Not going with the flow

I hate "me too" products, period.

When I buy something, I want something that's cool, different, a pleasure to use, something that makes me feel good holding it. Thus I don't like to use what everyone else does.

Let's see...
I use a Mac while everyone uses Windows PCs (Computer OS).
Mac OS is elegant and productive. You get to get your work done, instead of dealing with errors, crashes, viruses, worms, flaws, lags and all the crap that normal people encounter with computing. In this case, viruses and adware mostly target the most popular platform: Windows, so using a less popular platform keeps me away from those hassles.

Firefox instead of Internet Explorer (Web browser).
Similar to the first one, I avoid the popular yet less stable solution. Firefox also provides extra functionality, such as easily manageable extensions & skins, instant in-page search, and customizable search box (which I default to PubMed for research paper search). Many small options, such as tabbed browsing, restoring the last opened pages, searching with google and Wikipedia from the address box... all though little things add up to a great experience. Best of all, it's cross platform, I can use it on a Mac.

Palm instead of Windows Mobile (PDA OS).
Interestingly, this is yet another against Microsoft option. Yeah, Microsoft tends to commoditize inferior products to the public with strong marketing. Yet, in this case, Windows Mobile (WM) isn't exactly worse then PalmOS. Due to the stagnant development of Palm OS, the lead of Palm over WM is almost gone, with Microsoft constantly adding features. However, I stick to Palm because it has an intuitive user interface, while WM tends to hide all the features in layers of meuns. Palm also is more responsitive, with most applications giving instant feed back to your input.

Clie over iPod (Mobile music).
Find this interesting? I am comparing a PDA against the iPod! Will, as I said, I like cool stuff. The iPod is considered good looking to most people, yet I think the feel of white plastic is too heavy. My first Clie (NX73V) has a magnesium casing, while my recent one (TH55) has a glossy reflective screen cover over a metal screen bezel. I have a great big color touch screen compared to that of the iPod which is half size. My Music player looks better then the simplistic white screen on the iPod. I can also drag me music in and out freely from my memory card on any computer, while the iPod is locked on to iTunes on your own computer only. Best of all, I can edit song info, delete songs, edit playlists on my Clie. A flexibility that the iPod doesn't have. Actually, if I really won't a MP3 player, I would want a Sony Walkman, which is designed beautifully, and not seen in everyone's pocket on the streets. Yet, it's locked on to Sony's equivalent to iTunes: Sonicstage, which is Windows only. If only the Walkman supports Mac OS, I'll get one.

Merida over Giant (Bike).
Giant bikes, iguanas and yukons are everywhere. I don't see how they are better then Meridas, yet their prices are about 20% higher then a comparable Merida with similar graded parts. Thus, getting a Merida MTA510 is a no brainer. I have enjoyed my bike and have never regretted saving that 20% for other add-ons.

PHS over GSM (phone system).
Now this is not an easy choice as the previous ones. At the time of choice (4 years ago), going with PHS means great looking Japanese phones, battery power of 1 month per charge, mobile e-mail and internet, and calling fees of only about 20% of that of others. Yet, now the GSM phones are much more advanced, while recent PHS phones are crapy, and none from Japan. The recent phones even have crappy battery life, and no e-mail nor internet. The only advantage left is calling fees, yet good thing I still holding on to my old phone, retaining most of the advatages...

超強單車重改

這是強悍改車的極致吧！很有殺氣的土炮味，而且一看就知道超重的orz
開站強檔專輯-小蜜蜂傳奇

KDDI going to the US?

Reuters reports that KDDI is planing to set up camp in the US, as KDDI mobile, using the Sprint CDMA network.

Cool! As long as I can afford it, I would really love to use Japanese phones out of Japan. Imagine a reasonably sized clamshell phone with a humongous high-def screen, real HTML web browser with Flash support, usable good quality camera, office doc readers, fully functional music player, built-in e-wallet and more. Oh, and the "push e-mail" that's all the rage in the US was so last century in Japan that it's expected to be part of any basic phone: nothing to write home about. If KDDI really provided all that in the US at a reasonable price, many people will be switching from clumsy "smart phones" to easy-to-use, better functioning Japanese feature phones. That would be a big hit to Palm, Blackberry and many others.

Yet, if they went the route of Helio (partly owned by Koreans), charging high fees that people aren't willing to pay, then they would become a niche player that nobody but uber-geeks (or, in business jargon, "pro-sumers") would care about. It would be the Japanese and Koreans fighting it off in the US for a tiny market no one cares about.

No matter how good the phones are, if the prices aren't affordable, then no one cares, just as what Helio achived.

騎車暴走化

換了光頭胎之後，我的騎車習慣似乎有點變了。
不過換了1.25的光頭胎後，忘記重設碼表的輪徑，因此現在隨便可以採到時速30km/hr我也是有點懷疑啦。
總之呢，現在在騎平路時比較常掛大盤又踩高轉速，完全是個暴走化
然後睡了一覺之後，第二天早上就腿軟整個虛掉。
午餐之後，又暴走化了...orz

我還在新市到台南的路上（緩上）巴掉機車呢，小有成就感 :P

接下來必須想辦法解決騎長途時會出現的胯下皮膚過度摩擦皮的問題。

Southern Taiwan and little liuchu island biking trip - Day 1

Apr 5

Planned to get up at 6, alarm changed to 6:30, got up at 7, went out 7:30, and after much procrastination, I've finally packed up my bike and am on the train to Taipei at 8:18. As every years' tumb dusting day, it's a nice cloudy day with slight drops of rain. A look around sure shows a different beat of life today. As this is the begining of a 4 day major holiday, I expected to see lots of people, yet the streets in Keelung are quite clear, and the train station nearly empty. I'd normally see all these places packed on a normal weak day's rush hour. Maybe most of the south going crowd already when last night.

I'm on a 4 day trip to the south and little liuchu island(小琉球). As I am trying to stay put with being single, I set out on my first biking trip on my own, to get a taste of the freedom and loneliness of traveling solo. A twist to this much anticipated holiday though, I've got about 3 research papers in my backpack, and about 15 more, with over 50 pages, in my memory card waiting for me to study during the holiday.

I reserved a bus seat for 9:30 from Taipei to Tainan (國光客運), yet the bus arrived at 9:45. There were slight traffic jams, yet just slightly, which is bearable. The bus stopped at the bus company's own bus terminal in Taichung for a lunch brake. The terminal is half terminal, half highway rest stop, with a simple make shift conviniant store and some food stands. Passangers have 10 minutes to fetch up lunch and use the bathroom, then everyone comes back on the bus and we start off again. 3 movies were shown on the bus, yet I didn't pay much attention to the movies. In one of them, a guy was dating a secret lover behind his wife, and the lover was forcing him to devorce with his wife. Under high pressure, the bastard murdered his lover and his wife had a new baby. I didn't know what happened in the end as the Anime (Honey & Clover, in fact...) loaded in my PDA was much more interesting. Another movie had a guy with an inuit girl trying to surive after their plane crashed in the middle of nowhere. I ran out of interest when the girl died. Well, after much sleep, some movies and read a paper, the bus finally arrived in Tainan at 2:10 pm. The time it took was quite nice, considering the fact that today is the first day of a national 4 day holiday.

Went to Grandpa's in Tainan before setting off south. Grandpa stuffed me with a copious load of food and I hit the road at 2:45 pm, with a stuffed belly.

The road to Kaoshong was shorter then I expected, about 60 km. The view wasn't estonishing, yet it's typical of this part of Taiwan. As always, there were roadside "betel nut girls" (檳榔西施), selling betel nuts in glass walled stands, wearing bikinis. And many of them have a weird combination of nice bodies with ugily faces. I saw one today who has this face that just looks like my most hated old Chinese teacher from high school, YUCK!

Just entering Kaoshong, there was this bridge, with a curved down hill when you get off the bridge. Right when I was picking up speed and cutting into the down hill ramp, a normal "slow" sign came into sight. Yet, under it, was a black sign with shinning yellow letter of the most common Budda prayer (阿彌陀佛). Damn, those remind me of prayers for the dead. In the shock of reading that sign, I nearly lost control, yet got back in control in a split second. That sign could cause accidents by scaring the ass off drivers, man!

Kaoshong is the southern end and a major train maintainence station of the newly built Taiwan high speed rail, and am I happy to see those beautiful trains.


Went to see my uncle here in Kaoshung, and went to a buffet with steak for dinner (貴族世家). Quite an interesting day.

批踢踢...

今天的趣事真多...

批踢踢的進版畫面也出現兔子了


另一方面，還出現了新的BBS站：有名大站 orz

Hello, NTU Single club!!!

[台北電訊/綜合報導]
有鑑於單車運動逐漸普及化
據說本屆社團營運團隊決議，台灣的單車運動已經大眾化，不需要再大力推動
因原有的使命已達成，因此將行社團改制，朝向全新的目標前進

目前全球人口以對數成長急速激增
根據Wikipedia記載，2007年的世界人口已經突破66億
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population )
而台灣人口密度 636人/km^2 也已經是世界排名前幾名
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density )
眼看世界食物量供給逐漸失衡，有些人肥到進不了自己家門，有些人卻嚴重營養不足。
根據馬爾薩斯的人口對數成長理論，地球的食物供給將在不久的將來跟不上人口的成長

因此，為了緩和人口爆炸問題對地球環境的負荷
為身在這個太陽系中獨一無二的美麗新球上負起一個房客的基本維護責任。
台大單車社陶社長於四月一日下午1點於位於活大的社辦開辦記者會，
宣示全力推行單身運動，將原有「台大單車社」改制為「台大單身社」
全力推行台灣單身新運動。

另，配合這次社團改制，以進行網站全面更新，網址為：
http://club.ntu.edu.tw/~club20364/
（不負責任記者 台北報導）

Google TiSP: Free WiFi with a flush!

Google has just launched a new product that will provide free home Wifi to everyone, hooray!

Google TiSP beta, code named project teaspoon, is aimed to give everybody free wireless internet connection from their own toilet!
Be sure to click on the "get started" link on the page and see how it works! The installation procedure is so cool, I would really like to talk about it, but don't like to spill the beans, go and take a look! (LOL)

Five for Fighting | Two Lights

After listening to Five for Fighting's "The Riddle" on Pandora for some time, I was addicted to the song, and went to a store to pick it up (for 12USD, the normal price in the US, yet expensive from Taiwan's standards). It's been many years since I last find an English song that I truely find touching and can't resist the desire to buy. Five for Fighting, which is really a one man band of John Ondrasik from LA, does light rock music on a wide range of topics from love, peace to family, and even wisdoms of life. This is really what I like the most, songs about experiences, memories, struggles, all the feelings that you get in real life. Like a breath of fresh air in a world filled with "love songs" that only focus narrowly on romantic relationships.

Yahoo mail's storage turns infinity

Yahoo is expected to remove it's 1GB storage limit from it's free email service, by it self, a pretty cool decision. Yet, as a long time Yahoo mail user and a Gmail convert, I think Yahoo missed the point. Although this upgrade would give Yahoo a great competitive advantage over competitors (Gmail has a constantly growing limit, now at 2.8GB and still growing slightly everyday; Hotmail has a limit of 2GB), that would not win me back over to use Yahoo mail as my main email.

Yes, at first I tried Gmail because Yahoo mail at the time has only 6MB, while Gmail has 1GB. But then, I was hooked on to Gmail's simple and fast AJAX based interface. Soon after, Yahoo updated their service to have 1GB storage, and then added an AJAX interface that, frankly, looks better then Gmail's. I considered moving back to Yahoo, which was my first email account, I sure did. Then 2 things bugged me.

First of all, Gmail has a nice notifier that pops up the moment you get new mail, allowing me to give real fast replies, and never worry about forgetting to check my mail. Well, with Yahoo, I sure can fix that with a widget or Yahoo messenger's mail notifier. Not as elegant, yet does the job.

But here's the real pain in the ass: spam. Gmail's spam filter does so good a job that I only see spam about once a month: it is only the graphic based spam that could get pass the filter. Gmail allows me to enjoy email once again. On the other side, Yahoo lets at least 2 spam mail into my inbox everyday. Yahoo even has a fancier name for it's spam filter: "Spam Guard (TM)", yet, it lets the same spam past again and again. I could click the "this is spam" button to train the filter, yet the same identical spam shows up tomorrow, reminding me that the " this is spam" button never works.

Yahoo still doesn't get the point. They add fancier functions time and again, yet the spam filter still doesn't work for me. While Gmail keeps my inbox clean, and also provides the luxury of simple text ads that don't bother me, and tight integration with other Google apps, such as spreadsheets, docs and much more.

Watch the fun Gmail puppet show on YouTube :)

TMNT

Who's interested in remembering some memories from childhood? Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles are back, this time in modernized 3D computer animation. Ah, the good old days as a kid, always having fun... By the way, did I say this movie come back has gotten highest sales in box office last week in the US?

In theaters March 30th in Taiwan, anyone wanna go? Anyone?

Trailers
Official site
Intro on Yahoo Taiwan

New tires

Today I changed my bike's tires from the chunky XC tires (the CHT cheep 26/1.95 tire that came with the bike in front and Kenda Karma 26/2.0 in the rear) to the newly bought road tires that my friends got me from Taichung (Kenda Kwest, 26/1.25). It is much thinner, and smoother, with no chunks. The road tires were actually for my Hokkaido trip in Summer, but I really wanted to test it out and wear out the wax that came on new tires.

Changing the tires turns out to be a 2.5 hour bike maintenance since in the process I noticed that my rims was coated with a thick layer of brake shoe "powder" (the debris from the rubbing of the brakes with the rim), by bike really dirty, my brakes worn out (and the metal parts in the brake shoe was already starting to eat into my rims, ouch!), and my chain also real dirty. So, after the lengthy tire & brake shoe change, and cleaning up my chain, gears, rims, fork and body, I finally got to go out for a test ride.

Switching to road tires was a strange feel. When I first started riding good bikes (more expensive one, in contrast with commuter bikes), I was really satisfied with that "vroom" sound that the chunky tires give, which really sound like motorcycles. But now, it feels a little, well, too silent. With a newly cleaned chain & gear set, and smooth road tires, it's like you glide on the road, with no more then the sound of the wind. It's supposed to be more energy efficient with road tires, but the feel isn't that dramatic, since the roads around my home wasn't that smooth (you get a lot of pot holes and rocks on the road); the difference really kicks in when you start going up hill, when you notice that you can still maintain a speed of 25km/hr on slight hills, it's like all hills are much easier now. Going downhill is another story. Since the tires are thinner (1.25), the downhill curves aren't as stable, as I yet to get used to the handling of the feel. I need more practice to get full control of these tires.

Something else noticeable, is that the tires, being thinner requires much less air to fill up. So I can easily pump it to 60psi before my hands get tired (with my tiny mobile pump, I mean), where as with 2.0 tires, I could get tired before I get the pressure up to 50psi. This and the less weight of the tire it self also contributes to the decrease in energy loss. Yet, with the crappy roads around home, that also translates to a bumpier ride.

On the look of the tires, mine has 2 bright yellow strips on the sides of the tires, which really doesn't look too good on my black/brown bike. Oh well, that's what you get when you trade in good looks for bargain prices...

Skinning Google

Google has always been well known for their barebones clean-looking search-only homepage. Now, look what's new with their personalized Google homepage?

I logged in with my Gmail account, set up a theme, and there it is, cute and beautiful. I like it :)
Maybe this will be something that'll make me start using the Google homepage again, since I usually use the search box in the right upper corner of Firefox to search, without even seeing the Google homepage...

--- update---

It's now noon, and the theme changed! Now the tea garden is sunny, and the fox has gone out on a boat ride in the lake :)

Also, as you can see in my Wired news headlines in the screenshot, Wired has a report on this cute move by Google.

囧rz

今天MSN連不上，就讓Skype掛著（雖然說我的skype聯絡人不多，但總比沒有好）

結果來了個不認識得來搭訕
一開頭就來了個「安安」（心想，火星文打招呼法，這一定不是我這世代的）
然後問如何稱呼（回：同我的id）

然後，正想著他要幹麼時，重點來了：
「我有在兼職約嗎3200　2H」
（這又是火星文嗎？但老實說在網路上提到時數＋價格又不敢講清楚的似乎也只有一種狀況）
於是在我回了個「啥？」之後對方終於說清楚是「援交」...

唉，我要的緣份是心靈夥伴和旅遊夥伴，不是這種東西啊～
況且，3200我寧願拿去旅遊，而不是拿去玩這種東西

Skype還是只跟在真實世界認識的人通就好了...

Asahi ビールは...

從日本回來後,爸爸開始買Asahiビール來喝。
台灣市面上有2種Asahi: Asahi 生ビール＆Asahi ビール 乾杯。前者42元,後者32元。印象中，報紙曾經說過「乾杯」系列是為了打價格戰而推出的。但憑甚麼罐子上多打了「乾杯」兩字就可以便宜10元？今天喝的時候，仔細看了一下標示, 發現Asahi生ビール 一如一班人印象，是日本進口的；而「乾杯」卻來自中國深圳的「青島啤酒朝日有限公司」！

原來是委託青島啤酒做的。

另一方面來說，在台販售的青島卻是代理商在屏東設廠生產的。難道說，「Asahi ビール 乾杯」才是真正中國生產的青島啤酒？

Anyway, one thing for sure, 我家以後再也不會買「Asahi 乾杯」了。
--
Edit:
這更有趣，我又發現Sapporo啤酒是委託台灣菸酒公司烏日廠製造。那何不省點錢買台啤就好了呢？

Beer catapult mini fridge!

Some Duke graduate modified his fridge to throw him a beer, while sitting in his couch watching TV, with a flick of a remote! Cool!

Robotic Beer Launching Refrigerator - The funniest videos clips are here

Read the full story at MSNBC

Logos/λόγος

Logos [in Wikipedia] [in Wiktionary]

In my first Philosophy class, today, the professor talked about a lot of interesting thing, so much at I start to regret taking the class as late as in my last year, which is, now. The sad part is that a lot of the lecture has a strange nature that makes you really don't feel it's right, but can't think of any good way to retort, and can't help but agree with him in the end. But over all, the lecture today makes me think, makes me feel like I have a fresh, enlighted mind. I am now starting to have a taste of what the famous quote of René Descartes: "cogito ergo sum" (I think, there fore I am.)

The professor mentioned 2 important ideas of Philosophy: Be able to express/talk (as the greek word: Logos), and be willing to speak. He said: "People who don't speak are no different from dead people to me." Well, that sure is something I should remember, since I don't express my self very well, and I seldom speak. I should try to trash the "silence is gold" crap, and adopt Logos as part of me.

白沙灣夜衝

回來了，好累
身理影響心理，一整個糟糕
看來真的該去償還睡眠債了。

霧太濃，沒看到月全蝕。整個月亮、太陽、甚至附近的山都看不見...
只在自己的人生中，又留下了一筆青春瘋狂的回憶。

用 MacOS 內建的 Terminal 上BBS!

當有人問說用 Mac 如何上 BBS 時，「去灌 Alien BBS」似乎已經快要成為標準答案了。不過昨天竟然有朋友說不好意思在公用的電腦上灌軟體，希望 Mac OS 有內建的可以上 B 的東西 orz (老實說，公用電腦是 Mac 很少見呢，不過在創意工作場所出現 Mac 應該是正常的吧) 於是我研究了一下如何讓 Terminal.app 正確顯示中文，竟給我成功了XDD
昨天整理了 step by step how to, 現在就 Po 在此，以後有別人問時就可以看這裡了^^

1. 先找出「終端機」(Terminal.app)
   （若已經對Mac有所了解，知道在那，可以跳過此說明）
   • 若有spotlight (螢幕右上角的放大鏡)，直接搜尋「終端機」就可以了。
   • 若是舊版的MacOS可以到 Finder->「應用程式」資料夾->「工具程式」資料夾。
     Finder: 點 dock 中(桌面下面那一排圖示)最左邊那個笑臉
     
     應用程式->工具程式
     
     
     「終端機」就在裡面
     
2. 接著要改終端機的語言編碼設定
   
   • 螢幕左上方的選單中選「視窗設定」
     
   • 在跳出的新視窗中，上方的下拉式選單中選「監視器」
     
   • 視窗中下方的「字元集編碼」改成繁體中文
     
3. 改終端機的顏色設定
   終端機中原本是白底黑字，我們把它改成黑底白字
   
   • 剛剛的設定視窗中，最上方的下拉式選單中再選「顏色」
     
     
   • 然後把標準顏色改「黑底白字」就設定完成了
     
4. 最後，由終端機啟動 telnet!
   以ptt為例，輸入”telnet ptt.cc” (也就是 telnet +空白+bbs網址)
   
   按下enter後，就成功了（雖然畫面有點醜orz）
   
   

註：視窗大小自己拉到適當大小，不然換行、排版會怪怪的！

競爭阿～

今天在找 seminar 要報告的 paper 時，忽然突發奇想，來找找我去年暑假在洛杉磯做的研究主題的相關論文好了。

結果發現一連找到3~4篇主題跟我去年的主題一模一樣的論文，全部都是美國的實驗室發的，卻沒有一個是我學姐發的。想去年暑假時，學姐才用那個主題要去申請研究經費，正要開始做。而現在找到的那些論文卻都是去年暑假之前就已經投稿到期刊去了。我跟學姐合作的研究被做走了，而且別人結束時，我們才正要開始。

結果今天整個下午心情都很不好。
為了自己暑假時一直失敗感到抱歉。
為了學姐的心血感到可惜。

---

還好現在的 project 快要結束了，而且還找不到在做類似東西的 paper...

我必須努力提昇自己做實驗的速度與品質>"<