Orbiting World of Warcraft

Brain Tumor

2012-01-24T20:31:00.000-08:00

Just got the shocking news that one of my friend's daughter has brain tumor. I was shocked. She is such a sweet little girl, why??!!!!! I even feel anger. This even is the worst one in my life, because it actually shakes me to my core, almost worse than me contract this tumor.

WOT Progression

2012-01-10T11:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I finally elite my E50, and a day earlier I elite my King Tiger :-) Not too long ago I was simultaneously leveling 10 tanks, now only 5 is in the list. My t44 is still 60k away from the t54, and the t32 is only 100k (plus I got 50k of free exp if required).

My new Patent is dead

2011-12-30T13:42:00.001-08:00

After some extensive search, I found others have already got the idea, so the process is aborted.Good thing is now I have more time for World of Tanks!

Patent Process

2011-12-26T22:05:00.000-08:00

My previous patent is still in progress. I responsed to a request late (due to my own fault) but thanks for a great gentalman in USPTO, I was able to continue the patent without extra fee.Now I just got another idea on games (will discuss more once I file the patent), and found that I have totally forget how to do it and have to re-learn everything. So I decide to blog it, in case me or others need this info.First, I suggest you go to this web site : http://www.uspto.gov/patents/process/index.jsp and obtain a customer number.There are 3 catagories of patent, most likely yours will be a Utility patent (a design patent is for looks and plant patent is for plants).Here I only talk about Utility Patents.First, go to https://efs.uspto.gov/efile/portal/efs-unregistered, because I was unregisted. If you are like me, had an idea suddenly and don't have a customer number, this is the only way.Fill in the following forms:1. Oath of declared field2. Specifications and Claims: http://www.uspto.gov/patents/resources/general_info_concerning_patents.jsp#heading-143. Go to http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/accelerated/ae_accelerated_examination_tutorial.pdf and fill in SB28 (A petition to make an application special for accelerated examination), PREX.SRCH (search) and PREX.SUP.DOC (search results)4. Submit using https://efs.uspto.gov/efile/portal/efs-unregistered

Tim Tebow

2011-12-12T08:31:00.000-08:00

A great read on Tim Tebow, from WSJ

Limitless

2011-11-26T21:02:00.001-08:00

One of our friend rented this video when he visited us. I always wanted to see this one but never got time, so I was really happy.The movie was cool, tight and clean, keep me guessing till the end. However the ending was not very good (spoiler after this), I hate the idea of drugs can actually be good.... Kind of like the gene in the bottle and you asked it to grant you more wishes.Anyway, my friend did suggested a much better ending, that the main character is bluffing.. Of course that will be a tragic ending and I won't sleep well.

World of tanks 7.0 might have replay feature

2011-11-23T07:39:00.001-08:00

Noticed it in the 7.0 public test patch. Now that is a good feature to have!!

NHibernate metadata reader closed problem

2011-11-17T07:37:00.001-08:00

Encountered that exception, had no idea what it is. Googled and some people suggest it is a bad table, some suggested it is the session out of scope. None fits my situation.So I go ahead setup the nhibernate/active record/fluent source, did some debugging. What happened is someone is using StructureMap's ObjectFactory.Get() method inside a domain model's constructor, and while nhibernate is constructing that object, the constructor is doing more nhibernate calls via IOC. That is just bad, and now it is solved :-)

XMan First Class

2011-11-01T18:05:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I finally got sometime and rent X-Man First Class from redbox. This is a good movie (maybe because I am a long time X-Man fun), good plot, some part of it is a bit too unrealistic (the teleport demon). A little bit of modification will be good, maybe make it take time to teleport (else he can zip out of trouble, instead of stay at the danger at end).

R.I.P Dennis Ritchie

2011-10-18T14:20:00.000-07:00

Such tragedy. Just a few days ago it was Steve Jobs, now Ritchie. I am so sorry I didn't post this on time. Ritchie is not as famous as Jobs, but I do fee just as important. He is the co-funder of C language, I still remember the feel when I switched from basic to C. C is simple and flexible (so flexible my wife still have nightmares with pointers), I feel in love with it more and more. Of course time moves on and we went to C++/Java/C#, but you can see C in all of them.Attached is a link to The Development of the C Language.

Warren Buffet might owe billions in taxes

2011-10-13T12:27:00.000-07:00

Story from http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=45889Which states in past years, Buffet sometimes have billions in Unrecognized Tax Benefits. Just to make sure I didn't get it backwards, I did some research, and here is one from http://mays.tamu.edu/media/documents/2009/09/16/rego_2009.pdf:

Tax planning strategies that reduce tax liabilities on tax returns generate “tax benefits,” which may or may not be recognized in financial statements. When a firm recognizes a tax benefit on a tax return and records an offsetting liability in the financial statements to account for the contingent liability associated with that tax position, we refer to the tax benefit as being “unrecognized.” The liability for unrecognized tax benefits is also commonly referred to by tax practitioners as the tax contingency or the tax cushion.

So there you go, Buffet, who claims he didn't pay enough tax (and want to pay more), have taken tax benefits that his firm think IRS might not allow. And that is what we call a hypocrite.

R.I.P Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T20:20:00.000-07:00

Even though I am on vacation and is really tired from a full day of activities, I just have to drag myself off the bed and do a short note. Just 2 days ago me and a friend was taking about how amazing Jobs is, how fiction like his life was, and now he becme a legend. Just want to say Jobs well done!

Battle Of The Scheldt

2011-09-29T21:05:00.000-07:00

World of tanks have a special, lead me to watch the video for "Battle Of The Scheldt" on youtube. The Canadians fought it and lost many people, there were internal fights about who should get the glory etc (i.e. not acceptable if US was not present...) and at the end, not one Canadian officer is invited to the victory celebration.

New game on the way

2011-09-21T20:44:00.000-07:00

Assuming if I got time, I finally got a new idea of a game, will call it "Ivy of Life".Hope it won't be just another incomplete project of me :-)Also excellent SC game Janbi vs Fantasy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2WC0ltpnbQ&feature=feedu_more

Corrupted Unions and Corrupted management

2011-09-07T06:47:00.000-07:00

Usually when there are Union/management conflict, I blame the Unions. Can't help it. Even though Unions have their purpose in the old age, today's Unions are generally corrupt, lazy and greedy (Rubber room teachers making 100k+retirement benefits).However in this post is about corrupted management. This is a story about per-bankrupcy Delta CEOs. The CEO tied his salary to company cash flow (note, not profit). Then what he did is he borrowed money to increase cash flow, so he got compensated more. He also spent a lot of money setup a multi-million dollar fund. With help of big money and big lawyers, the fund is setup so that nothing can touch it, not even if the company went bankrupt. That is why we need fiduciary laws, so we can nail those corrupted CEOs, neither them nor the Unions is good for our economy.(By they way, I heard this story form other people, and I don't have time to confirm it independently).

Hough Transform

2011-09-05T21:12:00.000-07:00

I was doing some research on de-skew a image, and found this page about Hough TransformA interesting read, and the idea is very simple and easy to use. It is very interesting as how presenting data in a different way will lead to a much easier understanding of it. The other example I can think of is Fourier Transform, I have done multiple applications that requires FFT, and it do wonders to some instances.A note about FFT is the 2D FFT. I remember had the question about if doing vertical FFT on a FFTed graph make sense, but since I was a bad student (always want to play games first) never asked this question. Think back, the way 2d FFT is performed makes no sense, but since it does present a usable solution (for compression etc) we are just doing it :-)

Source Code

2011-08-25T12:02:00.000-07:00

Rented Source Code and have some buddies over and watched together (yes I am cheap and use redbox), feels like the good days back in college :-)

It is a good movie, good ideas (impossible in real life though) and I like the ending, although I think if the ending is 1 minutes early it will be a more artistic ending.

Very similar to Inception, but I would think Inception is more physically possible.

After the movie are some discussions on physics and string theory. I heard about string theory before but imagined the 12 dimension thing is totally crap. But after yesterday's discussion it sounds a bit plausible, acutely like the idea that all 5 different modules are just the 5 projections from the 12 dimension final theory (Still think it is more close to crap though, epically CERN didn't find the practical).

Cisco VPN service network troubles

2011-08-15T20:00:00.000-07:00

Wife suddenly started to complain about trouble to connect to our server (at home). I thought a simple reboot will fix the problem but nope. Can ping other computer from server but can't ping the server from other computers.

Firewall is off, and after some research I found it is the Cisco VPN service. As long as the VPN service is started, even if VPN is not connected it will still prevent connections.

So problem solved :-)

MS security updates

2011-08-10T08:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday night I posted about how I got a virus by just using IE9 to view drudge report (even after I denied the UAC requests), MS released 13 patches, once of them is this:

Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 9 for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB2559049)

Download size: 20.9 MB

You may need to restart your computer for this update to take effect.

Update type: Important

Security issues have been identified that could allow an attacker to compromise a system that is running Microsoft Internet Explorer and gain control over it. You can help protect your system by installing this update from Microsoft. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

More information:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=221946

Help and Support:
http://support.microsoft.com

Win 7 Internet Security 2011 – Unregistred Version scam

2011-08-10T02:06:00.000-07:00

I was browse Drudge report and all of a sudden a UAC dialog popup, the details shows "File Operation". I know it must be a virus and closed it. Then another dialog popup as well, "File Operation" and there is GUID in details (too bad I didn't record it). I denied it as well.

To my surprise, a Win 7 Internet sccurity 2011 window appeared, definitely not from brower, and shows virus scanning in progress!!! I denied the UAC and IE9 still changed my computer??!!

On the internet, saw the blog with same problem. He run security scan (MSSE) and fixed the bug. I will try to do the same.

http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/05/01/fake-anti-virus-software-psa-win-7-internet-security-2011.aspx

WOT 6.6 patching now

2011-08-10T01:27:00.000-07:00

This morning wake up early and wanted to play WOT. To my surprise WOT is patching. I thought it will start patching at 7 like usual, I guess not. Can't wait for this patch, my Panhther will be changed and a PantherII will be added :-)

WOT test server up

2011-07-31T19:03:00.000-07:00

Yep, I spend over 10k gold to get the IS4, and is a bit disapointed. A bit slow, and I was killed rather faster during my first 2 trials....

Starcraft match, Baby vs Killer

2011-07-21T18:28:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VXIE0o9Qbo&feature=feedu

See link above. I was surprised by who finally win :-)

javascript math

2011-07-14T21:12:00.001-07:00

So what is 70.18*100 in javascript? It might be surprise you that the result is 7018.00000000001.

And number.toFixed() should fix this nicely.

Another interesting thing about jqGrid. I have a date column that requires a customized format but needs to be sorted as date. I did some research and none of the online solution works (my jqGrid version is 3.6.5). So I download the source, and what's going on is jqGrid parse the date with y,m,d,h,i,s A (as year, month, date, hour, minute, second, AM/PM). So the solution is:

sorttype: 'datetime', datefmt: 'm-d-y h:i:s A' (I am mm-dd-yyyy hh:mm:ss AM/PM format).

Cool jQuery UI

2011-07-06T08:57:00.000-07:00

Haven't been doing scripts for a while, and there is one from msdn that looks pretty cool: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/scriptjunkie/hh127352.aspx

Kind of surprised how easy it is doing round corner UIs :-)

OSL JD vs Flash

2011-06-26T06:04:00.001-07:00

Another great battle between 2 best players.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DExusOePdSA&feature=feedu

This is just amazing!!

2011-06-24T19:28:00.001-07:00

It is called domino music. If you have never seen this before, prepare to be wooed....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_CDLBTJD4M&feature=player_embedded

My Lowe got destroyed by T54

2011-06-13T21:08:00.001-07:00

Yep, to my surprise, my Lowe, a heavy tank in a 1v1 frontal attack, got destroyed by T54, a medium tank...

World of tanks matching

2011-05-22T22:17:00.000-07:00

I love WOT so far, even bought gold (to make my progression faster and to support the game). There is one thing that I really hate about the game. When I am on a lower tire tank and got matched in a higher tire tank game, I was unable to do damage at all sometimes. My IS bounce off on M6 all the time, my M3 bounce off on M4 (from a distance). In the last game, all shells from my M3 bounced off the M4 (I fired maybe 14 shoots, and earned him "Steel Wall". Errrrr.

The M3 is 2 tires below M4, so that is fine, but in one game, during a frontal attack, all my shells from my IS bounced off a KV3 while it killed me????

Another fun game

2011-05-14T21:29:00.001-07:00

english commentary by Nuke

Incredible Starcraft Match

2011-05-01T21:53:00.000-07:00

Jaedong vs Baby, enjoy!

iPod is killing US jobs

2011-04-21T04:17:00.000-07:00

This is old news, I wanted to blog about it.

In short, "Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr (D-IL) spoke on the house floor saying how he believed that the iPad was "eliminating thousands of American jobs." LOL, not sure how he got elected.

Big regrets

2011-04-18T19:23:00.000-07:00

Now I really regret that I have not bought the heavy pre-order package for World of Tanks. A bit worried that I might be caught by wife, bought the light package instead. Now I found that the M6A2E1 is almost impossible to penatrate by my best guns....

Flash vs. Bisu!

2011-04-10T23:06:00.001-07:00

Very nice Starcraft fight, commentary by Nuke.

World of tanks will wipe soon

2011-04-10T22:16:00.001-07:00

I went ahead and bought a $45 package, just to show my support. Really wished if they could offer me a way to not wipe my account, 2 month of hard work!!

Paul Graham on Tablets

2011-04-02T22:49:00.000-07:00

I think it is just a great read. Kind of showed how good hardware helps innovation. The PC world on the other hand used to be race to the bottom. Still remember how dyanmic ram wins over static ram Back when I read the first book on CPUs, I can't understand why people would save half the transistor count and make the product slower. However the use of SDRAM is a good choice, as that small performence is not as good as adding a accelerometer.

Interesting discussions

2011-04-02T22:20:00.001-07:00

I started a topic on broken toys, and there are flames but the discussions are worth a ready I believe.

Great SC1 Game

2011-03-26T20:11:00.001-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXomV0d44Uo&feature=feedu_more

Census money income statistics

2011-02-28T12:15:00.000-08:00

This link from http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/income_expenditures_poverty_wealth.html is a much better presenter of income sensus. Even allows to copy and past:

YEAR	$15K	25K	$35K	$50K	$75K	over
1967	10.7%	11.3%	14.0%	22.1%	25.6%	16.3%
1970	9.2	10.6	12.0	20.8	26.2	21.1
1980	8.8	10.5	11.4	17.1	24.8	27.4
1990	8.6	9.4	10.2	15.6	22.4	33.8
2008	8.1	9.0	9.7	13.6	19.4	40.3

I was going to use this table as evidence that lower tax rates prompt more middle people to higher brackets, but because I don't have the data in 50s, it is not conclusive.

family income statistics

2011-02-24T16:42:00.000-08:00

This is for my own reference so I don't forget.

this links to census.gov's family income statistics over year :http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/p60.html.

Now I would like to do is mine out the data and make an inflation adjusted table of how people are doing over the years and compare with US top marginal rates: http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php

World of Tanks

2011-02-22T03:09:00.000-08:00

Played this MMO (or FPS), and LOVED it! Maybe it has something to do with my love of WWII tanks. Even the Leichtractor is not so bad :-)

How different are you from a Christian

2011-02-14T21:53:00.001-08:00

I compiled a list of requirements to be a Christian, most likely not complete. #6 and #8 is likely the most impossible, I will never give my bank account to my neighbor at least.

1. No idol worshiping
2. don't kill
3. don't steal
4. don't enoy your neighbor's belongs, including his/her wife/husband (2x2 metrix)
5. respect your parents
6. Respect the sabboth and don't work on that day. (Jew/Christian/Islam only)
7. Don't judge other people
8. love your neighbor as you love yourself
9. donate 1/10th to charity.

I fixed my own f1.4 EF 50mm!!!!!

2011-01-22T19:21:00.000-08:00

Yes, this is a great day for me!!!

The lens that I loved most, the Canon f1.4, recently got stuck. I had it for 2 years now and I loved it, sharp images, fast shutter even when inside homes. Great for kids, and great for people like me who don't like flash.

And yet for several month now, the AF system only able to auto focus at one direction. And a week ago it finally got totally stuck, I can't adjust focus manfully.

Went online, and other people are complain about the same thing. The Canon f1.4 lens has a weak point, the front. If you push it too hard it could get stuck.

I was heart broken on this. The lens is expensive, and when it gone bad and I have to go back the the default lens, the difference is too big to accept.

Finally I went online and did some research, found this and this.

Initially I doubted my ability to fix the lens, but decided to give it a try. After about 1.5 hours, I finally did it!! Followed the second link, and the instructions are great!!! Some of the instructions I didn't understand initially, but I figured everything out with some practice.
Thanks to those authors.

Step 3, pop ears on he plastic protection piece in the mount was the hardest, what you need to do is push the ears toward the center and push the inner plastic ring outward at the same time.
I also had trouble removing the wires, pushed on the wrong piece lol.

Anyway, I am very very happy about this. Every since I decided to really believe in God, I have encountered multiple difficulties. First my old company started laying off and salary cuts, then the lens. But all was resolved in surprising manners. A recruiter called me and land me a better job, and now a quick fix and I am happy in multiple fronts!

Working part time

2011-01-17T20:12:00.000-08:00

As you know I change job recently, trying to get a job with better security and pay. Well, my new job is very nice, pays better, but I am not sure about the security part. My new company is hiring too many people (or at least I feel that way), and I am a bit worried.

Lucky for me, my old company wants me work part time for them. With babies at home, spare time is in short supply, but I do need to keep in touch so I don't lose the relationship. When I was young I used to think that I am a good programmer and will never need to worry about jobs. But now I am older and need to support a family, this is a must.

Wonder Girls

2011-01-14T22:15:00.000-08:00

I am about 2 years too late, but recently I found this amazing video on youtube.

If you have not seen this before, you will not be disappointed. Wonder girls are a Korean group, and I don't understand most of it except "Nobody nobody but you"!

Enjoy!

Gini Coefficient

2011-01-09T21:10:00.000-08:00

I was watching a lecture and heard the term "Gini Coefficient". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient. A very interesting concept. Lecturer linked Gini with how developed the country is, the better (lower) the coefficient, the better the country is developed. The reason is simple, the system will became more efficient when people gets closer to their fair share of the game.

Actually, in a real world, the coefficient will never reach to 0. Also it will be inefficient if the coefficient gets to 0, because that means no one is getting rewards when they work harder. And I think that is one of the main reasons that even in the most developed countries, the coefficient is around 0.3.

However in a developed world, it should never be too high. The reason is if the place is fair, all people should have the same access to education etc, so with a even start, the majority of people should be around the same level.

It is also interesting to note that the lecturer noted that during the 1930's, when the Soviet Union was doing their X year progressive plans, the system works so much better that even the intellects in US think it is the way to go. However the system of government central planning didn't stand the test of time, and eventually the pitfalls shows up, the system is so inefficient that the Soviet union has to import food because of production problems.

Anyway, as I am from a communist country, here is from my high school political book "The system that gives better productivity will replace the less efficient ones". That was a rough translation. Only in the original book it was predicating communism will over take the world. Just amazing what 10 or 20 years of time can prove.

Some Javascript basics

2011-01-06T20:58:00.000-08:00

I used javascript for many years, did many things that solved hard problems at work. However I recently changed work, and this company used javascript heavily.

Through my recent debugging and fixing of the code, I found some old javascript tricks that I never know!!

1. === and !==. "===", the triple equal sign, means compare with type. So even though 2=="2" is true, 2 === "2" is false because their types are different. Same with !==. I found this one while I was reading jQuery code.

2. function closures.
(function(){
//do something without affect globals.
})();

2. call and apply.
Suppose you have a function doSomething(a,b). You can call itwith a new "this" by using call and apply. i.e

3. arguments
It is a variable made available by javascript that contains current function call's arguments.

function doSomething(a,b){
alert(this.id + ' ' + a + b);
}
var obj = {id:'me'};
var func = doSomething;
func.call(obj, 1, 2);
(function(){func.apply(obj, arguments);})(1,2);

the above code will show "me 12" twice.

Because I never know those before, the first time I saw them, I thought they are either typos or some home made functions!!

Recent activities

2010-12-19T20:12:00.000-08:00

Well, has been very busy recently, didn't do any gaming, not even Starcraft 2.

I have been very busy between my kids, Starcraft 1 videos, new job, Christmas light, Home improvement (adding a new office) and rental. Still recovering from the cuts resulting from the 15amp wires (they are incredibly hard after a while).

Yes I still want to make my own RTS game, but I just can't find any time for that.

Need a good PVP

2010-11-22T10:18:00.000-08:00

PVP is not the pvp in WOW, it is Portable Video Player.

Recently I found I am drawing argo from wife from even watch the Korean Starcraft matches on youtube. Now argo come from not even playing games??!!

So some thoughts and I decided to get something small that can play back mp4, or even better, something tinny (like a phone) that can play youtube videos. Got to be cheap and no subscriptions. After some initial search I decided on either a cheap mp4 device or the apple i-touch. MS ZUNE is out of it because it is expensive but doesn't offer youtube through wifi (what a waste).

Asp.net MVC

2010-11-14T19:21:00.000-08:00

I did some research on ASP.NET MVC, and I have to say I like it! Very cool design and seems light weight. The initial caching of path seems to take some time but that is the only thing slow I noticed. The way the framework is designed is impressive. The only thing that might be a problem is the control path seems to be only 1 level, but it should not matter too much.

99 weeks out of employment.

2010-10-25T15:08:00.000-07:00

Just saw this shocking link from some post:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/10/21/60minutes/main6978943.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody

I am deeply shocked. There are people who make over 200k a year, and normal engineers just like you and me. All affected the same way, can't find a work and broke. When I was out of work, I go back to college and became a tutor, but that income will never cover the mortgage payment.

How can we help them? What can we do if we are in that condition? How come I know people who are been on social security for a long long time and their benefits never expire?

Econmy 101

2010-10-20T14:49:00.000-07:00

Here is my rant (from my post on Broken Toys)

The government can build a bridge to no where, and temporarily show some benefit, but that is bad and it be getting bad things.

It is has almost the same effect of print money and give to people (with the added disadvantage of wasting raw material and generate greenhouse gas). When you build stuff people don’t want with “stimulus”, you create inflation, people will find their money doesn’t worth as much any more.

Again, as I can’t stress enough, wealth is created. You create wealth by produce things people want, and the only way to benefit poor people is by increase productivity, so things get cheaper (the best example is food, much less people get hungry today than 100 years ago because of the leap in farm productivity).

Government spending can temporarily jump the economy, but it will never be long term and worst of all if people started to depend on it, you create a tumor that will just keep getting bigger.

As a matter of historical fact, check the 5 year plans of Soviet Union and Culture revolution of China. Do you know how many people died of hunger during the failed government economy pushes? Millions.

So less Taxes, more productivity. Let the Rich get richer, as long as the poor gets richer too.

Nice jQuery tutorial

2010-10-08T12:05:00.000-07:00

I have been doing mainly Silverlight recently, but here is a nice jQuery one (better than doing ajax myself).

http://dotnetslackers.com/articles/ajax/Using-jQuery-with-ASP-NET.aspx

Way too busy

2010-09-21T08:02:00.000-07:00

I am very busy recently, work and others. At work 2 of my co-workers quit so there will be more stuff on my way. At home my daughter doesn't like eat much, every meal is a struggle.

I am still planning to make a new game, with my spare time I got the path finding, unit targeting stuff finished, but need to make a playable game (won't be enjoyable at all). All that need time that I don't have.

Remember when I was young, I had so much time and often get bored. Now this is just totally unexpected.

Yes and Starcraft II is getting a lot of my spare time as well, I am doing the achievement stuff one by one. Got to have some fun.

Funny Nuke

2010-09-13T11:32:00.000-07:00

Here is a Video from NukeAtNight, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJY94AY4TZk&feature=sub

Just listen to it, at the beginning, there are something involving a girl named Sue and something about pylons.

I can see the future now

2010-09-10T06:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/arm-cortex-a8-a9-a15,11257.html#xtor=RSS-181

See this link. It is a Quad core Arm processor that will be used in smart phones. I am starting to think the future belongs to this kind of tiny but powerful devices (yes, I am sure Flash/Java/Silverlight can run on it). Maybe eventually your computer/phone/pda will all be in one, and you carry them on the run, and when at home, just plug in mouse and keyboard....

Or even better, with the thin led screens, you can have a screen act as a keyboard (and when in phone mode the screen can be wrapped inside). Maybe I should pattern my idea.

Starcraft II blog

2010-09-03T14:21:00.001-07:00

found this blog on the net:

http://www.ftwins.com/ftwins-pro-strategy/starcraft-2-brutal-video-campaign-walk-through-on-the-great-train-robbery-mission-8/

I was looking for a way to beat this in Brutal, and don't want to waste time trying myself.

Beat "All In" in Brutal

2010-08-30T11:17:00.000-07:00

I finally beat the last level in Starcraft II "All In" in brutal. I was having trouble despite watching youtube on how others did that, but theirs seems easier because the waves seems to contain less numbers.

So basically I used the mind control device (but I did make a big mistake, I put the devices in front of the island where the artifact is instead of put it at the rear, puting them more at risk), and at the last moments I moved all my units to the center. After that, I kind of just waited and win because there are so much going on I can't do much.

Jaedon!

2010-08-27T16:31:00.001-07:00

vs light, this is very interesting!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRqS68D2TH0&feature=sub

Don't die pylo...

2010-08-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

Just watched a Starcraft II commentory by Husky, very funny ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2m83fsqIx8&feature=sub He even named a plyon pylo, and from now on all plyons will be pylo for me :-)

Car problem

2010-08-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

I have a very old car and it finally started to give me problems that I can't ignore (i.e. not starting any more).

Last Friday when I try to start the car, it won't start. The day before I noticed that when I try to start the car, the starting process sounds "slow", but didn't pay attention.

Now the car won't start, I started to dig problems.

My first thought is the battery, but I want to make sure there is no other problems. So I jump up the car, and checked to make sure the alternator is producing electricity. Then I checked for leaks. I am a total amateur on this, what I did is, disconnect the battery, and measure the resistance of the 2 wires. The resistance is 0!! After some search, I understand that there are diodes inside the alternator, and I should measure it positive to positive. Still it is only 20 Oms. So I started to suspect that my alternator diode is bad. A friend of mine also had the same car type, and I measured his resistance, also 20 OM.

So based on that, I am pretty sure it is my battery. Changed the battery, tried to start, and somehow my security system won't let me start! Guess it is a all new round to check my 10 year old security system (which is installed before I bought the car).

ATI releases AA fix for Starcraft II

2010-08-02T12:25:00.000-07:00

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Catalyst-driver-Starcraft-SC2,10992.html#xtor=RSS-181

Thank GOD!! I bought a ATI card for it's speed and power efficiency, and when I got Starcraft II, noticed the squares in some of the cut senses. I was regretting for getting the ATI card but now I will try out the beta driver immediately.

Got Starcraft II (Update)

2010-07-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

Install Starcraft II at places where you can't control firewall is not a good idea, but at my home it went very well. I got windows 7 64bit, and because I have to AFK from time to time, I didn't even notice the patch download. When I came back to the computer, Starcraft II was already playable.

This is my first impressions. First, the graphics is very good. Sound quality is very good as well, love the music (will be better if they mix in the original sound tracks from Starcraft I). I only played a short time, and the cut senses are pretty good in general (but some are not movies, look like real time 3D generation and needs some anti-aliasing, it could be my graphics card, which is ATI5770, with everything on ultra).

Another thing is, it looks like every time I start the game, I have to logon to battle.net. What if my internet provider went down (which happened several times)? Have not tried to play without internet yet.

Got Starcraft II

2010-07-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

Yep, I went to my local GameStop and bought Starcraft II. Went and installed at work to avoid wife (it is already 7pm so it should be OK). After all 12GB, I click on it, it keep saying "StarCraft II requires a patch, would you like to download it?". If I click yes, the same message will come back after a short black screen. If I click cancel, the game exits.

I guess it must because the company firewall. Blizzard should give some consideration to us who might not have internet access. Maybe a static download?

Will try out at home, after 12pm when wife sleeps :-(

Starcraft II beta (update)

2010-07-19T18:01:00.000-07:00

Finally got beta working on my laptop, it was very slow though (about 3 year old low end dual core XP machine).

So I got a chance to go home today to try it on my desktop. Strange thing happened.

On my laptop (windows XP), once it installs, when I run, it will download 2 more patches.

On my desktop (windows 7), once it installs and run, it went to login screen directly, and if I try to login, it fails with "invalid version".

Googled and there are several discussions, but no solution.

Starcraft II beta

2010-07-17T17:14:00.000-07:00

Yes, finally I got a beta invitation!! It is kind of late and I was in a personal emergency when I read that message, and have to leave immediately.

It is kind of late but I am so happy now. I was so bored that I wanted to play Diablo II, and found I can't find my copy (We bought 2 Diablo II so both me and my wife could play, but that is over 10 years ago and it is lost somewhere), so I have to buy online from Blizzard. Now thank you Blizzard!! I am going to download it (slow over the hospital wifi) and enjoy it later!

Almost pirated a movie.

2010-07-06T13:04:00.000-07:00

Yep. I was experiencing with a internet TV on my computer last weekend, and the provider explained that it has signed contracts with many content providers so they could provide the TV legally.

So I decided to give it a try. On the menu there are lot of movies, foreign and US. I picked "Clash of the Titians", and the picture is crystal clear, no buffering at all.

Then I got worried. No ads or nothing that I could think of that could provide this financially. Even though the site clam it has permission, my common sense tell me that it is not possible.

I immediately re-activated netflix, but nope, it is not on yet. I searched the movie theaters near by, but none of them carries it. Eventually I found tickets on sale out of state on movietickets.com, and I immediately bought a ticket for 3.75.

Guess this is a good example of never be greedy, or else I could waited and watch the same movie on bigger screen for just 1.07 from redbox.

Chrome Browser Video

2010-07-04T15:44:00.000-07:00

This is a video the google people did for Chrome, I have to say it is very impressive!!

Take a look, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCgQDjiotG0&feature=pyv&ad=5456497857&kw=video%20downloader%20chrome.

Here is another a$$ hole want more money from you and me

2010-07-02T15:27:00.000-07:00

from cnet, politicians want internet tax again.

I guess the bridge to no where has run out of money again.

I am going to immigrate to Korea.

2010-07-02T08:23:00.000-07:00

According to toms, Korea people will get free version of Starcraft II.

Those lucky bastards. They already have Starcraft as their national sports and now this??

In the related news, happy July 4th.

WOW may go free to play?

2010-06-30T14:46:00.000-07:00

And here is the link from toms.

So it is just a distant possibility. Anyway, just yesterday I was thinking if WOW could have a offline mode I would be play it from time to time.

If it really went free to play, I might spend an hour or two per week and buy some stuff to boast my abilities.

Microsoft meeting

2010-06-29T09:04:00.000-07:00

My co-worker has finally pushed me to our local Microsoft meeting, and I have to admit it is a good experience. Relaxed and fun, free food and items. I win a MS T-shirt (which I always want to have one). The presenter showed some cool lambada moves and some general coding styles. Best of all, I saw a few former co-workers :-)

So if there are MS group meetings at your locale, I strongly encourage you to attend.

Two cool starcraft matches

2010-06-27T14:23:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCDD80UBlZk&playnext_from=TL&videos=igu6aFom048&feature=sub

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6wbNKHZu-M&playnext_from=TL&videos=CyMK_kP30i4&feature=sub

Yes they are starcraft original, and yes I love protoss :-)

The oil leak (again)

2010-06-24T08:02:00.000-07:00

It is still not resolved. I am very pissed off by BP and The US President.

BP is definitely at fault, despite all the awards it got.

And Obama should have done much more!! He could have summoned the CEOs and experts of other companies and solve this. Even the Iranian president offered help. TAKE IT!!!!!! Mr. Ahmadinejad probably can do this much quicker.

And all the related US Government agencies. If they can't prevent this, can't do anything about the spill, can't offer any good ideas and all they do is point to each other, that means they are useless and should be trimmed.

Big companies and big government is the same, all should be break up.

Unreal Tournament

2010-06-24T07:56:00.000-07:00

I had the game back in 2000, and love the game play (especially the one where you can snip on top of a tower and the last one).

Recently during a conversion with a friend, we talked about unreal and he wanted to play. So I promised that I will give him the CD. Well, turned out that CD is lost forever and somehow I wanted to play again as well.

So I went to GameStop near my home and bought unreal tournament 3. The graphics is better than the original, and I am going through the levels right now hopping the great levels in the original is still present in this new version.

It is great to play old games for cheap, my copy is only $10 :-)

Boobs and talents

2010-06-23T11:48:00.000-07:00

I was reading a blog about some new movie Megan Fox started in and the author was talking about how no movie will show case her talents.

Will, unfortunate for her, big boobs cover up whatever talents underneath.

Economic Enlightenment Survey

2010-06-22T08:35:00.000-07:00

A very interesting Survey on Economic Enlightenment. The link is http://econjwatch.org/articles/economic-enlightenment-in-relation-to-college-going-ideology-and-other-variables-a-zogby-survey-of-americans, which contains more info on how/what kind of people did on this Survey.

1. Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable.
2. Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those
services.
3. Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago.
4. Rent control leads to housing shortages.
5. A company with the largest market share is a monopoly.
6. Third-world workers working for American companies overseas are being
exploited.
7. Free trade leads to unemployment.
8. Minimum wage laws raise unemployment.

And all the answers should be of type "Generically speaking", or "statistical" nature.

And the answers are:

1. Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable.
Yes
2. Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those
services.
Yes
3. Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago.
Yes
4. Rent control leads to housing shortages.
Yes

5. A company with the largest market share is a monopoly.
No
6. Third-world workers working for American companies overseas are being
exploited.
No
7. Free trade leads to unemployment.
No

8. Minimum wage laws raise unemployment.
Yes

So how did you do?

Phenom II X4 940 first impressions

2010-06-18T11:32:00.000-07:00

My Phenom II x4 arrived today, got it installed and here are my impressions.

1. consumes much more power than my old athlon X2 4800+. the 4800 boots at 150W, idles at 80W, max out at 160W. The Phenom II x4 boots at 200W, idles at 110W, max out at 260W (during video encoding).

2. Faster. Twice as fast during video encoding. This I really cares because I need constantly upload videos from my camcorder to youtube, and the encoding speed is killing me.

3. Windows experience index jumped from 5.5 to 7.4, and my other scrolls (memory, video) also jumped from 7.0/7.1 to 7.4. My disk score didn't change.

Starcraft videos

2010-06-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

Jaedon vs Baby: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghxOPQtQA_k&playnext_from=TL&videos=iO3wEEiQusQ&feature=sub

And, Starcraft II, this is a really great one, massive toss power:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1LBC3FHh4M&feature=channel

Enjoy!

Still Waiting for Starcraft II

2010-06-17T07:34:00.000-07:00

I always thought I am a very responsible adult, have the ability to not over spend, save for the future and when spending, spend rationally.

And Starcraft II kind of affected my mind. It is like a drug. I just bought a quad core cpu to replace my aging Athlon X2 (even though it should be able to handle Starcraft II just fine), and I will buy Starcraft II at the release (instead of wait for a used copy for half the price).

And the waiting is burning me from the inside. I feel like a drug addict.

BARACK PETROLEUM

2010-06-16T06:21:00.000-07:00

Yes I am really pissed, and I steal that headline from drudge.

This oil leak is not supposed to last this long. Even if they keep pouring heavy stone and concrete on that thing the leak would have been stopped by now (because the bigger the area the smaller the pressure).

The US President did nothing. He could easily offer a xx million reward to anyone who could solve the problem. He had the entire Navy/Army/air force at his command. I am sure just dump 1000 tons of stones will make the leak slower. And, NOTHING!!!

MVVMSAQ model for Silverlight

2010-06-09T08:06:00.000-07:00

MVVM is the base coding style for Silverlight, and I am adding a Synchronized Action Queue to it.

Silverlight can get data from server via WCF or Asmx (also javascript of course), but neighter WCF nor asmx supports synchronized data mode, which can make the code a bit hard to maintain when multiple operations are required for a single action.

the SAQ model (Synchronized Action Queue) will fix that. Basically we fake synchronized action via a thread, and all actions will be queued for the thread to process. It has no advantage when a single action is required for any operation, but when you need combined actions for a given operation, the synchronized command will make the code much easier to read and maintain.

The oil leak

2010-06-02T11:19:00.000-07:00

I can't believe they haven't stopped it yet. Initially I thought it is because it is deep and hard to get near, but now I saw the SAW right on the pipe??!! If they can get a saw that close, they can get anything close.

What they should do is, make a pipe with a valve that is bigger than the leaking pipe, stuck it on to the leak, seal from below (I know we can seal iron together under water). Now you have a leaking pipe with a valve on top, just close the valve.

Net Orbiter, cross dll obfuscating added

2010-05-28T20:03:00.000-07:00

I took some time to add cross dll obfuscating. It was pretty easy (but I thought it will be easier). One core change is needed, and all others are just configuration changes. Much easier than when I use native TypeBuilder.

Now I need to make the interface a bit better, the current one is really hard to use even for me.

New obfuscator almost working now

2010-05-26T15:13:00.000-07:00

Yep, after I developed my last obfuscator, which uses .Net's emit functionality, I decided to create a new one, parsing and constructing the .net assemblies myself.

The reason is simple. The emit functions has 2 drawbacks. First, there is no way to specify a catch or finally block is tiny or fat, and no way to let them not generate a leave command automatically. That increase the code size dramatically. Second, it automatically adds the framework reference in the assembly, so if it is a silverlight assembly, it will became a .net assembly, and requires a extra ildasm/ilasm to fix it.

The parsing was easy, obfuscating is much easier too, the reconstructing of the .net assembly is HARD!! I have to spend all my free time (which is tinny, often less than an hour a day) on it, and two days early I thought I got it, till I encounter a big file and the obfucsator was able to shrink it a lot. It just won't load. Turned out there are many small places where ECMA335 didn't specify, and I had to try it out.

Now all that is left is polish.... Which will be slow and boring.

Finally reconstructed a .net assembly

2010-05-19T08:07:00.000-07:00

Yep, I was toying with ECMA335 recently and parse a .net assembly was easy. The re-construct of a .net assembly from the parts was hard, as you have to keep coming back to update the different RVAs. After that, I keep running to "Invalid IL format" problems, and turned out they are the alignments.

Last night I got it working, I was able to reconstruct my reconstruct program and use the reconstructed program again. That was with 3.5 framework. When I use the 4.0 framework, I got a strange "Divided by 0" exception, even though I can de-assembly using ildasm, so it is not a total success.

The little things

2010-05-17T08:56:00.000-07:00

I really like that song done by Danny Elfman, called "The little things".

There is several videos of it on youtube, but when at work listen to something without video will be great. Today I suddenly thought about it might be available on amazon. And it is surely there. Finally listening to it at work is just that much pleasant.

Babies knows right from wrong

2010-05-10T07:54:00.000-07:00

Very interesting link and cute baby here.

However this is my assumption from the beginning, intelligence is from spiritual plan (by God), and the computing power is grown later on. So in this case it is the intelligence of moral code, and the ability to see through complex situations or consider other use cases depended on number of brain cells and experience.

Ron Paul Schools Bernanke on Bailout

2010-04-23T09:08:00.000-07:00

Just watched this, Ron Paul on price fixing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv6rQ0U01Yc

4 way sli of Fermi

2010-04-22T09:35:00.001-07:00

This guy did a great video of setup/benchmark of 4 way sli of nvidia fermi, enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY8uppkjwL0

Count your purchaes, You owe Tax!

2010-04-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

Yep, that is what NC tax collectors are telling their tax payers. They are demanding Amazon to give customer info (name/address/what they purchased)so they could collect taxes, even from previous years.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20002870-38.html

Does that mean if you live in NC, and you bought some drink when you were on vacation out side of the state, you have to pay taxes on that drink to NC government?

This tax system is way too over reaching. Let's either move to either Fair Tax rr Income tax + property tax and abolish all other taxes.

Silverlight 4 is here!

2010-04-15T20:26:00.000-07:00

Yes, finally! And for all the developer tools (Visual studio express 2010), go here

An Alternative Theory of Unions

2010-04-08T08:42:00.000-07:00

Just read the Paul Graham essay
An Alternative Theory of Unions.

It is a great read. Last month me and others argued about unions in a post in broken toys. One side of the argument is unions protect workers, and my argument is unions will prefer manu work in farms and resist machinery. The essay supported my argument from another point of view.

Of course, that essay also give me chills. I have long believed that one day IT work will be paid less than janitors (IT job is easy and fun). Now I really need to find what is the next high in demand profession and try to switch.

Energy star for Gas Powered Clock

2010-04-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

Heard this from Neal Boortz this morning, and I did a quick google search and fond many links, this is one of them.

Yes the EPA is awarding energy stars to funny things, and because the post is dated in Mar, it is not likely an April fools joke.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-talk-energy-star-appliance-fraud-0328-20100327,0,3996362.story

Why the British is no longer a world power

2010-03-31T11:33:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered why the once mighty British Empire is now just a tiny island without much world influence? Here is part of the reason. Its legal system is in such a bad condition, that selling a gold fish to a 14 year old can result in $1000 fine, placed under curfew and wear a tag.

See details here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1262250/Great-grandmother-tagged-selling-goldfish.html

The intention of the law is good, but I think with so many restrictions, the UK people is no more free than people in North Korea.

.net obfuscator

2010-03-29T14:28:00.000-07:00

I finally got some extra time yesterday and did some finishing touches on the .net obfuscator. I tried to find a baml parser but failed, so I will just let the user give a path to the xaml source files instead.

The configuration screen looks bad, but the obfuscator do get the job done.

Now all I have to do is find a name and design a website to release it.

"It's like we are married, but we are not fxxking"

2010-03-17T11:58:00.000-07:00

I am sorry I have to put such word in there, but that is a exact quote from Paul Graham's essay in 2009 when he quoted a Start-up founder on what's the relation ship is like between co-founders.

Very interesting, and again I urge young people to start Start-ups, which is the true drive for a nation's economy.

The full link is http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html

2010 census

2010-03-16T11:41:00.000-07:00

Yes it is census time again, and I heard on Clark Howard over the radio about some interesting facts.

It is needed because so they know how many people a state is representing.

But for that you only need how many people are in the household.

And sometimes you got very intrusive questions, and those, according to Clark, is big companies doing market research but don't want to pay for it. So they use our tax dollars.

I don't hate big companies, but I hate big corporations/unions/organizations who use our tax dollar for their interests.

So here is where our tax dollars went

2010-03-12T08:42:00.000-08:00

Just saw this on dredge:
Senators question $1 million pay for charity's CEO.

It is OK for a charity's CEO to get paid for $1million. But it is not OK if they get their money from tax payers. That is called looting.

Online tax revolt

2010-03-11T13:18:00.001-08:00

Heard this from Neal Boortz this morning :-)

Now you can join the Online Tax revolt:
http://www.onlinetaxrevolt.com/
and see your avatar walk to DC :-)