iPhoto 09 has been plagued by performance issues. One of the most annoying ones is the memory leak problem in slideshow mode. I used System Monitor and have seen memory footprint steadily grew from 200MB to 1.2GB while playing an endless loop of video files.
Last weekend Apple released a patch that finally fixed this problem. This feels great and we can now enjoy family video clips for as long as they want now.
It saddens me greatly to learn a couple weeks ago after my travel that Maxine has passed away. It’s been a grave possibility ever since she was hospitalized a short while ago (see my previous post), but it still felt so sudden and unexpected.
It is also moments like this that makes us contemplate our lives on this planet – how do we take full advantage of it while we are still able, how do we spread the love to others in our lives. Maxine sets a great example for us to follow: always love what you have, love your friends and family, enjoy life fully, and learn as much about life as possible.
You will be deeply missed.
By now, Google’s announcement to exit China market if the Chinese government doesn’t change their censorship policy has been discussed ad nauseam. The limited attention span of people also have shifted towards some real disasters in the world – like the Haiti earthquake. So what will Google China do? Here is my prediction.
Google will drag this out silently for a couple of weeks for good measure. Then it will post another blog, saying the following:
“After our announcement posted on Jan 12th, we have received a tremendous out-pouring of support from citizens and friends in US and especially in China. People have said XYZ and ZYX, …. they have done YYY and ZZZ and truly amazingly loyal to the Google brand and what it stands for. After some soul searching at the US executive office, we realized that our mission is to help the internet become a better place by organizing the world’s information. It will be a tragic setback if we give up that effort in the world largest internet market.
“In the meantime, we have held several open and candid conversations with government officials in China. We have achieved mutual understanding of our disagreement. We have agreed to continue to build an open internet while under Chinese laws. As a result, we will make certain adjustment to our scope and business models in the China market. We want to balance the importance of continue to help build the internet market in China and the importance of freedom of speech. But we will not give up one of the most important market in the world.”
In other words, show is over, back to business now.
I watched Invictus and Avatar this weekend. Very different but both are great movies.
Invictus is about how to heal old wounds. It takes courage, wisdom and determination. The nuance shown in the process of change is great to watch and appreciate. It wouldn’t be a great movie if the story behind it wasn’t a true story. Of course, that is not to say the presentation is sub-par in any shape or form. The pace of the movie is very nice, not rushed but always gripping.
Avatar on the other hand, is all about presentation. Completely 3D, extensive CGI. It is a beautiful story borrowing some bits and pieces from American Indians and modern day world-wide struggles. An entirely invented alien language and completely new alien world (Pandora) immersed you in a heightened sensory-overload experience. If you like Scifi movies, you’ll love this one.
Maxine and Don Huffman are both professors at Central College, Pella, Iowa. They are both very dedicated to education and especially cross border education. They have been using their own fund, time and other resources to promote the exchange scholars program between Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China and Central College since 1986.
They are big fans of the friendship between China and USA and have traveled extensively to China up until the last a couple years. In their senior ages, Maxine’s mobility becomes more limited and she has been mostly Pella bound recently.
Heading into the holiday season, Maxine unfortunately had a stroke after she fell at home. She is in stable condition while being treated at the Mercy hospital at Des Moines. Our prayers are with Don and Maxine. We hope Maxine will pull through and have a speedy and complete recovery.
Below are quoted from Zhejiang University website:
Maxine Huffman教授，长期以来致力于发展美中关系，发展美国中央大学（Central College）与浙江大学的校际合作交流，在她的积极努力下，美国中央大学与浙江大学自1986年起建立校际合作交流关系，中央大学英语系每年选派经验 丰富、学术地位高的专家来浙江大学任教，并使得我校多名英语教师在中央大学的工作学习中得到了业务提高，为我校的英语教学作出了巨大贡献。Maxine Huffman博士及其丈夫Don Huffman还经常在中央大学举行各种各样的专题讲座，介绍中国文化，让更多的美国朋友了解中国，成为中西文化的使者，中美两国人民友谊的桥梁。Maxine Huffman博士业务能力强，教学工作认真负责，一丝不苟，赢得了全体师生的好评。她曾多次受聘来浙江大学任教，所教授的课程包括英语语言学、英美文 学、英语写作、英语口语等，她所教授的课程内容丰富，形式多样，生动活泼。在课堂内外她始终把学生作为她的朋友，从学习、生活各个方面关心学生，成了学生 们的良师益友。在外语系组织的历次对外籍专家、教师的检查评估中她都获得一致的好评，学生们称赞她是他们所遇到过的最好的外籍专家。
Maxine Huffman博士始终如一地关心支持浙江大学外语系的发展，给外语系提出各种办学建议，并每年用自己的工资购买大量的书籍、资料寄给外语系资料室，为外 语系的资料室建设作出了巨大的贡献。外语系资料室为她设立了专柜，这些资料给外语系研究生、本科生的学位论文、毕业设计提供了大量有价值的素材。在他们夫 妇的影响下，他们的女儿也用自己的钱购买图书资料寄给外语系。
Maxine Huffman博士对中国大学英语教学也作出了巨大贡献。浙江大学外语系自1995年开始进行大学英语教学改革尝试，1997年学校正式立项进行教改，并 编写一套旨在培养学生提高综合应用能力的全新的大学英语教材。Maxine Huffman博士夫妇得知这一消息非常高兴，立即买了一台新的电脑，在国外帮助我们收集、编写大量时代气息浓、信息量大、语言规范、贴近学生日常生活的 材料，源源不断地发往中国，使教材编写工作进展顺利。
Windows 7 has been very robust for the last several weeks that I feel confident enough to push the performance boundary a little. I want to see how well Linux virtual machines (VM) runs on top of Win 7.
There are three popular choices to run VM on Windows 7: Virtual PC, VirtualBox and VMware Server.
Virtual PC is a free Windows update for Windows 7. It is intended to supply a Windows XP VM for legacy programs. I was able to boot and install Linux (Ubuntu 8.04) on it but couldn’t boot into the finished install at all.
VirtualBox (VBox) is an open source VM acquired by Sun. It is cross platform (OS X, Linux or Windows). VMWare Server(VMS) is the entry-level VM (freeware) from the virtualization powerhouse VMWare.
Both VBox and VMS install and run Linux VM successfully. Of the two, I feel VBox is more suitable for a desktop/laptop host environment because of its small memory footprint, nice “seamless mode” when guest and host apps run side by side and full snapshot capabilities. VMS is probably more suited for a server environment for its web-based remote management GUI. In my test VMS also has slightly better device drivers such as video that works more smoothly out of the box.
Some of the features VBox has are included in the VMWare Workstation version (or the VMWare Fusion for Mac OS X). It is not free though.
Finally got around to spend sometime in blogging again and did some upgrades. Now the Wordpress of this site is upgraded to the latest version: 2.8.6. I’ll say I’m quite impressed coming from the really old version (2.0?). The plugin management is significantly improved as is the entire admin console. Upgrading is a relatively painless process since there’s not too much customization in my Wordpress install.
I think for most people choosing the hosted version from Wordpress (or any other blog software) is the way to go. Upgrading happens behind the scene and you always have the latest greatest features and hand-holding. For me it is a choice to learn more about how things work behind the scene – it’s an extension of my day job. So I also upgraded the Google Analytics so that I have a better idea what the 20 people are reading about on my blog.
One thing broke was the Chinese display support. I had to make some changes after some online search and trial:
Using phpMyAdmin, select the database table “wp_post”, select “Structure”, edit “post_content” field. Change Collation to “utf8_unicode_ci” from “latin1_swedish_ci”.
The blue screen of death is no longer an issue after I caught up with all the system update patches. So far I really enjoyed my experience with Win 7, comparing to the Win XP it replaced and the Snow Leopard upgrade I still regretted. Maybe some of these new features are in Vista also, but I completely skipped the Vista experience like a bad TV show:
Small issues:
I just got my Windows 7 Ultimate as a holiday gift. Installed on a two-year-old notebook PC yesterday. The installation went very smoothly as I have a clean install. The PC had WinXP and Ubuntu dual-boot. I used GParted to easily removed and resized the Linux partitions. Then I instructed Windows 7 to take over the unpartitioned space.
Win7 rewrote the Linux boot manager (grub) with its own. It boots slightly slower than WinXP even though it is a new install while my WinXP had 2 year worth of junk on it. Win7 named its boot partition C Drive and the first partition D Drive. So if I like it, I can just use the WinXP partition as the data partition for Win7.
All the important drivers such as sound, video, printer, network and wireless worked out of the box. Office suite installed easily. So does Firefox and a few other essentials. Win7 networking worked well. I was able to join my office domain and setup exchange server connections fairly easily.
Today is a rude awakening when I got the first blue screen of death when it booted up in the morning. Still investigating…but I think I’ll be dual-booting WinXP Win7 for a while.
I’ve been quietly annoyed by Yahoo’s inability to filter out junk mails for months now. Why couldn’t they do as good a job as Gmail? Maybe they should outsource their search to someone else…wait, in fact they did.
Anyway, now I’ve encountered another downside of Yahoo’s horrible junk mail filter. I’ve ordered several books from Apple via iPhoto but never got the confirmation emails. After a few days just before I wanted to order again, I smarted up and checked the Yahoo spam folder. Sure enough, buried down deep in junk mails are the Apple receipts. How could something as popular as Apple online store receipts get recognized as junk email? It blows my mind. Maybe Yahoo should allow me to search the “junk” mail folder so that I can uncover these buried treasure easily. Currently it doesn’t.
Product suggestion to Yahoo email: since your junk mail filter sucks, maybe you should have folders and search/index functions built into the junk mail.