環島後記(9/12~9/17)

前一天晚上已經打包完成，車也一切準備完成。但因還是對光頭胎缺乏安全感，怕會打滑; 半夜還夢見自己在北宜公路九彎十八拐過彎側滑; 於是清晨2點起來換回顆粒胎﹒﹒﹒
>出發
4AM 從校門口出發，本來要一起去卻有事的唯中騎著淑女車來替我們送行。(害我一度以為他要淑女車環島orz)唯中很hi的拍了照之後，我們上路。在市區 以時速30hm/hr很快的來到了北宜公路。人家說"紅綠燈是當參考的"，柚子卻是完全的"信號無視"，害我每停完一個紅綠燈就要加速追上他。

>雙人出發，單人環島
柚 子的速度爆快的，還是個騎20幾公里都不必休息的死變態，我一下子就被甩開。然後因為努力的拉高速度想追上，每天都有不同的毛病產生。膝蓋痛、大腿痛、 背直肌酸痛、手痛、肩膀痠，甚至腸胃不舒服都有: 結果我的速度反而越來越慢，一天能看到柚子的次數幾近個位數，幾乎只用手機聯絡……好吧，我這自不量力的跟錯人。一個人獨自賞風景，自己決定何時休息也還 不錯。不過柚子專門騎到離我還有幾十公里外的地方先找住宿，自己先享樂，然後打電話叫我自己慢慢夜騎倒是令人頗為不爽。(雖然說這樣才能6天環完……)

>遠離平日生活塵囂
環島，除了以騎車看風景滿足自己喜歡旅行的心之外，也暫時逃離了日常生活的煩惱。實驗、社團工作和一切心事拋諸腦後，以另一種步調過一個禮拜的生活。
此外，也暫時遠離了好人的怨念XD
同 行只有另一個男人，省道上也不常見同年齡的女生; 注意力完全在路上和兩旁風景。只是在宜蘭新城的警察在聊天時對我說: 「看你一臉忠厚老實的樣子應該還沒有女朋友; (然後對柚子說)像這位應該就有！」(此時柚子心中: 靠！我才剛被甩啦！)你是說我有好人臉是吧！好啦，我不否認啦，真有你的。

>休息點
除 了半路上累了在路邊停下來休息之外， 有兩種特別的休息點: 警察局和7-Eleven。警察局可以休息、喝水、上廁所、問路、和警察聊天; 7-Eleven則是覓食補給的好地方。各地派出所各有其特色，宜蘭的往往都有很漂亮的建築設計，臺東的有濃濃的原住民氣息，臺南的最有人情味……不過共 通點是警察伯伯們除非忙不過來，不然都非常親切，比以經不錯的7-Eleven好幾十倍。這次旅行讓我對警察的印像完全改觀。而7-Eleven也是各地 略有不同。東部的都很大，加上停車位、廁所、座位，真是個很好的休息點。南部有些"有點偏僻又不會太偏僻的"有思樂冰和重量杯喔！
>蘇花公路
據 說是最難的一段，但我還滿喜歡的。(嘉南平原才真是痛苦啊)當初膝蓋開始痛時就是為了想體驗惡名招彰的蘇花而忍痛繼續的。它平常很多沙石車，路面凸不平 又狹窄，而且共要爬三座山。不過我們騎的時候車很少，天氣又好。而延途的海景真的是美不勝收，而那三段下坡也真的很棒。總之那真的有種說不出來的爽感。



>臺灣南端
臺東到墾丁之間的海岸在陽光的照耀下有如電影中的夏威夷一般，平整的路面，右鄰青山，左靠蔚藍海面，頭上還有
藍天白雲，如此完美的體驗一開始還很難相信是真實的。
之後經南迴公路爬入山中，發現有如世外桃源的原住民部落: 東源村。這山谷有湖，有青青草原，還有一大片野薑花。傍晚的村中，大家似乎都已吃飽飯坐在家門口聊天、乘涼、看日落。很喜歡這樣悠閒的感覺。
晚上住旭海的民宿。(民宿老闆竟只請吃煮泡麵當晚餐，而那小村中也沒啥其它東西吃，餓啊～)當地的免費公共溫泉澡堂，很神奇的讓每一家民宿都可以無成本號稱「溫泉民宿」。不過公共溫泉澡堂正擴建中，所以是在鋼筋、水泥碎片之間以溫泉水沖澡。

>大逆風
一 般來講，臺灣夏天應該都是吹西南風，所以我們在東部南下時有點小逆風是應該的，而且風實在不大。而花東縱谷中因有山阻擋，可說是幾乎沒風。不過當我們在 墾丁往北轉時，風向卻跟著我們轉，而在我們到西岸時正好變成正北風！(據說在菲律賓莫名其妙的出現一個可惡的雲團造成的)而我們在西岸走濱海，無山擋風， 於是必需很廢力的龜速前進。若是在爬山路，多花的體力至少還可儲存為位能，在下爬路段很快樂的把它用掉; 但逆風時那體力卻是完全的浪費掉了。

>耍廢
話 說在東部時我可以為了美景忍住身體上的痛苦繼續前進; 在西部卻是個不好忍受的折磨。在西岸不但要逆著強大的北風前進，身邊還是極其無聊的魚塭和少數農田。我可以在一段100公里的路段中從頭到尾都看到一模一 樣的魚塭，簡直就沒有前進過。在這樣無趣又累人的路段中，我的雙腿還是在痛。於是在速度拉不上20km/hr又沒有繼續前進的誘因下，我決走在臺中放棄; 沒想到想耍廢也不容易。
離 濱海公路最近的火車站不讓我的單車上車，那些混蛋還收我退票手續費(怒)，臺鐵果真是人渣的大本營……。於是我只好到臺中坐國光客運。走臺12從濱海到臺 中市竟然還要爬一座山，花了我2個多小時; 最扯的是我還經過大大小小共四所不同的大學！臺灣的大學浮濫程度可見一斑。
國光客運算我的愛車一張半票(需拆車包好)，票上還寫著「寵物票」。呵呵，寵物是吧？

>Aftermath
Lance Armstrang在他的書中說過﹕「我們騎單車的都有點自虐頃向。」嗯，我現在手臂很黑，左臉脫皮中，全身汗斑奇癢，手腳痠痛一個禮拜了，手指無力，膝 蓋也還在痛，還一直咳嗽……果真有自殘到，不過磨破皮的胯下倒是好了。我想，騎車暴力環島是為了速度感和風景的視覺享受而不管身體的皮肉之苦吧！

評馬英九

話說馬英九一直被稱為"不沾鍋", 麻煩的是永遠跟他無關.

最近我對他當上國民黨主席後還想當"不沾鍋"還頗怒的.

國會空轉2天, 他的回應是: 我想立院黨團會做出最好的決定.

軍購預算被封殺, 又是: 那是立院黨團的事.

拜託, 一切都是立院黨團的事, 都跟你無關? 你黨主席是當假的? 你以為你是君主立憲式無責任精神領袖嗎?

試想, 如果一個國家去入侵鄰國, 而其總統卻說: "侵略行動是國軍做的決定, 我是愛好和平的", 而置身事外, 你作何感想?

身為黨主席, 卻不為自己領導的黨做任何辯解或負責, 到底是自己管不住自己的黨, 懒得管還是不為自己的決定負任何責任我不知道. 不過在我的眼裡, 我覺得馬主席只不過是個會在鏡頭前微笑講客套畫的演藝人員. 這些特質(不就是林志玲的工作內容嗎), 去當名模搞不好還比較適合.

An exciting day for mobile music

Apple just reveled several new products yesterday, but before the excitement had time to fade, Sony also released new products. The mobile music market is getting in hotter battle with time. Seems like Apple and Sony are going to dual it off with their iPods and Walkmans. The result? Many great choices for us customers.

Apple:

The iPod Nano was the most significant bomb here. Completly replacing the iPod mini, it comes in 2gig and 4gig flavors, and using flash memory, instead of relatively fragile Hard disks. Also, as a result, they're extreemly thin (Apple compared it to a pencil), have better battery life. But what makes me like it so much, is that there's finally a black colored iPod, with a color screen. iPods are certainly getting better.

Also just out, is the Motorola iTunes phone, named ROKR. Which, in my opnion, is great software in ugly hardware. Crap. Apple should've designed the casing.

On the software side, iTunes was just upgraded to version 5. The big change is a more beautiful look, and integrated language packs(which makes iTunes be in the same language as your OS). The search function is also super charged. But, no big changes since it's already so good a piece of software that there's not much places to improve.

Sony:
Now, the revenge of the old Walkman kingdom.

First of all, the Walkman A series. There's the A3000 and A1000 series which has a 20gig and 6gig HD, respectivly. And the flash based A600, from 2gig to 256MB, which is just an upgrade of the previous E500/E400 series. All use dazling mono colored OLEDs, which although not a color screen, are still vary cool. They are touting a new built-in music search function and cool designs. However, I guess I can't say much before I get to play with one.

And, comming with the new walkmans, Sony included a whole new software to replace the highly critisized Sonicstage: The Connect player. Don't know much about it yet, since I can't find much about it on Sony's site, but looks like an iTunes clone at my first sight of a thumbnail. Although I believe that Sony isn't a company that likes to copy form other, I hope that it'll be as easy to use as iTunes. However, 1 bas thing. While iTunes and Sonicstage are free downloads, the Connect player seems to only come with the new walkmans for now.

The Web Revolution 2.0 part II

(Click on the links to get farther explainations of the word)

• Web on-the-go

Ok, everyone agrees that the internet changes our lives dramaticaly. However, those conveninces are restricted to the time you're in front of a computer, which is ony when you're at home, school or office, right? Think again. Enter the next best thing: Mobile internet clients. The web changed our lives in doors, next, it's going to effect every part of your life.

Actually, it's not such a new concept. The amazing people at Palm(the company that brought us the kind of PDA that we're most familar with) already did a web-connected wireless PDA(the Palm VII) in the mid 90's. However, the Palm connected to a propriatory network with limited content instead of the World Wide Web; connection is also limited to select US cities. Another flunk was the WAP protocol that's added on to the GSM phone system, which was slow, expensive and also not compatable with the popular WWW. Mean while the PHS and PDC (which was what iMode first run on)phone systems in Japan, while also only had access to a propriatory network with limited content became a hit in Japan due to fast speeds, cheaper rates and a special life style of the Japanese. And that past had lead to the recent sucess of 3G phone services there.

But what's really important is not just mobile content, but also, the network that we are all familer with, which is compatabilities with open standards such as the WWW, HTML webpages and email. The first sucessful tecchnology that I know of is WIFI(IEEE 802.11, also known as WLAN), which was first supported by Apple by the name "Airport" in it's notebooks. Then Palm came out with the Tungsten C handheld, and Sony with it's Clie NX70v which supports a WIFI card. But those were far before their time, at a time when there weren't much WIFI hotspots(access points that send/recieve signals to/from a gadget' radio and provide web access) around. But the number of hotspots gradually grew, first in offices and schools. And then about 2 years ago, Intel started to promote notebook processor and WIFI radio packages under the Centrino brand, and promoted the set up of public hotspots, which really jump started the WIFI standard. Now all major corporate offices and universities have WIFI access, and many big cities have them, too. It is also said that you can get a free access anywhere in New York.

But some people don't like to be restraned to hotspots. Here's where data access over cell networks comes in. GPRS and PHS systems had provided this for years, where your phone acts as your modem, which connects to your laptop or palmtop. But GPRS is slow and expensive while PHS is restricted to cities and are only used in Japan and regions near by such as Taiwan. Now 3G systems are suposed to do this fast and cheep, but we'll see. I've heard that some data technology called EVDO works well in the US with smartphones(PDA phones), but never seen it in person.

Anyway, with WIFI and 3G, you can easily see how a mobile network can spread and change all parts of our life, where ever you go(almost). You can do most of the work, like viewing sites, sending documents, Email and IM, all on the go with handheld devices that are connected to the net. But actually, we PDA loving geeks are already doing that.

(This article was written on a Sony Clie PDA)

Oops! Forgot to celebrate my blog's aniversery

It's been pretty busy for the past few days that I forgot about it!
Anyways, more then 1 year has passed since I started bloging August 27 of last year.
I've tried many different title backgrounds before I settled down with this one. Changed my overall posting style every once in a while, and traffic has gone up and down with the popularity if the content.
Posting frequency has dropped last month due to my busy life style and my mood. But I now started to type more and more on my PDA, and posting has gone up again.
Also, I guess this has turned out to be mainly an English blog, rather then a multi-language blog. I originally tried to post in both English and Chinese to appeal to more readers, and tried Japanese postings for fun, but turns out that most of my thought are in English, so I got tired of translating stuff. And Japanese postings once scared off one of my friends from reading my blog, so I'm dropping it, I guess.

Well, blogging has been an intresting hobby for the past year, and I'd continue doing is for as long as I have the time to, and thanks for reading!!^^
---

Speaking of languages...
I now think and take notes in English, jot down todo lists and appointments in Japanese, and Chinese has become only a language of speech and reading for me... Looks like something's happening to my "Language-switching mechanism" in my brain...:P

The essence of lab experiments

Since it's impossible to have every experiment sucessful, I start to think the most important part of doing experiments is debuging. Starting with reading your lab notes and contemplating the possible problem, listing it all out, and then designing methods to tackle the problem. Then you execute your plan, obtain your results and do more brain storming, determining if you've found the answer or plan your next move if not. It most've been those chalenges and brain storming that make doing lab work truly exciting. No wonder experiment classes with predesigened protocols always seem more dull then nessesary.

A thought on the New Orleans tragedy

Absolutly terrible.

It just gets more frightening with every other news story you read. Some one who was evacuated to the superdome even said that he'd rather be in Iraq. It made us here inTaiwan, where another trapical storm just passed yesterday, seem like living in paradise. We had high mountains to destroy a typhoon, while they had a bowl shapped land that invites floods.

One good part, though. Yesterday the American Red Cross website was so clogged up by people intrested in the "New Orleans Relief fund" program. Maybe you could check it out when the traffic is a little lower.
link

The Web Revolution 2.0 (part I)

It is frequently mentioned in the news that when the internet came into our life, it changed our lives a lot. Starting with the launch of Netscape and followed by the dot com boom, it totally changed our life style. But it's not over yet, here's a new round of revolution that's under going on the web.
(Please click on the links if you don't know that word)

• Homemade Media

It all started with blogs. People are slowly getting tired of traditional news media, which often contains boring or make belief stuff. Someone eventualy started to set up sites that are a bunch of self written articles, posted in time order. It was called a "web log", which was then abreviated to "blog", and a whole new type of web site was born. All kinds of stuff was written, all sorts of people wrote them, and readers like the style of writing which differs from the traditional stuff. But the biggest blow came when a blog pointed out some thing wrong in a TV news report during the last US presidentual election. The ancher man was doomed and blogs are hotter then ever. Some blogs even feature first-hand news reports that renew faster then the news onTV, and are also mentioned or refered-to from time to time in newspapers.

And came podcasts, which some say are audio blogs. Homemade talk shows were recorded and uploaded to the web. Now people can not only get music from their portable players, but also weekly programing. And since iPods don't come with radio tuners, people are already tuning less to radio shows. With podcasts, there's even less reasion to turn on the radio. When Apple came out with iTunes 4.9 which handles podcast subscriptions easily, traditional radio networks got the message that podcasts were a big threat, and started to make podcasts of their own. But it's not just the fresh feel and convinence of podcasts that made it popular, I particularly love the "homemade" feel of them, which aften contains lots of um's, yeah's, let-me-see's, pauses, sometimes with a little static, friendly tones and best of all, they're in much more flavors that you could find just the flavor you like the most. What's more, no ads that come with long disclaimers. The programs are made because the host love his topic, just as his audiance; not for a profit. Wired once listed some company podcasts which are actualy ads disguised as personal podcasts, which are hysterical and lost the sprit of the original casts.

The underlying thing that made blogs and podcasts to be so special is RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, which automatically sends the latest posts or recording the whoever that subscribes. This reduces the need for the receptant to check by him/herself for new content; instead, whatever new update is actively presented to the receptant in real time.

So what's next of this "grass roots media"(as journalests like to put it)? After the realm of newspapers/magazines and radio shows are tackled, what's left other then TV? When video taking and editing is easy enough, and the bandwidth is cheep enough, I'd guess that homemade TV shows would become more and more common, and of course, published on the web with RSS. By showing the traditional media the power of the mass, we could force them to offer better, improved content then what they offer now.
(To be continued...)

Talim typhoon...

要来了
基隆＆台北都是下午4:00以後停止上班上課
（No~我不要下午4:00後就没公車回家了・・・）
明天八成也不用上班了
(check here)

後面還有一個Nabi耶...

最新動態:
中央気象局
美國海軍聯合台風警報中心

Alright, so searching is the future if computing?

I've recently had some great experience with the "new" way of using a computer: searching, both with Apple's spotlight and Google's desktop search v2.

Both gave instant search results, which gave me a thought of using it to launch applications. Well yeah, it's convenent, fast and simple to launch programs this way. But what's so special about it? What made it be emphasized by Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and others so much?

Yeah, is sure's much better then digging in a crowded start menu or applications folder in finder. But, so what? People had always been able to launch programs in this fast and simple manner with command bassed OSs, such as DOS or UNIX. Adding this way of launching programs is just a fix to the crapy GUI(graphical user interface) that someome screwed up in the past.

So don't be too suprised at how this "non-graphical" user interface works so well, it's just taking a page from an old book.

By the way, the start menu is the biggest crap in windows that I hate the most. Could never guess who came up with this kind of junk that wastes precious time of thousands around the world.

Taiwan railroad sucks

Once again, the train from Keelong to Taipei is out of service.(like, is this normal, or is operating smoothly a rare seen?) Anyway, it's not like the usual when they're "just" not on schedule, but they're completely down, I guess.

But what really sucks is that all the train takers came over and clogged the bus station to Taipei. Forming long lines of over half a mile(kind of...). They just don't have enough busses to process that much passengers.

I really think that the government should just shut down the railroad company, sell the assists, and set up a whole new rail company.
---
Crap, I'm stuck here.

Google's answer to Konfabulator?

Google just released it's 2nd version of it's desktop search software. Like most other google downloads, it free to individuals. The biggest difference to it is the addition of a "sidebar" (just as in the image in the left), which shows info from the web such as news, RSS feeds, weather, stocks, and a search field for searching files on your computer or googling the web. (Additional add-ons could be downloaded to add more functions, just like Konfab's "widgets")

However, doesn't this seem similar to Konfabulator, which Yahoo just bought? Looks like delivering webcontent to your desktop recently got hot. Konfabulator sort of pionnered that idea, with great eye candy; then Apple built a similar function called Dashboard into the latest MacOS X Tiger; then the concept showed up in sidebar form in copy-cat-Micro$oft's preview of Windows Vista(the next version of windows, which was codenamed Longhorn) Now, Google also did a sidebar and released it.

Look very useful, simple and functional, however, this time, I like Konfabulator's eyecandy better. This is the first time I favor Yahoo's product instead of Google's I guess. But what I chose was bought, not made by Yahoo, anyways. And maybe I could just use the desktop search without the sidebar :D

By the way, Google desktop is for Window$ only, while Konfabulator works for both Windows and Mac.

Spam in comments, now I'm pissed off...

Damn!
Now there's spam in the form of blog comments
Don't make me close down my comments

Now California should come up with a new law against blog-spaming so those guys could be stopped

Leave the web clean!

夜中躺在路中間的野狗

今晚不想做什麼正事
又根據前兩次的經驗知道夜騎貓空比白天快一小時, 又涼又舒服, 於是就把車組一組, 往貓空殺去.

不過一開始就不是很順利
煞車片境有如磁鐵般貼著輪框...花了20分鐘調整;
然後又太久沒充氣, 後輪軟到有雙避振的效果

不過問題解決後基本上都蠻順利的

延軍功路騎到木柵, 再經過政大上山, 一路上狀況都不錯, 也很高興體力比上武嶺時好多了...
直到...

在剛看到頭頂上經過的北二高後沒多久
在窄窄的上坡路段赫然發現一隻野狗在
"路中間"
乘涼...
由於是上坡路段, 牠又剛好在坡變緩的地方
~也就是頭燈照不到, 我也看不到的地方~

當時我正以時速約20以上, 掛中盤死命的往上衝
而且下午剛下過雨, 地是濕的...

我看到牠時, 只跟牠距離不過幾公分而已

結果
不經考慮的動作: 雙手猛按=>前後輪通通鎖死
(德技我對不起你~~你說的煞車技巧在危急時完全忘光了)

車網路邊測滑, 我往反方向滑去
(幸好後面沒車, 否則這個世界就少了一個愛騎山坡的笨蛋...)
兩個膝蓋+一邊手肘+臉頰都擦傷
後燈分解了, 右煞把又彎了
(不過主車體只有小小的"ㄌㄠˋㄌㄢˋ")
眼鏡也掉了一個鏡片(後來裝回去了)

倒是那可惡的狗, 等我摔了才嚇了一跳,
然後悠閒的走開...(怒)
---
不過倒是感謝那很棒的bell安全帽
摔到頭的時候
只感覺"好軟~~"
終於知道上次唯中在陽金上的感覺了XD
不過, 雖然只有小小的刮痕, 摔過的安全帽還是要換
再來一頂bell的吧^^

手套上的刮痕則小到幾乎看不出來

嗯, 護具還是很重要的
下學期參加活動要戴安全帽的規定似乎應該嚴格執行才是

Accessing PubMed on a PDA!

(image from http://www.freewarepalm.com/medical/mdontap.shtml)
I just noticed a PDA freeware (both Palm and PPC supported) from the National Library of Medicine called MD on tap, which is " an interface to the MEDLINE database via a device that you tap"
It is a software for searching the MEDLINE database using the PubMed search engine via wireless net connection. A great way to find papers relating to your research. As it even faster then search from a PC, since it's not a browser, it saves the time of rendering HTML webpages, and only sends the content, in pure text to you, and sometimes with a link so you can also view it by the normal way in HTML.
Had a great pleasure with it, since it's simple yet powerful, and extreemly fast.

Now people in the bio/medical field have another reason to get a wireless PDA :D

Sync folders on your PC with your mobile storage device!

A new beta download from Micro$oft:
SyncToy for Windows XP

Would be really useful for PDAs, memory cards and USB thumbdrives. You can keep all the files on those stuff the same as the files on your harddrive by syncronization. Said to be a preview of a function in the next version of Windows (Vista), but what's important here is that it's really useful, wither it's a preview of what-so-ever.

I'm getting it now, really excited to give it a try.

Korean played Starcraft to death

Read it on BBC news

Well yeah, it's quite shocking and sad to Europeans or Americans, but we're already used to seeing this in the news from time to time here in Taiwan.
However, the previous ones dies of those new internet RPGs from Korea, which I wasn't quite intrested in, while this one died playing my favorte PC game.
But, here's how I keep alive: I kept being killed/defeted in the game that the lack of accomplishment overwhelms me and I soon loose intrest. But since it's a game of good quality, I come back once in a while to be defeted and back off--again. By the way, it's the only PC game that I play in the past 5 years. Newer computer games are becoming more and more sophisticated that I am simply too lazy to figure out how to play. I now only play games on my PC on an average of about once every 2 months.

Games on my Palm are becoming more satisfying to me. Due to the limited resources on a handheld, most of the games are easy and simple. Games like Bejeweled are easy and can always be finished in minutes. Now that's what I call "instant gratification". Thus, I play Bejeweled more often then any other game on any platform.

ptt2 掛了XD

批踢踢兔大爆炸啦!
預計約近 00:00 才能重新開放 Orz

另外批踢踢兔預定在 8/10(三)
上午
03:00停機進行維護作業，
預計在晚間 18:00之前可以完成重新上線 :)

批踢踢兔站長群
Wed
Aug 10 07:14:05 2005

Thoughts on the PSP

After playing with the PSP for some time now, I think it all makes sense to me now: The PSP is what killed the Clie.

Many theories have been made on why Sony dropped the Clie line. The Palm and PPC fans always like to say "bacause the Clie's crap, no one wants them." I really don't think so. If so, then why did the line live so long? Why didn't Sony drop it earlier? I've always thought Sony is a troubled company, figuring out where's their profits. It's a big complex of thousands of divisions. So it's now cuting the smaller ones (eg. the Clie line) to save money.

But also, I think it's more of a problem of products with over lapping markets. The PSP was actually what the Clie was ment to be: a portable media center. The Clies did what it was ment to do, beautifully. However, labling it as a PDA made it's market limited, since most people don't think of PDAs as media devices. They're thought of as organizers or handheld computers instead, which only business man should need. But the PSP is a gaming device, which would be connect to a reputation of an entertainment hub. And it's also more affordable and acceptable by most people.

Thus, I think Sony must have seen the PSP as the succeeder of the Clie, and much more. Under this stratagy, of course the Clies should be cut and make everybody move to the next big hit, the PSP.

Finally found some meaning in my life

Have been pretty down for the past year.
But now, after a month doing experiments in a lab, I guess I found just what I'd like to do for a living: doing research. Actually, I'd be looking forward to this day since elementry school, but never expected I'd be so attracted, excited with and enjoying these lab work that seem to be constructed by a bunch of highly repetitive work. However, once you know about the whole big picture, make sure what you're doing, what's your approach, what's your goal, the whole thing sort of sucks you in. Every failures and success, no mater which, makes you more excited with the whole thing. It's all about tackling problems, finding one, pinning it down and conquering it. Failures are not set backs, but rather clues to what you should try next. You find a stratagy, try it refine it and slowly close in on your goal. Even that part of taking notes and organising your progress is an exciting jorney through a new world waiting for your discovery. By just focusing on the experiments, you get to forget all your worries and woes of other parts of your life. Lab work entices your adventurous sprit.

So now, research as a carrier, cycling as a sport, guess that it for my future life^^

明天到底是怎樣?

台北照常呼?
http://tw.news.yahoo.com/050804/39/254e5.html
台北放假呼?
http://tw.news.yahoo.com/050804/161/254sa.html

怒
亂報一通

好啦,以這邊為主
http://www.cpa.gov.tw/

好了,我今天overnight incubate的菌要怎麼辦?
(其實不想放假)

10th planet discovered?

-News from NASA JPL
-News from ABC News

(Artist's concept image, with the Sun in the far distance. From NASA/JPL's website)

Do not say "the 9 planets of the Solar systen", from now on, make that 10.

It was reported that the 10th planet of the solar system was found, farther from the Sun then Pluto, the 9th. It is now called "2003UB313", with a size bigger then Pluto, and a similar icy, rocky surface. It was discovered using the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego, CA. The discovery was announced on July 29 by planetary scientist Dr. Mike Brown of Cal-Tech in Pasadena, Calif., whose research is partly funded by NASA.

However, some may say that this is the "real" 9th planet since Pluto is considered by some as an "astroid" instead of a planet.

今天晚餐的談話...

跟一群社上的朋友去吃飯, 聊著聊著, 講到誰誰誰電腦裡很多蘿莉圖, 誰誰誰又有點色; 不知怎樣, 就有人說: "松智的電腦應該很乾淨吧?" 學長就說: "我用過, 真的很乾淨"
然後一個女生就問說: "難道你真的是木頭嗎?"...

嗯. 被大家這樣討論真不知道該高興還是傷心?(原來我在大家眼中的形象是這樣...)

當木頭, 算是受過傷之後, 不得已的選擇吧.
為了防止自己傷的更深, 全力清除生活中會讓我想到傷心事的事物. 卻無法徹底清除心中的慾望, 只能把它封印到最深處. 成為木頭, 是個讓希望能自己生活快樂一點的嘗試, 卻也是個無法完美達成的目標.

看著身邊朋友一個一個找到那個值得關懷, 付出, 守護的人
心裡非常混亂
有祝福, 有羨慕; 也有忌妒, 憤怒, 和一份自悲的無力感
自己卻已經失去去尋找那個人的動力與衝勁了, 而開始懷疑她的存在
我唯一能做的, 就只有繼續壓抑自己的情緒, 每多一分鐘不去想它, 就多少一分鐘的痛苦.
只是不知到這樣不斷的壓抑, 抑制, 是否會有什麼不好的結果.
---
"請你暫時不要理我, 我只是一塊在無情的大海中浮浮沉沉的木頭."

石門水庫探路之行

-3個人一起騎, 卻都分別來自3個不同的學校.
-美聿要借的車剛拿到就已經爆胎了=>一天的早晨從換胎開始.
-一路聊天過去, 每停一個休息點, 又聊至少十幾分鐘以上才走.
-又吃到思樂冰了^^ 中途經過三峽時為了思樂冰特別鑽入小巷找7-11; 回程時邦尼又再去補了第2杯(辦活動時就以這個為收對點, 來個思樂冰團吧XD)
-里程破百, horray!!!
-除了石門水庫風景區內以外, 全程緩上緩下. 之前一直很虛的體力終於恢復正常了. 我全程有80%以上都掛大盤. (飆車真爽)
-石門水庫好髒啊~~
-大家團購了2瓶2.2L礦泉水, 再加上思樂冰, 午晚餐麵湯, 額外飲料, 單日每人攝取水分超過2公升. 夏天騎車的開銷真的很大.
-發現我有一個跟清大邦尼一個相同點: 肚子餓了就開始飆車, 看可不可以早點到達有食物的地方.
-赫然發現, 桃園好近, 而石門水庫的南方就是新竹縣界了. 所以, 新竹也很近, 修推來新竹玩吧:D

其實今天的最大收穫是多了一個可以聊得很開的朋友/車友, 並在談話間更了解清大車社(原來他們專門在情人節辦活動的...好人的怨念...我們台大聖誕節也排一個吧!). 期待學期中跟清大一起辦大活動會師^^

Statistics:
Max speed: 58.5km/hr
Odometer : 1982.7km
Distance : 111.05km
Time : 6:20
Avg speed : 17.5km/hr

Sony to make SLRs with Konica Minolta

Intresting what they might come up with to take on the much acclamed Nikon and Cannon DSLRs.
Hope this means better choices for all consumers.

However, the name might be a tounge twister.
Lets say the guy in the store told you that there's cammeras from "Sony Konica Minolta" and Nikon, and you now try to guess wither there's 2 brands, 3 brands or 5 brands.

Tech in our Lab...

One thing that impressed me when I first met our professor of our lab, was that he used a clie and an iMac G4.
But what's intresting is that a professor seems to have some kind of influance on the others in the lab.
Lets see, there's a total of 3 clies that I knew of in the lab (mine would be the 4th)
Even more impressive is that there's another iMac in the lab as a public computer, and amoung the graduates, an iBook, 2 powerbooks. There's even more people saying that they are planing on buying an Apple as their notebook computer.

So when you have good products, I guess it's good marketing to let leaders use them, and the people that he leads might follow suit. :D

暑假墮落...

最近總覺得只要一離開實驗室, 就變的很...沒精神
結果除了實驗外的事都做的很糟糕

排課拖了很久, 拖延了幾個禮拜後, 搞出一個以超重課塞滿20幾學分的自殺課表

社團下學期的活動時間表, 一直停留在暫定的狀態, 有不知要去哪的, 也有不知誰主辦的

社團網頁, 也是一直拖延, 現在又停格在半成品狀態了

到圖書館借了一堆書回來, 結果卻只是借回來占書架空間的, 沒什麼在讀

只要一個人獨處就再度進入無神狀態, 只是掛在電腦前發呆, 或想著自己有多爛
一直說要忘掉的事卻每天回想
一直說要療傷卻自己在傷口拼命抹鹽...

...(好準的星座分析, 正親身體會中T_T)

雙魚座最怕失去的東西：夢想
雙魚座是一個愛幻想，精神空虛的星座，由于他長期需要一個精神支柱，所以常常有一些不切實際的夢想，一旦夢想破滅了，可以想象。
from: http://tw.mb.yahoo.com/astro/board.php?&bname=152958182&action=m&tid=105424&p=3
---
disillusioned, no more day dreaming...

WTF, Docs2go kept loosing data!

I've been using docs2go on my clie to take notes on lab work.
Today, it kept quiting it self without saving everytime I open another application.
I guess I reentered some stuff for more then 3 times.

Then, the sad part.
As I just said, I reinstalled the OS on my desktop. So my docs2go desktop app is reinstalled, too. A first sync today right after the reinstallation, loaded 3 duplicates of my labnote file on both my desktop and my clie. But it also restored all 3 duplicates to where I stoped last week. That means a DATA-LOSS of A WEEKS worth! Holy shit!

Alas, I reentered all of what I can remember, but some data are lost forever. but the part that I entered over 3times today is partly documented elsewere, and I remembered every bit of the part that's not documented, thanks for the mutiple inputs that make me memorise them...

CRAP.
I don't think I should sync docs2go anymore, since backing up files doesn't require the mess of syncing.

PSP firmware update2.0! (for japan)

(also posted on 1src, read the discussions on 1src)

Hay, intresting update, makes the PSP a more mature product.

Here's what I can get with my clumsy Japanese. If you're Japanese, you can read it here:
http://www.playstation.jp/psp/update/ud_01.html
or better, correct where I'm wrong :)
---
>web:
-A browser (finally! But I doubt it'll be easy to surf the web with a D-pad)

>video:
-Jump function?(what's this?)
-A-B repeat (repeat playback between 2 points)
-4:3 video mode added
-Mute function added
-New format supported for the memory stick: MP4（AVC）(what's different from the original?)

>Music:
-ATTRAC3 format supported for MS PRO DUO with use of Sonicstage 3.2! (Horray! Can we use ATTRAC3 in MS PRO with clies also? :D )
-AAC and WAV file playback supported (great!)

>Photos:
-You can now set wallpapers!
-Photos can be receved(with what? IR photo transfer from a clie?)
-TIFF、GIF、PNG、BMP formats supported

>Settings:
-Added:
Korean menu option, font selection(I guess), theme settings, browser launch restrictions, security settings, "WPA-PSK(TKIP)" security supported(what?), keyboard input to web supported.
---
Oh yeah, the update will be avaliable on July 27. The file you get now from the link is ver 1.52.
14MB on the MS needed and the file should be under /PSP/GAME/UPDATE
Wonder if this works on models not bought in Japan, can't find a warning that says you can't.

The eXPerience

Here is my "eXPerience"with window$. Since "Micro$oft" used to tout the "new eXPerience" of XP, here's a discription.
(Just reinstalled XP again, and much thanks, it wasted me at lease 7 hours of life, including the reinstallment of my applications and drivers. Yes, my computer is running smooth now, but don't expect it to hold for more then 4 months)
---
Welcome to the great experience of XP.
It gives you a chance to see the "safe mode" everyday, which you rarely have the chance to see in previous versions of windows.
We've minimized the chance for you to see the infamous "blue screen of death", so that you won't know what hit you when your computer freezes up.
We've also included new features, for example, "system restore", which you well be seeing with every bootup!
New Monthly updates require you to pause your work and reset the system constantly.
Also new, we invite you to experience the world of "reset loops", which is also a new feature! It altomaticaly reboots your computer when you try to turn on your computer, everyday before windows is completely loaded, add tells you that windows didn't successfully load. from here, you have the choice to try the new feature of "system restore", or enjoy the extream security of "safe mode". And also, "reset loops" allows you to enjoy the floating flag of the windows logo several times a day!
But here's the best feature yet! The reset loops make you reinstal windows every six month, which allows you to remember your windows CD key or even be able to recite lots of micro$oft propaganda!

Enjoy your eXPerience with XP!

Y.A.S.T.

WTF! "Yet Another Stupid Typhoon" had just passed by.

It provided an additional day off, leaving me with nothing to do but play games on PDA /PSP, or sleep. Since I didn't plan for a day off, and all my unread books and computer files for all the undone work are far away at my dorm, I've simply got nothing to do. It brought almost no wind from a typhoon's standard and lots of rain. It brought back some stupid memories of last year, of the stupid things I did, the stupid phone calls I made, the stupid messages I sent, the stupid thoughts I had... Damn it, will it just go away?

Hated typhoons last year just because some stupid reason. I was the fool. Had no reason to hate them this year, but am still a little down because of the memories.

pa1mOne name now back to Palm

palmOne Becomes Palm Again
(on 1src)

And a new logo so it can now sell orange soda (lol)
The design fits just right on a can of orange soda, just what I needed for this hot and sweaty summer night!

I still like the good old blue circle better

待探活動路線&下學期活動預定

1.北宜->小格頭->石碇->109->106->軍功路
2.土城/新店 (unusable)
3.三峡 (double check滿月圓)
4.桃園/石門水庫
5.汐止
6.福隆露營, 老人自hi2天大活動
7.瑞芳->九份, 維持一天

活動暴力化の始める ○￣＿

date of sunday	sat	sun	note
Sep 18 2005		1. 北海岸/龍門露營	中秋老人自hi団,之後開學
Sep 25 2005	士林	2. 猫空 by芳諭
Sep 30 2005			Fri, BBQ by 牧梅＆naox
Oct 1 2005	o1. offroad101	淡水by 智誠&naox
Oct 9 2005	b.大活動	々by chroma&牧梅	國慶3休日
Oct 16 2005	深坑	3. 巴拉卡
Oct 22 2005	o2. offroad2	?
Oct 30 2005	勉強します
Nov 6 2005	期中考
Nov 12 2005	b2.宜蘭hybrid	々by 牧梅
Nov 20 2005	x	5. 桃園へ？
Nov 26 2005	6. 北47/北47-1by deadkid＆松智
Dec 3 2005	x	o3. offroad3
Dec 10 2005	烏来		(烏来休推)
Dec 17 2005	7. 瑞芳／九分by 松智and Toby
Dec 24 2005	?		クリスマス前夜祭
Jan 1 2006	勉強します
Jan 8 2006	期末考
Jan 15 2006	花東？

想接主辦的請跟我連絡^^(尤其是知道"社上沒出過活動的好路線"的人報上名來吧)
給個意見吧！------------------------v(點這裡)

Where've all the portable video players gone?

About half a year ago, when Gates just launched the "Windows portable media stations", hard disk based portable video players were all the rage, with all tech news prodicting it as "the next iPod".

Well, what do we see now? Portable video players are no where to be seen on the news or fourms, already pretty hard to find in stores, and I've never seen one used on the streets. Instead, people are saying that PSPs are great video players and memory sticks are selling like hot cakes. I don't know if people really do watch movies on their PSPs, but I guess sony accidently killed the portable video player market. Sometimes a product is going to die, no matter how the press likes it.

Say, where's the smart phones that they said were so cool? So far I only see ocassionaly, Treos and the Sony Ericsson P series. Where's the others? Shouldn't they be taking the world by storm?

my lab...

糟,在我這個lab中,男生似乎是極為弱勢的族群...

Google Earth Rocks!

Want a 3D map+sat photo package? Get google earth for free!

I've located my home, school, and even tried a search for driving directions from my cousin's home to LAX airport! Although it's a little disapointing that detailed read data seems to be only avaliable for the US, which means no driving directions for Taiwan. Anyway, try to let it "play" the directions, and it will take you "flying" from one place to another, it's like riding some sort of floating device in the air :) The driving route it showed took the best route possible, avoiding all the older highways which are heavy with traffic, and the line drown is in such great detail that it reminds you where to change lanes and which ramp to take at highway intersections.

Little problems with it are that parts of the photos are very old (our school's library is still a flat plaza/not built in google earth), some parts not clear, and some other parts covered by clouds. And only the US had the most detail. And, it is heavy on your graphics card and internet grid, since it does a lot of 3D rendering and gets all photos and data from google's servers.

However, it's still a very fun tool. Satalite images were never easier to get.

I've saved the spot of our school, if you can't find NTU, just feed this file into google earth :)

...

積存了半年的淚水, 只有稀釋, 沒有釋放

也許, 失去愛人的能力, 會讓生活好過一些

News: Teen slain for his iPod

A sad reason not to buy an iPod?
I don't know, but exchanging a life for an iPod just isn't right.
(news from usatoday.com)

Independence day

Forth of July, happy birthday USA!
However, I don't have much to do here in Taiwan...

耍笨夜騎上武嶺

6/30經過一整天很累的爬坡, 終於到達觀雲山莊. 吃完那要用搶的晚餐後, 到大通舖整理一下東西, 並休息了一下. 此時智誠說要出去夜騎看看. 很想夜騎(很想試試新買的頭燈在夜晚的威力), 又以為只到大禹嶺的我就說我也要跟去.

頭 燈裝了新的4顆電池(80元T_T)後輕裝上路. 本來想說要在11:00前回山莊, 就要求要定一個時間折返. 結果心中想著9:30說出來的卻是10:30, 也不知為何當時不想跟智誠更正, 就認了... 一路上狀況很好, 不到30分鐘就到了大禹嶺...原來才4公里而已. 好吧, 就繼續往武嶺殺, 看10:30前能到哪. 大禹嶺有好心人士叫我們要注意夜中高速行駛的"蔬菜運輸車".

從8號切入14甲後, 路開始明顯變陡, 但不知為何狀況真的很好. 除了要運用2吸1吐的技巧多吸點氧氣外, 真的不覺得累. 空氣很涼, 但我那"大賣場100元防風外套"的保暖效果還滿棒的XD. "蔬菜運輸車"果然多, 夜晚中的安全靠口語通報. 跟智誠2人一前一後, 看到前方有轉彎就互相通報方向("turn left"), 聽到或看到有車更是要喊("incomming" , "有車, 距離300公尺" 或 "truck comming, stay out of the curve"), 然後找個安全的地方停下來會車. 就這樣走走停停, 一直休息, 偶而還看看星星, 慢慢的就爬上山了. 山上的星空真的很棒. 在沒車經過時可以說是幾乎完全無光害, 北斗七星, 銀河等都一清二楚. 我還是第一次注意到有些星星真的會明暗閃爍呢! 另外還看到了一顆流星喔, 只不過太快了, 來不及許願...

爬了一段山後忽然發現前方的路段變成很長的下坡, 開始懷疑是否走對路. 智誠只好打電話回去問技師. 一段時間後, 確定沒問題, 就帶著不安的心情滑下去. 然後, 過了氣象觀測站(有個電子看板顯示氣溫12度C)後, 果然不出所料的出現超陡坡. 這超陡坡果然毒, 之前的輕鬆都不見了, 開始累了, 而且左小腿腓腸肌開始痛了, 而且風超大的, 還要不時下車躲卡車, 在陡坡上又很難上車...真的不好騎. 過了一段度日如年的爬坡時光後, 又見到了下坡...此時心裡只想著"Oh man, not again, 又要浪費未能再繼續爬了喔...武嶺怎麼這麼遠?" 但智誠卻發現旁邊有個不起眼的小樓梯. 停下車, 爬上去, 手電筒一照, 竟看到了...一個熟悉的牌子, 上面寫著斗大的兩個字"武嶺"! (哇! 2日上武嶺耶^^)本來計畫要在山上大喊一聲"幹"以發洩過去一個學期的怨念的, 卻過度興奮, 對天大喊了2句我自己也不記得的瘋言瘋語. 只記得第一句好像是類似某連續劇中女主角看到愛琴海時喊的東西XD(好啦, 我已經瘋了) 山上的星空再加上天氣的配合更美麗了, 遠方暗暗的山丘也很漂亮, 再加上乾淨的空氣, 真是棒極了. 沒帶相機或PDA出來還真是可惜... (真希望有個女友可以分享這份喜悅)

在 觀景台上hi完後, 準備快樂的滑下山, 沒想到卻是災難的開始. 首先我的後燈沒電了. 然後滑了幾公尺後, 前燈也掛了. Great, just great. 運氣真好. 只好拿出鑰匙圈上的單顆LED照路(可見度比鹵素前燈少了至少2/3)然後靠智誠借的頭燈滑下去. 此時的前燈很怪, 休息過一陣子又亮了. 本來以為過熱, 燈泡拿出來卻冷冷的(後來問技師才知道其實是電池沒電了, 然後過一陣子又有電了). 然後, 過了氣象觀測站開始爬坡時連智誠借的頭燈也掛了. 結果兩個人很寒酸的靠著一顆LED慢慢往上爬...到了下坡路段時我忽然發覺, "蔬菜運輸車"好亮啊. 有些為了夜間安全還全車為了7彩小燈泡, 有如電子花車. 於是我們兩個就趁著下坡還跟得上卡車速度的路段, 貼著卡車的屁股走, 有如吸盤魚吸在鯊魚身上一般. 不但借用它的照明; 有對向來車時不用躲, 它幫我們開路; 卡車後面甚至還會排熱, 完全不怕冷; 唯一的缺點就是必須要多吸廢氣.

再回到8號公路後, 因為我自己記錯觀雲山莊的里程, 智誠又認錯"山莊", 結果迷路在觀雲山莊和大禹嶺間短短的4公里...現在想起來還蠻搞笑的. 打了好幾通求救電話回去, 又一邊幾找路. 此時還要輪流開頭燈輪流"休息頭燈". 然後又在對自己的直覺信心不足的情況下, 竟在到達觀雲山莊前半公里折返, 一直到"再度遇見大禹嶺"後才搞懂自己在轉圈圈. 回去後又衝過頭幾公尺, 因觀雲山莊把招牌的霓虹燈關了. 在路口見到文三錩等人所組成的搜救大隊, 真是太感動了. 還聽說他們走了一公里, 還被一群狗包圍, 真是對不起大家.

為大家帶來的麻煩與不便非常抱歉. 回去後只有冷水澡可以洗也可以算是種懲罰吧.

第二天早上要跟大家一起上山時, 發現自己已經把體力在前一天晚上用完了, 一路上像個需要散熱的野狗狂喘氣, 慢慢龜上山...這才是耍笨最直接的報應啊~~

The movie of Narnia in the works!

Just found out that the classics of C.S. Louis are being filmed into a new movie, with the first of the 7 parts, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, comming out this Christmas. The director is Andrew Adamson, who directed the Shrek series, and like the Lord of the Rings, it's filmed in New Zealand(with some parts in Cezch). The effects and sceneary in the trailer are beautiful and ashtonishing, reminding me once again of The Rings trilegy, and yes, the creatures are almost like what I expected them to look like when I read the stories. Since there are 7 books in all, I guess this would be yet another sequel series just like Herry Potter and the Lord of the Rings. However, I'm already sold when seeing the trailer on apple's quicktime movie directories, and really think this is a movie to be excited about. Also, I'd really like to see how they interprited the story. I'd really hate to see another movie that does as bad a job at story telling as the Herry Potter movies, which had a lot of the important info stripped out.

By the way, if you haven't read the book, read it. Although a child's book, it's still a masterpiece.

As for the trailer, see it here.

2005武嶺會師

I'm back. Was really a good trip.

Here's my photos

遊記嘛...還不知到要不要寫XD

Just saw the LifeDrive

It's finally released in here Taiwan.

I tested it today in a store and here's what I think.
The casing is absolutly good looking. The sturdy and cool feel of aluminum is just great. And somehow the design makes you think that the screen is very very big. I had to take out my NX73 to convince myself that it's the same size as my clie's.

The notorious 5sec lags are nonexistant. Everything jumps out almost instantly. (Maybe the complaining guys are comparing it to a palm Vx?) The longest lag I've seen is from pocket tunes, which took 3~4secs indexing just 2 songs. But pocket tunes is a known to have some bugs on the lifedrive, and would have an update soon. And besides, my clie audioplayer also lags sometimes when indexing songs, no big deal here. And you know what, pocket tunes on the lifedrive still loads faster then sony's vaio pocket music player(which is a piece of crap).

Everything is so suprisingly smooth that at one point I was considering to buy it as my next PDA... until I came apon blazer. The sells told me that the lifedrive is that fastest web browsing PDA he had ever seen, and asked me if I ever seen pocket IE on PPCs. I said no, and proceeded my test. He said that he was always a PPC guy, but this thing made him consider switching to palm.(good one here, palmOne)
WIFI connection is slightly faster then my clie, and blazer loads palmOne's moble portal site instantly. But then, I decided to see if it renders normal sites as good as Netfront3.1. I was expecting the same result because Access said on their site that palmOne used their rendering engine in the newest version of Blazer. So I tried the slowest, bulkiest site that I would read with my clie~ www.1src.com . At first I has problems with grafiti anywhere, I don't know how to tell it whether I'm selecting or writing. But eventually, I wrote in the URL. (with grafiti 2, which is also difficult for me) And now, Blazer suffers, slowly rendering the site, with text only, and a window popped up saying "not enough memory" a minute later. Hay man, didn't you have a harddrive built in? And you are telling me you can only show me pure text? I tried to see if I could force it to show not only text but also images, to no avill. Maybe I'm not familer with Blazer, but it's menu is sure confusing. Sorry, Netfront still rules, both on palm and PPC.

That's it, Blazer is that thing that brought me back to reality. The lifedrive lacks 3 essentials: Netfront, Decuma and Picsel viewer. Now, maybe I should get a TH55 as a backup instead.

Class list for next semester

3分子生物學 molecular biology
3動物生理學 animal physiology
1動物生理學實驗 animal physiology experiment
2生物統計學 biological statistics

2計算機程式設計 computer programing
2心理學 psychology
2拓撲學 topology
2体育 PE

共17學分
adding more in the future...
天阿7個重課！！

My NX73 in a comic?

Isn't this my clie?
今天在死亡筆記本第64話中看到的, 夜神總一郎用sony clie NX73掌上型電腦傳訊息給兒子
天阿, 這個作者實在是畫得太棒了, 跟我的NX73長得一模一樣, 一眼就認得出來

Systematics Ch10text book notes

Evolutionary classification
Criteria
1.genealogy/common descent
2.different degrees of modification which descendants have undergone.

Steps
1.sort into provisional classification by overall similarity.
2.test for monophyly, usually by cladistic analysis.

Recognition of taxa
1. Distinctness(size of gap)
2. Degree of difference(more charactors better)
3. Evolutionary role
4. Grade characteristics (groups of animals similar in general level of organization as distinct from groups of common genetic origin are called grades.)
5. Size of taxon
6. Equivalence of ranking in related taxa(balance)
7. Stability

Article link: PDA obsession

PDA24/7 - The PDA ruined my Life?

In this article, by Shaun, who runs one of the biggest PDA related sites, he talks about his obession with PDAs and his site.
He said "the PDA starts to dictate how you spend your leisure time and stops you from thinking reactively" that's an intresting point. However, I guess what really matters is how much of your life do you organise with your PDA. In my case, I have chunks of free time that I don't know what to do with exactly, while I only have 2 goals in mind: 1)study, 2)look for fun. You could organise every bit of your life, however, as I'm a guy that always do stuff on impluse and who seldom work according to timelines. I'm a "goal-orinted guy", so for some stuff, I prefer to use the To-Do list instead of the Datebook. Besides, I've tried severel times to completely organise my day, comming out with a datebook view with numerous chunks of "study time", which is quite boring just to look at. And besides, I never succesed to use time precisely according to that kind of organisation. I usually end up using "study time" reading novels :) Actually, I use Datebook for appointments that have time limits, such as classes, speechs I need to go to, or appointments I have with others. Other stuff goto the todo list. I like flexibility.

On the other side, I've seen a friend with his datebook completely blank. I'd ask: "then why buy a PDA in the first place?" seem that some people buy them not to organise, but just as another expensive toy. Now, in that case, the PDA is wasting a lot of his time while saving none.

intresting news: A Wireless World, Bound To Sockets

A Wireless World, Bound To Sockets
Washington Post (Link may need free registration)
Sunday, June 19, 2005; Page A01

Intresting article.
It said that an average modern person brings about 5.5 power eating gadgets... How much do you bring around?
Let me see what I have with me...
PDA
Camara... built into my PDA
Computer... just what my PDA is used for
MP3 player... also built into my PDA
Electionic dictionary... also covered by my PDA
And mobile phone.

Hm...
That means that if I buy everything seperately, I would have 5 seperate gadgets with 5 heavy chargers. However, I only need to bring one for my PDA, while my phone has a battery life of a month. Sometimes it's good to have a convergence device :)

And yeah, I did sit on the airport floor next to a socket last summer for a quick battery charge. And I did notice that at Osaka airport, there was and army of guys with Apple powerbooks, forming a whole line along the wall, one or two next to each socket.

Cell biology exam info

These are from my notes, if I missed anything, please comment.(BX板上也有小球的必考題整理)

Ch1
-Search: What is "Yeast-Two Hybrid system"?
-Important: Temperature sensitive mutatent~ a mutant gene product is only defective in function under unnormal tempratures
-one cell is about 10 microns in diameter

Ch12
-Important: tables 12-2&12-3
-Important: patch clamping research

Ch16
-Search: What steroid hormone other than progestrone has a membrane receptor?
-Important: FRET~Floresence resonance energy transfer
(Check here for more info on Wikipedia)
-Give an example of the "dominant negative" receptor techneque. (Which is flooding the membrane surface with over expressed truncated receptor.)

By the way, Scirus is much better than NCBI's search engine, it shows abstarcts and searches more databases.

New skin for SkinUI: Concept C1

New skin for SkinUI: Concept C1

Studying for the final exams sure is boring, and I really want a new skin to liven up my day, so...
Partly inspired by sony japan's beautiful website (If only their walkmans are as cool as their website...)
Finally done it :) Enjoy.

Comments, anyone?

t-storms; with thunderstorms; a t-storm or two...

Something I really hate to see on my clie
(From the weather panel of Avantgo travel)

Seats at the library are hard to find

First, of course, you want one with a desk, because you want to study, not just read.

Next, you avoid those next to the library offices to avoid the noise.

Then you want one next to a power outlet so you can listen to music without using the battery; leaving you with about 30% of choices.

Sometime you want a spot with a strong WIFI signal for web access. However, this is not important.

Last, you want to avoid the noisily chating, hugging and kissing couples. But avoiding these couples leaves you only 10% of choices.

With the power outlet & kissing couple avoidance rules, I get about 10*30=3% of the seats to choice from~ and most of those are usually taken.

Mood: Oh, man, not again...

(Warning, do not read if you don't like crap talk)

Damn, I'm day dreaming again. Hormones overwhelming, can't concentrate on studying. In the mode which half of my mind is going irrational, or just going haywire. When that half takes over, stupid things I will do...

Quit it! I need a logical, rational mind right now. To hell with the hormones and neurotransmitters. Once again, I'm wishing that some kind of antagonist exists as a pill...

Great places to get wallpapers

Some of my friends like my wallpapers on my clie or my desktop, so here's where I usually get my wallpapers:

1. JAL壁紙コレクション:
   Japan Airlines has a great colection, renewed monthly usually comes with a calender.
2. deviantart.com :
   A great site to get art, photograph, GC, skins and much more.
3. National Geographic:
   I guess everyone knows this is a great destination if you're into photographs.

As for anime, some are great, but I don't like them to be my wallpaper, they usually make it look messy, expecially if you have a desktop full of shortcuts/icons. As a rule for a clean look, I stick with photos and keep the number of icons on my desktop under 5.

More clones? this time with PPCs

Do these 2 look alike? These are the Fujitsu pocket Loox v70 and Asus Mypal A730W
Specs look the same, and the casing is defenently the same. My guess is that Asus made this as an OEM for Fujitsu, but also sold it under the Asus brand in Taiwan. I recall the 2 already did this kind of thing with some notebook before.

Looks good, was one of the only 2 PPC I'd be intrested to play with (the other is the iPaq with the touch pad) and is the only PPC I'd consider "nearly as good" as my clie. However, I still see no reason to switch to the darkside. Start menus just downright suck.

Yes, I stick with PalmOS unless palm screwed-up badly.

Ultimate skinning tool for PalmOS5~skinUI

In case you are a Palm user and haven't known about it, check out skinUI by dmitrygr at palmpowerups.com

It skins title bars buttons menus and much more. Although it's still in beta, it's nearly done, with some minor bugs left, and it already seem like the coolist new app of the palm comunity lately, being mentioned on most major palm related sites :)

And don't forget a skin I modified from the original Cobalt skin:

CobaltDark, with new command bar icons!

And of course, thank dmitrygr for this great app.

Just got a new pair of headphones

My new sony Q36

Sadly, my old Q33 somehow got it's cord badly bent, and it won't play a note unless I kept it bent with a wire or tape or press it hard with my fingers. The wires sort of broke, I guess. It's such a waste. My old Q33 headphone was the first "clip-on" style headphone I know of, can change color by switching "shells" and has very very good sound quality. I've used it for about 2 years, I guess.

Oh well, here I am with my new Q36 I got today. It looks cool, matches the color of my black clie (PDA) and the cord is soft and comfortable, covered with cloth. Best of all, it has a built-in cord coiler, with the press of a button, the cord will be pulled in, out of sight.

However, I was disapointed with my first experience with it. Sony said that the cord roller is "quite". But, when I pressed that button, the cord rolled in with CLICKS so loud that it would only be "quite" if you're at some noisy place like Disneyland. The sponge is harder because it's still new. And, this thing is made in China, while my old Q33 is made in Japan. But most of all, sound is sort of dull and muffled; not as clear as my old Q33, now sound quality is what I really care about, and this preformence makes me think that this thing is a waste of money. However, they don't accept returns unless it's defective. Also, I've heard that all new headphones need some "molding in", and it takes time for it to do it's best sound quality.

Well, I guess I'll have to wait and see. Wish it'll get as good as my old one.

流行病學info from ptt PH-92版

1)流行病學期末考:
6/27 @基醫201R

2)轉鄭老師來電通知：

下週一(6/13)的流行病學課程，原則上正常上課，

可能會上到 PM6:30 或 PM7:00。

After reading the chapter of Cladistics in Systematics

A few thoughts...

The conflict: the words "Holophyly" and "Monophyly".
Originally, taxas of which all are from the same ancestor are "monophylitic groups", and out-groups are considerd another monophyly. Then came Henning with his Cladistics methods. In order to get his method to make sense, he took the word "monophyly" and applied a new defenition, meaning taxas that are composed of ALL the offspring of a common ancertor, including out-groups. Now with one word, two meanings, we have a confusion. Then along came Ashlock. In an attempt to clear things up, he tryed to replace Henning's "monophyly" with a new word, "holophyly". But, people started to use both words in cladistics; and we now have 2 overlaping words with 2 definitions, and a total of 3 combinations of word:definitions pairs.
Thanks a lot for messing stuff up, folks.

Notes: to find apomorphic charactors.
1.Out group comparison
If one of two homologous characters that occur as variants within a single holophyletic or monophyletie group is also found in the sister group, it is the plesiomorphic character.Any character that is restricted to the monophyletic group is apomorphic. A paraphyletic group is a monophyletic taxon which does not include all the derived ex-groups.

2. Ontogenetic sequence~ development.

3. Stratigraphic sequence~ fossil record.
---
Autapomorpeic characters evolved in only one of two sister groups.~ignored in cladistics.

How did Mayr wrote this chapter?
Introduced the Cladistics method with detail with 10 pages; told the advantages and usages of cladistics in half a page; then used up a total of 20 pages bashing the method and the supporters of cladistics altogether as if they are all useless unreasonable junk.
He even used emotional phrases such as "..., so be it."

Boy, he really hates the new kids in town...

What the hell...

Threw in my clothes in the dryer, inserted the coin, and waited 45 minutes here in my room.
45 minutes after, went back just to notice that I didn't press the "start" button...
Rats...

To my classmates...

明天6/8起一個禮拜內, 別忘了填教學意見調查
對各個老師的感激或怨念都在這時獲得解放...

On life: Real intrests?

While preparing for the nearing final exams, I started to feel bored and dosed off several times. Then I started to think, "What do I really like?" I choose to major in biology because I felt it intresting in high school. But now, I feel bored, so what am I really intrested in?

Now I come to think of it, I'm actually intrested in all sorts of things. I could walk in a library on a free day, and read all kinds of books, from technology to literiture, you name it. However, I hated to prepare for tests on those kinds of things. Literiture or computer science exams, or something else, whatever, I hate exams. However, when it comes to Biology, I just feel the exams boring, but I don't HATE them.

So now I have a more clear view of my self, I guess. It's the test preperation boring, not the topic boring. So, oh well, I should retreve my intrest of biology after the exams, I guess.

iPod sells falling...

Saw this on MobileRead.
Looks like the sells of iPods are falling.
I wouldn't say that "it's the end of iPod fads", but rather, I guess it's turning into a mature market, just as PDA. Most of the people who wants one have already got one, so growth is slowing down. That's all.

I wouldn't say that I like iPods since they feel so plastic...
But I should admit that at their recent price, iPods got the best value on the market.
Maybe I'd consider one if they come out with PowerBook styled aluminum iPods :)
In the mean time, the offerings on the market seems to tell me to stick with my beloved Sony Clie for MP3s.

Mood: To my self...

This semester is near it's end, so pull your self back together and kick some ass, man!!
(My progress: Mostly still un-studied, 2 and a half chapters left on cell-biology
Next target: Biochem)

What's that you were puting into your mouth?

A day or two ago, a Taipei city councilor told the press that several food venders were selling food that were recycled from funeral houses, previously used in some funeral ritual. He pointed out several venders (some reported a number of 6, others a number of 11), and since NTU is near a municipal funeral houses(about a mile from my dorm, I guess...), some amoung the list are near our campus, which we, our selves might had eatten some! (eew, sick...)

Overhyped
And so, I did a news search on google, and found some follow up reports. Apperently this councilor wasn't creditible. Of the listed names (the 6-numbered version, I really can't find the 11-numbered version although it was mentioned), as a reporter discovered, one has been closed for over a year, and others were non-existent. Fine with me, since I seldom trust politicians. So, this is an overhyped report, right? I think this is quite apperent. However, I never liked the food those venders near the back of our campus provided, either. Many of them are over priced and contain so much grease and MSG that they make you want to puke. Besides, it's a sticky and oily street with cockroches running about.

"So, just don't eat there..."
Well, I'd think there's much diference in the food in our campus, either. Nearly all the food options that a student could afford on a daily basis are servered over greased, over flavored, and lacks veggies. Sometimes I even prefer skipping meals or just drinking milk as a substitute.

Enter fastfood.
How about the bigger, highly known names?
I just read a book from the library, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser
It tells you how these franchises are over charging you with low quality food. Let me point out a few. What you taste of almost every fastfood dish is of flavoring, not the food. For example, real french fries don't taste the way they do at the big M, instead, your tasting beef extract. They undercharge employees, and many of them are teenagers that don't care about your health. You may get a hamburger that has once been dropped on the floor. And the beef paddies. They come from big sloghter houses that care more about production speed then anything else, so your beef may contain shit from raptured guts that are carelessly removed. There are much more, just read the book and you'll know.

So what should we eat?
I don't know. I consider food that you cook a home yourself the only really safe food. However, that is not an option for us dorm dwellers, since cooking is prohibted for fear of fire hazards. So, I guess we are destinied to eat CRAP to get our education done. But is food at home really safer than the food outside? Think again. The "American Beef" you get at supermarkets are also from the same sloghter houses that provide the hamburger beef paddies, and germs that normally only live in the guts (such as E coli. 0157) are frequently found, according to the book. And we all know that vegtables with high levels of pesticides are also heard of from time to time...

I guess all we can do is avoid the foods that we are sure were unhealthy(like greasy foods), and through the rest out of our minds since there's not much we could do to avoid it.