Do you wanna be 008?

A friend forwarded this to me
Consider a career change...

Jamie Cullum is having his first concert in Asia in Hong Kong in June. Happy to see famous-but-not-quite-pop artist choosing Hong Kong to start. Despite of "unique" general culture, how Hong Kong people see musics definitely needs to change.

15:18 BST (British Summer Time, GMT +1, daylight saving)
Wikipedia is sooo wicked (I know I've said it before, but it really is!!!). I started looking at "Internet", then found some term that I wanted to look at, then another one in that page, and keep following links from pages to pages. Today I ended up with this which explains a particular episode of The Simpsons. I've watched this episode before, but then this entry also explains many trivial features in the cartoon e.g. the Utah teapot that appears, a lot of equations popped up to Homer's mind, etc...

Then this page contains the word "belch", which I didn't know what it meant. I googled it, and found this!!! A site containing tonnes of digital recordings of BURPS!!! Saying I'm strange, weird, disgusting?!?! I'm by far less strange than whoever created this site!!!

Buuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrpppppppppp, oops.

Talking about in-jokes, if you've watched Monster Inc's and the making of it (including in VCD's or DVD version), it has explained a lot of pictures that appeared within the movie. I reckon there are reasons behind many many subtle things you see in cartoons. I think the reason is that when the artists draw the pictures, they have time to think about the details of each pictures. Rather in films, producers would just want the setup to look good, doesn't care too much what story is behind a painting in a room.

If you look at the equations that appeared in the episode of The Simpson I mentioned, you can see that every equation has a history. Particularly this:

1782^12 + 1841^12 = 1922^12.
* Although a false statement, it appears to be true when evaluated on a typical calculator with 10 digits of precision. If it were true, it would disprove Fermat's Last Theorem, which had just been proved when this show first aired. Cohen generated this "Fermat near-miss" with a computer program.
* That the formula is false is apparent by inspection: the left side is the sum of odd and even numbers, which produces an odd result, but the right side is even.
* Using exact arithmetic, the left side equals 2,541,210,258,614,589,176,288,669,958,142,428,526,657 and the right side equals 2,541,210,259,314,801,410,819,278,649,643,651,567,616.

Fermat's Last Theorem

There are no non-zero integers x, y, and z such that x^n + y^n = z^n where n is an integer greater than 2.

(Note: a^b read "a to the power of b")

Andrew Wiles proved the Fermat's Last Theorem about 10 years ago. But many believe that there exist a much simpler proof to this theorem, because from notes by Fermat, he simply said "I have a truly marvelous proof of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain." See here to learn more.

Another day

Will he become the next England football manager? Is he the man? Will he do the job better than an English man?

Give your say.

15:17
Marco Fu has fought his way through to the semi final of World Snooker Championship, taking place at the Crucible in Sheffield. Congratulations to him, and also sports in Hong Kong, although I'm not sure how much Hong Kong is really involved about his progress. His coach is Terry Griffiths. And, he's won the first game against Peter Ebdon in the semi-final just now.

Found this on BBC News international version. The technology is quite interesting. And bear in mind that one of the options to dispose of nuclear waste is to shoot them to the Sun!

Many of you may already know that I've reading a book about Chinese history. It's a colourful book, full of pictures, outlining the history of China since the civilisation started. This week, I've reached the late Qing dynasty, when many western countries and Japan were trying to convert China into a colony shared between them. It hurts when I read what they did to us, the Qing government (led by "Chi Hei Tai Hau") was so weak that they signed every contract put in front of them, even when some great fighters were winning wars against the foreigners. People with such power, every decision they make could have enormous consequences.

During that time (~1900 - ~1912), a scholar translated a book about Evolution into Chinese and published it. It mentioned about weak spices being isolated and extinct because of other strong spices. It created a lot of influences on the whole Chinese nation at that time, which eventually the "Tung Mung Wui" led by "Sun Chun Shan, or Sun Yat Sin" successfully kicked out the Qing dynasty and started a whole new phase in Chinese history.

More about the history to come when I read more.

15:54
Another interesting site, in here.

A joke

Got forwarded a couple of jokes today, and would like to share with you:

1. Ireland's worst air disaster occurred early this morning when a small two-seater Cessna plane crashed into a cemetery.
Irish search and rescue workers have recovered 1826 bodies so far and expect that number to climb as digging continues into the night'

2. You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today.
They left a little note on the windscreen.
It said, 'Parking Fine.'
So that was nice.

3. Two fat blokes in a pub, one says to the other your round.
The other one says So are you, you fat bast**d!

4. A man takes his Rotteweiller to the vet.
My dog's cross-eyed, is there anything you can do for him? Well, says the vet,let's have a look at him, So he picks the dog up and examines his eyes, then checks his teeth.
Finally, he says,I'm going to have to put him down. What?
Because he's cross-eyed? No, because he's really heavy

5. A man came round in hospital after a serious accident.
He shouted, Doctor, doctor, I can't feel my legs!
The doctor replied, I know you can't, I've cut your arms off.


Have a nice day.

22:32
After a reasonably nice day, watched a very exciting match between two best teams in the world. It was a real shame that Shevchenko's goal was disallowed, where the defender was clearly slipped. Otherwise it could be even more exciting. Both teams were attacking (compared to the defensive Arsenal from yesterday) and with great quality players, even one of them is not a human being, or he wasn't born on Earth.

No title

Time is getting shorter for me staying in this little hole. Wonder what's round the corner.

The weekend was full of football and music. Watched two matches on Saturday, and played on Sunday. All the other time we were doing this song. It's taking us forever to finish it, sigh.

With a lot of help from AF and LN (both my bosses), I'm becoming a consultant again for a couple of days. But that also means I had to do as much as possible to finish my task at the office. Unfortunately even I stayed til 9pm (yes I know bo, it's normal for you, my poor darling :-(), on an evening with Champions League semi-final, I couldn't get it done. Let SD to finish it for me :-)

Procrastination

A friend introduced this word in her blog. I think it's a perfect word to explain the typical behaviour of a lot of us, especially when we were students. A related article that she found is also very interesting, see here.

Also, from the links I've found this site. It has a lot of recipes for good Cantonese style food, and I think I know her through my friend too. It's amazing to learn the other sides of people that you think you already know, such as him. He always says his Chinese is crap.

Time for me to stop procrastinating, back to work.

Easter weekend and after it

Had a very nice Easter weekend with my friends and brother. Spent the first two days of it on a road trip to the west of London. SL and I drove to Bath, Cardiff and the Stonehenge then back to London, with KC being our navigator, and HY the quiet passenger. Thank SL and HY for booking everything and KC for reading the map throughout the whole trip.

This is also the first time I really enjoy driving an automatic, even though the car (a Kia Mangentis) was quite crap. It was the first time I drive in countryside, on A roads where two lanes with both way traffic, I once got to more than 80mph. Quite fast for a beginner like me.

On Sunday we went for "yum cha", and Premiership match. Snooker with KC after, we both used "stick" from the club and he beat me (3-1) even though I got 71 points from the 3rd frame.

Watched another match with my brother on Monday noon, a much more exciting match (sorry to say that SL). Then had a walk in reasonably good weather. Spent the afternoon and evening staying with KC doing some musics. Good job man!!!

Today is the first day back to the office for work, after 11 months of consulting. It was definitely good experience and it was a shame having not finished the project in the proper way. Well, what can a small potato like me do?

Need to make sure my presence is worthwhile in everywhere.

Some photos

Went to dinner and snooker with KC and PF tonight. PF is a really good story teller, and he has a lot of stories + jokes to tell, and he remembers them all quite well. He also promised me to send me a 詞 that he wrote a few years ago. So cool~~

Beat them both at snooker, though with some fluke.

Some photos as promised.

Sainsbury's building in Holborn

Little Fish playing in Water Rats in King's X

Self explanatory. Quit now please!

Outside and Inside Southwark Cathedral near my flat

Big delicious chicken doner meat and chips + mayonnaise near Old Street

View outside my friends' new place

Just one more day left at this bank

Waterloo under sunshine

Easter's coming!!!

Easter holidays
I have never been looking forward to Easter, apart from when I was in the first two years of boarding school. By then, life was so boring that I couldn't wait to go to somewhere else. Then in uni time, Easter always meant that I had to revise full time. This year, SL, HY, KC and I are going on a 2-day road trip towards Wales, and that's why I am so looking forward.

Last blog and atheism
Can't believe none of you said anything about my last entry. Wasn't it interesting? If nobody can prove that there's no teapot between the Earth and Mars, you can't deny that there's one!

Last Friday my aunt gave me an article about Intelligent Design, and how it could fit into modern Science. It talks about a concept of multi-timeframe (I'm not sure I've translated it correctly). It argues that theories in modern physics, chemistry and biology can still be valid even God used 6 days to create the Universe. Here is the outline of it:

Imagine that God is the ultimate, perfect item, who control absolutely everything, and know everything. He spends six days to create everything in the Universe (from nothing), and put it in front of the first human being (Adam and Eve) a few thousands years ago, such that when these human beings (created by God) investigate how the Universe was formed, it looked like it's been some billion years ago. Or in other words, during that 6 days that he spent in his timeframe, it was some billion years in our timeframe. This, in some sense, fits the Big Band theory. The God started the bang.

The article went on to explain why evolution is not possible, which I think is less convincing and therefore not putting it here. Because of the education system that I went through, I firmly believe that monkeys, gorillas are our relatives.

Back to the manual gear box
I rang my driving tutor and arranged an advanced driving lesson with him last night. I first spent a little bit of time driving near Old Street, to get used to manual gear box again, and also his new car (Honda Jazz Sport, 1.4L). Then we went eastward to Limehouse tunnel, A13, M25 (south), Deptford Crossing (a big bridge that cost £1), Orprington, Bromley, Deptford, Surrey Quay (dinner at a Vietnamese restauray, super nice!!!), and then finally back to London Bridge. This car is so much better than the one that I took my driving test with (his old Nissan Micra 1.0L). It's much more sensitive, the steering, brake, gas, gear box, everything. And it was just a pleasure to drive. And it's not expensive at all (something around £12,000)!!!

Photos
I've taken some photos but have been very lazy to upload them. Will do so soon.

Bertrand Russell

He is one of the most influential mathematicians, philosphers and politicians in the 20th century. I first heard about him when Jay and I were preparing for our interviews for Cambridge in Autumn 2000. His notable academic contributions include Logical Atomism and his famous publication Principia Mathematica (described as "an attempt to derive all mathematical truths from a well-defined set of axioms and inference rules in symbolic logic", truths such as 1 + 1 = 2).

I spent part of this afternoon reading the article about him in Wikipedia (see here). As well as a superstar in his academic fields, he was also an outspoken politician, and famously opposed the war against Vietnam by the Americans.

Another interesting part of him can be found in his Russell's teapot. The fact that no one can disprove the existent of a China teapot between the Earth and Mars, it doesn't mean that it's there. This as a consequence tell the difference between agnostic and atheist.

Related articles:
G?del's incompleteness theorems
Google search result on "Atheist"


I am looking forward to the match tonight. Without a doubt, Arsenal were the better team last week when they beat Juventus by 2-0 at Highbury. But everyone says it's very different at Turin. We'll see.

Town for sale!!!

Saw this news on BBC.

Click here


ebay advert:
Here


Sorry for not being talkative.

Super tiring weekend

Went to a house warming party on Saturday night. Met some people (a Japanese guy working for UBS Tokyo, and came to London office for 1 year, and a girl who's recently bought an apartment in a listed building in London), left very early and didn't have any alcohol. Because of the football tournament on Sunday, really wanted to have a good sleep before having to wake up at 7am. But, WTF, the room above me was having a loud disco party until 3am!!!

When I woke up in the next morning, my legs were still tired. We had to drive for an hour, including motorways, to get to a school near Watford. Can't believe a place that you can get to by tube (Moor Park, Metropolitan Line, between Zone 6 and Zone A), looks totally "non-London". The school has a massive field, with 10+ hockey pitches and many rugby + football pitches. It's like 20 times bigger and 100 times better than the college that I went to.

Anyways, we lost in the tournament. We had own-goal (not by me), penalties, and even a red card (not for brutal tackle, but deliberate handball, not me, DANG!). What a day.

New term of the day:
Blook -
1. One definition of blook is a book serialized on a blog site. Chapters are published one by one as blog posts, and readers can then subscribe to a blook with an RSS feed, tag it, comment on it, etc.
2. Another definition of blook is a printed book whose content was originally posted on a blog.
(definition from Wikipedia)