Happy New Year to Me!

Yup, it's my birthday! Just spending a quiet evening at home with Dad. I got some nice virtual b-day cards, and even got a virtual birthday cake from my sister.

This year's resolutions:

1. Build a new creative network.
2. Develop an original concept into a project.
3. Maintain momentum.

Soreness, Finally!

Today I finally started feeling some soreness in my jaw, of the "low throbbing sensation" variety. More ibuprofen, ice packs.

I also noticed that the left corner of my mouth was scabbing over, left over from when the dentist was stretching my mouth open to use the various implements of tooth pullery. This reminds me, at one point during the extraction he actually said, "Hand me the pliers". I thought it was odd that he'd use that term in front of a patient, because it doesn't bring up pleasant thoughts. Dr Matthew had a Southeast Asian / Indian appearance, so perhaps he wasn't trained here in the States. His dental assistant must have been surprised too, because the following dialog ensued:

    "What did you ask for?"
    "The pliers."
    "Ah. A lot of dentists call it the 'East-West' (?)"
    "Oh. That's interesting.'"

I'm sure they discussed doctor-to-doctor codespeak when I left :-) Another thought that came to me was that DDSs must have tremendous arm strength to do what they do, and they probably would be pretty good at foosball.

A Picture Perfect Christmas

Emily bought these neat little frames for the Christmas tree, which was horribly unadorned up until Christmas Eve. Mom's in her mid 20s in this photo, back in the 1950s I think. The picture of Dad is more recent; he looks like a grizzled mountain explorer!

Emily, Robert, and their cat Audrey. Whee!

Me, trying to look like I belong in a picture frame, and the two cats Katai and Ekaterina. Em pointed out that Kate and Mom had the same expression!

Random Video Catchup

On day 2 of my wisdom tooth extraction recovery period, I got caught up with hours and hours of movies and anime. So far, I've experienced very little pain and soreness, and I've just been taking ibuprofen.

• Finally watched Amelie, after having it in the shrinkwrap for two years. Just about everyone I know seems to have recommended it to me, and grudgingly I have to admit I liked it a lot. Very charming and cute.

• Rewatched the pilot of Firefly with commentory by Joss Whedon and Nathan Fillion. Whedon puts a lot of work into his shots...more so than I realized. It was inspiring...I kind of want to swing a camera around also to play with framing and lighting now.

• Watched 16 episodes of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, which is the television series version of Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell manga. It's an alternative timeline version of the movies, and much more faithful to the manga in tone. I love it. I have yet to see Ghost in the Shell: Innocence, the sequel to the first movie directed by Oshii. I wasn't a huge fan of the original GITS movie because it lacked the run-and-gun action and ensemble dialog of the manga...everyone seemed to be part of one giant group mind, muttering philosophically to itself. The television series is dramatic and still has a sense of humor. As an added bonus, I hooked my computer to the TV so I can watch torrented anime files on it. Whee!

• Watched 12 episodes of Gilmore Girls, until my eyes bled. Nevertheless, I remain charmed by the inspired blathering and ranting of the central characters.

• Grabbing Samurai Champloo now... the next series from Cowboy Bebop director Shinichiro Watanabe. I have high hopes.

Graphical Patterns

I was browsing through secretrobot and came across a lot of interesting entries. In particular, the one on GUI Design Patterns caught my eye.

Patterns have been something of a buzzword for programmers. Programmers often have to deal with the same kinds of situations in their programming tasks. While the code itself may be novel and unique, the general pattern of use is often the same. You might think of patterns as "formalized tactics"; there are known ways of dealing with certain situations. As applied to programming, the original concept of "programming patterns" was taken from architecture.

As in programming, there are similar situations that occur again and again in GUI Design. The sites mentioned itemize several methods of interaction that are worth reviewing. I've grown up steeped in these conventions so I don't really think about them, but there is insight to be gained from having a more formal palette of techniques spread before you.

On a side note, I can't help but think that GUI Design Patterns are somehow a disservice, as people tend to superficially match the isolated task at hand to the nearest widget. The result is almost guaranteed to be bad. People also find it difficult to separate the appearance of the user interface (as in, "it looks cool") from its usability. In practice, people can adapt more quickly to bad interfaces than good interfaces can be built, so the status quo of horrible software is maintained. Argh. There is almost always important context and workflow that exists in symbiosis with the software application.

GUI Designers could benefit from knowing a bit more about contemporary video game design. The best games are all about psychology and flow, though it's easy to get distracted by the graphics technology.

The Joel book on User Interface Design appears to properly make this distinction, though I have yet to order it.

SharpFlash

This looks neat, an open source project to extend Flash to the desktop using C#. There are other commercial tools that do the same thing, but it would be interesting to see how one goes about doing something like this. I'll have to check it out later...blogging it so I don't lose it. Via FLOG.

Can’t Take the Sky From Me

I finally got around to watching Firefly, Joss "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Whedon's short-lived Science Fiction Space Western series. I picked it up on a whim several months ago after hearing some buzz about it being cancelled before its time...a mere 9 episodes aired on Fox, at random times and in random order, before it disappeared. The complete series on DVD includes those 9 episodes plus several ones that have never been seen. With over a thousand reviews on Amazon and a solid 5-star ranking, I was hopeful that Firefly would offer a fix for my post-Farscape depression.

The look of the show isn't your typical SciFi fare. If you're used to watching SF with obvious visual cues, you wouldn't think Firefly was the sort of thing you'd like. On the surface, the show looks like a western, from the dress to the accents right on down to the revolvers and lever-action rifles. There are no aliens, just humans.

Superficially, comparisons that come to mind are Farscape, Cowboy Bebop and Enterprise. You've got the rag-tag crew on a ship that's trying to keep below the radar of the oppressive bad guys. It has a similar rough-and-tumble aura...there's no prime directive here to get in the way. What I like about the show is the cast of characters...there's 9 of them, and it's an ensemble representing, of all things, a family. Farscape's cast, by comparison, has sharply-defined characters that seem to share the same space. Firefly's cast feels more maleable, wearing on each other and exuding a surprising warmth that belies their criminal exterior. While watching, I suddenly understood how a friend of mine felt about running his company in a particular way...there's a morality that goes with being part of a crew, and that's important. It's not the same as "doing the right thing", which leads to some powerful moments in later episodes.

There are other interesting touches:

• Everyone speaks Mandarin Chinese (albeit badly)...part of the premise is that the two major universal languages are English and Chinese. Apparently they get away with some interesting swearing this way.

• There was a civil war and forced unification of the independent worlds under "The Alliance"...the captain was on the losing side, is sick of war, and keeps flying out a little farther into the Frontier.

• The Cowboy aura permeates the show, from the expressions to the environments to the props. The inner worlds of the Alliance, however, are colder and more opulent in the mandarin sense.

• There's also a nice contrast in Alliance technology and ships...it's kind of a blend between the Imperial architecture of Star Wars and Singapore.

• I also like the theme song...it's a ballad, like Enterprise, but it's terser and reflects that independent Western desire to be free. The Enterprise theme song, is more of a Guns 'n Roses gospel anthem.. I like it too, but it seems bloated and excessive by comparison:

          Take my love.  Take my land.
          Take me where I cannot stand.
          I don't care, I'm still free.
          You can't take the sky from me.
  

• There's a lot of Buffyverse actor cross-polination, if you like that kind of thing. Captain Mal Reynolds was "Caleb" in the last season of Buffy, and Zoe was "Jasmine" in the second-to-last season of Angel. Yes, I'm a nerd.

• The spaceship CG is different from the normal fare: it simulates hand-held cameras in places, with rack-focus and depth-of-field effects. They've also chosen to show the action without sound...when a scene is in space, it's silent.

• Kind of a nitpick, but the show seems to have avoided any real attempt at portraying realistic use of firearms. Maybe it's to show how casual everyone is with guns, but it makes me wince when I see the allegedly experienced crew sweeping each other, fingers on the trigger, as they idly chat and gesture at each other. You'll shoot your eye out!

It's an inspiring work that clearly means something to Whedon. There's going to be a movie in 2005, which hopefully will re-kick off the series. I'm looking forward to it. It deserves to come back.

Pulling Teeth

Today was a long day...first, I got two wisdom teeth extracted, then I replaced my main hard drive on the production PC. Guess which one took longer.

I was pretty nervous about getting the teeth yanked, but so far it hasn't been a terrible experience. I had it done under local anesthetic at Modern Dental, which seems to be a good enough operation. It's the first time I've had my teeth looked at here in the States; prior to this, my dentist uncle in Taiwan had done all the work. Apparently my extractions were more difficult than anticipated, because I have a mutant upper wisdom tooth that has three roots instead of one. It didn't want to come out. The bottom tooth wasn't much more cooperative, but it eventually came. The entire procedure took a little over an hour.

Replacing my hard drive, on the other hand, took the better part of a day. Two of my hard drives were on the very brink of failure, which made it difficult to get the machine to boot up so I could transfer the boot files to the new drive. I eventually got it to work, but the data drive was hosed and I had to toss it. Fortunately I have everything backed up to a central server, so I haven't lost anything. While I had the computer open, I also cleaned up the video card's cooling fan, which was gummed up and making horrible noises.

All in all, a productive if slightly annoying day. The next two days should be quite painful in the jaw and I'm on a no-alcohol, no chewing diet. So much for holiday drinking and eating!

Go Team!

John Doerr is a VC with an apparently great track record, and does a Question and Answer session with Fast Company. He confirms the mental calculus that's been churning in the back of my mind recently: a great team is everything. Worth reading, if you're thinking about raising some hell with your own company some day. However, it's the kind of advice that you will have had to experience before you really get it. Via jd.

The Good Stuff

Dad brought some special tea, called Pu Erh Tea. It's fermented, aged and compressed into a cake that you have to pick apart yourself.

You can see the shrink-wrapped brick in the red box (Dad says it just says Pu Erh Tea). It takes quite a bit of effort to scrape the leaves off the main brick enough so that it can actually be brewed. Since we were splitting this brick between my sister and myself, it was necessary to crack it in half.

The tea itself is a mild, red tea that has a kind of earthy taste. Not as strongly flavored as black or green tea, it's sort of faintly fragrant. The Wiki article says that there's mold that forms on the compressed cake as it ages that contributes to the earthy flavor. Sort of like cheese, I suppose.

Some of the fancier cakes have shapes embossed in them.