ZHONG GUO REN

Two weekends ago, I started porting BitTorrent to .NET using Azureus as a guide with my friend Pete. We got the different message types mostly sorted out and started working on the BEncoder. The hacking came to a halt when I found out that Pete is going LISA for a week. Now that LISA is over and Pete is back in Boston, hopefully we’ll be able to get some more done before the Thanksgiving holiday.

Last week I decided to buy my first desktop computer, because I’m sick of endlessly shuffling files around to come up with some free disk space. With my iPod half full, the My Music

directory on the Windows laptop filled up a third of the Windows laptop’s disk immediately. After hearing from Miguel about how nice it is to have a file server at home, I decided to get in the game as well.

I have no idea how Dell stays in business, well actually, how others can compete with Dell. I spent $600 last week and I’ll be getting a P4 desktop with a 17" LCD screen delivered this week. When computers are this cheap (the low-end models start from $350 or so), companies like TiVo and others selling specialty hardware will have to work extra hard to compete.

A little secret: the key to getting a good deal at dell.com is to keep track of techbargains.com. Just keep track of when the sales start and end, clip a few coupons, and suddenly, everything is much cheaper.

I updated my blog’s to use the awesome Kubrick theme. I’d like to customize it a bit, and will probably start with making my own banner instead of using the default blue.

After seeing how well the blogspot editor works, I also got htmlarea working in my WordPress post interface. It sure is pretty, but it’s not working as well as the one offered by blogspot.

I tried to install a Wiki this afternoon, for organizing the work I’m doing for Professor Lorenz. I tried PhpWiki, MoinMoin and PmWiki.

In the end, I chose PmWiki, cuz it’s so much easier to install than the others. The rest of them are a mess.

There was a scare just now. All my entries disappeared. I thought I had messed up the MySQL database and lost all my entries. I was just about to start re-importing the old entries from LiveJournal, but I popped into #wordpress and asked for some help. Turns out it was a simple cookie/cache problem. Whew!

Here’s a link to My Wiki.

I walked a lot today.

Walked around Chinatown with Celia earlier this afternoon. Met a guy at Panang with cool hair.

It’s fun being with Celia. It’s nice to be able to speak Chinese. I’d like to see her more.

I met up with Atsushi afterward and showed him the Copley / Hynes area. Bought the new Zap Mama CD.

Started reading So Yesterday, it’s fun so far. A little bit later: I finished it. It was a quick read. Recommanded.

Came home to discover that my Windows laptop is FUBAR. Major bummer.

I started blogging again. I’m toying with my Bloglines client protoype, but I think the smart thing to do eventually might be to work with the Blam guys to support the Bloglines API.

I talked to Mike on IRC. I really shouldn’t be writing code at night. The two bugs that I mentioned have been fixed. Here’s the code and a sample OPML file.

On a whim, I decided to buy a new laptop on eBay. This will be my 3rd IBM thinkpad in 4 years. I started with a X20 in the summer of 2001, then upgraded to a X24 in the summer of 2002. This X31 will be my third.

The DSL man from Covad / Speakeasy will be coming on Monday to install DSL. The laptop will arrive Monday.

I read this last night and thought I have had very similar experience before.

I’ll be heading to Paris in a week. I don’t think the in-flight announcements in French and English will deviate as much as they do in my Pacific flights. I always have the most fun flying to Hong Kong from Tokyo: the announcements come first in English, then Japanese, then Mandarin and Cantonese.

The Mandarin announcer is almost always better than the Cantonese announcer. With Cantonese, there’s always a lot of ahem, ah

pauses; the Mandarin announcer (probably from Mainland China) probably had a lot more training in public speaking than the guy from Hong Kong.

The short version: I pee’d next to Zhang Yimou tonight.

The long version:

I went to my favorite Thai restaurant with Danny on Sunday. As we walked towards the restaurant from the T station, we passed by the Coolidge Corner theatre and I noticed that they are doing an event about Zhang Yimou this week. Having re-watched Zhang’s latest film, Hero recently, I was pretty excited.

I came home and googled for the event. A few clicked later, I got myself a ticket to see Zhang Yimou.

I got there by 7:45 (a mad dash from the office), and was greeted by possibly every single Chinese person in Boston, the place was packed

. I queued up just like everyone else and waited patiently. Next to me was this couple, Kim (Asian, short hair) and Mark (tall, white guy). Turns out they’re big fans of Chinese cinema — they love to watch kung fu movies (Mark’s impersonation of Cantonese and Mandarin is absolutely spot-on, he attributes it to watching each movie twice, once in Cantonese and once again in Mandarin)

The show started at 8:05 and didn’t end until 10. It started with a lengthy introduction by Carma Hinton, an American filmmaker who grew up in Beijing (it was odd to hear a Beijing accent in her English). Afterward, various speakers came to the podium and gave a 5 to 10 minute speech about a certain aspect of Zhang’s work.

There were various performances, in between the speeches. The first one was the usual Chinese folk dancing bit (boring), and the next one was martial arts demostration by Donnie Yen’s mom, master Bow Sim Mark. The performance itself wasn’t all that amazing, but when I realized that Master Bow must be in her 50s and she can still do a split effortlessly (some I sure can’t do), I felt pretty impressed.

During the last performance, an er-hu recital, I got up to use the restrooms. I had my camera in my shirt pocket, but I decided to leave it in my bag (a big

mistake).

At the restroom, as I was washing my hands, I saw a man in a dark suit standing at the urinal. Short hair, dark suit, not especially tall. I got a glimpse of Zhang Yimou while waiting in line. That man looked like Zhang Yimou. I looked at the other Chinese man in the restroom, I mouthed to him in Mandarin: This is Movie Director Zhang?

and he replied, Yeah.

I washed my hands meticulously and slowly dried them, carefully turning my hands, elongating the process. After I walked out, I saw the woman who introduced Zhang to the ceremony. After a brief chat with her, Zhang finally came out of the restroom.

I shoke his hands and told him I’m a fan of his work. After some polite smallltalk, he was shoved back into the theater by the show’s coordinator.

Even though it was great to get to see him in person, I wish I had left my camera in my pocket. Oh well, c’est la vie.

After the show, I got to meet Richard Gordon, husband of Carma Hinton and a personal friend of Zhang Yimou. He told me he will see him tomorrow, and could get me a autograph. They are showing Hero at the Coolidge tomorrow, but it’s sold out already, but I guess I’ll still head over there tomorrow night and try my luck.

Sigh, I’m late.

50 minutes late.

I was supposed to have dinner with Anthony, but I was late.

I feel so bad.

I stayed home today because DHL said they have a package for me from Apple. I’m getting a free replacement for the busted iPod remote control.

Over the weekend, the wireless reception at home got really bad. My cellphone is down to two bars from the usual four, and wireless barely works — I have to use my laptop from a specific corner of my futon to get connectivity.

The DHL man just buzzed in and I went downstairs to pick up the package.

I checked my mailbox on my way up, and whoa! I got a piece of mail from my friend Teresa:

tomorrow, when the war began the legacy download

I haven’t opened it yet, the hand-made envelope looks so pretty and I don’t want to cut it open…

I just read her letter, it is great. Teresa, you have good handwriting!

Some friends at school got a spare invite on gmail, so I have a gmail account now:

duncanmak @ gmail dot com

.

Alex — if you want in on orkut, write me an e-mail so I can invite you.

Yesterday, I got an e-mail from Cynthia:

> when do you take the bus?
>
When I go to work in the morning, ahem, i mean, afternoon.
I'm still on Hawaii time, I need to fix my schedule badly.

Cynthia writes back:

dude, you've been on hawaii time since i've known you.

I got to the office by 11:30 today. I’m starting to shift to PST. Just a handful more timezones, and I’ll be fully adjusted.

p.s. Alex definitely fucked up last night — it got so cold all of a sudden.