Mouse fitness

Real-life painting

It looks like a painting, right? It’s not. Makeup Girl is actually a photograph of a model in bodypaint. Peter Kun Frary, a professor of music at the University of Hawaii, spotted this model in a stage display at a shopping mall:

Recently I walked by the Ala Moana Mac cosmetic store and noticed a crowd of Japanese tourists gawking and snapping pics. Amazingly, a model in full body paint was posing against a set. She was a darn good simulation of a late 19th century oil painting. At first I thought she was naked--wearing only makeup--but she sported a few scrapes of cloth in the right places. Also, she hardly ever blinked...

These are the two "paintings".

Performer's Galleria.

"PleaseRobMe" website highlights dangers of telling world your location

A website called PleaseRobMe has been launched to highlight the dangers of sharing too much information on the internet about your location.

The site pulls together updates on Twitter from people who publicly broadcast where they are at any given time, making the point that if they are in the pub, for instance, they are not at home and could be burgled.

The Dutch website lists "all those empty homes out there" and provides a running total of "new opportunities". The data is searchable by city or by people's Twitter usernames. A search for London reveals a stream of people who have recently left their houses.

The PleaseRobMe website has caused a stir, with some accusing it of making it easy for burglars to target people's homes.

The site took developers just a few hours to create after thousands began posting updates about where they were in the online social game Foursquare, which is based on a person's geo-location in the real world.

In Foursquare, a free application accessed through mobile phones, people send messages to friends and other players, including via Twitter, to say where they are. The more updates people give, the more places they visit, the more points they get. In some cases players "check in" at their own or a friend's home, giving the exact address.

There are several similar online applications, such as Gowalla, Brightkite and Google’s Latitude service.

The developers, Boy Van Amstel, Frank Groeneveld and Barry Borsboom, said that they did not want to encourage criminals, only to remind people that sharing information on the internet carried risks.

They say on the site: "Our intention is not, and never has been, to have people burglarized."

They explained: "On one end we're leaving lights on when we're going on a holiday, and on the other we're telling everybody on the internet we're not home. The goal of this website is to raise some awareness on this issue and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz, etc. Because all this site is is a dressed up Twitter search page. Everybody can get this information."

Crimestoppers advised people to think hard before they posted personal details online.

The Times. Feb 19, 2010.

Rice pudding (年糕) delicacy won't dethrone king

Rice pudding, a traditional Chinese delicacy on the Lunar New Year table, is expected to see a strong boost in sales this year, but will continue to lag mooncake as the No 1 festival food in Hong Kong.
For the past month, staff at Wing Wah Cake Shop's kitchen in Yuen Long have been working day and night to mix rice flour with various ingredients, steam it, package the pudding and then deliver them to its 40 shops and restaurants across the city.

Wing Wah is expecting rice pudding sales to show double-digit growth this year but says mooncake - with industry-wide sales of around HK$700 million a year - will remain the king of festive cakes.

Food has been always been at the core of Chinese festival culture. During the Mid-Autumn Festival, mooncake is a must-have snack that represents family reunion. At the Dragon Boat Festival, people are accustomed to eating rice dumplings as a way to commemorate the ancient poet Qu Yuan, who died for his nation.

Rice pudding, also known as rice cake, is considered an auspicious food to consume at Lunar New Year. Its Chinese name is nian gao in Putonghua or nin gou in Cantonese. Nian is "year" or also "sticky", while gao is "cake". Together they indicate a wish for a "higher year" ahead.

Although the three major Chinese festival foods are equal in cultural value, they vary greatly in commercial value.

Wing Wah general manager Lee Ying-kuen said rice pudding generated less revenue than mooncake due to the keen competition among cake makers and the food's shorter shelf life.

He explained that making rice pudding was simpler and involved fewer ingredients than mooncake, so many small bakeries and also housewives would also make supplies.

"At this time every year, you can find rice pudding sold in every corner of the city, from street shops, restaurants to big hotels," Lee said. "We cannot expect it to generate sales volumes as big as mooncakes, which are only available at big bakeries and  hotels."

Rice pudding usually can only be stored for a month in a refrigerator, whereas the shelf life of mooncake is as long as two months. "This is important if we want to develop the overseas market," Lee said.

Wing Wah's mooncakes are sold in Europe, the United States and Australia, and are also available throughout the year at its counter in the Hong Kong International Airport. But rice pudding is only produced for the Hong Kong market.

The city's largest catering group, Maxim's, says Lunar New Year is the second-biggest festival food market.

Maxim's sells mooncake in more than 80 locations around the world, but this year for the first time it will promote its Hong Kong-made rice pudding outside the city. Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Foshan have been chosen as the first batch of cities to sell the products.

Angela Chan, Maxim's branded products manager, said the turnover of rice pudding would increase this year due to bigger demand in Hong Kong and the new market across the border. But the group did not expect sales to exceed mooncake sales.

"It's hard in terms of the demand and value," Chan said. "A box of mooncake is priced at HK$200 on average," yet rice cake usually sells for between HK$30 to HK$100.

Even so, retailers have gone to great effort to innovate, with new pudding flavours and packing in order to attract more buyers.

In addition to the traditional turnip, taro and coconut pudding, novel products being marketed this year include "bird nest" pudding from Wing Wah, durian-flavoured pudding from Taipan Bread and Cakes, and Hello Kitty-shaped cakes from Maxim's. Some retailers are also following the green trend and packing their products in boxes that can be reused instead of vacuum-sealed plastic bags.

Designer-turned-cook Xu Yuan is trying to turn the annual delicacy into art. Saying traditional rice pudding is "boring", Xu started to apply her imagination to the cakes six years ago.

This year, about 100 of Xu's puddings were snapped up by friends and customers at her restaurant in Wan Chai a couple of weeks before the Lunar New Year. The most popular ones are "star pudding" and "tiger pudding", which feature colourful stars and tiger skin patterns with carrot, water chestnut, sesame and other ingredients - all from Xu's own organic farm in the New Territories.

Xu has stuck to tradition, using a stone grinder to produce the rice flour and firewood to steam the pudding which, she said, creates a much better taste.

As a result her products are more expensive, ranging from HK$200 to HK$350 each.

"Honestly, I cannot make much money from this since it takes too much time," Xu said. "For me, it's a statement of my food philosophy rather than a business."

A lover of traditional food since her childhood, she said the little cakes always reminded her of happy moments celebrating the festival with her family.

"Although my puddings are fancy in appearance, their flavour is 100 per cent traditional. I think people love this traditional flavour because they do love the warm feeling of sharing with their loved ones," she said.

SCMP. Feb 13, 2010.

US east coast shut down as 'snowpocalypse' hits

Washington DC ground to a halt on Saturday as the US capital was blanketed in its heaviest snowfall in nearly a century by a storm dubbed “snowmageddon” and “snowpocalypse”.


The “white-out” blizzard dumped up to 32 inches of snow in some parts of West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia were all pounded, receiving up to 2.5 feet (30 inches). After setting several records, the storm swept out to sea across New Jersey and Virginia, battering the mid-Atlantic shore with winds gusting to 40 miles an hour but largely skirting New York.


The snow brought down electricity lines, leaving at least 200,000 people without power. Several roofs collapsed and trees were felled, blocking roads. The weather has already been blamed for hundreds of accidents and the deaths of a father and son who were trying to help a crashed motorist in Virginia.
President Barack Obama had his own minor brush with the hazardous driving conditions as his motorcade navigated the short journey from the White House to the winter meeting of the Democratic National Committee.
A heavy branch crashed into a car two vehicles from the president’s. In his speech, Mr Obama later referred to the storm as “snowmageddon”, embracing one of the favourite short-hands for the historic storm.
Transport networks were preparing to shut down and residents of some rural areas were warned they could be forced to spend up to five days indoors. Stores had earlier reported a run on food and basic necessities, with many people stocking up for supplies for Sunday evening parties to watch the Super Bowl, the biggest date in the America sporting calendar.
Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia each declared “snow emergencies”, allowing them to call in assistance from the National Guard. The predicted snowfall is the biggest in the US capital for 90 years.
The National Weather Service warned that conditions would be “extremely dangerous,” with heavy, wet snow and strong winds. They warned that transport would be affected and supplies to shops could be delayed.
Airlines cancelled flights, schools closed and the federal government sent workers home. Some hospitals asked people with four-wheel-drive vehicles to volunteer to pick up doctors and nurses to take them to work.
The National Zoo closed early and the Smithsonian museums planned to close on Saturday. Flights on Saturday afternoon were cancelled at Dulles International Airport in suburban Washington. Amtrak stopped most trains heading south from Washington, affecting fans heading to the Super Bowl in Miami.
In western Virginia, a tractor-trailer struck and killed a father and son who had stopped to help another driver who had crashed in snow on Interstate 81, Virginia State Police said. William Edward Smith Jr., 25, and 54-year-old William Edward Smith Sr. died at the scene, authorities said.
The storm comes less than two months after a storm on December 19th dumped more than 16 inches of snow on Washington.

The Telegraph. Feb 6, 2010.

Poor schoolchildren shut out of the Web

Needy students who don't own computers are finding it tough to do their homework



For more than two years, while other children played in the schoolyard at break time, Ching has been lining up outside a computer room with 30 or 40 poor children.
They wait to use the internet to do their homework. Sometimes the break ends before Ching has had her turn. "Often after I type in the password and go to the internet, the bell rings," the Primary Three pupil says.


Back at her Mong Kok home, her mother Fung Hin-mei, 38, calls the public library each day to book a computer for her daughter.


When Ching returns home, she quickly finishes her hardcopy assignments, then hurries with her mother to the library to do her online homework. In the one-hour limit she does English, Chinese and mathematics, and searches for information.


"Sometimes I forget to make a booking and we have to wait for an hour to get back-up places," says Fung, a single mother.


Ching has even resorted to using a computer at a mall which allows limited access.


She is one of an estimated 12,560 poor children, aged six to 14, struggling to do their homework because their families cannot afford to pay internet fees. For every 100 children from low-income families, seven to eight have no internet access, according to government research by the Department of Social Work and Social Administration at the University of Hong Kong.


The Hong Kong Council of Social Service (HKCSS) says 157,000 children, aged six to 14, live in poverty.


For most children, using the internet to do homework is a normal part of life. But for poor children it is a daily struggle.


"Each day they line up for school computers, or rush after school to community centres, libraries, or shopping malls, to use the computer to do homework," says Au Yeung Tat-chor, an organiser at the Concerning CSSA Review Alliance (CCRA).


Social workers and academics say homework announcements and submissions of the work, as well as information searches over the internet, have become routine at all schools. Au Yeung says some children who cannot do online assignments have marks deducted while others have their conduct's marks cut.


While poor children can get second-hand computers from social projects they receive no help to get online. Social workers want the Education Bureau to provide free internet for poor children, arguing that the lack of such availability means the children are deprived a basic right to study. "It is a violation of children's rights," says Peace Wong Wo-ping, a policy research and advocacy officer at the HKCSS.


Wong Hung, an associate professor in the department of social work at Chinese University, says that in an information society students who have no access to the internet are being deprived of basic facilities.


Wong is worried that if the government does not help the problem will make poor children less competitive and contribute to cross-generational poverty. He says suggestions by the government that such children can use computers in public libraries and community and youth centres are "not viable".


In his policy address last year, Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen pledged to help students with digital learning. Initiatives are expected to be announced in the budget this month.


Peace Wong says: "We expect that the budget will create some kind of co-operation with an internet service provider to ask them to provide discounts to poor children. It will be short term and have quotas."


The CCRA is organising a march by 200 poor children and their parents in Central today to raise awareness of the problem.


Au Yeung says many of the poor families he has helped have to cut costs in other areas, such as food, to pay for internet connection.


Fung, who gets HK$3,700 a month in welfare payments, eats cheap food to save money. She says she has no way to cut her expenses.


Ching says internet assignments account for a third of her homework but she is often unable to submit them. She says her academic results have suffered because internet homework is taken into account.


Things are even worse for Wong Tin-yau and his twin brother Tin-lok, eight. They do not have a computer. Their mother, Lau Iu-sin, 36, says the public library is a 45-minute walk from their Kwai Chung Estate home, so she can hardly take her boys there.


For a mother who earns HK$960 a month as a part-time market stall cleaner, the internet seems a luxury. Her husband Wong Tak-kuen, 59, is an iron-bender. He earned HK$5,000 last month but is often out of work.


Lau, who came to Hong Kong in 2008, is not eligible for welfare.


The HKCSS, CCRA and Wong Hung have called for the Education Bureau to cover internet fees for poor families.


An Education Bureau spokesman said they put a lot of resources into helping the needy. "An annual subsidy is provided to schools to put in place computer rooms and facilities for use of needy students."


There is also a programme to give a recycled computer and a one-year free internet line for children of welfare recipients and those getting school textbook assistance. But social workers say this is a short-term programme offering 20,000 places and cannot solve the problem.


Both Fung and Lau worry that their children will be left behind. "I am worried that they will be poor when they grow up and our poverty will be passed to the next generation," Lau says bitterly.


SCMP. Feb 7, 2010.

It was saved last year, but tree now faces final chop

Maryknoll Convent School alumni are making a last-ditch effort to save a 70-year-old tree on the campus after what the school described as a "painful" decision to fell the tree because drainage work had damaged it.
About half the roots of the 20-metre Norfolk Island pine, which leans to one side but was declared safe last year, were damaged last month by a contractor digging a trench. Work was suspended when the Kowloon Tong school discovered the damage.

The tree cheated death in July last year when the school, which is a declared monument, was forced by public outcry to drop a plan to fell it. The school said it feared the tree was a threat to the safety of pupils and traffic in Waterloo Road. The government said at the time it would draw up a plan to preserve the tree and set aside HK$500,000 for the purpose, but there has been no further action.

Preparations have been made to fell the tree on Saturday, but some alumni have spoken strongly against its removal and plan to stage a protest outside the school on Saturday. One, Winnie Chu, said she was "fed up" with the school's lack of transparency. "I don't know if it is really something about the stability of the tree or something else," she said.

Some observers are asking whether negligence by the school or government led to the damaging of the tree's roots. "Someone has to be responsible for that and we are determined to drag him or her out," former legislator Tanya Chan, who has been following the case of the tree since last year, said. She suspected government approval would have been required for the drainage work because the tree was on the grounds of a declared monument.

University of Hong Kong tree specialist Professor Jim Chi-yung said digging under the tree clearly violated international standards in tree care. While damage had been done, there was no convincing evidence to suggest removal was the only solution, he said. "We can stabilise the tree first before finding other ways to save it," he said.

However, the supervisor of the school's primary section, Helen Yu Lai Ching-ping, said the school stood by its decision to remove the tree.

The school had always wanted to preserve the tree and the decision to remove it had been a "very painful one" to make, she said.

"I graduated from this school 50 years ago and I grew up with the tree, too. I feel as heartbroken as anyone does to see the tree go," she said.

Yu said the government had advance knowledge of the drainage work because it was carried out to meet a Buildings Department order issued in 2004, and half the funding came from the government.

She said discussions involving the school, contractor and Antiquities and Monuments Office took place before the work started, and the work tender clearly stated the contractor had to protect school property. But she could not say whether the school was aware of the work's potential to damage the tree.

Wood from the trunk would be used to build furniture for the school, while the smaller branches would be turned into souvenirs, Yu said.

A new tree would be planted on the campus on "worldwide reunion day" on February 19 to mark the school's 85th anniversary, she said.

The Development Bureau said last night it had no advance notice of the drainage work, and that there was no need for the school to seek permits from the Buildings Department or the Antiquities and Monuments Office for minor renovation work.

It said two independent consultants had been hired to inspect the tree after the damage was done to its roots. They ruled out the options of building a support for the tree or trimming it because such work would take six to eight months - and would still not completely rule out the risk of the tree collapsing.

The bureau said it "understood and concurred with the decision" of the school to remove the tree.

SCMP. Feb 5, 2010.

Does Facebook have a future?

If you search online for articles about “the end of Facebook” you’ll see that people have long been predicting its demise.
An undercurrent of doubt, especially over its value and ability to generate revenue, has accompanied the brand through every phase of its rapid ascent. But despite the naysayers, the world’s biggest social networking service just carries on getting bigger and bigger.

Last year, it reached 350 million active users, up 200 million in 12 months. And statistics published this week at the tracking site InsideFacebook.com demonstrate a strong start to 2010: another 23 million new users in the first 30 days of the year.
Facebook now has a central place in our culture. Just like Google, it has become a verb: people now whisper “Facebook me” as they air-kiss. After years of asking, all our friends are now “on it”, including millions who aren’t really our friends at all – brands, bands, TV shows and businesses.
It’s normal to see buskers in the Tube displaying badges urging us to join them on Facebook. I even saw a badge like that on the back of a plumber’s van. Surely Facebook has finally, totally made it and is here to stay. But is it?
Probably not. The history of the internet is littered with the bodies of dead and dying social networking services – Six Degrees, Firefly, Friendster, and, closer to home, our very own Friends Reunited. Each experienced explosive growth and appeared to be a permanent fixture, until they were rapidly abandoned for something else. In the history of social networking, the moment of apparent ubiquity often echoes with the crack of doom.
So, why should Facebook be different? Are we seriously to believe that, like Lehman Brothers, it’s “too big to fail”? What could bring it down? And what will replace it?
The thing most likely to kill Facebook is probably Facebook itself – or more precisely Facebook Connect, a feature that allows users to sign in to other sites using Facebook log-in details. It’s a brilliant idea but it also means that I have less and less reason to visit Facebook. And if I don’t visit Facebook, I don’t see their ads.
Of course, Facebook would argue that this doesn’t matter because its true value lies in the social data it still able to collect about me and my mates. Facebook is gambling on owning the one social graph (the data about me, my contacts and what we all do) to rule them all. The problem is that they don’t.
Telephone companies and email providers also have that kind of data – and they have tons more of it. It’s just that they have yet to get their acts together. Now that phones and the web are really beginning to converge this becomes more valuable.
Does this mean that someone, somewhere, is working on the new Facebook right now? Possibly, but whatever comes next will be created by someone who doesn’t even know they are doing it. Facebook never set out to build a better MySpace.

The Telegraph. Feb. 4, 2010.