there is only one hell, but a lot of paradise

paradise

hell

word of the day

prodigy:

An unusually talented or intelligent child

Example:

Stephen Schwartz

the demo guy at Google reader

Google reader is a cool tool.

But this guy that gives you crash course on how to use it .... Let's just say he needs shaving.

Man, he really fits people's steretype about geeky engineers to his exact measure by inch.

From MS Natural keyboard to conformist

I used to insist on using MS Natural keyboard at work. But since moving to a group with tighter intra-group collaboration, I drop the habit and conform to the norm, just so that others won't feel so bewildering, when all he wants was to type something real quick on my keyboard.

 

From this experience I learned that when people get closer, they have more tendency to conform to the "norm".

PC vs Mac

If MS wants to win its ad campaign against Apple, he'd better hire this guy, Laurie McGuinness. Or at least offer to pay his rent.

Work Mac works for PC.	Girl PC gets the girl.

Shakespeare and Power

Shakespeare means classic, there is no doubt about it. But his works reveals secrete of power that transcends time, and remain relevant (or even inspiring) in observing politics today: Is Carl Rove the counter-part of Iago in Othello? Who is the counter-part of Ricard of Gloucester in Henry VI? Rumsfeld or Bush?

You might have your answer after listening to this show. Radio open source (http://www.radioopensource.org/shakespeare-and-power/  )

download the radio show (mp3 24M bytes)

quote of the day

A Shakespeare scholar, Stephen Greenblatt, met Clinton in the White House on a poetry evening to celebrate the Millanium.

When he was shaking hand with Clinton after the event was closed, he asked Clinton (this was at the early stage of the Monica Levinski scandal; the whole thing has not blown up yet.), "Mr. President, don't you think that McBeth is a great play about someone who felt compelled to do things that he knows are politically and morally disasters."
Clinton looked at him for a second, still holding Stephen's hand, and said "I think Mcbeth is a great play about a man whose immense ambition has an ethically inadequate object."

Stephne was amazed and even thrown off by his quick response.

joke of the day: Golf Problem

The only problem with golf is that the slow people
are always in front of you and the fast people always end up behind you.

物化的人性

Excerpted from the poem by T. S. Eliot "The cocktail party"


当你衣冠楚楚前去赴宴
走下楼梯，一切都已安排就绪
只等你进入选中的角色

这时，往往当你迈到最低一级台阶
不曾料到还有一级
你一个踉跄，一脚踩空
就在此时，你体验到自己成了一件物品
任凭这恶意的楼梯摆布

marketing

If you sound like a marketing guy, it's not going to help you sell anything. The first rule of doing marketing, is to avoid sounding like a marketing guy.

spending some time with life

Today is one of the few sunny weekends in Seattle this spring. I got to sit down with a book under the sun and enjoyed reading it.

The book was a collection of proses written by a jornalist in China. He commented on books, theatre plays and his daily life.

I like the fact he is not pretending to be a big shot and always keeps a low profile. Although he did try to raise a few eyebrows by mentioning a few celebrates in the intellectural community (as if there is still such a community in China).

 

BTW, the book is named Bourgeois Itch. ISBN 7-02-004626-6

生命之意义 (2)

Everyday on NPR's "writer's almanac", Garrison Keillor will end the 5 minute short program by saying "Be well, do good work and keep in touch."
I think that's the meaning of life.
Especially, after he stated all the important historical and literary deeds that happened on this day many years ago.

**************************************************************

One of my ECE prof used to say: "Would you rather do it or shovel manure?"

There are always hard work that you don't like but have to do. I alway convince myself by asking myself this question.
And God knows, there are just piles and piles of manures waiting for shoveling.

一个很牛的签名档

很多人被一种毫无快乐和成就感的生活所主宰.这很不幸。音乐中涵盖了我们命运无法掌控的生命之痛.这种消沉的感觉成为了生活方式的一种.换句话说.痛苦就是我的生活选择——这是一种艺术



courtesy of 孙书超 from 中国地网 — 非主流人的圈子

生命之意义

The goal of my entire life is to accomplish a great work. It will have profound impact on future generations. Whether or not I can actually make that far, only time will tell.

Once this is set. All the rest is just dust. Fame and fortune are only ways to motivate myself to keep doing this, never the other way around.

All for the peace of mind

There is very little that an average guy like me can do to change things in this world.
So what's driving me to work everyday and keeping me from giving up?
I guess it's the thought that I should try my best so I won't regret when I got old.

Memorable quotes for
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

joke of the day: Zero to 200

Zero to 200

A couple had been debating the purchase of a new
auto for weeks. He wanted a new truck. She wanted a fast little sports-like car
so she could zip through traffic around town. He would probably have settled on
any beat up old truck, but everything she seemed to like was way out of their
price range.

"Look!" she said. "I want something that goes from 0 to 200
in 4 seconds or less. And my birthday is coming up. You could surprise me."


So, for her birthday, he bought her a brand new bathroom scale.


Services will be at Downing Funeral Home on Monday the 12th. Due to the
condition of the body, this will be a closed casket service. Please send your
donations to the "Think Before You Say Things To Your Wife Foundation," Dallas,
Texas.

Adobe's apollo

 

What's a cross-platform runtime?

See the ebay application demo to get an idea.

 

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/videos/apollo_demo07/index.html

a very witty story

KHAZAR JAR

--A Khazar dream reader who was still a novice in a monastery was given
a jar as a present, and he placed it in his cell. That evening he dropped
his ring into it, but when he looked for the ring in the morning, it was
not to be found. He stuck his hand inside the jar but could not reach the
bottom. And since his arm was longer than the jar was deep, this suprised
him. He picked up the jar; the floor beneath it was flat and revealed no
opening, and the bottom of the jar was sealed like any other. He took a
stick and tried to touch bottom with it, but to no avail; the bottom seamed
to be escaping him. He thought, "I am, that is where my limit is," and
asked his teacher Mokaddasa al-Safer
to explain the meaning of the jar. The teacher picked up a pebble, dropped
it into the jar, and counted. When he had reached seventy, a splash was
heard from deep down in the jar, as though something had hit water, and
the teacher said:

"I could tell you what your jar means, but ponder first whether it is
worth it. As soon as I tell you, the jar will be inevitably be worth less
to you and less to others. No matter how much it is worth, it cannot be
worth more than everything; yet, once I tell you what it is, it will no
longer be all the things it is not, and what it is now."

When the novice agreed, the teacher picked up a stick and smashed the
jar. The startled boy asked why he had damaged it, and the teacher replied:

"The damage would have been if I had first told you what the jar was
for and had then smashed it. This way, you don't know its purpose and there
is no damage done; it will continue to serve you as though it had never
been smashed. . . "

Indeed, the Khazar jar serves to this day, although it has long since
ceased to exist.

ZT from http://thor.prohosting.com/mila18/yellow/jar.htm

绿原《小时候》

绿原(1922- )，湖北黄陂人，“七月诗派”的重要代表，著有《童话》、《又一个起点》等诗集。
作于1941年的《小时候》塑造了一个率真、清纯的童话世界，它集中体现了绿原早期诗作的艺术追求：哀乐出自童心，似地泉喷涌而出；以孩子的遐思作为想象的主线，妙想连绵不绝；诗句一如幼儿口语，稚嫩、清新、自然。

《小时候》
        
小时候
我不认识字
妈妈就是图书馆            
　　　　　　
我读着妈妈——              
   
有一天                    
这世界太平了              
人会飞…… 
小麦从雪地里出来……        
钱都没有用……   
　　　　　　
金子用来做房屋的砖        
钞票用来糊纸鹞            
银币用来飘水纹……          
　　　　　　
我要做一个流浪的少年
和一只从埃及国飞来的红鹤，  
旅行童话              
去向糖果城的公主求婚……    
　　　　　　
但是
妈妈说：              
“现在你必须工作。”        

每个人都想离开

在纽约百老汇街头，最醒目的招牌是红底黑字的Chicago. 在Chicago街头看到的是Seattle's best coffee. 在Seattle downtown的gallory,橱窗上 贴着Tokyo, Paris, London。 在Tokyo 六本木，大家都想去New York's hard rock.

 

每个人都想离开自己现在的地方。到哪里去，并不重要。只要不是这里。因为“生活在别处”。

偷一段吴玲瑶的散文

题目叫《痴痴的等》

 

说好多歌曲里有类似《痴痴的等》这个意象。古代传说里，也有望夫石之类的，但是现在有了手机了，就不可能出现这种故事了。如果等人不来，就直接打电话问。再不用苦守寒窑十八载。

 

本来这样就很可以告一段落了，谁知作者突然笔锋一转，在结尾一段来了一个无厘头:

“各种等待中，一个朋友最觉得不舒服的是，以前在台东乡下，大街上有一家寿材店，每次走过的时候，店里放的总是那首《总有一天等到你》"

 

这实在是够神来的。可以和“我随便起来不是人”有一拼。

 

 

First time in 川霸王

It's red painting with black framing gives the whole place a high pitch. Dishes are served minutes after ordering (That's QoS!).

Having been on a low-carb diet for two weeks, I was totally speechless while all the lamb and beef are served (too busy devouring).

 

Saw some MS employees there, and they looked rather Vista-busted. Oh well, tough luck throwing the whole company on a product that doesn't really sell.

St. Patrick's Day

It's a day where people wear green and drink Irish beers. The parade (yes, people in Seattle hold a parade for almost everything.) got bummed by rain (yes Murphy's law is always at work).

All about Peotry

LA Theater Works presents the play Mimi's Guide.
The play shed a very different light to the anti-war movement: how those who protested the war by not going to the war were actually hypercritical, how a Vietnam young man fights to keep his name, and how poetry transformed human beings.
It's not the established poets, but those who truly love poetry and got moved by it, that are changing the world, and making it a better place.
 
http://www.latw.org/radio/detail.aspx?title=Mimi's%20Guide

Author Doris Baizley Cast Powers Boothe, Frances Conroy Synopsis A woman whose first lover dies in Vietnam, a poet who made his name in the anti-war movement of the 60s, and a young professor who left Saigon in 1975, encounter each other at a university in the deep South, and find their own demons are awakened by the lush, sensual climate – and each other.

Glad to see a startup from Evanston

The $7 TV Network

The
architects of TCP/IP, Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf, knew exactly how they'd
bring television to the Internet. They would use multicasting, a
particular IP service that allows many hosts to share a multicast
address and, through that address, receive the same content whether
that's rocket telemetry or Wheel of Fortune. Multicasting was seen as
the most efficient way for one computer to talk simultaneously to a
million others and that capability has been built into every router
pretty much since the beginning, though generally not enabled by the
network administrator. A decade ago Cisco Systems bought Judy Estrin's
Precept Software and its IPTV video product specifically to throw
television on the web and hopefully encourage admins to turn on
multicast support. No such luck. That is until next week's Video on the
Net show in San Jose when a start-up from Evanston, Illinois will
introduce Neokast, which is effectively multicasting for the masses.
Soon every computer will be able to broadcast to the world.

Multicasting hasn't broadly succeeded before now primarily because
it places a large burden on the routers, which are responsible for
caching and retransmitting video. Multicasting is generally turned off
in routers to save bandwidth and keep the network running as fast as
possible. Cisco wanted to turn multicasting on for IPTV specifically so
the routers would slow down and have to be replaced. With Cisco it
always comes down to routers and how to get people to buy new ones.
That's evident in Cisco's purchase this week of WebEx, where we can
expect Cisco to strongly push video services on those two million WebEx
customers, straining the system and forcing hardware upgrades. It's not
about Microsoft; it's about the routers.

Precept Software found that video worked well on a LAN but poorly on
a WAN, where lack of multicast support required creating VPN tunnels
that were just too much overhead for last-century PCs and networks.
Much the same applied to the Mbone, or Multicast Backbone experiment
from the late 1990s. Academics will argue that Mbone was a success, but
if that were truly the case, why aren't we watching TV over Mbone today?

Neither our PCs nor the Internet were ready for multicasting in
1997, but today they are, the trick being to somehow enable an
efficient multicast-type experience without turning on multicast
support in the routers, where multicasting remains switched off.

Enter Neokast, the brainchild of a PhD candidate from Northwestern
University, Stefan Birrer. Neokast uses peer-to-peer technology to
effectively emulate a multicast experience.

Neokast presently operates as a .NET application, meaning it is
limited for the moment to Windows computers. The player can operate as
a stand-alone application or a browser plug-in. And as far as the user
is concerned, connecting to a video stream is a matter of going to a
web site and clicking on a link. The viewing experience is very much
like cable or broadcast TV because with Neokast you aren't initiating a
video stream, you are joining a broadcast in progress. There are clever
ways to use Neokast for video-on-demand, but right now the company is
emphasizing its broadcast-like features.

The way the P2P components work is simple to describe but hard to
accomplish. I watched a Neokast demo from my office in Charleston and
the stream began playing in about two seconds, which is close to
instant-on in the world of Internet video. If there is buffering
happening, as there simply must be, it isn't a very big buffer. Had
there been no peers up and running other than mine, the video would
have streamed straight from the server in Chicago, but with enough
peers operating, the load on the originating server is several orders
of magnitude less than for typical one-stream-per-user distribution.

For content creators this is key: the more people who watch your
Neokast the more efficiently will your server bandwidth be utilized.
According to Birrer, under normal circumstances the server bandwidth
should plateau at 3-4 times that of a single stream NO MATTER HOW MANY
VIEWERS ARE BEING SERVED. With a per-stream bandwidth of 700 kilobits
per second, this means that Neokast would never require more than a
continuous three megabits per second of server bandwidth per video
channel.

Let's put that in a real-world context. Three megabits per second is
almost precisely 1000 gigabytes per month, which is half the allotted
monthly throughput for a $6.99-per-month web site at 1&1. So if
Neokast's claim is valid, it would be possible to broadcast American
Idol or the Super Bowl or friggin' CNN worldwide for $7 per month.

Heck of a deal, eh?

Neokast is not a video technology, it is a networking technology, so
there is no proprietary video codec. For the moment Neokast uses Xvid
because its free licensing appeals to a bunch of grad students
programming out of several apartments in suburban Chicago. But Neokast
could just as easily use another codec like H.264, possibly improving
its video performance, which I found already quite acceptable.

Here's what makes Neokast different from other peer-to-peer
products, especially BitTorrent. Unlike BitTorrent where you are
downloading a file, with Neokast you are intercepting a video stream.
Under normal circumstances the client does not end up with a local copy
of the complete video, the P2P caching aspect of the product being
limited to a few seconds or at most minutes of content. This makes
video rights management much easier and ought to appeal to TV networks
and movie studios.

Also unlike BitTorrent. Neokast is scrupulously polite. According to
Birrer, the key technology is Neokast's flow-control algorithms that
help the program to play well with networks and with other
applications. Neokast gives a preference, for example, to local peers
wherever possible, allowing a single copy of the show to come through
your Comcast or AT&T gateway then ricochet around inside the local
subnet, thus limiting the local ISP's Internet bandwidth hit to not
much more than the native 700 kbps. This trades inexpensive intranet
bandwidth for much more expensive Internet bandwidth.

Neokast uses a varying combination of TCP and UDP packets and looks
to the network a lot like web surfing, so it is difficult for ISPs to
limit the program with traffic shaping. But why would ISPs even want to
limit Neokast? They ought to encourage its use as a more efficient
protocol.

There may well be other products that can duplicate Neokast.
Certainly there are others that claim to. But the ability to stream
live TV is rare on the Internet, and Neokast's claim to carry live
programming with no more than a 10 second total end-to-end delay might
well be unique.

Neokast will be shown for the first time in public next week at Jeff
Pulver's Video on the Net conference in San Jose, but for a sneak peak
you can watch a short video I made about Neokast this week,
interviewing the founders. That video is among this week's links.

Neokast comes from a company mysteriously called Metis Enterprise
Technologies, LLC when they ought to have simply named the company
Neokast. And no, I don't have any financial interest in Neokast, but
thanks for asking.

The people behind Neokast have the goal of making everybody a
broadcaster. I can see Neokast appealing to established TV networks or
local stations that could put their present products - commercials and
all - straight up on the net. It might appeal, too, to movie studios
that like the idea of viewers watching without being able to
necessarily copy the film. But the news implications of somebody
setting up a webcam from their window in Baghdad or Darfur and serving
a truly global audience is what appeals to me.

Of course it will eventually be harder to do than I have described
here. 1&1, for example, would balk at having their bluff called on
that loss-leader bandwidth allotment. Just finding what you want in a
million-channel world would be hard, too, though less hard than
figuring out what to put in 24 hours of programming per day.

All Cringely, all the time? I don't think so.

Guiding lights from Eric Liu

Who influenced you? And how do you pass it on?

These are the two animating questions behind every interview I did for Guiding Lights.  I discovered, as I traveled from place to place and profession to profession, that the two questions are simple enough to open up a broad conversation and unusual enough to get people off conversational autopilot.  They allow us – indeed, require us – to examine more closely than we usually do the web of relationship and obligation that holds us all together.

 

In the months since the book came out, I’ve used these two questions to catalyze countless conversations about the art of mentoring.  These conversations have evolved into a format I call “Talking Circles,” and to my great delight the circles have been rippling out all across the country.  This part of the website is to tell you about what happens in Talking Circles, to show you how easy it is to create your own, and to prompt you to pass it on.  

 

Here’s what happens.  I gather up a group, usually about a dozen people and rarely more than two dozen.  Sometimes the participants know each other through some affinity or affiliation; sometimes they are complete strangers to one another.  I provide some context for what brings us together.  And then everyone around the circle spends about five minutes answering my two core questions.  

 

That’s it.  We tell stories.  We see our own lives in the stories of others.  Without fail, as we realize that we are safe to reflect and share, we talk about our search for purpose, our reckonings with failure, our resilient sense of possibility.  We remove our masks.  And in the process we do something subtle but powerful:  we create trust, empathy and community.    

  

These Talking Circles have taken place in workplaces, houses of worship, classrooms, neighborhood centers, locker rooms, kitchens, cafes.  (In Seattle , the Starbucks Coffee Company has sponsored several series of Talking Circles in stores across the city, where anyone is welcome and all comers get free coffee, dessert and books!).  I’ve led Talking Circles with people from all walks of life:  schoolteachers, corporate executives, librarians, union members, pastors, nurses, lawyers, engineers, artists, life coaches and many others. 

 

Facilitating a Talking Circle is like conducting a small musical ensemble in a largely improvised performance.  It requires you to listen with great intensity, to anticipate how to stitch threads from one story to another, to roll with unexpected riffs, to judge when silence is golden and when a note will help.  I love doing Talking Circles.  But my purpose is to make it so that I don’t have to do the conducting or the catalyzing.  And I hope that as a reader of Guiding Lights, you will be sufficiently inspired to lead your own circles.  Here are some guidelines on how to do it.

Key issues for multi-tasking

1) Scheduling
2) Switching between tasks
3) Dealing with exceptions

These are common issues to both human and machines.

quote of the day

I turned early
to humor as my branch of writing ... because life was bitter and I was not.

Max Shulman

It's his birthday today.

终于找到最好的web hosting workflow了

Picasa import, retouch, upload.一条龙。连raw也能搞定。确实很赞。
终于可以把以前积压的片子陆续上传了。

http://picasaweb.google.com/ericzhouh

希望这次可以一鼓作气，将更新进行到底。

toast master是怎样炼成的

高中的时候吧，班里开新年晚会，我就自告奋勇作主持人。那时候老师只看成绩，不看主持水平，所以我也给混水摸鱼上了。班里没有音响，我就从家里搬了一台双卡收录机，插上一个塑料麦克，就主持上了。报个节目啥的还是没问题地。但是我不知道抽了那根筋，一定要唱一首歌。唱就唱个简单的口水歌吧，可惜我不会，于是开始唱sound of silence(主要因为当时就听了这么一盘带子)。

一个五音不全的人唱sound of silence, 结果可想而知。最惨的是我的收录机在这个关键时刻还坏了（Murphy's law at work）。于是我只好"清唱"。 我开始之后的一分钟，是全场最寂静的时刻，寂静的我都依稀可以听到地上裂开一条缝的声音了。

 

那是完全没有找到调！！

 

还好大家都很宽容，没有当场赶我下去。不过后来想想，真的很糗。

 

 

第二件糗事是去参加湖北台一个很烂的少儿节目。本来安排有辩论，一伙人认真学习了历届大专辩论赛，想要一展口才，但是不只何故，辩论环节被编导咔了，换成让我朗诵一段很煽情的歌颂母亲的稿子。我写了半天的稿子，又被指导老师咔了，一定让我背她写的。所以最后，我就以一段干巴巴的背诵完成了平生第一次"上电视"

 

在大学给人帮忙，录了一个访谈，那时候采访的人我认识（帮着修过电脑），所以不是很紧张，有几段说得还很激昂，可惜现在已经不知道白话了些什么了。应该是类似“苦练内功”“板凳甘坐十年冷”之类的话。

 

再后来，念研究生，会议发言之类的，我已经可以应付自如了。就是说得太快。

 

工作以后，有次在一个Surveillance workshop做panelist, 还说出了如下豪言壮语："Surveillance can not solve our problem. Our problem lies in the nature of capitalism social stratification. It can only be solved by promoting social justice and economic equality."

嗯，这下扬眉吐气了。

 

 

 

黄舒俊 雁度寒潭的出处

全文：风来疏竹，风去而竹不留声，雁度寒潭，雁去而潭不留影。故君子事来而心始现，事去而心随空。


解释：轻风吹过稀疏的竹林会发出沙沙的声音，风过之后，竹林归于寂静，不再留有风的声音；雁子飞过寒冷的深潭时会倒映出雁影，飞过之后，水潭里不
再留下雁子的身影。所以，一个品德高尚的君子，当事情来临的时候，心才会随着活动，当事情结束之后，心也就跟着恢复了原来的宁静。


出自：《菜根谭》

discovering myself

I just realize that an average person spent 90% of one's life time by oneself. So the key to lead a happy life is to "Get along with yourself."
How?

The first thing I could think of would be to keep learning, so there is always some new to share with myself.
The 2nd thing is to get under the skin with oneself. Try to understand why I think and behave in a certain way. I guess that's related to psychology, neural science and personal health care.

With these two basics settled, I am pretty well rounded for the rest of my life.

Bring real change to this world

What brings real change to this world, is not flashing ideas, magical algorithms. It's well-designed and excuted architecture.

Even if someone got the brightest idea in the world, it still takes hundreds of email/calls, weeks of meetings and months of development before it could happen. So be patient and do good work.

An idea that will change the online retail landscape

After working on the same floor with the retail guys for so long, I finally comes up with a killer app for Amazon retail.
This time, it will change the entire landscape of online retail and write the new chapter of Amazon.
Comparing to my 12 patent disclosures and 7 filed patents, this idea is by far the most revolutionary.
People, wait and see!

An interesting scam email

---

From: ecobnknigplc11@aim.com
[mailto:ecobnknigplc11@aim.com]
Sent: 07-03-04 17:29
To:
undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: ECOBANK/U.N. Compensation Payment:
YOU ARE ELIGIBLE!!!

DIRECTOR

SCAMMED VICTIM/$100,000 BENEFICIARIES.
REF/PAYMENTS CODE:06654
$100,000 USD.
 
ATTENTION,

 

         ECOBANK/UNITED NATIONS SCAM VICTIMS COMPENSATIONS
PAYMENTS.

This is to bring to your notice that I am delegated from the United
Nations To Central Bank to pay 150 
scam victims $100,000 USD (One Hundred Thounsand Dollars) each. You are
listed and approved for this payment as one of
the scammed victims to be paid this amount, get back to as soon as
possible for the immediate
payments of your $100,000 USD compensations funds.
 
On this faithful
recommendations, want you to know that during the last U.N. meetings held at
Abuja, Nigeria, it was alarmed
so much by the world in the meetings on the lose of funds by various individuals to the Nigerian scams artists operating
in syndicates all over the world today. In other
to compensate victims, the U.N Body in conjunction with the Nigerian
Government is now paying 150 victims of this
operators $100,000 USD each in accordance with the U.N. recommendations. Due to
the corrupt and inefficient Banking Systems in
Nigeria, the payments are to
be supervised by the United Nations' Officials and the Central Bank Nigeria as
the corresponding paying bank is ECO BANK PLC.
 
According to the number of applicants at hand, 114
Beneficiaries has been paid, half of the victims
are from the United States, we still have
more 36 left to be paid the compensations of
$100,000 USD each. Your particulars was mentioned by one of the Syndicates who
was arrested as one of their victims of the
operations, you are hereby warned not to communicate or duplicate this message to him for any reason what so ever
as the U.S. secret service is already on trace of
the other criminals. So keep it secret till they are all apprehended.  Other
victims who have not been contacted can submit their application as well for
scrutiny and possible consideration.

 

For more vital information, please visit:
http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/news1jul.htm

 
You can receive your compensations payments via any of
this options you Choose, DRAFT/CHEQUE PAYMENTS or WIRE TRANSFERS. I shall feed you with further
modalities as soon as I hear from you.

 

 

 
Send a copy of
your response to the official email: ecobnkplc@aim.com

 

For Inquiries:

On-line customer care service:info_ecobnknigplc@yahoo.com
 
Yours faithfully,
IYAMAH
SYLVANIUS.
SCAMMED VICTIM/REF/PAYMENTS CODE:06654 $100,000
USD.

Mother farm: tons of fun

2005 autumn, I went to one of the most unexpected places in Japan.

I did a quick search and found that Harvey wrote a nice introduction about it here
http://www.japannewbie.com/archives/000132.html
While he also promised to eat his hat, I am not so confident to say so, because most of my hat comes with a jacket. :(

Without further adue, here is Harvey's article:

MOTHER FARM マザー牧場

If -anyone- visits this site who has been there before, I will eat my hat.

Mother Farm is similar to Living History Farms, if you know what I mean. We have a grandLiving History Farms in Iowa! Oh, it was wonderful! The cows! The Corn! Petting zoos, games, events. Stinky Cow stuff... giant pigs... ewww...

Actually. It's kinda boring.

One of the funniest events they had at Mother Farm was a pig run with the kids. The kids had to smack their baby pigs around a race track. Some of the pigs would stop to dig in the dirt, and it was absolutely hilarious to see the frustrated children desperately smacking the pigs to get them to move. The staff looked like they were having the time of their lives.
click for bigger pic.

There was also a hilarious contest in which old people had to bail hay
as fast as possible. Weaklings!!! I could have done it! They should have let the gaijin on the job.

One of the most elaborate events they had was a sheep demonstration by a Japanese speaking foreigner who seemed to be from New Zealand. (Not that everyone in New Zealand is a sheep herder, it just seemed so from his accent. Really! I happen to like New Zealand. In fact, I want to live there some day. If anyone from New Zealand reads this please post a comment!) They had dogs running on the backs of sheeps, the man was man handling the sheep, dragging them around the stage. At the end, he sheared a sheep in about 2 minutes, and gave an entire garbage bag of sheep wool to a random kid in the audience. Now that's comedy.

Mother Farm was a great change of scenery. The area is very open and spacious. Good place to slack.

Mother Farm is in Chiba, you can get there from Kurihama by taking a ferry across the water and driving about 20 minutes.

cafe before starring night

Cafe Terrace at Night

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from The Café Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, at Night)

Cafe Terrace at Night

Vincent van Gogh, 1888

Oil on canvas

81 × 65.5 cm

Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

学做西餐的网站

I have been listening to this radio show for a while, but this is the first time I actually visit their website.

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quote of the day

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more































violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move































in the opposite direction."
Albert Einstein

drum machine

Drum Machine

A "trivial" patent idea

Don't know if this is patentable. But it's surely handy.
In parties, people often have trouble finding their own cups. Jay comes up with the idea of sticking a number on each cup.

But that would be too troublesome for a big party. How about during manufacturing, we print different number (or colored icons) on all paper cups packed together? That way the host can distribute the cups, and each party attendee just need to remember the number on the cup.

hmmm... sounds like a trivial idea after I wrote it down. But post-it was a "trivial" idea that feed 3M for years.

patent funs

Today I meet up with my boss and Jay. We just sit there and count all the things we should run to the patent lawyer tomorrow. A rough count goes beyond 12 proposals.  And all are very cool stuff. One of them certainly deserve a CVPR paper.

 

That's really encouraging. After the meeting my boss said we are going head to head with GOOGLE (if they flip the switch) in POD, and MS is just entering. And  on SSI, we are competing with lightning source and Lulu.com.  I said to myself. This is it. This is my dream job!