If your child has already watched Frozen several times and has already memorized the lyrics to Let It Go, here’s a challenge. Learn the song in Chinese. Disney has a Cantonese, Mandarin and Taiwanese Mandarin version.
I like éšå®ƒå§ by Bella Yao the best of all the Chinese versions.
I’m sitting in the bleachers at a local ice skating rink on a Saturday morning wondering how fast the free Wi-Fi is. Speedtest.net reports the download speed as 1.25 Mbps and 0.35 Mbps as the upload speed. My experience is that the connection is perfect for reading text, but struggles with video.
Fortunately, I also have a Verizon Jetpack 4G LTE. In the belly of a concrete ice rink, Speedtest.net reports the download speed as 2.30 Mbps and the upload speed as 1.36 Mbps. That’s more than twice as good since the connection isn’t being shared. 😉
Obviously, the Verizon Jetpack 4G LTE experiences a bit of variance in performance depending on the location. At home, Speedtest.net reports a download speed of 4.41 Mbps and an upload speed of 0.56 Mbps. Strange that the download speed is faster than at the ice rink, but the upload speed is slower.
April 11, 2014 – At the gymnastics center, the download speed is a swift 11.49 Mbps and the upload speed is 0.87 Mbps. Quite a bit of variance.
I think every Mac user must have a love-hate relationship with Intuit. I still don’t understand why Intuit had dumped Quicken for Quicken Lite a/k/a Quicken Essentials for Mac. Ugh. But, I’m glad that I jumped on iBank instead of waiting around for the long-rumored Quicken Deluxe for Mac. I’m sure it is still just around the corner.
Despite the rocky relationship, I still turn to Intuit for its tax software. The regular TurboTax, which works on a Mac, and TurboTax Business [Download]
On January 1st, I was in Paris. The only problem was that almost all the regular tourist attractions were closed. Fortunately, a few searches on Google along the lines of Paris open new year suggested the Musée des Arts Forains. Despite visiting their website and viewing their numerous photos, I still could not figure out the place. With nothing to lose, our group headed to the Paris Metro for a day of exploration.
Traveling in a foreign country is a challenge. For those unwilling to pay exorbitant data roaming fees, overseas travel is like a time warp back to the 1980s. I don’t mind traveling on intuition and paper maps, but not everyone is comfortable with those arrangements.
The Musée des Arts Forains website linked to Les Pavillons de Bercy website, with English directions. But, the bane of all travelers is uncertainty. Why show both the metro stop for Bercy and Cour St Emilion? I really want to memorize just one stop. Cour St Emilion is the closest station.
From the station, we had no problem finding the Musée des Arts Forains. We still had to walk 5-10 minutes to reach the entrance, but plenty of signs showed us the way.
Once inside, we had to pay for admission. We then received a ticket each, which was good for one ride. Additional ride tickets are available for purchase.
One ride we tried was the foot-powered carousel, which consisted of bikes attached together on a circular track. As everyone pedals together, we circled around faster and faster.
Most rides were in the nature of merry-go-rounds. This attraction looks like a giant swing. I couldn’t tell if it was there just for viewing purposes or the ride was not open at the time.
Besides rides, we were entertained by magicians, musicians, and other performers throughout the day.
Outside, the decorations were very much in the holiday spirit, with reindeers and Christmas trees. For food, we purchased tickets at the ticket booth, which we then redeemed at the food booths. I only remember cotton candy, hot dogs (merguez) and drinks, as well as vin chaud (for adults looking to warm up).
I’ve been looking at an EyeTV for a long time. Almost too long. A few weeks ago, a family member inquired about recording a television program for later viewing. I did not have a post-VCR solution for that. When I returned to the ElGato website, I couldn’t find any of their relevant products. Nothing from Amazon as well. Looks like Tivo will be following this path as well.
I rarely watch TV or record any programs. After all, it’s been years since the living room has seen a VCR, so I didn’t want to commit to a Tivo with its monthly fee. Fortunately, I found a new ElGato EyeTV 250 Plus from Other World Computing. Looks like a few others had the same idea since they are now out of stock.
The EyeTV 250 Plus is quite impressive since I was able to pull a few more channels from my external antenna than the television. KQEH (Channel 54), which has a few more channels of programming than KQED (Channel 9), was cutting in and out on the television, but clear on the EyeTV. (This prompted me to terminate all the unused coaxial ports in the house. KQEH now works, but I’m not sure if that was causation or correlation.) Unfortunately, I have a coaxial port in the living room, but not the office. So, I picked up a Winegard FlatWave Amped internal antenna from Costco. I affixed it to the window and scanned for channels again. It picked up even more than via the external antenna, but mostly international and shopping channels.
I am very impressed by the combination. Had I known they worked so well together, I would have made the leap a lot earlier.
Feb 5, 2014: I was wondering why the Winter Olympics did not show up in the program guide. Then, I noticed that NBC 11 (KNTV) was missing. I had problems receiving this channel on the regular TV as well.
So, I went about testing various mounting locations. I could not get a signal for NBC 11 from any of the windows, regardless of orientation. When I mounted the antenna on the wall, it worked. Note that the height of the antenna matters too. The antenna is placed close to the ceiling. While NBC 11 shows up in the program guide, the Signal Quality sometimes drops, even when there is no change in Signal Strength.
I’ve been with AT&T DSL for several years at the 6.0Mbps tier, which wasn’t bad at first. However, now that software is distributed almost entirely by Internet, I just got tired of the waiting. I could have switched to AT&T U-verse, which offers downstream speeds up to 45 Mbps, but I hate the introductory pricing with the one-year commitment.
Instead, I went with Sonic.net and their Fusion service for $39.95 per month, which is not an introductory price, but also not an upfront price either because of the convoluted taxes.
| Rental Modem Router Combo | $6.40 |
| Fusion Service | $39.95 |
| Federal Subscriber Line Charge Fee | $6.50 |
| Property Tax Allotment Surcharge | $0.26 |
| Voice Regulatory Recovery Surcharge | $0.52 |
| Federal Universal Service Fund Fee | $1.69 |
| FCC Interstate Telecom Service Provider Fee | $0.04 |
| FCC Telecommunications Relay Service Fund | $0.00 |
| Property Tax Allotment Surcharge | $0.00 |
| Voie Regulatory Recovery Surcharge | $0.00 |
| California Lifeline Telephone Service Surcharge | $0.19 |
| California Deaf and Disabled Telecom Program Surcharge | $0.03 |
| California High Cost Fund-A Surcharge | $0.03 |
| California High Cost Fund-B Surcharge | $0.05 |
| California Teleconnect Fund Surcharge | $0.10 |
| California Advanced Services Fund Surcharge | $0.03 |
| California 911 Emergency Surcharge | $0.08 |
| California Public Utility Commission User Fee | $0.03 |
| Palo Alto Utility Users Tax | $0.82 |
| Total | $56.82 |
From browsing various forums, I already knew about the modem fee. So, in addition to the $46.35 service + rental fee, I was dinged for $10.47 (or 22.6%) in fees, surcharges and taxes. The number of fees, surcharges and taxes is almost comical. Imagine dining at a restaurant and ordering a $25 steak, but being billed for a seating surcharge, utensil service fee, dining table allotment, and lighting surcharge.
Anyways, the transition was surprisingly smooth, which has never happened before. My download speeds have roughly doubled from 5.09 Mbps to 10.70 Mbps, according to speediest.net.
Lately, iPhoto has been crashing quite a bit on me. Usually, it occurs after I had imported some photos and was browsing from photo to photo. The bad news is that the photos would disappear from iPhoto, which led me to this tip to Repair/Rebuild the Database.
That usually worked to restore the lost photos, but the last crash was particularly troublesome. I was able to restore the photos, but all the EXIF data was lost.
To restore the EXIF data, I had to locate the original photos:
File > Reveal in Finder > Original File.
I couldn’t drag-and-drop these back into the iPhoto. Instead, I had to duplicate them, then import (File > Import to Library) them back into iPhoto. Now, the photos with EXIF data have been restored.
I have long been a fan of books by Grace Lin. Her children books feature a Chinese theme and include delightful illustrations. I’ve checked out all her picture books from the library and read them to my children.
Now that my children are school age, we have moved on to her novel Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. Set in China, the novel tells the story of a young girl named Minli and her adventures as she seeks to change the fortune of her family. The chapters pass by quickly in this page turner. There was a constant element of suspense that compelled us to keep reading even when we already knew it was pass time to go to sleep. But, what is summer for if not to let the schedule slide a bit.
When the Mountain Meets the Moon is a great summer reading book.
Located across the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Area Discovery Museum offers an engaging experience for young children. During our visit, the museum offered a Framed: Step Into Art exhibit.
Basically, the exhibit displays a work of art with the usual description of the artist and the work. However, the exhibit also brought the art to life with an accompanying activity based on the art work.
The museums exhibits are distributed through a lot of small buildings, with each having a theme. This building had a wave exhibit, which for most kids, meant an opportunity to play with water.
We did not explore the interactive playground on account of the summer rain.
The mini Golden Gate Bridge is interesting in concept, but there really wasn’t anything to do other than attach plastic panels to it with rivets.
During a break in the rain, we did explore this structure which is great for a game of hide-and-seek. You have to explore Lookout Cove to find this since it’s a bit hidden at the far end of the playground.
I loved the frog instruments. Roll the wooden stick along the frog’s back to make a croaking sound.
Finally, we tracked down the source of all the bubbles.
There is also an art studio where the kids can paint, draw and do other crafts. It’s a great place to take young kids for a few hours.