I’m watching Nanking on Hulu.
Considering the nature of this documentary, Hulu really shouldn’t be showing advertisements, especially Japanese car ads.
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The Oakland Zoo offers a different experience than the larger San Francisco Zoo across the bay. For small children, the Oakland Zoo offers a more manageable experience since the exhibits are smaller and closer together. For example, the giraffes at the Oakland Zoo are confined to a large dirt lot instead of the gigantic savanna. The children see the giraffes without having to walk through a giant exhibit. I don’t know how the giraffes feel about it.
Like the San Francisco Zoo, the Oakland Zoo is a zoo in transition with some older exhibits and some more recent ones. The newer children’s zoo offers shows and interactive exhibits. You will have a wonderful time at either zoo.
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The San Francisco Zoo is a fun place for children and adults. Located near Lake Merced, the zoo showcases a broad spectrum of animals in various habitats. Some exhibits, like the giraffes at the African Savanna, appear expansive and more modern. Others, like the Lion House and the various playgrounds, seem dated. Overall, the zoo is a wonderful destination to visit. The park is large and walkable. The bonus is the Little Puffer Steam Train that loops around one section of the park. Children just love train rides.
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Fairyland is a large playground located near Lake Merritt in Oakland. It’s not an amusement park, so don’t expect a Disneyland or Great America-type experience. Instead, Fairyland offer sandboxes, slides, puppet shows, farm animals, and a few rides with a fairy tale theme. Most rides have minimum and maximum height requirements, so your child cannot be too little or too big. He or she must be just right.
For families with young children, Fairyland is a fantastic value. Admission is $7/person, ages 1-100. And, Fairyland offers more than enough attractions to keep most children busy for several hours. Although the food at the concession stand is limited, it is reasonably priced. No $7 hot dogs or $3 bottles of water like I’ve seen at other places. Most items were 1-3 dollars. Also, if you want to bring your own food, you can dine in their picnic area inside the park. This place has a totally different feel from commercial amusement parks.
While the park may appear dated, only the adults will notice. I do wish that the park had a more organic texture to it. A bit too much concrete for my taste, especially with a lot of young ones running around.
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Strange things can happen when the kids play with the computer. So, the kids managed to restart the computer. However, they couldn’t get past the login prompt. And, neither could I.
When I tried to login, half the keyboard didn’t work. Only the right-side of the keyboard would work when I tried to enter the password. I restarted the computer again and it made no difference. I thought about resetting the PRAM, but that requires depressing keys on the left-side of the keyboard. While cleaning out the keyboard with a pressurized duster, I discovered that the num lock key was lit. 
That explains why only the right-side of the keyboard worked.
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Something appears to be missing. I can read the article. I see the reload button. I see an e-mail button. I see two buttons for changing the font size. And, I see the save button. But, where is the back button? Once I read an article, I get stuck in a dead end.
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My National SR-MK18N rice cooker still works. However, the cooking insert had developed a scratch on its non-stick surface. And, as consumers of non-stick cooking products all know, today’s scratch is tomorrow’s flake. So, who used a metal utensil in my rice cooker? Anyways, Panasonic sells a replacement pan for $49 (which seems a bit steep to me), so I headed online for some comparison shopping. Sure, I can buy an entirely new Zojirushi 10-cup rice cooker from Costco for $99, but the item that really caught my attention was the $470 Zojirushi NP-HTC18 Induction Heating 10-Cup Pressure Rice Cooker and Warmer (via Amazon). The bonus? Amazon had already discounted the rice cooker from $550! For $470, I better be able to watch HD movies from the rice cooker’s LCD panel while the rice is cooking.
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I hate security questions—those idiotic series of questions that pretend to make your web experience more secure. I’m not sure how these so-called security questions can be any more secure than the last four digits of your social security number or your mother’s maiden name. At least, most of us has commissioned those two pieces of information to memory.
The real problem with security questions is that they solicit immemorable personal trivia:
- What is the last name of your favorite teacher?
- What is the last name of your favorite athlete?
- What is the name of your favorite charity?
So, instead of committing 1 password to memory, you now need to commit multiple passwords to memory because security questions are really passwords. If you can’t answer the security question, you can’t access your account—even if you know your password. And, with some web sites requiring users to set-up 3 or 5 security questions, that’s a lot to remember. If you have more than one online account, good luck: 8 accounts that require 3 security questions yields 24 pieces of trivia that you have to commit to memory. For people who cannot even remember their passwords without writing them down, how can they even keep track of all their security questions. The net effect is that all these security questions don’t make your online experience more secure. Instead, by requiring people to jot down more trivia (or else face the risk of being locked out of their account), web sites are making their users’ lives less secure unless their users secure the answers to their security questions.
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I love the American Experience series. However, when I was watching the episode on Test Tube Babies, I came across this annoying segment:
Part of the documentary is blacked out on the Internet, presumably because WGBH only has the rights to broadcast the NBC historical news clips over certain forms of transmission. 21st century technology crippled by 20th century laws. How sad!
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In The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman asks whether our political systems have adjusted to the flattening of the world. If Facebook is a microcosm of our world, the answer is a resounding no.
Take Scrabble, for instance. On Facebook, Electronic Arts and GameHouse offer two versions of Scrabble: Scrabble and Scrabble Worldwide. Like the World Series, Scrabble Worldwide only includes part of the world. While the World Series only includes baseball teams inside the United States and Canada, Scrabble Worldwide only includes players from outside the United States and Canada. Of course, none of this makes any sense unless you delve in the the historical reasons for splitting up the markets.
So, to build this electronic Berlin Wall to segregate North America from the rest of the world, Electronic Arts attempts to locate players based on their IP address. However, sometimes, EA thinks that California is outside of the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. It’s a shame that EA has to waste time and money devising these anti-circumvention efforts (that don’t work well) to support some last century’s marketing decisions.
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