If you like being controlled...

If I were to keep my political cap off and discuss issues not related to a certain political party, then I would say that the group which annoys me the most are MPAA and RIAA in their attempts to control content. They even want us not to be able to record TV shows and be able to watch it at any point in time. Their preference is that if we record something, we have to watch it within a certain amount of time or else it expires. Even if you buy a CD, they want to prevent you from creating mp3 files for the songs on the CD. Very frightening if they get their way.

Into the new HD DVD format, manufacturers are building in the type of controls which the MPAA/RIAA want.

Mike Evangelist - former product marketing manager for DVD Studio Pro at Apple Computer - has called for an outright boycott of both HD-DVD and Blu-ray drives.

If you care about having control over the content you purchase, then you would consider a boycott, too.

43 Things to do in my life

There is an interesting website which is called 43 Things at http://www.43things.com. The concept behind this website is for people to document what are some things they want to do. It's a bit ambiguous whether these things are to represent more short term goals or long term goals. Some people have put down more long term goals, like "Be happy" while others have realized it is better to put more realistic, achievable goals. Not to say that "Be happy" is not an achievable goal, but in order to accomplish a long term goal, it would be good to document the short term goals which need to be done to achieve the long term goal.

Anyway, you don't have to document 43 things if you can't think of 43 things. I am up to 23 right now. The interesting part comes in that you can see how many other people have the same goal. You can then document comments about each goal and read other people's comments about them trying to achieve their goals. The website also provides common other goals for people who have the same goal. For example, it is not surprising that a common goal among people who want to learn Japanese is to go to Japan.

There's also a sister website called 43 Places, where you can list places you want to go... You can then see other people who the same desire to go to the same place as well as see comments from people who have already gone there.

An interesting website... How useful it is is another question, but it's still interesting.

Search is over...?

I think I have found my next digital camera...

The good points about this camera:

• Video 640x320, 30fps
• SD memory card, no limit to video except by memory
  
• Thin (making it easier to carry)
  
• Non-protruding zoom lens (coolness factor)
• Wi-fi (a plus)

Steve's Digicam already has a review on the Nikon Coolpix S6.

Some more Mozilla extensions

I added a couple more mozilla extensions...

Auto copy is useful because it will automatically copy what you've highlighted onto your clipboard. I mean, what else would you be highlighting text for anyway? Auto Copy is available at https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=383&application=firefox.

I added the Google toolbar... Some useful parts of the Google toolbar is knowing how many sites are referenced for a particular search term. For example, there are over 16 million hits on "learn japanese". No wonder it would be difficult to get Japanese Tutor better search results.

There is also a tool called Conquery to allow querying of highlighted text by using the context menu (right-click). It's sort of useful to be able to highlight the name of a movie, perhaps found on a program guide, then right click to look up the movie in IMDB. Conquery is available at http://conquery.mozdev.org/installation.html.

And finally, I did add an extension which makes it possible to right-click in Gmail to preview your mail... The guy intentionally did not do it while hovering over mail because he said it was not very well performing, but actually, I don't find right-clicking so convenient either. I mean, if I am going to have to click to see the mail, then I might as well left-click. Gmail preview bubbles are available at http://persistent.info/archives/2005/08/20/gmail-preview-bubbles.



Oh, and this image is simply that there are products, such as Window Blinds, which allow you to use skins to customize your Windows appearence... This one in particular has some transparency in the windows to allow you to see what's underneath. A review of Window Blinds is available at Extreme Tech. I don't have Window Blinds myself... Sometimes I have to think about whether I really need something before I buy it... Hey, wait a minute. What's "need" have to do with spending money?

Next "must have" item

This is too cool. I got to have it.*

A shower which can tell you how hot the water is by the colored lights.

* Of course, by "I go to have it" means unless I find something actual useful to do with my money.

So I think I'll get the shower head right after getting the cleaning robot:



And by the way, this is pretty cool, too. I gotta have this. (The below loads the entire video before playing. Instead, you can also go here to see the streaming video version.)

I wiki, do you?

One of the newest trends these days are wikis. The most famous is wikipedia available at http://www.wikipedia.org. This is an online encyclopedia where anyone on the Internet can contribute to enhance the information in wikipedia.

In general, wikis are collaboration tools which allow multiple people to edit a document to share information. These documents are presented as web pages. However, knowledge of HTML is not required. Wikis have their own simplified formatting markup language. For example, to make something bold, you simply enter *bold*. To make an ordered list, you simply use the # sound, like:

# bananas
# apples
# oranges

And they will automatically appear as:

1. bananas
   
2. apples
   
3. oranges
   

For those of you who are not familiar with markup languages would wonder why you wouldn't simply number your own lists. Markup languages make for easy modification. For example, if I had a list of 25 numbered items, and then I needed to add a new #1 item, I would have to renumber all the other 25 items... But with a markup language, I simply add a new "# pears" and it will automatically take care of numbering all of the items.

At work, we have already discovered the advantages of wikis and are trying to use them within our project. However, the tools we use are only available within our own company. For personal wikis, there are websites available on the Internet which provide wikis, many of them are free.

One of the available places for free wikis is PBwiki. I haven't yet defined the uses for my own personal wiki, but I am sure I will be taking advantage of this soon. Some of the functional benefits are:

• Easy to use markup language
• Sharing of information
• Automatic versioning of changed information
  

Free acounts are available at PBwiki. Premium accounts are also available for more storage.





Google this! (Please...?)

For some reason, the description from Japanese Tutor "disappears" from Google, so that without any description for the site, of course the site will never be found by anyone searching for a tutor. I can't really find a pattern for when the description disappears and when it comes back.

Google results (previous):

japanese tutor flower mound	japanese class flower mound	japanese language class flower mound	learn japanese flower mound
4. KBCafe Argyle reference		3. Learn101.com reference	25. KBCafe Argyle reference
6. Wink.com reference		97. Wink.com reference
25. Jimrin's Gadget blog
26. Learn101.com reference
33. Blogger profile
38. japanese-tutor.com

Yahoo results:

japanese tutor flower mound	japanese class flower mound	japanese language class flower mound	learn japanese flower mound
1. Japanese Tutor on Comcast
2. Tagbert Grapevine reference
6. KBCafe reference
10. Japanese Tutor in Texas Frappr reference
17. Japanese Tutor in Texas Frappr reference

MSN results:

japanese tutor flower mound	japanese class flower mound	japanese language class flower mound	learn japanese flower mound
1&2. japanese-tutor.blogspot.com	1&2. japanese-tutor.blogspot.com	1&2. japanese-tutor.blogspot.com	1&2. japanese-tutor.blogspot.com
3. Japanese Tutor in Texas on Frappr

I can add URLs to Google or add a sitemap to Google.

Cold, you think?

When I arrived in Vienna on this trip, the highs were in the lower 20s (approximately -6C) with the wind chill must colder. However, it was warm compared to the previous couple of days where the highs did not get out of the single digits!

The Danube was actually frozen over. Well, the hotel is on the Danube and on half the side closest to the hotel, it was frozen over. It looked like the river on the other side was still flowing.

If only I had my camera! I did have my phone which has a camera, but it is quite an old phone and the resolution is not that good. In fact, you have to e-mail pics which are saved on the camera. Ugh! See! I do need a new phone!

On the last couple of days, there was a heat wave... with the highs getting above freezing! And I forgot to bring my swim suit!

All's well that ends well?

Friday was not such a good travel day, but it could have been worse. I normally have to wake up around 4:30 am, so I can leave the hotel around 5:20 am to get to the airport in time for a 7:00 am flight. I actually woke up a few minutes before 4:30 am, and I was trying to think should I try to get a few more minutes or sleep or should I just wake up. I ended up falling asleep, but then I woke up one minute before the alarm clock was supposed to go off... But then I noticed I had not turned the alarm clock on!!! Needless to say, it would have been terrible if I had overslept. I either set the alarm time but forgot to turn the alarm on, or when I previously woke up, I turned the alarm off... Anyway, then my reserved transportation to the airport did not show up... The front desk then called a taxi for me... The taxi then arrived but just as he was pulling out, he was saying there is a 10 euro surcharge for taking me to the airport... What..??? So I had him take me back, and we talked it over with the front desk, and the front desk also agreed this was BS, so they called for another taxi. I then got another taxi, and I ASSUMED he wouldn't be charging me the 10 euro surcharge, but when I got to the airport, he asked for 10 euro more than the meter. Sigh. This guy also took me the long way to the airport, heading into the city instead of taking the most direct route. However, as it turned out, it was not significantly different, and he didn't speak English that well anyway. I asked for his business card but he said he had none. Hmmm...

Even though I didn't get to the airport as early as I wanted, fortunately, there was not a long line at the Swiss counter, so I was able to check-in quickly. In the end, all's well that ends well, but the problem was the transportation was mainly because the transportation desk at the hotel did not set up the transportation properly for me, so I'm sure I'll be giving some feedback to the hotel.

Update: February 28. I finally wrote to the Hilton Vienna Danube to complain about the fact that I did reserve airport transportation and noone showed up. We'll see if they respond.

I must not be having much luck in traveling these days. On my trip to Vienna on February 28, I noticed I was in row 39. I hate being in the back. When I checked in, I told him I know I want to change my seats to something as close to the front as possible. Apparently, he thought I was joking because he did not do anything. When I did ask him again, he basically said that I should check at the gate. Ugh. OK, so I go to the lounge and ask if they can move me closer, and she was able to get me to row 20. At least that is 19 rows better... Anyway, when in Zurich, at the airport lounge there, she noticed they lifted the wrong ticket at Dallas. Instead of lifting the Dallas to Zurich ticket, they lifted the Zurich to Vienna ticket. So now, I did not have a ticket to Vienna anymore. Actually, I was fortunate she noticed because if it would have been discovered at the gate.. Or worse yet, if they would have continued to lift the wrong ticket on the next portion and then discover on my trip back to Dallas that I had no ticket, it would have been a confusing mess. Anyway, this was all caused by the first guy who stapled the boarding pass to the wrong ticket. I think I'll avoid him in the future...

Useful Firefox extensions

There are quite a few Firefox extensions which are extremely useful. Here are a few I use:

Title	Description
Xinha WYSIWYG editor	Provides a WYSIWYG editor to create HTML in any input field. This is useful when editing a wiki or blog which supports HTML but does not provide a WYSIWYG editor. Or even in the case of Blogger which does provide an WYSIWYG view but does not provide table functions, you can use Xinha to create tables.
Internet Explorer Link	If you need to view specific web pages in Internet Explorer, this extension will provide a right-click context menu to open the link in Internet Explorer. The alternative is to copy the link, open Internet Explorer, and then paste the link in the address field.
Firefox Keyword	Not a Firefox extension, but I use this function of Firefox a lot. If you right-click on an input field, you can define a keyword for that field. Then in the address field, you can type the keyword name plus the data you would like to put in the input field which corresponds to that field. As an example, I can create a keyword "google" for the Google search input field. Then if I type "google search-term" in the address field, it will automatically behave as if I had gone to http://www.google.com and entered the search term in the input field and pressed Enter.

By the way, in case of using Xinha for creating tables for my blog, I have my Blogger setting to automatically assume a line break for each new line, and Xinha tries to make the HTML look nice in tables, but Blogger interprets the nice formatting as extra line breaks, so after creating the table, I've had to delete all the excess line breaks.

Let there be light!

We recently bought the Sentina Smart Rechargeable LED light. It serves as both a nightlight and a flashlight, and both have auto-settings. For the nightlight, the auto setting will automatically turn the nightlight on when it gets dark. For the flashnight, the auto setting will automatically turn the flashlight part of the light on upon motion detection. It seems to work perfectly in our bedroom so that the light automatically turns on when we have to make a trip in the middle of the night to the bathroom. It is also supposed to automatically turn on in case the power goes out. I have not tried thi function yet, but perhaps it is the same as the auto nightlight function.

Give me my MP3 player, part 2

Since I bought Kyoko an MP3 player, I thought it would be nice if she could play it in the car. Of course there are car stereos now which have a connection available for your MP3 player, but a new car stereo can be a little pricey... But for $34.99, I can get a FM modulator which will play it over FM frequency so it can be heard on the car radio. The one I thought was the best was VR3 VFM8, which I found on SkyMall. It also has the capability that you can plug in USB flash drive to play mp3 files on the flash memory. Therefore the FM modulator itself also has play buttons. One advantage of this unit over its previous version is this unit can be songs in random order.

Update: On February 25, we finally got a chance to try it out... A little bit disappointing, mainly because we had to crank the radio about 3x higher plus put the volume on the mp3 higher to get it a fairly audible level. Perhaps most FM transmitters/modulators are like this. I mean, it would be a bit of a bummer if you're driving down the road and then you're listening to someone else's mp3 files, too. Also since you are not supposed to start the car within it plugged into the 12v outlet, then it's a bit of an inconvenience at times. I would be interested to see if the volume is any better when using a flash drive, but I don't have one off hand. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....... Anyway, it is still useful for long trips.