Gag Order

I was thinking about my blog, and why I don't seem to blog as much as I used to. It's not that I necessarily am so busy that I can't take 15 minutes out of every other day to jot some thoughts down, or to relay something that happened to me so I could share it with you. It's not that at all. But even so, somehow, my blog has turned ... well ...

My blog turned boring.

It's been wicked of all fun things, and replaced with discontinuous thoughts and the entries are just no fun anymore. Now, I know I said this before, but I promise to try harder.

And for the record, some funny things do happen in my life. M says tons of stuff that just cracks me up (often at her expense). But I'm not allowed to write about them.

I think I may have already said too much.

Sleep Deprived

For the past three weeks, I've been getting fairly regular sleep and certainly have been getting at least the 7 hours I'm accustomed to. But for some reason, I still wake up and feel like I used to feel after getting just 5 hours of sleep. What gives?

Well, this morning, I read this article which might explain part of the reason for my constant exhaustion upon waking.

The other part might be the extra healing and recuping time I need after hitting the gym (which I've been trying to get back into).

G Block

So a day or two ago, I noticed that Gtalk wasn't connecting from my work computer. Our IT Dept is always messing something up -- or un-optimizing something that was only so-so before, so that it runs just a little bit slower/worse now -- so I chalked it up to one of their experiments.

But it's been two days now, and I am now pretty certain they've gone and G-blocked us. MSN was always blocked, as was YIM, and Gtalk is their newest addition. Skype, for some reason, has been left wide open, and that's what most of my coworkers have resorted to for IM chatting; IT "justified" it by saying it's VOIP, so it could be used for work purposes. (Never mind that Skype basically floods the network with other people's traffic, which slows us down.) So the long and short of it is that I am without a messaging client at work now. [sigh] It's like I'm in prison (minus the sodomy).

You can find me in G Block.
And visiting hours are over.

Whiff

Every workday morning, I ride a bridge over a semi-polluted river. And on the sunny days, I flip up my helmet visor to take a few good whiffs for those precious minutes. Because on my commute, that's about the freshest air I'm gonna get.

Gee Whiz, a G9!

Okay, now I got something to say: those bastards updated my camera series! My G7's only 3 months old, and they just released the Canon G9! Dammit.

I tell you, technology moves too fast for my peanut brain to keep up with.

The only main improvements are that the G9 has 12.1 MP (over my 10MP, which I never use all of anyhow) and an updated 1/1.7" sensor (which I would have liked, but probably minimal difference from my 1/1.8"), and now it comes with RAW mode (which would have been a very nice addition to my cam). Oh, and now it has a huge 3.0" PureColor LCD II instead of my 2.5" LCD, though not higher resolution.

Other than that, there's not a lot of difference; just a few minor tweaks here and there. But as a package, it certainly makes the Canon G9 a compelling product -- if I were making my camera purchase decision today, it would easily be the G9 over every other, hands-down.

Sepat Sounds like Some Kind of College Exam

I haven't blogged much recently, partially because I feel like I'm pretty busy doing stuff (other than blogging), and partially because there isn't much going on in my life to blog about, really.

Oh yeah. There was that super-strength typhoon Sepat that came barrelling in on the Friday and dumped water all over Taipei. But it wasn't really that bad, and (as usual) the east coast took the brunt of it all. On Saturday, we went out for a quick lunch. On our street, we counted 3 scooters and 1 bicycle lying on their sides from being blown over ... though in all fairness, they looked like they could just as easily have fallen over from rust or old age. And there were 2 medium-sized trees planted around office buildings that were uprooted and gently placed on their sides.

Yeah, see? That's the extent of my excitement these days: wind and rain.

Abide by the Code

I never knew there was an official man code, but having read this, we have no recourse by to comply. And I think there's a distinct opportunity here to create these rules into an illustrated or photobook.

Simplify

Over the past 5+ years, I've noticed that my life has somehow become logistically too complicated. It's not that I'm necessarily achieving any more than anyone else (sometimes it feels like just the opposite), but rather, there seem to be way too many steps and procedures that I need to do in my own pragmatic little way.

And the result is, I'm busy with life.

Busy just trying to maintain it, instead of move forward with it. But how can I help fix this problem? I imagine that eventually, it will indirectly cause health problems for me.

So I've started on a recent quest to simplify things, to give up control of exactly-how-i-like-it to close-enough-but-at-least-greatly-automated. And thus, I share with you some of my recent findings.

Mainly, I enjoy RSS feeds from lifehacker and zen habits, many articles of which are targeted to simplifying life. Some are good articles, some are pure garbage or (for me) exceedingly unrealistic, and some really hit home for victims of digital packrattery like me.

Hope that helps you too.

The New White

Some 7 years ago, Apple made white the new black, and we loved it. We called it revolutionary in the aesthetics of computing design, and we proudly displayed our white computers.

And now, Apple's making black the new white. And even though it's just the old black, we'll call it revolutionary in the aesthetics of computing design.

Now, I'm not saying I don't like the new look -- I do, though with reservations -- but I am saying that it's not the amazing transformation that I'm sure a lot of Apple fanboys are going to be saying it is.

It's just the old black, folks, but back again. Like disco.

S.W.A.T.

I have watched military and SWAT and covert spy team movies and seen them give each other quiet hand signals while strategizing how best to infiltrate the enemy grounds. I've seen how they all seem to understand this particular form of sign language, but I'm not real privy on the exact meanings -- I just guess. So if you're like me, you'll appreciate having this handy little guide on military hand signals. Enjoy!

Picture New York

Those of you who know me and/or my Flickr account know that I love to take pictures. (It's a disease, really.)

So you'll understand that when I came across this photo by lorenzodom, it struck me as rather awful that a city like New York would try to impose such a silly law (official PDF). I can't imagine what reasonable justification they must have for imposing this.

Anyway, there's an online petition at PictureNY, and as a reward (in addition to the warm and fuzzies of being able to take pictures in NY), you can watch this hilarious rap video they made.