Sunday, February 26, 2006

The provenance of a.m./p.m.

Here's some intresting stuff from my GRE vocabulary studies...

The word root "ANTE", is Latin for "before" or "in front of".

Ante Meridiem, which means "before noon" is abbreviated as "a.m.".
Similarly, "p.m." stands for "Post Meridiem".

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Also, some sort of joke
"MAL" , as in "maladies" and "malfunction" means "bad".
But how about the word "male"? Does that mean all men are bad ? :D

預防運動傷害:保護你的膝蓋

這是即將po在車社網站上的宣導文(修改版),
各位看官, 給點建議吧
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Preface: why protect your knees?
若你會來單車社,想必對騎車有一定的喜好吧!膝蓋是騎車時最重要的關節之一,它背負著把大腿伸縮的力量轉換成腿部的上下移動的使命。膝蓋受傷可能造成你終身不得再騎車,甚至行動不便。想像一下,當你的膝關節只要轉動,就會讓你痛不欲生,是何等痛苦啊?

膝關節是腿部活動的一個活動點,是大腿骨和兩隻小腿骨間接合的地方。為了讓關節上下的硬骨間能順利的活動,中間墊了幾塊軟骨和一些分泌液在其間,作為潤滑之用。到老年時,軟骨磨損,可能會受傷、感染-而發展成關節炎。從目前西醫對膝關節的了解,因軟骨細胞都已分化,無法再分生來修補磨損的部份;反而將由硬骨中的幹細胞(myoblast)取代而新生硬骨。之前上動物組織課時老師說了一個半開玩笑但可怕的說法:大腿和小腿間的軟骨被應骨完全取代後,兩段硬骨會完美的合而為一......

而在年輕時運動傷害所引起的膝蓋痛,一般是因為肌肉出力過度,疲累乏力,使膝蓋骨鬆動,晃動而跟附近的肌腱磨擦,造成劇痛。因此,以下將說明如何較省力而有效率的踩踏。

Knowing your derailers
擅用變速。買車時都花了大錢買高級變速了,幹嘛擺著不用,踩重檔虐待自己?
較低的檔位(也就是踩起來感覺較輕的檔位)雖然踩起來車速較慢,但力量(扭力)較大,用來起步、加速或爬坡。較高的檔位,每踩一圈,輪子轉得更多,車速較快,但力量較小。當你達到一定的速度,有了足夠向前的動量(momentum)後再升檔加速。
另,因變檔需要鏈條的轉動來把鏈條帶到別的齒輪去,所以請在"需要變檔前"就先變過去。例如:看到前方有坡時,在開始爬坡之前就先降檔;或在停紅燈前先降檔,以利稍後綠燈時的起步。

Paddling correctly
在踩踏時,你的目的是為了帶動齒輪旋轉,因此,踩踏並不只是死命的用大腿力量往下踩。踩踏的出力,可以分散至腿部的各個肌肉群。想像自己要踏一個正圓,動做應分為向下踩(用大腿)、往後帶(用腳板)、向上拉(用小腿)、放鬆,而完成一個圓形的運動軌跡。踏板應踩在腳板的前半段,也就是腳趾至足弓間肉多的部分。

How your muscles work
肌肉在正常的適中長度下出力最大﹔在緊繃的狀態下,出力效率反而較低(*見註解)。因此讓雙腿保持在放鬆而較高的踩踏速度(又稱轉速)下才能得到最佳的踩踏效率,同時也能減緩肌肉疲累並減少關節中軟骨的磨損。

Acknowledge your body's limits
每個人的身體都有一個體能極限。不要一看到別人很神的往前飆就不服輸的硬踩重檔跟上。除了天生的強者以外,體能應該是漸近式的慢慢練出來的,而不是跟漫畫情節一樣,「只要我有骨氣,就可以把體能極限逼出來」。利用意志力和腎上腺素逼出自己的體能極限是很傷身體的。記住,善待自己的身體並不是懦弱,而是有長久發展的遠見,一種有智慧的表現。

Conclusion
因此,最理想的狀態是保持在你踩踏最舒服的檔位,在踩起來感覺太輕或太重時隨時適時的變檔調整至最舒適的檔位。放輕鬆騎,想騎快一點的話可以把轉速拉高。若騎累了,就下來休息一下沒關係,休息是為了走更長遠了路。
膝蓋是要用到老的東西,受傷了很難再生,所以奉勸各位好好保護自己的膝蓋。

*註:
肌肉在正常的適中長度下,肌動(Thick filaments)與肌凝纖維(Thin filaments)間的連結(cross bridges)最多,出力最大﹔在緊繃的狀態下,因肌動(Thick filaments)與肌凝纖維互相重疊部分過多,可以形成的連結(cross bridges)較少,出力效率反而較低。

Friday, February 24, 2006

さよならありがと・一青窈


上週剛買 一青窈的最新專輯:&
整體感覺下次再說吧,來談談其中最後一首歌:さよならありがと
因為日文聽力很弱,剛開始聽只覺得旋律很棒,很喜歡,而不知道其中在唱什麼。

今天心血來潮來研究一下歌詞(這也是要買正版CD的原因之一~有精美歌詞本+翻譯)。一青窈的歌詞一向都如詩一般,形容事情的方式很奇特,不過也必須要細細品味,多念個幾次才會懂。

*sigh*

這次,是失戀歌啊。

跟我去年的心情很符合。對於一個人盡是一些不可能實現的幻想,而回憶中的笑容也永遠是美麗的。沒有苛責,沒有怨恨,除了逐漸消逝的遺憾外,只有簡單的一句:「再見謝謝(さよならありがと)。」

我文學造詣不好,這裡描述得更棒:
本の蟲~赤の淵の日記~:さよならありがと(日文blog)

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感謝一些好朋友的關懷
去年跨年就把那些不悅,隨著當時玩的「真心話」,就丟掉,留在去年。那荷爾蒙的一年期限也在去年過期了。

快樂,是珍貴的。現在,既然在車社找回來了,就要好好珍惜^^

Taipei International Cycle Show



今年的車展又來啦!
這一定要去的啊

雖然說這次的時間很爛(週三~週六)
不過至少最後一天要進去!!!

去看看今年最新的發展,還有什麼奇怪的新零件
(也看看有什麼贈品XD)

今年想找一票人一起逛,最好可以找到技師級的導覽^^

展出日期:
95年3月8日(星期三)至10日(星期五)  上午9時至下午6時
95年3月11日(星期六)     上午9時至下午3時

門票:

入場券每張新台幣200元 (每日展覽結束前1小時停止售票)
*12歲或身高120cm以下孩童謝絕入場

Press release | Map | Site link

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Isolated identity

Great, so I'm one of the "in between" guys.

Being a foreigner studing in Taiwan means no scholarships, no awards and no jobs.

Being an American studing abroad means no American scholarships nor internships either.

My identity is something in between, and there's nothing in between.

Power outage at dorm

The power just went out. All of a sudden everyone started to walk out of their rooms and talk with friends. Everyone depreved of internet access, the normally quiet hallways are now filled with the noise of chatting people. What a difference! Dormmates are finally talking with each other. These guys normally don't talk, they just sit on their seats, their eyes glued to their screens for hours. There's even sounds of playing guitars, fireworks and cheers.

The long lost interactions between humans, deprieved by technology, are ephemeraly restored by the temporary outage of a modern power grid.

Me? Now blogging on my handheld :)
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Just went outside to see the commotion. It was full of laughter, full of people, fireworks going of here and there. Someone even put a "firework wand" in front of their bike and rode around, in the end setting the bike on fire accidentally. The atmosphere was totally bacchanalian!
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It was said that some TaiPower guy accidentally cut of the power to the whole campus... Geez.

收卡XD

曉嫚說要給的"松智好人好事事蹟錄"終於出現了XD
不過,第一次在社辦信箱收到東西,還是今年生日唯一的生日禮物(雖然晚了2天),還是頗高興的^^

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

PocketMod: The Free Disposable Personal Organizer

It is said to be the next best thing to a PDA. Some even say that it's better then an electronic organiser. Behold, the PocketMod!

Some people just don't like electronic, or some feel that they like the feel of pen and paper. Well, here's a great way to get organised, and save money on dayplanners.

PocketMod is actually a flash application that helps you lay out all the stuff need for your organiser on one piece of paper. You design your own, print it out, fold it, find a pen and get going! You've got no learning curve for input, since it's just pen and paper; it's even lighter then any other organiser you could find on the market, because it's just a piece of paper! So, for all those who want an alternative to pocketbooks and PDA, enjoy!

The definitive Firefox communicator

Upgrade to Firefox 1.5!
In the history of Mozilla, the original Mozilla suite, which originated from the Netscape communitator, in addition to the core browser, consists of an email app, an instant messenger and a webpage editor. Sure, it's rich in features, but it's very big, takes a long time to download, and early versions of it were buggy. Some one came up with the "keep-it-simple" idea, and made a great single purpose browser: Firefox.

But with it's powerful extendable architecture, and the advent of AJAX based web applications, Firefox is now almost the all purpose communicator once again, and with a much smaller foot print on computer system resources. Here's how I did it:

E-mail:
I use Gmail, now that makes a lot of difference. It's one of the best AJAX based web apps I've used. Unlike most webmail interfaces, everything in Gmail responds instaneously, as if it were a mail app on your desktop. You click on a title of a mail, and boom, it expands and is ready for your reading pleasure within less then a second. Everything is where you'd expect it to be. Replys to the same mail stream are grouped together, in what they call: conversations. Right after you finished reading the mail, the reply input box is right there under the mail. And, expected from Google, you can, of course, search your mail and contacts. No more digging around in folders. Because the whole interface is streamlined and carefully crafted for your ease of use, it feels so good that I ditched my real mail apps (Thunderbird on PC and Snappermail on handheld) altogether.
(P.S. need Gmail? I've got some invitations around to share)

RSS feeds:
Well, Firefox covered that right out of the box. They called it: Live bookmarks. Sweet.

Instant messaging:
The best experience here comes from Gmail chat, which is a feature of Gmail. However, all my friend are on the MSN network, and web MSN isn't that good, so I still have to keep my MSN messenger on my desktop. Pitty.

Telnet/BBS:
Here's the PCman plugin that lets you use telnet with Firefox. Although sometimes a little buggy, it feels good to have everything under one roof, with the convinence of Firefox's tabbed browsing. I like it.
Mozilla Taiwan 討論區: pcman - ( firefox 1.5 ) 懶人包 by 新注音 新倉頡

What's next?
I recall seeing a FTP extension for Firefox, maybe I should try it sometime.

So, when Firefox does it all, I can eliminate several softwares and keep my system clean and neat.

Monday, February 20, 2006

Yesterday

Yesterday just finished a few minutes ago. Nothing special, no nothing.

But, yeah, you're the invisible guy, remember?

Yeah, the guy who easily blends in and who was always forgotten...

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Mood...

1. Self-control
I seem to feel much more happier when certain intrinsic desires are inhibited. I on purposely force the unwanted desires out of my ego, into my superego, and with them, getting ridding of the related bad thoughts as well. However, I guess this kind of inhibition needs a clear mind, since whenever I'm tired and overwhelmed with stress, those stupid thoughts start to come back and hector me.

I need to get some good rest, keep a clear mind, and focus on what I have, on what's important, and on the happy side of life.

2. On relationships
Something inside seems to shout at you that you need a mate. You disagree and tell that voice to shut up. For from experience, love only brings sadness and torture while friendships usually brings wisdom and happiness. So you ignore that nagging voice and forcefully set out in search of happiness. However, you still have doubts on how long that voice could be ignored.

3. Back to school
After an insanely busy semester of workaholism and a crazily event filled winter vacation of hedonism, it's back to school again next week. Back to the stressful and lonesome world of study. Hope I could survive without crumbling this semester, since I'd be spending much more time on boring and depressing exam prep.

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The firewall of self-protection of the soul is crumbling under the power of inherent desires. Hold on and fight back.

Friday, February 10, 2006

Using the address field of Firefox wisely

The address/URL field, that's where you normally type in the web address of the website your looking for. And I've always used it in it's most traditional and normal way.

However, I noticed that with some sites, like Google or Yahoo, you could omit the "www." and ".com" and just simply typing what's supposed to be in-between. I originaly thought that Firefox just added on the "www." and ".com" for you, but, today, accidentally, I saw what's going on in the status bar at the bottom of the window: when you type a word or phrase that doesn't like an URL, it first tried adding on "http://", then it sent your input to Google, and then shows you the first entry from the Google search! In other words, Firefox clicked on the "I'm feeling lucky" link of Google for you!Also, since it's just a search quary, you could type any language there. You could even get rid of some of your bookmarks.

What if you just wanted to do a google search? There's always the search field on the top right corner of Firefox at your service. But I realized that typing "google ***" (*** being whatever you want to search for), and boom, there it is!

Firefox is sometime much smarter then you think :)
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Don't try this in IE, it just takes you to a stupid MSN search page telling you that they can't find what you want. Well to hell with it, who care if MSN search can't find it?

Monday, February 06, 2006

Kids are so cute...

剛從金山回來
去帶了人本的單車營隊3天
感覺好像剛從另一個世界回來似的

那真是個和平常生活完全不同的世界
平常無論是系上還是社團, 我的生活圈都是以年紀相近的自然組男生為主
那裡, 則是小五小六小孩子的天地; 工作人員則幾乎都是社會組的女生
不能說哪邊不好, 但真的是個完全不同的體驗

那是個歡樂的世界
連工作規劃, 開會都是開開心心, 輕輕鬆鬆的
雖然小朋友偶而闖禍會令人頭痛, 但也會因為那神奇的闖禍方式而發出會心的一笑

來說說蝌蚪事件吧
他們到學校生態池中撈了一堆蝌蚪, 然後帶回寢室玩
因為怕水中氧氣不足, 又撈了一些水草, 晚上還輪流拿手電筒照, 讓它行光合作用
不過也有因為不小心打翻, 而弄濕別人枕頭, 或害蝌蚪乾死的
有拿熱水燙蝌蚪的, 還有拿別人吃飯的晚來裝蝌蚪的
任何千奇百怪的事情都會發生
不過都在人本的工作人員耐心的溝通下一一解決

小朋友玩夜市(園遊會)時最可愛
一開始有一個攤位說: "給我2張衛生紙就可以免費玩一次"
我看了他一眼, 他就很老實的說: "因為我要醒鼻涕"
(要不是我身上剛好沒有帶, 我還真的想給他兩張的)

射飛鏢的, 我花200(遊戲鈔)玩2次, 反而贏了500
一開始認真拉客的男孩說: "這樣我們虧錢耶"
然後要他的夥伴們各出一點錢

他們的寫的字也很經典
每一張海報上都有20%的注音
還有$符號被畫成一個3加兩槓的
我還抽獎抽到一張紙, 上面寫著"餅幹5片"

生意太好的攤位, 價格倍數成長
生意差的, 老闆自己跑掉去玩
還有給人優待券, 然後惡性倒閉不認帳的攤位XD

帶小朋友拆裝車的時候, 他們很明白的說了: "我們只想破壞"
然後就很興奮的拿出各種工具開始肢解那些車
連最複雜的變速系統都被拆的慘不忍睹

出去騎時, 最刺激
有些小朋友非常不穩, 左晃又晃, 還不敢按煞車, 一直把腳伸下來踩地
還有一個小妹妹, 一出去就從馬路的左邊衝到右邊,
然後又好像打彈珠一樣又彈回左邊, 快撞電線桿時又衝回右邊...
一邊下坡一邊大叫: "這什麼軌下坡? 會死人的!"
然後死命的案後煞, 後輪一直鎖死, 左甩尾, 右甩尾... 但都不會摔

離開童年這麼久了, 又去跟小朋友玩在一起
感受那充滿活力, 古靈精怪, 歡樂, 吵吵鬧鬧的生活
還有小朋友用全身的力氣在你耳朵旁邊大吼叫別人...
真的會令人懷念起自己的童年生活
也忘掉平日生活的一切煩惱, 盡情的一起玩樂

Thursday, February 02, 2006

GRE prep: Damn, I'm so in trouble

I just bought that blasted GRE preparation book today, and read through the introductions. As with any exam introduction, it includes examples of the questions that might appear in the test, one for each question type. Going through it, I realized that I don't understand even one of them.

The uncomprehensionable sentances, the never-ever seen words, the twisted logic. The fear added on with each minute I read on, eventually morphing into panic, the panic of the realization of my own weakness.

I AM REALLY IN DEEP SHIT

---

As I finished the whole introductory literature, I finally calmed down and layed out my conclusions.

  • My poor vocabalary must be improved.
  • I must invest much time and energy in this, compared to GRE, TOEFL is like child's play.
  • The math part of the GRE, however, is so easy that it's almost ignorable.
  • I must further slim down the classes/credits I take for the next semester. This is not a time to take intresting but unnecessary classes.
  • The next helf year of my life would be one of much more cortisol (stress hormone).
  • My temper would be really bad for the next half year.

And my plans:
  • Read a vocabalary builder daily.
  • Dig deep into that book, daily.
  • Find more resources, expecially more books.
  • Although the math part is much more enjoyable, restrict the time invested on it. Of which, my skills should be good enough.
  • Manage time better, throw out the unnecessary, including computer play time and unneeded class taking.
  • Workout a rough schedule for the time I have in the States this summer. Find a slot for GRE test taking and register.
Hope I could pull it off nicely like I did with my high school and university entrence exams. Wish me luck.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

[Stupidity]花東趣事筆記

雖然過了這麼久,還是要po一下,因為這實在太經典了XD
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今年花東又玩了一次小天使小主人。

一開始本來抽到了一個自己覺得有點無趣的人,而且還是之前我花了很大的力氣去說服她安全帽的重要性的一個人,總之就是一個給我的第一印象不怎麼好的人。隔壁的朋友則抽到了一個老朋友。他說這難度太高了,就說要跟我換。(整個遊戲的重點就是要在照顧小主人的同時讓她以為自己的小天使不是你)
我想了一下,嗯,我跟她比你還熟,對我來說,要我耍她難度比你還高吧!不過我是個喜歡挑戰的人XD

好吧,交換!

然後,我們兩個就聯合起來準備好好整一整她。朋友當軍師,我當主角,前兩天我都很順利的耍低調,直到第三天我開始出紕漏。第三天我不小心讓自己的小隊輔知道了我的小天使是誰。當時我以為小隊輔和她不熟,所以小小放心了一下,天知道這可是洩密的源頭。

某天,我的小主人在猜她的小天使是誰時,我那個很天才的小隊輔給了一個提示:「他是個好人。」

然後,最經典的來了,我的小主人的回答據說是:
「嗯,那麼,應該是松智吧。」
...
 ...
  ...
原來我是好人的代言者。

囧rz

都怪我之前在blog上po太多好人文了,我的形象T_T