Autumn, 2008 Bronx NY

Even tool some time to listen and read this little poem Snow by George Bilgere. Enjoy every word of it.

Also, read the little biography of Edwin Hubble with gusto.

Enjoy all those audible references and images. Like the way it depicts sounds, the “quadrupling the pressure in their lungs” of the nightingales of London and Berlin, and the Voyager’s recordings of Brandenburg concertos and Johny B. Goode.

Another interesting one, is titled Purring by Coleman Barks

The opening of the poem is rather scientific, and I especially like “poetry is human purr", wonderfully said.

Then, I started to notice that Firefox also has its built-in spell checker. However, Internet Explorer 7 does not have a built-in spell checker, but there are third-party spell checker for IE7. Since now I almost use Chrome exclusively on Windows PC, and Firefox on Macintosh, so IE7’s lack of spell checkers becomes irrelevant.

Information about Firefox spell checker

Information about Google Chrome spell checker

For Internet Explorer, there is a third-party product called ieSpell. Although now I seldom use IE7, but it is good to know there are such product for IE.

As more and more applications are moved to the cloud, browsers are increasing important for general usage. Spell checkers, traditionally associated with stand-alone word processors and operating systems, are now more closely associated with browsers. It is a harbinger of the age ofcloud computing.

I chose the Adobe Premiere Elements as my video editing tool. I am a huge Adobe fan, spent endless hours reading the books about Photoshop,Premiere, DreamWeaver, and playing with those wonderful tools.

Usually, one can burn a DVD directly from Adobe Premiere Elements. But, to burn into a folder is more advantageous. For details, check the following article:

How to burn Adobe Premiere Elements projects to a folder (then to DVD)?

The WWI veteran’s letter as a blog

Also, a related retro blog is that of George Orwell’s diary posted as a blog

So much for the blog, here there is an Wired article denouncing the value of personal blog:

There are many funny and witty comments under this article. For me, a personal blog is never about popularity or ratings. I am perfectly comfortable of the fact that only my immediate family read my blog. For me, blogging is just way to dump my overly clogged brain, to make room in my brain for new stuff. I am not a good writer, so I am not bothered by any ambition or expectations.

Something Mr. David Pogue described very well in his recent two blog entries on why we video tape our lives:

Why we shoot home videos

Readers’ react to the previous entry

There are many reasons why we document our lives, and sometimes we don’t know the reason why we write diaries and make video tapes ourselves.

I am a little confused when I am writing this, funny, isn’t it?

However, there are no such utility included in Mac OS X. According to Apple, their file system is so perfect that you don’t need to do defragment.

If you do need to defragment the hard drive, the cheapest method is to backup the whole hard drive, and then erase the content, copy back the backup copy.As the Apple document suggested, there are always third-party utilities.

For me, it is a self-powered hard drive, which has a built-in card reader to read all the comment digital camera memory cards, be it CF, SD, SDHC, etc. So after the memory card is full, I can dump the contents, including still digital images and videos, to the hard drive. Then, I can format the memory card to take another batch.

The only drawback is, you put all you eggs in one basket, so make sure you don’t lose your hard drive, don’t drop it, don’t forget it in the hotel room.

I found two such external hard drives:

Digital foci Photo Safe II, on sale at Amazon.com

A review on Digital Foci Photo Safe

Another review

A similar product:

Hyperdrive Space

I prefer to bring my laptop with me, but boy, a laptop can be such a heavy burden. So if the trip is not too long, maybe such a photography hard drive is a better choice.

GTD entry at Wikipedia

GTD Primer

For a brief review, see the flowchart:

from GTD Primer

A video of David Allen talking to the folks at Google

First, I implemented the system with my Palm handheld computers; soon after, I discovered that I was not carrying my Palm all the time, and I cannot update and use the system in a meaningful way. It’s rather difficult to implement it with my Windows Mobile cell phone as well.

So I continue to search for a better solution.

Of course, this is an age of Web 2.0, and GTD is a rather natural candidate for a Web 2.0 design. From the Andrew McCaskey’s SDR News Podcast, I learned the Nozbe GTD system, and gave it a try. It’s a decent GTD system, the only drawback is, I must pay them $40-50 a year to use the system, the free account is very limited. So the search is still on.

Last week, I came across this page: Tools for Getting Things Done. Perusing the list, I discovered the free PHP GTD application, aptly named GTD-PHP.

It’s quite easy to install, the requirement is rather low: a web server, a MySQL database, that’s it. Then, you can access your GTD system from everywhere. Since it is in a rather early development stage, it does not offer the log-in features existed in other more mature PHP applications, such as PHPBB forum or WordPress blog software. Instead, it takes advantages of Apache web server’s built-in access control. The security deails can be found at the Security Page of GTD-PHP.

So, now I am working to to migrate my tasks and projects from Nozbe to my own GTD-PHP.

It turned out that CTG files are part of the DCIM (Digital Camera Images) file system structure that conforms to the Design Rule for Camera File System, a standard for storing digital images on memory cards by digital cameras.

.CTG (stands for Catalog) files store the image and file index information to be used by the camera to display index images without traversing each individual folders. They are not meant to be manipulated by the end users. However, out of the camera, they are useless. They can be safely deleted once copied to the hard drive.

.CTG reference info

What’s the CTG file

Now, both my PC and Mac has more than 1 GB RAM, and the hard drives routinely exceed 100 GB. However, I see few reasons to change my site’s overall appearance, since I am quite a minimalist, and the austere interface suits me so well. For that reason, I did not change my HTML pages for a long time.

Ever since I start to use Wikipedia regularly, I start to love the keyboard shortcuts of the site. Especially the Alt-F (Control-F on a Mac) keyboard shortcut to put the input focus into the search box. It would be nice to have a similar shortcut for my blog.

So I look into the source code. I learned the usage of accesskey attribute of HTML. It can be used inside a link or a text box form. Someone wrote a quite good introduction on how to use keyboard shortcuts within web pages.

Another accesskey usage page.

So, today, I added the following keyboard shortcuts to my home page. To access the keyboard shortcuts, use Alt key on a Windows computer, and Control key on a Mac. If you use Internet Explorer, you must hit Enter to go to the link, but you don’t need to if you are using other web browsers, including Google Chrome. One reason I use Chrome, so that I can save my “Enter” key on my keyboard,

b: My English blog
c: My Chinese homepage
a: My bookmark page (quite old, has only historical and nostalgic value)

inside my Chinese homepage:

e: My English homepage
m: My Chinese blog
a: My bookmark page (the same as in the English page)

In my English blog page:

h: Go back to my Homepage
b: Refresh the blog page
f: Put keyboard focus to the Search box, just like the Wikipedia page

In my Chinese blog page:

h: Go back to my Chinese homepage
m: Refresh the Chinese blog page
f: Search my blog, just like Wikipedia search box

Another interesting fact, since I use frame in my home pages, I must use the following tag to set my keyboard focus first:

<body onLoad="self.focus()">

Sometimes, the red-eye prevention flashes of small cameras do not work very well, and you may still have persons with fearsome red eyes. You can always remove them inside Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, or even Apple iPhoto or Aperture, but you must have a computer nearby.

With the Canon SD1000, you can correct the red-eye on the camera after the picture is taken.

1. In playback mode, go to [Play] menu tab
2. Use left and right buttons to select a picture and press [Func. Set] button. A frame will display automatically at the position of the red eyes. If the camera cannot find the red eyes, use the left and right arrow buttons to select [Add Frames] and press [Func. Set] button. 35 correction frames can be added, use the arrow and [Func. Set] buttons to position the correction frames
3. Select [Start] and press [Func. Set] button
4. Select [New File] or [Overwrite] and press [Func. Set] button
5. Press [Menu] button, then choose [Yes] or [No] to decide whether to display the corrected image

Make sure you have enough juice in your battery before start editing.

1. In movie playback mode, select [Edit] icon, the press [Func. Set] button. The movie editing panel and the movie editing bar will display
2. Use the up and down arrow buttons to select the In and Out point, and use the left and right buttons to select the cut point. To check the temporarily edited movie, select [Play] icon and press [Func. Set] button, and use the [Exit] icon to cancel the editing
3. Select [Save] icon and press [Func. Set] button
4. Select [New File] or [Overwrite] and press [Func. Set] button. When not enough free space left, only [Overwrite] will be available

When the camera shaking warning icon appears when pressing the shutter button half-way down, if this feature is activated, the [Printing] button will light up, blinking blue.

At this time, while holding the shutter button halfway down, press the [Printing] button. When the [Printing] button lights up, press the shutter button all the way down the take the picture with the increased ISO setting.

While the shutter button halfway down, press [Printing] button again to restore the original ISO setting.

To activate the Auto ISO Shift feature, goes to [Shooting] tab, down to [Auto ISO Shift] menu, choose [On]. [Off] is the default setting.

Canon PowerShot SD1000

1. [Func. Menu] button -> AWD (Auto White Balance), change to “Custom”
2. Aim the camera at a piece of white paper or cloth, then press [Menu] button. Make sure the center frame is filled with the white reference. When use the optical view finder, make sure the whole field is covered.

Once set, do not change the settings, especially ISO. Cannot set Custom White Balance with Stitch Assist mode, use Manual mode to set instead.

Canon EOS 350D Rebel XT

1. Photograph a white object, white reference should fill the viewfinder center, use any white balance setting, use Manual Focus since it would be difficult to auto focus on a white object.
2. Select [Custom WB] menu item in [Shoot2] tab, custom White Balance screen will appear
3. Select the white reference image taken in step 1, then press [Set] button, the white balance data will be imported, the menu will reappear
4. Select [White balance], [Shoot2] tab, [White balance], press [Set] button, the white balance screen will appear
5. Select [Custom white balance], then press [Set] button. Then, when the shutter button is half pressed, the [Custom WB] symbol will be displayed on the LCD panel

Sony Handycam DCR-HC32 Camcorder

The custom white balance is called “One Push” in the camcorder manual.

1. Touch [One Push] button
2. Frame a white reference object (wall, paper) to fill the screen with the same lighting condition as the real shooting
3. Touch [One Push] button. The indicator flashes quickly until the setting adjustment finishes. During the process, don’t shake the camcorder. If a white balance cannot be set, the indicator will flash slowly.

His Pattern Language inspired the design patterns movement in computer science. Some computer scientists even refer to Christopher Alexander as the Jedi master Yoda in the Star Wars movies. His tenet is to make the environment, be it a building or computer program, more humanly comfortable, more pleasant, not to treat people as machines.

It all sounds very well, until I tried it. The buttons and menus of the mobile media player consume large amount of the screen real estate, mind you, the screen is very small in the beginning with. Press “0″ will put the video to full screen mode, similar to the Alt-Enter on the PC Windows Media Player. However, when I activated the full screen mode, the video rotate 90 degreen, wasting a large amount of screen space. If the screen is portrait-oriented, that makes sense, but the T-Mobile Dash is landscape-oriented, so turning 90 degrees with display a landscape-oriented video on a portrait mode.

Of course, that’s a bug on the Microscoft’s side, hardly a news to anyone dealing with Microsoft product. But now I need a solution. It turned out not difficult, just do the following:

1. Download Mobile Registry Editor, and install on the Windows PC
2. Connect the Dash to PC, launch the Mobile Registry Editor
3. Add Dword value “LandscapeMode=0″ to HKLM/System/GDI/Rotation/ key

However, I often use my phone and Nokia 770 to browse the Internet and read/write email messages. Both have Wi-Fi connectivity, and my cell phone also has the EDGE cellular data connectivity. To my chagrin, both devices cannot read and write Chinese, my native language.

So, a couple of months ago, I busied myself to find a Chinese solution for both devices. It turned out not very difficult to make the devices display Chinese characters, but it was trick to input Chinese on them. So, in the end, I gave up the crusade to make them capable of inputting Chinese characters, it would be fine to just display Chinese correctly. Anyway, it is a hassle to input Chinese even on a regular computer with full-sized keyboard, it will not be very practical to input Chinese on a handheld device to begin with.

My solution for the Nokia 770 is a software package called Maemo CJK. Maemo is the platform for Nokia Internet Tablet developers, it is based on Linux.

Link to MaemoCJK Project

My solution for the T-Mobile Dash is a commercial software package named CE-Star, from a company called Mobile Embedded Expert. The software is not free, but it is not very expensive. Also, it can input Chinese characters.

CE-Star for Smartphone

Today, I spend some time to test drive the new browser. Here are some of my impressions:

User Interface

It’s quite minimalistic, the window frame is only half the size of those normal Windows applications, including Internet Explorer and FireFox. Other than normal web page spaces, there are only tabs, address bars, and that’s it. You can use Ctrl-B to bring out the bookmark bar, but I find it unnecessary. As you may know, I am myself a minimalist, so I am quite happy to see the new Chrome user interface. It even gets rid of the status bar in the bottom.

The address bar doubled as a search bar. If you type a web address, Chrome will interprete it correctly; or if you type a phrase, the Chrome will interprete that as a search phrase for your default search engine. It’s quite intelligent.

Also, it uses almost identical keyboard shortcuts as Internet Explorer. For example, you use Alt-D to put the input focus into the address bar, Ctrl-T to open new tab, and inside address bar, Alt-Enter to open the link or search in a new tab.

Although it does not have a search box, but if you type Ctrl-E, it actually put your focus into the address/search bar, and put an “?” in front of your cursor to indicate you want to search inside the address/search bar. That’s neat. Ctrl-K does the same thing, which is the equivalent keyboard shortcut for FireFox.

The best thing I like about Chrome is the ability to re-open the last tab one accidentally close. All one need to do is to type Ctrl-Shift-T. Neither IE7 nor FireFox can pull this trick.

Performance

My second impression is, this browser is fast. I did not do an accurate measurement, but intuitively, I feel it faster than IE7, which is my prime browser on the Windows platform. There are quite some under-the-hood improvements, such as sand-boxing each Tab process, fast JavaScript engine, and easy management of the tasks. Using Shift-Esc can bring up the Chrome Task Manager, the same fashion I use Ctrl-Shift-Esc to bring out the Windows Task Manager.

For now, there is only Windows version. I hope the Mac OS X version will come out soon, and I expect some performance improvments over FireFox 3, which is my primary browser on the Mac OS X platform. For some reason, I never bother to use the Safari brower on my Mac. Maybe that’s due to the fact that early Safari incarnations annoyed the hell out of me. Maybe they corrected all the bugs, but since I already have FireFox installed, why bother?

Interestingly, Google even made a comic book on the new Chrome browser to explain it:

Chrome Comic Book

I am tempted to use it as my primary browser, but I need some time to get used to it. Right now, I know IE7 and FireFox 3 quite well, so I will continue test and try, until I am really comfortable with it.

Nice work, Google.

Last month, I went to Chicago for on training trip. Coincidentally, it’s the 10th anniversary since I came to the United States. On August 19, 1998, I arrived New York City from Beijing, excited and exhausted after a 17-hour’s flight. I can hardly believe that is a decade ago. At the time, the phone company in New York City was Bell Atlantic, and I barely spoke English, and I had a very different view of the world.

Now, ten years later, here I am, still in New York, but now I am father of two sons, and a quite different man.

Anyway, first, about the Chicago trip.

I did not travel often. A decade in the United States, I hardly leave New York City. I guess I am a sedentary person, I did not travel far in China as well. I think I’d like to travel, but my life can hardly allow my indulgence on this aspect. Maybe I should try harder.

It’s a short trip, I only visited Downtown Chicago, the Field Museum, and took an architecture boat tour on Lake Michigan to admire the wonderful skyline of Chicago.

Day 1, I visited the Field Museum and the Aquarium nearby. Many years ago, I read about the T. Rex Sue in National Geographic. It’s the most complete T. Rex fossil in the world. Now I was able to see it with my own eyes. They even had a replica outside the museum. Here are some of my pictures of the museum visit:

Day 1: Field Museum

The conference was organized by 2600, the famous hacker magazine.

Here is the web site of the conference, and hopefully I can download some of the speeches and discussions.

Link:

Hope Conference

2600 magazine