January 30, 2006
January 19, 2006
ABC, It's Easy As 123
The latest source for ready-made celebrities here in Taiwan seems to be the pool of folks returning to Taiwan from other countries. The wave of 小留學生 have washed back to shore bringing tall, good-looking, upper-middle-class 20-somethings who speak Chinese with a sterilized accent without the tinge of Taiwanese dialect. 王力宏 caught some heat when the liner notes for his new album had a bunch of errors in the lyrics as he used the wrong homonyms in the idiomatic expresssions. Although that's really more his label's fault than anything. Hello, copy editors?
Apparently 許慧欣 (a.k.a. Evonne) is another pseudo-ABC who's more comfortable reading in English.
藝人跑通告過程中常有許多空檔，許慧欣打發通告空檔的方法是看書，所以包包裡總會放一本書，比較特別的是，因為她從小在美國受教育，中文程度不太好，包包裡放的都是英文原文書。
The on-line story doesn't contain the photo, but the dead-tree article had a shot of the book. Not that I've read that book in particular, but I did read something from the same author. So thanks to mediocre fantasy novels, I feel as we have a connection. I mean, a connection beyond "I'd hit it." Still no discernable musical talent, though.
January 14, 2006
Leisurely Dissipation
Got to go on a field trip to Xinchu for an ITRI seminar on LED heat dissipation techniques. The weather was great, and they provided pretty decent food and snacks, but the show was a little disappointing for NTD2000. The industry guys talked nice but didn't give out much content. The research guys had some cool ideas, if I were still a physics grad. student, but they rambled through their presentations (seems like some of them would've been more comfortable presenting in English) and I'm not sure how useful the ideas are for industry. For gods sake, the LED die won't survive more than a 500V ESD jolt and you want me to put 8000V electrodes right there? Sure it's for a good cause (generate a corona wind to enhance airflow through a heatsink), but no amount of cooling would do any good if the darn thing's dead. Loved to see the electrohydrodynamics Navier-Stokes equation up on the big-screen though. Brought back some scary juju.
January 11, 2006
It's A Mad Mac World
Must... wait... for... Rev... B... before... upgrading...
Sure, the new dual-core Intel MacBook should blow away my current workhorse in performance. But there's always the version-one bugs to be worked out, new Intel-native software to be compiled, and most importantly, a new form factor to come. After all, why buy a new Mac if it looks the same as the last one?
Okay, so when's the Merom-books coming? Let the rumors begin! Hey, I am an obscure component manufacturer in the Pacific Rim. I'm not saying anything, though.
Worst thing is that the earnings pre-announcement drove the stock up and beyond my pre-set sell trigger. With the gain I missed out on I coulda almost bought a MacBook already. Oh well, diversification is good.