Category: Fun

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Fun iPhone app

iTunes, iCloud, Dropbox, wd 2go

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Krugman, the Nobel economics laureate recently penned an article basically saying Apple is no good. I think he has one valid point on iTunes and the relatively closeness of Apple ecosystem. This reminds me of one thing, the cloud storage for consumers. Apple has this iCloud going for a few years, it can be used to back up iDevices (photos, videos, documents, etc.), but not as flexible as Dropbox (or Box.net, and many others), both Apple and Dropbox has the subscription plan, for iCloud, it’s $20 for 10Gb additional (5Gb is free) per year, and for Dropbox, it’s $10 for 500 GB per month (2Gb is free, and there are other ways to earn free storage).

Then I came across this wd 2go, it is probably the cheapest (if we ignore the electricity, and bandwidth cost), basically it’s free with the WD My Book Live purchase. My Book Live costs about $129. There is no recurring fees. I have not got this one yet, but I’m thinking about it as I have 2 iPhones’ worth of pictures/videos, and need to store it someway. Was wondering if I could just transfer from iTunes to the WD My Book drive.

While I went through all these, what’s my point? Personally I think the openness rankings of those 3, from most close to open: iTunes/iCloud, Dropbox, wd 2go. Of course I understand one can argue security wise, the ranking might be different 🙂

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Fun

People are more important

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Was at a friend’s house last night, watching the July 4th fireworks display at his house, as the house has a perfect view. We talked about things since we have not seen each other for a while. When asked by a friend what is the things gave me impressions on my first employer (I worked there for 8 years), I thought about it, and said “people”. Yes it was the people in Unigraphics Solutions (UGS, EDS PLM Solutions, and last Siemens PLM Software) help me jump started my career, and you all know who I meant. I still keep in touch with some of them.

The paragraph above was written about a month ago. This past Saturday I happened to bump into my old colleague at local license office. I knew he changed job couple times in recent years, after both of us left the company (me in 2008, him in 2009). He told me some unpleasant development in the company lately: downsizing, layoff etc. I know at this time my capability is fairly limited, but my thoughts and prayers are with my former coworkers.

Yes, human beings are always the most important.

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Fun

Two jokes

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From CocoaChina.

一、
一个人坐在热气球上飞行，突然发现自己迷路了。他降低高度，发现下面有个人。他把气球降的更低，大声向下面的人问路，“请问，你能告诉我我在哪吗？”

下面的人说：“当然，你在一个热气球上，距离地面30英尺高。”

“你一定是个搞技术的，”热气球里的人说。

“没错”这人回答道。“你怎么知道的？”

“很简单，”热气球里的人说，“所有你告诉我的东西在技术上都是正确的，但对我一点用处也没有。”

下面的人回复说，“你一定是个项目经理。”

“没错，”热气球里的人说，“你怎么知道的？”

“很简单”，下面的人说，“你经常找不到北，或者不知道该去哪，你希望别人能够帮助你。在遇到我之前你也是这样，但现在是我犯了个错误。”

二、
从前，有一牧羊人，他在一条荒废的公路边照看他的羊群。突然，路上一辆崭新的保时捷嘎然来了一个急刹车。车主，一个穿着阿曼尼的西装，Cerutti的鞋子，带着Ray-Ban太阳镜，TAG-Heuer腕表，系着一条范思哲领带的年轻人走了出来，问牧羊人：“如果我能告诉你这里一共有多少只羊，你能给我一只吗？”

牧羊人看看这个年轻人，然后又看看他那成群的在牧场上吃草的羊，说：“行。”

年轻人停好他的车，用笔记本连上无线网络，接入美国宇航局的服务，用GPS扫描地面，然后进入数据库，导出60张填满了算法数据和校验数据表的Excel，然后用他的高科技的微型打印机打印出一份150页的报告。他转过头来对牧羊人说：“你不多不少一共有1586只羊。”

牧羊人非常高兴，说，“非常正确，你可以拿走一只羊。”

年轻人选了一只，放进保时捷的后备箱。牧羊人看着他，问：“如果我能猜出你的职业，你能把后备箱里的那只动物还给我吗？”

年轻人回答：“当然，为什么不呢？”

牧羊人：“你是一个IT顾问。”

年轻人：“你怎么知道的？”

牧羊人：“非常简单。首先，你不请自来。第二，你让我花钱来换取我已经知道的事情，三，你根本不知道我是干什么的…现在你能把那只狗还给我了吗？”

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advice and tips Fun

Travel in Shanghai

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I visited China with my family a few weeks ago. Shanghai is the flight stop where we arrive and depart.

We stayed at the Courtyard Xujiahui, and Four Points by Sheraton at Pudong during our short stay in Shanghai, a few weeks ago. As I have family and esp. little kid nowadays, I prefer western brand hotel (4 stars) so that it has a bit nice and consistent environment. I no longer go to Home Inn or Jinjiang Star. That was when I was single, and just need a clean place to shower and sleep.

Getting around
In general Shanghai taxi is very nice, with a few exceptions. For instance, we waited one hour in Shanghai Hongqiao railway station on rainy Friday evening (it was also the first day of Gao Kao, China’s college entrance exam). It’s probably better idea if one travel light (without big luggages). Another instance was we were at People’s square, about 10 pm, basically no taxi will take us to Xujiahui. There were a few illegal taxies pass by and asked us if we want to take it. Finally we decided to take Metro (subway) to get back.

Tour bus
We took the double deck tour bus at People’s square, my first time taking it, and was surprised to see a lot of changes in Shanghai, for example, I have not seen Lao Xi Meng for many years (probably not seen it since 1995, 18 years). Big big change. I would like to show my brother the picture some time as I thought he probably have not seen it for 18 years either. Tour bus No. 1 is a good idea for short stay visitors because one can use it for 24 hours, and see many interesting places (bus stops at those places) along the way.

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advice and tips Fun

Went to tower grove farmers market yesterday

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It was the first time I brought my wife and my daughter there. The weather was a bit hot, as I went there after 9:30 am. We bought the typical things: ribs and eggs from Bobbi (live spring farm), tomato, beans and cucumber from amish farmer. Serenity enjoyed her bagel and apple at the picnic by the market, it’s just some food we brought in case she wanted to eat.

I’m hoping to bring them more often to the market on Saturday mornings this Summer.

Btw, I was thinking about adding a “news feed” to the ToMarket app I recently created. It’s also funny Serenity singing about “ToMarket” couple times yesterday.

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advice and tips Fun

China trip: some random thoughts

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We took a 2 weeks China trip and came back last Monday evening. A bit exhausted, and at the end of the trip, our daughter got sick, she said she got tummy ache, and needed to go to restroom (lavatory) every 10 min. The fun part of being parents.

Some more serious thoughts

1) My parents are getting older, just as I am getting older. At one morning, my mom asked my dad: did I take the blood pressure medicine. She is not in her 70s yet, but she forgot about it.

2) Money and money: obviously this is a hot topic and it seems my family can not escape it as well. The thing makes me a bit annoyed is when they ask me how much I make in the states, as one of the very first question. It seems money is an important yard stick to measure if a person is successful or not. Btw, it seems everyone back home has more money than me. Interestingly, I read about this article yesterday, it mentioned something similar to that extent.

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/mark-kitto-youll-never-be-chinese-leaving-china/#.Ub54LvmThBH

3) Environment. Not so good. The air quality, and the noise is obvious. One thing a bit interesting is Serenity was curious why the car/bus beep (honk) at each other, or at pedestrian. The air at my hometown is not good due to all the container trucks (18 wheelers), and heavy industry.

4) Hard to get coffee, I mean real coffee, not those faked cappuccino ones made by machines gas station here. It’s more easier to find in Shanghai. I got my black/bare ice coffee (Mei Shi Ka Fei 美式咖啡) at Christen bakery 克里斯丁饼屋.

I will talk more later. Btw, I am seriously thinking about wrote something like my memory.

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Fun

Yoyo’s funny words, Spring Musical

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Yoyo likes to talk a lot, and this morning she said something quite funny: daddy, you should not drink coffee or alcohol anymore, because they won’t help you grow. You should drink some milk. Then she handed her milk bottle to me. Sometimes, she likes to use some big words like “even”, “actually”, we think she learned those from her teachers.

There are also frustrating times, like, she does not like to say “hello” or “good bye” to her teachers, friends and parents. And, sometimes she say words like “go away” to us.

Spring Musical
That’s something we did not expect, and it totally blew up away. I can not upload picture or videos for the obvious reason (it includes other kids). But the teachers did a wonderful job teaching all the kids, and to make it more impressive, the kids bow after they sing the songs.

Overall, we are very impressed with the growth of our daughter. Here is the circle game, the song sing by both the kids and parents at the end.

My thoughts on Power ball
Thought it’s funny. I got a small win on Power Ball last Saturday, I matched the PB only, the prize is $4. Because the cost of ticket is $2, so the return on investment is 100%

I read an Christian Science Monitor article which talked about the government increasing dependence on the lottery revenue, which for the society is not a good thing overall, because there is hidden cost of people got addicted to gambling. The increasing publicity arising from the larger win from Power Ball or Mega Million is one factor to draw more casual players (people who usually don’t play, like me). The CS Monitor article is here.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2013/0517/A-record-Powerball-jackpot-isn-t-a-record-to-celebrate-video

I read (or heard form NPR) that a blue collar worker bought $80 worth of tickets. I would think one of my extended family member had similar thinking, when operating in the domestic A share stock market. Basically they extrapolate from my example: so if $2 can make $2, $200 can make $200, etc.

This is a very naive and dangerous extrapolation (thinking). I hope fewer people go to that route.

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Fun iPhone app

Objective-C code hall of shame

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Today I found out I made a dumb mistake while deleting an NSMutableArray.

for(int ii=0; ii<[myNSMutableArray count]; ii++) { myNSMutableArray removeObjectAtIndex:ii]; } The reason being it will get confused about the elements (index) during the loop. The correct way is to use removeAllObjects method.

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advice and tips Fun kids

Preschool days

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Did not want to go in the morning (most days), did not want to leave in the afternoon (sometimes). Positives: she started to call some teachers by name, and some friends by name. She talked quite a bit in English, continuing make progress on language.

Kindermusik, sit on teachers’ lap. A nice overlap for her as this class is only class she goes this whole semester (with the transition from toddler to preschool).

Change job
The tuition goes up again. I need to make more money to support my family. I plan to start new job on April 1 (yes April fool’s day, but hopefully new job works out for me and my family).

A bit emotional lately as a net friend passed away recently, reminds me of an old friend’s husband passed away years ago at similar age. We all need to balance our life and work at this age.

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Fun

18 rules on iPhone

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From a Massachusetts mother to her 13 old son.

NPR Talk of the Nation has a discussion on this today.

Very much applicable to myself (though not a teenager).

So in summary, no TV, limited iPhone, happy parenting 🙂