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Review for Canine Cat Scratcher

Yunyao — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 06:18:22 +0000

As a cat and modern design lover, I am always looking for cat items pleasant for both the cats and my aesthetic standard. I had my eye on the canine scratcher for a while, but its over 1000 USD price tag made it out of reach. However, recently, I found that it now costs "only" 395 USD. I pulled the trigger w/o too much hestitation since I need to buy the cats a holiday present anyway. However, I was still a little nervious at the purchase, as it would be a huge bummer if the cats don't like it. But I really love the design and can totally see how it fit with the rest of the house w/o screaming "cat furniture".

It took over 3 weeks to receive the scratcher (somehow I didn't even get the confirmation email and it took an email from me to learn about the status of my order). But I was very pleased at the arrival. It was very well packaged and arrived without any damage. It is just the right size as a standalone decoration. Most importantly, the cats love it.

After some fighting, it has now official become Mayori's favorite ride. High recommend!

Are you Han? My paternal ancestry - Hypothesis

Huahai — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 07:02:41 +0000

I was brought up as a Han Chinese and I myself have never doubted that identity. However, I do know that I look slightly different from people around me when I grew up. Darker skin, slightly curly hairs, deeper set eyes and other distinctive facial features. Put it simply, my face does not look like an average Han male face. However, nobody really said anything about my appearance except that my old brother occasionally joked about it (he looks like a normal Han Chinese by the way). After all, I look just like my father. Besides, there are plenty of male relatives in my father's native village (near Chongqing) who look just like me.

It took a foreigner to first question my ethnicity. When I was in graduate school in Beijing, there was an exchange student in my group, an African American girl, who one day took me by surprise by asking: "Are you Han?" I instinctively answered "Yes". She didn't say anything more and I didn't either, but I knew why she asked.

When I came to US, the situation got worse. When I went with Yunyao to visit her college friends, they always talked English with me first, then were totally startled by my almost perfect Mandarin. Hispanic people in the states always wanted to talk Spanish with me then were surprised by my inability to speak their language. Later I learned one Spanish phrase or two. When we traveled in Latin American, people in the restaurants always insisted on correcting my poor Spanish pronunciation while ignoring Yunyao's arguably worse performance.

Since all the female members of my family look like normal Han people, Yunyao became curious about my paternal ancestry and suggested me to take a DNA test to find out. At first, I dismissed this seemly outrageous idea. A few months ago, I became curious myself when I learned a few things about the make-up of Han Chinese Y-DNA haplotypes. Below is a chart I made using the data from this Nature study on 1289 Han males in year 2004.

O3*, O3d and O3e all belong to the group O3. It is interesting to see that O3 takes up about 55 percentage of the Han populations.

Since people always talk about the differences between southern and northern Chinese, a chart (using the same data set) comparing the two follows:
Clearly, Northern and Southern Han Chinese males have similar genetic distributions, so the alleaged north-south difference is not that significant, at least in term of male lineage.

Now, the big question, what haplogroup do I belong to? To find out, one has to take out the wallet . Luckily, Yunyao bought this FamilyTreeDNA test for me as a birthday gift. Here is the package I just received in the mail:

There are two swabs and two specimen tubes in the package. Following the instructions, I scraped my cheek for a full minute, put the swab in the tube, and put everything into the envelop provided, and mailed the package back.

While waiting for the results, let's make a prediction about my haplogroup. To do that, let's look at the haplogroup distribution of the province where my father and I came from (using the same data set as above):

The number of Sichuan Han people tested in the Nature 2004 study is only 65, so this chart may not be very accurate. In the absence of better prior information, let's work with this.

There are 5 percent of C*among Sichuan Han people. A major part of these are likily the decendents of the Mongol invaders. Since I am not Mongol looking, I rate the probability of my being C* to be zero, P(C*)=0.

The two percent of D1 in Sichuan Han people are likely related to a Tibetan origin. According to my family history, this is again unlikely my paternal lineage, P(D1)=0.

There are surprising large percentage of K* shown in the data. K is a very old lineage appearing around the Pacific everywhere, and is particularly common in the Australian islands. I think the chance of my being in this group is higher than normal. Of course, it could be that the study didn't not differentiate some of the down-stream haplogroups of K, such as LT, M, N and S. In any case, I rate the probability of my being one of these K people higher than 16 percent, P(K*, LT, M, N, or S)=0.2.

Similar to the national level, O3 is the most common among Sichuan Han people, taking up 57 percent. Since I am not normal Han looking, I will down rate the probability of my being O3 from 0.57 to 0.3, P(O3)=0.3. I cannot down rate O3 too much though, as my blood brothers do look like normal Han.

The eight percent of O1 in Sichuan Han people are likely the results of migration from other parts of southern China, as this is a common gene type in southeastern Asia. Given our family history, the probability of my being O1 should be significantly higher, P(O1)=0.3.

O2 accounts for 13 percent of Sichuan Han people. O2a is commonly seen in the tribal people of southern Asia. I rate the probability of my being O2 higher than normal: P(O2)=0.2.

To recap, my probablistic hypothesis regarding my own Y-DNA haplogroup is the following:

P(K*, LT, M, N, or S)=0.2

P(O3)=0.3

P(O1)=0.3

P(O2)=0.2

Let's wait for the moment of truth...

Best Chocolate Places in Manhattan

Yunyao — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 21:02:31 +0000

I recently stayed in Manhattan for a few days during a business trip. My colleague and I were looking for places to buy some special chocolate to bring back home. We asked a few locals New Yorker as well as consulted the web for recommendations. Here are the list of stores we collected.

La Maison Du Chocola (store website)
Vosges (store website)
Jacques Torres (store website)

We only have 3 hours to spend in the city. So we went to La Maison Du Chocola store in the Rockefelle Center, the store closest to our hotel.

Since there is not free sampling, I was not very sure that I would like to spend \$100 on one pound of chocolate. I bought two small boxes with 6 pieces of chocolate each. Obviously, I am not the only one who is not sure: they even have tiny small packages with only two pieces of chocolate (\$8), accompanied with a pretty gift bag.

When I gave the gift to Huahai. He absolutely loves the chocolate. So it is money well spent and I plan to buy more for him when I go to NYC next time.

Review for "Virtual Cat Toys HD Catnip Collection"

Yunyao — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 19:46:34 +0000

As many of friends, I recently acquired a HP Touchpad largely due to its low price. I don't really need a tablet, as I am sitting in front of computes almost all the time. My original plan was to turn it into an interactive cat toy, at least sometimes, so I can keep the two cats entertained while I am working.

Unfortunately, I could only find one game designed for the cats "The Catnip Collection". According to its website, it "is a variety of toys that will amuse and challenge your cat and its human".

The reviews seem pretty decent (4 out 5).

https://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?packageid=com.wtflolomgbbq.haxe.vct

Even though it is not free anymore, I bited the bullet and bought the app. Unfortunately, the cats are not even remotely interested! I think that the problem is the objects (insects, balls, etc) are constantly moving instead of stopping and moving randomly. So the cats get bored after 5 seconds.

Hopefully the app developer will see my post and consider improve the game further. For the smart cats who play with human all the time, we need something that is really challenging!

Planning a Dream Trip to Italy the Easy Way

Yunyao — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 22:13:30 +0000

Huahai and I have just returned from our first trip together to Italy. The trip itself was wonderful and unforgeable. However, it usually took a lot of planning for such an extensive trip, unless you hire someone else to do it for you or join a tour group.

We usually enjoy traveling at our own pace and explore the area; therefore, we (basically myself) always do our own travel planning. Unfortunately, as a very busy professional, I do not really have much time to do the planning. (Can you believe someone have actually spent half a year to plan a two-week's trip to Italy and produce a travel plan with 90 pages?)

Following my usual practice, I have spent a lot of time initially on online travel forums initially. I also got the aforementioned 90-page's travel plan and a shorter one from a friend. Then I have brought Rick Steven's book. Eventually, I have managed to come up with a travel plan with only two pages that working out pretty well. Here are some tips that I have summarized based on my experience with this trip. I wish that I have known them first before I started the planning. It would have made my life much easier without compromising the quality of the travel plan.

1. Buy at least one good travel book.

For European trips, I highly recommend Rick Steven's book, which contains very detailed information for each of the places. Then you can bring the book with you and do some of the detailed planning such as where to have lunch on the go. I bought this book only a couple of weeks before our trip. I wish that I have bought it before I even started the planning. It would have saved me a lot of time reading online postings.

2. Refer to travel packages for possible travel itinery.

While I do enjoy the freedom of traveling at our own pace, studying the sample travel packages listed at the travel agency's websites is a very efficient way to come up with a travel plan that covers the major must-seen sites. I would add one extra day for each stop, as the tour groups tend to travel at much faster pace than I would like. Rick Steven's websites also provide very good example routes for each city with free mp3 audo downloadable. Another good place to get some inspiration is Yahoo! trip planner, where you can view other people travel plans.

3. Book hotels well in-advance.

A good travel book typically contains some recommendation for accommodations. But the list is usually very short. I found Tripadvisor to be a great place to find accommodations with good value without broking the bank. However, top ones can sold out fast. Therefore I recommend booking the hotels as soon as the trip schedule is set. Of course, don't forget to use Kayak.com to find out how to get the best price. I booked the hotels about two months ahead of time, but any of the smaller nice budget hotels have already sold out.

4. Reserve museums in-advance or join private tours.

Check the travel book or online forums to find out whether any of the sites on the travel plan requires reservation and make the reservations ahead of time. Otherwise, you may find yourself stuck in a really long line for hours or even worse end up have to miss the must-seen sites. Joining private tours typically helps avoiding the long line but can be expensive. We only did the private tours when we were able to see things that we could not see otherwise (e.g. underground part of Colloseum is only accessible by joining one of the private tours). Many of the places can be reserved online. In addition, many hotels can help you make the reservations for free --- just send requests via emails with desired time and date.

5. Arrange only one or two must-do items per day, preferably in the morning.

I feel that vacation is a time to relax, not a time to check of boxes of to-do items on the travel plan. Therefore, it is better to do only one or two must-do sight-seeings in the morning and then simply add other items as you go depending on the mood. With a good travel planning book, it is easy to do such last-minute planning without stressing out yourself in planning or following the plan.

6. Arrange some resting days.

As a first-timer to Italy, I was surprised how much walking I need to do everyday. It is true that most of the things are either within walking-distance or reachable via public transportation plus walking. However, all these walking adds up! According to my pedometer, we walked over 10 miles in one single day just visiting museums! Unless you would like to walk miles and miles everyday, it would be better to arrange some days with activity that requires not too much walking so your feet can recover. I am really glad that between our visits to Rome and Florence, we stayed in Sorrento and did a few day trips involving bus tour, boat tour, a little bit hiking, and swimming. These resting days give us some space to enjoy Italy from a completely perspective while giving our feet a break.

Best CSV Reader/Writer?

Yunyao — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 21:36:13 +0000

My colleague has highly recommended to me the following CSV reader/writer: http://supercsv.sourceforge.net/

I am yet to test it out, so I will need to come back provide my review. But just put a pointer here, since this tool is not realy easy to find without the right keywords.

Quick Fix: Windows XP Crashes with Blue Screen with Video Content

Yunyao — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:06:04 +0000

For some reason, my main working machine, a Windows XP desktop, recently started to crash a lot followed by the blue screen of death. The error message output at the blue screen does not seem to be helpful.

***STOP: 0x0000008E (0xE0000001, 0xBA490925, 0xA880D820, 0x00000000)
***watchdog.sys - Address BA490925, base at BA90000, Date stamp 480254ab

After a few crashes, I realized that the machine crashes whenever I play any video in the web browser ( I am using FireFox). Initially, I didn't bother to look into this problem and simply attempt to solve the problem by avoid playing any video, since I don't really intent to watch any video during my work hours and would rather spend my time doing really work instead of fixing the machine. However, this didn't really help since so many sites now a days include video content .

So today, when the machine crashed again, I decided to fix this issue once and for all. Luckily, one Google search using the error message turned up quite a few answers. Most of the answers tent to be too complicated than what I wanted and involving checking for malware, virus, etc, which is not really my concern. Luckily, I found a very simply solution here.

Due to changes to the link, the exact solution from the above link no longer work. But the basic idea is to go to any site with flash content, and then right click on the flash content, select "setting" from the pop-up menu and uncheck "Enable hardware acceleration".

For example, you can go to http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplatformruntimes/gallery/ or any Youtube page. Just make sure that you don't play the video before you make the change. Otherwise, you will see the blue screen again.

NetFlix Is Splitting Into Two!?

Yunyao — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:20:12 +0000

It has turned out that Netflix has abandoned the plan, finally.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Huahai told me the news late last night that NetFlix is splitting into two, my first reaction was that he must be reading from Onion! After all, based all what have learned from the business school classes and information economics classes, it makes perfect sense to provide bundled services, especially when it comes to information product.

However, the news is definitely true, as further confirmed by the following letter that I received this morning.

I don't know about you. But like many other loyal NetFlix subscribers, I love the convenience of their streaming service and almost use it exclusively even when I have bundled unlimited DVD service. In fact, I don't even watch cabled TV anymore except for the morning news. However, when I was informed that I have to pay 60% to get both services, I dumped the DVD service without hesitation. After all, I was only watching at most one DVD per week. However, this price hack does have hurt my feeling --- it seems that they don't care about their customizes anymore when they now dominate the market.

Nevertheless, the above news has shocked me. Frankly, I don't think that this move makes much sense --- why lose the establish name and give away the convenience to the customizes to be able to combine both services and maintain one single account? It also goes again the economic of scale. It all seems to me to be a very costly move.

However, I am very excited at the news. It looks like a big move that will be written into business school text books in the near future. I am really looking forward to seeing the outcome a couple of years from now on.

More on the move can be found on their blog.

Easy Tuna Birthday Cake for the Cats

Yunyao — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 23:25:18 +0000

I was looking for buying birthday cakes for the cats' birthday. Surprisingly, although it is very easy to find dog bakeries, there seems no existence of a single cat bakery. Luckily, a single Google search online brought up many birthday cake recipes for the cats. I picked one simple recipe with my cats' favorite food --- tuna.

So here is the tuna birthday cake for the cats, decorated with shrimp with catnip garnish.

It looks very nice, but most importantly, it was an instant hit. The cats jumped on to the dinning table as soon as I put the cakes on it.

Mayori started with her favorite --- shrimp --- first.

Tom enjoyed the cake itself too.

Recipe (modified based on an online recipe I found, but I could not find the original link anymore):

1. Turn the oven on 350 degree

2. A can of tuna or salmon in water + 2 eggs + a little bit cheese + a little bit of flour

3. Mix all the ingredients and put into a muffin pan.

4. Bake for 15 minutes

5. Garnish with a cooked shrimp (the easiest way is to put one or two shrimp into a cup of water in a tea cup. Microwave for 1 -2 minutes).

蛋糕的做法如下：

先把烤箱调到350度。

然后将tuna／salmon 罐头一个, 鸡蛋两个，少量cheese，少量面粉，搅拌好以后倒到
烤muffin的模子里。

放烤箱内烤15分钟左右, 上面再放上煮好的虾一只就好了。

Resources to Get Rid of Lawn the Frugal Way (Phrase I)

Yunyao — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 01:39:05 +0000

We are getting rid of our front lawn --- to save water and money!

A landscape designer helped us did the design to convert our front yard from an old deteriorating classic English garden into a vibrant modern garden full of native plants.

Given our shoe-string budget, we plan to do most of the work ourselves. However, since both of us work full time, it will be a while before we can actually start the project, but being a person who loves to plan, I have started collecting resources to do the project frugal way already!

Here are the resources I have collected so far based on the main steps for the landscape projects:

Step 1. Demolition

We need to get rid of some plants and get rid of the lawn. It would cost a fortune to hire professional to do all the work, especially given the size of our front yard. So my current plan is to wait for the rain and then get rid of the lawn via sheet mulch.

This video on YouTube explains in details how to do sheet multch. This websites added some more way to amend soil during sheet multch.

Here is a link describing alterative ways to get rid of the lawn.

There are several ways to get cheap compost in the Bay area. The ones I am considering are

Guadalupe Landfill “Valley’s Pride” Compost
999 Guadalupe Mines Road
San Jose CA 95120
408 268-1694
Hours: Monday – Friday 8 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Feedstock used: yard trimmings, stable manures, redwood grindings
Delivery available. Self – haul price $20/yard, bags available for small quantities.

Zanker Road Resource Management
705 Los Esteros Road
San Jose CA 95134
408 313-0444
Hours: M-F 7 a.m. - 5 p.m. Sat/Sun 8 - 3
Self – haul price $14 cubic yard, order minimum 2 yards.
Feedstock: yard trimmings
For more info: www.zankerrecycling.com
Contact sales rep Alex Sharpe: alex@zankerrecycling.com

Royal Oaks Mushrooms

Self serve only - $10 cubic yard
15480 Watsonville Road
Morgan Hill
408 779-2362

Cupertino Residents

Unlimited FREE bulk compost Friday and Saturday mornings from 8:30- 11:00AM at Steven’s Creek Quarry, Steven’s Canyon Road across from the Steven’s Creek Reservoir dam. The site is open typically the last weekend in March through the 4th weekend in October. The site may be closed during that time due to rainy weather or muddy conditions.
Feedstock: yard trimmings
Bring driver’s license to verify residency

Free Horse manure Compost - Almaden

Call (408) 390-3233

To get free mulch, I am considering contact one of the tree service companies based on ads on craigslist or simply call the tree service companies to get free clipping from them. We got one truck load of free mulch this way a couple of years back. It makes sense to do it again.

Step 2. Trenching

Step 3: Grading

I have yet to find out a frugal way to do this. Hopefully we don't really have to do much. We need to talk to a few landscapers to find it out.

Step 4: Hardscape

To reduce cost, we plan to keep the current hardscape as much as possible. Since both the front and back yard have been professionally designed before, this is not a bad idea for our case. We plan to paint the raised beds in dark grey to make they look more modern.

However, we still need to replace some portion of the concrete walkway. Given our zero experience with concrete, we still need to decide how to do this step in a frugal way.

Step 5: Plant

For now, I am planning to buy all the plants from the nursery recommended by the designer: Capital Wholesale Nursery: http://www.capitolwholesalenursery.com/.

The most frugal way is probably just do all the planting ourselves, as it would cost around $10 to $15 to plan one professionally. If we need things to be done faster, maybe we will hire someone outside of HomeDepot?

Step 6: Irrigration

The most frugal way is just do all it ourselves. Fortunatelly, Huahai has already had some experience in making drip-irragation system. So he will probably be the one do all the work. :)

Step 7: Pot

We need to buy a fancy pot as the center piece of the front yard. We will probably ask the design er for recommendation and also check out Flora Grubb as well.

Some online stores that may be interesting:

http://www.simplyplanters.com

http://www.goodiestore.com

If you only want to get rid of your lawn and don't care about the exact design, a cheap and easy way is probably contact guys from http://www.naturalfrontyards.com. It costs about $3.5/sqrt to do the entire convertion.