I have spent this evening travelling in the ancient city of Angkor. Unfortunately I am not able to set foot in this land yet. Instead I have visited Angkor virtually using Google Earth from my home. It is a small pity that I wasn't going there personally. But what an incredible experience does Google Earth provide! The aerial image gives me so much intelligence on this distance land that even travelling on the ground cannot achieve. He go here.

All this was prompted by an article on the collapsed of Angkor on the current issue of National Geographic. I launched Google Earth to find an image of modern day Angkor to compare with the illustration of a historical map. The glory of the 13th century city is still clearly visible from the satellite.

The square at the center is the site of the ancient capital Angkor Thom, now filled with dense jungle in dark green color. The surrounding area are fields with little population. Siem Reap to the south is the only population center today. The most striking features on the map are several large rectangles. I have labeled three of them, the West Baray, East Baray and North Baray. They are actually enormous reservoir built in ancient time. The largest one West Baray measures 2 x 8 km. Today they are mostly filled up. There are still water in the west side of West Baray. Otherwise they are filled will fields. There are even roads and houses built within the Baray. National Geographic has suggested the failure of this water system during a mega-drought period is one reason for the decline of Angkor.

You can also find clusters of blue dots on the image. They point to pictures uploaded by users. These are actually enormously useful information. First of all you cannot fully understand the area by looking at the aerial picture alone. The user pictures give you detail ground level view and help you to understand some geographic features spotted from the sky. Secondly it tells you where tourists are going! An area with a dense cluster of blue dots are picture worthy places. This is an instant travel guide constructed automatically!

Since Google Earth has come out a few years ago, it has helped me so much in learning about places and geography. It is a really revolutionary tools!

2009.07.03 [travel, geography] - comments (0)

Yesterday the car free event Sunday Streets was held in Mission. A section of 24th St and Valencia St were closed to traffic so that people can come to the street to play. Since I live nearby, I just rolled down the hill on my bike to check it out and then have lunch and go for a movie.

Even before I hit 24 St, I got a flat tire. I thought there goes my day. I am just going to walk the bike uphill, scrap my plan and stay home for the rest of the day. But then I vaguely recall there is a bike maintenance booth of some sort in this event. So I pressed on. Sure enough, the good folks of Sports Basement were there to help. They fixed my tire and I was good to go again.

The 24th St was filled with people! There were kids everywhere. Some are on tricycles, some are on scooters, some are in strollers pushed by their parents. There was Aztec dance performance, people riding bike with the boom box. Really there were activities everywhere. Previously Sunday Streets put a lot of emphasis as a biking exercise event. But in Mission you really don't get to do a lot of biking because of the density of people. The traffic was going at a pace only slightly faster than walking. So I shifted to the lowest gear. Bike strolling it is. And it is really a nice way to see the city in a way that I can seldom do.

I filled myself up with a burritos lunch in a local restaurant. I was so full that I literally cannot move, let alone to ride a bike. So I spent some extra time in the restaurant reading paper, and then walked around in the neighborhood streets. Finally I ended up in a park where there were soccer matches going on. I stopped to watch the Latino teams play. It was already too late for the movie and I no longer in rush to go home. Lately my life is so full of work and activities that I seldom have a downtime like this.

The sun was warm in the park. I think it was a good Sunday afternoon.

2009.06.08 [San Francisco] - comments (0)

While I have ridden my most favorite Golden Gate Bridge bicycle route great many times, today I have extended my range to the Larkspur ferry terminal. What promoted me to go is because bicyclists are offered free ride on the ferry in the weekends of May. This gives me a great excuse to explore the part of Marin County that I have not been to before. It delights me to find a bike path that goes nearly all the way from the Golden Gate Bridge to Corte Madera. The path goes through the mud flats along the bay. While it is not as spectacular as the Golden Gate Bridge, it offers me a quiet and nice diversion.

I returned to San Francisco by ferry. The ride was free as promised. They must have kept this promotion a secret, because I found only two bicycles on board. Despite it was a cloudy day, I enjoyed the relaxing ride home on the top deck.

While the popular Sausalito ferry offer a view of the former prison on Alcatraz, the Larkspur ferry offer a glimpse of an active prison in San Quentin as well.

2009.05.23 [San Francisco] - comments (0)

Paris je t'aime (2006)
Director: 18 group of directors

Paris, je t'aime is 18 short stories set in Paris made by 18 different set of directors. Although each segment has only about 5 minutes, the good ones are fluid, affectionate and poetic, making the whole film a memorable experience. Here are the few ones I like,

I will start with the honorable mention, Place des fêtes by Oliver Schmitz. A Nigerian immigrant is dying on the street from stabbing wound. When the beautiful paramedic comes to help him, he feels as if he has known her.

Wes Craven's Père-Lachaise is a lighthearted story about a tourist couple visiting Oscar Wilde's grave and start having an argument there. Then it comes a moment of inspiration.

In Faubourg Saint-Denis, Tom Tykwer portrayed the yearlong love affair between a blind student and an aspiring actress in a fast paced sequence backed by techno music, mixed with happy, longing and sad emotions.

Isabel Coixet, who is fast becoming one of my most favorite directors, has made the Bastille segment. In this story the husband, who is about to leave his wife for another woman, decided to stay with her it when he learned she has terminal illness. It is a very loving piece. "By acting like a man in love, he became a man in love."

The best is saved for last. In Alexander Payne's 14e arrondissement, a middle-age woman recites her travel story in her French class in a rather flat tone. In her story we have learned she has a bland life and is somewhat lonely. But despite her seeming naiveté, it is those little things she has done to appreciate life that makes it a pleasantly uplifting story.

2009.05.21 [movie] - comments (0)

Newspaper is running a story on Stock Market Game for school children. 81,000 students, some as young as fourth-graders, took part in this year's competition. Each team receives simulated portfolios of $100,000 and tries to generate the maximum returns in 10- or 15-week periods.

The adults are really enthusiastic about the kids involves in stock trading. "I know lots of people who could have used your investment advice this year," quipped Brian Riley, managing director for Merrill Lynch in San Francisco. "When Obama came out with his green program, they started looking for solar companies," one teacher said. It sounds as if the kids really have a strategy. Or is it really a poker game?

The winning team, eighth-graders Nestor Aguirre, Anthony Poimboeuf and John D. Giannini turned $100,000 into more than $361,000 in a 15-week period that ended April 24. I wish the game would have held in last September. Because it would ensure massive bloodshed among our little traders. And this will prove to be their most valuable life lesson.

2009.05.13 [investment] - comments (0)

There was a long winding discussion about a short URL generator bit.ly. Many people are familiar with the pioneer in this field tinyurl.com, which for many people, is the synonym of this service. Nevertheless, with fast raising popularity, many people see a lot of promises in bit.ly as a business. On the hand, just as many people brush off it as a trivial service easy to replicate. Someone dismiss it as an application that can be done in 10 lines of code. This prompted the posting and set off a discussion on Fred Wilson's blog.

I should say I agree with most of the comments from both sides :) But as a geek, the idea of building a short URL generator in 10 lines has latched on my head. So I set out to work. An hour later out came http://tungwaiyip.info/shorturl. In just 10 lines of code, it is the world's shortest short URL generator, or so I thought.

This is a real application. It has UI, URL shortening algorithm and database persistence, all in 10 lines of code. Feel free to check out the source code. I have a lot of fun doing this. There is a fatal flaw though. It does not handle concurrent update very well. To squeeze the code even more to handle concurrency does not seem fun. So I just stopped there.

2009.05.12 [python] - comments (0)

KFOG put up their kaboom fireworks show last night by Embarcadero. I always consider it the best fireworks of the year, trumping even the New Years Eve fireworks. This year I notice something interesting. The fireworks is reflect by the the newly raised glass tower of One Rincon Hill, making the tower itself a sparkling display. Too bad I can't get a good shot with my basic camera.

2009.05.10 [San Francisco] - comments (0)

My son is a really good talker now. He is very inquisitive about everything. The most common question he asks all the time is "What is the name of this?" Sometimes he asks for the name of an animal, sometimes for some sort of vehicle, sometimes for an object that we just see or use. But sometimes he'd also ask for something we don't usually attach a name to.

One day we were walking on the street, he pointed to the ground and asked me "what is the name of this?" So I answered "pavement". Sometimes I used a new vocabulary like "hauling" and he'd ask what is the name of "hauling"? Then I explained to him what hauling means. Sometimes he'd ask "what is the name of green?" And I just answer green is green.

People might find him cute for asking this sort of naive questions. I think he is just curious and want to learn about everything. Somehow I have an epiphany; perhaps this is a lesson in epistemology for me, to know a thing is to be able to name it. He is just practicing the saying.

2009.04.24 [philosophy] - comments (0)

One day my wife’s laptop won’t boot up all of a sudden. I rolled up my sleeves trying to fix it. This is a Dell Inspiron 710m with Windows XP. It turned out to be one of the toughest PC problems I have encountered in years. I have spent many hours using many different ways to repair it. I am still not sure what broke it in the first place. But the virus checker is my prime suspect. Did it kill my computer? [more...]

2009.04.17 [tech] - comments (0)

We had a nice walk in the Middle Harbor Shoreline Park in Oakland this Sunday. The park is just a narrow strip of land fronting the bay amid the busy Oakland container port. But this strip of land and the marshland has the best location. It has great open feel and the bay view is exceptional. This area used to be used by industrial and militarily before it was turned into a park just a few years ago. Now it has become a little known gem in the East Bay. [more...]

2009.04.14 comments (0)

I have just completed two investment books - "The Intelligent Asset Allocator" by William Bernstein and "The Only Guide to Alternative Investments You'll Ever Need" by Larry Swedroe and Jared Kizer. Both books argue for asset allocation as the best investment strategy. I am not planning to write any detail review this time. I have been reading about asset allocation for many years, and am quite convinced it is the best strategy for me. The interesting things I have learned from the books is many supposing smart investment devices have failed miserably, often involve big risk but have a return that trail market index. [more...]

2009.03.30 [book, investment] - comments (0)

El Norte (1983)
Director: Gregory Nava

El Norte is a story about two indigenous Guatemalan brother and sister, fleeing from the civil strife from their village, embarked on a perilous journey for a new life in the United States, which is simply referred as El Norte (the north) by the people. As this title has suggested, it is a story seen entirely from the point of view of the immigrants. For them U.S. is the land of legendary riches. Immigration laws are really challenges they have to workaround. But when they have arrived, the reality is a lot harder than they have imagined. They find their prospect limited to menial labor, and a life under the shadow of illegal status with a constant threat of deportation. [more...]

2009.03.20 [movie] - comments (0)

I am not usually a sci-fi fan. Fictions only make up a small part of my reading. Nevertheless when I came across this short story βoyfriend, I have become very enchanted. Base on 21st century technologies that I am so immersed in today, Madeline Ashby make a projection into a future world where technologies become so intertwined into our consciousness. It is a dreamy world and from there many questions arise. Can technology substitute human relations? Does it make us better people? Can we live without it? [more...]

2009.03.19 comments (0)

The idea of green roof is attractive. In many buildings, roofs are wasted space cover with black asphalt. Why not turn it into something more useful by covering it with soil and grow vegetation on top of it? This will help reduce rain water runoff, urban heat island effect, air-conditioning cost as well as CO2 in the atmosphere. [more...]

2009.02.14 comments (0)

President Barack Obama ordered the government Monday to re-examine whether California and other states should be allowed to have tougher auto emission standards. Within just one week, Obama has managed to roll back many bad policies set by the Bush administration. We have grown used to the top government being brain dead on science and other issues. When we finally hear a president who say things that actually make sense, and that they actually understand issues, it is so refreshing that it is almost unbelievable. [more...]

2009.01.26 comments (0)

近日聽到趙來發先生辭世的消息，令人感嘆不已。多年前讀過趙來發《素食宣言》一書，印象猶新。我雖然沒有變成素食者，但也因此而減少吃肉。除了此書外，我還是到了現在才從他朋友口中知道他是文化界活躍分子，曾當過信報，明報等文化版的編輯，可惜認識他時是為時已晚。 [more...]

2009.01.19 comments (0)

早日又到山頂一遊，兩個商場裏外遊人密密麻麻，獅子亭上都是觀景和拍照的遊客，四處聽到的都是普通話對話。近年大量中國遊客訪港，令香港旅遊業興旺，旅客數目屢創高峰，成為香港經濟重要支柱，如此盛況在山頂可見一班。 [more...]

2008.10.27 comments (0)

早日我回到我童年時成長的灣仔區懷舊，找太太替我在戰前舊樓前拍照留念，然後我再到舊樓旁的後巷拍照。太太問我幹嗎在凌亂的後巷拍照？我說我媽小時候就是沿這小巷帶我上學。那時每天早上我帶著書包跟媽媽走這條捷徑到學校，下午媽媽在學校等我下課，然後一同從這裏走回家，小學的時候就是這樣渡過。 [more...]

2008.10.24 comments (0)

Ballad of Narayama (1983)
Director: Shohei Imamura

The Ballad of Narayama is set in a remote village in Japan. There was a tradition that before a parent reaches the age of 70, the son will bring her on the back to a remote mountain, where she will let die alone, so as not be become a burden to the family in this very deprived village. Orin was 69. She was preparing for her journey. She reminds her son Tatsuhei not to behave like his father, who 30 years ago has evaded the duty of carrying his own mother to the mountain and brought disgrace to the whole family. [more...]

2008.08.15 [movie] - comments (0)

The Bilingual Edge

Why, When, and How to
Teach Your Child Second Language [more...]

2008.07.24 [book] - comments (0)

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