End of Decade Note

Today is last day of the decade. Much has happened this decade (as with any decade as people-and-things will change multiple times). The world has seen terrorism hit hard and we are still living under the cloud of terror. Much of the decade is war on terror with little success. Disasters strike with huge tsunami in Indonesia and big earthquake in Sichuan. On the other hand we have seen China propser with the spectacular Olympics and lots of advancements in technologies. We have seen the rise and fall of stocks, auto industry, bank industry, and seen unemployment pass 10%...
The world is changing.

In 2000, I hand edit HTML to do my blog now it gets easier. In 2000 I bought my LAST playstation game: Capcom vs SNK. That's it. No more games! They get too hard (and expensive) to play.

Personal note: I have changed jobs several times, mostly involuntarily due to lay off. I bought my first (and brand new) car at 2001 and seen it run and have problems and now traded-in and probaby don't have much timeline left. I have turned from single to married AND with kid! It's about time. This just need to be done in the decade of 20s, or at the 30s at the LATEST. I bought a home and have a life time of debt.

The next decade (and rest of my life) will be raising kid and maintain a living and the spotlight will be on the next generation.

The main character Kwok Jing in Condor Herores didn't get much attention in the Condor Heroes II, because the spotlight has gone to his (evil) brother's son.

In the next decade, I hope the world work hard to maintain peace and focus less on endless violence && I stay employed.

New Camcorder

I got one of these for my family for Christmas. The Flip Video Recorder.

It is a sleek video recorder slightly bigger than a typical digital camera. It makes much better videos than my (old) digital camera. It can record up to 2 hours. But yikes, it uses AA batteries? No charger? That means I need to go radio shack for rechargable batteries? Eew.

About buying camcorder, I don't want to fuss with little tapes, I want it to go straight to a computer. well nowaday there is a lot of choices for these now. And I don't want to pay a lot. This one just seems fun to own and easy to use...

Yes, easy interface, and it creates MP4 files. Sure, the program that comes with the Flip can view them.

Ok, MP3 is for music, so MP4 is for video... especially for streaming, the Flip is ideal for people who post things onto Facebook.

Let me open MP4 files by double clicking in Windows Explorer. RealPlayer comes up and say, [ding!] I can play this file if you pay me. Buy Real Player Plus. Come on. :(

Let me open it up in Windows Media Player. It simply can't play. MP4 is in the Files formats that are not supported list. Ok, I am not going to pay a lot for a muffler, nor viewing video files.

Fortunately I go to download.com and got some Codec pack and now Windows Media Player can play it.

Terrorist and Pope attack

Oh my, a plane heading to Detroit almost got blown up by a Nigerian young man on Christmas. Waita minute I thought we only have Iraq and Afganistan to worry about. Just what is on this young man's mind? What purpose is there to blow himself up along with 300 innocent people? This is the horror of terrorism. This man act on his own? I think not. Gotta be controlled by something greater, perhaps al Qaeda. Look, young man (kid), they USED you. They push you out like I push out a pawn out e2-e4.

Sure, Obama (and everyone) wants a report on why he got passed security. Just like your product manager wants to know why a certain bug is released in your code. Evil people know how to beat the system. There are just too many bags to search and scan.

It is a blessing that America hasn't been attacked since 911. Yikes, we just revealed to al Qaeda that our security system is vunlnerable!

Another news: the Pope got knocked over by a woman in red jacket! She just jumped over and knock him down. Yes, there are bishops and securities around him he still got pulled down. I wish the Pope actually knows some kung fu and fended off the attack. If one of the security able to defend the Pope with a fast reacting dragon punch or something he would be instant celebrity.

I'm glad the Pope is doing fine, but did he say something about it during his Christmas Service, like "don't worry folks I am fine." I don't think so because otherwise I would hear that in the news. Popes (and most preachers) tend to just read off prepared scripts.

On OS

Windows 7's ads are everywhere: billboard, buses, etc, featuring common people that says something like "I want it easier, and I got it." Trying to approach the regular people here, instead of techical jargons like yea you can do 64bit now.

Why bother all that advertising? PC users basically have no choice in the OS. If you buy a computer, chances are you will get Windows 7 already installed. I can't specify hey I WANT Windows 3.1 or I WANT Windows 95, probably still possible to get a Windows XP machine now.

But there is no good reason to shell out hundreds to upgrade your Windows XP to Windows 7 either. Keep using that old computer with old OS until you need a new computer.

Don't worry Windows I WILL be your customer, although I avoid to pay you as long as I can. I can't stand the one-mouse button Apple even if it is pretty. I can't stand an interface where I can't open 2 programs side-by-side. I also can't stand "Delete" meaning backspace and NO way to actually delete the way it SHOULD be doing: the mouse pointer stays and delete words after it.

I am not going through pain of making Linux work either. No one has time for that. Basic things should start working right away (like mouse moving, monitor not burning, printer driver working) when I turn on the computer and I am not hunting through HOW-TOs.

Saab dies

Here is a news item about death of Saab.

I haven't seen a Saab on the road for so long, wondering what happened to it. Oh it was sold to GM and then GM lets it die? I didn't even know GM has it.
Um, I think GM can barely handles its own line of cars why bother dealing with Saab? Saturn was designed to be new hope for GM alas it didn't catch on.

To win, you just need one good car. I've heard good praise about the Malibu, focus on that one then, market it a lot! Lines and lines of worthless cars is just bad business.

My fellow Americans, mediocrocy just doesn't cut it!

Hybrid Cars

I predict one day all cars would be hybrid and gas cars will be a thing in the past. The world's fuel supply is depleting fast; fuel-efficient car is the way of the future. Gas car will be gone like dot matrix printers.
However, I am not so sure if everyone will park in their garage with their cars plug into wall outlet like you would with your electric toothbrush. I can't forsee that happening yet.

The Prius is cool looking, but it is a few thousands more than the size-comparable Corolla. How many tanks to fuel to make up that? You may have sold your car already before you have some savings. Even for environment's sake many people won't shell out that money to buy a environmental friendly car.

Another car I looked at is the Honda Insight. Good looking and good price! But YIKES what the heck is up with the rear seat? If you are above 5'7" you won't be so comfortable, probably as little room as the Beetle. Come on (E.)Honda, I expect you can do better than that!

Another one is the Chevy Volt. This is the opportunity for Americans to buy American if this is done right. Ok, it isn't even launched yet. I saw some concept pics, yikes it is ugly, looking almost like a 60s muscle car. Whoa, $7500 tax credit? STILL will cost you $32,500. and I thought the Prius was just a tad more expensive than what I want to pay. This is bound to fail, Chevy.

Here is what people want: a great eco-friendly car, reasonably sized, cool-looking design and reasonably priced. The Prius is almost there. The price must come down a bit more in order for a economy booming car-change revolution to take place. Unfortunately, I haven't seen an American car making this happening.

If ink jet printers and laser printers are a few hundred dollars more than the noisy dot matrix printers, we would still be hearing the long-time-no-hear sound of the dot matrix, or the even more noisy daisy wheel.

Wacky C#: the ?? operator

The "??" is an operator. Yuck. Ugly syntax. What is in the mind of the designers??
See here for details.

Sure it doesn't encourage readable code. It IS ok to use an if statement for more readable code, or use the good old "?:". I can comprehend 1 question mark, but not multiple.

You decide which is more readable
1. foo ?? bar
2. (foo == null) ? bar : foo
3. (foo != null) ? foo : bar

"var" ought to stay in Javacript and Pascal

Strongly typed language is an evolution step forward. Ok, in reality, there is only ONE type: bits and bytes. See, it is abstraction that makes programming easier. In there beginning there are number type, then string type aand of course now structs and all sorts of classes that built upon strong types.

Perhaps a decade ago there is COM in Microsoft thing and all these variant types, types are no longer so explicit. Yuck.

Look at this thing in C#. The implicit variable declaration var. C# stole this from javascript! Look, javascript is a script, intended just to add some power to plain o HTML. It is ok to have weaker types there.

"var" is of course the variable declaration section of Pascal. VB stole so many things from Pascal.
For example, Dim i as integer looks just like var i: integer?

I see 0 advantage of the "var".

C# has even more fun construct: the lambda.

Documentation: Javadoc vs MSDN

Javadoc was the revolutionary documentation tool that Sun themselves used to generate documentation for its API. Brilliant idea of the comment /** */ that anybody can use to generate their own documentation.

Ok, later on that annotation thing @ got into java and alas annotation has got into the language and (polluted the simplicity of Java since 1.5.

On the Microsoft programming world there is MSDN. Sure MSDN, contains a lot of info but it is inferior compared to javadoc in presentation quality. Javadoc is so clear about what's in a package, and what are the fields, methods of a particular class.
MSDN has that too but isn't so clearly layed out. (Javadoc wins)

Most of MSDN has sample code too, but yikes, sometimes those are too long and too complex to demonstrate a concept, sometimes the sample code is incomplete, formatted incorrectly and just too big too wild.

Ok, java API lacks sample code, but you can almost google any Java thing in question for an example.

When Microsoft copies Java into C# how come it doesn't copy this useful feature?

* * *

Waita minute, C# actually can generate documentation, but not good old HTML but XML.
(Did I say how much I hate XML?)

Here is the MSDN documentation. Some of the links on this page are BROKEN!
Look for /doc for documentation generation.

The world's biggest software monopoly can't even maintain its own documentations.

杯水車薪

Here is a good use of "杯水車薪", in a news item about the climate summit. Who is going to give up profit for good of mankind? Will such meetings ever accomplish anything. Even if the president signs something is it really going to help the environment?

A carload is on fire, and you got 1 cup of water.

The world can only be saved if people are financially motivated to reduce CO₂. How? reward industry with $ for improvement? If I know I would be the speaker a the conference.

I live near a park and in there. Once upon a time, there was a recycle bin. I dump used plastic bottles in there. Whoa! One day it is gone! I am now forced to dump it as regular trash. Who stole it?! Should I ask Daley to give the park another one?

My (new) workplace has such bins, but whoa! people put regular trash in there too! HOW DARE. If I am the office manager I FIRE anyone who misuses recycle bins.

Want to attend Harvard?

I saw this ad on the CTA:



That lady in traditional clothing seems to be learning computer graphics on C++. That cout thing... that matrix, and the wording that says "digital media art."

cout is a unique beast of C++. No other languages have this << pipe thing. printf of C makes a comeback in the latest Java.
cout writes to the console. The computer class this lady is taking is a toy class that teaches you basic things but charges you hefty tuition. Graphics apps ought to jump out of that console.... In a semester or two, your school (even Harvard) isn't going to teach you some Windows API or Unix graphical environment API to draw cool things, but merely teach you some theories. Matrices is such important tool for computer graphics.

To most people, computer graphics means rocking great things you see in movies. Schools in a semester or two can't teach you that. It can teach you foundations such as turning 3D into 2D and that mathematics is too tough for most people. Bezier curves, I am sure, will scare the daylight out of most people.

Another meaning of computer graphics is able to tweak pictures with difficult-to-use programs such as Photoshop. I suppose the guys who tweak with photoshop does not need to know the math behind Bezier curves.

So is it a rewarding experience to take a class or two in software engineering and computer graphics? yes.

Are you going to find computer graphics work just by knowledge obtained in the classes? no.

Computer graphics work (there are almost non-existent) means very good art skills and able to use those that professional graphics memory-hog software. It means ultra smart programmers who are much better than the average guy doing database and simple web programming.

That matrix stuff are very interesting math topics, however, modern computer graphics engines such as OpenGL actually does all that work for you and your less math capable classmates don't have to know any of that.