We went skiing to Christal Mountain. We had a bad memory that we drove down there about 2 hours only to figure out that it's closed a couple of years ago. But, this time, it was open.
Because of the heavy snow, we unfortunately couldn't see Mt Rainier, but the snow was great. We want to come back again sometime soon.
We started to use iPhone. It's really well made. The interface works very smoothly and all functions are well connected. The problem is that it's closed and don't give us any chance to extend and play with unless we try some hacks.
I carved a Jack-o'-lantern for the first time.
This is supposed to be the cat bus from Totoro.
I launched xfig after a long time and was surprised that it now has the fancy banner. But, the application itself looks the same as before.
I haven't worked out for almost two weeks, so I went to the gym today. I ran for 1.5 miles and did some weight training.
My weight has increased to 119.8 pounds.
I had a ramen at Maru Ichi for dinner. The Maruichi ramen special was pretty good.
I deposited a check using an ATM and was surprised that ATMs have been improved a lot. Before, I have to put a check an envelope and write down my name, account number, the amount, etc, and deposit it to ATM by typing the amount again. Now, ATMs can scan checks and automatically detect the amount of each check probably with OCR. All you have to is confirm the amount.
I went to San Francisco downtown with my colleague. We had dinner at the garden court. It was very nice place.
Arcade Renaissance: Nintendo of Japan dropping Hardware support for the Famicom
I didn't know that they are still supported. It was a decade before Windows 98.
I went to the gym before dinner today. I jogged for one mile and did weight training.
Today's weight is 118.4 pounds. I expected my weight was lower because I weighted before dinner today. But, somehow, my weight keeps increasing.
I went to a gym to do some exercise. I jogged for 2 miles and did some weightlifting. Today's weight is 116.8 pounds.
I bought a car. So, I can finally return a rental car.
Finally, I settled down. My apartment is still empty, though.
We went to The Crucible and tried blacksmithing.
Well, this doesn't look professional, but we had fun.
Compared to usual flights from Indianapolis to Bloomington, the flight from Seattle to San Jose was very short without any transit.
I rented a car and stayed in a hotel. I need to find an apartment to live and buy a car as soon as possible.
I left Bloomington after having lived for 4 years. The flight to Seattle via Chicago was smooth.
We traveled Southern Indiana today.
We first visited Starlite Drive-In Theatre. We didn't see any movies, but it was exciting because this was our first time to visit a drive-in theater outside of movies.
In Bedford, we stopped by a limestone give shop (Half Moon Lime Stone Product) and bought some souvenirs made of limestones.
Then, we went to Bluespring Caverns and had a cave tour on a boat.
On the way to the Spring Mill State Park, we stopped by Applacres and bought apple butter.
In the Spring Mill State Park, we saw how people lived in this area in old days. The demonstration of grind corns using the mill was exciting.
At last, we had dinner at Gasthof Amish Restaurant, a restaurant in Amish town.
It was a long day, but we had a lot of fun.
I moved to a tiny one-room house as a temporally living place as my current lease ends in a week.
I went to the Dayton Air Show with a friend. Before the show, we stopped by at the National Museum of USAF to see a lot of air plains.
This week's lunch was Chinese food at Lucky Express. This was my second time to go to Lucky Express. I can only go to this restaurant with Chinese friends because dishes I like are not on the menu. We need to ask the owner in Chinese to get them.
I join the baseball practice. I got a blister on my hand and it burst. So, I couldn't bat well during a practice game.
I had a quick dinner with my friend before playing badminton at Penn Station. I liked their subs much better than the ones at Subway, but probably much less healthy.
I twisted my neck while playing badminton. Maybe, it's because I didn't stretch enough this time. I had hard time even to lay down on the bed because of the pain.
This is almost the end of my fourth year in Bloomington, but it's my first time to spend the 4th of July in town. I went out to watch fireworks with my friends.
I had lunch at Golden Corral with some friends. A couple of hours later, we played badminton.
This week's lunch was at the Pita Pit. It was like Subway, but with pita instead of bread.
My ATM card was swallowed to an ATM. I called them. The representative reacted as if it was nothing and simply told me that they would send me another card.
We went hiking to McCormick's Creek State Park. We hiked a trail around Wolf Cave. We didn't have any flashlights, so we didn't go through the cave.
Today's lunch was at Noodles & Company. I ordered Japanese Pan Noodle, which I didn't dare to order last time.
It was supposed to be Japanese Yaki-udon, but tasted bit different. It had too much source. But some Americans liked it.
I bought something that costs $2.99 and gave a cashier $3 with cash today. The cashier didn't event try to give me a penny. The purpose of labeling products as $2.99 instead of $3.00 is to make customers feel like it's cheaper. Without giving a penny back, it is really just "feel like."
It's not that I want a penny back, but I think they should label the product as $3.00 from the beginning.
A new digital camera I ordered last wee arrived today. It's Casio EXILIM HI-ZOOM EX-V7. This is my 5th digital camera. The following is the history.
Sanyo DSC-X110 (bought in 1999)
Canon IXY Digital 300 (bought in June 2001)
Sanyo DSC-MZ3 (bought in December 2002)
Casio EXILIM ZOOM EX-Z40 (bought in April 2004)
I installed Google Gear. It seems working right with Google Reader. I would really like to see this to be used with Gmail and Google Calender.
Last time I wrote the following to detect whether latex or pdflatex is used to compile a source, but I noticed today this will confuse the latex commend in Cygwin. The latex commend in Cygwin is a symbolic link to pdflatex and this makes pdflatex to produce a pdf file instead of a xdvi file even though you call latex.
\ifx\pdftexversion\undefined
\usepackage[dvips]{hyperref}
\else
\usepackage[pdftex]{hyperref}
\fi
\usepackage{ifpdf}
\ifpdf
\usepackage[pdftex]{hyperref}
\else
\usepackage[dvips]{hyperref}
\fi
This service will be useful when I look for an apartment or something.
For example, this is the apartment I stayed last summer.
We had a sushi party. Another Japanese ordered fresh fish from somewhere and he made sushi. It was fun. I brought pre-cooked sukiyaki.
This week's lunch was at Cafe Django. I had today's special, peasant momo. I have had momo multiple times at a Tibetan restaurant, but today's momos were huge.
We had lunch at Bombay House again. It's a Indiana style buffet. We've covered pretty much all restaurants within walking distance from the university.
Probably it's my first time to play baseball even tough I have played softball when I was in an elementary school.
Today's lunch was at Noodles & Company.
I found something interesting today. They are called chopstick helpers. It's best described if I say that they turn chopsticks to tongs. Honestly, with a chopstick helper, I cannot use chopsticks at all.
I was playing around with the URL formating with Latex today and found the following.
\url{http://example.com} in the url package displays URLs inserting line breaks properly. But, the same \url{} doesn't insert line breaks if you use the hyperref package with the dvips option (hyperref is a useful package to create hyperlinks in PDF), but works fine with the pdftex option.
So, I started to use pdflatex to create PDF instead of the old-style latex-dvips-ps2pdf combination. pdflatex doesn't support EPS files, so I converted all EPS files to PDF using epstopdf.
But, I still want to use latex and xdvi for quick modification. It's because xdvi refreshes the updated dvi file automatically. I can just keep xdvi open showing some specific page. Every time I compile the TeX file, I can see the modified result right away. I don't need to reopen the file and move to the specific page. So, I did the following to make the LaTeX file compilable both with latex and pdflatex.
First, I load the hyperref package with the proper option detecting how the file is compiled.
\ifx\pdftexversion\undefined
\usepackage[dvips]{hyperref}
\else
\usepackage[pdftex]{hyperref}
\fi
I have been using the following script to open files using Windows applications, but today I got to know about cygstart.exe, which does exactly my script does. How long has it been there?
#! /bin/sh
/cygdrive/c/Meadow/bin/fiber "`cygpath -w $1`"
Because of the recall of ThinkPad batteries, I received a new battery today. I have been using the original battery for almost a year, so it's a good timing to switch to a new one (as you know, batteries wear out).
Today is the final of World Cup of, ... well, cricket, a sport I knew nothing about except the name. Recently my friends from India and Sri Lanca, where cricket is very popular, kept talking about the games. So, I went over their place and watched the last couple of hours of the game. A game is usually around 8 hours because they play shorter version in World Cup. (The longer one lasts for 5 days.) Thanks to their explanation, now I know at least how they play it.
Today was a picnic at Bryan Park. We played regular Frisbees and Ultimate Frisbees around here. (The satellite image of Google Map has gotten better even in this small town.)
Today's lunch was at Falafels Flavors From Jerusalem. It's a Israeli restaurant.
My laptop came back this morning. It was fast. They seem to have replaced the mother board, which they call planar card, and the keyboard. I thought it was a problem of the fan or somewhere around, but anyway, the problem was fixed.
By the way, it's still handled by the IBM repair center, not Lenovo's.
As I wrote in DVD Encoding in a Fridge, something has been wrong with my laptop, ThinkPad T60. I finally sent the laptop for repair. Thanks to Web-based email, schedular, blog, RSS reader, bookmark synchronizer, and memo combined with classic services like IMAP and CVS, I could easiliy move my working environment to other computer. But, still something is totally diffent without the laptop.
I watched Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot by Jacques Tati. It's a comedy and somewhat similar to Mr. Bean.
Actually, there will be a parody by Mr. Bean, Les Vacances de Mr. Bean.
I got the address to send in Chinese. Not even knowing how to pronounce it, I went to a post office and copied the address to the envelope. Because it contained non-printing materials, an post officer asked me to fill in a customs declaration form in English. Well, I need to go back to the post office tomorrow.
When I encode MPEG2 using my laptop (ThinkPad T60), it becomes very hot and either suspends or turns off automatically. I had the same problem last summer with my old ThinkPad X30, but I was disappointed that the same happened to the new T60.
I probably need to send back the T60 to check because it's still withing the warranty, but to circumvent the situation, I put the T60 in my fridge last night. When I woke up this morning, the encoding was done. (Of course, the computer was suspended because it's out of battery.)
I have been using the ToDo gadget for Google Desktop to keep track of my ToDo list. But, somehow the Google Desktop nowadays uses a lot of CPU in my environment (probably after the recent update, I'm not sure). So, sometimes, I need to disable the Google Desktop. Then, of course, I cannot access to my ToDo list.
I searched a bit and found this (Google Operating System: ToDo List for Google Calendar) and decided to give it a try.
Although I haven't tried it by myself yet, this seems useful. It is still its early stage, so it has several restrictions, but we can hope for its future.
Edit (4/16):
I tried by myself and it turned out that it was not so useful because the Google Calendar provider doesn't cache the entries. If you cannot use it offline, what's the point of using Google Calendar from a standalone application? We'll hope for the future.
This week's lunch was at Casablanca Cafe. It was a Moroccan restaurant. I had paella. It was really good.
Last weekend, we had a very good weather. That's why we even went hiking. But today, it went back cold again. It even snowed a little.
When I told people that I had an engagement ceremony in Taiwan, two questions drew my attention. First question is "I thought you were Japanese." and the second question is "Did you get engaged with a Japanese working in Taiwan?" Even in this age, a lot of people seem to assume that people get married among the same nationality.
Since the weather was good, we decided to go hiking at Paynetown, which has a hiking trail around Lake Monroe.
I needed to convert DVD to mpeg2 to re-author the video from our engagement ceremony. Somehow the authoring software I had, WinDVD Creator, doesn't process VOB files well, so I had to convert DVD back to mpeg2 first.
After a lot of searching, the followings are the steps I had to go through.
1. VobEdit [VOB to m2v]
- Open the first VOB.
- Demux
- Check "Demux all video streams"
*.m2v will be generated.
2. DGMPGDec (instead of DVD2AVI) [VOB to wav]
- Open all VOBs
- Select audio track (Audio -> Track Number)
- Audio -> Output Method -> Decode AC3 Track to WAV
- Audio -> 48 -> 44.1KHz -> Off
- Save Porject
*.d2v and *.wav will be generated.
3. TMPGEnc [wav to mp2]
- Select *.wav to the Autio Souce
- Check ES (Audio only)
- Load DVD (NTSC).mcf
- Start
*.mp2 will be generated.
4. TMPGEnc [m2v and mp2 to mpg]
- File -> MPEG Tools -> Simple Multiplex
- Type -> MPEG-2 Program (VBR)
- m2v to Video input
- mp2 to Audio input
- Run
*.mpg will be generated.
References
- http://www.digital-digest.com
- http://members.ld.infoseek.co
Back to the normal life, we had lunch at Snow Lion Restaurant. This is another Tibetan restaurant in Bloomington.
The flight from Seattle to Chicago O'hare was delayed for more than one hour because of bad weather in Chicago. I was worried about the connection at Chicago to Indianapolis.
When I arrived Chicago, my next flight was also delayed for two hours, so I didn't miss the flight. After waiting for two hours, the flight was canceled. So, I was assigned to a next flight, which is delayed as well. So I waited another one or two hours at the airport.
Finally, I reached Indianapolis, but my luggage was lost again. I had to wait for a long time in the line for the baggage claim because a lot of luggages were lost. Finally, it was my turn, the person told me that my luggage should come with the next flight. So, I waited another 10 minutes and so, and luckily, my luggage did come out.
It was way passed midnight. There were no shuttles running at this hour. I had to take a shared limousine to go home. When I reached home, it was past 3 am.
The lost luggages were still lost in the morning. On top of that, we had things to do before I could fly back to Indiana. I postponed the flight to tomorrow.
The luggages were arrived in the afternoon.
We flew back to Seattle. Since we couldn't get a direct flight from Taipei to Seattle. It was via San Francisco, where we had to go through immigration.
When we reached Seattle late at night. Our luggages didn't come out.
In Taiwan, there are a lot of breakfast places where we can eat cheap and good food. This video clips show how they make bread in a traditional way.
In Taiwan, there is a tradition to hold an engagement ceremony, which is more or less as important as a real wedding. Engagement ceremonies are held at bride's house. In the morning, a groom and his family visit bride's home with gifts for the ceremony. The beginning of the ceremony is a tea ceremony, in which the bride serves tea to groom's family one by one and each person returns a red envelop, which is a traditional envelope with money in it, in the cup. Then, they exchange rings, like in a western wedding, gloom's family puts a necklace on the bride, and so on.
Today, we had one, but we had it in our own way, a mixture of Taiwanese tradition and western tradition. In the morning, my fiancee got professional makeup and dressed up with the dress we rented from a bridal shop. We went to the cultural center to take pictures. Since I was staying at my fiancee's family place, my fiancee's brother in law took me out to drive around the block before visiting my fiancee's place, pretending that I was from home. We had a ceremony at my fiancee's place. We kept the ring exchange for the wedding, so instead of exchange, I put back the engagement ring, which my fiancee took out before the ceremony, to her finger. Following the ceremony, we had a reception in a restaurant.
There are a lot of scooters in Taiwan. Finally, I videotaped it.
In the morning, I spent time at Starbucks in Taipei while waiting for my company. It's kind of stupid to spent 3 US dollars for a cup of coffee when you can get tapioca milk tea (my favorite) with 60 cents from street. But, I needed the Internet and a place where I can stay forever without worrying about being kicked out.
When I'm using my computer, a middle-aged man said something in Chinese. I assume that he asked something about my computer or the Internet connection, but of course, I didn't understand. I told him that I didn't speak Chinese in Chinese, but somehow he got interested in me and started conversation. My Chinese were so bad and basic, but he was so persistent to me a lot of question, such as where I was from, why I was in Taipei, who I was with, how long I was staying in Taiwan, what I do in the US, about Tokyo and Taipei... I think the "conversation" lasted almost 30 minutes.
We went to Taipei by Taiwan High Speed Rail, which is sometimes called Taiwan Shinkansen because it's based on the Shinkansen technology.
In Taipei, we met a friend who I got to know in Seattle in 1999 when I was studying in University of Washington as an exchange student. It was the first time to meet her after seven years!
This is the restaurant we had dinner today. It's in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
This is the entrance of the restaurant.
This is the inside of the restaurant.
This is the dish I had.
This is the dessert.
We went shopping. While adults were negotiating price in Chinese, which I don't speak, a niece of my friend (5, 6 grade) and I were left out. So, we started a "conversation."
Most of the conversation was like this. (Everything is in Chinese.)
Pattern 1
Niece: <a sentence>
Niece: Do you understand?
Niece: You don't understand.
Me: I don't understand.
Pattern 2
Niece: This is a <noun>.
Niece: Do you know that.
Niece: You don't know.
Me: I don't know.
Sometimes, she said something I can understand with my very poor Chinese knowledge. Then, I say either "I understand" or "I know." Then, she became very happy and replied with even longer and complicated Chinese sentences.
Anyway, we had fun like this for a long time. I feel like if I spent a week with her, my Chinese would be improved a lot.
Via Taipei international airport, we arrived in Kaohsiung. This is my second visit to Taiwan. Last time was almost seven years ago (August 2000).
The first thing I noticed is that it was host! I felt like it was already summer. I was wearing a jacket that is thin for the weather in Indiana this time, but Taiwan was hotter than I expected. The first thing we did is to buy short pants and sandals.
Like other Taiwanese, we went shopping by scooter. It's also the first time in seven years. The last time I rode a scooter, which is also my first time in my life, is when I visited Taiwan seven years ago.
The flight was at 2 in the morning. We fell asleep right after it landed.
All of their flight attendants look the same because they have the similar hairstyle and makeups. Their services are very good, compared to the service of American airlines.
The flight to Seattle is at 8:15 am. To get to Indianapolis airport, I need to take a shuttle at 4:50 am. For that, I need to get up at 3:30 to 4 am. But, today I need to forward the clock for one hour for the daylight saving time that starts three weeks earlier from this year. If I go to bed now, I can sleep for only two hours?
This was what I was thinking around 1:30 am, and I decided not to sleep. Instead, I slept on the shuttle, on the first airplane, and the first half of the second flight. The connection from the first flight to the second flight was very smooth because the first flight was delayed a little, so I didn't have to worry about falling asleep while waiting for the second flight.
But because of the smooth connection, my luggage didn't show up at the Sea-Tac airport. I had to be in a long line to report for a lost luggage.
While waiting for the first flight and for the second half of the second flight, I was reading books I bought a couple of days ago. I can read Japanese books much faster. I finished the first book and the half of the second book.
I went skiing to Paoli Peaks with a couple of friends. We were planning to go to skiing from last year, but we had been procrastinating until the last weekend for Paoli Peaks. A good thing is that we could ski for a whole day with the half day price.
It was hot. Today's highest temperature was 63 degree. I only wore T-shirt under my ski ware, but I kept sweating. I saw several people skiing/snow boarding just with T-shirts.
Although it was really a small place, but we had a good time there.
We had lunch at a new restaurant, Mandalay. It was Burma cuisine. The dishes were somewhat like a mixture of Chinese and Indiana.
Japanese books I ordered at YesAsia.com arrived today. It was $6.99 each with free shipping because I bought more than $20 this time. It's kind of expensive when the original price is 540 yen each, but this was the best deal I found. Of course I can buy from amazon.co.jp with the original price, but they charge 2700 yen plus 300 yen a book to ship to the US. And it's more expensive ($7.60) from kinokuniya.com and they don't have any free shipping.
A tendon from my left solder to my back hurts from this morning. I'm guessing it's due to the laying pose when I use my laptop on the bed. I need to stop using the laptop on the bed.
We are done with Luis Buñuel and now move on to Roman Polanski, who was the directory of The Pianist. This week was Nóz w wodzie (Knife in the Water).
Java Web Start JNLP doesn't allow us to pass empty string or spaces as an argument. There are valid cases to pass them as arguments. I don't know why it's not allowed.
This is the exception I got.
BadFieldException[ The fieldhas an invalid value: ,]
at com.sun.javaws.jnl.XMLFormat$8.visitElement(XMLFormat.java:549)
at com.sun.javaws.jnl.XMLUtils.visitElements(XMLUtils.java:258)
at com.sun.javaws.jnl.XMLFormat.buildApplicationDesc(XMLFormat.java:545)
at com.sun.javaws.jnl.XMLFormat.parse(XMLFormat.java:99)
at com.sun.javaws.jnl.LaunchDescFactory.buildDescriptor(LaunchDescFactory.java:48)
at com.sun.javaws.jnl.LaunchDescFactory.buildDescriptor(LaunchDescFactory.java:60)
at com.sun.javaws.jnl.LaunchDescFactory.buildDescriptor(LaunchDescFactory.java:117)
at com.sun.javaws.Main.launchApp(Main.java:182)
at com.sun.javaws.Main.main(Main.java:136)
I went to ice skating for the first time after I caught a cold. Because my condition is not perfect yet, I skipped badminton I usually play on Saturday.
Because of the blizzard warning from yesterday, the school was closed for the morning. The international office as well was closed and my appointment from last week was ended up with being postponed for another week.
I have been feeling tired lately, but finally today, I'm down completely. I spent a whole day at home resting. I wanted to get some medicine, but gave up because the outside was around 10 degree.
I watched Super Bowl at my friend's place with a big projector screen. It was a very excited game and our Indianapolis Colts won the victory.
In these two years, I learned a lot about American Football and became a big fan of it.
I had a breakfast at Runcible Spoon and received a two-dollar bill as the change. I had seen one before, but it was my first time to actually own it.
By the way, I have never seen a half-dollar coin.
I watched The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz by Luis Buñuel.
This movie also includes multiple scenes that show Luis Buñuel's obsession to women's legs. A scene that a leg of a manikin falls of is representative.
We had a hotpot party organized by a person from Sichuan, a city in China famous for hot dishes. We had not-spicy pot and medium-spicy pot. But, medium-spicy was already spicy for most of us. I'm usually good at spicy food, but if it gets spicier than this, I won't be able to enjoy the food.
I watched AFC Championship with friends with a projector. It was one of the best game ever.
I'm collecting flight millage from United, Northwest, and American. Even though I buy whatever cheapest tickets available, usually I can accumulate millage in one of those three because the rest of the airline companies affiliate with one of the three (except Soughwest, I sometimes fly with).
This time I bought tickets from Eva airline. The problem is that Eva is not affiliated with any of the three. Eva only goes with Continental even though Continental is affiliated with Northwest. So, I cannot earn millage of Northwest if I fly with Eva.
It seems like if I replace Northwest with Continental, I can cover more airlines, but the problem is that JAL only goes with Northwest, not with Continental.
This winter had been weirdly warm like 40s or 50s until yesterday. But all of sudden, it went down to 20s with dry snow. Now I feel like it's winter.
Watched Illusion Travels by Streetcar by Luis Buñuel. This movie was shot in Mexico.
We went ice skating. For some reason, the ice arena was so crowded and we couldn't get in for about 20 minutes. But, luckily when we bought a pass for 10 sessions, they made this time free.
An interesting article that compares iPhone with cell phones in Japan.
In Japan, barely a ripple - Los Angeles Times
Because something was wrong with the ISO creation on my Windows laptop, I inserted a CD to a Linux box to create an image there. To my surprise, my Linux box auto-mounted the CD and created an icon on the desktop. Since I haven't used CD on Linux for a long time, I didn't know that it became this easy to use CDs. But, for today's purpose, all I needed to do is "dd if=/dev/cdrom of=cd.iso".
Probably because of the ski in Christmas holiday, the skin on my fingers became dry and rough. Because if that I can't login to my laptop, Thinkpad, using its fingerprint reader. I have to type my password manually.
We tried a kind of Japanese hot pot, shabu-shabu, at home for the first time. I usually prefer sukiyaki, but I enjoyed it.
At the Alderwood mall, I found a Japanese 100-yen store, Daiso. All items seem to be imported from Japan and little bit expensive as $1.50. But, I still got some items that are hard to get here in the US.
This year, we spent the new year's day with a traditional Japanese New Year's dish, ozoni. According to some web search, it seems that there is no standard recipe for ozoku. It depends on the region of Japan. So, I tried to imitage what my Mom cooks. It was easier than what I thought.
