Macbookを得る！！！

Got my Macbook today, finally!

I'd post the details when I have time in the future.

First thoughts:
1. It's so hot, you could fry bacons on the back
2. It's heavy, but well, acceptable
3. Screen's gorgous
4. Frontrow remote is very nice
5. Looks good and shiny, much better then the iBook

One issue:
All applications can connect to the internet, except Dashboard. Real weird.

Dell laptop explodes at Japanese conference

Dell laptop explodes at Japanese conference - the Inquirer

Wow! Better be careful with cheep and crappy laptops. Wonder what's the cause, though. I'd expecially like to know if it's an isolated case, a problem with Dell, or a problem with some component provider that also provides components to other brands.

Drying up

My blog is drying up...
But that's just because I'm in the middle of my finall exams.
Yet, it'll be dryer next week, as I go biking for 5 days :D

Oh, well, here's a little venting...
Where is my Macbook?
I was told that it would be shipping on about 6/10~6/15. It's now 6/21 and the store still has an empty stock. Stupid Apple Taiwan... They shipped plenty of the expensive black models, while letting the cheapest white ones deplete. Now, they're like:"If you can't wait, just pay more for the black." But hay, that's one of those unethical sells tactics, isn't it called "foot in the door"? Of course I'd like a black Macbook, but I can't afford it, and besides, if I could, I'd just go with the lighter and cooler Sony Vaio SZ.

So now, I've got 3 options:
1. Wait untill Sunday and test my luck
2. Just go get it in the US
3. Fine, I get to save my money, and just stick to my handheld. Then, no cyclub site updating, no BBS posting/replying, no photo uploads to Flicker, and blogging in English and Japanese only (no Chinese posts). (Oh, and no more Pandora.com radio nor Skype, crap...)

The last one seem like the most likely to happen. Fine, I'd have a lighter load on my back and backpack.

Article link: Words of wisdom for 2006 grads

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0614/p13s01-legn.html
I'm graduating next year, not now. (But I do know people who are graduating this year.) Never the less, it's a great article. Several suggestings from adverse fields, for being a person with better inner strength, for being a useful person to the society, to the country. Some are patriotic, and only for Americans; some others apply universally; some point out the US society, but may also apply to other countries.

A great site to see weather satellite photos

http://weathernews.jp/satellite/
It's a beautiful flash site, the photos are big and clear, but wait, it's a ... video!
I know it's a Japanese site, but since Taiwan and Japan use the same weather satellite, you can still get the see photos. Just click on "アシア広域"(Asia wide area) and you could clearly see the whole east Asia, including Taiwan. To zoom in a little, click on "日本広域"(Japan wide area), and you can still see Taiwan in the left bottom corner. Neat!

Cars

http://www.pixar.com/featurefilms/cars/index.html

Any one wanna go watch Cars with me??

ARRRRRRG! STOP THE RAIN!

I've had enough! Stop it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wholesome life

Sometimes, it's nice to be busy.
Preparing for the finals, the reports, GRE, summer research, Wuling biking trip, graduation trip, my new Macbook, grad school application, scholarship application...... Life targets, things to look foward to, to anticipate, making every tomarrow more enticing.
This would sure be an intresting and meaningful summer. I like it.

Independence or intemacy?

Sometime ago, I've been reading the book , which discusses developmental psychology from a woman's point of view. Since most of the developmental psychology theories that we've read in our psychology text books are based on studies on men, it's nice to see how different it is in the other sex.

It is usually stated that from ages 18~25, people are in search of intemacy. Gilligan corrected this by substituting the "people" above to "men", and then giving us the other half of the story. Men, from their childhood, are always in search of independence, so in their post-adolscent ages, they need to fullfill their other need: intemacy, which, since they're unfamiliar with, are kind of afraid to face it. Woman, on the other hand, are the antithesis of this. As girls, they are adept in handling intemacy, while reluctantly face independency when they grow up.

That's the case before the 80's(when the book was written), I guess. Now, we are in a different age, when woman are more, will, indepedent. I now see my female friends all doing great with both indepedence and intemacy, while many of us boys are still afraid of intemate relationships. Seems that girls have advanced in their development, while boys are lagging behind. Maybe I still have some growing up in this part.

However, the theory seems to confirm in my case on the independence part. From grade school to collage, I've been switching districts each time I graduate, starting with a fresh pack of classmates eachtime, never seeing an old friend in the new school. I even attended a highschool far away from home for a better education and the adventure of going into the city alone. Next step, for grad school, I'm going to the US. Leaving the country, leaving all my friends behind, for a better future, for the adventure of the unfamiliar. Yup, I'm always on a plan to get farther independence alright. But intemacy? Left for fortune to decide. Should I fix it? How? When? I'm not sure, for now.

New Cyclub president

新任社長當選後的表情...

囧

社會亂象

今天在台科大吃晚飯時，餐廳的電視正撥著TVBS新聞。看到了不少令人不爽的事：

• 新聞報導不公正，參雜著偏見：
  在看完李泰安和趙建銘相繼的報導後，明顯的感覺到，新聞界喜歡李泰安，討厭趙建銘。
  在報李泰安時，把他拍得和藹可親，又拍了一堆鄉親、鄰居、支持者的關心，好像他是個被誣告的英雄似的；另一方面，趙建銘的待遇就大為不同了，捕風捉影的，報了一堆沒事實根據的「疑似......」，越抹越黑，好像整個電視台都是邱毅的走狗，大家一起亂槍打鳥。
  事實上呢，我想明眼人都很清楚，李泰安和趙建銘兩個人目前都處於被告身份。在一個法治社會中，再為定案前，所有嫌疑犯都應該視同無罪看待，待調查完畢，一切底定後，才能確定他是否有罪。
• 接著出現邱毅受到支持者歡迎與鼓勵，還有人叫他選總統......。這社會是怎樣？一個扮演只會亂咬人的瘋狗，卻沒有認真審理法案的民意代表這麼偉大？
• 國民黨黨中央正在對馬英九開砲，說該出來積極推動總統罷免案。其中有某位發言說：「罷免是我們的權利，身為在野黨，我們應該使用它！」啥？有權利就該用？不見時機，不爽就用，這叫做濫用權利。那麼，有解散國會的權利的總統，是否明天不爽也該來解散國會，立法委員全部重選？

之後，又在台灣日報上看到李登輝說，台灣的民主正在倒退，本土政權不能捨棄自己的路線，領導人不適合就該換掉。這發言呢，基本上是對的。我也對陳水扁的一事無成感到不爽。不過問題是，若罷免了，那該選誰來代替？目前的政壇上我看不到任何的是任人選。其實呢，若說要解散國會，那更棒了。「利」法院一直是我們社會最大的亂源，幾年下來法案幾乎都被封殺，我們的法律和政策一直停滯不前。不過呢，每次改選出來還不是那批混帳？

仔細想想，改選後似乎不會更好。因此，考慮改選的龐大社會成本，無論是罷免總統或解散國會，現階段都是不適合的。仔細想想，該反省的是選民：為何每次改選後，還是同一被垃圾當選？再這種選民亂投票的情況下，對任何政黨都沒有進步的誘因，大家恣意腐敗。目前的的政壇，無論泛藍或泛綠，我看不到一個真正有心要為國家做事的，我也看不到一個愛國的（只有愛錢、愛勢、愛中國共產黨三種）。可悲的是，放眼望去，人民中愛國的也了了無幾，難怪大家亂投選票。
---
其實我一直覺得台灣缺少一個能激起全國向心力的英雄。我們需要一個類似日本的小泉純一郎首相的領導人，一個有魄力，解散國會，重組政府，拯救國家的英雄。話說在陳水扁之前的李登輝和蔣經國也是很棒的領導人，兩人的努力，造就了台灣在90年代的繁榮與民主自由。怎麼開始覺得非民選的兩位總統比民選的更棒了呢？悲哀啊！

And the $ goes to...

Apple

I went to an Apple store (蘋果優勢, Appleuser @金華街) tonight to see if I could get to have an idea when the new intel Macbooks are avaliable in Taiwan. To my surprise, they not only have a clear answer (somewhere between Jun 10~15th), they also got one on display! Since it's not avaliable in Taiwan yet, they got one from Japan to let Apple lover in Taipei get to have a try before it's released. Boy am I impressed. Through a little sliming down, this baby look much better then the old, white, chunky iBook. It's also got a glossy wide screen, and a better looking keyboard now. But the best part is the price. People usually have the impression that Sony and Apple computers are among the most expensive models on the market. But not this one. The entry level Macbook is only 38900NTD (1211.88USD, tax included). It's got 512MB of RAM, intel integrated graphics, a 5400rpm HDD and a 1.83GHz intel core duo processor. And of course, WIFI(Airport, as in Apple jargon) and Bluetooth comes standard. No where else have I ever seen a core duo notebook under the 40000NTD price point! Also, you can now boot up Windows XP on these Macs, natively, no emulation. But the funny part here is that the infamous "Ctrl+Alt+Del" combo on PCs isn't supported on a Apple keyboard, which means no fast way out of crashs in windows :D

There are some drawback, though. In online review of the Macbook, it is said that this thing is hot and noisy (the fan). Also, it's still quite heavy, compared with the 13inch models from Sony. And it's assembled in China, which I defenantly don't like a bit. But the low price and great style justifies these drawbacks. So, I guess I'll be on the Mac ship in a few weeks. Here I come!

Vertibrate experiment exam info

脊椎動物學實驗期末考について

6/8(四) @12F
*考avian& mammals only
(考試說明錄音檔下載)

• 鳥的目的拉丁文＆哺乳類的各目（看到要認得）＆誰的親源關係較近(有配合題)
• 去梅峰看到什麼老鼠、鳥調看到什麼鳥(鳥調結果有上傳公布欄)
• 看標本時的list、台灣常見的動物、何科何目
• how to認鳥：嘴、脚、叫声
• 鳥叫CD 20種鳥
• 標本的標示牌上有的小東西？
• 小馬拍的照片？？

Others:

• 台灣的飛鼠：小鼯鼠、白面鼯鼠、大赤鼯鼠
• 鷺科鳥類的中指的一側有類似梳子的構造
• 刺蝟（小隻，食蟲目）&冠豪豬 （大隻，囓齒目）不同
• 黃鼠狼的分類：食肉目、貂科

Get a taste of Vista on XP

Craving for Vista? The next version of Windows, named Vista won't be avaliable to consumers until next year, and considering it's thrist of computing resources, your existing system might not be powerful enough to run it smoothly. Bellow is a screen shot of my desktop with some of the stuff I'll be showing off :)

Some features of Vista can already be tried out on XP, here's some:

1. IE 7 beta (download English version, Beta 2)

Yup, IE 7 is here, the first version of IE in history that has temped me to try it. Thanks to the pressure from Firefox, this supposed "Vista only" update is now avaliable for XP. The best new feature that I like is the new rendering engine that is updated and more standards compliant, which means that I can use more CSS coding in my future websites, and I could expect that my site would look more like it should be in a standards compliant browser such as Firefox. If you haven't done a website yourself, you might not know that the old IE 6 used to screw up your site frequently, requiring you to do specific tweaks to your HTML code, just to make it look right in IE, I hope those day would go away with people upgrading to IE7, or Firefox.

Other new features include all the features that you'd expect from a modern browser, including tabs, RSS, search box...etc, which is all already standard features on all other major browsers, like Firefox, Safari and Opera. Now, threatend by the popularity of Firefox, Microsoft finally put them in IE, by heavily copying features from major competetors, of course. One good thing is the tab implementation, which offers a clear new tab button out of the box. Firefox completely hid the tab function by default, requiring you to activate it. Another suprise is that the search box defaulted to Google, instead of MSN. It is said that it's because that's the settings it detected on my system(maybe Google desktop did the settings some how?), nice!

However, it's still in beta, which isn't stable enough. It terminates it self when you are low on memory, and it eats up your memory pretty fast. Also, you need to first click on Flash movies to "activate it", then it'll run, which is ridiculus. Firefox is still my top choice for it's stability, security and easy customisation; but IE 7 sure is a nice toy :)

2. Windows Media Player 11 beta (English beta here)

The last version, WMP10 took a page from iTunes, and made it my video player of choice. It has nice media file organisation capabilities, and video controls just the way you'd expect it to be. However, it still can't beat iTunes, as iTunes is still king of user friendlyness. With this update, it's copying the album art view from Sony's Sonicstage, and entering the "cool looks club". You can even make it search for album info and pictures for any song, but this feature is real slow, and some times screws up. It's yet another nice toy, with great usability. However, iTunes is still easier to use, and Sonicstage still looks better then WMP11. (Sonicstage CP4.0 rocks, it's only flaw is lack of multi-language support for files)

3. Google desktop (get it here)

2 major features of Vista are integrated file search and the sidebar with gadgets (well, toys like a clock and the news on your desktop). You can get both with Google desktop. Once the software finished scanning your harddisk, the search is blazing fast, narowing your list as you type in each letter. However, since I have my files quite organised, I found my self less frequently using search. Also, I tend to remember my files by location, instead of file name, which retards me from doing a search. the sidebar, on the other hand, takes up too much space on my small screen, and the widgets (gadgets in Microsoft jargon) arn't as good looking as Konfabulator's, mentioned below.

4. Yahoo Widgets(previously Konfabulator) (US & Taiwan versions)

Why use a "sidebar" when you can move each widget around? Here is the pioneer of the concept: get info from the web onto your desktop without opening your browser, and making your desktop beautiful at the same time. Since then, we've got clones such as Apple's MacOS X dashboard, Google desktop's sidebar, Microsoft's Vista Gadgets and Opera Widgets. But I still like the first one best. You can get traffic updates, news feeds, email notifications, weather and clocks and calanders on your screen in the form of wonderfull eyecandys.

5. XP power toys Alt-Tab Replacement
(choose Alt-Tab Replacement from the list on the right side)

Vista offers screenshots of the opened windows when you use Alt-Tab to switch between apps, to help you choose the one you want. Here's the equivilant in XP. (You can't see the app titles because it's darkblue on a black background, that because I installed something else to change the look.)

At the end of this post, here's another of my screen shots. This one better reflects my software usage, since I normally don't use WMP11 for music, nor IE7 for browsing. I use Sonicstage (official site & download link) when I want the cool look, and always use Firefox as my browser. The floting clock and circular memory meter is part of Yahoo Widgets. You may notice that my MSN messenger is skinned with Wave11. Also, my whole system (including the black statusbar) is skinned with Brico Pack Vista Inspirat (This is a system hack, it might screw up your system, so if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it) Last, I've got Objectdock on the bottom, to get a Mac like dock :)