Keep on reading, even if you don't have a fat wallet

If you like reading, like me.
And don't have that much money to buy lots of books...

Of course, you can just go to a library.
But, you can read more.
Just found a great place to get eBooks, and they're free!
Project Gutenberg

if you have a palm PDA, you can get the ebooks in formats optimazed for your palm here:
manybooks.net

Dawn of the clones

Yes, I do major in Biology.
But no, I'm not talking about cloning animals or humans here.
Anyway, wanna see clones?
click on the following 2 links to see them:
for Taiwanes-> what we are familiar with | the clone
for others----> what we are familiar with | the clone

Hay, that's sick.
Yeah, we all know that the original is all so successful, and so easy to use.
But, hey you guys at big Y, you are the pionner of the web search engine, have you eatten your dignity to clone big G?
Although the big G formula is good, I like innovations better.

火星人の変化...

DNA中的Adjacent thymines照了紫外線会産生Cyclobutane 5566 thymine dimer...
呵！

Just sent 2 more emails to labs...

Two more mails to two more professors of the institute of immunology.
Wish there is at least a reply.
If not, I guess I would be forced to stick with labs of our own department. If that's the case, maybe I would need to try neurobiology(my second intrest) instead of immunology.

新的行事曆軟體...OTZ

剛剛抓到一個PDA上新的行事曆軟體, 據說可以在同一畫面下顯示行事曆和代辦事項(ToDo)
Motendus
結果灌完後第一次啟動竟然問:"你是還是女的?"
選了"男的"之後,
發現ToDo只有一項: "找女朋友"............................而且不能新增XD
真是令人不解...

又仔細看了一下網站說明, 發現此軟體中的一年只有362天, 其中"情人節, 聖誕夜 和聖誕節"不顯示
但若ToDo中的"找女朋友"前面打了代表完成的勾勾, 就恢復成一年365天
網站說明還寫著:"這下你應該知道此軟體的概念了吧"

這個作者是好人~~~~~

The intresting and funny story of the CEO of Opera software

http://www.opera.com/swim/

The CEO of Opera, which makes the great Opera browser, said that he would swim from Norway to the USA if downloads of the browser exceed one million. And he sure went out to sea... read the link for the story.

Hm......Looks like you've got to find ways to add spice to life from time to time.

How to elongate your boot up time?

Do you think your computer boots up too fast?
If you are using win XP, try Konfabulator, in my experiance, it effectively doubles your computer's boot time :P

Not enough?
Try Norton system works, with a full install of all the components, it tripled the boot time of my old win98 computer(wonder if it's as good in XP...)

P.S. In my opinion, the additional components of Norton system works are junk, you only need anti virus. But, with Konfabulator, it's great eye candy, so I'll play with it for a while... :)

Ok, iPod are getting cheap :P

I once thought that iPods are expensive, as I said in a comment of a previous post.
But today, at Costco, I noticed that they are selling both the Toshiba Gigabeat 20GB and the iPod photo 30GB, with the iPod carrying a price tag that is about a buck or two cheaper than the Gigabeat.

Here's the prices:(well, I don't remember the actual numbers)
iPod photo 30GB: about 11200NT
Gigabeat 20GB: about 11800NT

Hay man, the iPod has 10 gigs more, for a lower price!
And compare that to the Sony Walkman HD3(Taiwanese version, supports chinese): about 15000NT (that gameboy looking thing hasn't shown up in stores yet)
and the Japanese version of HD3: 12000NT, while both only has 20gigs.

Guess the "expansive days" of the iPod are over. Maybe I should put the iPod back into my consideration list after all.

What an unpleasant experience

Guess I was all drowsy yesterday. When I left the "rich and poor" classroom yesterday I left my little bag of PDA stuff there. And it wasn't until I got home (5 hours later) that I realized that the bag wasn't with me. I've got 2 memory sticks and a clie WL110 WIFI card in there! One of the memory sticks was barrowed from a classmate, and the other one contained a whole backup of my clie PDA, which means that if someone read that one with a clie, they'd get a lot of my important info. To make things worse, that WIFI card was discontinued, and was one of the 2(all discontinued) my clie could take, which means that without it, my clie would be disconnected to the net forever!

I thought about what I would do if I didn't get them back...

I'd need to buy a new MS card for that classmate, and a new clie if I'd want to surf the net on the go again...

I couldn't sleep that night, and went to school, drowsier then ever, the next morning, in search of my stuff.

I was the first one to get it when the doors were opened. I got back into that blasted classroom, and looked around - I can't find that little bag! I went over 3 times before I gave up an started my way down stairs.

Then I tried my last chance and asked the guy in charge of classroom maintenance. And was he soooooo good! He had put it in a safe place, made sure I knew what it was, and gave it to me. He said a lot, reminding me not to do it again.

Of course, I won't want to experience that again.

AvantGo User Support is Great!!

Starting Apr 16(Apr 15 in the US),I got a problem with Avantgo, it's the 2nd server orinted problem I've encountered since I started using it(more then a year and a half ago)
I can't get the Avantgo homepage loaded. All I get is a page with this message:
"An error occured
We're sorry, but an error occured while processing your request."

So, the next day(Apr 17), I filled out their support form, and got an automatically generated email assuring that they would reply in 3 days.

And sure enough, I got their reply today(Apr 19), and it was fixed!
(execpt for the ads, oh well, that's a bigger problem for them)
A good company with good support deserves our support, so, here's a little publicity for them; and I'll continue using their great service.

Finally found THE MP3 player, and it's not a sony

All right, just found this, from Toshiba:
The Gigabeat F series (cnet taiwan review | engadget report )

touch pad, good looks, USB on the go, big color screen and a reasonable price.
almost did well everything sony did wrong with their walkman HD
The only draw back is the battery life of 16hr compared with sony's 20+
(the 30hr they claimed is just for ATRAC3, not MP3), but hay, I can live with that.
just compare that with this:
which one looks better? I don't think there is anything to argue here.
I, would not want to hold that gameboy looking thingy on the streets.
I was once a Sony fan, but after they droped the clie and then lost the edge with walkmans, I'm turning.
Besides, walkmans don't support Chinese traditional ID3 tags, no color screen nor USB-otg, AND BOTH SONY &TOSHIBA HAVE THE SAME PRICE.
So, I'd go for the "more for the buck", with the same high quality you'd expect from most major Japanese companies.

I'm saying bye bye Sony unless you come up with something just as good.

剛考完流病...

嗯~很久沒有一科像這樣採用"臨時報佛腳"戰術了
因上學期有好幾科太早唸完, 考前忘光, 所以這次就試試看
很神的, 今天下午3:07剛好唸完, 從圖書館走出來
驚!
3:30就要考了, 而且是在醫學院!!
結果在狂飆而且各個紅綠燈都很配合之下, 我破了自己的紀錄, 在15分鐘內從總圖騎車到達基醫大樓^^
一開始發答案卷時真是嚇死人, 竟然每人要拿6張答案紙
結果題目難易適中, 共7題問答, 2組計算題
我寫了3張(單面), 在最後一分鐘剛好寫完
真是驚險, 接下來等成績了...

段考...

明明就還有好幾科沒唸
卻一點書的慾望都沒有
無聊的掛在網路上, 也沒啥好看的網站
新聞很無聊
也沒什麼新奇的gadget上市...

真是糟糕, 再這樣下去我爆定了..................................................................................

On the movie playing functions of the PSP

I'v recently seen many websites saying how revolutionary the PSP is as a portable movie player.
Yeah, it plays movies, but not very good.
First, it uses UMDs or Memory stick duos.
With the UMDs, it's like you've got to buy another "lower resolution version" of every DVD you have. And they haven't even started selling them yet.
And with the Memory stick duos, it's very expensive (from what I know, it could sell for twice of that of CF or SD cards). And besides, it maxs out at 1GB.(Yeah, they just came out with a 2gig version in japan, but the price is like intended to stop anybody from buying it)

So, I guess most people would use MSs instead of UMDs for movie viewing.
But this isn't practical.

Viewing movies with the PSP is similer to viewing with a clie(a sony PDA). In fact, it uses Image converter 2(which is a modified version of what came with clies), to compress the files on your computer to a MS card. And notice the difference: Image converter for clies are free, but Image converter for PSP is "sold seperately".

First of all is the problem: where do you get your movie files?
The easiest way is to convert from VCDs, but those are hard to get these days.
DVDs are protected by encrption, so you need to crack the code first(and breaking the law), rip it to MPEG format(which is extreamly slow), then feed it to Image converter. I've seen someone on a fourm that said it took him a whole night to rip a DVD, and maybe an hour more to put it into the memorystick. That's crazy, if you have time for riping, why don't you just see it on your desktop, with a larger screen?
Or, get them with BT or P2P and look out for subponas from Hollywood. Something I wouldn't do.

Then, after you have it on the memory stick, do you really need to see it on the go? Only if you commute long distances on public tranportation, I guess. Steve Job got it right: "You can listen to music while doing other things, but you can't while watching a movie." Yeah, imagine watching a movie on your PSP while driving on the highway to work.

My Clie can play movies just the way PSPs does, but I seldom do it, even if my Clie's screen has much more pixels then the PSP. I don't have much videos to watch, and I can't watch videos while studing for an exam.

Just got my bike fixed

今天到阿綸去修我那台在北宜公路上掛掉的活動車
本來以為要大翻修, 把變速拆下來重調.
結果沒有整個拆下來, 反而是把變速線換掉.

我的變速線竟然折到了!!

而且還折到兩處, 在龍頭那一個, 可能是我不小心吧
但在車價邊緣又一個就太扯了...
聽鎮祐說色彩賣的車有好幾台都有類似的變速怪問題...

難道他專門折人家的變速線?
不會吧...
只能說算我衰吧
以這種方式慶祝活動車里程破1000km

Turning off my phone

Although mobile phones are all the rage
I'm starting to get tired of the bombardment of ringtones, vibrants and calls.
I decided toturn off my phone and return to the peacefull life I once had. It really doesn't matter to loose call since none of them were truely important, and besides, I'm a loner.

------
Disconnecting from the world.

今天の生化課...

之前一直告訴自己「生化是重課,不要翹」所以細生只念了一章就徒図書館過来了。
結果来了,却不知道老師在講什東東。只知道従上個星期到現在都是一堆不知要幹麻的pathway。
What the heck am I doing here?

The fight for your pocket

So many things are fighting for your pocket space, how do you choose?
Let me list the stuff:
1.Phone, 2.MP3/walkman, 3.games, 4.digicam and 5.PDAs.

Now, I think the first thing is to consider which is most important to you.
As #1 can do the work of at least 3 and 4; #3 may do #2; my PDA can substitute 2, 3 and 4
A Treo can even do all of them.
But convergent gadgets never do all of them well.

Phones only take calls good, they do a lot more, but do non of them well.
For example, many mini memory card maxs out at 128MB, so, takes too less MP3s; most can only play simple games; 0.31MP camera; and inputing data with "multitap"(worse then a PDA's touch screen)

Walkmans usually just play music, and do it well.

Portable games(aka PSP)are only good at games, too big and heavy for music play(and bad UI)

Digicams also just take photos.(Only a friction plays music)

PDAs may also be good at games or music play, but never good at taking pictures. I'd say it's best for reading web content on the go.

So focus on what you need most and keep in mind that the added on functions seldom do well.

Thus, for me, I have a seperate PDA and a phone that is only for phone calls(There is an email function, but it's taken care of by my PDA). Personal data management and news reading is essential to me, PDAs are OK with music play, and I'm not that found of phone calls.
Maybe it's because I seldom get or make calls, don't have much close friends, and no girl friend. Call me a loner.

But for some others, I guess the simplist solution is to keep the pockets clean and empty :D

Learning to be ignored

I guess, because everybody's life is so busy, they have a tendency of ignoring others.
Because you aren't any "important somebody", they don't have to always notice you.
Thus, you've got to get used to being ignored.
No, nobody takes a friend that serious, so you might as well think you're just an acountance.
Get used to being ignored, and live with it.
The world still keep on moving even without you.

Thus you learn that you, also, have a right to ignore others.

I'm going to turn off my phone for a little privacy...

News: New Sony HD walkman anounced

The new sony NW-HD5 walkman is just released.
Quite nice, but
1.Hay that's ugly, looks more like an uglified gameboy
2.only displays 6 language, without Chinese(hay, iRiver had something like 20+)
3.only 20GB
4.no cradle nor remote control(which makes the HD1 still better)
5.Man, it lakes the "Sony cool look"

The HD1 made me look forword to a HD2;
The HD2 made me look forword to a HD3;
The HD3 made me look forword to a HD4;
Now the HD5 made me look forword to a HD6...
Nice try Sony, go on, and let Apple and iRiver eat it out.

Related:
http://www.betanews.com/article/NWHD5_Sonys_iPod_Killer/1112802877
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000420038937/

All right, done another web site(I hate IE)

Finally done the Wuling site for the cycling club.
With each debug, the more I resent IE and the more I appreceate the hard work of the guys at mozilla and W3C.
It seams that M$IE always have some kind of rendering problem with this or that. But with Firefox, you usually get what you want to see.

But the thing that really pissed me off is not the rendering problems of IE, but rather the "safety measures" that came with XP SP2. It went so far as to block my flash movie and my 2 javascripts.
The Flash movie is the navigation bar that links to the pages of the site; one javascript is for showing the last modifing date of the site, and the other just a count down clock to a certein date. IE said that they are "active content", and that they may be harmful code. Come on, man, this is just like saying that "THE CLOCK ON YOUR DESK MAY KILL YOU!" Yeah right, can you strike someone to death with an alarm clock?

This forced me to go on to MSDN for some help, and found some hysterical solution:
Just add the following tag to your page

with"http://yoursite.com/"being the URL of your site
Yeah, I guess M$ like to play with "digital signatures", but this is absolutely stupid.
There's a Chinese saying that goes something like "taking of your pants just to let out the gas of the guts".

Ok, so next time remember to add that junk code to your page if you use flash or java, or IE will block them: for no reason.
And, once again, use a W3C compliant browser, such as Firefox. Website developers around the world will thank you.

---

I also played around with HTML validation, and found that the number of errors of a M$ Word generated HTML file could be 10times the normal errors of HTMLs you write yourself. Macromedia Dreamweaver is a very good piece of softwere, thank them for their generous 1 month trial(such a shame that I can afford to but it); and thank them for including a "Word/Frontpage junk code cleaner".

太平山之行感想

• day1~北宜公路to羅東

雨天騎車真的很不好受. 雨衣只蓋到上半身, 下半身全濕, 雙腳還感覺的到雨水在鞋裡前後流動. 下坡時更為了讓雙腿不要太冰而必須繼續空踩. 不但如此, 鏈條卡滿了泥巴, 砂石; 最扯的是變速因此管線不順, 還定位跑掉...
在坪林休息後, 天氣放晴了, 但那雨後故障的變速開始折磨我. 就在此混亂之中, 忽然感到後輪特軟, 還跟著踩踏上下擺動. 下車一看, 發現一小塊"暗色錐狀不明物質"卡在外胎上, 伸手一拔, 後輪"噗嘶"一聲把僅剩的氣洩了大半, 真是禍不單行.
把車倒過來, 準備清車, 車架上的一個孔卻有如水龍頭般狂洩, 一小柱水柱流了出來...靠, 還車架積水咧!
嘿, 住羅東真好, 什麼設備應有盡有, candy甚至還有和室可以睡. 還要感謝智誠那超棒的阿媽. 只可惜在這麼棒的地方的夜晚, 必須要在補胎和沒完沒了的變速調整中度過.

• day2~羅東to太平山

Candy真貪吃阿(怎麼每次出來完都會跟很會吃的女生同桌, 記得大一新生宿營時也有), 大清早就嗑了2大碗稀飯和一堆肉, 結果上車騎了沒多久, 就消化不良了XD
話 說羅東到土場間的路程比想像中遠, 騎了很久都看不到土場. 期間經過一大片田園, 因飆太快, 又張嘴狂吸氣, 吃了不少drosophila(果蠅), 攝取了一些不乾淨的幾丁質. 還有一隻直接飛進我的喉嚨裡, 淹沒在澱粉脢和唾液中, 弄得我喉嚨很乾, 還一直咳嗽; 幾十分鐘後才被喉嚨吐了出來.
沒追到大隊, 大家都有自己的理由. 到土場前, candy消化不良, peacer和我肚子餓, 智誠不小心跌倒受傷; 上山後, 我受不了那冰冷的空氣, 氣管很痛, 變速又不順; 智誠背包太重(為何背包需要裝鋼架?); candy好像比較沒問題了; peacer血糖不穩, 還是校園跑車...結果都沒追到. 只有我剛好看到最後一批人要上去放行裡的那一刻.
等我們4個人都到了, 大家都已經在碰碰車上, 房門全鎖, 又沒鑰匙, 只好使出住宿舍學到的"刷卡大法", 把一間的門刷開.(哈, 那個鎖真好刷)

• day3~翠豐湖, 下太平山
  

早上跟柚子去騎翠豐湖(是怎樣, 前一天有一堆人要去, 今天只剩我們2個), 這真是個飆車的好地方, 路大部分是緩上緩下, 還有一堆髮夾灣, 不但車速很少低於20, 還可以練練高速壓車過灣. 我有好幾次差點擦到護欄, 看來過灣還要練練. 此外這條路還謀殺了我們不少相機記憶容量.
滑下太平山還滿空虛的. 花了近6小時爬上去, 滑下來卻不到一小時...
在遊覽車上, 終於了解維中學妹有多好人, 竟連點快10首的好人歌, 狂唱(一開始還唱了"我是女生", 承認了身為學妹的事實).

photos

Thoughts of today

Before you want people to work for you, you should respect them first.
Not let them wait a whole afternoon, having nothing to do, practically wasting their time.

Today, I was not respected. So I left. Wasting 5 hours for nothing is enough.

My favorite keychain

Have I mentioned the TV-B-Gone keychain before?
This is a must get I'll be getting the next time I'm going to the states, turns off almost any TV you see!

News: Gmail is now 1 year old

Last year's April fool's, Google launched Gmail beta with 1GB storage, and we now know clearly they weren't joking.
Today, it's once again April fool's, and Gmail just turned one.
On Gmail's one-year birthday, they celebrated by putting this "Infinity+1 storage plan", and you started to wonder:"Infinity Gigabites?"
To archive their funny April fool's special homepage, here is a copy: (all rights belong to Google)-------------------------------------------

A Google approach to math.

On the eve of Gmail's one-year birthday, our engineers were toiling away furiously. Notes scribbled all over the walls. Complex calculations on napkins and empty pizza boxes. Millions of M&Ms.

The result?... starting today, we're beginning the roll-out of our new and top secret Infinity+1 storage plan. The key features are:

• Write, don't worry.
  You want to stop caring about storage. We want to keep giving you more. Today, and beyond.

• The gift that keeps on giving.
  1394.860506 megabytes of storage (and counting) for every user.
  (the number in front should be running on their own site...)

• No complicated equations. No tough algorithms.
  Just this one graph:
  

Gmail turns 1 today. And we've always loved a good joke. We know we won't reach infinity, but check out what we will do ...

Well, in fact they said they ARE giving out TWO GIGs, that's right, one more gig.
Are they going to give out one more gig every year?(lol)
(Although my account says: "You are currently using 26 MB (2%) of your 1398 MB.", I guess they well gradually add it up)
I don't know, but one thing clear:"They are always number 1 in free storage"
(Just as Yahoo anounces "plans" for giving out 1GB)
By the way, anyone needs a Gmail invitation? I've got more then enough to spear^^

天阿: 好忙

這兩個禮拜真是有夠忙的
之前邊準備生化考試邊坐杜鵑花節美宣就已經覺得有點忙不過來了說
結果杜鵑花節結束後不但沒有輕鬆點
現在還是生科之夜+武嶺會師網宣+物理+細生+期中考大神...
然後還有一堆閒書, 不但看不完, 每次到圖書館看到好看的還拼命借...
回到宿舍又會忍不住到PDA討論版逛逛

每天熬夜
每天上課睡覺

今天有種快虛脫的感覺
明天去騎太平山, 放3天假, 看會不會好一點

單車社16週年社慶^^

今天愚人節, 也是單車社的社慶
以下是大家高興的吃蛋糕照片
感謝出錢買蛋糕的兩位同學^^

putting on the candles

everybody drooling...