Transformers: Entertaining, yet really crappy

Yet again we line up to see the Summer event: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (TROF)



We made the 11:00 movie, even after waiting on line for 20 minutes. Apparently, most Chinese people didn't want to see the English version.



You see this picture? Its a bad photograph. Shot with an Apple iPhone. Which is an expensive phone not suitable for taking good pictures. However, the talent behind this photograph - Haga - was far greater than the talent behind TROF. You see, like this photo of people standing on line to see TROF, the movie was mostly a big, loud, expensive blur. There were two good scenes in the whole movie. The first good scene was when we got to see Megan Fox's butt presented for us while she straddled a motorcycle. The second good scene was when Optimus Prime fights a group of Deceptecons in a forest. The latter scene was basically ripped from The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (LOTR:FOTR), when Borimar fights off the orcs to protect the Hobbit ring-bearers, then dies. Why was this scene good? Because it was THE ONLY fight scene in the movie in which one could tell what is going on, who is where, etc.

OK. One other good scene at the beginning of the movie when a shard of the AllSpark animates a bunch of home appliances, which go on a rampage. I was sort of wishing we could see a movie wherein people fight animated home-appliances threw the entire movie. That would be sort of cool.

Michael Bay (who is a dumb-ass tool ... DAT) was given a lot of money to throw at this project. And he decided that the people who must like this movie must like robots who curse (use the M-F combination), people who like to see a chihuahua hump toy-bulldog (two scenes of this, not connected to anything), little robots hump Megan Fox's leg (um...why?) , and a shapeshifting transformer who can imitate a sexy girl (brings to mind a certain movie in which the governor of California fights a shape-shifting android from the future...that movie had 10X more plot than TROF). Basically, Bay assumed he was making a movie for the stupidest of audiences.

I got to say this though...I'm a fan of military porn. I like pictures of Israeli women carrying M16s. And I like how in TROF, there are a lot of money shots, in slow-motion, of brave metrosexual-looking US armed forces guys lovingly climb into their fighting vehicles. I'm not saying I'm gay and get turned on by seeing men and their fighting equipment. Not that there is anything wrong with being gay...cause there isn't... but I'm not gay.

There were fewer unnecessary human characters in this movie. In the last Transformers movie, there was about 30 throw-away characters, including: the Australian blond analyst, the black fat computer hacker guy, most of the soldiers, the black soldier who has the line "Left cheek!", the main soldier's wife, the analyst from Sector 7, the John Turturo character, the sheriff who arrests Sam, Bernie Mac, and about 10 others. OK. There are still alot of throw-away characters in TROF. For instance, the Sam's college room-mate. The room-mate's hippy friends. The bureaucrat from NAS. The black soldier who now does not get to yell "Left cheek!". And about 5 more. However, now we get throw-away robot characters. Such as: the Blackbird Scottish transformer. The two ghetto-black-guy-coded Mini-Cooper transformers who use profanity. The motorcycle autobots. The autobot named "side-swipe" or something like that. The little robot which humps Megan Fox's leg. And even the shape-shifting sexy Deceptecon is basically a throw-away character.

Anyway, spending time seeing this movie was more enjoyable than say...standing outside waiting for a bus on a really hot day. The popcorn was cheap. The kids didn't have to go pee. No one in the theater seemed to concerned about kids running around and climbing on seats because they couldn't focus on images on the screen...the movie was just so loud that we could not hear them anyway. There was a few scenes that were cool. And that's all I have to say.

Stay tuned for next post, wherein I review a noodle restaurant!

Opening Night of Transformers (to be continued)

Suzhou Science and Cultural Arts Centre

We went an opening night of Transformers 2 at SSCAC on Wednesday 24th June, which is a brand new movie and opera theaters.



Previously Jesse took Akiva to watch a Star Trek movie on his birthday. Akiva was able to sit through during the movie. Next weekend we all went together. Akiva and Kenaz talked and rolled around on the seat. However I had really good time. I haven’t gone to movies since the last Star Wars came out in 2006 (that was also Jesse’s birthday).



A SSCAC movie theater has a big red cushy seat with good space between seats. It was very comfortable to watch movie. It was also very relaxed atmosphere. Most locals keep their cell phones on and talk on the phone during movie. I felt OK when Akiva started asking questions about the story loudly.



That day was also the last day of final test for all local schools. I thought fewer kids would appear after their final. We left home 7:30 to catch 8:00 English language show. The line wasn’t long. I was sure we can see the movie. Akiva was so excited and could not hold his jet and asked me to buy popcorns. In this movie theater a food stand is out side of a ticket office. I bought a large bucket of popcorns and sodas. Kenaz actually told me not want to go to a Star Trek place because it was dark and scary. I told him cheerfullywe are going to see a Transformers!!!
Jesse came to us sadly and said all tickets were sold out that night. We went home with big popcorns and watched a Transformers 1 on TV.

Review of pirated iPhone Chinese English Dictionaries

My iPhone Homescreen. You can see the icons for the software I'm reviewing here.

This is a review of iPhone Chinese-English / English Chinese dictionaries for the Apple iPhone. I’m writing this review for all those interested in using the iPhone as a Chinese language study aid.

I imagine some people will see this review because they are regular viewers of my site. Some viewers are regular visitors – in China and elsewhere. But because of the keyword “iPhone” and “Chinese dictionary”, many people will come to this who have never been at the Hard-Boilded-in-Suzhou site. So…an introduction. This is the Covner-family-in-China blog. I, Jesse Covner, am a management consultant. My beautiful wife Haga is currently working for a Japanese recruitment services company. For the last 4 years, the site has focused more on the development and antics of our sons Akiva and Kenaz. There is also a healthy mix of restaurant reviews mixed in. If you want to know about what noodle restaurants in China are the best, you have found the right blog.

Now, back to the topic of this post. I should add some disclaimers / background information that may or may not be relevant to this post.

1.CRITERIA:

i.Two bottom line pass/fail criteria. First, as this is written for students of Chinese language, the dictionary needs to have pinyin romanticization display. Second it needs to be able to translate both to and from English without needing an online connection. No skimpy widget interfaces to a web service for me.

ii. Top three things I look for are: a) depth of the dictionary database, b) stability, and c) speed

iii. Another important criteria is the look-up algorithm. Does the software look for all works / translations containing a text-string, or does the software bring up only the exact matching word. Also, does the software return partial results as a word is inputted, or does the software wait for a manual “enter” key-press.

iv. Extras are good, but not important to me personally. Extras include customer word lists, flash-cards, character-within-word search, and custom dictionary databases.

2. All software mentioned on this post was downloaded using 91助手 (91Helper AKA IPCsuite, AKA LazyPanda...not sure about how these guys want to market it... Look here). As I am using my first generation iPhone in China, so of course it is jailbroken. Software downloaded from 91helper only works with jailbroken iPhones. And much of it may be pirated. If you don’t mind this, no matter where you are, I recommend download 91helper.

3. A lot of software on my phone has stability issues. I assume that is because my phone is jailbroken. I do not know if other jailbroken iphone have the same issues. Soon I will upgrade the software to version 3.0 (Chinese version jailbreak software should be out by the first week of July) and that may fix some stability issues. Anyway, if the dictionary software is unstable on my phone, it may not be unstable on a non-jailbroken iPhone.

4. I feel like iPhone is a little too trendy…a little to metrosexual for my taste. I’m a masculine guy… in fact, when they were shooting the new Star Trek movie, the producers originally were going to cast me in the role of Captain James T. Kirk.



Then, someone idiot pointed out that my ears were too big so maybe Spock would be a better casting fit.



However, I’m obviously someone who is ruled by my emotions, so playing Spock may not work. What do you think?



Anyway, I would like to trade up to a new Android phone, but one which has a 3.5mm audio jack and 5 Mp camera (the Samsung i7500…due to hit markets in September…comes to mind). Some of the new Nokia S60v5 touchscreen Symbian phones are nice to, but software availability is limited and the UI is a little clunky; I don’t think they have much selection in dictionary software.

5. My Test. Sao1 – 骚 . All Chinese agree that one of the meanings of this word is “trouble”. Some Chinese say this also means “flirtatious, in a very sexy way”. Some Chinese say this means “slutty…basically only whores are Sao1”. So this makes a good test because its one of those Chinese words which Chinese people do not agree on the meaning.

Anyway, to the reviews.


KTdict C-E
Developer site: www.klausthul.com
This is a bare-bones interface to the open-source CC-CEDICT dictionary data. It has a huge database of words. On my iPhone, it is not always stable, but that’s maybe just my phone. It was very stable until recently. KTdict starts to look up words as you enter them. It has a longer load time than other programs, but once it runs, it seems to look up words quicker than some others. It also looks up all words which contain a given Chinese character.



Users are able to enter in real pinyin as well as “number pinyin” ie. shuo1 zhong1 wen2. The only reason I can see for doing this is if you don’t have a Chinese input system on your iPhone. And if you have not installed this, then your phone is a sub-optimal learning tool. But you can also enter in the non-tone pinyin (ie. shuo zhong wen) and it will give back a close-match pinyin results. The software displays characters in both traditional and simplified character sets.

Because this software uses the CC-CEDICT, the dictionary file is huge. However, because CC-CEDICT is open source, it sometimes feels that there are too many definitions listed for each character. If you are new to Chinese language study, it will sometimes be impossible to understand which definition is most relevant (because word meaning changes in different contexts).

Test: Sao1 – 骚 Trouble, Disturbance, Rumpus



I would recommend this dictionary if for no other reason that the dataset is large and contains many medical and industry specific words which is sometimes useful.

QingWen (请问)
Developer Site:
Not sure who develops this; I downloaded from 91helper. Qingwen loads fast and so-far seems very stable. It takes longer to look up individual words. It does not start to look up words until you hit the search button. It also does not look for partial English strings…or at least it does not look for as many partial strings as the KTdict software does. Qingwen looks for an exact match to English words. So you need to know how to spell an English word before you look it up...a problem for me because my spelling is bad.



It seems to me that the version of Qingwen has a smaller dictionary than cc-dict, but it is possible that Qingwen matches more exact definitions. My friend Gareth told me that Qingwen’s website says it uses CC-Cdict.

QingWen displays characters and English letters in a larger font than the KTdict program, so its easier for people who should wear glasses to read.

QingWen has some very good extra features. With Qingwen, after a single character is found, you can push a button to look-up: words containing the character, words starting with the character, other characters with the pronunciation of the character, and other characters with similar pronunciation of the character, but including other tones,.

Words and characters can also be added to one of multiple, editable word-lists. This is great for study. However, it does not make these wordlists into custom dictionaries. You cannot add your own industry specific words into the dictionary in this way.



Test: Sao1 – 骚: To have sex appeal.

The extra features and general stability and speed of Qingwen make it into an excellent tool for people who study Chinese.

CEDict Simplified
Interface just like QingWen, however it looks up words as it they are entered. Only one wordlist, in which every entry needs separate editing. Probably based on the CC-Cdict dictionary as well. I would say that this is the fastest loading of the programs I have used.

But it does not work well. I typed in “May”, and the first entry I got back was “May I ask?” This program’s algorithms don’t work well.

English Chinese Dictionary
Developer: PPCLink www.ppclink.com
This is easily the most feature rich dictionary I have tried so far. Has links to online look-ups so that you can get more information (online content displays within program). Grammar book for people who want to study English Grammar. Adjustable fonts. Word of the day feature (which picks words at random and is pretty useless…today I learned the word of Spotted Seal), history look up. The software looks up words as the word is entered.



Sao1 – 骚 Trouble, Disturbance, Rumpus. From this test, it would seem that the software also uses the CC-Cdict source.

I would recommend this software. However, it’s a little too much for me. I think Qingwen is a little better for me because it allows for multiple word lists and also character-within-word lookup. But this dictionary is pretty good for its extra features.

Kenaz Swimming

Akiva's Updates

Akiva has some changes after coming back from San Diego.

We came back on Thursday night and that weekend Akiva took off his support wheels from his bike. He practiced with Jesse until Jesse didn’t want to bend over to hold Akiva’s bike on Sunday. That Sunday was very hot. I got very tired and impatient when I was helping Akiva. Jesse and I thought he wasn’t ready.



During weekday our babysitter who is short and good squatting skill helped Akiva. By Wednesday, Akiva was able to ride a bike by himself. All our neighbors wowed at him. Now he is so comfortable he can ride with one hand and the other hand waved at me. Now at least two grand moms are convinced to take off support wheels and practicing with their grandchildren.



Jesse has been encouraging Akiva to ride the elevator by himself. Before we left for vacation, he never would do this. Then just recently, after Jesse and Kenaz went downstairs first, Akiva followed in the next elevator by himself. Later that day he brought his girl-friend up to the apartment to play (her mom was annoyed because it was her dinnertime and she didn't go home). Now he also can use the key to lock and unlock the front door, which is difficult because the lock and door-handle are heavy. All of a sudden, he has a lot more independence. But he still likes to sit in front of the TV with his fingers in his mouth. So we are not worried about him running away. Yet.

We're back!

When we returned from San Diego, we were a little too busy to put the last post up right-away. Then the Great Firewall of China started blocking access to Blogger. Now I'm using a free, not-very-good VPN service called Hotspot Shield. Its add supported and so very annoying, but atleast now I can post. Anyway...


The kids made new friends with Sammy and Lilly.



I had an operation on my sinuses. I'm not going to get into the details of how and why. But anyway I am now a little healthier.



We went to SeaWorld twice. Actually, Haga and the boys went four times... Haga LOVES Shamoo.



We had more family dinners. Great-Grandma was a little bit surprised by how wild my children are.



Dinner was always great. One night, Rachel made Guacamole. We had that as a topping for BBQ steak and salmon and salad, with that rice-shaped pasta dish on the side. (the following pictures were taken by Akiva...he is following in his father's footsteps into being a professional food photographer).







Our flight home was relatively easy. The kids slept a while and when they woke up, generally speaking, the didn't fight.



When we arrived, the "silver people" (yes...obscure Jefferson Airplane reference there) boarded the plane to take our temperature, make sure we don't have Swine Flu. At the time, I was still coughing a lot. So everyone around me was nervous...not because they thought I had the flu, but because they didn't want to get quarantined with me.