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.

 

24, the Fifth Day, at the 19th Hour

More bad guys showing up in this episode. I kind of don’t get it though. Why now?

• So Audrey did turn out to be okay. Unfortunately her father Heller was not. I wonder just how many plan Bs (or CDEFG for that matter) Henderson has prepared. Jack had Henderson captured but Henderson’s men in the chopper had been following Heller that if Henderson didn’t contact them in time Heller would be killed. Heller refused to become a hostage and drove his car into a lake. I suppose he’s dead, but somehow I have this feeling that he’s alive.
• It was funny how Chloe was bossing Buchanan around when she was trying to set things up to help Jack. “I hope you don’t mind I’m bossing you around…since I don’t work for you anymore!” Heh Heh Heh.
• So Aaron Pierce was indeed being dealt with by Logan. Did he really only has Aaron transferred? Although I would think even Logan couldn’t just order to have him arrested or killed for no reason.
• Who are these new guys who seems to be behind everything, and make Logan looked like a puppet and Henderson like a little field op? Let’s see, there’s Robert Romano…..errr (if you are an ER fan you know what I’m talking about…), I mean, that Graham dude and two other conspirers. Are these people some CEOs of the Big Oil that’s why they can crap on the President of the United States? (Well, Logan is a wuss to begin with…) I’m not sure, but isn’t it kind of late to introduce these guys as the true villains?
• Karen Hayes finally came to her senses and tipped Buchanan that CTU agents were coming to get Chloe. What took her so long? On the other hand, that Miles bastard couldn’t stop grinning with DHS finally absorbed CTU. I just can’t stand that guy. I really want to smack him in the face.
• Jack found out Henderson handed off the recording to another person and that guy was getting on a plane that seemed to belong to some diplomats. As usual, Jack just cruised through the checkpoint and got onto the plane easily. My gosh, that was some TIGHT security there! Were they trying to poke fun at the airport security (which should be better than a normal airport, with all that military presence and etc) or that there’s nothing Jack can’t do?
• I can’t help but think that at the end of all this, Graham and those guys won’t get caught. Their plan obviously will be foiled by Jack but they probably will just sit back and let Logan take the fall. On the other hand, I don’t believe the recording will be made public and let presidency collapse just like that. (Heller did have a point there.) Chances are, I think Logan will resign and leave just like what Heller wanted. As for Henderson, he is so dead, unless he is put in jail so he can be brought back next season, just like what they did with Nina Myers.

In the next episode, Jack seems to turn into a plane hijacker. Did they come up with this idea to coincide with that new 9/11 movie United 93? Okay, may be I’m just being a conspiracy theorist here, let’s see what happens next week…

 

The Buzz/Hype Over The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi

I was going to write about the new anime series for the new season that starts this month, but then I came upon this post by a fellow wordpress.com blogger JP Meyer on the buzz/hype that surrounds one of this season’s new series, The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi (涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱). He made some good points in his post and I think I’ll put in my cents as well. As for this season’s other new series, I’ll leave it to another post.

I’ll start off by saying that I’m in the “I just don’t get it” camp. For the 3 episodes that I have watched so far, I don’t see anything so special that justifies the buzz I’ve seen. The story isn’t particularly interesting. Episode 1 is just showing that amateur movie they made. There is some humor here and there, but overall it’s only mildly funny. If there were parodies of any kind, I didn’t see it nor get it. The first half of episodes 2 is to show what kind of a wacko Haruhi is and the second half and episode 3 are about how Haruhi bullies people into submission as she tries to get her SOS-dan going. A lot of the stuff isn’t funny, especially the scene where Haruhi blackmailed the computer club into letting her taking one of their computers. If there was anything that I found funny, it has to be the witty comments by Kyon. The comments he makes throughout these episodes are pretty funny and they make watching that loose cannon that is Haruhi tolerable. Storywise, at least for only 3 episodes, I’m simply not impressed.

There’s also this whole thing about the dance in the ED. I agree with JP (who actually likes the show a lot) that I don’t see why this is particularly good, as there are a number of shows that have their characters dance during OP/ED. The dance itself is very well animated, but it has more to do with the amazing job that Kyoto Animation has done. The fact that it is well animated doesn’t make the dance itself any “cuter” or “cooler” than the others I have seen. I think the ED is nice, and quite a bit better than some of the lazy crap (eg. Mai-Otome and Ergo Proxy) that I have seen lately. It’s just that I don’t think it’s as AWESOME as some people make it out to be.

The Dance During ED

Is there anything good to say about this show? Sure of course. The animation is top-notch, as expected from Kyoto Animation. The backgrounds look pretty and a lot of attention has be paid to the characters’ (more like only Haruhi’s) idiosyncrasies such as the way they walk. (In the OP Haruhi walks in a slightly different way.) The art is also very consistent that unlike some other shows where by episode 3 or 4 one would notice the way the characters are drawn doesn’t look the same anymore and the sloppiness shows. And as I said earlier, although I find a lot of the stuff not very funny, I really like Kyon’s witty comments. Sugita Tomokazu (杉田智和), the voice behind Kyon, has done a pretty good job here.

As to why the show is so popular, well, I’ll throw a few wild guesses out here, and see which ones stick:

• The first episode starts off in such an odd way that it gives viewers the impression that may be this is something different. Something so different from other shows that it has to be great.
• “Moe” factor: Haruhi, Mikuru, Yuki, bouncing breasts, glasses, and bunny suits.
• The show is funny. Laugh. Damn it.
• Superior art and animation.
• The Dance.
• Cute aliens? (Check out the end of episode 3.)
• Because other people say so.

Overall I personally find this show to be average. There are a number of new shows for this season that I enjoy watching more than Haruhi. I think I’m going to watch a couple of more episodes to see if the story would pick up a bit. As it is I think I would watch other shows instead.

 

Beagle and Its Dog Slow Indexing

I’ve decided to turn on Beagle on my FC5 box to give it a try. What I don’t understand is why it takes so damn long to index my hard drive. I set the environmental variable BEAGLE_EXERCISE_THE_DOG=1 before I started beagled, and it’s been indexing my drive for the past 6+12+ hours. Why is it so slow? Does indexing really take that long?

Update: I’m fed up with it and I won’t bother anymore. Go to hell beagle. You can’t even find my little .bashrc in my home directory. Back to using locate……