A Piece of American History In My Eyes

From the official web page:

"Harpers Ferry National Historical Park is located at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers in the states of West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis, John Brown, "Stonewall" Jackson, and Frederick Douglass are just a few of the prominent individuals who left their mark on this place."

Saturday morning, I wandered around the Harpers Ferry National Park and took some random shots.

The old bridge over Potomac river

The winding staircase

Some old shops


"The Herb Lady"

Indiana Brass Band

Adieu! Linux

I was wrestling with my linux installations these days. Ubuntu is great. Everything was working until I encountered problems with Windows Media, Macromedia Flash, and Real players. I've been hitting google constantly trying to figure out a way to solve the problems, only found that others were having the same issues, but solutions were rare and so far none worked for me. So, after couple weeks excitement I found myself back to the warm and cozy xp again.

I'll get a Mac next time. The dual processor G5 looks so attempting.

Back Online

4070 kbps down, 350 kbps up. Finally after 4 days of daily phone conversation with Comcast, I'm back online again.

Days without Internet

Comcast upgraded its system to "provide more features" to the customer. Along the way they lost me from their database :(. Hopefully when I get home from work it's fixed, or I'll be really ... (thinking about Verizon now).

BloGTK...

BloGTK...

BloGTK is cool, just doesn't support blogger's atom API. Namely, no title can be entered when posting to blogger.com. I made a custom tag "Blog Title" as the following:

<h3 class="post-title"></h3>

so at least anything inside the custom tag appears to be a like a blog title.

Guitar Wired to His Brain

That's Kirk Hammett. Joined Metallica at age 21, he has had a very fruitful career with an array of guitar solo gems such as "One" and "Master of Puppets". He was influenced by masters like Jimmy Page and Joe Satriani, but his acrobatic playing is truely second to none. Apart from listening to the music, watching his fingers flying over the strings is rather enjoyable as well. In live concerts, among the four guys in Metallica, Kirk is the closest person to the audience, constantly interacting with them . That's one more reason he is my all-time favorite guitarist.

Ubuntu Hoary: GeForce FX 5200 Ultra Dual Display

Install the latest NVidia driver:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx
sudo nvidia-glx-config enable
sudo apt-get install nvidia-settings

Modify xorg.conf. See the txt file.

Reference:
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/BinaryDriverHowto
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/XineramaMultipleMonitors

Ubuntu Hoary: Logitech MX700

Figured out a simple way to get all buttons on my Logitech MX700 recognized (works in Firefox):

Modified the mouse section in the xorg.conf from:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

to:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "ButtonNumber" "7"
Option "Buttons" "7"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "EmulateWheel" "on"
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "9"
Option "InputFashion" "Mouse"
Option "Name" "PS/2-Mouse;PS/2"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Restart X. That's it.

Modified from matrulesok @ http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/ntopic38481.html

Take on the 'Guin Part III

I'll make this concise... Ubuntu Live CD popped in, everything worked except for the dual monitor. Gnome GUI wasn't as impressive as the SUSE, but I quickly committed myself to the distro anyway. 2 o'clock midnight saw myself still clicking on the screen...

Here is the list of a few things I worked out so far:

• Dual monitor setup
• Input method
• Updating, patching system

Quote from my MSN conversation with guru tyang -

"Help, where is the firefox installed? I can't seem to find it anywhere... oh, it's right here in /usr/lib/, called mozilla-firefox."

Now you know how I was combating the Penguin.

Take on the 'Guin Part II

Once I had the Live CD and DVD in hand, I set out with the SuSE first. It went through boot up, detecting hardware, install services, etc. etc., and finally KDE was up. Logged in, immediately I felt like home - the GUI looked just like a hybrid of Windows and Mac. Looked closer, ther were few things left behind, including the non-functional sound card and YaST update. OK no big deal. I configured the sound cared to one point that it could play the notification sound, but I could never get the CD music or MP3 to play. YaST update didn't work at all. Maybe due to the strip down version of the Live demo? The Open Office Novell version worked beautifully, kudos to Novell. PDF viewer, on the other hand, crashed every single time when I tried to open a file.

Anyway, the GUI, Office suite, and hardware recognition were impressive, but I tend to shy away from the "enterprise" attitude (stripped down demo version, for example) I could sense. So I decided to move on and look at Ubuntu, which supposely is the hottest distro on the block now.

(image linked from www.novell.com)

Take on the 'Guin

OK, I figured I'd be having some free time so I decided to dive into the Linux world again. The last time I touched it was several years ago when I had to use cc to compile something. At that time I didn't even bother to load GUI, partially because the computer was like from grandpa's attic. This time, a P4 2.4G with 512 MB RDRAM, over 200 G HDD space, FX5200 ultra driving dual 17" LCD, Soundblaster Live, dual optical drive (DVD + CDRW), blah, blah, I felt I was ready.

First thing to do was of course Google, finding the distros with good reputations among the gurus. After some brief readings (to the upper limit of my patience, which is not that up), I started to download Live versions to test on my computer, namely, SUSE 9.3 Live and UBUNTU 5.04 live. The downloading was at about 300-400 KB/s over my cable modem, took couple hours, while I was eating dinner, fixing my bike, etc.

(Linux penguin image location: http://www.isc.tamu.edu/~lewing/linux/sit3-shine.7.gif)

Firefox Video Campaign

 3 Firefox videos can be viewed at http://funnyfox.org:
The Office
The Mobile
The Notebook
Frankly the videos look pretty dumb to me, though Firefox is still awesome.

SUSE Live

It is pretty cool that the OS runs entirely from DVD-ROM, not installed on the harddrive. The only downside so far is that it doesn't recognize my video card as dual head capable.

It can be downloaded free here at the SUSE website http://www.novell.com/products/linuxprofessional/ (1.4 GB iso for bootable DVD).

32 hours

After 32 hours straight working in the lab (0700 Thursday - 1500 Friday), I think I need to get some shut-eye now...
...zZz...zZz...zZz...
(Image linked from http:// www.ibiblio.org)

Meaning and origin of FEDERVOL

Sensitive, friendly and kind you look for peace and beauty in your environment and relationships. People like to be around you because of your charm and generosity and because you always generate a happy atmosphere. You have a fairly traditional approach to life and have a strong attachment to home, family and loved ones. With your creative imagination you have potential to be successful in the arts.

Maybe I should get couple paint brushes and a one way ticket to Tahiti...

See for yourself (snatched from tyang's blog).

(image linked from http://www.artchive.com)

Good headphone discussion forums

Head-Fi

Watch out for the bees!

Some nice floral photos taken by JF.

Cell phone again

My contract with Sprint is expiring this month. Having had much with the poor Sprint signal at home and office, I'm going to switch to another carrier after 7 years with Sprint PCS. Verizon was on top of my list until I read some reviews today about the Motorola v710 phone. It looks like a great phone on paper, but what quickly made this phone + Verizon tasteless to me was the alleged Verizon crippling the phone's functions in order to drive customers to paid services. The reviews can be found through the links below:
1. "The Motorola v710: Verizon's New Crippled Phone" by Jonathan A. Zdziarski
2. FAQ on Howard Forums
3. Reviews on amazon.com
Now the search is on again.

Trip like I do

(Source: officialfilter.com)

I've got the understanding of a four year old
I've got the peace of mind of a killer's soul
I've got the rationale of a New York cop
I've got the patience of a chopping block...

The combining power of Filter and Crystal Method puts the industrial techno to a new high.

BTW, Filter's hit song "Hey man nice shot" mp3 can be downloaded from the official website.

(image linked from mtv.com)

Cats

(image linked from nationalgeographic.com)
Since tyang was talking about cat, I went ahead and found some reference about the cat family. Cat, or Family Felidae belongs to Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Chordata, Class Mammalia, Order Carnivora. There are 18 genera and 36 species, according to the NIH taxonomy site.

o Acinonyx jubatus (cheetah)

o Caracal caracal (caracal)

o Catopuma badia (bay cat)
o Catopuma temminckii (Asiatic golden cat)

o Felis bieti (Chinese desert cat)
o Felis catus (cat)
o Felis chaus (jungle cat)
o Felis margarita (sand cat)
o Felis nigripes (black-footed cat)
o Felis silvestris (wild cat)

o Herpailurus yaguarondi (jaguarundi)

o Leopardus pardalis (ocelot)
o Leopardus tigrinus (little spotted cat)
o Leopardus wiedii (margay)

o Leptailurus serval (serval)

o Lynx canadensis (Canada lynx)
o Lynx lynx (Eurasian lynx)
o Lynx pardinus (Spanish lynx)
o Lynx rufus (bobcat)

o Neofelis nebulosa (clouded leopard)

o Oncifelis colocolo (pampas cat)
o Oncifelis geoffroyi (Geoffroy's cat)
o Oncifelis guigna (kodkod)

o Otocolobus manul (Pallas's cat)

o Panthera leo (lion)
o Panthera onca (jaguar)
o Panthera pardus (leopard)
o Panthera tigris (tiger)

o Pardofelis marmorata (marbled cat)

o Prionailurus bengalensis (leopard cat)
o Prionailurus viverrinus (fishing cat)

o Profelis aurata (African golden cat)

o Puma concolor (puma)

o Smilodon fatalis (saber-toothed cat)

o Uncia uncia (snow leopard)

Yesterday

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday

Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be
There's a shadow hanging over me
Oh, yesterday came suddenly...

-Yesterday by Beatles

DC cherry blossom picture

A cute picture I took last month during the cherry blossom.

Man on the moon?

(image linked from www.nasm.si.edu)
What prompted this title was my visit to the National Air and Space Museum yesterday. It was a nice sunny day, perfect for museum hopping in the national mall. After numerous times circling around the museum I finally found a tiny street parking spot where I managed to squeeze my WJ in. Into the door, realizing I had forgotten my camera at home, I was actually able to pay more attention to the exhibitions. What caught my eyes the most was the bold display of the Apollo program in the 60's and early 70's. From moon rocks to lunar module to space suits, behind the bullet-proof glass, history was told in silence - man stepped on moon in 1969.

That was 40 years ago, pre-internet era, when people were craving for news from radio and television. Today, the powerful internet not only brought me pretty much everything I need to know about the Apollo program, but the extensive questions some have raised into the credibility of the program (site 1, site 2). Later Fox TV jumped in and aired the infamous "Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?" on 2/15/2001. There were quick rebuttals from NASA, including this post dated 2/23/2001, in which Dr. Tony Phillips had eloquently dismissed the claims.

Both China and India had revealed their moon exploration time tables (by 2010 and 2007, respectively). These mission will never have the same historical impact on human history, but equipped with much advanced technologies nowadays, they might tell us more than the Apollo missions could offer.