Greater Vancouver's First Snow in 2007

I have heard that Vancouver is a warm city even in winter. However, in my first 6 moths in Vancouver, we met this heavy snow.

I guess many people are still not ready for this and most of the cars on the road were going like snails, since they don't have the winter tires.

Hooray! Nikon D300 and D3 are out.

depreview.com published two articles today to Nikon D300 and D3. The status of D200 might become embarrassing. But Nikon will take some marketing strategy to handle this. I am ready to throw my old D100 away now, and hope We can get a good deal for D200 before Xmas :D

Here are the photos and citation words from depreview.com



Nikon announced the new DX format D300 which also features a 12 megapixel CMOS sensor, 14-bit A/D conversion, EXPEED image processor, sensitivity up to ISO 6400 (with boost), the new CAM3500DX AF sensor (51 point), HDMI video output, UDMA CF support and last but not least the super-impressive 3.0" 922,000 pixel LCD monitor with Live View. See full review at dpreview.com



Nikon has today lifted the covers on their first full-frame digital SLR, the new 12.1 megapixel D3. The D3 is all about speed and sensitivity, twelve megapixels on a big CMOS chip means large photosites (8.45 µm pitch to be precise) and that adds up to base sensitivity of ISO 200 to 6400 with an additional two stop boost over that (up to ISO 25600). See full review at dpreview.com

Sexy Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse under Linux

I recently bought a brand new DELL Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse Bundle (they are actually produced by Logitech) . Here is the picture of this beauty:



The reason of this purchase was I couldn't find my mouse shipped from Germany and my keyboard is old and I was annoyed by those wires and cables and I saw the SALE by DELL. La la la...

When I got it and tried it under windows, I was a bit surprised by its handy functionalities and reliabilities. Em at least, it's installation under Windows was easy and straightforward. Then I tried to use it to drive my lovely Debian system, however I had no lucky this time. The set up of this BT keyboard and mouse was a bit funky and I spent a whole night to work it out. And now it's the time to share my experience.

• Step 1: Setup Kernel

Networking --->

<*> Bluetooth subsystem support  --->--- Bluetooth subsystem support

   L2CAP protocol support

   SCO links support

   RFCOMM protocol support

[*]     RFCOMM TTY support

   BNEP protocol support

[*]     Multicast filter support

[*]     Protocol filter support

   HIDP protocol support

Bluetooth device drivers  --->

 HCI USB driver

[*]   SCO (voice) support

 HCI UART driver

[*]   UART (H4) protocol support

[*]   BCSP protocol support

[*]   Transmit CRC with every BCSP packet

 HCI BCM203x USB driver

 HCI BPA10x USB driver

 HCI BlueFRITZ! USB driver

(The four drivers below are for PCMCIA Bluetooth devices and will only how up if you have also selected PCMCIA support in your kernel.)

 HCI DTL1 (PC Card) driver

 HCI BT3C (PC Card) driver

 HCI BlueCard (PC Card) driver

 HCI UART (PC Card) device driver

(The driver below is intended for HCI Emulation software.)

 HCI VHCI (Virtual HCI device) driver

(Move back three levels to Device Drives and then check if USB is nabled. This is required if you use a Bluetooth dongle, which are mostly USB based.)

USB support  --->

<*> Support for Host-side USB

--- USB Host Controller Drivers

 EHCI HCD (USB 2.0) support

[ ]   Full speed ISO transactions (EXPERIMENTAL)

[ ]   Root Hub Transaction Translators (EXPERIMENTAL)

<*> OHCI HCD support

<*> UHCI HCD (most Intel and VIA) support

< > SL811HS HCD support

Build the kernel and then install it

• Step 2: Bluez-Utils

Install the Bluz-Utils by`ap-get install Bluz-Utils`

• Step3: Configuration (very important)

Now it's the tricky time. The key point is this BT Keyboard and Mouse can not be used as hci, so we need to use hid instead.
A) Find out the MAC address of them by `hcitool scan` or `hidd --search`. If there's no results, then press the sync button on the bottom of the devices, and try again. The result looks like:

# hcitool scan
Scanning ...
       00:0A:0B:0C:0D:0E	DELL BT Mouse

B) Turn off HID2HCI at "/etc/default/bluetooth" : change the value of HID2HCI_ENABLED to 0.

HID2HCI_ENABLED = 0;

C) Enable HID daemon and set the start up options at "/etc/default/bluetooth" :

HIDD_ENABLED=1

# The MAC address here is just a fake example

HIDD_OPTIONS="--master -i 00:0A:0B:0C:0D:0E -i 00:01:02:03:04:05 --server"

Reboot and Cheers!
There are some other softwares for gnome, which can let you setup all the functional buttons, such as volume turner. Very fancy and SEXY.

Keep using modified themes of windows after M$ KB925902.

Microsoft recently released a security update KB925902, which keep monitoring the size of the multimedia resources loaded in the memory. Many awesome themes for windows modified shell32.dll to include more eye candies. I am personally using FlyakiteOSX, whose modified shell32.dll file reaches 27MB, and that screwed M$'s security check. The result of this issue is that some software, such as Calculator, GVim, and WMM, could not work, since system will complain the use of memory address.

Fortunately, we can still cheat M$ to work around this issue by rebuild the user32.dll, which comes with the update KB925902. And there's a nice guy "Marzo Sette Torres Junior" wrote a detailed tutorial about how to rebuild the DLL. As a Memo, I reposted his article in below:

Subdomains works now!

Instead of using PHP scripts for page redirection, I am now using html code to redirect the pages. At least it works and now the gallery and blog can be accessed through http://gallery.qingshen.de and http://blog.qingshen.de

Belgium Photos are updated!

The web-space provider of my personal website recently installed suPHP module, which causes some problems in page redirection. Fortunately they managed to bring my gallery and blog back to the world :-) Since the subdomains will not work at this moment, to access the blog and gallery please use http://www.qingshen.de/blog/ and http://www.qingshen.de/gallery/.

After nearly 2 months, I finally finished sorting all the photos shot in Belgium during Easter. A direct link to its album is http://www.qingshen.de/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=2787 It's a shame that I have been so busy with my new job and have no time at all to do my hobbies. It should be better once I get totally settled in the new city and country.

Blog and Gallery work again!

The problem was that my web-space provider recently change their PHP server to suPHP, which does not allow me to use ".htaccess" to modify the memory settings. Fortunately, the provider responded to my problem report quickly and now the gallery and blog work again.

However, we still have redirection problem, which makes the wiki down. I will contact my provider again and try to fix it.

Cheers.

The "three mouseketeers" of Nikkor Lens!

Before I came to Canada, I sold my lovely Nikon D70 but kept the lens AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G IF-ED (3.8x). And I suppose to buy a new Nikon DSLR here, but recently ran out of money. So, I can only checking the website to feed my desire. Yesterday, I found some nice pics from the best three zoom lens that nikon has made. Hope I have money later to get them.

接上文:微波炉煮的饺子和豪华方便面

旅馆里只有微波炉,就不管有没有营养了,先解馋再说:

温哥华的“华”化

刚来温哥华两个半星期，结果上班就已经两个星期了。再加上很多要办的手续，星期一到星期五基本就是没有闲暇的时间。周末了，自然就要去放松一下。人生地不熟，能去哪里呢？平日里没有时间做调查，临时抱佛脚也来不及。哎，又过了在网上GG,MM“拉帮结派”去“海皮”的年纪了。最后只好去Shopping Mall逛逛了。虽然说俺不好一个逛街，不过生活必需品总是要购置的。在路上的时候，猛然想起刚来时一个中国朋友特意推荐过一个叫“大统华”的华人连锁超市。既然是友人极力推荐，那还是要去探探究竟的。

经过漫漫征途，终于在Shopping Mall的底层找到了传说中的“大统华”超市。大温哥华地区华人之多，其实是众所周知的事情。其中又以温哥华市和Richmond市尤最。年初的时候因为工作面试来过一趟，也看了名声在外的北美第二大“中国城”。但和今天进入“大统华”超市的感觉截然不同。去中国城，就像是老外在深圳看世界之窗，而在“大统华”超市，就是南京人逛苏果的感觉。

我这么说主要有这么几个原因：首先是语言，基本只说华语，广东话居多，剩下的都是各种腔调的普通话，这其中当然也包括台湾人的“国语”。然后是货物，正宗“国货”，这里的国货是指就是那些在国内能买到的东西。据个例子，看到这里出售的美国黑人牙膏的包装盒上赫然印着“黑人牙膏”四个汉字。不知道如此“华”化是否必要:) 再者就是购物的方式了，和国内无太大区别，熙熙攘攘好不热闹。最后就是规模，基本和本地超市规模相当。相比之下，欧洲那些小豆腐块亚超里面还包括不少泰国，越南的物品，所以根本不能说是中国超市（其实人家也没说是中国超市，只是华人在外影响大，基本上亚超可以和中国超市画等号）。回来后，打电话给纽约的一位老友，说起这件事情，他也感叹温哥华给华人带来的方便，美国恐怕也只有三藩市可以媲美了。

虽然说“大统华”东西不少，可惜我现在居无定所，也都不方便卖。最后只好无奈的买了点方便面，方便粉丝，和期待已久的饺子回来。下面奉上照片一张，大家共欣赏。温哥华的“华”化，当然不只这一点，不过由此可见一般了。我想这也要归功于那些来这里投资消费和“富有”国人们。他们说，我们想要适合自己生活的方式和环境，于是他们就有了这样的生活方式和环境。。。。

温哥华饺子

First week impression about Greater Vancouver!

Since May 11th, 2007, I have been in Greater Vancouver for one week. The change from Europe to North America isn't that big and I got used to the life pretty soon. However, there is still something remarkable :D

Last Day in Germany: I had been hanging around for 2 hours at Frankfurt international airport before I get checked in. What annoyed me was the stupid questions that the clerk asked for securities :( BUT, I did get some compensation. After the check in, I was told that my seat is upgraded to business class, which far more comfortable than the economic ones. I did enjoy it and it was the first time in my life that I felt 10 hours flight is too short :D

Arrived in Vancouver: There is nothing new to me at the airport except the immigration office. I was told to see a immigration officer in order to grant my work permit. This task was easy and pleasant, but it took me 1.5 hours to wait in the queue. Plus the luggage claim, it took me almost 3 hours to get out of the airport. But the nightmare was not finished. As planned， I would pick up the car, which was rented by my company. But my credit card could not pass the machine and there is no other way around this. Finally I could only take the Cab to the hotel and ended the whole tiring day with a fast dinner at McDonald. Oh, forgot to say that I did successfully pick up my new cell phone, which I have online reserved one day before my flight in Germany, on my way. That impressed the cab driver a lot, and I told him that's called planning, which I have learned in Germany. :D

The following days in Greater Vancouver: In the next day, I had a very rich breakfast and then Bill a very nice relocation assistant came and picked me up for the settlement orientation. It was quite pleasure to work with him and we finished all the important settlement, like bank, social insurance number, drive license, jut in the morning. It was a great success :D Besides work, there was nothing special I did in the following days. Although living without a car in north America is hard, I haven't expected too much and everything ran smooth enough for my first week. BTW, I finally got the rental car, which is a Dodge Caliber, and here is a photo I found in the internet as a reference. Then the life became easier.



Life Style in Canada: The culture here is similar to US. People keep looking forward to any new stuffs. Compare to the culture in Europe, you can easily feel their strong creative passion to entertain their life rather than to enjoy what they used to have. Anyway, it's just different living style. I meant no criticisms. One more happy thing I found here is shopping. Typical huge american shopping mall offers everything you need. And because of its multi-culture, I can buy most of the chinese cooking materials by without going to special "Asia-Markt". The drawback is people can hardly taste a pure culture here.

Misc: There are still many things to say. However, I decide to left it for later stories. What I want to mention at the end of this story is the cities in Greater Vancouver indeed have marvelous views. :D

A Dodge Caliber from National Car Rental :D

Rescue IBM ThinkPad T40 "Black" Display: Replacing its CCFL

I bought Lin a used IBM ThinkPad T40 from ebay about 1 year ago and it has been working very well. However, the display recently became reddish and Lin complained it always. Since it worked somehow and I thus put less attention to it. One day the poor display finally gave up his ghost and stayed in black.

After a simple analysis, I guess the problem was caused by the defect of backlight. Since the display became reddish in his last few days, I was sure that the CCFL of the LCD display is brocken. I should have done more detailed investigation but I had neither time nor mood to do so. Forturnately, I was right and the display is revived.

As a memo I documented the most important steps in my Wiki.QS by the title "IBM ThinkPad T40 CCFL Replace"

Easter:第一站Antwerpen

4月6日 Good Friday！早上5点多挣扎着爬了起来，匆匆的洗漱了一下，拎上前一天准备好了的行李还有补给和老婆一起扎进了我那辆93年的“别摸我”。调整好GPS，油门一踩出发罗！一路上开开停停，顺便吃个早饭，两个小时后进入了荷兰境内。德荷边境没啥特别的，一路开过，先看到一个大方牌，上面蓝底白字写着Niederlande并环绕着一圈欧盟的小星星。继续开进约500米，更大的一个蓝牌则醒目的标记着荷兰境内交通限速的规定，Autobahn后面赫然印着120 km/h，sigh小郁闷了一下。再往前就是一个大型加油站和餐饮中心，周围停驻了不少18轮大卡。没什么闲心看这风景，于是匆匆驶过这个冷漠的边境。

在荷兰境内没开多久就进入了比利时的境内，路况感觉比荷兰稍差一些。但就这样，比利时的朋友也很喜欢开快车，同样是120的限速，对比利时人来说恐怕就是个建议而已。从出发开始，近4个小时后终于抵达了Antwerpen。和大多数其他欧洲旅游城市相似，Antwerpen也传达着它那点缀着17，18世纪欧洲传统建筑的妩媚。在欧洲驾车旅行泊车是个问题，我们在约定地点周围转了20分钟才找到个限时2小时的停车位。等停好车已经过了约定时间半小时，于是赶快跑去火车站和Lihlii还有Danly他们会合。

见到两位朋友，着实开心，在短暂的问候之后，我们一行4人就开始了正式的比利时旅行。Antwerpen是第一站

Antwerpen-Centraal Railway Station本身就是一个景点。它始建于1895年，并被公认为比利时最精美的火车站，其有关资料可以查阅Wikipedia的介绍。 离开了中心火车站，顺着正前方的大街步行，不久就到了Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal（the Cathedral of Our Lady）即圣母大教堂。教堂前的广场算是典型的欧式风格，四周一圈布满了大大小小的咖啡店和餐馆，在加上在广场上驻足休憩的人们和觅食的鸽子，让人身子骨都懒了起来。时间关系我们没有进入教堂内部参观，我则因为停车时间快到了，而不得不在此和其他三人暂时分开折回去取我的车。途中竟发现手机失窃，很是郁闷了一会儿，好在最后还是和大家在约定的集合地点碰上了。其间发生一个小插曲，我在用老婆的电话打给O2公司要求冻结我的电话的时候，那位接线的老兄居然认为我要冻结我正在通话的这个号码，不知道是如何的逻辑:(

在和朋友再次会合后，我们又相继走马观花地看了Het Steen（literally: ‘The Stone’）和Town House并饱食了一份意大利式的午餐。在Het Steen前我们看到了传说中的恶巨人Antigoon的雕像，据说他后来被一名罗马勇士Silvius Brabo打败，并割下他的一只手抛入河中。而这一传说也成为了Antwerpen城市名的由来，因为Antwerpen源自荷兰语Hand Werpen（hand-throwing）即“扔手”。并且这个著名的传说也被以各种各样的形式在城市中重复再现和传诵，这其中就包括做成手形状的巧克力和饼干:D

Antwerpen的观光很快就结束了，一路上记录的照片可以在Gallery.QS上找到！

2819

WPG2 Plugin Integrated!

Great Success! After 2 hour struggling, the "WordPress Gallery 2" (WPG2) plugin is settled in my blog. You should now see a thumbnail of the images from my Gallery.QS.
Since I am not a skilled worker of web scripts, it took me a while to figure out how to correctly install and configure it. To help myself later and the people, who might have the same tough life as I, I documented my experience and some tips in my Wiki.QS :D

Easter: BeNeLux游

马上要离开欧洲了，心里总还是有点眷恋。不为别的， 就是习惯了这里“悠闲懒散”的生活。这个话题不能深入，否则跑题，被批不及格 :P
人心有一部份是比较“贱”的，有佳人相伴的时候常不知道要珍惜！自从得知要离开欧洲后，就开始盘算着能否在走之前再多看几眼这里各国独具一格的风土人情。
时间是比较好定的，一般是找个周末再连个宗教节日（感谢上帝），所以一下就相中了复活节的那几天。选地点本来是件很头疼的事情，因为欧洲还没去过的地方很多。可这次的决定却作的比较果断，原因很简单：因为计划做的匆忙，定廉价机票也太晚，所以远的地方就不在考虑之列了；再看近的地方大部分都去过，而没去过的地方里面却正有个广为人知的“经典”路线 --- 荷比卢！lol ：D
Netherlands其实早在2003年初的时候就去过，不过那年只去了Amsterdam还把相机给弄丢了，结果玩得不开心，还什么美景也没能带回来。于是一直想着要再旧地重游，把上次错过的补回来。另外两个国家我都没去过，因为国家土地面积比较小，于是在旅游路线上一般都会和Netherlands并在一起。这并非是中国旅行社的专利履旅行路线，大部分欧洲“原驻民”也基本采用如此的路线游玩，因此他们将这三个国家统称为BeNeLux, 也就是Belgium, Netherlands和Luxembourg的缩写. 这一点有GPS地图数据为证，这三个国家的地图通常被归为一个文档，并命名为BeNeLux.map! Great Success!
荷比卢离我们实在不算远，于是乎决定趁我的老BMW还没卖掉前，赶紧拉出去遛遛。实际行驶的路线我在下面的地图上用不同颜色标示出来了。经过的城市如下Paderborn(start)->Antwerpen->Brugge->Gent->Brussel->Den-Haag->Kinderdijk->Rotterdam->Giethoorn->Volendam->Marken->Amsterdam->Paderborn(end).
整个旅游行程从4月6日凌晨6点开始，到4月11日晚上11点结束，历时5天半，行驶1750公里。其间故事多多，等我这两天整理照片的时候一并娓娓道来。此外在Den Haag的时候有受到Lihlii和Danly同学的热情招待，特此表扬:D 有心人估计从路线图上已经发现，我们其实没有去卢森堡，原因很窝囊，今天不好意思说，过两天酝酿好了在讲:D

The Route of BeNeLux

Leasing or Purchasing?

最近和一位朋友聊起在美洲买车的时候,提到了Leasing。德国人通常在私人购物的时候会考虑Instalment Plan而对于Leasing似乎不是很感兴趣，谈得也少。由于最近被逼换车，所以不得不花点时间来研究一下了。

Benefits of commercial leasing

For businesses, leasing property may have significant financial benefits:
* Leasing is less capital-intensive than purchasing, so if a business has constraints on its capital, it can grow more rapidly by leasing property than it could by purchasing the property outright.
* Capital assets may fluctuate in value. Leasing shifts risks to the lessor, but if the property market has shown steady growth over time, a business that depends on leased property is sacrificing capital gains.
* Leasing may provide more flexibility to a business which expects to grow or move in the relatively short term, because a lessee is not usually obliged to renew a lease at the end of its term.
* Depreciation of capital assets has different tax and financial reporting treatment from ordinary business expenses. Lease payments are considered expenses, which can be set off against revenue when calculating taxable profit at the end of the relevant tax accounting period.

Disadvantages

There are some significant drawbacks:
* If circumstances dictate that a business must change its operations significantly, it may be expensive or otherwise difficult to terminate a lease before the end of the term. In some cases, a business may be able to sublet property no longer required, but this may not recoup the costs of the original lease, and, in any event, usually requires the consent of the original lessor. Tactical legal considerations usually make it expedient for lessees to default on their leases. The loss of book value is small and any litigation can usually be settled on advantageous terms. This is an improvement on the position for those companies owning their own property. Although it can be easier for a business to sell property if it has the time, forced sales frequently realise lower prices and can seriously affect book value.
* If the business is successful, lessors may demand higher rental payments when leases come up for renewal. If the value of the business is tied to the use of that particular property, the lessor has a significant advantage over the lessee in negotiations.

www.qingshen.de is back!

After a long silence, www.qingshen.de is back. There are still some settings need to be reconfigured, but the website works in principle.

I have been suffered with routing my server to the internet. My pains was ended by giving the try up. Now my website was settled on the server from a web hosting provider. Although it took me sometime to get it running, it's cheap enough from me to pent my efforts :) I am now enjoying the stable life.