His Story

马上就是鼠年新春了，大家都忙活着这个新年怎么过。今年春节我也特别激动，因为是八年以来第一次可以回到父母身边一起过年。以前因为这个时候总是在上课期间，所以都是其它时候回国的。刚才在公司的邮件列表里看到有人给了一个网址 http://duilian.msra.cn/ ，打开发现是中国微软研究院做的一个电脑辅助对联软件。整个作对应赋的过程都是基于自然语言分析得出的，很牛叉！

都说 7 是一个神奇的数字了，这儿又发现了一个地方是用到这个数字的，特别是如果你是一个 cmd.exe 爱好者的话：在执行了若干命令之后，只要在提示符状态按一下 F7 功能键，就会弹出一个文本窗口。窗口里面是当前这个进程开始以来打入的所有命令历史纪录。

上次说可以通过 hotmail 获得 Space 地址，这次又想知道谁在 MSN 上把我给删了。这年头人心不古啊，今天跟你聊几句打个招呼明天转手就把你 Delete 了。所以很有必要钻研一下，以免热脸贴到冷屁股上。记得好像 Pidgin 可以做到这个，于是就装了一个。

因为 Pidgin 所基于的 GTK 跟 Windows 本身的字体显示子系统是完全不沾边的，所以装上以后无法显示中文，人名显示出来的全是乱码。解决办法是，退出 Pidgin，去 C:\Program Files\Common Files\GTK\2.0\etc\gtk-2.0\gtkrc 把里面的

gtk-font-name = “sans 8″

改为

gtk-font-name = “SimSun 9″

然后运行 C:\Program Files\Common Files\GTK\2.0\bin\gtkthemeselector.exe ，并选择任何一个非 MS-Windows 的主题。最后，重新运行 Pidgin 就可以了。 

BTW，Pidgin 还有一个功能，就是可以在别人打字的时候就提醒你，即使打的那句话还没有发过来。这样你可以在别人给你 Hi! 之前提前打招呼，很酷。

经常在某些场合看到一些 hotmail 地址，有时候会好奇这个 hotmail 的主人是否有 Space。有一个方法很简单，就是在浏览器地址上打入：

http://members.msn.com/<邮件地址>

比如，想看到 en-cn@hotmail.com 这个邮件其主人的 Space 空间，就打入 http://members.msn.com/en-cn@hotmail.com 。这样就会看到 Live 英汉通 的 Profile，接着只要把鼠标放在其头像上，然后在弹出的选单里点 View space 就可以了：

 BTW, the new Windows Live Space is here. Xuan, your team is cool!

It turns out that the second beta of Windows Live Writer is released, so this post is just to give it a try. Update: If you have installed Bad Behavior in your Wordpress site, you will probably see a 403 error when publishing in WLW. Make sure you turn it off.

Today is a sunny day and we’ve spent whole afternoon on the first morale event since I came to the team - Picture Hunting. People were divided into 7 groups and were give a specification of 50 items. Each group wants to take 50 pictures inside the campus according to the specs, within a fixed amount of time. I think my group has done a good job. We first brainstormed on the specs and marked each item with possible location. Then we planned our route just to make it less time consuming. We’ve searched the garage, the soccer field, the people’s offices, etc. and we ended up with a bunch of interesting pictures. It was really fun.

Look what I’ve got:

(credit: popfly.ms)

Hey, buddy! How’s going? Yeah, I’m good here. Are you coming to Seattle to visit me sometime? OK, It is too bad that you don’t have vacation any time soon. Alright, just in case you are wondering how does it look like in WA, here are some high definition photos taken by Microsoft Research. Check them out.

BTW, don’t forget to scroll your mouse wheel to zoom in for more detail. =)

Tired of “history | more“? After you’ve type a bunch of commands under PowerShell window, simply press [F7] to trigger the history window. Never thought this thing can be so interactive. =)

A little story from one of my friends about the front door of his home.

Day 1:

It is very annoying that every time I go back home, I have to insert the key into the door lock in order to get in. How come it doesn’t know that I am the person who lives here? I will get into my home anyway, so the step of opening the door by the key is really unnecessary. No, I don’t like the smartcard and fingerprint neither. I just want to do nothing. OK, I’m going to disable this feature, so It should be always open to me.

Day 2:

I just got everything in my home stolen! How come my front door let others to get in? It is so insecure! It should know I am the only person who lives here! No one should be allowed to be here. What? I need to turn on the feature I just disabled? But I don’t like that feature. It’s annoying. OK, I hope the company making that damn door hear what I am saying. If they are not going to improve this door, I am going to switch to another door product that doesn’t require any authentication to get in and also disables others from getting in.

Sigh…