A Spree

Widely acclaimed as probably the most wanted title in this decade, Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare 2, a sequel to the previous phenomenal Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, finally shows up in November.

The memorable character, the SAS Captain Price, is back, to more than a few people's heart's content. The adorable Price, with his rigid and quaint English accent, who is likely the one that singlehandedly redeems this sequel by his appearance in the latter one third part of the story.

MW2 is so much wanted that a few days before its official release, the whole p2p and bit torrent networking world (underground of course) was driven to such a frenzy looking for the leak or cracked version that the community was doomed to an endless cycle of searching-downloading-ranting, then all over again.

Going on a sharing spree before a shooting spree.

In an era of electronic bits and bytes, any better way to raise enjoyment up to the very e-enjoyment?

Pop the flare, man, pop the flare.

Kafkaesque Fragment

Reading Kafka's "Wedding Preparations in the Country". A fragment, an incomplete work. A work that might never have had a chance to complete itself, would Kafka have enough time at his disposal.

A trip that averts and abhors its destination is doomed to eternal procrastination. It is a trip that doesn't want to go anywhere and is all but happy to go nowhere. How can anyone, including Kafka, impart to such a trip a legitimate end? An end of any kind thus be given can only be illegal, almost by definition.

A fragment, this fragment, is born by nature.

It is, therefore, already complete.

Phone

Today I brought F to a short walk outside the cafe shop my family usually go for a brunch.

Quite to my amazement, I found a rank of public phones attached to a series of standing pillars of a telecoms company. Nowadays public phones are almost like an endangered species waiting for their ultimate demise. As the growth of mobile phones advances aggressively, people are more used to the disappearing of public phones as part of cityscape. Who would want to insert coins into the slot for a phone dialing that blesses only a few minutes of connection?

Yet the dying species persist, if only at obscure corners of this city. More to my surprise is one phone which provides a composite solution to the use of inserted coins, phone cards, and, well, a modem port.

A modem port? This is quite something that would fire up some imagination of sci-fi characters.

What a beautiful finding for a short city walk!

A Wonder

Sometimes life is full of wonder which simply cannot get rational explanation of how it happened.

I've been working on making an old hacker game Uplink run on my linux-based Eee PC for hours and days. All is to no avail. Finally I gave up.

Then my brother somehow got intrested in the game and started playing it with escalated frenzy. After he called me for some help and shared with me his amazement at the game's simple design yet deep immersion, I decided to give myself another shot.

By my brother's hint at downloading a new patch, I tweaked this and that with a lengthy process of trial and error. Then to my total ignorance, the game finally fired up in my machine. I had little idea how it started working. Yet it did work.

What a wonder!

Evolving

My first attempt of playing with Linux was almost two decades ago. Back then, hard disk storage was 40MB at maximum. It was the time of Win 3.1 or its predecessors. The non-GUI installation interface of Linux was painstakingly geeky. My CRT monitor almost blew up my face due to the integer value wrongly input in the installation. The non-intuitive interface built a steep threshold stepping over which requires the user of solid perceptiveness in almost every way–hardware, kernel, shell, and file systems. The impression left of this first attempt? Almost got killed by an OS. Cool!

After around one decade and a half, the second attempt ensued. It’s a time when Red Hat was not Fedora. By dint of the hardware advancement and better GUI interface with intuitive package integration and management, the threshold was seriously lowered to such an extent that Linux’s solid and secure file structure and its powerful and versatile server build finally lent me access. Interestingly, the more one gets used to the OS, the less dependable on the GUI one becomes. Yet Linux’s multimedia support at this time was still poor, causing much pain to general users. It’s server administrators’ heaven, yet desktop users’ nightmare. Still geeky, lacking the intimacy a general user may find in the Win-doz.

Then a few days ago I had my old notebook installed with the new Debian-based Ubuntu. Pretty amazed at the overall performance. Not only does it boot faster, but the interface is more eye-catching, and its media de-coding almost jaw-dropping. Now it even supports plug’n'play. It’s hard to imagine how much the open source community has worked to get Linux evolved during the years I had no knowledge of.

My old notebook now has its second birth. Faster in running, more solid in structure , more efficient in operating, yet smaller in the OS storage size.

Very proud of being myself back, so many years after, to an old friend.

Heartbeats

The heart, the tiny one, does really beat, when the waiting was over.

Speechlessness. Only grateful tears.

Please keep growing and be stronger, my tiny tiny sweetheart.

The Second Second Coming

The second coming fails to come, fails its eventuality and our expectation. Maybe what we are facing is a real hope that cannot know in any way, and can only be blind to, what is hoped for. Maybe the not-coming is in fact its very eventuality, is what the hope it brings forth really meant. Or maybe the coming is not prepared enough because we are not well-unprepared. All is in a mist. Yet all is glittering, gleaming, speaking of something that no one understands but may come to articulate itself shortly after.

The 6-month interval is sheer waiting for nothing.

And now is the second second coming. The same unexpected. The same of that for which we will never be ready. And the same as before will we welcome the coming.

It is the coming that makes the waiting waiting.

The Black Sun

Heated to extremity, the sun turns black. Turns that which looks directly into it blind.

Hit by the black sun, the building is going into spasm.

Encoding Babel

Moblogging is enticing. Yet the test on communicating between different encoded systems has turned out no satisfying results. Kind of like standing in front of a Babel tower with no hope of getting diverse tongues together in mutual talks. Finally gave up on the efforts as they had cost almost twenty hours of human health and energy. Those of mine, of course.

Decide going back to simplicity. If technology cannot make things easier but complicated, maybe it’s time to go back where simplicity reigns. Productivity, supposedly, starts there.

Mobile Blogging

After quite some time of trial and error, a way is found, thought not without certain comprise, to post blogs on the move. Blogging by email, ftpping photos taken by the phone camera to the server, and cron-activating the entry . Though a simple 3-step procedure, a pda camera phone with GPRS wireless connection and a palm ftp tool are needed to make it really work. Time and energy exhausting to get it go.

Blogging on the move; a moving blogger; a blogging wanderer.

The only question left, however, is this: how often would one thus keep thinking and blogging thoughts after technologically empowered as such?

A fearsome question.

Being Weightless

eMule v0.45b Statistics

Runtime: 67 days 1:47 Hours
Transfer Time: 66 days 17:34 Hours (99.5%)
Upload Time: 66 days 17:31 Hours (99.5%)
Download Time: 57 days 1:06 Hours (85.0%)
Total Server Duration: 66 days 8:28 Hours (98.9%)

Downloaded Data: 66.57 GB
Download Sessions: 57033
Total Overhead (Packets): 3.68 GB (61.81M)

Uploaded Data: 107.86 GB
Upload Sessions: 172405
Total Overhead (Packets): 4.44 GB (78.89M)

It's already been over 2 months. The existence in the meantime can be said of the ecstasy of information overload at best, and of unbearable weightlessness and mental blankness at worst. For over 2 months, my being seems transfixed by the endless flow of bits and bytes in to and out of the computer, by the vast and boundless sea of informational exchange. It is all about share. Yet is it? What is this emptiness inside that would surface time and again even after the great joy of successfully getting the target files following the long wait? Watching the incessant change of figures, numbers, and statistics of the data transfer, one cannot help shuddering at the ecstasy of overloaded information. One at the same time cannot avoid tasting the bitterness of an existential modality that keeps losing its weight. Is this one way to be free? To be free or merely to feel free? Or there's no difference in between? To feel free and to be anxious about being thus. The difficulty of living!

The Second Coming

S called me for an event already happening, yet not in its full presence.

Though a bit surprised as it exceeds daily expectations, I did feel the burgeoning of something new inside.

We had a long talk through the phone, exchanging thoughts regarding the impact the event may have on our life. This, of course, is of the line of thought that resides on the reality principle. Reality, for sure, demands that the event be stopped.

Can reality ever think otherwise?

Deep inside my heart a voice did sound otherwise, singing to me a celestial bliss the event's coming will bring us.

Along with the bliss will come hardship? Yes. Ordeal? For sure. A great disruption of our already planned and scheduled life? Definitely.

To deal with that disruption will be the greatest and the gravest challenge we will face were we to decide welcoming it. We will need courage, wisdom, and love to house the bliss coming to us.

To be ready to not be ready. This is the essence of hospitality, of hope, and of future.

After thoughts and tears, I have made up my mind to receive the gift, to welcome the guest into my house, into my life, and to believe at the same time that the blessed guest will enrich my life, will make my days countless ones teeming with life.

This is the Second Coming.

And I have nothing at hand to prepare myself other than the patience in love and the faith in hope.

Droning

Hear insect non-stop droning from nowhere. A sign of weather change. Temperature going a bit higher. Sounds and smells like summer.

Is it now already leaving behind the winter and entering a warm spring? Almost not feel cold this winter.

I’m starting to miss the coldness, which seems able to make everything, physical and non-physical, coagulate to a solid matter. Solid coldness.

J's Blog

J has set up her own online blog for one month. I already got into the habit of reading her blogs every now and then. To tell the truth, J is more diligent than I am in writing personal blog. I should feel ashamed of my laziness.

Reading her blogs always makes me happy. It’s strange that one may never know much of another person, even one of familial members, until reading his or her journal like one from a total stranger. In this way, I came to know bit by bit J’s life, her feelings about the world, and her travel experiences. Her blog unfolds before my eyes a life of thankful tenderness I would never associate with J in the past.

J does find her right guy in her life and happily shares all the joys and tears with him unreservedly. I feel happy for J and sincerely wish her a life of unending bliss. A life I believe she already carefully cultivates and grows along with her tender lover.

Wrath Dispelled

People sometimes may need only to get a bit closer to each other for the wrath caused by daily trivialities to disappear.

My wrath caused by getting along with S did so shortly after.

Today when I stepped outside kitchen, S stood there to block my way. We got so close to each other that any visual evasion became impossible.

S looked into my eyes as I did hers. On the next second, S suddenly grabbed my balls, squeezing them tenderly though not without certain strength to express S’s ambivalent feelings about my obviously not-so-friendly attitude to S in the past few hours.

I laughed. S smiled. Wrath disappeared. The day grew brighter.

A bliss. Yes.

The Flame of the Blue

Finish reading the novel The Blue Flame (青の炎) by the Japanese writer Yusuke Kishi (貴志祐介). This is probably one of his best. Though generally categorized as an author of thrillers, Mr. Kishi in this novel successfully leads his readers into a juvenile world that is constantly disturbed by an anger with adults, a nebulous sense of justice, and an unbalanced motivation of rush actions. The "blue" in the book title refers both to a heated fire burning with sufficient amount of oxygen and to the wrath of the young that finally triggers the protagonist's action to set up a scheme for a "complete crime" (a flawless crime that will forever remains silent).

The protagonist, to be sure, is not a cold-blood killer. He simply wants to protect his family from the intrusion of his stepfather that has breached, bit by bit, the otherwise happiness of his family life. After his careful design for terminating the man's life and his successful execution of the plan, the young boy, however, is besieged by regret and shame for his killing a person alive before his eyes. Yet he has to continue making another crime plan to cover his tracks that have been followed by one of his friends whose death ensues shortly after. In the end, the young boy chooses to kill himself to protect his family from the cruel inquisition that would have come from media, police, and the whole society if he were arrested and convicted of the crimes he has committed.

The plot is captivating. The protagonist is a round character worth the readers' sympathy and criticism at the same time. His world swinging between determination and hesitation, between strong will and weak heart, between clarity and confusion in thinking, would have no difficulty finding an echo in today's juveniles. A sad story indeed. Yet the whole description of the process from his plan-making to his plan-execution is breath-taking. As a larger social context is strongly suggested therein, the novel gains a depth rarely found in the author's previous novels.

Some reviewers think of this novel as a Japanese version of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. I can't agree more.

DVD Backup

Spent some time understanding how to backup DVD movies. Interesting sort of knowledge. Made me excited for quite a while. First, I didn't know why the images would sometimes be broken after I used DVD Decrypter to rip the data and burnt them onto the disk via Clone DVD2. I thought that it might be caused by the flawed original disk. Then I came to understand that the basic technology behind Clone DVD2 is to squeeze the data larger than 4.7 GB into that storage limit, thus causing the loss of image quality and even operability. Therefore, I turn to DVDFab for a safer splitting of data larger than 4.7 GB into 2 disks, thus preserving the original image quality without any loss.

Now the triad of my DVD backup comprises DVD Decrypter, DVDFab, and ImgTool Classic. The first tool is to rip the data to HD. If the read ISO file size is smaller than 4.7 GB, then it will be burnt to a blank disk with the writing ISO function of the same tool. If otherwise, the data will be converted to files in HD. Then DVDFab will be called up to see if unnecessary files could be omitted for one disk storage. If not, DVDFab will split the data into two disks. The final step is to use ImgTool Classic to turn ripped files into ISO image files and to burn them onto disks in turn.

Technology sometimes does save troubles for people provided people would like to learn more of the mechanism working behind. Though I have to admit the whole process of this DVD backup sounds no less troublesome for some ears, I enjoyed much the whole learning experience. I started to know more of the DVD basic structure. Also, by turning from commercial packages of one-click solution, I am quite happy for using all my chosen tools for free.

Proust and Sign

Pick up Deleuze's treatise on Proust and sign to read. Beautifully written. I really like the way Deleuze brings forth his musings on Proust. My order of Proust's monumental work arrived at my hand a few days ago. Really want to re-tackle the work and wish to have a better feel of it as my experience of life and literature has grown and expanded years by now. Literature always brings me consolation and food of thought which teaches me what may lie beyond the signs of human use and what use those signs can assign itself to for achieving a work in its proper sense. A way to rethink my will to creative writing.

Hyperion

Coming back from my trip with my family to Sabah, Malaysia. Aside from various precious memories, what struck my mind most is the reading experience of Dan Simmons's Hyperion, the first of his four-volume space opera. To be specifically, it's the Priest's Tale in its very beginning. Though the novel is structured like Chaucer's Cantebury Tales, his Priest Tale does leave a strong impression. I would say a certain sense of sublimity is successfully created in that tale. Yet the following two tales are not so attractive and fall into a clear category of sci-fi space novel. The written signs, so to speak, simply designate things to communicate in those two tales, while in the first one the signs signify something that is beyond simple things and transport the reader's mind to a place where communication is brought to a failure. The novel, at least up to now, has demonstrated before my eyes what kind of literature is appealing to me and, to my thinking, should be coming near the greatness that can stand firmly against temporary reading consumption and instant post-reading amnesia. There's a kind of literature that will never leave you in peace, but violently make an encounter with you, an unforgettable encounter that will keep disturbing you for years, or eons of years. That's the literature i am seeking and want to write about.

New Year

Again, a new year starts. It's time to think back on the days of the past year. What have I done, what have I achieved, what have I not reached as the set goal? Always a pressing question surfaces up when this very first day of a new year arrives.

Last night, as usual, I and my family--my two lovers, wife and son--went out to take a walk in the cold night to spend the last few hours of 2003. Though I had a bad headache and backache, I still had a good time getting along with them. We didn't go to the bookstore to buy each of us a new book due to a shortage of enough time. Yet we did visit a restaurant to enjoy a good meal at midnight, at the border between 2003 and 2004.

People, crowded people, swarming here and there all over the city. It's hard to imagine how come so many people, including young and old, would be sleepless late at night and seem to catch the last moment of joy of the last year, to forget all the unhappy memories in the past in that joy which is no less than a hope, however faint it may look, for a better future whose first day will come to meet them soon.

The night was cold, yet expressions on people's faces were joyful and happy. Why not feel happy for all this. It's a sign of life, of being alive, no matter how many obstacles to lie ahead that, to be sure, will one time or another have to come.

I like this moment. This last night of the past year and before a new one. And this precious moment to be together with my beloved family.