Distro Hopper

The good things about Linux are 1) free to use and open source 2) you hardly get bored because of a plethora of distributions. The word "distro hopper" is for the latter, and I am one of them. There are several features of distro hoppers:
1) one thing one must do in a *successful* day is to check the updates on distrowatch.com (I just put it into my google reader which makes it easier);
2) one has multiple computers with different distributions;
3) CD-R is in good demand
4) one likes computers, no matter how old it will be, since Linux can always have niches for grandpas (actually to make a grandpa on skate is one of the best things Linuxers can do);
5) one upgrades current system to the new release on the day it comes out;
6) one avoids using Windows in every occasion unless one has to;
7) one shows big respect to BSD users;
8) ......

But definitely Linux hoppers have to pay to get such boredom immunity. For example, I used to be a Ubuntu lover since it was the first distro I used in Linux world, and till now it still held the longest time record (half a year) I used a distro in one box before I burned everything out and tried another distro. I upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 the day it released, but it crashed after some days due to hardware incompatibility. After that I installed Debian (KDE). Debian was a classic grandpa that put stability in a very important place but the KDE 3 in it seemed so lame (I must admit that I am a Gnome user). So I switch to OpenSUSE 11.2 KDE. But it turned out that I was astonished by KDE4's extravaganza so later I switched back to Fedora 11. It went so well until last night, when I upgraded to Fedora 12 and the ATI video card just didn't work. I tried many solutions out there including the open source mesa driver but the most frequent answer I got back was: you are a little unlucky man.... it is the future work of Fedora 12 to improve the compatibility of ATI video card. It took me a whole day to decide to give up Fedora 12 (because Fedora took up the 2nd place in my distro ranking just next to Debian), and try OpenSUSE 11.1 Gnome, which came out earlier this year(OpenSUSE 11.2 has been there for weeks). And now everything worked out of box... It made me feel less great because I either did not do much work before it worked (OpenSUSE 11.1) or did much work but it just didn't work (Fedora 12)...

Maybe I will cease being a distro hopper temporarily, since I don't have too many boxes to play (right now I have Debian Lenny in my grandpa notebook, Fedora 11 in my netbook, OpenSUSE in my desktop and another Debian Lenny in the server). Hopefully one day I can handle them all, and match towards BSD family. One advice: resisting the temptation of upgrading to newest release... wait for some time and it will be much more stable and fun to play with.

Eight-leg robot

Amazing robot from Japan, which was part of the research on future transportation:

List of Professor-Approved Holidays

Now it seems partially true for me. lol

Sushi Robot from Japan

This is what I think engineering should be, interesting, amazing and practical.

Shame On Microsoft

A headline news in Unix-like community: Microsoft patents sudo. There were several blogs talking about it and here are some 1, 2, etc. Nearly each of them began with something like that: "What? Microsoft patents sudo?" When I first looked at it , I thought it was just a geeky joke. But eventually it turned out that I underestimate Microsoft's shameful sense of humor, mingled with the silliness of that patent office. Well, nothing more. Shame on Microsoft.

Last Day of October

And obviously it's Halloween again. Last year I went to a friend's house with striped shirts, telling them it was something called Doppler Effect. Since there were some engineers it was not such a terrible joke. We enjoyed kids' presence with "trick-or-treat", the instant of innocence which they might miss years later. After that we went to a bar and took some drinks, spotting various costumes including a "He-man" with a big sword in chilly open air. Halloween was always a perfect excuse for partying in stressful university life, and a good time to be awkward or insane since nobody could blame you for the appearance that could make you nuts in a classroom.

This year was a little different. The traditional "Trick-Or-Cheat In The Lawn" was moved to Oct 30 because of the coming football game in Oct 31 when Halloween should be. I was not well informed of that due to the tight agenda. Luckily I still get a reminder from someone about this change and went to the Lawn (without a camera :( ) In front of such a huge crowd of children dressed up with their imagination, at that moment I have way more reasons to love kids than in other time in my life. But today I chose to stay at home under the pressure of homework, class project and research project. This evening I intentionally moved my work place to the living room that was closer to the door, expecting some kids with loud "trick-or-cheat". But I only got one family with their six kids. I served my favorite chocolates and they scrabbled to their needs. "Thank you man. I really appreciate." The Dad said. And that was the end of story, and I came back to my CMOS circuit and futuristic (or unrealistic) devices simulation.

Two-condom combinational problem

Currently my daily job is mostly about technical or scientific thinking. Sometimes I have to think about too many problems at the same time and get really tired. For me there are two solution candidates available: one is to put aside everything and go to bed to have a good sleep, the other is to think ahout another different and interesting problem(s). Well, this time (actually last night) I chose the latter, by thinking an "interesting" problem posted by Emanuel Derman in his book My Life As A Quant (Wiley, 2004), i.e., two-condom combinational problem:

"Two (heterosexual) couples decide to have group sex with each other in all possible male-female combinations. They have only two condoms, and everyone is scared of catching some venereal disease. How can they manage four couplings with only two condoms? The first man puts on two condoms, one over the other, and then sleeps with the first woman. Only the outer surface of the outer condom and the inner surface of the inner one has had contact with any potentially infectious surface.The man removes the outer condom and sleeps with the second woman. The second man then dons the removed outer condom whose inner surface has until now had no contact with anyone’s skin, and sleeps with the first woman, whose only contact has thus far been with the outside of the same condom. Finally, the second man dons the second condom over the one he is already wearing, and sleeps with the second woman, who again only experiences a condom she has already touched."

I think that was brilliant! But he commented immediately after the solution: "It was impossible to resist the temptation to generalize to N couples." But he just abruptly discontinued and migrated into another topic. Well, I admit it was an attractive problem, so I spent some time thinking about it. Let's say there were N couples needing condoms with a minimum number of n, so the it became N-couple-n-condom combinational problem. Obviously n <= 2*N, since it absolutely worked if each male and female had his / her own condom. And n >= N, because when N=3, n=4, and n got larger as N increased. In my current solution n = (2*N-2) if following the algorithm Derman decribed, but indeed it might not be an optimized one. But it might contain another implication: in terms of resource efficiency, don't have large hetero- group sex......

Something From Seminar

It is not optional for grad students in the department. Usually it was not a comfortable experience sitting there and jotting down something for a destined report like a high school student. But this week it was grad school Q&A session. Professors became much nicer if they quit lecturing, as they talked about their own experiences as graduate students couples of years back and answered the questions. Some good comments:

1. In grad school people usually think years ahead and plan something on the way, like what they should fullfil and what kind of contribution they should make to that field. But it is *scary*. Because in research, which is something people are really talking about in grad school, is so unpredictable. People can easily mess up the mood in front of such a goal, or at least it may not be a enjoyable experience. So the other way to think about is that one is expected to solve unknown problems in grad school. If one puts the focus on the problem itself for a while, he may find the contribution when he looks back.

2. How to tell one is doing a good research? You are working on something that you feel yourself stupid... A problem that is known is not a good problem for researchers.

3. Time management is very very very crucial. It is both valid for engineering, and life itself. While there is no generic answer, one is expected to develop his own time managing skill.

There are some other suggestions but I especially find these three common yet useful. After spending a year here I can feel how true these three can be....

But personally speaking the salty wisdom above is mainly valid for grad school. It is not always true for others. There is a whole different world out there. Inside, we work hard and get paid miserably, which is nothing but pointless for a *successful* life prototype we believe we are after. It may not be so conceivable but in order to do well in grad school one has to obey the game rules and work hard. We make different choices, play with a little different rules and be responsible. That's it.

Nobel show committee's wise decision

Everyone has been talking about this year's Nobel prize since yesterday. Anything else was put aside from the news headlines after Barrack Obama became the peace prize winner. Well, he might be the one who would eventually win the prize, as many people said, it came too early, way too early before anything he worked on had effect. Here is the full citation for Obama's Nobel win (source : BBC). So the point was made clear: this prize could be won by the vision, but not necessarily the fact. But it could still be a wise decision since, hopefully, it might hold him from doing something unhappy to people...

Actually I was pleased to know another Chinese scientist Charles Kao (although he holds US nationality) in Hong Kong won the Nobel prize in physics because of the achievements in fiber optics. It was clear that he won with both vision and fact.

A shell compiler

This is what I find interesting today: shc (shell compiler), written by a guy called Francisco in Spain. It is an open-source program under BSD license, which I, as an open-source advocate, really appreciate. The tarball is here.

As everyone knows, Unix shell is an interpreted language. So it doesn't make any sense that there is something called "shell compiler". Actually it should be called shell "encryptor" instead of "compiler". This is how it work: when "compiling", it takes the original shell script and encrypts it to a binary; when you execute the binary, it decrypts and extracts the script out and run. So after "compiling", it looks like a binary but in fact the file is still dependent on the corresponding shell specified in the beginning of the script by token "#!", which should be available in system. And consequently, it will not enhance the executing speed of the original shell script.

The tarball comes with the source file of shc, the compiled shc, shc man page file and some other files which the binary shc is not dependent on. It is also quite straightforward to use:
shc -f my_shell_script
I just copy the shc binary into a directory in $PATH and add the man page of shc to /usr/share/man/man1 after gzipping it. Now I can use shc just like I use ls in my computer.

This is an interesting tool to play with.... and also a perfect tool for a lazy Unix user or administrator who tries to hide some privacy info in shell script away from others without going through the pain of rewriting the code in C and compile...

End of September

September looks very special to me since I fell in love with one of Green Day's greatest hits Wake me up when September ends several years ago. It is now still one of my favorite song and so does the album American Idiot. It is a simple song with short lyrics. Even after listening that song for hundreds or maybe thousands of times, I still don't know what it is about indeed. But I don't really care because that should be the beauty of it. I think that is the ultimate enjoyment when I am deeply touched with the original envelope kept intact. I would say it was the song escorting me through certain important period of my life. Now I am listening this song to bid farewell of September.....

Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
Wake me up when September ends
Like my father's come to pass
Seven years has gone so fast
Wake me up when September ends
Here comes the rain again
Falling from the stars
Drenched in my pain again
Becoming who we are
As my memory rests
But never forgets what I lost
Wake me up when September ends

Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
Wake me up when September ends
Ring out the bells again
Like we did when spring began
Wake me up when September ends
Here comes the rain again
Falling from the stars
Drenched in my pain again
Becoming who we are
As my memory rests
But never forgets what I lost
Wake me up when September ends
.......

Just come back from the job fair

There were many companies in the first day, and less in the second, and even less in the third which is today and the last day of annual job fair this year. But most of the companies were doing consulting. Even when I was talking to the staff of IBM they told me they were looking for IT consultants instead of engineers in this job fair. There, indeed, were some companies looking for real engineers. But just from the submarine-shaped goodies on the table and the launching missiles in the shiny screen, everyone knew it was not a place for non-citizens (besides, I dislike firearms...). So what was the point? Seeing I was going around the job fair, one of my officemates said this to me: "Don't worry. You deserve more than consultants." Another friend of mine in the group said there was no point to be in grad school if I was to be consultants (although I thought I was not) because the consultant was just a synonym of intellectual labor. So again, what's the point?

Recipe Exchange

I got an email from one friend of mine about an interesting program, called Recipe Exchange. The original email has been attached to the end of this entry, but the basic idea was to invite different people to give their recipes on how to do a quick meal. We are busy people with mundane needs, but unfortunately we usually don't have time for lunch in weekdays... I was in the middle of work this afternoon (though it is Sunday today!) but I was quickly drawn to this idea and jotted down something I thought might be helpful to others. Of course I also wish to get ideas from other but I haven't sent out the emails yet. I will do that later, but now I would like post my so-called *recipe* below:

Hi there,

I have something fancy-free but quick to do a lunch in busy hours, which you might already know:

1. Buy some lettuce, tomatoes, bread, mustard, black pepper, and most importantly, beef slices.
2. Grab two slices of bread every time, rinse the lettuce and slice the tomatoes. Lay one piece of bread in a plate and put lettuce, tomato slices and beef slices layer by layer in whatever sequence you like best, and don't forget to add some mustard and black pepper or whatever spice you like. I prefer beef slices instead of chicken or ham slices because I am a beef monster which is not necessarily true to my friends. I also prefer to have a lettuce-tomato-beef-tomato-

lettuce symmetric structure which doesn't have anything to do with my stomach but makes me feel less worse in front of it.
3. Viola... And look forward to dinner...

Bonus recipe:
1. Make good Five-fragrance Beef [dagger here].
2. Open a bottle of beer on your 21 year's birthday and enjoy the beef as dinner.
3. Make it up in a sunny weekend or casual weekday (hopefully) if you have missed (2).
4. It is awesome even if you are not a beef monster.
Dagger: It is a traditional Chinese way of making good beef. Different people have different ways of making it and some of the recipes are a little mystified because they are kept only within a family which does the business as a group in the market, just like Microsoft hawks proprietary software in the market but never give you the source code behind it. But my recipe is open-source: get some soy oil, a big chunk of beef (2 or 3 lb), red pepper, garlic, cinnamon, a fragrance leaf, fennel, star anise, black pepper, etc, and slice the beef into pieces you can afford and put everything into a high pressure cooker... after that you will get what the cooker gives to you. It is not so delicious as some mystified recipe but it is good enough to me.

Best,

--------------------------------

Original email from my friend:

Hi all,

You have been invited to be a part of a recipe exchange. I hope you will participate. Please send a recipe to the person whose name is in position 1 (even if you don't know them) and it should be something quick, easy and without rare ingredients. Actually, the best one is the one you know in your head and can type right now. Don't agonize over it, it is the one you make when you are short of time.

After you've sent your recipe to the person in position 1 below and only to that person, (you can cc me on it too if you want) copy this letter into a new email, move my name to the top and put your name in position 2. Only mine and your name should show when you send your email. Send BCC to 20 friends. If you cannot do this within 5 days, let me know so it will be fair to those participating.

You should receive 36 recipes. It's fun to see where they come from! Seldom does anyone drop out because we all need new ideas. The turnaround is fast as there are only 2 names on the list and you only have to do this once.

1. email 1
2. email 2

Bon Appetit!

Play With Multi-line Random Quotes

Heroes are alike. So are geeks. I always come up with some kind of random thoughts. For example, two days ago when I was doing something in my Ubuntu I suddenly felt it would be less dull if I had a random quote in the beginning of each new gnome terminal I started. So I told my friend about that and he quickly figured out how to do it just by inserting several lines in ~/.bashrc and, of course, creating a new file hosting these quotes. It is explained in detail in his blog here. But it only works for single-line quotes. What if I want to do with a quote with multiple lines? Or, what if I want to have ASCII graphics instead of *dull* quotes?

All of this only needs some modifications. For example, I want to make my previous blog entry Graduate School FAQ v1.0 as the quoting source. You can copy and paste and save as ".quotes.sh", or just directly download it here (you can remove the numbering of quotes to make them more *random*, if you are a perfection mania like me). As you can see there are three lines for each quote, one is for question, one is for answer, and the other one is just a blank line. Actually you can make more lines per quote or ASCII graphics if you want, but for convenience each quote should have the same number of lines. And I create a shell script (.quotes.sh) to do the random quoting thing, after putting the quoting source file .random_quotes.txt in the home directory:

#! /bin/bash
# to display random quotes from file ~/.random_quotes.txt
lines=`wc -l ~/.random_quotes.txt | awk '{print $1}'` # how many lines in total
quote_len=3 # how many lines a quote contains, depending on file ~/.random_quote.txt
let quote_num=${lines}/${quote_len} # how many quotes in total
let RAND=${RANDOM}%${quote_num}+1
let RAND=${RAND}*${quote_len}
echo
echo Graduate School FAQ v1.0
echo http://llijun.blogspot.com/ # you can put title here
echo
head -${RAND} ~/.random_quotes.txt | tail -${quote_len}

Or you can just download it here. And then chmod this script to be executable. In the end, copy this script to home directory and insert a line

~/.quotes.sh

into ~/.bashrc so that the script will be executed every time a new terminal starts.

Try it, and it should be something like this:

Graduate School FAQ v1.0
http://llijun.blogspot.com/

Q: Why should everything I do be reproducible?
A: It means most of time you should fail in the same fashion.

Isn't it beautiful? Congrats, you are taking off as a geek.

Graduate School FAQ v1.0:

Q1: What is graduate school?

A: A place you may go after college, where you may get money to pay rent, or spend more if you don't.

Q2: What are people doing in graduate school?

A: They are playing cards which companies and government pay for.

Q3: What is graduate student?

A: -- I'm afraid I have to dump these snacks. It's a pity since people are too concentrated on the prominent speaker in the seminar. -- Don't worry. We have many graduate students.

Q4: Is graduate student still student?

A: Is hotdog still dog?

Q5: What does it mean when people say "it is interesting" in paper?

A: They are still struggling to get something that sucks less than a piece of crap.

Q6: Why should everything I do be reproducible?

A: It means most of time you should fail in the same fashion.

Q7: What are people talking about in conferences?

A: They jumble eggs but why they all turn out to be yellowish.

Q8: What are people talking about in journals?

A: They jumble eggs and they should be yellowish.

Q9: What does PhD mean?

A: People spend years jumbling eggs which is well known as philosophy.

Q10: Isn't all above ridiculous?

A: Don't make fun of grad students. They just make terrible life choices.

To Be Or Not To Be??

Last Sunday, I got the news that a friend of mine committed suicide. I was shocked. He was my high school classmate, an easy-going guy with open laughter of my age. Since we got into different colleges we did not meet quite often in four years. But this May when I was on the biking trip from Shanghai back home, I had a chance to visit him when I stopped by Ningbo. He loved photographing and was the head of photographing club in his college. In his fourth year, he published an album of previous works. We were chatting for hours and had dinner together. I went through the album while talking, and I would say it was really good. I could see he had been shaped into a open-minded guy with sensitive antenna towards life. By his shots of the world around him, the reader could feel some kind of subtlety beneath the cover, then drawn to ponder over what life could look like. We had a nice afternoon of talking and laughing over pieces of the past, and then stepped onto the balcony to pick up the last bundle of sunset with warm summer winds on the face. I mistakenly thought that this moment, which only youth could give rise to, would be perpetuated into both lives. In fact it vanished after one month even without a trace. The more surprising thing was, his final decision was not a rushing burst but a secretly and deliberately conceived plan that had been running over an unknown period (not to my knowledge, but at least more than a month). He did not leave a will either. The last message he gave on his another blog was "It will be June 20. It is time to go." We all thought he was just to be on a trip, but never realized "to go" meant "to be gone" with an unknown reason.

To be or not to be, now it has failed to be a question for him. In front of death, I grasp the feeling of nihilism again. On his death, people begin to linger over bunches of questions. But now I wish he could rest in peace, free of whatever reasons in the life of past perfect simple tense. We all inevitably encounter the questions of existence from time to time, and the only difference is we make different choices. I choose to live to the end of nil, maximizing what I bump into on the way; he chooses to take a shortcut to the end, wrapping up what he has already got. I really can not make an easy judgment on which is better here. But since I have made my choice I will stick to it and show my best respect to other one's choice.

Right now I have difficulties in typing his full name. This is his blog ("We are who we are"). At least it has perpetuate itself with a lasting beauty.

The Doomed Prisoner of The State

These days I am reading a book called Prisoner of The State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang. It has been a quite sensitive topic in Mainland China, a consequence of what happened in June 4 twenty years ago. Zhao has been kept under house arrest in the rest of his life since that eventful year, until his death in 2005. However, during that time Zhao secretly made some audio tapes to record his experience around that event (or "massacre" that is often seen in Western newspapers which the current Chinese government dislikes), and his thoughts on the economic and political reform in China. The book I am reading right now is a recompilation of those tapes which were smuggled out of China by Zhao's close friends before his death. So for the first time, I have a chance to know how he as one of the leading roles told the whole story. And ironically it is the first time I see so many pictures of Zhao himself since even now they are still quite restricted in China.

The book has been translated to plain English (there is also a Chinese version published in Hong Kong this May) and not long, so I can quickly cover the pages I am interested in and jump from chapter to chapter. After finishing half of the chapters in the book, one of the strong impression I have is that Zhao was doomed. The situation was not so bad in the beginning, but later got deteriorated by April 26's editorial in People's Daily, which proved to be one of the central issue in the whole event. But assume that Zhao did not go to North Korea after the break of demonstration in April, and thus probably there would be no such editorial, and again assume Zhao had enough political finesse to handle the conservatives inside the communist party and pacify the students thus something might not really happen in June 4, would some extreme burst due to big tension be avoided eventually? Probably not. Often people can predict the history with something generic but sometimes sadly it is the few people that determine the bit, the key points. At that time Deng Xiaoping was the big power in the party. Although he was only the chairman of Military Committee (which was even not a position in the government), his opinion was the only thing that really mattered in every big decision of the state. Zhao's rise up to the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party was a result of the Deng's appreciation and supports, because Deng also held a firm belief in economic reform. On the other side, although Deng talked about political reform in differently places, he actually was a conservative on that (Zhao said in the book that Deng just paid "lip service" on that). Here came the problem, a real dilemma for Zhao at that time. If Zhao wanted to deepen the reform, he must gurantee the support from Deng (in fact it went quite well in his economic reform, e.g. in early 1989 Deng even promised Zhao about another two terms of his position). But when it came to political reform, their opinions diverged. In Deng's plan there is no such democracy as Zhao proposed. Deng believed the dictatorship guarantee the social stability and efficiency, which he regarded as one of the biggest advantages of socialist country. But Zhao's opinion was more open. On this point, Deng's view of political reform was to just make administrative changes inside communist party while keep other things unchanged. He could not tolerate any western iconed system like multiparty, not to say the tripartite seperation. Zhao realized that the political system seriously lagged behind the economic situation, so he would carry out the political reform (democratization as he called) anyway, which would not get support from Deng. Even though Zhao could be patient enough to do his job bit by bit to make a smooth transition in the end, the students could not. If we take the "contributions" of the conservatives like Li Peng into account, the progress would be slow, if there would be any at that time. So a big demonstration would unavoidably surged some time later since students wanted to see a big meaningful leap forward in democratization. According to Deng's unswerving stance (because of the Culture Revolution in 60s and 70s Deng was quite impatient and negative about students' demonstration), a hard-line resolution (crackdown) would fall on the students. Even Zhao could pacify the students he probably could not make it every time. In a nutshell, Zhao's political reform could not get supports from Deng so it was doomed to be unrealizable in Deng's era. All he could do was maximize the "administrative democracy" under Deng's framework. On the other hand, Deng's backing was really valuable, but it was almost the only thing Zhao had since he was not a veteran in Beijing political circle. So even if Zhao outlived Deng in the end, he still could not get down to his own plan because his position would be gone with Deng.... Of course, all of the above is based on the assumption that the externalities (e.g., the mass behavior of students) were constant. In fact they could be variable, which Zhao did not discuss in details, so the whole situation might be another case (I am not sure, though...).

In the book, Zhao was quite painful about how China missed a big chance to deepen the reform. He kept on trying but finally could not make it. But as I mentioned above, it seemed doomed from the start. It has been 20 years since 1989, and China is rising with a economic boom. The economic abundance is good for Chinese people, which should not be denied. But the problem is the political system is still seriously lagging behind which continues to stake up problems and cost the economic potential in the future. (And the economic progress has its own problem in economic level too, e.g., the environment deterioration which is quite serious by now. But it is another topic.) China is several times richer than it was 20 years ago, but its political reform barely makes progress from what Deng set up . Today there may also be some points Zhao mentioned before but they are more like air bows. Deng believed in "rule by men": the whole country was dependent on the few saints in which the whole system works in a high efficiency. Actually he was "the one" in his time. He also advocated political reform and "rule of law", but its ultimate goal was "rule by men" in the behind. Now it has not changed too much, or it changes, but not deep enough. Moreover, the situation today is more critical and harder to deal with, as problems accumulates in these year due to the inefficient solution or even just ignorance (e.g. corruption). I even feel that from time to time it is drawn back a little bit. For example, definition of free speech in China barely changes from what Deng expounded more than 20 years ago. The "Green Dam" event is just another example recently. Censorship exists in every modern country, but "Green Dam" just passes the line too much. It is not something government should even think about as a modern country. But unfortunately China does. Personally I am very depressed by it. It does not mean that the software itself hurts me a lot, but I can not understand why the government goes to the opposition direction. China needs change, and it is changing, but in a lopsided manner.

Pragmatism is a good word. In China it used to mean (economic) efficiency. But sometimes it also means "man, you shouldn't talk too much about politics". The fact is, my generation is qutie pragmatic, losing the passion to talk about real politics, because the environment went astray since our childhood. Earlier this month I happened to come into a personal blog maintained by a "post-80's" (people born between 1980 and 1989). He wrote a entry in June 4 (here). I think what he wrote was quite pervasive among the young people who cared about this event. China can not just go without any meaningful changes. I may not be able to figure out "constructive" measures, but emotionally (since right now I can not figure out if it is logically substantiated), I think we are not doomed with a dead end.

As long as I know, there are many electronic copies of this book in Simplified Chinese available online, as well as the copies of the original audio recordings (for example someone has uploaded them into Youtube). Some movies like Tiananmen show the whole event from participants' view, but this book is another chance to know something from an insider's experience.

Tech Geek Tendancy

Maybe I shouldn't talk about this in the evening before final exam, but I just couldn't help not think about it: am I going to be a tech geek? Despite the fact the I can work on something intimidatingly boring, I will eventually end up with a deep intoxicating mumbling like " it's a piece of shit but, hey, it's so damn *scientifically* interesting". Okay, I am an engineering guy, but I am human who lives a life too. In the weekends of college, I would get up late and had lunch with my college friends. Now I get up late and cook the lunch alone ( actually I would rather call it kitchen chemistry lab since it does not necessarily have the elements of cooking). In college I would read some leisure books for fun to relax. Now I read "leisure" paper (the paper that was not in my direction) to relax. In college I said "it's cold" when temperature was low. But now I say "kT is a little bit low" instead. In college I would stop working if tired. Now I will say to myself "man, you just get a higher BER but still under threshold" and continue. In college I would do sports to keep fit. Now I do sports to burn my boredom. In college I would play some small computer game in spare time. But now I played with Linux etc. I can't imagine a scenario like: "-- What are you doing? -- Just play with something to kill time. -- What are you playing with? -- Linux." Oh no, it's so abnormal... But it seems like this is just what I am doing.... I don't want to be geeky, but is it a paradox that a good engineer refuses to be geeky? I really don't know. Well, I think I need to talk to people, or I will go astray. Anyway, I have an exam tomorrow, followed by another two in the same week. Gosh, I love it!

Do It Neatly

Maybe I should wear a tie and suit to say something profound in this very first blog entry, which, in other hand, might be funny if keeping on doing like this. Anyway, I don't mind saying something less trivial. Yesterday I saw something quite interesting (scientific humor) from a homepage of a former Caltech graduate. It was called "Rules of Lab". While most of so called "rules" would make people like me keep laughing with bitter sweet (or sweet bitter, as you might see), I came into a sentence saying "if you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly". Actually I couldn't tell whether it was joking or not. The question that really stroke me was "what I am doing".

One year ago, when I was still in my college, I was very sure about my future plan as a grad student. Now I think there were basically two reasons:

(a) science and engineering was what I had already known and thus what I wanted. I could do interesting things in grad school that would be later put into practical application.
(b) I couldn't just jump into business since I never got any aura on that. Neither could I just abruptly start working in a company since in my field college student couldn't do that much.

So this choice seemed to be wise, or it was the one. Apparently if I was to be grad student for sure, do my work in US should be better. This motivation was simple, clear and persuasive to the "past me". Even now it is still reasonable in the whole. But the problem was, is and will be when I make a plan, I can only take something in the "past me" for reference, instead of talking to "future me". Otherwise I may still be in US now but not here. Future is always unpredictable, and that should be the beauty of it. But for many people including me, this beauty is not quite approachable to be appreciated with ease.

I will just skip talking about the first semester here, which is just a miserable flashback. Something does happen in second semester till now: I find I am doomed. Grad school can be perfect if I verify the two reasons I mention above, while, in my current case, I can not. For (a), I am not doing something I am interested. My purpose in grad school was and is to do something real, something practical, finish my thesis and put it into real life. I don't mean people devoted to theoretical things are nothing but nerds. People are different. While someone is talking about the great minds of Steven Hawkings or Albert Einstein, I would rather admire someone like Thomas Edison. But now I am just going in the opposite, not to my will, but just having no choice. In real life not everything is moving towards your advantages. Grad school is different from college. If I want to solo, I should think over many other things. I just find there are not so many opportunities as I imagined before to do what I am interested, however strongly motivated. Maybe engineering school here is too small, or it's just a bad time. For (b), I said I couldn't just because I hadn't tried. If I lose my reasons, what am I doing here? That comes back to the quote: "if you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly".

At least now I don't know if it is an awful answer. I will just say I don't know and go on. But I can't help think back on this issue from time to time. Well, at least I know I am lost, but still trying to do it neatly. I avoid talking about the value of doing something, as many guys in research community often claim their work is of great potential of application while they know they are telling some kind of lies which they believe as the truth not because it is but it just can not be substantiated somehow. I am doing my job, by which I get my necessities. Not much, just bread and milk, a trade-off of unsubstantiated possibility to find myself sometime in the future, of keeping the light on, and away from numbness. That's my current philosophy of doing it neatly.