思前想後最難的卻是不去想。

So I just bought a Samsung LN46C550 46" LCD TV, one of the cheaper 46" I could find. After having a little fun with making an antenna from a key ring (which picked up 22 channels), I went off and bought a cheap antenna and a HDMI cable to hook it up with my computer. I have a ATI 780g board from ECS and everything kinda just worked when I connected the cable and set the TV's input to HDMI. Only kinda, as I will explain below.

The first problem was the screen sometimes flickers. This was especially problematic when XBMC is running. Eventually this was solved by upgrading my drivers from Ubuntu-X.

Another problem is metacity always opens new windows in the "first" screen, where "first" is defined as left to right and top to bottom. Which means that they are often opened on the TV even when it's off. Haven't found a solution yet, but it would probably involve checking why it is not detecting that the TV is off.

A more major problem is resolution. The TV's native resolution is 1920x1080 which is 16:9, but my main monitor is running 1680x1050 which is 16:10. When I set those respective resolutions, part of the screen is chopped off from the top, left, and bottom. If I turn off the smaller monitor, it is a little better in that only the left side is chopped off. This problem goes away if I set the TV to 1680x1050. I was going to try the fglrx driver but it refuses to install. Again, no solution yet, but I wonder if it's the same bug as this bug.

I mentioned XBMC earlier. I found a remote control application for XBMC on Andriod which works quite well, it can even do wake-on-lan on my desktop which I didn't realize would work without prior setup. However it doesn't seem to have any integration with video websites like Hulu, YouTube or Amazon Video on Demand. Consider that I am not going buy a lot of DVDs and rip them, XBMC is not very useful to me. I will likely end up writing a small launcher application for the small handful of things that I will do on TV.

The Samsung TV supports DLNA and is able to play video files from DLNA devices, which Rygel is able to serve video files to. Except Samsung's DLNA implementation doesn't seem to support any kind of control for DLNA'ed video aside from stopping. No pause, no fast-forward or rewind, which makes the whole thing pretty useless.

My wireless keyboard and mouse was shipped to the office when I was off to Denver, probably will end up on my TV a lot more often once I have those, which will probably motivate me more to look into solving all those problems.

No, not that Weakest Link, but this link.

So I finally signed up for LinkedIn after resisting it for the longest time, mostly because I wasn't looking for a job (I am still not looking for a job). Recently though I keep hearing about it so I decided to sign up just to see what it is about. I didn't have very high expectation because I've seen other people's LinkedIn profile and it looked like just a résumé page, but I was still surprised by how many bumps I hit within the first 30 minutes.

First of all, signing up. On most websites usually you see a login page first, with a link to a sign up page. LinkedIn is the other way around. When you go to its home page, it asks you to sign up, with a link to log in. A little strange, but okay, not a big deal, since signing up is what I want to do anyway. The signup box looks like this:

Odd, it doesn't include a password confirm box for signing up. It's okay, I will just be careful. Okay signed up. I have to log in again right away? No problem, I saved my password somewhere and I can just paste it in. Wait what? Password mismatch? Okay let me try again, maybe a copy & paste error. Nope. Will okay I will follow the password reset link, maybe I typed my password wrong when I signed up since it doesn't have a confirm password field. Reset my password to the same one, and it automatically logged in me. So far so good.

Oh it says my email address is unconfirmed, no problem, I will just click the link to send out a confirmation email. Clicking the link in the confirmation email asks me to log in again. Oh extra security is never bad, right? Okay, sign in. Wait, password mismatch???

Reset my password again. Confirm my email address. Sign in. Password mismatch. Reset my password. Confirm my email address. Sign in. Password mismatch. Reset my password. Confirm my email address. Sign in. Password mismatch...

You get the idea.

Somehow I got the idea that maybe my 16 characters password is too long for LinkedIn's little mind. Nevermind that it happily accepted it when I signed up. And indeed, using a shorter password bypassed this problem. A website that doesn't handle password correctly does not give me much confidence at all.

LinkedIn is useless without having the résumé there. Since their résumé import tool says it can import HTML, I decided to just import my resume. Of course, it cannot directly import from a URL, which is probably the only interesting use case for importing HTML. Imported from a local file instead, error. Tried again, error. "Try importing PDF or DOC instead", it said. Okay... printed to PDF file and tried again. Success! It took the file!

Except what it imported was a mess. It created positions out of nowhere, moved everything around. I ended up just re-creating the résumé manually. From what I was told other people experienced this too.

The whole website seems to be pretty unprofessionally done. Modifying things usually send you back to the menu page 90s style. This is kind of ironic because a friend described it to me as the professional version of Facebook. In reality though it looks like a project done by monkeys going through a checklist.

A coworker and I came up with two sure hit business ideas:

1) start a toilet paper printing company. We will print custom order toilet paper (want your company's logo on it?), novelty topics (word of the day except word of the square? foreign language, horoscope, etc), and advertisements (have an event that you want to advertise in the local malls?). If technology permits, we can even have a subscription service which will install the printer right at your restroom and download the latest news everyday and print that to your toilet paper!

2) smart pot for people who can't keep a plant alive. The pot will have sensors that detect the dryness of the soil and base on the size of the pot, automatically disperse the right amount of water. There will be a knob that controls this for different types of plants. A large bucket is attached to the pot so you only need to remember to water once a month, and an indicator will flash if water will run out soon. Solar powered, with a rechargeable battery that will take care of the nights. Also a higher end model that will include a webcam and software so you can monitor the plant on the go. Optional subscription service so you can have experts look at your plant and tweak watering schedule remotely or send you other advices.

我一般通常都行路番屋企，但最近SF嘅傍晚都想和我吹吹風，係巴士同30分鐘嘅uphill battle兩者之間，作出決擇並唔難。巴士上除咗會發生巴士阿叔同巴士阿嬸等等大件事之外，其實仲有唔少小事件值得去留意。八掛Observant嘅我自然就會留意到呢D小事。

某日係巴士坐底無幾耐，旁邊嘅少女突然係到自言自語，基於禮貌同我鐘意坐近門口(巴士會坐滿，近門口方便落車)嘅原因我無換位。途中佢問一個人巴士會唔會經過Pacific Heights，我無聽到對方回答，但我林佢有點頭，因為少女之後話"Oh Okay"。再過咗一陣，佢又突然問一個女人佢個手袋係邊度買嘅，個女人聽唔明英文，少女就用廣東話重複。女人話係佢個女買俾佢嘅，少女唔甘心，就問佢個女係邊度買嘅。女人話：「係埠仔」少女依然唔死心：「邊個埠仔」「二埠」。

可惜嘅係，貌似ABC嘅少女唔明邊度係二埠，又唔知二埠究竟係地方名定係店舗名。本來我想插嘴解釋，但原來台山女人知道二埠嘅英文點講。ABC少女同台山女人嘅廣東話對話，最後就由唔識英文一方嘅英文結束。

某日嘅第二日，一個阿伯用英文話俾一個白人年青人聽有位坐。年青人唔想坐，就多謝阿伯嘅好意。阿伯就突然間呢個年青人識唔識講中文，年青人話唔識。阿伯又問佢識唔識廣東話或者普通話，跟住攞咗本書出嚟唔知講咗D咩。年青人想比現一下自己，就講咗句「你好嗎」，又問阿伯係咪識講廣東話。阿伯見難得有人問，就話佢廣東話同普通話都識，又見年青人中文咁有潛質，就話俾佢聽「你好嗎」嘅普通話係點講。佢有佢教普通話，年青人知道係Chinatown行，始終係要睇廣東話嘅面色，所以佢有講咗唔可以唔識嘅「幾多錢」。阿伯嘅英文同年青人嘅廣東話對話，最後就由無出聲嘅我落車而結束。