Dixie Chicks Strike Back!

My friends from high school
Married their high school boyfriends
Moved into houses
In the same ZIP codes where their parents live
But I
I could never follow
No I
I could never follow

I hit the highway
In a pink RV with stars on the ceiling
Lived like a gypsy
Six strong hands on the steering wheel
I've been a long time gone now
Maybe someday, someday I'm gonna settle down
But I've always found my way somehow
By takin' the long way
Takin' the long way around

I met the queen of whatever
Drank with the Irish and smoked with the hippies
Moved with the shakers
Wouldn't kiss all the asses that they told me to
No I could never follow
No I
I could never follow...

Well, I fought with a stranger and I met myself
I opened my mouth and I heard myself
It can get pretty lonely when you show yourself
Guess I could have made it easier on myself

But I, I could never follow
No I, I could never follow...
~The Long Way Around/Taking the Long Way/Robison, Maguire, Maines, Wilson

This song just gives me the goosebumps... the Chicks won five Grammys on Monday including Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Album of the Year, Country Album of the Year, and Country radio stations in the States are still not playing their music. Even though they are my favourite female country group, I hadn't thought it was urgent to get their latest album Taking The Long Way released last year. Started listening to them after I got their 1998 breakthrough work Wide Open Spaces. Reason why I like country is that it's probably one of the few genres where songwriters can write mundane but truthful things and actually get away with it. Their Grammy wins prompted me to take some action. Had a fun outing with the classmates on Tuesday night, went to Borders thereafter and found that they were sold out.

Anyway, I found it at Sembawang Music store tonight. It's quite a technical album, so more time is needed to get the hang of it. But it feels so authentic and solid nonetheless. Not Ready To Make Nice, which won Record of the Year, is sort of a 'mrbrown's-fan's-response-to-Today's-treatment' song, the indignation felt when being told to shut up when one voices one's opinions. Lead singer Natalie Maines, who's from Kansas, said a week before Iraq invasion "Just so you know, we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas." That promptly resulted in a boycott from the Country radio folks, which probably contributed somewhat to their phenomenal Grammy win... ;p




Source

Lego Mindstorms Controlled By Handphone

I've got the Mindstorms NXT for two months now, but haven't got around to making the various models yet. This is the 'Hello World' startup model, there're many more in the included CDROM and website . Since Lego is to be played as 'sandbox', one can find inspiration from hundreds of other projects too. More lesson plans here and here.

And I've just realised there's also a handphone Bluetooth application. It can be used to run programs and collect data, and drive the thing around using the handphone joystick. My first remote control car!! Run, robot, run! ;p

Obama For President!

Full text here. What a breath of fresh air this guy is! First noticed him at the 2004 Convention breaking the mould of what a politician should, and could, be. Hopefully he beats the lady on the left! America deserves better than the current Shrub... [Picture source] Update (!): A most bizarre thing is happening in international diplomacy and protocol. Obama isn't even US President, and Australian PM, Bush-ally John Howard is already treating him as if he were, scolding him for his Iraq War stand (as if he's the only Democrat or even Republican advocating troop withdrawal.) Excellent comeback from Obama!

Microsoft Vista

Woohoo, Vista is going to be released tomorrow. In case anyone is wondering which version to get, the following is the definitive guide! (Click picture to enlarge, from Joy of Tech.)

Anyway, I built a Core 2 Duo system last month, and paid more than $200 for Windows XP Pro. They'll send me a Vista upgrade in supposedly 6-8 weeks, and I'll need to pay a postage fee of $27...

Update(!): Vista arrived on Feb 4th. So far everything looks fine and loads very quickly, the Help system has been greatly enhanced, and the interface has been improved, with the exception of the presentation of the programs list that appear after All Programs is selected. I prefer the old, more 'chaotic, but usable' presentation. Drivers are not out yet for some components, which I find quite incredible given the fact that the Beta has been out for months...

Sony Ericsson Z610i

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
~Arthur C. Clark

To keep my mental health in a more manageable state, and also to provide sufficient scaling in the years to come when my phone number would probably be distributed of hundreds of young people, I decided I needed to get a new handphone. My first preference would be an SE phone, due to the superior user-interface design (:P) of the SE phone I got last year. Angie happened to be free so we went to a downtown Singtel shop. I'd already done research on the Internets and decided to get the Z610i.

It was only when the Singtel guy inserted the battery that I experienced what Clark meant. The last time I had that feeling was then Steve Jobs did the 'expanding movement' with his thumb and forefinger to zoom into a picture in his iPhone.

For the Z610i, the magic is in the organic light-emiting diode (OLED) display at the front of the chassis. I knew that Sony had already used this in their little MP3 thingies for quite a while already, but I hadn't seen the actual product before. The display looks like surreal little pixels floating inside the glassy plastic. Magical.

The display shows the clock and other information. The icon that looks like the contour lines of a rounded hill represents 3G reception. I have no idea why. If you play music, the display changes too...

The finishing of the chassis is wonderful too. A reviewer describes it as having the 'the look of a drop of mercury over a pebble'. This seems just about right. I remember what mercury looks like from science classes, and the metallic finishing looks almost exactly like it. Then again, it's actually plastic, not metal. Reminds me of the 'is the metal chassis of the Palm Zire actually plastic?' debate years ago.

Sony Ericsson is an interesting company to watch. They were almost goners a few years ago before joining up with Sony. And then suddenly they were making great phones that had the design, the UI, and the backing of quite solid manufacturing materials; my impression is that the plastics they use were better than the competitors. (The materials used for the Z610i is quite out of this world!) And they've been doing really well recently. Anyway, this phone is available for students at $99, supposedly until Feb 16.