Seek n' Destroy

It came upon us naturally, so effortlessly, that I don't think many of us know just how profound an influence it has on our lives. When people point to the great human inventions: the wheel, housing, electricity to the house, the automobile, surely, the web browser belongs too.

The browser, in and of itself, is just the medium just as paved roads are. It allows us to connect and access information easily. Once upon a time, if you had a question you didn't know the answer to, you were content not to have it answered. Maybe you'd have an encyclopedia, but more than likely you didn't. Now, you search for it on the net. People once wondered how we would manage the information overload, and it is the search engines that have let us deal with billions of webapges. Google and search engines like it (though there's nothing like it) give us roadmaps to the Internet, and now answers come that wouldn't be there otherwise.

I can hardly imagine how software development must have been like before the web was around. You would have to buy a compiler, and install it. If someone else had good software but didn't sell it, you would never know. Nowadays, you search, download, install, find examples, read tutorials, technical papers. You can do this and more with the browser.

Once upon a time, you had to have a map, and had to be able to read the map. Now, you can go to maps.yahoo.com or maps.google.com and get directions. You don't even have to read a map anymore (though, to be fair, a map still has its place, when you need something suitably large to get a feel for where things are relative to each other).

How many things can you now buy without having to visit the store? This isn't the days of Sears & Roebuck where you had huge catalogs. Now, many thousands of stores can advertise their wares, without a single catalog sent by mail.

All of this seems so incredibly pedestrian, that we forget how much the web has changed our lives. Broswers have opened avenues to non-standard forms of entertainment. Writers no longer need to work for a magazine to have their work noticed. They no longer need the pedigree of journalism degrees, nor interns at the Atlantic. If you're reading this, it's because browsers and the websites it connects, and the software that lives at the site, makes it possible. I spend no more effort writing this than I would an English essay, and an audience around the world can read it--or not.

Once we get beyond our basic needs of food and shelter, information becomes necessity of the 21st century. Can you even begin to imagine where technology will lead us? Entertainers need only entertain for thousands, but there will be so many of them, catering to desires that some of us never knew we had. People now make films for a mere thousand dollars, and distribute their work for free on the Internet. No agents. No distributors. No cast of hundreds. And possibly, yes, no talent. But with so many people producing so much creativity, surely a few, gifted geniuses will put their nuggets of gold somewhere on the net, somewhere amidst the dross and mediocrity, and someone, maybe you, will find this, and marvel at the insight, cleverness of our fellow humans.

Once upon a time, the vast majority of Americans married someone scant blocks from where they grew up, met people in their neighborhood. Cars have freed us some, to move to parts across these vast country. But the Internet now lets us reach even further, to even more people. We can talk to Australians as easily as the French, the Russians, and even those across the country, the state, the city, the block, and even the room. We can chat with those who have obscure interests. Do you love soccer, but want to find fanatics of Manchester United. Do you suffer from a rare disease, and seek others who have gone through what you have? Do you miss pots of nehari from the streets of Lahore? You can find people who live there now. No longer is communication to those of different countries only accessible by those who arrange pen pals. You can find people all over. In this brave new world, we've reinvented the way we deal with one another. Perhaps not for the better.

The most amazing things are yet to come, and they, like the browser, the killer app that will bring these wonders to us, will sneak up, and become part of everyday life. We'll hardly wonder how such a thing became part of our lives, so much that we no longer awe when we should. The marvels will seem so obvious, so ordinary, so mundane. And it's a shame that we won't be able to appreciate them as much as we should. We'll still go to work, and still buy food at the groceries, and still lament how much our waistline won't get smaller. And in all of that, we'll not realize that our lives have become, immeasurably fuller.

See you Latte!

Part 2 in the journey of coffee.

The resurgence of coffee houses in the US during the late 80s and throughout the 90s up until today meant not only more exotic brands of coffee, but also more exotic ways to prepare them.

In particular, espresso (not expresso) became quite popular. Making espresso requires a dark roasted coffee, which means the beans are roasted darker than your average bean, almost to the point of charring the bean. The result is, in fact, almost like drinking burnt coffee.

The beans are then ground extremely fine, and placed in an espresso machine. You put the grounds in a metal cup like device, and install it in the machine. The machine then heats up water until it is steaming and forces the steam through the fine coffee grounds, which then makes a shotglass worth of concentrated coffee.

Espresso is not really new. Apparently, it's been in Italy for a long time. However, it was rare to see espresso in the US. With the proliferation of Starbucks and Starbuck clones (Seattle's Best, and even local coffeehouses), anyone can get espresso.

Interestingly enough, a shot of espresso has less caffeine than a cup of coffee. However, people think it has more because a shot of espresso is like 1/8 of a cup of coffee, and one shot of espresso is considered about a cup of coffee.

While some prefer espresso straight-up, much as some prefer taking shots of liquor, others don't want their coffee so concentrated. They want to drink a cup (or more) as they would their coffee.

To that extent, you can add milk, in particular, steamed milk, to espresso to make two other kinds of espresso drinks. If you make 1/3 cup of espresso, to 2/3 cup of steamed milk and you have cafe latte. To make steamed milk, you fill a small metal pitcher with milk (whole or skim), insert a steel nozzle, usually from the espresso machine, then turn on the steam. By moving the nozzle throughout the milk, it causes the milk to thicken a bit, and create a frothy top.

You then pour the espresso in the cup, followed by a the steamed milk, then put the froth on top.

For a strong tasting espresso drink, you can put 1/3 cup espresso, 1/3 cup steamed milk, and 1/3 cup froth. The froth does nothing except fill up the cup. Essentially, you are changing the ratio of espresso to steamed milk, using less milk for a stronger taste.

You can also make cafe au lait, which is regular (good) coffee, with steamed milk, or even cafe americano, which I believe is espresso diluted with water.

Alas, lattes and cappucinos are likely to run $3 or more. Some lattes are served in cups that are extremely large, holding roughly 2 to 3 cups worth, for the truly caffeine addicted.

I've since gone back to regular coffee since I want to save money and felt the caffeine was just fine in a regular cup. By regular coffee, I still mean good coffe, but not espresso.

And that, boys and girls, is my summary of coffee.

Legal Addiction

There's one addiction many Americans share with me, and rather than kick the habit, they pay the relatively small cost to feed it, and that's coffee.

I remember a survey that asked what food smells much better than it tastes. Coffee topped the informal Usenet survey. To be honest, I almost didn't start my coffee addiction. My parents weren't coffee drinkers, so I was never exposed to this as a kid. Indeed, until late night sleeping and early morning classes were causing me to doze off in class, I had never thought about using coffee.

My first experience in drinking coffee wasn't that great. I tasted it black and said ick. It was only when my roommate suggest adding milk and sugar that coffee suddenly became more than palatable. From then on, I was drinking coffee.

Like any addiction, the more time you drink, the less effect it has. When you first drink coffee, you get a jittery feeling. It doesn't quite awaken you as it makes you jittery and nervous, but that works out well. Over time, it just mildly perks you up, and if you don't drink it, you get headaches, feel sluggish--all the signs of coffee addiction. I can now drink coffee and go right to bed. Mind you, I don't do that anymore, but I used to.

As it turns out, the 90s were a good time to be a coffee addict. Starbucks was just getting started, and while it wasn't the juggernaut it is now, many stores would sell coffee beans so you, the average Joe, could make a better cup of Joe. I recall a fellow grad student, Murad--who we eventually just called "Moo", and I in our journey to coffee nirvana. At first, we drank run of the mill coffee using a cheap coffee maker from someone that would be a future (now past) roommate. After deciding we needed a better coffee, we bought ground coffee, which we ground in the store.

Then, we discovered that ground coffee, much like ground pepper, loses its flavor in the air. So, we began to buy beans, and bought a cheap blade grinder. Using the grinder to make freshly ground coffee, and sweetened condensed milk instead of sugar (early predecessors to Vietnamese iced coffee), we were beginning to take steps forward to coffee drinking maturity.

We bought a cheap Braun coffee maker, which, for the money, is still one of the better quality coffee makers. It uses a cone filter, which allows more water to drain through coffee and is a lot sturdier than the cup filters that most Mr. Coffee's use. These days I'm using a Presto Scandanavian style coffee maker. It looks cool, and makes a decent cup of coffee.

Moo took the process one step further. He bought a French press. In this contraption, which is basically a cup, you put in coffee grounds, then pour hot water, then let it steep, much as you let tea steep, then you use this plunger, which is basically a filter that lets water through, but not coffee, and pushes the grounds to the bottom. You then pour the coffee into the cup.

This kind of coffee making does not filter out all the coffee grounds. Your cup gets fine coffee sediments, which some coffee drinkers swear by. You also get the oil that comes with coffee beans. I've heard that this can lead to heart conditions, and all, so I usually have coffee made with filters.

As it turns out, one other key step in making good coffee is fairly hot water, and preferably good water. Water should be nearly boiling, but not quite, and there should be some steeping. Alton Brown, host of Good Eats, has made a show devoted to making good quality coffee.

There's one step that I haven't taken myself and that's buying a burr grinder. Typical blade grinders use a blade to chop the beans. The pieces range in size from large chunks to small, fine bits. It's better to use a burr grinder, which makes a much more uniform grind. Alas, burr grinders cost about $60, and really good ones are twice that much. I own a very good one that I have yet to use. I don't know why.

And of course, you want to use good beans. Coffee beans come in two major varietes: robusta and arabica. Nearly all classy coffees are arabica. Mocha Java (which is a blend), Sumatra, Ethiopian, etc., are all arabica beans. The typical coffee you get at a McDonald's is likely to be robusta. Interestingly enough, robusta has more caffeine, but in general, does not taste as good as arabica.

This lead companies like Starbuck's to make its fortunes by essentially selling expensive coffee. Whether selling $3 coffee makes senes or not, people were willing to spend the extra money to get a better coffee, and Starbuck's and companies like it took advantage.

In a later article, I'll explain the various kinds of coffee products, such as lattes and cappucinos, as well as some of the politics to coffee businesses like Starbucks.

Needless to say, after more than 15 years of coffee drinking, I've picked up my share of coffee trivia.

Time's a wastin

Annoyance #301. I can easily set the time for my blog entries. Yet Blogger apparently has decided that I live in the West Coast, and by fiat, sets my timezone to that of my Angelinos compadres. Oh sure, I know. I know.

Blogger has no frickin' idea where I live. It can't use my IP addresses or GPS or what-have-you to determine my alma timezone (which, btw, is evil---just write an application that needs to be timezone aware). But Blogger-dudes, could you have a link that says: "To change your timezone, click here" somewhere near the Change Time & Date link?

Pretty please?

(alma mater means nourishing mother? That's frightening.)

Sam Woo, that's who!

Saturday morning, Dave and I went to watch Kim Ki-duk's 3-iron, a film about Koreans and golfing (not really). In the film, the Tae-Suk, the itenirant motorcyclist who breaks into houses with tenants on vacation. During his stay, he proceeds to clean clothes (apparently, Koreans still prefer the antiquated technique of rubbing clothes on a washing board), repair broken items, and take pictures with his digital camera. Tae-suk also cooks himself meals at the houses.

I had suggested to Dave that we go to a Korean restaurant, to complete our experience, but he wasn't in the mood, figuring it was too elaborate. In fact, we had almost not made it. I had watched The Incredibles until 4 am Saturday morning, and somehow managed to rise by 9 am to go to the gym. Finishing at just before 10:30, I called Dave, who had already tried to reach me half an hour ealier (I don't carry my mobile with me while working out).

The film, so we thought, started at 11 am, and so we were prepared to live half an hour early to make the Beltway trip to Betheda. As it turns out, the film started at quarter of noon, and so we spent time at the Apple Store.

Once the film completed, I suggested eating Korean. Even though Dave nixed the idea, I made a trip out today to Sam Woo.

For those of who think all Asian cuisine is the same, it's high time you tried out cuisine from South Asia. You'll see that Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Burmese, and Indian food each has its distinctive touches.

Koreans, unlike Chinese who prefer pork, place beef as king of meats. A typical Korean meal starts with something resembling appetizers, which need not be ordered separately, as it usually comes with the meal. Today, I had 6 dishes, consisting, to the best of my knowledge kim-chi (fermented spiced cabbage---a national dish), fermented radishes, two kinds of fish (mini sardines, and something fried), bok choy.

In particular, you can find kim-chi in nearly every Korean's household. Usually stored in a large clear jar in the refrigerator, kim-chi is fermented spiced cabbage. To a Westerner, the stuff smells to high-heaven, and it tastes a lot less fiery than expected, given the amount of red chilli flakes that live on its surface.

The appetizers are almost a meal unto themselves. However, I followed that up with a dish Tuk Man-Doo Guk, which is a large bowl of soup, consisting of dumplings, rice cakes, veggies, some egg, in a broth. Large noodle soups are very common in Southeast Asia. Vietnamese pho, for example, is a national dish, and any metropolitan area has its share of pho houses (pho is actually pronouced closer to "fa", though most pronounce it as "foe"_). Chinese and Japanese cuisines also have large noodle soups.

To the untrained eye, these soups look like they serve 3 or 4, and they would, if Asians perceived soup as an appetizer. However, it's often seen as comfort food and a meal unto itself. As I mentioned earlier, Koreans add their own spin by having appetizers, which seem to precede every authentic Korean meal.

Ironically enough, many Korean restaurants also serve Japanese food, particularly sushi. This, despite the general animosity Koreans have to Japanese (mostly due to the Japanese treatment of Korean during the second world war). I suppose money is money.

While watching this film, I wonder how much I'm missing out because I don't live in Korea, so I don't fully understand the culture. As an Asian, I have some idea of Asian culture in general, but certainly a lot less than other Asian Americans since I grew up entirely in the US, and have never been to an Asian country. I suspect there's a strong Buddhist element to Kim Ki-duk's films---interesting, given that the Asian country where Christians have had the most success is Korea. I suspect, being the auteur that he is, even native Koreans may find elements that are strange.

This is probably the sixth Korean film I've watched. Korean cinema has not gained the kind of worldwide acknowledgement as Chinese, Taiwanese, or Japanese cinema. Filmmakers from Korea seem to share the desire for coolness that hip Hong Kong directors like John Woo imbue to his characters. Yet, their films seem more violent. In particular, police abuse seems right out of Dirty Harry. Whether Korean police is this aggressive, I don't know, but I've seen two films with abusive officers. To be fair, you see it in American and Japanese films too. If anything, Korean cinema seems to resemble Japanese more than Hong Kong, at least, the serious stuff that makes it to the US.

Sapporo beer, in the venti size, accompanied my meal. It's a Japanese beer, which tastes like American beer, with a little more flavor. It tastes a lot like Singha beer. It's not heavy and dark like Guinness or Beck's Dark, nor is it complex like a microbrew, nor is it completely watery like a cheap American beek, though that's the closest kind of beer it tastes.

Apparently, I could have had something analogous to a Japanese sake, but Korean style. Next time.

Run once, Write everywhere

It is my habit to buy books on anything that I don't know that much about. I've long since past the aversion to reading documentation (except for a few things---it's weird) no matter how simple the technological hurdle I must leap. One of these days, I'll write an entry on how software should be written, at least, from the user's perspective.

My rant, such as it is, is on the differences between browsers, and how this creates a lack of uniform experience for everyone. I have this book on how to blog specifically on Blogger. It points out that my editing window should have two tabs: Edit HTML and Compose.

So here I am writing this post using Firefox. Firefox, for those not in the know, is a browser developed by the good folks at Mozilla. The folks at Mozilla, if I'm not mistaken, once wrote the browser, Netscape. I've read, from Joel Spolsky, that they spent a great deal of time rewriting Mozilla browsers (of which Firefox is one) from the ground up, and therefore, spending a great deal of (in his opinion) unnecessary time when they could have refactored, and leveraged all the old debugged code.

Now, Firefox is their lightweight browser, who's main purpose is to, y'now, work as a browser. See, there was a time when a browser was more than a browser. It was a mail client. It was a news reader. It was a web page editor. I suppose, if time and memory had permitted, it would have been an IDE, and you could have edited Javascript to your heart's content. But, developers realized, wow, that's a huge amount of memory (just as cell phone developers must have thought, "you know, maybe they just want to use the phone to talk". Maybe.

So, they kept the core functionality and produced a lean, mean, browsin' machine, and thus Firefox was born. (I'm sure the history of Firefox that I've presented would not past muster with a true Internet historian. My version is just a folksy retelling, with the occasional fact badly mangled. I'm sure you'll forgive my indiscretion and lack of scholatic integrity.)

Point is (and I usually get around to this), Blogger runs best on Firefox. The book I have (Visual Quickstart, or some such) must assume that I, as a good netizen, have acquired Firefox. However, my experiences in running Firefox on the Mac have been disastrous (in sum, it's start app, crash, start app, crash, start app, crash!, ad infinitum).

I run Safari on my IBook, and it's quite a satisfactory browser, but in the totem pole of what works on most webpages, Safari must be near the bottom behind Firefox and IE.

Nice editing buttons that the book claims exist, do not. So I am forced (forced!) to look up documentation on Blogger's website to find out why I am not enjoying the healthy Blogger experience I should be. It occurs to me that they could tell me, with a handy link that you're frickin tabs don't work, but no, they don't want to inform me that I might be lacking something when I clearly know that I am!

I am running this on Firefox, as we speak (or write, or read), and my tabs are available to me so I can italicize or bold or frickin add a link. I tell you it's nice to have these editing features and to finally figure out that I needed Firefox to get them, but what a pain it was to find this information.

So I implore all you web developers to take the Dave's Dad Test (I'm sure you're wondering "Am I possibly the Dave being referred to here?" If you have doubts--if you just asked that question, you're not the Dave I'm talking about). Dave's papa, so he tells me, is the most technically-challenged individual since Shamu the Whale (and his dad, presumably, has opposable thumbs). Have him try it out! Heck, have me try it out. I'll tell you what I don't like.

And this, my friends, is why it's dangerous to write rants. You (meaning me) get in a surly mood, when you should be happy that it's Memorial Day, when the sun is out, the food is grillin, and it's a day off to ponder why we sent troops overseas.

I know, some day, we will look back at today and wonder "Boy, we really didn't know how to write software!". To be fair, it's a difficult, daunting task, and I don't envy anyone who has to do it for a living.

Oh dear! I have to do this for a living!

Take care, boys and girls. Drive safely, and imbibe with restraint.

3-Sith

Among the film critics I most enjoy reading is Jonathan Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum used to write weekly columns for the Chicago Reader. These days, he might write a review a month, but there was once a time when he would write 3 times a month. Film critics are already seen as an elitist lot. Rosenbaum often criticizes other critics, eg, Camby from the NY Times. His reviews often tie two or three films whose only commonality was that he saw them near one another, ie., they were released right about the same time.

That's going to be my start as well. I've been reading online film criticism for a long time, starting probably around 1997. Some of the best, referential, incisive writing is being done by online critics, and my favorite is Mike D'Angelo. Once upon a time, I was a poor graduate student who was too timid to drive anywhere in the DC area. I would see maybe a dozen films a year, and maybe twice that in video tapes (or maybe not). In other words, I didn't watch that many films.

However, I knew a lot about films (though certainly, I'm not a film buff like Roger Ebert or Leonard Maltin) mostly from reading reviews. The hardest part about writing a review is the review itself. Most fledgling critics merely summarize the film. It's so much easier to say what happened in a film, than say why you liked the film, what was working, and what wasn't. D'Angelo's reviews tend to be of the spoiler-less variety, which is, in my mind, far superior to the "here's what happened in the movie". Having tried to write some film criticism myself, I know this route is a challenging one.

Mike has replied to my posts and probably considers me something of a minor crackpot, for exactly the reason I state. I read reviews far more than I watch films. Lately, this has changed. Several reasons. First, the appearance of the amazing Landmark Theaters. Once upon a time, if you wanted to catch art films, you were hard-pressed to find them. You'd have to hunt out special theaters. Well, those theaters are now nation-wide. Landmark Theaters allows fans of cinema to watch films that would otherwise require living in New York City. With tickets around $10, Landmark isn't cheap, but it's no more expensive than most theaters. Gone are the days of $5 movie tickets, at least, if you live in a metropolitan area.

I have a strong preference to watch current films, rarely spending time to catch the classics. The French New Wave, the independeng pictures of the American 70s, Peckinpah, John Ford, Tarkovsky, Ozu, Godard, Bergman, D. W. Griffiths. These are all names and eras reaching back to the silent era that I don't have a strong predilection to watch.

Instead, I'd like to see Kiarostami, Wong Kar-Wai, Kim Ki-duk, the Dardennes brothers, Atom Egoyan, and others whose films have reached the US from places as far-flung as China, Korea, Taiwan, Iran, Canada, and Thailand.

The other boon to cinephiles everywhere is Netflix. I know true cinephiles believe in the theater experience. Large, pristine copies of films, luscious colors, crisp sounds---film as it was menat to be experienced by filmmakers. However, making the time and moeny commitment to attend films at the best theaters is far too costly and time-consuming. Netflix to the rescue!

Netflix, and now Blockbuster and Walmart, give you what traditional brick-and-mortar video stores could not. DVDs delievered to the home. This would seem a minor convenience at best, but they do two other things that make it worth while. First, they use a monthly all-you-can-watch business model. Pay just under $20 a month, and you get to watch as many movies as the local Netflix site and the post office can deliver. If you really devoted yourself to watching films, you could probably manage 20 a month. Watch 5 a month, and you basically break even.

More importantly, Netflix is able to use "the long tail". The long tail has been discussed in the media in recent weeks, but people in consumer electronics have talked about it for months. It says that the most popular films are watched by a lot of people, but that there are many people collectively who want to watch little-seen films. For everyone who wants to watch Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or even Triple X: State of the Union, there are those that want to see Shane Carruth's Primer, Wong Kar-Wai's Days of Being Wild, Atom Egoyan's Calendar. Even critically unacclaimed films in gay/lesbian cinema now has a chance to be seen by many. Latter Days, an average, but touching film about a closeted gay Mormon meeting a shallow West Holllywood waiter, can be seen by many more people than those who live near big cities.

I've used both more recently to catch up with little known (even to me) documentaries and films by great directors, and even the occasional dreck film.

This brings me to my review of two films that I recently saw.

Believe me, I had no intention of watching Episode 3 on opening night. My coworkers were set to watch a 12:01 am showing of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith at a local theater. I figured the film would be sold out, despite being shown in the wee hours of Thursday, May 19.

As it turns out, work wasn't too bad, and my roommate wanted to see it that evening, and I thought, why not?

Everyone who's followed the first two episodes has heard the complaints. Lucas can't write dialogue. He cares more for action and special effects than for stories and acting. Lucas went back to the well with The Phantom Menace creating a film that seems aimed at 8 year olds rather than early teens. From a dorky Anakin, to an insufferable Jar-Jar, to odd accents from Nute Gunray and Watto, to Anakin bumbles to save the day, to the "why bother with Darth Maul", to what-the-hell are mitochloridians, to Lucas reliving his drag racing days, the movie was a complete waste.

Attack of the Clones followed with a title that sounds like a bad "B" movie of the 50s (Attack of the Killer Bees!). However, with lowered expectations, I found the film more enjoyable to follow. Maybe I like mysteries better. True, it introduced Dooku whose name sounds like Duckula, to no great purpose.

Lucas had a huge problem to solve when he made these films. He knew the backstory he wanted, and roughly how he wanted to achieve it. He needed to have the Clone Wars. He needed to kill off the Jedi. He needed Anakin to fall to the dark side. He needed Bail Organa, so he could get Leia to live with him. He needed Luke and Leia to be born, and then to be relocated. Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. But then, he goes on and on, deciding that C3PO should once belong to Anakin, and Mon Mothma needs to show up, and let's have Chewbacca, and there's little Boba. Thank goodness he didn't introduce us to little Han Solo.

The biggest of his problems is Anakin becoming evil Vader. The real problem, as I learned from the film, is that the dark side isn't all that dark. Think about what the Empire has done. Are people enslaved? Not really. Are they tortured? Not so far as we know. Indeed, the Empire's purpose seems mostly to eradicate the rebellion, and it's not entirely clear what the rebellion is rebelling against. That didn't matter in Star Wars since Vader just seemed like a cool bad guy.

So Anakin needs to convert from good to evil, and yet, the reason for him becoming evil just doesn't seem to fly. I'm not sure Lucas, who seems to study myth, every found a reason why people choose to be "evil". Hitler wanted to restore Germany to its greatness, but needed someone to blame for the woes of Germany. Stalin was probably paranoid. If you take power by force, there's a sense others may take it away from you, and through treachery.

Anakin becomes evil because of what? He wants to save Padme? And this gives him incentive to kill all Jedi? The problem with the Jedi is that, for the most part, they are good. It's hard to think that killing all the Jedi serves any purpose. His fall from goodness just doesn't make sense. Anakin is far more passionate than Vader, and so even that transformation doesn't make sense.

I also felt there were many awkward moments in the film. The Emperor's disfigurement, the needless use of Dooku, the surprising lack of shock that the Sith Lord was hiding in the most obvious way possible, the battle at Kashyyk for no apparent
reason except to show Chewbacca. I have no idea why Mace and Yoda seem so angry so often. I never could buy Yoda as military leader. It just seemed to go against what the Jedi should have been about (of course, if they never fought, it would be hard to defend the Republic).

The great irony is that, for all the action Lucas puts in his films, it never feels like a rush, because we never care. The Jedi are supposed to react to great danger with perfect calm, but in that calm, the viewer never gets engaged.

And for all of Samuel Jackson's greatness as an actor, Mace Windu was simply a waste. He doesn't do much, like many other characters presented in the film.

The film does have a few good points. Most notably, I liked the way the Jedi are killed off, betrayed by the stormtroopers that were supposed to help them out. Ian McDiarmid oozes evil charm in a way he hasn't in any of the previous films. Too bad, it falls apart once he has to act like the Emperor in ROTJ. Hayden Christiansen played Anakin more conflicted, and he seemed more of a friend to Obi-wan than the whiny guy he played in AOTC. I thought his performance was better, but still problematic. Ewan McGregor did fine, again doing his best Alec Guinness.

After having watched "The Incredibles", I believe Lucas has a profound problem with story telling, as much as he believes in a good story. He was too hamstrung by his other films, which created all sorts of constraints on how the story could be told. Truth be told, he should have went for an even darker film, making the Emperor be Anakin's father (by somehow using the power to "create life" in Anakin's mother, maybe even to tell Anakin that he had his mother killed, and will have Padme killed too, and have Anakin rage and fume and yet be unable to stop himself from doing what the Emperor says, and then maybe have Padme have feelings for Obi-wan, and Anakin be jealous about her feelings).

On a completely different front is Kim Ki-duk's 3-iron. His first film of note to reach the US is "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...and Spring" about a Buddhist monk who teaches a youth about Buddhist ways. The seasons are really the seasons of man's life from childhood to teen to adult to elder, and to youth again. It is a quiet film of few words, and yet is compelling from beginning to end.

3-iron starts off far different, but ends in about the same place. A wayward Korean male who's life is spent breaking into houses whose tenants are on vacation, and proceeding to clean up, and repair broken items, meets an abused wife of a Korean businessman. Nary a word is spoken between the two, as he rescues her, and has her join him in his life of living off others. The silence between the two is only broken once when the woman utters Leia's famous line in TESB. However, her soulmate does not gratify us with the reply of "I know".

Kim uses silence as well as anyone. For a while, I didn't understand the use of the golf club. The violence that threatens when ever the ball is struck is palpable. But it made more sense once I realized what golf is about. Of all sports, it seeks, though repetition, and calmness of mind, to seek perfection. Golf is a popular sport in Asia, and Kim makes it a metaphor for seeking spiritual perfection as well. Yet, just as no one ever becomes perfect in golf, neither does the relationship between male and female. It is an odd, strange, beatiful film stuck between serenity and violence.

Its solution to the problem is something a Westerner wouldn't have thought of, but rather than attribute it to a particularly Eastern way to handle problems, perhaps I'll just credit it with the odd genius of Kim Ki-duk.

Tea Leaves

A few years ago, I heard the term "blog" for the first time. It took a few more weeks before I had the term explained to me, b y, of all people, a colleague who had pretty much retired, and was teaching. I realize there are techonophiles in their 50s, and I'm not so young either, but I didn't expect him to know what a blog was. So, for those who don't know, blog is short for "weblog". They're online diaries.

Except they're not. A diary differs from a blog in one extremely important way: secrecy. In principle, you write a diary expecting no one else but you will read it. This secrecy allows you to put thoughts that might be seen as offensive or hurtful. But it affords a degree of honesty. Most bloggers would avoid talking about their health, their dissatisfaction with marriage, their affairs, or other highly embarassing situations.

Amazingly, if you could ever prevent your friends, family, and coworkers from reading your blog, and restrict the readings to complete strangers, you'd be set. You'd get the fame (or notoriety) you might crave from publishing a blog, but without the consequences of having everyone you know harass you, get upset, and so forth.

There are people who are reasonably open with their lives, who enjoy the publicity as much as Big Brother participants. Those blogs can be fun to read because they offer the kind of voyeurism that make people read blogs. Since I'm curious about people, I want to know what they're thinking, and what they're thinking is often not what you think they're thinking when you talk to them. So few are willing to be open.

And I have to be in that camp too. The people who are best suited to writing blogs are college students who don't live at home. They are just far enough from their (hopefully) technically-unsavvy parents to avoid dealing with these issues in person. They're old enough to write stuff that's interesting, but young enough to not worry about it affecting their job, their marriage, etc.

Personally, I don't feel I have that luxury. A few months ago, a blogger working for Google got fired weeks after joining Google. He criticized their operations, complaining that Google's in house meals were an underhanded way to make employees work more hours. The amount of protection bloggers have from their employers is not that great. Not that I have that much to complain about my place of work or that I want to reveal anything of a sensitive nature, but that still places boundaries on what I can and can't (or won't) say.

Which finally gets me to the point of this entry. Why blog? Why the name "Tea Leaves"?

To answer the blogging question, I have to say, up front, that I've been using the Internet a long time. I was reading Usenet in the late 80s and using email then too. I used Mosaic, then Netscape, then occasionally IE, Safari, and Firefox. From the years of 1990-1997, I wrote a lot of articles on Usenet. At first, I was scared to write on Usenet. After all, who wanted to hear my opinions?

What? You don't know what Usenet is? In the late 80s spanning even until today, people could write articles to newsgroups. A newsgroup is not really news. It's a bulletin board. You can either write an article, or you can write a response to someone else's articles. The set of an original article, plus all the follow-up responses is called a thread. For example, suppose I want to write about the series Enterprise (which I've hardly seen) coming to an end, and the meaning of not having any new Star Trek on television for the first time since like 1988.

I'd give my article a title, very much like the blog entry I'm writing now, and then people could follow up. But where would I put this article? Usenet provided a googol-monguos newsgroups. I might post it in, rec.arts.startrek.enterprise, where fans of the Enterprise show could write (called "post") their opinions. There were newsgroups covering the gamut of topics from geek subjects such as AI, operating systems, to coffee drinkers, to Indians, Scandanavians, to those wanting to talk about sex.

Two things really killed Usenet. First, in 1995, or so, AOL members were allowed to write to Usenet groups using their AOL accounts. This lead to the newbie ways that lasted a year. Cries of "newbie AOL posters" abounded, as if homeless people were suddenly admitted to a posh Princeton club for blue blood alumnis. Newbies (effectively, stupid newcomers) had no idea how Usenet worked, but had no fear of demonstating their lack of knowledge. My thinking, at the time, was that it was an annoyance, more than anything. I couldn't work myself to the lather that experienced denizens of Usenet would.

AOL newbies were tolerable. They'd eventually learn how to write a post, how to manuever their way around before browsers changed our lives forever. What really killed Usenet is what's killing email. Spam. Once spam was introduced to newsgroups, there was no turning back. A group like alt.sex already had few enough articles that were intriguing to read (such groups were said to have low "signal to noise" ratio, borrowing a term from DSP communications, meaning few good articles to many bad ones) were made unreadable. Links to porn sites abounded, and posters stopped posting. Spammers are perhaps the greatest evil in the Internet, making what was an intriguing forum, unusable.

That happened in about 1996. Until then, I had cut my teeth in writing articles on Usenet, primarly on tennis newsgroups where I found fans of tennis that were more rabid than me. I think the group still exists. Once I stopped getting cable, it became increasingly difficult to follow tennis. Furthermore, tennis is personality driven. You don't root for a team, you root for a person. And it's not like golf, where players can have careers spanning 30 or more years. A tennis player's career lasts maybe 15 years, and that's for a good player, like Agassi. Sampras's health is so shot, that he had to retire.

Since the heyday of Usenet, I haven't written much in a public forum. I've written a lot of tutorials, but in hindsight, I think I should have written them in a different way. At heart,I'm still a teacher, and even though I don't teach these days, I think about it. Time away from teaching is helping me see teaching from a better vantage point.

Let me stop a few moments. If you've read this far, you've seen me jumping from topic to topic to topic. This is how my mind works. I think of something, that reminds me of something else, that reminds me of something else. I don't feel the need to write a focused blog, and I'm sure that's not the point of many blogs anyway, or at least, not it's effect. I then become self-aware that I've become totally schizophrenic, and point it out, so you know that I know that I write this way.

For the last year or so, I've been wanting to write a blog, but just figuring out what I wanted to use for a blogging service had me quagmired. Should I use Blogger, Typepad, MSN Spaces, Squarespace. Should I pay for the service? Should I hose my own blog?

A month ago, after having convinced myself to use MSN Spaces, then convinced myself not to use it, I picked Blogger. I then did what I normally do, which is get a book on the topic. Buying books--that's a whole entry unto itself, which I will delve into much later on. The book, by the way, is Visual QuickProject, Publishing a Blog with Blogger. I know what people think. Blogger is so easy an idiot could use it. Let me state this emphatically. Technology sucks! Books like this sell because the people who deliver technology can't make their technology easy to use. As easy as Blogger is to use, I would tell you how to make it better (and all software for that matter) were I divinely given powers of Software Czar.

And it took me weeks after I decided on Blogger (my decision finally coming down to "just pick a damn blogging software, and move on") before I made myself write the first entry last night.

I'm still pissed the editing bar doesn't appear in this window. My book is obsolete within months of publishing, or else Safari doesn't know how to render a toolbar. And, did I mention, I hate toolbars?

The first roadblock I had to this blog was coming up with the name. Goodness, my blog needs a name? I love the one that a "friend" (what do you call a person you keep in contact with that hasn't quite reached the level of friend---eh, I'll just say friend), who named his blog "Blarg", like some horrid transmorgrification of "blog" as spoken by a Long John Silver shill. I picked Tea Leaves because "tea" was a name I used in chatting way back in the day.

Ironically, I drink coffee far more than I drink tea. I'm sure I should be a tea drinker and imbibe oolong or white tea or antioxidant rich green tea. I should, I should, I should. But I'm a creature of habit, and so a cup of Joe is my choice of caffeine.

The thing is....someone has already picked tealeaves.blogspot.com. That's just my luck. Names being taken from the namespace of the Blogger-verse. Maybe that reason alone should have made me go to some other service. Instead, I spend minutes, MINUTES! trying to figure out another name. Finally, I settled on "chaileaves" because chai is the Indian word for tea.

This is where I get to say that I had chai before chai was hip. I had my first chai in maybe 1991. Chai is black tea, milk, and some Indian spices. It became much more popular years later.

Chai also happens to be the last name of my freshman (er, first year) roommate. He was Ed Chai, Malaysian born, ethnic Chinese, citizen of Canada, married. Also, knew an Ed Choi from Philly, also married. (They may have gotten divorced since then but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt). I didn't name this blog after my roommate.

This is not a blog about predicting the future, despite its name. I just like its double or triple meanings of tea leaves being literally tea leaves, and that it is based on an old chatting name, and that it refers to augurs of the future.

That is all.

To Blog or Not to Blog

I had written a fairly lengthy post about blogging already, only to have it zapped by Blogger. Would it make sense to save what I'm typing right now? Oh no, I must click "Save as Draft" because moving forward and backward causes stuff to get deleted. Technology sucks! (Long live technology).

I wanted to write a far more remarkable first blog, but instead, I write a short, unadulterated, flaming rant!

Instead, I will await a more opportune and sane point to write a true first blog.