GunongLaut

2015 Projects Part 1

2016-02-21T21:34:00.001+08:00

Project Name	Description	Components
Annual family photo pages - 15 pages for years 2000-2014, printed and digital versions	One page per year from 2000. A carefully selected few photos from that year, with a typed in list of highlights. In the future, it's easy to look back to remind ourselves of how we've changed over time.	Template built & photos tweaked and "assembled" with Photoshop. Printed on A4 Photo Paper by colour inkjet
100 Days of Childhood memories, which spun out into Drawings of Childhood memories	Diane gave me the idea, and I started with making a list - with one item for each day, and was amazed at how many things I had forgotten, and how over time, one memory led to another and another. This project left me with a sense of gratitude, some sense of loss, and a better appreciation for my relatives and family members. Which led me to want to capture some of these in the form of drawings, that might help my daughters better understand the world I came from.	Paper by 53 on iPad 3, Pencil by 53, with drawings posted up to my tumblr blog Photo references from Google Images, Fact Checks from Wikipedia and many blogs on reminiscences, recipes, geography, history and wildlife.
Select a photo management application to use on a dedicated windows Notebook for our family photo collection	The focus for me was really on the photo management aspect. Editing features was nice, but I needed a robust and reliable method to sort, file away and tag thousands of digital photos from 14 years of photo taking, and then to later handle scans of the printed photos from the days before my switch-over to digital cameras. The Tags had to be written into the image files themselves. Lightroom won out over the other apps I was considering, and after making the selection, the real work of organising the huge mass of photos - gathering them from various PCs, memory cards, USB hard drives, email (as attachments), sorting, de-duping, naming, dating, filing away, tagging - began.	Choose between Picasa, Photoshop Essentials, the Photo app MS provides in their "Live Essentials" family & Lightroom.
"Audiophile" PC	A dedicated PC, tuned/optimized for good clean audio playing mostly lossless files stored on the local hard drive. The basic idea is that all unnecessary system processes are disabled, leaving only what is necessary for the PC to playback audio. After evaluating two possible solutions, I settled on Audiophile Linux running on a basic intel pentium CPU A1018 with 4G RAM and 320G HDD. I plug my Thinksound ON1 headphones into my HotAudio BitPerfect DAC which is connected via USB to the laptop, and am very pleased with the audio quality.	Evaluated Audiophile Optimizer (running on Windows Server 2012 R2) and Audiophile Linux (running on Arch Linux)
Home Server	Central location for file shares, potentially media streaming. FreeNAS was a very powerful contender, but I was forced to re-install plug-ins quite frequently when sync broke, and unhappiness with dlna and itunes supporting plug-ins. Linux Mint 17 was so much more easy to configure and update, and for my purposes, the file transfer speed was good and the lack of high end data protection features that FreeNAS is famous for were not needed.	Evaluated FreeNAS 9 and Linux Mint 17. On Linux Mint, I'm using SAMBA for file sharing to Windows PCs and Android tablets/smartphones, and Syncthing for file syncing (see next section). TeamViewer allows me to easily remote control the server from any of my windows PCs.
Sync Photos, Music, eBooks from respective dedicated PCs to a central server	As I carefully filed away, tagged my media collection, I keep a copy in a USB HDD, but I also wanted a copy sync'ed from the source PC to a central server from which I or other family members could access that content from any laptop, tablet or smartphone. I settled on Syncthing because of what I was reading in the user forums, and gave up on BitTorrent Sync when they introduced an upgrade that made it impossible to run an unlimited number of sync partnerships with a free account.	Evaluated BitTorrent Sync (proprietary) and Syncthing (open source) running on FreeNAS, Linux Mint and Windows
Clutter Clearing and Tidying	Clothes, Documents, Books, Magazines, Electronic Gadgets. I had made good progress but hit a plateau until I encountered the Marie Kondo Method. My clothes cupboard now contains 25% of what I started out with, arranged so that every single item is easily visible. With documents and old articles and magazines, I have reduced down to 15% as well, and freed up a great deal of storage box and cupboard space. I have more work to do on electronic gadgets, but most of the pieces from my bedroom have now been given away or discarded.	Marie Kondo Method
Windows 10 upgrades	Performed extensive use and testing prior to the final release in July 2015. Worked out lots of issues in terms of drivers and how best to upgrade from W7/8/8.1 home/pro have activated status after clean installs. Also, what features to disable (danger!) and services/startup apps to disable.	Early Adopter/Insider access to builds for testing, and working out how best to upgrade the large number of PCs at my disposal to Windows 10
Speed up scanning of paper photos	To save time, I wanted to scan 4-6 photos at a time, using the scanner of my mid-range HP all-in-one inkjet printer. The scan settings could be set for good quality, and experimentation was needed on how to place the photos, whether white or coloured backgrounds was better for the software that separates the photos from the single scanned page and saves out each photo as its own JPG file. The Gimp + Divide Scanned Images script combination worked best, and was also completely free. It would accept multiple scanned pages of 4-6 photos each, against a white background, all in one folder, and then output the individual photos into a different folder.	Tested Photoshop's built in capability, and the "Batch Divide Scanned Images" script for Gimp. Both had issues, but I found the latter achieved much better results, so that is now my tool of choice, with manual photoshop work as my back up for difficult pages of photos.
Checking all HDDs for bad sectors, and moving out data from suspect drives	After discovering that a 2TB drive in my FreeNAS server was suffering from an increasing number of bad sectors, I gathered all my external USB HDDs and tested them, finding two 500G and one 1TB HDD also had many bad sectors. I purchased two new 2TB USB hard drives and consolidated the data from my old USB drives into these new drives. I use Hard Disk Sentinel regularly to check on the SMART readings of my internal and external drives, in order to get early warning of future drive misbehaviour.	Hard Disk Sentinel, Sea Tools for Windows, DiskPart (windows command line), Chkdsk (windows command line)

Who Would You Choose and Why?

2013-08-24T23:14:00.003+08:00

I'll bet this one day becomes part of a self-administered personality test that you'd take to better understand yourself:

Daphne or Velma?
Lois or Lana?
Betty or Veronica?
Gwen or MJ?
Wilma or Betty?
Bailey or Jennifer?
Lucy or Patty?

Common Endings – a fiddle, a song in the night, and the security only love can bestow

2010-02-15T16:53:00.001+08:00

Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.

The great, dark trees of the Big Woods stood all around the house, and beyond them were other trees and beyond them were more trees. As far as a man could go to the north in a day, or a week, or a whole month, there was nothing but woods. There were no houses. There were no roads. There were no people. There were only trees and the wild animals who had their homes among them.

So begins the first chapter of the first of several books Laura Ingalls would write, books that have a special place in my heart and those of my daughters, Diane & Laura.

Back in 1973, I was selected to take part in an inter-school (primary) competition of sorts. Thanks to this contest, I would be teamed up with 3 other boys I’d not met before that, despite our being in the same school and the same level for 5.5 years prior, boys who would later be my classmates in secondary school. I suppose we were among the few that our teachers figured were reasonably avid readers, because the contest involved reading 3 books, and then sitting for a multiple choice test to gauge how much we recalled and comprehended. (I vaguely recall the test being held in a school in Chai Chee, back when the western end still had the main road running along a ridge, and a large chinese cemetry populated the northern slope, and kampong houses dotted the hills).

One of those books was Laura Ingalls’ Little House in the Big Woods. This was not the kind of book a nearly teenage boy should dare to admit liking – it was told from the point of view of a little girl, and was about life in the wild woods of Wisconsin, living among the wild things, living a life of self reliance and mostly, living a life strongly nourished by the love in her family.

I would read this book to Diane many years later, when she was around 4, in a small cabin somewhere near the Canadian Rockies during a holiday we were having there at that time. We had purchased the book in a delightful children’s store in Seattle called the Imaginarium. It was the ideal setting, and being much older than the pre-teen who first read the book, found myself taken by the simplicity and good naturedness of the story, and the humble, self-depreciating way in which the author presented herself. It wasn’t long before Laura came along, and we had acquired most of the books in the series.

Lately, I’ve been taken by how the books end. In “Big Woods”, Pa is playing his fiddle on a winter evening, in a darkened room lit only by firelight and Ma is swaying on her rocking chair knitting. He’s just played and sung Auld Lang Syne.

When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, “What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?”

“They are the days of a long time ago, Laura,” Pa said. “Go to sleep, now.”

But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa’s fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the fire-light gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

She thought to herself, “this is now.”

She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the fire-light and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

At the end of the second book, Little House on the Prairie, the family has left the home they built behind them, preferring to pull out on their own before being forced to do so by federal troops out to drive settlers away from land the government had allocated to the Indians. Pa is understandably angry and upset that his own government has caused him and his young family to flee west like outlaws toward an uncertain future with only the possessions that would fit into their wagon, and the animals they took with them. They’ve camped out on the prairie for the night, the children are in bed in the wagon, and Pa is playing his fiddle and singing.

They sang with a lilt and a swing that almost lifted Laura right out of bed. She must lie still and not wake Carrie. Mary was sleeping, too, but Laura had never been wider awake.

She heard Jack making his bed under the wagon. He was turning round and round, trampling down the grass. Then he curled into that round nest with a flop and a sigh of satisfaction.

Pet and Patty were munching the last of their corn, and their chains rattled. Bunny lay down beside the wagon.

They were all there together, safe and comfortable for the night, under the wide, starlit sky. Once more the covered wagon was home.

The fiddle began to play a marching tune, and Pa’s clear voice was singing like a deep-toned bell.

“And we’ll rally round the flag, boys,
We’ll rally once again,
Shouting the battle-cry of Freedom!”

Laura felt that she must shout, too. But softly Ma looked in through the round hole in the wagon-cover.

“Charles,” Ma said, “Laura is wide awake. She can’t go to sleep on such music as that.”

Pa didn’t answer, but the voice of the fiddle changed. Softly and slurringly, it began a long, swinging rhythm that seemed to rock Laura gently.

She felt her eyelids closing. She began to drift over endless waves of prairie grasses, and Pa’s voice went with her, singing:

“Row away, row o’er the waters so blue,
Like a feather we sail in our gum-tree canoe.
Row the boat lightly, love, over the sea;
Daily and nightly I’ll wander with thee.”

Laura’s third book, “On the Banks of Plum Creek” ends thus:

The wind was screaming fiercer and louder outside. Snow whirled swish-swishing against the windows. But Pa’s fiddle sang in the warm, lamp-lighted house. The dishes made small clinking sounds as Mary set the table. Carrie rocked herself in the rocking-chair and Ma went gently between the table and the stove. In the middle of the table she set a milk-pan full of beautiful brown baked beans, and now from the oven she took the square baking-pan full of golden corn-bread. The rich brown smell and the sweet golden smell curled deliciously together in the air.

Pa’s fiddle laughed and sang,

“I’m Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines,
I feed my horse on corn and beans
Although ‘tis far beyond my means, for
I’m Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines!
I’m Captain of the army!”

Laura petted Jack’s furry smooth forehead and scratched his ears for him, and then with both hands she gave his head a quick, happy squeeze. Everything was so good. Grasshoppers were gone, and next year Pa could harvest the wheat. Tomorrow was Christmas, with oyster stew for dinner. There would be no presents and no candy, but Laura could not think of anything she wanted and she was so glad that the Christmas candy had helped to bring Pa safe home again.

“Supper is ready,” Ma said in her gentle voice.

Pa laid the fiddle in its box. He stood up and looked around at them all. His blue eyes shone at them.

“Look, Caroline,” he said, “how Laura’s eyes are shining.”

There’s a lovely pattern emerging as we savor the ending paragraphs. In the preceding chapters, there’s a challenge, a danger, a trial of some sort. It’s always night. The family is together. A fiddle plays and Pa is singing. There is good humor and love.

Here are the closing paragraphs from Laura’s forth book, By the Shores of Sliver Lake.

“Now we are all snug,” Pa said, “settled at last on our homestead. Bring me the fiddle, Laura, and we’ll have a little music!”

Grace was safely in her bed with Carrie beside her.

Ma and Mary sat rocking gently in the shadows. But moonlight shone through the southern window and touched Pa’s face and hands and the fiddle as the bow moved smoothly over the strings.

Laura sat near Mary and watched it as she thought how the moonlight would be shining in the fairy ring where the violets grew. It was just the night for fairies to be dancing there.

Pa was singing with the fiddle:

“In Scarlet town where I was born,
There was a fair maid dwellin’’
And every youth cried “Well-a-wa.”
Her name was Barbary Allen.”

“All in the merry month of May,
When green buds they were swellin’
Young Johnnie Grove on his death bed lay
For love of Barbary Allen.”

Laura drew the curtain as she and Mary joined Carrie and Grace in the tiny bedroom.

And as she fell asleep still thinking of violets and fairy rings and moonlight over the wide, wide land, where their very own homestead lay, Pa and the fiddle were softly singing:

“Home! Home” Sweet, sweet home,
Be it ever so humble
There is no place like home.”

It’s easy to see night and sleep as being a metaphor for the end of life. Each book ends with the gradual and peaceful onset of death, a death in the company of loved ones, music, stories (in the form of song), and contentedness. And each next book in the series is a new morning, a rebirth complete with loved ones that closes yet again with another evening, where it’s cold and dark outside, with the family all together, safe, and with fiddle and song.

Just a week ago, I completed my reading of Raymond Moody’s “Life after Life”, and the thoughts that book has me mulling over work so nicely with the endings of the Laura Ingalls books.

“Look, Caroline,” he said, “how Laura’s eyes are shining.”

Note: If you’re keen to learn more about Laura Ingalls and her daughter Rose, there’s an good piece by Judith Thurman in The New Yorker entitled “Wilder Women – The Mother and Daughter behind the Little House stories”

Gaiman’s Wake for Bruce/Batman

2010-01-05T22:59:00.001+08:00

This two part story (Batman 686 and Detective 853) by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert brings to mind lots of things.

The art style harkens back to the work of Will Eisner and Dave Stevens. There is a “Bob Kane’ishness” to the Batman’s costume.

The storyline makes me recall Alan Moore’s and Curt Swan’s “the Last Superman Story”, from just before the John Byrne reboot. Moore and Swan created such a loving tribute, capturing something so genuine and true about the Superman of the 60s and 70s.

The holding of the wake in Crime Alley, and having Joe Chill as the bartender brings to mind the classic O’Neil/Giordiano story where a visibly upset Batman goes on a rampage, beating up crooks and fiercely demanding from them information on where to find Leslie Thompkins. I remember thinking that this Leslie person must be a real bad-assed crime boss guy – the truth at the end of the story is that she’s the social worker, now old, who comforted a young Bruce Wayne just after his parents were shot by Joe Chill, and is still working to bring hope and love to Crime Alley.

It also harkens to the Sandman “Wake” story cycle, and I would not have been surprised to see Death of the endless make an appearance. As with the end of Morpheus, it’s also a “not-end”, a beginning of sorts. There is a lady character that leads Bruce to his transition, but it’s not Death.

First up to speak at the wake are Alfred and Selina – both claiming to have been responsible for the death of the Batman, both telling stories so brilliantly inventive in the context of the relationships they’ve both had with Bruce. These short snippets of story could each be easily expanded into graphic novel length productions. They are that interesting.

A quote I like from Alfred’s eulogy/confession:

“And then he began dressing as a bat. As an Englishman, I find it difficult to identify the place that eccentricity ends and madness begins. That Master Bruce was eccentric, I do not deny. And I admit that it is not normal to dress as a giant bat and fight crime.”

Another quote, from the mysterious woman at the end of the story:

“Remember the goodnight book, Bruce? It’s just like that. You remember. It’s time for you to say goodnight. Say it.”

Which evokes memories of that bit that Death of the Endless says in “Facade” (Sandman #20):

“When the first living thing existed, I was there, waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job is finished. I’ll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave.”

The wake is held at the back of the Dew Drop Inn, which is the title of a short piece written by Gaiman, dated Dec 1995, and posted on Tori Amos’ site, hereinmyhead.com

Reading this story also brought to mind a 4 part Batman story by David V Reed (and art by John Calnan) ages ago – sometime in ‘77, titled “Where were you on the night Batman was killed?”. It’s a very “David Reed” type of story – featuring Batman as a brilliant detective rather than as a superhero. News gets out among the denizens of the underworld that the Batman’s body is found, but no one knows who killed him. Various villains start claiming credit for the murder, and a court is convened where 4 villains give their testimony of how they killed Batman (depositions by Catwoman, Luthor, Joker and the Riddler). Two Face acts as the “District Attorney” debunking their stories lawyer style, and Ra’s Al Gul presides as judge. At the end, we discover that Dent (Two Face) turns out to be Batman in disguise, and as he knew the details of the death of the person wearing a batman suit (an admirer/impersonator) was waiting for the real killer’s story to match the facts he knew. So the whole “court” was a trap Batman had set up to find the killer in a murder where so many were claiming to be the killer. While searching the web for references to this story arc (I had trouble recalling the artist’s name – I first thought it was Jim Aparo), I came across this very entertaining write up of another 4 part David V Reed Batman story from the same period – the Underworld Olympics 1976. Damn – I actually remember it now – and can picture myself reading the issues on a hot afternoon, on the shaded side of the house, by the drain, close to where the watermelon vines were growing, and near where the wind blew noisily through the patch of jungle land from which snakes sometimes emerged, only to be slaughtered by yours truly.

A last recollection before I end – one I don’t recall too well as it’s a Punisher story I just leafed through and didn’t actually read – there’s a wake at the back of a bar for one of the villains in the Punisher’s rogues gallery, and the other members of said gallery get together to pay respects and reminisce. Turns out the bartender is the Punisher in disguise, and he uses the opportunity to do-in the collection of his enemies in the room. Not sure I recall this correctly, but I think he blows up the bar with explosives. Which pretty much illustrates dramatically the difference between Batman and the Punisher.

Paradise Falls - Adventure is Out There

2009-12-19T13:22:00.006+08:00

Adventure. What a wonderful word. Adventure is often associated with travel, a journey, although that need not necessarily be so. And journeys are often seen as a metaphor for growth, for life.

I'm revisiting Up! (see older post) because this film hits me at so many levels. And because it's the year end, when most human beings take a turn towards being more thoughtful and reflective.

This time, I'm focusing on one of the non-human characters in the film. Paradise Falls. Nestled deep within, and at the top of the Lost World.The real inspiration for Paradise Falls is the Angel Falls in Venezuela. It's nearly a thousand meters of unbroken free-fall, and thanks to the great height, much of the water never reaches the ground as part of a stream. Instead, it's vaporised, carried away by the winds before it reaches the base, and according to Wikipedia, the mist can be felt "a mile away".

My earliest memory of the Angel Falls is a photo, in an old children's encyclopedia (Lands & Peoples, from Grolier ..... I think). The photo, in black and white, features the falls in portrait mode, with a small aircraft flying in front of it. I've done a search on google images for this picture, but no luck finding it yet.

More recently, the Angel Falls was featured in the Freshwater segment of David Attenborough's incredible documentary series, "Planet Earth". The camera follows the streams that flow atop Auyantepui, over the edge, then turns backwards so we see more and more of the falls as the camera continues it's flight path away from the tepui. Throughout the series, Attenborough presents Earth as a system that is built up around and driven by the flow of energy, a system made up of living things and the physical aspects of the planet, and fed by the solar radiation it receives. Having this at the back of one's mind makes the viewing of the camera work, of the water plunging down through open space in the bright sunlight all the more exhilarating. That's a huge amount of potential and kinetic energy at work there.

In an enjoyable blog post by Eric Salituro (at bayareascience.org), the writer points out that when studying a map, you'll notice that the falls clearly drain into a river at the base (Kerep), but strangely, there is no corresponding stream at the top of the Tepui. The water supplying the falls is the result of moisture from the clouds that enshroud the tepui, and there is well enough of it to generate it's spectacular result.
There's so much to learn, to discover, to see, to experience, to stir the heart. Adventure is out there. And inside.

The Sandman - King of Dreams

2009-12-05T23:05:00.005+08:00

Picked up this book (hardcover) by Alisa Kwitney from the National Library (call reference 741.5-973). It's something of a broad sweep of Gaiman's work on the monthly series, which ran from 1988 till 1996, and contains cover art, pages, quotes and a little bit of "behind the scenes" and "did you know" type information in the text.

Kwitney writes well. Good amount of wit, and a published author herself, she was one of several assistant editors at Vertigo who worked closely with Gaiman on the title. In Gaiman's introduction, he mentions that Kwitney's father is Robert Sheckley, an author of short sci-fi stories I remember enjoying greatly. Sheckley's stories had all the necessary trappings of sci-fi, but were infused with a relaxed style of intelligent humor, and the stories I remember best had a compelling build up of a problem that seemed impossible to solve, and then a clever resolution right at the end. I've not seen Sheckley's collection in the book stores in ages, but if you do find a copy, it'll be worth your while to pick one up. (and then mail to me as a gift)

Reading Kwitney's "King of Dreams" reminds me of how wonderfully enjoyable the sandman run was. I'm picking up new insights I missed in earlier reads - like when Morpheus dismisses Lyta Hall carelessly (after dismissing her "ghost" of a husband - the odd character Kirby did a few issues of) her posture is one of giving birth - and in this case, it's the foreshadowed birth not just of Daniel, but also a hatred that would lead her to the Furies in "the Kindly Ones".

I also found a quote by Death that I've been looking for. I thought I read it in one of the "Books of Magic", but here it was, in the one issue story "Facade":

When the first living thing existed, I was there, waiting.
When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished.
I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave.

Another nice snippet of info was that one of Gaiman's early proposals to DC was to work on the Phantom Stranger, which was turned down and this resulted in the proposal for Sandman instead. My head is buzzing at what Gaiman was planning for Phantom Stranger - my first serious attempt at comic collecting began with the Phantom Stranger (by David Micheline), unfortunately just before the series was to be cancelled. The back up feature in that book was Black Orchid - which interestingly was the first work Gaiman (with Dave McKean) did for DC. While we're on the topic of the Phantom Stranger - look up Moore's take on the Stranger's origin.

This would be a good time to pen down a few "Top" Lists:

Favourite Individual Stories:
1-Midsummer Night's Dream
2-The Sound of Her Wings
3-Three Septembers and a January

Favourite Story Arcs:
1-Season of Mists
2-World's End
3-The Wake

Favourite Spin-Offs:
1-Death - the High Cost of Living
2-The Dream Hunters (illustrated version by Charles Vess)
3-Death - the Time of Your Life

I'm closing this post with a quote from Destruction, in a story within a story within a story (lost count of the recursiveness) - Petrefax's tale of the Necropolis Litharge tale from the inn at World's End. (which nicely recalls Douglas Adam's Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

It's important to have places like this. Once the spirit's flown and the spark of life has gone, then the rituals of farewell are needed. All the rituals we go through to help us say goodbye. You HAVE to say goodbye.

This quote makes me think of Departures. And on an almost cold december night in Singapore, with the ground soaked and the braddell insects singing over the drone of distant traffic on wet roads, this is perhaps a very appropriate thought.

Twenty Years have passed, Boy!

2009-09-27T17:03:00.006+08:00

Twenty years have passed, Boy
But the memory still warms me
Wild Flowers in a Mason Jar

A couple of months ago, I received my HP 20 year long service certificate. Twenty years ago, I'd just left Singapore Airlines, where I had an Engineering job and had been having a good time cavorting around the aircraft hanger and within the aircraft airframes. I was about to start a new career, in systems support for business mini-computers. The internet was just a research thing back then, but we did have a connection and got a lot of joy from the text based, terminal based apps of the day. This was well before Andreessen & Bina created Mosaic, the browser that would later become Netscape, the browser that would mark the start of the consumerisation of the internet.

The Smell of Rain......
and the Warm Earth in his Hands....

JenMei, now just starting her second year in Stanford, was born 20 years ago.
We were driving a dark metallic grey Honda Quintet back then.
Home was a 2 bedroom Bayshore Park apartment for which we were heavily (but in retrospect, thankfully), in debt.
My home PC was a IBM PC XT Clone with green monitor and an add-on mouse that required a special ISA card (think jumpers, IRQs, I/O addresses). I remember buying the mouse specifically to try out Win2.x. All the other DOS apps I was using had little need of a mouse.

...his face was mirrored in the window
And his reflection flew across the moonlit land

The Song of the Month (which is a rather odd naming convention, as I've not been very monthly about my song posts) is John Denver's "Wild Flowers in a Mason Jar", from his "Some Days are Diamonds" album. There are many great lines in the song. But what I like best about it is how it builds images of a journey, and a look back to simpler times.

Were those really simpler times, 20 years ago? George Bush the Elder was president of the US, Gorbachev was leading the Soviet Union, Margaret Thatcher was PM of the UK, Corazon Aquino was president of the Phillipines, and Lee Kuan Yew was Prime Minister of Singapore. The Soviets were pulling out of Afganistan, fleeing fighters and weapons that were later turned on the providers of those very weapons. Salman Rushdie was hiding to save his life. Exxon Valdez committed major environmental carnage against the Alaskan coast. Solidarity joined in the Polish Elections and the country saw a non-Communist become the elected Prime Minister. Massacre in Tiananmen Square. Ayatollah Khomeini moved to the next world. Tim Burton's version of Batman hit the cinemas, with the oddly cast Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne. Aung San Suu Kyi began her house arrest that carries on till this day. Nelson Mandela's party took part in elections in South Africa, signalling the last days of Apartheid. And .........Matt Groening's "The Simpsons" premiered on Fox.

And so much has happened since then. We've said goodbye to lots of people who have left the physical world. We live in a different place. Our thinking has expanded & broadened. There's bigger geographic distances between family members. We've visited many new places and learnt new things. We have grown.

Twenty years have passed, Boy
But the memory still warms me
Wild Flowers in a Mason Jar

Making my spirits go UP!

2009-09-02T22:34:00.005+08:00

I have a new all time favourite movie.
How does Pixar keep coming up with films filled with heart, wisdom, fun, pathos, imagination and adventure?

UP! is a masterpiece.

The childhood dreaming of Carl and Ellie brought to mind Randy Pausch's last lecture.
The land around Paradise Falls made me think of Conan Doyle's, Edgar Rice Burroughs' & Jules Verne's respective Lost Worlds.
The little short before the main film was a lovely look at how some partners life gives us are partners that bring us pain, but it is still possible to love and to be faithful.
The colors thrown against the wall of the little girl's room, from the light coming through the balloons, rising up to the ceiling were spectacular.
The blueness of the sky, the little house against it and the balloons like a giant heart held by many, many strings.
The badges wanted not for themselves, but for the hope they gave Russell of seeing his Father again.
The need to let go of what's weighing us down, in order to lift off.
Charles Muntz fails as an adventurer and a person because what he wants is glory for himself. In contrast, Carl is doing what he does first for Ellie and then for Russell, and Russell does what he does in the hope of getting his Father back.
Kevin the bird, whose behaviour in his first scenes in the film harken back to the days of Chuck Jones' RoadRunner.
The dogs so brilliantly portrayed. Their behaviour and mannerisms (and speech!) was ultimately so dog like in devotion and simpleness ..... "squirril!" ...... "point!" .... "master!"
And Dug. He who once wore the cone of shame was the most adorable of all.

When the wonderfully rendered credits roll at the end of the film, you'll catch Brad Bird and John Lasseter listed. Oh happy fault, that both these masters of graphic storytelling had to leave Disney over creative differences (in very separate incidents), and eventually ended up working in the same company, Pixar.

Wuthering Heights

2009-07-26T13:26:00.005+08:00

Out on the wiley, windy moors

We'd roll and fall in green.

You had a temper like my jealousy

Too hot, too greedy.

How could you leave me,

When I needed to possess you?

I hated you. I loved you, too.

From the Wikipedia entry on Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights:

Written when Bush was just 18, the song's lyrics are based on the story of the novel of the same name. Kate Bush was inspired to write the song by the last ten minutes of the 1970 film version of Wuthering Heights.[1] She then read the book and discovered that she shares her birthday (July 30) with Emily Brontë. Bush reportedly wrote the song, for her album The Kick Inside, within the space of just a few hours late at night, looking to the moon through her open bedroom window for inspiration.

Lyrically, "Wuthering Heights" borrows liberally from the novel's utterances of its protagonist Catherine Earnshaw, most notably in its chorus, with Bush utilising the famous ghostly phrasing "Let me in! I'm so cold!", as well as in the verses, which reference Catherine's confession to her servant of having "bad dreams in the night."

Musically, this is an amazing song, with Bush's high pitched calling out to Heathcliff, and singing in parts like a wailing ghost. Back when the song was first released and played on Singapore Radio, the lyrics were hard to catch and I had no clue how dark and sinister the lyrics were - the melody and instrumentation were pleasing enough to provide entertainment. That changed 2 years back when I found myself wanting to listen to the song again (no idea what possessed me), and I got hold of a copy, and was stunned to discover that the song was basically a haunting set to music.

Heathcliff, it's me, your Cathy, I've come home. I´m so cold,
let me in-a-your window

We come in peace for all mankind

2009-07-21T07:36:00.006+08:00

Forty years ago, I was a primary two student, eagerly consuming the many commercial tie-ins with the apollo space program that ice-cream companies, children's magazines, biscuit manufacturers, coloring books were speeding in our direction.

Walls, an ice cream company, had the best offering. They sold you a book that had spaces in which you pasted little picture cards. You got a card with each ice-cream lolly (called SkyRay) you bought from them - it was in a little slot in the paper covering. The lolly was cleverly shaped like a futuristic spaceship - in 3 sections - each a different fruit flavor.

Collecting all the cards and filling up the book seemed at that time to be the most important thing in the world. More important than homework, the vietnam war, the difficulties of a young nation ejected from the Malaysian Federation just a few years before, the facing of a pullout of British forces which would have a huge impact on the defence and economy of the island.....

Perhaps there was one thing more important. The landing of the Eagle in the Sea of Tranquility.

July 20th, 1969. The names of 2 heroes forever entered history that day.

"the eagle has landed"

"we came in peace for all mankind"

For a little while, we were not chinese, african, russian, malay, vietnamese, british, american or indian.
Were were not men or women.
Were were not young or old.
We were just a collective mankind, looking together in wonder at this amazing thing happening far away, on a place we could look at on most nights and which featured so prominently in much of our legends and fiction.

It was a truly magical time.

Many years later, an Insurance company ran an advertisement on Singapore TV, using Dick Lee's "Life Story", and featuring a young boy living in the 60s. In one scene, the family is in a darkened room, illuminated only by a black and white TV showing the moon landing. I'd love to get a copy of that advert. It's probably the most enjoyable advertisement I've ever watched, and the moon landing scene is definitely part of the reason.

The New Frontier

2009-07-18T17:17:00.005+08:00

Are we up to the task .. are we equal to the challenge? Or must we sacrifice our future in order to enjoy the present?

That is the question of the New Frontier. That is the choice our nation must make .. between the public interest and private comfort .. between national greatness and national decline .. between the fresh air of progress and the stale, dank atmosphere of "normalcy" .. between determined dedication and creeping mediocrity.

All mankind waits upon our decision. A whole world looks to see what we will do. We cannot fail their trust, we cannot fail to try.

On the 15th of July, 1960, a young man accepted the nomination from his party to stand for election against Richard Nixon, in a competition to become the president of the United States of America.

His acceptance speech, which you'll easily find on the web, is often referred to as the "Kennedy New Frontier" speech and is amazingly relevant today.

Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus. It would be easier to shrink from that new frontier, to look to the safe mediocrity of the past, to be lulled by good intentions and high rhetoric...

The full text of the speech and the MP3 version are available at the American Rhetoric page here.

I've just finished reading Darwyn Cooke's amazing, marvellous, awesome series, "The New Frontier" collected into a hardcover book that I borrowed from the Singapore National Library (Call Number 741.5973). It's the story of the transition from the superheroes of the golden age to the new world of the superheroes of the silver age. In the backdrop lurk McCarthyism, atomic weapons, racism, the conflicts spawned by the cold war, experimental aircraft that pushed the limits, ethical treatment of women ..... There are soldiers, dinosaurs, aliens from outerspace, monsters, magicians .... what fun! The link with the start of this post is that Cooke's graphic novel's concluding panels paraphrase parts of the Kennedy New Frontier speech to excellent effect.

This is a piece of work you don't want to miss. Cooke's drawing style is perfectly suited to a story that takes place between the end of WW2 till the 60s. His character design for Diana of the Amazons is particularly appealing. The section in which she defends the actions of a group of vietnamese women who have massacred their former captors and torturers (using weapons Diana put within their reach) to a stupified Clark Kent (in his alien persona) is priceless.

Diana: These women have reclaimed their home. And their dignity. I have chosen to train them to survive the coming war. Surely you see the virtue in that.
Clark: You're supposed to set an example! But to allow cold-blooded murder... and then to celebrate.
Diana: What, hand them a smile and a box of flags? Their families, their mates ... their children were murdered before their eyes. This is civil war. I've given them their freedom and a chance for justice .... the American way.

There's a bit more to the exchange, and you can read it yourself. But I love the last panel of this sequence. Diana says with a stern look on her face, "There's the door, spaceman."

Highly recommended. This is a must read.

Robert McNamara ...looking back at the Vietnam War

2009-07-12T21:11:00.006+08:00

In an Opinion piece in the NYT Apr 21st 1999, Robert McNamara wrote about how post-mortem discussions with Hanoi revealed that the death toll and economic cost of the vietnam war could have been so much smaller - had each side not made very wrong assumptions about how much punishment or boldness the other side could tolerate, and about how open the opposing sides were to negotiations.

For example, in Vietnam each side miscalculated by repeatedly underestimating the costs and risks its adversary was willing to accept. The failure of the United States to anticipate the almost incredible losses absorbed by Vietnamese Communists, both north and south, is well known. But we learned in our dialogues that the North Vietnamese were prepared to absorb far greater punishment than was ever delivered by the American bombing. Likewise, the Hanoi Government, in a series of disastrous miscalculations made from 1961 to 1965, repeatedly underestimated America's willingness to prosecute the war in the South on the ground, and in the North via the bombing. In Vietnam neither side understood the bottom line of the other with regard to how South Vietnam should be governed, by whom and for how long. Each side, American and Vietnamese, discovered during the course of our dialogues that its former adversary was much more open to negotiations -- to a neutral, coalition government in Saigon -- than was believed at the time.

The point is this: These mutual misjudgments were not preordained by some process of escalation that, as is implied by many who see the Balkans through the prism of Vietnam, was beyond human control. Both the Americans and Vietnamese in the dialogues, who for the first time had access to one another's real intentions at the time, concluded that many opportunities existed along the way for leaders to do what they should have done -- lead! -- rather than ignore the Vietnam crisis in slow motion.

By the time Nixon ordered the withdrawal of US forces from South Vietnam, 3.5 million Vietnamese and 58 thousand Americans had lost their lives. He ends the opinion piece, which calls for the application of lessons from the Vietnam War to the Crisis in the Balkans, with this quote:

It was once famously said that the United States did not have 10 years of experience in Vietnam, but one year of experience 10 times over. Will we say the same about the Balkans?

During his military stint during WW2, during his time with Ford, and later as Secretary of Defence, McNamara applied systems analysis to bring about efficiencies, cost savings and support decision making. The systems approach supported his work well and the success it brought him set him up to trust them enough to apply them to the Vietnam War (source: wikipedia):

McNamara's plan, supported by requests from top U.S. military commanders in Vietnam, led to the commitment of 485,000 troops by the end of 1967 and almost 535,000 by June 30, 1968. The casualty lists mounted as the number of troops and the intensity of fighting escalated. McNamara put in place a statistical strategy for victory in Vietnam. He concluded that there were a limited number of Viet Cong fighters in Vietnam and that a war of attrition would destroy them. He applied metrics (body counts) to determine how close to success his plan was.

With hindsight, it is easy to see that even the best methods and processes for management, when supplied with incorrect data/assumptions, can generate tragic results. McNamara was definitely a brilliant man - a Harvard Associate Professor, President of Ford Motor Company, Secretary of Defence who achieved great things during his lifetime. But the folly of the Vietnam War that he's credited with architecting is the one thing that he will be most remembered for. To his credit, though, he did have a change of heart about how the Vietnam War was being run, and tried to persuade President Johnson to take steps towards ending America's involvement in the war. But things had gone too far .... America's prestige was on the line and perhaps too many in big-business who stood to profit massively from continued hostilities were pushing hard on their lobbyists. His failure to change LBJ's mind led to his resignation and a new job with the World Bank in 1968 where he is credited with shifting the Bank's focus towards poverty reduction.

Robert McNamara passed away on 6 July 2009. The BBC carried this obituary on it's website.

A gift of Naipaul from Books Actually

2009-07-01T22:08:00.003+08:00

I discovered my favorite Singapore bookshop while walking around the Amoy Street area during the lunchtime break of a course I attended in mid april this year. The shop is question is one of a row of restored shop houses along Ann Siang Road, up and then halfway down a hill from Amoy Street.
Books Actually is a little piece of heaven for storybook lovers. The decor, smell and selection seem just right, and one feels compelled to purchase something because of the feeling that it would be a great crime to leave without a new book, casually underarm, protected by a simple paper bag.

You can find them at 5, Ann Siang Road. (Wikipedia has an entry on Ann Siang Hill here)

View Books Actually, 5 Ann Siang Road in a larger map

And purchase I did. A collection of snippets of VS Naipaul's writing. Taking prominent place in the collection were the prologue and first chapter of "A House for Mr Biswas". This was a book I first read as a literature text in Secondary school, and later again as an adult in my early 30s. I thought I had gained so much more from my second reading, but now, revisiting the book with the widened eyes and narrowed heart of a 47 year old, I find myself astounded by the depth and beauty of Naipaul's storytelling. Perhaps some of my own story had somehow gotten mixed up into the pages, disguising itself and possessing the seemingly simple sentence structures Naipaul employed in his story of a most unheroic hero, an everyman who was as unremarkable as can be, yet special, unique and admirable in his clumsy striving for his place in the world. It was painful to read. And beautiful too.

2009-06-20T19:18:00.002+08:00

God sends me important lessons when my life most calls for them.

From the Wookipedia's Palpatine archive:

Emperor: "You want this, don't you? The hate is swelling in you now. Take your Jedi weapon. Use it. I am unarmed. Strike me down with it! Give into your anger! With each passing moment, you make yourself more my servant."

Luke: "No."

Emperor: "It is unavoidable. It is your destiny. You, like your father, are now...mine."

Sarah Palin as Anne Elk?

2009-04-18T13:07:00.005+08:00

While doing research for the book I'm working on, I came across a great quote from Mahatma Gandhi that I wanted to use for my Gmail account's signature block.

I was then faced with the matter of giving up the current quote I'm using - an obscure bit of dialog from Monty Python's Anne Elk (Theory of Brontosauruses) Sketch.

After a good amount of deliberation, I've found myself itching to watch the sketch and went over to YouTube and ran a search. I came across this video......

.....and what caught my eye was the note the uploader posted. The note asserted that the way Sarah Palin performed in her television interviews while on the campaign trail were remarkably similar to John Cleese's Anne Elk character. I'm extremely disappointed that I did not make the link myself, but this is just so true.

To quote Anne Elk herself, "How very true, my word yes".

A closing thought - could Michael Palin somehow be related to Sarah?

More Giant Aquatic Dwellers (and edible too!)

2009-04-12T14:06:00.006+08:00

Pangasianodon gigas
Otherwise known as the Mekong Giant Catfish. That's no understatement!

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/photogalleries/giantcatfish/index.html

Surprising statistics from National Geographic:

According to John Lundberg, researcher with the All Catfish Species Inventory, 2,800 species of catfish have already been described and an additional 1,500 species may yet be discovered. "One out of every four freshwater fish, one out of ten fishes, and one out of twenty vertebrates is a catfish." Catfish are found on every continent except Antarctica and in fresh, coastal, and marine waters.

The World Wildlife Fund has a page on the Mekong Giant Catfish, in view of it's endangered status. There's a PDF factsheet on this page for download, if your appetite (mental, please - not physical) is whetted by this post, and you're wanting more food for thought.

This is one of a number of Posts thats been sitting in my drafts folder for too long. So I release it now from blogpost purgatory, with a little bit of cleaning up, and a little recollection of a meal that Laura, Henry and I had on the last dinner in Manila, in early June 09, where we were working on the Centex Manila school IT Lab.

One of the dishes we had at a restaurant serving local food, a short walk from the hotel we stayed at, was catfish, grilled over what we believe was a charcoal fire at the back of the establishment. It was one of the dishes we ordered by pointing at what we saw at a nearby table that looked interesting - we didn't know it was catfish at that time. Very tasty, lovely texture. It was a perfect complement to the grilled squid that also graced our table.

Brilliant Film: Okuribito (Departures)

2009-04-12T11:10:00.010+08:00

What a brilliant film! Slow moving and zen like - but full of thoughtfulness, grace, ceremony and respect. Most of the dialog in the film is spoken in soft tones, the scenes bathed in gentle light, and the cello playing in mellow tones.

The way in which Daigo (the apprentice) and his boss/master approach the dead - gently massaging, kneading, using a careful eye to apply make-up and a respectful technique to cleanse and dress their "client" in japanese costume finery, all in full view of the mourning family members - makes one think of a beautiful and heartfelt performance. It is a solo performance, requiring technical skill and a heart for the art. It is a performance that coaxes beauty from what society attaches mostly negative feelings to.

The english title of the film is Departures (link to website here). And there are many of these in the film that are not just about death:

The departure of Daigo's cherished dream of being a professional cellist in an orchestra.
The departure of Daigo and Mika to the former's rural hometown from the big city.
The departure from the idea of a "normal" and socially acceptable professional life
Told in flashback, the departure of his father when Daigo was 6
The departure of Mika when she is not able to accept her husband's chosen profession.

There are departures from places, ideas, relationships ...... and physical bodies.

But each departure is accompanied by an arrival. It is impossible for it to be not so. To say more would give too much of the plot away, and I've already said too much as it is.

Departure is associated with loss and/or abandonment. Even if one loses the body, the spirit still lives on. Perhaps one does not lose his body. He gives it up, leaves it behind. But still has what's important with him. Daigo no longer has his orchestra job and his expensive cello, but he still has his playing skill and the child sized cello of his youth - and play it he does, in the home he grew up in, in his office at a company christmas party of 3, and in the open fields under the open sky with the mountains in the background. Performances that bring beauty forth from the substance (wood and string) and essence (the composer's creation, the performer's will)

Life and Death. Passages. Gatekeepers. Substance and Essence. Body and Spirit. All nicely captured in the role of the Okuribito - "a person who sees off".

Director Yojiro Takita has done a superlative job, melding many different elements - visual, characterization, script, music, the rural backdrop into a beautiful meditation, a rounded and thought provoking performance that leaves one feeling and thinking well after the ending credits fade off the screen. The soundtrack should make excellent listening on an overcast day.

Today, Easter Sunday 2009, marks the end of Lent. There's an excellent Op-Ed piece in the NYT by James Carroll, in which he writes about Lent. It's worth a read, and this section from the editorial rolled nicely into my thoughts that were still very tangled with the film:

The season begins with the word “Remember,” uttered as a blot of ashes is smudged on the forehead. Remembering the transience of life — ashes to ashes, dust to dust — remains the essence of the observance.

Substance.
Essence.
The Creation of Beauty.

Our lives are not "Things". Our lives are "Performances" to be experienced. With the technical & physical aspects, and just as importantly, the invisible spark of creation, imagination, passion and will.

In Anthony DeMello's book, "the Song of the Bird", he speaks of creation as a dance, performed by God. You cannot keep a dance in a bottle. It does not exist apart from the dancer, but it is not the dancer. It is to be experienced, not owned or bought or kept. It is to be Remembered.

A Creation of Beauty.
Essence.
Substance.

Giant Coconut Crabs

2009-04-11T03:23:00.004+08:00

I have this fascination for giant aquatic creatures.

So imagine my delight when I came across this picture of a coconut crab. It's taken from a the hoax-slayer site, which makes a judgement that the picture/story is real. Comments at the end of the page from people who have seen and eaten the crabs corroborate the story.

Do a google image search for "coconut crab" and you'll see more photos of this large beastie - one of which is clinging to the trunk of a man, and another to the trunk of a tree. Or you can just click here for the google image page.

There's a good amount of detail in this wikipedia entry.

After giant squids (see this post) and giant crabs, what's next on the menu?

Edward Weston

2009-03-29T16:07:00.005+08:00

I was reminded of an earlier post where I mentioned a possible coming holiday to Monterey and surrounds when I read a recent article on the New York Times' website:

In Point Lobos, Where Edward Weston Saw the World Anew

Edward Weston and Ansel Adams left us photographs of the Californian landscape that are so stunningly beautiful and awe inspiring that they are the stuff of legend.

All the more now do I feel the urge to spend a good couple of weeks enjoying long walks along the coast near Monterey and on the trails in the heights of Yosemite. Mountains and Sea. Gunong dan Laut.

At the Bishan Library this afternoon, I came across a DVD for loan - a PBS documentary on Ansel Adams. This was mere hours after I'd read the Weston piece in NYT, so I happily borrowed it without hesitation. In the small print on the back cover was notice that part of the funds that made the film possible had been donated by Hewlett Packard. I can't recall if it was Bill or Dave who was an avid wildlife photographer - I suspect it was Dave Packard (his daughters were behind his donations that made the Monterey Bay Aquarium possible - the idea just seems to fit).

"The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh."

Edward Weston

Comic Book Resoures Feature - Re-Reading the Watchmen

2009-03-16T22:07:00.002+08:00

Came across a really enjoyable series on the Comic Book Resources Site.

A couple of comic fans (Atom! and Carr who are comic shop owners in real life) discuss each of the 12 issues of the Watchmen. It's really enjoyable to read. Recommended.

Here's the page with links for all 12 parts of the discussion.

Who Watches the Watchmen? The Watchmen movie opens

2009-03-08T10:57:00.005+08:00

The watchmen movie opened in Singapore a few days ago.
It's got an M18 rating, which should be quite a draw to the typical movie goer who's just out for entertainment and something to jabber about with friends in casual talk.

For some of us, though, the movie is going to be serious business. It's a story about how imbalances of power create dangerously unstable situations, the consequences of people taking the idea that "the end justifies the means" to it's logical conclusion, and the power of the journal, the written word to upset the best laid plans of mice and men. No details here, because I don't want to spoil this for those who have not yet read the graphic novel or seen the film.

The press is having a field day with journalists trying to write smarter reviews than their competitors. "It's too faithful to the original", some say. "Moore will be spitting venom at the film", say others. "The socio-political context for the story is too different today, from when the book was first released in 1986". "Fallible heroes who think and do bad things are not a surprise any more." "The loss of the pirate comic sequence (Tales of the Black Freighter) undermines the story." "Where's the giant squid built by the scientists, artists, musicians....."

I've not seen the film yet. I will go to the cinema with the same attitude that accompanied me to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. The attitude that says that it's not just about the story, but how it's told. The reader's experience from a novel, comic or film cannot be the same. Different senses and mental faculties are engaged. Consider that simply reading an Isaac Singer story originally written in Yiddish that's been translated into English is going to result in a different experience - irrespective of the language and cultural perspectives the reader. How much more so a translation from 2D drawings sequenced into tight 9 frame pages and rigid monthly publishing schedule to a full movie treatment with computer graphics, audio effects and live humans in costumes that would look comical in ordinary daylight is going to be delivering a very different experience of the story.

My advice. Enjoy the film on it's own merits. It's a different work altogether from the original graphic novel.

For the record - I thought Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings was a brilliant piece of work. Some of the visual sequences still bring about a rapid series of changes in my vascular and digestive systems - in ways that the poetry and grace of Tolkien's pen could never have.

Just as in the case of the Lord of the Rings film, I'm sure I'll have an uncontrollable urge to go back and re-read the Watchmen with new eyes. As a companion to my re-read, I'll be referring to Doug Atkinson's excellent annotations.

Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library

2009-02-27T23:55:00.005+08:00

The Acme Novelty Library is huge. Twice as tall as the typical comic book, and sturdy between it's hardcovers, it's an almost confusing mix of panel arrangements, small fonts and very clean graphics. One of the first things you notice when flipping through the book are a good number of pages that mimic the look of the kinds of adverts that will be familiar to readers of american comic books of the late 60s and early 70s. Quite delightful!

But once you get past it's size, the visual layouts and how the book feels in your hands, and start reading through what are mostly one page stories, you immediately realise that this is a book about tragedies - self-inflicted and thoughtlessly inflicted upon others, born from ignorance, an ignorance that's purely the result of the character's thoughts, ideas and beliefs.

Chris Ware's characters are a lonely and alienated bunch. They're trying to fill what they think is lacking in their lives by getting into relationships with people or machines, but selfishness or plain stupidity keep getting in the way and the result is emotional hurt to one or both parties.

It's mostly poignant stuff, and occasionally depressing.

For a Wikipedia Entry on Chris Ware and his work, click here.

While browsing the web for more on the author, I came across this Time article:

the depressing joy of Chris Ware (Nov 2001)

If you live in Singapore, there are many copies in the National Library branches, under the Call Number 741.5973 WAR. The Central library alone has 3 copies.

Song of the Month series begins

2009-02-05T14:33:00.004+08:00

A new series! Song of the month. And the song for Jan 09 is from Mary Chapin Carpenter.
A simple song, told like a simple story, that brings up deep thoughts and feelings of time passing by, family relationships and the meaning of life, and certainly what it's like to travel through the freezing darkness of open space for what seems an eternity.

Mary Chapin Carpenter wrote a children's book based on the song, titled "Halley Came to Jackson", which is on Amazon, where you can read formal as well as customer reviews.The lyrics are available on this page in Yahoo's Music site.

See the Amazon MP3 widget on the right navigation bar to listen to a snippet. It'll be there till next month's song is loaded into it.

Who Watches the Watchmen

2009-02-03T10:32:00.006+08:00

Just read this article from NYT's site:

Watchmen Skulk to the Screen - published Jan 30, 2009

Which sent me back to my old copies of the series. I've not read and re-read the Watchmen as much as Lord of the Rings or the Sandman series. Which perhaps added to the sheer enjoyment that overcame me on this most recent reading.

Strongly recommend you read the graphic novel before you see the film. I'm confident that no matter how good a job Snyder does on the Watchmen movie (and he should do good, based on his work on 300) the movie will pale in comparison to the richness of the original comic series.

If any of you is interested to borrow my copy (individual issues, individually bagged) to read, give me a buzz.

Watchmen is truely awesome. Moore and Gibbons totally outdid themselves on this collaboration.

My new book on Blurb - Cambodia travel photos

2008-12-30T21:42:00.003+08:00

One of my goals for 2008 was to finally create and publish a photobook on Blurb. (Let's not talk about the goals I did not manage to accomplish).

It's just done. Uploaded 30 minutes ago, then I went through the settings to see what options Blurb provides for marketing the book.

The Blurb site features "badges" - image links to the book on the Blurb catalog, an easy click-through to browse an online preview and place an order. (all major credit cards accepted!)

Cambodia Pictu...

digitally edited t...

By Philip Lee

Book Preview