Ke Colin Zheng

Michael Jackson's This Is It!

AMC的电影票留在车里好久了，
事先也没有看影评，无论优劣，只想看看传奇的最后风采。
结果是惊喜地，
这种几近纪实的叙述，让我感叹他的天才横溢。
我想，他一定活在一个鲜活生动的视觉世界里，歌着舞着。
一个简单而纯粹的音乐和视觉天才。
这一生没有亲身一睹MJ的演唱会，是遗憾啊！

Route:

Saturday: Friday Harbor –> Posey Island –> Spieden Island –> Stuart Island (camp)

Sunday: Stuart Island –> Spieden Island –> Posey Island –> Friday Harbor

Wild lives Encountered:

Seals, Oyster Catchers, Bald Eagles, Porpoises, Orcas, Jellyfish,

Stats:

2 Day Trip

10 Hour Paddling

15 Mile Roundtrip

Some photos by Harlan:

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曾经以为最完美的爱情人生是和一个人在一起，走过中学，大学，研究生院，走到婚姻，走完人生。
曾经以为最完美的职业生涯是为了一个兴趣，在大学里学之，在研究生院想之，在公司实现之，一生以系之。
为什么其实这不是生活？

The weather was nice, and I got my last hand on the Canon 1D MarkII from the lab. So I managed to get Jon to pose for me to shoot some photos.  The bike/soccer photos didn’t turn out too well as it was too dark by then.

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其实不想走，其实我想留；
确实应该走，确实不该留。
拖拖拉拉，迟疑不定的我，终于还是到了结束校园生涯的这一天。
写了一张清单，特此纪念华盛顿湖畔，象牙塔里无知的青春：
2 Degrees;
3 Fellowships & Awards;
4 Advisors;
6 Summer Internships;
7 Years;
10 Papers+Patents;
3000 Email Contacts;
40000 Email Messages;
1000GB Data+Craps;

Finding deals is always a hot topic, especially under current economic conditions. dealsea/bensgargin/dealnews are just samples of hundreds of deal websites that collect sales/deal information online. But the nature of the collection process determines that you are always going to be behind the deal publishers. Is there a way to act before the deal is even published?

Let’s take a look at how Neiman Marcus releases their sales items: admins first updates the inventory, then the website releases/links these items onto the sales page. Those lucky web-surfers catch a glimpse of the 60% off prada bags while refreshing the sales page, and in one second, those deals/steals are gone.

It turns out that with some engineering efforts, it’s possible to grab on deals before they even get published onto the sales page.

Imagine you are one of those Prada fans that are desperate for Prada handbags. Here is what you need to do to get the bags you want:

1. Scrape the entire inventory of Neiman Marcus.
   Neiman Marcus website is designed in such a way that inventory of each product can be accessed via: http://www.neimanmarcus.com/store/catalog/prod.jhtml?itemId=prodXXXXXXXX
   So if you can enumerate all possible product IDs, you can scrape the entire inventory of Neiman Marcus. With cloud computing, it took me less than 8 hours to collect the inventory using 16 nodes.
2. Filter out all items but Prada Bags.
   From millions of item pages, you can classify the pages by brand, and item type. If you are only interested in Prada handbags, that will narrow down the item list to a couple of hundred items only. Note you want to store available items as well as unavailable ones, as they might turn available with a sales tag and deep cut price.
3. Online monitoring all Prada Bags.
   Now that you have collected the item list, all you need to do is to constantly check whether there is any deal popping out on these items in your background processes. An email service could come in handy to alert you as soon as your websearch routine returns a bag updated with a sales tag in the inventory.

I know you would ask: how effective is this and how soon do I have to act upon the deals?

After getting to see all the discounted prada bags, what I found out was: it usually took websites over 20 minutes to publish/update their inventory change, since they have millions of products in stock. But even if you are on a single PC, it took only 5 minutes to check through the entire Prada bag list. So you win over on average 15 minutes, which is about enough for you to call your friends, search reviews and make orders!

I actually built a system to do exactly mentioned above, not because I love Prada bags (although I did buy a few after seeing the discount and the price). I was looking for building some interesting internet search applications, and this turns out to be perfect given all the technical elements in it: web crawling, cloud computing, text processing, and web programing.

*ps: Again, I don’t recommend/encourage anyone to do this for commercial purpose. It’s all about getting your friends happy and convincing them IT can do good deeds!

感谢livesync，终于可以把自己网站的blog和msn的space二合为一。

在牛年的第一天做这件事情，也是希望往后能多写点自己的心情和体会。

忽然发觉自己的生活，从来不缺乏戏剧的因子，

所以新年的愿望是：

1. 多拍点照片，记录跌宕时刻

2. 早点结束游荡，该干嘛干嘛

It’s fun watching planes, ancient, old and new and my dad jumping up and down!

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Duke is pretty cool. I like the brick-stoned buildings, and the lovely southern accent.
Oh, yes, the morning rain on the graduation day makes it like Seattle, and that’s my favorite!

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A bunch of us took a day off to smell some flowers.

We checked out the tulips in skagit valley and took a short hike close to deception pass.

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