JetFable’s Gamer Writer’s Block

If you could only read 3 nonfiction books in your life for leisure purposes, the Tipping Point is one of them, the other two being Freakonomics and Blink. The Tipping Point is not as fun as the other two books I recommended, but essentially helpful for entrepreneurs, or in other words, people who wants to start something (not necessarily a business). If I had to describe the Tipping Point in one sentence, it is that the book tries to identify how an epidemic is started, not a malady kind of epidemic, but when a trend crosses a threshold and spread like a disease. To draw a real life example that’s not from the book, there’s a very tiny japanese ramen restaurant close to where I live, they make excellent ramen, one of their flavors, a white soup based pork ramen, is probably the best of its kind, best I’ve ever had. This restaurant is in the middle of nowhere, in a small alley surrounded by residentials. Eight years ago I was introduced to this restaurant, and I began going about once a month, it was never crowded, but only seemed to be sustaining itself by loyal customers. Some time between that number of years, a change happened, everyone started going to that restaurant. The wait around dinner time is more than an hour, and if I went there at 9:15 pm (it closes at 9:30), there’s still a 10-minute wait. Since the restaurant did not have any geographic advantage, you can pretty much rule out people who stumble upon it, so how did it become the Ramen place to go to in that district, that threshold is the tipping point. I wouldn’t quote the book too much, but word-of-mouth empidemic needs Connectors and Mavens, Connectors are people who are connected to a lot of people, and Mavens are people who are authorities of the subject. It matters less if suddenly 30 people stumbled upon the restaurant, than 1 connector/maven who went to the restaurant, and loved it.

Have you heard of Craiglist, heres an interview of the creators with Freaknomics. Craiglist only has 25 employees and it is one of the top 10 traffic sites in the US. Yes, and it looks like shit (thus it loads quite fast), and well its domain name is not that great either. Recently there is an indy documentary film about the lives of people who use Craiglist in San Francisco. Have you wondered how you could possibly heard of Craiglist? Like the restaurant I mentioned above, Craiglist does not have any advertising, and its purely from word-of-mouth. I wonder what its tipping point was. Tipping point is necessary for success.

Talking about Craiglist reminds me of Baidu, it is now the 3rd most-used search engine globally. It owns 5% of the queries as opposed to 60% from google. It is amazing because only people from china (who reads simplified chinese) uses Baidu, sure China has 1/6 of the world’s population, but what is the % of people who are online and regularly searches. Imagine Baidu expanding globally, into other asian languages, even traditional chinese, the possibility is endless. Baidu stocks skyrocketed, everyone wished they bought it before (including me). Ever since the subprime fiasco, stocks are moving agaist the economy, some people say we are again in a bubble. I dont think we are. We are only in a bubble when everyone’s grandma and their cats are talking about buying stocks, most people nowadays, they are still weary of what happened in the past. Trading is always a game of not being the last guy to get to the party, and certainly not the last guy to reach the exit in case of a fire. I still predict a recession 9 months after the first interest rate cut, and that puts us right in election time. Yes, a democratic president always have to pick up the pieces. So between now and then is probably a good time to invest, get the hell out, and buy a house. I continue to recommend solar energy stocks and techs. If you don’t already have GOOG, RIMM, AAPL, BIDU, it may already be too late. The correct thing is probably to identify the next GOOG, and right now my speculative google contenders are VMW and FSLR. More speuclative risky stuff I recommend would be STV (digital TV in china!) and YGE. One long term investment advice I really have is, don’t buy too much of  your own company’s stock for your 401K no matter how much a discount you get, well unless you worked for Google. Just look at Enron, when shit happens, you lose not only your job, but your retirement funds. Have you watched Damages, the show I kept recommending, and recommending. If you haven’t watched it, you get two slaps from me. Do you sympathize with Ted Danson’s role as the crooked CEO on trial for screwing his employees. It takes a crook to become a CEO, all CEOs should screw his employees in the first sign of troubles, just because they can (yes, if you are a CEO reading my blog, please screw your employees to your heart’s delight, but chances are, you already have). They become CEOs for power and success, and to screw their secretaries (a different kind of screwing than the above), if you are screwed in light of your employer’s accounting trouble, its really your own fault, enough said.

Talking about buying a house (and don’t ask me if housing in the US has bottomed yet), a friend asked me how much money I would spend on stuff I want to buy, as opposed to tying myself down with a morgage and saving every penny I can. My answer is this: whatever you want to buy is always worth it (no matter how much it is) if it brings you happiness. My advice is live every moment as if it is the last day of your life (who knows you may die in a car accdient tomorrow), and also keep in mind that you may live forever (and in case of that, prepare a little), and the correct way to live is to have a balance in between of that two thoughts. Balance is the key to everything.

I have so much I want to write about but so little time to do it, but if I don’t, well, you know, my brain expands exponentially and then at some point it implodes and I forget everything, literally everything, and this world ceases to exist as we know it, so I have to do another system flush, I hope that I get to flush at least once a week.

OK, I am going to brag about my power of foresight again. Here, these are today’s news: Wii confirmed to be only 1.5 times more powerful than the Gamecube, if thats even a generous number. You get what you paid for, and you know what you paid for won’t last. Here’s what I said last week. Forget people who say graphics don’t matter. These are poeple who refuse to embrace the future. And another of today’s news, Google tesing “My World” later for launch. My world is essentially something like 2nd Life, here’s what I said last month. In order to take over the future world, Google has to own the metaverse, Googleverse? The only thing to do is purchase something like 2nd Life, WOW, or create their own competition.

I read this book called the Secret accidentally. Accidentally meant well I was at someone’s house accidentally watching the pilot eipsode of Bionic Woman on cable, and accidentally I saw this book so I skimmed thru a few chapters while I was half-paying attention to the show. If I had to read during a TV show, it says a lot about the show, so I do not want to talk about it. As for the book, is a book I far from recommend it. In fact I here by declare war to anyone who believe in this load of crap. The person who got rich off this idea should die, and those who believe her should perish from my positive thinking. Read the Amazon Reviews here, yes the reviews are more entertaining than the book. What is it about, it is a self-help book that encourages positive thinking, by literally disregarding every physical law that make up this world. I’ll give a few examples here what the book said (and please do the world a favor and don’t buy the book). It doens’t matter what you eat, if you keep an image of what you want to look like, you can never get fat. So basically all the obese people who have problem don’t want to look thin, right? And people who goes on a diet / exercise is wasting time? Better yet, if you drive to the mall and have a positive thought about getting a parking space, viola, there will be one right there in front of you. People who gets frustrated not being able to find a space is because they carry with them negative energy. What a load of horse crap is this? If there are 10 spaces and 15 people looking to park, 5 people won’t be able to park, I think that is the basic law of the world. Sure I always say that our minds shape the universe. But it isn’t 1 person’s mind that shape the universe (though I’d like to believe that’s me), even in quantum physics, that 15 people searching for 10 parking spaces coverge to exist at that time, even if their minds created the mall and the parking spaces, their viewpoints still give them no free space, because you can’t violate the observer phenomenon — and that this universe must make sense according to the rules we know. The book gets better, it talks about the law of attraction, not the attraction you are thinking about, but the power to attract disaster onto themselves. It says that people who are on a plane crash all have negative thoughts to cause the plane crash. Should I stop talking about the book here? I can’t. Take Fate and random events out of the question, many events need to collide for an accident to happen (like turbulence, tornado), certainly not negative thoughts, even if I agree that negative thoughts tend to make a person more prone to bad things because they expect it, and not to mention, people who gets on a plane buys the ticket in advance, at different times. Even if you can prove that 90% of plane crash victoms are at that moment having their mid-life crisis, what about the rest of the 10%? Who can they blame it on but fate? Anyway, I will stop complaining about the damn book here. On to other things.

Damages, the best TV drama lately. I cannot rave about it anymore than I can, with awesome acting and a lot of twists, okay I am a sucker for twists. Glen Close is awesome in her role as a devious yet brilliant lawyer, and the protagonist of the movie (geez what’s her name?) well innocent and naive and her job and relationship with her mentor changes her. The relationship here reminds me somewhat of Devil Wearing Prada, of the mentor apprentice relationship but of course, without the dark twists. Damages isn’t anything like Unfair, but like Damages, in Unfair, the protagonist can trust nobody, basically everyone has an agenda of his/her own and there’s always a twist ending in a betrayal. The movie was just out, it isn’t anything as good as the TV show, but it’s worth watching, if it isn’t just for 篠原凉子, who is gorgeous for that particular role. The next show I like is Burn Notice, and it reminds me a lot of McGuyver, in many good ways.

I think I stopped thinking emotionally about the world at some point, but try to use economic standards and theory of evolution to explain everything. Its not like I have become and uncaring and emotionless human being, its just there is an answer for everything, pretty much everything, but sometimes the world hide it from us, and it does a very good job of it, so you have to stand and view the world as a economist / scientist / engineer / creative writer / free thinker / philosopher.

I thought about changing jobs, because I don’t think I am paid enough. I often say I am paid both too much and too little. I am not paid enough for what I can do, but I am quite overpaid for the amount of hours I spend on actual working. I had a discussion with friends the other time. The one thing you should learn in your first job, is that hard work don’t pay off. The right way to work is to work smart. People don’t get rewarded for their hardwork. Consultants go into another company and try to change the world, and you start to realize it doesn’t pay for you to want to finish 2 months of work in 1 month. Nobody wants you to do it. Your client don’t want you to be there because you improving things mean more corporate people are laid off or they have to spend less time on a task that would take them longer, and they want it to take longer. Your boss don’t want you to be quick because well you are charged by the hour and get paid 1/10 of it, and essentially if you don’t do crap for the whole day, your employers are more than happy to get 10x the amount of profit you don’t work for. The lesson here is if you work for somebody, your hardwork don’t pay off. The people who kiss ass gets promoted, and thats life. If you want to work hard, start a business on your own so your fate is entirely in your hands. Well I didn’t really want to talk about how I don’t try to work hard, but I am still good at what I do, so even when I do get paid sometimes just doing my own things, I can still get paid more not doing anything, that’s why we went to school. That leads me to talk about market value, getting a new job means evaluating your market value.

I think a job interview is very like a first date (though I hate the former more than the latter), you present an illusion of your own market value and try to make a fair trade. If you know anything about trading, is that trading is never fair, everyone may be happy but somebody is always better off. I think relationship can be broken down to this trading market value elements, okay I know, I am disregarding everything emotional about relationship and try to explain it with math, but math explains everything, the fact is that nobody wants to be with someone who they dont believe to be a fair trade. And by market value of a person, I take into accout Apperance (this counts more for females but its still somewhat a factor for guys), Education / Income level, and that is why we often improve ourselves, and go to school, or start a company, buy a new car, this is how society works. As time moves forward, market value of a person changes, and people become mismatched because they longer think it is a fair trade, like me with my current job, or people around me with their current situation / relationship. I see a guy who doesn’t want to get married because he says he is not financially ready, of course later he dumps the girl, because becamse successful, what was a fair trade before turns rotten, Girl leaves guy for another guy, or prospect of another guy, after she attends more school and go to work, same idea. Like I often go to a starbucks at my lunch hour, and the girls who serve me coffee know my name and what I order, and we chat sometimes, and they would ask me what I do for a living and other things, whatever I say seem to fascinate them (and yes they even ask me how much I make). And no, I am not interested in them, because, well, the market value just don’t match. And by that I meant their attractiveness don’t really compensate for their social status. Sure maybe there are some really hot waitress who think I am not a fair trade to them, because billionares want them as much as I do. Will I ever date a girl from a lower social status, yes, of course, but in order it to be fair, she has to be attractive, just like I can pretty much date a very averge looking college-educated individuals who can talk about many things with me. Thats the trade-off in life. I may sound cruel and shallow but in fact, thats really how the world works. You see non attractive guy with a very attractive girlfiend, they are rarely from the same social ladder, and the reverse apples to the old hag who marries the young handsome stud. What happens in Knocked Up doesnt really happen in real life, though its a good message to the average joe, but in the movie, I can see her getting knocked up happening because he was pretty funny, but I could not see the relationship sustaning becasue he’s basically the bottom feeder of society. In fact he could not afford to go anywhere they went. But what happens in SuperBad, is in fact realistic to a certain degree, which is also why I love the film so much. Yes in the movie, the geeks/nerds whatever you call them are of a lower social ladder than the hot girls (and yes thats how cruel the American Society is), and theres no way they could get them unless they level the playing field. In order to “level up” their class status, and offer a fair trade, they have to do what the higher class couldn’t get, by producing a fake ID and get alchohol while even the cool dudes could not, and McLovin here of course highly level up his charisma by faking to be a bad-ass hacker criminal. If you notice anything here its never really about their apperance but their place in the social heirachy of the world. Of course they got the girls just by being themselves at the end, but the underlying message of it all is that, well others don’t think you can provide something of a equal or higher market value, they are not going to spend the time to get to know the real you (they will not negotiate and trade with you). This is why we work hard (or I mean work smart) right? There is an answer to everything.

 

10 politically incorrect truths about human nature, it deserves to be read, if not worshiped. Of course I already believe most of the facts that the article claimed (other than #6), but I think it might come as a revelation to some people, and they should enlighten themselves. And from the article I really like this quote: Women often say no to men. Men have had to conquer foreign lands, win battles and wars, compose symphonies, author books, write sonnets, paint cathedral ceilings, make scientific discoveries, play in rock bands, and write new computer software in order to impress women so that they will agree to have sex with them. Men have built (and destroyed) civilization in order to impress women, so that they might say yes.

Women saying no to men is the sole driving force of civilization, believe it or not, women rejecting men is what makes men become better men. And really, it isn’t because men are smarter than women, but there are more important and influential men in the history of mankind, just because men needed to be powerful so they could get laid. Neil Strauss, who wrote the Game (which I recommeded before), learned that after infiltrating the pick-up artists society, that he learned to become a better man by learning to pick up women. Freaknomics had a discussion on the Science of Insulting women (the comments are interesting), a technique called “Negging”, which is invented by Mystery, a real-life character from the Game, who now hosts his own TV show on VH1 (think of it as the Apprentice with Mystery instead of Trump). I don’t really think of Negging as insulting women and lowering her self esteem, but to convey non-interest (so they don’t have to say no to you, reacting to their genetic desposition), and to boost self-confidence (which is very important). Making slightly negative comments just means you are not nervous, and stops you from gawking at them.

Which reminds me of the movie Superbad, which I saw this past weekend, and like Donald said, Superbad IS super good, for numerous reasons. Yes it reminded me of high school life, which was total torture, I am not sure if I belonged to either the jocks or the nerds crowd, well I just came from overseas so I was one of the FOBs, which I didn’t even remember if that was even a lower social standing than nerds. To me, then, American Society was a strange place, which I didn’t quite get at that time. In Asia, being the top of your class gets you chicks, everyone knew that. One can study their way into being popular. In US, its the opposite of that, pretty much, you are stuck being where you are and can only hope that this phase of your life passes (maybe past torture propels you to future success). Maybe thats why Asian kids are on a whole better academically, not because our parents force us to, its because, what sex drives us, which also explains what I wrote before, how Chinese societies killed creativity. If women only chose the doctors and lawyers, who would draw comics, design video games, and write a book? Not to say being a writer is aphrodisiac to women in America, its about gaining respect, which the kids in Superbad tried very hard, to earn respect, to get laid, and found that at the end being themselves as more important, and I agreed, overall a pretty good message behind the laughter, and I whole-heartedly recommend the movie, and one you should watch with the guys (though I saw it with a girl).

When you spend a lot of times on the road, you notice many things, like I said last time that women are more likely to get into a car accident when talking on the phone, its not necessary because women are poor multi-taskers (in fact someone showed me a study that proved the reverse) or drivers, but because women spend much more time on the phone than man, and are much more likely to pay attention to the conversation (and I bet, more emotional about it too). Now here’s another phenomenon that I notice. When are you on a main street turning left onto a side street, and there are 2 lanes for the turn before the traffic light. You notice the right lane clustered with cars, and the left lane almost empty, and you have to make a right turn into the mall let’s say within a block after you turn (but not right away), which lane would u go to? Ok, let’s put some actual numbers to it. Now, let’s imagine there are 10 cars on the right lane, 2 cars on the left lane, and on average, 8 cars can pass assuming the driver in the first car isn’t playing with himself when waiting, and the average wait for the next green light to come is about 3 and a half minutes. Now what would you do? I’d go on the left lane and take my chances of cutting into right later, almost 100% of times. But if you think about it, why is the right lane clustered with cars, even when people know that they have to be stuck with 3 extra minutes? Are most drivers even smart enough to think this way? Is time an important factor to them? Or are most of them on the phone anyway and don’t care? I wonder if you can categorize people this way (Do people who get ahead in their cars also more likely to get ahead in life?). What about when you are on the freeway trying to get onto another freeway, and you notice the right 2 lanes are backed up all the way at least a mile back, so you stay on the left lane and try to cut in at the last minute. You can usually get in, assuming you are not terrible at driving and can afford a decent car. But how many people honk at you and give you the middle fingers as if you have slept with their wives and cheated their life savings, and how many people happily and willingly let you pass? Years ago I was on a consulting gig and at a social event one of my clients told me that she hates people who cut in front when getting on the freeway. I told her I was one of those people who do it, and I make sure I do it every chance I get. I never said I was a very tactful consultant. I am the exact opposite of those people who curse at those who get in front of them, I usually let people get ahead of me since I just did it anyway, and I actually pity those who waited in line, so I make sure they wait longer while I let more people get ahead of me (yes, I’m such a jerk). Its like that study in freakonomics about who in the company did not pay for the bagels, its usually the CEO, I bet that’s what they learn in MBA school, to cut corners, while the peons worked fervently and complained and of course, willingly paid for the bagels.

This is one of those random thoughts article which I usually dislike, because it lacks artistic unity, but hay, I can’t always stick to art, it is information that gives us power, and well, I got to unload my brain once in a while. Interesting new contenders in the web 2.0 space this week: Newser, which tumbnails news, and surprisingly, I really like it a lot. I am one of those multi-tasking gurus which are doing a million things at the same time, Newser enables me to read and sort out the news I want, in an organized way, while doing other things. Well as this is happening, Google is moving towards having user comments in their news, an idea already used in Slashdot, which I read religiously. The second contender to stealing away Google’s leftover lunch is Spock.com, a search engine that claims to be the google of people, yep you use it to search people (who needs privacy?). So far its very good, and most likely you’ve been indexed if you put in your full name in sites like Friendster and Linkedln. Spock is still in Beta and reminds me of Friendster, which didn’t always work (and failed because of it). It is worth trying out. If you sign in you can manage the entry under your own name, not unlike Wikipedia. As for whether these two companies will be sucessful when we move towards the Metaverse, who knows? But my bet is they are here to stay.

The stock market is going nuts this week, the subprime mess that Bush left us in is finally taking effect, worldwide. But I don’t think we will crash. We are ending this year higher is my guess. If we correct more, that’s more buying opportunity for your 401K account, tech and solar energies still leading the next bull market. A lot of people ask whether housing will crash? I am still waiting. But the fact is that, if you need one, you need one. And it will always be okay if you are in it for the long haul.

Interesting discussion in Freaknomics “Cut God Some Slack” blog about who buys the Religions are bad for you books. Those books generate a lot of controversy, and by looking at the 100 comments a day, you know that both sides of the fence buy these books, making them best sellers. And no, I have never read one, and most likely will never, because I already know what it says. The comments are entertaining to read, and I contributed my own as well. And this one is especially classic: A person asked me on a plane if I believed in God. I said no and he asked me why. I said it was like believing in my wife. He said how is that. I said, I don’t have one. He said,I see, you would almost have to have one first before you could believe in her wouldn’t you. I said right. Plus, even if I did have a wife, over time I might not want anyone to see me with her, if you know what I mean. He said I guess that goes for gods too. We just laughed and shook hands. So much for God in America!

Some other interesting discussions this week I have with my friends are: Well, do you need good language skill to make you a good actor? I still remember Kevin Costner in Robinhood (The prince of Theives?) who couldn’t even mimic an English accent, while everyone around him did. Well that’s not acting skills but language skills, but to me thats just not believable, though I am sure a lot of people don’t care. But if you can’t role-play the character you are in, how can you even be a decent actor? The best actors do have good language skills.

The second topic is, is saying “Women can’t drive” a sexest comment? And is it even true? I am not even going to comment on that, but well, statisically speaking, when you run into really slow drivers, or drivers who aren’t paying attention to the road, if you guess “women”, 75% of times you’ll be correct. Statiscs do speak for themselves. What makes men better drivers? Its very simple, video games. Video games give us better hand-eye coordination, and multi-tasking ability, and that’s very important in driving. Not to mention, most people who race, and know the car inside out, are men, and men drive women out on dates, so practice makes perfect. Men are constantly competing in all sorts of genetic traits for the women to select them as mate, well, while women just have to compete in beauty. This reminds me of this one time, that a woman almost hit my car, and she was on the cell phone, and didn’t even notice she almost hit me, while I dodged safely out of her way. This comes to my next question, are women drivers more dangerous on the cell-phone because they are worse muti-taskers? If you think about it, this is only probably true to a certain extent, because men simply talk less, or as my friend suggested, they have the ability to not pay attention to the woman they are talking to and pretend that they are, so which makes them better concetrated on the road. I remember, this once, during a conversation, my bluetooth got disconnected, so I searched for my handsfree, while changing lanes on the freeway, hook it back up on the phone, and voila, she’s still talking, and didn’t notice I was away for at least 30 sec, I repeated her last sentence into a question, and she thought I was paying attention. Hands down, men ARE better drivers, just because we are jerks.

New US drama I watched this week is Jericho (recommended by a friend), and hands down, its awesome. It’s what happend after Jack Bauer failed in preventing a terrorist attack, after the 10th time. Enough said.

Here’s an insightful article about how Chinese copy the Iphone, and I know, they claimed that the cardboard inside bun story is fake. Fake news, fake buns, same difference to me. They both smell fishy (Coverup!)

This Survey says 40 percent of PS3 owners knew that their console included Bluray, and thats equivalent to saying 100% of idiots in american didn’t know their heads contained a brain. It’s just sad. Another survey also said that people who download video over the internet (legitimately) are dissastisfied with the quality of interent video and they prefer going to blockbusters. They are also idiots (if you don’t know why, so are you). 

Someone said my blog is awesome, I cannot agree more. At least it isn’t depressing. I am generally a happy person, it is not that I can’t get depressed, but I think I am very used to compartmentalizing myself so nothing really devastates me (trust me, don’t attempt if you lack high IQ) , the only depression I get is a writer’s depression, that I am too lazy to find new ideas and too damn lazy to write, and too damn lazy to finalize my manuscript and too damn lazy to publish my work. For those who are depressed about life, I don’t understand why, life is full of interesting new things to investigate and look forward to. T Jefferson Parker, in his book The Fallen, wrote that in order for a man to be happy, there are 3 things: He must have someone he love, he must do the things he love, and he must have something to look forward to (hopefully these 3 things are not refering to the same -> person -> insert sexual joke here). Its very easy to achieve this, I think. You might think that the first one is out of your control, but it’s not, it doesn’t even require that person to love you back. And well, get a hobby, and look forward to something. If not, you can keep refreshing this page and hope that I won’t update my blog (yes I stole this from Tommy), and you may get your wish. Be happy.

 

 

And that’s just the way it is. Well today I was told by a friend that she was upset about reading what I wrote about my Thailand trip. This is what I said, not in the exact words, to understand my stance as a writer, that is to understand that I learn to compartmentalize myself, same thing as people who have schizophrenia, except that I know how to distinquish illusion from reality, and I know when the different parts of me struggle to be the real me. I think we all act differently towards different people, same thing when I am here writing, its a different me than the real me, well its still me, except sometimes it may only be a small part of me. Here I am a god of my world, who literally is a pimp of words, cleanser of minds, speaker of truth, entertainer of souls, I hardly give a damn about what anyone thinks, here I am narcissistic and brilliantly funny and I am always right and I am the authority of all things, and sometimes sound like an asshole (which may or may not be true in real life), and thats the persona I take on as a writer. In any case, my friend claimed that I spoke mainly of negative things in the Thailand trip, but thats not what I was writing about. I did not write about my trip, I wrote about the difference of human lifestyles, I wrote about how dependent I was on technology, and my inability to adapt to a less technologically advanced situation. Of course all she read about was how bad the bathroom was and how hot and humid it was and how hard the bed was, but she was missing the point. It wasn’t that I wasn’t grateful for the hospitality, its just I wasn’t used to it. But I believe in trying everything out in life, so if I could turn back time I’d still do it again, but I wouldn’t want to live there in the future. I like my comfort — I like my 42inch plasma screen, my wi-fi internet and my ice coffee and my winter-like air condition. In, any case, I’m not sorry about writing crap (about actual crap that I couldnt bring myself to unload, pardon the pun), I am just sorry that she had to read it. Oh well, I know, if I was her, I’d be angry at me too. She asked me why I focused on negative things, but thats what we read about in life. I remember I also wrote about an old woman mumbling to herself like talking to a ghost in the restuarant in HK, a couple who treated others like strangers, and well I never talked about how good the food was or how great a time I was having reading the damn book I had in my hands, but I wrote about loneliness of the human condition. Same thing we only read about plane crash and never the happy passengers, we don’t blog about the happy 3-year relationship we had until we broke up with someone, we don’t write about how happy we are until we are lost and miserable and depressed. I think people who commit suicide is probably 80% happy but he chooses to dwell on the bad things because that’s what he remember. After having said all that, those you know me personally, I think you should know whether what my stance is on what I write about. I believe I wrote that I was the center of the universe, this page don’t exist until you click here (I think I also imply that you don’t exist until I thought about you, but that may have been lost in the midst of things), I wrote that there was no God, if there was it was created by the human mind (no offense to Christians out there), I don’t believe in freewill. The list goes on… the writer me takes those topics serioiusly, but the writer me is also at times hidden inside the real me. If someone chose to take offense at the real me for what I write, well its your choice, in any case I hope my other articles of intellect and humor makes up for it. I have gotten long-winded again (like many of you who knows the real me also claim that I am), until next time.

Chinese people are known to many things, not just software. I have heard them making soy sauce from human hair, diluting milk to increase their profit margin, gold farming on MMO which I’ve often talked about… now they put cardboard in their buns (The exact compostion of cardboard and fatty meat is 60/40). After I read that, well it got me to research about how to pirate an egg, which was a rumor I heard from before. Here’s the exact step to create a counterfeit egg. I was pretty amazed. Inhumane, yes of course, but also ingenious. I am not sure if I should be proud to be Chinese or not, but to think that if we used some of that brain power to not gyp others (well usually ourselves — there’s a saying: Your brothers are usually the first to swindle you), we could create more useful inventions in the history of mankind.

I like to tell others I am always right. Well it’s mostly true. But others always like to argue with me, and they always lose because they have no basis for arguments, they simply cannot recall when I was wrong. not that I am never wrong, I usually admit my wrongness right away and only argue when I am right. I pick my battles so only the ones that I can win. In any case, a little more than 1 week has traversed since my last blog entry, but it seems that all my predicions are correct. I compared the iphone to the wii, and viola, today Nintendo’s CEO compared the Iphone to the Wii and say it has Wii-like staying power. I gave some stock predictions on my last blog, and I am just about 99% correct (it is in fact 100% but I don’t want to sound too conceited). NYX did bottom and then rose about 10 points, AKAM got into S&P 500 and rose about 3 pts, GOOG and AAPL made new highs yet again. Best yet, my solar picks all gave mind-boggling returns, FSLR reached 117 from 90s (looking like to be the next Google) when I recommended, STP broke 30s, TSL hit 70s from 50s. Anyway, I sound like a prophet of sorts but not really, if you study technology enough you should know which technology is here to stay and which will lead our future.

While Microsoft Windows maybe going away soon enough, the web is here to stay and its still at its beginning stages. Here’s an article where Tim Berners-Lee (the father of the internet) Discusses the Future of the Web, he talks about semantic web where we carry the data with us and share it across different web applications, and that is what we may call web 3.0 or eventually 4.0. The metaverse will also be an eventual point of the evolution of the web. I predict Google buying a company like Linden Lab (the makers of Second Life), but I think we are still at least 10 years away from that, so the semantic web will be here first. Now let anyone challenge me whether I will be right or wrong.

As you all know, I can’t get away from writing for that long. It’s a mental disease, but at least it’s one of my better ones (yes I have a lot more). Someone once complained that my blog is devoid of pictures, so recently I’ve included more. It doesn’t in any way enlighten anyone who wants to read my words of wisdom, but I guess, it’s easier on the eyes. The theme today is virtual world, if you haven’t guessed already. As somewhat of a big gamer, I guess I still amaze myself that till this day I haven’t really touched an MMO, I guess it has something to do about being a writer. I’ve often believed that no good stories can be told on an online game, because no good story can come out of a world with more wanabe heroes than villains. But in any case, a virtual world is good for a lot of things, like conducting a job interview.

Read Wall Street Journal’s article here. Personally I hate job interviews, I usually don’t perform well at them, because I usually dont know crap about my craft. I am a writer not an engineer but all the interviews I have attended are enginnering related to a certain degree. I’m not sure how well a virtual job interview will work, I am not sure what the point of it is. I mean dressing up your avatar and than navigating it through the interview room, might as well do it in a chat room, without all the fancy graphics. I do believe it may work to a certain extent in tech-related jobs, as those candidates who did not know how to properly navigate an avatar are immediately crossed out as idiots, but then, how well does an avatar’s behavior reflect the real person’s. An avatar can’t really pick his nose and smell bad. Its like having your first date in 2nd life, does it really work? Sure it works if you never have to deal with that person in real life, but if you had to, just think about this, have you ever met someone that you disliked at first sight? I make split-second judgement on people all the time, you can’t exactly do that in a virtual world. When you’re hiring someone, their personal manner, attitude, quickness, humor, curiosity, and a few dozen other traits are really important, you get none of that online. But then I think it might work if you need to hire a brainy enginner that you don’t have to interact with much, usually how well they present themselves is indirectly proportional to how smart they actually are. In any case, I like the idea of telecommuting because I hate sitting through traffic everyday (idiots who drive to work, yes, you), and I certainly love the idea of working in a virtual office.

Well, there are people who log onto virtual worlds when they get back home from their day job, and there are people who work like a slave in the virtual world. This New York Times article interviewed a few chinese gold farmers who worked in terrible condition getting worse than minimal wage. It is an interesting read.

And a while ago I read about BBC’s article about Germany’s investigation into child pornography in Second Life. Sure advertising and selling child pornography (of real children) in a virtual environment is wrong, you get no argument from me. But what about sex with an underage avatar, turns out in Germany you can get 3 years jail time. I am talking about virtual sex (which isn’t sex) with an underage avatar (a child-lookalike thing which may be controlled by your grandma) gets you 3 years of real ass-raping in jail. Sure, pedophilia is really sick, but where do you draw the line? Is virtual rape really rape? I mean I can’t imagine anyone getting scarred emotionally from a virtual rape. I can’t even begin to describe what that is. Afterall, virtual death is not even remotely close to real death. I think whats fair is not real jail time, but virtual jail time.

Rockstar’s violent yet brilliant game Manhunt 2 been issued an AO rating and officially delayed maybe for eternity, since both Sony and Nintendo will not allow selling of an AO rating game. This reminds me of a message board posting about the first Manhunt, as some parents were disgruntled about Manhunt teaching kids that a plastic bag could kill someone (as Plastic bag is one of the execution method in the game). This is one of those times when I seriously doubt the average American intelligence. Not knowing that a plastic bag could kill is almost saying you didn’t know you needed oxygen to live. Yes, a bag could kill, but so can your mom’s bent-up dildo.

And finally, I want to talk about Denno Coil (電脳コイル), a science fiction anime that gets its idea from the matrix but yet manages to seperate itself from the rest of the crops. It talks about the advent of augmented reality (AR), somewhat a fusion of reality and virtual reality. Here everyone wears glasses to see and interact with the virtual world placed on top of the real world, resulting in a half real and half virtual internet city. Compared to all the matrix clones that I have watched during the past years, this feels like somewhat of a refreshing revelation, which I highly recommend. Well then, until next time.

 

Here is a must-read theory for “Lost” fans, and it touched on a lot of concepts about quantum mechanics which I have mentioned before. I guess even if you haven’t watched Lost (where have you been?), you should read it for kicks anyway.

Slashdot linked to an article about the 25 most censored stories of 2007, turns out #18 is Physicist challenges official 9-11 story. I am sure last year the video “Loose Change” made quite an impact, a conspiracy theory of the US government orchestrating the event, and then there were numerous other videos that came to disprove the rebuttal of 9-11, and it was soon dismissed as another conspiracy theory. Why would the US government do such things? So many people are dead. Well all theories and circumstantial evidence have some truth to it. Twin tower debris does show that it was caused by inside demolition, as the physicists are trying to prove. Even if the government did not architect such plans, maybe someone did. If you played Metal Gear Solid, you know who the Patriots, or the Philosophers are, or even if you watched 24. Highly suspicous, many people can benefit from war and 911. That includes Arms dealer, the bush administration, billionares that continues to make billions by shorting airline stocks prior to 911, or even the twin tower owner who got insurance money prior to its destruction. Just who’s in on it? Who knows. Some things are better off not knowing.

The Game, written by Neil Strauss, an enjoyable book which I read recently, about a writer who penetrated the society of pick-up artists and became a guru himself. Its an interesting read even if you dont want to learn about how to attract women, but these people are the authority on seduction. You’d think that it’s ridiculous that people who ask women “Do you think magic spell really works?” could get anywhere, but you’d be suprirsed. It’s all about confidence, or as I would put it in my own words, the aura (yes, like samurai who reads each other’s murderous intents). These people broke down attraction into a science. And regardless, the book is well-written, and an interesting study of social dynamics.

I guess there’s some similarity to attraction and conning people (look at most marriage), Liar Game is a japanese drama based on manga thats about the ultimate con artist tournament. It’s one of the smartest stories ever written lately. The part about the minority game is my favorite. 22 people, each given a million dollars, in a room where they vote on “yes” or “no”, and the majority is eliminated, and when eliminated you owe the million dollar that is given to the victor(s). Turns out there’s a perfect solution to ensure a win-win situation. Yes, the show is a must-watch.

 

I played a bilingual version of Pictionary last weekend, it was fun, mostly easier than the regular version of Pictionary.
It was pretty interesting that we would determine which language is easier right at the start based on each card, and we don’t stick to one language because some terms are more common than others in this language and not the other. I remember getting stumped at this term, Polka Dots, and I had no freaking idea what it was, well I knew neither the English nor the Chinese. I am pretty sure I’ve never heard it or read it before, well now that I have developed this near photographic memory (since I started writing — my core memory dump operation), well it could be before I had better memory, or I just heard it and not register, but if I said I haven’t heard it, most likely that is true. Either way, most of the girls thought of it as a really common word and looked at me weird that I didn’t know it, yeah it happened that all my teamates were girls so I am not sure if all the guys agreed, I decided to use the word on the flip side for that round. It bugs me that I don’t know something (because I know everything). I don’t disagree that its probably a pretty common word, but I think about when do I ever have to use it? I think I call them dots on a shirt, or on whatever, in either language, I never had to discuss the pattern with someone, hay I am not a girl. Yeah, I write but when did I have to describe the pattern on a shirt? And hay I am not gay, I wear stripes or plain, not polka dots. I think some writers do write a lot about what each character is wearing, I guess that term is nice to know, I am not that kinda writer, I am the kind that writes: “sword clashes, blood splashes”, and the only dots I have to discribe is when the female character wears flimsy clothing and they are cold (or excited), and the male protagonist notices, and one thing leads to another (insert clips of your own imagination right here). I do not write about the what color boxers my protagonist wears, I have not even thought about that . I am more likely to use both “Apotheosis” (ascension to godhood) and “Apoptosis” (programmed cell death) in the same sentence before I use polka dots, in fact, I think i might have. I always remember this word apotheosis favorably, in the “Gap” series, Stephen Donaldson used that word, as one of the two password, to seal an android’s limit break godmode ability. So if he heard that word, in combination with the other one that escapes me at the moment, he will go berserk. Perhaps I’ll use Polka Dots as a password to seal myself. In any case, just some interesting facts about daily life.