Categories
Site Info

Search the blog

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I have not figured out the best way to search my posts. The Word Press (blogging software I am using here) provides a default search button, which is at the top of the side bar, does a decent job and will show all the post with the “key word”. The reader need to use the browser’s “Find” functionality to narrow down the actual key word in the post.

I also noticed when people do “baidu” search “Small Talk程序”, my web page is shown in the result:

stlplace.com 2006 January
“Small Talk” computer language, I am referring to “conversation starters”, or “…Leader(PL),PL是一个技术领导的位置,通常他们自己也写程序,但最重要的是他们要分析用户需求,搭建软件框架,指导…
www.stlplace.com/blog/2006/01/page/2/ 36K 2006-7-6 – 百度快照

But as you noticed it will show the archive page of Jan which contains the key word “Small Talk”. Again the user needs to use “Find” in the browser.

Similar thing for Google. Or worse, right now it only shows the main page. I guess my blog is not popular enough to be noticed by Google. But anyway as an experiment, I put the Google search button at the bottom the side bar so the user has an option. I was thinking, ideally when the user search, the result can be narrowed or even better highlighted.

Categories
Business Life

No exit strategy

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Watched the Charlie Rose Show with Warren Buffett  Part 2. One interesting comment from Warren Buffett is “when I decided to buy a stock, I intended to hold the stock for life. I don’t have an exit strategy”. This is really something. In the reality I think Warren does sell stocks from time to time, but I think in most of times he hold a stock for a long time. He has the patience. And he is confident about the organic growth of a business if he decided to buy after doing his research.

On the other hand, when we look at the dot com and current web 2.0 craziness, how many are really going to “hold the company for private” for a long time? I think many people are looking for VCs or IPOs before actually start it. We can apply this to our own career path and personal life too. Sometimes when there are no exit strategy, we have to work hard to make sure things work.

Categories
Site Info

UTF-8 and GB2312

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To me this is really a nusance: some Chinese web pages are in UTF-8 (unicode), some are in GB2312. Internet Explorer can not determine the Chinese code format from a web page header and makes a wrong guess. Basically the user has to go to View => Encoding and try those two formats to see if it will work. 

This is not an isolated problem for Chinese language, or for web browsers. Similar problems do occur to other non-western languages, and software. Before we have a better solution in the software, I wonder if we could all agree on UTF-8, which seems to me is a newer (and better) standard.  

Categories
Business

Charlie Rose show features Warren Buffett

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Charlie Rose, the famous TV talk show host at PBS, has this 3-part series show features Warren Buffett. The show is played in PBS station in late night. Here is the link of Google Video for Part 1 (it’s free as of now).

I watched it last night. Here is an interesting comment I heard from Buffett: how old a person starts your own business will largely determine if he/she will be successful in  his/her own business (when grow up). Buffett started at age of 6.

Since we can not roll back the time machine, why not we take his other advices, such as love what we do (passion), and focus.   

Categories
China Saint Louis

Gas prices

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The gas price is creeping up again. This weekend the regular unlead costs about $3.00 here in St. Louis. Last time it broke the $3 barrier is post Katrina. It seems siutation is not going to improve in the near future due to geopolitical reasons (Iran, North Korea), more importantly, the supply and demand trend. A few days ago I heard from NPR that number of cars in China increased 3 fold in past 3 years. I can tell it by visiting the apartment complex in Shanghai (so many cars, so little packing space). It’s good to see people are enjoying the “freedom of cars” in China, just like the American enjoyed in 1950 and 1960s. That was also the hey days of American car makers. There are certainlly problems comes with “car freedom” in China: traffic jam, air pullution, tensions between the “have” and “have not”, etc. The solution, however, won’t be simple. One top oil investor said “unless American got rid of the big SUVs, Chinese go back to bicycle, we are not going to see $1.50 gas”. Yes, I know, those 77 cents per gallon days is gone forever, that was 1998. The thing is at this price level, I don’t see most people reducing too much driving, not the middle class American and newly-emerged Chinese car lovers. I think for the people to take notice, the price must go higher. Maybe we will see $5 gas soon?

Categories
Fun Web

Delicious

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There are a lot of hype about Web 2.0 lately. As I learned more about it and I believe some are not just hypes, e.g., the RSS, XML, and the del.icio.us bookmarking site with social networking and tagging capabilities. I have 5 computers (3 at home, and 2 at work), and I used 3 of them frequently. I would like to have the same bookmarks (or favorites in Internet Explorer). del.icio.us solved this problem for me. And its registration, install and use are fairly staightforward.

Besides keeping all my bookmarks (or good article) in one place. I can add “tags” which helps me to identify the content. So far I don’t have anyone in my network. But from the bookmark I can find out people with similar interest, etc.   

del.icio.us is currently owned by Yahoo, as is the flickr photo sharing web site (also features the tags). Don’t overlook this “tag” thing, it’s like put your own key word for the content (the alternate way is let computer figure out), which I believe is more semantically correct in most cases.

Categories
Saint Louis

MUNY

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MUNY is probablly one of the best kept secrets in St. Louis. Not sure the full name of MUNY, but it is America’s oldest and largest outdoor musical theater. It’s located in the Forest Park. Besides great musical shows, it has another nice feature: it reserves the last a few rows of seats for public for free. You can see the schedule of the shows for this season here.

I went to see the show “AIDA” last night. I went back again tonight because I have to leave early last night. It’s a love story from ancient Egypt, filled with wars etc. Although I probablly only understand 30-40% of the English, I did understand the story because it’s a live show and I watched it almost twice. I will try to write a summary of the story in Chinese/中文 sometime when I have more free time.

Here is a picture I took at last year’s MUNY. You can have an idea what’s it like.
 

Categories
China Life

Stereotype

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前两天说到找Roommate, 有各种各样的人回应. 从种族上分, 有白人, 黑人, 印度人, 中国人. 其实找Roommate毕竟不是找老婆, 没必要那么认真. 我不是种族歧视, 但是我对美国的黑人还是有一些切身体会, 憋在心里不吐不快.

我有一个中国朋友特别不喜欢, 看不起黑人, 同时又有点害怕黑人. 我想大多数在美国的中国人也抱有类似的心理. 主要原因还是因为缺少了解. 说实话, 黑人多数是比较穷, 可能在有的方面素质差一些, 但是他们毕竟比华人早来新大陆一二百年, 在政治上的地位和自我的感觉比我们华人不知道要高(好)多少. 这听上去可能有点不可思忆, 却是不争的事实.

前不久在电视上看到这样一个的故事, 一个在美国出生的亚裔(成功女性), 人家这样问她: Where are you from? 从心底里面, 多数人还是认为我们这些黑眼睛黄皮肤的人”是从其它地方来的”. 这在我所在的美国中西部就很明显.

就我个人而言, 我碰到过很好的黑人(我的同事), 也碰到过极差的黑人. 我的黑人同事Programmer, 他是我们公司最好的Programmer之一, 曾经上过MIT, 人也极好(Nice). 反过来, 当我刚来St.Louis住在公司附近(黑人较多), 曾经接到过黑人的骚扰电话, 放在家门口的拖鞋无故不见, 出去散步回来发现房门是开的. 总之叫了两回警察. 最倒霉的一次, 过绿灯时车被一个黑人撞了(估计是急着去上班). 跟她说好大家把车都停到加油站, 结果她趁机跑掉. 第二天自己当了一回侦探把她抓到, 她又没有买保险.

说到这, 又想起一个一面之交的黑人. 有一回买了个27寸的电视, 从停车场吃力地往家搬, 有个黑人兄弟正好看到, 二话没说就过来帮忙.

说了这么多, 我的大意是不要用公式化地去看黑人, 白人, 老中, 老印, 所有的人. 哪里都有好人和坏人. 

Categories
Saint Louis

找室友Roomate

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我的朋友兼室友准备离开这个城市, 前几天我把召室友的广告登在网上.
 
收到很多回音, EMAIL, 电话, 有一位还发来了照片. 有白人, 黑人, 中国人, 印度人. 昨天有两个人来看房子. 老印(印度人)先到了, 他来美国也有五六年, 人看过去挺老实. 最近在这里百威啤酒找到工作. 我实话告诉他我不能容忍印度饭的味道, 因为他说他会”Cook a lot”. 其它倒没什么, 他说下班后主要也就上上网. 那倒不要紧. 他对我的房子挺赶兴趣. 恨不得马上就敲定.
 
把老印送出门, 老美(小美)就来了. 在路上迷了点路. 谈了一谈, 双方都还满意. 他甚至想当场给定金了. 我说你再想想, 毕竟已经找了两个月的房. 他也是最近搬到St. Louis, 本来是想买房的. 看了两个月, 没看到合适的. 先找个地方再说. 我说(今天)我等你电话.
 
今天两个人都没电话, 也没EMAIL. 看来我还得再等一等. 正好我也可以想想, 听听各方的意见.

Categories
China Fun Technology

Douban mipang and hnlhousing

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Shortky after I wrote the web 2.0 article, I got comment from Andy and he mentioned his new site hnlhousing.com. I checked it out and it was cool. As I said when I first saw the housingmaps.com about a year ago, I thought it was a very useful tool. Basically it combines the listings on Craigslist with the Google map, and list the house/apartment by date or price. That’s the mashup. Interestingly after two maps, St. Louis was not on either of them. So I guess there is still some value to create one map for St. Louis.

Just kidding. The web 2.0 thing is really heating up, especially on the other side of the ocean, you know it’s China. I came across douban a while ago and I registered it lately. Douban is a web site which lets people review books, movies and music, and more importantly, it connects people with similar interest by “group” or “neighbours”. If you are curious, here is one article from do news which talked about its founder Yang Bo. But I think the real impressive thing is its clean user interface, unlike its big brother sina, sohu, netease, its web page is simple and easier to use. There are links for “buying books” or “compare prices” (I believe that’s where their revenue comes from), but it’s not annoying. Anyway, the web site claims 190,000 registered users as of lately, and is getting a lot attention from the news media and competitors (sina and mop).

I also checked out another web site called “mipang” (米胖)   which means “pop rice” in Chinese. It lets people share about their hometown or places they have been, by words or pictures. It’s at a much earlier stage than the douban 豆瓣, but I think it’s equally fascinating (if not more) because there is Chinese proverb “learn more travelling 1000 miles instead of readinging 10 thousands books”.

Here is an article from China Web 2.0 Riview.