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If you like Zelda type of ARPG puzzle games, I bet you will like this one as well. It’s on iphone. I had a fun time playing it. Download it for free at: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dwarf-complete/id404126580?mt=8

I believe we all have learned the idea of sharing, probably ever since our childhood. Parents have obviously good reasons to teach their kids early on to share with their siblings. Kindergarten teachers in school also encourage the students to share with their classmates. In general, sharing is a good practice in life among friends and family members. Sharing often stops when we are entering the realm of strangers, and that’s reasonable. After all, why should we trust strangers? There is a possibility that they may steal the things we share with. That’s indeed a valid concern. ...

Google has this very handy graphic tool to display the unemployment rate data. Without that, you will have to go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website to dig through the pages. http://www.google.com/publicdata/embed?ds=usunemployment&ctype=l&strail=false&nselm=h&met_y=unemployment_rate&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=state&tdim=true&tstart=631152000000&tunit=M&tlen=252&hl=en&dl=en You can also compare the state unemployment rate VS the national unemployment rate by following the link below. http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=usunemployment&met=unemployment_rate&tdim=true&dl=en&hl=en&q=unemployment+rate There are many more datasets. I was surprised that US has only 300 million people currently, VS 1.3 billion from China! Find out more from the link below to see all the available datasets! ...

XML::Simple Provides an extremely simple API to read and write XML into and out of Perl native data structures. Simple for simple things, but has some gotchas, which led to the creation of a " strict mode" for the API and a guide for switching to XML::LibXML. XML::Twig Very powerful module to read and process even huge XML documents. Allows you to process the XML one “twig” (tag with all its children and content) at a time, giving you the data either as native Perl datastructure or a structure of objects. See also: xmltwig.com ...

A Chicken and a Pig lived on a farm. The farmer was very good to them and they both wanted to do something good for him. One day the chicken approached the pig and said, “I have a great idea for something we can do for the farmer! Would you like to help?” The pig, quite intrigued by this, said, “of course! What is it that you propose?” The chicken knew how much the farmer enjoyed a good healthy breakfast. He also knew how little time the farmer had to make a good breakfast. “I think the farmer would be very happy if we made him breakfast.” The pig thought about this. While not as close to the farmer, he too knew of the farmer’s love for a good breakfast. “I’d be happy to help you make breakfast for the farmer! What do you suggest we make?” The chicken, understanding that he had little else to offer suggested, “I could provide some eggs.” The pig knew the farmer might want more, “That’s a fine start. What else should we make?” The chicken looked around…scratched his head…then said, “ham? The farmer loves ham and eggs!” The pig, very mindful of what this implied, said, “that’s fine, but while you’re making a contribution I’m making a real commitment!” ...

It turns out that babies have only their first year to be native speakers of any languages. Once they pass that period, their language hearing abilities will be set or culture-bound. From then on, it will only get harder and harder to learn new languages. Also, having real people talk in front of the babies yield much better learning results compared to using audio and video devices. This finding suggests that we should spend more time with our babies so they can pick up the language early on. ...

拜年後乘港鐵回家時，見到一位婆婆上車。婆婆站的位置，兩旁的座位各坐著一家人：左邊的家庭組合是爸爸、媽媽、兩位姨姨、舅舅和三歲右左的小男孩；右邊則是爸爸、媽媽、昏睡的十歲男孩和昏睡的七歲女孩（另加搭「座」的阿叔乙名）。 或許沒人看到婆婆，沒人讓坐。 婆婆疲倦的倚在車箱的牆壁。 左邊那家人的舅舅言談間表示下一站要下車，爸爸把握機會，跟小男孩說：「咦，舅父要落車喎，要同舅父講乜野啊？」媽媽則以不太標準的英語口音道：「what do you say? 」（用法也不太準確。）小男孩揮手說：「bye bye。」 婆婆聞言，緩緩地走到舅舅面前，打算坐他的位子。 豈料舅舅一離開坐位，抱著小孩的爸爸竟把小孩放在坐位上，然後在旁的媽媽作出完美的配合，以迅雷不及掩耳的速度把身子移到那座位上，同時將小孩抱起，騰空出自己的座位讓他們另一位家庭成員，一名年約二十多歲的妙齡女郎。好一招以快打慢！婆婆只好無奈地轉身。 對面那家人的媽媽剛好見到婆婆，馬上把身旁六七歲倚著她睡的女孩搖醒，小女孩揉著眼睛，媽媽指指婆婆，小女孩乖乖地自動站起來，媽媽請婆婆坐，並示意小女孩坐到自己膝上。 各位父母，一個行為猶勝千言萬語。 And for that mother who prefers English, an act is worth more than a million words. Ref link: https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=499976848130&id=696102999

This session was recorded at the 2010 Acts 29 Boot Camp in Seattle, WA. In this session, Pastor Mark Driscoll talks about Marriage, Ministry, and Mistakes This is very eye-opening. Pastor Mark is being very honest about many real issues for many people jugging ministry, marriage, and family. The truth is that, many things can go really wrong. He is not pulling stories from books, but from thousands of pastors’ lives. ...

I found myself doing a lot of “:syntax on” when using vim. Then I was like, maybe I can add that to the setting file… So, it turns out it’s hecka simple. Just do the following: vi ~/.vimrc Then put in the line “syntax on” somewhere in the file. Then you are done! Next time when you open any source files, syntax will be turned on automatically! Apparently there are a lot more settings for you. Take a look at here. ...

Does anyone see the patten in this matrix? I color-coded it but that’s all I can see. If you are given a i,j coordinate, can you quickly tell me what the corresponding value is? See the whole picture If you want to get the numbers in spreadsheet format let me know. I have it in 100x100, or any size since it is generated from my script. Email me at bychan AT gmail.com , thanks! ...