Posted by samson on Jan 18, 2012 in
Life's little pleasures In preparation for the Year of the Dragon, I went shopping for some new decorations at a local Chinese Store. When I looked very carefully at some of the merchandise, I simply started laughing aloud.
Traditionally, red lanterns are hung whenever there are any celebrations in a Chinese household. There may be symbols or characters of the family’s last name written on these red lanterns. White lanterns are never used for celebrations as white lanterns are used for funeral only, these lanterns are usually marked with the character for ‘death ceremony’ on it in blue. Simply put, the characters written on lanterns are very important in Chinese culture.
In one of the stores I visited, red lantern are hung as a display and are also available for sale. The only problem with this merchandise selection is that two of the available choices are completely not related to Chinese New Year. The first of the two lanterns have the words Siu Yuo, 燒肉, written on it while the other saids Chuen Siu, 串燒. Siu Yuk is the famous Roasted Pork, with the crispy outter shell available in many Chinese roasting shops. Chuen Siu are little pieces of meat on a small bamboo stick, barbecued and flavored. It is extremely famous in the countries of Malaysia as Satay and Japan as Yakitori. There is nothing really special about the design of these lanterns. To be precise, these lanterns cannot be considered as Chinese style lanterns at all. They are closer to Japanese style lanterns in terms of design and are commonly seen as signs for Japanese restaurants. Just imagine hanging that lantern out for New Year celebrations. *roll eyes*
The second funny thing I found is the hanging decorations available for Chinese New Year. A famous portion of the Chinese New Year celebration is the Lion Dance, 舞獅. In Cantonese, the pronunciation is Mo See. When you hang it up like the picture above, it is called Dil See, 吊獅. The problem arise now primarily with Chinese grammar. In Chinese, some animals such as fishes, dogs and lions must be referred to as a tail, 條 (read til), when talking about their number or performing any actions on them. So in Chinese we would say we hang the Lion up with 吊起條獅, Dil Hay Til See. That sound extremely normal until you take the homophone version of Lion, the symbol for corpse. It can read Dil Hay Til See with the symbols 吊起條屍, since corpse can also be described by the word tail in Chinese. Essentially to hang the lion for decoration is now related to hanging up a dead corpse for decoration. Who on earth would want to do that?? hahahaha!
Tags: Chinese culture, Chinese household, Chinese Store, Chuen Siu, Dil, merchandise, New, problem, red lanterns, til
Posted by samson on Jan 17, 2012 in
Life's little pleasures Today is the day of Je jo, 謝灶. It is the twenty third day or twenty forth day of the twelve month in the Chinese calendar year. There is a traditional rule passed down specially designed for this day, something sweet and sticky must be created in each family.
Je jo literally means Thank Stove. According to Chinese mythology, the god of Stove is call 灶君, Jo Kwan, a god that have been known to have multiple forms and gender. Jo Kwan is present in each household near the stove area, monitoring each family. On the day after Je jo, Jo Kwan would return back to the heavens and have a detailed report to the king of gods, 玉皇大帝. This report covers everything the family have been doing for the past year and the gods would reward or punish the family and its members according to their past act. The sweet and sticky food offered to Jo Kwan today is to glue his or her mouth together, disabling the reporting in relations to the family that offered the sweet. Since traditional Chinese have a very high sense of self respect and awareness, anything that is consider common living standards today are classified as bad. Some examples includes lying, earning too large a profit, starring at a pretty woman who is not your wife, etc…. Hence everyone would need Jo Kwan to keep his or her mouth shut when reporting.
A customary rule for Je jo is commonly referred to as 官三文四, Koon sam man sei. This translates to “government hires on the third and citizens on the forth”. It is a rule of thumb used to celebrate Je jo. Basically Je jo starts on the twenty third day of the twelve month but only government officials celebrate on this day. The next day is the twenty forth of this month and is celebrated by the common citizens.
Traditionally speaking, after this offering, Jo Kwan would return to the heavens and monitoring of the people would seize. Hence some people would let some minor bad habits into their lives during this period, until the return of Jo Kwan in the new year.
Tags: family, god, Jo Kwan, Jo Today is the day, mouth, Preparing, Stove, third day, traditional rule
Posted by samson on Jan 16, 2012 in
Learning Management System Today’s an important day for me, it is the first time a plan I have designed is put into action. This planning began around the end of last year and it is using our most current technologies in a method that we have not yet attempted before.
The goal is to use the AdobeConnect system as a tool to facilitate interpretations of lectures to disabled students. The current systems for disabled students, especially the hard of hearing students primarily involves special interpreters to come onto campus with the student and interpret the professor’s lecture as it is happening. Another possibility is to have the professor pre-recorded the lecture and closed captioned it ahead of time for the class. There are challenges for both scenarios as the first puts are very high demand on local interpretation professional and the later stresses the instructor of the course. When I was approached by the Center for Students with Disabilities at the Durham College and UOIT campus, my solution was to use AdobeConnect.
Having the lecture broadcast live to an interpreter or caption specialist who are not local increases our pool of candidate. Since our campus is in a close proximity with many post secondary institutions, we are in a constant battle with these other institutions for interpreters and captioning specialists. With AdobeConnect acting as a conduit, we can now hire non-local interpreters and captioning specialists. They would have a virtual presence instead of a physical one, reducing the amount of physical stress on these people as well.
The Pilot lecture is officially today, for a Bio Chemistry class. The professor is using the Logitech Orbit AF webcam that I suggested for both the WebCam feed and the audio feed. I sat in a corner joining in to his lecture as a participant, listening and viewing his lecture from a participant point of view. The Webcam’s right light technology is amazing, it was able to pick up crystal clear images in a dimmed room. The room needs to be dimmed to reduce the washout effect on the projections. With the Lenovo built-in webcams, it would usually be a silhouette instead of a face, but I was able to see his skin pigment and features clearly.
With the audio recorded from the Orbit AF, even with Right Sound technology enabled, it was not able to pick up the student’s voices as clear as the instructors. My suggestion to the professor is to repeat whatever the live audience saids if it is worthy. The face tracking system of the Orbit cam was not tracking his face properly either. I believe that is a result of him being new to the Orbit AF, hence my suggestion was for him to use the Orbit cam when he is free. Once he got used to how the Orbit works, it should function better in a lecture scenario.
He loves the system so much that he actually brought his own Oribit AF and is now considering using the recording function for each lecture, enabling his students to review each lecture in the future. He is now looking forward to the next lecture, hopefully with the full captioning crew this time.
Tags: AdobeConnect, class, disabled students, Durham College, face, interpreters, lecture, technology
Posted by samson on Jan 13, 2012 in
Random Thoughts Today is friday the thirteenth, a typical day associated with bad luck in the western world. The original friday the thirteenth marks one of the bigger crashes of the stock market. This day have than been slowly adapted to other sections of the western culture.
I must admit that I am now part of this culture, as I have face some personal misfortune today. Looking back at this incident really suggests that I should be thanking the father for protecting me, letting me walk away from this with no injuries at all.
This morning was the long awaited first day of snow for Toronto and area. The combination of snow and freezing rain have made the roads slightly hazardous to drive on. I have been trained to drive safely on snow or ice covered roads, something similar to the conditions I faced this morning.
Since I knew the traffic would be horrible between home and the College, I departed 40 minutes early. I took my usual route on the 401 towards Oshawa and attempted to exit at Thickson road. When I arrived, an accident have just occurred and the traffic was blocked completely. Since this exit was blocked off and the ambulance just arrived, I do not want to see smashed up body parts this early in the morning. Since the college is on Simcoe street, I’ve decided to continue and exit at Stevenson road instead.
This apparently is my mistake as Stevenson road’s expressway off ramp was not salted and covered with a white layer snow. I slowed down from the 50km/h that I was traveling at while on the 401 to approximately 25 km/h as I prepare myself to go onto the off ramp. The off ramp itself goes up from the expressway to allow trucks to pass under it, bends to the right at the highest point and comes back down while bending to the left and end at the set of lights of Stevenson road. I must have slowed down furthermore as I head up the ramp since I have stopped stepping on the gas pedal and started to gently apply the brakes. I was at the first bend when I noticed my tires seems to have lost its traction, so I followed my driving training and started stepping on and releasing the brake at intervals, simulating the ABS braking system. That did slow down the car a bit but not enough. The worst part is from this right bend to the left bend and Stevenson road itself is a down hill slope. My interval braking did not stop my car in time and I crashed into a van that was waiting for the lights to turn. I got out to start the information exchange process and noticed that the white layer I thought was snow is actually ice. It was an icy slide from the right bend all the way to Stevenson road. The entire ramp was not salted or shovel at all!
Luckily the accident seem to be contained at the bumper level, both car’s air bag did not go off and the other person’s van was simply scratched while bumper got slightly indented. We reported this incident to our respective insurance company and parted ways. This was my virgin car accident and I believe it is a good lesson learn. God will protect me from harm when I need it and not want it, also I don’t think I will ever drive on the express route during snow day ever again.
Tags: accident, car, Friday the thirteenth, morning, road, Stevenson road, thirteenth
Posted by samson on Jan 12, 2012 in
Computer World Some time ago, I have put a team together to give the Keynote event utilizing the AdobeConnect system in the Regent Theatre a test run. The event is basically a broadcast of a live keynote presentation onto the internet via AdobeConnect and having live audience in the theatre at the same time. During the session, questions from the live audience and virtual audience will be ask and answer by the keynote speaker live. UOIT have never attempted something like this and we are all really excited.
The setup basically take full advantage of several systems available to the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Professional level video camcorders will act in place of the standard computer webcam and professional level audio equipment will feed the computer with audio signals. The keynote presenter will wear a wireless microphone enabling him or her to roam around the stage. A professional video camcorder will be focused on the presenter as he or she move and will feed a video switchboard which in turn feeds to the computer. The wireless microphone will also be linked into an audio switchboard, allowing the controller to duplicate the signal for the theatre’s speakers and AdobeConnect simultaneously. Since the event includes a question and answer section, live audiences have to queue up at a question booth where the dean of the faculty of education will be moderating. The dean’s primary role is to moderate the questions from the the online section of the event and ask the presenter these questions, his secondary objective is to ensure the audiences are able to speak into the audio equipment. As the dean or the audience ask their questions, the video and audio will be switch at the switchboards to broadcast their image and voice instead of the presenter, hence decreasing the demand of the screen real estate. The current plan is to have two separate feed for the projector within the Regent, the presenter’s computer and the AdobeConnect host. The presenter’s computer is basically the slide machine controlled by the presenter and the AdobeConnect machine is where I switch the slide mimicking the presenter’s.
Everything was fine and going well, I have contacted the audio specialist ahead of time and have altered the initial plan which involves two question booths instead of the single question booth according to his suggestions. I have also contacted the video specialist, who assured me that his cameras would work perfectly within a computer. He said he tried it before and it worked out extremely well!
When we got there and started the hook up of putting everything together, the audio portion worked perfectly. We tested it before hand and matched the audio standard jacks, basically audio performed as plan. Video on the other hand, gave four of my laptops a blue screen of death!
This RCA to USB device basically destroyed the entire test. The reason behind the RCA to USB device is that our professional level video cameras are still on the older 480i/p standard and our HD video camcorders do not support streaming easily.
Since AdobeConenct can only broadcast 640×480 video signal, I did not push for HD video signals. The USB device requires a device driver but the company that produced the device have stopped their production at the end of Windows Xp’s life. When the device driver was installed onto a Windows 7 machine, it immediately blue screened.
As of right now I am looking for either an updated version of a similar device or an analog to firewire converter, as I know firewire works perfectly well with AdobeConnect. Yet another lesson learn!
Tags: computer, professional level, Regent Theatre, University of Ontario institute of technology, video camcorder