James Lin’s infrequently updated blog
Some songs that have been circulating in my head over the past few weeks (not all at the same time, thankfully):
After back-to-back party conventions, the Olympics seem like old news, but here’s my reaction anyway. They were clearly a triumph for China — all the controversies from denied protests to lip-syncing girls faded away, and the actual competition dominated the headlines. I was proud how well the Chinese people conducted themselves during the games, and I also found myself rooting for China, even though I detest its government. The pecking order for my cheers: the United States first, then Taiwan (or “Chinese Taipei”), and then China. Taiwan won 4 bronze medals this year, 2 in men’s taekwondo, and 2 in women’s weightlifting (!!!).
I’m watching analysis of Hillary Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention, and it’s amusing to see the different (and predictable) slants that the different cable news channels have taken.
MSNBC is basically saying, Clinton did her job, the Democrats are unified, everything is happy. Fox News says, we’re getting inundated with e-mail from Clinton supporters who will vote got McCain, the Democrats are in trouble, there’s still a civil war in the party. (What do you expect from Fox viewers?) CNN is somewhere in the middle. Hilarious.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 2½ months since I’ve blogged. In June, I hurt my left arm that left it in a sling for a week and a half. Then I went on a slew of business trips, I started twittering, and I posted tons of photos (as usual). Looks like blogging got squeezed out.
But recently I got a new toy: an iPhone. One of the apps I’ve installed on it is WordPress, so I no longer have to be sitting in front of a PC to blog. It’s too soon to say if this will encourage me to blog more — let’s see if it does.
Just in time for the end of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month:
Secret Asian Man by Tak Toyoshima is a nationally syndicated comic strip (one of the few, if not only, by an Asian-American), that often deals with racial issues in the U.S. I first saw it in the Mercury News.
One book on my reading list is American Born Chinese [review], a highly regarded graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang, which won the 2007 Michael L. Printz Award for literary excellence in young adult literature. (So maybe I’m not in its primary target audience…) The author relates his experience growing up as an Asian-American through three different stories.
Another book on my reading list is The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8. Lee. The author’s original purpose was to track down the origin of the fortune cookie, which is basically unknown in China, but the book broadens out into a general discussion of Chinese food in the U.S. Lee makes an amusing appearance on The Colbert Report to promote her book.
There is also a film on the origin of the fortune cookie, The Killing of a Chinese Cookie by Derek Shimoda. It focuses more on the fortune cookie than on Chinese cuisine in general. I saw this movie at the San Francisco Asian American International Film Festival, and it’s thoroughly entertaining.
Asian-American comedians are hitting their stride, from 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors to the Kims of Comedy. I saw a bit by one of the “Kims”, Dr. Ken Jeong (who is also a real physician), about his previous girlfriend:
My last girlfriend: 5-foot-10 white woman. I’m a 5-4 Korean boy. Ok, we’re walking down the street, you’re not thinking, “What a cute couple.” You’re thinking, “Oh look, she’s got a tutor.”
Finally, Jeff Wong writes a column for SFGate covering Asians in pop culture, appropriate titled Asian Pop [archive]. In his latest column, he asks whether Asian-Americans in their thirties and older (e.g., me), obsessed with our depiction in movies, books, and TV, are fighting yesterday’s war. While traditional media are still important, teenagers and twenty-somethings are increasingly focused on other types of media, especially online. Have I become curmudgeonly already?
Finally, today’s silly video. Turk from Scrubs brings the flava:
Here are some stats about the photos I took during my recent trip to Florence for CHI 2008. I took 934 photos and videos, kept 907, and uploaded 504. But if you don’t want to experience my trip in real time, you can see my highlights with 350 items, or my super-duper-highlights with only 72 items, a full 92% off the original size!
After Barak Obama scored a 37 in seven frames of a bowling game in Allentown, Pennsylvania yesterday, Hillary Clinton, taking advantage of April Fool’s Day, challenged Obama to a bowling game, “winner take all.”
The long-awaited iPhone software development kit is here, and overall I’m pretty impressed with the amount of power and flexibility Apple is giving to third-party developers. Beating Daniel’s expectations, Apple is giving access to the iPhone’s native API. There are a few gotchas though. For example, only one third-party app can run at a time, and it can’t run in the background.
There was another disappointment from my point of view, and this is because I work for IBM (although the following is not necessarily IBM’s opinion). Where was the Lotus Notes announcement? About a month and a half ago, the web was abuzz with IBM’s plans to introduce a native Lotus Notes application for the iPhone. IBM then said it wasn’t ready yet, and during yesterday’s announcement, all the enterprise hoopla centered around Microsoft’s Exchange and ActiveSync. I think IBM missed a chance to show “enterprise” also means Notes and Domino, not just Exchange. (Whether this is because Jobs was unhappy IBM was jumping the gun and upstaging Apple’s own announcement, I don’t know.)
Last month I had the pleasure of visiting the GVU Center at Georgia Tech and talking with some of the professors and graduate students. Here are my (mostly unedited) notes on their research projects and interests. If anyone wants more info, please leave a comment.