Month: April 2007

The View from Taiwan => A Pinch of Fate

Never let it be said that I passed up an opportunity to mock another culture…

Every time I pinch my wife’s cute little nose she says, “Don’t! My nose will get longer!” Never mind that she’s a college graduate with an above average intelligence, this is one of the weird cultural things around our house I just don’t understand.

Now it’s beginning to make sense… link, with picture.

There’s a strong Taiwanese folk belief that the shape of the nose can be changed simply by pinching it. In local society a long straight nose is preferred, with the result that the childhoods of many local women saw periodic torture with clothespins and other devices to lengthen out a beautiful pug nose. Like my wife.

Here an intrepid company has capitalized on this belief by offering a specialized nose pincher, a “nose lengthener.” The original price was $250, but it’s on special for $199. Use just 5-10 minutes per day, while driving, reading, watching TV… Very convenient! And you can use it with any nose.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Family, Taiwan

After the devastatingly cold winter freeze we had, both Michelle and James’ trees appeared to have been wiped out.

Recently, though, Michelle’s tree has been showing a strong surge of new growth.

I’ve tried pruning some of the old, dead branches off and am really unsure if I should finish cleaning up the top area. These particular trees is a ficus nitida (Indian Laurel Fig) and apparently, all I can do it wait for spring (it’s here, yeah!) and see which branches can spring forth new growth.

James’ tree, on the other hand, is only showing a few leaves forming on the main trunk. Maybe, just maybe, some of those can turn into new branches.

Technorati Tags: Blog

With our upcoming trip to Taiwan planned for June, I decided it was time to upgrade our secondary camera.

Normally I use my Canon DSLR for most of my photography, but that’s just not always convenient to haul around. Chu-Wan’s got our old Sony Cybershot, which is a lot more portable, but it’s now 6 years old and beginning to wear out.

Based on a lot of reading on Steve’s Digicams I decided that a Canon SD600 was a good fit for us. Very small, decent picture quality and, most important, fast on startup. I can’t tell you how many pictures we missed because of the slow startup on the Sony. (My Canon, like most DSLRs, has a near instantaneous startup.)

Just as I was getting ready to order it, the next generation, the SD1000 came out and since it was basically the same camera with slightly higher megapixels, higher ISO capability and some other technological improvements (for roughly the same price) I decided to go with it.

I ordered it on the 14th from Amazon.com and was amazed that it shipped the same day.

So here’s the problem, I’m tracking the package and this is what I get:

Shipment Date: April 14, 2007
Destination: PHOENIX, AZ, USA
Estimated Arrival: May 2, 2007

It shipped from Wilmington OH. Google says thats 1,893 miles by road and can be driven in 1 day, 3 hours.

DHL will apparently take 18 days.

That’s 105 miles per day.

I’ve ridden further in a single day on a bicycle. That’s slower than the Pony Express back in 1860.

I’m glad I didn’t wait until May to order this, it might not arrive before we left the country.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Commentary

Life on Mars is gone. The final episode aired this week.

It’s past 2 in the morning and I’m wide wake. I’m wide awake partly because of how disturbed I am about the final episode. I did not like it and I will say no more about it so as not to spoil it for anyone else.

Perhaps we could say it is a credit to the writers that they have been able to produce a compelling drama series that could both draw me in and, ultimately, deeply disturb me.

While the adventures of Sam Tyler in 1973 have come to an end, immediately after the airing of the final episode, this BBC press release announces a sequel series, Ashes to Ashes starring Philip Glenister as DCI Gene Hunt, now transplanted to the 1980s in London.

I’m already questioning how they’re going to end this one.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Television, UK, Video

After a particularly short battery-run on my MacBook monday morning, I decided that there was nothing left but a call to AppleCare. Surely they’d replace my faulty battery.
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My family and I have given the Apple TV a heavy weekend of testing, here’s what we’ve discovered.
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