Archive

Archive for April, 2009

Skip .mac/mobileme synchronization for specific preference files

April 24th, 2009

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Generally, MobileMe is the easiest way to keep all of your Mac data synched up. Occasionally though, you’ve got an application that you really don’t want the same configuration for in two places. Scouring the SyncServices Developer Documentation, I was finally able to figure out a way to do exclude specific configuration files. Simply execute:

defaults write plist.to.ignore com.apple.PreferenceSync.ExcludeAllSyncKeys -bool YES

Where plist.to.ignore is the plist file name without after truncating the trailing “.plist”. For example, there’s an application called Zooom/2 I use to effortlessly move and resize windows. When using it on a MacBook, I prefer to base activation on the “fn” key located on the lower left of the keyboard, but on an iMac this key isn’t convenient so I should use a different shortcut. Rather than having to give up all of my mobileme preference syncing, or having to deal with desktop style settings on my MacBook, I just close the application and run:

defaults write com.coderage.Zooom2Settings com.apple.PreferenceSync.ExcludeAllSyncKeys -bool YES

Note that there’s also an “com.apple.PreferenceSync.ExcludeSyncKeys” array that you can add to the plist file to exclude an array of specifically named keys from the mobileme sync. For full details see the Apple Developer Connection Sync Services Programming Guide.

ryan Geeking Out(奇客通道)

OS X: Get the Print to PDF menu fixed…

April 24th, 2009

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The Mac OS X “Print” menu can easily become quite a mess! Applications like Aperture, iPhoto, Yojimbo and others all automatically add convenient shortcuts to your PDF menu that make it far too clumsy to use. Of course there’s the “Edit Menu…” button at the bottom of the list to help get things back in order.

More interestingly though, you put Aliases or Automator Workflows directly into the following two folders:

~/Library/PDF Services
/Library/PDF Services

Macworld has an Mac OS X hints article including this note about PDFs and a few other good tips. You can download more automator actions direct from apple.com. While you’re getting the PDF Services menu under control, you might also check out Service Scrubber to get all the junk you don’t use out of your services menu!

ryan Geeking Out(奇客通道)

Coolest Application of the Day

April 23rd, 2009

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If you’ve got a Mac that includes a Multi-touch Touchpad, you must download the free “Multi Clutch” utility to really make your trackpad work the way you always wish it did ;-)

Globally, I assigned “Swipe Up” and “Swipe Down” to Exposé’s Show All Windows and Show Applications Windows

For Adium, Skype, Safari and iTerm I simply assigned “Swipe Left” and “Swipe Right” to each apps Previous Tab and Next Tab functions.

Additionally, for both Safari and iTerm I made the “Zoom In” and “Zoom Out” gestures equivalent to the keyboard increase/decrease size hot keys – which in Safari also makes the size change happen in a way that’s actually useful (instead of Safari’s default way toooo fast size change).

Combined with the existing touchpad features, this really sets the Mac apart!

ryan Uncategorized

My Favorite Online Game…

April 23rd, 2009

There’s a great online Geography Game called on the “Rethinking Schools” website. I think geography is quite important – especially when you start traveling around.

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I’ve even picked up a license for “World of Where“, a similar Mac OS X geography game but it takes too long to start up and my geography for the Americas, Europe and Asia are all pretty well remembered. It’s the Middle East geography that I need a refresher on now and then.

I personally like to just download the Mapgame SWF file directly to my computer and play it via iSwif when I need to relax for a second. Loads a heck of a lot quicker than most games you’ll ever play, and at least it’s useful too!

ryan Uncategorized

所以,你想要做政治家吗?

April 18th, 2009

经济学家杂志(The Economist)刚完成了个国际政治家背景的调查。总共查了各个地方的五千政治家。 发现:

  • 非洲:很多军人做政治家
  • 西方国家(法国,德国,美国):大部分是律师
  • 中国:大部分是工程师
  • 埃及:秀才
  • 韩国:政府职能部门的人
  • 巴西:医生

当然,全球的商人做为政治家频率很高。参考英语原文

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ryan Economics (经济学), International (国际)

Sync Madness 同步毛病

April 18th, 2009

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I’m still not sure why the “Contact Synchronization Issue” has not been solved in a “Standards Compliant” way. The solutions are so many and so simple. The easiest probably being an IMAP folder named “Contacts” where each “message” in the folder is simply a VCARD file. This approach could easily be supported on any modern mobile phone (not just smart phones), is almost the way Outlook/Exchange stores contacts anyway, and could easily be integrated into any other Contact storage system. Since we’re all familiar with storing (and offline caching) of emails, the exercise should be trivial.

Until the renaissance (文艺复兴) in Online Contact Storage arrives, the slightly confused (Plaxo is a tool vs/ Plaxo is a social network) Plaxo is our best hope. Plaxo syncs contacts and calendars with Mac, Windows and Windows Mobile. Unfortunately, they don’t offer iPhone or Blackberry support yet.

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If you’ve got files that you need to share between multiple devices, it seems that SugarSync is the best option at the moment. SugarSync supports both Mac and Windows, and makes your files accessible via: BlackBerry, iPhone and Windows Mobile. Last, SugarSync provides an online gateway for access to your files and for easy photo sharing.

Questions: Can I use SugarSync to replace .Mac as my Yojimbo synchronization tool? I assume that .Mac/mobileMe has native understanding of the sqllite format. Just would be nice to have one tool to perform synchronization instead of Plaxo + SugarSync + MobileMe all running at the same time – else your menubar will end up looking like this.

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ryan Uncategorized

War Reparations to Tsinghua Univ 庚子赔款 -> 清华大学

April 17th, 2009

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You’ve certainly hear of the “Boxer Rebellion” (义和团运动), and if you’ve lived in China you’ve heard of the “Eight-Nation Alliance (八国联军), but in history books the story of what unfolded can only be described as “cloudy” at best. Today I finally understand why:

Esherick comments that “confusion about the Boxer Uprising is not simply a matter of popular misconceptions,” for “there is no major incident in China’s modern history on which the range of professional interpretation is so great.”

In 1900, The “Boxers” were a sect that emerged in Northern China (near Shangdong) and were fervently anti-foreign. There were a series of floods in the region and local farmers became desperate. They focused blame for the misfortune on Christians in China (both local converts and missionaries).

Meanwhile, there was a power struggle in Beijing and the Empress Dowager Cixi seized power from the reformist Guangxu Emperor. Because Western governments would support the liberal Guangxu, Empress Cixi decided to use the Boxers to expel all western influences from China and consolidate power. On June 21, 1900 the Empress Cixi declared war

on all foreign powers that had diplomatic representatives in Beijing. The Boxers besieged foreign embassies. Additionally, the Boxers killed more than 32,000 Chinese Christians and several hundred foreign missionaries.

Eventually, the “Eight-Nation Alliance” (八国联军)brought 20,000 troops from Japan, Russia, UK, France, USA, Germany, Italy and Austria-Hungary to counter-attack. After the Eight-Nation Alliance rescued the besieged foreign embassies in Beijing, they looted the capital and forced Cixi to sign the unequal “Boxer Protocol” (庚子赔款 ) of 1901 requiring payment of 450,000,000 taels of silver to the nations involved, with complete repayment to take 39 years. Equal to $335MM USD in 1901 (or $6.65B today). Additionally, the Taku Forts (大沽炮台) in Tianjin were decommissioned.

The portion of the payment given to American was more than the Americans had actually asked for, so President Theodore Roosevelt eventually agreed to return approximately half of the war reparations. Rather than simply returning the silver directly to the Gov’t in Beijing, Roosevelt established the “Boxer Rebellion Indemnity Scholarship Program ” (庚子賠款獎學金), a scholarship program that enabled Chinese students to study for free in the USA. Additionally, the funds were used to establish a “prep school” of sorts in Beijing that was called “留美预备学堂”. Eventually the “prep school” became 清华学堂 (Tsinghua College) and eventually 清华大学 (Tsinghua University) – the most prestigious University in China.

ryan China (中国), History (历史)

Hedge Fund Bubble Popped? 对冲资金泡沫破裂了?

April 7th, 2009

1/2 of 2009 revenue was raised by “buy-out funds”… With so many fewer buyers and fewer dollars in the system, should be a good time to go asset shopping. Expect to see a turn around in asset prices when credit in the west loosens up again.

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ryan Economics (经济学)

Is It NBA or NFL?

April 3rd, 2009

Good friend of mine emailed me the following:

much social unrest beginning to brew, tax protests popping up nationwide…the seeds of a possible revolution of sorts in america
seeing lots more stuff like this: “Is it NBA OR NFLjoke about congress.

Unrest and revolution. That’s not a bad thing. It’s apathy that’s unacceptable. Even a representative republic requires the participation of the people if it is to work.

The people of the USA are (of the large nations) the wealthiest, best educated and best governed on the earth. The system is not perfect, but it is the best that is available now.

Longer term, I think the USA will most likely continue to be the highest per capita large nation on the planet — there are a few small nation/states with large supplies of natural resources that can have very high GDP per capita levels, but very difficult to achieve on a large scale.

Foremost problems in the USA are:

  • Debt has been used to finance consumption rather than investing in productive capacity (usa debt vs/ china debt)
  • Unskilled labor wages are too high to be competitive with world markets
    • Basically, an american “non-professional rank and file worker” isn’t fundamentally any more productive than a chinese peasant farmer, but their labor wages are at least 8.5x higher ($300/month vs $2550/month). This discrepancy creates large distortions throughout the rest of the economy. The american gov’t should work to close this gap, both by increasing the prices of 3rd world laborers and letting american blue collar labor be correctly valued.
  • Gov’t is too large a % of the economy
  • Social safety net removes the classical motivation from society – if you produce nothing, you eat nothing

Additionally, consider this. The federal debt of the usa is $10,802,000,000,000. ($10.8T) if this $10.8T would have been invested in automation technology. For comparison, from 1961 – July 1969 (first lunar landing) we invested $23 billion USD (compared to the soviet investment of $10.1B). For only $10B we were able to get men on the moon. if we invested 100x that amount – heck, even 10x that amount, is it possible that complete factory automation (and elimination of high blue collar labor cost) would not be solved? Additionally, the USA would be the largest exporter of such technology thereby helping the current accounts deficit.

The problem was apathy. A little revolution is a good thing. Perhaps the revolution will even be televised

ryan Economics (经济学)

SDR: Special Drawing Rights

April 3rd, 2009

IMFSDR.jpegThe IMF has a great page with everything you’ve ever wanted to know about MetaMoney.

The SDR is an international reserve asset, created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement the existing official reserves of member countries. SDRs are allocated to member countries in proportion to their IMF quotas. The SDR also serves as the unit of account of the IMF and some other international organizations. Its value is based on a basket of key international currencies.

The allocation of currencies in the SDR is revised every 5 years based on the relative importance of currencies in the world’s trading and financial systems. The latest review of the SDR was in November, 2005 where the Dollar, Pound, Yen and Euro were maintained as the SDRs basket of currencies.

The SDRs currency mix is reviewed every 5 years, so come November 2010 (just after the Shanghai World Expo), expect to see the SDR expanded to include Canada and Australia, which would even out the value of SDRs when growth in commodity markets outstrip growth in share prices.

ryan Uncategorized

MetaMoney: The Next World Currency

April 2nd, 2009

140px-Globe.jpg.jpegSince Nixon released from the gold peg in 1971, the supply of dollars has been allowed to grow to large and the dollar has been debased. Since 2001, the speed of debasement has increased due to: 1) stimulating american domestic consumption and 2) financing military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.  

More importantly, the USA only accounts for 5% of the global population and around a quarter of global GDP. It’s unreasonable that any single country should be expected to manage the global money supply. Nations exist foremost to care for their citizens and secondarily to interact in world affairs.

So, the problem: how can we create the next medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account?

Interesting enough, MetaMoney already exists and is traded globally. It’s a little known part of the IMF called “SDRs” (Special Drawing Rights). The SDR currently includes:
- Dollar (42%)
- Euro (36%)
- Yen (12%)
- Pound (8%)

You can check the current price of the SDR at the IMFs website.

Professor Ho in Hong Kong suggests calling this: WCU (World Currency Unit)

ryan Uncategorized

Treo Pro Replacement: HTC Touch Pro 2

April 1st, 2009

The Life of the Dollar

April 1st, 2009

10 Years of Dollars

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Focus on the last 4 Years (Bush’s 2nd Term)

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Same Period Against the Japanese Yen

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And against the EURO

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ryan China (中国), Economics (经济学), USA (美利坚合众国)

TimeAndDate.com: 控制时间!

April 1st, 2009

Have a meeting scheduled but you’re not sure when localtime?
Need to a meeting across several timezones?
Need to know what time it is somewhere right now?
Need to countdown to a specific event?
Want to create an easily accessible “Personal World Clock” for the timezones you need most?
Everything you could imagine doing with time is all free at: www.timeanddate.com!

Select time and place to convert from

Select place to convert to

Location Local time Time zone
Los Angeles (U.S.A. – California) Wednesday, April 1, 2009 at 5:30:00 PM UTC-7 hours PDT
Shanghai (China) Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 8:30:00 AM UTC+8 hours
Corresponding UTC (GMT) Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 00:30:00

ryan Geeking Out(奇客通道), International (国际)

Alchemy of Finance – Sorros / 索罗斯《金融炼金术》

April 1st, 2009

200904020004.jpg Since “The Alchemy of Finance” was getting poorly reviewed on SeekingAlpha, I’ve decided to weigh in on one of my favorite books ever. The short review is simply: Go Read It. It’s even available in Chinese: 索罗斯《金融炼金术》.

I didn’t read the Alchemy of Finance for the first time until sometime during 2003, and since it’s been one of my favorite books – perhaps my favorite in the entire finance/economics/inve… category.

The corollary of reflexivity that stuck with me the most was that:
Credit expansion leads to a contraction in value of the underlying collateral.

Sorros also made some interesting philosophical points – somewhat dialectic:
– Progressive society longs for the stability and relationships
– Conservative society long for the freedom and individualism
– Western society measures everything, and will therefore overvalue measurement itself
– The magic of the market can’t be separated from the madness of the market
– The very success of the Bretton Woods agreement sowed the seeds of it’s own disaster
– Freely floating exchange rates based on fiat currencies are not sustainable

Sorros isn’t god, but he’s smart and wise. As an investor, he’s been both more accurate and more brave then most of us. His recent work has much evidence of self-aggrandizement, but so did StarWars 1-3…

Whether or not “reflexivity” is an idea that has merit, good to remember that Howard Aiken said: “If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats”

ryan Books (书), Economics (经济学)