[m] became a Ph.D. candidate

I proposed and defended my dissertation topic towards Ph.D. degree on Friday, December 16th. According to UIC regulations, I became a Ph.D. candidate and finished the second milestone towards degree completion (the first one was the Qualification Exam).

The dissertation topic, called Personal Augmented Computing Environment (PACE), was based on my long-time thoughts about how the advances in mobile computing and grid computing could benefit individual users. Having been a mobile handset developer for one year and a research assistant with EVL for three years, my past experience backed me up perfectly in conducting a research project as proposed. Particularly I am interested in three aspects of PACE: 1) effective clustering and utilization of mobile device resources, 2) scalable multi-modal human-computer interaction and 3) context-aware methods and models.

[updated on June 22, 2006] One keynote on this year's WWW conference specifically addressed personalized web search in mobile environment, which was very close to the paradigm of PACE. As I will start my internship at Motorola Lab from August, I feel quite motivated in exploring the "Seamless Mobility" concept heavily prompted by Motorola.

[d] Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Yesterday Chicago had its biggest snow blast this winter. Although I had to leap among snow piles on the streets and spend half hour to dig the old Camry out, the feeling of holiday season was sweet and warm. Next Friday will be the prelim exam date and I expect it to go through smoothly. This year had been a hard time for me (I even did not have time and mood for the Thansgiving turkey). However, it is good to see things changing gradually and positively.

On X'mas day, I will be flying home. How I missed my parents, the view of Jingpin Hill from the window of my bedroom, and the delicious meat buns served with hot soup! No place is better than home. That is so true. So let me turn the radio louder and sing along with the music: "let it snow, let it snow, let it snow......".

[d] Da Sox wins!

The recent hot topic of the game between Chicago White Sox and L.A. Angles finally has its result revealed: Sox won the game 9:6. This morning when I was waiting for #8 bus on Halsted, I saw trees on the road side were decorated with -- white socks! Needless to say Bridgeport has been the area that most celebration took place. Being a southsider, especially one lives near the home field of this team, feeling of pride and joy also comes to my heart. Wish White Sox all the best in the World Series!

[d] ipod nano scratch

There has been tiny scratches on my new ipod nano already, although I have just used it for two days. This little cute thing is also vulnerable. Here is how the screen looks like now.

With the doubt whether I was just a careless user or there was some problem with the coating plastic, I googled "ipod nano scratch". Ouch! My worry was true: the first 15 records were all about user complaints on this issue. Clearly, Apple did not do a good job on the screen manufacturing (it's shipped from Shengzheng, China. Whom should be blamed for? ......).

Luckily (or surely), issues are always followed by solutions. I also found one post by Todd Dailey: Restore your iPod nano to new condition with a $4 can of Brasso. Todd claimed that his solution to be successful, with proof of pictures before and after treatment. I will look into that later. His post was also a good beginning of the "scratch fix" thread, where over 100 people followed up with their experiences.

At the same time, I need to start to look for a nano case now. Even after treatment, this is still a necessary accessory. The lowest price I can find online is about $17. Apple really created a good business, exactly as the other fashion creator: Google.

[Edited on 11/15/05]
I got the case from U. of Washington bookstore, during HitLab visit. The final price is $19.99 + tax. The rubber case doubled my nano's thickness, and the cumbersome coat I recently putted on doubled my figure as well ......

[d] Meeting Mr. Galvin in person

I get a precious chance today to attend the talk given by Mr. Christopher Galvin. Chris was Motorola CEO when I was still at Chengdu site, and his retirement was six months after my leaving, on June 2003.

One funny thing I remembered was that when our team was developing voice dialing software on a PDA cell phone, Chris' name was used as a sample contact list entry. In the demo video, I spoke the name "Chris Galvin" to the phone, and Chris' contact list automatically popped up with pictures.

That was things three years ago, good memories. The topic of today's lecture is how Motorola succeed to grow into a manufacturing giant, and Chris did tell some stories I did not known about before. Before founding Motorola, his grandfather founded two other companies and they both went bankrupt. The reason? No innovation and following existing business patterns. This story actually inspired me to change perspective on my current situation, of which I am trying to not mimic other's way but deal with things in my own style and is starting to get positive results. Success comes from perseverance. If every dog has its day, then I will definitely wait for mine.

[d] SoC deadline finally came

The deadline of SoC is Sept. 1, and it came yesterday. My TSC-I2 project final released version 0.08, which is for sure not perfect for the coding geeks but good enough for me.

What did I get besides the stipend and the T-shirt? Well, I got to know that open source force is now really powerful: the software construction tools, the operating system platforms, and a very, very big and active community -- on sourceforge.net alone, there were over 50 new software released or updated on the single day of Aug. 31; I also worked together with a group of smart people, regardless of their nations and levels of education; more? a motivation to take care of something with "Made by Xun" logo:).

[d] long time no update

There has been apparent discontinuity for my blog since the end of July. During the past three weeks, I had been badly stuck by implementing PLL for tsc-timekeeping. The scale of the source code was not big, but some of my understanding of the whole mechanism was not correct. The annoying problem of integer overflow also took me over a week to spot and fix. But that was real life.

What I learned from this lesson is two kinds of work are at least as important as, if no more than, coding: planning and analysis. After I decided not to mingle with the code anymore but sit down and work it out on "pencil & paper" fashion, all were solved within two afternoons. Analying the data with matlab helped me to find out the overflow problem, which is almost impossible to spot by bare eye.

I also learned that one should show good communicating skills. Not just to promote oneself, but also make the best use of the team power. Comment the code in detail; talk to mentor whenever failures are observed or bugs are fixed; actively make team mates involved in testing and using the deliverable...... These are so important that I will definitely put them as a gauge in my resume.

[d] get time to start the cool summer

ICORR2005 is ending tomorrow. My poster presentation and lab tour are both today and at this moment, I am done. It is time to start the cool summer and delve myself into open source codes.
After acceptance of summer of code, my email box on bert is flooded with maillist emails and I didn't have time to look at all of them. When I am reading them today, I found lots of things have been going on, and the first weekly update was due on Tuesday (ouch!). Well, a cup of coffee and 2 hours after midnight always work for the overdue projects ( I hoped they also work for the credit cards :-) ).
Doing a mentored project with peers to discuss with is of much fun. These used to be my happy memories in Moto, and now google is bringing them back.

[d] back from Atlanta

Memories vanish with time. I remember the Chinese proverb: "good memory is not as useful as a crapy pen". But still two days passed away before I get time to write something about Atlanta trip. Next time (I always say this), I will do things timely.
Started from Chicago, along I-57, I-24, then I-75, the 800 miles trip was a good drive. Although along the highway, Kentucky and Tenesse seemed to be all wildness to me, Atlanta was just great. I should also say this for Nashiville, where we stayed for the first night.
We toured world of Coca-cola, CNN center, Centennial Park, State Capitol and MLK historical site. The last night we went to Stony Rock Park and watched the laser show. The rock and the show were gorgeous. Oh, I forgot to mention that I bought a basket of genuine Georgia peaches along the way, and distributed it to office mates:).

[e] China is getting more attention

I got my June 2005 IEEE Spectrum today. The cover page features a Chinese Engieer, with the bilingual descriptive language 中国的技术革命 (China's Tech Revolution). Being the largest society in the hi-tech field, it does mean something for IEEE to choose China as a special report topic.
This is not an individual event. From the far side, I noticed that on May 22, 2005, NYTimes published columnist NicholasD.Kristof's article: 从开封到纽约--辉煌如过眼烟云(Glory is as ephemeral as smoke and clouds). From the near side, two Chinese Postdocs and two Chinese research Engineers joined SMPP this month, making Chinese researchers the second largest racial group here.
Another interesting fact is that in the recent Summer of Code hold by google. The number of proposal authors ranked third among the whole applicants. No wonder visa regulations for Chinese students and scholars to enter U.S has been greatly relieved.

[d] I am like a travel agent !

As I chose to drive to Atlanta for RESNA, I need to arrange all the on road stuff myself. The whole work took me over a hour this morning.

1. Call the Hyatt Regency Hotel to make room reservation.
2. Find and book the lodge at halfway.
3. Print out the driving directions.
4. Make additional air ticket and room reseravations for Ran.

Parties involved:

1. Atlanta Hyatt Regency Hotel.
2. Frontier Airlines.
3. Red Roof Inn SEA-TAC.
4. Greyhound.
5. AAA.
6. National Car Rental.

I am really like a travel agent.

[e] Human Learning; Machine Learning

Driving on Essenhower this morning. I suddenly rised the idea of my own learning process of life. How are people adapting? It's still a black box to me. Yet I do know the machine learning techniques: use training cases to accumulate knowledge; apply it to new, undecided cases; (optionally) adjust the learning effect by feedback.

Now, let me treat myself as a learning machine (LXLearner). It is hard to say that LXLearner is a good one. First, LXLearner don't make judgements fully based on accumulated knowledge, instead, a big portion of arbitory factor is introduced, which makes the output pretty unstable and not converaging; second, LXLearner uses quite outdated and limited training data, makes the decision process inaccurate; third, the robustness is bad: LXLearner is easy to be stressed by faulty and malicious data.

:).

[d] You are a dog, I am a dog

Summer comes in a sudden: the hot air; swimming pool in next door neighbour's yard; I even saw people grilling outside. While change of season does mean little to me, it means much to Sam. Today when I started the car and backed up out of the yard, Sam was following me and greedily sniffing the roadside grasses.
I got down the car and called Sam's name loudly to get him back. He looked back from time to time, but apparently wanted so much a chance staying outside. This called up my sympathy -- poor dog, he stayed in a small yard all day and seldom had a chance to enjoy running in the alley.
I parked my car, put Sam in the harness and brought him to the nearby two blocks. He was so happy, and this mood influenced me. I love dog walking, as myself is also a dog who had long been confined in a cage. A dog's life is anything but just dog food.
It was midnight when I called it a day. Walking on Miller, clock seemed to be spinned back to two years before. A dog, who tried unsuccessfully to be a great dog and just recovered from long-time-no-freedom depression, is now walking himself again.

[d] EMEBC abstract submitted.

Let me cross my fingers......

[e] 盲艺人和他的琴盒

小时候读过一个故事： 从前有一老一少两个盲艺人， 流浪四方，卖艺为生。 奔波的生活， 日复一日枯燥的工作使他们疲惫不堪而又无从逃离。要是眼睛能复明多好啊！ 老盲人一次认识了一位江湖医生，交给他一张可以让盲人重见光明的秘方--只要用一千根弹断的琴弦做引。医生把秘方放在老盲人的琴盒里，嘱咐他收集完药引后 才能打开。
老盲人怀着希望，带着少年卖艺弹琴， 遗憾的是他终究没有等到收集完一千根琴弦的那一天，就撒手西去。少年拿过了琴盒，继续流浪四方，他从少年到了中年，鬓边已有白发的时候，琴弦到了一千根。
当他满心激动地拿着药引，让人打开琴盒拿出秘方抓药时，药店的人呆住了--秘方只是一张白纸。

最近老是回忆起小时候读过的故事。经历，让我慢慢增长了对人生的理解力。 生活的意义到底是流浪，弹琴，在希望中等待，还是最终见到桃花源式的光明时的喜悦？ 幸福和伤痛都是少数，人生更多地是平凡的日子。 为得而喜，为失而悲，莫如看淡得失而静心去做。 且弹一千根琴弦再说罢。

[d] EMBC05 paper almost finished

Writing is boring, but rewarding. When I got to know that EMBC05 extended paper submission dealine to May 2. I decided to submit another one to it, which incorporates the work I've done in the past one year. The paper was finished today, about two weeks from the kicking off. It is true disseminating your work is a good way to make you look at it again and thoroughly.

[e] 4.15现象

每年的4月15日是美国报税截止的日子。这一天人们拥挤到各个邮局直到凌晨，邮寄出报税的表格。还在上初中的时候，我在卡耐基的《人性的弱点》中就读到过这样的描写。
路 上人头攒动，邮局灯火通明的景象，如同泰国繁忙的水上市场，或是富士山的赏花时节，虽然非常熟悉，终究未曾亲历。最近忙于赶文章，干活常到深夜，还真让 我赶上了这一幕。4月15晚12点，开车经过Harrison街上的中央邮局.平常到了这个时候，Harrison街早已是“路上无人车马稀“， 这一天却是车水马龙，数百辆轿车堵得水泄不通；各个路口，均有警察指挥交通秩序。车里的人们神色严肃，手里拿着装报税材料的白色信封，等待着停车冲入邮 局。电视台，报社的记者，也在这个时候凑起了热闹，拿着话筒扛着摄像机在车流里穿梭。邮局为方便大家投递，在路边的drop off邮筒旁，也各配置了一些工作人员，现收现盖邮戳。情形颇是壮观。
千军万马赶deadline的事情，来美后已是颇有经历。课程的项目作业，学术会议的投稿，往往选在凌晨12点截止。这种时候，大家无不“email加咖啡，一杯又一杯". 生活中时不时这样冲一把,倒也不失小小的乐趣.

[d] 做学问与判案

昨晚重新审读了自己被ICORR接受的文章。本来打算深化内容后投往EMBC， 然而发现数据处理的几个欠推敲之处。 自己原来的解释虽可说通， 但有牵强附会之嫌：
1。关于数据拟合，在中段出现钟型曲线的情况下， 仍对整个数据作线性拟合非常不妥。
2。使用最大值和平均值说明所收集的数据不合适。 平均值或有意义， 但最大值无论在统计上，还是在实际实验中都不能说明任何问题。
反 复考量，还是决定不把文章投向EMBC。 尽管直观上我们所用方法的效果是显著的，但在一个个体实验中取得的数据还远不到可以证明的作用。有文可发， 特别是对EMBC这样审稿不甚严, 会场地点又具有吸引力的会议, 放弃投稿确实让人可惜. 昨晚想来想去, 到下决心放弃也花了两个小时.

似有天意安排,今天看新浪就见到一起因错误证据造成的大冤案. 湖北省京山县的佘祥林, 由于法院的错误判决蒙冤狱中11年. (链接). 审案人员为了证明卷宗的正确, 从修改关键证据, 隐瞒不利证词, 到被披露后低调掩盖. 与做学问中的修改数据, 隐藏反例, 答问时狡辩何其相似! 警方要破案率, 法院要判案率, 所受到的诱惑和在会议上发表自己的文章, 实在是颇有共同之处啊. 板凳坐得十年冷, 看来走研究之路还是要有宁静之心.

[e] 老鼠爱大米

老鼠爱大米，是一首歌的名字。初次知道他，是Alex发来的链接。 其时正是夏天， 心情也浮浮躁躁， 听过以后，一笑了之， 大概是当买买提上笑话版的东西来着。 今晚寂静无人， 写完该当的论文部分以后，重听这首歌，看看Flash版的MTV, 忽然感觉就出来了。闭上眼睛，川大的荷塘，雨中的64路车站， Sheridan Park里的秋千和棒球场， 随着吉他声，带着夏夜的气息， 真真切切地浮到脑海里。
7年前的老鼠， 7年后的老鼠。人生变化如是。 感觉的微妙，已是我言之所不能及*。

*LY说"我喜欢王菲的歌和钱钟书的小说,因为它们总能说出我自己言之所不能及的感受".

[e] 随想

天气慢慢转暖。 从办公室的窗望出去， 虽然草地还是斑斑驳驳，但蓝蓝的湖水和明媚的阳光，不容置疑地宣示着春天快要到来。 这已是到美国后的第三个年头。身边的人来来去去， 换了一间办公室，新的办公室扩建也已经有半年。如果把来美后的轨迹画成散点图， 多半是无从拟合； 即使用电影艺术里的快进来重现，起承转合也够一部大片的长度了。

时光的流逝，首先唤起的记忆是朱自清先生的《时间》， 再次想起的，是坐在长椅上回顾人生的阿甘。每一个人回看一段人生的时候，大概都会有阿甘的感觉： 几十年的过往可以在等车的时间里一一浮现 -- 如携一本小书； 又可以走五洲， 过大洋， 见形形色色的人，品味各种各样的心情故事 -- 书却是起伏跌宕，可百读而不厌。

[m] military units translation.

squad: 班; platoon: 排;company: 连; battalion: 营; regiment: 团; brigade 旅; division 师; corps: 军; army group 军团;

this is an useful link from PLA daily.

[m] Datasheet for the world's skyscrappers

Searching courtesy of X. Li:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001338.html

[e] 杂记一篇

花开两支，各表一朵。学习工作固然烦心事儿不少，把自己看成一个普普通通芝加哥市民的时候，身边倒也不缺可乐的素材。

今天在公交车上就看 到一对小情侣。男的老外，女的国妹，都26，7左右。上车甜甜蜜蜜的，女孩手里还拿一星巴克咖啡，上面插着两支吸管儿--这情景大学时不少见，到这里可 是久违了。上车后，男孩儿交钱买票，女孩先找位子坐下了。看这老外掏着掏着钱，问题就出来了--怎么都凑不够（自从cta涨价以来，类似的事儿我见到好几 起）。没办法，叫女孩：“你还有一毛钱吗？”

字正腔圆，带着北京味儿。我一下来了兴趣，边上瞅着。

女孩的回答也够意思：“你今天不是在路上捡到一毛钱吗？”自自然然的。

今天外面气温0度，要干的活也还有一大堆。可我没法不乐：p.

[m] Interesting online image collections

Java look and feel Graphics Repository.

Card images: this is something I have being in need for long time.

[e] 生活的平凡

世间很多东西，都不是可以同时得到。鱼和熊掌算是一例。还有可举的是闲钱和闲情，就像一首歌所唱的那样：

我想去桂林啊我想去桂林,
可是有时间的时候我却没有钱,
我想去桂林啊我想去桂林,
可是有了钱的时候我却没时间
........

诚 然如是. 小到吃的东西, 拥有的东西都不可兼得, 人的体验更是如此. 世界之大, 让我们虽能如小小跳虫一般, 在各个点中移动, 但要由点至面, 便是穷其一生也难得探索多少. 在Keyhole里查找地图,能从整个地球转眼找到自己的小小巢穴, 这一zoom in/zoom out之中,更让人感到个人之小.

[d] 6 hours dedicated to the old good Camry

The success of repairing the battery problem encouraged me and I got more interested (and confident) in auto repair DIY. On Thursday's Tribune there were leaflets for Sears and Pepboys, all advertising on Presidents' Day tools sale. I kept the leaflets and went to Pepboys this afternoon. Which is a bit far (12 miles away from RIC).

Long words in short, I bought a 2-ton jack combo, an oil drain and a 1-million unit spot light. The first two should be able to help in oil change and brake check and replacement. The latter could be used in camping. Actually the spot light was so strong that it seemed that it could be used as an anti-air light:).

[d] Another busy day.

Temp dropped to 16F today, the effect is significant as I lost vitality: absented for one class and felt sleepy for the other.

I went to bed at 6pm and got up at 9pm. Gave a try to setup a blog at: http://smpp-ric.org/~xluo/wordpress/. Failed. The reason was PHP compilation didn't generate libphp4.so file. PHP+Apache+Mysql, these were things so far away.......

The 3 hour attempt proved again my recent finding: effort should be spent on tasks, not tools. I will give it up and use blogspot directly, as my task is to use a blog, not necessaried to be built by my own.

Hello World!

My first time experience with a personal online blog.

Test Watering......

[Edit] Category markers will be put before the title of each article, tentatitive assignments are:

• [d] for dairy
• [r]for travel
• [t] for tech
• [e] for essay
• [m] for misc.