数学

老妈要给儿子早期教育，所以每次洗澡时我都交他一些数学。中文数1－10 就是这么教会的。当然用英文数是幼儿园交的，因为家里英文是非法语言（不要问我为什么）。数数也是洗澡时交的。由于每次是数手指或脚指头总是五个，以后每次问他数别的东西的时候，“来，数一数有几个”， 回答总是“一二三四五！”。最近交他加减法，他已经学了不少了。我很是欣慰。

一加一等于几？
“二！”
二加二呢？
“三！”
三加四呢？
“二！“
那四加三呢？
”天线宝宝！“

我老早就跟他妈说过，我们儿子是个天才。她只是笑笑。

Be Careful

每天儿子他妈把我 drop off 的时候，对话一般是这样的：

爸爸：好了，我下去了。
儿子：去工作。
妈妈：跟爸爸拜拜。
儿子：（挥手）拜拜！ Be Careful~~

Videos (my video bookmarks)

Bookmarking in PDF reader

Plugin: Bookmark A Page In Your PDF

http://www.aldenta.com/2006/09/15/plugin-bookmark-a-page-in-your-pdf/

A PDF Viewer like VIM:
http://code.google.com/p/apvlv/

Willingly exploited

Recently there is news that a Chinese worker at a manufacture site in China committed suicide because an iPhone 4G prototype was lost and he was suspected and apparently interrogated. When I heard the news, immediately I had the suspicion that he might have been killed by his boss from over beating, which is quite likely considering the situation in China, though it is entirely possible too that he indeed killed himself because of the pressure or mental instability.

Regarding the suicide, many people online are voicing about the exploitation of workers in poorer places like China. This is not something new and people have complained about it before. Being a relatively firm believer of free market, I tend to think that the workers in poor places are actually *willingly* "exploited" if we have to use the word exploit. They are free not to work for the manufacture if they don't want to work there. Instead they choose to accept the job, and they get paid for their work so that they have better life than they would otherwise have in rural areas. Since they have a choice, we can't say they are exploited. Or if we have to use the word, we may say they are "willingly" exploited.

But a second thought came across immediately. They choose to work there because that is the best choice for them. And the reason is that they had a lower starting point -- no wealth to start with, low education, etc. Instead, the rich people and the rich countries or the rich companies, or rich whatever controls more resources of the world so that they win in the game of free competition, which is the core of an efficient free market. In a place where competition is not "free", meaning unfair, due to corruption or ruling privileges or power, things can get worse. So in the free market, the poorer people lose, collectively speaking, and the rich half controls greater and greater portions of the total wealth. The poor have to work to sustain themselves. And the only places are the factories, that pay minimum wages. So they are willing to work there - to be exploited - because they need to survive, but rather unwillingly on the other hand if only they had any better choice. They same applies to workers in Walmart, for example. They may be happy for the job they get -- there may be 10 people behind them willing to take the job, but they don't have any better choices.

一岁半

儿子一岁半了，从咿咿呀呀到现在妈妈爸爸爷爷奶奶都能说了。晚上睡不着，索性把他会说的词记录一下，虽然不完整，但也有个记录，等过些日子回头看看应该很有意思。爸爸妈妈那是出生就能说，除此之外，最早认识的的是”灯“，那是从壮壮哥那学的，后来就是”电灯“，问他电灯在哪，很早就知道用手指了。至于说多早，那是相当早了（所以说记下来很重要）。拜拜也很早会说。应该一岁吧。把他送到homecare,每天我们走的时候跟看他的阿姨说，”我们走了，拜拜“。过几天，他每次听到走字，就自动说拜拜，绝对准时，而且带手势的。有人到家里，刚说个走字，他就挥手跟人家说拜拜啦。这次回国，跟一个阿姨学会了飞吻，只要你说”給个飞吻“，他就給你”恩吧～“前提是如果他高兴的话。动物也颇认几个，狗狗兔兔猪猪鸟鸟都知道。鸡鸡也知道，不过那不是动物。蚂蚁也是知道的，只是还不会说 Yi, 所以说出来是”蚂木～“，飞机，汽”这“都知道说。另外现在知道要”奶～，奶～～“了。而且知道说”屎～，屎“的，只是经常谎报军情。回说的词还很多，这些远不完整（门，鞋，锅，垃圾筒，大大，鼻子，眼睛等等等等）他妈mi(自封，儿子不这么叫）可以作证。再加上他最近他学东西突飞猛进，所以不能全部记录，以后想起来再补充，不过记下来一点聊胜于无，也算是没有白失眠哈。

archlinux

Fedora is slow and bloated. So I decided to install a lighter OS.
My current setup is:

* OS: archlinux.
* Some additional fonts
* Some additional packages: acroread, tetex, qiv, etc.
* Window manager: wmii
* Browser: Firefox + Vimperator extension.
* Email client: mutt
* Terminal: urxvt (from the rxvt-unicode package) with -fn 'xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:pixelsize=15' parameter that displays Chinese properly.

Now the system boots up quickly, is more efficient and usable. Don't think will want to go back to Fedora or any bloated system again.

embed fonts in latex generated pdf files

It is sometimes tricky to trick latex/pdflatex to embed all fonts in the final PDF files. But embedding all fonts makes the document self-contained, and some publishers require this. The following is a list of steps that should guarantee the fonts are embedded. The information is collected from the internet, and should work for Texlive 3.0.

1. If you use latex-> dvips-> ps2pdf, then in the ps2pdf step use the following:

ps2pdf -dSAFER -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
-sPAPERSIZE=letter -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer \
-dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dMaxSubsetPct=100 \
-dSubsetFonts=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true \
file.ps

2. If you use pdflatex, then
(a) make sure pdflatex embed all fonts that are used in the text part by running the following command (to download all the 14 Adobe Base fonts)
updmap --setoption pdftexDownloadBase14 true
(b) run pdflatex on the .tex file
(c) check that all fonts are embed by using
pdffonts file.pdf
or open acrobat reader and check Document Properties->Fonts
(d) If there are still fonts not embedded, then those are from the
included figures. These can be corrected by running the following
gs -dSAFER -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH \
-sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sPAPERSIZE=letter \
-dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 \
-dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dSubsetFonts=true \
-dEmbedAllFonts=true -sOutputFile=newfile.pdf \
-f file.pdf