A Little Bit of New Found Respect for the Enemies

Let's just get it out of the way first: I hate Hideki Matsui. He plays for the hated Yankees and he has hit well against the Sox. He and that 'roid monkey Sheffield are the two hitters that I'm most afraid of in that lineup. While I don't wish people to get hurt, I can't say I'm not happy to know Matsui will be out of the Yankees' lineup for possibly the rest of this season.

With that said, I don't hate Matsui as a baseball player. (I only boo for his laundry. Captain Intangible/A-Fraud/HGHambi are another story.) I actually do respect him as he is a very disciplined hitter (although he's a mediocre outfielder), and as someone who simply "shut up and play." Yesterday after looking at the way his hurt his wrist, I have some additional new found respect for the guy.

As one can see from the picture above, he really twisted his wrist in a very very bad way. It was obvious it hurt like hell. Yet this guy, without showing a grimace on his face, got up and picked up the ball and threw it back towards the infield. When he was picking up the ball you could see the glove came off and his hand kind of hanging there as if it wasn't part of his body. That's one tough guy right there. For a lot of other players, they probably would stay down and roll on the ground in pain.

Well Mr. Matsui, I'm sorry to see that happened to you. I'm sure it hurt like crazy. If anything, I'll see you again next year when the Sox play the Yankees again…;-)

Sony’s PS3 Announcement and People’s Silliness

So Sony announced the details of PS3 during a E3 conference yesterday, and as expected people just started to bitch like no tomorrow. Some of the complains are justified but most of them are downright silly. Here's some examples:

• "Man, $500! That's so expensive! And that's not even the 'high-end' version!" – They are right the PS3 is a ridiculously expensive piece of hardware. It's only a little less expensive than this or that!
• "What's up with the controller!? Back to the old design while stole the motion sensing thing from Nintendo Wii huh?" – When Sony first revealed that boomerang shaped controller, people bitched like crazy (it's UGLY! OMIGOD!), now Sony goes back to the old design and adds a little something, they still bitch like crazy. May be they have a point about "stealing" the idea from Wii, but seriously, why are people getting all worked up about a friggin' controller? (I never understood all the brouhaha about Wii's controller either.) I can see the point if it's very uncomfortable to hold (how many people actually tried it?) but bitching about how "ugly" it is? Yeah, it must be pretty trendy nowadays to lug your game console on your back, with head-mounted display, and play a game of Call of Duty while walking down the street. The console and controller must look COOL so you won't look like a dork. Riiight. As for the motion sensing thing, I could care less whoever Sony stole the idea from, if it means games will make use of it, I'm totally fine with it.
• "Oh no! The 'low-end' version won't have HDMI output! OMIGOD! No HD gaming nor Blu-Ray movie in full resolution!" – Last time I heard, component input is capable of going 1080i, so what's the problem? I have to wonder just how many PS3 games are actually capable of outputting 1080p resolution. On the other hand, if you have the money to own a HDTV capable of 1080p, is the extra 100 bucks that big of a deal? The friggin' HDMI cable itself costs like $40!
• "Geez, no HDMI, looks like I'm staying with my Xbox 360 and I won't be getting a PS3!" – Same as above, if you already have a 1080p HDTV, already own a Xbox 360 (which doesn't have a HDMI port either), and WAS planning to buy a PS3, is that $100 such a deal breaker? It sounds really silly if you ask me.

Seriously, if there are games that you really want to play and you can afford the price, get it whenever it comes out. (Or wait til the price drops to your range or when the games you really want comes out or both.) If you can't afford it or there's no games that you like, then just stick with what you have. I'm sure as hell that I won't be getting the PS3 when it goes on sale on November. It's expensive as hell, and I only have a 20" analog TV to go with it, which is kind of pointless. In order to get a PS3, I'll have to save enough money to get a HDTV first, and it won't be a 1080p capable one. I'm actually really looking forward to FF13 and MGS4 and a PS3 GT, but I'll think about it when I have the money and I won't lose  sleep over it because I couldn't get one at launch.  While I'm saving the money, I'll go to my friend's place to play Dead or Alive 4…

24, the Fifth Day, at the 21st Hour

Spoiler alert! Read at your own risk.

I knew it I knew it I knew it! I knew that guy is a shameless bastard! There are a couple of things that I guessed right, but on the other hand they are obviously dragging this out in order to fill the last 3 hours of the show:

• One of the two things I guessed right: James Heller is indeed alive. When his car dove and submerged into the lake, they showed some big bubbles coming out of the water. I thought may be Heller's not done. It's still unbelievable that an old man like him survived such a fall.
• The whole thing about getting the plane to land before the fighter jet shoot them down, I don't know what to think about it. That pilot + terrorist dude repeatedly said the plane was descending too quickly and that stretch of the highway is not long enough, yet when it was all said and done the plane didn't even get a scratch. Man, at least make it have a crushed landing gear or something you know…
• Come on man, everyone knew Bierko is going to escape when they keep showing him and the driver dude staring at each other. How obvious! Where's the surprise??
• Logan's trying to apologize to his wife before his tried to kill himself was just lame. Apparently he thinks what he did to Martha was wrong only when his plan was about to fail.
• The other thing I guessed right: Miles is an ass! This minute he says he doesn't deserve to be shut out because he has been loyal; the next minute he sells out his boss. I hope someone will kick this guy's ass before this season is over.
• Chloe was careless and let that bastard erase the recording. One the other hand, what kind of device he was using to erase it? Does it generate a strong magnetic field? Isn't the recorder supposed to shield against things like that?

During next week's preview they showed the recording goes kaput, Bierko is up to something, and Jack turns attention to Henderson once again. I wonder how the heck they are going to wrap this thing up. Without the recording Logan is pretty safe, may be Jack can somehow squeeze some information  from Henderson on Graham and try target those three instead. I don't know. Let's see what will happen next week.

The Incredible Vim 7

Today Bram Moolenaar announced the release of Vim 7, the text editor that I've been "enslaved" to for several years. I've been using Vim to code since 2000 when I got frustrated with the clumisness of the notepad-type text editors while I simply couldn't get used to emacs. I had seen people use Vi/Vim to move around text files at amazing speed and make changes 10 times faster than what I could do. I gave Vim a try on and off before but I found the learning curve to be too steep. I knew in order to learn I'll have to force myself to use it day in and day out. So when I started to write code for a living I decided to bite the bullet and forced myself to learn Vim. Even now I don't consider myself to be a power user. I think of myself as somewhere between a newbie and an intermediate. But after using it for several years, when I have to use notepad or gedit or even Word, I find myself keep making these weird mistakes: pound on the Esc key after finished writing a sentence; use "hjkl" to move the cursor instead of the arrow keys; type "dd" thinking it will delete the whole line, etc etc. Alas, I've become a slave of vim.

Although I'm not a power user, there are a couple of new features in Vim 7 that I found incredibly useful: tabs and intelligent completion.

Vim 7 with tabs and a modern IDE-like auto completion.

I've always liked the split window mode of Vim, I found it very useful to do cut and paste across multiple files. In this new version they come up with a new trick: tabs. It allows you to switch between multiple files quickly by typing 'gt' in command mode. If you use Gvim or your terminal program supports it, you can even switch between tabs with a mouse click. Yes I know you can use :e to open multiple files and switch between them using :buf <buffe_number>, but it's no where as convenient as just typing 'gt'. Also having the tabs at the top of the screen gives you a good idea of which files you've opened. This feature is just incredibly useful and I probably will use it instead of the split window mode or using screen and have multiple instances of Vim running. (Split window mode is still useful when I have to type something while looking at another file.)

Another new feature is the improved auto completion. There was auto completion before v7 but this time it has been improved that it acts almost like a modern IDE (eg Visual Studio, Eclipse, or even Dreamweaver) when activated. I never really used the old auto completion because it was hard to see what choices you have without the little popup menu, but I think it has improved enough that I'll try to use it whenever I can. (Also, if you look at the screenshot above, it even works across multiple files!) One shortcoming that I noticed though, auto completion is only limited to the keywords already appeared in the files currently opened. If a particular keyword isn't already in the current opened file/files, auto complete will not have the keyword you're looking for. Eg. if you have a HTML file where there's no <table> tag yet and you type <ta then ctrl-p, the popup window will not have 'table' that you're looking for. Basically, it won't help you memorize the tags or function names or etc, it will only helps you type less whenever possible.

There are also other new features, but I don't find those to be particularly useful for me. I do like the better support for Unicode but I still could get it to display some of my UTF-8 encoded files correctly. Unicode support really has never been its forte and I'm not sure if v7 is any improvement. In any case, I was pretty satisfied with v6.4 and the tabs feature in v7 only makes it better. People who are using Vim really should give this new version a try.

For Once, Can You Guys Please Listen? X.org/Nvidia/FC5?

When I first installed Fedora Core 5 on my computer, I specifically had x.org to use 60hz vertical refresh rate for my LCD monitor.  It worked fine, although not in GDM, but it was better than nothing.  Now, after a few updates with the kernel, x.org, and the official nvidia driver, I notice it goes back to 75hz again.  Even worse, if you launch the "screen resolution" preference under System->Preferences menu in Gnome, it won't even let me choose between 60hz or 75hz anymore. You can click on that up/down arrow thingy and nothing will happen. What's going on?

The now useless screen resolution preference.

I tried to change the settings in /etc/X11/xorg.conf to force a 60hz vertical refresh rate, but x.org completely ignores it. What the hell? And which one is the problem here, x.org, FC5, or the nvidia driver? It used to work, with the nvidia driver installed and all, but somewhere along the line it suddenly broke. I really don't like the 75hz refresh rate because it creates some visible artifacts on screen. 60hz works much better for me.

I've googled around as usual but there's never any good answers.  (If only my changes in xorg.conf wasn't being ignored…) If anyone knows what's up, please let me know. Here's my xorg.conf and Xorg.0.log. (WordPress.com won't let me use the <code> tag with the style attribute to create a iframe-like window, so I'll link them instead…)

24, the Fifth Day, at the 20th Hour

There’s not much to talk about for this episode. It’s mostly about Jack trying to find out which passenger on the plane has the recording, and a few things here and there.

• As soon as Chloe walked into that bar and the camera pointed to that drunk dude, everyone knew the guy was going to cause trouble. The amusing part was how Chloe dealt with him: a couple of nice shocks from her stungun. As usual, Chloe did it in a way that makes you laugh.
• Miles continued to be an ass. Buchanan was right, Miles is a little ass-kisser.
• Thanks to Martha Logan going nuts Mike Novick is getting reallly suspicious of Charles Logan now.
• I was surprised at how long it is taking for Audrey/Curtis/Henderson to get back to CTU. They didn’t show up for the entire episode.
• That Federal Air Marshal guy, wasn’t he kind of weak? Jack took him out easily, got his gun and badge and all that. I hope the real FAMs aren’t this bad.
• When the pilots tried to suck the air out of the baggage area to get Jack, he came up with this trick where he pulled these wires from the ceiling that made the plane unstable. That’s a pretty convenient trick, and kind of scary too if one thinks about it. Wouldn’t someone be able to easily crash a plane by pulling those wires?
• At the end Graham told Logan that he intercepted a call between Chloe and Karen Hayes. How did he do that? Weren’t they supposed to be on some kind of secure line? Or there’s another mole inside CTU?

From the preview of next week’s episode, Graham told Logan that he has shoot down the plane and they showed how Jack and the copilot dude trying to avoid being shot down. You know, everyone knows they will be fine. Even if the plane gets shot down, it probably will crash in a way that Jack will be able to make it out in one piece. It’s only a matter of how it happens. Let’s see what will happen next week.

Just Shoot Me, Please

Any other miserable day for my fantasy baseball team, or rather, the pathetic management of the manager, yours truely:

Red Sox vs. Devil Rays: It was Schilling against Kazmir. Big Papi has done poorly against Kazmir, with an average below the mendoza-line and no HRs and RBIs. Carl Crawford doesn’t have much success against Schilling (a healthy one that is) either, so I decided to bench the two for today.

Guess what happened: Both Ortiz and Crawford homered. There goes 2 runs and 3 RBIs. Crawford also stole a base. How did their replacements do? Sexson and Shelton: 2 runs and 2 walks, that’s it.

Trying to act like you did something smart will only bite you in the ass at the end.

Cubs vs. Brewers: I had Carlos Zambrano going. And this is his pitching line:

IP      H     R     ER     BB     K     HR
4.0     8     7     7      5      5     1

The Brewers won 9-0. Just freakin’ pathetic. With outings like this my team will never make it out of the bottom in ERA and WHIP. After Beckett’s debacle at Cleveland, it took 3 good starts from Maddux, Haren, and Verlander to get the team’s ERA under 4.50, and Zambrano just erased all the work they had done for the past two days.

This is ridiculous. My team is crashing straight toward last place. Someone just shoot me please.