I've had a bad feeling since last week for no reason. Somebody from Britain claims that Jan 24th is the most depressing day of the whole year. I had a hunch that something bad would happen this week. There is always a cloud of uncertainty.
Today one of my colleagues is fired for a lapse. I saw him wandering in the parking lot when I was looking out of the second floor window at lunch time. Then in the afternoon, I got the official announcement through email. All this happened so abruptly and out of the blue, I didn't even get a chance to say good bye to him. I do wish I could see him again some day in the future, under a more favorable circumstance.
Bad things happen all the time for no reason. Although it is close to Chinese New Year, I still feel lackluster and sluggish. No resolution to make a new year's resolution. What will happen next? Besides the fact that I have one year less to suffer, will New Year be better?
I have to admit the motherboard (MSI KT4V, MS-6712 Ver:1.0) is kind out of date. It does not have SATA or PCI Express interface. But it has IrDA and Bluetooth, which makes it unique, its maximal FSB can be 280MHZ, which can boost the Athlon XP 2600+ to run as 2400+.
However, I did not find any CD comes with the Motherboard (Maybe it is lost by CompUSA. Or maybe the MSI does not bother to make one). So I have to download drivers from MSI's web site. But unfortunately, the Audio driver that is there can not be properly installed under Windows XP (Missing file during driver installation). So I have to find another one from Realtek's website. (The audio is made by Realtek).
I suggest to install Service Pack 2 right away after you installed Windows XP on that motherboard. Some devices can not be recognized by the initial installation but can function properly under Service Pack 2. Although there are someone there badmouthing the SP2, at least it saved me from havoc on that motherboard.
The power supply (A+GPB P4ATX50F 500W Power Supply) is an overkill to this setting. It has 500W horse power, with 24/20 pin ready, which can host most server board on the market. I did this in order to make it easy for the future upgrade. (I always want to have a server board, although it does not serve me any better).
References:
[1] PC DIY(1)
Let me say upfront that life is not defined by awards. Every individual being can and should define life by himself. I don't think there are clear cut criteria that could apply here one-size-fit-all. Medal can be some circumstantial evidence, but it can not prove the worthiness of life by itself.
However, human being, at least most of those I have ever seen (include myself) are shallow and vanity-driven. That's why oftentimes we fight for trophy and rush for fame lemming-like.
So let's talk about award winning, strategically and tactically. Yesterday was a huge disappointment to Mr. Zhang Yi-Mou, whose attempt to snatch international award was foiled again. Actually, I'd not seen any of the nominees in that category (Best Foreign Language Film) before. But when they announce the winner, they showed some trailers from each movie. To tell the truth, from the trailer, the impression I had for "House of Flying Daggers" is that it is just another Asian Kung-fu action movie. The other movies, although not that artful, are penetrating and touching every day life. The action movie can not compete with that kind of life-movie if we put them in a bigger picture.
It seems that Zhang's recent strategy is to lean on action movies. Maybe he did this to emulate the success of "Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon". That's why he churned out "Hero" some time early. However, it seems that (No offense here) westerners do not know how to appreciate the finesse of Zhang's style. Before "Hero" was showed in US, its rating on Yahoo Move was A-. I guess at that time, most raters are Chinese or at least Asian. But after its debut in US, its rating slipped to B+ overnight. What a pity!
Tactically, there is no doubt that Zhang Yi-Mou is a talented director, with artful manipulation of light, color, lens and music, he conjured many ethereal scenes and mesmerizing takes. However, action has been cliche these years after the Tiger/Dragon show. To win a western award, maybe he should look into the glitz from everyday life. Zhang did a pretty good job on this before, back in China. Hope he could do it again, in a Hollywood style next time.
I only have a IBM ThinkPAD 390E at home, which can still clatter along but is out of disk space (only 3 GB disk) and under powered (P-II 300. That makes it a champion if it was ten years ago). So I decide to get a new one, a desktop. And this time, I want to build it by myslef so that I can tweak it later on. Here are the parts I bought for this petty project. | Part | Retailer | Price | Date | | Memorex DVD RW | Fry's Electronics | $119.99 | 01/02/05 | | Memorex DVD+R 8X 25 Spindle | Fry's Electronics | $19.99 | 01/02/05 | | Memorex 48X 80Minute 700MB 20 Pack CD-R | Fry's Electronics | $15.99 | 01/02/05 | | Creative Optical Mouse PS2/USB | Fry's Electronics | $19.99 | 01/02/05 |
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| | AMD Athlon XP 2600+ Boxed CPU | Micro Center | $119.99 | 01/08/05 | | IOMAGIC 3.5" 1.44MB FLOPPY DISK | Micro Center
| $19.99 | 01/08/05 | | PNY COMP 512MB PC2100/2700 | CompUSA | $99.99 | 01/08/05 | MSI KT4VL VIA KT40
| CompUSA | $99.99 | 01/08/05 | | ViewSonic VA721 17"TFT Flat Panel Display | Fry's Electronics | $349.95 | 01/08/05 | | A+GPB P4ATX50F 500W Power Supply | Fry's Electronics | $69.99 | 01/08/05 | | Seagate ST380013A 80GB Ultra DMA100 Harddisk | Fry's Electronics | $89.99 | 01/08/05 | | Logitech Access Keyboard | Fry's Electroncis | $14.95 | 01/08/05 |
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| | Mad Dog Silver Thermo Compound | CompUSA | $10.99 | 01/09/05 | | Mad Dog MX4000+ AGP Video Card | Micro Center | $55.99 | 01/09/05 | | Chemical Silicon Heat Compound | Micro Center | $6.39 | 01/09/05 |
Total Cost (Plus Tax) ~= $1200
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Movie - The Alamo
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1/13/2005
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(The following comments are for the movie "The Alamo"(Ref[1]). If you have not seen it and do not want it to be spoiled, please stop reading right here. )
This flick proves again that movie previews can be deceiving. I have to admit that I do not have much knowledge on history for that period of time. However, from what I know and what I understand, the movie is trying to paint a saga-ish picture for something as land grabbing and turf fighting. The plot is flat, without any twist whatsoever. That's quite a twist to me though, 'cause usually I would expect something out of the box at the later stage of the story. That puts it in line with "The Master of the Commander, The Far side of the World" (Ref[2]). But Billy Bob is no match to Russell Crowe. The fight in that small compound pales in comparison with the stormy ocean.
I don't give much credit to the acting, either. The Texans seem like a bunch of rabble. Maybe they were at that time. The Mexican armies wear cool uniform, but the director made them look like bumbling idiots on the field.
References:
[1] Yahoo Movie, The Alamo (2004)
[2] Yahoo Movie, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
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Lab Notes - GMail(2)
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1/04/2005
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Besides the .rar format, the .arj format can also pass through
GMail's attachment sniff. And it is free for personal use.
The arj can be downloaded from http://www.arjsoft.com/files.htm
Please use ARJ32 most of the time. (Do not use ARJ, its 16 bit
counterpart. the ARJ does not support long file name).
ARJ is the compress tool I used to play with on daily basis back in mid 90's.
Now it has almost faded into oblivion. What a difference ten years can make!
However, one of the merits of ARJ is that it can divide a large file into
small trunks, which is not well supported by winzip. In the age of bulky
storage, this kind of feature seems obsolete. But in some cases, like email
file transfer, ARJ32 can still find a notch to fit in.
Here are the most frequently used command/parameters for ARJ32
*) ARJ32 i
This will check the integrity of ARJ32.exe itself. It is very useful to
check if the compress tools has been infringed by virus or just corrupted
during file copy.
*) ARJ32 a -r -je -v1000k abc.exe c:\abc
the a stands for add/compress
the -r stands for recursive,
the -je means to generate self-extracted .exe file
the -v1000k specify the small trunk size, here it is 1000KB
*) ARJ32 e ... or ARJ32 x will do the extraction
The x command seems to be able to keep original directory path.
So use ARJ32 x most of the time.
You can also use -y option to make default answer as Yes. It will save
you some extra key stroke.
To extract multiple volume, don't forget the -v option, which is
arj32 x -y -v abc.arj
*) ARJ32 t ...
test the integrity of compressed file
*) ARJ32 l ...
list content
References:
[1] Lab Notes - GMail(1)
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