The China Syndrome

Alarm? An interesting perspective from India, and two recent articles (India-China talks hint at radically changed globe and Europe and China: Competition and partnership can go hand in hand) portend an epoch prevalent of China's rise.

Pretty Dirty

This movie portrays the unseen world of illegal immigrants.

rename

To rename all files matching *.bak to strip the extension,
rename 's/\e.bak$//' *.bak
To translate uppercase names to lower,
rename 'y/A-Z/a-z/' *
To fix the extension of html files (from .htm to .html)
rename .htm .html *.htm
To check what will be renamed first BEFORE actually renaming
rename -n 's/current_name/new_name/' More examples:

rename 's/\.flip$/.flop/'       # rename *.flip to *.flop
rename s/flip/flop/             # rename *flip* to *flop*
rename 's/^s\.(.*)/$1.X/'       # switch sccs filenames around
rename 's/$/.orig/ */*.[ch]'    # add .orig to source files in */
rename 'y/A-Z/a-z/'             # lowercase all filenames in .
rename 'y/A-Z/a-z/ if -B'       # same, but just binaries!
rename chop *~                  # restore all ~ backup files

Feature Requests

In addition to these six feature requests, I hope that Blogger will implement the following:

• As recommended by this guide, I'd like to control per-post security settings to selectively restrict my readership. It shouldn't be a huge challenge because most modern file systems support access control nowadays.
• I'd like to group my posts by category so a reader interested in movies can quickly glance over all my movie reviews (and nothing else) by choosing the corresponding category view. This is also a nice way for me to organize my posts, narrowing the specific content of a post. A full featured database as the back end is probably necessary for such a task.
• I'd like to automatically trackback my blog—ie, to report everyone who responds to one of my posts on his or her own blog. This could be tough. I still have no idea how this notification protocol works. HaloScan.com provides free blog comment and trackback services.

A Firefox Tip

I learned a useful feature today. In Firefox one can associate a keyword for a bookmark, which can simplify surfing and searching. For example, bookmark www.washingtonpost.com with the keyword post. Hereafter just typing post in the location bar (easily activated by Alt-D) will take me directly to . Of course, saving a few mouse clicks using Smart Keywords is not a big deal in itself. However, this shortcut becomes really handy when looking for something at a searchable website (ie, it deploys http-POST style forms). For example, bookmark http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=%s with the keyword a and file it somewhere (such as in the Quick Searches folder). Then simply typing a bookmark in the location bar will tell me all there's to know about the topic of bookmark at Answers.com. In other words, anything after a keyword in the location bar will automatically replace %s in the corresponding bookmark. So a bookmark fully expands to http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=bookmark. I haven't found a quicker way to search.

First Review

It's been exactly one month since my inaugural post. My original purpose of blogging is to improve the effectiveness of my writing. To that end, my efforts have been dismal. Instead, I find myself frequently using the blog as a playground for experimenting web designs. One fringe benefit is that I can now use my blog as a portal with all my bookmarks conveniently available anywhere on the web. Anyway, I shall focus on not the appearance but the content of my blog hereafter.

春日

Ah, the makes me ! The air smells like freshly cut grass and the breeze feels like a cool silk scarf.

I wonder if the weather in England today was as great for the royal wedding—35 years in waiting! Though certainly not a fairy tale, it's an incredible love story, don't you agree?

Battle of the Brains

Congrats to 上海交大, the 2005 World Champions in the 29th annual ACM-ICPC. It's noteworthy that no American school (despite a large presence of nearly 20 teams participating) placed among the top 10 teams this year while no Indian team has ever won a gold medal. Canadian (Waterloo), Northern (KTH and NTNU) and Eastern European (Moscow and Wroclaw) teams have been consistently formidable in recent years. Could this portend a future trend in IT outsourcing?

Blogger Bugs

So I am not alone in experiencing recent problems with Blogger. However, it surprises me that Blogger is now considered as a utility. I have great sympathy and respect for the Blogger crew who have to endure unwarranted abuse while providing a free service for so many people from all walks of life worldwide. It's hard work.

La Vida Robot

An epitome of the Chinese adage—"人外有人，天外有天", this story of four underdogs quickly draws my encomia for their teachers, whose dedication is exemplary. While I applaud their achievement, I can't believe that these kids need cash donations to attend college in the US. There are so many generous scholarship opportunities available to international students. I think that talent alone is usually the only ticket necessary to the best private schools in America.