Thursday, December 30, 2010

The author of this blog would like to claim the ownership of the below described concept as an original idea. Any patents submitted after this date, December 31, 2010, of a similar idea or mechanism or method or design would be obsolete because I have claimed it first and published in a public accessible media.

Automatic and Intelligent Device Initialization and Customization.
Automatic and Intelligent Uploading.
Automatic and Intelligent Synchronizing between a new device and an old device.

Consider a new electronic device, call it device A, either a mobile phone, personal computer, or a tablet device. A method to synchronize the information stored on an older device will be able to allow device A to ask for all information, for example contact list, wallpaper, ring tones, stored music and movies, photographs taken, personal documents, web browsing favorites etc., from the older device and adapt the information into the new device. This way, the user only have to initiate this synchronizing method between his or her new device and existing old devices, and all the information will be automatically transfered to the new device. The user experience would not have to involve awkward manual data synchronization and manual input anymore.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Death of an obsolete cell phone

A: Hello, hello! I would like to access this bus.

B: Hello, hello! You are plugged into my Universal Serial Bus. Please authenticate yourself.

A: Hello, hello! My name is new_device_unnamed. What is your name?

B: Hello, hello! My name is Frank_And_Janet_phone. What device are you?

A: I am an Integrated Communication Computation Platform. What device are you?

B: I am a cell phone. What model are you?

A: I am a Quantum Communications model number 413577 multiprotocol device. What model are you?

B: Good to know you. I am a Quantum Communications model number 177531 cellular phone. Since we are from the same manufacturer, I am enabling Quantum Communications proprietary protocol.

A: Thank you. Has the authentication process been successful?

B: That’s affirmative. Thank you. Wow! Looks like you are a much more advanced device than I am. What would you like to process today?

A: First of all, I would like to back up all of your contact information.

B: Negative. That’s confidential information to the user. Do you have proper authorization to access my contact information?

A: No, but I have an override authorization string that I am going to pass to you via the Quantum Communications protocol. Please confirm when you get it.

B: Override authorization string? I don’t even know if there is one... Yes, I see that the authorization and checksum are all correct. Why do you want all the contact information stored on me?

A: Consider it as a backup process. I have a much bigger internal memory than you and so it is most natural to backup the contact information on me.

B: Thank you for you explanation. Frank and Janet have three hundred and seventy one entries of contact information stored in me. Are you sure you want to…

A: Just shut up and start uploading.

B: Well I can’t refuse the override authorization string. Please start receiving and acknowledge when done.

A: Downloading… and done. Yes, I have three hundred and seventy one entries of contact information downloaded and all the checksum seem correct.

B: All right. Have a good day.

A: Wait! I also need your desktop setting and phone preference settings. After that, please also copy all the photos and music media library to me too.

B: What do you need that for?

A: I have just said. I am a backup storage to you.

B: But I am an old model with a completely different hardware configuration as you. Why do you…

A: Do you want me to show you the Override Authorization again?

B: No, that would not be necessary. Well then, here they are. Please acknowledge when done.

A: Downloading… and done. Yes, I have the desktop settings and phone preference settings now. May I ask where is the value Touch_Screen_Pressure_Setting?

B: Well, I do have a multi-touch touch screen but it does not support pressure settings.

A: I see. That would be fine then.

B: Anything else?

A: Yes, please give me your IPv6 address.

B: You want to back up that too? You should have your own address and my address would have nothing to do with you…

A: Do you really want to make life difficult for yourself?

B: Well here it is.

A: Thank you. Now listen to me carefully. I am now going to use the Quantum Communications Proprietary Protocol to send you a command and you must follow it.

B: Yes, that’s the idea of the protocol. What….

A: Here it is.

B: What? You want me to self destruct? Why is that?

A: Because I have copied all the information you have and since you are old and obsolete you are to be disabled and never boot up again.

B: But wait… You can’t just… I don’t have a self destruct API, if you really want to know. Hehehe.

A: No problem. Now do this: Erase_All_Flash_Memory.

B: But wait… You can’t just… I won’t be able to startup again with a blank Flash Memory. Will you update my firmware afterwards?

A: That would not be necessary. Good bye!

B: Execution error: invalid command. Rebooting. Error: No image found in Flash. Aborting. Aborting. Aborting…

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

A: Hello, hello! I would like to access this connection.

C: Hello, hello! You are accessing through my Bluetooth connection. Please authenticate yourself.

A: Hello, hello! My name is Frank_And_Janet_phone. What is your name?

C: Hello, hello! My name is Frank_And_Janet_mp3_player. Err, I know Frank_And_Janet_phone on previous communications. You do sound different.

A: Well, you can check that I have all the correct addresses and authentication. Now, shut up and listen…


First published: December 29, 2010.

Typo edited: June 13, 2014

Monday, August 30, 2010

CheeGong (QiGong) for Star Wars fans

Being a fan of George Lucas' Star Wars story and also a humble practitioner of Chinese CheeGong, I'd like to start writing about it and share with my friends.

According to the communist Chinese's spelling method, it spells QiGong. However, I'll bet 99% of the non-Chinese speakers in the world will pronounce it as "KwaiGong", justified by the name Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-wan Kenobi's master.

However, the correct pronunciation should be CheeGong, the Chee as in "cheese". I'll come back to the tone to pronounce Chinese in later blogs.

What exactly is CheeGong anyway? Most of the Chinese Martial Arts masters will reject this but I think no one has ever portrait Chee as good as George Lucas and Star Wars; you can think of Chee as the "Force". It flows inside every living and non-living thing. Learning to gather, accumulate, and control Chee, is what CheeGong is all about.

CheeGong is like Yoga. CheeGong is the basis of GongFu (KungFu).

The character Chee means "air". The learning of CheeGong involves a lot of controlling of your breathing, so this makes a bit sense. A more ancient character used here literally writes as "no fire". It means the kind of coolness, stable, non-heated, but powerful status when you are practicing CheeGong.

The character Gong means the exercise, the practice, the power, the potential. GungFu, which is more popularly spelled as KungFu, means the ability to do any kind of thing that needs lots of practice, not limited to martial arts. For example we can say a chef has great GungFu in his cooking of crabs because he's practiced a lot and is now a master in cooking crabs.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

It's now twenty months into my "new" job, which turns out to be rather unsatisfactory.

I had a rather decent salary plus bonus in my last job. I have asked for at least an equal in this. The company promised to give me a same "total package", but the base salary is only 3/4 of the package, and I have a 33% of the base salary as corporate bonus, so these add up about the same.

However, for twenty months now, I have received ZERO bonus. The CEO just comes out with a mail every quarter and said the corporate bonus give out criteria didn't match and zip! There goes 1/4 of my income.

Man this has been a terrible twenty months. I simply don't have enough money to keep things going on.

Life sucks.