CitySavage

Set Game (setgame.com), originally uploaded by willowyangcn.

you can get the poker game at http://setgame.com
Interesting game.

Posted by willow at 03:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I will be helping out at this 2006 China IT Summit. They will have Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize Laureater, to give a special talk. I just bought Joseph Stiglitz's new book "Making Globalization Work". Seems like another wonderful book after the "Globalization and Its Discontents" in 2002.

Posted by willow at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I was reading some technical book today and encountered this interesting anecdote.
The Mars Pathfinder landed on Martian surface July 4 1997, followed by expeditions by Sojourner rover. But it soon experienced several software resets. Each reset delayed the work by one day. And the scientists from JPL had to debug and patch the system remotely from Earth!
Here is a nice powerpoint from Harvard University by Matt Welsh nicely describes the dramatic incident.
Lessons:
● Automatically reset system to “known good” state if things run amuck (Far better than hanging or crashing)
● Ability to trace execution of complex multithreaded code is useful (provide debug mode)
● Think through all possible thread interactions carefully!!
The complete story can be find at Microsoft website.

Posted by willow at 12:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

P7010001, originally uploaded by willowyangcn.

Those four buildings right outside of Beijing Tsinghua University will host world class companies.

Posted by willow at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Scientific Calculator, originally uploaded by willowyangcn.

This is just a glimpse of what my 620MHZ VGA PDA is capable to do. The major functions that I am now enjoying:
1. Excel: Bookkeeping
2. TCPDUMP: Divx quality movie
3. Mapopolis: Map with bluetooth GPS support
4. Mdict: Dictionary
5. AvantGo: Offline reading NY Times
6. TeamOne: Ebook reading
7. MediaPlayer: Listening to MP3
8. MorphGear: My gameboy
9. Putty: SSH to your linux box at home
10. Resco Audio Recorder: An excellent recorder

Continue reading "Do you feel geeky dotay?" »

Posted by willow at 01:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Pocket PC, originally uploaded by willowyangcn.

Teddy is holding my new PDA -- Dell x50v, upgraded from my old HP iPaq 2215. But neither of them are my dream PDAs. Dream PDA means I am dying to have, but not available for certain very reallistic reasons.

Continue reading "My dream PDA" »

Posted by willow at 01:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Skype
Most popular VoIP software, good for PC to PC, support conference call between several PCs. I did experience frequent disconnection when using conference calls. PC to Phone is decent, with a little bit of background noise. You need to pay for Phone to PC, get a temporary phone number, but only on a quarterly(3 months) basis. It also support PocketPC, Palm, and even Linux.

Stanaphone
I have recommended it to soo many people. It is a New York area based VoIP company. Register free for a New York phone number (no "212" of course). Free to accept phone calls, and free PC to PC. My Dad, with little computer knowledge, installed the client software in China, so that he can make "domestic" phone calls to my Cell in U.S. The bad thing is that it becomes hard to connect in the weekends. The sound quality also degenerated.

Continue reading "VoIP" »

Posted by willow at 11:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was pretty pissed off by my Belkin Bluetooth adaptor F8T001 not compatible with Windows XP sp2. The bluetooth stack in sp2 simply doesn't work and ruined my machine. To be fair, I shouldn't only blame M$, but this event did push me one more step to a Linux OS on my lappy. So I decided to install SuSe in my Dell 5160. Installation is as easy as snapping your fingers. It even resize and keep the original windows partition for you, gracefully. The only issue is my wireless is not working yet. Gotta figure out.

Posted by willow at 12:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)