I really like Unix philosophy:

Data dominates. If you have chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming. [link]

Yes, I used to install all the programs to the Windows > Program Files. And I found that the data is always saved in My Documents. And the settings of the programs are stored in user profile application data. This is very annoyance when I needed to format and reinstall the Windows. Because My Documents is in C:. Though we can move My Documents to other location, I did not do so. Because not everything in My Documents is what I want. Most of them just created by the programs. Very annoyance.

If you like portable applications, surely you know about PortableApps.com. I think the most prominent projects of the website are OppenOffice Portable, Firefox Portable, and GIMP Portable. But recently, since I subscribed the RSS, there are more and more new applications in PortableApps.com, such as the game like “Frets on Fire”, the online game “The Mana World”, etc.

This is very interesting. Portability is a very convenient feature because this allows us to bring our applications by using a USB pendrive. And sometimes, we need administrative privilege to install the applications. But portable applications just let us extract it, then we can run the applications anywhere.

A very bad experience for me to upgrade COMODO Firewall. The update was slow. So I decided to download the latest version installation file.

Then tried to install from the latest version. And the installation detected the existing of the older version. I was asked to uninstall the older version. Right, I uninstalled it. Then I was asked to restart the computer. But I didn’t restart. (I know, this was my fault). Then I continued installing the latest version. Finally, restarted the computer.

Just very happy to find that, my eMule is high ID now. Great!

Since Windows XP Service Pack 3 released, we might need to install the critical hotfixes ourselves. There are several ways to install hotfixes. We can search for “windows offline update” from internet.

But, I personally prefer go to The Software Patch, and download manually. Because I can download whatever I like. However, installing those hotfixes manually is troublesome. Then I wrote a batch file to install the hotfixes automatically. But I need to update the batch file whenever I download new hotfixes. Finally, I found a good solution.

Just upgrade my web browser Firefox to version 3.5. Because it is 3.5, some extensions (addons) cannot be used. The Google Notebook extension cannot be used. This is a bad news for me. Because the development of Google Notebook is stopped. Thus, no more Google Notebook extension for Firefox 3.5.

Google Notebook is very nice for note-taking. Because, we do not need to bookmark everything because of part of the page we like. Sometimes when we are surfing net, we might like some quotes. Using Google Notebook, we can highlight the quotes, and save it.

One day, my junior asked me, how to improve programming skill. Then I told her, only practicing a lot and a lot. Then, I told her about how can we learn like machine learning.

Just like machine learning (such as Artificial Neural Network), we need a lot of training samples. More samples will produce better result. So, as we learn, we also need to have a lot of samples. Then, the learning process need to be repeated. After enough learning, a person can surely categorise the new sample. Because, even a machine can do so. For example, an expert is able to appraise the fake painting and the real painting. This is because he or she has many experiences.

I am not a creative person. But doing programming lets me think how to become a creative person.

We can create a computer with integrating AI (Artificial Intelligence). A low level AI computer will produce a simple pattern, which can be easily learnt by human. A higher level AI will have a more complex pattern. Whatever it is, there is a pattern in an AI. This is because the pattern is programmed by the programmer.

Helping another friend, to fix the same virus infection, Worm:Win32/Conficker.C. But this time, the situation is different.

Doing the same procedures like last time. But, during the scanning in safe mode, the computer suddenly turned off. Then I tried to restart. When log in to Windows, suddenly, “blue screen of death” come out, and the computer restarted. So, could not log in to Windows anymore.

SystemRescueCD, my favourite. Use it in order to backup the data from C: drive. Then, using the ntfs-3g to mount the D: drive, found a message something like:

Two days ago, I was helping one of my juniors to rescue his laptop. However, I didn’t bring any tools. And I recalled a LiveCD, SystemRescueCd. Then I tried to download it. Luckily the internet connection was good. The file size is 234 Mb (version 1.2.0). And immediately burned it to a CD using CDBurnerXP.

However, I am not familiar to the Linux command. Fortunately, SystemRescueCd provides GUI. So, used the wizard to start X Windows. Then, I needed to copy the data from C: drive. Firstly, I tried to copy the data to a pendrive. But the pendrive did not have enough disk space. Then, I tried to copy to D: drive. But the D: drive is NTFS filesystem. I knew about ntfs-3g before, but I did not know how to use it. The start screen of SystemRescueCd did provide information on how to use ntfs-3g.