Mixi scraping

I want a piece of code written to scrape Mixi user counts and post them into google docs.
Basically, it should take a list of group names and pull them on a schedule (monthly) and post it as a spreadsheet into google docs. Appending the current values to the previous. I want this in Python.

Smart phone media players

The smartphone media player space is quite sad.
First, most phones do not support external storage like SD/microSD
The most mature player is on Win Mobile, which has an outdated interface and not a modern UI
the only modern OS's are iPhone and Android. iPhone is totally locked down, so getting a player that supports other codec is impossible.
so the only hope is android, but all the players are based on the OS codec, which requires conversion.

This is sad, I was playing h264 video 5-6 years ago on 640x480 screen. Most smart phone screens are of lower resolution and cannot play files without conversion. Seems like a huge step back, shouldn't CPU be 16x more powerful than 6 yrs ago? Why can I do less on a device that weighs the same and offers similar battery life. Something is not adding up

Harvard Business IdeaCast 157

I've always railed about exporting of US manufacturing jobs off-shore as an erosion of US economic basis and competitiveness. My words have fallen on either deaf ears or sympathetic ones with equal inability to do anything about it.

today's HBI talks about how the export of US manufacturing hurting US ability to innovate. Such as off-shoring of consumer electronics which resulted in battery tech off-shoring and now battery innovations required for green industries have to come from off-shore

real time 20090529

Jon Stuart was off this week, so the only political news comedy show was real time.

Sotomayor figured prominently in their discussion. John Bolton (total jerk) read off the oath of office in order to make the point that justice would be blind to the identity of the parties involved. However, I think that the oath does not mean that you don't take your perspective of the situation based on your background. I think that was the point that Sotomayor made in mentioning her ethnicity, that it made her view the world in a way that is still lacking in the supreme court. Because judges don't make judgments in a vacuum, they make it from evidence, precedence, and most importantly their judgment which was built with their upbringing. In a way, I feel that attacking Sotomayor for that statement is akin to attacking that they're not brought up in an "appropriate" environment and world

11/9 vs 9/11

No this is not a post about how Europeans label month and day opposite of Americans. This is something I thought of listening to The World is Flat by Thomas L Friedman. It has been a boring listen so far. The author takes too long to make a point. Also, at 2.5 hrs in, nothing in the book cannot be discerned from the book jacket and title.

Friedman raises the idea that flattening of the world was made possible by three events. One of which was the Fall of the Berlin Wall, which occurred on Nov 9, 1989. I thought that it was ironic that the end of the spirit of freedom in US occurred On Sept 11, 2001, when the WTC was destroyed

11/9 and 9/11, what ironic symmetry.

PS: it was just under twelve years between the two events, corresponding to the number of years in Chinese Astrological cycle

Preventative Represention

Recently, I saw a sign by the elevators indicating that it's undergoing preventive maintenance.

It bothered me because I thought that the word should have been preventative.

But upon reflection, preventive made sense as the root word is prevent, not preventate.

Asking around, it was consensus that both were real words. This prompted me to googlefight them. The result I got was (YMMV) 7.06M preventative and 5.36M preventive. This led me to further google preventative.

Seems that most scholarly discussions (particularly medical) seems to believe that preventive was the correct form and preventative should be discouraged (opposite of googlefight result).

However, trying to formulate sentences, I think the following rule of thumb works for me (I made it up): When using as a noun, use preventative, but when using it as a adverb/adjective, use preventive

As in:
Getting a flu shot is a good preventative against the flu

Getting a flu shot is a good preventive measure against the flu

Idle thought: why is a congress person a representative instead of representive? When they are supposed to represent us (Unless you're Al Sharpton, then congress people representate us)

Outliers as confirmation for Chinese Education Ethos

Outliers, a book by Malcolm Gladwell, discusses the underlying pattern beneath success. How "self made success" are not self made, but a person presented a opportunity and took it.

I think that the lesson to be learned from the book is that, while having opportunities will not necessarily guarantee success, but without them success would not be possible. This meshes well with much of Chinese value on education (and many other Asian too, but I can only speak for Chinese).

Chinese have the story of Mencius, whose mother moved three times in order to find a good environment to raise her son. Basically, an environment that would surround Mencius with people who like to study. Much like how Silicon Valley, with its large number of engineers, became a cradle for the internet boom. How UIUC was cradle for vast number of important people for the internet age

As an aside, this is precisely how an environment that de-emphasizes manufacturing will lose ability to compete in production. You no longer have a kid who can get access to machine shops that can hone their talent, the society become crippled in providing opportunity