Yellowstone trip

Long time no blog until I found out my wife posted an excellent blog about our Yellowstone trip. I am just too lazy writing up a long and exhaustive memento. It was a pretty nice trip in the hot summer of 2005.

Poa Annua

These things popped up in my lawn since about two weeks ago. Their appearances really get on my nerves, and it will be tough to wage a war against them. I contacted Scotts Lawn Service to have a free lawn analysis. Hopefully they can suggest something useful but not too costly.

Based on what I have read so far, I guess I made mistakes in not doing some prevention work in early spring and then mowing the lawn too short. I will try to stop mowing my lawn for a while and apply Ortho Grass-B-Gon Garden Grass Killer. I will also consider mowing with bagger to collect the seeds of them.

$%@x#!, I really hate my lawn!

BigKid : Xbox 360 vs PS3

BigKid : Xbox 360 vs PS3 puts up a nice comparison table. Someone throws in a NINTENDO Revolution picture, too. I blogged this with Mozilla on HP-UX aftering installing a google toolbar to it. This toolbar thing first works on IE, then there is a Firefox version, and now it can fit backward to Mozilla. Job nicely done! These developers make me like open-source mechanism even more every day!

Dantzig's obituary

Long time no blog. Lately the biggest tech news are probably the reveals of xbox 360 and PS3. I have wanted to write about the specs of the hardware. But it turned out it would take too much time digesting all the stuff around the Net, so the idea has not been realized so far. Today I learned from Slashdot that George Dantzig passed away and somehow I felt sad. I have this emotional attachment because lately I spent so much time implementing the Dantzig alogorithm to solve the Linear Complimentary Problem that results from solving the contact constraints in multibody dynamics. RIP, Dantzig. Here is the post from Slashdot:

Posted by timothy on Sunday May 22, @10:00PM
from the life-well-lived dept.
Markus Registrada writes "George Dantzig, the inventor of the Simplex method for solving Linear Programming problems, died on May 13. He was also the now-legendary student who turned in solutions for what he had taken to be a homework assignment, only to find out they had been posted as examples of what were suspected to be unsolvable problems."

Plextor 716A DVD burner

With the failed CDs keep piling up, finally I am fed up with the degrading performance of both of my CD burners. File archiving becomes ever more important to me with my routine BitTorrent downloads. I decided to pursue a DVD burner. At the beginning, I was surprised to find out that a 16x Sony DWD22A only cost in the low 50s. As I read more user opinion on the web, I concluded Plextor 716A would be the best in the current market and I got an OEM version from newegg.com. I'd like to pay attention to the details this time to avoid piling up failed DVDs, so I spent time reading the manual and found out my 40 conductor IDE cables have been outdated. Then I went on to replace them with 80 conductor IDE cables for both my hard drive and the new acquired DVD drive. I also got a bundle of 25 8x TDK DVD-R from BestBuy for only $9.99 (basically no matter which brand you choose they are all made in Taiwan). Last night I finally used Nero to fire up this baby. The DVD-R was burned quietly at 8x without any problem. I am looking forward to breaking speed record if I have faster disks. This drive can burn CD-R at 48x. I have never achieved 16x with my previous HP CD burner although it is advertised at 16x.

Google Maps

I searched computer hardware stores in my home town area and found Google Map and Driving Direction quite impressive. I also spent a little time checking out Yahoo Map and MapQuest. Compared to the other two offerings, Google Map provides the largest map viewing area and keeps the rest of page very clean as opposed to getting cluttered with ads. Google Map also interacts very well with the users by showing neat popups when the turn of driving direction is clicked. Panning around the map is very smooth by dragging it with the mouse. At the right bottom corner, it states that the data is from NAVTEQ, which is also used by the other two map offerings. So everyone uses the same source, it is just a matter of coming up with the best user interface and Google does it brilliantly.

Matrix Toolkits for Java

I have been using Colt for a while, and thought it is pretty good. Today I just came across another numerical library that could be the best I have ever seen - MTJ. Native interface to BLAS and LAPACK, sparse matrix solvers, and distributed matrix computation are all packed in one library?! Are you kidding me?! For those who stick with C++, I found MTL. For C# users, I found Math.Net. But they certainly cannot compete with MTJ in terms of the features mentioned above. Java people are just extremely blessed!

Frequently Unanswered Questions

I thought the title of this posting is neat. After reading a post from Slashdot, I collected the links here so I can ponder upon in the future. No, I am not interested in how placebo works. I am not blessed with the mathematical talents to solve the millenium problems, either. The things that always fascinate me are the cosmology and astrophysics stuff - strange gravity pull and speed of light that make Einstein famous. Moreover, I do find the sonoluminescence phenomonum very interesting and I may have some reflection on Navier-Stokes Equation. Without further ado, here are the links

• Millenium problems
• Open Questions in Physics
• 13 things that do no make sense

I just increased my swap space with a swap file

/sbin/swapon -s

Filename                        Type            Size    Used    Priority
/dev/hda5                       partition       1044184 0       -1

df -m

Filesystem           1M-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda7                  372        81       272  23% /
/dev/hda2                   46        10        34  22% /boot
/dev/hda6                 9705      2325      6887  26% /home
none                       251         0       250   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda3                26537      2113     23076   9% /usr
/dev/hda8                  251        64       173  27% /var

su

dd if=/dev/zero of=/usr/extraswap bs=1M count=1024

/sbin/mkswap /usr/extraswap
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 1048572 KiB

/sbin/swapon /usr/extraswap

/sbin/swapon -s

Filename                        Type            Size    Used    Priority
/dev/hda5                       partition      1044184 0       -1
/usr/extraswap                  file            1048568 0       -2

cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.mybackup

emacs /etc/fstab&

diff /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.mybackup
10d9
< /usr/extraswap          none                    swap    sw              0 0 

Eclipse

I found Borland JBuilder become quite sluggish as I move on to the version of JBuilder 2005. Since I have been reading high praise on Eclipse for some time, I finally decided to give it a try. After I loaded the download page of www.eclipse.org, somehow it smartly detected I was using HP-UX and let me download the HP-UX version of Eclipse Platform SDK 3.0. This version just launched without any problem as it detected the path of installed HP Java VM. At this point, I was very impressed since nothing worked in HP-UX so naturally before. This is a whole new experience!!

The interface is of motif theme that seems outdated, but, again, it is a HP-UX version. I will need a windows version for a fair comparison. The perspective, in my opinion, is a pretty good idea. It let you switch around different arrangements of the panels for each specific task. Switching over from JBuilder is not easy since it also has many merits and I am very accustomed to it. I will explore other notable features of Eclipse after I have accumulated more play time.

The Dow Jones Expensive Merlot Index

Movie "Sideways" slaps Merlot but here is the rebuttal.

By DOROTHY J. GAITER AND JOHN BRECHER

In a broad tasting of American Merlots that cost $20 to $50, mostly from the 2001 vintage, these were our favorites. While most inexpensive Merlots are meant to be drunk immediately, many better Merlots, including these, will age beautifully for some years. These pair well with steak and similarly serious foods.

Vineyard/Vintage	Price	Rating	Tasters' Comments
Duckhorn Vineyards 2002 (Napa Valley)	$49.99	Delicious	Best of tasting. Intense, dark and rich, with herbs, earth and cedar -- all in a package that's so sensual it's like blackberry chocolate fondue. Very young.
Sarah's Vineyard 'Besson Vineyard' 2001 (Santa Clara Valley)	$20.00	Very Good	Best value. Lighter than some, with more obvious fruit flavors. It tastes like great grapes, left alone to taste good -- fruity yet not at all sweet. Very pleasant.
Steltzner Vineyards 2001 (Stags Leap District, Napa Valley)	$24.98	Very Good/Delicious	A deep, complex wine, with a sense of place and plenty of layers. Slightly herbal and nicely tight, with such great acids it demands a big meal.
Corte Riva Vineyards 2002 (Napa Valley)	$44.99	Very Good	Hefty, with great body and structure, some herbs and plenty of earth. Blackberries and cream. A real mouthful of wine.
Groth Vineyards & Winery 2001 (Napa Valley)	$34.99*	Very Good	Elegant, with Bordeaux-like structure and a long, dry finish. Could age for a long time.
Joseph Phelps Vineyards 2001 (Napa Valley)	$38.99	Very Good	Smells like chocolate, blackberries and rich soil, with some nice hints of herbs, too. Tight and nicely earthy.
Larkmead Vineyards 2001 (Napa Valley)	$36.00*	Very Good	Very serious wine, with hints of black tea and soil. Have it with roast meat.
Matanzas Creek Winery 2001 (Sonoma County)	$29.95	Very Good	It looks and even tastes dark, with hints of tobacco and coffee and a kind of leathery toughness. Classy wine.
Provenance Vineyards 2001 (Carneros, Napa Valley)	$26.95	Very Good	Grapey and pleasant, with some spice and cream, a dark core and nicely dry finish.
Rombauer Vineyards 2001 (Napa Valley)	$25.95	Very Good	Very pleasant, plum-like fruit and terrific acids for food. Quite complete. More forward and easier to drink than some.

NOTE: Wines are rated on a scale that ranges: Yech, OK, Good, Very Good, Delicious, and Delicious! These came from California, Florida and New York. *We paid $36.95 for the Groth and $29.97 for the Larkmead, but these prices appear to be more representative. Prices vary widely.

4 8 15 16 23 42

Again I am LOST!

Episode 18 - Numbers

4 8 15 16 23 42

I am tired of guessing. The facts that interest me are

• The flight number of their crashed plane is 815
• Someone has already registered the domain name http://www.4815162342.com
  

Episode 19 - Deus Ex Machina (Latin for "God from the machine"). This episode will center on Locke (BTW, John Locke is the name of a English philosopher). The title is so tantilizing that ABC is going to make us wait for a LONG LONG time (April 13 according to TV Tome). Some quick notes are:

• Deus Ex Machina refers to an implausible ending where everything is solved and justice is served.
• The episode title is also similar to the title of Chapter 48 of Watership Down "Dea ex Machina." (Watership Down is the book that Sawyer was reading that came from Boone's suitcase).
  

Facts provided by TV Tome

A small form factor PC

VIA has been producing a series of Mini-ITX motherboards for some time. Recently it introduced a so-called Nano-ITX board with the size of 12 x 12 cm. There are plenty of PC modders using Mini-ITX boards to build many weird-looking PCs, which can be seen from mini-itx.com. But what really raises my interests in Nano-ITX is the JDOS project. The project promises an embedded system running Linux and Java. I have been dreaming about using the cellphone systems running J2ME as the microcontrollers for robots. What advantages does the JDOS solution have over J2ME? The other thing that baffles me is about the real-time operation in Linux. Some people claimed that Windows CE naturally supports real time operations but Linux does not. Does J2ME have real time capability? And why are there so many questions in life without answers?

Count Linux Distros

It seems nowadays a great number of geeks could take the Linux kernel and bundle it with different flavors of software and make their own distros. What distro should I grab to fit my next PC project?

• Xandros - Do printer/file sharing just like Windows. It is used by Extremetech to build a home server. Great for beginners. Bundled with Walmart PC.
• Gentoo - Features Portage (based on FreeBSD's Ports tool) that lets administrators acquire and update software by downloading source code and compiling applications to suit their particular system.
• Fedora - Fedora Core 3 has a better plug-and-play and wireless networking support.
• Mandrake
• SuSe
• Debian - Very hardcore!
• Ubuntu - A derivative of Debian.
• uClinux - For embedded systems.

The caveat of installing Linux is of course making sure that all the hardware in the PC system can be properly supported. Many hardware by default only ship with Windows drivers and there is just no way to get around. Try to put Linux on laptop is proved to be no small task.

La Pyramide Inversée

Dan Brown claims that the tiny stone pyramid is actually only the apex of a larger pyramid hidden underground that holds the real Holy Grail.

Carly Fiorina and Mark Jen got fired!

I didn't realize that Carly Fiorina is so much hated by her employees at HP until I read the postings on SlashDot. There are many CEOs turning around their shambled companies by laying off thousands of people. They are applauded in the end for their achievement even though the means to success is evil. It's more or less like the Chinese cliche - one who succeeds is a king but one who fails is a thief.

So who the heck is Mark Jen? He is the guy fired by Google after he blogged about his work life. Here's the story at CNET. The moral here is do not piss off your boss in your blog. Mark is now on his own just like Carly but without a $8 million severance package.

Hurricane is gone

Hurricane is gone! It might sound good to most people. But for the people who have been working on the Hurricane engine program for over a year, the news is just a blow to them. I don't actually hear people expressing their frustration, but I just feel it in the air. The reason of canceling the program is Ford is not going to meet the CAFE restriction due to the poor fuel economy of this engine. Duh!? Isn't it just obvious from the very beginning? I was surprised when I heard this engine program is a GO. It is a backward thinking to compete with the pushrod engines from GM and Chrysler. The decision making of the senior management is plain ridiculous. Somebody please conduct a Six Sigma project to eliminate the senior management to cut cost ...

The related mid-range diesel program got canceled too since it shares the bottom end with Hurricane. Nonetheless, diesel engines are still a correct direction to pursue. I think the program should be revived but with a smaller displacement. There is more advanced technology coming with the diesel engine package, in which the know-how should be brought into V-engine.

There is no denying that the brutal competition of truck market demands more horsepower. High revving and advanced VVT can provide horsepower but not low-speed torque. Are we going to bring back the supercharger to the 5.4 L?

Shoveling is fun!

Shoveling is fun! This happened on Jan. 23 as a foot of snow was dumped on the previous day. And honestly we were just pretending to have fun. It was an atrocity!

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

I have read something over the internet that overusing the hands on a non-ergonomic keyboard may cause carpal tunnel. This surely raises concerns with my hands after intensively playing Ninja Gaiden last night.

Referring to this section of the carpal tunnel article, however, the causes of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) have not yet been found. Any condition that lessens the amount of space in the carpal tunnel can compress the median nerve in the tunnel, hence resulting in CTS. Some researchers believe that overuse of the wrist may be a cause of CTS. But this is not accepted by all physicians.

Since the correlation of repetitive strain injuries and carpal tunnel syndrome has not been established, it seems to me it would be OK to play some more Ninja Gaiden. Just have to get plenty of rest before the boss fight at the end of each chapter.

Duratec 35

Here is the interesting link of duratec 35 in wikipedia. This is the first time I come across this info outside Ford. Of course, we can still google Duratec 35 to find some other links. For example, I found another good piece of analysis in a response to Why No V-8 in Ford 500. For succinct answers, they are

1. It won't fit.
2. No transmission available to handle the load.
3. Worse fuel economy.
4. Duratec 35 is due.
5. Horsepower race is insane!
6. Too much to handle in the launch besides CVT, flexible production system, etc.

Back in wikipedia, there is also a list of Ford engines, which is quite comprehensive to me. The Duratec family page is also very resourceful. These are actually digression from my interest in the Flat Engine that I first saw it from Porsche at Auto Show (pardon my ignorance).