Moving the mountain

1989, Tiananmen Square.

It was my last year at HK Poly. I almost waved the Chinese flag supporting the students' protest. Nationalism had never been a trendy thing in HK until that summer. Like fashion, it gradually slowed down after the incident.

Watched Moving the mountain 12 years after it was released. Didn't feel much about the student protest any more. It's like an old wound that left a scar. It's better left untouched. But it's not forgotten.

In the documentary, the then student leaders regretted what they did. We all did. Youth was about doing the wrongs and making bad decisions. Who dare to organize a protest like that in China except the students?

They died too young, too naive. Was there any value for losing their lives? Was there any impact to the system? Do we really want to move the mountain? Are we still trying to move the mountain? Is there a mountain?

If the students were willing to dismiss earlier.. If the government gave way to the students.. If we didn't scream and yell on the other side of the shore..

I can imagine how hard it is for the survivors to live in the shadows of a massacre. As for the leaders, it was hard not to put the blame on oneself.

"I didn't kill hundreds, but the hundreds died because of me." ~ Chinese proverb

But what done is done, there is no turning back. The only thing a survivor can do for the dead is to treasure one's life, have faith, and continue to live.

Gigabeat

What is the worst thing you can possibly do to a good standard? How about encrypted it and make it proprietary?

The guys in Toshiba must have too much time to burn: a popular, portable, almost universal audio format like MP3 in their hands can turn into something completely the opposite. For no rational reasons, they convert all the regular MP3 files into their SAT format before they copy the files to the Gigabeat player.

What makes thing worst is this Gigabeat player does not recognize regular MP3 compressed audio files! Technically, Gigabeat player should not be considered as a MP3 player, it simply cannot handle any regular MP3 files.

Gigabeat is not a USB drive either. Regular Windows XP PC can't recognize the Gigabeat without the driver install. Even after installing the driver, this player doesn't play/ read any image or audio files that is not copied using the Gigabeat room software. The camera backup functions does not work with my Canon digital cameras.

This Toshiba is the forth portable digital audio player I bought. The price is good, the sound quality is quite good. However, the designers of this piece of machine were either living in a cave or completely out to lunch when they first started with this product. And the organization continues to progress in their directions of uniqueness and disregard the value of user-friendliness.

I understand it is fun to pretend to be an inventor, especially when you are 'enhancing' an established standard. But on the practical side, if something is good and working, there is not point of fixing it. Best wishes to the guys in Toshiba, I hope one day you can focus again and make an audio player that is usable. You may even create a standard that you dream of. In the meantime, I am sending this puppy back to the store.

Money de motivator

Seeing Enron - the smartest guy in the room, I wonder how those big corporation executives thinks.

All common men like good ideas, and what is to offer these days are virtual ideas of future satisfaction. Enterprises aim for a profit. On the surface, profit in general is an revenue from providing the commodity/ services. The game grows more complex after this concept of shares and stock gets introduced.

Besides making money from trading what an entity produce, people start trading the shares of the entity - the value of the entity itself. In a perfect world, the one who gives the best service receives the most money, the asset of the company's profolio expand, the value of the enterprise rises, and the cost of shares reflects that. A trusted business can make profit on their shares just by blowing air on things their never had.

In the documentary, Enron guys instead of selling what they produced, they traded what others made. There was nothing wrong with this until they started to sell what they hadn't own, lied to the public continuously on their services, drove up the energy prices by turning off their own taps, and causing disruptions on people's regular lives. I am not commenting on the stories behind all these energy de-regulation decisions, but this system won't work without proper monitoring of the service by a neutral party.

A success business grows. A corporation exists to make profits. We have no problem with these statements but the social ethics is really ate at low point. As a consumer, we wish those businesses are run by good people who give us reliable products. The board of directors and shareholders only see the gaining power of the organization as of now. Ethics which is a low priority is out of the window and long gone.

What is in the mind of those corrupted executives is hard to imagine. I am low in the food chain and I am happy or content with where I am and what I get. I am greedy. I don't mind getting more but I want a good sleep at night too. Money does not really motivates the way I work, of course I need to put food on the table. I like work, and I like technical work and that's what gets me up in the morning. Money is not a sole motivator to me, I turn down higher pay jobs because I don't want the tasks. But money can be a de motivator in the case when your co-worker doing the exact same job got 50 cents more per hour.

I don't know how those Enron guys think. Maybe I just have no intention to learn. I am not a rich guy and I am gladly not struggling to be one. I once worked in a small enterprise and I saw how corrupted those people could be. And they didn't see themselves bad. No one is innocent, and I am a sinner, too. Maybe all North American business are similar, they are running be similar type of people. Once a bad habit becomes popular, it becomes commonly acceptable. I think once we get to a point of greed, we become inventive.

X-men III

The big media fuss about X-men III was the disappearance of Bryan Singer from the director's chair. In this episode of the X-men movie series, characters were highly expendable. One after another, on both ends of the camps, characters we liked were gone one by one.

Losing Jean in the sequel was a big pain. Losing Jean/ Phoenix and all the fine others in this chapter and possibly from the franchise altogether was an unnecessary overkill.

To me, the major differences between this movie and the previous two were: instead of building the characters and their stories and burying leads for the future development of the plot, it cashed in by putting an end to mostly everything that left hanging. It felt like removing that old B&W TV from your summer resort you visited every year if you know what I mean.

X-men movies were always about indifferences. About discriminations. May it be on the topics of mutants, homosexuality, racism, communism, terrorism. It's about people whose trying to change others because they are not the same. People who idealize their own beliefs and discard the existence of others. Is this liberty? Like it or not some people is knocking at your door and liberates your family. To give you the cure because you are not normal. While you are waiting for your damaged home to be rebuild as a results of freedom, I will take some of the underground black gold from your backyard and you can buy as many hamburgers and Cola from the Walmart I just built at your neighbors' lot for your convenience.

Salmon - the call of nature

I travelled to Salmon Arm, BC a few weeks ago to witness the gigantic salmon run this year.

These sockeye salmon originates from the Adams River. Their life mission is to return to where they were born to mate, spawn, and die.

It is impressive too greet these fishes after their 500km upstream swim. It probably took them some time to go against the flow of the river to get there. The salmon stopped eating once it left the ocean. They consumed their body fat and continuously to get to their destination night and day.

On the way, they faced their natural predators: bears, birds, and other animals. But these fishes were determined, they were a big group, and nothing can stop the run. When they reached home, they found their partners, laid the eggs, and died in pairs.

Will the sockeye salmon learn from us and find a more convenient location to reproduce? At this age of global village, do we still care about where we were born, where we live, where we die? As the dividing lines of culture between different nations and people blurs, the fusion generates new culture. The horrible thing is: it doesn't necessary mean we love our neighbours because we see them more.

http://www.bcadventure.com/murphys/adamsriver/salute.htm

So be it

Life is a big experience. And this big experience is composed of all these small adventurers and experiences we do every day.

When I was young I was curious and opened to different ideas and different people. I was happy to share myself and befriended almost everyone I came across. I wanted to be the most popular person I knew. Then, I was a working in a buying office and people skill was more effective than legal contracts.

In another part of the world, things got a bit harsh for me when I switched over. Working in a factory was different than working in an office. I saw less people and started to work like silos liked people around me did. Worked like a machine and got paid like one. I felt little and didn't want to go on like that. I didn't want to admit I was a failure either.

When there is life, there is a way. Been a carefree if not careless person before, I was never a big fan of the unfriendliness of computers before: too much to remember to use, everything needed to be fairly accurate. On the other hand, computer studies was quite straight forward - do as you were told and you got consistent results. I started taking computer classes.

Computer training changed me. I took high school Math again to gain my qualification to study in a new country. I was working part-time in a drug store while doing my classes. Not the most relaxing thing in the world, but I had been too comfortable for my first 25 years of life. Mathematics suddenly became my friend. I had not demand myself to be 100% since high school.

Studying in the local polytechnic school was a quick 2-year. The likes grouped together most of the time. I was not always available for the Chinese student society because I had my own schedule of work and family, but I had some good friends. Mindless talks, tough homeworks, good laughs. Life was once again simpler and truer. I got by with a little help from my friends. I missed these years. I was lucky/ unlucky to go through post-secondary twice.

The path ahead of me was not exactly what I started and planned for but it didn't look too bad and my own expectations were manageable. Work got better, and I learned the true relationships between accuracy and repeatable results. My pervious approximative personality wouldn't apply here. I am now working in computing, in math, in 0 or 1. The compiler was not a very forgiving piece of software. As time goes by, computer programmer like me adopt become a compiler. People become less important than being right.

I was attached to my experiences. I want my repeatable successes. Went back to school to do my applied degree in part-time. I gained knowledge from the courses and at the same time I was obsessed after my first hard earned distinction. Following the law of the diminishing marginal return: getting a pass takes some efforts, but to get full marks takes an unproportional amount of time, efforts and devotions. It was completely non-economical, but this was one of the most rewarding things in life.

Pretty soon, I was possessed by the classes, or by my own silliness of virtual perfection. I worked and pushed myself to the edge until I said it was good enough. I am becoming slaves of my obsessions. I own my house or my house own me? I own my car or my car owns me? I own my life or if my life owns me? I own my computer? My work owns me? I just have too much time in my hands to waste 50% of the project time to make the last 4 of the 5% work. Of course this may imply ineffective project management, think I should put the items in the rest area more.

Life is perfect, I am not, so be it. Easy to say, depending on the subject, the correct application is the hardest part indeed.