Let's get spooky

Jasmine

Chinese food in Atlanta

Had some great Chinese food in Atlanta the other week, most of the restaurants are located along Buford Highway, it's like a Chinatown there, but it's pretty small, and mixed with other Asian restaurants.

1. Peter Chang's Tasty (川娃儿)

It serves Szechuan food, so it's spicy and oily. Tastes pretty authentic, only it's a little bit salty.

6450 Powers Ferry Rd,

Sandy Springs, Marietta

Ga, 30339

2. China inn (六福)

The best Chinese restaurant so far, it serves very good Szechuan food, we had some nice chat with the waitress, the dish in the bottom right corner is so tasty!

5470 Peachtree Blvd

Chamblee, GA 30341

3. Canton House (富丽华)

A typical Cantonese restaurant, serves dim sum and Cantonese food, not spicy. This restaurant, according to my friend, is hot spot for hosting wedding ceremonies.

4825 Buford Hwy

Chamblee, GA 30341

4. Man Chun Hong (满天红)

The worst so far, it's in Korea Town, the dishes don't look good nor taste good, it could be it serves better Korean food, but if you are going for some authentic Chinese food, don't go there.

5953 Buford Highway Northeast

Atlanta, GA 30340

Panda

For a guy who lives only a few hours' drive from Chengdu, home of Giant Panda, I've never thought that my first encounter with panda would be in the US, more specific, in Zoo Atlanta. And guess what, these four pandas in the zoo are from Chengdu, just a few hundred miles from my hometown. It always brings excitement to see the familiar in an unfamiliar environment, especially for the first time. That's why Americans would be excited to see Starbucks in China, and Chinese would be very excited to see Dragon dance in the US.

Visitors love to see pandas, they could stay there for a long time just to watch the baby panda climbing, they are the most lovely creature in the world. Unfortunately there are only a couple thousand panda remaining both in the wild and in conservation areas, they are endangered by low birthrate and loss of habitat.

What's new in iOS 5

1. Chinese input.

That's added value for Chinese users like me. It's smarter than its predecessor, but a little bit slower.

2. Notification center

This thing works as a double-edged sword. On one hand, you just love how all your push notifications being aggregated into one page, on the other hand, it's a battery killer! Every few minutes, you'll get a notification from your email, SMS, Calendar, IMs, etc. So to save battery, you might not wanna put push notifications active for a lot of apps.

3. Photo editing

It doesn't do much magic, just crop, auto-enhance and red-eye reduction. Compared to what Android can do, this is just like nothing.

4. Twitter built-in

Now you can post tweets inside photos

5. Reminder

This could come in handy when you think you might forget something yet not considering it as worthy of putting in the calendar.

6. Reader in Safari

7. Dictionary

Double clicking on a word doesn't only give copy and paste, it also gives a "Define" option, which is a dictionary

When you hit it, it'll be something like this

8. iCloud

This is the killer update in iOS 5, but it seems Apple hasn't turned on the service yet, even though I had iCloud installed on my Mac, I don't see any syncing between the phone and mac.

9. iMessage

R.I.P. Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

How to install iOS 5 GM

iOS 5 just went golden yesterday after Apple unveiled iPhone 4S, and promised to release the final version on Oct. 12th. If you cannot wait that long and want to lay a hand on it right now like me, you could download the Golden Master version, which is amount to the final release version, and have installed right now! Here's how (for Mac only):

1. Download the latest iTunes 10.5 beta 9, direct link, install it

2. Download iOS 5 for your iPhone, downloads are available here, http://imzdl.com. For ATT users, use GSM, for Verison, CDMA.

3. Extract the IPSW file from the iOS 5 seed

4. Back up your iPhone by iTunes

5. Open iTunes, connect your iPhone, press and hold option key and choose "restore", select the IPSW file from where you extracted it

6. Wait till the system is loaded and your iPhone restarts

7. Setup preferences, iCloud and sync with your back up

Ig Nobel Prize

Heard about Ig Nobel Prize today in Modern Analysis class. Just to be clear, it's NOT the Nobel Prize awarded in Oslo. Ig Nobel Prize acts to award "research that makes people laugh and then think", as they state their spirit. For example, this year, peace prize is awarded to the mayor of Vilnius, Arturas Zuokas, who solved the illegal parking problem by crashing these luxury cars with an armed tank, they even have a video for this

Tennis again

7 days to Qualify

it's gonna be four tough days from Aug 1st to 4th, wish for the best!

Mac OS X Lion Pros and Cons

Having been testing Lion for a few days, I‘m starting to get used to the new system. Below is what I've found.

Pros:

• Airdrop makes sharing much easier.
• Versioning keeps track of modification history.
• App full screen is a nice feature but it doesn't work quite well on non-apple applications, at least for now.
• Reader in Safari works like an information aggregator, it detects the core information on a page and display it in a pretty decent way.
• Built-in dictionary and smart zoom are two smart features, but dictionary is a little slow.

Cons:

• When switching between desktops, desktop icons sometimes don't show up.
• Back/forward gestures disabled, even in finder. So you need to press on that little back/forward arrow to go back or forward in applications like Chrome. However, one could use two/three finger swipe gesture to switch between pages in Safari, iCal. It seems that Apple is trying to promote its own apps.
• When switching to an app on a different desktop with Finder open, screen would give a quick flash.
• Launchpad is not as useful as it seems, you could always use spotlight or third-party search apps to find things quickly.
• Switching between apps is not as straightforward as in Snow Leopard where you could just swipe four fingers and select the one from the active apps. Whereas in Lion, there is mission control, you need to switch between desktops first and find the target app and then activate it.

All in all, I don't think it's a major release, it could just as easily be an upgrade. It might take some time to adjust to the new gestures if you are already familiar with Snow Leopard, especially with the new "Natural Scroll Directions", which allows you to swipe like the way on iPhone. So if you turn this feature on, you will be treating your touchpad as the screen, swiping up means grab the page and pull it up, yielding pagedown, which is just the opposite to the traditional scrolling.

4th of July

Bill Baggs Cape

Gorgeous view from the light house

Movie time

Watched 7 films in cinema this month! Guess that fandango deal (2 tickets for $9) on Livingsocial has contributed quite a bit to box office.

X-man: first class

Pirates of the Caribbean 4

Kungfu Panda 2

Super 8

Midnight in Paris

Hangover 2

Transformer 3

more yet to come...

Save more on travel

bidding on Priceline.com has been my best pocket saving strategy when planning a trip. To save more, I would collect more useful information from other sources to help bid.

www.mrrebates.com

This site provides cash back if you click links through their site, for priceline, it's 2% cash back. So click priceline.com through mrrebates.com, bid your room, and get 2% on top of what you've won.

www.hotwire.com

Hotwire works as a preference to how much you are offering on Priceline. Usually you should price lower on Priceline than Hotwire's offering. If you can't get a better deal on priceline, then buy it from Hotwire.

www.biddingfortravel.yuku.com

www.betterbidding.com

These two sites provide successful bidding information on Priceline and Hotwire. So before bidding, just go to these two sites, and check what other people have won and how much they are paying. The bottom line is, you shouldn't be paying more.

My trace in May

Having lived in Gainesville for two years, I kinda like the way life is. Going to school is routine, having my own room with independent bathroom, which I would've never thought about when I was back in college in China. Comes weekend or study break, I could just drive my car to the beaches or to the cities for fun. Shopping is easy, everything can be purchased online, and I'm enjoying seeking deals whenever making a purchase. All these little details keep bringing me the hope of an even better life here. Going back to China is such a long way. From the time I got on the plane to the moment I got off the third plane in Beijing, it's about 24 hours. Followed by a wonderful month of adventures.

Jiu Zhai Gou

The saying goes:"once you've been to Jiuzhaigou, you are done seeing scenic waters". Jiuzhaigou is renowned for its colorful waters and multi-level falls, one of the World Heritage Sites. What's been captured by camera is just a tip of an iceberg. It's gorgeousness is beyond the scope of imagination, you have to see it with your eyes to appreciate the real beauty of it. The best season to visit Jiuzhaigou is October when the water level is high and sky is clear. I was there in raining May, but my joyfulness when actually seeing all the colors in the water was never less. You just couldn't help but be amazed by how much innovations our mother nature has put in creating this beauty.

Huang Shan

The other saying goes:"once you've been to Huangshan, you are done seeing scenic mountains". With that said, I‘m done seeing waters and mountains one thing for all in May! Being another World Heritage Site, Huangshan is known for its sunrise, as displayed on the upper-left corner of the picture, its pine trees, the lower-left corner, and of course, the view of clouds from above when you are standing on the peak and you feel like you are standing right on top of the clouds, which makes you think you are the Creator! However, none of these would happen if the sun doesn't pay a patronization. I happened to see the sunrise and pine trees, but not the clouds, which is perfectly fortunate already in a raining season like this.

Hong Cun

Well, another World Heritage Site, to the southwest of Huang Shan, Hong Cun is a small village town open to visitors. It's the location for one of the fighting scenes in "Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon", which attracted even more tourists after the movie was named the Best Foreign Film on Oscar.

Guangzhou

The Forbidden City

As the name idicates, it's the "Forbidden" city, though it's open to tourists, armed policemen are everywhere ready to suppress unrest of any kind and arrest whoever dares a bold attempt to make a protest. To get anywhere close to it, you need to go through a security checkpoint and the stares of the security crew. Police lights are always on around that area as if making a warning, "DON'T be stupid", which gives one the shudder. So this is the capital of China, the very place where Chinese emperors have ruled this country for hundreds of years.

Butterfly Effect

wikileaks -> turmoil in middle east -> twitter -> more turmoil -> soar in gas price?

Busch Gardens

Having heard about the world renowned roller coasters at Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay for a long time, but I never had the gut to take a ride. Then on this cloudy Sunday, just because friends insisted, I finally took all of the four major roller coasters in the park, Gwazi, Kumba, Montu and Sheikra.

Sheikra, the first dive machine roller coaster in US, is at the core of all the rides in the park. It starts by climbing at a 45 degree hill, make a U turn, then hold for 2 seconds at the very edge of the dropping point. So basically the riders in the first two rows of the train would face the ground from about 200 foot above for 2 seconds, knowing that they'll be dropped vertically any moment at a very high speed. I was in the third row, so didn't feel a thing. It is at this point, people would start to scream and cry. Then it makes its first 90-degree dive, make a loop and proceeds with its second near-vertical dive, 81-degree, into a small cave, and down to splashdown area. The whole ride lasts about 2 minutes, the first row is always in high demand, definitely recommended.

Post from iPhone

This is a test post from iPhone, my magazine subscriptions.

2011 UF ISOM Workshop

The ISOM Workshop this year will be held on Feb. 11th and 12th at Hilton, topics would be on Healthcare and IS. Great opportunity to socialize with faculty from other schools and meet with new ideas, and of course, the free food is always attractive!

Link to 2011 ISOM Workshop

2011 FACSS Chinese New Year Show

Make Mac run faster

Had this Macbook Pro for a year and half, it's running damn slow as applications are installed and uninstalled. Usually it so happens because either too many applications are been installed and it messes up with the disk permission, or there're some disk errors that require repair. To make the system run faster, the following few steps would help:

1. Remove unused applications;

2. Close unnecessary notifications;

3. Repair disk permission

--a. open applications->utilities->disk utility

--b. select Mac OS disk

--c. verify disk permissions

--d. repair disk permissions

4. Repair Disk

--a. insert Mac OS CD

--b. restart the system

--c. open utilities->disk utility

--d. verify disk

--e. repair disk

these few steps have worked for me, it feels light and new again.

Dancing to I gotta Feeling on Kinect

Dancing to Poker Face on Kinect

Dancing to Crank That on Kinect