| Don Park's Daily Habit |
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Last Update: 13:46:19 05/27/2006
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First Fetched: 00:16:26 01/31/2004
Last Updated: 13:46:19 05/27/2006
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So Lenovo is picking up my ex-laptop, T60p, tommorrow. I got it for a great price but, because I have a powerful desktop with large screen and buckling-spring keyboard, ThinkPad was just sitting there most of the time staring at me. It sort of felt like how I would feel if I had two wives. LOL I realized that, since I usually work at home and visit my clients once a week for a couple of hours, what I really needed was a small personal notebook for communication and light reading/writing, not a powerful desktop-replacement. Yeah, MacBook Pro is out too. And no, I don't need to play a game nor run Vista on the thing. So the new plan is to get a MacBook soon and, when Vista comes out, replace my desktop with a high-end machine (Merom, DX10 GPU, the works). As to which MacBook, I think the low-end MacBook (white, 1.83GHz, $1099 $999 with $100 rebate at Amazon) with 2G memory ($225) and 120G drive upgrade ($159) is attractive. As I've pointed out in the comment to my previous post: ...
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T60p was sitting on my desk when I woke up. It sure looks menacingly dark and prettily thin but damn it's surprisingly heavy like a gun. I spent most of the day loading it up with the usual software. While at it, I also started breaking in the battery (which doesn't fit tightly into the laptop for some odd reason) by charging it fully then draining it to near empty. Supposedly, I need to do it a few times but never got around to doing it more than once because the damn thing took forever (5+ hours) to drain (/cheer T60p). While the laptop was very solidly built, I don't see why people were raving about ThinkPad keyboard. I normally use buckling spring keyboards (put on your earmuffs, I am about to start typing!) so I guess I am spoiled. ;-p I am pretty happy with T60p but I am going to visit an Apple store this weekend to spend some time with MacBook and MacBook Pro to make sure I wouldn't be happier with one of those. I think MBP weighs about the same as T60p though. Plain ...
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Josh Kopelman's post 53,651 and Brad Feld's post Web 2.0: The First 25,000 Users Are Irrelevant reminded me of the many campfires I built during family camping trips -- another one coming end of this month, w00t!. Starting a campfire can be difficult, particularly in the morning because firelogs dampen overnight, so I usually use something extra to help me start the fire. So, TechCrunch is the firestarter (usually scraps of papers) and the first 25,000 users is the starting fire. Me standing in front of the fire with a ready can of firestarter liquid is harder to place though. Definitely not a VC blogger because a VC who actively and publicly cheerleads a portfolio company is more likely to set him or herself on fire. Yikes. Just a post to compress wordy wisdom into a picture cuz I am visual guy.
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Just ordered a ThinkPad T60p, basically 15-inch T60 with workstation quality display card (ATI FireGL v5200) and faster drive (7200rpm) to take advantage of their anniversary sale which ends May 15th. At $2199, I am saving around $550 although it's actually more like $350 if you take upcoming (end of May supposedly) Core Duo price drop for 2GHz Core Duo. Actual order price was a little over $2600 due to Office, service plan, and tax. Oh, well. It's on the heavy side (6.25lb) but I am not a mad conference hopper so it should be alright. I am looking forward to the 15-inch Flexview others have raved about. Besides, I am pretty sure this baby will be able to run Vista handily with Aero fully enabled. Why did I not get a laptop with wide display? As a developer, I need to see more lines of code (read vertical room) than more cells or movies. Anyhow, the details: 2GHz Core Duo 15-inch Flexview (1600x1200) 100G drive (7200rpm) FireGL v5200 (256mb) Overall, I think this is a good deal ...
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Just in case people who read what I write on this blog get confused, let me make it clear what I use this blog for: let go of ideas I don't want clogging up my head. let out frustrations accumulated over time. share what I feel like sharing. I don't blog to be recognized, get credit for being first of whatever, nor to amuse anyone. I am too much of a bastard for that. This blog is here to satisfy my own needs and no one else's. I tend to give a shit too much so I am trying hard to be selfish in the sense 'I don't give a hoot if other folks in this elevator called Earth suffocates if I fart right here and right now.' So when I rant, you are looking down the barrel of my mental or emotional shotgun. There is no purpose, political nor economic, behind the act except my need to pull the trigger. It's just mental gas. Nothing more, nothing less. If I seem reasonable, consider it an accident. If I seem to be shooting at you, that is your problem, not mine. Get your own blog and shoot ...
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I don't know what the hell is going on over at the RSS Advisory Board but it is starting to make my skin crawl. Who is behind all the recent activities? Whoever it is, let me say this to that person: RSS is not your milk cow. I know many of the newly appointed members and, although I think they are wonderful people, I suspect they are being taken advantage of because I don't see why they are needed. According to their charter, the board has three duties: publishing the RSS specification DONE guiding developers who create RSS application What more can they do beyond what's out there already including several books and countless examples? broadening the public understanding of RSS The public is doing just fine with RSS, finding new uses everyday, without any official broadener. The only kind of visible activities by the board I observed was broadening of the board size. The board has nothing to do! With so many well-known names on the board, it now looks like an Indy racing car on a ..
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Yup. Today is my 44th birthday. 44 is a terrible number because Sa-Sa could be interpreted as death twice over. I don't look old (when I am not tired) but my body feels old and my state of mind feels so tranquil yet rigid that I must have finally reached the much heralded Old Fart club. Here is the proof: toward the end of yesterday's Internet Identity Workshop, I felt sad that everyone seemed so optimistic. I wanted to tell them that user-centric doesn't mean looking out for the users but learning to live with little or no interests from the users. Users don't really care about identities, guys. They do care about identity theft and phishing thanks to the constant bombardment of security news over the years. For users to care about identity, it'll take more than similar kind of bombardment over the years because fear is more compelling than convenience. And what about all the websites? Why would they adopt any of the identity schemes? I don't see any compelling incentives being ...
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What I've been doing for the past 6 months in my spare time has now become a new meme: New Golf. Learning from the New Golf - Diego Rodriguez (fellow 'researcher') Power lunching with wizards and warriors - CNet World of Warcraft is the new golf of the tech businesses - the Inquirer Is World of Warcraft the New Golf? - PC Magazine Are MMOs the New Golf? - Game Girl Advance / 1Up Slashdot It doesn't matter if it is or not. What matters is that I am having fun and I know there are rich veins of ideas in there. For now, I managed to mine some good stuff that could become a keystone of the next generation group communication technologies. It's not about 3D graphics and it's not about immersion. It's not even about what WoW has but more about what it lacks.
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Apparently I missed the release of two technical PDF docs explaining InfoCard at the XML level: A Guide to Integrating with InfoCard v1.0 Technical Reference for InfoCard v1.0 Hmm. Looks like enough is there for anyone interested in integrating InfoCard into webapps. I'll have to browse around WinFX SDK to see if I have all the bits to do the same for client-side apps. Andy Harjanto's InfoCard development blog looks helpful too.
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By layered client virtualization, I mean stackable secure application containers. Each container contains one or more applications (i.e. IE or Outlook) or platform components. At each level, view 'down' defines the complete running environment. Theoretically, each browser window can be a complete PC. Even if a malware gets downloaded and executed, it is contained within the stack and so are any damages it causes. Each stack sees a controlled copy of the physical drive, changes to which is limited to the stack (if a stack deletes a file, the real file is not deleted but it is no longer visible to the stack).
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From FAQ: When Google is not your friend A North Carolina man was found guilty of murder in November in part because he Googled the words "neck," "snap," "break" and "hold" before his wife was killed. But those search terms were found on Robert Petrick's computer, not obtained from Google directly. Good grief, now you can't research before committing a crime without jumping through anonymity hoops.
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The gamer's computers are typically more expensive than business computers these days. I am not quite sure when the switch happened but it used be the other way. Likewise, I think gamers are more efficient at working together than their business world counterparts. In World of Warcraft, reaching level 60 seems like the finishing line until you've reached it. Not even close. A whole new world of end-game instances (dungeon of sort) opens up when you get to level 55 or so. While it is possible to become level 60 without ever grouping with other players (known as soloing), end-game instances require 5 to 40 players to work together. What startled me the most was the huge difference quality of teamwork makes in the game world. For example, Zul'Gurub is an instance designed to be raided by a 20-man group. With solid teamwork, it can be cleared by 10 man in an hour without wiping (every man killed). With bad teamwork, full 20-man group might end up spending 10 hours in there, wiping at ...
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Final versions of Eclipse 3.1.2 and MyEclipse 4.1 were released recently. I am downloading both now. I am also using early release versions of Eclipse 3.2 for RCP projects, Visual Studio 2005 for .NET 2.0 and Win32 works. Too many tools to play with makes Don a dizzy boy.
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I don't know about you but the Workflow portion of WinFX is the most interesting part. No, it's nothing new but the fact that it will be done system and market wide is and will likely allow new types of applications and tools to emerge. Check it out. Hmm. I think Workflow can be ported to Java world and Eclispe tools for visual layout can be built in matter of weeks. Of course, months will be wasted because there will be too many versions. By the time a winner emerges, Sun will launch a JSR effort, further delaying and confusing the market. In the end, it will take close to two years before Workflow becomes an everyday technology for Java developers. Hillarious
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Like me, others in the We Know guild are also trying to take something home from the table. Ross Mayfield (Kalevipoeg) is thinking about synergy between real life and virtual life. Joi Ito (Jonkichi) is looking at the impact of virtual world in learning, group dynamics, and social structuring. I am focusing on enhancing groupware/teamware with what I learned in WoW. If you are observant, you'll see many veins of valuable knowledge in games just waiting to be mined. Each moments of realization or frustration is an ore to be harvested.
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To be frank, my blogging activities has slowed down to a trickle mainly because I've been spending most of my free time playing World of Warcraft, leveling up with Joi and socializing with fellow We Know guild members. Now that Slashar (aka /R), my 'main', has reached level 60, I have been able to rise above the deafening noise of fun and reflect on the experience to see if anything really valuable was there other than mountains of thrills and forests of friends. I'll share what I found in future posts.
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I've just spent an hour cleanup mess after CheckPoint VPN uninstall went haywire. System rebooted in the middle of uninstall and then proceeded to reboot yet again. When I've recovered enough to see the desktop, I got a persistent system error. I tried CPClean but that didn't work. In the end, I had to brave installing SecureClient (CheckPoint's VPN client) yet again just to see if uninstalling without crashing might fix the problem. It did although it screwed up my drive letter mapping. Security is great but not if it requires twisting system in sickly ways.
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Happy New Year Everyone! What am I doing tonight? Big fat nothing. But I am comfy and happy tonight doing nothing. Maybe I'll open a bottle of wine and grab a good book...
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Looks like act II of an ugly drama has started. Now professor Hwang is being called a lier after some confessions were made by co-authors of the landmark Science paper. From what I can tell, the confessions are not evidences of wrong doings but rather admissions that they added their names to the paper to share the limelight without the due dilligence required of co-authors. Also, the Korean media is being really sloppy and reporting shaky conclusions. They should just wait for the scientific community to prove or disprove instead of perpetuating rumors and questionable confessions. Update: While I am still waiting for the final report from Seoul University, I've found an interview transcript which made the most sense to me. Unfortunately, the transcript is in Korean. In case you know Korean, here are the links: Page 1, Page 2. Update #2: The interview mentioned above was pulled due to pressures from fellow scientists who got upset by some comments made during the interview. ...
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Continuing with a series of posts which I now call Killing Field posts, I want to think out loud about files. To be more clear, I am talking about files as seen by users, not programmers. To casual computer users, a file is a save. I think this is because, in absense of prior understanding, past experience becomes the seed of understanding. Modern UI requires users to save after they created or changed something. So a file is a save to them, a repeatable experience. As an experience, I think when, where, and how take precendence over what. When did I save that? Where and how did I save? The reason I put where and how together is because they are closely related in today's UI: where is a place and how is navigation (how you got there). Why affects everything, but I am not sure if it's important to users other than for organizing where. The question I am struggling with is: if they didn't have to save, what would a file be?
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What Dave said. Couldn't agree more. I am a bozo alright. The funniest thing is, I am happy being a bozo.
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While I am resetting my thoughts on UI design, I am wondering what use people have for applications as a metaphor. As a bundle of code implementing useful features, they matter but should users know about them or can they just work with documents? Where would Microsft Office monopoly be if applications disappeared from the users view? What if we killed the notion of Word, as an application, and replaced it with an assortment of blank papers, each designed for specific tasks like report, invoice, resume, or letter of resignation? So, instead of launching Word then selecting a template, user simply navigate to a page listing different types of documents and selects one. It's the same with email and IM. navigate to the email or IM page to send/receive emails or start an IM session. Notifications of newly arrived email or IM request can be done with blinking icons on the toobar. Too wild? Hmm.
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When I observe how my wife and son uses the family computer, I can't help noticing how little use they have for the desktop. They look bewildered when I open the Windows Explorer. To them, file open or file save dialog *is* where the files go. My Documents? It's just an icon they never touch. The web is the little blue icon on the desktop that looks like a letter e. Email is another icon next to it. IM is the little person icon on the bottom right. Word is a W icon on the desktop. They don't even ask why only one click is needed for icons on the bottom right and double-click is needed for icons on the desktop. It just is. Software my wife uses are (in the order of usage): Internet Explorer (which they call Web) MSN Messenger (for chatting with friends) Outlook Word Software my son uses are very similar: Internet Explorer Word (for homework) Outlook Games Hmm. While I can see some new approaches to UI here that could be relevant to casual computer users, I am also sadden by the ...
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I've been monitoring the ongoing controversy over ethics violation by Korean stem cell research pioneer Hwang Woo-suk. My conclusion is that Professor Hwang did not have an ethics lapse. I'll explain why and also highlight what I see as journalistic terrorism through omission as well as outright lying. These are the details I put together from reading Korean newspapers: Eggs used by professor Hwang's research team came from doners through a medical clinic. Professor Hwang was not in a position to know who the donors were. All he knew was that eggs were being donated by volunteers. Without informing professor Hwang, the clinic paid each donor about $1500, supposedly to make up for expenses and time lost. Since the clinic had 40% stake in the stem cell patents filed by Professor Hwang, I suspect their motives were not entirely clean. When egg shortage was severely impacting the progess of stem cell research, two female assistants in professor Hwang's research team volunteered their ...
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This post is a warning about a dangerous attack vector against bloggers and blog readers by hackers and spammers, an attack which is very likely to appear in the near future. While I realize that my warning might even expedite the timetable, it's just a matter of time IMHO before someone puts the two and two together. Maybe someone already has. Spear phishing is a phishing attack which is custom tailored to an individual. The potency of spear phishing lies in personalized content containing information only a very small number of people or companies would know. Usually, it's some shared knowledge or experience like a person's recent e-Bay bid on a laptop. A personal email mentioning the bid would make the potential victim assume the sender is the seller. True? Not always. Spear phishing is typically not very scalable because each attack has to be personalized. With blogs, however, spear phishing attack is scalable. The danger is that the relationship betweeen bloggers and between ...
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While I am on the subject of next generation browsers, this is what I think of IE 7: bury it. As Microsoft mentioned countless times before IE 7 was announced, the dang thing has a list of legacy issues long enough to practically guarantee future problems. Let it just rot and, instead, build a new browser that taps .NET 2.0's full potential. ActiveX? Leave it behind. Netscape Plugins compatibilty? AJAX? Piss on the whole stinking lot and move on to build a better canvas onto which developers can paint their picture on without twisting everywhich way like we have to do now to build even a crippled web application. Microsoft should be doing more than just dicking around with silly ornaments like browser tabs.
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Hmm. All I want to know is where the cashier is. My blog is worth $162,022.98. How much is your blog worth? Excellent marketing gimmick BTW. How much is your blog worth?
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Thanks to Kevin Marks suggestion and an upset stomach which made me blink in and out of sleep for three hours (I am still short 5 hours), I came up with a new design for the web service I was working on, a design which I am calling screen-based web service API. It's not REST so I figured the design approach calls for a different name and, since the approach is similar to the mainframe COBOL application screen scraping web services, the word screen makes sense. The first cut of the web service API was of traditional RPC-based design. It was functional but none of my client's customers put it into production use. Many stories and lessons there. The second cut was RESTish grocery bag-based design which I just spent three weeks implementing. Most of that three weeks was spent on eating my own dog food. By the last week, I was terrifyingly convinced that it would take more than a month for a customer to integrate the web service into their webapp. What I wanted was some where between ...
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Sorry about the lack of posts lately. I've been in the web service hell. I think the main problem with web service API is that ideal granuarity of service conflicts with ideal interface for the service. RPC-style web service API is unsuitable for typical medium to large web applications because too many calls per page has to be made, resulting in unacceptable performance. State transfer (aka REST) style web service API is typically chunkier (less calls) but message payload could get too big and the reduction of payload size could easily increase payload and client software complexity. What's the point of building a web service API if a complex platform-specific client has to be built to use the API? While being tormenting, I've been taking my breaks in WoW, grinding through monsters. Oy. I think I was a mule in my previous life.
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