We went out to see The Incredibles tonight and all of us enjoyed it very much.  The Incredibles is very well made, best so far from Pixar, and is a true family movie with something for everyone, moms and dads as well as kids.  My wife and son liked Dash, the son in the movie, the most while I thought the neighborhood kid on a tricyle was the best character in the movie.

I highly recommend it.

During the Mobile Blogging session at BloggerCon, I got frustrated listening to people enumerate use cases for mobile blogging because they seemed to be obsessed about serving the needs of leisurely cellphone users who are more interested in having fun than worrying about tommorrow.

Other than greed, I can find little motivation to make the life of brats with six thumbs who go around taking photos just so they can keep in touch with friends.  For me, it's more rewarding to address think about use cases for the forgotten people: people who are struggling with life everyday, people who don't know how to use a computer let alone type, people whose lives might be improved with down to earth application of the latest technologies.

So I mentioned the handblogging idea I had posted about more than a year ago using a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant in France as an example.  Whether it's a small store owner in France or a grandmother selling fish off a cart in China, their customers are increasingly addicted to information at their finger tip yet they are ill prepared to provide their customer's need for information.  Their 'content' are typically valid for just hours or even minutes yet they don't have time to update homepages.

So handblogging comes to their rescue.  Original version of this idea was audio-oriented using telephones as the update device but I think cellphones equiped with a camera will be easier to use.

I'll be at Stanford all day to attend BloggerCon.  Pre-conference dinner last night at Ming's was fun although there weren't any cigars.  I hate lugging things around so I'll probably go to the conference with just my moleskine.

Update:

I skipped the last session, Fat Man Sings, and got home early because I didn't get much sleep last night.  This was my first BloggerCon and I enjoyed most of it.  I wanted to attend Julie's Emotional Blogging session but Larry Lessig's Law session was just too compelling.  In retrospect, I think I would have been better off at other sessions because while Larry's session was interesting, I had nothing in the end.

There was an ugly moment during the Scoble's session, Overload, when a vendor apparently talked about his product and Dave got up to put a stop to it.  Seemingly most of the participants in the room thought vendor participation would be all right and thought that they, the participants, should have the right to decide, overriding Dave's protest in the process.  They didn't realize that, while they thought it would be alright for that session, Dave was concerned about the wellbeing of the whole BloggerCon conference series.  Although his stance might seem harsh to some participants, I think he was right to not give in.

On the other hand, I think he could have handled the situation a little more diplomatically.  In the next BloggerCon, it might be a good idea to ask for volunteer Vendor Watchers instead of Dave having to wade into such delicate situations.

My thanks to Dave for organizing the conference and Stanford Law School for letting us invade their space for a day.  I sure hope Dave does it again in the west coast soon, ideally once a year.

As of 7:31PM PST, Bush is leading in both Ohio and Florida.  I am not sure whether what I need is a stiff drink or a barf bag.

Update:

Yesterday morning started great.  I woke up around noon and took a nice stroll with my wife to vote.  It took us less than 10 minutes and I went to work happily.  It was at the office that the nightmare started.  How could the majority of this country vote for Bush after four years of miserable performance and causing, literally, a world of hurt and hate?  What are they saying?  Four more years of the same?

Urgh just about sums up how I felt since this afternoon.

Not being a baseball fan, I probably watch no more than a couple of baseball games in any given year, but this year I watched 8 consecutive ballgames.  That's right, I started watching after Red Sox lost the first 3 games to Yankees.  Why?  Because, if an amazing story was about to unfold, the fourth game against Yankees had to be the game where it starts and I had a feeling the impossible was about to happen.

One after another, I enjoyed the excitement and the thrill continue on until the happy ending tonight.  My thanks to Red Sox for the amazing 8 games and heartfelt congratulations to generations of Red Sox fans who persevered despite all those years of agony and frustrations.  They must have felt it as I have.  There was a smell of magic in the air throughout the eight games I watched and, tonight, even the moon winked.

I'll cherish those moments as I am sure all those who watched will.

I haven't been blogging much this week because I have been busy with work and my own projects.  BTW, I am planning to release soon a preview of a new server-side news aggregation technology built around a handful of interesting ideas.

First we invade a country on false evidence, causing the ranks of terrorists to swell, and then we let them walk away with 380 tons of powerful explosives.  Now what?  Wait for our troops to get slaughted?

While the technologies of electronic goods have improved over the past decade, their quality have dropped to a point where it is not unusual to see things stop working after just a year.  It seems to me that analog and mechanical parts break down way before digital parts do: switches, latches, wires, power adapters, etc.

For example, AC power adapter for my laptop became unreliable in six months of use.  My typical yet odd state of being busy and lazy at the same time meant I would just wiggle the thing until it worked.  After three months of wiggling, it died.  In the course of trying to breath life back into it with ducktape, I found out that outter mesh of wires was torn somehow.

So I went to Fry's and got Targus universal AC adapter which came with a handful of 'power tips', each tailored for a particular brand or model of notebooks.  One of the tips worked with my laptop.  Again, after just a few months of use, I was back to wiggling to make it work and things went downhill from there to having to do an emergency surgery on the power tip at 3AM.

Once you open up something, it's open for good.  The power tip was designed wide for some unknown reason and was getting in the way of another port right next to the power port.  So I chopped off one of the sides and ducktaped the result.  Today, not the usual wiggling ritual would work so I did another surgery.

Afterward, I could see that there wasn't much life left in it so I ordered a couple more power tips as well as a spare power adapter.  While ordering, I found out that the power tip I had mangling into use was not the right one for my notebook.  Oops.  Feeling sorry, I gave it a name to apologize for my abuse of 'power'.

Here is Igor the Tortured Power Tip:

When Igor's replacements arrive, I will give it a decent burial at sea.  I am sure my gold fishes will make excellent tomb guardians.

Using JDBC directly can get tedious fast, particularly when the database schema is in flux.  Many Java developers use Hibernate, but I prefer to work closer to the metal.  If you are like me, you should take a look at iBATIS (I, Bad Ass?).

Below is an example of iBATIS SQL mapping definition:

<select id="getAddress" parameterClass="int" 
        resultClass="examples.domain.Address">
      select
        ADR_ID           as id,
        ADR_DESCRIPTION  as description,
        ADR_STREET       as street,
        ADR_CITY         as city,
        ADR_PROVINCE     as province,
        ADR_POSTAL_CODE  as postalCode
      from ADDRESS
      where ADR_ID = #value#
</select>

And here is the Java code that uses it to fetch an address:

Integer pk = new Integer(5);
Address address = (Address)
    sqlMap.queryForObject("getAddress", pk);

Simple and intuitive yet flexible enough to get us into trouble.  What more can you ask for?

BTW, iBATIS for .NET was released earlier this month

Doing my share of leaning in to prevent four more years of Bush, I created a simple banner which you can see below at reduced size.  Feel free to use it or spread it around.