| San Jose | New York | Amsterdam/Paris | Saigon | Tokyo | Sydney |
06/10/2008 - It's been a while since I updated my personal site. Job, personal life, etc. got in the way... You know how that is.
Anyway, I have been playing with blogging, it's probably easier to keep up-to-date than this site, which requires manual HTML hand editing.... yeah, so 20th century! :-)
So go ahead! Give my new blog http://blog.le.org site a try.
04/29/2007 - New Video On Demand (VOD) box from VUDU.... seem to be interesting.
Links from Gizmodo and NY Times about them.
04/05/06 - Mozilla's list of problematic extensions
Whoo Hoo!
08/23/06 - Updates on previous stuffs
I am now running Firefox v1.5.0.6. It seem to be much more stable, less crashes
:-). Actually more stable than IE. I've left it on for days without
crashing. It still eats memory, but not as much as before, and my tuning
(see tips below for how) seem to also helped.
Once again, I can't live without Session Manager (I used to use Session
Saver, but that seem to be not as stable, since I've switched to SM,
it seem to work better). The ability to save sessions, to be able to
re-open tabs or windows that I've accidentally closed, etc... is
wonderful!
Useful link. California Megan's
Law web site - database of Registered Sex Offender (in California).
03/17/06 - Today's RANT! :-)
Firefox.... what can I say about it. I love it... I hate it! Grrrrr!
Piece of crap! ;-)
There are many things to like about Firefox, the tab features alone is well worth it. I usually have 2 Firefox windows with around 40-50 tabs each. If I was still using MSIE, I'd drown in all the IE windows, not to speak of my laptop would keel over from the load!
There are many things to not like about Firefox, the latest version of Firefox, version 1.5.0.1. It eats more memory, seem slower, and crashes more often than the previous version 1.0.7. Besides the mysterious and random crashes, it eats memory! Cripes, I have 1GB of RAM in my laptop! What's wrong with this picture?!?
At least I've found out how to lessen the amount of memory it uses, see below for the tweaks. But the crashes and the freezes while downloading got my blood pressure higher than I like!
For the crashes, I've found that the Session Manager plug-in saved my bacon many times. I highly recommend this plug-in. It constantly save the session you are using, so after a crash, you can restart Firefox and get all your windows and tabs back to exactly where you were before. You can also take snapshot of a session if you want to get back to it later.
As for freezes while downloading, I have not found a fix yet. This did not happen until version 1.5 and later. What I mean is that when I download a file from a web site, EVERY FREAKING THING freezes! I can move the mouse, but clicking on anything does not work until after the download is completed! For large download, there are a few seconds here and there where I can get Firefox to accept my mouse click and keyboard typing, but overall, it is as if the damn thing froze up! At the end, when the download status shows 100%, there is yet another freeze, I just have to sit and wait until it is done. More than once, I've closed the wrong window, tab to or type something into the wrong place!!!
ARRRRRGGGGG!!!! Piece of crap! There! I feel much better! :-)
I am starting to think about trying Opera, since it supports tab browsing and is supposed to be much more stable than Firefox. I'll have more to report on this.
02/22/2006 - Circuit City lied about their so-called "Price Protection". I just had a very frustrating discussion with their salesperson. Two weeks ago, I purchased an MP3 CD player for $29.99 at Circuit City. Today, I saw in the paper that Frys is selling the same model for $19.99 after Instant Gift Rebate, e.g. they take the $10 off at register and you pay $19.99 before tax.
Circuit City refused to honor their "Price Protection" because they said that this is a "rebate". Bullsh*t! They are playing with words. This is a price reduction at the counter. There is no rebate that I had to send in to get my money back.
CC just lost me as a customer. I am going to tell everyone I know to not buy from them again. They lied.
12/22/2005 - Stability problem in Firefox 1.5? I was experiencing random crashes after installing 1.5. It drove me up the wall! Luckily I had the SessionSaver exention installed. That allows me to restore the Firefox session I was in... and I have a lot, 2 windows with 20+ tabs in one, 30+ tabs in the other, opened at the same time. I'd hate to lose all that work.
After some searching around and seeing lots of other reports, I run into a possible explanation. Firefox 1.5 has new feature call bfcache (Back and Forward button caching), that speeds up the display of recently viewed Web pages. This of course eats up precious memory.
When I adjust the values associated with bfcache, my crashes stopped! Immediately! Wow! What a difference. I am sure there may be other factors, but bfcache has to be the biggest one causing me problems.
So, how do you adjust, and what do you adjust?
01/2006 - McAfee did came through and mailed my rebate check. I got a response to my complaint on their web site. OK, so they are not as evil as I thought :-).
12/2005 - This is something that got me a upset. I've been using McAfee antivirus for the past few years. I purchased a 3 users box from Amazon and dutifully filled out all the rebate forms (2 of them) and sent in all the required proofs. Weeks later, they sent me an email saying it was invalid!!!! I've already sent in the proof (proof of purchase cut out) and the other rebate requires the old CDROM of previous version.
I went on McAfee web site to check on the rebate status and send an email to complain. Their web mail form only listed VirusScan version 7.0 as the latest. The version I purchased was version 10.0!!!! See the problem? An antivirus company that is at least 3 versions behind on their web site. Leads one to suspect how good they are at keeping their antivirus dat files updated!
I will never buy McAfee again, and will recommend against it to all my clients and anyone else who asked my opinion!
11/2005 - This is kinda old news, but Slashdot has a mention about it. And I thought it's pretty darn funny, just had to share it.
Apparently, back in 2002, Unisys and Microsoft decided to create an Ad campaign about how bad Unix is, and that switching to Windows is the solution. They put up a web site called "We Have A Way Out". It was originally running on FreeBSD+Apache.... :-)... and of course, people figure that out... so embarrassed Unisys and Microsoft switched it to Windows and IIS... but did not secure the server...
Within short order, script kiddies hacked into it and had fun.... for several hours, till the site got taken down...
The moral of the story? Windows might be easy to use... for home users and office workers... but no IT dept in their right mind would let office workers setup their own Windows desktop. Same for setting up _REAL_ servers. It still take skills, experience and knowledge to properly setup and maintain servers, ANY servers. Windows, UNIX, Linux, whatever. Unisys and Microsoft were practicing deceptive advertising in implying that Windows is soo easy, it does not need proper care and feeding... by saying that it's a point and shoot.... yeah, shoot your own foot maybe! ;-)
There is no such thing as FREE LUNCH.
9/2005 - Katrina Help Resources and the Vietnamese version.
Microsoft "commissioned" a bunch of studies that purportedly shows Linux costing more than Windows in the enterprise, has higher TCO, etc...
We all know how "scientifically" valid studies that was paid for by a vendor to show how much better their product is.... heh, about as much as theories that pigs can fly...
Novell decided to publish a rebuttal to MS's lies. The rebuttal is here.
This page seem to crash IE6. Don't click unless you want to to crash your browser.
This page 2 seem to crash IE6. Don't click unless you want to to crash your browser.
7/28/04 - If you are truly concerned about protecting your privacy,
consider learning more about how to protect it.
A good place is here.
6/27/2004 - Go see the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 if you haven't. Great movie!
6/24/2004 - *NEW* - The MediaMVP can now play DivX!!! Yeah! I am set! No more having to convert DivX to MPEG first! Well, MediaMVP software will do it (transcode) for me, but on-the-fly... but that's what computers are for, make 'em do the work.
3/2/2004 - Fun new toy I picked up is Hauppage MediaMVP.
A neat little gadget, the MediaMVP. List price is around $100, Buy.com had it on sale for $89 and there was a $20 rebate. It's a tiny little box, size of a 3.5" HD. Comes with an IR remote control. You plug it in to your TV (or stereo system) with left/right audio and either composite or S-Video outputs. Connect MediaMVP to your network (wired or wireless) 10/100 ethernet. Install software on your PC, and now you can listen to MP3, watch MPEG-1 or MPEG-2, look at JPEG/GIF pictures, etc. Very easy to setup. FYI - the software is to turn your PC into a file/movie server for the MediaMVP.
I installed the sw on my laptop, connect to my network via WiFi wireless. It work very well streaming MP3s and all the mpegs movies I've ripped onto my hard disk. Very easy to use, my 5 year old figured it out in minutes.
MediaMVP is Linux based, running on PowerPC chip, has hardware MPEG decoder.
7/16/2003 - Ok, so I've been neglecting my web site again. There's more to life than updating website ya know ;-). I've been remodeling various parts of my house. Just got done with my bathroom, I'll post pictures later. Next is to do the roof, nah, I am not going to do all of it myself. It's currently woodshake and I am going to replace it with composition shingles. I am just going to strip the old roof off and put on plywood sheeting. The roofers will do the rest of the work. This saves me a couple thousand bucks, so why not?
2/18/2003 - Not really recent, I've been playing with this for a while... but anyway, I am talking about my PS2... and its mod chip. A mod chip allows the PS2 to play foreign releases (Japanese, European, etc.) games on a US PS2 -- and vice versa. It also allows you to make backup copies of your original PS2 games, and then play the backups. That let's you put your precious orig CDs/DVDs in a safe place (yes, I've had a couple of my game disks scratched by my overactive son... for some strange reasons, he likes to stand on the disks and spin.... yike!).
Of course, I am sure you can also see the potentials by now... of playing backup copies that others made of their games... I'll leave it at that.
There are a couples places that I have found to be very useful when I was researching into this area/topic. I'll post them when I get time.
01/03/2002 - Got some cool new toys for Christmas? Having problem setting it up? :-) I'll trade you my services for... make an offer. Email, phone or onsite services. We can discuss what your needs are. I have need for handyman to do work on my bathroom. Contact me at (Tin). Specializing in PCs, network security and WLAN (802.11 a/b/g).
11/20/2002 - Latest hobby is hacking my TiVo series2 SA (Stand Alone) box. Here is some links that I've collected. TiVo
3/25/2002 - One of my hobby is Information Security, so I have just added a section for it on my site.
3/20/2002 - I've been watching Atlantis: The Lost Empire. I love animation... always had, always will... just a kid at heart... or is that a geek? hmmm....
02/06/2002 - Since I am from Salt Lake City/Utah... here are some pictures that was sent to me by my family of the preparation in SLC for the 2002 Winter Olympics.
11/09/01 - Who's that knocking at my door?!
Pesky worms! heh!
9/17/01 - ...I am not sure what to say after last week's events.... Things has certain changed, we are now entering a new era... for good or bad.
7/27/01 - Yes, yes, yes. I know I said 4 months ago that I was updating my site... So I lied! ;-).
3/9/01 - I am in the process of redesigning and updating my web site. It's getting too disorganized and stale.
Some of my social contribution: No Nike and Help Samoa Workers.
I've been working on wireless applications, as you can tell from my wireless link.
In the process, I managed to acquired a number of wireless gear to play with - such as - a Motorola GSM Tri-band P7389, a Nokia 7190 (US version of Europe 7110), a Samsung SCH3500, a RIM 857, a Palm Vx with Omnisky CDPD Omnitell wireless modem, a Palm VIIx with BellSouth Mobitex service, a RIM 957 PDA (BellSouth CDPD), a NetBlaster Wireless LAN card and basestation (it's proprietary 2.4Ghz and 2Mbps theoretical speed, although I get around 900kbps max), and will be buying Aironet/Cisco 802.11b 11Mbps/22Mbps gear soon.
I have also got my hand on eval copy of Nokia WAP v1.1 gateway, WAPlite WAP gateway, the open-sourced Kannel WAP/SMS gateway, managed to play with Peramon WAP gateway, etc...
As time permit, I am going to be putting up notes on how my experiences with these gears go, what kinds of things I am doing with them, etc. I will also have HOWTOs on how to set them up, find services, write apps for them.
A verrrrry good question! :-)
I will let my experiences speak for itself....
I have been "playing" with computers and network since 1978. Back then, it was Teletype and S-100 bus IMSAI computer. High-speed modems meant 110 baud, which was an improvement compared to baudot (at the glacial speed of 50). My first experiences were with a programmable calculator.... and a punch card reader (KSR33)... the less said the better :-)
My networking and system experiences range from early experiences playing with the original ARPANET at BYU and later at University of Utah, to PC based BBS. I run the first Opus/Fido node in the Salt Lake City/Utah area (node 15:2).
I have worked or consulted for clients ranging from American Express, GTE, SGI, Unisys, SunSoft to Sony and many others.
As techno-nerd :-), my interests and experiences are wide ranging. I have worked with/as network hardware, telephone switches, routers, bridges, wires and cables, janitor, short order cook, to software involving electronic financial transactions, ECAD/CAE (schematic layout, simulation, tests), systems benchmarking, realtime graphics and databases to kernel and OS work.
Meaning, things, areas, subject matters that caught my current fancy. Some have not been updated for a while... I lose interest....
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Various and sundries from my data vault... I told you my interests are eclectic! Actually, there are many more items I have collected but don't have the time to put up...
Latest GPG pubkey, please use this. It supercedes all other ones that I've used.
GPG fingerprint = 3929 0B74 CB08 7C06 5CCD EBAF E916 1298 0A42 14F2
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Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)
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CtGDdLML0kxEw8v8hatOAKDGhgHXWcsG2ynUPqfD5adEC4WIMQ==
=D47K
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----Tin "Tin Man" Le / tin@le.org
Last Updated: $Date: 2007/04/29 23:03:26 $