http://pure-essence.net you must visit this geeky girl's weblog! Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:54:56 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The 27" in my bedroom broke so we decided to get a new HDTV. Since Andy's working for BestBuy right now, he does very decent discount. We got a 42" Insignia 1080p LCD HDTV [1] with 4 year warranty and a TV stand for $952. It would be $1350 without employee discount. Old TV in bedroom New TV in bedroom TV in living room Sony 50" rear projection. We had this one for about 3 years. [1] http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8632802&st=insignia+42%22&lp=1&type=product&cp=1&id=1194052334530 http://pure-essence.net/2008/06/11/got-a-new-hdtv/ WOW this is touching!! [youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=wKUaLlK776s[/youtube] http://pure-essence.net/2008/06/06/an-amazing-softball-story/ I needed a text counter at work. I searched around trying to find a jQuery plugin that fits the bill but I didn't find anything. So I wrote one myself. Check it out :) It should be pretty flexible. Requires jQuery [1] Define the maximum of characters the user may input May be applied to one or more input text or textarea fields Also disable the user from entering more characters after s/he reaches the maximum Live demo + Documentation + Download [2] [1] http://jquery.com/ [2] http://pure-essence.net/stuff/webTips/dodosTextCounter/index.html http://pure-essence.net/2008/05/30/dodos-text-counter/ I was positively surprised to find the movie The Storm Riders [1] on youtube decently dubbed. It's one of the best Kung Fu movies I've seen. Real Hong Kong style. Way better than the new Forbidden Kingdom [2]. No dis on Jet Li or Jackie Change but their new movie which I have seen in the theater is way too tuned down for the PG 13 rating and Americanized. I think it failed as a Kung Fu movie. Plus The Storm Riders [1] has way cuter actors like Ekin Chang and Aaron Kwok. Go watch it if you have nothing to do :) The Storm Riders: Part 1 [4] | Part 2 [5] | Part 3 [6] | Part 4 [7] | Part 5 [8] | Part 6 [9] | Part 7 [10] | Part 8 [11] | Part 9 [12] [1] http://us.yesasia.com/en/PrdDept.aspx/code-c/section-videos/pid-1989/ [2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0865556/ [3] http://us.yesasia.com/en/PrdDept.aspx/code-c/section-videos/pid-1989/ [4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk9-qjZLe_w [5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKNdFj6QvKM [6] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=549-XgzQpLw [7] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKUWgeXJHFM [8] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krCxA3C5eN0 [9] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDps1d8Ydsw [10] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJdme_qXMcE [11] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whselpxa324 [12] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZqLyRTw-GM http://pure-essence.net/2008/05/11/storm-riders/ [1] If you haven't seem the new Marvel movie Iron Man [2], you really should! We watched with some friends yesterday. It was highly entertaining and impressive. All these super hero movies are similar but this one definitely has its uniqueness. I love his humorous conversation with his robots. You cannot obviously question all the science to details in movies like this but I still wonder how he stayed alive in a burning iron suit LOL. Blinds [3] Health Insurance Quotes [4] [1] http://ironmanmovie.marvel.com/ [2] http://ironmanmovie.marvel.com/ [3] http://www.smithandnoble.com/sn/home.jsp [4] http://www.online-health-insurance.com/quick-search/index.php http://pure-essence.net/2008/05/05/iron-man/ [1] I took a day off to go to the annual tulip festival in a local dutch village Pella [2]. Although it was raining, we still had a fun time. [1] http://flickr.com/photos/dodozhang21/sets/72157604847317642/ [2] http://www.pellatuliptime.com/ http://pure-essence.net/2008/05/02/tulip-time/ [1] [1] http://digg.com/travel_places/Oh_My_God_Look_At_Those_Gas_Prices_PICS http://pure-essence.net/2008/04/17/plane-crash-is-nothing-when/ I've been using foobar2000 [1] as my media player for quite some time. It's lightweight, highly customizable and uses little resource. Today while I was listening to some soothing music, I remembered back then I had a CD player that had a sleep function where you can set a timer to have it automatically turn off in 30 minutes. I thought would it be nice to do something like that with foobar since I leave my laptop on all the time by my bed. Sure enough, I didn't have to look far, foobar's got an awesome plugin foo_scheduler [2] that does that and much more. It can perform many actions on a scheduled basis including, start, stop, lower volume, exit and even shutdown your computer. Alternatively this is the first thread I stumpled upon [3]. It contains much valuable information for scheduling your computer. [1] http://www.foobar2000.org/ [2] http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=49589 [3] http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t57705.html http://pure-essence.net/2008/04/07/another-reason-why-i-love-foobar2000/ Misty says "meow" - what is daddy doing? http://pure-essence.net/2008/04/04/weirdest-photo/ 花非花，雾非雾。夜半来天明去。 来如春梦几多时？去似朝云无觅处。 小时候上语文课要背许多古诗。大多数是唐诗。前几年回国我特地买了一本《唐诗三百首》以为会学一些新诗。其实脑子里有印象的诗还是小时候讨厌背的东西。记忆最深的是这首白居易的《花非花》。这首诗对我来说很特别。它不是语文老师而是音乐老师教的。教它的目的是为了让我们学为这首诗写的歌。教之前老师让我们闭上眼睛，在我们脑海里打造了这首诗的弥朦境界。那时的我可能只有小学三年级。但我被催幻了被打动了。我仿佛真的进入了诗人的世外桃源。我想那是我对诗词的情窦初开吧。 http://pure-essence.net/2008/03/26/1224/