Tech Icons You May Be Looking for...

There's a guy who's kind enough to create these fabulous icons and publish them without copyright... Visit UserInterfaceIcons.com

Found it via Twitter of Dave Winer.

Go Tartan!

Finally we took the first place from DAPRA Challenge back from Stanford who admittedly performed better last year. Anyway, the VW Touareg is much cooler than the Tahoe, but what can I say, GM is a huge funder for researches at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute.

So, next time you're in Pittsburgh, esp. on Forbes Ave, be careful of a GM vehicle with a bunch of gadgetry stuff on top. It may be unmanned.

Seattle's Best Thai Food - Krua Thai Kitchen

Krua Thai Kitchen

2515 NE 55th St
Seattle, WA 98105

(206) 985-4398

www.kruaseattle.com

My girlfriend and I love good authentic thai food. We've been looking hard to find anything that's close to the restaurants we usually visited back in thailand. We know a lot of thai friends some of whom serve in thai restaurants. All of them say this place is a real thing so we gave it a try.

This place is definitely our favorite Thai restaurant in Pacific Northwest. We fell in love with Krua Thai since the first time we tried it. Fish sour broth (thick orange curry with water crest omelette and shrimps) really hook us and is the dish we must order every time. For the menu... Hmm... Where should I start? It's too hard to describe all the dishes we like in detailed like my normal food review on my treo keyboard during the flight. But i'd say there's no dish we tried that's disappointing. Beside that orange curry, the top ones are clay pot prawn, pork skewer, and trout salad. I guarantee with my thai tongue that all these are authentic. Quality of their raw materials including seafood, vegetables, and duck is also second to none.

They have about seven to ten tables inside and about three tables of outdoor seatings so the back lot can accommodate everyone's parking. We've been there on random nights in the week including saturday and have never experienced any wait for the table. Two waiters are staffed at all time but they also handle to-go orders which can peak some nights so the service may be a little slow. After all, they're all efficient, attentive, polite (and sometimes hot :P).

Full marks for food, service, price, and parking. Oh... Did I tell you that the place and food are incredibly clean for the price range? I would cut half the star for not selling any alcohol but it's a no biggie.

We eat at this place so often that you are likely to run into us when you're there. If you see a geek with a treo and orange curry on the table, don't forget to say hi.

Best Beer Buy at Costco

I tried this Peroni the first time at Little Italy in Boston with a client who was raised in Italian family. Along my post on Italian wine, I think it's a good idea to blog this Italian beer as well. It tastes like Kloster (the beer popular in Thailand before Heineken came in and convert beer drinker including my dad to be its fan) so it reminded me of a lot of early beer drinking experience.

I found Peroni 24-bottle box at about a dollar per bottle and was so glad that Costco doesn't carry just domestic trashy Bud-Miller-Coors trio. It's quite easy to drink and not bitter but not tasteless like other light beer (good for girls and guys). The price is comparable to Heineken and Corona so I would recommend it if you want to stock some beer for future parties or dinners. It will make your party memorable because everyone has Heineken and Corona in their fridge.

Italian Wine of the Year - Straccali Chianti

I've never been into Italian wine. Most of the time, we had Chianti at Italian restaurants since they always carry it as house wine. My experience with Chianti hasn't been good - the ones I tried had very high acidity and tannin esp. the horrible one Buca di Beppo carries (probably I should stop eating there).

I found this Straccali at the grocery next to my place. It's in the "clearance tray" with $6 price tag for 1.5L bottle. Can't remember the year but I think it's 2003. No expectation for quality at all - just buy and bring it to large party, I thought.

We had a house-warming party last night an a friend's place. There were me and my friend who were not against red wine so I was a little reluctant to open it in case it was lemon. Man... it turned out to be an amazing wine even when you don't consider the price - medium-body, great taste, and super drinkable. Between two of us, we finished 2/3 of the bottle even before the appetizer was ready - it was duck foie gras brought directly from Paris. I absolutely enjoyed it since alcohol has turned off my sense of liver stinky smell.

Someone also brought 1.5L Yellow Tail Shiraz and we opened it. A few other people helped us on that bottle but I could tell that the toilet bowl at that place was quite purple last night ;)

BlogRush Update: Steve Jobs-Style Introduction

Just got this email from BlogRush...

Boom! Phase 2 Is Now Active (And New Video)
BlogRush to me
10:02 pm (1 hour ago)

The massive BlogRush "Phase 2" is now active!

New Dashboard, new reports, new widget sizes, and a lot more!

Please start by watching this VIDEO that will explain how to use it all:
http://www.blogrush.com/vphase2

* It's very important that you watch the video FIRST
or you will miss out on some of the new additions.

After you watch the video login to your account at
http://www.blogrush.com

AND...

We're not done yet!

Lots of additional improvements and features in the works!

We're working very hard to help drive even more traffic
to your blog.

Stay Tuned.

Best Regards,

John Reese
Founder of BlogRush

The subject line is funny. It makes me think he tries to copy Steve Jobs at Apple Keynotes.

I really want to check it out BUT it looks like they screwed up my password during the migration -_- Just asked for the new password and hope it's going to work tomorrow.

In terms of stats, still two visits were driven in from BlogRush widget. Still keep monitoring.

Romantic Side of xkcd...

Click the image above to see the full-sized.

Album I'm Waiting for...

The Killers is coming out with their new album, Sawdust. Click the image below to pre-order from iTunes and listen to the first single. Hmm... these guys are pretty active -- releasing three albums in three years with some singles.

BlogRush Update: I'm Qualified

Only a day after I blogged about BlogRush's quality audit process, I've got the email below from the founder.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Congratulations!
-------------------------------------------------------------

You are receiving this update because your blog has passed our strict
Quality Guidelines and criteria -- we believe you have a high-quality
blog and we are happy you're a member of our network!

-------------------------------------------------------------
10,000+ Blogs Removed From BlogRush
-------------------------------------------------------------

We've just completed a massive SWEEP of our entire network. We've
removed over *10,000* blogs (Yes, ten thousand) that did not meet our
new Quality Guidelines.

I've always placed the widget four pages (for 1024*768 resolution) down on the right pane. Well... sorry to say this but I wouldn't consider it a good page location (at least I wouldn't put AdSense there).

But after all, keep up guys. You're at a very important moment of your idea... whether it will take off or will flop.

BlogRush Update: A Month Later

After I started placing BlogRush widget on my blog and wrote one update, here's the update at one-month mark:

• BlogRush member's Dashboard and Report are not up yet; the temporary Dashboard shows that my "Traffic Last 7 days" is 36. Below is the preview that the founder promised to the community. Looks pretty neat.
  

• Google Analytics reported that I've got two single visits from BlogRush widget, with the average page view per visit of... one.
• The founder sent a short email (thank god...) to every member and link it back to his blog post. Here's a quote (with the part that I think important bolden):
  

We are adding Widget Performance Monitoring to our network. If a member’s natural widget performance (the rate at which visitors click headlines and other factors we aren’t making public) falls far below the average activity of other members in their category…

THIS MEMBER WILL BE REMOVED FROM THE BLOGRUSH NETWORK.

We are working on something that might give members with poor widget performance a “warning” to let them know they are in danger of being removed from the network; which will give them a chance to give the widget better placement on their blog so they can, hopefully, rectify the situation and remain a member of the network.

We are not going to require our members to place the widget at the very top of their blogs or put it in any specific location. However, it’s common sense that if someone places the widget where normal visitors aren’t going to see it much, that they will achieve poor widget performance — and will most likely be removed from the network.

DO YOU HAVE THE WIDGET PLACED REALLY LOW ON YOUR BLOG?

If so, you need to move it higher on your blog to give it better placement.

Don’t want to do that? THEN PLEASE REMOVE IT COMPLETELY.

As I said, BlogRush was designed as a FAIR system. There’s a reason it was created as a COOPERATIVE network. It’s so its members can work together to generate more targeted readers for their blogs.

But this system doesn’t work if all members aren’t contributing at least somewhat equally. Why should any member give the widget high placement if other members are not going to? And yet those other members stand to receive the SAME REWARDS? It’s just not fair and, therefore, we have no choice but to make this change.

So any member that’s only willing to put the BlogRush widget at the very bottom of their blog isn’t a member we want in our network — and our network will deliver more traffic, per member, without them.

This is the part I don't get. We have to give their widget good placement enough, otherwise, we'll be removed from their network? Here are my takes on this:

1. BlogRush is not yet a mature service. Its success relies heavily on involvement of the community, i.e. bloggers. Thus, the "stick" approach - forcing the bloggers to give up the valuable page space (potentially for ads) to the service that hasn't been proven to boost traffic - is not going to work.
   
2. The criteria for fairness and equality doesn't make sense. I haven't gone through the whole logic for giving members the credits yet but I feel from his message that earned credits are primarily constituted of the number of times that the widget is loaded, and not much on the times that the widget is really viewed or clicked. As you figure, the weight on views and clicks should be much higher.
   
3. Lastly, I don't agree that the higher the widget is located, the better performance it's going to give. Back to the second point, BlogRush should change their logic to give more credits when blogger's widgets are watched or clicked.

Like I said, I'm a big supporter for innovative internet marketing ideas but BlogRush doesn't go the right direction. The blogger should have freedom to choose where in the screen they want to place the widget and accept the consequence of higher or less traffic. Threatening to cut off membership is, frankly, quite dangerous for BlogRush at the moment.

Say that again? Dumbledore is Gay???

JK Rowling revealed in her interview at Carnegie Hall that, while she was writing her HP Saga, she always imagined in the back of her mind that, Dumbledore is actually... Gay.

Found it through Digg and Leaky Cauldron so this shocking news must be legit.

The Office - Screen Saver

I never ever got this show but wow... this is hilarious. Not sure how long YouTube is going to keep it though but just in case you're lucky.

Myers-Briggs - The Fortune Teller

Have you ever been to or read fortune teller who just describe how you're like to make you ooh and ahh of how accurate it is? I just experience it myself. I took the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) a while ago with this the result below:



However, I just found out what it means to be an ISTJ - Introvert, Sensing, Thinker, Judging. Holy cow... it's like the writer has worked with me for years...

Serious and quiet, interested in security and peaceful living. Extremely thorough, responsible, and dependable. Well-developed powers of concentration. Usually interested in supporting and promoting traditions and establishments. Well-organized and hard working, they work steadily towards identified goals. They can usually accomplish any task once they have set their mind to it.

The text is excerpted from PersonalityPage. You can take the test of 60 questions and see the results there.

Something you can't stand, but can't live without...

... the Palm Treo 750

Turbulance

Love this ad. It really explains all how my Saab 9-5 handles on the freeway.

xkcd rocks...

Oh man... I took me twice to get this.




I would be really surprised if they don't have any constraint on the Students table. But well... that's probably the first time they got this after all these years.

If you like it, here's their site and RSS feed.

This is the First Time that Dilbert is Way Wrong

By wrong, I meant that the Dilbert part never happens. :P

Just kidding...

Danang Krungthep - pork leg, anyone?

DaNang KrungThep Restaurant
905 San Pablo Avenue
(between Buchanan St & Solano Ave)
Albany, CA 94706
(510) 524-6837




I'm on the run again - now to Richmond, CA, a little town just a bit north from glamorous Bay Area (sayonara Kansas City, I won't miss you!). Great food, lots of night lives, tons of Thai friends.

Seems to me things are not that simple in consulting. For the first two weeks of the project, I have been carpooling with my manager to the client site at 7.15, attending back-to-back meetings till 7 in the evening, feed myself with crappy cold food at the hotel room, and work a few more hours before spending valuable time on recharging sleep. The cycle has been like this three to four days a week.

I rang a good Thai friend who went to Stanford for two full years, asking what she recommended around the area close to my hotel. The first and only thing she could think of is this place - Danang Krungthep. With all the steam I accumulated during the work hours, I know it's the time to give myself good Thai food and a bottle of Singha. DaNang is the forth largest city in Vietnam while KrungThep is the Thai name for Bangkok. So, we expected the balanced mix between Thai and Vietnamese menu from this place. (be careful of another place called Thep or KrungThep down the same street - it's not the same restaurant)

I was impressed with Danang Krungthep. The place, though not highly decorated, is spacious, clean, and well ventilated. At the time we arrived (7-ish Tuesday night), the place was less than half full. Parking is just in the convenient back lot. We were seated right away. The menu is huge. And, most importantly, they had the unlimited supply of Singha... Ahhh....

We spent about ten full minutes to go through the hundred-page menu. I decided without thinking to go with the pork leg (it's chinese/thai stew style with pickled cabbage). Seriously, most Thai restaurant just stick with perfecting their spices for stirred fry and sauces, and don't bother to buy the whole pig legs and make this rare dish from scratch. It comes with appropriate amount of skin. The meat is tender. Pickled cabbage is mellow. The dish and Singha just go really well together. We also had fried spring roll as appetizer. You know how good Vietnamese spring rolls are so it's not a disappointment either.

Full five stars for great food, parking without hassle, good service, willingness to go above-and-beyond on food, and supply of Singha.

I guess I have 412 more items to try at this place.

Chocovic Guaranda

I just blogged a couple of days ago about the the amazing dark chocolate I found at Trader Joe's. As promised, I gave the sister bar with cocoa from Ecuador "Guaranda"a try. Although it's more fruity, mellow, and easy to enjoy, I like the strong cocoa flavor of the Ocumare better. Give both a try and let me know how you like them.

Demotivational Posters

Since the motivational posters are grossly overpriced (it could range from 9 to 20 bucks depending on how good wordings are), here's the site that let you create your own demotivating posters on your own. The selected ones are posted here.