Sarah Connor Chronicles & California Drones

In the end of this TV show of sarah connor chronicles (season 2, episode 13), Sarah met the mysterious California Drone, which rose my interest greatly. Why does the writer want to relate the show with this famous UFO case, which has caused great turmoil on the Internet? There must be some people commenting this, so I googled, and find following links which I would like to digest later time:

A detailed comment I just wanted:
http://screenrant.com/sarah-connor-chronicles-california-drones-mystery-brusimm-4647/

The report on Los Angeles Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-drone18mar18,0,2839889.story?page=1

Drone research team website (man they are serious):
http://droneteam.com/index.php



I previously saw on the web that someone said the Drones were deemed fake. But it (together the files from CARET) caught my mind tightly!

Gmail's bug!

I've been so busy recently, preparing for my visa appointment... Anyway, I'm still alive.

Here's a tiny *bug* I have discovered in our lovely Gmail:

I have been using the "planet & universe" theme for my Gmail, and it's really cool! ...except when there's no email in inbox where a weird Google Reader link is there:


But actually the words are there, and the font color is same as dark sky background!

I'm single again

We departed, shortly after we've known each other for 20+ days. We used to be so close and dreaming the future, but now everything gets back to the original track... and I broke someone's heart, again.

Don't ask why, see my memoir 50 years later.

博士学位论文答辩 PhD Thesis Defense

Here are several photos taken from my defense.

The defender, fearless and hardened :)

Ms. Yi Ling was giving a kind introduction on me to the committee members and audiences. In the very front of the picture are three female scholars in my committee: Dr. Hongya Gu (Peking Univ.), Dr. Shuhua Yang (CAU), and Dr. Xiujie Wang (CAS). They are all brillient scientists and good tutors!

I was doing the viva.

The concentrated audiences. In the center is my mentor, Dr. Zhen Su.
I was explaining some serious stuff to Dr. De Ye who are very interested in my work.

Acknowledgments:

Professor Zhen Su and his wife Ms. Wenying Xu for bringing me to this step;
Professor Ziding Zhang for his continuous encouragement;
Ms. Yi Ling for her kindness in everything!
Dr. Junjie Fu, Dr. Haiyan Wu (became PhD one day later than I am!), and Yunyan Liu who were previous lab members and my close friends;
Zhiyu Peng and Linchuan Li for productive collaboration and friendship;
All the lab members and my friends;
And finally my dear parents!

Vitamin C to beat cancer

I read the letter in PNAS that points out possibility of using Vitamin C to cure cancer, just after I have eaten a large, juicy orange. Though Dr. Piet Borst is conservative about the prosperity and seriously doubted some experimental evidences, I would like to accept them all, fairly!

See http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0809328105v1?etoc

Some recent news about me

Dear all, sorry for not writing these days. Actually I have been quite busy, so buuuusy that I am twirling like a top!
亲爱的朋友们，很抱歉最近什么都灭有写，不是没得可写，实在是咱太忙了...

Here I shall announce something which are strong enough to change my life:
这么吧：宣布两件大事，任何一件都足以改变我的一生！

1. I have accepted an offer by Dr. Joshua Yuan at Institute of Plant Genomics & Biotechnology, Texas A&M, US, where I shall work as a bioinformatician. It is a permanent position.
1。我将要供职于Texas A&M的植物基因组学与生物技术研究所，PI是Joshua Yuan教授。Yuan教授是个非常nice的大好人，但直到现在我也不知道他的中文名怎么写～～

2. I got a girl friend... ;-)
2。我有女朋友了...吼～吼～

As a conclusion, my life got changed twice in one month!
综上所述，本人的一生在过去的一个月里改变了两次！

And one more big news: I shall defend my PhD dissertation in November 27th, 2008!

Science this time, not politics!

Wen Jiabao, our sincere Premier has had an short editorial article published on Science Magazine. See http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/322/5902/649

Premier Wen announced his ideas and encouraging remarks to all Chinese fellows working in the science and technology fields, and to all their peers world wide, through Science Magazine. I think Wen holds in his mind that science and technology advancements, not any social and state formalisms, will save human from trouble. I believe he is right, at least under condition of current state of human race. Sci & Tech helps solve problems, though in the process new problems might emerge, Sci & Tech must be the only hope of solution.

Mysterious tomb in the valley

This mysterious tomb resides in the valley of Baiwang hill. It has been known to me for some years. During a tour to the hill on Oct 12, we visited the tomb again. First image showed this tomb has a curious "front gate", built with piled stones, stands firm. A white object can be seen on the left, which is the gravestone been pushed down from its original place. Second image is about it. First part of it is in a language I didn't recognize, but I guess it said the person buried there was born on September 1877, and died 1947. Second part is in Chinese, but most contents had been removed with great strength, obviously intentionally, as though someone didn't wish to let the contents been read by others.

A lot of local residents were strolling there all the time, but seemed no one cared about it.

My "portrait"

Some guy did a portrait for me, just because I didn't share an apple.
某人记恨我吃苹果时没给他分点儿，就在白板上给我画像。针对这种不道德行为，我在旁边进行了批示...

Dummy bug in my Python programming

My buggy program:

for line in fin.open('onefile'):
list = line.strip().split('\t')
... (other goodies)

def revComplimentary(seq):
li = list(seq)
... (other goodies)

When the self-defined function is called, a TypeError is thrown saying "list object is not callable". What hell is this problem? It turns out that I have redefined "list" to be an object in file processing.

UFO observed 晚间观察到不明飞行物体

刚刚在来实验室的路上观察到一个不明发光飞行物体
I just observed a bright object flying in the sky, on the way to lab.

时间：10月8日晚18：40～18：50
Time: Oct 8, 18:40~50, pm

地点：中国农大西校区校园内
Place: Campus of China agricultural univ.

描述：今天空气能见度非常高，一轮新月悬在仰角不高的天空上，光线也非常强。月亮的旁边（右边？）有一颗很亮的星体，肯定是行星，但不知道是哪个。当时我上方的天空有一架民航飞机在兜圈子，飞得很低。这时我看到头顶正上方有另一个更亮的发光物体，它肯定是突然出现在那里的。我把它与月亮边上那个行星比较了一下，该物体光线比行星的光线白很多，几乎不显黄色，并且它在以比较慢的视觉速度移动，因此我想它不会是流星。如果只瞟一眼的话，几乎会把它当成一颗行星。因为只能看到一个光点儿的缘故无法估计该物体所处的高度。我观察到这个东西在直线朝南偏东方向飞行。大概有1分钟多一点之后，这个东西已经飞到仰角很小的远方，这过程中，它的发光强度一直在减弱，最后就不见了。这过程中它没有发出任何闪烁。在观测过程中，那架民航又从我与那个物体之间的天空飞过一次，对比之强烈使我认为那个物体肯定不会是普通飞机。不知道民航的驾驶员有没有看到这个东西。

Description: The air quality of that night was very good. I shining star could be seen to the right of the moon, which I guess could be a planet. There was a plane flying in circle to land in a nearby airport. I was staring at sky at that time, as I'm always doing in clear nights. Suddenly I noticed a bright "star" straight above my head. It looked very much like a "planet", but it was moving slowly, like a man-made satellite. Its light was white and stronger than the planet in the other side of the sky. It was moving in a straight line towards south-east. Neither the shape nor the flying height of the object could be estimated. I stopped and watched it for 1-2 minutes, meanwhile the object's light faded gradually, then disappeared completely. That looks like the light was turned off, or it was blocked from me by the structure of that object itself.

Busy than ever

Dear all, now I have great hope to graduate in advance (for half a year). That would be really important for my career and life. It is required that I submit my dissertation at October 15. As a result, I'm busy with it all these days and the following, and I have to cancel all travel plans.

The day before I have prepared to give a lecture on Dr. Su's class on Oct 6, when he will be absent. I have generated a length lecture notes about bioinformatics web services, most of it is summary of my view & understanding about the business. But Dr. Su said there's room to add even more contents, eg, to introduce the DBs that this lab created. I shall put this note on my personal website, free access.

Waiting for interview

As you probably know, I'm near graduation and I'm expecting that to come earlier.

During the time my ``tCalculator'' paper was in revision (and was accepted then, owing to everyone's blessing, thanks!), I was busy looking for postdoctoral position and composing my dissertation. I finally got in touch with one professor in CSHL. She would like to interview me, and it has been arranged in the following days. I hope I can join her group to work on those grand and complicated knowledge systems on crop genomics. That is fancy, really appealing for me.

Readers with good memory should tell that Dr. Lincoln Stein resides in CSHL, too.

Oh yes! I watched Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society this evening. Complicated animation, fancy INDEED.

Google Page is out of my reach

Shit it! I cannot visit pages.google.com for months. This means I cannot modify my page contents, and visitors abroad keep on reading the same boring stuff over and over again, and my fellow country people reads nothing for no reason >_<

Don't quite know what's the cause but I'm forced to use my ``back-up'' website so as to ensure everyone can read something meaningful.

Visit http://bioinfo.cau.edu.cn/~xzhou/ for more info.

再登鹫峰

On August 31st, 2008, we went to Jiufeng Hill again. This time, we went quite far beyond.
Beijing had plenty of rains this summer, and there was a big shower in Aug 30, so we enjoyed the clear sky and clean air that day. How wonderful it is!
北京今年夏天的雨水特别多，空气也比往年要好不少。趁着前一天下过雨，我们就在这天出发爬山去了。天真的好蓝啊！


这是在鹫峰公园入口不远处。
this photo was taken near the park entrance.

Zhao Yang was on the road. Hills are connected with each other and you never know where the climax is. Only you know is you are getting higher. The altitude of the highest point there is over 1000 meters, and we have been there. Note the altitude of Beijing city is around 40 meters.

We three. The camera was placed on a rock.

Someone now needs a blessing again~

... due to my manuscript is again awaiting decision after re-submission ... thank you!

... and thank you for your previous blessing, seemed that it works! :-)

赤城温泉 Chicheng Spring

我和爸爸去了趟赤城温泉，这里环境优美，山清水秀，有治病保健功效的温泉驰名远近。
We went to Chicheng, a small town near my hometown. There's a famous, hot spring in its moutainous region. It has long history and its mineral water can cure certain diseases.


温泉附近的山间公路。从张家口方向前往温泉和县城必经之路。这张实际是在回来的路上拍的。
This is the road leading to Chicheng. Very fine scenary.




为什么这么有名呢？一在历史悠久，二在开发彻底。温泉所在的山谷里光大小旅馆就有十几家。真是赞叹赤城县政府的工作效率，小小山谷几年内搞得像商业街。但 是管理人士似乎终于无法忍受高档的餐饮、服务设施与落后、陈旧的温泉景点之间的不协调，于是开始了对老温泉景点的彻底翻修工作。我们恰好赶上了进展到一半的工程，瞧这一片乱糟糟！
The spring is under re-construction because people decided that the old antique facilities there do not match fast growing hotels around. I used to be here many times in my childhood but now everything is in a mess!



幸好，不管人怎么折腾，山还是依旧那么青...
Hills and valleys are still green there...



从施工工地往上走，还能找到待翻新的温泉眼和古庙。庙叫什么？抱歉忘了 :)
An old temple, waiting to be renovated. Sorry I forgot its name.


这就是大名鼎鼎的赤城温泉！从这一眼小井里流出的热气腾腾、带硫磺味儿的胃泉水（治疗胃病！），和周围静谧的满山树木构成了我小时候的美妙记忆之一。可现在它周围的环境让它看起来就像 ... 一个下水井，我们死活没有敢把水杯伸下去打点水品尝。
Ahh... yes! This is the Spring! It's water can cure stomach disorder. I felt sorry that it currently looks like sewer, but it is still the famous spring.


里面的泉水依旧流淌。我问旁边的一位工人师傅，他称这水能喝，在这里施工的人都在喝。
This is how the spring looks like.

官厅水库

大家好，我今天就回家啦。在回来的路上我们绕道走了我很久没有来过的国道上，并且来到了官厅水库边上。在饱览库区景色同时，我们不禁为水库现状担忧：据旁边的居民说，从1995年到现在，水库的水位线已经下降了十几米！而且的确我们在水库的另一边看到湖底白色的沙子已经能从水上看到！

I'm back to home now. Yesterday we went to see the Guanting reservoir. It is among the earliest built reservoirs in China since 1949. Now I'm sure it is in danger due to the tough "dry" problem of this land. Residents here said that the water in it has dropped more than ten meters since 1995, and in some places we have even seen bottom of the lake.

Someone now needs a blessing

I just saw this. How breath-taking! ... haha

就等编辑大人的决定了，真是有点令人紧张啊哈哈哈~~

To the hill again

A few days ago, we went to the Baiwang hill again. This time, to the top.

又去了趟百望山

又去爬百望山了，放松且惬意！
We had a trip to Baiwang hill nearby, relaxed and happy.

最近一段时间的雨水十分充沛，山上的植被超乎往常的茂密，我看得满心欢喜 :-)
There has been plenty of rains these days, and the plants on the hills all grows happily.

空气不错，站在半山腰也看得挺远。几年以后不知道这景色会不会变。
The air is clear, so the view is good.

我的拿手好戏：用草叶做的笛儿打鸣，把所有人都吓着了。
I made some noise using grass leaf. So loud everyone was astounded :)

Photos on the play ground

The play ground is the place I love the most inside the campus. Wonder why's that? Because I want to KEEP HEALTHY!

Every afternoon over the last 3-4 years I went to play ground for physical exercise. Sometimes with fellows, but usually along. This day it is the first time I took camera along with me. A lot of photos been taken! But I will just show a few.

On the football field. Behind me a fierce match is going on.



Acrobat showcase.



Some trees here consists nice habitat for magpies. During this breeding season, some baby birds would fall off the tree and its parents would gone mad for it. When I took photo for this unlucky buddy, several magpies up there are yielding at me, and one even tried to attack me!

Install libsbml on Ubuntu

I have changed OS to Ubuntu 8.04(hardy), so everything I installed and configured on my old FedoraCore4 were lost

>_< :-(

Now I'm installing libsbml.

./configure complained that C++ compiler cannot produce executables. So I installed "build-essential".

Then ./configure complained following:
*** Could not find 'xml2-config' in directory yes/bin/.
*** Please check that the PATH supplied to --with-libxml=PATH
*** is of the form '/usr/local' and not '/usr/local/lib'; in
*** other words, omit the 'lib' part of the name. The 'configure'
*** utility will append 'lib' to the given path automatically.

I googled, and installed "libxml2-dev".

Then I configured successfully.
./configure --with-python

But make produces a lot of errors. This is because Python developer tools has not been installed.
apt-get install python-dev

Compilation succeeded this time!

make
make install

ldconfig

After this, run python, run "from libsbml import *", command succeed!

Install Python API to libsbml

I installed Python API to libsbml, the famous SBML library.

First build libsbml with "--with-python" during configure, the libsbml library is installed on /usr/local/lib/ by default, and the Python API is installed on /usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages/libsbml;

Then add following line to .bashrc:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib
export PYTHONPATH=/usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages/libsbml:/usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages

This way python can import libsbml!

Mourn the lives lost in earthquake

May 19, 2008. Chinese people all over the country and world wide mourned the lives lost in earthquake.

Following are screenshots of major Chinese websites at the moment. All were in black-and-white.

We Chinese people are one family!

Earthquake strike in Sichuan, China

Strong earthquake struck Sichuan Province, China on May 12th, ~14:00. What can I do to help??


Photo from Xinhua News Agency.

Be a blogger...

I hasten to add a few words to my Blog when I discovered something, so as to be a blogger...

In the coding morning, I ran into one strange problem which kept me scratch hair for an hour...

      file = 'tmp.ode'
      fout = open(file,'w')
      ... (write goodies) ...
      fout.write('done\n')
      subprocess.Popen(['xppaut %s -silent > out 2>err' % file], shell=True).wait()

Obviously I forgot to close the output file object. For me, this has the peculiar effect of disturbing the following system call: the xppaut interpreter simply refused to read the ODE file, which I have found to be readily there on the directory, and contents are all correct.

The Spring of Chinese Symphony 中国交响乐之春

We attended the first opening concert of 'The Spring of Chinese Symphony', at concert hall of National Centre for the Performing Arts.
在国家大剧院, 聆听中国交响乐之春的首场演出.

Announcements on the website (http://www.chncpa.org/)
网站上的公告.

Outside the huge opera.
在国家大剧院的外面

Inside the opera there's several exhibition halls with colorful contents. Of special interest, several posters were dedicated to the construction process of the opera, started on 2001. Below is the first one, "Unforgettable scenes"
"不能忘却的瞬间" 展板, 记录了大剧院自2001年的艰苦建造过程

A modern sculpture on one side of the corridor to the concert.
长廊里的一尊雕塑, 但是没记下艺术家的姓名. 以后这里是否也能出现"约翰.施特劳斯"一样的标志性雕塑?

Cameras were not allowed to take into the concert hall, so I can only took pics using my poor cell phone (I didn't took pics during the performance).
I arrived early on my seat and following is my view angle. Poor isn't it? But I had face to face with the orchestra conductor and had a exciting view of his performance.
从我坐的位置看去就是这个样子. 那晚演出观众非常多, 只有1/5的座位空着. 在这里唯一的好处就是能看到指挥的全部神情和手势.


20100117

那是我第一次也是迄今为止的一次去“高雅”。但好像从那以后原来的实验室又“高雅”过一两次，当然我已经不在场了。

不知道为甚么今天突然想起来这次音乐会了。但演奏的曲目除了那个“展览会上的画卷”，也都忘干干了；那些配合北京奥运创作的曲目，恐怕不会有谁对它留下印象。

“我们的曲谱也都是正版的” 这是我唯一记得的指挥的一句话

Find files and delete

The first time I used "find" to delete all old and obsolete temporary files:

# find /xxx/tmp/ -ctime +14 -exec /bin/rm '{}' \;

$ find . -name '*.zip' -exec unzip {} \;

Revisit to phoenix range 再登凤凰岭

Some new pagodas sighted in Phoenix Range, in addition to our last year's visit. Sadly, they are almost relics or remains. Wonder how they stood thousand years' erosion, both by human and nature.

在凤凰岭中又见到两个佛塔, 一个在上方寺的遗迹中, 另一个在小山头上. 它们基本上都有严重的损毁, 但似乎公园并没有将其修缮的打算, 它们甚至没有被标注在公园地图上. 它们都为古代僧人所建, 经历几乎千年的风吹日晒雨淋人毁, 见证了尘世变迁. 在不久的将来, 它们将各自化为一堆堆的碎石瓦砾, 重归造化怀抱...



When I was taking above photo, I discovered this fern living in the shade of stone I stood on. Don't know its name.
下面这个蕨类植物照片是拍上面那个塔时发现的, 应该比较常见, 卵形叶, 叶背尚无孢子囊. 附着在岩石的背阴面, 环境干燥.

Mountaineering 登鹫峰

(Apr 6, 2008) 只爬到了海拔~600米的小山头, 后面的高山没有上去 (>1100m), 下次吧...


Well, we got a photographer...
瞧, 我们有专业摄影人员...
... and he took pictures during picnic time...
还在野餐时为大家拍照...