Ken's Space

Gangsters are nice

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 04:19:05 GMT

Quirky, dark, urban hip, uncanny and nice gangsters... Wait, "nice gangesters"?
　　
　　Yes, Sir Ben Kingsley and Morgan Freeman as mob bosses - Who would've thunk?
　　
　　Gangsters are supposed to be merciless, smart and violent - not the fatherly figure Mr. X-Men or the straight-faced US army general. Put the slick-tongued Mr. Slevin in front of Tony Soprano or Don Corleone, he wouldn't have survived for more than 5 minutes. Or maybe gangsters are nice guys who loves to talk a lot and let people carry big guns into their offices, who knows.
　　
　　But don't get me wrong, I LOVE this movie even though the gangsters are little bit too nice: acting is first rated - Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman, Josh Hartnett and even Lucy, everybody delivered tour de force performance. (Bruce Willis? Don't go there... :-) Josh and Lucy had great chemistry hitting off the scene when they first met in the apartment, and Lucy's monologue rocks! "You mean this isn't the first time a crime lord has asked you to kill the gay son of a rival gangster to pay off a debt that belongs to a friend whose place you're staying in as a result of losing your job, your apartment and finding your girlfriend in bed with another guy." - you just gotta love those good screenwrites.
　　
　　OK, so you want to talk about Bruce Willis? My favorite scene of him in the whole god damn movie is when he said this at the end: "I am a world-class assassin, fuckhead." Now that sums up Bruce's entire career - man in trench coat, both hands straight with big guns and an intense look on the face, frozen forever, appropriate in every action movie he's done. In the bonus material he asked Morgan Freeman: "Career advice, do you think I chose the right career?" Freeman laughed, didn't say a thing.

Some things about the south

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 04:16:52 GMT

If you're not a South junkie you may not enjoy this movie at all - it was all about the South, the music, the story, the weird yet profound deep south of the Americana. We travel with Jim White, a folk singer, to various small town USA and visited barber shops, fast food joints, trailer parks and... you get it, churches, everywhere we go, we see and hear things so ordinary yet so iconic, mesmerizing and poignant.
　　
　　"I love the small town. It's not even a half-mile across the whole town. Very small. This way over here we have the church. Over here we have a truck stop. Over here we have the juke joint. Back behind me we have the prison. It's your typical Southern town. Some people go to church. Some don't. It's just one of those small towns." — The Mayor, Ferriday, Louisiana
　　
　　Some complain this movie is stereotyped since all it portrays was how poor and strange the South is - get over it, if it's part of the South then why not show it? I am sure there're movies depicting filthy rich white Southerners (maybe a redneck too, like the chimpanzee who's ruling the US of A) that make people think the South is all rosy and elegant and gone-with-the-windish, then so be it. You see only what you choose to see.
　　
　　Love the music and the cinematography in this flick. Heck, you can't get a bad picture of the South.

Federated SVN

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 04:12:44 GMT

One of the many issues we ran into with a distributed development team literally across the globe is sluggish connectivity - it was so painful that a mere check-in will cost you the time to prepare and finish an entire cup of cappuccino - good for the coffee lovers but not for geek heads.

So without further ado, here's how we build our in-house federated SVN system.

1 Set up SVN servers on both locations.

2 Dump the entire SVN repository from the primary US server and load it to the remote China server, this ensures a equal starting point. The following steps should be done on both servers:

3 Create a synchronization user account

4 Set up password-less SSH for the aforementioned user.

5. Create two new directories: svnlocalcommit and svnremotecommit under /tmp

6 Edit the post-commit script of SVN to include the following: echo $REV > /tmp/svnlocalcommit/$REV, for every commit, this will create a new file under the directory /tmp/svnlocalcommit

7 Load the following "svnpush.sh" script onto the server's /usr/bin directory:

##################################################
#!/bin/bash

VERSION="$1"
DUMPFILE=svndump$VERSION

# create a dump file
svnadmin dump [svn repo path] -r $VERSION --incremental > $DUMPFILE

# push it to remote SVN server
scp $DUMPFILE <user>@<server>:/tmp

# load commit on remote SVN server
ssh <user>@<server> /usr/bin/load_commit.sh $DUMPFILE
exit

##################################################

8 Load the following "load_commit.sh" onto /usr/bin directory:

##################################################

#!/bin/bash

DUMPFILE="$1"

svnadmin load [svn repo path] < /tmp/svnremotecommit/$DUMPFILE

##################################################

9 Load SvnAgent program as the synchronization user

10. Kick off SvnAgent, you're all set.

So here's how it works:

1. Someone makes a commit, the post-commit script will create an empty file named with the rev # under /tmp/svnlocalcommit directory and return, this will be very fast since it's done locally.
2. SyncAgent scans the svnlocalcommit directory every 5 seconds, once a new file is found it'll invoke the svnpush script
3. The svnpush script dumps the local commit (also to /tmp/svnlocalcommit folder but with a "svndump" prefix)
4. The svnpush script then scp the local dump file to the remote server (under remote server's /tmp/svnremotecommit directory)
5. Once scp is successful, the script then commits the uploaded file remotely and returns
6. The SyncAgent daemon receives the return status from the svnpush script
7. If the status was successful, the SyncAgent removes the empty file from svnlocalcommit and sleeps until next scan
8. If the status returns failure, the SyncAgent goes to sleep and try again next time.

Not that hard isn't it?

This works well when commits are coming from one way at a time mostly - namely, one teams works actively while the other team isn't.

Ah, want a copy of the SvnAgent source code? Email me here: k e n 0 6 2 4 7 0 0 [ a t ] g m a i l . c o m

Now get back to work you slacker!

Son de Cuba

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 03:39:12 GMT

After my fanscinating Cuba trip, I had to recap some of my previous "Cuban experiences". Among them is watching the Buena Vista Social Club.

I've watched the movie 7 years ago, which seemed like an eon. I had to admit not much of it was left in my memory, except it's about some old singers singing Cuban folk songs. I wasn't even into photography back then, so nothing visual really registered.

Now years had passed, I've learned to look at things differently and learned to embrace other cultures, watching the movie again is like feeling a fresh breeze in a hot summer day. All the familiar streets of La Habana, the Malecon, the beautiful yet run down buildings, the classic cars... and the music. I remembered it clearly like it just happened last night, we were walking on the dark cobble-stones street of Simon Bolivar, searching for live music, and there he is, a tall, slim young man carrying a gitar walking towards Plaza Mayor, where everything happens in the vivid nights of Trinidad. We followed the man into an outdoor bar, sit down at a front row table, and the joyful rythms of Chan Chan started flowing in the air...

Sitting in my living room a few weeks later, I can't help but feeling nostalgic already: watching the Buena Vista Social Club perform the same song in Amsterdam and Carnegie Music Hall, the wave shattering on the bank of Malecon, the serene garden where Manuel "Puntillita" Licea played dominos. And all the artists - humble, honest and optimistic - just like every Cubano we met all over the country...

I am a little sad to learn that some of the artists had passed in the past few years. On the other hand, I am happy that the movie had done justice to their musical talent and given them the credit they've long deserved. To me, the Buena Vista Social Club had become another piece of my memorable Cuban expereiences.

Greetings from the Summit County!

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 19:55:16 GMT

It was one of my smartest decisions made in 2006: didn't purchase a season ski pass for this season. The incredibly warm winter in New England marks a miserable year in every ski resort's year book. As a result, I didn't hit the slopes until the 21st of January, and it's in Colorado!

Been riding in New England all the time, I feel like a frog at the bottom of a well, as the Chinese saying puts it, after I came to the Summit County for the first time: the powder is soft and thick, the trails are wide with lots of variations, the crowd is few, the scenery is beautiful, I already start to miss the breathtaking view at the top of the bowl in Vail, the tricky but thickly powdered tree paths in Breckenridge and the wild and wide rides in Keystone and we still have 2 more days to explore! Life is good and I have no complain.

上帝也要去古巴

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 03:05:05 GMT

还有四天就要启程了, 这几天里忙着决定路线, 在Lonely Planet论坛上问些初级问题, 找西班牙语日常对话的小册子, 久违的对陌生城市的向往与兴奋一天比一天强烈. 在美国的这几年习惯了机场-公路-汽车旅馆的旅行方式, 真怕自己已经忘记了该怎么搭长途汽车．

我对古巴的了解一只手板就能数出来：David Allan Harvey的影集,the Motorcycle Diary，Buena Vista Social Club和Fidel.就是这么点东西就足以让人心痒, 希望能亲眼看看这个经历了许多苦难贫穷却不屈不挠的岛国．再一想到自己能赶在那帮穿着星条旗短裤，脖子上挂着数码相机的胖老美们之前领略一下加勒比海的最后一块净土，更禁不住感到自豪． :-)

两天前收到了Pedro从哈瓦那发来的电邮，确认我预定的casa.临了他预祝我旅途顺利，用他满是拼写错误的英文说道：God tavel to Cuba，我猜他说的是"Good travel to Cuba"，不过他说的也不错，上帝也要去古巴．

First Friday in studio 209

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 21:35:37 GMT

Borat - Make fun apathetic nation of US and A

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 18:56:21 GMT

It was nearly two years ago, I was channel surfing one night. On the screen a tall white man, in his early 30s, dressed in bright yellow jump suit, wearing a shiny gold chain as thick as my thumb, moving his hands like a black gangsta rapper coming straight out of MTV, was interviewing Buzz Aldrin, the 2nd man ever walked on the moon.

The tall white man was Sacha Boran Cohen, aka Ali G, aka Borat, aka Bruno, and his interview was CRAZY:

ALI G: When you went to da moon, was da moon people friendly, or did they scare you?
BUZZ ALDRIN: We had no hopes of finding any life there whatsoever.
ALI G: When is man going to walk on de sun?
BUZZ ALDRIN: It's much too hot on the sun; we can never go there.
ALI G: We could go in de winter, when it's colder.

Later Ali G would mix Louis Armstrong with Neil Armstrong, compare Michael Jackson's move to Buzz's walk on the moon. You get the idea.

Since then I was hooked with the show, and learned about Cohen's other alter egos: Borat the Kazakh reporter and Bruno the Austrian gay fashion journalist. They were all outrageously ignorant and out of place - to the extend that people let down their guards and show their true selves.

That was totally what had happened in the Borat movie.

The movie is simply a series of Borat episodes sew together, with very little plot. Some scenes are almost straight out of the Ali G show - like singing the national anthem in a rodeo game, or messing with a group of frat boys. And granted, lots of scenes were dim-witted and simply were there for the sake of being funny (but not much so).

In my mind's eye, I have this strange association of Ali G/Borat/Bruno with Robert Frank, the great photographer who relentlessly showed the unflattering side of the US when lots of Americans were in a mood of extreme supremacy. Both from Europe, both Jewish, the two artists (I know some would not agree on this) poured freezing cold showers to the Americana. Let it be the black passengers sitting at the end of a bus or the homophobic rodeo owner who agreed gay people should be hung, 50 years ago or yesterday, realistic or absurd, the same ironic message was sent. However, one thing is different - how the Americans are treating the two - RF's "the American" was doomed with ill fate for years, not even Jack Kerouac's introduction could save it; on the other hand, Cohen was hailed by film critics and fans as a great comedy genius for his outrageously "brave" acts. Sure, we are becoming more open minded since the last 50 years, but have we learned from our mistakes and become less apathetic? That's the question.

三个W一台戏

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 20:38:16 GMT

1999年, Wachowsky兄弟凭着"the Matrix"横空出世, 把一本漫画演变成一个后现代版的庄周梦蝶的科幻传奇,还顺带把Keavu Reevs从"Dude Where's My Car"这类水深火热的SB角色中拯救出来(课外读物: Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure), 让人好不激动了一回. 但是可惜好景不长,趁热打铁的Reload和Revolution即没有重整旗鼓,更没有继承其革命传统,让人觉得这哥俩不是吸了太多大麻,就是已经江郎才尽.

结果,这种怀疑到昨晚被"V for Vendetta"一扫而空. 事实证明W兄弟的才华比两把刷子还要多至少一把: V的故事其实很俗,无非是一个未来黑暗世界里的受害者挺胸而出英雄救美并发动群众力量捣毁了邪恶的统治. 这些都可以忽略不计, 真正要赞的是整出电影里精心策划的对白和第三个W - Hugo Weaving老到得近乎无懈可击的演技. 由于其地下工作者的身份, 老W整出电影里都没有露出庐山真面,害得我猜了半天到底好莱钨什么时候出了个这么文武双全的老戏骨. 跟Matrix里的Agent Smith相比,V少了些狡猾,多了些文雅, 但是不变的是丫特有节奏的咬文嚼字和W兄弟们较真得近乎痛苦的措辞. 找本字典出来,然后看看下面的对白:

"...a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.”

(一个微不足道的老小丑, 被命运无情的捉弄, 忽而变成受害者,忽而成为恶人. 这副浮华的面具, 尤如被曲解的民声, 已经变得没有意义, 消失无踪. 然而, 这曾经英勇的神圣力量依然不屈, 必要征服那滋生病毒,腐败,贪婪和暴力的源泉. 对天指誓, 唯有血债血还, 方可一日保还道德,警醒与真理的价值. )

怎么样,不得不服了吧? 四句话里用了四十个V字词,还不带重的, "V"onderful.

So long Whalom

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 03:13:54 GMT

"Coasting to a Stop at Whalom Park" - this was the headline on yesterday's Globe's regional news.

"... for many area residents whose teenage years were defined by weekends spent at Whalom Park, who remember their first kisses at the roller-skating rink and their first dates in the Rose Garden dance hall, the end of the amusement park was not quite real until yesterday morning, when a roaring yellow excavator tore a hole in the park's best-loved attraction, the Flying Comet roller coaster (also known as 'The Black Hole')."

It finally came, I thought - the dooms day of Whalom Park, a place where lots of locals had spent their childhood riding the "Flying Comet" or dancing in the "Rose Garden".

Almost exactly two years ago, I had the opportunity to photograph what's remain of the Whalom Park, thanks to Mark Chester, a long time Lunenburg resident who grew up riding the carousels and was then trying very hard to prevent the demolition. The mid-autumn weather was cold, but we had lots of fun - Andrew and I brought torch lights, we painted the coaster, the can-can building, various creepy objects in the ghost house with our lights under long exposures. The place was already a wreck, I didn't have to do anything but just point my camera and shoot to show how sad it's become. The beautiful fall color, which mixed with the bright but chipped paints of the buildings, made the whole place look so unreal. The pictures were not great but it certainly recalls the memories of some visitors (My Whalom Park album has by far attracted most comments in my pbase site):

"I can't believe that a huge part of my childhood is gone. My childhood was less than perfect, and Whalom Park provided me with the opportunity to be a child. Whalom Park provided me with the opportunity to spend time with a father that was never really around. Whalom Park was a good excuse for him to be a kid, and take his kids. I am sorry to see that this historical site has withered into nothing more than memories wrapped up in a used Kleenex. I was glad to have Whalom for as long as I did. It was a real place for a child who grew up to fast, to go and just be a kid. I remember it fondly." - from "cubby"

"I grew up in Leomister MA and now close to 50 years old have very fond memories of Whalom Park. Looking forward to the day when it returns to being some kind of recreational and educational park rather than some gated development." - from "Chris"

"Im 22 years old now, but I was about 10 when my Dad who grew up in Leominster, took me to this park. I remember riding the roller coaster so many times and how much fun I had. I would have loved to take my kids here, but I guess thats not going to happen. It makes me so sad to see it go :(" - from "Katy"

I wish I knew about the demolition before it happened, at least I can take a day off and go to say good-bye to the park properly - although I've never really enjoy my time in the park while it's open. But with the visits we paid two years ago, It feels I am somehow attached to it. It's always sad to see a friend, be it new or old, go.

(photo: Rick Cinclair for the Boston Globe)

Tri-x again

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 14:03:42 GMT

Can't remember when was last time I shot with a roll of tri-x.

On a boat trip to the P-town.

Let's work for universities!

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 20:11:24 GMT

Today I had lunch with three coworkers from my previous job. Among them, I am the only one without a child. (granted, I am the youngest too...) So we talked about things and inevitably, the topic turned to kids.

Rich works for Bentley, a local university with student tuition shooting for high 40k a year: in the greater Boston area, almost all private colleges are money crunchers. While we were whining about how much it costs for kids to go to college nowadays, Rich mentioned if he held on to his job long enough, his oldest son, who is 7 years old now, will be able to go to Bentley for free. Hmm... let's do the math: if Bentley charges 50K a year for a four year program by then, he'll be able to save 200K from the tuition! Or that translates into a 50K bonus a year! That's a lot of $.

So that's a no-brainer: take a little bit of pay cut, get tons of vacations, work in a slow-paced environment, and your kids go to school for free. What are we waiting for, everybody who has a high-school-age kid should start monstering for an academia job! Of course, that's when you can find a decent job, your kids are willing to go to the same school you go to everyday, and your boss is not a jackass. :-) But given the trend of the growth in university tuitions, this idea may be really attractive to those who can't afford their children's education.

I am going to build a web site for university jobs and sell it to Monster tomorrow.

IP TV & Comcast

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 14:42:02 GMT

Last night my order of the KyLinTV set top box arrived - it's a slick yellow hybrid box the size of a laptop. I said "hybrid" because it has the regular AV output jacks aligned with RJ-45, USB and even a mount for Wi-Fi antenna.

Once powered on, a set up screen (in Chinese, yeah!) somewhat similar to Windows 98 network configuration appears - SSID, WEP key, router, DHCP, DNS server, all that usual stuff. The on-screen key pad is a pain in the arse, and I can't believe the keypad is missing some keys like the semicolon and the plus sign!!! This is even more brilliant than some web sites who say "please don't use special characters as part of your password". Hello?

The set up was a bit of hassle: besides the WEP key, I completely forgot I've restricted my wi-fi access with MAC filtering. So after running up and down a few times on my stairs b/w my desktop, laptop and the set up box, we're finally wired. Now it's the moment of truth: how well can this piece of yellow matchbox performe with my Comcast broadband Internet?

I flipped onto a news piece, my mom standing next to me in excitement - after the 2-week long blockade of Chinese news media, she's dying to see anybody speaking Chinese on TV - now a baby-faced anchorman appears on the screen, and... he started speaking! Alright! It works! But wait... what's that "buffering" stuff on the corner of the screen? Oh, it must be some initial buffering, let it settle down... OK it's streaming again... cool... hey! Why is it buffering again??? #($*%^!(@#!...

So our first experience of IP TV was not good - the video jitters every few seconds, it's simply unwatchable. Going over the manual in frustration, I found a test utility for bandwidth utlization. The minute-long ping test rendered my connection speed at a miserable 0.36Mbps, hell, even Lucent's stock chart is doing better than that. Sigh... not Comcast again.

I had so much horrible experience with Comcast that I was in joy when I found out the state of Massachusetts was filing a class action law suit against them. Helplessly, I dialed the 1-800-comcast (or should it be 1-800-get-grumpy?) number, started ramping with a poor operator girl somewhere in Canada. She finally gave up or got lost in the mix of my sarcastic comments and technical jargons, and called up a technician, who claimed to be looking at IP TV himself and seemed to know the difference between megabits and kilobits. The conversation ended up like this:

Me: Hey Robert, you said you're looking into IP TV yourself right?
Robert: Yes I am.
Me: Are you using Comcast by any chance?
Robert: (after a short pause) No I don't, we don't have Comcast in Canada.
Me: Good for you man. And stay the hell away from it.
Robert: (laughs) I understand.

Oh well. The customer service proved themselves again that they can't do jack about your problem. All over their web site Comcast is promising 1.5Mbps but I am getting only 1/4 of what I paid for. This sucks.

In despair and disgust I flip on the bandwidth test again, the line starts crawling... and this time it stayed higher, the final result said 0.56Mbps. Hmm... interesting, let's do it again, 0.67Mbps, at some point the speed actually spiked over 800kbps, the recommended speed by KyLin TV. Magically the speed kept growing, like a beat up car starting up in a dead, cold winter night. And finally it averaged over 0.8Mbps and viola, the baby-faced anchorman finally was able to speak for more than 2 minutes without being frozen like a pre-historic mammoth caught in an ice-age storm.

Exhausted and still anxious, I went to bed. No dreams about the Internet or TV.

Woke up in the morning, my first thought was "let's check the bandwidth". And this time, the number jumped to nearly 3Mbps. Wow! That's amazing! It must be all my evil neighbors who knew I am getting an IP TV and conspired to slow down my Internet last night! No, it must be all the west coast Chinese parents who were watching the latest security-guard-beating-up-journalists-news last night!

So there it is, I left the house with my parents watching their beloved CCTV-4. And we'll find out how KyLin TV is doing on its first day at work.

Welcome to IP TV.

Custom List: Custom List

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 22:08:48 GMT