Like a swarm of bugs, no, make that bats, they descended in a cacophony of sound as soon as the sun set. Mad mobs of midget pirates and devils and princesses and ghouls, all hungry, insatiable, needing a feeding, jostling for position outside our doorway. Watch out! That one girl was sneaking in, undoubtedly to snatch more than her fair share. Here in Hong Kong, Halloween is alive and well.

All the way from the land of the Rising Sun comes this picture, courtesy of greggman. On the left is Hsuan, on the right is, uh, Hsuan's twin sister.

And there in the middle is... Johnny!

Wow! You read a lot of hype in most magazines about Sony's newest videogame console. Most journalists are so far removed from the heart of the industry that they inevitably buy into the hype.

Remember Rocket Science? Probably not. If you do, then you'd remember they were a dismal failure that was featured on the cover of Wired!

Finally, an article in Salon that tells it like it is. This is so dead on, that it's scary. This is what everyone in the industry knows, but is afraid to say. Everyone is holding their breath and waiting for the dust to settle.

I wouldn't discount the DVD ability of the Playstation 2 though, since I believe Sony is trying to broaden the target of the console beyond hardcore gamers.

Also, it's a Sony, so people are waiting for an excuse to embrace the machine. Watch out when that Must-Have Game gets released. I know there's a high probability I'll buy a machine once Metal Gear Solid 2 comes out.

How long have I been asking for Seinfeld episodes on DVD? I want it all, every single season, and I'm willing to pay top dollar for it. Since I was a late in discovering the show, there's about six seasons of hilarious hijinx that I need to catch up on.

I sensed the first spark of hope today. There on the shelves at HMV were the first six seasons... of "Friends". Unfortunately, they were PAL DVDs made in Britain and no one outside of Europe owns a DVD player that will play those discs. Even Hong Kong, which broadcasts PAL, sells mostly NTSC players.

"Seinfeld" and "Friends" are both Must-See TV. Hopefully it's only a matter of time. We're getting close to achieving my dream.

Wired's change to e-mail has sparked off a religious war among its readers. Most of them took offense at the tone of the article. The rest of them are following convention. Only a few of them could look past the condescension in the writing and address this issue, which is of the utmost importance...

I must apologize. I've been encoding subliminable messages into my titles. Some of you may have picked out that the title "GeORgE W. Bush for PrESidenT" has the subliminable message GORE BEST hidden in it.

Actually, that was accidental, a side-effect of my actual intended subliminable message encoding "GeORgE W. Bush FOR PREsideNT", which reads GORE FOR RENT. Sorry for the mixup.

Hong Kong is China. And it was time for a new look. What better place than the cleverly named Time's Cut, near Times Square in Causeway Bay, for the apparently very popular China-Prison-Inmate-cut.

"Cut short, good look," he said (transliterated) and I knew he was a pro when he used the authentic New Zealand "clipping" technique on me. Whoosh. $105. Divide by eight if you're in the U.S.

Baaah.

Al Gore says all the right things, but I don't believe him. Watch how he takes that head-back, double-chin pose as he preaches. I hate it.

It's an election based on pure impression for me. George W. is likeable, the guy next door with the grill. He doesn't have all the answers, he doesn't always say the right things. Sometimes, damn it, he says what's on his mind.

Does this make him a good leader? I don't know. But the President has to deal with people. So impressions count.

Put it this way: between Gore and Bush, who'd you rather have over for dinner?

Feeling nostalgic for the good ol' days? Well, I've integrated the old photo albums into the new site. Check out the recent features.

Feeling really, really nostalgic? I've reconstructed the old, old home page for the feature called "Times New Roman" which is about the latest site redesign.

Did you know you can comment on most feature articles?

Engrish is that funny Japanese-English that reads like bad broken poetry. If you read enough Engrish phrases, it begins to make sense. Stop. You've had too much.

Be sure to check out the Recent Discoveries page.

"Slamming" is not Spamming's drunk cousin. I'm wary of all long-distance phone companies, so it's no surprise to me that the biggest consumer problem in telecommunications today is "slamming" or the act of stealing customers without the customer's consent.

Verizon and Qwest have both been accused of "slamming" by a lot of people recently. One woman complained when Qwest claimed her husband switched over their service. Except her husband had been dead for eight years!

In another case, a man's dog, Boris (also the man's listed name in the phone book), supposedly "signed" an authorization for the service change. Hey, your dog lives there and has rights too, buddy!

It's a Subway Series! A Subway Series? Is Subway the sponsor? Pacific Bell sponsors a ball park and Subway gets to sponsor the World Series? And only if the Yankees win? I hate baseball, so I have no idea. What does it mean?

It's the Yankees vs. the Mets!

Oh.

Forget the New York Times and Salon. For all my serious daily news from now on, I'm going to The Onion.

Today's top headlines in The Onion, "Bush Horrified To Learn Presidential Salary" and "Discovery of Oil Turns Peru Into Bunch Of Assholes".

I used to think that the relational database was an abstract, complex concept that was way over my head. After spending the last couple weeks getting this site dynamically generated with CGI scripts, I realized that fundamentally the relational database is the simplest concept.

Anyone can learn how to use them. I suspect it still takes a lot of experience to master them. Since MySQL/Perl forms the backend of this site, I wrote a short introduction to using these two open-source solutions together.

For Windows users, I compiled a series of steps that help you set up a CGI/Perl/MySQL web-development environment, so that you don't need to be online to test your site.

I broke down today and bought it. After priding myself on facing the Britney-Christina onslaught without giving a second thought to actually buying in, I learned that the song that's been bouncing around in my head for the last few months is Christina Aguilera's.

How many people had I crookedly hummed the song too, to confused looks and shrugged shoulders, before a radio DJ in Hong Kong finally set things right?

Those of you who know what I'm talking about, the song is "Come On Over (All I Want Is You)" and it's like a late-80s song come out of hibernation, stretching, jubilant gospel-pop. What does it remind me of?

Amazon's defense of its one-click patent against web-late-entry Barnes and Noble has received a lot of criticism recently from people who don't believe something so obvious should be patentable. So isn't it ironic that OpenTV is applying to extend an original patent they held in 1994, three years before Amazon made one-click shopping available, to include "one-click" shopping?

If the Patent Office finds in favor of OpenTV, this would put Amazon on the defensive.

Forbes.com has an article on the situation that is aptly named, "Amazon Tastes Its Own Patent Pending Medicine".

Here's a party that none of us have ever been to.

Wired.com has an article about a living room in Munich which attracts some hot DJs. Apparently, the venue has gained a cult following and is being streamed Shoutcast-style around the world. With live chat and webcams, it's not exactly back to basics.

Now, all you movers and shakers out there can enjoy [danchan] daily news while on the road! Just point your PDAs browser to: http://www.danchan.com/handheld

It's easy to add [danchan] to your AvantGo channel list for offline browsing! Just choose Create Channel while logged into AvantGo. Specify the URL above and you've got [danchan] in the palm of your hand!

After almost a week of work, the comment system is up and running. Registering is one easy step.

Be the envy of all your peers by becoming a member of [danchan] today! You can add your comments to any of the daily news items! You can vote for the comments that you find most interesting!

What are you waiting for? Hurry, before your preferred nickname is taken!

Wired News had an article today called "Casting Couch, or Auction House?" about an idea that is trying to bridge the gap between the world of movies and that of the Internet, not by providing video content online, but by auctioning off (eBay style) starring roles in an upcoming movie online.

The producers have managed to raise $500,000 of the film's $1.5 million budget this way.

I can only think that once the novelty of "Who Wants to be a Movie Star?" (yes, that's the name of the project) wears off, people will judge the movie by the fact that these are actors paying to act.

How good can they be?

The best actors in the business are getting paid Mega-Bucks to act in movies and well, we all know that even those films could suck.

In the Technology section of Salon today, there was an article about Jim McCoy and Mojo Nation, his idea for a next-generation Napster. While open-source projects such as Gnutella and Freenet up the ante with a distributed, decentralized network system, Mojo Nation takes it two steps farther, adding encryption and a free market environment.

What exactly does a free market environment mean to file sharing?

It means users need to earn Mojo, the form of currency on this network, by offering bandwidth and storage to the network. The users can use this Mojo to "purchase" files over the network. Files are encrypted and chopped up and distributed all over the net so that purchasing a file requires purchasing the pieces of the files.

The price of the pieces, or rather, the price of sending the pieces, is set by the market.

Jim McCoy was quick to state that users are "paying" for the service of sending the packets, not for the content itself.

And how does Autonomous Zone Industries, the company behind Mojo Nation, make real American dollars? Well, some users will end up with a surplus of Mojo and others will have a deficit. Autonomous Zone Industries acts as the bank, taking a cut out of every real-dollar-to-mojo transaction.

So as long as you've got a couple bucks in your pocket, you'll never have to despair over the thought that "I've lost my Mojo!"

The web-savvy among you may notice that [danchan] now sports a new look. The idea was to create a design that was simple, logical and elegant (quick to load, easy to navigate and aesthetically pleasing). After many thoughtful revisions, I decided to steal from the best, and so, [danchan] now resembles a simplified Salon.

Most pages are now dynamically generated, the exceptions being old pages that don't work within the format of the new design. Many more features (and feature articles) are in the works, I just couldn't wait until they were all finished.

Please feel free to submit any daily news items (along with any relevant links) that you find interesting and I'll consider posting them. I'll even give you a byline!