Movie 2014.08.26 - Lost in Beijing a.k.a. 苹果

Don't know what to feel after watching this tragedy of a movie. Felt a bit dragging, as there were lots of shots of daily life in Beijing, which could've been edited off. I guess the moral lesson of the movie is that in this dog-eat-dog world, it's every man to himself.

We have a young couple living in some shantytown in Beijing. An Kun is a window cleaner. Pingguo works at a massage parlour. I would say they're happily married, as they have passionate sex once in a while. One day, while Pingguo is drunk at work, her boss Lin Dong takes advantage of her. Amazingly, An Kun saw it go down while cleaning the windows. In his anger, he rapes the wife again back in their place. Making the most of the situation, he tries to extort money from the boss. Unsuccessful, he starts fooling around with the boss' infertile wife Wang Mei. Meanwhile, Pingguo becomes pregnant. Lin Dong was beside himself with happiness. He showers the couple with gifts and nutritional supplements. He strikes a deal with An Kun - if the baby is his, he'll pay him a big sum of money in exchange for the baby.

The baby turns out to be An Kun's. He bribes the doctor to fudge the blood type on the birth certificate, and proceeds to "sell" the baby to Lin Dong. Meanwhile, Pingguo stays over to take care of the baby. An Kun gets jealous of Lin Dong and Pingguo, so he kidnaps the baby. He is eventually caught. Pingguo realizes that everyone is just after their own interests (even her husband), so one early morning, she leaves with the money and her baby.

Movie 2014.08.26 - Maleficent

Another movie putting a twist on a well-known fairy tale.

We have the human kingdom led by King Stefan (Sharlto Copley) and the fairy kingdom in the Moors protected by Maleficent (Angelina Jolie). The two used to be childhood friends, then lovers before things turned sour. In his ambition to be king, Stefan drugged Maleficent and sliced off her wings as proof of her death. Maleficent was so incensed by the betrayal that she transformed from cheeful fairy to spiteful "witch" overnight. On Princess Aurora's (Elle Fanning) christening day, she put a curse on her that can only be broken by true love's kiss. Through the years, she spied on Aurora, and started to accept her. When she fell asleep on her 16th birthday, Maleficent simply gave her a true love's kiss, which promptly woke her up. Aurora freed Maleficent's wings from their shackles, and Maleficent is whole again. Big fight between Maleficent and King Stefan, and his men with her dragon, where King Stefan fell to his death. Maleficent takes Aurora to the Moors to rule the fairy kingdom.

The trailer and soundtrack made the movie look scarier and spookier than it is. I found it a bit boring.

Upgrading the ZTE V9... Again

The Optus MyTab a.k.a. ZTE V9 is currently on official CM7.2, but that hasn't been updated in years (March 1, 2013).

I did some searching and the latest unofficial CM ROM is CM11 Kitkat.
http://www.modaco.com/topic/367844-devrom-cyanogenmod-110-android-442-for-zte-v9/

I was so excited, I immediately installed it. Didn't even do a backup. Wipe data, factory reset, wipe cache, format /system, wipe dalvik cache, flash ROM. What do you know? Installation aborted due to "some symlinks failed".

My suspicion is that the /system partition is too small. I took a second look, and the CM11 thread says it needs more than 185MB for /system. I remember when I installed CM7.2 over the stock Android 2.2 ROM, I had to do some repartitioning. Got a bigger /data, but /system was reduced. So apparently, I currently have a 136MB /system partition, instead of the default 220MB.
http://www.modaco.com/topic/342556-repartition-nand-for-optimal-cm7-setup-2011-08-15/

Instead of repartitioning again, which is quite messy, I've decided to install some old versions of CM until it fits into the /system partition. Started from CM10.2 to CM10.1 to CM10. With CM10, I didn't get any installation errors anymore, and the tablet booted up just fine. Downside is that the /system is now full. Can't even install gapps. So I guess I have to sideload all my apps. Some apps like MX Player doesn't work become of some missing libraries that probably come with gapps. TuneIn runs, but would FC once in a while. My home button also now doesn't work for some reason.

I'm really itching to repartition and install KitKat. Maybe I'll save that for a rainy day.
http://www.modaco.com/topic/342556-repartition-nand-for-optimal-cm7-setup-2011-08-15/#entry1744456

Better QuickPic

QuickPic has a new update (v.3.7.1) since my last post. And now, you can disable the pan and zoom feature. So it looks like I can keep using QuickPic as my slideshow viewer, instead of Dayframe. Sans playlists and weather info and photo details, etc. On an old ZTE V9 with only 512MB of RAM, this makes a big difference.

QuickPic vs. Dayframe

I've always used QuickPic as my default photo gallery. It's small, fast, free, and doesn't come with ads. With a recent update, it now supports online albums from Picasa, Google Drive, Dropbox, Flickr, OneDrive, etc. And its slideshow feature works pretty well, too.

However, if you're trying to repurpose an old Android tablet (or a Kobo) as a digital photo frame, then QuickPic is not what you want to use. For one, QuickPic pans and zooms into a small part of the picture, so you don't see the whole picture. It also uses transitions between photos. Not good if you're using an E-Ink screen, as the final picture ends up blurry.

This is where Dayframe comes in. Like QuickPic, it can pull photos from the cloud, but it can handle more online sources, like Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, etc. You can group different photostreams into playlists. It supports Chromecast photos and slideshows. The slideshow can even display current weather and photo details. You can set up Dayframe to run as a screensaver to run at specific times of the day. Unlike QuickPic, you can disable the zoom feature and slideshow transition.

The only downside I can see compared to QuickPic is the app size. Dayframe is around 20MB, while QuickPic weighs in at less than 500kB.

Windows No-Password Login

Of course you still need to assign passwords to users and the administrator account for better security. I'm talking about the use case where it's your personal laptop, and Windows still requires you to type in your password every time it boots up or wake up from sleep.

Easy way to bypass this. Open command prompt, and type in netplwiz. Untick "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer." Click Apply. It will then ask you to enter your password again. Reboot to take effect. Works for both Windows 7 and 8.1.

Next, go to Control Panel, then Power Options. On the left-side panel, click on "Require a password on wakeup". Select "Don't require a password", then Save Changes.

Movie 2014.08.17 - New York, I Love You

This is one of those 10-short-movies-in-1 like Love Actually and Valentine's Day, where the characters in those sub-plots are independent, but somehow interact with each other within the bigger picture. The main commonality here is that all stories happen within New York.

Two guys hop into a cab, and they decide to share the ride and the fare. They and the driver can't decide which route is the fastest. They argue until the driver kicks them out of the car. A young cocky thief steals from the wrong guy, and gets one-upped. The girlfriend of the better thief spends the rest of the day with the younger thief. A customer comes in to a jeweller's store and they haggle and talk about their religion. Later on, each of them daydream about getting married. A writer hits on this classy lady at the street corner. After a long discussion, she turns out to be a hooker, and gives him her business card. Frustrated, he goes back to his writing, and meets a film maker at the next table. He leaves her a message on her videocam. At the same street corner, two strangers have a spirited discussion about anonymous sex. Then they go back in the restaurant to finish their dinner as husband and wife. A retired singer checks into a hotel with an intent to commit suicide. A bellboy with a walking disability tries to help her close the windows, and falls to his death. A painter frequents a Chinese medicine store and offers to paint the pretty shop girl. She refuses. One day, while the owner is asleep, she sneaks off to the painter's studio, but too late, as the painter recently died.

I liked the story about this guy who was dumped by his girlfriend on the day of the prom. The local pharmacist took pity on him, and offered his daughter as a stand-in. She looks all right, so the boy agrees. Turns out she's on a wheelchair. They go to the prom, and they tell people he's doing it for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. They end up at Central Park, and he gets his prom night wish, too. You know what it is. Next day, boy pushes girl back home. She hops off the wheelchair, and walks into the house. Wannabe method actress.

Last story is about this old couple who celebrates their anniversary by taking a stroll by the beach. And we know all these because of that film maker who had her videocam always on.

Clearing Windows Clipboard

Found myself in a strange situation where new putty selections are not being copied to UltraEdit. I tried copying text from other applications, but it looks like it's not being copied to the clipboard because Ctrl-V always yields the same content.

Try this trick to manually clear the Windows clipboard. From the command prompt, type in 'echo off | clip' (without the single quotes). Or if you're lazy, Win + R, then 'cmd/c "echo off | clip"' (without the single quotes).

Try pasting in an empty Notepad to verify that the operation worked. In my case, I went back to UltraEdit, and the old clipboard contents is still there. So maybe UltraEdit is filling the clipboard from its cache. Switched to good ol' Notepad, and no more issues. (After clearing the clipboard again, of course.)

eBay Tips and Tricks

I've been buying and bidding on eBay for many years now, and I'd like to think I know my way around the system.

The last thing you want to do is to let the seller (and other bidders) know that you're interested. The more "valuable" and popular an item is perceived to be, the higher the price people are willing to pay for it. And as a buyer, of course, you want the price to be as low as possible. So when you see that item you like, do not immediately put a bid on it. Simply put it on your watchlist, so you get back to it later.

Some people swear by automated sniping software, but I'd rather do the job myself. At T minus 15 seconds, put in the highest bid you're prepared to pay. At T minus 3 seconds, click on the Confirm button. Just enough time for the bid to go in, but not enough time for other bidders to increase their bids. There's always a chance that someone else has already put in a higher bid, so if you really really want that item, confirm your highest bid at T minus 10 seconds. In case there's a higher bid, you still have some precious seconds to beat it.

One thing you need to be careful about. When sniping, make sure you're actually logged in. There have been times when I put in my highest bid at T minus 3 seconds, only for eBay to ask for my username and password. By the time I've logged in again, the bidding has closed.

Watch out for items that are listed twice by the same seller. Is it so that he really has two items? In that case, no need to go all in on the first one because you still have a second chance. If it turns out to be a dupe, better make sure you snag the first one. I remember one seller having an item for regular auction, and the same item ending 7 days later with a Buy-It-Now price. It's possible that he really has two E100s lying around, or maybe that's just his strategy. If the regular auction fetches a price higher than the Buy-It-Now price, he can simply cancel the second item. If someone make an offer that is higher than the winning bid, guess which winner will get the goods?