Month: March 2008

Maundy Thursday

I just figure out this (about the Maundy Thursday) recently. But I don’t know am I correct or not. If I am wrong, please tell me.

Gospel said that, “that year” the Passover was on a sabbath day. And Jesus celebrated the Passover a day before the sabbath day. For the Jewish, a day started from sunset until next sunset. Therefore, the sabbath day is the sunset of Friday until Saturday. That means, Jesus celebrated the Passover during the evening of Thursday, which is a day before Friday evening.

Then, the Passion of Christ happened on the day time of Friday, which is not the sabbath day. And then, Jesus was buried in a tomb. And other people continued keeping the sabbath. And Jesus was “rest” on the sabbath day.

Then, the next day of the sabbath should start at the evening of Saturday, which is also the first day of a week. But we might think that the first day of the week is Sunday, which is started at 12:00 a.m.. Because of a day started at the evening, that is why we celebrate the Easter Eve during the evening of Saturday. Then during Sunday morning, we celebrate the Easter Sunday.

OpenGL matrix mode

There is a problem when switching matrix mode between GL_MODELVIEW and GL_PROJECTION. As an easy practice, we always glLoadIdentity() after glMatrixMode() to reset the matrix. Because of this, the object displayed in GL_MODELVIEW will be disappeared when we glLoadIdentity() in GL_PROJECTION. Actually, this is because after we glLoadIdentity(), the gluPerspective() (or whatever we have used in GL_PROJECTION) will be reset. That is why the object in GL_MODELVIEW will be disappeared. To make it appear, that means we need to set back the gluPerspective().

We can preserve the GL_PROJECTION without glLoadIdentity(). However, if we are using gluUnProject to get the coordinate, we need to use glLoadIdentity() to reset the GL_PROJECTION beforehand.

I spent 2 days to figure out this stupid problem… Orz

Petition

如果我們把東西借給人，當我們需要那東西時，就會不斷地催迫那人儘快交還。若那人尚未交換，我們就會不斷地催迫，一直地催迫，直到那人交還為止。
If we lend something to other people, when we need the thing back, we will unceasingly ask him to return the thing as soon as possible. If he not yet returns, we will urge and urge until he returns the thing.

但若我們的祈禱，也能有這種毅力，不斷地祈求，必會得到所求的。然而，我們不會這樣地祈求天父。因為我們沒有把任何東西借給天父。天父亦不欠我們任何東西，而且需要幫忙的是我們。另外，我們也不敢這樣祈求天主聖父。因為，我們知道自己是罪人。這是理所當然的，我們本來就應該要承認自己的罪過。因此，我們若真的有所求，就必須先向天父認罪，並求天父寬恕。為求天主寬恕，自己就應當先寬恕別人。之後，就祈求天主。
If we pray with the persistence like this, we should get whatever we ask. However, we will not pray like this to the Father. This is because we do not lend anything to the Father. And the Father doesn’t owe us anything. Even more, we are the ones who need the help. Besides that, we are not dare to pray like this to the Father. Because, we know that we are sinners. Of course, we should confess our sins. Therefore, if we really have petitions, we need to confess our sins to the Father first, and ask for forgiveness. To ask for forgiveness, we need to forgive others. Then, we can ask from God.

並且，為避免良心的責問而影響信德，我們應當定改。
Even more, to avoid the condemnation of our conscience which will affect our faith, we need conversion.

Desktop search review

I like to read articles online. And I will save the webpages to my computer, especially programming tutorial. Sometimes I don’t have time to categorise what I have downloaded. So, I just drop them to some of the folders. But, when I want to search the file, there will be the problem.

We can search the content of a text file by using built-in “find” function of Windows. However, the searching will always slow because it searches file by file. Therefore, the files need to be indexed first. To do the indexing service, we just need to install desktop search software.

So, there are many desktop search software. X1 Enterprise Client, Google Desktop Search, Yahoo! Desktop Search, Copernic Desktop Search, Windows Desktop Search. Now, I just give some comment for these desktop search programs.

X1 Enterprise Client
I don’t know it is freeware or not for the current version. But I know the version 5.6.3 is free. I personally don’t like X1, because it is quite slow to load. Besides that, I cannot disable the “startup” function even the program provides the function to disable the startup. What I comment is for version 5.6.3. So, I don’t know whether the startup problem is fixed in newer version or not.

Google Desktop Search
It is very small and simple. However, you must make your computer “idle”, sot that the program will start indexing. Why can’t we do indexing whenever we want?

Yahoo! Desktop Search
I didn’t try this. Because it is based on X1 Enterprise Client. No comment.

Copernic Desktop Search
It is clean when install. Will not change the startup every time start the program. Can add in any file types you like. However, the only problem is, it cannot index the MHTML (MIME HTML or web archive) file properly. You can set .mht file to be indexed, but it will only index the file as the text file, not a web content. For me, this is a problem, because I always save the webpage as .mht. And I often use Firefox. There are two extensions (or addons) that can save the file as .mht: UnMHT and Mozilla Archive Format.

Comparison of UnMHT and Mozilla Archive Format: .mht file saved by UnMHT can be opened faster by using IE, while .mht file saved by MAF (Mozilla Archive Format) is slower to be opened by IE. However, by UnMHT, the content are encoded by “base64”, which means we cannot search the text using Copernic. By MAF, the content of the html file is encoded in “quoted-printable”, which you can still search the content as the text file by Copernic.

Windows Desktop Search
This can solve the problem of .mht file. And you can install IFilter to index the content of several types of file. However, I found that, maybe because I use OpenOffice portable version (which means I don’t install OpenOffice), even though I install IFilter for StarOffice/OpenOffice, I still cannot search the content in the “.odt” file (OpenDocument Text). To solve the problem of OpenDocument file type, we can use Copernic. Copernic can search the content of .odt.

So, depend on your favour, you can install whatever you like.

Simplified chinese or traditional chinese?

Actually, I personally prefer traditional chinese. Because the character is more complicate, and look prettier than simplified chinese. And besides that, the traditional chinese character provides better meaning in the presentation of the character itself. Especially the character “love”, 愛，in traditional chinese, the centre of it is 心，that means we love with our heart. However, the simplified chinese is 爱, which doesn’t have the 心 at the centre.

Another important reason is the surname. When I was young, I was taught to write the surname in simplified chinese, that is 钟. The traditioanl chinese of 钟 is both 鍾 and 鐘. While both meanings are different. Therefore, in computer, the simplified chinese of 鍾 becomes 锺, instead of 钟. So, that is why I prefer traditional chinese, because of the surname problem.

However, I admit that, I can find a lot of stuffs from China websites. Therefore, I set my Windows XP in simplified chinese language, so that there is no problem when installing the programs.

For the Windows XP, we can solve the problem of the simplified chinese and traditional chinese by installing AppLocale. Using this program, we can view the Big5 coding (traditional chinese) without changing the language setting. However, AppLocale will prompt an annoyance dialog box. So, I install pAppLocale, a modified version. pAppLocale is better.

Game benchmark comparison: XP and Vista

Fortunately, I still can download a lot of software that support Windows XP. Otherwise, I need to switch to Windows Vista. Vista or XP, which one is better?

Seven out of ten of the games tested produced frame rate averages which were lower under Vista than XP SP2, however, a closer look at the numbers shows that when Vista is slower than XP SP2, the actual frame rate differences are only in the single digits. Read more.

I also don’t know how to compare them though I read the article.