5x5x5

After getting the Rubik's 5x5x5 for about a month, finally I picked up my mind and dedicated 4 hours straight into solving it over the weekend.

The trick is to reduce the 5x5x5 to a 3x3x3. It is not as hard as I thought, although at certain stages there are steps that definitely need to be memorized, and I simply looked them up online. It was quite fun, but I think I won't do it again...solving the 5x5x5 once is enough. I'll continue to work on my goal of solving a 3x3x3 under a minute.

Geocoding on HK Maps

Finally I am able to locate my HK home on Google Maps!
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=238+king's+road,+hong+kong&ie=UTF8&z=16

Yeah, Chinese works too:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=zh-TW&geocode=&q=%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF%E8%8B%B1%E7%9A%87%E9%81%93238%E8%99%9F&ie=UTF8

And the driving directions somewhat works...still plenty of work to do.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&saddr=238+king's+road,+hong+kong&daddr=mongkok&ie=UTF8

Stumbling on Happiness

Gloria borrowed this book from library today. Like the author said, on first glance I thought it's one of those self-help book. I flipped a couple pages, and it has already caught my attention. Seems it's actually about the study of happiness from a Harvard psychology professor. The mere existence of a quote from Steven Levitt (author of Freakonomics) on the cover makes it worth reading.

Coincidentally, I was just reading 壹週刊 and 李碧華 mentioned this book in her column "有 一 本 書 《 Stumbling on Happiness 》 （ 《 快 樂 為 什 麼 不 幸 福 》 ） ， 由 在 美 國 哈 佛 大 學 任 教 授 的Daniel Gilbert （ 吉 爾 伯 特 ） 所 著 。 「 英 國 皇 家 學 會 科 學 書 籍 獎 」 之 得 獎 作 品 。 內 容 是 以 科 學 角 度 探 索 人 們 如 何 追 求 快 樂 。 還 沒 讀 過 這 本 書 ， 只 是 書 名 吸 引 了 我..."

So it will definitely go on my reading list now.

Sicko

Watched Michael Moore's new movie Sicko about the broken American healthcare system. I can't agree more with this. Gloria visited the hospital and did a couple checkups in December, and we keep getting bills that summed up to a couple hundreds afterwards. We are supposed to be the "well insured" already. A similar treatment in Beijing last year is only one hundred RMB in Beijing, paid in full without insurance. In US every month the company pays almost $1000 for the health insurance for me. Just where does all the money go?

However, I do believe there are some false fact in the movie. Here is a critic:
http://blogs.nypost.com/movies/archives/2007/06/kyle_smith_on_m.html

One of the main criticism is that the entire part of Cuba is false, possibly a propaganda created by the Cuban government. This is totally possible. But still, I don't oppose MM adding this to his movie. Afterall, when you are in a country where 65% doesn't know where London is, and Bush was successfully re-elected, you need something a bit dramatic to stir up a change in people's mind.

You gotta love this video

福佳始终靠你
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j3vh55SSVw

Discussion on 頭條新聞
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXlWG-rQMNw&NR=1

I am glad that Hong Kong people still have the freedom to publish and view something like this (typical Hong Kong style humor). One thing that reminds me Hong Kong still have hope over Mainland China.

Rubik's Cube

After been amazed at someone solving the cube in 2 minutes blind folded when I attended a friend's wedding a while ago, I recently decided to pick up Rubik's Cube. After two days of practices, now I can successfully solve it in about 10 minutes. Still a long way to go...and a lot more to learn. It is definitely fun.

Some interesting facts I found:
- It is invented in 1976 (before I was born!)
- It is said to be the world's best selling toy (but guess what, I cannot find it in Target or Toys R Us)
- The world record for solving a standard cube is 9.7 seconds
- Beyond the 3x3x3 cube, there are names for 4x4x4 (Rubik's Revenge) and 5x5x5 (Rubik's Professor's Cube)
- Someone patented a method to create cubes up to 11x11x11
- There are 4 dimensional cubes and 5 dimensional cubes, and only a handful people reportedly have solved them
- Despite having more than 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 permutations, a cube can be solved in <26 moves.

A little math would show that only a tiny tiny percentage of those permutations have ever existed on Earth.

Ron Paul 2008

Hillary Clinton used to top my list of presidential candidates for 2008, until recently someone introduced Ron Paul to me. I think there has never been a politician whose views align so perfectly as mine. Here are some major issues he mentioned:

- He supports cutting taxes. I cannot agree with this anymore, with about 40% of my paycheck goes into vacuum last year, with a large portion of it funding the war which I oppose strongly.

- He is totally against the war, and argues that the US' involvement in the middle east directly lead to 9/11. A less aggressive foreign policy can be of great benefit to the US and the rest of the world.

- On immigration, he voiced out what the silent majority of the US had in mind - the illegal immigrants ("Undocumented workers"? Give me a break.) should not enjoy a short cut to getting residency, nor should they be eligible for any welfare.

Too bad I am not eligible to vote.