nan | 楠木

I feel good.

Bought myself a drink.

To enhance productivity, I’ve been trying many desktop softwares this week. I was formerly quite a user of StyleXP, but this week I decided to try some other softwares.

Yesterday I installed Windowblinds, which instantly made my windows very cool-looking. Problem was, it was only a trial version. And there were some glitches here and there when running on my thinkpad.

I downloaded some vsstyles myself, but apart from Royale, which is a official theme from MS, all the others could not be loaded via Display.

So I snooped around a bit, and found out about uxtheme.dll, which really is the linchpin to the issue.

So I renamed the original uxtheme.dll under windows\system32\, and duefully copied the new uxtheme.dll. Somehow something was wrong. Though I rebooted, still nothing happened when I tried a 3rd party vsstyles.

Hmm, by looking at the file in the system32 folder, it appears that I was unsuccessful in replacing it.

Some more googling.

Then I learnt that there’s something called the dll cache. And you can manually purge this cache:

SFC /purgecache

After this process, I was successful in replacing the dll.

And now, I’ve got some fancy desktops. Not too bad.

BTW, http://www.deviantart.com is a great site for downloading such resources.

Because there’s going to be meeting today, last night was another all-nighter.

I’m seriously starting to hate going back home at 5 am — I have to spend 40 minutes on the road without really being able to sleep (otherwise god knows where the cabbie will take me).

Beijing’s weather is really picking up now, not like the horrible past 3 weeks.

We actually had blue skies for a change this week.

And today I didn’t even realize it was Thursday already. Hey, at least that’s some good news.

I think I’ve got 99% chance to finally get a weekend and do a lot of much needed personal stuff.

I am sure a million bloggers have mentioned this already, but today I really felt it.

I just randomly clicked into a newly updated blog, no other reason in the choice apart from it was the only Chinese one I saw on the list. There was nothing particularly new about the content, basically just a girl writing her dairy.

Watching her laundry list of her day and her thoughts and feelings for the events, it suddenly hit me for the first time — this was really “voyeuristic”.

Not that this was the first time I read some blog that was quite personal and daily life. Just that in the past I was paying more attention to what they said, not to the act of reading itself.

Today, as I was reading semi-detached, I realized how weird it was–I don’t know who she was, what she did, but I know quite a bit about what she felt about something that happened the day before.

It was perhaps even more than the basic literal sense of “voyeur”: you weren’t looking at their bodies, you were directly looking at their thoughts.

Eerie stuff.

Especially when I know some person will read this.

Third week, working weekends also.

But it isn’t that intensive.

Had dinner with Lucia & her bf, chatted a lot on the industry. They are considering the possibilities.

Up to now, I think I’ve made the right choice. I like what I’m doing, and I’m learning a lot.

It’s going to be weird when I do get that first weekend though.

开始了新的blog。

并不是因为这里不好，只是工作了，应该换个地方，从头开始记录。

而这里，如果有闲暇，或许还会“涂鸦”一二。

新blog：

dani19.wordpress.com

放弃了msn，虽然那会是最方便的。但是功能貌似很差，而且页面有bug。

Gained an insight today simply by looking at things differently.

We were discussing the case study on one company. News articles showed that for 3 consecutive years the company’s products were out of stock during the Chinese New Year. Such was the demand and popularity.

Then someone said, “but that’s not a sucess, that’s a failure.”

–Because it means this company failed to capture those potential sales.

Indeed, this is another legit way of looking at the info.

Another major event of this past week was Koizumi’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine. Koizumi lived up to his pledge some years back to visit the shrine on the most controversial day of the year: Aug 15th, the day when Japan lost the WWII.

Of course this yet again stimulated a wave of protests from both China and South Korea. The event was widely reported and analyzed. Hence I don’t really want to talk about its implications on future Northeast Asian politics: it definitely hinders the relations between Japan and its neighbours.

But again, the protests and demonstrations in China and South Korea don’t solve the problem. It isn’t helping either. Though such actions exerts pressure on Japan, that pressure now often ends up pushing the Japanese public to become more and more annoyed at its neighbours. “Why are you always poking your nose into my business?”

“It’s not only your business,” we’d be inclined to say. But this is exactly where we suffer a breakdown. We only convey our hatred to the Japanese public; the informatino of why we hate them, and why indeed they should change, is not communicated clearly nor effectively.

So while the Japanese new generation grows up totally ignorant of their nation’s past, they also see the hatred of their neighbours. No wonder they might become frustrated.

And of course the extreme right wings in Japan are taking full advantage of the current situation to promote their ideals.

The key to resolving this hatred lies in promoting the truth and properly educating the young generation of not only Japan, but also Korea and China. Of course it is especially difficult to accomplish this goal with the Japanese youth, and that is precisely why we should adopt more strategy and enhancing dialog, rather than simply promoting blind hate.

Israel’s month long war came to a cease-fire recently. I’ve not followed it closely, but according to my understanding of the situation, Israel has not achieved much. Instead, it probably elevated Hezbollah’s position in Lebanon.

Israel labels this war as a war against terrorism, but I don’t think the whole world would agree. The irony, however, is that like all the wars claiming to be “war on terror” in recent years, the results have been far from satisfactory. If, that is, terrorism is the real purpose of those wars.

Afghanistan: this country has gradually slipped out of the world’s attention, except for the occasional reports on military action. Osama is still to be found.

Iraq: we all know how this one played out. The U.S. is still dragged down in the mess. And it is not really a war on terror rather than a brazen invasion of a sovereign state.

In Lebanon, if the purpose is to reduce Hezbollah’s power, by all indications from the news media, we can see that Hezbollah is certainly strong and well. It may even increase its popularity and support by playing an active part in the rebuilding process. In terms of military strength, it may certainly have suffered some blows, but that also remains unclear at this point.

If I may say so, by all means the war on terror has not been successful, and will not be successful going down its present path. Military aggression and use of force, can only be successful to the extent that it suppresses or deters terror–in economic terms, it only raises the cost of terrorism as it is more likely you’ll receive retribution. Therefore, it may help to reduce the “supply” of terror.

However, continuing in this simple economic analysis, the war on terror does nothing to reduce the demand for terror. Terrorism arises from myriad factors and issues, but military action does nothing to address these issues. As long as these issues exist, such as poverty and social injustice, and western democracies are seen as the cause of these issues, then terrorists will continue to appear, and acts of terrorism will not cease. The demand is too great.

Furthermore, the war on terror aggravates many of the already existing issues, stimulating further hatred, thereby creating greater demand. Therefore, like many people have said, the war on terror is self-defeating. Which really is the biggest irony and tragedy–not only for the US, but for the whole world.

I am feeling quite contradicted at this film. On the one hand, the film has a gripping flow, and I paid almost full attention throughout the whole 2 hours, which is something I’ve not done in a while now (compared to the likes of 16 Blocks and Inside Man).
On the other hand, though, the storyline does feel a bit unsatisfactory as a whole. It’s not an issue of plot holes; plot holes are somewhat irrelevant in a film like this. It’s the fact that the film is loaded with all kinds of political and social messages, and I kept wondering what was the point that the makers had in mind.
It seemed that they had no point intended; the film was quite a free flow of ideas, nothing really original (political freedom, terrorism, clash between religion… basically the main issues of the world today). The way that the film portrays a terrorist as the protagonist was of course quite controversial, given the recent affairs.
In terms of the cast and production, my only objection is that Hugo Weaving, who is such a talent, is given so little room to express himself. As the main character, V, he wears a mask throughout the film, and therefore has no facial expressions whatsoever. This obviously hinders the chemical reaction between V and Evey, the female lead played by Natalie Portman.
As a closing remark, I do think this film is one of thsoe films that needs to be viewed more than once, so that the real picture can be seen.
8/10