Archive for the 'Miscellany' Category

Puzzling marketing: McDonald’s China 24-hour delivery

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

McDonald’s China has fairly recently launched 24-hour delivery service in Beijing, to most parts of the city. That’s good news for those of us who need a dose of heart disease at 2:00 AM. Here’s a portion of the flyer they’ve been stuffing under people’s apartment doors to advertise the service: My question is: what, [...]

A suggestion to get Apple out of the censorship business

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

After reading Trent Reznor’s expletive-filled mini-rant about Apple’s App Store approval process, which I basically agreed with, it got me to thinking: why does Apple want to be the decency police in the first place? Apparently, when you submit your app to the App Store, they have people using it and looking for naughty words [...]

Mandarin Vocab 4: 专辑

Friday, April 24th, 2009

So, just like everyone else, I failed.  I did not stick with my resolution to post a new Mandarin word every day or two.  However, I have been making a slightly more concerted effort to improve my speaking, and hey, it’s still 2009, so I can come back to it. I’ve been enjoying www.google.cn/music, which [...]

5 great 1980s remixes that are better than the album versions

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

I’ll continue the “5 great” list with these 12″ gems from the 1980s. They may not necessarily be my favorite 12″ tracks of the 1980s, but these are instances where the remix of the song improves markedly on the original version. And this also means it excludes tracks that were issued on 12″ first, or [...]

2009 Resolution: learning Mandarin (for real)

Monday, January 26th, 2009

I’m endeavoring to attempt something never before achieved in the history of mankind: make a New Year’s resolution, and stick to it. Given my desire, it’s apropos that I write this on the first day of the lunar new year, since the resolution for 2009 was: learn Chinese, like for real. “For real” means expanding [...]

5 great fucking songs

Sunday, January 18th, 2009

My last post got me thinking about posting some top 10 lists on my blog, just for fun. But then I thought, “10″? Do I really have that much to say about that many songs? I suppose I could endlessly fill the space with tired music critic clichés, but we should all be spared that [...]

When five is not enough

Saturday, January 17th, 2009

I am a closet music historian, and a not-so-closeted music geek. Anyone who bothers to get to know me finds this out sooner or later. On that “Rock & Roll Jeopardy!” show that VH1 used to run, they used to ask a lot of questions about ’80s pop, and I found out watching that show [...]

On Obama

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

OK, not literally. But I thought I’d write a few words about Obama after the election, and then I ended up so busy that it sort of never happened. I could wait until the inauguration to write about this, in that most apropos of moments, but now is just as well, while the President-elect goes [...]

Skin and bones

Monday, October 6th, 2008

You know, for all our pontification and theorizing and building, the fact remains, we’re all just a bunch of gunk stuck onto a skeletal foundation. All of us from kings to the unemployed, from skinny super models to obese computer technicians to beefy bodybuilders…we’re all just skin and bones. Some of us, though, are more [...]

Unfortunate tool tip

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

To you non Web developers, there’s a special tag we use when we want to make text pop up as your mouse hovers over something. It’s called a tool tip, and if I’m not mistaken, the practice originated in Microsoft software years ago. Now, to you Web developers, if you’re using a single header graphic [...]