[r] Hostels in Rio

Although Brazil is considered a developing country, the hotel cost is far from low. This is especially true in tourism-flourished Rio. The hotel I stayed costs $150/night. For a single student, a good way to cut lodging cost will be staying in hostels. Two websites to find them:

http://www.hostelworld.com/
and
http://www.hostelz.com/

The hostels in Rio charges $15-$20 a day, and quite a few of them resides in areas that have good views (e.g. Copacabana Beach).

[d] Flourish 2007 Conference

The UIC ACMers and LUGers organized a very successful Flourish 2007 Conference. It is the same group of people who turned SEL 2262 from a boring TA office into a friendly lounge for computer science lovers. My respect goes to these young & energetic boys/girls. They are the real hope of pushing UIC forward towards one of the top school names, well, at least from the current 50-or-so ranking in CS.

Being one of the attendee, One of my pleasures is being able to listen to Chris Dibona's talk in person, and take a picture with him. Information age shortens the communication distance, but not necessarily the geographical one. Obviously getting travel money to go to open source conferences like OSCON and PyCon will be a dream for my Ph.D. career at UIC ... , not even likely after starting full-time job... So, thanks Flourish!

[d] New Year, New Car

我的老丰田Camry已经开了两年整了，故障也越来越多。年底假期期间它连连抛锚，终于让我下定了买新车的决心。上周末买下了这辆07款福特Escape. 自己开车上班是安全多了，爸妈要是今年来也能舒服不少啊（想念中）。主要指标：

• 入门级四门SUV ，2.3升185马力
• 油耗23/26（街道/高速，英里每加仑）
• 自动档五级变速