Timeiscoffee

Anti-histamine

2012-01-05T00:00:00.000-08:00

I read on the cold/cough medicine I was taking today that there was anti-histamine in it. Having thought that they only had anti-allergenic properties, I looked it up on Wikipedia:

Histamines produce increased vascular permeability, causing fluid to escape from capillaries into tissues, which leads to the classic symptoms of an allergic reaction – a runny nose and watery eyes.

Does this mean I can start drinking cough syrups instead of taking Claritin for my crooked nasal septum?

Steve Jobs - still can't like him

2011-12-09T21:21:00.000-08:00

I've been reading to Steve Jobs's biography on audio book for several days now. I understand the impact he made on the current industrial design and how he "revolutionized" consumer electronics but as I read (listen) further into the book, I can't help myself noticing his manipulative, immature and elitist behavior. I'm only half way through the book so I don't know whether he matures later on, or he simply learns to hide that bratty-ness in front of others. But personally, ingenuity doesn't necessarily have to mean douchebaggery.

Hobby search - tracing

2011-12-09T21:09:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to find a new hobby lately. Ever since that "event", I didn't go out much and have immersed myself in the great web of world wideness lately and thought that a new hobby will perhaps pull me out of this mess. I chose "art" in general because I've always had ambition in creating something (even though I have no creativity). I jump up and down (inside, not physically) when I see a beautiful design and always had the dream of creating one that people would admire and find joy just like I did. However, like I've mentioned before, I have no measurable talent in fine art. So to start simple, I decided to trace a photo. The result... well, is insignificant. Done with Illustrator and Photoshop.

Random doodle on some random day

2011-12-09T21:02:00.000-08:00

Quick doodle I did on Autodesk Sketchbook mobile on my HTC Glacier. Office was slow that day and there was a miniature statue of Liberty I bought at the gift shop on Liberty Island. I tried picking up drawing as a hobby but it's too time consuming. Honestly it feels more like work than anything else...

Subject:

[Chirp] Time filler: new logo

2011-10-10T01:26:00.000-07:00

Since I *lost* my previous logo, I've decided to remake it.

Nothing much's been changed, except that the coffee mug has been upgraded to a paper cup.

~~Paper cup is a reminiscence of busier times at UBC.~~

2011-12-09 I take it back. I'm busier now. Perhaps coffee symbolizes "break". I remember my CPSC adviser criticizing me on using "timeiscoffee" as email, as it might be interpreted as laid-back and not hard working. Since then, I've used a different email for more formal things but for some reason, I have strong attachment to the words "time" and "coffee". I wonder why.

[Chirp] Machine Learning class starts today

2011-10-10T00:54:00.000-07:00

The Machine Learning class, the online course offered free to everyone by Engineering Department of Stanford University, has officially launched today.

Here is their official launch email:

Welcome to the official launch of Machine Learning! We are excited to have you in the class and look forward to helping you become an expert in machine learning. You can start watching videos and completing the review questions at http://ml-class.org.
Every week we will release new material for class, including video lectures, review questions and (for students in the advanced track) programming exercises. You can attempt the review questions and programming exercises as many times as you like, and we will only use your highest score.
To help keep you on track with the course, we also have due dates associated with the review questions and programming exercises. After the due dates, we will continue to accept late submissions with a small penalty on your score.
The first week’s content covering linear regression is available now, and you should watch the videos and complete the review questions by 16th Oct, next Sunday.
We hope you'll have a lot of fun learning about machine learning. Please go to http://ml-class.org to get started!
Andrew Ng & The ml-class Team

I'm really excited about this opportunity and hopefully will be able to follow it through till the end!
You can still enroll at http://ml-class.org/.

There are also two other courses offered by Stanford Engineering at the moment, Introduction to Databases and Intro to AI. They're still open for registration at the time of writing this.

[Android] Give your Android phone a long and happy battery life

2011-10-08T17:16:00.000-07:00

My phone really brings out the perfectionist side of me.

On one hand, I would like my MyTouch 4g to be as beautiful as it's Android operating system can let it be so I rub my phone's superiority in the face of all those Apple fanboys. I could simply present my phone's extensive functionalities and customizability but being Apple fanboys, they only care about the aesthetics.

On the other hand, I need my phone to have battery longevity of a sea turtle, which is a difficult task when you have custom widgets and whatnots running on your phone. So for last couple weeks, I've been constantly looking for apps and tweaks which could increase my battery life and I would like to share some of my findings:

1. The usual: Turn of 3g, GPS, bluetooth, dim the screen, blah blah blah. Internet is much like history in that it loves to repeat itself, over and over again. When it comes to making your Android phone's battery last longer, much of the internet agrees on: Dimming your screen, turning off 3G when you aren't using it or when there is Wi-fi available, and turn off GPS and bluetooth. They also mention the usual Juice Defender and Advanced Task Killer for that extra mileage.

2. Automate battery saving tasks with Tasker. One thing I have yet to find mentioned is Tasker. Although its often praised as an application unique to Android and truly shines in it, it’s rarely mentioned for its battery life saving potentials. For example, to awe brainless iPhone fanatics around me, I have a beautiful minimalistic lock screen on my phone, thanks to Widget Locker and Digital Clock Widget. However, one of my favourite functions in Juice Defender, turning off 3G while the screen is off and keeping it off when I am on the lock screen, doesn't work properly with Widget Locker's lock screen. The solution I found was to set 3G to disable whenever Widget Locker runs and voila, I had my favourite hack back.

3. Replacing default Gallery App with... something simpler. Gallery app is... fancy. And with fancy-ness comes CPU hogging and with CPU hogging comes battery chugging. I've found that replacing the gallery app with QuickPic allows you to squeeze a bit more juice out of that battery.

4. Block Ads with AdFree. I know this is pushing it a bit. But those tiny ads mean more bytes of data suckling sneakily on your battery.

5. Freeze battery hogging and/or bloated apps with Titanium Backup pro. Some apps are plainly designed to be annoying. Freeze their bottoms to prevent them from running once and for all.

[howto] Word wrap in Notepad++

2011-10-08T16:35:00.000-07:00

View -> Word wrap

It shames me to admit that out of my laziness, I googled above function.

Also I'm genuinely surprised that "googled" isn't included in Chrome's auto-correct function.