I started to look at how to config a Amazon Mechanical Turk user interface to recruit workers to write tags for some research papers in Engineering Education. These papers are in .PDF format.
I first used <iframe> </iframe>, didn't work. There was just a pop-up window asking me whether to download the pdf. Then I realized this probably the problem of the pdf viewer of my browser. After Googled it, I found many people have had this problem. I figured that the best solution among those suggestions probably be to move the nppdf32.dll file in Adobe Reader folder to the Mozilla Firefox Plugin folder, but then I found that the Mac version of Adobe Reader doesn't have a nppdf32.dll file.
After spending quite a while wondering online, I found this best solution for me: to install the Schubert|it PDF Browser plugin. After installing this, I can view the pdf in a nice window in Firefox browser, but my Mechanical Turk code still didn't work, it was just showing a blank box, and other things under the box have disappeared. Then I changed the <iframe> </iframe> to <embed> </embed>, work nice!
Now I am worrying that this is working for my browser, but probably won't work for all my workers' browsers. Everybody is using different versions of OS, different versions of web browsers, different versions of pdf readers, and having different preferences about whether to download the pdf or view it online. Everybody has encountered similar or totally different problems and solved or not solved in different ways. What it takes to give everybody the best web experience?
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Friday, July 8, 2011
Fix Macfuse on Mac OS X 10.6.8
This is my first real technical blog post. So the story is that I really want to continue my web programming learning process, the first thing to do is to mount the remote server as a local drive on my new Mac. This Mac came just a few days before Apple launched the whole new Lion OS, so my version is Snow Leopard 10.6.8, and it's running on the 64-bit kernel. After I installed Google MacFUSE and the Macfusion GUI, I encountered two problems:
1. When I tried to mount using Macfusion, I would constantly received the error: Remote host has disconnect. While I was sure the remote host has no problem.
2. The MacFUSE preference pane is 32-bit only, when click MacFUSE from the system preference on a Mac that runs 64-bit kernel, it will cause the system preference quit and reopen.
The first problem is the major problem, I googled and found these two blog posts quite illuminating:
http://rackerhacker.com/2009/08/28/fix-macfusion-on-snow-leopard/
http://www.5dollarwhitebox.org/drupal/node/97
I tried these two solutions, but they didn't work for me, I simply cannot find the 'sshnodelay.so' file here on my machine. Maybe because these two blog posts both are from some time last year, there have been quite a bit of updating going on. Then I found this blog:
http://blog.philippklaus.de/2011/04/fix-sshfs-with-macfuse-on-mac-os-x-10-6-7-snow-leopard/
It should work for both 10.6.7 and 10.6.8. I simply downloaded the 2.1.9 version of MacFUSE it pointed to and installed it, problem solved!
One last thing to say here is that the default mounting path of Macfusion is home folder of the server, if you want to visit files that is not under the home folder like me, simply specify the path to "/" as the screenshot showed below.
For the second problem, it's minor, but quite annoying. Every time if I click the MacFUSE from system preference, the system preference would restart and show 32-bit. I solved it by downloading the MacFUSE preference pane file from here. After downloading, unzip and copy the MacFUSE.prefPane to /Library/PreferencePanes/, and replace the previous version.
Other things I learned:
(1) The Mac OS X 10.6.8 doesn't allow the user to enable root user for security reasons.
(2) The 'sudo' command is for avoiding root user, so if I use 'sudo', I do not need to be a root user, I just need to type my admin password.
(3) I have to memorize some of the bash command for Linux, such as sudo, cd, ls, ~, etc. Here is for my preference in the future.
(4) The newest Lion OS is really attractive and at a very reasonable price for update. The multi-touch function is really cool and fascinating. However, after I got this trouble with MacFUSE on my version of OS, I decided to be patient. Who knows what kind of problems I will encounter with a whole new OS? But from another aspect, it's always worth to explore and to tackle with new challenges. It's always great to realize how little I know, and how much I've learned and will learn in the future.
1. When I tried to mount using Macfusion, I would constantly received the error: Remote host has disconnect. While I was sure the remote host has no problem.
2. The MacFUSE preference pane is 32-bit only, when click MacFUSE from the system preference on a Mac that runs 64-bit kernel, it will cause the system preference quit and reopen.
The first problem is the major problem, I googled and found these two blog posts quite illuminating:
http://rackerhacker.com/2009/08/28/fix-macfusion-on-snow-leopard/
http://www.5dollarwhitebox.org/drupal/node/97
I tried these two solutions, but they didn't work for me, I simply cannot find the 'sshnodelay.so' file here on my machine. Maybe because these two blog posts both are from some time last year, there have been quite a bit of updating going on. Then I found this blog:
http://blog.philippklaus.de/2011/04/fix-sshfs-with-macfuse-on-mac-os-x-10-6-7-snow-leopard/
It should work for both 10.6.7 and 10.6.8. I simply downloaded the 2.1.9 version of MacFUSE it pointed to and installed it, problem solved!
One last thing to say here is that the default mounting path of Macfusion is home folder of the server, if you want to visit files that is not under the home folder like me, simply specify the path to "/" as the screenshot showed below.
For the second problem, it's minor, but quite annoying. Every time if I click the MacFUSE from system preference, the system preference would restart and show 32-bit. I solved it by downloading the MacFUSE preference pane file from here. After downloading, unzip and copy the MacFUSE.prefPane to /Library/PreferencePanes/, and replace the previous version.
Other things I learned:
(1) The Mac OS X 10.6.8 doesn't allow the user to enable root user for security reasons.
(2) The 'sudo' command is for avoiding root user, so if I use 'sudo', I do not need to be a root user, I just need to type my admin password.
(3) I have to memorize some of the bash command for Linux, such as sudo, cd, ls, ~, etc. Here is for my preference in the future.
(4) The newest Lion OS is really attractive and at a very reasonable price for update. The multi-touch function is really cool and fascinating. However, after I got this trouble with MacFUSE on my version of OS, I decided to be patient. Who knows what kind of problems I will encounter with a whole new OS? But from another aspect, it's always worth to explore and to tackle with new challenges. It's always great to realize how little I know, and how much I've learned and will learn in the future.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Review: Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan ArielyMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I enjoyed the first chapter of this book very much. The notion that our decisions are always based on comparisons but not absolute values poked me to think that I have compared too much. As a perfectionist somehow, I compare every aspects of my life with others, which actually oftentimes makes me unhappy and unsatisfied about my situation and also become impatient. I have to learn to only compare the most important things, and just let go other things and enjoy my life.
But then after the first several chapters I gradually lost my interest, because I kind of feel that I am more rational than the examples given in this book, and even if sometimes I am irrational, I am fully informed of that, and happy to be irrational. Irrational thinking and emotional feeling are human nature, it's not necessary to be rational all the time. If we are happy to be influenced by others, we are happy to get free stuffs, we are happy to compare ourselves a little bit in order to improve ourselves, and we are happy to keep some doors open, and wait for miracles, that's fine. I aware that the author also noted some of these in the book, also I am thinking I feel this way because most of the time I am more rational than the examples the author described. I can deal with most of the situations in the book, except compare too much, and sometimes leave many doors open (usually at the fist stage, when I am not seeing things clear, I will keep many doors open. During the final stage, I would be very decisive). So the last several chapters are not as much as useful to me.
Overall, I have to admit that behavioral economics looks like a very interesting field.
View all my reviews
Saturday, July 2, 2011
ASEE @ Vancouver
American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference and Exposition at Vancouver, Canada--This is the first real official academic conference I attended where I have to do a presentation in the prestigious ERM (Educational Research and Methods) division about our paper.
I made a plan to blog about the conference during my stay at Vancouver, but got too busy about cleaning some data, preparing for the presentation, and too lazy while enjoying the delicious food, beautiful scenery, hanging out with friends, and wondering around the exhibition hall. Also, I didn't have free internet at the conference center. Although I didn't attend too many sessions besides our own, the main plenary, and the best of computer in education division (which we feel are not the best), I still learned something and realize something:
1. Probably 80% of people don't know or don't want to know how to make a good presentation, and I am very lucky to be with an adviser who has extremely high standard about presentation skills. First, I have to be clear about what I am going to tell the audience and confident about why this is important. Second, make the slides in a clear and nice looking way that could guide the audience through the process, and impress them by the beautiful graphs and effect. Third, be polite, enthusiastic, confident, professional, don't be offensive, and remember to smile. Last, and most important for me now, I have to improve my oral English, learn to choose the appropriate wording and tone while speaking, and find a more natural way of smiling and gesturing.
2. There are lots of topics in engineering education, but most of the presentation topics are not attractive to me at all. I decided to direct more effort towards social media and collective intelligence. We met a director from Pearson, and he has a very cool personality. He takes a different photo everyday and posts the photo online. He is definitely a fan of social media, like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. I saw a project started by some Standford students called Piazza at the exhibition hall, and I got to know about Amazon Mechanical Turk. Then I saw some news about Google +, and today I saw an IEEE spectrum titled Super Socialize Me: Google, Facebook, and the Struggle for the future of the web. I feel I am at the entrance of a promising and interesting field, and I have to figure how to get in.
3. If I want to be a professor in the future, I have to teach, being an engineering education major, I have to teach engineering, in order to teach engineering in a higher education institute, I at least have to have an master degree in engineering. So I have to stick to this plan, and start to do something starting from the NCN summer school.
These are the three major things, and there are lots of other things about Vancouver to say--among them--I definitely miss the food and fresh taro bubble tea there ~
1. Probably 80% of people don't know or don't want to know how to make a good presentation, and I am very lucky to be with an adviser who has extremely high standard about presentation skills. First, I have to be clear about what I am going to tell the audience and confident about why this is important. Second, make the slides in a clear and nice looking way that could guide the audience through the process, and impress them by the beautiful graphs and effect. Third, be polite, enthusiastic, confident, professional, don't be offensive, and remember to smile. Last, and most important for me now, I have to improve my oral English, learn to choose the appropriate wording and tone while speaking, and find a more natural way of smiling and gesturing.
2. There are lots of topics in engineering education, but most of the presentation topics are not attractive to me at all. I decided to direct more effort towards social media and collective intelligence. We met a director from Pearson, and he has a very cool personality. He takes a different photo everyday and posts the photo online. He is definitely a fan of social media, like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. I saw a project started by some Standford students called Piazza at the exhibition hall, and I got to know about Amazon Mechanical Turk. Then I saw some news about Google +, and today I saw an IEEE spectrum titled Super Socialize Me: Google, Facebook, and the Struggle for the future of the web. I feel I am at the entrance of a promising and interesting field, and I have to figure how to get in.
3. If I want to be a professor in the future, I have to teach, being an engineering education major, I have to teach engineering, in order to teach engineering in a higher education institute, I at least have to have an master degree in engineering. So I have to stick to this plan, and start to do something starting from the NCN summer school.
These are the three major things, and there are lots of other things about Vancouver to say--among them--I definitely miss the food and fresh taro bubble tea there ~
Review: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy ChuaMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Being grow up as a Chinese, I was so attracted to the western ways of raising children. I always felt I had no freedom, and I didn't know what I love to do. All I thought is to excel in examinations. Now in retrospect, I realize that what I was complaining is the Chinese school system not the Chinese parenting style. Compared with Amy Chua, now I would complain my parents weren't so strict on me, especially about piano. I was such a lazy piano student and my parents didn't push at all. They care about the school scores more than piano. I had interest in piano at the very beginning, and I was me who said I wanted to take piano lesson, but after a while, I soon get bored (this also has to do with the boring teaching method of the teacher, but we have no way to get a good teacher at that time, also it's not custom to question teachers in China as Amy mentioned). Now my piano is all covered with dust. I guess this also has to do with the Chinese school system. It really doesn't allow that much time to practice. I went to school at 5:30am and came back at 10pm during high school and still had endless homework to do. While Amy's children are educated in the US, so their school system allow more time to practice, their parents have more money to get them good teachers, and more flexible time to accompany them for their music lessons.
I was always thinking that if I had children in the future, I will let them choose to do what they love to do, but now, I kind of feel that it's dangerous to totally abandon the chinese parenting tradition. I won't do such extremely as Amy did, but I do agree that practice makes perfect. We need to drill the hard part to master it, and to achieve success, and to be happy, and then want to do it more.
There is a book called 'Making Learning Whole' by David Perkins, which has a chapter about working on the hard part. I really like that, and think it proposes the same thing as Amy did. I will definitely push my children in the future to drill on the hard part. I hope I can do it too. I feel I've abandoned too much hard-working tradition since I came to the US. Freedom is really attractive but dangerous sometimes.
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Review: The Last Lecture
The Last Lecture by Randy PauschMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I saw some negative reviews among the dominantly positive reviews towards the paper book. I actually watched the video of the talk, so my experience was very positive. What impressed me wasn't his strong mind towards the cancer, but his childlike heart towards his dreams. Sometimes I will feel scary about growing up; The adult world is so complicated, and you have to compromise with so many things including your dreams. I am not saying that we absolutely necessarily have to stick to our childhood dreams, because some of them might be a bit ridiculous and selfish, for example, one of mine was to become the greatest leader of the world, which I assumed should be the chairman of the United Nations. This dream was kind of selfish, because I was just thinking being a chairman is great, not thinking about that position is to serve the humankind; Probably I was in the egocentric period of development. So what I am saying here is to always look at this world like a child, in a positive attitude. Be kind, nice, pure,warmhearted, but not dumb. Be frank and sincere, and work hard to fulfill your dreams at whatever period, don't easily get frustrated and give up.
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