Technicat

PhilChu

PhilChu

📍 Las Vegas, Nevada http://technicat.com/

Manzanar

On my recent trip to the Bay Area, I thought about stopping by Manzanar. I've been there before, almost accidentally finding it on the way back from Lake Tahoe. But I figure amidst the constant stream of lockdown complaints, seeing where American-born citizens (and immigrants who could have been citizens

Life Is Art, and Cheap

I recently returned from a trip to the Bay Area, which I always find invigorating from absorbing the tech atmosphere (even though, as someone who grew up in the early PC days, I find Silicon Valley overall a disappointment, more Wall Street 2.0 than Whole Earth Catalog). Also part

The Legend of Avelino Martinez

Sure, it's great to see a Chinese American superhero on the big screen, but I want to see a movie about Avelino Martinez. I finally found his mural (one of a series of Tehachapi historical murals) on the streets of Tehachapi on my most recent otherwise tedious drive between Las

Counterfeiting and Car Chases, LA Style

Originally written on Epinions in February 2004 I love movies about LA, ranging from Hollywood stories (The Player), comedies (LA Story), to the gritty noir pics based on Walter Mosley and James Ellroy novels (LA Confidential, Devil in a Blue Dress). But the first and most hard-edged LA “locale” movie

The Game Localization Handbook

I see there’s a newer edition of this book. Here’s a review of the first edition that I wrote on Epinions, so it’s a bit dated (with reference to hardware). As video games become more respectable(?), an increasing number of books, magazines and web sites offer to

Len Deighton

I haven’t written many reviews on Goodreads, but I wrote a few brief ones on some of Len Deighton’s Cold War-era spy novels. His books are largely out of print (although SS-GB was recently produced as a TV series), but I often find them in libraries and used

Writing the Character-Centered Screenplay

There’s something wrong when a book on screenwriting is tedious to get through. Halfway into Andrew Horton’s Writing the Character-Centered Screenplay, I thought I would scream if I saw the word carnivalesque again. By carnival, the author refers to the mystery, progress and interaction of the developing characters

To Program Is Human

When I worked in Silicon Valley, it seemed everyone wanted the title Software Architect. It’s a sexy-sounding title, maybe because in the movies all the cool people work in advertising or architecture firms, but in the real building world, while the architects get the glory, someone has to put

Smart Mobs

My first Epinions book review, of Howard Rheingold’s Smart Mobs, written back in 2003 (the bit about wireless games and wireless internet not working out yet is a bit dated). And I did visit Hachiko’s statue afterwards. This book made me laugh, it made me cry. And it

Serenity Found...No One Who's Actually Asian

A while ago I read Serenity Found, an enjoyable set of essays on on Joss Whedon’s Western sci-fi depicted in the TV series Firefly and the movie Serenity. Firefly is probably my second favorite TV series, next to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for the same reasons as as everyone