New Google Search Interface

I have not done a “Geek”, I mean, truly dorky geeky, entry for weeks. So here it goes…

Apparently Google has been working on a new user interface for its famously simple (read: bland but fast) user interface. For months, I have noticed Grace’s Camino browser always produces a different Google UI. At first I thought that’s one of those perks Camino offers as a browser. But now I know it’s probably some kind of deal struck by the Camino project and Google to test out the new UI.

If you are anxious to try out the new Google UI, Ars Technica has a hack, which I will go over below.

New Google UI under Camino
This is the new Google UI I have been seeing on Camino.

New Google UI after the Javascript tweak
This is the new UI after a one-line tweaking on your browser…

Here’s how you will get the new Google UI according to Ars Technica.

1. Go to Google using any browser
2. In the address bar of your browser, copy/paste the following code in ONE LINE with no spaces (this could mean copy/paste 3 separate times):

1
2
3
javascript:alert(document.cookie="PREF=ID=fb7740f
107311e46:TM=1142683332:LM=1142683332:S=fNSw6ljX
TzvL3dWu;path=/;domain=.google.com")

3. Hit enter and click on “OK” on the message that appears.
4. Start searching and enjoy the new UI!

Zagat of the Bay Area

Sometimes I wish there was a Zagat for absolutely everything and for everywhere. Zagat was great for New York when we didn’t know what the hell to eat because there were so many damn choices. If we ate at a different restaurant for each meal, I am sure it’d take Grace and I a long long time to really completely try just 60% of all the restaurants in NYC. Unfortunately, that’s the opposite for the Bay Area (or, at least for the South Bay where absolutely nothing happens). Everything is so far apart from each other here that it’s very hard to discover new “hole in the wall” places. I mean, it’s not like in NYC where you walk by somewhere and go, “WOW, I have walked by this corner of my daily routine a thousand times but never saw this place!”

Luckily, there’s Jason and Terry’s Bay Area Review (or JatBar.com for short) for this activity starving place. I look forward to actually using this site once in a while before Grace and I dare each other to eat at the same places again!

As of today, there are 600 some odd restaurants reviewed and listed on the site. That’s like… one-tenth of a thousandth of restaurants in Brooklyn Heights where we used to live! WOW! Sweet! Choice has become an exciting option again… Or is that an oxymoron?

Aw, shoot… Did I mention I miss that stinkin’ New York City?

Sushi Date

Today was Grace’s birthday. Instead of having a formal celebration, Grace and Bryan went over to Nikky’s birthday party instead (I had to stay home to catch up on some freelance work). When they came home, I made some sushi for Grace since she’s been bugging me about making more since my fluke in making it so good last time. But I think I got the rice to sticky today having cooled the rice for a bit too long. Or maybe I just poured the sushi sauce into the rice too early, making the rice soaking in all that sauce…

So maybe last time was really a fluke…

The Art of Anatomy

Jasson showed me a pretty freaky link a couple of weeks ago. I promised to post it but never got the time to. So here it is…

ARTNATOMY is a website that combines wonderful and amazingly detailed layers of skeletal, muscular and facial expressions through a system of sophisticated yet simple to use controls. Basically you can make any kind of face and see the underlining muscular structure for that particular expression. Jason thinks it’s great for artists to reference in their drawings or models. I wish I had this when I was studying for my human anatomy exams at SCAD.

Tip: Go to “Level 2” via the buttons on the top, left hand corner for the advanced expressions I just wrote about.

Artnatomy 1
An expression with the superficial layer.

Artnatomy 2
The same expression with some muscular transparency.

Artnatomy 3
Again, the same image with some muscular transparency plus the skeletal structure.

Steady Growth

I know I will probably get angry messages from parents against sleeping with babies, but I don’t care.

Bryan has been sleeping with us since birth. But it’s gotten to a point now where he is basically taking over the bed. Or… more accurately, MY side of the bed.

You see, ever since he was a tiny little slob of meat baby, Grace had him sleep in a certain position that soothed him best. Now at almost 8 months, he continues to look for “the zone” when he sleeps. And “the zone” usually is turning his head (now his whole body) towards me and hold on to my pillow. But as of yesterday, his arms are no longer the only “intruders” to my own “zone”… He has now crossed both of his legs over! So my 1/3 of this dinky Queen size bed has effectively been reduced to 1/4.

I think it’s about time to move him to his own stinking bed…. He can have all the space he wants THERE.

In other news, Bryan also just started to take baby cereal (I know… new pictures will soon follow). It’s very funny to look at his face when he tries new food in his mouth. We never know what to expect from his expressions. Babies are most fun to observe when they start to externalize their experiences as they begin their physical exploration of the world.

Another not-so-recent news, Bryan graduated his first class — baby sign language. I am sure he didn’t learn much (I only see Grace doing all the studying), but a “team achievement” is one of the same. I will be proud of him later when he signs “milk” (or, “stop shaking me” ).

Bryan's first graduation
Bryan looks “stoned” like a deer caught in the headlight. He has no idea why someone’s taking a picture of him with a piece of paper which he tried but failed to eat. And no, he’s not a pot-head (yet).

Taiwanese Charisma

The Chinese media has been heavily covering Mayor of Taipei, Ma Ying-Jeou and his visit to the United States for the past few days. The sheer volume on the coverage of his speeches, people he met, his schedules, and… practically anything and everything about this man, has been unprecedented. If foreshadowing reveals anything of the future, this could signal the newly elected Chairman of KMT will be a serious contender for the 2008 presidential election in Taiwan.

Ever since DPP’s double blow in the past two presidential elections on KMT, Taiwan has been at its most polarizing point between different “ethnic groups” in recent memory. The political atmosphere in Taiwan has reached a point where the Pro-Blue (KMT) population of Taiwan simply can’t communicate with the Pro-Greens (DPP) and vice versa. Whenever Pro-Blue and Pro-Green issues arise among friends and family, you can literally feel the tension in the air.

While George Bush and the Republican Party in the United States are busy covering their lies about the war in Iraq, President Chen and his DPP simply live their lies out in the open with no one daring to prosecute him or members of his party — lies about scandals, money lundarying from public projects, purposely pitting one Chinese ethnic group against another, driving the Taiwanese economy to the ground… etc. I thought I’d never say this, but THANK GOODNESS China has been acting like a true world power in the matter of DPP’s thoughtless push for “formal” Taiwanese independence (yeah, like it will EVER happen). Like an adult irritated with a child’s annoying pranks, China simply yells at the little one to shut him up. The day when it stands up and takes Taiwan for a good spanking, there’s really not much anybody can or will do anything about*.

Now that I have painted a gloomy picture of Taiwan, let’s look at the silverlining… Chairman Ma (not MAO) has a pretty good grasp of world affairs and what they pertain to Taiwan as a whole (I am sure having a Ph.D from Harvar didn’t hurt). He’s not just another frog in a well who sees world affairs narrowly and carelessly. The Pro-Greens don’t like Ma because they think he’s pretentious** and has a track record of doing the “politically right” things. But hey, at least he’s not going to rock the boat and put the lives of the Taiwanese people on jeopardy against an enemy Taiwan simply can’t win fighting.

Having laughed at the Americans for having elected a dumbass president twice, now I have to laugh at my own dumbass people for putting a clown in the presidential seat two times in a row as well. But at least when an ant is run into the ground, nobody will notice, whereas when America is run into the ground, the world might explode (literally)***.

* China is a permeant member of the UN, that rules UN intervention out; US forces are too tied up with N. Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, “war” on terror and other things; Japan and S. Korea just want to watch Taiwan burn; the rest of the world would be too afraid to lose their investments in China to do anything. Sure, they will issue “statements” on how disappointed they are on China’s actions. But what is boils down to is this: there are no true friends between nations, just buiness as usual. In other words, Taiwan will be f*ucked within a week when China spanks.

** He CAN’T be more pretentious than Bush or Chaney!

*** And it has been “exploding” daily in Iraq.

Steve’s Play Ground

Sometimes being stubborn can really pay off big time, especially if you have the will to drive that stubbornness through walls. Steve Jobs did just that and then some.

Murdza reminded me of an article that Vanityfair is running on Steve Jobs and the 30th anniversary of Apple Computer. It’s a pretty long read with lots of comparative analysis to modern cultural icons. I was also surprised by the in-depth disection of the author’s keen observation on the trend o the tech/gadget industry in general…

An excerpt:

One counter-intuitive aspect of Jobs’s media sensibility is that it’s had little to do with content, that great sentimental area of media concern, and everything to do with hardware—the thing that nobody in the American media business has wanted to have anything to do with for two generations. Steve is really an appliance-maker.

And a stubborn one. For most of his career, the rap has been that Jobs missed out on greatness and ubiquity ecause he insisted, unlike the folks at Microsoft, on tying his software to his machines. Perversely, it didn’t seem to matter to him, or even so much to register with him, that, as Windows claimed 97 percent of the P.C. perating-system market, software-is-everything/content-is-king became the market-making truth. His stubbornness here, his blindness, seemed like a business tragedy. Only for a bit of flexibility on Steve’s part, this could have been a Mac rather than a Windows world (ushering in an epoch of peace and happiness).

Except that one day in the near recent past everybody woke up and found out that while all the geniuses were blathering on about content this and content that, the media culture had, in fact, come to be dominated by machines. It’s Steve’s gadget-centric world which we just live in.

iPods, Razr phones, BlackBerrys, plasma screens, Xboxes, TiVos, laptops. Machines are the objects of desire. Machines are the habituating, behavior-changing things. Machines themselves are fascinating, life-enhancing, cool, sexy.

The medium is the message.

This article is so cool that I PDF’d a copy just in case the link disappears (and it almost certainly will). Many have written at length about Steve Jobs, but few offer an observation with a scope that encompasses everything this man is about (even the not-so-flattering stuff).

Mac Uptime

Murdza sent me this image the other day….

Mac: 200 days without reboot

That’s 200 days of Mac OSX running without a reboot. I am sure there are machines/OSes that have last longer than that. But it’s impressive nonetheless. I would never want to bet with someone if I had a Windows-based machine to be up and running for that kind of up time.

Murdza, don’t you ever apply OSX updates that Apple issues? They almost certainly require reboots!