Arriving Macau - Chinese heritage

While Portuguese influence fades in Macau, Chinese heritage is readily visible. Lined the back allies of Leal Senado square are many East-meet-west style of buildings.




In fact Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro has probably not changed much for the last half centry.



Much of the shops still remain the same way as they would have been seen around Southeast Asia at that time.



One with laterns, lots of them.



You find pawn shops, once lots of them, now much fewer.



And you find the oldest Lee Kum Kee retail store there.



While you'd have thought Rua da Felicidade is authentic, I seriously doubt so.

Close encounter with the iPhone

Residing in the San Francisco Bay Area, home of Apple Inc.'s headquarters, it's kind of lame for me to not have played with the iPhone until today; especially when I've been bashing it, so I owe it to myself to blog my first physical encounter.

The overall experience is quite positive. Just as everybody else has stated, the device is well built with good workmanship, slim and sophisticated, exactly the size and weight you'd expect. Brightness of the screen was just right (I was indoor) and the touch screen (that uses the more advanced Projected Capacitive technology which eliminates the need of a thin film above the glass surface) is responsive. The pinhole camera takes surprisingly bright and sharp pictures.

I am most impressed with ironically, the Notes application. It has a yellow legal pad background and employs cute little fonts, compared to the boring undecorated plain white background and the uninspiring Tahoma font on the Windows Mobile devices... well, there is no comparison. (If only I'd figured out how to focus my camera...).

That is not to say I am a convert. There were some unexpected results. Namely, the rotation feature worked but was terribly sluggish (took a second or two). And even though I had wireless connection (was able to view company web pages), Maps and YouTube didn't show before my patience ran out. The biggest disappointment of all was the browser itself. The commercials suggested a light tab on the screen will auto zoom auto crop to a particular section of a web page; that didn't happen. Instead I needed to use two fingers to carefully zoom out the page according to screen width, which coincidentally made the fonts too small to read, which meant I ended up having to scroll left and right. If this is the iPhone version of the internet, I prefer the watered down mobile one, at least my Windows Mobile wraps line for me so that I can avoid finger aerobics.

I had three characters wrong out of fifteen using the large on screen keyboard (my Pocket PC phone achieved 100% hand writing recognition of the same words). I've read that the experience gets much better over time and I have no reason to doubt that. But I was puzzled as to how was I supposed to input characters outside the 26 alphabets (such as Chinese). OS X as far as I know has hand writing recognition, but that's seemingly and inexplicably missing here on the phone. I feel so left out.

Supply of inconvenient truths about Linux is abundant

Medical emergency. Mr Michael J Jordan's head is stuck in his ass. How can I not blog something about this nonsense.

Have to learn command line:
I have a Fedora installation at work. A few months ago I plugged in my USB key, I couldn't find any GUI to reformat it, and the only instruction I found on Google was command lines. Then a few weeks later I downloaded an application in rpm format. I double clicked it, some windows popped up and disappeared. I couldn't find where to start the application after the install (turned out I have to use command line to run a shell program to configure it first). No need to learn command line? Enough said.

Difficult installation:
With the internet age borned a new generation of technically computer literate people. They don't write code, they don't have a technical degree, but they put together computers and install OSes. They may not be grandmas, but that's not the point. The point is many people do install OSes and is Linux is not easy to install and requires alot of attention during the process. I've a technical degree, work at a technology company, so I count myself technical competent, but I still find Linux not easy to install; many people with the same background as me agree.

Hardware compatibility:
It's true that common hardware are supported well. But many people have a piece or two of odd hardwares that don't run on Linux. Heck! Think about your beloved iPod, sure it works on Linux, if you are willing to give up the iTunes experience (which is why I use an iPod rather than other mp3 devices). And if your so called "average user" don't install OS, good luck to them figuring out how to download and install software for their music players.

You really can install and run any program you want on Windows:
I download from sourceforge.net, all the windows ones work right off, no virus no spyware no OS reinstall. Where have you been Mr. Jordan? I'd like to have the same experience in Linux, without having me to download and install gcc, which requires me to download and install openssl, which requires me to download several hundred other things.

I am not a slave of Microsoft:
Not everybody who bashes Linux is a Redmond follower. Linux is a free product so it is OK to be not as good as Windows. But saying Microsoft is spreading inaccurate information about Linux, instead of taking in the criticism with an open mind and perhaps finding ways to improve it if you are so passionate about it is downright childish.

Linux is not ready for commoners. You can't expect users to rely primarily on free software out there which are difficult to install (if they even install). But then we all knew that already, we all know Mr. Jordan is just a propagandist who is urgently in need of some Metamucil.

The truth about iPhone

To those who respond "...but it looks good!" to this, I say "So is my behind, kiss it!" Ha ha.

It is a for laugh foul exaggeration of course but there are some truth to it. The on screen keyboard of the iPhone is superior to other smart phones (because of bigger keys and magnification) I'd assume, but I can't imagine it be match to any physical keyboards - the extra tabs required to type numbers and symbols is annoying and I've seen no mention of a hand writing recognition software like those in Windows Mobile devices (is there one?)

I am a Pocket PC fan and I've been playing with a Pocket PC phone I recently got from my brother for a while. It's neat because it does video, music, ebooks/pdfs and a whole slew of other things, but I quickly realize the music part is really lagging behind the iTunes experience. In iTunes, podcasts are updated automatically and sync'ed when the device is connected; not so in Windows Mobile: a seperate software (MS recommends juice) has to be used to download podcasts, and then Windows Media Player has to be started in addition to ActiveSync to "sync" music... and by "sync" I really mean drag and drop download, nothing cool like iTunes - kudos to iTunes on this. Yet I still prefer Windows Mobile devices to iPhone - the price tag is deterrant enough but programmability and number of supported software out there is important too, no t to mention the lack of aftermarket battery being a big minus (applies to cheapos only I guess).

But back to the subject, it's not the first time Steve Jobs plays these word games [cough], word scams. I remember when the video iPod came out, he said something like "it plays video, music video, ..." What The? If Bill Gates came out an said the Zune plays videos, educational videos ... he would have been buried. This dude thinks charisma can get him off anything, I say his good faith is seriously questionable.

Arriving Macau - Portuguese influence III

Talk about pavers, the contrast wavy design seen at the Leal Senado Square on Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro really examplifies Portuguese pavement architure.



The buildings surrounding the square are just equally Southern European, painted colorfully with lots of flower boxes hanging outside; the twist: Chinese signs.




There is also Taipa bridge, the bump in the middle looks exactly like the Ponte Vasco da Gama in Lisbon.



However Portuguese influence is fading, Macau is building upon its past into the future, literally speaking.

Arriving Macau - Portuguese influence II

Ceramic tile walls and famous Portuguese pavers go hand in hand. The Escola Portugesa De Macau is a prime example.



In fact these pavers are all over in Macau, especially on Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro...



...and its many back allies.


This beautiful style of pedestrian construction is uniquely found in Portugal and her colonies, surely in Lisbon...



... as well as Rio de Janeiro of Brazil.

It was burning hot that day, I am not sure why I wore so much...

Encabulator breakthrough

This is great. Even though I am a bit skeptical of the hydrocoptic marsovans' effectiveness in preventing side fumbling, I still think this is a major breakthrough.