Everyone has their own good luck bringing ritual/item. Could be as simple as listening to a “lucky” song or wearing pair of lucky boxers or something else that’s physical or it could be an unusual way of doing some normal activity. I know I have a couple myself If I’m microwaving something, I’ll stop the microwave once the timer reaches either 1 sec or 23 seconds.

Earlier this week I caught a Shark’s game with my buddy LN who has a good luck bringing ritual of his own. TO ensure a sharks win he eats nachos in the first period of the game and pizza in the third period. Oooo a ritual that involves eating? Count me in!

Game was against the Pittsburgh Penguins. There’s no doubt that they’re a good team, as they made it to the final round of the playoffs last year. Check out the pic below.

That’s their team captain Sidney Crosby, who is one of the brightest stars in the league and considered by many to be the “face” of the NHL. He was a first round draft pick back in 2005 and since then has made headlines by becoming the youngest team captain in the league and by also being the youngest player in the history of the NHL to win both MVP and scoring awards.

The shark’s arena can hold 17,490ish fans…and its normally full of teal and white wearing sharks fans, but there was a good number of fans in attendance wearing Sidney Crosby jerseys, (Oh and btw Crosby’s jersey is the best selling jersey on NHL.com) especially fans of the female variety.

Sidney Crosby warming up before the game with Shark’s players in the background.

Well guess LN’s ritual worked! Not even Crosby could stop the 5 home game winning streaking. Sharks left the ice with a 2-1 win! Crosby didn’t get any goals…he didn’t even manage to get more then 3 shots on goal against the Shark’s defense! Ahhh the power of nachos and pizza (and a a good game by the sharks of course :))

You may have heard that Microsoft unveiled their successor to Windows Vista last week during the PDC. The new operating system will be called Windows 7, as it’s Microsoft’s seventh operating system to date. While it’s still in pre-beta form, they handled out copies of the upcoming operating system to developers and walked through some of the new features. Looking through the list I couldn’t help but feel like they were simply playing catchup with Apple’s OS X Leopard operating system as some of the features feel like crappy rip offs of features already present in OS X. Posted some screen shots below for a short comparison.

Desktop:
With Windows Vista and previous MS operating systems, if you have a lot of applications/documents open on your screen and you wanted to look at the desktop you could either minimize all the windows one by one, or click on a button on the taskbar that would minimize all windows at once. With Windows 7, placing your cursor on the corner of the screen, “hides” (as seen in next two screenshot) the windows and allows you to see the screen.

Windows 7: Loads of open windows.

Windows 7: Windows “hidden” to expose the desktop.

Hmm sorta useful I guess….but OS X already has that feature and it works better and looks sexier! As you can see in the screenshots below, first you have a screen full of open applications. Now one downward swipe of your fingers on the multitouch trackpad and it displays a miniature version of all the open applications, allowing you to easily find any window that was previously hidden. Want to see the desktop? Well one upward swipe with your fingers on the multitouch trackpad and ZOOM, open windows fly off the screen displaying your desktop!

OS X: Lots of open windows.

OS X: Swipe fingers down on touchpad to see all open apps.

OS X: Swipe fingers upwards on touchpad to see desktop.

Windows 7 Widgets/Gadgets:
Apple calls them widgets, Microsoft copied them and calls them “gadgets” in Microsoft Vista. In Vista, these gadgets were in a sidebar on one side of the screen. In Windows 7, the sidebar is gone, but as you can see in the screenshot below, the gadgets can now TA-DA be placed anywhere on the screen.

Hmm…that seem’s pretty familar..OH wait…OS X has the same feature! (screenshot below).

So yeah looks like microsoft is just ripping off features thats have been available on OS X for a while now. There are some upcoming features that sound cool, but with the way Vista went, I won’t believe a word of what they’re saying Windows 7 will be like until I can actually see it with my own eyes.

(Note: On macs without multitouch trackpads, the features above can be activated using keyboard shortcuts and also by moving the cursor to one of the corners of the screen…as MS copied)

Happy Diwali everyone!

Ok I <3 coldplay.  Any friend of mine can tell you that There are no other artists on this planet I <3 more then Chris, Will, Guy and Johnny…and they’re the only band whose music I purchase legally (well there is one other artist..but won’t mention him in this post. Ask me if you care to know :))! So you can imagine how super excited I was when I found out that Coldplay has a EP dropping on November 24th! Two coldplay albums in one year!!! Wooohooo!

Icing on the cake? This album will have a version of life in technicolor with lyrics! LIT was one of my fav songs on the last album Viva la Vida or Death and all his friends (VLVODAAHF) ..and I remember Chris mentioning in an interview early this year that the lyrical version was going to come out on their next album and since then I’ve been waiting to hear it!

Tracklisting:

1. Life In Technicolor ii
2. Postcards From Far Away
3. Glass Of Water
4. Rainy Day
5. Prospekt’s March/ Poppyfields
6. Lost+ (with Jay-Z)
7. Lovers In Japan (Osaka Sun mix)
8. Now My Feet Won’t Touch The Ground

No major surprises in the track listing. Postcards from far away, glass of water, rainy day, prospekt’s march/poppyfields were all written prior to the release of VLVODAAHF and didn’t make it onto that album because according to the boys those songs didn’t fit the mood of that album (not an exact quote). Coldplay also recorded a song with kylie Minogue that didn’t make it onto the last album…was hoping it would be on this one, but doesn’t look like it made it Hope that gets released sometime in the near future.

So two coldplay albums in one year…plus I got to see em live for the 3rd time earlier this year. Can it get any better?  Well I’m hoping they come back to cali next year on the second leg of the tour! I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed. I know they recently announced some new japanese tour dates (Lucky you Sharky, I hope you get to go see em!) and will prolly be adding more dates over the upcoming months.

This post is a bit overdue..almost 2 months overdue! Well better late then never right? 

Hit the middle fork river for some white water rafting this last august a few days before the season ended. Was my 2nd time rafting the middle fork river and the 3rd time going with W.E.T Rafting company. Love those guys over at W.E.T. Their guides are the best on the river IMO and I don’t intend on going with any other companys in the future.

Middle fork river is famous for the Tunnel Chute rapid (the one in the pics below).  River is rated 4+, but the tunnel chute is a 5 I think. Its a 15 foot drop to the bottom and immediately after hitting the bottom, you enter a tunnel that was blasted into the rock by miners back in the days of the California Gold Rush. Last time I rafted here (in july 07), the water was flowing much faster then this year’s trip but it was still a lot of fun. One advantage of doing this rapid more once is on that on subsequent trips you’ll know where the camera man is and you’ll know when to smile!

Unfortunately pics were only taken at this rapid and non of the others that followed, because the river is pretty remote and for the most part not accessible by road. 

Halfway down the tunnel Chute

Waving at the camera man!

Why am I the only one smiling?

The tunnel at the end of this rapid. On the last trip a friend’s head almost got hit by a jutting rock on the left side of the tunnel.

I’m lazy…clicking “bookmarks” on firefox, scrolling down the 200 or so links I’ve bookmarked over the years and then finally clicking on the blog I wanna read takes wayyyy to long. So adding 3 more blogs to my blog roll (on the lower right side of the page) so I can get to those blogs with less effort

New Additions (in alphabetical order):

- Awesome Cake: Don’t know if I keep going back to his blog to see his kick ass drawings or read his blog entries. Both are addicting like…well…like awesome cake!

- NobodyInIT: This is my long time (primary school and high school) buddy’s brand spankin new blog. Need to ask him where he got the title of the blog from :). Just by looking at the other 2 comments left on the blog, I can tell it’ll be a great way to keep in touch with old friends since they’ll be frequent visitors on that blog.

- Paradise Not Found: In the words of the blog owner “Who cares if you don’t know where Fiji is? We will tell you. We will show you. Most importantly…we will live it for you. Aimless youth with infinite possibilities on the how and when who would rather muck around town, shoot a few billiard games and drink themselves to a satisfying stupor then help achieve world peace.” Well I haven’t seen anything on world peace yes, but the blog entries have left me rofl at work (eeek…wait its probably not a good idea to admit I read this at work).

Took my sister to her first San Jose Sharks game last tuesday and it turned out to be an awesome game! Game was against the Columbus Blues. Sharks were down 1-0 the first period and as soon as they tied it up, the Blues made it 2-1 within 10 seconds. After that the Sharks took over the game and hit 4 straight goals to get the win!

Sister enjoyed her first game. Prior to this game Jonathan Cheechoo was the only shark’s player she knew of..so of course she kept screaming his name every time he stepped on the ice. Will most likely take her to a few other games this season. Nice having another sharks fan in the family

Brought along my 40-150mm lens to the game and took some pics. Pics came out alright but the 150mm zoom wasn’t enough to see much details on the faces of the players….need to pick up a 70-300mm lens in order to do that I think. That purchase will have to wait though as I ordered a macbook pro today (one the new ones that came out on tuesday)!

Cheechoo shoots!

And scores!

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Game over!  Sharky comes out to celebrate the win!

Last weekend was fleet week in San Francisco so I took the camera along hoping to take some pics of the blue angels airshow. Didn’t anticipate traffic to be as bad as it turned out to be and as a result ended up catching just the tail end of the airshow…still managed to take a few pics though.

Next year I’ll be sure to leave earlier!

Excerpt from a story from Business week:

”
A contentious battle between Apple and part of the music industry is set be decided today (Oct. 2), when a panel of judges appointed by Congress is expected to rule whether Apple (APPL) and other online music distributors should pay higher royalty fees to music publishers.

The ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board affects not only Apple but also Amazon.com (AMZN), EMusic, RealNetworks’ (RNWK) Rhapsody, and Best Buy’s (BBY) Napster. Music publishers, who represent creators of song lyrics and sheet music, want an increase in royalty payments while Apple and the other companies are pushing for a reduction.

…..

Many within the industry expect the board to leave the current royalty rate unchanged at 9.1¢ for every 99¢ music download. The panel is due to provide the parties with a written decision on Oct. 2 before making it public on Oct. 6.

Music publishers would like to see the rate raised to 15¢ for every 99¢ sale, arguing that online music distribution costs much less than those of CDs, which also carry a 9.1¢ royalty. “You don’t have to ship them, there aren’t any breakage problems,” says David Israelite, president and CEO of the National Music Publishers’ Assn..

…

The RIAA and the Digital Media Assn. say the current rate is already too high and want it reduced to about 4¢ per download. Record labels are competing against music that’s distributed freely, explains DiMA Executive Director Jon Potter. “It’s a difficult thing to do,” he says.

….

Ultimately, the music industry could suffer if Apple were somehow forced to raise its prices, some analysts say. “If the price is too high, everyone is going to go the other way, which is free,” says Daniel Ernst, an analyst at Soleil-Hudson Square Research, which has a buy rating on Apple.”

For once I’m on the same side as the RIAA. With over 5 billion songs being legally downloaded from itunes I think its pretty safe to say that $0.99 a song is a sweet spot for most consumers. Any increase in royalties will hurt the bottom line of companies that sell digital music and cause them to increase their prices…driving consumers back to peer-to-peer file sharing networks, torrents etc etc. Music publishers shouldn’t get greedy..as it is the royalty rate per song of 9.1 cents is the same as CDs, but their overhead costs are much less…doesn’t that translate into a better deal already for the music publishers? David Israelite’s comment in the article quoted above seems to go against logic. You’re getting the same $$ with less risk/expenses! Be happy and move on!

Off topic - Now there are people like me who still don’t purchase songs at 99cents/track… its not that its  expensive (1/4 the price of a coffee!) but its due to DRM. I don’t want any restrictions on the number of computer’s I can listen to a track, the number of people I can share it with, the number of times I can burn it onto a cd etc etc. Yeah there are alternatives out there like Amazon that offers DRM-free music but 1) its not as sexy as itunes and 2) its not itunes (Ok so I’m biased? haha).

Woooohoooo can’t wait for the Shark’s regular season to get underway next week!! Bought a “Shark Pack” tickets to ten games. Figured it would be cheaper then getting tickets to individual games…especially with ticketmasters “convenience” fee  which can add 10-20% to the price of the tickets….oh plus they charge you $2 to print your tickets…wait let me see if I understand this correctly…Ticketmaster is charging me to print tickets with my printer, my ink, my electricity, my paper? WTH? So yeah said to hell with ticketmaster….

Things I’m looking forward to this season:

1. New coach: Since the new Coach used to be Detroit’s assistant coach I’m hoping he injects some toughness into the Sharks. Yeah

2. NABBY!!!: Are an awesome season last year, expect more of the same awesome goal tending this year!

3. Black jersey: The Shark’s Black jersey will be back this season. Sharks had 3 jersey’s prior to last season…Teal jersey for home games…White for away games..and a black one that they wore from time to time. LOVED the black jersey..but last year when they switched to Reebok jersey’s all teams dropped their third jerseys for the season. Reebok’s reason was something along the lines that they didnt have time to create the 3rd jerseys for all the teams..but I bet the REAL reason is to increase sales this season - if they offered 3 jerseys last season, most people might have only bought 1 out of the 3..whichever looks the coolest in their opinon…but since they offered only 2 jerseys last season, a fan would have gone out and bought one..and then this season might find the 3rd jersey better looking then the one from the previous season..and end up with 2 new jerseys - this isn’t really a bad assumption based on opinons of fans on forums…I know a lot of shark fans bought a teal jersey last season even though they really wanted a black one. I fall into that catagory haha.

4. Taking pics with zoom lens. I don’t think the 40-150mm will be enough though…even with Olympus’s 2x lens multiplication factor…might need to get a 70-300mm…Trideep you didn’t tell me photography was gonna get this expensive!

5. Watching the sharks kick butt and make it past the 2nd round of the playoffs and bring home the Stanley cup!

Okie enough for now…there’ll be more posts on the Sharks throughout the season. Here are the games I’ll be attending (not counting the playoffs )

Tue. Oct. 14 vs. Columbus Blue Jackets
Tue. Oct. 28 vs. Pittsburgh Penguins
Tue. Nov. 4 vs. Minnesota Wild
Sat. Nov. 22 vs. Washington Capitals
Sat. Dec. 6 vs. Edmonton Oilers
Thu. Jan. 15 vs. Calgary Flames
Thu. Jan. 29 vs. Phoenix Coyotes
Thu. Feb. 19 vs. Los Angeles Kings
Thu. Mar. 19 vs. Nashville Predators
Sat. Apr. 4 vs. Anaheim Ducks

(Took this pic at a Sharks game last year…fight! fight! fight!)