Fleeting Years

preferring Mac OS X

Thu May 09 00:00:00 -0700 2013

At last, I installed Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.3 in my Thinkpad T410, though I thought never using hackintosh before. I am getting used to OS X and considering transferring all my working flow into OS X now.

In my old passage, I prefer avoiding hackintosh because of the sucking hardware driver support, and the difficulty to build up the prefect system environment. But the world is developing much faster than that in my opinion, I found some awesome posts about running a prefect OS X on my laptop on [bbs.pcbeta.com], the most advanced hackintosh discussion platform in my country. So I spent a weekend to successfully run smooth Mac system on my PC laptop, with correct *.kext and dsdt etc, although wireless adaptor and SD card reader don't work and won't work. Nothing crashes ever. Yes, it's prefect and stable enough to work on.

So why does OS X attract me?

Firstly, it's beautiful and elegant. Windows 7 is beautiful too, but I have faced it for a long time, and it's time for me to appreciate another kind of art. :-) Ubuntu and other Linux distributions always enjoy ugly desktop. I don't meet hardware issues in Linux, but I am always disappointed about its wired arrangement of windows, strange launch bar and some other stuffs.

Secondly, it's consistent. I mean the style of applications, and the consistent keyboard shortcuts. Most of the applications keep the similar GUI style. (Maybe because all of them are developed by using Cocoa framework?) What also shocks me is the fact that I can guess a keyboard shortcuts in different applications, because the similar tasks in different applications share the same keyboard shortcuts, which contributes to my productivity and happiness a lot.

Lastly, it ensures the productivity. The consistent keyboard shortcuts, the feature that most applications can enter full screen mode, high quality applications, and the unix-like system...... The combination of these advantages ensures the smoothness of working. I can give up mouse most of the time, with the help of system keyboard shortcuts and quicksilver. And I can concentrate on one thing with full screen mode. Some professional (and beautiful) applications such as Photoshop exist only on Mac or Windows. Some developing tools such as command tools run smoothly only on Mac or Linux. (I don't play Windows-only programs such as those rely on .NET at present.) So the software environment of OS X take the advantages of Linux and Windows from my point of view though I have to switch to Windows when I'd like to use online bank. What's more, it surprises me that messages can communicate between GUI applications, which allows me to use some services to improve the productivity more!

Hope the OS X becomes even better in the future. I think I will buy an Apple product next time I want a new computer (after I have earned enough money though).

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空山不见人

Sun Jan 20 00:00:00 -0800 2013

也算是开始放寒假了，开始有一段比较“长”的时间住在家里。

可是有一些不对劲。

我在家里自己的房间睡醒了，总觉得不对劲。床褥，衣柜，桌面上的公仔依然一样，静默地等待着我的回来，或者根本不在乎我有没有回来，依然沉默地呆在它们呆的地方。我又想到，此刻我放在宿舍的枕头书本，台灯等等，一定也是这样子，在灰尘的积累之中等我回去再见它们。两边的方寸之地带给我的感觉都是一样的。

可是它们不应该一样。我恍然，是房屋里的物事给了我一个陌生感。但这是我的家呀！哪里都可以陌生，这里却应该是最熟悉，闭着眼睛也可以在各房间之间穿梭的地方！

我下午走出家门，在我这个自小长大的小城镇中游弋。在我长大的这些年头，城镇也在成长。哪里的吆喝声不见了，哪里的商铺改头换面，哪里的地方装修了。无论如何，城镇都变化了。老树开了新芽，朋友搬了新家，中学换了名字，牛杂不断升价...... 自己的记忆和老旧的商铺和那个熟悉的城镇仿佛被打包了，仍在了时光的上游，我这个凡人就在洪水中不断冲走。无奈又漠然地看着回忆渐渐模糊，消失的时间的那一头。

自小我便发现，基本上我是不怕生床的。就是说，有很多人在不是自己家的床上都翻来覆去睡不着，嘟嚷着还是自己家的床舒服；而我在宿舍，在朋友家里，在旅游的途中，不会因为这个原因而睡不着。我知道这些地方都是陌生的，但我又知道我只是一个过客，总会在某一天归去那个熟悉的地方。尽管是我本人在外面，在旅游，但我就是一个旁观者，平平静静地看着“我”的游历。

但现在，我在自己的家也感受到了在宿舍的一样的感觉。不是宿舍变得越来越熟悉的感觉，而是家里越来越带来陌生感和疏离感了。

那么，我那个熟悉的地方去哪里了？

我自小向往到处游览的那种浪漫旅行，多么的惬意与潇爽。可是，如果真的一生漂泊流离的话，那就只剩下狼狈与沧桑了。

我怅然若失，尽管我现在还在父母的庇护之下，但我已经不知道为何开始了漂泊流离的生涯了。

一生漂泊，只为了追寻那个逝去而不再回来的时光。

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已经不见，不要怀念

Sat Nov 10 00:00:00 -0800 2012

忽然间想起来，某人有某个博客，似乎已经好久好久没有更新了。今天登上去，发现，最后一篇已经滞留在几年之前。

恍回多年前。

高中是一片湖，几只鸭子，一片小林，一条臭水渠，几座楼，几个人，晃来晃去的丑校服。三年了。湖还是那片湖，鸭子却死了，林还是那片林，似乎装修而砍了几棵树，水渠上还是有着小桥，水变清了，倒有了几分小桥流水人家之感，老师又成为了高三的老师，同学却早已不是那些人，标记着身份的校服都重新设计了。

物非人非，记忆终将无法考证，空寥寂寞。

那个时候，我们写下狗屁不通的句子，只求押韵不求平仄，偶尔有一两个意象，霎那构筑起悠远寂渺的意境，落地生根成优美的诗词；作为怕鬼的唯物青年，现实的理想主义者，爱文学的理科生，我们时常对遥远无垠的外面带着瑰丽的想象，对漫漫迷雾的未来长路有着璀璨的憧憬。

现在才发现，最美的诗与最美的梦一样，都是可遇不可求的。

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playing Node.js: 1. basic concepts

Thu Oct 18 00:00:00 -0700 2012

These days, I wanna have a look at the hot and smart technology: Node.js. So I'd like to make some notes and share some useful resources.

Node.js

What's Node.js?

Javascript on the server side.

What's npm?

The package manager for Node.js. npm for Node.js is as apt-get for Ubuntu.

How to install it?

I'm not talking about how to do it in Windows, because it's bringing ourselves into troubles. Use one of the techniques from gist: 579814 is just good and ok. After following that, npm and node shoule be avaiable as the command in the shell.

What's a `package.json` file? And what's a `node_modules` folder?

Every Node.js project should provide one of these. It describes the dependencies and some other information of the project. See one example. node_modules is the floder of the local dependency files.

What's the `module`, `require` and `exports`?

There are two excelent posts explaining them. Node.js, Require and Exports, Node.js, Module.Exports and Organizing Express.js Routes. The follwing should be read before reading the second post here.

CoffeeScript

What's CoffeeScript?

CoffeeScript is a little language that compiles into JavaScript. It provides a simplified way to write javascript without the annoying from awkward braces and semicolons and othe stuff from the original javascript.

Why should I use it?

It's the good part of javascript.

How to use it?

npm install coffee -g so coffee is the command line. See Installing for more information. It can be used on client side too.

How to transer between CoffeeScript and javascript?

Command line can be used. However, official website provide an in-time translator from CoffeeScript to javascript, which is good for development. And there's an unofficial project, called js2coffee, whose website provide an in-time translator from javascript to CoffeeScript! (However, the latter one may occur some mistakes, and the result should be checked on the first site...)

Express

What's it?

A framework for devloping Node.js websites.

Install?

npm install express@3.x -g for global usage. Create a folde and run express --css stylus to get a hello world example. Then npm install to install the dependencies locally. Run node app to view the website!

What's a "middleware"?

"Middleware" is an important concept for Express framework, and Connect, the framework that Express is based on. In short, a request sent to Express apps (or/and the response) is handled, modified, 'filtered' by the middlewares, in order.

In fact, I think Node.js is still young, and its concepts are unfamiliar to most of us. It's good toy, however it should be carefully considered if we want to use it in production.

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playing R: useful packages

Thu Sep 06 00:00:00 -0700 2012

R is an useful software for statistical computing. And it has a package system, which enables users to install many interesting and useful packages. Here I note and recommend some.

install.packages("ggplot2") # powerful printing system
install.packages("devtools") # make dev life easier
install.packages("knitr") # elegant report generator
install.packages("reshape2") # use melt() and *cast() to reshape the data
install.packages("plyr") # The split-apply-combine strategy for R
install.packages("stringr") # work with strings
install.packages("Rglpk") # powerful solver for mixed integer linear programming
install.packages("lpSolve") # including solver for transportation problem and assignment problem
install.packages("goalprog") # goal programming
install.packages("Rdonlp2", repos="http://R-Forge.R-project.org") # powerful solver for smooth nonlinear minimization problem
install.packages("gafit") # simple package for Genetic Programming
install.packages("igraph") # complex network research
install.packages("TSP") # travelling salesman problem
install.packages('foreign') # read SPSS, SAS, S-PLUS, Stata files
install.packages("ggpmap") # access Google Maps
install.packages("googleVis") # access Google Visualisation API
install.packages("rdatamarket") # access http://datamarket.com/
install.packages("twitteR") # access Twitter

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playing R: importing data

Thu Sep 06 00:00:00 -0700 2012

It's quite important to acquire, deal with and import data for statisticso work. Here is some notes about acquiring and importing data in R. This post may be updated frequently.

# first of all, we should know where we are:
normalizePath("~")
# change the working directory if necessary:
setwd("~/tmp")
# show the file in the directory:
dir()
# edit some file if necessary:
file.edit("a.txt")

Assuming there are two files in the working directory:

a.txt:

name price
apple 10
orange 12
watermelon 9

b.csv:

name,price
apple,10
orange,12
watermelon,9

c.csv:

name,price
1,apple,10
2,orange,12
3,watermelon,9

Here shows the result. read.table("a.txt",F) is the same as read.table("a.txt",header=F) and read.table("a.txt",header=FALSE). read.table() and read.csv() should load the data into RAM as data frame. Pay attention to the differences of the examples.

> read.table("a.txt")
V1 V2
1 name price
2 apple 10
3 orange 12
4 watermelon 9
> read.table("a.txt",F)
V1 V2
1 name price
2 apple 10
3 orange 12
4 watermelon 9
> read.table("a.txt",T)
name price
1 apple 10
2 orange 12
3 watermelon 9
>
> read.csv("b.csv")
name price
1 apple 10
2 orange 12
3 watermelon 9
> read.csv("b.csv",F)
V1 V2
1 name price
2 apple 10
3 orange 12
4 watermelon 9
> read.csv("b.csv",T)
name price
1 apple 10
2 orange 12
3 watermelon 9
>
> read.csv("c.csv")
name price
1 apple 10
2 orange 12
3 watermelon 9
> read.csv("c.csv",F)
V1 V2 V3
1 name price NA
2 1 apple 10
3 2 orange 12
4 3 watermelon 9
> read.csv("c.csv",T)
name price
1 apple 10
2 orange 12
3 watermelon 9
>

And some columns will be factors, some will be simple victors.

> b <- read.csv("b.csv",header=TRUE)
> b$name
[1] apple orange watermelon
Levels: apple orange watermelon
> b$price
[1] 10 12 9
>

scan() is another fast function to import data.

Acquiring infomation from the web is quite flexible.

DataMarket is amazing, with lots of free data avaiable to download. There are some guides. Run the following code to try:

install.packages('rdatamarket')
library(rdatamarket)
l <- dmlist("http://datamarket.com/data/set/17tm/#ds=17tm|kqc=17.v.i")
head(l)
plot(dmseries("http://data.is/nyFeP9"))
oil <- dminfo("http://datamarket.com/data/set/17tm/#ds=17tm|kqc=17.v.i")
print(oil)

It's important to find the informations. Here are some websites may help.

http://datamarket.com/ # an open database, good with "rdatamarket"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download # Wikipedia database
http://openflights.org/data.html # data about flights among the world, three csv files.
http://stat-computing.org/dataexpo/ # The Data Expo at the Joint Statistical Meetings
http://data.worldbank.org/ # data from World Bank
https://explore.data.gov/catalog/raw # data from Data.Gov
http://data.un.org/Default.aspx # data from UN
http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/datasets # data sets from IBM
http://aws.amazon.com/datasets # public data sets on AWS, big, including data from 1000 Genomes Project
http://snap.stanford.edu/data/ # Stanford Large Network Dataset Collection
http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/ # UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository

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never use Hackintosh

Sun Jun 24 19:00:00 -0700 2012

Never use Hackintosh. After many frustracted experiences, I had to believe the fact.

A few days ago, I saw a man use a IdeaPad, and his screen attracted me: it runs max os (10.7.3 Lion). Actually, I heard of the "mystery" Hackintosh before. But it was the first time I saw anyone successfully insall it on a PC. "I love anything from Apple Inc. And the mac os is my major operating system instead of Windows 7." He proudly introduced the os to me, "It's not easy to run mac os perfectly on a PC. Actually, I have spent almost one year to make it almost perfectly."

I am interested in the idea. And there is a successful story in front of me. I would like to give it a try. So I started a looong journey.

But it sucks.

In fact, I managed to run mac os in my ThinkPad already. NVIDIA graphics driver ran properly, sound can be heard, via earphones though, and power manger works, being able to show the battery percentage.

As we all know, the key of installing Hackintosh is the hardware compatibility. Drivers and startup configures should be carefully treated. For my computer, I managed to solve the problems about the three most important aspects: graphics, sound, and power. Anything basical just works.

And the key point is: they JUST WORK, ALMOST perfect, but NOT EXACTLY perfect.

It is a simple consideration on economics: we should do things that can bring incomes more than outcomes.

Installing Hackintosh is interesting, at the first time. And successfully making it run is cool, if you do not plan to use the os for a long time. The ALMOST perfect system is annoying: I didn't know when it will crash, I couldn't shutdown the computer via software control and I had to press the button manually, and I had to tweak the system to run iTunes properly......

The productivity was incredibly low when I used the Hackintosh. If I have to take almost a year to configure the os into exactly perfect state, why not use Windows 7 and Ubuntu to earn money, then buy a new MacBook Pro a year later?

Never use hackintosh (except you just want to play with it). It absolutely costs and wastes time.

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Jekyll, for hackers, not for humans

Thu May 24 19:00:00 -0700 2012

Nowadays, Jekyll (suddenly) becomes populars among hackers.

In short, "Jekyll is a blog-aware, static site generator in Ruby". It can be used to build a "static" blog, instead of using WordPress.

Born in "static", Jekyll does not have the problems such as security issues, C10K problems, php and database engines backend needed, software updates...... Considering that the comments, analytics can be done by Disqus and Google Analytics by adding some javascript snippets. More excitingly, writting posts in markdown,text-based instead of databases needed, they are cool! It should be the best alternate of WordPress!

Not exactly. The above paragraph or similar texts can be seen in almost any posts in the Internet introducing Jekyll. But since it and anthor project based on it, Octopress, are designed for hackers, it's not for humans.

When a simple user want to write a blog, he may start in Blogger or WordPress.com. They provide good features and large community. They automatically deal with the technical details. Inserting pictures, videos, etc. are simple and easy. When a curious user want to customize their blog, he of she starts to study HTML, CSS and javascript. He want to buy a virtual host account, such as BlueHost. WordPress' famous "five steps installation" gives strong convenience. After "clicking", binding domains is easy as well. Installing plugins gives user the satisfaction. after learning some php syntax, a user can even try to modify of develop the themes and plugins!

In short, "playing" with WordPress (WordPress should be the most famous and widely used blogging platform or software) (or Blogger, Tumblr), users or players can "grow up" from easy to hard. In the very end, he or she can stop in any steps, or he or she can fully control WordPress just as a "person knowing more common sense about programming".

But Jekyll doesn't. "Playing" Jekyll needs that you are a hacker already!

Want to play Jekyll? Hummm...... It's written (majorly) in Ruby. But how to install Ruby? It seems that I'd better have a GUN/Linux distribution or a Mac? Moreover, it's cool to host it by github, whose cofounder is the author of Jekyll, but hey, what's git? Version controller? I am not interested in it's differences compared with Subversion! And what's markdown? How to configure the text editor to suit it? ...... Lots of question flooded into my mind when I want to play Jekyll!

Moreover, I am disappointed with some limits of the "official support" from github. In deed, github does a good job and it provies lots of convience to programmers, and I love it. But, considering Jekyll, it's designed for hackers, but which hacker on earth doesn't write LATEX or insert gists?! Maruku markdown pharser seems to provide the opinion buliding fomulars pictures, but it requires the local LATEX engin! Rdiscount is fast, but does not support LATEX. Kramdown seems to support MathJax very well, but it can't be viewed in RSS because LATEX snippets are tranformed into <script> tags! In similar, gists can be inserted by adding the "embed" codes, but still they can't be viewed in RSS because they are <script> actually. Yes, Octopress seems to deal with some problems, but it's not "officially supported" by github pages, and it's even more complicated. Plugins can solve some problems (not elgently), but again, it's not supported by the official github pages. Of course I can generated the pages by the awesome Pandoc and upload the static files to the server or github pages, but again, it's more complicated (though maybe I can't help doing this later.....).

So, if you are a hacker, you may want to try Jekyll. It should improve your writing environment and speed later, if you haven't commited a suicide while installing, configuring Jekyll, bearing the limitations and non-perfect aspects, and considering whether generating static files locally or by github pages, hosting it on github pages, or virtual host, of Heroku, or VPS etc. ...... If not, WordPress should be the best choice of writing yet.

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if Flash is open source.....

Mon Jan 30 13:16:21 -0800 2012

If Adobe open source Flash, it will regain the control of the web.

It's no doubted that Flash has greatly contributed to the development of the web. (Well, if it didn't appear, will HTML standard be developed even faster? Who knows.) But today, Powerful JavaScript, improved HTML 5 and CSS 3 are going to replace it. New tags in HTML 5 such as video and audio can function like Flash. Angry birds and Cut the Rope in HTML 5 are the best proofs.

What if Adobe open source Flash player and related software?

Think about chromium and Android. Google open sources them and they are widely spread because there are no concern about the license. But actually, Google do control the development now, because other firms almost only concern about the "cost" rather than the development of the software itself.

Due to the license problem, Firefox and chromium don't embed Flash player. Chrome does, because Chrome isn't open source, different from its brother. Once Flash is open source, browsers can embed Flash players, and factories and net users can contribute to the development of Flash player, solving the issues such as high CPU use more easily. And developers will turn back to the mature Flash technology instead of taking risk of new technology (js, HTML 5 & CSS 3).

In fact, if Flash is open source, there is almost nothing different towards general users.

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Education 2.0

Sun Jan 29 20:49:45 -0800 2012

It's likely that a new tipping point of the new style of education -- including teaching and studying -- is coming.

Education, encompasses teaching and learning specific skills, and something less tangible but more profound: the imparting of knowledge, good judgment, and wisdom. It's important to focus on and improve the way of interact between teaching and studying. It's obvious that how students absorb the knowledge and raise their curiosity determine the result of the process. Here I mainly discuss the narrow sense of education. which usually means the process of acquiring the knowledge of science, literature, etc, usually in schools.

Accepting education (in schools) is relevant to opportunity cost. The time is always limited and the process is not always pleasing. What's even frustrating, so many people can't offer the cost of entering schools, so that they have to work "in advance".

Now online education is becoming popular. Maybe it provides more opportunities to poor man and those have limited condition to enter the famous universities.

Till now, education level has been developed by Internet greatly. Researching is enjoying the convenience of the super high speed and large volume of information data. Searching and creating data with the help of Internet is easier than ever. However, education focus more on the interaction of teaching and studying, as well as the creativity, rather than just researching. n this aspect, open course bring great impact, for example, some universities, such as Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and more, has released their video and/or presentation online. Some websites, such as netease open courses, have gathered and translated, and spread these online resources greatly. What's more, there are some online courses available, such as Stanford's Coursera, MIT's MITx, and Udacity.

But it's not enough. In essence, they are just putting the media online, not deeply taking advantages of Internet -- connecting and interacting with people much easier.

Education 2.0, with the help of web 2.0, is the key and next revolution in education and society, in my opinion.

What's it? The answer may hides in (inconspicuous) places: Wikipedia, and github.

Have a look inside Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Launched in 2001, Wikipedia has formed the largest online encyclopedia, with high quality, great authority and high page rank (which reflects how websites rely on it). In fact, The English Wikipedia passed 100,000 articles in 2003, a great and incredible success. Such a great increase of articles tells people that they had just waited for it for a long time. It's a masterpiece by billions of net users, reflecting how great work can be done by the power of self-organization of the combination of the elite and the crowd.

Essentially, Wikipedia shows the desire to share and curiosity about knowledge. A virtuous cycle formed fortunately and is functioning smoothly till now. A simple way of editing and discussing, and the nature as a creature of "web 2.0" may explain its success.

Now observe github, subtitled "social coding", another cool web-2.0 website, poplar among programmers. In similar to the growing process of Wikipedia, it enjoyed a great increase. launched in April 2008, it hosted about 46,000 repositories just in the first year! By now (Jan. 2012), over 3,800,000 git repositories are enjoying the platform. Github is your new resume. It's possible to create a reliable and informative resume with the help of github and books in 2 years. There are real project, cool guys, people with the same interests, and here comes everybody.

The most powerful innovation of github should be "social". One can "follow" another developer or "watch" a project, while at the same time "fork it" and "send pull request" have become the "culture" among the users.

So what's the business of education?

Self-organization, happy collaborative work, creativity, and study process as a resume. A platform, (called "Wikihub" if I create it :-),) taking advantages of Wikipedia and github, should have the above advantages and features, and lead the revolution of education, named "education 2.0.

Education 2.0 should be benefited by self-organization. Both Wikipedia and github illustrate that self-organization also work and work even better. Students just don't know what they will go at the beginning, but actually discover what they want later.

Education 2.0 includes happy collaborative work. 1+1 > 2. Twitter and Facebook prove that all the "tiny" behavior may effect on "big" result and incredible destination, which attract and confuse social researchers a lot. An appropriate platform allowing students to study what they are really interested in may drive our society to new ways. Because they are interested in, so they are fond of and realize the necessity of learning other knowledge that they don't pay attention to before.

Education 2.0 enjoys the advantages brought by creativity. Unlimited and uninformed in advance may promote creativity, one of the most important power of society. But it should be noted that creativity relies on the knowledge base. So in some case and at some stage, teachers and other leading students should provide tips and hints and help to their fellows.

Education 2.0 lightens, if not solves, the conflict between study and work. Github notes down users' operations and growth, and projects are for real world, instead of "not being practical". When students end the education, they get resumes automatically.

This article is just about a summary and a prediction. Whatever, Internet has changed our life, and it will surely change the style of education. The tendency shows that another tipping point is near, maybe before 2016 we can see and create the tide.

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Fleeting Years

preferring Mac OS X

空山不见人

已经不见，不要怀念

playing Node.js: 1. basic concepts

Node.js

What's Node.js?

What's npm?

How to install it?

What's a package.json file? And what's a node_modules folder?

What's the module, require and exports?

CoffeeScript

What's CoffeeScript?

Why should I use it?

How to use it?

How to transer between CoffeeScript and javascript?

Express

What's it?

Install?

What's a "middleware"?

playing R: useful packages

playing R: importing data

never use Hackintosh

Jekyll, for hackers, not for humans

if Flash is open source.....

Education 2.0

What's a `package.json` file? And what's a `node_modules` folder?

What's the `module`, `require` and `exports`?