Beijing Bayou 北京八友

As Charles Barkley is wont to scream whenever he sees Ginobili's amazing plays, Game 1 was about Ginobiliiii !!!! Ginobili was vintage Ginobili. His big-game ability and craftiness appeared for the first time this year. The other player instrumental in the Spurs' win was Stephen Jackson whose defense on Kevin Durant made Durant less effective during the fourth quarter. I though Oklahoma still had a terrific chance of wresting the game away from the Spurs in the last two minutes of the game. Durant is possibly the best fourth-quarter closer since Michael Jordan.

Watching streamed NBA games on TNT is a different experience. I saw the game mostly on ground-level. Many times, I don't even know if the players scored and relied on the home-crowd's reaction or announcers to know baskets were made. On the other hand, the ground-level action allowed me to see Stephen Jackson's amazing defense on Kevin Durant. Jackson was physical and made Durant work really hard to shoot uncomfortable shots. Once I saw Jackson's defense, I thought the Spurs had a good chance of winning. 

Even though it's a weird experience to watch the game on the ground level (there were too many views of the camera man's shoes), it was also fun to see up close shots of the Spurs players communicating with each other. During a time out in the 4th quarter, the camera was on Duncan, Ginobili, Parker, Jackson and Neal. Duncan, Ginobili and Parker took turns leading the discussion, Jackson and Neal listened intently, and were seen responding. I had no idea what they talked about but it came across as beautiful and wonderful communication among the teammates. They came out of the time out playing really well. In addition, after Jackson committed his fifth foul, which he thought he didn't commit, he reacted emotionally. Duncan was close by and immediately block Jackson's path to calm him down and stop him from talking to the referee. Ginobili rushed from the other side of the court to talk to Jackson as well. Both Duncan and Ginobili communicated really well. Jackson finished the game without committing a sixth foul.

Kevin Durant is going to be even tougher to guard in the years to come. His length, speed and shooting prowess makes him difficult to defend. If he adds about 5-8 pounds of muscle and a low-post game, his team is going to be win multiple championships. If Durant develops into a Scottie Pippen-like defender, he'll be Michael Jordan on offense with the most disruptive defensive presence on the floor.

Oklahoma already has a few players capable of playing John Bach's doberman defense that Pippen, Jordan and Horace Grant unleased during the Bulls' first 3 championship runs in the early 1990s. The first three quarters of Game 1 showed how Oklahoma's athleticism, speed and length totally disrupted Spurs' offense. The Spurs three-point shooting were horrible compared to their previous two series.

Defense still wins games, that's how the Spurs won tonight. Defense with a potent offense makes a team almost impossible to beat. If Oklahoma hires an assistant coach with a brilliant defensive mind to help head coach Scotty Brooks, the NBA will have a Thunder dynasty.

I have watched very few NBA games since 2006. I don't have a TV. I take it back, I have a TV, it's called a web browser. The only NBA games I watch -- when I have time -- are the ones ESPN3.com streams on the internet. But thanks to a sports.yahoo.com post three weeks ago, I learned that TNT Sports streams NBA games as well.  Thus, I got to see a few playoff games this year, which are more than the zero playoffs games watched from 2008-2011.

Many basketball pundits are predicting the Spurs-Thunder to last 6 or 7 games with the majority picking the Spurs as the winner. They've watched many games and are very knowledgable about basketball analytics (it can get MIT-geeky).

Based on the few games I've seen this year, I am impressed with both teams. I've also enjoyed watching the Spurs play beautiful team basketball, which is the way basketball should be played.

I am rooting for Ginobili, Duncan and the Spurs. Even though the Spurs swept its first two series, I haven't seen Ginobili play close to his best. Durant, Westbrook and Harding are amazing ballers; they give the Thunder a very good chance of winning this year's NBA title.  If Ginobili is not at his best, it's impossible to say the Spurs are favored to win the series.  But given that the Spurs are a deep team, they and the Thunder have equal chances to win the Western Conference Finals.

I think the series will go only 5 games and most likely will come down to the team playing better defense in the last few minutes of the game and some lucky breaks. 

A block and a half away, construction of two houses next to each other has been underway since late last year. I've enjoyed walking by these houses in the past few months and  seeing the layered-changes. Here are pictures of one of the houses in different stages of its construction:

January 2, 2012

March 11, 2012

April 8, 2012

May 13, 2012

Yesterday, I watched live on Facetime my niece and nephew's piano and violin recital. They live a few time zones away. In the past, I got videos and pictures of events similar to this via email. The iPhone/iPad, Facetime and wifi internet connection are wonderful technological tools. They make it easy for families who live far from one another to stay in touch. My niece and nephew no longer talk on the phone or chat with me using Google Talk (a terrific tool but it doesn't work with OS X Lion), they facetime with me. I hope software and hardware engineers will continue to create wonderful and valuable tools that improve lives of people and connect families and friends economically and efficiently.

Taking Udacity courses is fun and educational. They allow me to review concepts, relearn concepts I haven't applied in eons and learn new concepts. Udacity has made 2012 a serendipitous year so far. A concomitant delightful surprise of Udacity is learning Python. 

Python is the required language for doing Udacity's programming homeworks and quizzes. After several weeks of exposure to the language, I conclude that it is a nifty language. I love learning Python features from Peter Norvig's Udacity class. As a Python newbie with limited time outside of work, comparing my quiz and homework programming solutions to Peter Norvig's elegant code solutions exposes me earlier to powerful Python features than I would have if I study Python on my own.

An interesting side effect of learning Python is I want to become reacquainted with C again, learn Objective C and functional language to be named later. Udacity has made programming and CS very fun. 

The San Francisco Road Runners Club (SFRRC) is holding its first annual Catch the Road Runner 5K run on August 5, 2012. Begin your fun Sunday morning in San Francisco with a 5K run. Details of the race are here. Start training! :)

The best eggplant dish I have ever had is the steamed eggplant from Southland Cafe in Cupertino, California. It's cooked with ginger, garlic, soy sauce and an oil I can't identify.

Udacity.com is now one of my favorite websites. It is a top-notch high-quality online educational site that offers terrific Computer Science courses. I had an udaciously fun time studying Udacity's CS 101 class on Search Engines. Professor Dave Evans, the instructor, is one of the best instructors I have seen. I learned a few new things from Dave's class. I also learned a little bit of Python. For Dave's optional class project, I wrote a simple Facebook Deals crawler to crawl Facebook users' streams for deals posted by brands with a Facebook presence. The foundation of my Facebook Deals Crawler is Dave's CS 101 web search engine. The source code of my crawler which shows proof of concept is available here.

Up next for me is Peter Norvig's CS 201 class at Udacity. I am looking forward to seven weeks of udaciously fun time of learning CS from Peter Norvig. I wish Udacity was available when I was a kid. Here's hoping Udacity succeeds and becomes an alternative to expensive universities for high quality Computer Science instruction.

Christmas lights and decorations in Mountain View, California.