This tiramisu might look like a shit, but it tastes great.

The presentation doesn't look good, but it tastes awesome. #Taiwan #Chiayi #Travel #sharetravelpics #foodporn #food #teampixel https://t.co/0hRjgjBLIU pic.twitter.com/aJS9TpEQgr

— CW Chou (@tweejoe) October 17, 2021

When I walked in this coffee shop, it’s all familiar to me. The decorations, the menu, the staffs, all of them. I asked few questions, and I felt these questions had been asked before, and I got the exactly the same answer.

Fake it until you make it: Bad blood book review

Bad blood by John Carreyrou ( Image source: Amazon)

I have developed a diagnostic device in my master degree research. What I did is a portable machine for prothrombin test. We had spent a year to figure out a way to detect signal from tiny amount of blood, and couldn’t be able to move the whole test into a tiny machine. It’s so complicated. That’s why when I heard the news of Theranos, I don’t believe it. It’s not I don’t believe it will come true, I just don’t think we can achieve what Elizabeth claimed at the moment.

Fake it until you make it?

It's not easy to have meal alone in Korea.

Eating alone in Korea isn’t easy. Most of traditional Korean food restaurants requires people to order at least two portions. The first day in Korea, my friends and a went to the famous Daegugalbi restaurant in Gyeongju. We were quite confused when we ordered the meal.

First meal in Korea. It's good, but it's freaking spicy! #Korea #Gyeongju #travel #food #teampixel #explorekorea https://t.co/ULG6JgS64Y pic.twitter.com/kKnPJUbrVf

— CW Chou (@tweejoe) November 24, 2019

Daegugalbi

I think it made by pork mixing with Korean spicy sauce, which make it tastes spicy and salty. We ordered it slightly spicy, but it was still very hot for us. Thankfully, a cold soup was provided for us. It’s very helpful for easing the spiciness.

Anne & Ama

I recently visited an exhibition called Anne and Ama in the museum of Taiwanese Literature. Anne Frank is a well-known little girl who is a victim of Nazi during World War II. She had been keeping journals during her life time, and her diaries were found after she was dead in a secret room in Amsterdam where she hid from Nazi. The room she lived is now a museum to memorize her. 

I started a new blog

I've noticed that I haven't updated my blog for a long long time. And I looked back all the posts in this blog and found that most articles were not the reason why I started this blog. I decided to start another new blog, and post irrelevant posts in another new blog.

Customized new tab page of Google Chrome

The new tab of Google Chrome always bothers me because I don't need a search bar on a blank page since the location bar has the same function. I've written one article about how to change it back but, unfortunately, the way I wrote isn't available anymore.

Now, there's a much easier method to do so.

Find my phone for Android

Is there anytime that you forgot where you've put your phone?

I believe some people, including me, have this problem once in a while. We may have left the phone in the office, or it's just buried under a pile of clothes. For Android users, there is now a easy way to find your phone.

It's been so long!

I just found that the latest post on this blog is a year ago. I really should start writing something again. Though most of the articles would be boring because they're about my stupid meaningless life experiences. I still don't know any good topic to start with. Travel log is one of good ideas, I guess, but who cares about traveling Taiwan?

I hope I will post a new one soon...... Finger crossed!

Oh~ Merry Christmas~ I almost forgot! Happy holidays everyone except I don't even have a holiday.

Go back to the old new tab page of Google Chrome

NOTE:
This method isn't available anymore. Try the new way to do so.


I usually use Firefox as my default browser, but I use Google Chrome mainly for Google services like Gmail and Google drive. Therefore, I feel convenience that many online applications can be shown as an app icon in the new tab page of Google Chrome.

Unfortunately, after I've updated Google Chrome to version 29, the new tab page is changed. We could find a search bar in the middle of the page and few recently viewed sites showing below. Notably, the shortcut of applications is gone, instead, an app bookmark is shown on the bookmark tool bar, which links to a page (chrome://apps) that shows the applications we've installed just like the old new tab page.

Some people may feel okay because they don't have many applications and it seems to integrate with Google Now (I don't see Google Now running on my computer, and I don't know why) which could be very useful. However, for me, I prefer the old one. So that's what I do to get my old new tab page back!

1. Enter "chrome://flags/" in location bar of Google Chrome
2. Press "F3" or "Ctrl + F" to search "Enable Instant Extended API "
3. Disable the option and click "Relaunch Now" button 

Finally, we can get our new tab page back!

Tune thouchpad for Linux Mint

Touchpad in linux works quite good actually, but there are still different from windows. I'm used to tap three fingers for right click, and two fingers for middle click. However, in default, right click is tapping three fingers and nothing for middle click.

The simplest way, which found on the google, is to create a script:

synclient TapButton2=2
synclient TapButton3=3

Save it and run it every time start up desktop.

Or you can modify/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "touchpad catchall"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
    MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
    Driver "synaptics"
    Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "on"
    Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "on"
    Option "CircularScrolling" "off"
    Option "CricularTrigger" "0"
    Option "TapButton1" "1"
    Option "TapButton2" "2"
    Option "TapButton3" "3"
EndSection

 I'm lazy to do that. 

Install Linux Mint 14 on USB Drive

I had tried to install Ubuntu on USB drive before, but it failed. I don't know why. Today, I installed Linux Mint on USB drive again and it success unbelievably. I don't know why either. And I found out that we could install on USB driver through Virtualbox. Virtualbox makes it more convenience to install because we can do another thing with computer while installing at the same time.

First of all, download Virtualbox, and a Virtualbox extension package is also needed to make USB work. Download the latest Linux Mint iso file. After those files are downloaded and installed completely, toggle enable USB 2.0 in Virtualbox >settings >USB and mount the iso file in the Virtualbox. Then we are ready to begin.

Boot the virtual machine with CD of Linux Mint, mount USB drive and click install.

The most important thing is here, choose your USB driver instead of hard drive to install, and remember to install the MBR on the USB drive as well.

The rest of steps are the same with installing linux on hard drive. After the installation finished, it's time to test the USB drive.

Notably, there is no way to boot virtual machine with USB devices directly, but we can make the USB device as a virtual hard drive, then we can boot from the USB drive. So here is what we going to do next. Go to Virtualbox installed folder in Command mode, and type the command:

VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename D:\VirtualBox\usb.vmdk -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive4

Where "D:\VirtualBox\usb.vmdk" stands for your virtual disk location, and "PhysicalDrive4" stands for your USB drive (The number might be different in different computer).

Then, create another virtual machine with usb.vmdk, and it's done!

Here is the screenshot of my desktop after tuned:

NOTE:
The most worst thing of Linux Mint is that it doesn't install input method in default so we need to install it by ourself if we need one. Go to command line and install ibus.

sudo apt-get install ibus

Synchronizing Firefox

I love Firefox. I have been using it since Firefox 2.0. However, I haven't use synchronization because what I don't really need to synchronize all. What I need is synchronizing bookmarks only, and Xmarks do a very good job on that, plus, Xmarks synchronizes bookmarks between browsers. That's what I exactly need.

Months ago, I bought my first smart phone, Xperia pro. I start to use phone surfing websites. The biggest problem is the bookmarks on desktop were not available when I'm using phone. I did a little search on Google and it showed nothing about it until Chrome and Firefox for Android launched. I love these two browsers. I use Firefox the most, but I still use chrome a lot. These two browsers can both help me get my bookmarks on my phone because the bookmarks are exactly the same between Firefox and Chrome thanks to Xmarks. I tried Chrome at first because I'm a huge Google fan, but Chrome is too large. The phone kept showing "low space" which is really annoying. That's why I turn to Firefox.

Synchronization of Firefox is not the same with Chrome. Chrome synchronizes with Google account, but Firefox uses "pair devices" instead of account. The next following is showing how to synchronize Firefox between phone and desktop.

1. Launch Firefox on Android and press the menu bottom, choose "Settings" and "Snyc". Then, you'll see three code.

2. Launch Firefox on your computer and go to "Option" and "Sync". Select "Pair a device" and then you'll see three input boxes.

3. Entering the code on phone and press Next, and your Firefox is synchronizing.

4. Finally, you can see the successful connection on both phone and desktop.

A trip to Lie Ying Jian at Mei Ling

Lie Ying Jian means a tip of falcon, which is located in Mei Ling of Nansi, Tainan, Taiwan. It is named so because it looks like an eagle standing on the top of the mountain, and it is one of the most amazing scenes that I’ve ever seen in my life. I had heard so many people recommending this place as a best site in Tainan so I went there in a lovely afternoon.

We just want a bottle of wine

Finally, we have tasted the wine. Even so, it was miserable because no one know how to open the wine even we had two openers.

The story started from the day before yesterday. We planned to enjoy the white wine with cakes but no one brought any opener so we tried to borrow from others. We had asked every one we know that if they had an opener, but the answers were always "no". We discussed for a while and found that every one of us have openers and decided to bring them and taste the wine in the next day. However, in the next day, no one brought one because we thought that others might bring one. What a coincident! Not even one person had the different thought. Anyway, today, some of us did bring an opener in case things happened just like yesterday but no one knew that it was just the beginning.

At first, the opener was stuck in the cork successfully, and then we came to a problem which is nobody could pull out the cork. We have tried one by one until the cork mashed into pieces, which means the opener was useless after that,. That was really a tragedy. We had been looking forward this wine for two days because we didn't have opener but now we had many and they were useless. So, we had to use another way.

The most senior man came to an idea that we could stick a chopstick through the cork and make a little hole. A hammer was used to stick the chopstick into the cork and a pliers was used to pull out the chopstick. Suddenly, the chopstick broke into two fragments. One of them stock in the cork. There was nothing could be done unless we pushed the fragments into the bottle. We used another chopstick and stuck it into the cork again. The fragments in the cork was pushed down into the bottle, and, this time, the chopstick was removed smoothly.

At this moment, every one was screaming out load to celebrate the success of the "wine-opening" and getting ready for tasting the wine. We pooled the wine in the cups, and found that the wine was coming out drop by drop. Yes, it was drop. Even we had to wait for the wine pooled into the cups, we were satisfied with every single drop of the wine because every drops were our hard work. The wine was so sweat by the way, and I almost felt that I was drinking juice.

While every one was trying open the wine, I was searching the easier way to open a bottle of wine. Here is what I found:

I haven't tried it yet. I don't know if it works well. Maybe I will try it next time. lol

Using "I'm feeling lucky" as default search engine in Firefox

Firefox is an open source web browser. According to StatCounter Global Stats, the global usage share of Firefox was 26.39% in October 2011. I think most people feel familiar about this software. For me, I am a fan of Firefox, and I have been using it as my default browser since Firefox 2. The most important advantage of Firefox is the variability. Firefox contains a lot of add-ons that improve the using experience, and many settings are variable for users.

The location bar is also a search bar. It can search for history, bookmark, even on web. However, a search box is next to the location bar. I think that the function of search bar is too similar with the location bar so I make a little change of the location bar. The default search engine of the location bar is google, and I changed it to "I'm feeling lucky", and I strongly suggest you to change.

Why should you change the search engine to "I'm feeling lucky"?

"I'm feeling lucky" is a service of google, it suggest one most possible website that you may want to visit when you search a keyword. It makes lots of convenience on searching websites. For example, if I want to visit "www.facebook.com", what I need to do is search "facebook" in the location bar, and then, it will automatically connect to facebook website. Mostly, "I'm feeling lucky" can direct us to the right website. This can save us a lot of time.

How do I change the default search engine to "I'm feeling lucky"?

1. Launch Firefox, first.

2. Type "about:config" in the location bar. Then the browser will ask your permission to change the settings. Click "I'll be careful, I promise!", of course.

3.  Then, search "keyword.url" in the filter, and double click the "keyword.url" in below.

4. After that, enter this URL, and click OK.

http://www.google.com/search?btnI&q=

5. Finally, you have the smartest location bar in Firefox.

Google plus invitation

I'm lucky to join google plus. I have plenty of invitations. I would like to share. :D
Follow me on twitter @tweejoe if you want to know more information.


UPDATE:

There is a good news. Google plus don't need invitation to invite people anymore. All you need is a link only. Luckily, I can share a link with a limit of 150 people register. Here is a link:
https://plus.google.com/i/J7G1z0d6zEI:o4VEic7pfcw

I don't know when will this link be unavailable. If you are interesting in google plus, just click the link.

Finally, hope you guys have a great time with google plus, and if you don't mind, add me into your circle.

Configure the proxy server of google chrome independently

I think many people need to use proxy server form time to time, and it's not bothering to set proxy server once in a while, even though there are different ways in different browsers. Browsers like firefox or opera have indepedent proxy server settings which means that the proxy server we set is limited to the specific browser.

Unfortunately, when we try to congifure the proxy server of google chrome, we will find that google chrome uses the same proxy server setting with IE. In fact, that is not a big deal if we don't need to change proxy setting very often. However, what if we need to use different proxy settings for different websites? Wow, that would be very troublesome! The easy solution is that we can use firefox for A proxy setting, and opera for B setting, and IE for C setting. Well, this solution is good, but not good enough. Here, I'm going to tell a easiest way to solve the problem.

What we need is google chrome. Wait! Did I just say google chrome uses the same proxy setting with IE? Yes, definitely yes, but it didn't mean that google chrome can't use its own proxy setting. This function is hidden. To do this, we have to set up a shortcut in the desktop first, and then set the target of the shortcut. Just add:

--proxy-server=proxy server:port

For example, if the proxy server is 1.2.3.4, and the port is 8080, and what I have to do is add "--proxy-server=1.2.3.4:8080" in the end of the target.

After we do so, we will use the 1.2.3.4 proxy sever every time we start up chrome with this shortcut. Is that amazing? I think it is. So, if we use different proxy servers for different websites, we can just set different shortcut for specific website.

Still, good is never good enough. This method only solves the problem of changing different proxy settings every time, but we aren't able to use different proxy servers at the same time. That is a little pity.
 

UPDATE:
There is an easier way to use independent proxy in chrome. Install this extension called "proxy switchy" on google chrome. It can help us switch proxy easily during surfing on the internet with chrome. Honestly, I haven't tried it. This method was provide by anonymous in the comment. Thank you, whoever you are.

Install rmvb codec for kmplayer

Kmplayer is a media player from korea. It contains many video codec but rmvb. Therefore, we have to install it by ourself.

First, download and install kmplayer from the official website.

Then, download and install the rmvb codec.

Extract the files and copy the four .dll files to the path of C:\program files(x86)\The Kmplayer which is the default installed path of Kmplayer.

Congratulation! It's done. Enjoy the movie!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Merry Christmas everybody! It is a really nice holiday, many of you should have a great day with family or friends. However, I have to finish my stupid PBL report. That is the worst Christmas gift ever!

PBL questions are about DNA methylation. I don't care if DNA methylation is age-dependent or not. I don't care if DNA methylation is the reason why we get cancer. I don't care what the paper is saying. I just want to have a normal holiday, but it's impossible.

It's really boring to be a graduate student. I shouldn't be here. This is not what I can bear. Damn it! Well, I am sorry that I say this word in this beautiful holiday, but my life really sucks.

I am tired of reading papers, just come here and complain a while. I think this is the shortest article that I have ever write on this blog. Who cares!

Mobile template is available for Blogspot

Blogger have launched a new function of mobile template which makes people much more easier to read articles on blogger. However, this function is still in beta state so anyone who uses blogger and wants to activate this function should sign in from this website: http://draft.blogger.com to make this option show up. After that, you can change the option from "setting" > "Email & mobile". There should be a "Show mobile template" option.

I don't have iphone or android phone or other smartphone so I don't know how it feel to browse my blog in mobile template, even there is a "mobile preview" bottom in the setting. preview could be different with the reality.

Speaking of smartphone, I really want one. Unfortunately, smartphones are too expensive for me to have one. Recently, I think HTC desire Z is pretty good. If I am rich, I will definitely buy one.