Month: May 2011

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Wireless Peripherals with USB Connection

Just a random rant.

I wonder why manufacturers don’t include a USB cable/connection on wireless peripherals (e.g. keyboards and mice). This is probably already out there in the market, just not in any peripherals that are any good. I know it’s probably counter-intuitive to think wireless peripherals with a wired USB connection, but have you ever had to setup a new computer with wireless peripherals or had your computer forget how to talk to your wireless peripherals? Do you recall having to find an existing wired keyboard and mouse or pull one from a working computer to setup your wireless keyboard and mouse? Yeah, annoying right?

If they included a USB cable (which would be great if they could design that it’s hidden/retracted when not in use) or if they just include a mini-USB port so I can easily connect it with a USB cable, that’d be awesome!

One could argue that if you ever had to use a wired keyboard/mouse to setup your wireless peripherals, that the design is broken already and I would agree. But until the day where they can magically get wireless peripherals to talk to my computer, I still need to bust out my USB keyboard and mouse.

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Signed up for Google Apps

I signed up my Krunk4Ever.com domain to use Google Apps. Hit a couple bumps along the way. Apparently my site had been previously registered for Google Apps. I don’t recall ever doing it, but my memory isn’t exactly great. In order to reset the account, I had to modify my DNS settings to verify that I own the domain. Turns out there wasn’t even an admin account setup for that Google Apps domain.

One of the reasons I was initially hesitant to sign up for Google Apps was because I had a catch-all account and I recall someone told me that Google Apps didn’t support catch-all. Either I misremembered or they added that feature later, but it appears they now support catch-all. The reason why the catch-all account is important is because I provide unique email addresses for most businesses I deal with. The instructions seem simple enough.

However, following those instructions landed me in a grayed out disabled forward address box. Turns out I’m not the only person who hit this issue: Why is the catchall forward address grayed out? I tried switching back to the current version (instead of the default of next generation) as suggested by some people, but that didn’t fix the issue.

Given on how much I rely on my catch-all, I was pretty upset this wasn’t working out and was even set on switching back. Then I found this thread: Can’t assign address to catch-all and the suggested workaround was to sign up for Google Apps for Business 30-day trial, which would make that field editable. After upgrading to Google Apps for Business, I was able to set the forwarding/routing address for my catch-all. Annoying that I had to do this to get it working when their help says that the free edition has this feature too.

Things seem to be working so far. I’m decided to continue using my GMail account as my default, so my old @krunk4ever.com email address will just be considered as part of the catch-all.

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New Email Address

Due to unfortunate circumstances, I have decided to change email address. It appears my email address was leaked and it has been receiving a ton of spam recently. It’s also what prompted me to post Why is There No Universal Email Web Client? last week.

After a long deliberation, I decided to give GMail a try. The main reasons being:

  • Ability to import emails from different accounts
  • Ability to send emails as different accounts
  • Free POP3, IMAP, and ActiveSync support
  • Emails are kept forever
  • Great spam filter
  • Tons of space

I know the last 2 are given for most email services these days, but did you know that Yahoo! still charges if you want POP3?!?!

I never knew how much I would love that deleting emails == archiving emails. No longer do I need to manually move emails I want to keep into a specific folder. Just delete it and if I ever need to find it again, I just have to search for it.

I was initially hesitant to give up all my email to Google, like they don’t know enough about me already. But I decided for the convenience, it would be worth it. I also consider hosting my email server on GMail, but decided to hold off on that for now.

Moving my email over did take a bit of time as I’m guessing (drag and drop) IMAP to IMAP via Outlook isn’t exactly the most efficient. But I went from occupying less than 1% of my email space quota to You are currently using 1325 MB (17%) of your 7586 MB.

Emails to my old address will still work (albeit with a delay), as they’re automatically imported by GMail every so often. My new email address is basically the same as my old one, but instead of *@krunk4ever.com, it’s *@gmail.com.

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Are Asians in America Brought Up On The Wrong Values?

Valerie shared this interesting article a week or 2 ago: Paper Tigers (What happens to all the Asian-American overachievers when the test-taking ends?) Let me warn you, it’s an extremely long read. It was pretty interesting and if you have the time to spare, it’s definitely worth the read. The part in the middle felt a little off topic when the author went off in a tangent on how Asian men suck at getting girls. As Valerie also commented, it was a bit weird to have a bunch of half naked men scattered across the article.

To summarize the article:

Let me summarize my feelings toward Asian values: Fuck filial piety. Fuck grade-grubbing. Fuck Ivy League mania. Fuck deference to authority. Fuck humility and hard work. Fuck harmonious relations. Fuck sacrificing for the future. Fuck earnest, striving middle-class servility.

I wouldn’t call the article enlightening as I’ve known most of the things he talks about, in fact I agree with most of what he says. What I disagree with is were we really brought up incorrectly? Are the values we’re taught, filial piety, humility, hard work, harmonious relations, etc. the wrong ones?

I will agree that in America’s society and culture, those values are not valued as highly and often will get in the way of climbing up your career ladder. However, these are values passed down from Confucius and seems to have worked for the Chinese for over 2000 years.

I was initially going to write a post on why I agree with the author and how Asian Americans should adapt. Then I decided that I was going to write a post on why I don’t think Asian values are necessarily incorrect, but should incorporate other values that American society values. Then I realized that such a post would probably never see the light of day, so I decided to provide a brief summary of what I got out of this article.

Asian American children, especially 1st generation Americans, are taught under very strict guidance. We are taught that excelling in school means a better future. The reason why my parents fought so hard to live a crappy life in America was so that their children and generations after will be able to have a decent future. However, Asian parents are very single minded. They believe there is 1 and only 1 correct path. Learning how the world REALLY works is something you will never learn from your parents and something you’ll have to find out by yourself.

However, I can’t help but feel that if there were more of us in this world, people who could tolerate, people who didn’t need to make gazillions to be happy and content, people who could work together harmoniously instead of trying to bite each others throat off, how this world would be a much better place.

Update: Not sure if I’ve ever shown people my 4 color chart (more details):

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Ano Hana

Wow, it’s been a really long time since I posted anything anime related.

So Sankaku Complex had a post on the Top 10 Most Beautiful Anime (nsfw) voted by users on BIGLOBE. It’s definitely not a definitive list and they tend to be newer stuff. I’ve seen half the stuff on the list already, but was interested in the remaining content. “Beauty” was defined as beautiful composition as well executed scenery, expressions and motion whilst specifically excluding consideration of story, character design, music, etc.

  1. Time of Eve
  2. Hanasaku Iroha
  3. Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai
  4. 5 Centimeters Per Second
  5. Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko
  6. Clannad
  7. Angel Beats!
  8. GitS: Stand Alone Complex
  9. Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance
  10. Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Time of Eve

I started with Time of Eve (ใ‚คใƒดใฎๆ™‚้–“). It was a 6 part web series later combined into a movie. It’s a scifi story based on Issac Asimov’s 3 Laws of Robotics, but it’s completely different from iRobot. It explores the idea that if robots were sentient, what if instead of destroying the human kind, they strive to become our friends, to be accepted as more than just a robot that accepts commands. <SPOILER>The premise of the story takes place in a cafe where humans and androids are equals.</SPOILER> The anime was indeed extremely beautiful, but I found the story a bit too artsy. It was still fun though.

Ano Hana

However, as the title of of this post may have already suggested, I’ve started watching a new series called Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai (ใ‚ใฎๆ—ฅ่ฆ‹ใŸ่Šฑใฎๅๅ‰ใ‚’ๅƒ•้”ใฏใพใ ็Ÿฅใ‚‰ใชใ„), which gets shortened to Ano Hana. The title translates to “We still don’t know the name of the flower we saw that day.” The anime is still ongoing and only 5 episodes are out so far.

Despite this being a TV series, the production and drawings were top notch. You’re introduce to a boy named Jin-tan and a girl named Memna. Initially I thought this was going to be a fan service anime with Memna jumping all over Jin-tan, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. By the end of the first episode, I was crushed with sadness. I don’t want to spoil too much, but Memna has a wish, but can’t remember what it was. Each episode reveals a bit more of what happened on that day. Memna is so adorably cute, yet they mix it so well with such a depressing story. From what I’ve seen so far, I highly recommend this series.

Another interesting tidbit is they’re using ZONE – secret base~ๅ›ใŒใใ‚ŒใŸใ‚‚ใฎ~ as their ED song. I’ve had this song in my mp3 library since college. When I first heard it, I knew it sounded really familiar. Initially I thought it might’ve been from another anime, but I guess this is one of the songs my friend shared with me. Apparently it’s been 10 years already since this song was released and the ED uses the 10th anniversary version.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-05-15

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Why is There No Universal Email Web Client?

Wow. It’s been over a month since my last blog post. And who would’ve thought possible, but I think I got sunburnt today. Really? My forearms are really red…

Today I wanted to rant about a technology that should’ve existed a long time ago, but I have not found any company that offers the product I want. Back before GMail made its debut, everyone was using Outlook or Eudora (I still remember servicing Eudora clients during my college job).

However, once GMail came out, that changed how people began to use email. Shortly after, Hotmail (now Live Mail) and Yahoo followed suit, with the convenient access and the high storage capacity. And for most people, that’s enough. Most people only have 1 personal email address and 1 work email address, and GMail and these other web email solutions work out great for them.

However, one of the main reasons people I think people have stuck with Outlook or Mail is the fact it can support multiple accounts. I have 4 or 5 different email accounts that I use on a regular basis and it’s extremely convenient to be able to access all of them in 1 simple application. I can search through ALL my emails, quickly glance to see which accounts have new emails, select which email account I want to send from, etc.

In today’s model, each email service has its on web client. If I didn’t have access to my computer or smart phone and wanted to check my email through a public terminal or a friend’s computer, I would have to sign in and out of each email account on their respective websites, which is a hassle.

Why hasn’t anyone made a email client web app that supports multiple email accounts. Outlook does have a web version called OWA (Outlook Web Access), but it only works for the exchange server that is backing it. I want to be able to provide an app with my email credentials and it would go and fetch all my email into 1 convenient location, where I can access from any computer in the world.

GMail does support fetching email from external accounts into your GMail account and they even have the ability to send as a different email address (once verified), but you lose the separation of accounts, which I find important.

Before I got my smart phone, the way I got around this was remoting back into my PC at home and using Outlook on that machine. I still do that today, but with my smart phone which also has access to all my email accounts, it’s has become less of an issue. Still I find myself composing emails through the remote session since typing emails that are more than a couple sentences long is such a pain on your smart phone.

Maybe one day, my wish will come true.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-05-08

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-05-01