Happy Fun Time

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Say Yayeah!

Sort of following Kumar's post....

This is one of the most ridiculous videos I've ever seen, but the crazy thing is, it's a real newscast.


NYTimes.com's Awesome Design

The New York Times recently redesigned their website and I think it's the best news website design yet. It's just simply clean and easy to read. The width of the page is larger now and I think it's about time web designers stop bowing down to 800x600 resolution limit. All the main text fonts have been changed to Georgia, a beautiful and classy serif font developed by Microsoft specifically for easy reading on screen. The best change, though, is the entire organization and multimedia integration.

Much like the top half of the front page of the actual paper, the top half of the opening web page contains all the latest big headlines and photos. The wide spread of headlines and sub-headlines invite the reader to browse the news and with the advent of tabbed browsing, heavy news readers, like me, can queue up articles to read while still looking around for headlines.

There's a new video feature as you scroll down. Thanks to Macromedia Flash, video can finally be streamed without horrible buffer times and slow page rendering (Real Player, anybody?). The NY Times seems like the first big news outlet to figure how to feature videos professionally and smoothly. Every other news site uses unreliable media players, like Windows Media and Real (ugh). The worst is MSNBC.com, where you can't even play their videos unless you use Internet Explorer. Also, NY Times excels at their multimedia content. It seems like they're breaking through their limitations as print media and going into TV-like reporting. Their multimedia section contains wonderful photo essays (or slide shows), some with audio accompaniment. It's like a mix of NPR style reporting and photo journalism.

In the bottom half of the opening web page, there's a neat and efficient tool that lets you scroll through featured stories from other sections. What's really cool is that this scroll tool is on the bottom of every article on the site. So when you're done reading an article, you can go to another feature without having to go back to the front page. There's also a tabbed box that lets your browse through the most e-mailed and blogged articles, in case you're curious what other people are reading.

However, the second half of the page still contains the uninteresting list of headlines that was on the previous design. Visually uninteresting and overwhelming, it feels like a chore to read those headlines. Why read through all that when you can scroll through headlines above? A good idea would be to make several of those horizontal scrolls of smaller scale, one for each topic, and display them on the second half of the page.

Anyway, NYTimes.com is the right direction for news media. It's professional, classy, easy to read, and fun to explore. Now we just need the half decent LA Times website to jump on board.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

D'Brickashaw Ferguson

Offensive tackle from the University of Virginia. A potential high pick in this month's NFL Draft.

All I gotta say is, I love this guy's name! D'Brickashaw. Just say that part. Just rolls off the tongue. Sounds like someone Bruce Willis would play in a cop movie. Yes, I'm talking Die Hard here. "You're way outta line, D'Brickashaw!" "I erased the lines, Chief." Then add a fine Scottish name like Ferguson to it. Or is it Irish? Or Scotch-Irish, whatever the fuck that is. Parents gave hime a great name for a football lineman. Good thing he didn't try to be a star basketball player.

D'Brickashaw. Ferguson.

I have to one-up David

Beautiful marching band choreography below, and I thought, man, there's nothing that could better that.

Or is there...



Supposedly, it was choreographed by none other than Slobodan Milosevic.

Just Awesome

Drum Corps International Video Clips

Excuse me while I geek out for this post. Click on the link above and select 1993 Phantom Regiment. Turn up your speakers or headphones and watch Phantom Regiment perform my favorite drum corps ballad ever. It's a classical piece written by Dmitri Shostakovich called "Fire of Eternal Glory." The resolution chord at the end is one of the most powerful and magical moments ever and the crowd knew it by giving them a standing ovation (even though there was 3 more minutes left in their performance).

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

I Hate This Kid

I really, really hate this kid. ::shudder::

CollegeHumor Movie: America, get ready to hate a new breed of pre-pubescent pop star.

I really don't like it when kids are put into a position to "act" cute. I especially hate the Welch's grape juice commercials with the kids acting cute. It's just so disingenuous and fake. BUY OUR PRODUCT!! WE HAVE A CUTE KID!! Come on!

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

250 Billion War Dollars Buys You...

I wasn't going to put this here when I first saw the article, because I kind of think the topic of "should we have gone in (for the original reason)" has become old hat. The liberals (most/many) know we shouldn't have, the conservatives (many/some) either know it, don't care, or refuse to admit it, and the apathetic are just that. People in each group will probably lock themselves in said groups.

...But it was amusing, so here it is.

Americanization

My coworker linked me the following article,
LA Times-Saying the Magic Words, which basically states that the Americanization of Vietnamese youngsters has caused a lifestyle rift and an untraversable communication divide between children and their immigrant parents.


My response to my coworker was:

I think "you reap what you sow." The parents are hypocrites and have failed if they wanted their children to retain their heritage but didn’t take the time to instill it in their children. It's also very ethnocentric to look down on your child for her inability to pick up a "new" language when the parents themselves didn’t assimilate and learn English.

My mom taught me Vietnamese before I entered kindergarten, so I speak/write Viet fluently, but I choose not to with most people just because I genuinely dislike the language, how it sounds, and what it conveys. I speak it at home but usually nowhere else unless I want the fellow-Vietnamese-person discount at local stores.

The language is passive/submissive language full of superficiality and fake respect that requires females to be extra meek and debased. I also think it's crazy how a Viet person refers to himself as "we/us," like he's freaking Gollum from Lord of the Rings--another sign of de-emphasis of the individual, which I hate. If you say "I/me," it is considered rude and demeaning to others, only to be used authoritatively.

Those English speaking-only Viet kids aren't missing much, other than knowing how to read a Viet cuisine menu. And I feel offended that I would be considered as having lost my roots if I chose to hate Vietnamese food in favor of mashed potatoes and gravy. I have my roots and my language, and I made a choice not to live by those traditions.

All in all, I think this has nothing to do with society. If you can’t communicate amongst your own family, then obviously the parents failed in more ways than one. To blame it on Westernization is very typical of Vietnamese people--it's always someone else's fault, isn't it? But this language situation is not unique to just the Vietnamese, so I don't know why this article is so focused on Viets.


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And on a side note, in Spanish, often with "negative tone" verbs like loss, forgetting, etc, the verb is reflexive upon the speaker and not an actual mistake by the speaker. For example, you don't say "I forgot my keys" but rather, "My keys forgot themselves with me." Just another example of how language mirrors a cultural mentality. There are many differences amongst cultures and sometimes, upon reading various posts on this site, I wish that "all-American" people would quit trying to analyze the minority mind with the values of America, having little to no experience of a completely different cultural mindset. Most foreign countries de-emphasize the value of the individual and suppress independent thought, so whatever spectacular insight you have probably seems ludicrous to someone with a different background.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

In light of the political statements below...

I must say having a featherbed is quite nice on top of a mattress.

It feels like you're sleeping on a good old feather mattress, like Samwise Gamgee remarked in Lord of the Rings. It's kind of like sleeping on a fluffly cloud. I purchased a 5" thick one, though, and it kind of sinks down around the middle, so I'd recommend purchasing a 3" one. Also get one with the loops on the side so the featherbed doesn't shift around much.

On the topic of material goods, Dell is currently having a sale on their 20" widescreen LCD's. The picture quality is excellent, supposedly the same manufacturer of the Apple Cinema Display LCD's. $336 + tax. Thinking about buying 1 for my laptop (I already have one for my desktop).

Monday, April 10, 2006

Didi Mau

I've been getting a lot of Republican mail lately, as usual. I dont know why. In any case, is it bad if I've developed a negative, stereotypical response to Vietnamese-American politicians? I look at my mail, or I see a banner, and I immediately think, "It's another one of those anti-communist, swung-to-the-right, will-never-vote-left-if-their-lives-depended-on-it, shell-shocked reactionaries." Kind of like Arnold (as he likes to point out about the Socialists), except it seems much, much worse (Viet D. Dinh, father of the PATRIOT Act comes to mind, although it's very possible I'm being unfair with my generalization) - Arnold is at least a centrist . I think even if I agreed with their policies, I wouldn't be able to vote for someone who was quite probably scared into their philosophy.

Yes, I'm sure it was a terrible experience running through the jungles from Communist forces that were trying to lock-up Pa and put him in a cage, while Americans indiscriminately napalmed anything that moved, or Agent Orange'd anything with a greenish hue. But that was over there, this is over here. That was then, this is now. Leftist there != leftist here. Hell, Asian values != Western values.

But yeah, I'm sure I'm being unfairly stereotypical...maybe. I'm sure some of those Vietnamese-American politicians are just like any other typical 0-gen Asian, frugal, "fiscal responsibility" types that vote conservative.

Christians Sue for Right Not to Tolerate Policies

Christians Sue for Right Not to Tolerate Policies - Los Angeles Times

This is a really good article from the LA Times about a rising number of conservative groups suing institutions, like colleges, and workplaces that ban speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation. Religious conservatives argue that their freedom of religious expression is being violated in order to create "tolerance."

I asked myself, "So what's the difference between hating homosexuality and hating blacks? I could argue my particular religion hates blacks." Of course, the religious conservatives argued saying homosexuality is a choice (like heterosexuality is a choice?), unlike race, which is an inborn trait.

I, for one, think policies to ban certain speech are not generally good, even if it's to promote diversity. Why? Because it prevents bigots from making asses of themselves. Of course, it depends if it's in a public or private setting. If a workplace wants to make sure its environment is safe and comfortable for its workers, then they have the right to ban hate speech (but they can't make employees sign a "tolerance pledge"). But if a campus group at Georgia Tech wants to make asses of themselves by denoucing homosexuality as a sin in the campus quad, I say let them. As long as they're not interrupting the business of teaching and research, give them the freedom to express their douche-baggery.