Radio channel host or DJ for gamer

i decided to be game radio channel host.

wow, i don't know how I come up with this. ahhh, this is just me ;)

菊花台 vocal demo

this is actually my second attempt at this song, I didn't do good job of the verse, partly because I need a windshield that I can yell at my recorder, but anyway, it isn't too bad.



give it a shot :) click the arrow on the right

Wow, seems I haven't done much only realizing I was stuck at the previous post

Interesting, I'm starting doing what I like bit by bit now. I'll publish my vocal demo and music here from now on. Life is far from perfect, but should be getting better this year, I hope :)

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Hot summer, cool mac, cond...1

today, I recieved flyfan from Kingston, it's a 10$ usb fan, pic here. Half second setup, and start my mac as usual with the koolsink(a panel keep my lap and case seperated by certain distance) underneath it.

This morning before I reieved this flyfan, it took 10-20min to get my internal fan kicking in. The temperature of the video card die was 134oF ish which is the limit my Mac gets a bit noisy.

After I plug in the flyfan and properly oriented to let the flow pass from left to right beneath the laptop case surface and the space raised by koosink(I'll post a pic of final setup later). I can tell is the video card die is locked below 127oF and the processor temperature is 109oF. My AC is on, so i guess the room temp is about 88oF. The best part is that now the internal fan will never get chance to kick in then. lol, I havn't tried serious operation, just want keep this test as normal as I used to.

Ok, my gut tells me again that this time koolsink(pad) doesn't do much, 'cause I can't feel any temperature on it. It just keeps my lap away from laptop. And the windflow beneath laptop creates a heat boundary layer which benefits the heat transfer rate dramatically. Anyway the common sense is that circulation is alway good.

I'm pretty happy with this flyfan, the drawbacks are that 1) in a very quiet room, you still can hear the fan noise(which is anoying 'cause it is some non-consistant electronic noise), I can't find the noise level on their website, I guess it's around 10db 2) It cools my lap too :) Well, life is not perfect, what can I say?

Hot summer, cool mac

My mac is so hot that the fan kicks in so early and you know, I don't like to hear fan's noise, drive me crazy most of time.

So, I decided to get rid of noise of my mac. It really took me a while to figure out that the fan kicks in whenever the temperature of any parts in mac reachs 133OF ish, including cpu top, bottom temp, hard drive, video card die, battery outlet, etc. This is what I found for my 12" powerbook, might not be the same for everyone. And usually the first part to reach that limit is either video card die(Temperature monitor) or power supply bottom(Temperox), both reading came from different software, and their readings are very close, made me think they might be talking about the same thing, or these two parts might be just connected somehow inside.

Anyway, this is good. I know when the fan kicks in. And Whenever it kicks in, the speed of fan got several stage/mode: (1) relativly quiet one, the speed is around 4000rpm (2) bit noisy, the speed reach around 4400rpm (3) you don't want to get there, I've seen somebody's fan can go as high as 6000rpm. The noise won't let you focus on anything other than what do I do with this mac now.

I've searched around about this topic since I had my first laptop. I know you probably can buy those cooling pad, iCurve, iBreeze, iWhatever, but IMHO, though some are better than the others, they only can work to certain extent. The idea is pretty simple, you want to extract and dissipate as many heat as possible to the ambient as fast as you can. But I am not really conviced by the way they're dealing with this. I'll explain in the following.

The heat generated by cpu and graphic cards mainly will result in heat accumulation and therefore temperature increase if not cooled promptly. But it's usually a long way for heat to go to ambient 'cause there're several resistence it'll meet in the road. To name them, 1) is the materical of the case or fillings between case and cpu(for example), less the conductivity of the material will give you high resistence. 2), the resistence for heat transfer through metal to air layer which close to the case. this also applys to the part inside the case which are all immesed in air 3), without flow around case, the heat needs to diffuse away by conductivity of the air or natrual convection due to the air density dependence on temperature.

I hope you're still with me. Good, usually, the resistence of 3 is higher than 1 and 2. Which means, that if you add a fan or AC near your laptop, you always get better cooling instantly. Therefore theoretically those laptop pad with fans should work the best as long as the fans added are quiet. In a word, the resistence of 3 can be eliminated completed if you can keep the temperature of air on the case surface to be constant ambient temperature. If you work on a hot day, anyway you screwed unless you have a AC around.

Still with me? You need a cool room with good circulation, and problem solved. Not quite, I'm sure ppl will argue that their lap still get burned at a cool room. True. Let's see what else can I do.

Let's first talk about the resistance of 1. Actually we can't do much about it 'cause Mac made the case. And I notice the temperature gradient from the hottest spot to the coolest spot is huge, I feel it's huge I never meatured but I am 100% positive the difference is huge for an operational Mac. What I mean is the whole laptop is not made of a metal though the surface looks like a metal material to me, therefore the conductivity is pretty small and the heat can 't spread effectively to let more surface to cool it. This is bad, but as I said there won't be much we can do. I find a commerical Canadian company which have a workaround for this. Here's the link www.koolsink.com. They create another better conductive surface to accerlerate this procee. I found convicing because I bought one and tried it, I can feel the uniform warm surface. But I can be wrong about this argument.

The drawback is related to resistance of 2. Nomatterwhat, heat need to dissipate throught that interface between case and air and if you have another pad beneath it, you actually dealling with double resistance of type 2. I've seen some ppl use fluid bag/liquid ice bag to cool the laptop, their ideas is about decreasing resistance of type 2. For whatever reason, my gut tell me this is the heat limiting case here, though my background tells me air circulation is the key (werid). But anyway, my plan is to follow my gut and I plan to use some conducting tape to fill the gap between the case surface(hottest spot) to my cooling pad.

I 'll let you know how it goes next time. Happy with any comments

Watch your mac

Heat and noise are problems for all the laptops I used, either big or small screen, slow or fast cpu. But I never spend time(maybe I don't :) to figure them out. For example, you'll see lots of ppl talking about everyday that their cpu hits 100% for whatever reason and fans get crazy for no reason, blabla.

Anyway, with my new mac, I am chilled, so I want it to feel the same. So first of all, I really want to find a way to monitor it on realtime, 'cause wherever something happens it might be too late to look at.

Here we go. I used two utilities. One of them is Activity Monitor came with OSX, very powerful and useful, I press command-5 to set CPU USAGE to float vertically at the left-bottom corner of the desktop and also ask the dock to show CPU HISTROY. This way I'm positive of what's really going on with my cpu at any time. Yes, that's right, this is the PLAN.

Second utility I downloaded online is called Temperature Monitor, hehe, with it, you can monitor cpu, hard drive, battery temperature. With the help of temperature, not only I get better picture of the relationship of the temperature and cpu usage, but also can I find way to deal with things promptly.

After I get used to the normal behavier of these two utility while doing common work ex. open close folder, open a couple of applications, etc. I start to surf the web. Here's where the monster comes.

I still can't believe this monster is tied to some website I regularly surf. But I am positive that they're the ones , at lease in my Mac. Whenever I surf these sites, the cpu usage will hit 100 and won't come back to below 5 after loaded (This is strange, 'cause you want cpu to hit 100 whenever it doing things but you don't want this last long, because the heat is mostly due to the cpu usage and the time it spent on staying on that usage, this is dueto the heat takes time to conduct and difuse away through air which is highly non-conductive.) This is long discussion, in short, these website sucks, most of them have flash, movies, tons of ads.

Here're two links, one of them is popular chinese site, www.sina.com.cn, and this one is the killer. Here's one english one, http://www.appleinsider.com, but this one mantains cpu usage around 40%, not good either but not too killer. I can't remember others, 'cause usually whenever I notice this from cpu history or temperature hit over 50C, I close them immediatly before I can record the sitename.

The above test is made using various browser, firefox 1.0.4, opera, camino, safari, IE on mac. They all have same behavier on these sites, but some are better than the other one.

I'd like to hear any comments.

For Mac

My wife bought a Powerbook couple of month ago, but not serious used it due to the chinese font looked weird to her, instead, she grabs my sony SR99, the tiny one.
So I had to give her mac a shot :), you know what i mean, besides it looks cool. After one month ish hands on, I started to like it.
It's kinda of a bit awkward at the begining, don't know where the things goes, don't know how to use the mouse (2 buttons becomes one big one, super), how do I type, etc. It seems that I have to start all over again( which makes me a bit sad, 'cause I am not supposed to be a computer newbie, i am not, lol)
But the bright side (many) is that first of all I noticed the start-up time is pretty fast and almost constant everytime (I don't know how others think about this). And the BEST part is that I can close the cover and put it into sleep instantly and whenever I need, it goes on right instantly. THIS IS just damn cool, useful, practical and professional.
The funny thing is that I should be worried about how to get my old favorite program into my mac now. But I wasn't. It seems like that mac has its own gadget world. OMG, so many and most of the utlities are much nicer.

Since this blogger is about mac and other things, I think I should hold on a bit and let the story goes on later. The catch here is that I start to call myself mac people after 12 years pc experience. You never know.

Hi, welcome

This is my first blogger, lol.

Testing, testing...