one of the greatest things for apple inc this month should be launch of latest osx, lion. there is no need to introduce it here as apple’s site does a better job.
today the curiosity has driven me to the app store & bought the latest os x. download was not long for over 2.7gb stuff. before installing, un-mounted boot camp partition and stopped running non-apple default applications to make sure installation going smooth. around half hour later, the installation was complete and it is rebooted.
i love the new login screen, the background is simple & also showing the machine is connected with wireless or not and how much battery is left. first time running was a bit frustrated, speed was a bit too slow. and the new multi-touch gestures make the old geeks unconformable. two-finger scroll does the different way as it was in slow leopard.
the biggest problem i hit was related to boot camp. unlike others, i don’t have problem to get boot camp partition mounted. but since there is no more disc for lion, latest windows drivers for boot camp 4.0 are needed to download instead. but the download does not support wireless lan! i needed to unplug the connection to router and plug it directly to the macbook… anyway windows experience index increases by 0.1 point with update of display driver.
launchpad, the idea from ios, doesn’t impress me much for those new functions i tried. maybe i’m out-dated. the old presentation is enough. but mission control rocks, it’s much better than the old expose. and lion runs smoother later. seems something was fine tuning at first one.
changes – i think it’s in quite traditional [h]ouse style except having too few clinic scenes. It had enough cuddy, wilson, the team especially thirteen (their new selling point). and even cg on medical is back.
cuddy’s mom actually loved house to be her daughter’s partner. they obviously had similar personalities.
and the team but not taub who was already miserable with his ex-wife were also miserable. chase wanted to be clean on sex before finding a new true love but failed. foreman wanted to show he is not controlled by house but also failed. thirteen was even more worse after her brother’s dead. she even said, “miserable is miserable, we are who we are, lottery is stupid”.
fix – luckily had arranged two patients (actually three) to make the episode at okay level. main one was typically detective drama way but handled badly. second one was from house & wilson gambling to fix huddy break up & it’s ok with that length of story. 3rd one was putting himself in real danger even he’s done a lot of dangerous ways before. but he should be fine or otherwise you cannot see him in the eighth season.
cuddy only made a cameo again…
after hours – seems like they need to bring few story lines together in one episode in order to make it attractive. this time the combination is quite nice. thirteen finally broke her own barrier due to murdering on her own sick brother with help from chase. taub faced the truth finally after all these years cheated his ex-wife rachel. he’s finally a man. house was stupid in order to get back his muscles. wilson was right on house but what he needed more is cuddy!
moving on – finally watched this over a month after it’s out … medicine for this season finale sucks. even layman can find the problem.
mental problem of the patient is a bit better. it was written that her mind was like house, but that part is not easy for normal audience to understand. both thought themselves miserable, but patient can pass thru it easily while that’s not for house
he told cuddy he was hurt and then said it’s not your fault. so cuddy moved on and house saw she’s dating. he got mad and finally figured how to move on. that’s cut the connection completely.
so that’s normal for cuddy not to come back in next reason.
i don’t like 13’s hairstyle in this episode… but she will be much hotter in cowboys & aliens.
how will taub handle his babies? which one will be legitimate?
P.S. every computer in the show is now mac. but why not cell phones are also from apple inc?
the dig – it’s a little simple for the case but that made more sense for the case. & it's cool to introduce thirteen back. masters should be also credited to get the final hint. taub & his life were actually the same type of persons! it’s nice to keep them in the loop. it’s not odd in this episode without wilson or cuddy passing by. i loved the spud-gun competition. it shows how rock thirteen can be after shooting troy & cowboys and aliens. and how house handled his trouble in a ‘smart’ way.
last temptation – masters is a freak. she started to ‘boot’ her mind into medicine just after wake up. she should be the smartest among house’s diagnostic team members but also the one who stuck the rules most. that’s what house loved and hated. but she cannot stay anymore: 1. thirteen is back at least up to the end of this season; 2. masters is no longer a med student and there’s no internship in house’s team (if that big rule can be broken, she can bypass that internship); 3. she cannot accept the rules house sets. she will be mad and may end like kutner… after huddy, what can cuddy do? just a cameo on masters’ decision? she should know masters’ stuff in surgery and did something on that. btw the chicken competition is so damned funny. how come house’s chicken was not caught after security notified and blocked masters’ way???
family practice – script was good on foreman!!! masters made me feel a bit like cameron.
you must remember this – too good memory the patient is… but the story is a bit dull. this episode wasted the boost of super bowl ads
two stories – ti’s not so normal style episode. script was good to make abnormal scenes forgotten. old performance of huge laurie was shown in front of him & cuddy and i love that. but there were too few wilson scenes. and content was too dirty especially in front of fifth-grade. does house really grow up? favorite: Who password-protects a computer they keep in a locked desk in a locked office? Someone who works with someone who thinks it's okay to break into other people's homes?
recession proof – what a sad story. masters is not dull on social matters anymore? house should be miserable in order to be smart? that’s the 2nd time house thought that issue. and seems long time the team does not use the white board to study the symptoms
bomeshells – is that a good time to make joke on two & a half man? btw story style cannot be used for another episode. sorry for house to face that event so early (after last episode he failed to show up in gala. cuddy should expect he doesn’t show up this time. he needs something to support him but he may choose the wrong one)
out of the chute – patient is interesting, master is interested in the patient (one is outgoing & vice versa) after being a bookworm for a long time. house is interested in being free from borders. he is doing what he can do after being dumped by cuddy. but medicine is not exciting.
fall from grace – house & cuddy can be professional after breakup? do wilson & cuddy have a chance to be together? will masters be in danger after being interested by a murderer?
first one makes me laugh even more than little fockers. and it is the debut of cuddy’s mom who expects to appear more in later episodes. she seems ok to house. and taub finally realized how much he did hurt her wife.
second one is back to normal. actions have consequences is the theme. anyway consequences are not bad at all. chase was played due to his attitude to women on wedding night few episodes before. but he may finally have a chance to change his behavior due to departure of cameron back to a respectful one at last. patient finally has gut to tell his son he is the father after pushing his son very hard as an instructor with no connection. and house finally likes cuddy’s step daughter after his “teaching”. this is nearly a well balanced episode except we miss wilson a lot.
this one should be the worst in “meet the parents” series. casts are great while the script is plain & loose. there is nearly no sparks between the actors as there was in “meet the fockers”. the only exceptional is the scenes between de rino & ben stiller. that seems smart for dustin hoffman not to reprise his role at first.
there may be too much showing of jessica alba. it looks like the debut casts are aging too much and use alba to give some juicy shots. but what don’t they match alba & owen wilson to give a happy ending? clip in credit is a lovely dessert after a fast food meal.
these three are cool except the trolley in 7567 is a bit weak. it’s too big in size while carry only two cases.
more pix are on my flickr.
this year i had bought many new sets but this is the one i would build as i can put it back into the box without disassembling it.
the design is based on smart fortwo. For course it is impossible for holding two minifigs into the lego car. And maybe the limitation of lego bricks, the real world one looks cooler. btw i don’t like the hairstyle of the minifig.
How come they only provide slick tyres? it’s not a mini countryman wrc…
minifig is not feeling comfort inside. he needs to raise hands, sit straight without back support or otherwise hit the top.
finally is a pix of 3177 and 6633, showing generation of lego for around 30 years nearly. of course the new one is smooth on surface and designed on consideration of aerodynamics.
there are problems related to vba being found after i installed excel for mac 2011 on my machine. not 100% excel coded in excel for windows 2007/2010 with common features (i.e. not include active-x or ribbon change) is accepted in excel for mac.
there’s a bug in instr function which makes excel for mac out of memory. when you use an if function & one of its criteria is based on result of instr function, it fails. the code is like below:
if instr(1, cells(x,y), zzzz, 1) = 0 and cells(a,b) = “ccc”
…
end if
another scene is if the cells are filled with date, the date format is affected & overridden by mac os x language setting. vba cannot detect those fields either or make excel out of memory.
and when you make changes in excel for mac, digital cert included in the spreadsheet is lost & you need to mount it back in windows version again before you can make the code live again.
it should be the must buy album in this year. the songs extra in deluxe version are also worthy.
the favourite is speak now, the title song.
premiere – should it be a 3-hourr season 6 finale instead of putting it in season 7? at least two things could be put in season 6: huddy finally come together which means of many sex scenes, and there’s temporary leave for thirteen to allow olivia wilde to focus on big screen. anyway the team could still solve simple cases even without guidance of house. and we can see the new opening credit (old one) after change of casts (why not execute the option of showing cameron a little bit more). the episode is still ok except of too juicy.
2nd – many people may have the same feeling when your loved one is your boss / co-worker. and the story came to a sad ending which made me feel a bit like how amber died. in total, it was not so juicy as the premiere!
3rd – this one so far was the best one in the season. it came back to the root of detective story which it’s based. the patient who is a detective story writer is actually a tribute to arthur conan doyle & agatha christie. it showed how the mind of writers is and made us remember “everybody lies”. you could also hear famous star wars phrase from wilson, “i have a bad feeling about this”, & dr cockroach’s laugh as in monsters vs aliens by hugh laurie aka dr cockroach.
4th – it’s quite dull. huddy tried to do a step further while chase was too focus on finding a partner in personal rather on work
5th – it’s another sad case. rachel was cute. will there be any following on what had happened between her & house?. good job robert sean leonard, wilson was so funny in the first & this episode. And is this so hard to find a new member for house’s team?
=> target: 25-35 years old couple. they have energy, start to have money to spend, and start to know how to enjoy the trip
P.S. Pix on flickr
season 6 got many new tries, these includes:
but the ratings keep falling.
coming season opening follows last year’s style, 2-hour episode instead of one. even omar epps said the script cool and starts filming next week which means more time to fine tune, this year’s is difficult to get as good as last year. we had house in psycho hospital for treatment which was very funny & interesting, this year what we can expect is only the spark between huddy after being together.
and casts are another issue, olivia wilde is busy on movies and takes a long break from the show. jennifer morrison only returns for three or four episodes in this season. the feminine main cast now only remains lisa edelstein, which is very abnormal for the show. this is not show for military, it needs more women to make the show well balanced. and the key man, hugh laurie, keeps yelling to go back to england or end good. this seems the show cannot last long after he can win an emmy. actually not few shows end not long after winning emmy desperately, from friends to recently 24.
not as bad as people said for the ending. it's reasonable for president taylor to change her mind. any people from administration will show in the movie? how about aaron pierce or ethan?
pillar is not as strong as jack. & his skill to search evidence is not good enough. chloe's way to hide the card is quite simple.
logan cannot be dead so easily!
er’s dr benton is the useless secretary general...
lucky for jack not be killed in order to bring story to movie. so cia & fsb is all around for him. hope kim is safe under chloe’s custody. if tony is set to be in the movie, as he knows about jack, kim is in much danger.
the miniseries shown in hbo is now over. many people were comparing it with previous one produced by same team, band of brothers (brb). obviously they would be disappointed.
band of brothers focuses on whole of easy company, 506th infantry regiment, 101st airborne division from low to high rank while the pacific aims on three companies of marine corps in pacific theatre with three enlisted corpsmen as the core characters serving in different companies. the front line time is different for two groups. brb only has a timeframe of around an year and at that time germans were falling already after failure of african & russian campaign. but corps fought for nearly three years and their enemy, japs, were becoming stronger and stronger after each battle. so the storyline of the pacific is relatively dull at the beginning and cannot show the big picture of front line. writers already used other methods to make the story hot, from censored screens, to language.
In guadalcanal, japs were just like enemies in electronic games, rushing to death with no means, since they had got the land easily. so what americans could do were just getting enough ammo & rifles to kill them. that’s why john basilone became hero & famous. just thought there would not be good results between corps and girls in melbourne since servicemen didn’t stay forever, but at least one pair can have a happy ending.
cape gloucester was a mess to the corps due to the environment, where they faced more in iwo jima & okinawa, making many with metal problems. so retreatment is a focal point of the episode. in peleliu, they finally faced the well prepared japs while two of main characters finally met each other. you can say that quality of those two episodes can be comparable to that in brb. but in history both cape & peleliu may not be so important for the campaign.
too little front line actions were shown for iwo jima in order to end the line of john basilone, and other two were not fighting there. iwo jima actually is very important for the corps, what people remember the corps action in wwii are mainly due to that battle. they should try to put a bit more on that.
land at okinawa really shows the bad side of japs like terrorists nowadays. using citizens as a weapon, they hurt a lot of troops even making corps friendly fired before japs were eliminated . newbie made the move even harder, they were not smart & tough when compared to those fought before.
why are nowadays veterans discharged easily misbehaving and becoming a threat to others? seems uniforms are no longer as respectful as before. after wwii, servicemen can wear uniforms in the street without any discrimination at all. of course every one thought they are saving the country but not serving for a person only. and life is not so tough that they can have enough time to take recovery from the effect of war. nowadays people just rush and rush, no one can have a rest. soldiers discharged from front line actually need a lot of relieve before back to society.
p.s. richard winters should be worth for medal of honor.
soap opera is cool for this episode.
starts great from thirteen reaction on all patient said we are straight, to chase talks about marriage, then on how taub handles his marriage.
something strange for the male nurse to take away the thing house doesn't accept from taub.
house is still miserable on cuddy btw but wilson kicks him out even wilson tries to find ways to compensate.
next one we can see someone comes back to follow house status.
the latest garbage truck specially built for coming toy story is out. compared to other garbage truck by lego solely (like my 7991), it seems toy story’s one is more cool at all (as it’s wider to show the size). but one thing it can be shown in the film only, the way to collect garbage will make both truck & environment polluted. the driver cannot go in or out his driver seat without getting some dirt. omg
actually a recap & point for House to run more episodes
there were two house episodes not focusing house himself recently. one is wilson, another is 5 to 9.
wilson obviously is talking about house’s best mate, wilson. but it still focuses on medical mysteries on wilson’s patient instead. and robert sean leonard said he doesn’t want wilson being focused again despite wilson’s first life will make an appearance soon.
5 to 9 is about another main character, the one with complicated relationship with house (huddy), cuddy. there are quite minimal drops on medical, but mainly focuses on her life as a step-mum, and as a leader of a small teaching hospital with freak genius house. how can she have time to do yoga & make love with lucas? how can she find out & handle drug stolen from pharmacy (this should be first time to show all staffs of pharmacy? but actually it’s out of control, otherwise house could take vicodin so easily.) with the help of two jerks (house & lucas)? how can she fight back from insurance company and board of directors’ of hospital (this should be the first time the board shown after kicking out billionaire edward vogler)?
i think if they develop a bit more on her with lucas/hosue, there is a spinoff opportunity instead of just on lucas solely.
new CTU looks like the set used in la femme nikita. but armoury looks suck, like personal collection of enthusiast only. they used to use dell, now they use apple. the director tries to be cool & smart but fails.
madam president is alone finally. daughter is in prison & her husband has left her.
ethan is taking medicine…
the journalist, who has an affair with president of irk, looks a bit like secretary of former president daniel
kim really grows up. but is this good to let jack back to ctu? last time he was dead if without her help. how about this time? either jack or ortiz cannot survive after season 9. they are quite alike. & renee is even darker than jack, she cannot handle it.
everyone keeps sayin, “damn it!”
dana’s ex-boyfriend may be connected to russian guys in the jail… i believe her role will be soon replaced by chloe.
maybe it’s a bit more on action. but if it is filmed by conventional way like those tv episodes for stories of agatha christie, it’s not a blockbuster even with jude law or robert downey jr.
besides the novels did say holmes is kinda professional on martial arts. this doesn’t make conflict to the original idea from sir arthur conan doyle. and the film does emphasize the method he investigates. actually many tv series nowadays are using the same style, like house, the mentalist. using both law & downey and starts with holmes already famous is very fit too all other stories using holmes’ methodology. they are not cartoon heros anyway. if people really want to know their background, they would buy the fictions and study themselves.
for some cg screens i have a feeling of another film starring jude law, sky captain & the world of tomorrow. the only drawback is i don’t like the way they handle hair of robert downey jr. it’s a bit too modern.
For the sequel, obviously needs to include death of mary, and of course professor moriarty.
anakin said he wants to celebrate the victory in the clone wars with ahsoka when she is in trap. that means ahsoka should be dead already in revenge of the sith. what he talks often fails, like his mother, padme.
the death i think also contributes him to closer to stay in dark side…
p.s. so crappy tvb broadcast was, both presenters & timing for ads suck.
i may know the wireless connection getting crappy between tp-link wireless router & macbook.
there are two factors, one is temperature of macbook. if the heat is not exhausted out, the temperature is directly proportional to the interference of the wireless signal. the connectivity in winter is much better than that of summer.
another is the boot camp. it seems either mac os or windows doesn’t disconnect / release the original connection well enough the next connection in another os sucks. but i still need to use windows as latest office for mac doesn’t support vba.
finally caught up the latest episode after going back home.
to see house to get away vicodin & hallucinations in psychiatric hospital really finds how his mind changes from resistive to cooperative without affecting his medical gut. and he finally finds a way to help people in a right way. the affair between him and lydia makes me think lydia is more attractive than cuddy and lydia is much fitter for house’s future. really hope lydia show in a later stage to fight for house. cuddy pls work a bit hard. :P
besides pls allow dr nolan to come back to further guide house. wilson is not strong enough to help house to go on as wilson knows the old devil house for too long and he is still sticking with amber.
it’s the right choice to choose foreman as the interim head as he had experience in mercy and he can use house’s angle to think. it’s a bit shock for the leave of taub, but i think his former colleagues find him back to the old field & kick him back. it’s normal for foreteen to separate and actually i like jennifer morrison more than olivia wilde.
what chase did to kill the dictator is reasonable as for his background. he was nearly a priest but he could not stand for his faith. his handling is still a mess now and should be an interesting point for coming few episodes.
my pc’s office 2007, .net framework, silverlight & hp printer drivers keep on crashin’. what the hell?
of course we cannot compare the brand new thing with the old aa2. it does bring something good, especially ifak which you can be treatable after gunshots, and also much more detailed basic training with new point systems. besides one thing you cannot do in aa2 is to melee the enemy.
however they should bring some aa2’s features back. i don’t like the aim point which is much harder to hit the enemy and hard to see when background is in rich details. m320 is worse than m203 in both way of aiming & number of available rounds (that means my favourite, insurgent camp, cannot be converted). and you don’t know how many bullets left after firing few. it’s very hard to get good result for xm110 test even you aimed the target so well. i miss m24/m82 anyway.
in google maps & earth! and also union square, land reclamation in front of star ferry, stonecutters bridge.
but how come lee garden road is next to hk academy for performing arts?
it’s completely fresh built, not like aa2 was just building on top of aa1. but before closing publicly staffed development studio, army should allow them to fix up the bugs first. there are still tons of bugs after the first update, like abnormal menu behaviour, account setting maintenance failure in game.
one of the things pissing me is it cannot link with aa2 account. i have already pre-registered my account so i don’t create a new one. the damned in-game setting don’t allow me to link back.
but the suck one is user cannot finish the basic combat training which you cannot play the game online! i have finished combat life saving for three times but the it doesn’t allow me to move on. is that due to steam? (seems so, the auth server delayed updating my result) damn it.
this one should be the best in this season so far.
story is so rich this time. it gives every characters shown up, first digging up house’s mind with amber! wilson was made miserable again by putting the bachelor party in his house (coz house kicking out cameron from the party) and walking out without pants after playing with his known stripper. foreteen is cool and seems like unbreakable. chase is poor being nearly killed by jealousy from house. and cuddy saves house and the day again.
but cg for flame by wine is a bit weak.
