Recycled Writing Instruments

Yesterday at a office product store, I was impressed to see pens made from recycled bottles. Now that's another good way to re-use some of that garbage. A while ago I also saw some pencils made directly from recycled newspapers. All good.

I got several other ideas to reduce garbage.

1. Don't lose it
Ok kids, a pen contains some very concentrated ink. It is an EXCELLENT invention. Imagine you have to write with feather-ink pens like Thomas Jefferson. You have to write a lot to use up the ink of just one pen. Theoretically a pack of 10 pens can be used for a very long time... Try not to lose 1 pen a day... and use a brand in which the inks actually come out (so you don't have to throw-and-curse it when you most need it.

2. Mechanical pencil instead of pencil
Mechanical pencil is also some excellent invention. Buy one and all you need is add additional lead and no sharpening. Young kids should probably stick with pencils first though... Someone should invent a BETTER eraser than the traditional worthless red eraser for the regular pencil. If you need pencil (if ever), use a mechanical one...

Kids of the future... will they ever need pens in college? or use some stylus on some hard-to-imagine future Touch Pad machines? But nothing beats the flipping of papers in going over your notes... In my college days, I can't even afford a computer. I go to the labs.

I am glad to see many people have how-to-reduce-garbage in mind. Also, the recent trend in reduced plastic in plastic water bottles is good. how about NO plastic at all? Boil that water... use a faucet filter... or buy a gallon instead of 12 oz bottles.

The Hostile Party Goer for the Math Professor

A friend forwarded me an excellent essay about math that I can't agree more.

What does that have to do with mathematics education? Well, when I occasionally meet people at parties who learn that I am a mathematician and professor, they sometimes show a bit of repressed hostility. One man once said something to me like, "You know, I had to memorize the quadratic formula in school and I've never once done anything with it. I've since forgotten it. What a waste. Have YOU ever had to use it aside from teaching it?"

What are you going to say to this hostile party goer?

I'm going to say, "well you have never done anything with it cause people already done a lot with it and you just don't know."

The quadratic formula opens up a new chapter in mathematics... it opens up a new chapter in human civilization!

Without the quadratic formula you can't solve quadratic equations if you can't factor the quadratic involved (and civilization is just stuck then). Quadratic equations do show up in real science, a simple example being Newtonian mechanics... d=v_it+(1/2)a t². Ancient mathematicians challenge each other about whether solutions exist or not.... quadratic formula enabled math to go forward beyond solving the simplest equations. It opens up branches of mathematics involving (brave new world of) complex numbers.

Please do not belittle any academic people, especially at parties.

And I am not going to ask the professor the glorious details of his research of algebraic topology either.

A meaningful Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS! The world suddenly filled with joy as people celebrate Christmas.. it is time where shopping malls are filled even most shoppings can be done online. Some people party like crazy, some even drink a lot and drive and die. Yes Christmas is important as it fuels the economy. Perhaps we should take a look at Christmas again... and have a more meaningful Christmas.

If you believe in Jesus... Look, Jesus never asked you to celebrate Christmas or exchange presents. Even the (mysterious) wise men didn't come every year. His 12 disciples never bother to buy Jesus anything. Also, you better know that the day of Jesus's birthday is actually not specified in the Bible and there is no Santa or Christmas tree either. How I wish the angels come sing again.
If you don't believe in Jesus... you are celebrating the birthday of a fictitious person? Do you want to celebrate birthday of Mickey Mouse also?

Good ways to spend Christmas
Christmas is a great reason to get together with your family. Go ahead, gather at grandpa/grandma's place.
Take a family picture.
Help the needy. Donate a few cans for food drive. Donate to charity.

Bad ways to celebrate Christmas
Spend a tremendous amount of money on gifts to people who already have everything
Meaningless loud party with not-so important people

Christmas suddenly puts the world in JOYOUS mode to temporarily relief from news violence happening everyday in the world. "Peace on Earth" filled Christmas hymns (comes from Luke 2:14), but unfortunately is far from reality.

Happy New Year.

Blog stats

I noticed blogspot now offers a statistics gadget to show how many visitors. (I put it in right column, bottom). Wow I didn't know I have that many. Well those are probably web spiders and stuff, not real people.

How do you do your OWN website statistics? Of course nowadays everyone uses google analytics.
One way is filters. I learned about filters the hard way, through humiliation from a job interview, "so you never used or heard of filters?"

A for Apple, B for ball...

Many Children books attempt two goals: teach the alphabet and numbers.
A for Apple, B for Ball, etc, and 1-2-3.

Numbers are abstractions. Children first need to associate something with first... like 1 apple, 2 apples... before they can deal with the numbers 1 and 2.

Now the alphabets... many books must give an example starting with each letter. A for Apple, B for Ball. I don't understand this "for" here. This "for" means, "here is an example".
Sure, everyone can come up with a simple word for each letter, except X.

X... what is a good example?

Gee, besides Xylophone or X-Ray, it is hard to come up with anything else.

X-Ray is too difficult concept for kids?

Xylophone... long word for kids, little-used instrument. How come this instrument doesn't achieve the status of a piano that kids flock to take lessons? This is exactly the same percussion concept. 4 notes at a time sounds better than 2 I guess.

Dr. Seuss dominated the Children book market. But I have to say.. I DON'T LIKE THE WACKY STORIES.

These are wacky rhymes, not even fable stories, these wacky books are Thing 1, Thing 2,... Thing N

7 Programming Languages on the rise

Infoworld wrote an article on 7 Programming Languages on the Rise. (It is annoying to click through the pages, click on the print link for a 1 page view)

Let me talk about each one too.

1. Python.
I blogged about this language before.
A first look: it is a lot like C with indentation instead of braces, with read-eval-print interactive mode.
I did not know it is big in the science and engineering.

2. Ruby
People are crazy about this gem... Remember Ruby itself is not big deal but Ruby + Rail is... I think its biggest charm is to generate some skeleton code for you. But why can't you generate your own and have to learn a new language? Does it simplify MVC or is it MVC with your favorite Java framework a bit too difficult? It also lets you do many magical things with few lines. It is a bit of a learning curve if you ask me. I am willing to learn (if you hire me to do Ruby) I wish I can share your enthusiasm.

3. MATLAB
For statistic people who needs to analyze large amount of data, Excel doesn't cut it. I know nothing about MATLAB

4. Javascript
Of course this one is one the rise! AJAX everywhere. Javascript is here to stay. Amazing what people are already doing with it. This is the true cross platform language.

5. R. I have seen R (and S-PLUS) in my computer science class!
ANOTHER LISP like read-eval-print thing.

6. Erlang. Not sure what this is at all.
Another functional language... eew this one looks hard

7. Cobol
You've gotta be kidding? Probably not good to invest in such poorly constructed language.

So Java and C# are not on the rise? Microsoft keeps rolling out new .NET versions. Java has programmers needing to update themselves for a decade+.

All these so-called rising language (besides Cobol) seem to belong to functional languages. Read-Eval-Print.. defining functions and expressions on the fly. People LOVE to write un-named lambda functions on the fly. Naming it doesn't hurt, ok?

Sure, each language has its unique syntax and twists, most languages try to create their own C-descended language + functional features + more....

Groovy/Grails should be on this list?

Of all the languages here, Java remains my favorite general language. I'll add Javascript for client side things for web apps.

But I am AGAINST JSTL, Custom tags. I am not super comfortable with annotations.

I am against wacky syntax invading programming language like LINQ.

All boils down to... statements, conditions, loops, calling methods from libraries.

To do MVC easier, we don't need new languages but some effective tools to generate skeleton codes.
About analyzing huge amount of data... yea, you need tools specific for that such as MATLAB.

Go ahead, pick and choose your favorite language for your work.

...Before You Die

I saw a few book titles with "...before you die." Such as "1000 Places to See Before You Die", and "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die". A few days ago, I saw 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die..

You get 1 or 2 game description on each page... from classics such as Pac Man to modern day beautiful games. Half a page isn't enough to mention the great fun of certain great games (such as the Street Fighters).

To go to 1001 places, sure you can buy some plane tickets, 1001 movies to see... sure someone has those DVD or online. But how do you play some old games? Yes there is the awesome MAME for old arcades classics.

But isn't the "before you die" title a bit depressing?

Sure, go to great places, taste great foods, see great movies, play great games. THEN YOU DIE.

Imagine how fun it is to be at the 1000th great place, great dish, and great video game, knowing that you will die after it.

Why can't the titles be simply "1001 Great Places To See", "1001 Great Movies to See", and "1001 Great Video Games?" Yes, I'd like to hide the "Before you die" part. Why mention death?

Before you die... figure out your meaning of life.

Fed up with some incomplete tutorials

There are good people who put good Spring tutorials on the web. But there are also some who only gives incomplete snippets. Every tutorial and book out there should give complete, runnable examples (that I can drop in my webapp folder in tomcat and see it run) But many don't.

If no things for me to run and see it working, it is not good enough.

I guess I need to write my own, BETTER THAN ALL, easy-to-understand, runnable tutorials for the benefits of struggling programmer-mankind. Screw anyone who tells me "there are many out there!" But none of them are mine, none of them as good. If you are going to do it right gotta do it yourself.

中國哲學書電子化

Chinese classics with optional English translation in here.

Children should RECITE this.

Full text of Confucious and much more are here too. Great stuff.

Anti-Christmas Billboard

A billboard sign saying "You KNOW it's a myth". Details here.

If you have to put up a billboard if you don't believe in anything... you will need a lot of billboards. Opinion: there is no need for such billboards... and there is no need to vandalize those billboards either.

Jesus never says anything about celebrating his birthday, and no birthday party was ever mentioned for 33 years of his life on earth. Even the day Dec 25 wasn't specified.

Gift tradition? It is probably from the wise men who visited, but they didn't visit every year. Also it is more blessed to give than to receive.

Don't like Christmas? just don't celebrate.

Like Christmas? KNOW that things like Christmas tree, Santa, Red nose Reindeer are not in the Bible. Read glorious details in Luke chapter 1 and 2.

Another disturbing story

There is an Ugly Betty actor hacking his own mom to death with a samurai sword. Disturbing, ugly story here.

The guy obviously is mentally disturbed and imagined his mom has the devil within.

And this is not the first time I read stories about family killing like this... and the guy has a Bible in his hand.

READ that Bible, how does Jesus deal with the devil? He simply tell him go away. He did NOT hack Peter when Peter suggested Jesus not to go on the cross. Ooh, Satan was there. (See Matthew 16:21-23)
Look, dealing with the devil is God's job, not yours.

The Bible is SUPPOSED to be able to calm the baddest criminal. How unfortunate is this story.

I hope it is not the "over reading" of the Bible that caused the actor's mental disturbance.

Ant vs Maven

Ant is "Another Neat Tool" that lets you do builds by writing instructions in XML. Need to compile using javac? use <javac>. Need to make make a jar? Use the <jar> task. You define "targets" to run and dependencies... It is neat if you don't mind crafting XML. Ant scripts are usually quite followable. Go head, spend a few minutes with ANT for fun. EVERY java programmer should know a thing or two about ANT.

Waita minute... just why am I wrapping commands with tags? Ok, here is why. ANT is cross platform and batch file stinks.. it is hard to make targets and stuff in a batch file.

Maven is the newer XML based tool that lets you do builds and much more. It is a new approach... you don't follow Maven scripts like an ANT script. Go ahead, spend 5 minutes with Maven.
Every java programmer should also know a thing or two about Maven also.

The following is instant-turn-off, you want me to type WHAT?

mvn archetype:generate -DgroupId=com.mycompany.app -DartifactId=my-app
 -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-quickstart -DinteractiveMode=false

Ooh, it generates a pom.xml for me and even some tests. Test Driven aficionados would instantly fall in love with it.

The big feature of Maven is dependencies handling. Most programs nowadays are not all made by your home grown parts... You may have the Log4J component, you may have Struts, Spring, Hibernate. Normally you would need to download all that stuff and jam your classpath with all those dozens of jars to build. With Maven, it will download those jars for you in the repository.
Your pom.xml does not contain the nuts and bolts of the command to compile your stuff and make the jar... they are behind the scene.

Deadly artillery attack in Korea is worrisome

US newspaper headline is about things such as holiday travel or about the Popes comment on condoms. These are not as worrisome as news about North Korea striking South Korea resulting deaths.

Look, this is "the first direct artillery attack on South Korean territory since the Korean War ended in an armistice, not a formal peace treaty" in the 1950s. Sadly, many Americans who barely studies any history only know Korea has great phones and great spicy dishes. That bloody conflict involved North Korea and the Chinese communists vs America + United Nations resulted in stalemate with millions dead.

Strong reliation will result in more deads and may snowball into much larger conflict.
No reliation may result in more aggression.

Repeating the Korea War is just going to cause more deaths, stay out America!
Some say the goal of the attack is to make them North Korea louder at the bargain table.

Javascript for Syntax Highlighting

Try this for beautiful syntax highlighter written in javascript.
Insert your code in a <pre> tag and it will be pretty.

<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="http://syntaxhighlighter.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Styles/SyntaxHighlighter.css"></link>


<pre name="code" class="java">
public class Fun {

public static void main(String arg[]) {
System.out.println("Hello Beautiful World\n");
}

}
</pre>
<script language="javascript" src="http://syntaxhighlighter.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Scripts/shCore.js"></script>
<script language="javascript" src="http://syntaxhighlighter.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Scripts/shBrushJava.js"></script>
<script language="javascript" src="http://syntaxhighlighter.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Scripts/shBrushXml.js"></script>
<script language="javascript">
dp.SyntaxHighlighter.ClipboardSwf = 'http://syntaxhighlighter.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Scripts/clipboard.swf';
dp.SyntaxHighlighter.HighlightAll('code');
</script>

On Latin

Google Translate now offers an exotic language in translation... Latin!

This language is now mostly dead... Only the ultra educated scholars can still speak fluently with this once-Europe-dominated language. Modern European languages are derived from it.. see this chart for instance . This is almost like HTML is derived from SGML.

Even the number of alphabets is not always the same... in the real old days, there was no W, Y and Z! and there was no lowercase!

Latin is not entirely obsolete... They are in your pennies: E pluribus unum. Mathematicians like Q.E.D at the end of their proof.

Some other Latin abbreviations lurking in English:
i.e. means "in other words"
e.g means "for example"

Also, is this a TYPO engraved in stone here in the Civic Opera Hovse in Chicago? No, it is intended, it just tries to be classic. There was... simply no W. (English speakers call this double-u, Spanish and French call it the double-v, which makes more sense. See, we don't even know what to call "w")

Why bother learning Latin? Pharmacy students wannabes flock to Latin classes in high school as they believe this will help their vocabulary. I wonder if that actually help them at all. I prefer learning languages that are still in wide use.

Languages are evolving... in a slower pace than a typical lifetime.

Genius Chinese 16-year-old chess player

This news captured my attention. (English equivalent: here). A 16 year old Chinese girl vs a world champion and just lost 1 game out of 6 (and able to draw 5 games). Amazing amazing.

I also discovered the New York Times chess blog. There is a java chess viewer there! Good stuff! It is impossible for me to appreciate a sequence like this: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6... I need pictures.

SO WHAT if you are good at chess? Think it is just some useless mental gladiatorship?

Hmm, SO WHAT if you can dunk a basketball for 2 points or push away all the heavyweight guys and reach the touchdown line? So what if you can swing a piece of metal and put a ball into 18 holes with fewer strokes than others?

Just do the sports and play the games you enjoy.

No man zone

News says teachers are earning poor grades.

So here we are, in a country full of poor performing students and teachers, in a poor economy. The future of this country just seems depressingly hopeless.

How come there are so few male teachers? Look at that picture: 100% ladies.


Look at a classroom of math, computer science, electricial engineering or the geekiest subject you can think of, you are likely to find a few female students. How come so few men go to education? Yes, it doesn't pay so well, and gosh and lot of paperwork. Unfortunately I am not capable enough to be one (not enough tough-kid-dealing-with-skills is one reason), but there are got to be more capable men out there.

Parents must instill the idea to the kids that one needs an education. Teach your kids what you know is just a start... they will probably need more than what you know to survive in the future world. Don't just rely on the poor performing teachers!

To deal with poor performing teacher-to-be students... come on, let's raise the bar. Simply don't let them graduate if they don't pass.

Hibernate revisited

JDBC is old school and Object Relation Mapping is mainstream (and has been around for years). ORM tries to abstract tried-and-true SQL and provides objects. Theoretically you can just change from Oracle to SQLserver just by tweaking the config file and no more dealing with different SQL syntax. ORM usually means Hibernate. Anything other than Hibernate such as Toplink gets you nowhere. Java programmers today need to list Spring/Hibernate on their resume unless you run your own shop. I previously read about it and now I have some time to look into more detail... to get something simple running.

So people is not happy with the simple JDBC approach because there are some boilerplate code to open and close connections and don't like hardcoding query strings. They don't want to transfer columns into their own value objects and demands more object wrappers.

So how do your objects know about columns of your table? You provide the mapping! (1. in xml or 2. annotation)
You have to include many jars in your classpath to make it compile happily.

It comes with 2 flavors of querying: the Criteria, and HQL. To prevent a few lines of boilerplate code, you'll need to learn a new query language.

If logging is on, you will see what query, insert, update statements that it is doing. For insert, update statments it gives you lots of question marks! That's PreparedStatements in action. But there is no obvious way to see exactly what it is inserting or updating.

You know internally that it is a wrapper to JDBC and your goal is to make Hibernate crank out statements that you would use

directly in JDBC.

I fail to share the enthusiasm.... long learning curve to get something straight forward. There should be tools that generate all that mapping, POJOs for me, perhaps it would becomes useful. No one should be hacking XML or error-prone annotation by hand.

Eco-friendly suggestions for Whole Foods

Whole Foods is definitely THE most successful grocery store around even items there are more expensive. Many people concern the evil aspects of genetically engineered food... even though they have consumed A LOT already.

Organic food is just one thing. If your local grocery store also sell organic food, is it going to be as big business as Whole Food? Probably not. It takes excellent decorations to attract customers... that really is an important factor of a successful business.

I like the eco-friendly theme in almost everything they have. The tables are made of bamboo, paper bags over plastic bags, and recycle bins everywhere.

But I saw also these enemies of environment: single-use chopsticks and individually wrapped utensils. Sure, individually wrapped utensils are cleaner, but I don't mind using those that are not individually wrapped... that amount of plastic wasted is huge.

Wooden single-use chopsticks used up a lot of woods... yes, there are some eco-friendlier options but they are not popular enough. Perhaps someone should made them in aluminum and you can toss them in same bin as cans? The world needs even more innovations to reduce garbage!

Here is one idea for Whole Food: reward-driven recycling.

Deposit recyclable items (cans, glass, etc) into vending machine... and rewards will be added to a smartcard for points... collect enough points to earn a discount.

Gaming New Era?

The Kinect is almost here. See News. I am sure it would be somewhat fun.

But it is also scary to me:

Using a 3-D camera, depth sensors and voice-recognition software, it recognizes your face, voice and gestures as you move around and talk, without requiring you to hold a controller or wear a headset.... It will even take a photo of you doing these things so you can post it on Facebook for everyone’s amusement.

A bit too powerful and intrusive.... SOMEBODY IS WATCHING ME. An evil programmer can spy on you if that game console connects to the internet.

Is it taking gaming to new era? or has it gone too far?

Emperor and Christianity

While browsing classics, I noted the great emperor Kangxi is a Christian and wrote a classic poem!

《基督死》

功成十字血成溪，百丈恩流分自西。
身列四衙半夜路，徒方三背兩番雞。
五千鞭撻寸膚裂，六尺懸垂二盜齊。
慘慟八垓驚九品，七言一畢萬靈啼。

For an excellent analysis, see here

Halloween... BOO!

The world needs reasons to party (and need to make some money to sell candies and partying items). It started as some All Saint Days and becomes a day of costume and trick-or-treating with a theme of horror. Great info here at wiki. Ah, the reason for wacky costumes is to camouflage yourself from actual evil spirits. In one old job, some co-workers full of mustache and beard give themselves a reason to wear a DRESS on Halloween.

Halloween also inspired many TWISTED minds filming twisted horror movies. Some colleagues sent some links of twisted videos to me. Though I am not too scared (no one actually got hack sawed apart) but I am sicked by twisted stuff conceived by some twisted minds.

About trick-or-treat... this is blackmail and parents encourage kids to do that? Ok ok it is... tradition. Let them dress up as something cute.

But I am not telling kids to actually eat candies from strangers.

Why isn't anyone thinking the "OtherWorld" on any day other than Halloween?

Look folks, there is positive and negative charge, ying and yang, matter and anti-matter, kickass programmers and dumbass programmers... good and evil.

World and Otherworld?

Go to the classics for name ideas

Congrats to the HK multi-millionaire who gets THREE new grandsons... from a surrogate mother.
News here. The father specifically wanted sons to inherit that big business. Ok, let's put aside moral debates of whether this is right or not right (legnthly heated debates if we go there)

I'd like to talk about the names: 智信、智仁、智勇. This comes right off of Chapter 1 of the Art of War, 孫子兵法, the 5 qualities of a general.

將者，智、信、仁、勇、嚴也

These are PERFECT names!

That's among the list of names I wanted to use for my son. But I only get less than lukewarm or even negative feedback when I say it out loud. The classics is source for excellent names. Unfortunately today's people are uneducated.

Ok, these kids will grow up to have EVERYTHING... except there is no mother. Will they ever attempt to look for their birth mother when they grow up?

Lost Classic

The classic 文理和合本 聖經 is here. I have never seen a paper copy.

For example, look at the beauty of Psalm 23 here... the use of "兮"

耶和華爲我牧、我不匱乏兮、
使我臥於草場、導我至憩息之水濱兮、
甦我之魂、爲己名導我於義路兮、
我雖經陰翳之谷、不虞遭害、因爾相偕、爾杖爾竿、用以慰我兮、
爾於敵前、爲我設筵、以膏沐我首、我杯盈溢兮、
恩寵慈愛、必隨我於畢生、我永居耶和華之室兮

維基文庫 Wikisource has a TON of classic stuff!

Slideshow creation: Microsoft vs Google

If you have a bunch of pictures to show off to a crowd, what do you do?
Sure you can do a Powerpoint, insert pictures and all sorts of animations and text to make it cool. It is a VERY time consuming to do so if you have more than a handful pics.

Much quicker is just run a program to works with a certain directory and create slide show automatically, preferably with music background.
Starting with Windows XP, Microsoft's photo viewer has basic slideshow ability. That one has very basic functionality, just image changing, no other effects, hard to even tweak how many seconds per picture.

Windows 7 is supposed to be much better in everything. Yes its slideshow viewer is much more sophisticated than XP! But the only problem is this: it doesn't let you sort by date created. The slideshow is in some order that I dont' even know what this is. Come on, I sort by Date Created, and hit the slideshow button in Explorer: FOLLOW IT!!! Your predecessor XP can do it, why not you!

There is also Windows Media Center thing that looks fancy but do wacky things that freezes my machine. Windows 7! Enough praise about you.

Sure go online to see what I can tweak? Some says Windows Power Toy, some says tweak registry. You just have to tweak registry, huh?

Enter Google Picassa, a fairly quick download and it does things right. It organizes your pics and can do slideshow easily. It even lets you tweak your pics. This is a great app to have.

Two reasons to get a new game console

OMG, there is now a Super Street Fighter IV. Long lost characters such as T.Hawk are now back, also there are SFIII chars whom I am not so familiar with. This would be a lot of modern punching kicking action! SFIII: what a disappointment, only ONE super? SFIII series should be skipped altogether.

Look at this game, what the 3rd Transformers movie SHOULD be: Transformers: War on Cybertron. Check out the videos... Omega Supreme is here! But look folks, transformers (especially Optimus Prime) primary weapon is not an AX! He only used it once in the cartoon. Let me see his signature gun/cannon! Transformers: drop the pretty girl, focus on the robots!

Games are fun if you have time to play and you have people to play with, with I don't have now.

Google AJAX playground

This is a fun playground. It is fairly easy to add translation, mapping and much more on your little websites! You can even learn a thing or two about Javascript. Google earth... I am impressed.

Mom's lesson and Pentagon bullets

Bullets were shot in the Pentagon, fortunately no one is killed, and no one seems to know what happened. Come on, this is the Pentagon, it should be the most secure place in the world? While it is hard to prevent a plane crash into it like 911, but at least there should be security camera and stuff that recorded surroundings to see what happened or even see who shot those bullets.

When I was a kid, my mom told me this: "don't ever throw anything out the window or do bad things! so many eyes are out there, somebody will know happen and catch you!"
This is a great lesson for kids, but unfortunately has a bit of distance from reality.
I assure my mom I won't throw things out the window and hit somebody.

Never mind solar panels on the White House, install more security cameras around the important buildings!

...for Dummies

I saw Differential Equations for Dummies at a local bookstore, a few steps from there I saw String Theory for Dummies.

Sure the Dummies book are humorous and actually have some very good information.

But look, Differential Equations IS NOT FOR DUMMIES. String Theory IS FOR THE EXTREME SMARTIES.
Differential Equations is for college students (who survived a couple semesters of calculus). String Theory is for some exceptional bright students who already have good understanding of classical and quantum physics and not afraid of multi-dimensions.

If you're really a dummy, stay out of these topics.

"A Reference For the Rest of Us" should be aimed at poorly written documents, such as the DOS manuals. But is ANYONE still using plain DOS?
I find it a bit of insulting to see Dummies titles for advanced topics (though the content is very good).

For a real differential equation book, gee, I can't even recommend one. Any advanced calculus text should have a section on that.... Differential equations come in when you deal with tough engineering problems and stuff, only the pros need it. For a famous $1 million unsolved differential equation, take a look at Navier-Stokes

For a gentle introduction to string theory, go to Brian Greene. But I have to admit I don't understand much of his work!
Most people will faint if they see professional mathematics involved.

John Machin's formula

Found an excellent article on the John Machin formula.


Most people merely list formulas without proof. Thanks to the author of that pdf!

239... is an odd number to be in a formula isn't it.

Revolt!

Now that's Revolt against tyranny.

But this is just a brief vent against the outrageous expensive parking fees. The guys (heroes) doing this may be caught, and penalized even more.

Google Autobots

Cars that drives themselves.
News here.

Which insurance company will accept these?

Are they absolutely sure they have all the "test case", such as boys rushing out to pick up their balls, potholes, etc.

Oh my, the autobots (or Stunticons) are almost here?!

I think the world does not need cars that drive themselves yet...

Java Web Services with Java6 SE

Web Service is the modern buzzword. Do you really need it? Classic answer is of course "depend on your business need." It is like some sort of Remote Procedure Call.. The idea is nothing new.

You may be daunted if you attempt to open a book or read on the web about this. There is a sea of SOAP, WSDL, libraries and XML madness to read about, and some resources may tell you to download additional SDK. It is changing so fast, what you are reading may be superseded by another thing. What used to be hard may now be easier.

The real problem is that some of the stuff you see don't compile, or that EXE that you are supposed to run is not even there?
You are out of luck if you don't have someone to ask.

Here is what I want to do: create a web service for fun, without NetBeans, Glassfish, without a specific IDE or a specific server. I prefer things done in pure Notepad and Tomcat as my server if needed.

Theoretically, Java 6 makes webservice easy. Just use annotation to mark a WebService and voila. See here for official tutorial. I have JDK1.6 SE downloaded and it has all the ingredients I need to build a simple web service.

Yea, I compiled that CircleFunctions WebService, and I used "wsgen" to generate the web service. and even without tomcat, that WSDL thing does show my webservice deployed locally.

Ok, how do I test it with a client? Boom, it tells you to use NetBeans, come on.

Here is another tutorial.

Oh, to write a client the service needs to be "wsimport" first. This thing would generate a bunch of classes including a "Service" class that you can get the "Port" so you can invoke the methods.

Opinion: THIS IS NOT EASY ENOUGH. Should be simply load it up and call like regular methods. (EJB2 is even more stupid in invoking methods, but that's an ugly past)

I'll let you experient with it to see if you can create a service and call it. Do you agree that such tutorials can be written a little bit more clearer, better with downloadable code? I am not doing web services with objects yet, will try when I get more time.

Another note, around a year ago, I attempted Axis2 with some success.

Coffee Cups

If you buy coffee-to-go, you typically get 3 delivery methods.
1. Cup delivered to you with coffee, creams added for you (McDonald's)
2. Cup delivered to you with coffee, you add cream yourself (Starbucks, Dunkin)
3. EMPTY cup, you walk over to the pots and pour your own coffee. (Corner Bakery, some BK)

I don't like empty cup given to me. Come on, I have to do that work myself? What is it to prevent me from taking my own cup to pour? or do a refill? (Ok, it doesn't look good to go to the police station for this)

For the sake of environmental friendless, if coffee places gives me a 10 cent discount if I bring my own cup, that should instantly bring you more publicity and business!

I don't need that paper sleeves... it is unneeded garbage.

Job opening emails

I get many of the following almost everyday:

Dear [My Name]

My name is [Indian Name] from [Very Generic Company Name], and my client is seeking for a Java Developer position in [Remote Town You Have Never Heard Of]. The duration is [Very Short Such as 3 months] and contact me if you have the following:

Mandatory skills
Spring/Hibernate: Expert level: DECADES of experience with it
WebService: Expert level: Decades of experience with it
Wacky various javascript frameworks: decades of experience with it.
We embrace Agile and so should you

Regards
[Indian Name again]
(800)123-4567
123 Obscure Rd
Remote Town, RT 12345
--------------------------------
Job market today
1. There are (almost) NO permanent positions, everybody just seeking temps.
2. and it is in remote little towns (not where you live)
3. Must stay current with tech. (How?*)
4. be ready to betray yourself to get hired such as say you embrace ____ even when you don't.

*I toyed idea of STARTING a company to get people updated with technology. You pay a small fee, and you get lectures of latest buzzwords and some hands-on classes. I pay an instructor $100, the students pay me $10... My cost is $100+x (where x is cost of operation) I need perhaps 15 students to become profitable!

McDonalds Food Decay Study

I find this story amusing.
Someone put burger and fries aside for a YEAR to study how it decays.

I hope this person isn't asking research money for this "study".

BUT LOOK at those pictures... but why are the position changed? Do you just play around with it everyday and observe its decay? If you really think there is little decay, I challenge you to eat it.

Everyone knows McDonalds is not the healthiest food in the world, nor taste better than many other burger places. But you have to admit this is some VERY successful business..

Java Creator left Oracle

Interesting reading:
Java Creator left Oracle.

Good luck to James Gosling, and I am not sure if Java is in good hands of Oracle.

But Java (in 1996) was such great thing... new programming language out of frustration and ugliness of C++.

But yikes, Java has grown some big and hairy. Come on, languages shouldn't need all the changes. May I say... things like annotations MESS UP the elegance of Java. I would even say templates (generics) are not needed. I don't buy a whole lot with a foreach loop either.

Unfortunately, Java itself is not useful enough.

One needs WebServices/Spring/Hibernate/crazy XMLs to find work if there is any out there.

Perhaps Microsoft wants to hire Gosling?

Lost soul seeking moral code

I have iGoogle News, and it pulls this article out. Why is this on my list of news? Those that should show up on this list should be something particularly important for the day.

So this gentleman is saying we should toss every moral ideas from religious text we have and embrace scientists such as Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur and Charles Darwin, because science can make people make progress.

Sure, I admire each of the scientists here.

He says, "Science, freedom and the pursuit of personal profit -- if we can learn to embrace these three ideas as ideals, an unlimited future awaits."

Sure, I agree. WE ALREADY embrace these ideas now, not in the future.

From reading this, I sense the author wants to seek moral rules... but can't find it, and embrace science instead.

Hmm, makes me wonder.. DO YOU KNOW ANY SCIENCE?

Science... tells you how things work. Scientists experimented and discovered (many, perhaps not yet all) rules within the world, such as things drop at 9.8 m/s^2.

It doesn't tell you moral: is it a right thing or wrong?

Moral is human collective wisdom... something passed from generations to generations.
I suggest the authors to pick up some classic text, such as those from Plato, Socrates, Aristotle to find out what ideas they have. Look BEYOND those religious text or classic Greek text.
Also look at eastern philosophy such as Confucius. Don't restrict yourself to any particular text.

Good news is: you do or do not have to agree with any of the great philosophers.
Discuss moral questions... to your professors. This is part of a great education.

Moral... is it right or wrong? There are white/black areas, and there are gray areas worthy of discussion. But science does not tell you moral.

Life Statistics

People compete and chart against each other even BEFORE you are born. That ultrasound... is the fetus of normal size? After the baby is born... how many percentile in circumference, length, weight? (How come no one is interested in the radius).
After a few months you get this survey: can your baby do this or that by certain time, such as lift head, turn over, crawl, sit, etc. We are bench marked since the beginning of life!

If the baby looks healthy, looks happy and intelligent, there is little to worry about. So what if some other baby can do other tasks earlier.

Your little survey say my kid has little problem solving skills? I beg to disagree. He may not be able to do it now, he may be able to do it better than that person writing the survey later.

I've heard some parents claim their kid can do fractions at 2. That's Amazing. Ok, I'll quiz that kid on the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus a month from now. Folks, there is no difference if you know the fractions or the Fundamental Theorem at 2.1 years old and when you are in 18, unless you can bring something MORE to the world, like Eistein breaking though classical Newtonian physics.

I try not to let fantastic kids stories or percentile statistics to bother me... until a few years from now. I will not strive to make his score high. But to HELP him understand things.

For those people can't help but look at the statistics. Let me tell you this: a certain percent will fail school, a certain percent will DIE because they drink-and-drive. A certain will DIE because of bad illness. A certain percent will make you a grandparent when they are in teenage.

Teaching is not Recession Proof

Headline says teaching is not recession proof. Oh, you go to teaching because of job security?

Waita minute, you go to teaching because you want a job, and not because you want to teach, make a difference, impact the new generation? That needs to be fixed first.

It IS unfortunate that teachers can't find jobs... got to wait til somebody die or retire.

Sigh, where are the jobs?

I suggest the person in that CNN story to team up with some friends with some money to open up a daycare. It is still teaching.
how about learn something so you can give private lessons: like Karate, violin, piano.
How about work for things like Kaplan for tutoring someone with ACT, SAT, etc.

Don't get stuck.

Waita minute teacher, "kinda stuck" ain't no standard English? I demand more from teachers. :)

Frozen Dinners

Americans like frozen dinners for lunch. Look at them: small plate, cold, frozen, unlively. But the amazing power of microwave... at least 5 minutes of it... give it LIFE! Their buyers happily chow it down.

Do they taste good? Probably won't be. But better than nothing.

But it is probably better than that expensive, high-calorie, isn't-so-good-either burger/fries/drinks at the fast food restaurant.

What's so frustrating about frozen dinner is that they take up precious time in the microwave when they are most needed... in the lunch hour. After 5 MINUTES of waiting, some guys dare to stir it around with the fork, boom close the door again for additional 2 more minutes.

We need a Constitutional Amendment! These guys SHOULD GO TO THE END OF THE QUEUE.

It is better to cook yourself than eat those pathetic frozen stuff. I hope you can find time to the supermarket and learn a recipe or two. Bring lunch. Spend 2.5 minutes a the microwave only AND DON'T stir your stuff then SLAM THE DOOR again for more time.

Alternatively, eat out. Don't block the microwave.

The world needs more of: affordable restaurants with good food, low price, low calorie.

More math books from Danica McKellar

I am delighted to see another book by Danica Mckellar, Hot X: Algebra Exposed", with somewhat a provocative title.

Full of flowers and girl-talks, this book will be fun for high school students. Instead of x and y, how about some flowers and stuff! Way to go Danica! I want your autograph :)

REALLY, girls (AND boys), that high school algebra is not that hard. Why do schools require you to learn this stuff? It adds your problem solving ability! With a little algebra, you can solve a lot more problems!

To me, the climax of Algebra is the quadratic formula... whoa, without it, we can't do much beyond baby equations. It opens door to the imaginary world (with a negative discriminant)

Ok, what IS an algebra anyway? chances are: your high school teacher may not be able to give you a very good answer. Dealing with unknowns such as x and y? Well, an algebra is a study of operations and its operands (Gee, I can't even give you a very good definition either)

In your math life, you just don't deal with numbers! You may deal with other things that are composed of numbers, such as matrix, and the rules may change. A × B is not B × A in the matrix operations.

Besides an autograph, I'd like to ask Danica, how many more books do you want to write? A teenage girl's guide to calculus would be very interesting. Danica, how about host a TV show about math, call it More Wonder Years. I will watch and record every episode!

Bankrupt Blockbuster

I KNEW it was coming... Blockbuster preparing to file bankruptcy.

Netflix doesn't need a store.

You can go to the public library to borrow a movie for free.

People no longer rent game cartridges, they play online.

Sorry, the changing of how people do things driving old stuff out of business.

"Be Kind, Rewind"

Actual Job Email I got

Hello Joseph Mak,

This email is in response to your resume posted on CareerBuilder

This is regarding a position for Java Developer with our direct client located in Chicago, IL Please review the following details and let me know if this is something that you would be interested in. Kindly send us a copy of your updated resume

I appreciate your interest in _[Company Name deleted]__ and we look forward to partnering with you.

Job Description:



Job Title : Java Developer

Duration : 3-6 Months


Basically it’s a Java Developer

Must be a U.S Citizen

Must have excellent communication skills.

Street Fighter vs Tekken

Oh my, Street Fighter vs Tekken is coming!
Video

Street Fighters fought with many other things: XMen, Marvel, Capcom, and SNK... and then finally go to Tekken. Delicious graphics, still Haouken, Dragon Punch and Hurricane? I hope Ryu gets some new moves.

Nope, I still haven't played SF4 yet.

Mourning for Victims in the Manila bus seige

I mourn the deaths and severe injuries of the victims in the Manila bus seige incident.
The Phillipines police appeared incompetent and failed to even acknowledge that initally.

These police guys should learn a thing or two from "Speed", one of the best movies I've seen.

You just don't anger a mad man with an M16. The police dare to arrest the guy's brother and let him watch it on Live TV.
You NEGOTIATE with him.

For those who lost jobs and face other bad circumstances... yes you are unfortunate, but please don't drag innocent people with you.
Find the guy who fired you instead (that's the Americans problem solving technique)

If you try to hijack something... chances are: you will DIE and your demands won't be met, although you may be able to drag a few innocents with you.

Email and Wristwatch

News says college freshmen think email is too slow and no need for wristwatches.

How time has changed. When *I* was in college there wasn't cell phones.

But, look, college "kids", you are PAYING for text messages. Your daddy and mommy did not have to pay for emails. Perhaps they also like my favorite email client elm

You twitch your thumbs too hard, while your parents simply type on the keyboard.

Text message only when needed, such as saying "I'm in a meeting, see you in 5 min", or sending 911 when you see a crime scene.

I do not see need to send text a lot, your Miss Right candidate may enjoy your texts (or block them altogether)

Wristwatch... I stopped wearing years ago. Cellphone-as-a-clock works for me. Heck, I don't even have a CLOCK in the living room. Cellphones though can act as simple calculator will never replace the real thing.

70% Does Not Understand the Equal Sign

Another stab at American math education: 70pc US students don't understand the equal sign in math: Study.
First I want to stab at the title. No one ever uses "pc" to stand for percent in math. How about using the percent sign. Ah, perhaps the % don't work well in an URL, then spell it out! or say 7 out of 10.

So given the following question (which is stupidly phrased): 4+3+2=()+2. The student will take the equal sign as the "evaluate" operation and go 4+3+2=(9)+2 and then say the answer is 11.

Look, don't blame on the kids yet. Blame on the QUESTION. Did you make it clear for the kids to find out what should go inside the blank?

The article says

Meanwhile, they suggest that parents help the students and teachers "read professional journals, become informed about the problem and modify their instruction."

You've got to be kidding. Not many parents are capable to read any professional math. I definitely can't.

To get people learn math: YOU HAVE GOT TO ATTACH MEANINGS. The equal sign, greater than and less than sign fortuntately has a pictorial meaning.
Think a SCALE. Both sides are equal gives you a symbolic =, symbolizing balance. The left is greater? Use the symbol >. The right hand side is greater? Use the symbol <. Simple. Tell the students.

Don't just do the math. Understand the meanings.

The fact that you move variables from LHS to RHS is because you are doing the opposite operation on both sides (to cancel a certain operation), retaining the equality.
Do you know it or blindly do it?
Note: Multiply by -1 on both sides of an inequality, however, would switch the arrow direction.
In real life, problems involving inequalities just don't show up often.

Do calculus students blindly apply the formulas without even understanding what the derivative or integral is? Learn the meanings FIRST.

Ok, back to the study, does it mean 70% Americans don't know the equal sign even when they become adults? I don't think so, what is it that makes them enlightened?

Editing in Unix

People have been debating for DECADES for the better editor on Unix: vi or Emacs?
WYSIWYG is for losers. In Unix we deal with text.

vi has arcane and strange commands, but users love it. The fact that they can use their cursors without leaving the home keys already give them endless praise. (Hitting Esc to the command mode although requires going out of the home keys never bothers anyone).

Emacs is a bit more intuitive but still wacky. Experts do all sorts of LISP things to tweak Emacs the way they want it.

NO other innovation is ever needed, after decades and decades. vi and Emacs are here to stay.

Perhaps you like Emacs more? Waita minute, emacs may not be installed on your system. But vi will always be there. So if you work in Unix, you need to learn vi. Face it.

Here is how to search in Emacs: Ctrl-S. Intuitive enough for me.
Here is how to search in vi: forward slash /, huh?

Let's say you are an emacs users and forced to use vi but did Ctrl-S.

Here is the result: instant FREEZE spell on your terminal!

Reason: it stands for suspend or something.

To fix: darn, close the terminal and try again, or the magic de-spell keystroke: Ctrl-Q.

Sorry, Unix users MUST give in to vi.

Career on Thin Ice

Recently I get a chance to talk to some people about their IT career. I am glad they do well... still have a job, in fact, they are having some good career. These guys are at least a few years younger and do have a much more successful career, most likely with less programming skills.

They say, "I don't do coding anymore."

A IT career without coding for me is hard to imagine. They tell me, they are now a liaison between "the business" and programmers outsourced half way around the world.

"I write specs and they do it"

Nice going. Without the frustration of code fighting, draw boxes and arrows, write some Word docs and have somebody figure it out*

* * *

I asked a couple other folks, "How long have you worked at your current job?"

"I've been there for 10+ years. I used to code and now I manage people half way around the world too"

I already thought my last job for 7 years was way too long.

* * *
These guys though seem to be doing good, probably able to drive a BMW merely by drawing boxes and arrows and have somebody do the real work. What these guys don't realize is... even THEIR job can be outsourced. Their career is also on thin ice.

Without some real skills it will be hard to survive. 10 year IS really too long for any job, unless you are a VP or something. I hope that job continue to provide them updated skills they need. I wish them good luck. I wish MYSELF good luck.



*If I "architect" something (that is too strong a word, do "software architects" know what an actual building architect does? they may not even remember the 30-60-90 and 45-45-90 triangles, nor have some actual skills besides pulling buzzwords), I WORK WITH my developers. I get them in a room, tell them what are the things and divide-and-conquer each component. I go into the burning house with firemen like a firefighter leader. I don't draw pictures and have them download and then hide from them.

Global Warming/Worsening

This piece of news has been bumped by other news. Gosh, huge ice broken off from Greenland. 4x the size of Manhattan.

Followed by flood! mudslides! and other disasters are bound to come. Are you going to point to me a prehistoric flood striked Earth also and therefore NO global warming is taking place?

For those who don't believe in global warming upon volumes of scientific data, this Greenland ice is another one.

For those who DO believe in global warming: can you explain why my winter heating bill is so high.

It is global weather worsening... it is increasingly more difficult for humans to survive.

I urge you... recycle that can. use less paper and plastic. Just garbage piling up is already a global problem.

Ridiculous studies

Often times we see how "research" deal with stupid topics. Here is a study of attractive women overlooked for certain jobs. So, the good look of some women actually HURT them in traditional masculine jobs...

like manager of research and development, director of finance, mechanical engineer and construction supervisor.

They were also overlooked for categories like director of security, hardware salesperson, prison guard and tow-truck driver.

I don't mind having attractive women at the director posts, IF they have the right skill sets. If you are an attractive woman, do you want to be a truck driver or a hardware salesperson?

There is no need to pay the "researchers" for these common sense "studies". What do you do with these "findings"? Close all these useless studies and spend that money elsewhere!

Learned something new from a Dummies book

I flipped over Geometry for Dummies and I am pleasantly suprised that I learned something new today.

A soccer ball is made by starting with a platonic solid, the icosahedron, and chop each corner off! Namely it is a truncated icosahedron.

I have always wonder the shape of a soccer ball... other balls (basketballs, volleyballs, baseballs, etc are made in more straight-forward ways).
Now I know the interesting formation of pentagons and hexagons formation come from that...

In that same Appendix section there was some brief talk on the Golden Ratio. Just about everyone who writes about it are SO fascinated by this number that they just keep praising it is FASCINATING by showing the golden spiral and shell shape.
Most authors simply too excited and never give good details to explain the phenonenom. (This is because φ -1 = 1/φ. You chop 1 off (the square) and you still have the golden ratio, and you can keep doing this)

Dummies book... don't let the title fool you, though it is a bit insulting, but most dummies book actually have some very good information with a splash of humor.

Look at how this author explains logic.
If I study hard, I get good grades
If I get good grades, I become a guy/babe magnet.

Contrast that with this:
Let p, q, r be conditions:
If p => q
and q => r
then, p => r, by transitive property.

Examples! Especially real world examples are nice to have in math texts.

19871988

It was the year 1987, and I have encountered this (homework?) problem. Calculator is allowed.
The problem is this: Evaluate 1987¹⁹⁸⁸. Give 4 significant digits in scientific notation.

Whoa, my calculator can't handle a number this big! Yours probably can't either.

But WHOA, Windows' calc can handle that. Amazing.
The answer is 6.567e+6556

How do you get this without a calculator that can have this big capacity? The answer is... logarithm.

Let x = 1987¹⁹⁸⁸.

log both sides, bring that exponent down.

log x = 1988 log 1987

The right hand side is: 6556.81735

This means, x = 10^(6556.81735).

The exponent is 6556.

The mantissa is 10^(0.81735) = 6.567.

Isn't it pleasing to find a use of that [10^x] key?

Ideas and Opinions

Eistein has many ideas and opinions, and he wrote a book with that title.
This is a classic, meaning you may hear people talk about it but may not have actually read it.
True confession: I have NOT read this myself, hopefully will be able to one day, and I hope I am capable of understanding him.

Relativity is on my bookshelf, and I must admit I don't understand all of it though it is already written for those "who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics", though it may be a piece of cake for your whiz physics major friends.

Sure, Einstein had some ideas and opinions, AND SO SHOULD YOU.

I encourage you to keep a blog of your ideas and opinions. It may be amusing to read it years from now, and it is a great way to share with your buddies... because it may be odd to suddenly call up your friend and say "hey I've got an idea or opinion".

If you have a blog I'll add it to my google buzz and I'll read yours often.

Imagine Einstein didn't write down his theories, he will just be another person in the crowd, and be totally forgotten.

Flood: Almost Everyone Has A Story To Tell

Here is a TV reality show idea: visit homes with basement after Chicago style storms.
Everyone has a story to tell... "I woke up in the morning, and whoa there are ___ in/ft of water!"
Follow by "I have never have any flood in ____ years".
Follow by a) "My Sump Pump is busted" b) "There is crack in the foundation" c) "Power got knocked out", d) I don't even know.

Yes, my basement is flooded.

Storms are getting more and more severe. Thunderstorm brings tremendous amount of water in every time. This is mother nature reminding you again She is NOT HAPPY with you earthlings!

Look, it really is stupid to have carpet in basement. I should know better. In fact, it is stupid to have a basement. It is better to have an attic than a basement.
Basement is bound to get wet. Even if you have a perfect sump pump, mother nature may decide to knock out your power. Ha, you got a generator to outsmart it? Good! Are you sure it won't fail you when you most need?

Business idea: manufacture devices that have self-check routines and make it connect to a display.
So if the sump pump stopped working I would know. Things like smoke detectors should have some mechanism to send battery life status to the display so I change the battery before high pitches hit my ear.

Even if it work perfectly, the city's water system may overflow and water may come out of your drain and give you a feet of water!

So carpets need to be ripped out, dehumidifier and fans need to be in and tiles to be put on. Even if you have tiles water may still damage you if you don't mop quick enough.

Insurance did you say? They don't cover it, unless you buy their ultra expensive policy that outweighs your damage. They only cover the most unlikely events such as UFO abducting your house for fun.
It is a horrible calculation to do if you add up how much innocent dollars to quietly pay them over your lifetime.

It really was a horrible weekend. Some highways had to be closed. Everyone has a story to tell.

On Company Meetings

Company meetings are meant to be a way for high level employees to communicate to the lowly regular employees. The speakers most likely deserve an applause or two. It is supposed to be informational, positive experience. Unfortunately for the past decade I just haven't gone to good ones. They are boring, chess sharpening experience (I just have to make sure sound is not on).

Look, first of all, you don't HAVE to have one. Don't schedule one if you don't have meaningful things to say. News items that you think are exciting can be communicated through your intranet or a broadcast email. If you have 100 employees, each making $10 an hour that's a $1000 an hour. Make good use of that hour and money.

Microphones: if your company don't even have good microphones go get some. There is gotta be a radio shack somewhere. This is the FIRST item on your company agenda if you are going to have company meetings.

Even if you have working microphones, unfortunately, most people don't have good speaking skills. This is why late night hosts make millions. People yap and yap an idea that can be summed up in 1 sentence into half and hour. Keep it short and to the point. Allow ME to demonstrate a good speech (but I forgot I am a lowest ranking lowly employee)

Topics: your topic is telling me that industry trend is that people are using more iPhones now then ever? How long do you want this speech to be? you've got to be kidding if intend to talk about this for half an hour. Talk about things that interest everyone such as quarterly earnings, # of new hires (don't make them stand and say "Hi I am so-and-so"), new projects etc. have a fun demo or two.

Projectors can be turned off. Look, if your speaker isn't talking about something on the projector, kinda hide the slides. If there is light, people's attention go there (not to the speaker)

Hours: don't schedule in late afternoon. People want to go home around 5:00. don't keep me after 5:00pm unless something is important. Don't make me come before 9:00a unless it is something absolutely necessary.

Make it a happy experience by being kind to your employees. 1. schedule it something like 9:30am. Provide good coffee and donuts. 2. Have short, interesting presentations. 3. Have the CEO speak to demonstrate connection. 4. Don't ever provide beer, it is simply stupid. What if one guy get drunk and start hitting people?

Animal Instincts and Programming

My mom's favorite (public) TV station is channel 11. WTTW Chicago. Well she is not so interested in education programs. She likes to watch documentary about animals because it is the few programs she can understand, without needing to understand much English.

So there was an episode about lions. Roar!

Male lions will roar and fight each other for territories and win the lady lions of their choice. (Roar!) The loser gets to go to another mountain for different adventures. If things go well, the lady lion would get pregnant and get little lions. The father? Not so civilized enough to stay with the cubs. (GOTO step 1) That's the lions life: hunt - survive.

The programmers is doing much the same. The consultants are the male lions: they go out to do their things and exit from the scene. They brag about what they do, and they often leave behind poor stuff. The poor support guys are lady lions... take care of the young. (Roar! )

Which role do you want to be in?

World Cup

I did not watch a minute of it. Don't have access to ESPN, nor got invited to any lets-watch-some-sports parties. Not just me. Americans are not jumping up and down each time a GOOOAL is made. America is a unique place in the world that doesn't catch World Cup fever. I wonder why. Well, America has too much sports to watch already: NBA, hockey, their own football, baseball, tennis etc. Hockey and soccer have almost exact same concept: get the puck in the goal. Hockey catches on and soccer doesn't.

I think the problem (and gem) of soccer is this: scoring is too rare. The entire game of the final has just 1 goal. I think Americans prefer to see scoring more often, more fast paced, scoring action like the NBA. They don't care as much about the actions in between. The soccer field iS VERY big. Although the soccer players run real fast it seems to take forever to go coast to coast.

Sports... it brings the world together. It IS the common language for mankind.
I think soccer is the most successful of sports in popularity because it is the most accessible sport: all you need is a relatively inexpensive ball, some cones or some old shoes to mark your goal post and start kicking. You don't need hoops or concrete ground, or nets or hoops. Simple is beautiful.

Transformers and girls

Sure, Megan Fox has spiced up the Transformers movies. Oh and she is not in the 3rd movie and she will be replaced by another great looking girl?

These guys don't get the theme of Transformers. It is NOT about girls.

Megan Fox's role roughly relates to Carly in the old TV series, and of course, Shia LaBeouf's role corresponds to Spike. These are MINOR characters of the Transformers.

What TF movies should focus on: 1. heroic properties of the autobots. They save people from the Decepticons 2. the evil of the Decepticons and the evil within themselves... including Starscream's ambitions

Fireworks and Firearms

Fourth of July... woohoo, fireworks, BBQ! Are we that happy to gain independence from British in 1776?

It is not just fireworks and BBQ... it is a violent crime weekend. Some people also decide to kill their enemies this weekend.
See this link for details.
Yikes, SO CLOSE to where I live.

Chicagoans LIVE IN A WAR ZONE.

Are police able to catch all these? Seems like I need to GET OUT of Chicago.
But yikes, where is America are we really safe from gun violence?

Also, every year, people has arms blown off or other horrible firework accidents. Look, if you HAVEN'T seen fireworks, turn on your TV. See it.
If you've seen it once, you've seen a thousand times. Don't need to risk your hearing or burn your money to buy those firecrackers and stuff.
Are you that happy to be independent from the British? can you tell me a phrase or two from the Declaration of Independence? Most of you don't even know what you're celebrating.
So don't play with fireworks! Let official professionals deal with it. Just WATCH, don't play.

When a boom sound comes, is it fireworks or is it firearm?

I'd stay away from McCafe

So there are people passing coupons around... FREE McCafe Frappe with ANY* purchase. So I decided to give it a try, with a small fries. Then the manager reads the fine print and says, "you can't order it with the dollars menu". Gee, I don't bother hiring a lawyer to defend the definition of "ANY" so I got some other cheap item: the Snack Wrap.

Ok, let's see how my free Frappe taste...

YIKES, there are more sugar than coffee! I already swiped that cream away.

Look McDonalds: buy some other people's frappuccino and taste them yourself and compare to yours. Other people have more coffee taste and (much less) sugar. Your food is already not healthy items, you cheat with your coupon's fine print and your coffee tastes bad.

If you want to stay in business you better have good products.

Roo

In my son's fun little books, I learned about a character named Roo in a Winnie the Pooh book.



It is fairly interesting that people starts looking at cartoon characters for names.

While looking around programming sites, I see there is a fairly new programming tool from Spring that is named Spring Roo.
It is another enter-something-at-the-prompt-crank-a-lot-of-stuff-for-you tool. Good! Nobody needs the XML mess to configure source code with MVC...

Waita minute, there is already Grails that does similar things. Grails is based on Groovy, which is Java + native lists and maps.

And both very similar things from one Spring Source? This link explains why there are two such things.

Typing stuff at prompt cranking out stuff is nice, but still not simple and intuitive enough.
Should be as simple as New->Controller, New->Action, New->Test on an IDE to crank some skeletons for me. /* Someone may have done something like this as Eclipse plug in. */
Nothing should make me type a long command at the prompt.

Now that's Inconvienent Truth

I am kinda shcocked to read about this story about Al Gore (alledgedly) sexually assaulted a masseuse.

What the heck is going on with the Clinton/Gore pair?!

Waita minute... that woman is... 54 years old? Even at 2006 she was 50 year old? Hmmm.

Gore definitely earned a spot in the history book at the 2000 election, now he may be adding an embarrassing chapter.

Observations that May Change the World

You may have heard this: one day when Newton was reading a book under an apple tree, an apple dropped on his head and he came up with theory of gravity. This is the dawn of modern science!

Another one you may have heard: James Watt was watching his mother boil water on a kettle and came up with the steam engine. This is the dawn of the Industry Revolution!

I wonder: if *I* can observe something and change the world! Why not? You can too.

Observation 1: Flying
It's man's dream for centuries... FLY. Sure, airplanes have already achieved that. Why not a simpler, WING approach? This observation is from playing the classic Joust game.
Build a (big) wing like a bird, with a motor, make it FLAP hard like a bird, and I think eventually you may fly. Sure you hands can't flop fast enough to move your body, what about a motorized wing? Every wing I see is hard and straight (and doesn't move).


Observation 2: Stir Fry Machine
I visited a Panda Express and have this interesting scene: a Chinese fastfood restaurant without one Chinese worker. Hispanic folks making Chinese food to you. If it does not have "Panda Express" sign, you probably won't buy because it is not so authentic? Then I look through the glass and see a young Hispanic man cooking with the wok like a pro! There is no ethnic barrier in cooking.
Working in the kitchen is hot, exhausting, repetitive. It is very tough job. Here is the mathematican (at least a math student)'s instinct: can we generalize it so a machine can do this?

Look, all recipes are basically algorithms. Computers love to follow them. Look, that fried-rice is actually pretty simple to make, add stuff in the right order and stir-fry it up! Ingredients: A motorized wok shovel. Tanks to hold salt, sugar, corn starch, etc. Programs to control a oil tank pouring the exact amount. Programs to spray exactly certain amount of sugar, salt, etc. Robotic arm to move raw stuff to the wok like motorized chess programs to move that pawn. I can run the world's first automatic restaurant!

But yikes, a successful machine will put millions of chef out of work.

However, I don't have an ounce of engineering ability. I made the weakest Popsicle stick bridge in high school. I don't think I can build any motorized things in my garage.

Recruiters and the Lake of Fire

Some recruiters ought to be thrown in the lake of fire.
I got laid off a few months ago. But work are still to be done. That company wants to hire a cheap consultant to finish things up. The company must have posted the opening somewhere. MANY recruiter cold called me, saying they know my company is hiring. Damn it I know my company more than you do! You want to phone screen me then introduce me to my company's hiring manager who is steps away?

One recruiter cold called me, lured me into his office, without telling me details of the job he has on his hands. He made me talk about what I do for a living, then tells me: this is the EXACT opening he has now. What, you wantto talk to MY company to have them interview me to go back to the company that wants to fire me? He deserves to be put on the lake of fire.

Another recruiter cold called me and lured me into her office and make me talking about my past. Then say "well we don't have any openings now but we still would like to meet you, and the economy is quickly picking up and when there is opening we will call you". She never did.
Ok, I will spare this lady from the lake of fire because she is a pretty lady.

Recruiters want every single things listed on their job description to have something to talk about.

Another recruiter cold called me and lured me to their office. I have about 8 out of 10 things listed. She gets her boss to talk to me. Then the boss says they need a candidate that has it all! Then why bother telling me to come in the first place. I took the sincere apology from her, but that boss has such attitude that deserves to be thrown on the lake.

After I found work, I haven't take my resume off some job search sites yet, so I can still attract a cold caller or two. Before the guy finish, I told him I recently found work. The guy says: "ok, I'll still send you an email so if you know some friends looking they can contact me, ok?" I never receive such emails. Empty promise deserve a visit to the lake.

Recruiters: I KNOW your job is horrible. You work in a dinky office, trying to find people matching job descriptions, call them up, sell them to the employers, earn some $ if you succeed. Not much different from a used car salesman, and I know you don't understand all the buzzwords in the job description. To prevent going to the lake of fire, don't waste people's time and lure them in your office unless you have some confidence that the candidate is a good fit. Don't ask me how many years of HTML I have. 10 hours of it is equivalent to 10 years. How many years of experience in addition/subtraction do you have? Also, do what you promise, such as send me that email you promised.

All interviewers should give status PROMPTLY: take it or leave it. People deserve answers.

π Revisited

While walking around in a store, I saw a symbol that usually only appears in a textbook. It is π.

It is some cologne with that name. Not sure it is named that way, and I didn't bother to ask for a long strip of paper for a smell. I am tempted to make a lucky star or a Mobius Strip out of those.

Ask some people... just what IS π (in math)? The unfortunate uneducated will have no clue. For those who know, ah ha, it is a trap. If the person starts with "It IS 3.14..." then this person can never finish because no amount of digits can fully spell out π. Better: it is the ratio of circumference over diameter, or it is approximately 3.14...

When I was an elementary school student, the symbol π is an odd ball to me.
Question 1: where did the value come from? (My guess was a very precise ruler to take such measurement of C/d)
Question 2: Why do we use a Greek symbol?

Well I didn't seek answers very hard back then. But the answers has to do with the great Greek mathematician Archimedes. π is actually an abbreviation, it was the first letter of Greek word that means "perimeter". Waita minute, perimeter? Yes, π is the perimeter of a circle with diameter of 1.

Archimedes uses a very interesting "trap" trick to estimate the value of π. He starts with a circle of radius = 1. What's the area? yes, it is π. He used regular polygons and circumscribed polygons to set that upper and lower limit! See this illustration. This legacy should be taught in high school geometry class (but I wasn't informed).

Mathematicans loves the Greek alphabet. π is used in other places... you may remember the product of a sequence with capital Pi...

One other use I know of... to denote the prime counting function, number of primes less than some number x as π(x).

Wiki has so much nicely presented knowledge. It is a treasure chest.

High school geometry class probably should include a writing assignment: about π, about e, about the imaginary number i, or about the golden ratio φ. Extra Credit: How about writing connect e,i,π with the "dazzling"* Euler Formula. Write about it, derive it... Math is so much more than calculations.

That cologne... targeting math enthusiasts? I am afraid there aren't enough around.


*I copied this adjective from this great book. Unfortunately, I don't understand all of it. :(
I almost named my son "Leonard!"

Children and Cost

I am sure you heard it before. Children are expensive. It will cost you $222,360 before he goes to college. See news item here.

Sure it will cost you $. Imagine this: SAVE that $222,360 with 0 kids. What are you going to do with that money?

Stop griping! You are not going to count that money and bill your kid when he turns 18 right?

That daycare is expensive? Sure. how about this: after you break your wallet paying for it, when your kids grow up, you OPEN a daycare in your neighborhood to collect that $ back. There are too few of these anyway (and that's why they are so expensive.)

Can't do anything about expensive diapers and formula other than buying as big pack as you can.

Considering the environmental friendly cloth diapers? See you are complaining expensive but unwilling to take a little sacrifice.

But the real problem is this: job market is diminishing... it's hard for daddy & mommy to find work!

If I have $222,361, I don't mind spending $222,360 to raise my kid, and I won't gripe.

A world full of old people with $222,360 is too depressing. Kids I welcome you.

Odd Jobs

Here are some odd jobs that I have had.

1. RUN programs (not write programs)
Every now and then, some data will come (somehow). I was supposed to RUN a bunch of programs (by starting them).
Baby sit them for errors. When they are done, run more programs.
If there are errors try to fix it or notify somebody.
Originally it was monthly, when people dare to put me run stuff daily I quit.

2. Buildmaster
You want me to WHAT? create build scripts for your projects already in progress? Maintain your chaotic branches? If you want to hire someone to do these things, put it in the job description so I won't apply. I got fooled into this job.

Something is very wrong with your company if you don't already have a build process and your code is in production.

Your project lead should give you such scripts before you even have a lot of code to build from. Here: you compile your stuff, package it and voila. You do it yourself. Only you know (and responsible for) what's supposed to be in your build. Don't make me ask you. You are responsible for the success of your project.

3. Maintain Proprietary Code
There are exactly two things you do in software. 1) write new code 2) fix somebody's old code. Yes (2) is necessary, you can't write new things all the time. I have seen completely undocumented code, outrageously documented code such as /* insert comment here */, but the worst is proprietary code locked in some hidden jars and stuff.

You define your own XML-like configuration stuff? Your stuff HIDE database calls? How do you suppose me to maintain this.

I have seen people who write some code, push me to maintain it, while shut door hiding from questions. Totally irresponsible. Sometimes I can get a hold of the author who will not dare to look at me to answer my questions.

That's only when I am lucky. Sometimes the author already quit. Sometimes source code is not even available.
IF things can run locally, IF a bug is reproducible, IF I can see exactly how data are queried and saved, I CAN probably fix your problem. However, sometimes things are hidden from me, inside some third party things. Ask them, not me.

4. Help Desk
Answer customer phone calls then try to address their complains. Yikes.
In a normal economy I won't apply for such work.

Here is what I want to do: write great code, learn new things, make good $, at a convenient location: not at the washroom or a conference room corner at a client site (something is very wrong with that). I am afraid I will never able to land on one anymore.

Protest Against the Dollar Sign

JSP: intermixing java and HTML is a decade+ old idea that makes perfect sense to me. But the problem is this: it doesn't look like everybody's favorite XML. JSTL wants you to use tags instead and argue it is better. See here here for details.

Besides tags, note the use of dollar sign and braces to evaluate an expressions.

Somebody just have to put tags around as if the world doesn't need more syntax.

Ok, it is better of preference, nobody forcing me to use JSTL yet.

Let's go over to the client side. If you have to pick the most popular javascript library... it's got to be jQuery. Don't let the name fool you. It has nothing to do with database queries.

JQuery makes heavy use of $ and it is not quite the same expression evaluation in JSTL. See here, for instance, for an introduction tutorial. Gee, I have not seen so many $ in javascript... just what is it?

Ah, it is merely a SHORTCUT to the variable jQuery! The dollar sign is the shortest variable that is not alphanumeric, and jQuery decides to use it as the shortcut of spelling out the name of itself. Gee, I wish the dollar sign isn't a legal character to begin a variable.

JQuery loves to do this: play with DOM and attach all events and call anonymous functions. So WYSI_NOT_WYG. See a little dropdown select tag or a simple anchor tag that looks perfectly innocent? Gee, somebody may have modified the onclick method or something.

If you LET somebody do something, they will do it all over the place.

Anonymous function (buzzword lambda) is not my cup of tea. I like explicit functions with names.

I protest against the dollar sign shorthand in jQuery.
I protest against inserting extra events to objects on the fly, especially with anonymous functions.
I protest against JSTL.

Those who need bifocal should get bifocals

Eyesight is the first thing that gets worn out on your body. Look at how many kids younger than 10 year old has glasses. Glasses are such great invention. Without that I am almost blind, with nearsightedness and astigmatism. When people get old, many people have far-sightedness, and they can NOT see with their glasses when they see something not so close by (unless they put their head within ONE INCH of the monitor).
When those poeple has to switch between looking at something close by (such as a computer) and looking at you. They have to switch glasses on and off.

This is very annoying.

Solution 1: make glasses implements the with (colorful!) bands attached, so they have to switch back and forth. Ok, I find this annoying too.
Solution 2: bi-focals. This however may require a line in your glasses.
Well I am not a bifocal user yet so I am not sure if this is a real good solution.
But if it is, go get it. Waita minute, isn't modern bifocals now can hide the line?

Putting your head 1-inch to your monitor is just both ugly for you and for not so pleasant for me to see.
Ok, another solution: change your font size to REAL LARGE, ok?

Jobs and Leaving Reasons (part 2)

Job 5: I maintain crap app there longer than I have been in college as time (years and years) quietly flows by. Surrounded by inept coworkers. This company does not give a damn about growing your career. Eventually got laid off, due to outsourcing to the people that Columbus wanted to meet. The fate of the talented and the idiots are the same.

Job 6: this place does not know what to do with me and indicates little interest to assign me interesting work. Completely clueless. The young people there are beautiful but extremely messy. That kitchen is a big mess.

Job 7: TEN days there. Told me to go home after their client cut the project which is probably a damn lie. This place wanted me to use my own laptop without telling me beforehand.
This place has some fairly interesting individuals
1. PM who sits on a ball instead of a chair, probably a Preparation H user, who does nothing after then 15 minute status meeting. Also needs bifocal...
2. The CEO's brother, who is an extreme OO aficionado who wants a elaborate OO model on the simplest things. I wish I can learn a thing or two from him. But he comes in at 2pm everyday, and during my 10 day stay, he didn't show up for at least half of it, because his glasses is broken and can't see a thing.
When I was told to go home, not one person shows any sympathy.

Job 8: This company is hard to get in: tough online test, and even an essay test. Mildly tough tech interview. But this company didn't believe I can do new consulting work for their clients and rejected me once. called me back after a support staff quit. So I will be learning more propriety things that will not help me at all in future jobs. But it is better than unemployed.

I've had helluva time trying to find work. Yes I do get some interviews, but some have some very tricky questions. Some are so reluctant to make decision that they don't mind keep you waiting, some don't mind telling you any status.

I NEED to stop begging people for a job and stop begging people to tell me my interview status!

Jobs and Leaving Reasons (part 1)

I've had several jobs in my career, and it perhaps is a good thing. If you have a 10 year job on your resume, it may be hard for you to find another job unless your title is VP and up. Do I want to have to jump jobs? Some people do: they get bored after a couple years. I don't. Job search and getting adjusted and all that are waste of time. Ideally I grow with a company and I ever have to hunt jobs and face endless frustrations during the processes.

I don't know how many times I fill job application forms during job search process.
People should not ask me to fill one up until you are ready to hire me. Don't misuse my information there. One particular interesting blanks to fill is job history and reason to leave. If someone leaves because the company they work for are full of damn idiots are they going to fill "leave the bunch of idiots there?" I will share the real reason to leave behind "seeking better opportunities"

Job 1: The guys there want me to run poorly written programs and babysit them. You don't put talented people in stupid role like this. This place is also full of foreign-language speaking people depicting poor professionalism.

Job 2: The job asks me to convert some poorly written full of GOTO, BASIC-like programs written for DOS into Windows. There are absolutely no specs: the job is to reproduce it. There are absolutely no full scale testing. This could be a successful product if some more resource put on it. Done with it, out I go.

Job 3: Absolute idiot "education software" systems in outrageous sloppy C++. This was BEFORE any visual languages such as VB, Delphi, C#. It was Borland C++ with OWL.

Absolutely poor company culture. Its culture is constantly praising the CEO. The guy who hired me quit after a week. I quit after 3 months.

Job 4: This is more like it. Custom software place with good amount of talent. Great culture: people work together. But, for a long time I was supporting existing things, fixing things here and there. Then I get chance to work on some web applications and learn a couple things along the way. However, for reasons still exactly unknown to me, the company collapsed. I like their philosophy: in-house, talented team, non-bodyshop consulting.

To be continued... (I have Job 5 to Job 7 to talk about, I am now at Job 8)

Starbucks gripes its sales numbers

"Here's a statistic that people are surprised by. Despite the long-term success that we've enjoyed, we have less than 10 percent share of coffee consumption in North America. And less 1 percent share internationally," Starbucks Chairman, President and CEO Howard Schultz told CNN Money.

Details here.

Ok, Mr. CEO, here are the reasons.
1. Your stuff is strong, not everyone can handle.
2. Your stuff is expensive, not everyone can afford.
3. You need big cans for home like Folgers. Your bags are expensive and too small. Big cans=less packaging=cheaper

(1) is significant. Look, one "tall" cup makes my head spin already. But I don't feel a thing even after a large Dunkin. Dunkin stuff is not as strong and cheaper (so they sell more).

Don't worry about McDonalds, their coffee tastes real bad.

Laptop and Input Devices

The laptop is really not a very good name for this type of open-up computer. Look, if a laptop has to sit on your lap, you will have a difficult time working as you will have to bend real hard and you have to type pretty gently to prevent it from falling off your lap. A laptop needs a desk.

Modern computing demands the mouse... and yikes, there really is no good place for it. The common spot for it is under the space bar. But your palm can easily "click" on something by accident unless your hands are at 90 degrees. Another popular spot is the pencil eraser type... Eew, a bit hard to use. Where to simulate the mouse buttons are also difficult to put. Some laptops give you TWO choices under the space bar.

The iPad solution: whack the keyboard altogether: tap on screen, tap on the virtual keyboard. Good solution! But tapping isn't going to be as fast as keyboard typing. And, if you have to use the mouse a lot (such as drawing), boy your arms are going to be tired. I prefer mouse, not tapping on screen. I only want to tap screen on a ATM.

Best solution: plug standard keyboards and mouse on the USB ports. Ok, but that knocks out your portability.

Tracball (Centipede players' favorite device) on the side are totally out now? Haven't seen them for a while. I like tracballs but I absolutely cannot stand thumb trackbals. I think a trackball tray pullable from the bottom or the right hand side of the keyboard would be a good innovation. I like keyboard and mouse (trackball) separated. The mouse should not interfere me typing.