Super Bowl XLII Commercials

I logged into MySpace today and there was a message from Tom - you know, Tom, everyone's friend - he told me I could watch Super Bowl commercials on myspace.com/superbowlads, and since I don't get FOX on my TV in Taipei, this was just what I needed.

Or not. 58 commercials later, I was very disappointed. There were screaming animals, talking babies, movie previews, and star appearances in lame ads. There was one, however, that stood out from the rest, and it was a Coca Cola spot featuring Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons (Stewie and Underdog) battling out for a bottle of coke classic. Check it! I'll repost it here for your convenience.

Coca Cola: It's Mine


A look back at Super Bowl XLI and XL commercials.

R.I.P. Lisa Chen (1985-2008)

There was suddenly nothing to celerate at Champaign last night during a get together among several high school friends when we received a phone call about the death of our friend Lisa Chen. Lisa had had a history of heart illnesses, and at 9pm on January 17th (E.S.T.), her heart stopped beating. She had been in her apartment in Boston and accompanied by her boyfriend. She was twenty-two.

Some found it very difficult to accept, and wanted someone - anyone - to call and said it had been a mistake, that Lisa was in fact alive and well. I blanked and did not know how to react. I wasn't close with Lisa, but those around me knew her very well, and I could not imagine what they must have been going through. I looked at them and dared not imagine, what if it had been one of them. It's been surreal.

On her Facebook profile, Lisa had described herself as "a girl with full of imagination ...a girl who likes to make lotss of friends...a girl who can live in KTV room everyday". And that's exactly who she was. You would have remembered her even if you had met her only once. Lisa had a weak heart, but she was a strong young woman.

After Champaign, Jenn, Chris, Elaine, and I went to Cashbox KTV and we sang our hearts out until five in the morning. We sang to life, to friendship, to health, to being alive, and to Lisa.

Dear Lisa, we love you and we miss you.

Ugandan Bloggers Happy Hour

Thank you Ndesanjo Macha of Global Voices for the tip about the film.

I just watched Ugandan Bloggers Happy Hour, a 16-minute short documentary on the young bloggers in Uganda's capital city of Kampala.

After 3 weeks of filming and 10 hours of raw footage, graduate students Annette Jensen, Kirstine Holm Schultz, Maria Munk Jensen, and Sara Michelle Skovborg Mortensen from Roskilde University in Copenhagen put together an upbeat portrait of the several young men and women of Uganda, offering glimpses of a bright future for a continent known to the rest of the world as the dark, the sick, the needy.

Blogger the 27th comrade questions media's romantic perception of the continent. "Have you noticed that whenever Africa is shown on CNN, all you see are mainly little kids with flies in their nostrils?" And the vids are from 1984, he adds.

"Even in chat rooms," Ivan echoes. "First off, they would be surprised that I have internet. Then, they are surprised that I could actually construct four sentences, then, they are most impressed that I have a blog. And then they're like, that's amazing, your grammar is not what we've expected."

Ivan, who has been blogging since 2004 and has two blogs does not spend anymore time in chatrooms.

Topped with a raggae/hip pop soundtrack, the bloggers are young, they are beautiful, and they are eloquent. The film is sunny, it is energetic, and it is a pleasure to view. The interviews and soundbites are wonderful. The montage of bloggers on camera linking these faces to their blogspot pages are effective. The bloggers are opinionated, they are well spoken, and they are welcoming.

"Everything you see there is just about all there is," 27th comrade shows us around his crib.

Watch Ugandan Bloggers Happy Hours here.
Read more about this project at ugandanblogumentary.blogspot.com.

The Daily Show, now online since 1999

Yesterday, Viacom launched the new The Daily Show with Jon Stewart website, http://www.thedailyshow.com, making available online every episode that was made since Stewart's debut in 1999. The new site is better than the original comedycenetral/shows/the_daily_show/, better than MotherLoad, and better than YouTube.

ComedyCentral.com became one of my favorite websites since that night in -i think '04- in college when I discovered clips of The Daily Show online at comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/index.jhtml. There were no ads near the videos then. I can't remember if the episodes had been clipped to segments or if they were viewed in the entirety. Either way, I thought it was brilliant and I stayed up watching the entire archive worth of clips, (which wasn't much).

The archive grew, then one day, an ad from Sprint PCS was placed alongside the video. It felt 15 seconds long and ComedyCentral.com said it was "payin' the bills". I didn't mind it. Some time later, MotherLoad was launched. It was fully ad-supported and became what is now the central video platform that houses all Comedy Central shows.

Sometime during this evolution, YouTube was created and became immensely popular. In March 2007, Comedy Central's parent company, Viacom filed a complaint against YouTube and was suing Google for USD1 million for the amount of Daily Show, South Park, and Colbert Report footage that was found on the video-sharing website. There were nearly 160,000 of them.

As reported in the L.A. Times yesterday, 13,000 clips and every minute of the last 7 years of The Daily Show are now digitally archived on the new Daily Show website and are searchable by both date and topic. Go on, take a look. With boxes like 'coverage of today's news' and 'world leaders' and subcatagories like 'guests,' and 'news team', the site reads, feels, and looks like a full out news website.

As for me, I am happier than before. I can now get 7 years -and counting- worth of Daily fix. Oh Viacom. How good you are to me.

Radiohead, In Rainbows

(Art work from Radiohead's Dead Air Space site)

Listening right now to Radiohead's new album In Rainbows that I downloaded from the band's website. In full support of its digital experiment of letting consumers pay as we wish, I put down EUR3.50 plus EUR0.45 transaction fee for a total of USD5.60 for this 10-track album. This experiment bypasses a record label company all together (they currently don't have one) as Radiohead revolutionizes - and scares the crap out of the executives of - the industry with this DIY album release.

This album - their first since the 2004 Hail to the Thief - is definitely worth more than USD5.60, but I am a cheap recent graduate, and this marks the first music album I'd paid for in years. In fact, I can't remember the last album I bought.

The tracks came inside a zip file. I could not send or transfer individual MP3 files via MSN to someone else, but I could send the entire zip file. It frustrated me also that I could not upload the files onto iTune nor my iPod for listening on the road, but I was very happy to be hearing what I am now hearing.

I have always loved Radiohead for its musical experimentation and reinvention. In Rainbows is another genius of Radiohead at work. It stunned me and I thought Thom Yorke's voice was at once nostalgic and haunting. The music is rocking, it's artsy, it's live-sounding, it's synthesised, it's ambient, it's anti-ambient, it's melodic, it's jazzy, it's satisfying, and it's just a little poppy at times.

Pete Paphides of Times Online UK writes, "This insidious index of sonic surprises is stacking up in my mind, like planes waiting to land. The trick, I guess, is to give your fans what they didn't know they wanted. Radiohead, old hands at this, have been doing it for over a decade now. With In Rainbows, they appear to have done it again."

I would gladly pay the premium to see them live.

Butterfly kisses Elmo

A butterfly was stuck inside the office today, fluttering about, landing on whatever that's red. She thought Elmo was a flower!!!

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

I finally got the pictures and video uploaded from my trip to Cambodia a month and a half ago. Upon arrival, Geoffrey Cain, who had spent this past summer in Phnom Penh researching human organ trafficing, took Preetam Rai and I on a tour through the infamous Steung Meanchey Garbage Dump in southern Phnom Penh.



I'd never seen anything like this before. It was - litereally - mountains of garbage. The area was about two miles wide.



Here is another look, taken by my little Casio EX-S100:



So I didn't fly to Phnom Penh just to see the dump. I had heard about the vibrant blogging community in Cambodia from Preetam Rai whom I had met at Wikimania in Taipei early August. Preetam is the Southeast Asia editor at Global Voices and is incredibly knowledgable about bloggers in the region. I was doing research on blogging and he informed me that bloggers in Cambodia were organizing their first-ever bloggers conference.

When I googled "Cambodia blog conference," I found this post where an early announcement of the summit was made. I learned about the outreach project a team of five young bloggers had been doing and was immediately intrigued.

The Cloggers (Cambodian + bloggers) Team (Be Chantra, Dee Dee Doll, Kalyan Keo, Mean Lux, and Viirak Hor) had been training university students around Phnom Penh and Siem Reap on connecting to the World Wide Web and setting up their own weblogs. The Personal Information Technology Workshop has reached some 1,700 students since 2005. Now they were having their first-ever bloggers conference.

The two-day Cloggers Summit took place at Pannasatra University and featured a mix of local and international cast of speakers and panelists. The Team had solicited funding from their respective bosses and gathered support from an internet service provider who equipped the ampitheatre with computers and wifi services that made live blogging possible. Registration of the event took place entirely on a wiki page. And the opening of the summit included a video-conference with a member of the Team who was not able to make to the conference.


Left to right: Sreynim Song, Phatry Pan, Mean Lux, Viirak Hor, Pagna, Be Chantra, John Weeks, Geoffrey Cain, Preetam Rai. (Photo taken by Beth Kanter)

The organizers were dedicated and energetic. The event was very well-organized, informative, and very engaging. It was frankly a lot of fun to attend. The summit also made international headlines on International Herald Tribune, CNN, USA Today, etc. Check out the my blogroll on some of Cambodia's bloggers.

Everything is blocked by the Great Firewall of China (.org)

Duuuuuuh. The Chinese censorship testing website, greatfirewallofchina.org is in its 1.0 infancy stage and is completely flawed. Every web address tested turns up blocked, even CCTV.com, Badu.com, and Sina.com.cn. I am very disappointed.

For your interest, here are the words you never see in Chinese cyberspace, a "hit-list" compiled by QQ, China's instant messaging service, obtained in 2004 by Xiao Qing, Director of the China Internet Project at UC Berkeley.

Here is another list, Keywords used to filter web content compiled by an undisclosed weblog hosting company, obtained by the Washington Post in 2006.

Why do these companies self-censor? To put it simply, very simply, because every internet service provider and internet content provider operating in China signed a voluntary Public Pledge of Serlf-Regulation and Professional Ethics for China Internet Industry with the Internet Society of China. Click here for the full text.

Testing the Great Firewall of China

I just learned about the website http://greatfirewallofchina.org that lets you type in any URL to test whether it's blocked in China. I have a feeling this is going to occupy me for the rest of this weekend while Typhoon Sepat hits.

A pledge to abide by copyright laws

In the previous 146 posts I have made on this blog since April 2005, I have made - o, let me count - more than 34 posts that violate copyright laws. All of the 34-some posts forementioned are dated after October 2006 (I have made 70 posts during this time, so the ratio itself is incriminating.) The use of the copyrighted material include text (reprinting in verbatim the full content of newspaper articles from, most likely, New York Times and Washington Post); photographs (reusing images published by news agencies, most often, AP and NYT); and videos (redistributing TV commercials by corporations such as Geiko and Apple). In the last 10 months, I created new posts with these copyrighted material in mind and completed my show-and-tell as I blatantly copied-and-pasted, and hit, "publish post". Other times, I used the text/images/videos to accompany or support my now-seldom original content.

I used to think my reproduction of the copyrighted material were informing and enriching the public, and since I wasn't making money from my blog and since I always cited the source - I thought I was exempt from copyright laws. After all, I was contributing information. That's just wrong. After having researched for the past two months many things Web2.0, attended Wikimania, the annual Wikimedia Conference, and learned a thing or two about Creative Commons, the only way to share. legally reuse and remix original material, it is my time to make the pledge.

I, Em Wu, shall, from now on, abide by all copyright laws to the best of my knowledge. It is my duty as a netizen to expand my knowledge of copyright laws to further the practice of fair use and the education of others. It is also in my interest and the interest of others that I begin the process of removing copyrighted material from my weblog.

The Stranger/ The Outsider/ L'Etranger/ Lo Strainiero/ 異鄉人/ El Extranjero

by Albert Camus
1942

Grabbed the book off of Dad's shelf today. Besides reading it, I wondered how many different editions I could find on the web. I found 52 total. Here are the results. Know of a cover that's not here? Let me know.

Update: Enid pointed me to Spanish covers I'd missed. There are 12 additional covers, bringing the total number up to 62.

Update 2: A look at Wikipedia's entry on Albert Camus.

Update 3: I took off the images, but I left the links there, you can still view. I must say, it was REALLY fun putting together all the images. Oh well.

English
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
French
14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.
German
24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.
Russian
31.
Korean
32.
Hungarian
33.
Chinese
34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.
Italian
40. 41. 42. 43.
Spanish
44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.
Cinema, Stage, and Recording
55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

At last, I came across this really cool image:


(Ferment Magazine)

A 3-stories installation of L'Etranger and Le Petit Prince forming the entrance to the Cité du Livre, Aix-en-Province's city library. Taken between March and April of 2005 by Roy Lisker.

Taiwan vlogs disappoint

I am starting to love my job. I Google and I YouTube, all day.

I was looking around on im.tv/vlog (Taiwan's YouTube) today looking for vloggers (video bloggers) who post online diaries. Instead, I found girls' photo slide shows (lots of them) and girls singing to the camera, KTV style (also lots of them). They were boring.

Here is a guy who logs daily on pen-spinning videos he finds on the web.

I didn't mind watching meme‧lin's videos that she records during her shifts at Family Mart. Meme is cute in her Family Mart uniform, though not disgustingly cute. The clips are simple, unpretentious, kind of sweet, and very short (one-minute each). In one episode, she names the handle of a golf club and the shaft of a golf club and declares it a golf club. In another, she enthusiastically tells viewers about the NT$10-off promotion at Family Mart. In a more technically sophisticated clip, Meme intercuts shots of her friends' motorcycle trip to Kenting while she is stuck at Family Mart.

Here's a nice video tbchung(是拾墨玩藝派) made about Miao-li's Xi-hu Village (苗栗西湖鄉). It captures a serene, beautiful, and extremely rural part of the island. It's disorienting thinking that it's 2007 and there're still water-buffalo on the roads. I've got to see it for myself one day.

21-year-old AndY, a Taiwanese parachute kid of 10 years in Vancouver, made/put-together this music video of a rap he wrote for Taiwanese children, called Taiwan's Children. It's not at all anarchistic but it's a good effort. Good use of clips and his music, despite his confused -and confusing- interchange between calling the country Taiwan and calling it Republic of China. It seems that young AndY hasn't made up his mind about who we are. In addition to this music video, he logs about his 21st-birthday bash, his plane trip back to Taipei, his basketball games, his love for hip-pop (he's a fan of Eminem), his day-trip to Seattle in his BMW, etc.

A decade of blogging

Happy blogiversary. A look at the decade of weblogs in the Wall Street Journal this weekend:

"It's been 10 years since the blog was born. Love them or hate them, they've roiled presidential campaigns and given everyman a global soapbox. Twelve commentators -- including Tom Wolfe, Newt Gingrich, the SEC's Christopher Cox and actress-turned-blogger Mia Farrow -- on what blogs mean to them."

Plus, a Q&A with Blogger.com engineers and managers on the evolution of blogging, and more.

A scene from 25th Hour

I am archiving this mainly for myself, for I truly love this film. I saw this at AMC Loews Boston Common in January '03 and was all sorts of emotions afterwards. I am posting this scene simply because it's one of the best monologues and montages out there. Watch it.

25th Hour (2002)
Written by
David Benoiff (novel and script)

Directed by
Spike Lee

Performed by
Edward Norton (Monty Brogan)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Jacob Elinsky)
Barry Pepper (Frank Slaughtery)
Rosario Dawson (Naturelle Riviera)
Anna Paquin (Mary D'Annunzio)
Brian Cox (James Brogan)

TRT: 135 mins

Below are the last 5 minutes of the film when Monty's father is driving Monty to jail. James narrates a dream of a possibility of a future that doesn't happen.

JAMES
Give me the word, and I'll take a left turn.

MONTY
Left turn to where?

JAMES
Take the George Washington Bridge and go west. Get you stitched up somewhere and keep going. Find a nice little town. On the way, stop in Chicago for a Cubs game. You always told me you wanted to see Wrigley Field.

MONTY
Dad...

JAMES
I'm saying that if you want it... If that's what you want. I'll do it.

MONTY
No, they'd take your bar.

JAMES
My bar. Jesus. My bar. They can take my bar to hell and back. You think my bar is more important to me than you, my only child? Give me the word, and we'll go.

MONTY
They'll find me. They'll find me sooner or later.

JAMES
You know how they find people? They find them when they come home. People run away, but they usually come back. That's why they get caught. So you go... and you never come back. You never come home.

We'll drive. We'll keep driving. Head out to the middle of nowhere. Take that road as far as it takes us.

You've never been west of Philly, have you? This is a beautiful country, Monty. It's beautiful out there. Looks like a different world -- mountains, hills, cows, farms, and white churches.

I drove out west with your mother one time before you was born. Brooklyn to the Pacific's in three days. Just enough money for gas, sandwiches, and coffee, but we made it. Every man, woman, and child alive should see the desert one time before they die. Nothing at all for miles around, nothing but sand and rocks and cactus and blue sky. Not a soul in sight. No sirens, no car alarms, nobody honking at you, no madman cursing or pissing on the streets. You find the silence out there. You find the peace. You can find God.

So, we drive west. Keep driving till we find a nice little town. These towns out in the desert - you know why they got there? People wanted to get away from somewhere else. The desert's for starting over. Find a bar, and I'll buy us drinks. I haven't had a drink in two years, but I'll have one with you. One last whiskey with my boy. Take our time with it - taste the barley, let it linger.

And then I'll go. I'll tell you, "Don't ever write me. Don't ever come visit."

I'll tell you, "I believe in God's Kingdom, and I believe I'll be with you again and your mother, but not in this lifetime."

You get a job somewhere... a job that pays cash, a boss who doesn't ask questions. And you make a new life and you never come back.

Monty, people like you. It's a gift. You make friends wherever you go.

You're gonna work hard. You're gonna keep your head down and your mouth shut. You're gonna make yourself a new home out there. You're a New Yorker. That will never change. You got New York in your bones. Spend the rest of your life west, but you're still a New Yorker. You'll miss your friends, you'll miss your dog, but you're strong. You got your mother's backbone in you. You're strong like she was.

You find the right people, and you get yourself papers. You forget your old life. You can't come back. You can't call. You can't write. You never look back. You make a new life for yourself, and you live it. You hear me?

You live your life the way it should have been. And maybe... This is dangerous, but maybe after a couple of years, you send word to Naturelle. You get yourself a new family, and you raise them right, you hear me?

Give them a good life, Monty. Give them what they need.

You have a son. Maybe you name him James. It's a good, strong name.

And maybe one day, years from now, long after I'm dead and gone, reunited with your dead mother, you gather your whole family together and tell them the truth, who you are and where you come from. You tell them the whole story. And then you ask them if they know how lucky they are to be there. It all came so close to never happening.

This life came so close to never happening.

FADE OUT TO PRESENT TIME

James and Monty have passed the George Washington Bridge. Monty has fallen asleep. James looks on and continues to drive.

THE END

Before Marriage and After Marriage

My mom received this in her inbox today from a colleague. This is quite funny. Read it through top to bottom and again bottom to top. (The English is my translation.)

Before Marriage <結婚前> Top to bottom 往↓看：

He: Thank goodness! The day I have been anticipating is finally here! I can't wait!
他：太好了！我期盼的日子終於來臨了！我都等不及了！

She: Can I change my mind?
她：我可以反悔嗎？

He: Don't even think about it.
他：不，你甚至想都別想！

She: Do you love me?
她：你愛我嗎？

He: Of course!
他：當然！

She: Will you betray me?
她：你會背叛我嗎？

He: No, how can you think that?
他：不會，你怎麼會有這種想法？

She: Can you kiss me?
她：你可以吻我一下嗎？

He: Of course, and I'll do it more than once.
他：當然，決不可能只有一下！

She: Will you hit me?
她：你有可能打我嗎？

He: Never
他：永遠不可能！

She: Can I trust you?
她：我能相信你嗎？

After Marriage <結婚後> Bottom to top 從下往上看↑