Add a web-based cgiemail HTML form to my "Contact Me" page. So now you can send me messages directly from my home page instead firing up your own email program. Of course, this is only intent to be useful when you feel it is convenient. You can always fire up your favorite email program to send me messages.
An example: if you are using a public computer, usually you don't have access to the email program. So it would be handy to send me message directly from the web.
I am also thinking to install a bulletin board here. Still in early development stages.
A funny incident: yesterday, I went to a local liquor store to buy some sherry. The store owner asked for ID! He told me he suspect I am under the legal age to drink some wine! That's hilarious, actually, like a comedy.
A sunny pleasant day. I hope this kind of weather will last.
Did some after Christmas shopping. Shopping is no fun for me, more like a necessary evil. Of course, I am not implying my wife is evil, :-)
Someone asks about my digital camera, here is the specification. I bought it more than two years ago, so I am afraid it is not state-of-the-art.
Digicam Specification
Model: Digital Camera FinePix 4700 Zoom
CCD Sensor: 1/1.7-inch Super CCD (with primary color filter), 2.4 million pixels in an interwoven pattern
Image file size: 2,400 x 1,800 / 1,280 x 960 / 640 x 480 pixels
File format: Still image: DCF-compliant (Exif ver. 2.1 JPEG-compliant), DPOF-compatible
Movie: DCF-compliant (AVI format, Motion JPEG)
Storage Media: SmartMedia (3.3V)
Viewfinder: Real image optical
Lens: Super EBC Fujinon optical 3x zoom lens
F2.8/F7.0 (wide-angle) to F4.5/F10.8 (telephoto)
Focus distance: f=8.3-24.9mm (equivalent to 36-108mm on a 35mm camera)
Exposure control: 64 zones TTL metering, Program AE (exposure compensation available in Manual mode)
Sensitivity: Equivalent to ISO 200/400/800
White balance auto-selected (7 modes selectable in Manual mode)
Focal range
Normal: Approximately 80cm/2.6ft to infinity
Macro: Approximately 20cm/0.7 ft to 80cm/2.6 ft
Electronic shutter: variable-speed, 3 to 1/2,000 sec. (using AE)
Flash: Auto flash using flash control sensor
Effective range: Wide Approximately 0.2m - 4m (0.7 ft - 13.1 ft)
Tele approximately 0.2m - 3m (0.7 ft - 9.8 ft)
Flash modes: Auto, Red-Eye reduction
Forced flash, suppressed flash, night scenes (slow synchro)
LCD Monitor
2-inch, low-temperature polysilicon TFT 130,000 pixels
Video output
NTSC (US/Canada model)
Self-Timer: 10 sec. timer clock
INPUT/OUTPUT TERMINALS
A/V Output
Stereo mini-jack(1), Audio: 316mVrms, output impedance 2.2 KOhm or less
Digital
USB (1) for image data output with a personal computer
DC Input
Socket for specified AC power adapter
POWER SUPPLY AND OTHERS
Power supply
Use one of the following:
2 AA-size Ni-MH (nickel metal hydride) batteries (included)
2 AA-size long-life (Minimum 1,000 mAh) Ni-Cd (nickel-cadmium) batteries (sold separately)
AC-3V AC Power Adapter (sold separately)
Battery life:
Ni-MH battery HR-3UF, with LCD monitor on, approximately 80, LCD off, 230, with 50% flash rate
Condition for use:
0 - 40 degrees Celsius (32 - 104 degrees Fahrenheit); 80% humidity or less (no condensation)
Camera dimensions (W/H/D)
78 x 97.5 x 32.9 mm / 3.1 x 3.8 x 1.3 in. (not including accessories and attachments)
Camera mass (weight)
Approximately 255 g / 9.0 oz. (not including accessories, batteries or SmartMedia)
Weight for photography
Approximately 310g / 10.9 oz. (including batteries and SmartMedia)
Christmas day. Pleasant and nice.
Rent a DVD, Down with Love. Actually, I am more into the action and sci-fi genre, but my wife is a romance comedy buff.
Read some report that Apple Mac OS X Mail.app program can corrupt IMAP4 inboxes. However, I failed to read more of such report. From my experience, it seems OK. Just to be careful, anyway.
Learned a trick to remove attachments from a email message, but keep the message itself. In Mac Outlook Express, there is a menu command, so that's trivial. On the Windows 98 I am doing:
Just note to save the attachments first, in case you need those files.
Updated my Chinese web site.
Had some problem with my Mac Outlook Express 5 and Cyrus IMAP4 server. It seems that Mac OE 5 is not very standard compliant. I used Mail Drop (another simpler IMAP client) without flaw.
Watched Anger Management DVD. Funny.
Not satisfied with my current web site. Thinking ways to improve it.
Watched About a boy DVD. Funny British Stuff, especially when they say "Bugger off", :-)
Watched Metropolis DVD. Good Anime, actually, it is the classical anime. Osamu Tezuka's early work. I enjoy his Astor Boy very much.
Went to watch Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Quite long, three and a half hours. Put all three episodes together, we get more than 10 hours total play time. It is almost equivalent to Richard Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung.
Read about Tuscany several times. Did some research.
It is a region in west central Italy, its capital is Florence, the city of Galileo, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Dante, and Machiavelli. It was a Lombard duchy in the 6th century. It was ruled by the Medici dukes, then the house of Lorraine in 1737, then to Sadinia and the Kingdom of Italy in the 1860s. Florence and Pisa are its two famous cities. Its population is about 3 million.
Read an interesting article in the New Yorker magazine, comparing the Lord of the Ring to Wagner's The Ring of the Niebelung. Interesting comparison. I remember several month ago, I read some article compare the Star Wars trilogy with Wagner's Ring, especially the music themes. I believe it is easy to google out use "Star Wars" and "Wagner" as the search phrases.
Raining all day. Watched the DVD Pirates of the Caribbean. Quite entertaining. With a lot of archaic words, though.
Rent the DVD Pirates of the Caribbean. However, I don't have time to watch it today.
A hectic day, running between boroughs.
Listened Puccini's La Boheme again. It is a Metropolitan Opera House production.
La Boheme is one of my favorite operas, along with Le Nozzi de Figaro, and Don Giovanni. Compared to the Mozart operas, La Boheme is short. However, nobody can beat the lengthy Wagner. A opera 16 hours long! Only Wagner can have this idea. Anyway, he is Wagner.
Today is my birthday. Had a good time with my pals in NYU Medical Center holiday brunch. Took some photos, they are in my online album now. Click "Photo Album" in the left column. Or click here.
Saturdays are always busy. Must go shopping, must do the chores, etc. It is far from the "lazy Saturday afternoon" stereotype.
Went to watch The last samurai again. This time, with my wife, just come back from California from a hematology meeting. Just before she came home, I watched the film the first time. Anyway, a good film, like a good book, worth a second viewing.
While reading 3001: The Final Odyssey, I noticed they mentioned the David Bowman and Dr. Floyd encounter was recorded in video on board the Discover spaceship. This happened in 2010. However, I remember in that book, it suggested no video recording was made during the encounter. Maybe I remembered wrong? Maybe I should check 2010 to find out.
Distinguished "republic" and "democracy". Essentially, "republic" means representative democracy, not direct democracy. I used to think they are the same thing.
Processed wife's films taken in California. Disappointed to the result, the color it too dull. It is hard say what is going wrong, the film, the weather, or the processing shop.
From my experience, to scan a photo is always inferior to have the digital camera shots. Although film photos are better on paper, on screen, digital cameras can produce much better result. Maybe my scanner is not good enough, who knows.
Went to see the movie The Last Samurai. This movie is so hot that National Geographic published an article on Samurai in the current issue.
Good fighting scenes, good acting on Tom Cruise's part. This kind of movie can only be enjoyed in theaters. DVD and home theaters can hardly give you the impressions in a real movie theaters. For movie screens, size does matter.
Partly melted snow made the road quite slushy. Dirty puddles made it hard to walk. The sunshine is so tempting, any how.
Made some effort to reduce the entropy in my apartment. According to the second law of thermodynamics, to reduce entropy, you must do work. I did a lot work to reduce the entropy. I am not sure about the efficiency, but I guess I am about to reach the theoretic maximum.
Went to welcome the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao. Too many people crowded before the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, the traditionally hotel for foreign dignitaries. As usually, a small crowd of Tibetan and Falun Gong is also there.
The movie The Last Samurai is going out. There is a feature article about Samurai in this month's National Geographic magazine. Wonderful pictures in the magazine, as usual.
Samurai is the term to refer to a member of Japanese medieval warrior class. During the Kamakura shogunate (1192-1333), they became the ruling class. Samurai culture developed during the Ashikaga shogunate (1338-1573). After Meiji Restoration of 1868, the class dissolved, but it is not going without a fight. In the movie The last Samurai depicts the end of Samurai. You can think a Samurai is equivalent to a West European Medieval knight. Someone in the Timeline, maybe.
This month also witnesses the 100 anniversary of Wright brother's first flight, althought it is not without controversy. All the magazines are pouring ink on this top. So maybe I can save some drops. (Another misnomer and anachronism. That's the way it is, anyway.)
My wife is visiting San Diego right now. That city was named in 1602. It was captured by the United States from Mexico in 1846, The zoo and Balboa part are renowned. Vasco Nunez de Balboa (1475-1519) is the Spanish conquistador who discovered the Pacific Ocean. But this fellow was beheaded by his rival Pedrarias (1440?-1531) after a farcical trial. Vasco da Gama is more fortunate.
A miserable day. In the blizzard, the heating system of my bedroom broke.
The stories of Kamose, Ahmose, the defeat of Hyksos by Ahmose; the first great female Pharaoh Hatshepsut; his step son, Thutmose III's vengeance; Amenhotep III, Amenhotep IV, later became Akhenaten, build the new city Amarna, only to be abandoned shortly after his death; his beautiful queen, Nefertiti; The tragedy death of Tutankhamum, the boy king, the great Ramese II.
I am enthralled by the stories of desert, the temples, the Pharaohs, and, yes, the treasures. Maybe I was only enthralled by the narrator's voice instead of the history itself. Sometimes I wonder, how much we claim we know about the ancient history are real, how much are made up by the historians. From different side, from different point of view, you can have different accounts to the same event. So history depends on who wrote it, that can be confusing, and sometimes desperately baffling. Maybe I should not think so much about the real meaning of history. It is only a narrative. As long as it is interesting and entertaining, it is a good narrative.
Event horizon is the surface of a black hole. Any thing, even light, cannot escape once it entered the event horizon. How do you distinguished a black hole from a neutron star? Someone said it absorbs energy, the energy disappeared without a trace. Neutron stars behave differently. So if you ever see some energy just disappeared from the Universe altogether, you know you are watching a black hole. I hope you are not looking at it too closely, watch out the event horizon.
It is very uncomfortable to sit in front of my desk, without heating system working, see the snow flake falling. I am just hoping my desktop lamp can give some extra more entropy.
Play a trick on one of my friend. He is watching the horror movie The Ring. I called him, after a short period of silence, I whispered "Seven Days". You will know what's his reaction if you happen watched the movie. That's fun. Or sort of, as long as I don't scare the hell out you, say, after midnight, although I like to try that, :-)
It would be hard to sleep without heat in my bedroom.
Now you can hear Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker everywhere. Soon you will hear George Balanchine as well, his birthday is coming. Expect a PBS event.
George Balanchine, originally Georgy Melitonovich Balanchivadze (1904-1983), Russian born US choreographer, art director and co-founder of New York City Ballet. The Nutcracker is his most enduring heritage.
Today witnessed the first snow of this winter. It is big, I am not sure if it will be as big as last winter's. Let's see.
I have a habit to name my storages media volumes, instead of simply number them. So I name my Zip disks, my SuperDisks, my audio cassettes, and my video cassettes.
I used the names of my favorite authors, composers, artists, mathematicians, and scientists. I also use the names of planets, satellites, and stars. I think it is fun to say "I just taped this week's Star Trek on Ganymede". It is much cooler to say "I tape the show on tape number 34".
For example, I named the four video tapes I bought last month with the four Julian Galileo satellites: Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, and Io. When Galileo used the telescope invented by Hans Lippershey to look at the Jupiter, he discovered the four biggest satellites of the giant planet.
So one of my video tape was named after Hans Lippershey, the other was named Galileo.
Simon Stevin (1548-1620) is the Flemish mathematician who contributed significantly to the decimal system we are using today. Like all the Renaissance wizards, he is a polymath. He studied music, and divided the octave into semitones. His namesake is a Maxell video tape, currently storing a Chinese martial art classic.
Poul Anderson (1926-2001) is one of my favorite science fiction writers, alone with Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. Currently I am reading his A Boat of a Million Years, which is fantastic. I already read five or six of his novels. Currently his namesake is holding several Chinese movies.
I also use Greek mythical names as my volume names. One of the tape was named Apollo, the Sun god. It is also the name for the famous Lunar expedition project. Unfortunately, the currently situation of spaceflight is miserable. I hope the current Chinese ambition of the Moon will rekindle our aspiration the the heaven. Now the tape Apollo is holding several Stanley Kubrick movies, including Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and some other science fictions.
Edwin H(oward) Armstrong (1890-1954) is the famous inventor who invented FM radio. He was born in New York City, educated in Columbia University. He invented the amplification circuits widely used in broadcasting devices. He won the Franklin Medal, the highest US scientific honor. However, some bitter patent lawsuit led to his suicide in 1954. A tragic hero. His name was storing the movie XXX and Gangs of New York.
Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) is THE science fiction writer. He was born in Russia, migrated to New York City at the age of three. He received a Ph.D. on chemistry from Columbia University. He wrote about four hundred books, I read a lot, but only a small part of them. His Nightfall (1941) is often called the finest science fiction short stories ever written. Other classic works: I, Robot, the trilogy Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation (1951-1953). His namesake was holding Matrix Reloaded and Dr. Zhivago.
Did some Java programming, read some Scientific American articles, and updated my web pages.
Last month, I downloaded some e-books of Jules Verne from Project Gutenberg. I have a link of Project Gutenberg in my Bookmark page.
I read Verne's 20,000 leagues under the Seas when I was in high school back in China, through Chinese translations. During my high school and college years, I read some of his books (Chinese translation). However, most of the Chinese translations are not good enough. Verne wrote in French, since I don't speak the language of Voltaire, English is the second best. It is also easy to get an English e-book copy from Project Gutenberg.
Now I already finished 20,000 Leagues under the Seas, Mysterious Island, and The Children of Captain Grant, all read on my Palm PDA. Considering he published those voyages extraordinaires during the 1800's, that's remarkable for him to predict the future so accurately.
Jules Verne (1828-1905), was born in Nantes, France. He studies law in Paris. Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863) made him famous. His voyages extraordinaires, including A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), A Journey to the Moon (1865), 20,000 Leagues under the Seas (1870), Around the World in Eighty Days (1873), and the Mysterious Island (1874), all wonderful adventuries. His works are the harbinger of the science fiction flourished in the twentieth century.
A good web site abot Jules Verne.
In his writing, he wrote a lot of scientific facts and principles. Actually, science is the real protagonist in his works. The stories, the fictions, are just a tool to teach science. This is unique. In most of the science fictions, science only act as an element to promote the story, a contraption to enhance and help the storytelling, a dramatic tool. In later days, his science teaching was dropped, and was dubbed as "info dump". This reflects the Zeitgeists of different times: Victorian and postmodernism.
However, I enjoy his info dump very much. Therefore, I enjoy his writing very much. His work is generally lengthy. Sometimes I wonder how he can manage that, before the invention of typewriter and word processors. With a quill pen, he can write so much text. His fingers must be very strong. Of course, we shouldn't forget the fact that Latin alphabet is much easier to write than Chinese ideograms.
BTW, these days I am reading a lot Philip K. Dick.
Read Philip K. Dick's We can remember it for your wholesale, this story was adapted for the movie Total Recall starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is the governor of California right now. It is surprising. It reminds me that in one Sylvester Stallon movie, it is mentioned that Arnold later become the US President. I believe in the movie, this is taken as an irony. However, now it seems it is not so remote, anyway.
Put several e-books to my Palm III. All in Palm Doc format. Realized Palm PDA can be a wonderful e-book reader. A good point of e-books is you can search the text, which cannot be done to paper books.
Read David Kelly Affair by John Cassidy in New Yorker magazine. The lesson: don't talk too much to the journalists, that can be quite fatal to a governmental employee.
Read a lot of Philip K. Dick. In this month's Wired magazine, there is a feature article on him. Realized a lot of movie was adapted from his stories and novels. Such as:
Philip K. Dick died in 1982. After his death, so many of his works was adapted to movies. He cannot enjoy those copyright money, what a tragedy!