张爱玲的大与小

看张爱玲的小说，好比掏耳朵，掏出来越龌龊，感觉越爽。

张爱玲是一个眼里没有“大”的人。她眼里没有“大感情”，“大道德”，“大善大恶”。她把一切都切得碎碎的，所有的感情，心理，动机，都是一大堆不纯粹地揉杂在一起的“小”，小温柔，小偏执，小虚荣，小贪婪，小狭隘，小算计。在她眼里，一切所谓的”大“或”纯粹“都是飘渺，虚无，无关紧要的。人性的本质是这些小，而她也只在乎这些小。

爱张的人，或多或少潜意识内有些同意她的观点。一部分是因为，我们被“大”欺骗太多了。大革命，大跃进，大道理，大时代。所有那些被过分纯粹化的大，后来都脂粉脱落，露出了本来面目。只有这些好比头皮屑一般的小，顽强地拒绝时代的冲刷，仿佛以不变的真理般的姿态出现，左右我们的生活。

在张的小说中，“小”总是击败“大”，琐碎总是击败整体，成为左右人和事的决定因素。爱情敌不过心结，亲情敌不过猜忌，国家敌不过个人，民族敌不过一刻的温柔。她描写王佳芝一案，起事的缘由是冲动，佳芝出马是因虚荣，与团队的裂痕是因为受轻视与单恋的破灭，而最终倒戈是因为那一瞬的感动。所谓“国家大事”，几乎完全没有对她产生实际意义。无论是身处龙潭虎穴，还是风口浪尖，时刻缠绕她心头的，竟然是手上戒指比不上别的太太，或是作为暗杀地点的珠宝店太不上台面这种事。张爱玲可说是把“小”的力量发挥到了极致。若是叫她来写现代小说，则总统夫人对老公婚外恋的嫉恨，当可引发世界危机。千万人的命运，国家的颠覆，在她笔下也不会得到多过一段对话的篇幅。

或者在张爱玲心里，几百年后，既无中国，也无日本。而女人，则仍旧充满了爱，恨，疑，嫉，小心眼，小打算，以及对钻石的热爱。

Free Pizza for a year!

The local PizzaHut is now having a campaign. They announced that if your pizza is not delivered hot, you will get free pizza for a year.

Tomorrow I will order pizza and set up a dry ice ambush in my apartment block's lift lobby.

Total productivity boost

I have discovered a quite simple productivity boost method:

Ignore your email. Totally.

If there is anything worth doing, people will eventually call you or find you in person.

When people ask you if you have received their mail, simply say you either never received it, or your email account is having some problem, or your were out in a meeting and his email was buried in other mails.

You will not be fired as long as you talk to people nicely.

Maybe, just maybe...

The cost of coding software is less than the cost of testing it.

Building test is easier than figuring out what to test.

Finding out what to test is equivalent to finding out what users want.

Finding user requirement, after all, is easier than getting user stick to what they said they want.

I am going crazy...

PD gateway
robust sync
corrupted sync detection
Vista support
bug fix and releases
adding various sync implementation
fix missing parameter
FE data
Data parameter and validity
manage phillips expectation
HK AIA release
complete PD MP sync solution
LSP design and implementation

Things I wish Apple could produce

I like Apple as a product company (although sometimes I am sacarstic about their products). I wish Apple had produced any of the following products,that would have made our life more pleasant (provided they are reasonably priced):

. Aircon unit
. Fridge
. Men's underware (maybe especially for geeks?)
. Universal remote controller
. Robotic vacuum cleaner
. Watch
. Hybrid car

Rear facing tandem bike with mounted water gun

Your boy will love to ride this bike with you. The rear seat is facing backwards, with an option gun mount (for those large water pistols). Splash the passers-by as you two cruise along the beach. Or imagine you are Sean Connery and Harrison Ford in "The Last Crusade".

Dining for weight watchers

A weight scale picture printed on your plate. Sure make you watch what you eat.

专为节食人士设计的盘子，印有体重计的图案。定能让你吃饭时三思而后行。

CakeMark

Cutting birthday cake is an engineering challange. You need to cut this cylinder shaped object into N equal size and shaped slices.

I think we can print an indicative color strip on the base of the cake (not really on the cake, but the cardboard base portion of the cake box). Different bands tells you where exactly to cut for 4/5/6/7/8/9/10 ... equal sized pieces.

Lightstick Motion TVRemote

Instead of point and click, Lightstick Motion TV Remote requires you to wave light sticks in certain pattern to signal your TV (which has a camera installed as the remote reception) in order to perform TV control, like volume adjustment and channel flipping.

Good for couch potatoes who wish to have an reason to excercise, or kids who is dying to become an aircraft-carrier deck crew.

Chopstick based Human-Computer interfacing

Chopsticks is one of the most minimalistic device, yet its usage is so versatile. I think the possibility of using chopsticks and touch screen to replace mouse based human-computer interface would greatly enhance the user experience.

If you consider each window/item as object floating on desktop, using a pair of chopsticks you can:

"Pick up" an object ;
"Poke" a button;
"Squeeze" or "Strech" an object to resize it;
"Flip" an object;
Use one stick to "pin down" the center and the other to rotate an object around it;
"Merge" two objects together;
"Split" an object to two;
I believe there are many other possibilities.

Unprint

How many of your printed documents are actually not required? How many of them are either draft/contains typo/ill formated/incorrect pagenated/only need to read once/never collected?

We should have such a printer that has an "Unprint" tray. Just put fresh printed document in this tray, and the printer sucks it in, strip off the ink and returns white paper into the paper tray.

LapSpider

I was fustrated that I could not use my laptop in bed in a comfortable position. Putting the laptop on the lap, it is too low. If you use a cushion, the laptop will heat up pretty fast, and your legs can't move freely. The ideal thing is something like a breakfast tray, and it need to be tilted at the right angle, yet very portable.

The LapSpider is basically a foldable supporting rack for your laptop. It unfolds into a four legged thingy, with a bare-minimum top surface for you to place your laptop. The front and back legs are of different length, so it gives a proper tilt. Once fold up, it is the size of a clothhanger.

Never let your shirt ride up your back again

I believe quite a lot of guys have the some problem I have with shirts that are tugged in your pants: they are bound to ride up your back. I can't remember how many times a day I have to adjust it or tug it in again. Interesting enough, guys in movie seems never have such problem. Their wardrobe staff must have them glued on their pants.

The Shirt Garter is my answer to this problem. By clipping the front of the shirt to the tail of the shirt with a elastic band that goes between your legs, the Shirt Garter will effectively connect the front and back of your shirt, so when you bend forward, the front of the shirt goes deeper into your pants, while the shirt-tail pulls out more. Once you stand straight again, the front gets pulled out while the tail is automatically tucked in.

To make the wearing more comfortable, we will also produce a "Premium" edition, which come packed with a bottle of Teflon spray to apply on your genital area.

Cocktail Statement

Inspired by my friend's recent blog entry on Cocktail party guide, these cocktail glass/flutes make the ultimate statement in a cocktail party: you are not here for the drink, but here for the mingle.

The lady's version has a series of holes around the rim. The gentleman's version has jagged edges, as if it is broken. Both are sadistically un-drinkable.

The "Everyer"

Let's consider names just for the sake of names. A lot of good products comes with good names. Like, something that can vacuum the floor is called a "vacuum cleaner", something squeezes juice from orange is called a "orange juicer", etc, etc.


So what if we have a product that can do EVERYTHING? That must be a good product. I don't even need a long design description for it. Usually someone come out with a design description like "a product that can automatically clean windows for you", or "a product that keeps record of your wine consumption and your perference, and also capable of recommending you new wine." Buf for my product, I can just claim "a product that can do anything and everyting for you". And the name, well, obviously, should be the "Everyer".

I would like to claim the copyright for the design and the name, if that is possible.

Star chair

A star shaped chair! You can rotate it, using any side as the base.

Rabbit hunt

This is a little idea for LBS based mobile game. A content provider can produce such a reward based game if it has access to Operator's LBS (Location Based Service) platform.

The game is like this: The game provider employ a certain person (the rabbit) carry a mobile and just randomly move around the city. Mobile subscribers (the hunters) can query about the relative location of the rabbit, through SMS. Eventually, if a hunter get so close to the rabbit, he/she can attempt to approach nearby suspicious looking fellow and ask if he/she is the "rabbit". The first one catches the rabbit get cash reward.

Sounds quite dumb, but I think the key to make it work is proper packaging and figure out the details. For example, my idea is the "rabbit" is supposed to be carrying some visual clues (like, he/she is wearing something related to a rabbit, remember the "follow the white rabbit" clue in Matrix I ?), not to make him so unique, but encourage people to approach him/her if the hunting circle has been reduced in a 10 meter ring. Another thing is provide relative location clues, like "the rabbit is 1430 meters of your north east", instead of "the rabbit is now at S 12.25'44", E 65.23'76" "

The logistic cost of the game provider is actually quite low. You don't really need a single person to play the rabbit, just pass the mobile phone and the "visual clue" around a group of employees, each of them can play rabbit for one day or something, while they commute around the city.

Business model? charge the players on each query. You can even throw in free teaser messages to trigger players from sending in more queries, like " the rabbit seems to be near by (within 1km), want to find out where it is?"

Adjustments can also be made to the game if we find the rabbit is too easy to track down, for example, provide rabbit with warnings when hunters are moving close. Since the rabbit is employed by the game provider, it is easy to fix a policy of how much evasion is most profitable.

Updates

Have not updated the blog for weeks. My original intention is to blog down every wierd design idea I have, but now the thing is I have a hard-time catching up with pictures. I promise I will keep up.

iPod racer

I got this idea from the star-wars "Pod-racing", but just the name. The concept is to produce toy cars that carries iPods, and uses iPod power as power source. The most interesting part is it uses the audio signal streamed from the iPod to control its speed.

So say you and your friend both possess an ipod. plug your ipod into the racer, and select an appropriate song to play. Your choice of song would determine the speed and the rythm the racer runs. While ballads or new age makes your racer cruise, techno will cause your racer to run in short and fast bursts. Now each of you can pick your favorite song, and race your music for a bet.

Fun?

Toilet paper fortune telling

Fortune-telling, for me, is an art of discovering meaning from chaos. People use things that seems to be totally random or controled by the environment in an computationaly intractable manner to predict their future. (e.g. Tea leaves, burn mark, Crystal ball.) We introduce you this toilet paper that adds a bit of amusement to your morning ritual. Each sheet is printed with a circular dimension grid. After wiping your arse, the smudge would give you an indication of the level of luck on each aspect of your life today.

Mushroom cloud lamp

Have your personal nuclear explosion on your desktop! This is basically a molded plastic lamp with the shape of a mushroom cloud.

Light stick basket

A basket of light sticks, each stick is a battery powered lamp/torch. Touch sensitive surface of the light stick cause it to light up when you pick it up by your hands. The basket serve as a cradle/charger. While in charge, the basket of the sticks can also serve as a floor lamp.

Cappuccino Foam Illusion

Stay in your favorite cafe to whatever length you like, and never be threatened by waiter who gives you dirty looks when you cup is already empty. We introduce the Cappuccino Foam Illusion, which is an ingeniously designed disc that looks exactly like the layer of foam on a cup of freshly served cappuccino. It even has the coca powder. Put one piece on your cup, and you can keep working on your spreadsheet, or use the WiFi offered by the cafe.

Heat Transfer Powered Torch

The problem with torches is that when you need them, they are probably out of battery. There are numerous types of battery-less torch out there which require you to constantly flick/shake/twist/wind them when you need long duration of usage, but I will introduce a better idea: a torch that lights up when you stick the tail part in your mouth (or somewhere else warm, go figure). The difference of temperature between tail and head portion causes heat transfer, and this generates power to light up the torch. An additional advantage is that you got both your hands free. Think of a situation when during a winter night your car broke down in the middle of nowhere. You get the idea.

Oh, an obviously more novel idea is SOLAR-POWERED torch. But someone has already invented it.

Water tube clock

A standing glass tube with the inner wall shaped as 12 pockets. Starting from 12 o'clock, water level in the tube will gradually drop, and when reaching 12 o'clock again, internal pump would bring the water level back to top. Well, you won't know what is the precise minute, but as a cool clock it serves well.

Don't ask me how to tune this clock. I am not the manufacturer.

Image will come soon.

Ipop bottle opener

You invite you friends over for a beer. You can't find your bottle opener. You wip out your ipod, and what do they know -- it can be used as a bottle opener! It's like, a cool gadget with real cool usage, make it sub-zero cool.

Mr Jobs, you there?

Cross-wired CCTV in elevator/lift

It is boring standing in an elevator. What if we install CCTV cameras and screens inside an elevator? The best part, let one elevator's screen show what is going on in another elevator, and vise versa. You can downsize your security staff already!

Nose drawer handle

There is always this forbidden desire to stick your two fingers into some pair of nostrils and pull! Now what if we make a drawer handle in the shape of a nose with such explicit indication for you to pull it? It would definitely be popular!

Tea Spoon

First lesson I got from western social etiquitte: do not drink from your tea spoon. They are used for stirring, not sipping, no? So here it goes: a tea spoon that has a hole in the middle! And you can hang it to dry!

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