Hands on GarageBand smart string

Apple released an update to GarageBand with the introduction of smart string, a cool and easy way to play wood wind instruments!

Why do we add 's' to verbs in the third person singular (he/she/it)?

Why do we add 's' to verbs in the third person singular (he/she/it)? "I speak" vs. "She speaks" I know we do this to make it grammatically correct but what is the reason behind this rule? And if one redundant information is gained, why only do this in present tense? "He spoke" not "He spokes"? Redundant in the sense that subjects like (he/she/it ...) are never omitted when use with s-conjugated verbs anyway.

In French verbs conjugation is even more complicated but there is a reason. Ex. je parle (i speak), tu parles (you speak), il parle (he speaks), nouns parlons (we speak), ... Because in the past the Romans omitted subjects so extra information is added to verbs. But does this or any kind of similar reason apply to a language of a different family like English?

Travelling around the world

I moved to Dublin

I moved to Dublin in September 2011. I now work for Google in the european headquarters. It's my first time to land in Europe and I'm very excited to explore the rich culture of the western society and the marvelous architecture!

Third International Conference of Information and Communication Technology for Embedded Systems (IC-ICTES 2012)

The Third International Conference of Information and Communication Technology for Embedded Systems (IC-ICTES 2012) is established to provide an international forum for researchers and industry practitioners to share their new ideas, original research results and practical development experiences from all embedded system-related areas including ubiquitous computing, pervasive computing, embedded system design, development of new HW/SW-related theories and techniques in embedded systems, information and communication technology for supporting development of embedded systems, and information and communication technology used in embedded systems.


http://itpe.siit.tu.ac.th/icictes2012/

เมื่อสมาร์ทโฟนคืออาหาร

แอนดรอย เปรียบเสมือนข้าวราดแกงที่คุณสามารถใส่นู่นนี่ ปรุงรสตามชอบ ชาวบ้านถูกใจ
ไอโฟน เปรียบเสมือนอาหารฝรั่งเศสของคนในคุกที่ปรุงโดยเชฟมีรสนิยมชื่อสตีฟ จอบส์
แบลคเบอรี่ คืออาหารที่กำลังจะหมดอายุ ต้องรีบกินและแบ่งให้เพื่อนๆ กินด้วย
โนเกีย คืออาหารข้างคืนที่เสียแล้วลืมเอาไปทิ้ง...

Cooking a Fried Rice (Kaopad)

Kaopad is a popular Thai dish. It's easy to cook and tastes good too!
Ingredients
1. Rice
2. Onion
3. Any vegetable you like
5. Any meat you like (here I use Chicken)
6. Egg
7. Seasoning (soy sauce, salt and pepper)

Check out more cooking recipes from Spicy Thailand

Breaking News Detection and Tracking in Twitter (WI:IWI'10)

On August 30, 2010, I delivered a presentation at the International Workshop on Intelligent Web Interaction (WI: IWI) in Toronto Canada.

Twitter has been used as one of the communication channels for spreading breaking news. We propose a method to collect, group, rank and track breaking news in Twitter. Since short length messages make similarity comparison difficult, we boost scores on proper nouns to improve the grouping results. Each group is ranked based on popularity and reliability factors. Current detection method is limited to facts part of messages. We developed an application called “Hotstream” based on the proposed method. Users can discover breaking news from the Twitter timeline. Each story is provided with the information of message originator, story development and activity chart. This provides a convenient way for people to follow breaking news and stay informed with real-time updates.

Breaking News Detection and Tracking in Twitter (WI:IW'10)

Japan's toilets are fascinating

Japan, the gadget loving nation treats you (and your ass) well in the toilet. Look at these buttons and what they can do to ensure the cleanliness before leaving the toilet. The orange button is for stopping. You need it when things get out of control. The button with w-shape and spraying water is for cleaning your thing. The one next to it is the soft mode. (For non-hardcore) The pink one is for lady. The location of water being sprayed is different. Guys get the strange feeling (perhaps kinky) when hitting that button. The last one is for air drying. Below these buttons are more buttons and LCD display. You can adjust the heating of the seat, the deodorizer, etc. You might be able to play some puzzles to kill some time there.

If you happened to be in Japan, be sure to check them out. Go try every buttons. [WARNING] If there's a button that will change a sanitary pad for you then, that's gotta' hurt a lot for guys.

Bangkok subway's prohibited items

There are so many rules in Bangkok's subway (MRT, formally). I have attached what's written as 'Restriction' in this post. And at least I broke one rule! (No photos) Anyway it's not hurting anybody, I think :) You can see that the rules are pretty strict. You cannot shopping too much. You cannot even sit! No eating and drinking illustration don't seem to match with the Thai culture. People like eating grilled pork with sticky rice more than hamburgers, I think. And the drink is often served in a plastic bag hanging to your finger comfortably using a rubber band. But the most interesting thing here is that 'no durian is allowed'. And to illustrate that well, it deserves some colours! (others don't) Now you ask, do Thai people really like to carry durian around, especially to the subway? My answer is No! They are heavy and stinks. I think they tried to warn foreigners. Coz' they like to buy exotic stuff, right?

Thai Students in Tokyo Tech

A new Facebook group for Thai students in Tokyo tech has been opened. I designed this logo :)

Thai Tokodai
The social network group for information sharing, news, events and more.
Est. June 12, 2010 

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=135544986458927

Thai Keyboard Layout

Recently I bought a new laptop in Japan. The problem is, I type in Thai frequently (cause I'm Thai) but I couldn't remember all the characters' locations on keyboard. I should have paid more attention when I was in the Typing class. Though, I can do touch typing in English :p I tried to Google the Thai language keyboard layout, but they all look ugly, so I made my own version of Thai keyboard layout. As you can see from the image, it is indeed a Mac keyboard.

For people who are learning Thai, feel free to use it :)

ASEAN Students Career Fair 2011

東南アジア留学生就職フェア

日付：２０１０年２月２０日（日）
場所：東京都立浜松町産業貿易センター５階第2展示室（アクセス）
時間：１０：００〜１６：００


ASEAN Students Career Fair 2011


Date: 20 February 2010 (Saturday)
Venue: 2nd Exhibition Hall 5th Floor Tokyo Industrial Trade Centre Hamamatsu-cho （Access）
Time: 10:00hrs to 16:00hrs

http://www.aynjapan.com/careerfair2011

Work opportunities in Japan and Southeast Asia.

Contact: careerfair2011@aynjapan.com

อธิบาย Push-Email

อะไรคือ Push-Email?

การรับส่่ง Email ประกอบด้วยตัวการหลักสองฝ่ายคือ Client และ Server

ในกรณีของระบบโทรศัพท์มือถือ Client คือ โทรศัพท์ Server คือ ระบบเครือข่าย

โดยปรกติ การรับส่งอีเมลล์จะเป็น Pull-service คือ Client เป็นคนติดต่อ Server

เพื่อร้องขอตรวจสอบอีเมลล์ เช่นเดียวกับการที่เราเข้าเวบ Hotmail, Gmail เพื่อ

เชคว่ามีอีีเมลล์ใหม่เข้ามาหรือไม่ ดังนั้นเพื่อให้รับอีเมลล์ใหม่ได้ตลอดเวลา Client

ต้องคอยติดต่อ Server อยู่ตลอดเวลาเป็นระยะ (Fetching, Polling)

ในกรณีของ Push-service เมื่อมีอีเมลล์ใหม่เข้ามา Server จะเป็นคนส่งสัญญาณ

ไปยัง Client ให้ทำการดึงข้อมูลโดยอัตโนมัติ ด้วยเหตุนี้จึงเรียกว่า Push

ข้อดีของ Push คือ Client ไม่ต้องคอยติดต่อ Server เพื่อร้องขอตรวจสอบอีเมลล์

อยู่ตลอดเวลา สำหรับโทรศัพท์หรืออุปกรณ์พกพาถือว่าสำคัญ

ถ้าโทรศัพท์ต้องคอยติดต่ออยู่ตลอดเวลานอกจากจะต้องใช้พลังงานสำหรับส่ง

ซึ่งสิ้นเปลืองแบตเตอรี่แล้วยังสิ้นเปลืองช่องสัญญาณอีกด้วย

นอกจากนี้ยังได้ความรวดเร็ว ณ. เวลาที่อีเมลล์เข้า จะมีสัญญาณส่งไปที่โทรศัพท์

โดยทันที (Real-time)

Touch screen, it seems some don't get it right.

This article was a part of my assignments to analyze the aspects of human interface which needs improvements.

A touch screen is a display that can detect the presence of touch within the display area. The use of touch screen improves productivity as it enhance the navigation of user interface elements. While traditional user interface requires users to activate control elements by using buttons, switches or movable objects, touch screen enabled users to directly manipulate control elements from the display. However the implementation touch screen to achieve the best results in terms of usability, and responsiveness is challenging. Wrong implementation of touch screen, will not only effect the usability, but make the device unpleasant to use.

In this section I’ll describe the case where touch screen made user interface, difficult to use rather than what it should be. Recently the trend of touch interface become a wide spread phenomena. We see cameras, cellphones, computers, gaming devices, etc. equipped with touch screen. Although we see successful cases for example the portable gaming device, Nintendo DS, which enable new ways of gaming experience through a touch screen. An iPhone which utilizes a mu

lti-touch technology, enabled a better way of navigation through scrolling, finger gestures. Now come to the area where the implementation of touch screen is not quite right.

1.1 Touch screen interface for tasks that require precision

Tasks that require precision like volume control, zooming control are better to implement with an interface that users can grab easily and receive p

hysical feedback for corrections. Figure 1 show an example when we overuse the touch screen. Notice that a zoom button is implemented as a UI element in the touch screen. The problem with this design is that users cannot get the feel of how much force requires to move the zoom level into a desired position. Often time users find the touch screen is too sensitive or too irresponsive. In a regular zoom button case, there is a distance between a pressed and unpressed state, which made it easy for one to operate with high level of precision. To improve this, we have to provide physical buttons for task which require precision and not overuse the touch screen. Many manufactures seems to understand this problem, and provide dedicate controls for this function. Figure 2. shows a proper combination of controls having a touch screen for selection with high degree of freedom and physical buttons for selection with fixed functionalities.

1.2 Touch screen interface with improper hardware technology

There are many types of touch screen technologies: resistive, surface acoustic wave, capacitive, infrared, etc. Each of these technology has its own advantages and disadvantages. For example resistive technology requires the use of force and works well with stylus. On the other hand, capacitive technology is highly sensitive and only accept finger touches. Figure 3 shows a phone that tries to combine both finger touches and stylus. The result is a torture user experience. Often times user will find that the system is irresponsive. Since the resistive type of touch screen require the use of force, when use with finger, one has to apply appropriate force to register a click. When a finger is place on top of the UI there is no feedback. Only when you really press it, the action is made. Also there is no way to avoid an unintended click since the action is already carried out. In the case of capacitive technology, we can detect the finger the moment it hits the screen surface. With this we can display a proper feedback.

1.3 Touch screen interface that lacks proper feedback

This one also concern issues in 1.2 but also discuss the design aspects of UI from the software point of view. In order to provide a good user experience, we always need to give a user the feedback so that he/she knows if the selection is correct or not. Figure 4. shows example of a typical selection screen found in ticket vending machine where many buttons are placed next to each other. In some places, machines do not provide visual feedback. For example (a) a user wish to choose D but accidentally press in the area in between D and E. With no visual feedback, the result can be ambiguous. Then (b), A user will then doubt about his selection which causes confusion. Since a touch screen provide no physical feedbacks like real objects, we have to provide visual feedbacks, sound feedbacks, or shake feedbacks to confirm the user. For example when press the button, the button has to change the look as if it is pressed as in (c) so that the user know right away which button was clicked.