Given that I’m not an Android user or developer, I still felt the improvements on Android system quite impressive. But my biggest inspriation is not on any specific topic, it’s how Google thinks of solving problem in the terms of technolodgy, not just web or mobile, they always think in a big picture. Much bigger than I do.
I’ve been a web developer for over 5 years and now I do feel I’ve got a handy toolkit to solve some problems. But I also feel I’ve constrained myself to this area, limited my imagination. Anything that can’t solve with the skills I’ve got is impossible. Web is bigger than I perceived, and yet it is just a part of technolodgy. We all know that it’s just a tool to solve problems, not the only way to do it.
I need to think out of the box. It’s too comfortable to just sit there and see their innovations, instead of trying to be the guy on the stage to amaze people with your innovations. I’ve spent less and less time on predicting the future of the technolodgy, but more and more on reality issues, like where to live, when to get married or so. I guess that’s the inevitable trend as you getting old but at least I shouldn’t let what I’ve learned blind myself. Keep looking, don’t settle.
I’d like to end this post with the quote of Steve Jobs.
I gave my iPad to my mom when I went back to China during the golden week, so I’m wondering if now is a good timing to buy a new iPad? Are they going to release a new model soon? “Buy or wait”, that’s the only options for me every time when I think about any product of Apple.
Macrumors Buyers Guide
Then I found this buyersguide by Macrumors. I know Macrumors website for a long time and used to subscribe to their RSS feeds, but I never noticed they have a this website.
Here you can see each Apple model with red or yellow round buttons. I guess there’ll be green ones once the “timing” is right to buy that product. As it says:
provide our best recommendations regarding current product cycles, and to provide a summary of currently available rumors for each model. This page is based on rumors and speculation and we provide no guarantee to its accuracy.
When to Buy a New iPad
If you click the iPad link you’ll see this:
You can see the last release was October 23, 2012. Average
release cycles is 311 days so statistically there are still around 100 days left, but judging from the recent releases it could be next month! Recent rumors might be helpful, to at least give you something to fill in the blankness of waiting.
2005. I was still in college. The phone I had was just a “pure” phone to call and text people, and even didn’t have a camera.
2013. Now I have Macbook, iPhone, iPad, Kindle, all “rich” devices. With 3G network I can connect to Internet anytime anywhere. Life’s been changed so much.
The Video: Samsung GALAXY S4
I never had a Samsung GALAXY phone, but after watched this video I was surprised by some of the new features. I’ve been using iPhone for 3 or 4 years, I’m so used to it and sometimes it makes me blind to see other innovations.
The video is 4:30 long, please take a look when you have time.
As you see below, this was how my blog header looks like before I write this post. There was no differece between top page(or home page, landing page) and the post page. If put into rails term, these are the #index and #show page, they’re sharing the exactly same header partial.
Thinking About My Target
Based on the data from Google Analytics, around 85% of the access are from search engines like Google or Yahoo, so for them the contents I provided should be most important.
But for the direct access to the top page, they could be my friends, could be the headhunters, my future boss or colleague, or just some random strangers, anyway these people are my target who I really want to pay more attentions to, make them impressive, show a little different things from the other audience.
A Good Example
Ryan Singer from 37signals, one day I happened to visit his blog, the moment I saw the page I knew this is one thing I also want to have in my blog!
Let’s take a look.
As you can see, the header in top page and every post page is different. Yes it’s low techy techy, easy to implement, not challenging at all, but it still matters.
Time for Action!
I’m sure every web developer understand this and every product they built must have a more beatiful and well designed landing page to catch people’s eyes. But do you apply the same principle to your own blog? You may use Wordpress or Octopress or any other blog generate tools to build your blog, and perhaps you even made a good About me page, but did you take one more step further to care about this detail? If you were aware of this and chose not to do it, it’s perfectly fine but to me, I don’t like to miss this detail.
Anyway here is my new blog header, just a simple introduction, I may add some more info later.
I guess this post may be nonsense to some of you. But if this is one thing that represent myself, at least I’d like to put more efforts to make it a little more “me”.
If you browse amazon reviews chances are you already saw this Amazon Verified Purchase label. This is not a new feature, I think it’s been there for a while but I just want to point that out.
It’s easy to understand, it means the reviewer purchased that item at Amazon, could highly increase the credibility of the review.
I think it’s easy to implement, the logic is simple but it’s a good indicator for users to decide if they should follow or trust the review.
Also I tried it myself. When I click to write a review for the book I bought on Amazon, I get this option to choose if I’d like to label myself as purchased the item.
When I was reading book this afternoon, not directly related to the its content but somehow it inspired me to realize some of self improvements I’ve accomplished through past couple of months or the past year. Most of them were changed subconsciously, like a good “by-product” thing.
Improvements
Taking stairs(mentioned before)
No more junk food, do more cooking
Sleep earlier, resist to temptation
Reading more often(thanks to Kindle Paperwhite)
No games at all(I’d like to have some)
No More Junk Food
I can’t remember the last time I grabbed a burger at McDonalds. Maybe for you it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but for me it’s totally a different story.
When I was still a poor student in China, having a McDonalds burger is like a “highs in the month” event. It was quite expensive compared to the salary, or the pin money I could get from my dad. Plus it was, and still is so so delicious, way better than Japan. So at that time, my image of an ideal life was I can at least afford to have McDonalds every day.
Then after graduated from university, I came to Japan to work as a full-time software engineer. My salary was good enough to have as many burgers as I want. Even though I knew people call it junk food, but for me it was not. I could eat McDonalds for one week straight.
I enjoyed it, I was happy. It seemed like that this was one thing impossible to change, not to mention I was not willing to change at all.
But what really changed me was after I joined cookpad, my current company. The company’s goal is to make cooking more fun, make people healthier. So more or less I got the point of why processed food is bad, then one day my boss sent me a link to Jamie Oliver’s talk in TED. That 20 minutes talk was amazing. Then I searched him in Youtube about his “Food Revolution”, and I watched all of them. That thing really changed my mind.
So from that moment, I started to review my pst, I found myself willing to change the habit of eating junk food.
Do More Cooking
But change is never easy. Even though I wanted to do more cooking, work fatigue, working overtime and a failed relationship made me feel extremely drained, exhausted and frustrated. Every time I got home I felt so powerless that I’d rather just skip the dinner. Shopping ingredients, looking for a simple enough newbie friendly recipe and cook it felt so unreal.
But thanks to some good books I’ve read, I adjusted my attitudes toward work and relationships, I managed to keep myself stay positive and made some changes in working environment. Now I go home earlier than before, rarely any overtime, I’m still a little tired after I open the door but I get the energy to go shopping and cook. Even though my cooking skill is not good, I can only cook several recipes and sometimes the taste is awful, I enjoyed it, I’m happy to serve myself, understand more about foods, balance diet nutritions from various ingredients, try out some new recipes in the weekend, etc. I feel content.
And what amazed me is that this change was much easier than I expected, especially judging from my past diet habit and “dreams”. I didn’t track my activities and mark them on a calendar. More like happened subconsciously, so, congret to myself! (But I’m still uncomfortable to cook with someones else cuz I’m clumsy and slow in the kitchen >_<)
A Must Watch Video
OK I’ll stop here today but I want to share a very touching video with you. I’m 100% sure it’s worth watching so don’t miss it! You won’t regret! No spoiler here~
When my friends and I went out for lunch today, I was asked about these 2 Japanese kanji: “炙り”, “挽肉”, since I’m Chinese and I’m supposed to be the “Kanji Reader” in the Gaijin group.
Hmm, but I let them down.. What I said was “I don’t know because we don’t have those kanji in Chinese”. But I was wrong! We do have “炙” and “挽” in Chinese, it’s just these kanji have highly fixed usages so I couldn’t recognise them in when they combined with Japanese Hiragana.
Any here are the meanings:
炙り(あぶり) - grill
挽肉(ひきにく) - ground meat
Even though I’ve lived in Japan for over 5 years, I still find myself rarely know any Japanese vocabularies related to cooking or food.
