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目前

They say you think up the most random and interesting thoughts during showers. While I was taking a shower and scribbling random Chinese characters on my glass door, I drew a 目(which means eyes, but not literally). Somehow that got me to thinking of all the Chinese drama I’ve seen and it was common for many to use the phrase muk cin (mu qian in Mandarin) which from context I gather to mean, in front of us (usually referring to decisions leading to different paths). For some reason I had always associated that as 木前, which would translate to in front of wood. That never did make much sense to me. Haven’t really thought about it in a long time, but some how things clicked and I realized the actual phrase should be 目前 which would mean in front of our eyes. Now it makes a lot more sense.

I guess the best translation I can come up with in English is: from what I can see

Interesting… 目的 also uses 目. 目的 translates to goal/destination. I wonder how those 2 characters came about to mean that…

Update: Upon further consideration, I think I figured out why 目的 came to mean objective/goal. 目的 literally translates to eye’s (possessive form of eye). I guess what you have your eyes set on is your objective. (-_^x)

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Side by Side Browsing

Just a random thought, but browsers should have side by side browsing.

Maybe it’s just me, but how often do you open 2 separate browser windows so you can look at 2 separate pages simultaneously. With our giant screens these days, it’s often a waste of screen estate just to have the browser take up the whole screen, given that most websites are better viewed in portrait mode. These days, I usually just snap my browser to the left or right side.

I think web searches are the best argument for my feature request.

When I do a web search and don’t see what I’m looking for immediately (e.g. sample code on how to do something), I open a few of the results in new tabs and then go through them. If I don’t find what I want, I go back to the results and open a few more.

Imagine instead of opening all the results in a new tab or always hitting back to get back to the search results, clicking on a search result would snap the search results to the left of the browser, and open a new browser view on the right. Therefore, you can quickly go onto the next search result without having to switch taps or go back to the previous page.

I’m not sure if both the left/right browser views should be of the same size. Having both views have the same size works great for comparing 2 pages, but having one as a side bar (e.g. Firefox’s bookmark/history or the new Windows 8 side by side mode), wouldn’t be bad either. Or maybe let the user decide and be able to change the widths on the spot.

Other features that would be neat if it came along with this:

  • If I clicked on a link and it pointed to a different domain, the side by side feature would automatically kick in.
  • Have a new target (e.g. _side) that people can add to their html, like what they have done for _blank, _top, etc.
  • History should remember the side by side views.
  • We can even designate a mouse/keyboard command to open the link as a side view. (e.g. opening in a new tab can currently be triggered by middle click or CTRL+left click)
  • There should also be a easy way to quickly switch which view is on which side, especially if one view is much wider than the other.

Just another random thought I had that would be cool if it came to existence.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-06-05

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Wireless Peripherals with USB Connection

Just a random rant.

I wonder why manufacturers don’t include a USB cable/connection on wireless peripherals (e.g. keyboards and mice). This is probably already out there in the market, just not in any peripherals that are any good. I know it’s probably counter-intuitive to think wireless peripherals with a wired USB connection, but have you ever had to setup a new computer with wireless peripherals or had your computer forget how to talk to your wireless peripherals? Do you recall having to find an existing wired keyboard and mouse or pull one from a working computer to setup your wireless keyboard and mouse? Yeah, annoying right?

If they included a USB cable (which would be great if they could design that it’s hidden/retracted when not in use) or if they just include a mini-USB port so I can easily connect it with a USB cable, that’d be awesome!

One could argue that if you ever had to use a wired keyboard/mouse to setup your wireless peripherals, that the design is broken already and I would agree. But until the day where they can magically get wireless peripherals to talk to my computer, I still need to bust out my USB keyboard and mouse.

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Signed up for Google Apps

I signed up my Krunk4Ever.com domain to use Google Apps. Hit a couple bumps along the way. Apparently my site had been previously registered for Google Apps. I don’t recall ever doing it, but my memory isn’t exactly great. In order to reset the account, I had to modify my DNS settings to verify that I own the domain. Turns out there wasn’t even an admin account setup for that Google Apps domain.

One of the reasons I was initially hesitant to sign up for Google Apps was because I had a catch-all account and I recall someone told me that Google Apps didn’t support catch-all. Either I misremembered or they added that feature later, but it appears they now support catch-all. The reason why the catch-all account is important is because I provide unique email addresses for most businesses I deal with. The instructions seem simple enough.

However, following those instructions landed me in a grayed out disabled forward address box. Turns out I’m not the only person who hit this issue: Why is the catchall forward address grayed out? I tried switching back to the current version (instead of the default of next generation) as suggested by some people, but that didn’t fix the issue.

Given on how much I rely on my catch-all, I was pretty upset this wasn’t working out and was even set on switching back. Then I found this thread: Can’t assign address to catch-all and the suggested workaround was to sign up for Google Apps for Business 30-day trial, which would make that field editable. After upgrading to Google Apps for Business, I was able to set the forwarding/routing address for my catch-all. Annoying that I had to do this to get it working when their help says that the free edition has this feature too.

Things seem to be working so far. I’m decided to continue using my GMail account as my default, so my old @krunk4ever.com email address will just be considered as part of the catch-all.

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New Email Address

Due to unfortunate circumstances, I have decided to change email address. It appears my email address was leaked and it has been receiving a ton of spam recently. It’s also what prompted me to post Why is There No Universal Email Web Client? last week.

After a long deliberation, I decided to give GMail a try. The main reasons being:

  • Ability to import emails from different accounts
  • Ability to send emails as different accounts
  • Free POP3, IMAP, and ActiveSync support
  • Emails are kept forever
  • Great spam filter
  • Tons of space

I know the last 2 are given for most email services these days, but did you know that Yahoo! still charges if you want POP3?!?!

I never knew how much I would love that deleting emails == archiving emails. No longer do I need to manually move emails I want to keep into a specific folder. Just delete it and if I ever need to find it again, I just have to search for it.

I was initially hesitant to give up all my email to Google, like they don’t know enough about me already. But I decided for the convenience, it would be worth it. I also consider hosting my email server on GMail, but decided to hold off on that for now.

Moving my email over did take a bit of time as I’m guessing (drag and drop) IMAP to IMAP via Outlook isn’t exactly the most efficient. But I went from occupying less than 1% of my email space quota to You are currently using 1325 MB (17%) of your 7586 MB.

Emails to my old address will still work (albeit with a delay), as they’re automatically imported by GMail every so often. My new email address is basically the same as my old one, but instead of *@krunk4ever.com, it’s *@gmail.com.

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Are Asians in America Brought Up On The Wrong Values?

Valerie shared this interesting article a week or 2 ago: Paper Tigers (What happens to all the Asian-American overachievers when the test-taking ends?) Let me warn you, it’s an extremely long read. It was pretty interesting and if you have the time to spare, it’s definitely worth the read. The part in the middle felt a little off topic when the author went off in a tangent on how Asian men suck at getting girls. As Valerie also commented, it was a bit weird to have a bunch of half naked men scattered across the article.

To summarize the article:

Let me summarize my feelings toward Asian values: Fuck filial piety. Fuck grade-grubbing. Fuck Ivy League mania. Fuck deference to authority. Fuck humility and hard work. Fuck harmonious relations. Fuck sacrificing for the future. Fuck earnest, striving middle-class servility.

I wouldn’t call the article enlightening as I’ve known most of the things he talks about, in fact I agree with most of what he says. What I disagree with is were we really brought up incorrectly? Are the values we’re taught, filial piety, humility, hard work, harmonious relations, etc. the wrong ones?

I will agree that in America’s society and culture, those values are not valued as highly and often will get in the way of climbing up your career ladder. However, these are values passed down from Confucius and seems to have worked for the Chinese for over 2000 years.

I was initially going to write a post on why I agree with the author and how Asian Americans should adapt. Then I decided that I was going to write a post on why I don’t think Asian values are necessarily incorrect, but should incorporate other values that American society values. Then I realized that such a post would probably never see the light of day, so I decided to provide a brief summary of what I got out of this article.

Asian American children, especially 1st generation Americans, are taught under very strict guidance. We are taught that excelling in school means a better future. The reason why my parents fought so hard to live a crappy life in America was so that their children and generations after will be able to have a decent future. However, Asian parents are very single minded. They believe there is 1 and only 1 correct path. Learning how the world REALLY works is something you will never learn from your parents and something you’ll have to find out by yourself.

However, I can’t help but feel that if there were more of us in this world, people who could tolerate, people who didn’t need to make gazillions to be happy and content, people who could work together harmoniously instead of trying to bite each others throat off, how this world would be a much better place.

Update: Not sure if I’ve ever shown people my 4 color chart (more details):