Pirates of the North China Seas

Holee crap!!!

From Slashdot:

"Whilst Microsoft was bragging about the sales number of their latest OS Windows Vista, few would actually know that they have only managed to sell 244 copies in the whole of China in the first 2 weeks. You heard that right, and that's the number quoted from the headquarters of the Windows Vista chief (90% national volume) distributor in Beijing."

I would have been shocked if they had claimed 2440 copies...this is just ridiculous!

I guess I really shouldn't be surprised since it is possible to buy US$1 DVDs of movies pretty much anywhere in China...

...the day after it comes out in the US...

...often weeks before it even reaches the Chinese movie theaters...

I've actually watched a couple during long business trips to China (cheaper than Blockbuster), and the main difference is that the quality just gets better as the bootlegs improve. Eventually, the DVD starts to near DVD quality until the day that it gets released on DVD, at which point it's pretty much over.

Enterprising capitalists never fail to impress!

Will Ferrell is a genius

A friend of mine just sent me the link below:

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1754070

I find it very refreshing to see somebody this famous doing something this low-budget and hilarious.

Let's welcome another Walker to the world!!!

The world just got a little brighter last week when it welcomed young master Owen Nicholas Walker to the world. He was born on 4/10/2007, weighing 8 pounds and measuring in at 20.1 inches long!

You can find more pictures here.

Congratulations to Jared and Leah for yet another job well done! We wish all of the Walkers (including little but big Alton) all the best on their newest addition!!!

This just gives me the willies

The following headline caught my eye:

Japan drafts their own version of robot ethics

I don't know about everybody else, but seeing this sort of news just makes me nervous. It might have to do with the fact that we're quickly gaining on the so-called "not-too-distant future", and such laws are now seeming like an awfully good idea.

I wonder how long it will be before our new robot overlords start to pass their own laws on human ethics.

Wulai Hiking Trip

Melanie and I went to Wulai this past weekend and spent a few hours wandering around the area. Wulai is a very neat place - nestled up in the mountains to the west of Taipei. There are some gorgeous rivers running through the valleys, and what makes them particularly interesting is that there are natural hot springs coming out of the ground into the river.

Getting there is also relatively convenient: we took the subway to Taipei Main Station, transferred to the line taking us south to XinDian, and then took a 20-30 minute bus ride up to the actual destination - roughly 90 minutes total.

If you are ever visiting us out here, then I would suggest forcing us to get out of bed early and hitting the road for Wulai no later than 10am - just to make sure you have enough time to explore. There is a lot to see, and you probably want to be able to take your time seeing it. It is also a lot of fun to switch between soaking in the tide-pools (man-made, but fairly natural) and hopping into the river proper (clean and relatively warm).

Here on the left, you can see that several families actually make a day out of bringing their beach gear and just having a blast. We were there on a slightly rainy day (as you probably surmised from our attire), and there was still a decent turnout despite the weather. What's neat about it is that the village has also started to capitalize on its touristic value by installing more parking, lots of restaurants, coffeeshops, etc. Also, since you are way up in the mountains close to the river sources, the water really is quite clean. It might smell a bit funky, but that's just because the hot springs are typically either of the calcium-carbonate or sulfur varieties - the latter being the stinky one.

In this picture on the left, you can see one of the places where the spring water is coming out in the middle of the river and moving downstream. This picture was taken just a few hundred meters north of the shore area shown up above. The rain caused the image to come out slightly grainy, but hopefully you can see enough to get a good idea for what this looks like. One of the cooler things about this is the fact that even on a day as relatively warm as the day that we visited, you could still see the steam rising from the surface of the water around the spring. The water is really extremely hot in certain areas - right near some of the sources, people even bring cooking utensils and food to boil in the water.

I'm not sure if there are supposed to be any medicinal qualities associated with this manner of food preparation (probably), but there were certainly a few families engaged in this wacky form of outdoor cooking.

From there, we headed up the path (roughly 1km walk) towards the trolley. There is a little train that will take you up the path if you aren't up for the walk, but Melanie and I decided (perhaps somewhat foolishly) to make the trek on foot. The walk was quite pleasant, but it is all uphill, so it will probably be a little bit trickier than you might imagine - particularly when it starts raining a little harder :)

One of the high points (somewhat literally) of this area is the waterfall, which is reportedly 80m tall. The two pictures shown here do not really communicate the scale of it, but it really is quite impressive. There is a little commercial village up at the top of the trail, directly across from the waterfall, where you can get a great view while purchasing your "authentic" Taiwanese & aboriginal goods. There are also (once again) more places to purchase food and drink, so we decided to have a nice dinner here before heading back down again. There is also a tram that will take you up to the falls proper, but we decided to pass on this since it was getting late, and it was a bit too dark and foggy by then for us to expect a much better view.

Overall, it was a very fun trip. If you're ever out this way, we just might take you...if you're nice to us...

But doesn't this almost defeat the point???

I just received an offer in my Amazon.com "gold box" that made me wonder if the company that makes this is either clueless or genius when it comes to understanding their target demographic for their product.

Below is an excerpt from the blurb on the Amazon website, presumably with content provided by Taylor:

Experience an easier body fat scale with no bending over or lifting the scale up off the floor to program. The simple, easy-to-detach wireless remote can be held easily in the hands, making programming and reading your body fat and weight readings effortless.

Seriously, if you can't be bothered to bend over or squat to program the scale to check your body fat percentage, then how much could you really care about the reading?

Excellent new Japanese workout program

I found this and thought it was too incredible to keep to myself.

http://blogs.forbes.com/digitaldownload/2007/03/mr_incredible.html