Am I on the Cover?

I guess the white MCS in the middle could very possibly be mine. This is the recently-updated page of the Big MINI Day event, which I went in May 2006 and was (probably) the only one pepper-white /black roof MCS without any mods, assuming they Photoshoped off the license plates.

Galileo Hacked

Jason Koski/University Photography

Mark Psiaki, left, professor of mechanical andaerospace engineering, hooks up an experimental GPS/Galileo digitalstorage receiver and patch antenna with the assistance of graduatestudents Todd Humphreys, center, and Shan Mohiuddin in Rhodes Hall. Copyright © Cornell University

July 7, 2006

Cornell sleuths crack secret codes of Europe's Galileo satellite

By Thomas Oberst

Members of Cornell's Global Positioning System (GPS) Laboratory havecracked the so-called pseudo random number (PRN) codes of Europe'sfirst global navigation satellite, despite efforts to keep the codessecret. That means free access for consumers who use navigation devices-- including handheld receivers and systems installed in vehicles --that need PRNs to listen to satellites.

July 7th TH

Thunderhill 7/7/06 Driver List
NO	FIRST_NAME	LAST_NAME	GROUP	YEAR	MAKE_MODEL	COLOR
1	George	A	Instructor	1998	Mazda Miata	Red
2	Hsin	F	Instructor	2006	Acura TSX	White
3	George	F	Instructor	1997	Mazda Miata	Green
4	Andrie	H	Instructor	TBD	TBD	TBD
5	Peter	H	Instructor	2003	BMW 330i	Red
6	John	H	Instructor	2006	Porsche Cayman S	Black
7	Jay	H	Instructor	1997	BMW M3	Black
8	Travis	L	Instructor	2000	Porsche 911	Black
9	Philip	L	Instructor	2005	Lancer Evolution	Silver
10	Allen	L	Instructor	TBD	TBD	TBD
11	Dave	M	Instructor	1997	BMW M3	Silver
12	Steven	N	Instructor	2001	VW GTI 1.8T	Silver
13	Bob	P	Instructor	1997	Mazda Miata	Red
14	Matt	R	Instructor	TBD	TBD	TBD
15	Jared	R	Instructor	2002	Corvette Z06	Silver
16	Vanessa	S	Instructor	2002	Subaru Impreza WRX	Blue
17	Jim	B	Red	1993	BMW 325is	White
18	Seth	B	Red	2005	Porsche 911 GT3	Grey
19	Jeff	B	Red	1997	BMW M3	Blue
20	Dick	C	Red	1988	BMW M3	White
21	Todd	F	Red	2002	Honda S2000	Silver
22	Benjamin	H	Red	1997	BMW M3	Blue
23	Chris	L	Red	1992	Porsche 968	Black
24	Ron	M	Red	2000	Porsche Boxster	Black
25	Robert	O	Red	1969	Chevy Camaro	Grey
26	Elmer	S	Red	2002	Corvette Z06	Silver
27	Christopher	S	Red	2001	Acura Integra	Silver
28	Marco	S	Red	1998	BMW M3	Silver
29	Raza	U	Red	1998	BMW M3	White
30	James	B	Yellow	1995	Honda Civic CX	White
31	Jordan	B	Yellow	2004	Audi S4	Blue
32	Nathan	B	Yellow	1975	Porsche 914-4	Red
33	Joseph	C	Yellow	1987	Porsche 944	Blue
34	Albert	C	Yellow	1972	Porsche 914	Blue
35	Bob	D	Yellow	2003	Radical SR3	Red
36	Ted	F	Yellow	1989	Porsche 911	Silver
37	Barry	F	Yellow	2005	Audi S4	Grey
38	Tim	G	Yellow	1997	BMW M3	Silver
39	Gabriele	G	Yellow	1999	BMW M3	Red
40	Steve	K	Yellow	2003	Mitsubishi Lancer Evo	Silver
41	David	L	Yellow	2003	BMW M3	Red
42	Tsalani	L	Yellow	2006	VW GTI	Black
43	Brian	S	Yellow	2004	Audi S4	Blue
44	Hung	V	Yellow	1998	Acura Integra	White
45	Matthew	B	Green	1985	Ford Mustang	Silver
46	Mike	B	Green	1991	BMW M5	Silver
47	Edmund	E	Green	1993	Ferrari 348/TB	Red
48	Roger	E	Green	1986	Porsche 944 Turbo	Red
49	Gene	G	Green	2003	Corvette Z06	Blue
50	Eric	G	Green	2004	Honda S2000	Silver
51	Miao	H	Green	2005	MINI Cooper S	White
52	Christy	H	Green	1990	BMW 325i	Silver
53	Thomas	H	Green	1998	BMW M3	Blue
54	Frank	J	Green	2003	Honda S2000	Red
55	Yash	K	Green	1995	Chevy Corvette	Red
56	Younggon Eric	K	Green	2003	Mitsubishi Lancer Evo	Silver
57	Shelliam	L	Green	2004	Subaru WRX Sti	Blue
58	Frank	M	Green	2000	Subaru RS	White
59	Richard	V	Green	1995	BMW M3	Black
60	Cindy	W	Green	1988	BMW M3	White
61	Cindy	W	Green	1988	BMW M3	White

The End of Formula1

Micros**t to Supply Electronics to Formula 1

http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/07/05/2357227.shtml

"... begginning in 2008, Micros**t will be the sole supplier of Engine Control Units to Formula 1..."

By year 2009, Formula 1 will cease to exist in motorsport, because 90% of drivers will be killed and the rest 10% sued by M$ for using illegal copies of software from their teammates.

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Fyre It Up

x' = sin(a * y) - cos(b * x)
y' = sin(c * x) - cos(d * y)

I Knew This Is Going To Make International News

Shanghai's signature knock-off market shuts doors

Fri June 30, 2006 11:51 AM ET SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Xiangyang Road Fashion and Gift Market, Shanghai's most famous street market for cheap imitation goods, was shutting up shop Friday, the victim of city government plans to redevelop the area. Stall owners said they had been told by authorities to vacate the area completely by late Friday night -- though some die-hard hawkers were merely moving operations to apartments in nearby residential buildings, and soliciting customers on the street. At its height, Xiangyang attracted thousands of foreign tourists and local residents to its cramped, muddy aisles. It offered ultra-cheap legitimate products -- clothes, sports equipment and shoes -- beside a wide range of counterfeit branded goods, from scarves and handbags to watches and pirated DVDs. Vendors said the business environment had worsened somewhat in recent months as China, under pressure from foreign trading partners, had taken sporadic steps to crack down on trademark violations. The redevelopment of the downtown Xiangyang area, which will include a metro line and possibly an up-market commercial project, sealed the market's fate.

A Few Things

1. Updating FC4 mysteriously solved the LCD display fubar problem.

2. Installed picasa and google earth.

3. Failed to run wmii

4. Found a nice image viewer: qiv

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Test from Flock

Can I blog from Flock now?

......

...

technorati tags:test

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MINI Turns One

One year of MINI :9

 

Fixing Strang FC 4 Display Glitch

Starting from the login screen, the entire display is fubar and pixes are mixed up at super low resolution 320X???... very scary because it looks like a broken display at the beginning.

typed login and password by memory and it actually logged me in. the mouse pointer is at the correct location on the LCD but the all the other contents are at super low resolution and as a result, convoluted. I managed to "feel" the location of an xterm terminal and did this:

su (be a little brave)
system-config-display --help
system-config-display --set-resolution=1024x768
system-config-display --reconfigure -v --noui
reboot

I have no idea what I was doing but that was all could try before attempting to re-install the entire system which is pretty much as bad as it could go assuming I do not have to replace the computer.

Fedora actually booted up and with an even scarier display, this time only part of the display is access able by the mouse pointer but I was able to login and the 1400-1050 display showed up except every has like 4 versions convoluted on the screen and again I had to find things through memory.

Good thing is I am able to use GUI mode of system-config-display and by selecting ATI Radeon M9 with generic LCD 1400x1050 and restart (logout/login) xserver, things seem to have come back to normal.

I have no idea what caused the glitch. I did update via yum and there is a new kernel (the third one). But I tried with all 3 of those and got the same scrambled display.

Hopefully I do not have to do this again. But I put this writeup somewhere other than my computer just in case.

20060204

Rained for the Entire Weekend, in CA :(

But did 100 miles anyway, in the storm ... ... totally different feeling.

Couldn't find a better chance to test the mood of DSG, especially when everyone else stays home ... well, sort of. Saw a black MCS, a white Z4 (top up, of coz) , 2 motorcycles and only 2 Ferraris.

My Wife Has Record at HomeDepot

During check-out, the guy asked for my home phone number and, guess what, it was already in the system, only with my wife's name on it. Pretty surprised...

yum

yum successfully installed the following, which I was not able to install from scratch:

mplayer
gaim
ntfs

The process is so simple that it is shocking, compared to the growing dependency requests which last forever in the configure-make-makeinstall or rpm way.

Another sign that things have improved over the years.

Fedora Core 4 on T41

Installing Linux on PC is no longer a daunting task, because after I had it working on my 1 year old T41, I do not really feel like wrting up some detailed installation notes. Fedora Core 4 pretty much works out of the box as installed from the 4 CD-ROMs or the 1 piece DVD. Ironically, the downloading took me longer.

Only a few tihinhs worth mentioning:

1. Intel® PRO/Wireless 2100 Driver for Linux

A year ago I was using LinuxAnt, a wrapper on top of the correspongin Window XP driver for the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 card. The installation was easy and the wrapper/driver is easy to use (through redhat-config-network) and stable. But the LinuxAnt wrapper is not free. After 30 days you need to buy a license although it is not expensive at all. I was screwed by someone and left the country. For the summer of 2004 I was pretty much on dial-up on the edge of my bed (see old posts dated last summer) and WLAN was not necessary so I did not bother to pay for the driver.

After this much time, things have improved. There is a completely open source solution: Intel® PRO/Wireless 2100 Driver for Linux, following the installation guide included in the download, it was relatively easy. The prosess did not exactly match the descriptions, but again I managed to get it working with the system-config-network utility, even encryption works fine and the wireless link is automatically established on every reboot despite an irritating error message on system startup (something about frequency, it does not matter).

2. Screen resolution.

Somehow the same screen does not as good in Linux as in OS X and Windows, it is always a bit blurry. Besides I was always a little worried while selection the display hardware type during installation. This time I was a bit brave and choose 1400x1050 on the IBM LCD (still selection generic LCD in installation) and it actually looks pretty good on KDE. One funny thing: GNOME desktop looks misplaced after I bumped up the resolution, changing configurations did not seem to help. One day I was bored and used my mouse to drag the task bars around the desktop ... ... After a few spins the problem is gone! The twisted screen corrects itself and everything comes back to normal! Now I have 1400x1050 on GNOME as well as in KDE. No extra configuration is needed.

Our Neighbour Has A New Baby!

Born Thursday, 18th. So small and cute :)
Now there are two babies in the neighbour yard.

Living with the MINI Cooper S Automatic

Living with the MINI Cooper S Automatic

Somebody did this write-up and saved me tons of typing. I have not finished reading the entire thing yet. But judging from his colour choice I must agree with him :DDD Anyway, I would prefer more time behind the wheel than the keyboard!

野百合也有春天……啊

……84号公路西向里废弃的农舍，在丛生的野草里边爬出那些花来，沿着木板墙往上生长，算不上协调，但是有生命力，总是好的。

回来的路上，就只想着肚皮，要吃烤肉了。

2005年8月6日。来自美国东西海岸几所大学的交大校友以及台湾同胞，海外侨胞们在半月湾。

世界很小啊

大学时的同学，千里迢迢找工作，结果一不留神，跟我工作的公司就在一条街上。布朗运动真神奇啊。

Little Kelvin Is Sick Today

When I came back from dinner, little Kelvin is gone! My neighbour took their 18-month Kelvin to the hospital after realizing that he is having a light fever in the late afternoon... It might have been the water spray in the morning, or simply too much fun in the yard throught the day.

Hope little Kelvin is fine :)

A Fun Run

It has been quite a while...since my lasgt post... All right, even the profile pages seems to have changes and all my "recent" posts are gone. A lot of things have happened and it could be the reasone of no posting (another reasone would be nothing really happened, which is not the case this time).

My wife can finally took over the Mini when she can drive herself to school every day. So I have the little machine for the weekend. One thing to do is to mount a video camera on it and take it to the moutains through 84 and 35 ... Unfortunately I cannot upload the videoS here ...

For the record, practically I was not actually speeding. According to the speedo in the videos, I was going 50-ish, around the limit.