Hey Doc

My impression of the city bus drivers are mostly grumpy and rude. Not today, the driver of this bus had a hip hop radio station blasting and also chewing the betel nut (more about betel nut, go here). Betel nut gives a person an alerting effect that its been wildly used by long distance truck drivers. When mentioned betel nut, you must to know the world famous Betel Nut Girls (ok, the link was not my photo). Those scantily clad women selling betel nut at the street corner or road side all over the cities and expressways. They are typically identified by those multi-color neon light decorated little booth which can bee seen miles away in the dark nights.

It has been raining for two days straight, the official rainy season is not even started yet. Both pair of my go-to-work shoes are all wet. Everything in the apartment felt damp. I feel like the mould is growing on my skin. Even with this much of rain, we are still worried that we may be facing the drought this Summer. Reason is that the soil erosion from upstream dumping the rocks and mud into the reservoir year after year which making the capacity of the reservoir smaller and smaller.
I wanted to watch the movie "The Motorcycle Diaries" when it first came out. I heard good things about the movie. It had won the Academy of best writing and best song. Until yesterday, I saw the DVD sitting on the shelf at this video renting place. I truly enjoyed the movie. I like the cinamatography, loved the music. This is the story about what made Ernesto Guevara de la Serna to become the guerrilla leader in his later life. Here is my early post on Che Guevara in case you have missed it.

On my way home from work today, I could not believe what I saw, my favorite steamed pork bun place is gone. That little store is left with just 4 poles holding the tin roof. How come I wasn't notified ? What am I going to do when I am craving for that tasty pork buns ? I used to buy them in dozen so I can keep them in the freezer for "emergencies". I wonder if its because of that giant about-to-finish 20 story building behind it had squeezed them out of here. Just what we need, another department store.
I saw the news the other day. Prepairing for the 2008 Olympic game, city of Bei Jing is tearing down the old city at the speed of one city block a day. All the ancient city like Hu Tong or Si He Yuan are gone. Most of them has dated back in 1200. These city allies are unique only to the old Bei Jing city. To replace them are the new modern high rises. Isn't there any old things worth of saving ? After all that was the remnants from our ancestor. We can't deny their existence, good or bad. That is how we came and what we are.

Lately I had my share of watching B movies in the late night hours. This reminds me of the TV show I used to watch with my buddies on Saturday nights, the USA Up All Night. Hosted by Gilbert Gottfried and Rhonda Shear. Its a TV show that plays all kinds of B movies. During the intermission, the host will give comments or say something stupid. We used to sit watch and laugh our heads off. Pointing out the bad acting and unreasonable, ill-logical scenes in the movie. We even argued about our difference of opinions.
If you like movies, you got to check out this website, IMDB. Its got everything you want to know about every movie that is ever made. Now they have short preview clips that you can download and watch.
Taipei weather is so crazy lately, one day we had 30 plus degrees and 15 degrees the next. This whole week is going to be rainy again. Got that dryer I wanted, no more damp laundries.

Yesterday was my very first time going on a company field trip. This is very common in Taiwan that a company will take all of their employees to a field trip, part of the benefits the employee gets. The place we went is on the east coast of the island. It has a much rockyer shoreline then the west coast. It Exposes to the rough pacific Ocean. Three tour buses took us on a 2.5 hour journey along the North Short Highway to our destination. I remember when I was little going on school field. Singing was always on the things to do on the bus list. Well, now we have grown up, this habit never dies. So we sing but in a modern fashion, we have Karaoke on the bus.
It is expected that the traffic will be heavy on weekends. There is no shortage of tour buses too. Like all other tour buses, they also entertain the passenger with karaoke. So what is the big deal ? The microphone, the wireless mic. Because the buses are in very close proximity with each other. All wireless mic transmits on the same frequency, so we have an interference problem. Our receiver sometime picks up the other bus's transmission and over powered our mic that we can hear other bus singing. The battle was on to see who can over power each other with our singing. This went of for a long time until we ran out of song to sing.
I read an article about how bad the mould can do to your respiratory system. Because of the high humidity weather we have, it is suggested that we should use cloth dryer and room de-humidifier to keep the mould from growing. You may remember that I have complained about cloth not been dry 3 days after out of the washer. So I bought a dryer 2 weeks ago. Now it gives me more reason to get a room de-humidifier.

Now here is a job that will never get penalized for doing a lousy job. I have never heard of any weather reporter been fired because he/she had made too many miss-forecast. My bitching did not come out of the blue. We had been hearing that a cold front is approaching that will bring rain and wet weather to the area FIVE days ago. The weather has been cool and sunny ever since. Guess what ??!! I got rained on coming home today. What are we suppose to do ? Bring the rain gear everyday just because it SHOULD rain but never came ?
Skype, gets my vote for the best invention of the decade. Now comes the video. The quality of the video is not the best but serves it purpose. Brings people across the globe even closer, sometimes maybe too close. What if a call comes in while I am in the shower ? Now I have to dress to answer the phone call.
Our company makes the gateway to bridge the normal PBX phone system to the Internet. Not so much that the company can make long distance calls free but makes the phone mobile. For example, I can take my phone anywhere in the world as long as there is an Internet connection, wired or wireless. Anyone can call me with that same phone number. I have used a wireless IP cell phone, pretty neat toy.

Have you ever come across something that makes you wonder, "How did they do that ?" I browse lots of photo web sites. I have seen some photos that just don't look like regular photos, more like a painting or illustration. You know they are digitally processed but how did they do that ? Here is the answer - High Dynamic Range. Have you ever experience this before while taking a picture ? The lighting looks good, it was sunny but the photo was either over-exposed or under expose in parts of the picture. The automatic response was, my exposure was off or the light meter was wrong. The real reason was the limitation of the camera, film or digital. It can not record with that high of contrast range. A human eye can distinguish a contrast of 10,000 to 1 in one view, the best of the camera can record is only 1/10 of the eyes, 1000 to 1. So what can we do ?
There are many software on the market that can "add" the dynamic range into your photos by combining multiple photos with different exposure into the final picture. So you set the exposure for the lightest and the darkest of your scene in 3 to 5 steps then Let he software do the work. Good, then what is the painting and illustration like about ? Somehow during the HDR process, the photo took on a different look then the real. I am not sure why but I really like this effect. Although this does not happen to all photos all the time. I guess there is other elements in the play. The example I am showing is a comparison of what would look like for a normal single exposure photo (left) and the result of a HDR photo, combined with 5 photos. (right). There is a whole web page dedicated to this technique. This is my favor photo. I can't wait to try this at the Hearst Castle.
My recent work load had decressed to a comfortable level. We are not out of the fire fighting mode yet, just fewer incidents right now. Our next big project is to setup a showcase demo so we can start showing the protential customers what our system can do in a real world.