Yoyo, mom, daddy, and incoming baby sister (my wife is expecting)
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Category: fun
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Signs we do too much googling
This morning, Serenity asked me to show her draw a pig. I said I don’t know how. She said google it, as mommy always did. So I googled how to draw a pig, and it comes up some results. I showed her the wikihow step by step animations. Now she is into wolf 🙂
(Update 02-19-14) This reminds me similar phenomenon in software development area, the popularity of sites like stackoverflow.com, coupled with some of the flaws in technology books/documentations, make me search much more and read much less. As a matter of fact, one of the iPad book author, Kurby Turner, mentioned this phenomenon in his learning iPad programming book.
And I regret it now, because she appears have a lot energy after getting home. But at pre-school when I picked her up, she was complaining about “lip hurts” (probably due to cold weather, and low moisture indoors), and “fear of doing high beam”. No matter what I offer (snack, chocolate), she was not motivated, and cried while asking for “go home”. I can understand both factors, and I feel the high beam is probably a more important factor, but I chickened out eventually. It’s also one of the coldest day this winter (minus 10 c). And I feel a lack of energy myself, so I “let it slide” (borrowing Steve Job’s word).
But I quickly regret it as I saw she is full of energy after getting home, esp. when doing the Skype with grand parents and her aunt/cousin back home.
(Update 2, 11-18-2013) I sold my Nexus 4 as I am getting my iPhone 5s. I still think Nexus 4 is a lot phone for the money ($199 before tax). Another feature I liked is the integration with google contacts, and google+ photo backup. I just found there’s an option on iPhone Google+ app for backup now.
(Update 09-16-2013) I agree with @PhillRyu that the back button on Android is nice, along with the multi-task button, it separate tasks from the home button (the iOS home button is a bit overloaded, it does both back and home, and double click home brings up the multitask thing).
(Original 09-08-2013) Last week I got my 1st Android phone, the Google Nexus 4. I bought it primarily due to its lowered price (from $299 to $199 before tax), and my 3 year old iPhone 4 battery is doing down hill (found a trick to save it after I bought the Nexus 🙁
I tweeted some minor problems/questions I have with Nexus 4/Android since then. Again for the most part, I am happy with the screen size, battery life (being new), and the sharpness of android in general. A few things I mentioned/complained in twitter:
1) Lack of a native Mail app, in iPhone I can add all the mailbox (yahoo mail, gmail) to the Mail app, in Android there is not a good very native app. But later I noticed the notification feature kinda compensated it. I did install the Yahoo Mail app. The Gmail comes by default.
2) Again on the email things, for some html formatted email, it appears iPhone can scale it properly the first time when the user opens it, on Android, it did not get right the first time. The workaround is move the mail left, then zoom (make it a bit smaller to fit in the screen). Not a big deal.
3) A bit sneaky: the Android recommend feature, in Youtube, Play store (music). Also the photo upload (to Google+).
4) Chrome web browser does not have a “reader” feature like Safari does: for better reading experience (filter out ads, and scale the web page).
5) Share it feature: initially I thought it only has the gmail, google+…after I installed the facebook and yahoo Mail, I found those are also available.
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iTunes, iCloud, Dropbox, wd 2go
Krugman, the Nobel economics laureate recently penned an article basically saying Apple is no good. I think he has one valid point on iTunes and the relatively closeness of Apple ecosystem. This reminds me of one thing, the cloud storage for consumers. Apple has this iCloud going for a few years, it can be used to back up iDevices (photos, videos, documents, etc.), but not as flexible as Dropbox (or Box.net, and many others), both Apple and Dropbox has the subscription plan, for iCloud, it’s $20 for 10Gb additional (5Gb is free) per year, and for Dropbox, it’s $10 for 500 GB per month (2Gb is free, and there are other ways to earn free storage).
Then I came across this wd 2go, it is probably the cheapest (if we ignore the electricity, and bandwidth cost), basically it’s free with the WD My Book Live purchase. My Book Live costs about $129. There is no recurring fees. I have not got this one yet, but I’m thinking about it as I have 2 iPhones’ worth of pictures/videos, and need to store it someway. Was wondering if I could just transfer from iTunes to the WD My Book drive.
While I went through all these, what’s my point? Personally I think the openness rankings of those 3, from most close to open: iTunes/iCloud, Dropbox, wd 2go. Of course I understand one can argue security wise, the ranking might be different 🙂
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People are more important
Was at a friend’s house last night, watching the July 4th fireworks display at his house, as the house has a perfect view. We talked about things since we have not seen each other for a while. When asked by a friend what is the things gave me impressions on my first employer (I worked there for 8 years), I thought about it, and said “people”. Yes it was the people in Unigraphics Solutions (UGS, EDS PLM Solutions, and last Siemens PLM Software) help me jump started my career, and you all know who I meant. I still keep in touch with some of them.
The paragraph above was written about a month ago. This past Saturday I happened to bump into my old colleague at local license office. I knew he changed job couple times in recent years, after both of us left the company (me in 2008, him in 2009). He told me some unpleasant development in the company lately: downsizing, layoff etc. I know at this time my capability is fairly limited, but my thoughts and prayers are with my former coworkers.
Yes, human beings are always the most important.
From CocoaChina.
一、
一个人坐在热气球上飞行，突然发现自己迷路了。他降低高度，发现下面有个人。他把气球降的更低，大声向下面的人问路，“请问，你能告诉我我在哪吗？”
下面的人说：“当然，你在一个热气球上，距离地面30英尺高。”
“你一定是个搞技术的，”热气球里的人说。
“没错”这人回答道。“你怎么知道的？”
“很简单，”热气球里的人说，“所有你告诉我的东西在技术上都是正确的，但对我一点用处也没有。”
下面的人回复说，“你一定是个项目经理。”
“没错，”热气球里的人说，“你怎么知道的？”
“很简单”，下面的人说，“你经常找不到北，或者不知道该去哪，你希望别人能够帮助你。在遇到我之前你也是这样，但现在是我犯了个错误。”
二、
从前，有一牧羊人，他在一条荒废的公路边照看他的羊群。突然，路上一辆崭新的保时捷嘎然来了一个急刹车。车主，一个穿着阿曼尼的西装，Cerutti的鞋子，带着Ray-Ban太阳镜，TAG-Heuer腕表，系着一条范思哲领带的年轻人走了出来，问牧羊人：“如果我能告诉你这里一共有多少只羊，你能给我一只吗？”
牧羊人看看这个年轻人，然后又看看他那成群的在牧场上吃草的羊，说：“行。”
年轻人停好他的车，用笔记本连上无线网络，接入美国宇航局的服务，用GPS扫描地面，然后进入数据库，导出60张填满了算法数据和校验数据表的Excel，然后用他的高科技的微型打印机打印出一份150页的报告。他转过头来对牧羊人说：“你不多不少一共有1586只羊。”
牧羊人非常高兴，说，“非常正确，你可以拿走一只羊。”
年轻人选了一只，放进保时捷的后备箱。牧羊人看着他，问：“如果我能猜出你的职业，你能把后备箱里的那只动物还给我吗？”
年轻人回答：“当然，为什么不呢？”
牧羊人：“你是一个IT顾问。”
年轻人：“你怎么知道的？”
牧羊人：“非常简单。首先，你不请自来。第二，你让我花钱来换取我已经知道的事情，三，你根本不知道我是干什么的…现在你能把那只狗还给我了吗？”
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Travel in Shanghai
I visited China with my family a few weeks ago. Shanghai is the flight stop where we arrive and depart.
We stayed at the Courtyard Xujiahui, and Four Points by Sheraton at Pudong during our short stay in Shanghai, a few weeks ago. As I have family and esp. little kid nowadays, I prefer western brand hotel (4 stars) so that it has good enough environment. I no longer go to Home Inn or Jinjiang Star. That was when I was single, and just need a clean place to shower and sleep.
Getting around
In general Shanghai taxi is very nice, with a few exceptions. For instance, we waited one hour in Shanghai Hongqiao railway station on rainy Friday evening (it was also the first day of Gao Kao, China’s college entrance exam). It’s probably better idea if one travel light (without big luggages). Another instance was we were at People’s square, about 10 pm, basically no taxi will take us to Xujiahui. There were a few illegal taxies pass by and asked us if we want to take it. Finally we decided to take Metro (subway) to get back.
Tour bus
We took the double deck tour bus at People’s square, my first time taking it, and was surprised to see a lot of changes in Shanghai, for example, I have not seen Lao Xi Meng for many years (probably not seen it since 1995, 18 years). Big big change. I would like to show my brother the picture some time as I thought he probably have not seen it for 18 years either. Tour bus No. 1 is a good idea for short stay visitors because one can use it for 24 hours, and see many interesting places (bus stops at those places) along the way.
It was the first time I brought my wife and my daughter there. The weather was a bit hot, as I went there after 9:30 am. We bought the typical things: ribs and eggs from Bobbi (live spring farm), tomato, beans and cucumber from amish farmer. Serenity enjoyed her bagel and apple at the picnic by the market, it’s just some food we brought in case she wanted to eat.
I’m hoping to bring them more often to the market on Saturday mornings this Summer.
Btw, I was thinking about adding a “news feed” to the ToMarket app I recently created. It’s also funny Serenity singing about “ToMarket” couple times yesterday.
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China trip: some random thoughts
We took a 2 weeks China trip and came back last Monday evening. A bit exhausted, and at the end of the trip, our daughter got sick, she said she got tummy ache, and needed to go to restroom (lavatory) every 10 min. The fun part of being parents.
Some more serious thoughts
1) My parents are getting older, just as I am getting older. At one morning, my mom asked my dad: did I take the blood pressure medicine. She is not in her 70s yet, but she forgot about it.
2) Money and money: obviously this is a hot topic and it seems my family can not escape it as well. The thing makes me a bit annoyed is when they ask me how much I make in the states, as one of the very first question. It seems money is an important yard stick to measure if a person is successful or not. Btw, it seems everyone back home has more money than me. Interestingly, I read about this article yesterday, it mentioned something similar to that extent.
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/mark-kitto-youll-never-be-chinese-leaving-china/#.Ub54LvmThBH
3) Environment. Not so good. The air quality, and the noise is obvious. One thing a bit interesting is Serenity was curious why the car/bus beep (honk) at each other, or at pedestrian. The air at my hometown is not good due to all the container trucks (18 wheelers), and heavy industry.
4) Hard to get coffee, I mean real coffee, not those faked cappuccino ones made by machines gas station here. It’s more easier to find in Shanghai. I got my black/bare ice coffee (Mei Shi Ka Fei) at Christien bakery.
I will talk more later. Btw, I am seriously thinking about wrote something like my memori