Miti with Auntie Lu

Miti was not too happy to be the stuff animal for Auntie Lu.

Still Looking (Snapshots)

Miti in bed with books

Miti likes to be in the middle of everything. Soon after I put down the new books, she was at it.

Halloween Arrived Early

Noticed a group of kids (and their parents) doing trick-or-treat today. The phone camera was not fast enough. I finally find a good reason why I need a small, fast, mirrorless camera like Nikon V1.

Horror classics, a lot of them I haven't seen yet.

A tutu, Halloween style.

Interesting exhibition in Legion of Honor, SF.

Book Stroll

Oh, the pleasure of browsing physical books. Guess which one I bought.

Poetry section of the bookstore. Glad to see my favorite poet, Elizabeth Bishop, is still in print.

Finally, Japanese manga has arrived.

Steve Jobs books are the rage now.

Thought around a torn down house

This deserted house near downtown Mountain View went through a rapid decay lately. First, someone set a fire and burned down part of the house. Several weeks later, a fence was put in and I noticed the inside of the house was torn down. What's the owner's plan for the house? Is it going to be torn down and rebuilt? Will the new house have the same style? Which part of the existing house do I want to keep? (I like the bay window and the inside porch.)

As a software architect I started to pay attention to how real life architecture works. (It's not a new concept. The whole "design pattern" idea was borrowed from the architect Christopher Alexander's work.) The hard part, is the continuous way of building. Building software can become a ever lasting home remodeling (with people still living in.) Without care, you may find the house you are building soon becomes the Winchester Mystery House.

Brighton Zombie Walk

Wow, this is really fun. Hmm, time to visit England again.

Three Wonderful Female Bonding Road Trip Movies

Over the years, I have watched the last two numerous times (the first one is a new discovery), so now I decide to have my own little film festival for strong female bonding road trip movies.

Road trip for menopaused women? Well, something to look forward to...

I love how Whoopi Goldberg said "I am not going over cliff with you two".
She didn't, but in the end, when she sang "anything you want", it broke my heart.

They did drive over the cliff in this one.

Book Stroll

Bookstores are getting ready for the upcoming Steve Jobs biography (next Monday).

Two interesting book covers

New edition of Agatha Christie, larger print, easier on the eyes

Things I bought. The clerk said the cover is evil looking. Guess he is not an Amazon fan.

The highlight of my pretty boring life is my weekly (usually Saturday) bookstore stroll. I usually bought my morning coffee at Dana Cafe (a pretty funky place, today they were out of one dollar bills and told me I got the coffee free since I am a regular), then walked cross street to the Book Inc. around the corner. It is not a big bookstore, but it's my favorite one. Every visit is like a little exploration. I surveyed the new books like a naturalist tried to find a new plant. No matter how good the Amazon book recommendation engine is (in fact, it's pretty bad lately, do they change the algorithms?), it's no comparison to what I can find in the real bookstore.

My last year in college, when I was not "retaking" all those required classes, I spent my free time in the A/V center and listened to the school's classical CD collections. This is one of my favorite (I had a tape version of the recording but couldn't find a CD version from the stores). While browsing the MP3s on Amazon, I saw this recording. It brought back so many memories and reminded me how far I had come.

Occupy San Jose

Took this photo during lunch break. (I work in downtown San Jose.) Judging from the crowd, it still has long way to go.

I made the 90% possible too

I love his story about going to law school. I think I can replace the "law school" with "Physics department". 

Escape to Zombie Land and the Sci-fi World

Just finished watching the first season of "The Walking Dead" (6 episodes only). Though this TV series is relatively well made (if there is such a term for zombie movies), it's lacking of original ideas. The episodes are a mix of "28 days" (protagonist waking up from the hospital), "the Zombie survival guide" (riding a bike and a horse, using crossbows and shovels, the definition of zombies), "Dawn of the Dead" (trapping in a shopping mall), "Resident Evil" (the Umbrella Corporation like CDC), and many other zombie "classics". Like all survival movies, most of the time you find the living is scarier than the dead (oops, the "undead").

Things got interested at the end of episode 6, when the doctor tried to explain how the brain stem got revived after death and caused those "zombies". I suddenly realized we got the zombies wrong. They are fascinating subjects. Because if human body can be resurrected after death, even just the brain stem, it's the first step to immortality. In fact, those zombies can stand all kinds of body decays. They may be ravenous, but they also don't have to eat or drink for a long long time. Nor do they kill, beat, or eat each other. Now, if we can also resurrect the neocortex and other sections of the brain...

Since I am in this Dr. Frankenstein mode, I find Margaret Atwood's new book a perfect companion for this weekend. Atwood dedicates this book to her fellow writer Ursula Le Guin. The book feels less like a collection of essays, but more like her letters to friends. (Now here is what I really think, she says.)  Reading it is like having tea with a fascinating friend. The topic is interesting, the desert is delightful. What more can you ask for?

New Iliad Translation

Do we need yet another Iliad after Robert Fagles's wonderful 1998 translation? Well, according to Fagles, every generation should have its own translation of classics. After 10 years of  "war on terror", the Trojan war of 21th century, yes, it's about time.

Stephen Mitchell is not a scholarly translator like Fagles. (He translated Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching" without knowing much Chinese.) He uses a 5-beat meter (no more Dactylic Hexameter), removes the fixed epithets (the grey eyed Athena), and omitted many patronymics (Achilles, son of Peleus). The result is a very fast moving Iliad. Many of the combat scenes, now read like John Woo's signature slow motion shots (which I didn't notice when I read Fagle's translation). Like Mitchell's other translations, it is not loyal to the original but is quite enjoyable.

I made a mental note to read Fritzgerald's Odyssey and Fagles's Aeneid later. (Both has languished on my bookshelf for a long time.) Most of the stuff I read lately are pretty boring stuff (technology, layman psychology, self help, how-to type of books). This type of reading is "safe", but it doesn't push boundary. I sometimes think I should have a year of reading dangerously: a year of reading novels (David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas" comes to mind), a year of reading poetry (Hello, Miss Bishop), a year of reading comics (they are wonderful), a year of reading classics (I always want to finish Dante). Like everything in life, maybe the time is now. 

Sea Horse and Sea Dragon