I got up in the afternoon because I worked til morning on an ASP.NET experiment.  Time flies when you are having fun.  When I got up, my wife had a good news for me.  My son returned two of his Christmas gifts to get me SOCOM II, a PS2 game.  To thank him, I allowed him to open one of his gifts early, Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando, another PS2 game.  Good news for both my son and I.  Heh.

After that, my wife mentioned in passing that Saddam Hussein was caught.  I was ecstatic but she didn't think it was a big deal.  My son didn't care either.  He cared a little bit about Osama Bin Laden but only as a level boss in one of his games.  We may live in the same house, but our interests are universes apart.

Now my son is busy playting his new game and I am busy looking for excuses to send him to his room.  Heh.

If I have a flashlight, do I have the right to point it a building?  What if the flashlight is replaced with a projection device and the building is replaced with a billboard?  What about projecting advertisements onto people passing by?  Is there such thing as reflective right?

Innovation is great but sometimes it feels like tossing and turning our forefathers in their graves like a Caesar's Salad.

Ron's Log has a nice photo collection of the Golden Gate Bridge (via Scott Loftesness).

Here is my own best shot of the bridge.  I must admit that Ron's shots are harder to take than mine since he had to climb the hills where I just said a boat.  As to the differences in color, I think Ron took his picture right after a fresh paint job.  ;-p

Is it a Dragon?  Nope, it's a Flying Snail!

Wecome to Mount Nevermind News.  We care more about the quality of your life than you do.

Our latest invention is WakaWaka, the new standard for walking.  As you know, the old way of walking was poorly documented and under-specified, opening the door to all kinds of funny walks.  WakaWaka is simply the right way to walk, designed to make you look beautiful whether you are walking to your death or to the restroom.  Also, every fine aspect of WakaWaka is documented so you'll never walk funny again.

To encourage you to walk the WakaWaka way, we have also designed WakaWakaThisWay, a walkway technology designed to enforce the WakaWaka walking style.  Since we care more about your life than you do, we will be ripping up old roads and replacing them with WakaWakaThisWay.  No need to thank us.  It's our job to care more about your life than you do.

Just now, I was passing my son's room when I saw a spash of red color through the window.  Signs of autumn are easy to overlook in California but here it was, right up against my son's window.  I doubt he noticed it though, just as I didn't notice it until now.

Wonderful colors.  Too bad the picture came out pretty bad with reflections and all.

Starting from today, I am going to be beardless.  I used to shave once a week (I think the picture on my blog is about 3 days worth) because I got tired of electric shavers breaking down (thick hair) or cutting myself everyday.  But it looks like I'll have to shave everyday now.  Why?  Because I am getting patches of white hair in my beard.  I don't look like Santa just yet, but I look weird with partially white beard.  Arghhhh!  I want to be forever young!

I have been thinking about how education could be improved with technology.  Actually, I came up with an idea first and spent most of the time trying to justify the idea.  Does the order matter?  Of course, there is more self-hypnosis going on in one direction than the other.

For one thing, I believe too much emphasis is being placed on reading and writing.  A baby does not learn by reading and speaking comes before writing.  Reading is like eating which requires one to digest and integrate what one eats into.  Reading is tedious and forced reading is torturous.  Don't bother thinking too much about these bits.  They are mere justifications.

The idea, which I am amusing myself coming up with justifications for, is learning-by-experience, helping kids learn by letting them just watch and listen.  Instead of explaining how to count 1 to 10 or the multiplication table, just let them watch numbers being counted or multiplied, leaving them to discover the rules by themselves.

Learning-by-experience doesn't require technology, but technology can accelerate the rate of learning by increasing the amount of experience a child consumes.  As to the downsides, the idea turns kids into young couch potatos.  Also, some experiences will not learned but burned into the person's memory, a brainwashing of sort.

Anyway, it was a fun 10 minute break.

Last time I have been in an adult shop was about two years ago.  My wife was in Korea visiting her relatives and I was bored and horny but too lazy to go hunting for some skin.  Yes, it's the sad story of a Don Juan turned couch potato.  Anyhoo, I haven't been in an adult shop for a long time so I thought a visit was called for.  Besides, my wife not being at home widens the range of raunchyness I can mix with popcorn.

While checking out the boxes, I saw that many of the boxes had a category sticker labeled Gonzo.  Gonzo?  Is that some new fetish for the X-Generation?  So I asked the perv standing next to me what Gonzo was.  Despite his apparent embarrasement and suspicion (?!?), he explained that adult flicks with outrageous actions are labeled as Gonzo.  Gonzo!

You see how educational blogs can be?  For more education on a similar subject, read Tim Bray's Debbie does BitTorrent.

Latest Google fad seems to be calculating Google Number (via Elliotte Rusty Harold).  A person's Google Number is the number of results return by Google when queried with the person's name in double quotes like "Don Park".  Bill Gates and Michael Jackson are both around 2,900,000.  Dave Winer is 194,000 and Don Box is 127,000.  My google number is 83,700 which seems too high.

The problem is that my name is not unique enough, which means there are several Don Parks contributing to my google number.  Unfortunately, it's difficult to figure out what percentage of the Google search result is associated with me because results are sorted by Google page-ranking scores which is affected by my being a blogger.  Sampling first ten pages reveals that only about two percent of the results are not associated to me.  Hmm.

Anyway, Google Number is good for ego masturbation.  Try it when you are feeling depressed during the holiday season.  If your head gets too big, go stand in line at the nearest DMV for an hour.