Hello there

Toilet Seats

2011-07-26T23:47:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I remember seeing these slow closing toilet seats which I thought were awesome. I didn't think about getting them at the time because I thought it would be a difficult project.
These last few weeks I started thinking about them again because I wanted to replace our toilet seats. They were old and I wanted to enjoy the slow close feature. After some research, I picked out Bemis 9170CHSL because I wanted high density molded wood and of course it has the slow close feature. Unfortunately only one retailer carried it: Chicago Faucet Shoppe and shipping would start at more than 25% of the price of the seats. Ouch.
I went back to research but just couldn't find another model until I visited Home Depot Pro and saw this: Bemis 553CHSL. This model was very competitive with 9170CHSL that I originally wanted. Including the exterior looks, there were only two differences:

553CHSL uses regular molded wood vs high-density molded wood for 9170CHSL
9170CHSL allows the entire seat and cover to be taken off via easy hinges on the top, 553CHSL does not have this

I looked through Bemis's website but just couldn't find any information about 553CHSL.
After looking at the product again and seeing what else I can get, I went with 553CHSL.

The installation is another story. Let's just say I should have followed the instructions. Nothing broke though, I just made it harder for myself while I was screwing things in.

The seats are nice. I like the Whisper Close feature and it works on both the seat and the cover. I did notice the cover isn't flush with the seat. It's offset a bit to the right. I have a suspicion it's the manufacturing. At any rate, it's not too bad. The hinges are very big compared to the old seats' hinges which were much smaller so I notice this a lot more than the offset problem.

One thing I have to complain about Home Depot is they don't do a good job of advertising the features on the product page. If I didn't visit the Pro store, I would have given it a miss if I saw it online. No where in the product page does it mention the Whisper Close feature. In the text it however does say: "... prevent slamming..." but that's not enough. I'm also wondering if it's Bemis's fault for not providing an accurate description.

It's been about a week and so far these are great seats.

10 PRINT "Hello World!" 20 GOTO 10

2011-05-01T21:58:00.000-07:00

I remember learning BASIC on my cousin's Atari. I forgot the model number now; I think it was the 3 or 4 series, the one after the touch type keyboard. I had such a Wow! feeling when I tried my first BASIC program. After that point I knew I wanted to try larger programs. Some years later in middle school I learned BASIC's graphics coordinate system in a computer programming class. I was thinking this is so cool, what can I draw? At the time I really enjoyed playing Super Mario Bros. so I mapped out almost a pixel by pixel blown up picture of Mario on paper, figured out the coordinates and began programming it in.

A few weeks ago I learned about Paul Allen's memoir "Idea Man". I managed to catch some of his TV interviews on Charlie Rose and some other show on CBS/ABC or NBC(Sorry I forgot which one.). I had heard of Paul Allen before as the co-founder of Microsoft but didn't really know much about him. I only knew that he was the older co-founder, invested in Metricom, and the owner of the Portland Trailblazers and the Seattle Seahawks. I felt sympathetic for him when the interviewers kept pressing him about his, to put it mildly, a challenging relationship with Bill Gates. My thinking was I'm sure the book has lots of other stories besides just Bill Gates, why the third degree? At any rate I decided I wanted to read his memoir.

The book was finally available at my local library this weekend and I picked it up Saturday afternoon. I finished it today before dinner.

I realized that the BASIC programming I did was in a way made possible through Paul Allen's and Microsoft's efforts in getting BASIC out to as many computers as possible. I was quite amazed at his stories of working weird hours getting things to work. He goes over it like a badge of honor and as someone who has done it before I'm again quite amazed.

ah, getting late... more some other time...

Origami: Menger Sponge using Penultimate modules

2009-09-30T22:37:00.000-07:00

I saw this and wanted to build my own.
The site didn't have instructions but it had some pointers:

1) The structure is called Menger Sponge.
I like this and initially wanted to build a level 2 or 3 version.

2) The modules are called penultimate module done by Robert Neale.
This site has a very good intro. This page, within that same site, has very good info about how to build the square version of the penultimate module which when assembled together makes a cube.
When I started building this module, I felt that it was too much trouble to start with a 4:3 ratio rectangular sized paper because all the origami paper I had were squares, 150x150mm to be exact. I also didn't like that I had to cut the ends so I left it. As I put the modules together my changes didn't affect the cube at all so I went with my changes.

After a few cubes, I finally decided to build the sponge based on that one picture I saw. :)

Starting out...

This reminds me of the Death Star from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi but I call it the Death Cube. :)

Almost done...

Done!

Another angle:

I had a good time building this and enjoyed figuring it out. My wife also helped me a lot folding the modules as I assembled it.

Making Takoyaki

2009-08-08T02:00:00.000-07:00

My wife and I made takoyaki for dinner tonight. It was very "Oishiiii!!!".
We've been talking about buying a takoyaki plate for the longest so we finally got one today. It started with seeing takoyaki being made in Japanese TV drama: "At Home Dad" starring Abe Hiroshi. We wanted so bad to experience it but had a difficult time finding a place to buy a takoyaki plate. Initially I wanted to get an electric one just like in the TV show. Later on I decided with the plate because I realized we already have a portable burner and operating an electric one probably costs more.

Another item I bought from watching a Japanese TV
drama is a Zojirushi tumbler. This time the show was "CHANGE" starring Kimura Takuya. In one of the episodes, he pours tea from a tumbler. When I saw that, I told my wife I wanted that tumbler. She thought I was nuts because we already have quite a lot of tumblers. I wanted the tumbler not because of Kimura Takuya but because I was very tickled that the tumbler's snout is opened from a button press. My wife says that in addition to Kimura Takuya pulling in all the big advertising bucks for the TV shows, he's also holding up the Zojirushi tumbler.

CORRECTION:
I just reviewed the CHANGE episode with the tumbler. Actually it's the last episode. The tumbler has a black top and the cup (which is actually the tumbler's cover) does not have a plastic ring on the bottom (or the top when it's put on top of the tumbler). I was right about the red button to open pouring. But it has a red tab versus the white tab to push in to close pouring. hehe

Having Fun With DealExtreme.com

2009-08-01T13:05:00.000-07:00

My wife told me about this site a few days ago and I've been having loads of fun checking out the site daily. I'm just addicted to see what else the site has, the user reviews and items other users have bought. The site is like a super combined store of all those small utility shops I've seen through the years. After just a few moments of surfing the site, I asked my wife why she didn't tell me sooner. She says she did, I just didn't pay attention. haha
I have already spent about 40 bucks of stuff there and I'm still looking for other stuff to buy. haha

One of the first items that brought me there was the Wii component cable.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4256

The latest item I bought is a lighter that looks like a match.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4366

My family saw this at a restaurant sometime ago and we were just mesmerized by it. I've been trying to find it at the small utility shops but haven't had any luck until now.

Now I have to get used to waiting for about 2 weeks I guess for DealExtreme to ship the stuff...

Fixing the Adblock plugin for Firefox

2009-06-05T23:44:00.000-07:00

I like using the Adblock plugin for Firefox but I am running into two issues. Since it is not maintained anymore and also being curious, I dived right into the code to see what I can find.

#1 Installation
The plugin used to install but ever since the later 2.0 versions and then the current 3.0 versions of Firefox the plugin just doesn't install.

Fix:
Download the plugin
Change the extension from .xpi to .zip
Unzip
Edit install.rdf and change the maxversion of Firefox to some high number, I think I chose 99.9
Zip the files back up, Use .xpi instead of .zip in the zipped filename
Install plugin in Firefox using this local file

#2 The radio buttons for the group "Hide ads" and "Remove ads" are both selected in the Preferences dialog box.

Fix:
Edit the file content/settings.js
This file is extracted from chrome/adblock.jar which is essentially a zipped file.
chrome/adblock.jar on my system is found in:
~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/.default/extensions//
On line 39 of content/settings.js, change the entire "if" code block to this:

if (Hide) {
radiohide.setAttribute("selected", true);
radioremove.setAttribute("selected", false);
} else {
radiohide.setAttribute("selected", false);
radioremove.setAttribute("selected", true);
}

Zip up all the files to recreate adblock.jar.
The new adblock.jar file could be smaller in size than the original adblock.jar. That's ok, Firefox will still load the file fine. I think the original adblock.jar was packaged without compression.
Replace the old adblock.jar file with the new one.
Restart Firefox, the radio buttons in the Preference dialog box should now work correctly.

Computer Help Call

2009-05-20T22:16:00.000-07:00

Tonight my uncle called me asking for computer help. My uncle speaks Cantonese and I don't speak it that well so I didn't ask more about the problem. I figured I just need to show up with my computer and see what's going on.
I arrive after my dinner and turns out the problem was his wireless mouse wasn't working. He has a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse set. To his credit he thought that the problem was due to batteries but after replacing them the mouse still didn't work. I immediately recognized the problem and told him about using Logitech's "connect" button on the receiver first and then on the mouse or keyboard second. He had this sudden and happy look to see that it was a quick fix and that he can do it himself next time.

My uncle called me before for another computer problem. He couldn't connect to his wireless network. Initially I thought I could resolve everything by just bringing myself. Turns out I had to bring my computer and an ethernet cable to diagnose his router and modem. So tonight when he called I thought I should bring my computer. (I left my ethernet cable at his house.) Turns out I didn't have to use my computer to "connect" his wireless mouse. So funny. :)

Yummy Crab!

2009-04-25T22:11:00.000-07:00

I had dinner tonight at Macau Friends Restaurant in the Sunset District. It was my first time there and I never heard of this restaurant before. I was looking through their menu outside and one item looked interesting: "Portuguese Style Curry Crab $14.99". So I thought why not!

I was so surprised at what came out. It was a fairly large oval plate and the curry sauce was filled to the edge. I scooped some of the sauce onto my rice and boy it was yummy! I next went for the prize and got my hands and fingers ready to work out the crab meat. The crab was simply delicious! It was a fairly medium sized crab and I think well worth it for $14.99 plus tax and gratuity.

My wife next asked me if this was as good as Thanh Long's crabs. I forgot the cost but I'm sure it was nearly twice the price or more. I thought for a bit and sided with Macau Friends. Thanh Long may have three different ways of cooking the crabs but the crabs are a bit smaller and obviously more expensive. Looking back, I think the Thanh Long's prices aren't justified.

Interesting price fluctuations for Nokia E71 on Amazon

2009-04-16T22:14:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks I have been researching a phone to replace my aging Motorola V3I because my front display and camera has gathered a lot of dust inside.

I decided on the Nokia E71. I remember a few years ago my friend had the previous version E61 and I liked the web browsing capability, so I thought I go with the next version. Then as I read the reviews on Amazon, I found out the phone has some trouble with T-Mobile's tzones WAP service.

I was still interested in following the price of the phone on Amazon. I remember it started out at 319.99. A few days ago or more it jumped to 339.99. I think it was just yesterday the price rocked up to 366 something. Finally today it jumped down to 320 even! These prices are for the black version. I haven't really followed the white version but it's now at 366 something.

In the meantime I'm still using my current phone. :)

Rolling Stops in San Francisco

2009-03-22T20:46:00.000-07:00

Recently my friend told me his wife got a ticket for a rolling stop near their home.

I didn't know what that was until tonight when my wife and I were scouting an intersection in SF while waiting for my uncle. We were looking at the tires of all the cars that passed by and only about 2 or 3 cars actually stopped. The cars that stopped did it only because other cars approached. But there were cars that still did the rolling stops waiting for other cars to pass before they moved on. So my wife and I were thinking with the SF budget, one way to help is by nabbing the rolling stoppers! At that one intersection we were there for about 20 minutes and saw about 30-40 cars doing rolling stops. Wow, think of the dough rolling in for the SF budget!

MSI Wind U100-279US memory upgrade oddity

2009-01-10T15:31:00.000-08:00

So after installing a 1GB Corsair laptop memory module into the MSI Wind, I found out that the wifi didn't work.

I re-opened the notebook thinking maybe I disconnected something by accident but I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. The strange thing is the wifi never showed any signals.

Then I realized the MSI Wind turned off the wifi. I think it's from opening and closing the bottom cover. This is not the same "switch" as the Windows "switch" of enabling the wifi.

So after turning it back on with the Fn + F11 key sequence, I was able to see all the wifi signals and somewhat connect to my home signal. The strange thing is it was able to connect to my home signal SSID but it got stuck acquiring an IP address. I even tried going into my router to release the IP address that the notebook was using earlier before I did the memory upgrade.

I was out of wits. Finally I decided to do a test. I tried connecting to another wifi signal to see if the wifi module is working correctly. I was able to connect so I thought I do one more thing. I decided to remove and re-create my home wifi profile. At long last I was able to re-connect. Boy what a journey.

Found GI Joe Snake Eyes!

2009-01-01T17:47:00.000-08:00

While cleaning up my old stuff, I found an un-opened GI Joe Snake Eyes!

I don't remember when I bought it but according to the year on the packaging I'm guessing late '80s.

I do however remember buying it as a kid and boy am I glad that I never opened it. I do have other GI Joe action figures that I opened but this one I treasured.

Opinion: John Chiang, CA State Controller is nuts!

2008-12-22T22:07:00.000-08:00

article:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/12/22/national/a153948S79.DTL

title:
Official says Calif. could be broke in 2 months

problem:
John Chiang, the California State Controller and also the official referred to in the article, says CA will not have any money in the next 2 months to pay folks. He also says the state will be forced to defer payment or issue IOUs. He's also referred to as the "Chief Financial Officer" in the article.

Another problem is this same person about 6 months ago was against the governor's plan to lay off state employees and slash the pay to existing folks.

article:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/25/MN0B11V432.DTL

title:
Controller says he won't cut workers' wages

I remember he also did a very lame interview on KCBS radio saying the governor's plan would be negatively viewed by folks in Wall Street. He also said California could access loans. I forgot what type of loans but I remember they were the same type of ARM loans "home buyers" accessed a few years ago that's now causing the foreclosure mess and not to mention the entire economic situation. First of all, six months everything was in the sh*ts so what and why is he so worried about what Wall Street thinks? Second when I heard him talk about the loans I immediately concluded that he is an idiot.

Winding forward to now, I'm sure he has to eat his words now. When the governor wanted to fix the cash problem six months ago, he was saying "What cash problem? California is doing fine!" Now he's saying, "California, we have a problem!"

Another problem I have is his inability to do his job. I'm thinking in business if the CEO ordered layoffs and salary reductions but the CFO declined to go ahead with the plan, guess what happens next? This dimwit thought that he was helping out employees but really he's destroying the state he lives in.

Products Review: Noise Canceling Headphones

2008-12-21T20:16:00.000-08:00

I have been in the market for noise canceling headphones for a week or two. What started it was my work area was getting very noisy. There were lots of sounds: desk and cell phones going off, folks having conversations near me or as they walk by, the A/C turning on and off with regular frequency, and the cleaning staff vacuuming.

I was willing to spend so I narrowed my list to Bose QuietComfort 2 and Sennheiser PXC 450. I also looked at "mid" class range and considered Philips SHN9500 and Audio-Technica ATH-ANC7 QuietPoint.

I didn't get to try the Bose but I was able to try the others.

Now the cancellations:

I canceled out Bose because of all the reviews about poor build quality. The photos of the plastic hinge cracking and breaking apart convinced me that Bose is not making a good product.

My friend recently bought a pair of Philips and let me try it out. It was actually very decent for the price; he paid around $50 I think. The noise canceling capability reminded me of the Philips noise canceling earbuds I used to have. It brought the noise volume down a bit.

The Audio-Technica felt like it didn't work that well. The headphones were comfortable but they felt a bit tight. The noise canceling did bring the noise volume down but it just didn't feel like much happened.

Finally the Sennheiser pair I have to say I didn't get a chance to try it before buying it. But I decided on this because I was convinced of the reviews and the information from the manufacturer. The noise canceling really worked for me. I know noise canceling headphones don't exactly kill all noise but the Sennheiser was able to do it for me by creating a silent like feeling in my ear despite the outside noises. I also like the talk-through feature where it brings the outside noise into the headphones if I want to talk and listen to someone without taking off the headphones.

The one negative about the Sennheiser is actually with the case. The Audio-Technica has a small pouch with a velcro backing to carry the accessories: audio cable, plugs, battery and more. The Sennheiser case does not have a pouch. What it has instead are rubber band cloth "hooks" but they are just too small to open up and put the accessories in. Also the headphones require some strange transformation to be put in the case. It just made me afraid that I might break them doing the transformation. With the Audio-Technica, I just have to turn the cans and that's it.

Redfin Commentary

2008-10-14T23:49:00.000-07:00

I hope Redfin will do well.

I wrote some entries a while back about Redfin and although I haven't been using the website I still think it's a great search service to monitor real estate.

I haven't checked Redfin's rules yet but in this market of shrinking buyers I think Redfin might want to open up some of its self imposed barriers to get business.

1. Handle short sales
I remember the reason given was that it takes too long. In this tough market, I don't think Redfin should leave that on the table. When times are bad, any potential opportunity is worth pursuing.

2. Remove the buyer's bid limit
With buyers shrinking and sellers unable to sell, I think Redfin should be more open to present any offer a buyer can present. I know some sellers will just reject the first low offer they receive but that's the market, supply and demand. I think Redfin should not side with the sellers and create a false sense of demand.

3. Provide "hand-holding" services
I'm not sure if Redfin is already doing this but I think Redfin agents should be more reachable. This is also in response to some of the topics I read in the Redfin forums about some buyers having difficult experiences getting their offers through. I know this will put a strain on the agents' working hours but in a job like this working set hours just doesn't make sense. It's even more important during tough times to have agents help buyers along starting with educating them on the buying process and keeping them up to date during the offer stage.

4. This one might be my perspective but I think the website should open up more to traditional buyers.
I know Redfin has lots of information on the website about the buying process but I think there are still a good number of folks who prefer to physically talk to someone. I'm not sure how yet but the website needs to be more friendly and approachable for these traditional buyers. Rather than forcing them to read through lots of text to get started there should be a better way to convince, educate, "hold their hands" along the buying process and eventually win their business.

I hope Redfin will do well. I really like their business and the website. I also hope one day I can join the team and contribute to the business. :) (I know it's not the right time now but I'll keep trying. :)

Samsung LCD TV Fun part 2

2008-09-14T01:13:00.000-07:00

This is a follow up to my previous entry.

My DVI to HDMI and audio cables finally came.

Specifically I bought:

1 x Link Depot 15 feet DVI to HDMI cable
1 x 3 feet mini audio 3.5 mm split to two RCA audio plugs
2 x RCA couplers
1 x 12 feet audio RCA plugs

I looked all over and could not find a 15 feet mini audio 3.5 mm split to two RCA audio plugs so I had to piece it together. The closest I could find is 12 feet. Obviously I went with this setup to match the 15 feet video cable. I could not find a 12 feet DVI to HDMI cable.

These cables worked great for my MacBook Pro and my Samsung LCD TV. So looks like when using the HDMI input, the LCD panel does support millions of colors.

I was actually afraid the video cable might not work because some of the comments I found were not positive. They ranged from not working at all to missing colors, lines, sections, or stuff.

So yeah both the audio and video cables work great.

Samsung LCD TV and Auto Wall Mount Fun!

2008-09-05T23:56:00.000-07:00

Samsung LNT4081F finally arrived Wednesday!

A look inside... some broken styrofoam.
As long as TV is not broken.

Testing it out first, scanning channels, looks good so far

Sorry no pictures of installing the Samsung Auto Wall Mount.
But here's one applying the finishing touches on TV and mount.

Installing the wall mount was fun and exciting but also difficult.
The difficulty was with figuring out the best location. My studs weren't in good locations for an ideal location so I had to settle.

In the end everything turned out great. I love adjusting the wall mount with the TV remote.

I think I found an annoyance with the PC input, or the VGA input.

The LCD TV can't be used as a secondary external display when I connect my MacBook Pro to it. I connect using the DVI to VGA connector and a VGA extension cord.
The odd thing is if I tell my MacBook Pro to use the LCD TV as a mirrored display then it works.

I next tried connecting a PC laptop using a VGA cable and discovered the color depth of the LCD TV is only 16 bit which means 65,536 colors. I may be wrong about this though because my PC laptop which uses Intel integrated graphics only supports a color depth of either 16 or 32 bit. Too bad it doesn't have 24 bit which would match the "millions" of colors Samsung states that this LCD TV supports.

I am going to try connecting my MacBook Pro via the HDMI input next, once the cable arrives in the mail, and confirm if the LCD TV color depth really is 16 bit.

Yay! Finished reading Hannibal

2008-09-01T11:29:00.000-07:00

I had a marathon reading session last night and finally finished the book. I really enjoyed the book. The biggest thing was to find the differences between the movie and the book. The story, characters and situations they got into were overall very gross. I almost felt like I was in the story about to get stabbed watching the whole thing unfold as a curious witness. Even when the story was not talking about Hannibal, I felt that in the background he was up to something and already planning the next several steps ahead.

Hate to spoil it but near the very end, there is a paragraph specifically for the reader to stay away from Hannibal if the reader wants to live. Wow that was just spooky!

Hannibal by chance

2008-08-31T01:26:00.000-07:00

On Friday August 29, 2008, I was driving my wife to a local bakery so that she can pick up a birthday cake for my cousins. On the sidewalk in front of my parked car, I saw a box. I looked inside and saw a hardcover book titled "Hannibal". I immediately thought, "Wow! What a good find!" I started having flashbacks of the movie as I saw it in the theaters. I kept thinking about the terrible brain scene. I picked up the book and read the flaps. My wife finally came out of the bakery with the cake. I took the book with me and started thinking about finishing the book on the same day.

Unfortunately I have not finished the book but as of Sunday I am about a third of the way through and have nearly 200 more pages to go through.

So far the book is intriguing yet disgusting but there are some technical parts that confuse me. There is heavy usage of fragmented sentences. The book is written from the third person perspective but when the fragmented sentences appear I think the author is trying to convey the exact thoughts and visuals the third person's mind is forming. Another technical part is the usage of the Italian language. I can only follow the characters' names. Everything else I don't have any context or understanding.

Back to finishing the book...

Quick Review: Hansgrohe E100 Monsoon Handshower

2008-06-25T12:11:00.000-07:00

Problem:
Very low water pressure in previous handshower, no identifying company marks anywhere

- afraid of larger costs to look into plumbing
- cousin-in-law says remove handshower to see if water pressure the same from tube
- sure enough, after removing handshower, water pressure coming out of tube is high

Solution:
- Went to Home Depot to pick out new handshower
- Narrowed down to two 40 bucks models: Hansgrohe E100 Monsoon and Waterpik Medallion
- Chose Hansgrohe because tube is smooth, Waterpik has striped metal and black colored tube which wife didn't like
- Upon opening product at home, surprised to see handshower is thin and light, now prefer this over the big and bulky previous one, Waterpik model also big and bulky
- After installation, water pressure is high again
- Only has 3 water output modes versus 6 for Waterpik model but realized 3 is enough
- Again love the smooth tube and thin and light handshower

How I fixed my Nintendo DS Lite's broken left shoulder button

2008-06-22T14:46:00.000-07:00

I cut out a small piece of thin cardboard paper and placed it inside the small switch hole after removing the rubber plug out.

After removing the back case and looking at the switch which the left shoulder button presses, I couldn't see any defect or any blockage preventing the pressing. I next proceeded to do testing on the switch itself without the left shoulder button and found that I needed to press harder compared to my working right shoulder button to activate it. I shined light all over that small switch but couldn't find anything. Finally I decided to pull on the rubber plug with tweezers and was surprised that it can be taken out. Inside is a hole and what looks like a circular metal sheet inside. I tested the switch again by pressing on that metal sheet with the DS Lite stylus and had the same results. Then I thought why I don't put something inside so that when I press the switch it won't seem like I have to press so hard. I found some cardboard and cut out a small rectangular strip. I stuffed it inside the hole carefully and folded it in half. Then I replaced the rubber plug. I tested the switch and it worked better. I also tested it with the button attachment and that also worked. So I finally I put the back case back together and tested again. My left shoulder button is now back in working condition. Yay!

Tools used:

- Craftsman 18-Volt 3/8-in. Drill/Driver
(I know this is way too much, but the next tool explains it.)
- Jackly 32-in-1 Electro Screwdriver set
(This thing contains the bits for a small Philips head and the all important tri-wing head. It has a screwdriver for attaching the bits but I thought why not make use of my electric drill. :) Finally this set also has a pair of tweezers so it's perfect. I knew this tool would come in handy when my wife bought it for me when we were in Singapore. I still have the receipt: S$9.90 at Chamoxa in Funan. :)
- Thin cardboard paper
- Scissors

Time used:
- roughly 30 minutes, most of the time spent on testing

Quick Review of Japanese TV show: Kuitan

2008-06-01T02:34:00.000-07:00

I like this show a lot. It is an easy to watch show combining food, mystery and comedy.
But most of all, it is about enjoying food. My mouth waters and my stomach growls as I watch each episode showcasing a particular dish.

The characters are wacky and cool, especially Kuitan and Igarashi!!! But I love the rest of the characters too: Ryosuke, Hajime, Kyoko, Rie, Momo-chan, Lau, Kelly, Police Chief and Owner. The varying supporting cast in each episode turned in very good performances too.

The 'Napolitan' end song created for Kuitan 2 is so funny and it's also very catchy. Seeing Kuitan, Ryosuke and Hajime dance in the music video is funny too.

Totally thumbs up for an Excellent and Enjoyable TV show to watch!

Whew Home Search Over

2008-04-04T07:14:00.000-07:00

First and foremost is thanks to our families for everything starting with raising us or from their perspective putting up with us. :)

Now some take aways...

- Anytime is always a good time to buy, just depends on your situation
- I say this because I find the perennial question, "Is now a good time to buy?" meaningless. In the end it really just depends on what you want. The news out there such as bad/good economy or buyers'/sellers' market are just things you have to accept and deal with.

- Thanks Redfin for creating a wonderful site!
- I also Thank Zillow for creating a very useful and enormous home valuation site!
- As mentioned in my previous post, I used a variety of sites to search for homes and I am thankful for their existence.
On a side note, I just can't understand how our families bought their homes years ago before websites existed. I think I would be lost still if I used their methods which would be combing through newspaper ads, picking up and pouring through free real estate magazines at street corners and lastly word-of-mouth from the agent or other folks in this day.

So that's why I want to very much Thank Redfin.

Redfin is very simply a wonderful site to use.

With that said, I feel bad for not using Redfin as our agent. My excuse is I had already talked to an agent first who was a referral from my cousin. My cousin did not use the agent in the past instead the relationship was through a friend of a friend. Honestly during the beginning we quietly "interviewed" a few agents by seeing how they act around people in open homes, respond to our questions and just guessing if we would be compatible. As we moved along I realized I kept relying on the agent my cousin referred me for a lot of things from several late night questions, lots and lots of rounds of home tours and more importantly: submitting bids.

- My wife and I are looking forward to enjoy our first home. :)
- On a side note, I am broke now from buying the home. :) Redfin, you hiring? I'm looking! :)

US SF Bay Area Home Prices

2008-04-02T21:23:00.000-07:00

I have a gripe about home prices in the San Francisco and San Mateo counties.

I think most of the sellers these days are still in lah-lah land. Despite all the negative news they still think there is some golden anchor out there willing to plop whatever they are asking. Instead what I see is they continue to wait, and wait, and wait. Some appear to "wise-up" by reducing after a month or more. The reason why I say "appear" is because sellers end up wasting another month or more of mortgage payments when they could have cashed out earlier and stopped the bleeding. Another disappointment I see is when they reduce, it's not a whole lot. Sellers are just not realistic about the true value that their house can fetch in today's market. Instead they are only concerned about their own value which unfortunately, in what I've seen, never attracts that golden anchor.

I think in today's difficult market to find buyers the only obvious way is to price like a contractor's special. In that situation multiple offers should come in and some will probably come in over asking and that will be the true value.

Anyway, good luck to those sellers waiting for their golden anchors.

Signaling, a lost driving habit

2008-03-23T12:09:00.000-07:00

So annoying... have been victim three times when a driver cuts in front of me without signaling. Then the driver for some reason wants to get back on the previous lane and lo and behold the driver signals! And the funny thing is there are no cars on that lane.
Annoying that these three drivers think cutting someone off without signaling is ok, but signaling when there are no cars around is the right thing to do.

Return of Condor Heroes - Hong Kong TVB 1983

2008-03-16T21:20:00.000-07:00

Watched DVD version produced by HK-TVB
Has missing scenes despite completeness claim by HK-TVB

- Sword fighting scene in forest between Yeung Gor(YG) and Goo Goo(GG) against Kum Lun Faht Wong(KLFW) (names are Cantonese pronunciations)
- After some somersaults by GG and a landing by YG, GG lands perfectly on YG's raised left leg, they then mega-jump towards KLFW with their swords ready for action.
- Wife calls this the stacking scene
- KLFW, on the other end, also mega-jumps with his wheel weapons, one in each hand, and does a karate kick

- YG sees the Big Condor(BC) for the first time
- BC just did something and is now on top of a building doing some wing movements
- YG interprets it as kung fu technique and imitates the actions
- BC eventually flies away

Feels like there is more but it has been ages since I saw the original on tv, in fact on KTSF26

Quick Review: Super Smash Bros. Brawl

2008-03-16T08:34:00.000-07:00

Went to Costco and noticed game, decided to purchase
Was lucky to find one elsewhere because the display stand for it was empty

- Only played for around 20 minutes
- Game feels like Jump Ultimate Stars for DS
- Game menu difficult to use, was expecting on-screen pointer like most Wii games
- Stages are interesting, funny when fall off platform

AT&T U-Verse Residential Gateway Nightmare

2008-03-15T17:16:00.000-07:00

Cousin-in-law signed up for AT&T U-Verse

Problem
- Plan required new DSL modem: 2Wire Residential Gateway 3800HGV-B
- new modem has wireless router functionality which we don't want

Situation
- D-Link DI-624 wireless router handled network, connected to DSL modem: Efficient Networks Speedstream 5360
- wireless router placed in same location as modem
- D-Link 8 port switch connected to wireless router
- switch placed elsewhere
- Linksys WRT54G wireless router connected to switch to expand wireless signal
- second wireless router placed elsewhere

Wish
- Keep existing hardware, don't use new modem
- AT&T says not possible

Compromise
- Use new modem
- But also use existing networking hardware so configuration is preserved

Compromise Plan #1
- Turn off wireless router functionality in new modem
- Discovered wireless can be turned off but not router yet
- Make modem act in bridge mode only just like old modem
- AT&T installer accidentally took modem's CD which has manual inside
- 2wire.com useless, no drivers or documentation for 3800 series
- searches found some discussion about bridge mode possibility but only for 2X00 series
- discussions mentioned alternative interface @ http://homeportal/mdc but did not find anything
- later realized bridge mode not possible because modem is somehow always looking for three "HomePNA" devices with IP addresses already assigned
- so figured modem will always be in router mode

Compromise Plan #2
- Make main wireless router act as wireless access point just like secondary wireless router
- First turn off DHCP on main wireless router
- Next plug ethernet cable into any LAN port in new modem
- Then plug other end into any LAN port in main wireless router, doesn't work if plugged into WAN port, got bit by that
- Configured main wireless router's IP address to be same block as new modem
- Turned off new modem's wireless capability
- Success!

I felt very happy to get it working. He can get online with his devices just as before.

Thanks Redfin For The Open Homes Feature!

2008-03-05T18:39:00.000-08:00

After getting responses from Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman on my previous post, I want to write feedback about their new open house feature.

Pros
- easy to understand icons
- no change in usage

Cons
- difficult to see all open homes and dates
- need to load specific home to see dates

Summary
I like this feature a lot. It's an outlet from having to use the clumsy interface of SFGate's Open Homes Guide.

I think however there is room for a slight improvement. What I pictured originally when I mentioned the Con in my previous post is a monthly calendar. I think having the monthly calendar would be very helpful to see the entirety of open homes and also to help control the search results. Each day in the month would show the amount of open homes and in turn would be an action to update the search results with just open homes for that day.

Anyway I'm sure Redfin already has ideas or is comfortable with it; I'm just an anxious software developer. :)

Extra: I read Matt Goyer's response to my Con about Redfin displaying "Undisclosed Address". I understand it's not Redfin's fault and apologize that it was directed that way. I forgot where I saw this but I remember seeing an online video interview Glenn Kelman had with Robert Scoble in which Glenn talked about some of the data that Redfin can't disclose due to agreements with MLS. Unfortunately from a consumer's perspective it's annoying to see missing data. I realized that the problem isn't quite with MLS but more with listing agents and/or sellers. For some personal reason or another, listing agents sometimes don't disclose the address or other information when they input the house on MLS. This however now becomes a problem for Redfin's new Open Homes feature. I have seen one listing on Redfin where the address is undisclosed and there is open house information. Where do I go? :)
Also on the price per square foot, I figured Redfin was displaying it to help consumers identify a bidding price. So naturally I thought the price per square foot should also be included.

US Bay Area Housing Research Online Tools

2008-02-20T07:20:00.000-08:00

After months of research, I want to record my findings.

redfin.com

Pros
- comprehensive
- in sync with MLS databases, in other words listings are up-to-date
- integrated outside information:
- maps plus facing views
- MLS text and photos
- home valuations via Zillow and now Eppraisal
- pricing history
- sale history
- recently sold homes but not that up-to-date
- searches only what I typed in and surrounds results with red outline
- previous default search to show everything on map is saved

Cons
- some listings have undisclosed addresses
- but upon double check with MLS database address is disclosed
- home disclosures not integrated
- depends on listing agents I guess
- I ask my listing agent to get it for me.
- price per square footage not calculated
- in "Nearby Similar Homes"
- and in "Nearby Similar Sales"
- no home valuations for nearby homes, like Zillow
- valuations appear only for homes that are on sale
- no open homes calendar

Summary
I use Redfin the most. I like the comprehensiveness and the up-to-date listings.

zillow.com

Pros
- home valuations for every home
- maps plus facing views
- recently sold homes but not that up-to-date
- home information from public records
- sale history
- does have listings but not MLS
- appears to be For Sale By Owners

Cons
- valuations now rounded to nearest hundred I think
- miss the specific evaluations
- in facing views, the home valuations are not rotated when the view is rotated

Summary
Second on my list is Zillow. I use it more as a research tool to understand generic home valuations and less as a listings database like Redfin.

sfgate.com/realestate

Pros
- open homes calendar
- latest sold homes, updated every Sunday

Cons
- search interface for open homes is clumsy

Summary
Since this is a newspaper site, I figure their core focus is news content and the real estate section is just extra. So I can look past the faults of the search interface and just extract the information I want.

ziprealty.com

Pros
- has MLS listings but not up-to-date
- has pricing history

Cons
- MLS listings update is very slow
- site is difficult to use

Summary
I only use this site to look at pricing history. Previously Redfin did not record this but they just started couple weeks ago I believe.

trulia.com

Pros
- looks like Redfin but not quite
- has listings but not MLS
- has foreclosure listings from RealtyTrac

Cons
- listings are not up-to-date

Summary
I tried Trulia out after reading some articles saying it's competing with Redfin and Zillow. Turns out for me it's not the case. I think the site is more of a social network site and less of a listings tool or a home research tool. Trulia is also a few days late with new listings. I think this is because they don't use MLS but instead scour websites for new listings. I am always getting emails one or more days late from Trulia about a new listing I saw already. On the plus side I think they also act as an advertising site for RealtyTrac.

(forgot to add some other sites)

reil.com / mlslistings.com

Pros
- MLS's own database, Bay Area specific I think
- search results also show unavailable homes so I can see which homes accepted a deal
- for homes that have gone into Pending states

Cons
- search interface is clumsy
- doesn't show DOM(Days On Market) or CDOM(Continuous Days On Market)
- strange that this is MLS and it's not shown

Summary
I only use this site for Pro feature #2. It quickly shows me what's going on with the areas I'm interested in. It's good to know which homes are suddenly not available.

craigslist
(real estate section)

Pros
- no frills search results
- some listings are not from MLS

Cons
- none

Summary
I found out several months ago that some listing agents use craigslist as another advertisement medium. So I just use it to quickly check who has listed what. Most of the time they are the same as what's on MLS but once in a while they are not.

Japan Trip Summary

2007-06-11T20:35:00.000-07:00

Sorry I was hoping to blog every night but I couldn't because of two reasons. I felt tired at the end of every day and two of the hotels we stayed at had wired internet access. There was only one LAN port and we had to play Musical Chairs or Chair.
The hotels we stayed at which had the one LAN port issue were in Osaka: Osaka Namba Washington Hotel Plaza and Kyoto: Ikoi-No-Ie. Next time I would like to come prepared with this product from D-Link or a similar one. It allows me to share that one LAN port with multiple computers using wireless signals instead of using more ethernet cables or in other words using a hub/switch. But enough of this tech talk ...

I thoroughly enjoyed my stay in Kyoto because my friend Jeffrey showed us around. I look forward to showing Jeffrey around if he comes to Singapore within the next month or wherever I am.

About purchases... on our very very very last shopping opportunity in Narita Airport I saw one electronics shop sell the Canon IXY 810 IS which is the upgrade model for my previous generation Canon Digital IXUS 800 IS. The model names and numbers are confusing. In Japan it's called IXY. In Asia and Europe it's called IXUS. In America it's called Powershot Digital Elph. The numbers are also nuts. In Asia and Europe it's 950 IS. In America it's 850 IS. Back to shop, they were selling it for 44,700 YEN tax free price if I remember. I was thinking that might be expensive and then I quickly blurted out to my wife that I should have went to Yodabashi. Right when I said that I noticed a sales staff standing at the edge of the store checking us out. Ugh... should have kept my mouth shut or spoke softly.

I bought a bunch of Nintendo GBA and DS games. And also one GB game.
For GB
- Super Mario Land (980 YEN)

For GBA
- Legend of Zelda (JP version, paid too much 1480 YEN)
- Kid Icarus (JP version)
- Mappy (JP version)

For DS
- Game and Watch collection (paid too much 3280 YEN)
- Jump Ultimate Stars (29XX YEN)
- Ace Attorney II (JP version, with English tracks, 2680 YEN)
- Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2 (燃えろ！熱血リズム魂　押忍！闘え！応援団２) (obviously JP version, paid handsomely for a new game 4170 YEN)

My wife was hoping to get a Canon S5 IS, but it didn't come out in time while we were in Japan. Expected release date is mid June. Also when we met Jeffrey, he educated her about camera sensor sizes and their relation with noise, night shots and photo-taking. She's now convinced to move up to SLR's because of their larger sensors.

Sights
Seibu Lions baseball game versus Yakult Swallows
I was hoping they would win a game, but I had seen some of their games on TV in hotels and they weren't doing good. So I was expecting a loss, which unfortunately did happen. At the end of the game I was very excited to spend money on a cap and jersey. I only bought a cap. They didn't have the nice blue jersey that almost every fan wore. On another note, on our last day, we went shopping around Ueno. The place felt like the Bugis street shopping in Singapore but of course larger. There was a sports shop there but again no jersey but they had some nice wool Lions caps. The one I bought at the stadium was polyester and didn't have the already curved bill.

Ghibli Museum
As an anime fan I thoroughly enjoyed this visit. I also enjoyed the process of getting there starting with the tickets. Upon searching, I found two well informed pages here and here that described everything. Initially I was planning on securing the tickets through JTB in Singapore, but one agency I called said I would also need to book airfares and hotels with them plus they would charge another 1000 YEN as handling fee. Two things: we had already booked our own airfares and hotels; for the agency to charge us another 1000 YEN when the tickets are 1000 YEN already was ludicrous. We ended up risking it and going for the LOPPI kiosk option at LAWSON convenience stores. Luckily for us the staff at LAWSON helped us out with using LOPPI. I don't recall which store but we went to one in Tokyo somewhat near our Star Hotel in Ikebukuro.

More to come later, need to clean up and head out for food...

second day in Japan

2007-05-29T15:07:00.000-07:00

I woke up around 3:30a and couldn't fall back to sleep. I kept myself busy watching 50 First Dates while I waited for my wife to wake up.
We eventually left the hotel around 6a to have breakfast. I was so surprised that around 6a it was already bright. I kept telling my wife that in Singapore 6a is still dark. Back to breakfast, we had a difficult time finding a place as almost everything seemed closed. We finally found a place that was open: Yayoiken. We had to order our meal tickets through a vending machine. It was an experience! I kept having this thought in the back of my mind that our food would come out of the machine. I know this wouldn't happen; otherwise what is the purpose of the kitchen at the back of the restuarant? But I couldn't help feeling that the food would eventually come out of the machine. Of course tickets came out instead which we then handed to the helpful waitress who initially directed me and my wife to use the machine.
Our orders came in about 5 minutes or less. My wife and I ordered some rice dishes. The waitress informed us that if we wanted some more rice, a large rice pot was behind us available for us to self service. I went back for seconds. The rice was very delicious even by itself.
We finally finished our breakfast and walked around. I saw a bunch of young boys wearing white hats and school uniforms. We were so surprised that they wore short sleeves and shorts as it was very cold for us and didn't understand how the boys can withstand it. I convinced my wife to follow the kids to see their school. After about 5-10 minutes we finally reached the school. There was a bright blue colored uniformed guard. He almost looked like he came straight out of an anime. He was greeting the boys and a few teachers as they entered the half opened gates. I remember when I was in elementary school in San Francisco there was no guard at the entrance. Once in a while there was the janitor, an old guy, who I recognized in the cafeteria and he would say hello to me.
We finally headed back to our hotel around 9a and checked out around 10:30a. We were headed to Osaka and had to take the train back to Tokyo Station in order to take the Shinkansen to Shin-Osaka station. I felt rushed and boarded the first Shinkansen we saw. My wife said it would leave at 11:56a. We first sat down and relaxed. Afterwards we tried looking for food in the train but couldn't find any. We realized the food was outside so we were wondering if we should go out because we would need to lug our heavy luggage also in case the train left. We decided to go and it was a rush to buy our bento boxes. My wife picked some meat box and I chose some vegetarian box. We were able to make it back on the train. The train left almost immediately.
I was so surprised later when I heard the train announcing all sorts of stops it would make. I remember the train I wanted was the Hikari one which only had 7 stops. I finally realized that I didn't take a better look at the schedule in front of me that I printed back home. We boarded the slower "K" train which made every stop along the way. As a result it arrived at Shin-Osaka an hour later than the Hikari train. I remember telling my wife we can board the later train if we needed more time to decide what bento boxes to buy. But I decided to rush it. Turns out if we boarded the later train at 12:06p we would have arrived an hour sooner at 3p and that was the Hikari train I wanted. Buggers and shucks!
To sort of make up for the lost time, I read our printed instructions to understand what local trains and tickets to buy to reach Nippombashi station and reach our hotel: Osaka Namba Washington Hotel. The instructions were easy to understand and we reached our hotel with ease.
After we relaxed and cleaned up we decided to head to Den-Den Town. After some walking we finally decided to have dinner. We spent around 1,300 Yen. I had this cold noodle dish as I wasn't very hungry. My wife had seafood noodle soup. At the end of our meal, I decided to go for ice cream after seeing the advertisement near our table. I chose green tea and she had chocolate.
After a yummy dinner, we did some more walking and I spent a lot of time in a game shop where I purchased(or rather re-purchased) the Japanese Legend Of Zelda classic for Game Boy Advance and Super Mario Land for Game Boy. I used to have these two games but I lost them somewhere. :( I was so glad to replace them. The shop was just amazing. They had so many games!! Too bad they were all in Japanese. When we left the shop the rest of the stores were beginning to close. I felt bad that my wife couldn't shop. We're aiming to get the Canon S5 IS for her soon!

first day in Japan

2007-05-28T05:22:00.000-07:00

So exciting...
Took Keisei line to Nippori and then transferred to a different train called JR Yamanote to Ikebukuro. Had some difficulties finding our hotel, Star Hotel Ikebukuro. Ate at a decent noodle shop, then walked around the Tobu underground shopping area.

Arrived midday so quite tired now and heading to sleep soon...

Bought New Shoes!

2007-05-18T18:19:00.000-07:00

I got an Adidas Campus low top basketball shoe. I bought it at the giant 24 hour Mustafa and Samsudin mall in Singapore for 101 SGD. Converted at today's rate is about 66 USD. Here's a link from Amazon for some pictures. The colors are the same as the pictures: white with light aqua stripes. I tried getting a link from the Adidas website but I couldn't find the shoe. Ugh, the site is just horrible. One tiny difference with the info on Amazon is the shoe's name is Campus 2. The name all over my shoes just says "Campus" only.

Before I chose this shoe, I also liked a similar model shoe also by Adidas. Here are the pictures at Amazon. Unfortunately Amazon only has the kids version. The one I saw at Mustafa was the mens version and had a different team, the Timberwolves. The colors were lighter blue(than the Cavaliers version at Amazon) and green stripes. I didn't chose this model because the sole was too flat. The Campus's sole was arched thereby giving me a feeling that it hugged my foot better. Admittedly, I tried the Timberwolves version first and didn't notice the flat sole. Then when I noticed the cool looking Campus model and tried it out, I noticed the difference.

Book Review: Culture Shock! Japan (2005 Edition)

2007-01-06T08:36:00.000-08:00

The book is great. I thoroughly enjoyed the information presented and had a good laugh at some of the anecdotes the author, P. Sean Bramble, told to get the peculiar points across.
I've always been fascinated with Japan ever since I started watching Robotech, or actually Macross, and also visiting Japantown in San Francisco when I was younger. Admittedly I had many chances in high school and in college to learn the language but I never did anything about it. :( Over the years I would catch many Japanese shows, live action and anime and again have always been annoyed at myself for learning the language and culture. About two weeks ago, my wife was watching this show called Densha Otoko and I suddenly got hooked into the show and it renewed my interest to learn the language and culture. By the way I thoroughly enjoyed Densha Otoko, both the TV series and the movie. I know the story is wishy washy but I really can identify with the main character. Seeing some outdoor scenes got me really excited to visit Japan so lately I've been reading some travel information online. So yesterday Friday I told my wife I wanted to head to the bookstore after work to buy the Lonely Planet guide. As you can tell, I ended buying the "Culture Shock!: A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette, Japan" book along with "Berlitz Japanese Compact Dictionary". I forgot why I decided against buying the Lonely Planet guide book. :) When we were at the bookstore, Kinokuniya in Liang Court, Singapore, I saw so many books that my wife suggested I also get a compact dictionary for our upcoming trip to Japan. I remember reading online at 4-ch.net about some posts about Japanese culture that I thought buying the Culture Shock book would be cool because all the information would be in one place rather than having to search and read from various sources. My wife didn't see interest in the book, but I knew it would be a very educational and fun read. I started reading it the minute I got home but couldn't finish because it was getting late and I felt sleepy, not because of the book though. :) I finished the book the next day.
Some memorable parts...
1. CVs are hand written, on my gosh! I can't imagine hand writing my resume for each job.
2. The supposed long work hours of salarymen. I can't imagine staying late for the sake of staying late, but according to the anecdotes there are people who do that!
3. The author revealing a bit about himself as I read more. I really read the book from front to back and also didn't know anything about "P. Sean Bramble". Also this book was shrink wrapped, which Kinokuniya is famous for doing, and there weren't any display copies for checking it out. But I have to say just as the book is about introducing and alleviating the culture shock of learning about Japan, I saw the same thing in learning about the author. One thing though I haven't figured out is the UK spelling he uses when it is finally revealed that he is an American.
4. He recommends reading "Rising Sun" by Michael Crichton. I read that book several years back and that was also an enjoyable read learning about Japanese culture.
I find Mr Bramble to be a very educated, thorough(especially the story he revealed in finding a day care for his daughter) and capable(for being able to move from America to Japan and starting a life and family there) person. If Mr Bramble ever writes a second book, Culture Shock! Japan is his first, I like to give some ideas:
1. Write about his JET experience, starting with how he learned about it to where he is now because of it
2. This might be sensitive and requires permission, but I would be glad to learn more about his life in Japan, his family and how he's raising his daughter. I have a friend who is in a similar situation. He's from America(read: white), has a Japanese wife and a son from the marriage and is currently living in Japan. He blogs and it's very educational when I read entries about his family especially about his adventures in caring for his son. It's very educational, full of life and just wonderful to learn about him and his family and in the process understand myself and who I am.
Now I gotta get back to learning Japanese as I mentioned in my New Year's resolution. :)

2007 New Year Resolutions

2007-01-02T08:21:00.000-08:00

1. Wake up early, probably won't be able to do this all the time, but will take baby steps. :)

2. work on my own things, such as teaching or building something

3. learn Chinese (actually re-learn) and Japanese

Product Review: Logitech QuickCam IM now works for Mac OS X with macam

2006-08-19T11:48:00.000-07:00

I have a Powerbook with Mac OS X 10.4.x (whatever that is latest as of August 20, 2006) and I finally got my Logitech QuickCam IM to work with it using macam, an open source USB webcam driver thing at: http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/

Apparently all the info was at http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-40663.html

The software from Logitech unfortunately doesn't work and even then it's only for certain models. Wierd that Logitech would include Mac software in the CD. But one thing I didn't notice when I first bought it was to check the OS compatibility. I took a look around the box and sure enough Mac OS is never mentioned. Argh!! But then again even if I had looked for something with Mac support, I would have paid more.

Anyway, glad I found macam. :) Thanks macam folks!
---
Next day... found out that Logitech's claim of 30 fps for video is misleading. I discovered that when I activate the "Low Light Boost" feature, the frame rate drops dramatically. I don't know what the actual number is but everything is stop and go. My PC system is a Centrino 1.7 GHz with Intel integrated graphics 915GM/GMS, 910GML.

Basketball Diary #1

2006-08-17T10:03:00.000-07:00

Today I had another great time playing basketball. There were some memorable plays. First my friend and I practically played hot potato near the basket and that drew laughter from everyone else on the court.
I was almost underneath the basket but a bit behind the backboard. My friend passed me the ball with a big defender in front of him(but I'm behind the defender) but I couldn't make a play so I underhand lobbed the ball back to him. My friend couldn't do anything so he passed the ball back to me while I was still in the same position. Unfortunately I still couldn't do anything so I passed it back to my friend. My friend probably noticing that I couldn't do anything finally decides to make something of it and lays it up and yes! count it!
My friend and I stared each other in the eye acknowledging the respect for each other. This was a very good play because the defender usually can overpower my friend so we got around it by almost getting him confused on who would finally shoot the ball.
Another play that happened earlier on was when I blocked a shot from a big man about the same size as the big defender just mentioned. I didn't think of it at the time because I didn't jump and block it, which is my ultimate. But looking back it was a good play because a block (I like to think) generally has a more psychological effect on the person than getting the ball in the basket.
On some things I should improve on is my flat-footed-ness. Usually it's because I get tired and can't move. But for the times that I can do something, especially on defense, I rarely jump up and follow the offense doing a layup. What usually happens is I follow the person with my arms and try to yank/block the ball. Of course the whole time my legs and feet aren't moving much and by the time I want to jump and try to do a block, I'm either long gone or don't have enough hops to get anything. I think this is due to reaction and reflexes and less on hops. I need to understand players more, see how they move and adjust my muscles accordingly. Because if I do my usual thing of swinging my arms around then I'm not really improving and anticipating their actions.
Looking forward to another good round of hoops!

Product Trouble: Motorola V3I (iTunes enabled)

2006-08-02T21:19:00.000-07:00

If your Transflash/microSD memory card has bad sectors, then sometimes the multimedia stuff won't work.

The most notable problem, at least for me, is when you have iTunes playing your songs and suddenly there's no more sounds. That's the bad sectors kicking in. When you check your phone, you'll see that iTunes is still running and it's quickly going through your song list but it never plays one second of each song. When there are no more songs to go through, iTunes would still be there. The only sure fire way to get sounds again is by turning off and on the phone. But the problem is it will occur again. Just don't know when.

Additionally when this happens, you can't store photos and videos into the memory card. The phone thinks there's "insufficient storage space".

So anyway, I've found out that my memory card has bad sectors and most likely than not that's the cause.

Product Review: Brother DCP-120C

2006-04-11T00:26:00.000-07:00

This printer is beautiful. Cost is about 100USD. Something reasonable. Ink costs around 20USD for black and around 11USD each for cyan, magenta and yellow. (The black ink cartridge is about twice the size of a color one.) Again something reasonable. Here's a link to Brother's pic.
Initially I wanted laser but after weighing the costs and the size, I went for inkjet. All the laser printers I saw were just too big. I wasn't concerned with color but since I figured inkjets also do color, I viewed it as a bonus. Little did I know how much I would enjoy it.
Hands down, I think this printer does an awesome job printing both text, and as a surprise to me, PHOTOS! I printed a whole bunch of photos and even a car photo I snipped from porsche.com and all of them came out great.
I also like the scanning capabilities. I wanted an all-in-one type printer and the scanner works very well. The copying portion is also great. Because the printer can do color, I like how I can decide whether to make a mono copy or a color copy.
An extra thing I like about this printer is the built-in card reader. It can handle CompactFlash, MicroDrive, SmartMedia, MemoryStick/Pro, SD, MMC and xD formats. The printer can print straight from the card reader. Plus when I make a copy the printer can also make a soft copy on the card. I can choose either PDF or JPEG. It's so cool! I also like how the card reader is positioned in the front with clear labels to inform me which format goes into which slot. I've seen other printers where they hide the card reader to the side or cover it with a door and worst have no labels so it's like what is this secret thing here? I like how Brother is attentive to the customer.
Finally the last feature I like is it comes with an automatic document feeder. This is so that if you need to make multiple copies, you don't have to do it one at a time by placing your documents one at a time in the scanner. The one tidbit about this automatic documenter feeder is that it has a small capacity, about 10 or so documents at a time. But I figure this is decent enough considering this printer is geared towards the personal/home market, not the business market where people have lots of documents to copy. I'm glad that Brother included this feature even within this price range. Thanks Brother!
Since this printer has a card reader and can print straight from it, I think it would be nice if they integrated an LCD so that we can see what we're about to print. But again, in this price range, I think I can live without it. Plus I have to go back to my original intents when I got this printer, which are to print great text, scan and copy. The others, color and photo print, card reader and automatic document feeder were very excellent bonuses.
Thanks Brother!
Yikes, one more thing, I like how everything is front facing. This is so that I can put the printer totally against the wall without having to leave some space between the printer and the wall. Some printers have the paper fed from the back of the unit and at an angle and that prevents you from positioning the printer right against the wall. The paper is fed from the front. Even the power plug isn't at the back, it's at the side. The little minus thing is the USB port. It's inside the printer and you waste about three quarters of a foot guiding the USB cable in there.

Probing

2006-03-20T11:33:00.000-08:00

I hate it when people are so bold to ask about your material thinggs instead of like maybe getting to know you? just maybe? They like to ask what you do for a living, how much you make, where do you live, how much you rent/how much is your house. But after all the questioning is over and you shoot them back the same questions, they say a lot of rubbish, dodge them, or just plain ignore you. Sheesh! You had the balls to ask, so I'm gonna ask them back to you.

Third party IM clients

2006-03-04T12:57:00.000-08:00

I recently heard about meebo.com and then headed to the site to get as much information as possible short of trying it out. I didn't try it out because I didn't want to give up my IM password. Short story is once I give meebo or any other third party IM clients my IM password, I am giving them carte blanche access to my account. They can login to my account without my knowledge.
So I think one way to help resolve this problem is for the IM players to create a password for use only on third party IM clients. That way paranoid people like me don't have to fear giving away their IM passwords. So obviously this password can't be used to view account details, change password, access other services that the IM player provides, or anything else. This won't solve everything but at least users can have some sanity knowing that giving up their IM passwords won't allow the third party IM client to have carte blance account access.

Apple going crazy with pricing on new products?

2006-03-02T11:56:00.000-08:00

The latest products: leather cases for iPods, iPod Hi-Fi boombox and the upgraded Mac Mini have outrageous pricing. I think it's because Apple wants more revenue before launching new stuff.
Starting with the leather cases, my gosh it's 100 dollars! It's just a bag?! So what if the material is from some cow with so and so luxurious this and that, it's a freaking bag?! Plus for the Nano version, looks like the ear phones can't be plugged in unless the Nano is put in upside down. Even if the Nano needs to be put in upside down, it defeats the advertising's purpose of being able to see the iPod's screen when pulling it out from the oh-so-ingenious tab. Sheesh! I still don't get it, 100 dollars for a bag?! I guess it's to pay back for the enormous salaries Apple had to pay whatever team that designed the bag. Gosh.
Next up is the boombox at 350 dollars. Ok this one at least there is some sophisticated technology inside rather than just being an empty bag(ok with some tab to help pull the iPod out, oh my gosh). But 350 for a box is just too much. For 350, I'm going to expect a multiple box set up: at least 2.1, have a decent equalizer, a tuner, multiple inputs, a DVD/CD player and built-in ripping. Yeah, I think for 350 I would pay for something like that.
Finally the upgraded Mac Mini. First I think it's cool that Apple is continuing with this line. But I think Apple forgot the original intent for the product which is to introduce new, cost-conscious PC users in switching/trying out the Mac. Paying up to 800 dollars for this product, and keeping in mind it's just the "CPU" no monitor, keyboard and mouse, is too much. Come to think of it, since this product is meant to capture the PC switching segment, I think it doesn't make sense to have a low and high end model. In all seriousness, there is no real-world difference between the two models to be of any significance for a PC switching user or any new user thinking of using a Mac just trying the system out. Sure the high end model has so and so stuff, but the customer will always adjust their use accordingly because after all, the Mac Mini is meant to introduce people to the Mac.

1GB iPod Nano?

2006-02-08T09:25:00.000-08:00

I don't get it.
I believe this is the first iPod where storage gets smaller instead of bigger.
Rather than increasing storage, the 1GB Nano crosses the Shuffle line up and I think it'll cause confusion. Before this, Apple was very clear in their line up and there were boundaries. If Apple continues crossing boundaries, I think it'll end up like the Creatives, iRivers, Samsungs and other mp3 player companies which make a bunch of similiar storage sized players in various form factors.

Maybe I'll expand on this but now getting sleepy and tired.

Intel based Macs II

2006-01-14T16:07:00.000-08:00

Reading Paul Graham's essay: How to Make Wealth (actually I read it before but just now made a connection to my previous post), I think Apple will introduce wealth(and not just all about money) if they re-open their Mac architecture so that customers can buy Apple based systems like PC based systems. With Apple using Intel CPUs, now it seems PCs and Apple will run hand in hand. Apple already uses the same ATI and Nvidia graphics accelerators that PCs have been using for years. Count that also to IDE and now SATA based hard drives including optical drives, so hardware wise there is really no difference.
But back to the wealth issue, does Apple really want to create more wealth and also make more money? I think they won't. The answer boils down to individuality. First of all Apple took a lot of time and effort to create wealth by introducing their own brand of computers. It's their cash cow. Yeah the computers are based on off the shelf parts but imagine if you created wealth introducing a new product that wazzled and dazzled the crowd on a new and different way of doing things, wouldn't you want to keep it to yourself and reap all the profits?
Ah anyway, I'm getting tired and sleepy. Half blogging and half watching Hong Kong movies: "Dragon Forever" and "Yes Madam!".

Intel based Macs officially out

2006-01-14T14:24:00.000-08:00

It's going to be interesting seeing Intel based Macs for years to come. Obviously I can't predict when/if Apple will shift processors again(I don't remember the early days, but I remember Motorola to PowerPC and now to Intel), but in a way it's kind of like history repeating itself. I remember when PowerPC based Macs came out not only was there a huge awe about it: I remember IBM taking out a huge one page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal congratulating Apple on the start of a new PowerPC relationship; but there's also the usual transition phase for customers. Emulators and cross platform versions of applications so customers can run them on old and new Macs. With Intel though, the interesting thing is Intel chips are also used by PCs whereas the previous chips, PCs never used them. If history really will repeat itself, I'd say in about 10+ years, Apple will shift to another CPU. And having already gone through the big companies: Motorola, IBM and now Intel; the remaining ones are AMD, Texas Intruments, National Semiconductor, Sun, maybe even Transmeta(if they're still around) or some smaller company. But seeing that Apple having worked with CPU companies with a long record, I don't think it will be with a small company. But who knows, maybe Apple will shift back to Motorola or IBM.
So back to the interesting thing with Intel, it now opens possible doors for Apple to move into the operating system software business like Microsoft. But with Steve Jobs in control of Apple, that won't happen anytime soon. Still, I think it would be nice. If Apple still wants some control(ie quality), then they can at least institute a program to hardware vendors to say this hardware is Apple compatible. Apple already has support for ATI and Nvidia graphics hardware, so I don't see any difficulties. Yeah this will take some market share from Apple produced computers but in the end business will always happen. Some folks will buy Apple, some will buy others, but in the end Apple still makes money and is able to convince customers the power of Mac software and hardware!
Ok, good luck Apple!

Games and more Games!

2005-12-23T09:37:00.000-08:00

So for Xmas, I bought my wife 2 DS games. Also bought one DS title and one Advance title for myself. hehe But I have to say that I researched the titles for my wife: Nintendogs and Bubble Bobble. I know she absolutely loves the Puzzle Bobble series so that was a no brainer. As for Nintendogs, I read that it is actually an entertaining gem and not the usual video game sort. I have to say that she was quite happy playing Nintendogs. *Pat pat on back*
She just mentioned that she also like the other DS title I got for myself: Trauma Center: Under the Knife. Lastly the Advance title: Mario Tennis: Power Tour. I got it because I thought it was time I finally get a sports game and tennis seemed a good start. Also the game was recently released, most likely in time for Xmas folks like me. hahaha

Revamp for Nintendo DS? II

2005-12-21T11:23:00.000-08:00

Having read through some of Nintendo's 2005 annual report, I am quite interested and amazed how the company has achieved its goal of creating highly engaging electronic entertainment products for everyone. And when I say everyone, it's not because of seeing the photos of people of all ages playing the DS in the report, but it's actually because I *have* seen people of all ages play Nintendo products. I admit I haven't seen much of a DS usage by folks from all ages, but as far as the Game Boy Advance SP is concerned, I have. The usual suspects are young kids around 10 years old plus or minus five years. But I've seen older people play it. And these are people who I wouldn't even think that they've heard of video games. For example, I've seen a motherly woman who looks like she's had several years of cleaning house, disciplining her kids, going through her first home purchase, and I see her relaxing away in front of a Game Boy Advance SP.

So with that in mind, I wonder what Nintendo has up their sleeve in the next say five to ten years. I can guess that they'll continue working on designing new games to capture more audiences. As for the hardware, they've already taken some items from the computing world starting with wireless(B standard actually) and the touch screen/stylus from the PDA computing world. I guess a few things missing are the flash memory and hard drive. There's also USB for a common and standard connectivity protocol and immediate access to an array of products. I'm not sure about Nintendo entering the motion picture retail business like Sony whereby they sell "UMD" versions of movies already out on DVD.

Another interesting thing to roll over...

Revamp for Nintendo DS?

2005-12-18T11:01:00.000-08:00

When Nintendo introduced the Game Boy, I remember being so in awe. I did have doubts about it being so big. It took 4 AA batteries and it was quite thick. But still, I was willing to lug the thing around and play with it. Then for several years, I lost touch with it. I still like the unit, but I just didn't keep up with it. Then I heard about the Game Boy Advance launch and was quite impressed. It was a lot smaller than the first Game Boy and this time only used 2 AA batteries. I later realized that the first Game Boy went through several modifications before the Advance came out. Nintendo kept the same form factor but was able to make it thinner and use less batteries, I think it was 2 AA or 2 AAA. Also Nintendo added color. But back to the Advance, after it was out for a while, Nintendo modified it to the SP. This time it changed the form factor to a clam shell and added an internal light. Additionally Nintendo started using lithium-ion batteries to meet the small size. I missed the AA batteries because they are easy to replace and cost less. Also rechargeable nickel metal hydride batteries come in standard sizes. But the thing with lithium ion is that it can be shaped into any size. On a tangential note, I wonder if alkaline and NiMH batteries need to be in a cylindrical size. Back to the SP, the last update to it is an increased brightness level of the LCD(or actually the internal front light) but the problem is the light can not be turned off anymore now.
The new Nintendo portable now is the DS. I think there is some history repeating itself. Although the DS has all kinds of features going for it: dual screen, touch screen(with a stylus and some thumb string thing) for the bottom half, wi-fi, a built-in microphone and the usual advanced hardware to produce games with better graphics and sounds, the unit is at the end of the day a bulky thing the original Game Boy. So now I can't help but wonder if Nintendo will modify the DS, especially in making it smaller and maybe even change the form factor. Here are my ideas:
1) Following the SP design, add another LCD flip up. The extra LCD would flip out from where the SP LCD is to finally reveal two LCDs so there are two hinges and the DS would not only be thicker than the SP but also bigger in width and length to account for the extra hinge and also the DS has slightly larger LCD size than the SP. The only problem I can see with this is the unit now is too long, but if it can fold up to a smaller size than the DS, then I'm all for it.
2) A modification to 1), the 2 LCDs would still be hinged together but there is some spacing between the two as the controls, the D-pad and the X,Y,A,B,L,R,start,select buttons are hinged on the left and right sides of the bottom LCD. The controls are between the 2 LCDs when the LCDs are folded, so the controls open outwards. Of course these things don't necesarily just contain the controls, they could store the stereo speakers, the charging input, the headphone jack and other circuitry.
3) A modification to 2), rather than the controls being hinged, they are instead hidden inside the left and right sides of the bottom LCD and need to be either manually pulled out or have a spring action pull out.
Wow, can't believe I came out with these 3 ideas while writing this. I didn't have it in mind when I first started writing this article. So.. a little pat on the back, hehe. So yeah, I'm really looking forward to Nintendo modifying the DS in the near future!

Job Interviewing Mishaps

2005-12-17T02:54:00.000-08:00

Things candidates say that are thumbs down:

1) When asked whether or not they read the job description, they give a long answer about being referred to the position by someone so they just sent their resume in but never answer the question.

2) When asked about their motivation and interests, they pause and think seriously and think and think and think...

3) When asked about favorite professional achievements, they talk about being in awe of the intracicies of some particular system they learned in a course sponsored by their previous company.

4) When asked a basic question about a particular skill they list as number one, they unfortunately don't know the answer. :(

5) When given a problem to solve, they answer with buzz words and justify that the problem is solved.

Delivering console/portable video games in so many formats

2005-12-15T10:45:00.000-08:00

I had a conversation with someone about the Sony PSP. He brought up an interesting point about not liking it because of having to buy the same games again and in a different format. He was also sold on my argument against the PSP being essentially a CD drive. As a portable game system, I don't want the battery power wasted on moving parts and because the system is portable why should there be moving parts in the first place? And what's funny is the PSP most likely has systems and technologies in place to minimize this problem. And these systems and technologies take up space and use up more power to keep everything running.

But back to the main issue about buying the same games in different formats. I initially agreed because the guy was telling me that he owns a PlayStation and finds it ridiculous to buy the same games again but in Sony's yet another new format, UMD, if he were to buy the PSP. I next thought about my Game Boy Advance SP and recently my wife bought me a Nintendo DS for Xmas and realized I'm doing exactly what he's against. hahaha My wife says I have Advance Wars for the DS and the Game Boy Advance. I tried to defend myself that although the game title is the same name, the details are different. For one very ovious reason, the DS is dual screen. So although it seems like it, it's not quite. Also the great thing about the DS is that it has backwards compatibility with Game Boy Advance games which means not having to buy the same games I enjoyed on the Advance again.

So I think to get around this problem of buying the same games again but in different formats, the console/portable video games industry should start standardizing the media. One easy and cheap option is flash memory. And there are so many formats to choose from: Compact Flash, SD, MMC, etc and even flash memories attached to USBs. So here's a wild idea.. I think games should be distributed on the web as software like an iTunes service which are then copied to the respective flash memory format that the console/portable supports. So that brick and mortar stores can still sell games physically to customers, I think the package should be a scratch off card which gives authorization to download the game via the iTunes like service mentioned earlier. They package should also include the game manuals and necessary retail cover art. I also like this service better because if the store doesn't have it, then the customer can always find the game from the same web service. That way the customer never has to worry about finding that rare game. I can already imagine building the software to make all this happen. Sounds exciting!

Nintendo

2005-12-10T11:36:00.000-08:00

I'm a Nintendo hard core nut. I don't quite remember my first day of knowing about Nintendo. But I do remember the old Game & Watch series and boy those were so fun and addictive. I remember wishing to collect them all. I remember playing Donkey Kong, Popeye, Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers and maybe others I've forgotten. But for Super Mario Brothers, I remember that came out way after the Nintendo Entertainment System. I just thought it was so amazing that despite Nintendo entering the home console business, they were still continuing with their Game & Watch series. There were also two things about this unit. One it was wide screen (and also a bit thinner than the older ones). Second the LCD (and also the entire unit) was transparent. This was a neat attraction in that I saw it as a dynamic background everytime I play the unit. I don't know if I remember this correctly, but I kind of remember my first Nintendo product came with a special note thanking me for buying their product and asking me enjoy the product but also be aware of the fragile yet advanced LCD and inside components which delivers that fun and entertainment. I think reading this as a kid I was quite thankful for the note and also quite sold. And became a Nintendo hard core nut.
I know Nintendo has its fair share of failures. But like any good company and good person, gamers will remember the good stuff. Sure I don't know anything about the Virtual Boy or that the Power Glove was maybe too advanced for its time but the Game & Watch series, the NES, and Game Boy's were the good stuff. Looking at history, I know Nintendo will keep delivering the good stuff and I can't wait to be entertained.

Slashdot: Finding a Ready-Made Dev Team?

2005-11-22T09:26:00.000-08:00

So someone asked a question on how to find a [software] development team that is ready to go but the someone/small startup "don't have time or funds to go through a developer recruiting cycle, create a practice, get the team 'gelled' etc." In addition this team is only used for getting the product out the door, after that there is no guarantee the team will be with the small startup.
This someone must be on drugs. First this someone wants an entire team to work for them for free. Second this someone wants the team to somehow magically form a relationship with the someone/startup and be able to understand thoroughly the how the product works and be able to build it. Finally after the product is built the someone thinks the product is finished so the team is just working short term, after that it's anybody's guess.
Wow! What a way to attract talent. It's like wanting to know the answers but not doing the homework to get to the answers. And finally wanting to sell the answers off as their own.
This someone is definitely inexperienced and very much on drugs!

Product Manufacturing, Wow!

2005-11-19T21:31:00.000-08:00

Interesting article explaining some of the processes in product manufacturing. I like the parts that mention that there are two main factories in southern China, some of the parts are sourced from nearby local plants and during the manufacturing process a log is recorded for every product manufactured so that internal folks know where each part is from so as to trace problems quickly if anything occurs. Then I start thinking about any other product that has been manufactured before the XBOX 360, there are tons! So I'm thinking product manufacturing in general hasn't changed much. When it comes to the name brand products, they almost always have a warranty policy for customers big and small. So these name brand companies need to have some kind of log to help them identify problems if anything occurs. So for no name brand products, the customer big or small can forget about having their problems resolved. They just have to spend the same or more money replacing the broken product. I'm thinking this is the case because my wife recently bought a 3.5" hard drive enclosure USB 2.0 set. The company name, well I don't know who it is, but the product was very cheap. Actually the funny thing was there were other products that cost at least 2 or 3 times more and the company name was also unknown. Anyway back to the product, right now it works great. The case could have been designed a lot better for a much safer and easier way to install the hard drive. But if it ever breaks, I have no recourse but to write if off and buy another one. Compare that with a name brand product, at least there's some assurance that the customer can work with the company to resolve the situation.
So I guess at the end of the day, it's whether or not to buy a name brand product or a generic one. I bet the funny thing is some name brand products internally use generic products! So I guess these companies are taking the burden of assuring the usefulness of these generic products.

Extreme Discipline

2005-11-17T10:15:00.000-08:00

I caught this article titled Mom Makes Daughter Stand on Street Corner and it got me thinking about the topic of disciplining kids as I have been seeing this lately to my wife's nephew and niece along with my cousin's boys. These kids are between 2 to around 4 years old.
This article is interesting because a mom used an extreme disciplining tactic after growing tired of her 14 year old daughter's continuing poor grades and chronic lateness to school. So the mom made her daughter stand at a street intersection holding a sign that says "I don't do my homework and I act up in school, so my parents are preparing me for my future. Will work for food."
As the article also says, there will most likely be two camps on this issue. Some will think this further harms the child rather then benefits. And the other camp would think this is the perfect solution to deal with difficult to manage kids.
I think I would sit on the latter camp simply because this camp always works. And like my wife keeps saying, kids know what they're doing when they're howling and scowling for stuff even at an early age so it's best to nip it in the bud before it's difficult to nip when the kid is older.
But sometimes the problem with discipline is that the kid forgets about it the next day and then the cycle begins. I like the mention about reinforcing the negative effects of discipline with the positive effects of praise so that the kid isn't always under discipline. I think this is good because there must be a balance. Just as parents need to discipline when their kids cross the bad threshold, parents should also do the same when their kids cross the good threshold. I know that the kid should be made to understand that having free room and board is already the praise they're getting everyday. I totally agree with that as the kid should also understand how things come to be. But without the matching praise when the kid does good, I feel the kid and the parents will never know the good effects from praise. The way I see it, it's like at work. Most managers would tell the employee when they've done a good job. Besides money, this helps strengthen the employee-manager-company relationship.
This discussion can go on and on and I think no one belief will apply to all kids. At the end of the day, the parents have to do their homework and hopefully find out what works best for their kids. I'm also ending here cause it's getting late. Initially I wanted to write more but I'm getting tired writing this and watching tv. hehe

Madonna Free from Material World?

2005-10-18T13:05:00.000-07:00

Saw this article:
About Madonna being disgusted by the material and physical worlds and thinks people should free themselves or risk going to hell.

I find that strange considering about a month from today she announced she will finally sell her music online through Apple's iTunes service. She should check herself for actually contributing to the material and physical worlds be hawking her music online, in CD's, whatever. I just find her statements conflicting because she sure isn't expressing disdain from all the money she earned selling music in the past and selling it again in online format.

Well, maybe she's enlightened but I just checked iTunes now and her music is still available for purchase.

Product Review: Logitech V200 Cordless Notebook Mouse

2005-10-13T10:22:00.000-07:00

Been eyeing this mouse for a few months now. I like it because of the claim of up to 1 year battery life. I know this is a company claim and as always company claims are like up in the air kind of thing.

But I have confidence in Logitech. Having bought and received several Logitech products before, I can say they are neck and neck with Apple in terms of presentation, great out-of-the-box experience, easy quick-startup guides with big clear pictures and generally simple instructions that don't eat up multiple paragraphs. Also want to add very clear and effective software that matches up with the quick-startup guide.

Finally back to the mouse itself...

I like it! Works great! It's a buy!

I'll list out things I like:

1) Optical sensor is a new type that works even on clear surfaces.
The sensor isn't the usual bright red light thing, in fact no light even comes out, maybe there is but it's not visible. There is however this small green LED light but I don't think it turns on when the mouse is actually being used.

2) Needs 2 AA but can be operated with only 1

3) Of course haven't proved the up to 1 year battery life claim, but I believe it. However to be realistic, I think it'll last minimum 8 to 9 months and maximum 10 to 11 months.

4) Horizontal scroll is neat! Also like the universal scroll feature, neat for scrolling really big pages for scrolling up, down, left and right.

5) Like the comfortable universal design so that the mouse can be used left or right handed.

6) Small USB receiver

7) On another note, but related for me, my wife approved of purchase. hehe :D

Unfortunately there are some stuff I don't like:

1) Logitech was quite smart with their advertising on the small USB receiver connected with the mouse. I thought it can hide inside the mouse, in actuality it attaches to the back of the mouse, so it's not flush with the mouse and also there's most likely chance of it being clipped off if not handled carefully during transportation.

2) Would have been nice if the receiver had additional functionality, like flash storage.

Part II: SingNet Broadband 10 & 25Mbps and Thomson SpeedTouch 585

2005-10-09T12:59:00.000-07:00

Yay! Short story is I finally figured out the extra steps needed to configure the ST585 into a modem-only bridge mode device.

The bridge.ini file the vendor sent me did half the story. The other half of the story involved a few items:

1) Absolutely the most important is to turn off DHCP under "Home Networking" -> "Interfaces" -> "Local Network"; and click the "Configure" link located on the top right side of the page. This DHCP left on is the reason why my download speeds were always halved. Both the ST585 and my external wireless router were doing DHCP which slowed things down.

2) Another important item is to turn off the wireless access point feature in the ST585. Following on 1), I don't want any devices to connect to the ST585 other than my external wireless router. And the rest of the devices should only communicate with the modem indirectly via the external wireless router.

3) The ST585 also has some built-in DSL/WAN inspection features which should be turned off because my external wireless router will now handle that. And plus the whole point of configuring the ST585 as a modem-only device in bridge mode is to send the DSL signal unfiltered straight to my external wireless router to handle.
These features are firewall, intrusion detector, UPnP, Address and Content filters, and Remote Assistance. Firewall and intrusion detector need to be disabled by way of CLI. Actually firewall is shown as disabled, but it's not quite there.

3.1) First my computer needs to be connected to the ST585, then I telnet in, enter the username which is Administrator(will be let in immediately), then type "firewall config state=disabled". Next you'll also want to disable intrusion detector by typing "ids config state=disabled". When you're done, type "saveall", "exit" and that's it.

Now I unplug my computer from the ST585 and plug it back to my external wireless router. I also plug my external wireless router to the ST585(in port 1) and also no other devices now connect to the ST585.

Whew!

Apple iPod Nano is AWESOME!

2005-10-08T13:29:00.000-07:00

Ok, I admit that ever since the iPod first came out, I was never a big believer of the the entire product line. My biggest peeve: hard drive based! With all the movement the player gets, even in Apple's own TV commercial of the user holding the iPod shaking it while listening to music, is just prime for hard drive failures.

I want to relay a related story on hard drive based music players. About a year or so ago before the iPod first came out, I knew of a guy who began having lots of problems with his laptop. My colleagues discovered the root of the problems was due to hard disk failures. After some questioning, the guy said maybe it's because he listens to his mp3 collection off his laptop when he's mobile: walking, taking the bus, whatever. Immediately my colleagues rolled their eyes. They explained to him that the hard drive in the laptop is a fragile item. And just because a computer is in a laptop form doesn't mean it's ok to move it around while computing. The guy had the balls to respond that it should be ok! because he listens to his collection off the smaller hard drive! My colleagues were now way past rolling their eyes. They had to explain to him yet again. There were two issues to go over, 1) the logical and physical sizes of the hard drive do not affect fragility and 2) his laptop had 2 hard drives because it was partitioned.

So back to the iPod, I recently bought the Nano for my wife and have never looked back. I like the size, that it's flash based, the UI including the click wheel and most importantly the entire music experience handled by iTunes. I think when Apple set out to create a nice and luxurious mp3 player, they weren't just focused on that like most companies did, in fact they were looking at the entire music enjoyment experience. That's where iTunes comes in, it helps users build and organize their collection, it easily syncs up songs that users want to listen to on their iPod and finally it has two outlets for users to reach out and get more content in terms of the music store and the podcast directory. Just AWESOME!

SingNet Broadband 10 & 25Mbps and Thomson SpeedTouch 585

2005-10-08T12:36:00.000-07:00

I recently convinced my wife to recontract her broadband plan to SingNet's Challenger Pack with speeds of (down/up): 10Mbps/1Mbps. She accepted the idea because the plan didn't require a long term commitment, only 3 months! I was so excited to step up to the higher speeds and began wondering how the broadband hardware would change. I knew that the current ADSL modem we used could only go up to 8Mbps so we obviously needed a new modem. Luckily the plan came with a free modem, a Thomson SpeedTouch 585.

Unfortunately that's where the excitement ends. After I received the modem, things just went downhill. The only positve experience was that at one point dslreports.com reported that I was able to download a little over 10Mbps.

Here's the list of bad experiences:

1) Can't use my existing wireless router with it following the previous set up I arranged, where the old adsl modem was set in bridge mode and the router talked to the modem by way of PPPoE sending the ISP login and password.

2) Modem can't be configured to bridge mode, learned that the vendor has to send me some configuration file in order to set it to bridge mode.

Note: I would publish the contents of this configuration file as it's just plain text but it's got over a thousand lines and looks like Blogger has a limit, email me at kfcblog AT gmail /dot\ com and I am more than happy to give.

3) Speed differences:

3.1) If I use the ST585 as is(without the wireless router), I get around 9 to 9.5Mbps. But tonight I got as low as 1Mbps!

3.2) If I configure ST585 to bridge mode and connect the wireless router with it, for some reason I only get around 4 to 4.5 Mbps!

On an unrelated note, if I use my old adsl modem(not ADSL2+ compliant), I get around 6Mbps. But I haven't tested it as much to see if the speeds are consistent.

In the meantime, I'm thinking of buying my own ADSL2+ compliant modem and be done with the ST585. I also don't like the web gui, router security, wireless and generally the difficulties with configuring it.

What's up with Apple?

2005-08-02T09:37:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Slashdot, I noticed Apple released a new mouse called Mighty Mouse. I see this as whole history of Microsoft/PC-copied-Apple's-GUI-ideas lawsuits and debates happening all over again.

This time the playground is not the desktop GUI, but the hardware. It first started with Apple announcing the switch to Intel, most likely Pentium class processors, and now officially producing 2+ button mouse along with a scroll wheel(and sort of ditching the one-button mouse).

I remember when Windows 95 first came out, there were lots of debates even from Apple's Steve Jobs side about Apple's Macintosh having the advanced GUI years ago. And that the PC users are finally getting to enjoy what the Mac users have already absorbed.

Same thing now goes for the Intel processors and Mighty Mouse. The old arguments that Steve used against Microsoft for their Windows 95 attempt now applies to the Mighty Mouse. The cheap OEM PC scroll mouse has been around for years now. Technology and profit issues aside, Apple finally caved in and adopted the Intel processor that PC users have been using for ages.

About scroll mices in particular, my first one was a MouseSystems ProAgio 5-button mouse. And it started out for Windows 3.1 and eventually had support for Windows 95. It was such a cool mouse and I loved it. The scroll wheel was this wide plastic wheel. The scroll wheel was also a button and below the wheel was another button. On the left side there was a long "slit" button. And finally it had the usual left and right buttons for a total of 5 buttons.

How many perfect shuffles are needed to return to original order?

2005-07-30T05:12:00.000-07:00

I've been intrigued by this problem ever since I read about it over at NexTag.com. I didn't quite know how to program it at first sight because I wasn't sure what data structure to use to represent the stack of unique cards. Of course I also didn't know the "trick" to calculate the result quickly. Finally I went with an array and decided to just program it the brute force way to understand the problem better. I could have scribbled with pen and paper to see how the perfect shuffle works, but it was just too manual and error-prone if I didn't keep track. I made my program display all the iterations and ran it through several small cases. I also went ahead and ran the ultimate case of 1002 unique cards at the 101st cut and saw that my program just kept running and running.

Seeing the perfect shuffle work on smaller cases was very helpful. I admit I didn't see what was going at first, but I remember now that one of the strategies with problem solving is to see if there is some kind of pattern. I suppose the harder part is actually figuring out a way to make use of it.

The pattern that I was led to notice was that each unique card will always come back to its original position in the same amount of passes, of course not all of them at the same time otherwise the problem would be very easy to solve.(I suppose.)

So after finding out the passes for each unique card, the problem just boiled down to finding a combination of cycles of each unique card's passes so that all of the cards come back together at the same time, in other words the lowest common multiple(LCM) of all the passes is the number of perfect shuffles needed to return the deck back to its original order.

I didn't know how to find the LCM of a set of numbers let alone just two numbers! I mean I knew how for two small numbers just by knowing some of the multiples and also the easy method was to just multiply the numbers but that won't necessarily find the lowest even though it is a common multiple. After some research, I realized one way to express it algorithmically was to take one of the numbers, multiply it through consecutive numbers starting with 2, but check if the result is a multiple of the other number. If so, then that's the LCM. If not, then multiply the first number with the next consecutive number and check the result again until the LCM is found. But there's some "beginning stuff" to check before doing this: if the two numbers are the same, then the LCM is that number and second if the two numbers are multiples of each other, then the LCM is the larger number.

When I coded this strategy, I found out for the part where I have to multiply the consecutive numbers and do the check, I didn't know whether to operate it on the smaller or larger number. I just said I'll work on the smaller number without any reason. Later on I realized I should have operated on the larger number. This resulted in a performance increase because with the smaller number, I would need to go through several multiplications to eventually find a LCM that is a multiple of the larger number. This would be very bad if the two numbers are very far apart. With the larger number, I realized I wouldn't have to go through as many multiplications to eventually find a LCM that is a multiple of the smaller number. Cool!

Actually there's a longer explanation of why I went this route. Before I noticed the difference, I decided to research further on other ways to calculate the LCD and hopped on to Euclid's Algorithm. I scanned over it and quickly implemented into my program and noticed how big of an improvement it made! I made my program display what the calculations were doing at each step of the way and realized it calculated the LCM much quicker. When I was doing my original LCM strategy, I was wondering why it took a while for some numbers and very quickly for others. It finally dawned on me that I was always calculating the LCM from the smaller number and when the difference is very large, that's what took so long.

Whew! So I made the change and was impressed that it performed the same as using Euclid's Algorithm. Neato! I implemented Euclid's using recursion whereas my implementation was just loops.

Btw, I implemented my solution in C++(actually it's just C, I didn't use any of the fancy C++ stuff) because I haven't played with Java for a while.



#include <iostream>
#include <time.h>

using namespace std;

long long shuffles(int nSize, int nCut);
long long findLowestCommonMultiple(int *arrayNumbers, int nSize);

int main(void)
{
    int i = 4;
    int j = 2;
    long long l;
    clock_t c_cpubefore, c_cpuafter;

    cout << "Deck size: ";
    cin >> i;
    cout << "Deck cut: ";
    cin >> j;

    c_cpubefore = clock();
    l = shuffles(i, j);
    c_cpuafter = clock();

    cout << "cpu time spent calculating: " << (double) (c_cpuafter - c_cpubefore) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC << " seconds" << endl;
    cout << "perfect shuffles needed for a set of (size " << i << " and a cut at " << j << ") is: " << l << endl;

    return 0;
}

long long shuffles(int nSize, int nCut)
{
    // simple check for now
    if (nCut > nSize) {
        cout << "ERROR: can't do shuffle because cut is larger than size of deck" << endl;
        return 0;
    }

    // v2 strategy
    // still have originalDeck array, but only do perfect shuffle until each
    // element goes back to it's original position
    // note: this is not the case where all elements need to be back at the
    // same time(because this would just be back to brute force method)
    // rather, just record the # of iterations needed for each element to come
    // back to its original position individually.
    // After that the problem just boils down to finding the unique combination
    // for all the iterations such that all the elements come back to their
    // original position, in other words, need to find the lowest common
    // multiple of the iterations.
    // another note: with this strategy, not able to show deck order for all
    // iterations, only up to the maximum iterations for an element to come back
    // to its original position

    int i, j, nTopdeckCount, nBottomdeckCount;
    long long lShuffles = 0;
    bool bOrdered = false;
    bool bNeedToShuffleAgain;
    int nBottomdeckSize = nSize - nCut;
    int *originalDeck = new int[nSize];
    int *keeptrackpositionsDeck = new int[nSize];
    int *topDeck = new int[nCut];
    int *bottomDeck = new int[nBottomdeckSize];

    // initialize the originalDeck and keeptrackpositionsDeck
    for (i = 0; i < nSize; i++) {
        originalDeck[i] = i;
        keeptrackpositionsDeck[i] = 0;
    }

    while (!bOrdered) {

        // get top deck of nCut numbers
        for (i = 0; i < nCut; i++) {
            topDeck[i] = originalDeck[i];
        }

        // get bottom deck of nSize - nCut numbers
        for (i = nCut; i < nSize; i++) {
            bottomDeck[i - nCut] = originalDeck[i];
        }

        nTopdeckCount = nCut - 1;
        nBottomdeckCount = nBottomdeckSize - 1;
        for (i = 0, j = nSize - 1; j >= 0; j--, i++) {
            if ((i % 2) != 0) {
                if (nBottomdeckCount >= 0) {
                    originalDeck[j] = bottomDeck[nBottomdeckCount];
                    nBottomdeckCount--;
                } else {
                    for (; j >= 0; j--) {
                        originalDeck[j] = topDeck[nTopdeckCount];
                        nTopdeckCount--;
                    }
                    break;
                }
            } else {
                if (nTopdeckCount >= 0) {
                    originalDeck[j] = topDeck[nTopdeckCount];
                    nTopdeckCount--;
                } else {
                    for (; j >= 0; j--) {
                        originalDeck[j] = bottomDeck[nBottomdeckCount];
                        nBottomdeckCount--;
                    }
                    break;
                }
            }
        }

        // increment shuffles count
        lShuffles++;

        // just did one perfect shuffle, now analyze each element and see if
        // it has come back to its original position

        bNeedToShuffleAgain = false;

        for (i = 0; i < nSize; i++) {
            if (keeptrackpositionsDeck[i] == 0) {
                if (originalDeck[i] == i) {
                    keeptrackpositionsDeck[i] = lShuffles;
                } else {
                    bNeedToShuffleAgain = true;
                }
            }
        }

        if (!bNeedToShuffleAgain) {
            bOrdered = true;
        }
    }

    // don't need these anymore
    delete []topDeck;
    delete []bottomDeck;
    delete []originalDeck; 

    lShuffles = findLowestCommonMultiple(keeptrackpositionsDeck, nSize);

    delete []keeptrackpositionsDeck; 

    return lShuffles;
}

long long findLowestCommonMultiple(int *arrayNumbers, int nSize)
{
    long long lLCM = arrayNumbers[0];
    long long smaller, larger;

    for (int j = 1; j < nSize; j++) {
        if (lLCM == (long long) arrayNumbers[j]) {
            continue;
        } else {
            if (lLCM < (long long) arrayNumbers[j]) {
                smaller = lLCM;
                larger = (long long) arrayNumbers[j];
            } else {
                smaller = (long long) arrayNumbers[j];
                larger = lLCM;
            }
        }

        lLCM = larger;
        for (int k = 2; (lLCM % smaller) != 0; k++) {
            lLCM = larger * k;
        }

/* This is where I figured out operating on the larger number resulted
   in a performance increase.
   The above code is a cleaned up version of below.

        if ((larger % smaller) == 0) {
            lLCM = larger;
        } else {
            for (int k = 2;  ; k++) {
//                lLCM = smaller * k;
                lLCM = larger * k;
//                if ((lLCM % larger) == 0) {
                if ((lLCM % smaller) == 0) {
                    break;
                }
            }
       }
*/

    }

    return lLCM;
}

DSC01683

2005-07-04T22:44:00.002-07:00

DSC01683, originally uploaded by hehemmm.

Ethan making faces to me! How?! hehe

DSC01682

2005-07-04T22:44:00.001-07:00

DSC01682, originally uploaded by hehemmm.

Another snap of Brandon.

DSC01681

2005-07-04T22:44:00.000-07:00

DSC01681, originally uploaded by hehemmm.

Trying to snap Brandon, but he saw it coming!

DSC01680

2005-07-04T22:43:00.001-07:00

DSC01680, originally uploaded by hehemmm.

Back in car and taking pic of Ethan's messy hair after wearing the cap! hehe

DSC01679

2005-07-04T22:43:00.000-07:00

DSC01679, originally uploaded by hehemmm.

Whoops, heading back now. Didn't even walk much of the bridge. hehe

DSC01678

2005-07-04T22:42:00.001-07:00

DSC01678, originally uploaded by hehemmm.

Still at the entrance... and look at the crowd!

DSC01676

2005-07-04T22:42:00.000-07:00

DSC01676, originally uploaded by hehemmm.

Having to look up to Ethan

DSC01675

2005-07-04T22:41:00.000-07:00

DSC01675, originally uploaded by hehemmm.

Walking on GG Bridge #2, notice the signboard in the background, haven't made much distance. hehe

DSC01674

2005-07-04T22:40:00.000-07:00

DSC01674, originally uploaded by hehemmm.

Walking on GG Bridge

DSC01673

2005-07-04T22:39:00.000-07:00

DSC01673, originally uploaded by hehemmm.

Surprising Ethan! Also we're on way to Golden Gate Bridge.

DSC01672

2005-07-03T22:14:00.000-07:00

DSC01672, originally uploaded by hehemmm.

Ethan camera shy, but moments later got in trouble for something I forgot.

DSC01671

2005-07-03T22:13:00.000-07:00

DSC01671, originally uploaded by hehemmm.

Never seen this before: spam and rice(and soy sauce in between) wrapped in seaweed. Chris told me this is Hawaiian.

For reference, baby pigeon weeks ago

2005-07-01T16:49:00.000-07:00

DSC01645, originally uploaded by hehemmm.

software cropped and zoomed shot #2

For reference, baby pigeon weeks ago

2005-07-01T16:48:00.000-07:00

DSC01644, originally uploaded by hehemmm.

software cropped and zoomed, shot #1

Progress of Baby Pigeon

2005-07-01T16:47:00.000-07:00

DSC01670, originally uploaded by hehemmm.

Might be hard to see b/c the baby pigeon stays behind that pillar. But can see that it's quite developed now, gray colored feathers, developed tail and wing feathers.

Eggs!

2005-07-01T16:43:00.000-07:00

DSC01667, originally uploaded by hehemmm.

Just found out the mommy pigeon laid two new eggs! The original baby pigeon is quite developed now.

2005-06-27T22:42:00.000-07:00

baby pigeon away from nest

2005-06-27T22:41:00.000-07:00

forgot to include this pic a while back, baby pigeon behind bathroom

2005-06-27T22:14:00.000-07:00

turned off lights shot and software zoomed in pic of lighted keyboard. I wasn't looking for this keyboard but after my okion one broke I was seeing if Fry's has the Saitek one I read about in tomshardware a while back: http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/20050409/index.html

2005-06-27T22:05:00.000-07:00

shot of Saitek eluminated keyboard in action, but flash killed the blue light

2005-06-27T22:04:00.000-07:00

don't know who this loot belongs to, better return it. it was on sale for 13.99 a buck cheaper than sticker price.

2005-06-27T22:03:00.000-07:00

oh, the back of the same loot, looks like have to return it

2005-06-27T21:59:00.000-07:00

June 24 loot, bought Game Boy Advance dual game: Golden Nugget Casino and more importantly Texas Hold 'Em Poker at Costco for 16.99

2005-06-27T21:54:00.000-07:00

loot #2 found at Target a pair of noise canceling ear bud phones with volume control and airplane adaptor for 29.99 after original price of 49.99! woohoo!

2005-06-27T21:49:00.000-07:00

buying belated housewarming gifts for Marjorie and Andrew. More like for Andrew cause he says he like the latest Gran Turismo 4 and I like NBA Jam, back in the arcades, so I'm curious how the Playstation 2 version works out

2005-06-27T21:44:00.000-07:00

loot #1 from shopping at Fry's Monday June 27

2005-06-27T21:43:00.000-07:00

Saturday night June 25 Brandon on sofa playing firemen with Ryan, Hubert and Eunice's son

2005-06-21T01:25:00.001-07:00

hehehe

2005-06-21T01:25:00.000-07:00

back side of router

2005-06-21T01:24:00.001-07:00

buffalo router unleashed from box

2005-06-21T01:24:00.000-07:00

all da loot together: 1 wireless pcmcia card, 1 wireless router, 2 gigabit cards(to replace old 10Mbps ethernet in desktops, but so far still getting 10Mbps, was on sale for 10 bucks each), 2 dvds: Logan's Run and In the Company of Men

2005-06-20T22:49:00.000-07:00

advertised food and prices at ikea restaurant

2005-06-20T22:48:00.000-07:00

escalator to head to 2nd level, same general layout as the Singapore one, just super large

2005-06-20T22:47:00.002-07:00

ikea entrance after taking elevator up from parking garage

2005-06-20T22:47:00.001-07:00

ikea parking lot #2

2005-06-20T22:47:00.000-07:00

ikea parking

2005-06-20T22:46:00.000-07:00

Cinnamon Sugar Pretzel, larger and more fluffy than Annie Anne's pretzel's

2005-06-20T22:45:00.001-07:00

Tropical Smoothie