Airplane Films [Movie Reviews]

I've been flying around a lot and consequently have been force fed a series of films. Unfortunately, I'm sad to say that none of them were terribly inspiring. I did, however, get to see Milk in the Castro last week. To watch a film and then spill into the street where it all took place was both emotional and inspirational.

Here are a couple reviews:

Milk
Harvey Milk's journey
film story crescendoes, arcs
Sean and Josh connect
[4/5]

Burn after Reading
Cohens take DC
web of intrigue, spooks, ego
Ridiculous quirk
[2.5/5]

Sixty Six
Boy vies for a nod
Bar Mitzvah on World Cup Day
Bit Cheesy, Stirring
[2.2/5]

Flash of Genius
Ford steals invention
Author draws line, fights machine
standard biopic
[2.1/5]

The Day The Earth Stood Still
Is man destructive?
Keanu decides man's fate
So predictable
[2.0/5]

The Long Shot
Cube coaches football
Girl inspires team as QB
Too many cliches
[1/5]

It's Political Sushi [Oddities]

My friend Marie sent me a link to this. Evidently there's a guy rolling sushi rolls in the splitting image of Obama.

I guess it's suppose to be an homage, but seems a bit weird to me... Its interesting what they choose to highlight as MyBO's key features...

How to be smarter [Exercise Your Brain]

Given that I've left the corporate world to join the startup world, I've been reading up on how to be more creative, more active, and more curious. In short, how to sharpen the mind and be smarter.

I came across this 2007 Wired article by Joshua Green. In short, here are a couple items that Josh tried to sharpen his noodle:

• Eat well, especially during breakfast
• Get a full nights rest
• Shower blind
• Brush your teeth with the opposite hand
• Blast Mozart
• Drink Coffee
• Engage in "Neurobics"

Source: Wired

Wuthering Abe [Books]

There are plenty of books that are worth reading and since the invention of the book, there's been a constant stream of must-reads. A couple months ago I decided to go old school and hit the classics. In Chicago, my commute from Wicker Park to West Loop took about 40 minutes.

So I decided to decidate about 80 minutes a day to read the classics. I started off with Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.

I must confess. For five weeks, I never got very far in the book. Call me unlearned and ignorant but I couldn't get into the book. Maybe it's the environment by which I was trying to read, or maybe I'm not into fiction these days. Whatever the case, it was/has been a mighty struggle.

I'm just grateful I didn't try to start of with a Tolstoy story. Two days ago, I gave up. The fact that I am now in a new city, my commute almost doubled (about an 70 minutes) and still not able to make significant progress in the book was very disconcerting.

I am ashamed that I can't finish such a heralded classic. I will learn to accept the fact that I can't appreciate Wuthering Heights and will try again later on (or so I tell myself).

I've since tried to put it behind me and have started to reading the Writings of Abraham Lincoln. His bicentennial birthday and my picking up the book is pure coincidence--though for a brief minute I pondered if it was fate that brought us together.

My confidence in the ability to consume pre-21st century material has been renewed. I am tearing through it.

Thumbs up to Honest Abe and Thumbs down to the Heathcliff and Catherine.

Contact Solution [Contact List Management]

By Teo

I'm a happy user of the HTC Touch PDA from Sprint. I was able to receive both my personal mail and my work mail. Unfortunately, right before my flight out to California this past Saturday, my phone decided to wipe all of its contacts along with it. Let me tell you, don't play with your contact list right before the plane takes off--You'll spend much of the flight wondering how to get your contact list back.

Luckily, I had exported my outlooks contact list in a CSV file. So began, over the last couple days, my journey to sync up all my contacts. I've tried plaxo but was never happy with it. It constantly crashed my outlook and create tons of duplicates. I found it unfriendly and inconvenient.

Add to the mix that K and I now have a MacBook... (We're supposed to share it, but since my vaio died on me, i'm the primary user...thanks k!).

I've been trying to figure out how to get the Outlook CSV file, Mac Address Book, Gmail, and my HTC phone to sync. If you know if an elegant solution, let me know.

At first, I found an interesting hack on lifehacker. At first it didn't work, but after I linked my ipod to the mac (the ipod syncs to my pc desktop). Course, as a new mac user, I'm not terribly crazy about editing my plist. I'm afraid of breaking things.

But then I cam across Soocial. It's still in beta right now, but so far, I'm a fan. Given how volatile these betas are, Soocial saves a back-up of your contact list and even sends you a copy via gmail. It even identifies doubles for you and allows your to merge them. Take that, plaxo!

The merge process is a bit slow, but I'm more than happy to give soocial some time to prove itself to me.

So one day later, how far have I come? My old CSV contact file that was synced to my phone is now living in my Mac addressbook and gmail. But my phone still has no numbers.

It's all about baby steps.

Lessons learned?
Windows XP desktop + Windows Mobile + macbook + iPod that can't decide if it wants to sync to a pc or mac = headache

Dalai Tweets [Dalai Lama]

His holiness, the dalai lama, joins twitter. Under @OHHDL, the office of his holiness the dalai lama has been posting for about 10 hours and has 3,293 followers at the time of the post.

HT: ReadWriteWeb

First Time Angler [Fishing in Austin]

I'm living through my second Chicago winter and I think two is more than enough. By next week, I'll be out in California.

In the process of moving out, I've started to clean out my e-files. So because of that, I'm going to telling you about a fishing guide by the name of Allen Christensen. Back in March of 2008, I visited my friend Bryant out in Texas. With original plans to check out SXSW, we ended up camping, hiking, and fishing in the area.

On one of the days, we decided to go fishing along lake Travis. Bryant had heard that Allen was pretty familiar with the lake. It was a day of firsts. First time fishing, first time with kettle chips. With a six-pack of beer, thai-flavored kettle chips, and a light tackle rod, I felt instantly like an old chinese man. Loved it.

With my beginners luck, I started to catch fish left and right which left Bryant a bit miffed. But suddenly I realized that my line had snagged on something big. My line was meant to catch 3-5 pound bass. This was a lot bigger. 5 minutes pass by, I'm trying to reel in the fish but at times my line looks like its going to snap. 11 minutes pass by, like spotting the loch ness, we shout as we see a flicker of the fish. It's huge.

My arms are screaming as after 15 minutes the fish gets close enough to the boat for Allen to shovel the fish on board. Turns out it was a 36 pound buffalo.


The stretched line fell back into the water, whereby we felt another tug. By hand, we reeled it in to discover that I caught a bass in the process.

Let me tell you, when we got back to the campsite, we had too much fish with us. Good thing we found people to share in on the food.