Another dream broken

Woo - things have been a bit crazy recently which resulted in this post being a bit later than I would have hoped for.  Still, better late than never, right?

In a move which is, I suspect, normal for beginner photographers, I tend to take lots of photos of things but only find 1 or 2 photos actually worth keeping.  As a result, you also tend to find that I only post 1 photo of each "thing" before I move onto a different subject the following week.

So I figured there would never be a better subject than a Guinness record breaking ship made out of lego to break this "personal record" for.  Below, a close up of the lifeboats from the lego World Dream - because after a setup like the above, I'm gonna need a lifeboat!

I have a dream

The World Dream is a massive new luxury cruise liner that launched last year and services Asia.  To mark the occasion, the company owning it created a massive model of it made out of Lego.  And when I say massive, I mean Guinness world record breaking massive.

At this point, anything I can say is superfluous to the model itself so here you go:

Blame it on the Pop

Not that long ago, I mentioned that I liked songs with a nice beat. As further proof of this, the latest song that I've been listening to (and the latest video to light up the interwebz) is Blame it on the Pop.



What is great about this song is that its actually a mashup by DJ Earworm. What he's done is created a new song by mashing up the top 25 hits according to the US Billboard and its incredible how well he has managed to incorporate the lyrics and music together into one cohesive whole.

I'm guessing this video has really put him on the board as well. With this video going viral (over 7 million views at the time of writing - not only impressive in its own right but particularly considering that it was only 6 million just a day or two ago), I noticed that a lot of his other videos are getting loads of hits as well just in the couple of days since I first noticed him.

IE in HK?

Last Friday, I took the afternoon off work so that I could go to the HK Book fair with the missus. Before going though, I needed to have lunch so the missus and I decided to go to Central, more specifically to a restaurant halfway up the hill to Lan Kwai Fong.

On the way back down the hill after lunch, I noticed two people standing next to the pavement fence. They were both holding up different signs. I can't remember exactly what was on the signs but they effectively said "Free high fives". Just as I passed them, a guy literally materialises out of thin air (that's the only explanation for where he could have come from!) with his hand raised. I immediately realised what was happening and, being the good sport that I am, I high fived him (the wuss was wearing gloves!).

If this sounds familiar, then you are probably a fan of Improv Everywhere. I blogged about them in the past and one of their recent pranks was the High Five Escalator which, by all accounts, went down really well. I'm guessing this was the inspiration behind the stunt in Central last Friday but to be fair, I don't actually know if this is the case or if they came up with a similar idea all by themselves.

In any event, there were a couple of reasons why the stunt in Central didn't actually work very well.

For starters, the two people holding the signs were standing next to each other with the high five guy just a little bit behind them. This meant that by the time I saw them, I was almost on top of the guy giving the high five. In fact, if he hadn't jumped in front of me, I would have missed him altogether as I was staring at the signs. Of course, this also raises another problem as people will be startled by the whole thing which may make them more likely to avoid the "crazy" high five guy instead of actually giving him a high five. To be honest, if I hadn't realised what was happening, I might have avoided him as well.

Secondly, the guys holding the signs were all standing on the left hand side of a relatively broad and busy pavement. This meant that a lot of people didn't even see the signs as they were concentrating on navigating the street and avoiding bumping into people. When you factor in the different walking speeds of people, I wonder how many people actually responded to the sign and gave the high five.

Contrast this with the IE version where they have the signs spread apart so that you can easily see them and see the guy doing the high five as well long before you actually get there. This lets people get used to the idea first so that they are ready to give a high five by the time they get to the high five guy.

Also, by being next to an escalator, the IE guys have a captive audience. You know that everyone on the escalator will see the sign - the only question is whether they want to take part or not. This actually has the added benefit of peer pressure - if you see lots of people in front of you giving a high five, then you may be more likely to give a high five as well.

Obviously, an MTR escalator wouldn't work in HK as the stairwell isn't located next to the escalators here. However, a better location would have been the mid-levels escalator. Particularly if you did this during the lunch hour rush, you would have had a huge stream of people all going up the escalator with relatively few people taking the stairs. Furthermore, with the stairs being on the right hand side of the escalator on the way up, it means that the people you will be high fiving will all be standing still and will have plenty of time to see you and your signs before they get to you.

Still, it was interesting to see something like this happen in HK and I hope that they do more of this kinda stuff in future.

Damien Walters

I'm feeling a bit lazy so all I'll do is post the below video and ask you to watch it. Besides, after watching the video, I'm a bit speechless anyway!



btw - my understanding is that Damien Walters is an Olympic level tumbler from Blighty who also practices parkour (also known as free running) and martial arts.

Alice and Kev

Strange - I actually scheduled the below post for last Thursday but for some reason, it never actually posted. Anyway, here is what I wrote for you last Thurs.

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It never ceases to amaze me how creative some people can be with their video games. I've talked before about machinima, which is the art of taking a game engine and using it to create a video. In the previous blog post about machinima, I was talking specifically about Red vs Blue which is a comedy video series made using the Halo game but another popular video game used for machinima is The Sims (a virtual life simulator released by EA).

In the past, there have been some pretty good machinima done using The Sims 2. In particular, creating music videos using The Sims 2 seems to be really popular. A couple of good examples that I've seen are When You're Gone, Space Oddity and Thriller.

Just in case you didn't know, EA has recently released The Sims 3 - the latest update in their multi-million unit selling franchise and already, some enterprising bloggers have gone about to see what the new game lets them create. Which finally brings us to the point of this post - Alice and Kev.

Alice and Kev is a blog created by a game design student in the UK detailing the exploits of a homeless father and daughter in The Sims 3. Kev is hot headed, mean spirited, inappropriate and insane while Alice is a kind hearted clumsy loser. Straight away, you can tell we are headed for comedy gold.

Despite the comedy potential, what really makes the blog stand out is the quality of the screenshots posted in the blog. Alice, with no home, no money and a horrible father, often has difficulty coping with school and life in general and the screenshots do an excellent job of capturing her mood as she struggles with her daily life. Considering all the situations talked about in the blog actually happened in game, the level of emotion shown on the characters faces is incredible. At varying times, you can clearly see that she is sad, hopeful, angry, resentful, determined - it all comes out from just looking at her face.

Another interesting point is that reading the blog almost feels like watching soaps again. When I was a kid, I used to watch Neighbours religiously. Just to show my age - I not only recall the Scott and Charlene wedding, I also recall watching Scott meet Charlene, or rather her fist, for the first time. Perhaps this is part of the reason why I enjoy reading the exploits of Alice - at some level, it reminds me of my childhood watching soaps on British TV. Of course, the other possibility is that I'm a sicko who derives satisfaction from the misery of others...

Doctor drills a hole in boys head

Despite the macabre sounding title, this is a fantastic story.

Basically, some kid in Australia fell down while riding his bike. Although he seemed alright, his mom (who is a nurse) noticed a bump on his head and took him to the local hospital. Lucky for the kid, he had a smart mum as by the time they got to the hospital, the kid was slipping in and out of consciousness.

The problem was that the kid had a blood clot in his head but the local hospital didn't have the equipment or a qualified expert to operate on him. However, with the pressure mounting, there wasn't time to do anything else.

Faced with a dearth of options, Doctor Rob Carson obtained an ordinary household drill and called a neurosurgeon. The neurosurgeon talked him through the procedure over the phone and Dr. Carson then drilled a hole into the kids head to let out the blood clot.

The kid is alive and appears to be recovering nicely from the ordeal.

This is an incredible story and a great piece of doctoring despite the doctor being pretty blase about the whole thing (he said "it is just a part of the job").

Dr. Horrible

If you have been following the geek blogosphere at all, you would know about Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. It was a 40 minute (approx) show produced by Joss Whedon as a web exclusive and was really cool and funny.

The show itself was only available for a very limited time online (talking a period of days here) so by the time I heard about it, it was already on the last day of free viewing before being taken offline. Luckily, I did check it out that day. Unfortunately, it was taken offline the day after so I didn't bother blogging about it.

Recently, I found out that the show is still available on hulu. If you get a chance, go on hulu and check out the entire series here (only 40 minutes in total).

PS hulu only works for user in the US. If you need to mask your IP, you can use hotspot shield. It's not great, but it is free (so I guess I shouldn't complain).

I am a geekdad

Recently, I found another great website called Geekdad which seems like it was created specifically for me (the reality of course, is that I am nothing special and there are loads of people like me).

Its basically a blog which is targeted at parents who are into geeky pursuits (like RPGs!). There are a lot of posts about family friendly stuff that you can do as well as tips and hints for parents. I'm particularly looking forward to sharing my love of RPGs with Gerry and Gerry 2.0.

They also have a puzzle every Monday which can sometimes be quite challenging. The latest one (which I have copied below) can be found here. I've already worked out a solution, which I hope is right, but will have to wait until Thursday before I know for sure. Have a go and see if you can work it out.

Your brilliance has created another remarkable device. Your investors are going to love this one but there's a problem. Your oldest daughter comes upon you looking worried. "What's wrong, Dad?" she asks.

"Well, I've got this remarkable invention but it's subject from time to time to three faults: the plasma pressurizes; the sprockets stick; and the torque rings fall off."

"That's terrible!"

"Yes, but in trying to solve this trouble, I've made several observations:

When the seal is removed, button B is pressed, and the lever marked "Forward" is pulled back, the engine overheats and the phase inducer shakes. The pressing of button B, the release of the safety catch, and a firm tap on the cooling tiles are accompanied by a shaking phase inducer and the ocular interface turning blue. If the seal is removed, cooling tiles tapped, and the Forward lever pulled back, the engine overheats and the ocular interface turns blue. When the safety catch is released, cooling tiles tapped, and the Forward lever pulled back, the ocular interface turns blue. When the engine overheats and ocular interface turns blue, the plasma pressurizes. If the phase inducer shakes and the ocular interface turns blue, the sprockets stick and the torque rings fall off. [sigh]"

Your daughter thinks for a moment. "Well, Dad, working under the assumption that the various events each have single causes, not two or more in conjunction, I think I know exactly how to cure your device."

What does your daughter come up with, i.e., what would you do to be certain of curing your device of its three faults?

Church weddings

Can you believe that I have never attended a church wedding until last Saturday?

On Saturday, one of my best friends in Hong Kong got married in a church. Which is funny as when I first met him, he wasn't a Christian and I would never have believed he would be the churchgoing sort. In the end though, love proves to be all powerful.

He met a girl who was a Christian. After a couple of years, when they started getting very serious, he started to go to church as well. I'm guessing that his original intention was to let his girlfriend have a church wedding. However, credit where credit is due - he took his duties as a Christian very seriously.

Anyway, having finally been to a church wedding, my final analysis is - I wasn't missing much.

I don't know if this is the norm for church weddings, but for my friends wedding, he had several of the churchs priests handle the ceremony. What followed was a long procession of priests blathering on about Jesus and Christianity (in case its not obvious, I'm not a big believer in religion). As a non-Christian, I found it terribly boring.

Having said that, it wasn't all bad. The main speech was targeted directly at the bride and groom and was in the way of advice for them. This speech was great in that it was obvious that the priest was familiar with both the bride and groom. Very impressive. I can imagine that, in situations like these, its very easy to fall into a standard speech. Instead, the personal nature of the talk made it very heartwarming (and funny to onlookers when she told the groom not to annoy the bride too much!).

Also, the church choir (I call it a choir, but there were ony 4 people) was actually quite good. Most of the songs were in Chinese so I didn't really understand. However, they did a very good rendition of the song - Perhaps Love by John Denver (at least I think it was John Denver).

Football Manager

As a gamer, one of the most common questions I come across from non-gamers is stuff like, "Why do you play video games? Why not go out and play football instead of sitting at home playing Fifa 08?".

My response is generally that video games let me do stuff I can't do in real life. For example, those of you who read my gaming blog will know that I spend a lot of time on a game called Football Manager. This game lets me be the manager of a football club (this message brought to you by Captain Obvious). As manager, I get to make all the big decisions as I try and take my chosen club to league and cup glory.

I mean, its not like I could do this in real life. Right? Right??

Well, actually, I can.

It turns out that, for the low low price of GBP35, I can buy my own share of Ebbsfleet United. Go ahead and check out the link. And before you ask - yes, Ebbsfleet United FC are a real football team (in fact, they will be playing at Wembley in May) and, as far as I can tell, this appears to be genuine.

What happened was that a bloke called Will Brooks, a soccer journalist apparently, decided to run a unique experiment. By raising funds from the public, he was able to buy controlling interest in EUFC (my understanding is that this was done in agreement with EUFC and was not a hostile "takeover"). In effect, the community has purchased EUFC as everyone who paid the membership fee of GBP35 is considered a part owner.

For the price of GBP35 (per year, I should add), you get to vote on the players which will play. Each part owner gets 1 vote and the actual team for any particular game will be based on the players who get the most votes. In addition, members will also be able to vote on accepting or vetoing transfers.

Although I say you are part owner, that strictly isn't true as you will never get your money back. Its probably more accurate to say that you are a member. This is probably a good thing though as it means more money is pumped into the club for development.

All in all, this looks like a fascinating experience. I haven't joined (its almost the end of the season) - but I am considering it for next season!

TMHPS - The Monty Hall Problem Solution

Last Friday, I posed the Monty Hall Problem. For those of you who didn't jump online to check the answer, here is the solution.

Switching to the other door gives you a better chance of winning the car.

Although anti-intuitive, the mathematical solution is detailed very well in wikipedia. Even if you don't believe the math, at the bottom of the article are a load of links to simulations of this game so you can try it out for yourself.

If that doesn't convince you, please let me know as I would like to invite you to a game of cards...

The Monty Hall Problem

The Monty Hall Problem is named after the host of an old game show called "Lets Make a Deal". Basically, in the show, the contestant had a chance to win a car. Naturally, as with all game shows, there was a risk of winning nothing. So here is basically how the game plays.

Monty shows you three closed doors. There is a car behind one door and a goat behind the other two. If you open the door with the car, you win it. If you open a door with a goat, you don't win the car. Simple, right?

Here is where the problem part comes in. After you pick a door, but before the door is opened, Monty will open one of the doors that you didn't pick to reveal a goat (Monty knows where the car is so he always opens a door with a goat behind it). At this point, you have a choice. Do you stick with your original door or do you switch to the other unopened door?

For example, suppose you pick Door 1. Monty opens Door 3 to reveal a goat. Do you stick with Door 1 or switch to Door 2?

The Human Camera

Quite frankly, this is incredible.

The below is a quick excerpt from a show called Beautiful Minds detailing the incredible ability of Stephen Wiltshire. Stephen is autistic and he is nicknamed "The Human Camera" for his ability to draw detailed pictures of cities from memory.



And for some local flavour, here is a video of him drawing HK (I don't know when he was here - however, I recognise IFC in the video so it can't have been that long ago).

Bungie - awesome customer service

This is a totally cool example of customer service which shows that a little cost at the right time and in the right place can generate a huge amount of goodwill for your company.

A while ago, a gamer called Nathaniel loved his Xbox 360. He loved it so much that he took it everywhere hence managing to get loads of signatures and even a drawing from various personalities in the gaming world. Alas, all good things come to an end. His Xbox 360 suffered death and he sent it in to Microsoft with express instructions to keep the case untouched.

Microsoft promptly wiped off all signatures and drawings from his Xbox 360 (real classy move that!). After telling his tale of woe, Bungie (developers of Halo 3) took pity on this poor gamer and sent him a bag of Bungie signed gear to make up for the loss.

Awesome!

This is a great PR move by Bungie. The screwup by Microsoft had nothing to do with Bungie. Nevertheless, they decided to take action to help the poor gamer. Naturally, nothing will ever replace some of the signatures that Nathaniel lost - still, its a great gesture from Bungie. It has also created a lot (and I mean a LOT) of goodwill in the gaming community for Bungie.

As for Microsoft? They are still "investigating" to determine what went wrong...

Star Wars: The Ultimate Collection

This is not awe-inspiring. It is so far beyond awe-inspiring that we are into scary.

Right now, I'm not sure if I can look anyone in the eye anymore while saying that I'm a Star Wars fan. I'm not sure I qualify...

Neil Gaiman is cool

This is just too sweet.

In brief, a guy in the Philippines wants to propose to his girlfriend. He finds out that Neil Gaiman (the famous author) is going to be in Philippines for a book signing and, knowing that his girlfriend is a Neil Gaiman fan, asks Neil (via the authors blog) if he can help him to propose. And Neil agrees!

Working together with the book signing venue etc, they set things up so that when the guy's girlfriend goes to get a book signed, Neil writes the marriage proposal on the inside cover of the book. How cool is that!

Really not much more I can add to this except to say - "Neil Gaiman, you rock!!"


PS You can find some more photos and a video of the event on the girlfriends blog here.

Die you corrupt official!

For the second time in just 3 months, China has sentenced one of its government officials to death for corruption (you can refer here for an article about the first instance). On the face of it, this may seem like harsh punishment. However, was the sentence justified? Obviously, there are a whole raft of arguments in support of banning capital punishment - so many in fact that I don't intend to go over them here.

The official in question was a high ranking official at China's State Food and Drug Administration. This is the body that approves new drugs for distribution on the market. One of the things the article mentions is that over the course of just 3 months, a team of 12 people approved over 14,000 drugs.

Clearly, these people had very little regard to the health and wellbeing of other people.

Sitting here impassionately, I can almost understand the argument in support of banning capital punishment. However, I can't help but think - what if someone I knew and loved took some Chinese medicine and died as a result of it? Could I be so dispassionate then? Or would I be clamoring for the death penalty for the person responsible?

The honest answer is that I don't know. I don't know if I could be the "bigger" person and forgive in that situation. I don't know if capital punishment should be banned. More importantly, I hope I never have to find out.

However, one thing which does "cheer me up" is that, at the very least, China officials seem to be taking the issue of food and drug quality very seriously. Two top ranking officials sentenced to death in just 3 months - a very clear signal to everyone else in China.

Extreme weight loss

Check out this article about a guy called David Smith who lost 401 pounds in 3 years - and all done naturally (ie without using any surgery or pills).

I generally make a big deal about the fact that I am fat. Having said that, I know I am not obese - just fat enough for it to affect my health and fitness. I really don't know what it would be like to be obese but I can imagine it would be very unpleasant. Looking at this story just fills me with awe that someone could lose so much weight through sheer force of will (and help from the Stax system).

Incredible.

There really isn't much for me to add to that.
Respect.

The CIA - full of smart people

Just a very short post today - check out this link.

The article is quite a long article about how the CIA rescued 6 people from Tehran during The Iran Hostage Crisis back in 1979. Basically, the CIA created a fake Hollywood production company - with offices, film script etc. They then used this fake identity to get into Tehran and rescue 6 people.

To be honest, if you have read the article, then there's really not much more I can say. I am stunned by the lengths which the CIA went to in order to create a convincing lie.