Joel Siegel, movie critic

When I created a section called "Obituaries" in my brand new Google Notebook, I wondered whose obituary would be the first I would clip and save into my Notebook. (Fashion designer Liz Claiborne had just passed away last week but as I'm not really that crazy about fashion I didn't bother to save any of the numerous obituaries written about her.)

Sadly, I didn't have to wait too long before that dubious honor went to well-respected movie critic, Joel Siegel, who is known for delivering his witty movie reviews on "Good Morning America". Reading the articles that immediately followed his death yesterday, I learned that he had been suffering from colon cancer and that he had stopped reporting to work just two weeks ago, never letting on how bad his condition actually was. After all, he was still relatively young at 63.

I myself am saddened by his sudden passing. Although I watched "Siskel & Ebert" more than Siegel on GMA--I would faithfully read Roger Ebert's review online--his name was one of the few I had heard of when it came to movie reviews. With Gene Siskel's own unexpected death years ago from brain cancer and Ebert himself ailing this past year, it's sad to see that generation of movie critics pass on one by one. It would now be time to be on the look out for people who would take their places.

Bookmarking and web content clipping

The past few days at my PC at work or my laptop here at home have been spent (aside from preparing teaching materials for my classes, of course) digging up information about bookmarking and web clipping tools.

I have long been copying the contents of news articles that I have found online and saving them in text files. As I'm a big ATP tennis and Federer fan, I have one directory in my hard disk filled with text files containing news or articles written about Federer, whether it is a review of a past match or praise about his game. (I even have a directory full of Federer pictures; he's not exactly good looking but he moves so gracefully on court and doesn't wear those funny expressions and grimaces most other tennis players have when they're striking the ball.) I would also copy articles about anything I would find interesting including, sadly, obituaries of famous people.

Anyway, the advantages of using text files as opposed to MS Word documents or printing to a PDF file included saving disk space. Besides, by printing a web page to a PDF file through Adobe Distiller for example, I would sometimes not be able to save the the entire URL, that being printed along the page margin but often truncated. However, simply copying to a text file would mean I would lose the text formatting--and any related graphics--that often made it easier to read the text.

And then this semester, I decided once again to take on the challenge of teaching a course for the first time. Naturally, this entailed preparing notes for which I would normally look up textbooks or other sources on the Internet. But for this particular course, it was difficult finding one or two printed sources for the varied topics covered, let alone one that was very very up-to-date. Thus the Internet became my primary source for information and, most importantly, graphics that I could incorporate in my slide presentations. The only trouble was that there tended to be several websites from which I could glean bits of information that I would put together for my lecture. As I had practically dropped the habit of taking notes by hand on paper (my erstwhile neat handwriting has sadly deteriorated ever since I began using computers), it became necessary to cut and paste text (and graphics) from webpages into document files.

But how to organize my notes? Just last week, I had stumbled upon Microsoft's OneNote 2007 in our brand new Dell Inspiron 640m and thought it was neat tool for gathering and organizing notes and graphics particularly those from online sources. I was hesitant though to install one here in my own laptop which was running on Windows XP and was prompted to search for similar tools. I had my eye on the ClipMarks extension for Firefox for some time but users complained in reviews that it was a bit unwieldy. When I came across articles discussing bookmarking or similar tools, I discovered that Google had its own tool for bookmarking and clipping online information. (Although I had heard about Google Notebook previously, I thought it was just like Yahoo! Notebook which was nothing but some kind of online text notepad.) And then there were several other similar services like del.icio.us, ClipClip and Diigo. After poring over several articles comparing bookmarking services/tools, I began to lean toward using Diigo. But my usual hesitation to clutter my laptop with more software kicked in and I ultimately decided against signing up for a Diigo account and installing a Diigo toolbar on my Firefox browser. (I'd even hate to have a Google toolbar!) I likewise ruled out del.icio.us as I wouldn't be able to clip text and pictures and save them. Anyway, sharing my bookmarks wasn't my primary goal and I wasn't keen on creating another account somewhere in the Internet (another username and password to memorize).

Finally, after reading about how other people have been effectively using Google Notebook for organizing their notes, I installed the required extension in the Firefox browser of my work PC and was relieved to find that the little link on the status bar was far less obtrusive than a toolbar. So after clipping some text/graphics and bookmarking a few pages into a few trial notebooks, I became fairly convinced that this would be sufficient to meet my current needs for lecture note preparation and news article clipping. Now I have the Google Notebook extension installed in my Firefox browser here in my laptop so I can clip bits for my lecture notes (and it being Wimbledon time, saving articles about Federer) at home as well.

Some improvements to Google Notebook that I would suggest to Google, however, are to enable:

• changing the color of a notebook or section (a la MS OneNote)
  
• tagging (much more comprehensive than simply classifying notes into notebook sections)
• highlighting of text or changing the background color of selected text (and not just changing the color of text)
• sticking a note/comment to selected/highlighted text and not just to an entire note
  
• copying of an image from a webpage and pasting it into notes without having to bookmark the image
  

Glad things of the week

I'm finding it necessary to focus on the positive side of things during these times when work has increasingly become stressful. I'm a pessimistic person by nature so it's quite a challenge looking for things to be happy about everyday. But looking back this past week, I'm delighted to report more than three things that have given me pleasure:

1. Classical music radio. One of my favorite classical music online radios is back! I discovered 90.1 WETA based in Washington, DC a few years ago (while I was in Singapore, I believe) while looking for a good classical music station to tune in to--that is, one that broadcasted a wide variety of classical music and didn't repeat their music too often. I also began looking forward listening to one of the talk programs they broadcasted WGBH's "Says You" even if it was aired in the wee hours of the morning Singapore/Manila time. Hence, I was dismayed to find sometime in 2005 that WETA had switched to an entirely different format, one of news and talk shows. But for some reason, they've decided to switch back to an all classical music format (at the expense of another classical music station in DC tho) just this year. What a blessing that I decided to check back on it this past week. Now I can enjoy my classical music once again whenever I get bored with listening to my mp3s.
2. One last iteration. I've already mentioned that I'm in charge of assigning teaching load to the instructors of my department. The stress of the past week has been partly due to this responsibility but I think that will be over soon since I believe I've more or less finalized that bit. A few details have been on the air for quite sometime since there were still a few people who were seemed interested in joining our teaching staff but couldn't come to a final decision. But after one finally confirmed he was eyeing a job in Singapore instead (lucky guy!) and a former student applied for a teaching position at the last minute, I reshuffled the teaching assignments one more time (changing the assignments of the least people possible) and am now convinced that this is the final set of assignment.
3. Federer vs. Sampras. This morning, I made it a point to wake up early in order to watch a short feature film produced by Wimbledon about that famous match between my favorite tennis player, Roger Federer, and another great one (not my favorite though), Pete Sampras. It was of course that match played in the fourth round of the 2001 Wimbledon tennis tournament where Federer defeated Sampras and prevented him from taking a fifth straight Wimbledon title. The film was appropriately titled "Changing of the Guard". I had already downloaded an 18-minute video of highlights put together by a tennis fan (obviously a Federer fan as well as it mostly included winning plays by Federer) but it was still pleasure to watch the highlights of the match on tv.
4. A bigger home. We moved our "pet" pigeon to our old dog's big cage this afternoon. My father had found a white pigeon (not really pure white, so I don't think it's a dove) on the driveway a few days ago. It seemed weak and didn't attempt to fly away when my father picked it up to put it in a safer place (our cats were starting to stalk it). So for the past few days, it had been confined to one of our small pet cages (about 2'x1'x1') as that was the one my father could put together in so short notice. The poor thing (probably somebody's lost pet, it was so tame!) happily took to his new home and eagerly drank the water and rice grains we provided it. But then I was worried that it would languish in such a small dwelling and suggested that we use our dog's much bigger cage (about 3'x2.5'x2.5'). The pigeon seemed happier with the new arrangements now that it has more room to flap its wings. I've also observed that it seemed much stronger and alert. We plan to provide it soon with a perch and a small box.
5. Rain! It's finally began to rain more frequently. We had a shower or two today and now (he-he, I'm still jetlagging obviously) there's a steady rain. It's rather inconvenient having to bring out umbrellas everytime we have to go out but at least the rain has helped cool things off by two to three degrees. A definite relief from the 30+ degree weather we've been having these past few weeks. Phew!

Bio clock gone haywire

It's been over two weeks since I got back from abroad and I'm still badly jetlagged (note the time stamp of this post). The fact that the past two weeks have been particularly stressful at work hasn't helped at all.

Yesterday for example--the first day of classes here, by the way--I was constantly running in and out of my office to post announcements, to talk with people, to answer and to make telephone calls. (The different department here normally have one or two phones only and these naturally are located in main office where the administrative staff have their desks). And then there were the students with problems with their schedules and enrollment who kept coming to my office. In the end, I couldn't escape so to speak and only got to have my lunch at 3:00pm. It was a relief that there was kind of a lull after that (hmmm...maybe setting my "whereabouts" thingy at my door to "will be back soon" kept people away) but still it was nearly 6:00pm when I got to leave work. So I got home, brought my things to my bedroom, took a quick shower, changed into my house clothes and lay down on my bed to take a quick nap--or so I thought. I woke up only to find that it was nearly 3:00am. I had missed my dinner--which wasn't so bad since I wasn't that hungry anyway having had a very late lunch--and another episode of Frasier (reruns on Star World).

And so, my sleeping pattern has remained thus: a nap immediately after coming home from work (followed by dinner) or else from 9/10pm (after dinner) to 12mn and then a period of wakefulness in the wee hours of the morning. That's usually followed by another attempt to get some shuteye before I get ready for another day at work. Oh well.

It's really strange though how I quickly overcome my jet lag whenever I go abroad. When I went to visit my sister this summer, I was up and about during the day and sleeping during the night by the third day. The same thing happened when I went to Rome three years ago. Of course it wasn't so bad then since there was just a six-hour difference between Rome and Singapore/Manila whereas there's the twelve-hour difference between here and eastern Canada/US.

Oooh. There's a replay of the Frasier episode shown last night starting right now. Got to go to watch. Now that's one non-stressful thing to do, 'ey?

Federer wallpapers

Speaking of wallpapers, I already had a previous obsession with wallpapers sometime last year when I went through a period of creating my own wallpapers featuring tennis great Roger Federer. This came even earlier than my experiments with transforming photos into watercolor "paintings" from photos using Photoshop.

Being a big Roger Federer fan, I thought I'd search the Internet for Federer wallpapers to use as a desktop background. But I was disappointed. There weren't that many and the few available were not what I had exactly in mind. Having a collection of Federer photos downloaded from the Internet myself, I decided to start creating my own. I began with wallpapers with a black background; those were the easiest to make since it was easier to augment a photo with a plain black background. Besides, I actually prefer black wallpapers. Here's one of the very first ones I made using a photo where the dramatic lighting in the photo was such that you'd swear it was a shot in a studio. (This was Federer's match against Hewitt in the semifinals at the US Open in 2005 played in the late afternoon.)
When there weren't many photos that could be easily blended into a black background, I thought I'd try out the clone tool combined with layers in Photoshop to extend the backdrops of the photos to fill in the rest of the background. I particularly love this one where Federer stands out from the hardcourt where the green and blue colors are already slightly muted in the original photo due to the early afternoon lighting (US Open 2006).
It soon became my goal to create an illusion such that you couldn't tell where the court ended and where the wallpaper started--Escher-like kind of stuff. Here's one of the last few I made early this year before the novelty of making wallpapers wore off.
Eventually making Federer wallpapers became such an preoccupation that there were evenings (when I'd basically have my only free time) when I'd spend time browsing through my collection of Federer photos to search for those that would be a good basis for a wallpaper and start working. Often when I had nothing else to do, I'd churn out three to four wallpapers.

Before I outgrew this wallpaper phase, I managed to make some forty-five 1024x768 Federer wallpapers that are up to my standards (ahem!) and am now using for my photos screensaver. I more recently added two more and have also made two wallpapers featuring the Spanish clay court specialist Rafael Nadal. Yes, he may be Roger's greatest rival nowadays (great player but he's a threat to Federer so ... hehe) but I couldn't resist taking a photo of him in a dynamic pose, his teal and black outfit standing out against the red clay court surface and making it into another wallpaper.
All I'm doing now is waiting for Federer to begin playing again so that I can make more wallpapers. Or perhaps in the meantime I can modify the existing ones to use on a widescreen monitor. Uh-oh.

Widescreen wallpaper craze

My obsession in the past few days has been looking for and downloading widescreen wallpapers from the Internet. What prompted this sudden craze is the purchase of a new Dell Inspiron 640m laptop which my sister and I bought primarily for our mom to use. (I already have my own Inspiron 600m--yep, this one I'm using right now--but I often have to bring it with me to work leaving my mom with nothing to use here at home.) As is the case for most new PCs and laptops being sold nowadays, it has been preloaded with Windows Vista (Home Basic) and this particular model has a 14" widescreen monitor which is ideal for 1440x900 desktop wallpapers. Of course, a few wallpapers (widescreen 16:10 and the usual 4:3) are included but as usual I wasn't satisfied with the choices available and looked to the Internet for more. Happily for me, I came across a number of good sources.

My primary source for high-resolution wallpapers I have downloaded so far is the cleverly named website called InterfaceLIFT where people upload not only wallpapers but icons and desktop themes as well. Wallpapers available there cover a wide variety of subjects and are of extremely high quality and come in different resolutions. I got to download my first batch of widescreen wallpapers (probably a dozen) from this wonderful resource to use on the Inspiron 640m. There's so much breathtaking scenery that I have a hard time deciding which one to eventually use.
For the rest of the wallpapers I got, I found the Wallpaper Review most useful. The websites listed there with wallpaper selections comparable to those found in InterfaceLIFT are Caedes and Social Wallpapering. Even Wikipedia has a small collection of nice ones. I don't recall finding much in the rest of the websites since I prefer actual photographs (minimal tweaking using PhotoShop is acceptable) to digital art.

Three "glad" things

There were three things that made me smile today:

• Cat napping: I had to go to my car to get the small 250w AVR which I always use with my laptop or for charging my cellphone whenever I'm at work. (I usually plug my more precious electronic stuff--like camera, my Yamaha P-80, my LCD tv, laptop, printer and cellphone--into an AVR. The electric current around here fluctuates so much that I'm afraid it will spoil my appliances, as it did my nice Sony component a few years ago.) When I got to my car I found the white and yellow tabby, who usually hangs around the area, stretched out and sleeping under front of the car on the passenger side. He was sleeping so peacefully in the shade--the sun was out and it was most probably a scorching 35C outside--that I didn't have the heart to scare him off. So instead of opening the front door on the passenger side to get the AVR which I had placed on the floor on that side, I got in through the driver's side and reached across the front seats to the get AVR. The cat was still fast asleep as I walked away.
• Help wanted and a prayer answered: For a few days now, I had been agonizing over the teaching load of the unit I work for due to the depleted teaching staff we currently have. I had to no choice but to give most of our junior staff a bit of an overload contrary to instructions from the administration to give no more than 9 units of teaching load credits to instructors with study load. Worse, there were still a couple of courses to which I had been unable to assign an instructor. My thoughts then were if only we had just one more lecturer to handle the surplus everything would be just fine. And then late this afternoon, our director came with the surprising news that a former instructor will be flying back home after resigning from a lucrative job abroad and rejoining the staff as a lecturer this semester. That's what I'd call an answered prayer! Hallelujah!
  
• Diamond in the rough: I came across this popular video of a talented contestant on "Britain's Got Talent" while reading a classical music blog at the Minnesota Public Radio. While I'm not completely impressed, there is something about the guy that makes me also think it's genuinely affecting to see his expression at the end of his performance.
  

It's back!

Sometime last week (my memory's so bad these days that I've forgotten exactly when) I went to buy lunch to go as usual at KFC. It was past 1pm but I wasn't that hungry so I decided to order a go-go sandwich. After I gave my order to the girl behind the counter, she asked "Caesar, taco or dragon?" I did a double take: did she say taco? I thought she made a mistake or else that I had heard wrong since I was told a few months back that they would stop serving the taco variety. As soon as she confirmed that they were indeed serving taco go-go sandwiches I chose taco naturally.

Yipee! Now I can once again look forward to eating something with that distinctive Mexican flavour. If only they can bring back their tempura chicken; their crispy strips--which were introduced in place of tempura chicken--aren't that great at all while the new garlic chicken steak is just plain awful.

Iconic music store to close

Another record store has fallen victim to the new trend of purchasing and downloading music from the Internet: Sam the Record Man, once Canada's top music chain, will be closing its landmark Toronto store for the last time at the end of this month. Boo-hoo! Although I've been there only a couple of times during my recent one-month vacation I have to mourn with other music lovers who been regular customers and have fond memories of shopping at the store at Yonge St. The store's interior may not be as hip as that of HMV or Tower Records (which closed recently as well) but their collection of CDs (I spent a few hours browsing their classical music section) is unique and more varied than those normally found in the other record/CD stores. This is truly the end of an era.

While I was away

I haven't posted for quite a while. I went on a one-month vacation abroad to visit my sister, do some sight-seeing and meet with old friends.

Now that I'm back, I'm trying to get adjusted to the time and weather here. Since I had been spoiled by the relatively pleasant spring weather (lower 20's C or lower 70's F) in Canada/USA, I'm now feeling rather uncomfortable in this country's hot and humid weather even if it's unusually hot these days. I have to have my airconditioning system full blast here in my room as well as in my office when I'm at work. I'm also still struggling to get over my jet lag. As you can see, I'm very much wide awake in these wee hours of the morning. I tend to doze off only as sunrise approaches but only get a few hours sleep as I have to report to work already. That's the main reason I practically drop into bed as soon as I get back from work at the end of the day, only to awaken a few hours after.

I've also noticed a few changes here and there which still surprise me considering I've been away for only a month.

First, the rest of the unpaved road leading up to our house from the main street is finally getting paved. The concrete was poured nearly two weeks ago and should be cured by the end of this week. As a result, it's quite a challenge maneuvering the car into the narrow strip portion of unpaved road whenever I drive home from work. One has to make an extremely sharp turn toward the electric post at the corner and back up into the main road again to align the rear wheels with the road. One has to do it properly else I might run over a corner of the concrete portion that still curing.

And then I discovered yesterday that there is no longer a Mister Donut at the arcade. Their lease must have ended last month and probably not renewed due to poor sales. (Sob! There goes my Php10 sugar-raised donuts!). Then today, I was dismayed to find that McDonald's has stopped serving "pink" lemonade (actually pomelo juice) and Milo. Sigh. From now on I guess I'll have to put up with their pop/softdrinks as I hate their orange juice, the totally artificially flavored Eight O'clock orange drink. Blech!

Oh well. It's a great welcome home for me.