The Power of 13KB
Posted by eric in Miscellaneous on December 17th, 2007
Amazing how a few bytes* can change a person’s life.
A couple of weeks ago, a colleague of mine from the states emailed me about an opportunity to join him in starting up a company. Now how many times in a lifetime does this happen? On the one hand, I’m having the time of my life in a foreign country achieving some of my personal goals. On the other hand, I now have an opportunity to do something big for my career. Which do I choose? Why are choices in life so hard?!? 
So after receiving the email and taking a week to decide, I finally came to the decision to work with my friend.
And this is why there hasn’t been any updates lately. I spent my last remaining days in Taiwan as a nomad traveling around the country trying to soak up as much as possible. I then traveled to Thailand to explore a totally foreign country. Finally, I said my farewells to all my family and new friends here in Taiwan before catching a plane back to the states arriving only a few days ago.
And, sorry to sound cheesy, but now that I’m back home, I can fully appreciate what the experience of living outside of your own country bestows. Reflecting upon my lifestyle at home, I no longer take for granted my every day life compared to the daily life of others in other (less fortunate) countries. I also feel much better having accomplished (even though partly) some of my goals that I’ve set out to accomplish 4 months ago in taking my trip.
I will miss what I left behind, but the future is brimming with opportunity. The twists in life are sure unpredictable. Whether advancing my career or achieving personal goals is more important, I don’t know, but having made my decision, I will pursue it with utmost passion and hope for the best. 
* OK, so Outlook says the email is 13 KB, but ignoring the overhead and the included previous email, the email is actually 1.3 KB.
Holy Crashes Batman
Taiwan has a lot of public signs that depend on XP machines to drive the displays. Here’s some public computer signs that crashed which I just so happened to be next to take an embarrassing picture of. 
| There are many of this type of signage along a very popular road in Taipei. I just happened to be walking by this one when it was malfunctioning. You can tell it’s Windows as the error says something in Chinese followed by Windows\System32\Drivers\Ntfs.sys |  |
| Taipei’s rapid transit is called the MRT. All the MRT stations have plasma widescreens to show the status of the next train along with some promotional material. Unfortunately this one doesn’t seem to be cooperating. You can clearly see the XP desktop here. Looks to be the English version of Windows too. This sign crashed at the Taipei Main Station, the central hub for all transportation in Taipei. |  |
| Last but not least, it can’t get more embarrassing than this. This is a gargantuan sign at a very busy street intersection. Instead of showing the normal advertisement, it’s showing some application that drives the huge display. I watched it for a few seconds while the operator was clicking around trying to get the sign up and running again. Here’s a picture of application the operator was clicking around around while trying to fix the display. |  |
Gotta love these public computer crashes!
Overcoming Shyness
Posted by eric in Commentary on October 31st, 2007
After reading this excellent article, I was inspired to reflect upon my own recent experiences on this topic. I used to be known as the shy person. Normally I would shy away from social gatherings and stay at home to work on my computer. However, recent changes in my life have inspired me to change my ways after recognizing the fallacy of my ways.
First off let me say I am by no means an expert on this topic. I am also not saying I’m completely “cured” either. This post is only my reflection upon my recent experiences in trying to overcome this “problem”.
The first step is to recognize by yourself that being shy is a problem. Having other people tell you will not work. You need the inspiration to come from within. Personally, I knew being shy was a problem for many years and many people have urged me to change, but it was only the last few weeks that I came to the conclusion that I must change myself in order to transcend to the next level of life.
Once you’ve realized that being shy is a problem, here’s what I consider are the most important factors to overcoming shyness:
- Have an encouraging set of friends. This might be a challenge for a shy person since this involves getting to know people. You can look internally within your family/relatives. If no one there can help you, then you can try meeting new friends at places where people congregate: the gym, church, and school to name a few. For me, I was lucky that fate led me to the group of classmates here at NTNU. My classmates here have taken on this role for me, and they were the ones who kick started my recent transformation. For this I’m eternally grateful to them.
- Let your guard down. When among friends, it’s OK to let your guard down. You must do this in order to try new things. If you’re stubborn on your refusing to try new things, you will never get to experience new things. Never drank before? Do it when you’re with friends. Never danced before? Let your friends show you the moves. Part of overcoming shyness is trying out new things and doing this with friends is the best and safest way to do it. Your friends will take care of you and will support you so it’s OK to let your guard down to try out new stuff.
- On your quest to become more social, you will make mistakes along the way. As the article says, don’t fixate on your blunders. After you realize something went wrong, consider the cause, consider how not to make the same mistake again, then move on. Shy people tend to be introverted, and introverted people tend to think about everything too much. So it’s natural for you to think way too much about something. Thinking about your mistakes too much will only exacerbate the feeling and make you feel worse, eventually causing you to give up your quest and cause you to lose everything that you’ve gained.
With these tips in mind, I’ve been successfully transforming myself into a more social person and meeting lots of new people. So far I’m having lots of success and with friends who support me, it’s been a lot of fun. Even though I missed out on so many years in the past, with another new year ahead, I’m enthusiastically looking forward to what’s upcoming.
Happy Birthday to Me
Posted by eric in Miscellaneous on October 22nd, 2007
Normally I ignore my birthdays. When I was younger, I wanted to get older. Now that I’m older, I want to be younger. Sigh.. will we ever be happy in life?
Well this has been a significant year to me because of the recent changes in my life. If you’ve seen any of my past entries, you might have read about a small trip I took to Taiwan. Lately I’ve been experiencing a personality change as well (upcoming in a future post). Collectively, all these experiences have changed me in the last few months making me look forward toward the next year with eager anticipation. I haven’t felt this way in a long time so I wanted to mark this occasion here.
So what’s the lesson I learned? The adage of the day is “change is good” in your life. If you feel like you’re in a rut, do something different. It will make you feel a lot better.
So, Happy Birthday to Me! 
Watching a random user use Vista
Posted by eric in Programming, Software on October 9th, 2007
I was sitting in the library earlier today when I noticed someone sitting in front of me with her computer on. While laptops in the library are commonplace these days, what was especially interesting about her computer was that it was running Vista. So out of curiosity, I decided to watch Jane Doe for a few minutes to see what her experience with Vista was like (Yes I’m nosy, but this is for an educational experiment. 
And if you’re the person who I was watching, I apologize. Don’t worry, I was too far to see anything meaningful! ).
Jane had a Sony laptop running Vista Premium. Let’s see what she was doing while I was watching:
1. Getting Connected
Shi Da (師大) has a wireless network across campus. The first thing I saw Jane do was try to get connected to the wireless network. She stayed on the wireless network dialog for a while (probably a good 2 minutes), which I’m guessing because the connection wasn’t connecting.
2. Media Player
After getting connected, she restored an already open Windows Media Player window which means she was listening to music. I noticed headphones on so that seemed like a valid assumption.
3. Messenger
Of course who doesn’t use IM these days? She popped open MSN messenger next to check on who’s online… well that was the original intention at least. The window stopped functioning during login and then the crashed dialog opened up showing the window had stopped functioning. I couldn’t see which option she clicked, but the progress bar started going afterwards.
4. Browser
Jane opened up an Internet Explorer window, but unfortunately this one also stopped functioning. She typed, clicked on the window without any response. Then the crashed dialog opened up showing the window stopped accepting input from the user. She clicked it and the progress bar started again.
5. Waiting
She went back to her studies while waiting for the close dialog to turn off. About 3 minutes later they finally closed. She opened up another browser window and this time no crashes. She typed in Facebook’s URL and started checking someone’s profile (couldn’t see from where I was sitting).
6. Torrents
She opened up another browser and this time opened up a torrent tracking site. She downloaded a torrent and started downloading some file (once again, couldn’t see exactly from where I was sitting).
7. Switching back and forth
For the next few minutes, Jane switched back from Facebook, to Media Player, torrent status, and back to Facebook.
8. Back to networking
About 5 minutes later, the browser stopped loading web pages. So she went back to the wireless network dialog to check on the network status. About 30 seconds later, the network was back up so she went back to Facebook.
At this point, I stopped watching as she was just browsing Facebook now.
One question comes into mind: did she use any of the “new” features of Vista? Absolutely not. Everything that I watched her do on her computer, XP could have handled perfectly if not better than the Vista equivalents. For example, the sidebar was left in the default state with the picture and clock gadget. The sidebar was left uncustomized and was just sitting there taking up screen real estate. Flip3D? Might as well not exist as she used the task bar to change windows.
So what did I learn from watching this random computer user using her computer running Vista for a couple of minutes? I learned that the flashy Vista or the new UI means nothing to the user. The user only wants to be able to accomplish a task: chat, read web sites, listen to music, …. While I learned this lesson previously through my past work experience, watching this random user today just reinforced this idea in my mind. I believe all software developers should watch a user use a computer before programming professionally. Of course I mean a “typical” user, not your project partner who’s hacking away at a bash script. Watching a user gives a lot of insight into how to design software for the user and not for the programmer.
Taiwan’s Weather
What can I say about Taiwan’s weather? I come from California, the west coast of the United States, where the weather is a nice 80+ degree Fahrenheit (29+ Celsius) in Los Angeles and a brisk 65+ degrees (18+ C) in San Francisco. Precipitation rarely occurs in Los Angeles while it occurs regularly around the winter/spring season in San Francisco.
Taiwan on the other hand is a tropical island surrounded on all 4 sides by the Pacific ocean. The temperature averages around 30-35 degrees Celsius (86 F – 95 F) and rains just about every other day. I don’t think I’ve gone a week yet without it raining at least once during the week. Since Taiwan is such a small island surrounded by the vast ocean, you can probably guess the weather here is completely dominated by what the ocean pumps out.
Not only is it hot and precipitation nearly constantly flowing, the high humidity is what I hate the most about Taiwan’s weather. The humidity makes it such that once you step outside, you’ll be sweating all over. Once you get back inside with the AC, you’ll develop a sticky feeling with the sweat drying up on your back.
The humidity not only makes it difficult to stay dry, but it also causes food to spoil at an exponential rate. If you don’t finish any food, you better stick it in the fridge immediately. Otherwise, you’ll start to notice little flies buzzing around and probably mold growing by the time you wake up the next day. Even dry crackers that are not properly enclosed will rot as one of my school mates here can attest to.
Back onto the topic of precipitation, rain occurs so often and at a specific time that there’s even a special name for the rain: Afternoon Thunderstorms, or in Chinese 午後雷陣雨. The day might start out a sunny 32 degrees, but once 1:00 pm rolls around, the clouds would drift in bringing a downpour for a few hours before leaving, letting the sun make a come back before nightfall.
Even though it constantly rains, that is not the most dangerous weather around. Rain is a small matter compared to the typhoons that come here quite frequently. On my 7th week here in Taiwan at this posting time, I’ve seen 2 typhoons (one on the day I arrived, another a few weeks ago) with a 3rd coming in less than 24 hours. What’s a typhoon? I’m not really sure how it compares to hurricanes (which is what we typically hear about in the states). In fact wikipedia even combines searches for both keywords into a single article: Tropical cyclone, which leads me to believe they are the same phenomenon. In any case, typhoons sometimes causes all businesses and schools to take a break when it passes by if it’s considered especially strong. Otherwise daily life continues on without a hitch.
You would think Taiwan’s weather in all the cities would be pretty much the same since Taiwan is such a small island right? I was shocked to find out in fact it is quite different. There could be torrential rainfall in Taipei, while it’s blazing hot 25 miles (40 km) away in Yilan City. Weird, but I’ve seen it with my own eyes so I know it’s true.
So what have I learned these past few weeks living here in Taiwan? Mainly that Taiwan is completely different from where I grew up in California. While the humidity and constant rain gets annoying, the clouds in the sky can lead to some great photo opportunities, such as this:
As I’ve come here to learn more about Chinese culture, I’ve accepted Taiwan’s weather as just another part of the Taiwanese culture. For anyone coming to visit Taiwan, hope this weather guide helps you plan on what to expect.
Halo 3 Launch at the Taipei Main Station
With the pre-launch marketing I posted about the other day, I noticed this yesterday right outside Taipei Main Station (named so because this stop is where all forms of transportation intersect in Taipei):
Yep. Only a multi-billion dollar company like Microsoft with unlimited amounts of cash can launch a game everywhere across the world all at the same time.
The stage shown above just repeated the Halo 3 trailer over and over. Nothing live or I might have missed it.
I was really disappointed with the swag. There wasn’t anything free. Once you buy a copy of the game, then you get a crappy bag with one of those imprinted pictures that look like it will fade in 3 washes.
And now for more pictures of the Taipei launch:
And yes, the main station always has horrible traffic as you see in the pictures above.
Preparing for Halo 3
There’s been lots of publicity in how much marketing money Microsoft is pumping into Halo 3. With the game being only 3 days away, the mothership is doing everything to make you buy this game. This is even apparent with all the marketing blitz here in Taiwan. I can only imagine what the marketing is like back in the states.
Here are some picture of Microsoft’s hard earned money at work here in Taiwan’s Taipei Main Station underground shopping mall when I was walking through there earlier today.
Nokia’s Crappy Warranty
Posted by eric in Commentary, Gadgets on November 8th, 2007
A couple of weeks ago, my expensive Nokia N95’s backlight battery decided to die on me. Why, I have no idea. Just one day it stopped working. Since I am currently traveling and not at home (in the U.S. where I purchased the phone), I wanted to find a local Nokia support center in order to get my phone fixed. Since Nokia is a global company, I didn’t think this was a problem. However, as it turns out, I walked up to the counter and the person told me that since my phone was purchased in the states, they would not honor the 1 year warranty BY NOKIA. “Aren’t you Nokia?!?” I said. “Yes, but we are Taiwan’s division and we don’t support the warranty by the U.S. You will have to ship your phone to the U.S. if you want to use the warranty.”
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but a company that markets GLOBAL phones does not have a GLOBAL WARRANTY policy?!? A company that wants you to travel with their phones won’t support the phone if it breaks outside of the country you purchased the phone?!? Does anyone else besides me think there’s something wrong with this concept?
So I tried contacting Nokia U.S.A. to get support. My first attempt at calling, no one picked up. So I tried to send an email. I got the typical response that Nokia received my email and would respond in 24 hours. A day later, no response, a week later, still no response.
Finally I gave up and just decided to pay for the fix locally here. Since the time and effort, not to mention the shipping, will cost just as much, if not more to ship back to the states.
Companies need to get it straight. If you’re going to market yourself as a global company and create a global device, you better support your own product globally! Nokia gets an A grade for technological superiority, but an F for one of the worst support I’ve ever experienced.
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