Holidays

Merry/Happy Christwanzaanuka (or happy holidays for the non-religious people).

I'm home for the holidays, until new years. I think I'll probably head back up to Bay Area on 1/1 or 1/2... It's weird to say that "I'm home", since it's actually my parents' home.... now that I sorta have a place of my own to call "home".

While I'm here, I only have crappy 28.8kbps dialup, courtesy of my paid DSL account from up north. I don't know why I can't seem to get anything above 28.8k, even though the access numbers I tried and my modem are all rated for 56k. It's a freaking conspiracy to get people to switch to broadband! =T Anyway, because of this, I won't be online much. If you need to reach me, please call.

Narnia

I had the chance to watch the new Chronicles of Narnia movie (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) on Friday. As luck would have it, I got to watch the DLP*-projected version, and it was geek-tastic! \(^.^)/ It's rare these days that I get to watch a movie in the theaters... on opening day even... AND in digital! I had to keep wiping the drool off the side of my mouth.

It's hard to prevent any sort of comparison between the Narnia series and a certain trilogy that "ruled them all" for the past few years. Really, if you go in with the mind set that Narnia is just children's books after all, then this movie should be delightful to watch. However, if you're looking for something to one-up Peter Jackson's Middle Earth, then you might as well spend your money on more LOTR merchanise and grow some hair on your feet.

I'd give "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" about a 7.5 out of 10 overall. It is certainly neither epic, nor original. I felt the story slowed down a bit at times, but perhaps it was necessary to set up the world in preparation for the remaining 6 movies. True to her name, the Ice Queen (played by Tilda Swinton) was icy cold in the movie. I hope kids and fans don't cry or spit on her if they see her out in public. Maybe this will give me a reason to go watch "Memoirs of a Geisha" -- for a comparison between the Tilda Swinton's ice queen and Gong Li's Hatsumomo-san. I found the movie to be enjoyable, especially the characters of Mr. Tumnus and Mr./Mrs. Beaver. Lucy is also a bit.... trigger-happy. If she were real-life kid, I'd make sure to stay the hell away from her. I guess this means that Disney now has a blockbuster franchise to exploit develop, provided that they don't screw something up royally. Maybe this will give them a good reason to put out some good movies for a change?

* For those who are not familiar with DLP. It stands for Digital Light Processing. (Geek alert! Read this paragraph only if you want to find out more about DLP. Otherwise, please skip to the next paragraph for more about movies using DLP and why they're so cool.) DLP is a technology developed by Texas Instruments -- basically works like the video projectors you find during meetings and presentations these days. Or rather, the projectors we see these days use DLP technology, as do some of the new HDTVs. If I remember the material from the displays class I took, I think DLP works by reflecting light off of hundreds of thousands of microscopic mirrors on a semiconductor, with each mirror representing one pixel. By varying the position of each mirror, it's possible to achieve gray-scale shades, ranging from white to black. The colors you see come from a light bulb source, whose light is bounced off these itsy bitsy mirrors and passes through a spinning color wheel to result in all colors of the rainbow.

Certain big budget movies will have DLP verions showing at theaters that have the DLP projector available. What's so cool about DLP? Well, old-school movies are basically reels of film -- the kind where the projector has two spinning reels, and the movie rolls from one reel to the other as it is played. These new DLP movies are shipped digitally (I think as a huge DVD-quality media file?) and they use DLP projection. This is like hooking up your laptop to the huge projectors in the university lecture halls. The film-based movies will show signs of wear (scratches, noise) when you play it, whereas the DLP-based movies will look the same use after use. To me, the difference between the two is like the difference between watching a 70s-era educational film (we had a ton of those in junior high and high school), and watching a DVD movie on a laptop.

"Can you opine?"

I get strange requests/questions at work all the time. Since I announce internal releases for databases and patch sets to pretty much all the groups related to database development, I have fairly high visibility. I guess people [who don't know any better] seem to get strange ideas like:

• "Hey, Robert announces these releases to us. Therefore he must be familiar with the *fill in the blank* of the database."
• "Hmmm.. I can't install this database release. Let's call up Robert and he'll know how to fix my problem." (I HATE being tech support for other engineers... that's why we even have an IT department!)

Anyway, so last night this engineer from another team in India emailed me asking whether I think it's crucial for them to perform a certain test on a database product. I found it strange and idiotic that some other team should be asking me (and I'm not even a manager) about how they should go about their testing.... and I told him that, in a friendlier, yet still-annoyed way. I guess his manager (who, I think, should be the one making this decision) probably got annoyed at the fact that I wasn't given them a straight answer and emailed me as well. He basically asked the same question in a different way and ended the email with the question, "Can you opine?"

At first I almost fell out of my chair laughing, because I thought that this was perhaps another case of Engrish at work....... I was thinking, "What the hell is... 'opine'? Is this even a word? Is this another case of words that look like they're written in English, but they're really not?" (This is always the first thing that crosses my mind because I often receive emails from Asian engineers that look like they're written in English, but I can't seem to understand them when I try to read them.) When I finally came to my senses, I tried looking up "opine" and found out that it is, in fact, a perfectly valid word! Maybe outsourcing does have some advantages after all.

Engrish At Work

The following is part of an email from a mailing list at work:

Post for a friend: She is looking for a living nanny who can take care of her 1 year old daughter starting at the beginning of Jan next year. Appreciate any recommendation of a nice and caring nanny

"Living" nanny? Too funny.... sigh...

Going Postal

I happened to come across the USPS announcement for the stamps to be issued in 2006. It seems to be a relative boring year in terms of stamp designs -- with the usual obligatory stamps celebrating various people/achievements and aspects of Americana. However, seeing how 2006 looks to be a year filled with weddings from various college/HS friends (also a sign that I should start acting my age more), a few of the 2006 stamps caught my attention.

Taken from: USPS - 2006 Commemorative Stamps


Stamps created especially for mailing wedding invitations and RSVPs. Seems like they'll be offering a booklet with 20 one-ounce stamps (for RSVP) and 20 two-ounce stamps (for invitation). Very clever idea!
[Available in early March]


The new 2006 LOVE stamp. The LOVE stamps always have clean, simple designs. =)
[Available in January 2006]


My favorite in the "Art of Disney" series. They ought to add the carpet ride from Aladdin. I almost want to say that Little Mermaid deserves a stamp too, but then I realized that there's a lack of suitable scenes from the movie with both Eric and Ariel.
[Available on April 21, 2006]

Random fact of the day -- The Little Mermaid Platinum Edition DVD will be brought out in October 2006. I can't wait...