kai's blog

Amazon Web Services(AWS) Finally Offers Persistent Storage(Elastic Block Store)

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:29:19 -0700

Today, Amazon announces Elastic Block Store(EBS). This is the final missing piece in their cloud computing offering.

RightScale wrote two very good blogs explaining EBS:

Clearly, RightScale has been testing EBS for quite a while prior ASW announced persistent storage support back in Apri.

Kai puts U.S. women's soccer team in semis with 2-1 win over Canada

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:41:23 -0700

SHANGHAI, China (AP) -- Natasha Kai headed in an extra time goal Friday to give the defending champion United States a spot in the Olympic women's football semifinals after a 2-1 victory over Canada.

Goal!!!!!! Kai!

Tags: soccer olympics

Watching Olympics - Lots of Games, Niche Sports(Soccer, Badminton, Ping Pong) Can be Watched Online

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:05:40 -0700

I didn't realize that Beijing Olympics already started until I read the results from women's soccer.

NBC is putting many niche sports for live online viewing: archery, badminton, fencing, field hockey, judo, shooting, soccer, weightlifting, sailing, equestrian, rowing, handball, tennis, cycling, basketball, water polo, softball, wrestling, table tennis, canoeing, triathalon, baseball, hockey, taekwondo

I love the so-called niche sports: soccer, ping pong, badminton. I already watched some women's soccer games online. For soccer, there's no match highlight. It's just the full game without commentary. That doesn't make sense as most people don't have time to watch all the full games. We want highlight!

Tags: soccer tv nbc beijing_olympics niche sports online

Online Services Let Parents Track and Share Children Growth

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 14:21:44 -0700

As a dad, seeing my son Wynn growing day by day is a really rewarding experience. My family has a notebook that tracks Wynn's daily activity, such as his diet, his sleep, when he first dose what(eg: roll himself to lay on his stomach). I also has a friend writing journals with pictures attached to detail his daughter's growth.

Two startups are trying to help parents keep track of and showcase the growth of their children online.

kidmondo offers very good features such as

Growth charts - track your child's height, weight and dental growth.
Medical journal - store and update medical records of doctor visits and immunizations.

Tags: baby kidmondo totspot parenting children growth

Ubuntu 8 on VirtualBox Hosted on Windows

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:57:49 -0700

I recently got a Macbook Pro. But I can no longer use VMWare on Mac to run Linux because VMWare charges for its Fusion player on Mac. Fortunately, I can use VirtualBox which is free for all platforms.

Here are the steps to get Ubuntu 8(Guest) up and running in VirtualBox on Windows(Host):

Download the ISO version of Ubuntu 8
Open VirtualBox. Create a new image. I gave it a 16GB virtual disk.
Attach the Ubuntu ISO image as cd-rom
make sure the boot sequence starts with cd-rom
start the virtual machine. It should go into Ubuntu's installation screen.

Tags: windows ubuntu vmware virtualbox

Why Can't It be Easier to Eject a Stuck CD/DVD from Macbook Pro

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:48:51 -0700

It's beyond my imagination why Mac doesn't offer a physical eject button for DVD drive.

I put in a blank DVD disc for burning data. A popup dialog popped up asking me what to do. I just hit escape. I opened finder. There's no the DVD drive being mounted.

Searching around, finally found the working solution: Open Disk Utility and choose the disc you wish to eject in the left-hand pane, then click on the Eject button.

Tags: usability mac dvd eject

Free Security Software for Mac OS X Leopard: ClamxAV Anti-virus, NoobProof Firewall

Sat, 31 May 2008 00:02:08 -0700

I've been used to running Anti-spyware, Anti-virus, Firewall Programs on Windows. Mac is "supposed" to be more secure, but I always want to be safe than sorry. Mac is getting popular, so it will become a popular target for virus and spyware writers. Also, Leopard's built-in firewall, which is not activated by default, sucks.

so I did some research, and started using the following free programs for Max OS X Leopard:

ClamxAV Open Source anti-virus - The version on Mac doesn't let me scan my disk in one click cause it said it'd cause problems. I had to select folders to scan instead. Also, I needed to set up the preferences to monitor scan with progress bar, scan email files, alert on virus detection, and the schedule to do daily virus definition update and scan. These things should have been set up as default.

Tags: security mac osx firewall anti-virus spyware leopard

Web 2.0 Gone Bad: Wiki Host Stikipad Disappears

Wed, 28 May 2008 00:54:17 -0700

Wiki host Stikipad has been offline for a couple of weeks as confirmed by mentalized.net.

I have a free personal wiki hosted there, and I haven't backed up my data! Now there's no way to get my data back.

Stikipad had a fine wiki hosting service that provides both free and premium wiki hosting service. I've seen some popular open source software toolkits hosted on Stikipad. That's why I signed up to use it at the first place.

No matter what has happened at Stikipad, there's not even a simple email notification from them. This isn't how Web 2.0 is supposed to be.

Tags: wiki web stikipad free

Microsoft Has Nothing to Lose on MSN's Live Search Cashback Program

Mon, 26 May 2008 18:34:57 -0700

Microsoft(MS) recently introduced cashback on your purchases through participating merchants if you find your items through MSN's Live search. Given that Google has been gaining search shares again and again, it's not surprising that people view Microsoft's move as desperate. Well, they are trying something that have been proven to work by Ebates, Fatwallet.

Basically, MS has nothing much to lose in this cashback program. They are betting that price-sensitive consumers in this recession period will want to save a few more bucks via cashback. With a CPA-based pricing model, MS hopes E-commerce retailers will increase their spend on advertising through Live when they see more leads through Live and good conversion rates/ROI(return on investment). MS is just giving up a little bit of income to potentially increase their search market share and e-commerce's advertising spend.

Tags: google live search msn cashback

China Earthquake: 11-year Old Boy Carrying 3-year Old Sister to Safety Zone

Sun, 18 May 2008 23:34:46 -0700

Sichuan Earthquake:

11-years old Zhang Zhi from Bei Chuan carried his 3-year old sister Zhang Han on his back, starting at 5 in the morning, walking for 12 straight hours to Mian Yang safety zone. They walked together with their elderly grandpa and grandma to escape from the hardest hit area.

Their parents are working outside of the region.

Zhang Zhi said he loves his little sister very much.

Original story in Chinese with pictures:

昨日下午5点，记者第三次深入北川县城核心现场，发现一股从背后深山逃出的人流�

Tags: china earthquake disaster 2008 sichuan

English Diary of a High School Student Surviving 2008 Sichuan earthquake

Sun, 18 May 2008 21:50:09 -0700

"The earthquake destroy our hometown. We have nothing now. Many people have no home. Many children become a lonely. This is happen on 2008.5.12. In that time, we are just have the first class in the afternoon. The earthquake came too quick and have no expect. It was very fear. But I saw the death people, my heart is hurt, I cried, have no cry sounds except tears.

After earthquake. We all have nothing. It is the ChangHong Company give us the help. They give us food, water, and clothes. The important they will rebuilt the Bei yi Zhong. They give us help. We will not forget forever."

"the Bei yi Zhong" means Bei Chuan First Middle/High School.

Tags: china earthquake disaster 2008 sichuan

Please Donate for China EarthQuake Disaster Relief

Fri, 16 May 2008 23:43:21 -0700

A 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit Central China on May 12, 2008.

The death toll has risen to 21,500. Thousands of people are still missing, and thousands of people are homeless. The death toll is expected to rise above 50,000.

You can view the complete slide show

Tags: china earthquake donation disaster 2008 sichuan

eBay is still FeeBay(Not the Same Old, but Worse)

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:07:08 -0700

I used to sell on eBay a couple years back. I stopped because I got busier and didn't feel like paying ebay all the listing/final value fees/store inventory fee + Paypal fee.

Every time I hear some news about ebay, I've always hoped they'd reduce fees. But they've always increased fees.

Then I heard the news that they disallow sellers to leave negative feedback. This is getting ridiculous. I understand the feedback retaliation loop between sellers and buyers. I've been on both the seller and buyer sides. What EBay is doing is to improve buyer experience on the expense of sellers. This can't work cause sellers can't have their voice heard.

Tags: ebay

JBoss Tomcat SSL Cache Control Max-Age

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:21:29 -0700

If you are running SSL with JBoss, you'd notice that Tomcat always sends "Cache-Control: no-cache" http header which ask browsers not to cache any content. This is a big NO-NO for static content like images, Javascript, css which should be cached by browsers to improve page loading performance.

JBoss wiki has the detail of how to disable cache control.

Once you get that fix, you can use to JBoss's ReplyHeaderFilter to specify max-age header to tell browsers to cache your content.

Tags: ssl jboss, tomcat, ssl, max-age, cache-control

Java: Loading Resource Bundle File with UTF-8

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 22:47:19 -0800

You hear that UTF-8 is the gold standard in internationalization. so you prepare your JSP pages to use UTF-8 charset.

Then you get your resource bundle files(property files) to use UTF-8 encoding. Everything looks fine in your text editor.

Now you load up the pages. Every character retrieved from your resource bundles look garbled.

This is because Java loads property files using ISO 8859-1 character encoding. Resource bundle utf-8 hack comes to rescue.

Tags: java utf-8 internationalization