It is Halloween today. Begin to spook, :-)
After I did some research on Wi-Fi (802.11b and 802.11g), I understand that it would be expensive to connect to two or more wired Ethernet wirelessly. The hardware should be repeaters/bridges, and I need one for each network. They are several different vendors and operating modes, all meant to serve "Enterprise" users.
I need to brush up my network knowledge, those terminologies are getting fuzzier since I left school years ago.
BTW, from what I read on the Internet, routers can function as hubs if they have more than one RJ-45 jacks. I guess I can generalize that to the Wi-Fi network?
My digital camera (Fuji FinePix 4700) comes with a software called EXIF viewer. At first I am not quite sure what is EXIF. JPEG is good enough, why bother with an odd EXIF? After dealing with my digital camera for a while, I began to understand EXIF.
The JPEG files generated by my FinePix 4700 are more than simple JPEG files. It also contains extra information such as thumbnails, exposure parameters, and camera settings and model. All those extra information are part of EXIF specification, which is compatible to both JPEG and TIFF formats. EXIF is cross-platform, so the thumbnails are visible by EXIF viewers on different platforms. By the way, on Macintosh, there is an extra way to store the thumbnail, which is independent of EXIF format. Of course, EXIF viewer for Mac uses the EXIF thumbnails and data.
Comparing the digital photo and music, we have the following analogs:
WAV and AIFF are similar to TIFF, because WAV and AIFF for audio files and TIFF for picture files are lossless formats.
MP3 to JPEG, because both are lossy compression formats, both are widely accepted.
MP3 tags to EXIF tags, both are used to store extra information in the files.
I also noticed the DPOF (Digital Picture Order Format). My FinePix 4700 comes with a software called DP editor, which stores printing ordering information in a folder named "MISC" under the root directory of the media, such as SmartMedia card, floppy,etc. I didn't study it very thoroughly, but it seems it won't work if you moved the picture file to other media, and it definitely won't work for non-rewritable media such as CD-R. So it is of limited use for me, because I mainly use CD-R and CD-RW as storing media for my digital photos. You can always issue ordering information by other means. DPOF is only meant to be an auxiliary goody to facilitate the printing process, not a mandatory procedure to print digital photos.
I burned some photos to CD-RW and brought them to CVS. It works as advertised, I am rather satisfied. That means I no longer need to upload my digital photos using the slow dial-up connections. I can just burn a CD, go to CVS and print the photos. It is called SneakerNet, :-)
Compared the backlighting of my Palm III and Palm IIIx. The default backlight of Palm III is dark letters, bright background; the Palm IIIx reversed it: dark background, bright letters. I prefer the dark background. On both machines, I can switch between the two backlight modes by using the dot dot 8 shortcut. The Palm IIIx has better contrast. Palm III has a bright rim around the screen, when the default backlight (bright background) is reversed by the dot dot 8 shortcut. I suspect that a dark background consumes less battery, although I never see it documented, but I guess it is the case.
I am thinking about the possibility of installing a search engine for my web site, since it would be convenient to search my journals. However, there are some difficulties, I will research on that later.
Today I spent some time to catch up the newsgroups. I am using the MT-Newswatcher news reader on my Macintoshes. I save a copy of the newsrc file on a floppy, so I can read news on any of my Macintoshes. Last time, I mentioned I decommissioned my Performa Mac for important jobs. However, I gather reading news is not considered an important job, so from time to time I still fire up my old Performa to read news, reply emails, and do some other simple chore. It is still a usable machine, at least it can save me from other Macs, saving a distressing power-up cycle for other machines.
Pondering about broadband services in my neighborhood, surprised to find that now Optimum Online provides cable broadband here. Verizon DSL still not there. However, the price is not very attractive: for non cable TV subscribers, the price for Optimum Online is $50 per month, which is quite steep. So for now, I should better stick to my low-cost dial-up Internet service.
In case I decide to use broadband, I need a NAT router. A NAT (Network Address Translation) router let you share a single IP address among multiple computers. Usually it is a dedicated (special purpose) computer running the routing software, but it can also be a general purpose computer running the routing software. For example, currently I am using my Windows 98 box as a NAT router to share the dial-up Internet connection with my iMac, Performa Mac, and PowerBook G4. The Windows box even runs a PCMacLan software, serving as a file server for my Macs.
Having a dedicated router can liberate my Windows box from serving Internet services. I checked the web, the cheapest NAT router only costs $12, which has an RJ-45 slot for WAN (cable or DSL modem), two RJ-45 ports for local computers or Ethernet Hubs. Although it has only two LAN ports, it can be plugged to Ethernet hubs to connect to multiple machines. The specification sheet states that it can be connected to more than 200 machines to share the Internet connection. Since I already possesses a 4-port Ethernet hub, this two-port NAT router seems a good choice for me.
Or I can choose a wireless router. Because I have already have a wired Ethernet network, the wireless router should be able to integrate into my existing wired network. It seems there are some models having both RJ-45 jacks and wireless connectivity. It should be able to connect to my existing network.
Considering the following scenario: Say I have already had two separate Ethernet networks, one locates on the first floor, we call it Net One. The other locates on the second floor, named Net Two. It is very difficult to wire them by Ethernet cable, too troublesome to lay cables between floors. So wireless is a bliss. Because all my existing machines are not rigged with wireless network card, and I don't want to invest a lot on the desktop machines, because they are not mobile anyway, since they are already hooked by Ethernet cables. However, I do possess notebook computers, and I wish I can move the notebooks while they are online. So what's my best shot to connect the two networks, enabling every machine to share the Internet?
Maybe it is a too complicated scenario. Net One and Net Two are separated for now, each has less than five machines. My task is: First, connect them wirelessly; Second, to share Internet for all the machines, for both networks. All the desktops don't need wireless connection, but the notebooks need share the Internet wirelessly.
To connect Net One and Net two wirelessly, I am thinking a wireless repeater. Then I can hook either network to WAN via a NAT router. If the NAT router is a wired one, all my desktops are covered, but my notebooks are not mobile, I am afraid. To make my notebooks mobile, I need a NAT router which can do both wired and wireless connections. I remember I saw such a model online.
How about the wireless repeater? Can I use only a wired NAT router, but use the wireless repeater to make my notebook mobile? Currently I don't have a good knowledge of all those wireless equipments, So I need to research it online. But I hope I can use a repeater to integrate my notebooks to the existing wired Ethernet network?
However, according to what I learned from text books, Ethernet and wireless are two different media, so the right terminology is bridge instead of repeater? I need to consult experts or text books on this issue.
Today I read an advertisement of CVS, saying they can process digital photos, $0.29 for a 4x6 print. That sounds good. They accepts CDs, floppies, SmartMedia Card, MMC Card, and Memory Stick. Sounds a good deal. I will check it out.
Today I cataloged my CD-Rs. I have plans to catalog my CDs and CD-RWs in the near future. To my surprise, now I already burned 116 CD-Rs! That's a lot, and it took me quite a while to catalog all of them. Fortunately, I still have enough space to hold another hundred, thanks to my big CD wallet which can hold 104 CDs.
I used a Palm Database program JFilePro 4.0 to catalog those CD-Rs. Other than that, I also use JFile to catalog my books, MiniDiscs, audio cassettes, and video cassettes. It is handy to have those databases on my handheld computer, so I can take them anywhere, freed myself from the desktops.
Spent several hours fixing my hi-fi stereo. A jammed cassette caused some mechanical failure. It takes me a while to figure out how to dissemble the machine. After some excruciating, painstaking tweaking, finally I made it work again.
Rented the Matrix Reloaded DVD. This DVD should have two discs, but my shabby local rental store has only the movie disc, no where to find the special features disc. Since it was cheap, so I still took it. Although later on, I was tantalized by the prospect of seeing the special features. Anyway, a decision was already made.
I already watched the movie in the theater. However, a movie this dense of meaning, metaphysical, and religious takes more than a single viewing to appreciate. When I hear the Architect talking, I wonder what he's talking about, his words full of obscure reference and meaning, very hard to understand. I used the back key of my remote quite often. Finally, I think I have a theory to make sense of the whole plot. However, before I watch the Revolution, I am not sure if my theory stands well.
I just came upon this web site, which discuss the meaning of the movie. I enjoy reading it. Now I am still thinking about the DVD special features, :-(
Checked the iPod web site, saw the Belkin card reader for iPod. This card reader can save the contents on a media card to iPod's hard drive, without a computer. It uses the huge storage capacity of iPod's hard drive to save digital photos read from the memory card. That's a brilliant idea. With an iPod and memory card reader from Belkin, you can save the trouble of bringing a computer or a lot of memory cards.
Rented the Italian Job DVD. Then I realized it is a remake of a previous movie with the same title. I am impressed by the car chasing, featuring the Minis. Recently I saw a lot of Mini commercials on magazines. However, I myself prefer bigger cars. The movie has a very clear plot and story line, no fancy trick, no mind-boggling metaphysical revelation. A clear-cut, quite entertaining action movie.
Found two bugs in my Photo Album CGI scripts. Took a while to restore the messed up files and databases. Now it is up running again. A lot of time is consumed to identify the bug, the actual fixing took only five minutes. Then, to restore the corrupted files and databases took much longer.
Every time the bugs corrupts the program, a huge core dump appears on the hard drive. Before long, all my disk quota is filled. Clean the mess takes a while too. So today, I don't have much time left for other activities.
Realized that on my web site, there are some old files which is not longer used. However, it is a little messy to distinguished them from those useful. I should take some time to clean them before it is too late. For now, it is OK, I still have enough hard drive space.
Did some maintaining chore for my iMac. Mac OS doesn't come with a defragment utility like the Windows. However, Symantec provides Norton Speed Disk to do the same job. Speed Disk cannot reside on the same volume that it works on, so you cannot put it on the hard drive volume. The optimum scenario is that you boot from a bootable CD with Norton utilities on it. That would be simple and neat.
However, my Norton doesn't come on a bootable CD. I have bootable Mac OS install CDs, but obviously I cannot add the Norton folder to it. It is tricky to make a bootable Mac CD. From my reading of David Pogue's Mac Secrets, it should work to have a System folder on the CD. However, after I burned a CD with a System Folder on it, the machine simply won't boot from it. Checking google, it says you need more than a System folder. Usually you can use Toast to make a bootable Mac CD, or there is a work around: use the Mac OS X's Disk Copy utility, make a read/write image of the CD, the add the content you want to add, then use Disk Copy to convert the image to CD/DVD, then burn the image to a CD. All sounds good. However, while I try it out, there are serious problems.
First, I made a Mac OS 9.1 install CD read/write image, but when I was putting the Norton folder onto the image volume, my PowerBook freeze, requesting a reboot. Every time I try to copy the Norton folder to the image volume, my PowerBook dies.
First I suspect that's my Mac OS 9.1 Install CD, then tried Mac OS 8.5 install CD. This time, the machine didn't die, but the CD image refused to hold the Norton folder, even I am sure that I made the image read/write.
I can made an image with Norton using Mac OS 9.1 Disk Copy, but that simply doesn't work. During the process, a blank was wasted for unknown reasons. Frustrated, I realized I cannot make a bootable CD with Norton with my current tool set.
Other than a Norton bootable CD, I have two other options. First, I can boot from Mac OS install CD, then use either SuperDisk or Zip to hold the Norton folder. Or I can use a Network volume.
First, I tried SuperDisk. It proved too slow. Then I tried Zip, it is slightly faster, but still too slow to bear. Finally, I tried Network volume. It works far better than the removable drives. A hard drive is much faster, even when it is not locally connected. My home ethernet runs at 10M bps. But it is still much better than either SuperDisk or Zip.
Now after I have the PowerBook, I can simply transfer my files from the iMac to the PowerBook, use PowerBook's CD Writer to backup, then delete archived files on iMac, run Norton from PowerBook. It is much faster and neat than my previous solution.
Before I have my PowerBook, first, I make a Disk Copy .img image file on the iMac, then transfer the big .img file to my Windows 98 box, which has a PCMacLan server software to enable my Windows hard drive mounted on Macs as a Mac volume. After I get the .img file on my PC, I use the PrimoCD software to burn a CD. The CD is Mac format, PC cannot read it.
Actually, it is quite wonderful: the .img image file format is not documented on the PrimoCD manual, nor it is mentioned on my Mac OS books and manuals. It simply worked. Maybe .img format is more universal then I originally thought, or Disk Copy adopted a non Mac-only image format. Anyway, it works, that's good.
Even it works, it takes much longer to prepare the .img file and transfer the file from my iMac to my Windows box. Now with PowerBook, I can shorten the maintain time at least forty minutes. That's a bliss.
Today, I made four CD archives, cleaned my iMac hard drive, run the defragmentation program. Everything is perfect now.
An extra word: To have a maintenance log is very important when you have a lot of archival CDs. I use my Palm to build a searchable database use JFilePro database.
Tried the CD-RW writer of the PowerBook G4, with perfect result. The Mac OS X 10.2 has built-in CD writing capacity, although it is not as sophisticated as the famous Toast CD burning software. However, for ordinary use, the Mac OS X built-in burner software is good enough.
The CD burning software of OS X is integrated in the Finder, when you insert a blank, Finder prompts you to give a volume name for the blank. You can then drag and drop files, folders to the volume. After you finished, highlight the volume, choose the "Burn CD" menu command. After a while, you get a Data CD. All is simple and intuitive. However, it doesn't support multi-session burning, which is provided by Toast.
As a comparison, the PrimoCD Pro burning software on my Windows 98 box is not intuitive at all, but it give you full control when you mastering a CD. You need to get familiar with dozens of buzzwords, to understand what they mean, all those obscure parameters. It takes me a while to get a hang of it. Of course, now it is my second nature to use the software, I remember every single keyboard shortcuts.
Between classical Mac OS and OS X, there are some keyboard shortcut changes. In Finder, you can no longer use the Command-N to create a new folder, instead, you use Shift-Command-N to do the jot. Now Command-N is to open a new window instead. In OS X finder, some useful keyboard shortcuts:
Shift-Command-H: Home Folder
Shift-Command-C: Computer Folder
Shift-Command-A: Application Folder
Shift-Command-N: Create New Folder
Command-N: New Window
Shift-Command-Delete: Empty the Trash Folder
Command-K: Connect to dialog box, it replaced the familiar chooser of the classical Mac OS.
BTW, Folder and Directory are interchangeable terms. Usually, by convention, when you are using a command line user interface, you use the term directory; when you use GUI interface, you use the term folder.
Spent a huge amount of time debugging a long and complicated perl script. It writes a binary output file, however, a careless ftp session corrupts the binary file. Unfortunately, the binary file proven not easily replaced. I need to fix it. It became gory. The pure fact that my brain is organic made the situation worse: I need take several breaks each 24-hour period to replenish my carbohydrate and protein stockpile. Context switching is expensive between tasks. All these annoyances prevent me from concentration on my problem for a convenient prolonged mixture of meditation and keyboard abusing. That's miserable.
The good thing about to have a wife is from time to time you don't need to prepare the bio-fuel to keep yourself running. However, everything has its downside: a wife can be high-maintenance sometimes. Of course, that's not always the case.
Another thing drove me crazy: the FTP on my Windows machine simply refused to work for a certain site. Because that perl script is used as part of an online application, I need frequently use FTP to upload and maintain. I usually use my Macintoshes to do the FTP job, which is OK most of the time. However, for certain reasons, I need to do the FTP on my Windows 98 box this time to solve the problem.
On my Windows 98, I tried WS_FTP Pro, WS_FTP LE, the Windows 98 command line ftp, and Internet Explorer (ftp://username:password@ftp.server.com as the url), none works. At first, I suspect that's the ISP. However, both my classical iMac and OS X PowerBook G4 hooked to the same ISP do a terrific ftp job. They even work fine after I put them behind the Windows 98 box, which runs NAT32, acting as a NAT router. It seems all FTP clients on my Windows 98 box refuse to work properly with this certain server. However, with certain other servers, Windows 98 is fine. This puzzled me profoundly. I contacted the technical support guy of the server without prevail. That's a tough problem.
To verify it is the Window 98 box, I have several options: fire up my Window 2000 OS installed on the same machine, try ftp there; or I can find another Windows 98 machine, dial to the same ISP, and try to see if that machine works. Fortunately, I can resort to my Mac as a last straw. However, that's very inconvenient. Or I can use the Web control panel interface, which is also inconvenient. FTP is simply too handy and useful to forgo.
Not being electronic myself, I must shut down for several hours each 24-hour period to maintain my processing and memory unit. That's not neat, but that's unavoidable. I hope someday, I can download (or upload, depending where's your vantage point) my mind to some higher form of existence.
Digressed a little bit. Trying to focus my mind on the problem now.
Read the New Yorker article Post-Imperial Blues by David Remnick. It makes an interesting reading, reminds me an article about the three hundred-year celebration of St. Petersburg several months ago. This article profiles Vladimir Putin, the current Russian president. I am not sure if the St. Petersburg piece was written by the same author.
Putin began as a not-very-successful KGB agent, stationed in East Germany before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Soon after he returned Russian, he worked for the democratic mayor of the city of Leningrad (aka St. Petersburg), Mr. Sobchak. He showed competence and loyalty. Even since then, he began to gain power and influence steadily. Finally, he gained the then president Yelsin's favor, appointed his successor after Yelsin's resignation.
In this article, Putin was portrayed as a dull, boring, but shrewd bureaucrat. He is not a revolutionary, but someone the Russian people want: a practical guy. He even got the nickname "Our German".
The article detailed some events in his presidency, such as his much-criticized resurrection of the former Soviet Union national anthem of the Stalin era. Even Yelsin publicly criticized it. But it was viewed as a means to appease those former communists and their supporters.
Read another article End Run at Enron by Jeffrey Toobin. As a foreigner, I don't understand the justice system of United States. This article analyzed why it is unlikely that the former leaders of Enron, namely Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling, will be criminally charged. The justice system is so complicated, the case is so convoluted, the jurors are so dumb, it is hopeless for the prosecutors to get fact straight and punish those responsible. That's fun. A word for future perpetrators: just make your case complicated, you may get away with it.
Imported my MP3 collections to iTunes. iTunes can recognize Unicode Chinese characters, but for some reason, it seems dislike the GB code. Some GB coded ID3 tagged MP3 files cannot display correctly. I must boot my Windows 2000 machine, use WinAmp to read the GB coded ID3 tag, and type those tags manually in the iTunes. Fortunately, I don't have much those GB tagged MP3s, a large number of those MP3 files are corrected tagged in Unicode.
The speed of FireWire is very admirable, it can transfer a large number of MP3s in a pretty short time. I am very satisfied with the iTunes/iPod combination.
Borrowed two books about space shuttle from library.
| Title: | Enterprise |
| Author: | Jerry Crey |
| ISBN: | 0-688-03462-4 |
| Publisher: | William Morrow and Company, Inc. |
| Year: | 1979 |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Title: | Space Shuttle: The History of the National Space Transportation System |
| Edition: | 3 |
| Author: | Dennis R. Jenkins |
| ISBN: | 0-9633974-5-1 |
| Year: | 2002 |
| Pages: | 513 |
I read the Enterprise first, because it has a preface by Asimov. It is more of a history than technical book. It contains more early budget politics and organizational issues than the really juicy technical details. Fortunately, the second book, Space Shuttle can provided much needed technical information and technical and conceptual history of the space shuttles.
Since I haven't peruse the Space Shuttle in detail, now I will comment on the first one, Enterprise, which I finished today. It is published before any space shuttle launching, so it cannot provide more interesting technical information. It concentrated on telling the early history of NASA and space shuttle program, the rationale of the shuttle, and early development. The book devoted on chapter to deal with the technical stuff, however, unfortunately, the pages of this chapter was badly vandalized.
The second book, Space Shuttle, is much more beautiful and juicy. It contains a huge amount of photos, diagrams, and data. I am much fond of those humorous insignias of those canceled flights.
Just wrote some Chinese articles and put them to my Chinese site. If you happen to read Chinese, please check the Chinese version. My English site and the Chinese counterpart roughly have the equivalent information, but they are not identical. Sometimes it is not desirable to put certain information in both languages, because it is irrelevant to the readers of the other language.
I usually update the English site more often. The reason is simple: it is easier to type English than Chinese. In average, three keystrokes generate a Chinese character, so usually it takes at least three times longer to write the same stuff. However, it is fun to write, in both languages. I hope you will have fun too. However, I suspect that the main purpose of this site is to entertain myself. I hope it can also entertain you, nevertheless.
Several week ago, I realized that I cannot get a broadband Internet service in my neighborhood. I checked Verizon Online for DSL and Optimum Online for Cable availability. Tough luck, neither provide services to my neighborhood. At first, I felt upset, and got a little angry. However, since I am a rationalist, I rationalized it. Here is how I did it:
First, it is an Age of Information, but it is also an Age of Information OVERLOAD. People get bombarded with mostly irrelevant information everyday and get perplexed, disorientated. Internet is a big accomplice: it provides more unedited, raw data than anything else. So maybe it is not a bad deal not having the broadband Internet service. The more bandwidth, the more time I will squander on irrelevant information. Life is short, art is long. I cannot afford spending my valuable time online all the time, that surely would happen if I have broadband. Using a slow dial-up connection would force me to select the most relevant information I need to receive and transmit. Another benefit is I can save a score of bucks each month. That is a large sum if counted yearly.
I already observed I spend more time online than I should. So I forced myself offline from time to time just to see if I can resist the temptation, just as from time to time I refrain myself from smoking. I did this just to prove I have the ability to control myself.
It is weekend again. The weather is gloomy, my mood goes with the weather. Now I am trying forcing myself out of the glum mood. Just to prove I can do it.
Finished reading the Linux article in the current Wired magazine. Not much new information than in his autobiography, which I happed to own a copy. Here is the detail:
| Title: | Just for fun: The story of an accidental revolutionary |
| Author: | Linus Torvalds and David Diamond |
| ISBN: | 0-06-662072-4 |
| Publisher: | Harper Business |
| Year: | 2001 |
| Pages: | 262 |
I read that book a long time ago, soon after I received my copy. Maybe it's time to reread it.
Watched the Churchill documentary on PBS, channel 13. I should be more aggressive and enterprising.
Reading Blue Latitudes. It is not a biography or a detailed account of Captain Cook's voyages. It is more like a travelogue, comparing Captain Cook's journal with the current situation, sometimes with banal sentiments. However, this is not a bad book, even interesting from time to time. I finished the chapters of the Society Islands and Tahiti, now in the middle of the New Zealand chapter. I was a little disappointed when I found it was not all about James Cook. However, when I read on, I found it still worth reading.
Located a piece of impressive space artwork here.
Found a Pocketop wireless palmtop keyboard. Seems better than my GoType. However, no plan to try it out yet.
It takes a while to organized my MP3 library. I thought it a modest collection, however, now I realized that it is not so humble. Anyway, it's fun.
This page about computer keyboards may be interesting.
What a windy day! I feel my house is being blowing up. However, it feels good to hear that China has successfully launched the Shenzhou V manned spacecraft. Someone already reported sighting in Europe and United States.
Today I transferred some source code files from my Windows PC and Mac OS 9 to my PowerBook G4, which has Mac OS X. Using vi, I found there are a lot annoying ^M strewn in the file.
The reason is UNIX, Mac and PC all use different types of line endings. If you open PC files in UNIX, you will find a lot of ^M in the end of each line. To remove using vi:
:%s/^M//g
to type ^M, first, type Ctrl-v, then Ctrl-m, you will get ^M.
If you open Mac files in vi, you will not get clear-cut lines at all. There are a lot of ^M and all the lines are congregated together. Solution:
:%s/^M/^M/g
the same way to input ^M: Ctrl-v and Ctrl-m. That's right, replace ^M with ^M. It seems doesn't make sense, but it works. Strange enough, really.
Today I made a mistake programming my VCR for Star Trek: Enterprise, typed the wrong channel code. Instead, I taped Churchill. Good enough, I will catch the show during the weekend rerun.
Several days ago, I read Columbia's Last Flight by William Langewiesche in the November issue of The Atlantic Monthly magazine. I read Langewiesche's previous reports on the EgyptAir's crash, 911, Anarchy at Sea, etc. I enjoy reading his in-depth reports. I noticed all those reports are related to aviation. It must due to his experience as a pilot.
I watched the disintegration of Columbia on TV on February 1st, 2003. Weeks after the accident, I read all the reports on New York Times. I am a space flight buff, closely following all the reports about space flight. However, reports on newspapers and TVs usually do not have the depth and thoroughness of this report.
In this report, Langewiesche reports in detail the mission, the events happened, and the ensuing investigation. Several key figures were profiled in the report, such as the chief investigator, retired Admiral Hal Gehman, and NASA's administrator, Sean O'Keefe.
In this report, Langewiesche analyzed that the NASA culture may caused the barrier of communication between the engineers and managers, which eventually caused the disaster. Shuttle Manager Linda Ham was depicted as an arrogant, aloof manager, lacking an open mind. Maybe it is not all her fault, but because of her position, she attracts blames easily.
The whole report is quite informative, with explanations of how space shuttle works, and how NASA works. I always read aviation articles with zest. I once dreamed to be a pilot and astronauts.
Science begins as star-watching. The sky never lost it enthralling power to curious minds. The Columbia tragedy is a setback to manned space flight. But we shall never quit aiming high. We will learn from this tragedy, and we will move on. Sky is the limit.
I just heard the news that China successfully launched the Shenzhou 5. I am very happy to hear that.
There is an interesting thread in rec.art.sf.written about paperback and hard cover books. I personally prefer the hard cover, although they takes more shelf space, and heavy. But they are printed in better paper, larger type, more suitable for reading on a desk. I like to read books on desk instead of on couch. So a heavy book doesn't matter when it is placed on a desk. Although the price is a disadvantage, usually I can find good deals on the Internet.
Since I finished 2061: Odyssey Three, I cannot help beginning to read the sequal, 3001: The Final Odyssey. Since it is the first time I mentioned this book, here is a little more information about this work:
| Title: | 3001: The Final Odyssey |
| Author: | Arthur C. Clarke |
| ISBN: | 0-345-31522-7 |
| Publisher: | Ballantine Books |
| Year: | 1997 |
| Pages: | 263 |
It seems the author already exhausted all the characters in the original odyssey, so who he will introduce in this final trip? To my surprise, it was the OLD Frank Poole!
I will refrain from giving away too much of the story here. I don't think I will give more details of the book to spoil it. Enough said, it is interesting to note in the first odyssey, three characters are mentioned: Dr. Floyd, Astronauts David Bowman and Frank Poole. The original odyssey deals mainly with Bowman, ok, let's not forget the quirky HAL. Odyssey two deals with Dr. Floyd and the born of Lucifer; Odyssey three deals with the centenarian Floyd and his grandson; so now it is high time to revive the long forgotten ill-fated astronaut Mr. Poole.
I promised not to give away the story, so I must refrain myself from saying anything more. Essentially, it is a good reading, I haven't finished yet, but I enjoy it very much. Clarke has a very lucid style, comparable to that of Isaac Asimov. Both of them are my favorites.
I am also reading Tony Horwitz's Blue Latitudes now. It helps to refresh my mind by switch from one book to the other every one hour or two. It essentially block any possibilities of doldrums. Music also helps my reading a lot. My favorite reading music are those of JSB (Johann Sebastian Bach), Ravel, and Debussy. They create a mood suits for my reading, and, as a by-product, blocks unwanted distractions. A cup of tea is a premium. Currently, Debussy's La Mer suits my current reading quite well. Too bad Captain Cook didn't have the luxury of modern audio technology, such as my Sony MZ-R70 MD player.
Since I already dumped a lot into my web, it may be necessary to implement a small search engine here. I need to begin to think how to implement it.
Sundays usually are not as preferable as Saturdays. I enjoy both of them, anyway. Today I finished 2061: Odyssey Three, a wonderful reading experience.
In this book, Dr. Floyd visited the Haley Comet as a VIP on board a luxury space ship, the Universe. A lot of wonderful delineation of the scene on the surface of Haley. Universe landed on the core of the famous comet, some scientists even went through some wonderful speleological adventure. However, their leisurely adventure on Haley was disrupted by a distress call from her sister ship, the Galaxy, which was stranded on the Jovial satellite Europa. Recently, something strange happened there, nevertheless, because of the "No landing" interdict, no one have a chance to have a close look. The unfortunate Galaxy got involved in a mysterious conspiracy.
Enough said, I am afraid I will give away the story. So I will stop here. Because of reading this wonderful book, I don't have time to write my notes on the Columbia Shuttle article I read days before. I will try to make it up some time soon.
Decided to formally decommission the Performa 6115CD Macintosh because of the hard ware reliability problem. Now all my daily computing is shifted to the iMac, and all the programming and debugging will be done on the PowerBook G4. I dumped all the documents on Performa to my PC server, which runs a Mac server program and NAT32 router program. It is the main server in my small LAN.
Realizing that the numeric keypad on my iMac's keyboard is under-used, only to collect dusts there. Recalled the program "MT Newswatcher" uses the keypad. Practiced it a little bit, find it very useful. It helps to keep the dust away from my keypad. The iMac keyboard is photographed and collected in my photo album under the "Gadgets" title.
Reading an online book about computers in spaceflight, very interesting topic. I picked it from my Internet Explorer bookmarks. I don't remember when I had put it there.
While working on my old Performa 6115CD Macintosh, I found it a little unstable. This machine is quite old, I bought it from eBay in the year 1999 for sixty bucks. It comes with a 500 MB 50 pin SCSI hard drive. Around 2001, the hard drive failed. I bought a Conner 1 GB SCSI hard drive to replace the old one. At first, the Drive Setup program of Mac OS 8.6 cannot recognize the new hard drive, so I download a hack from Internet to format the new hard drive. Ever since then, I am using this 1 GB Conner SCSI drive.
Around October last year, while I was reinstalling the Mac OS software, I found the hard drive became erroneous. I cannot tell whether that's because the hardware is faulty or my hacked Drive Setup cause the problem. Anyway, I managed to savage the hard drive by partitioning it to two, and use the second partition, hoping this would avoid those faulty sectors. At least it worked for about a year.
Today, I found unusually large number of files got corrupted. Some corruption happened just beneath my nose. That's not a good sign. I decided to savaged every file I can to my iMac, then abandon ship. Fortunately, my home network can facilitate the backup procedures enormously. It is time to do some house cleaning chores now.
I also finished reading the Columbia Space Shuttle article in the current Atlantic Monthly magazine. I am going to write some notes tomorrow.
I finished reading Isaac Asimov's Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection.
| Title: | Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection |
| Author: | Isaac Asimov |
| ISBN: | 0-06-105206-X |
| Publisher: | HarperPrism |
| Year: | 1995 |
| Pages: | 345 |
This is the final collection by Isaac Asimov. It contains both fictions and essays. The books is divided into three parts: Part one, The Final Stories; Part two, On Science Fiction; and Part three, On Writing Science Fiction.
In the Fiction part, I am quite impressed by the title piece: Gold. This story explores the difference between writing works and performance art. In the story, a science fiction writer contracts an opera (or the science fiction futuristic counterpart of the art form) director to adapt one of his science fiction novel into an opera. How should an opera present alien life forms and alien emotions?
Talking about opera, it reminds me a Futurama episode I watched several months ago. That's an intriguing burlesque of the opera (or future opera), wonderfully produced. I enjoy it very much, partly because I am an opera aficionado.
Back to the book. Several stories depicted lives of writers in the future. However, the writers are not always human. The Cal, Fault-Intolerant are quite fascinating.
Hallucination described a collective mind, which reminds me his novel Nemesis. I read it in Beijing seven years ago, I still remember collective mind in that novel. This kind of collective mind is quite different from the Borg, however.
Part two, I love the essay Inventing a Universe. It is fun to invent a Universe from scratchy. In modern day video and computer game industry, inventing Universes is a necessity, reaching an extravagance level. During Asimov's day, inventing a Universe is confined to conceptual and textual basis. J. R. R. Tolkien must enjoy inventing a Universe very much.
Part three, Asimov gave valuable advises to science fiction neophyte writers. He described how he write, analyzed the using of plot, metaphor, suspense, and dialog, expressed his opinions on book reviews, serialization of a novel in his magazine, the problem of plagiarism and originality, best-seller, etc. How he got his writing ideas? How the name of science fiction come from?
It is a good book, I enjoy it.
After finished Gold, The next two books on my reading list:
| Title: | 2061: Odyssey Three |
| Author: | Arthur C. Clarke |
| ISBN: | 0-345-35879-1 |
| Publisher: | Ballantine Books |
| Pages: | 271 |
| Title: | Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before |
| Author: | Tony Horwitz |
| ISBN: | 0-8050-6541-5 |
| Publisher: | Henry Holt and Company, LLC |
| Pages: | 480 |
By the way, it is convenient to take notes here the authors' other works.
Tony Horwitz's other books:
Arthur C. Clarke's Fiction works:
Clarke's non-fiction
Yesterday, I finished reading Neal Stephenson's In the beginning ... was the command line. Here I briefly review it.
| Title: | In the beginning ... was the command line |
| Author: | Neal Stephenson |
| ISBN: | 0-380-81593-1 |
| Publisher: | Avon Books (http://www.avonbooks.com) |
| Year: | 1999 |
| Pages: | 151 |
I don't think this book a serious one from Stephenson. It is a collection of essays, all related to operating systems, user interfaces, and computing experience. I strongly suspected that this book is more to entertain the author himself than to inform or entertain the audience. You know, writing, as well as reading, is fun, as you can see, I am enjoying it myself right now.
Even I don't deem this book great, it definitely is not a bad book. I cannot say reading this book a wasting of time. At least, this book informed us what Stephenson think about various operating systems, Mac OS, Microsoft Windows, Linux/UNIX, and BeOS. Essentially, I agree with what he says in the book. After all, it is very hard not to agree with him on the same basis that I cannot disagree with someone who declares that the atomic number of carbon is twelve.
Because this book was published in 1999, Stephenson had not have the chance to experience the new Mac OS X, which is essentially a UNIX kernel (BSD) with an excellent GUI (Aqua). I think it fits his compliment for the BeOS. I am not aware how the BeOS doing right now, but I suspect it is not very successful, especially after the advent of Mac OS X.
I found his description of the early command line and teletype computing interface interesting. He used a lot of analogs, some more fitting than the others. It is amusing to read his experience with those Microsoft technical support people. It is not hard to see why most people hate Microsoft and Bill Gates.
In his comparison of GUI and command line, he put the whole discussion into the big cultural and social context, which is a little off limit to my palate. However, it is fascinating to read his Morlock and Enoi metaphor borrowed from H. G. Wells's Time Machine. I did not read the book or watch those various cinematic incarnations. Maybe I should check out it from the public library, if I finished my current reading list (which is hopelessly not short).
This is not a bad book, but not one of my favorites.
Uploaded some pictures to my photo album. If you are interested, please click the "Photo album" in the left column.
CRYPTONOMICON
Yesterday I promised to review the book Cryptonomicon. Here it is.
| Title: | Cryptonomicon |
| Author: | Neal Stephenson |
| Publisher: | Avon Books (http://www.avonbooks.com) |
| Year: | 1999 |
| ISBN: | 0-380-97346-4 |
| Pages: | 900+ |
With a book this size, the author has much leeway to digress and indulge himself. In this book, Stephenson takes the chance to indulge himself, on the topics of World War II code war, U-boat, zeta function, digital computers, modern day cryptology, UNIX, Perl, Van Eck Phreaking, X-Window, etc. He also did a wonderful job to entertain his readers at the same time. I enjoy reading it. Actually, I prefer get lost in lengthy works to short stories. I feel more identified with the characters in long books. In short stories, you hardly get to know the characters before the whole story ends, usually abruptly. In a long novel, you have more time to know the characters, understand their motives, share their emotions. It is much harder to achieve this in a short story. That's why it is hard to be a good short story writer.
Actually, this book can be seen as two novels in one. One sub-plot sets in World War II, Lawrence Waterhouse is the American crypto-analysist, who knows Alan Turing in Princeton just before the World War II, and worked with him in Bletchley Park during the War. Another German mathematician also studied in Princeton with them. Later on, he worked for the Nazis.
Another sub-plot is set in modern day, a UNIX geek, Lawrence Waterhouse's grandson, Randy Waterhouse, is working on building a data haven near Philippine. He found that during the World War II, Japanese hoarded a huge amount of gold bullions underground somewhere in the jungle south of Manila. To unravel the mystery, he got to know his grandfather better and tap into the secret knowledge to reach the treasure. Of course, during the treasure hunting and crypto-hacking, he also get the girl. I believe I have not revealed too much to spoil the story. By the way, there is a better review at slashdot.org, but I don't have the URL handy. You can search it out easily.
It is a nice and rewarding reading. You can rubricate this work as a techno-thriller, although it definitely has some literary tinge. An interesting feature of the book is the cryptanalyst guru Bruce Schneier invented an cryptological algorithm for this novel, and in the appendix, Schneier described the algorithms in detail. In the text, there is even a Perl source code to implement the algorithm. This algorithm is regarded as quite robust by the experts. Stephenson even included a lot of diagrams and formulae in the book. By the way, they are accurate, as far as I know. Of course, for a book this big, he has the space to show off his technical prowess.
Tomorrow I am gonna review his In the beginning ... there was command line.
Spent some time maintaining my old faithful Windows 98 PC (I even gave it a name long time ago). Dumped all those downloaded files to CD-Rs, made extra copies, just in case. Then, deleted those files to make space (A 10 GB hard drive is no longer considered large). After the deletion, defragged the hard drive. For a 10 GB hard drive, it takes a while.
Reading Neal Stephenson's In the beginning was command line. A highly opinioned collection of essays, advocating command-line oriented OS: Linux/Unix. The writer shows some not-so-subtle contempt for the garish GUIs. That's not enough, he even spent some pages elaborating this issue in a somewhat lofty cultural-social context. Disney World/Films/Culture are the real life counterpart of GUI, books and text are the command line. It involves some insinuation that book-readers/command-line users are more sophisticated than moviegoers/GUI users. However, I prefer facts to opinions. This book has more opinions than facts.
Or should I say I prefer his fictions than his non-fictions. At least fictions are much more entertaining. I finished reading his Cryptonomican last week. I intended to write some sort of review. However, it is too late right now. I am going to review it tomorrow. I hope I will not be too lazy or exhausted tomorrow.
Finished the perl script for my photo album. Click the Photo album to check out my new script. I finally put the GD.pm to work. Without my new PowerBook G4 and the Mac OS X, it is quite impossible to accomplish.
I went to the library to check out The Dish DVD. Just finished it. A nice story about an Australian antenna team tracking the Apollo 11 signals in 1969. From NASA's web site, it is now part of the Deep Space Network, helping various deep space missions, such as the Galileo, Cassini, Voyager, etc.
Uploaded some new photos into my site. Some minor changes are made. The most significant change the photo album. I made it bilingual, so you don't need to understand Chinese to browse it. I put descriptions in both languages.
I just installed the gd graphics library on my PowerBook G4. GD is a C library used to create JPEG and PNG pictures. The source code can be obtained from http://www.boutell.com/gd/, and to compile and make the library, there is some extra work involved. First I tried to install GD directly, only to got a lot of making errors. It is obvious that the OS X libtool behaves differently than the gcc version. The JPEG library expect a gcc version libtool to work correctly. Some patch is needed to make the JPEG library work first, because GD need JPEG and PNG libraries. PNG library proved easy to build, althought there is a bug in the Makefile. Fortunately, it is easy to figure out what's wrong with the PNG Makefile instead of replace the OS X libtool with a gcc version.
Later on, I found someone wrote an article on building GD on Mac OS X. The site is located at: http://www.paginar.net/matias/articles/gd_x_howto.html. The description is quite accurate. However, I need to point out that an extra step is needed: just before building the GD library, you need to create a symbolic link at /usr/local/include, because the freetype-2.0.9 put a freetype2 directory instead of freetype, the GD Makefile expect the former location. A simple symbolic link solves the problem.
After GD library is up running, I downloaded the GD.pm, which is a Perl interface for the graphics library. I am going to code some graphics CGI using GD.pm. After make the GD up running, compile and install GD.pm is trivial.
Now I am coding some cool Perl CGI using GD.pm. Hopefully, I will bring it online soon. For now, I am just happy coding. It's fun.
As the first step to get familiar with Mac OS X, I checked out the Mac OS X Unleashed from the public library. Finder is the first application I need to get familiar with.
I read David Pogue's Mac OS 8 Secrets. I am very versed with the OS 8/9 finder feathers and secrets. OS X has its particularities.
First, I love the Dock. It is much better than the taskbar in the Windows. There is a very useful keyboard shortcut for dock: Command + Option + D, which toggles the Dock auto-hidden. Some very convenient keyboard shortcuts: Shift + Command A to Applications folder, Shift + Command H, F, C to Home, Favorites, and Computer folders, respectively. Shift + Command G use command line to navigate the file system. A neat feature for UNIX veterans.
A wonderful thing is in OS X the HFS+ file system can hold 256 characters in the file name. OS 8/9 can only hold 32 characters, which is quite limiting. To display a very long file name, hold Option key and hover the mouse cursor to the icon or text of that file.
Made some customization to the PowerBook. I prefer the bash shell instead of tcsh, so I change the Terminal.app to use bash instead. Wrote a short .bash_profile. Made my usually, sometimes idiosyncratic aliases.
Emacs is pre-installed. Although I am not very versed using emacs, I am good at vi. I usually write my source code using vi (or vim). For now, I don't see there is an urgent need to shift to emacs, notwithstanding I was told by a variety of friends that emacs is the programmer's editor. Maybe later.
Test drive my iPod. Very exquisite gadget. Put some Chinese documents into the Notes folder of iPod, make it display Chinese lyrics while playing MP3. Comparing iPod with MiniDisc:
Obviously, it is much more convenient to store 10 GB MP3 in a single piece. If encoded well, MP3 can have great quality too. By the way, the iPod ear phone is pretty decent. iPod has a larger, multi-lined backlit display, most portable MiniDisc player can only display a single line.
For building a decent music library with MP3, you must have a quite large hard drive. Before I purchase my PowerBook G4, my Rev. A iMac has only 4 GB hard drive (think about 10 GB iPod). My PC has a larger hard drive, but the Windows 98 OS and Mac OS 9 do not allow me to use Chinese characters for ID3 tags. They cannot display them either. So during my pre-PowerBooks days, a MiniDisc music library seems much more feasible. I can build a sizable music library without using a computer. My portable players and decks accommodate my needs well.
Another merits of MiniDisc: I can easily record and edit the tracks. I can easily record a radio show on a MiniDisc, and I can also record CDs that I borrowed from public library. Those CDs are seldom in a good shape, some scratches can produce noise when encoded to MP3, but thanks the fault-tolerance of audio CD players, those scratches can be quite tolerable in my CD deck, so my MD players. I can easily nip those undesirable parts with my porable players without the trouble to boot my computer.