see God at work?
A: God works at interrupt level. When He wants to do something, He suspends our processes, saves our registers and status, and swaps us out. Then He works His will on the world. Then He swaps us back in, restores our registers and status, and resumes our execution. To us, things appear to change by magic.

You own it to yourself to check out God as a Computer Programmer - "Important Theological Questions That Are Answered If We Think of God as a Computer Programmer". Just don't ask how I chanced upon the site. =)

So. The first suggestive nudge that I have ever received was from a Macau prostitute. Granted, she was rather attractive. But, really, do I look like the sort of person who needs the services of a sex worker? (I thought they target bald old men with deep pockets.)

...

No, please skip your honest answer if it is not an reassuring one.

Sweet anticipation. The last part to the Soverign Stone Triology - Journey Into The Void. Hardly literature, but a pleasant departure from the monotonous characterizations in regular Dungeons and Dragons.

Not that I know enough about D&D to criticize it: I kept falling asleep every 5 pages. Every single event seems to revolve around meeting a new adversary and the protagonists defeating it someway somehow. To a computer gamer, they would seem as bad as if somebody was writing a transcript of every single minor battle you have to put your characters through, in your never-ending quest for experience points.

No, wait. That is an understatement. Ever sat through a Taiwanese drama and paid attention to the background music? You would notice that they only need two pieces. A crescendo piece that they play whenever they want to bring the show to a climax, which is every 10 minutes, since every patriarchal figure featured seem ready to explode into white hot anger at every single trespass; and a soothing piece that eases off the tension built up as a result of the crescendo. You get the idea. (Nevertheless, it is great fun watching them with my sisters just to laugh at the predictability of them all.) Predictable as Taiwanese period shows.

I would gripe abit about the abysmal plotlines of Harry Potter too, but I do not think it wise to tread on too many toes in a day. =)

Perhaps one should not read too much into the portrayal of race in fantasy and science fiction. Surely I could not be the only one to think that the racial tensions between dwarves, elves, orcs, halflings and terrans in fiction are inspirations drawn from the Real World equivalents amongst humans. But even fantasy authors fall into the habit of racial stereotyping: dwarves as stunted and grouchy miners, elves as shrewd and aloof archers, humans as greedy and myopic merchants. In the Sovereign Stone Triology, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman turn some of the fantasy conventions on their heads. Dwarves travel as master horsemen; elves are prolific breeders in spite of their long life-spans [ref].

Not to make a mountain out of a mole-hill, but personally a departure from the convention seems to hint at a wider spectrum of possibilities. Surely some dwarves find their chain mail cumbersome? (Yes, Ms. Cheery Littlebottom, that's you.) I am sure that there is more to mainstream fantasy than racial characteristics, but I realise that such innovation is common among the books that I like. The Death Gate Cycle, and the Discworld series. Witches who really sound like your dysfunctional grandmother. How endearing!

Would love to go on about plots and twists, but I have friends who would screw up their noses and sneer at my pathetic knowledge of literary devices, so I shall stop embarrassing myself in public right about now. =) Hopping down to town to grab myself a hardbound copy soon as I clear off my backlog of work.

The Giant Buddha at the Po Lin Monastery, Lantau Island, Hong Kong. None of my pictures can do justice to the awe the enormous statue has inspired. Spent a full quarter of an hour trying to frame that particular moment for posterity. The monk on duty for closing the monastery to visitors was amused enough by my fiddling of the camera that he came over and gave some well-meaning advice on light and reflection. (Hope he did not hear me cussing in frustration.)

Anyway, this is the best I could manage with my Coolpix 5700. 6:00pm, 1/30s shutter. Would really appreciate advice on how to control exposure for both the orange sunset and the details of the bronze Buddha. As it is, I only have a silhoutte. Gah.

1 hour to my Maths examination and my calculator went kaput on me. 30 mins to my Maths examination and Yee Pern managed to borrow another calculator of exactly the same model, so that I can still plug in values to solve simultaneous equations. No luck. The 2 calculators are identical to the extent that they both do not work! What are the chances of 2 calculators failing on you on the day of your Maths examination??

I must be a terrible, terrible person. Either that or all Sharp EL-546Ls are wired to make their way to lala-land on 2002-11-22.

Is there anything inherent about the expressiveness of languages? Why is it that I subconsciously divide up my emotions to be expressed in the two languages I am fluent in? Not as if I was not any good in my English Literature class, but I cannot appreciate English poetry, much less write them. There is something intrinsic about Chinese that seems to facilitate the juxtaposition of the tangle of concepts. The granularity of the precision is so much higher: you can make each character count, if you are so inclined (and skilled). Yet the permutations in the alliance of any two atomic components are so flexible, that it does not take a language major to come up with new words and meanings. I don't think I can ever relate to English lyrics; a single Chinese verse says so much more, provided that you probe further.

Yet I write most often in English. It is not just that it has emerged as the most convenient channel behind scientific collaboration (or indeed, any academic or business pursuits nowadays; baring the trepidation of China as an emerging cultural superpower). There seems to be a larger potential in being witty in English, given the puns and word plays you can exploit to present irony and paradoxes. (I was about to insert some apologetic statement about my jokes falling on their faces most of the time, but perhaps it is just that you do not share my keen sense of humour. Ha.)

So does the converse of the Whorfian hypothesis hold up - that not only does language shape your perception of the world, but also that language is itself influenced by the domains it is deployed in? Is there any intrinsic quality we can ascribe to languages, as a result of values and concepts internalized in years of usage? Is there a need to ask these questions - is it not one of men's most gaping shortcoming their unwavering attempts to abstract and generalize issues, where they could have applied some feminine instincts to empathize with the context at hand? Can any of these questions be generalised (sorry) to other cultural artifacts apart from language?

Did that make any sense? I hope not. You are guilty of over-analyzing and over-dissection if you have seen any meaning beyond what I have injected in my ramblings, which is indeed infinitesimally small. Nevertheless, I would be most grateful if you tell me what you think it means, because I have not the foggiest idea myself. But, you do realize, this is not really about language after all, don't you? =)

I don't need to scratch my head and search my soul to figure out whether God created the universe. I was there. I saw the whole thing.

God didn't create the universe. Well, He did, but not intentionally. God just wanted a beer. But you can't just create a beer floating in the middle of the void -- there's nothing satisfying about it. It would be like a book written by an illiterate person -- sure, he could put lots of black squiggles onto a bundle of pages that would vaguely look like a book, but it wouldn't mean anything.

So for a proper beer, God pretty much had to make up physics. I'm not just talking about the refinements needed to get it to foam just right -- I'm talking about the whole deal. After you drink some, there should be less left over, not more. Drinking a beer should not make you turn into beer yourself. Beers should not be smarter than the drinker. Well, not the first few, at least. The state of drinking beer needs to contrast with something, so the state of not drinking beer must also exist. In fact, that's where most of the world came from, because having the world exist in only two states (currently drinking beer/currently not drinking beer) just seemed too lame to a clever guy like God. Same idea for water and other liquids -- if He can drink beer, He really ought to be able to drink not-beer, just so He can say He chose the beer instead.

And then there's the whole question of origins. A beer is so much less interesting if it creates itself or just spontaneously comes into existence. A truly full-bodied beer needs a background, a character, a story. God went a little crazy with that, inventing those 'human' things with enough cleverness to invent stuff, curiousity to try things out, and a desperate need to get sloshed, smashed, trashed, and basically totally drucking funk. And all that cleverness and curiousity necessitated science. And dinosaur fossils. And religion. (God got a real kick when he realized he'd have to invent religion, I remember. Of course, he wasn't exactly sober by that time...)

Oh, and you know that bit about "...and on the 7th day He rested?" Purely an excuse to keep us from bothering Him during His hangover. We're still on the 7th day, see. I'm not even sure if He thought far enough ahead to make an 8th day. He was having some trouble with the notion of Time, and I recall Him saying something like "aw, screw it. Nobody's going to be drinking any beer at the speed of light anyway. I'll see you later -- I'm gonna go get wasted."

Saddened. Just because it is a virtual tombstone, you do not have to remove it from your Favorite Links page, do you? It's not as if it is a dead link or something. As of today, I can only find one Google-indexed site linking to it. So, for old times' sake, Whiff. (Not that this is going to help matters until this site gets Googled, but well, at least the author counts as someone, no?) I will remember it for all the thank-you mails and the disciplinary warnings. But I have to practise what I preach, and move on with life...

It is a lonely night when you are melancholic.

Listening to Mr. Big - Rock & Roll Over. I wish I could link it here, but that would be violating the copyrights of the music label (the artists probably signed everything over to the label). Not that the traditional distribution mechanism is doing anything to dissuade people from piracy. I heard the song in a music store while I was in Korea, but could find the song in neither Singapore music stores nor my paid service Rhapsody. WinMX to the rescue. I would have paid for the song if it was at all possible. Sadly, it was not.

Perhaps all the Digital Rights Management is not going to help Hollywood. Consumer resistance to any form of restriction aside, preventing the duplication of any form of data on the computer is going to be a colossal, if not impossible, project. You can bet that the geeks would be up in arms if Palladium or any other fangled scheme threatens our freedom to utilize assemblers, debuggers and various development tools.

And what would be the point? It is theoretically possible to capture anything that your computer could possibly output. Trying to overcome this unique feature of a general purpose personal computer is as achievable as sticking to your diet while in Charlie's Chocolate Factory.

Regulate the means of distribution instead. Already companies are doing a fine job of shutting down sites that offer arcade ROMS and music CDs for download. Nowadays P2P engines are threatened by litigatious labels, phony downloads, carved up market share, and conscious system administrators with their trusty firewalls. Keep it up! Derive the music equivalence of BSA's $100,000 pirate-hunting booty.

Meanwhile, loosen up a little. Relax if we want to share a mp3 with a friend or two. Sharing with a small audience has always been possible since the days of vinyl discs and cassette tapes. Admittedly, it is easier to duplicate a file, but perhaps that just means that mindshare about your artists and your music gets spread around faster too. Nothing like word of mouth, or viral marketing, is it not?

Just watched Minority Report. Did anyone notice how bad was the interface Tom Cruise had to use? Sure, it was cool wearing virtual reality gloves and making full arm motions to drag video clips on and off a 40" projected display; but why could he not accomplish the same today with a, God forbid, Windows Media Player window and the trusty slider bar? Was he not just watching a video stream, pausing and replaying frames and zooming in on hotspots? (okay, so perhaps we cannot zoom effectively on 320x200 DivX bootlegs yet.) Did the full body exercise offer the slightest benefit over an operation otherwise achievable with an index finger?

Oh, please do not ever get me started on that awful fluorescent 3D-mesh rotating scene in Swordfish.

The minute flaws aside, I did enjoy Minority Report. Well-paced, well-filmed. I disagree, however, that the main message had anything to do with government surveillance or the perils of scientific advancement. Would that not be too... obvious?

Hey!

Here's another interesting angle. I started smoking when I was a virgin. So until I quit, on 6/14/02, I had never had sex as a non-smoker. I won't go into details, but it's quite a bit better without the cigarettes.

Even though I read scripting.com regularly, I have always thought that it was funny the way his critics spelt his name as "Dave Whiner". No longer. If I were a nicotine addict, I am not sure if I would have the courage to admit as much, much less transcribe on my weblog what it took to kick the habit. Almost as respectable as my grandpa who went cold turkey on opium voluntarily.

Say no to tobacco, the leading cause of statistics. Say no to smoking, except perhaps in the examination room. =)

Pragma Product Team:
[snip]
Quamrul Islam
Sultan Ahmed
[snip]

Mmmmm... pie.

Macy Gray: Why Didn't You Call Me? Madison Avenue: Don't Call Me Baby.

Oliver "Sabretooth" Kahn? Fearsome.

You don't need a washer or duck
Tigger is here, so you're in luck
I perform great feats
whilst between the sheets
so let's go back to your place to...