Elva Liang, a girl from Cangzhou, Hebei, met with me on a well-known Chinese foreign trading forum (FOB Business Forum) some days ago. She’s working in Zhongshan, Guangdong (hometown of Sun Yat-sen, father or founder of a Republic of China), added me to her buddies list on QQ (the largest instant messenger in China) when she saw my reply for a forum topic regarding how to look for someone’s MSN address as a sales newbie. We became to know each other then after we talked on the IM later on.

15th July was her date of birth, she asked me for a bunch of flowers as her birthday present, I agreed even though delayed 2 or 3 days as I know it’s very convenient to buy things on the net, I ordered the flower on Taobao.com (the largest C2C in the Chinese market), and the seller sent the flower to her office at 9am-10am in the morning on her birthday.

Elva with my flower on hand

Honest speaking, this is my very 1st time that I sent a girl a flower, and I didn’t quite concern what flower to be given in what day… Thanks Taobao, its website webpages helped me a lot on locating and sorting out a birthday flower by filtering by some certain “conditions”.

15th July is also an important day for myself, because my company Hsiendai Co., Ltd was finally approved on that day, about 2 weeks after leaving my former company.

Dropbox is great, gives you the freedom to work on any of your computers and always have the files you need. Let’s say you’re editing a document at home. As soon as you click ‘Save’, Dropbox will sync this same file to all your other computers (as well as your iPhone!) instantly and automatically. It’s as if you saved the document to all of your computers.

Dropbox has lots of other features to automatically backup your files and keep files synced between computers too, it also enables you share files easily with your friends and colleagues on Dropbox website, here’s Dropbox tour which you can learn all it’s features how to sync your files and store your files securely.

Besides all these things I am talking above, Dropbox officially posted some Tips and Tricks as well as some add-ons on their wiki, which give you the ability to use Dropbox services efficiently and creatively. You can visit those pages yourself and look for a way how to use Dropbox in different situations better. Well, after I saw their add-ons page I found a great trick to turn Dropbox into a powerful online photo gallery site. Ah, yes, Dropbox is so powerfull to do anything which you can hardly imagine.

See those screenshots above, this is a cool and full-featured photo gallery, right? Please do not doubt, it was built by myself, using My PHP DropBox Gallery php script, all those photos in the screenshots are stored in my own Dropbox account in Dropbox severs.

To generate your own photo gallery on your own web sever is easy, register a Dropbox account (skip this step if you already have one), creat a folder in your “Photos” directory of your dropbox and upload all your photo files there which you want to share with others, and then download PHP Dropbox Gallery scripts here, decompress it, and rename the file “config.example.php” to “config.php” which located in “upload/gallery” directory, change its content to meet your situations. And at last, upload all the files in the “upload” directory to your own web sever, that’s it.

Here’s my own PHP Dropbox Gallery demo, which make photo gallery and photo sharing more easier.

http://huzuofeiwei.com/php-dropbox-gallery/

Preparing for Installation

Eee PC has no CD-ROM, so that you can not install Fedora 12 from a Live CD disk. The best way for you is to download a Fedora 12 Live ISO and write this iso image to your flash drive, and then install F12 with this usb flash drive.

liveusb-creator is a cross-platform tool to do this job, it has an easy-to-use GUI which can ensure the Fedora 12 live CD iso you downloaded is correct, and, it can also ensure you write to the right USB disk. What you need is a 2GB USB disk.

During Installation

It’s quite easy and I think you can handle yourself, but here’s some points you’d pay special attention to.

1) At the screen choosing your time zone, make sure the “system clock users UTC” option is unchecked, in order to keep your two systems both Fedora 12 and Windows XP clocks are the same time.

2) When partitioning your hard drive, please be careful not erase your Windows partition which has some of your personal data. Please mark “Review and modify partitioning layout” optioned checked, so that you will be able to know which partitions will be formatted.

3) You’d better give your /home directory a single partition so that your data will not be lost when you fresh-install your system to upgrade your machine to the future Fedora release.

When partitioning my hard drive, I chose to cover my exiting Ubuntu 9.10 Linux system, and everything is correct when I check my partitioning layout, but I lost all data on my Ubuntu /home directory… this isn’t a matter as these data has been backed up on my laptop.

Another problem I met is when installing bootloader, the installation script says it has a bug, it maybe caused because Ubuntu 9.10 uses Grub2 and Fedora installation script can’t cover it’s files on MBR. I installed the system again and this problem was solved.

Post-installation

The first thing you need to do is to add rpmfusion software repositories when you log into your system. You can find insturtions on how to add both free and non-free repositories on RPM fusion website.

After RPM Fusion enabled, you need to update your system immediately to update all your software to be the lasted. You can do this job by clicking System/Administration/Software Updates.

(Enable Chinese Input)

Chinese Fedora users need a input method to input Chinese words.

Fedora has both ibus and ibus-pinyin preinstalled, a good news is that, I installed an English environment, and ibus-pinyin can be enable on clicks, no need more configuration.

Wireless Driver

Fedora 12 comes with no Eee PC 1000HE’s Ralink RT2860 wireless card driver, I am lucky because I have a G-Sky WIFI adapter, so that I can use it to connect my neighbour’s WIFI network (Fedora has G-Sky’s Reatek wireless chipset drivers by default) and install Ralink’s driver by running the following command in the terminal.

yum install kmod-rt2860

Configure your Mouse and TouchPad

Click System/Preferences/Mouse, and under the “Touchpad” tab, check “Enable Mouse Clicks with touchpad”, this will enable you to double-click an item on your system with our using a mouse, and Eee PC comes with no mouse at all.

Check “disable touchpad while typing” this will be helpful when you’re typing while touchpad always make you annoying.

You can also check “Enable scrolling”, this will enable you to scroll up/down when you move your finger at the right side of your touchpad edge.

Desktop 3D Effects

If you enabled RPM Fusion, and you updated your system to be latest, you should have the latest graphic card driver updated.

Go to System/Preferences/Desktop Effect, and choose Compiz, and mark both “Windows Wobble when Moved” and “Workspaces on a Cube”, then some basic 3D effect will be enabled, try to move a windows or click other workspace to give a try? I know this is only basic effects, but it’s enough, because you don’t have a mouse to operate your system to be more eye-candy

Anything more? Uhhh, I forgot, this is all… If you have any problem, give me a comment below.

It’s been so long a time since I switched to Ubuntu 9.04 before the release of Fedora 11, but now I finally switched back again and installed Constantine on my Eee PC 1000HE netbook. Fedora becomes better, and it works well on this little machine.

I still remember that Red Hat 9 is my very first Linux distribution that I tried when I was on college, although I knew how to install it after reading so many Linux books and magazines in our library, I had a very bad experience, because it doesn’t have a good browser. But things changed after my graduation when I installed a Ubuntu 6.06+Windows XP dual boot system on my office computer, this is the first time I started to use Firefox browser, it worked fine and most of the webpages could be displayed perfectly, and Linux systems left me a good expression since then.

One year later after I had my own job, I bought myself an HP Compaq Presario V3805AU laptop, I always planed to use a Linux distro so that I chose this one, it’s Linux-friendly enough because it has a Red-flag Linux desktop preinstalled. But Red-flag is based on KDE with a cloned Windows interface, and it’s hard to use, so I disliked it so much.

I installed Fedora 9 in my entire hard disk after erased Red-flag, because at that time I didn’t have a broadband internet connection, I had to connect to the internet with a China Mobile EDGE wireless router, so I spent a lot of time to looking for a Linux distro that supports mobile broadband, and finally I found Fedora 9, with GPRS/EDGE internet connections as it’s new features.

Both Fedora 9 and 10 worked perfectly on my laptop, but, it always has some small problems which drove me crazy as I only have some limited Linux knowledges, and can’t solve these problems myself, I switched to Ubuntu 9.04, Ubuntu is more stable as a desktop system, and, what I liked most is its new notify system.

Sometimes I blame myself a lot why I didn’t learn computer science and technology or something related as my major at university, I am so regret about that, because I can’t solve my own Linux computer problems, and I also don’t know what can I do for this amazing operating system.

With so many people’s hard work, Linux is becoming better than ever, especially Fedora Community, they contributed a lot to the Linux kernel and brought us new technology and new features to the Linux world one after another, I can do nothing to help them, but, I use their product, and, I can share my using experience with others, in a hope that they finally start to use it too. That’s what I can do to thank the Fedora community and all Linux developers, that’s why I am back.

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard broght us a new feature called “Cover Flow”, which allows you to quick preview your files in Finder without opening them one by one. Well, as for Ubuntu 9.04 users, you can now try Gloobus, it takes Mac’s quicklook feature to the linux world.

Gloobus is an extension of Gnome designed to enable a full screen preview of any kind of file. Ever been annoyed by those tiny miniatures of your files that are helpless. Outraged by the fact that there’s no miniature for half of the file formats you’re using. Excruciated by the painful loading time to see if you’re dealing with the right file? Hail to Gloobus, for this’ is the Holy Grail of preview! Designed as an extendable, standards-compliant previewer , so that it plays nice with Gnome and can be easily extended to support any kind of file, Gloobus enables instant previewing of your files, without even having to open them. Hit space, and BANG, here’s the content of your file, displayed as it would if it was opened.

Currently, Gloobus supports TXT , PDF, JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG, PSD, MP3, OGG, MPG, WMV, XCF It has a sleek black interface which will put your files in focus.

TualatriX (author of Ubuntu Tweak) setted up a Gloobus PPA yesterday, which enables you to install Gloobus on your Ubuntu 9.04 desktop quickly and easily. If you’re running Ubuntu 9.04, follow the following instructions:

1) Add these lines to /etc/apt/sources.list (sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list)

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/tualatrix/gloobus/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/tualatrix/gloobus/ubuntu jaunty main

2) Add the key (if you have enanabled Ubuntu Tweak Launchpad PPA, skip this step)

sudo apt-key adv –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com –recv-keys 0624A220

3) Update the packages list

sudo apt-get update

4) Upgrade to the latest patched Nautilus

sudo apt-get upgrade

5) Install Gloobus-Preview

sudo apt-get install gloobus-preview

6) Finally, quit and restart nautilus

nautilus -q
nautilus &

Now, select a file or a folder on your desktop or your file manager, and press Space, a Gloobus-Preview windows will be launched with the quicklook of the folder or file content. Enjoy!

Last night, I installed Gloobus on my desktop, it’s really amazing, Gloobus-Preview windows has a black interface, my gnome theme and blog theme are black too, it looks so cool! I’m listening a MP3, but I don’t need to open it by any music player now… it’s really amazing….

Brizzly is a web-based Twitter client, one of the best one in my point of view. It’s still in private beta, requiring invitation code to sign up, you can submit your email address here and wait to be invited to join in. I got to know this because a Chinese Twitter user Young Yang introduced it on Twitter with a invitation code in the other day. I’ve checked it out over the last week, and have really come to enjoy it.

Brizzly has a very good user interface, brings you the best tweeting experiences. You can publish your tweets (tell others what you’re doing or thinking), read messages which contain “@YourTwitterUsername” (@ messages), read tweets you marked as “Favourites”, and read/write direct messages to other Twitter users. You can also search tweets or people you follow, manage the people you are folloing  in groups. All these features come in one place, and, with multi-twitter account support. It’s quite useful.

Brizzly is not just a Twitter client, but it’s also a photo sharing service based on Twitter: You can upload your own photos to Brizzly severs and publish the photo link along together with any message you enter and share it out on Twitter between your followers. This is a very good service that I prefer, instead of twitpic, but all-in-one.

Another reason why I prefer Brizzly so much is its real-time stream feature, if a new tweet contains a link with videos or images, or you uploaded a photo to Brizzly sever and published it, Brizzly will automactically recogize it’s source link and embed it and displays the images or video together with your tweets you newly published or new messages published  by the people your are following. (as far as I know, I’ve confirmed that brizzly displays photos from YFrog and TwitPic and that it pulls in YouTube videos.)

Brizzly automatically resolves shortened urls. For example, when you post a tweet on brizzly with a long url, brizzly will automatically turns it into a Bit.ly shortened url; On the other hand, if the one you’re following posted a shorted url on Twitter, when Brizzly displays it to you, it will reconvert it to the full long url.

In one word, Brizzly is a very good web-based Twitter worthy for you to have a try. Please try to be invited first

This is Charles Peng from China. I am male, 24, and was majored in English at college. I have a good command of both listening and speaking, and my writing skills is also acceptable. I have no big difficulties communicating with any people from any English-speaking countries.

I am now working in a transponder keys manufacturing company located in Taizhou, Zhejiang, China. To be honest, I have been working here for almost 2 years till now. We are a company mainly manufactures all kinds of transponder keys, key shells/covers, key blanks, remote key shells/covers, we can also supply remote keys, transponders, locksmith tools/lock picks, auto advanced diagnostics (programmers),  key blades, etc of various kinds. We also accept OEM/ODM orders according to your own needs.

Here below are some pictures of our products we manufacture or we can offer and wholesale:

Some of Transponder Keys we manufacture

Some of other Transponder Keys we manufacture and wholesale

We can also manufacture all kinds remote keys/key shells, here’re part of those of our products:

Some of the Remote Key shells we manufacture and wholesale

Other remote key shells we manufacture and supply

We have been speciallized in manufacturing and selling these kinds of transponder keys, key shells/covers, remote key shells for many years. And it has become one of the leading transponder keys and remote key shells manufacturer and supplier in China. Our products sell good in our national market, and now exported to many countries, such as North America, Europe, Turkey, Africa, Middle East, and other countries or regions worldwide. With our high-quality products as well as our sincere services, I am sure you will be highly satisfied.

If you are doing such businesses, or you’re interested in our products, or if you have any inquiries, please kindly download our catalog here http://charlespeng.com/pricelists from my personal website, and don’t hesitate to contact me back for any further information.

Name: Charles Peng
Email&MSN: charles.peng[at]hotmail.com
Mobile: +86 158 576 58616
Skype: pengjiayou

I am always waiting here for your email…. If you want to download full-sized photos above, please visit here http://drop.io/transponder_keys_remote_keys/ or http://file2.ws/transponder . Thank you so much.

This is a song by Nicholas Tse called “So Beautiful when You Smile“, which was uploaded to a Chinese video sharing website Tudou in 2006 by myself, I almost forgot this MTV since today I visited my Tudou hopepage again, I like this song, this is one of the best songs sing by Nicholas.

Having listened this song again and again for lots and lots of times this morning, it reminds me of a girl, whom I like when I was in XFU, I like being together with her, and, I like most her smile, yes, really beautiful.

Time flies, however, I couldn’t be able to see her since July 2006, but her face when she smiles are always in my mind…

Well, I uploaded some great music files to Tudou in 2006 as well, these are Disco Dance Music, I forgot when I downloaded them and how to download them again. Thanks Tudou, they are all there. OK, try to listen these musics and see if you like it either

Linda was my classmate when I was studying in XFU, and we worked in the same city after graduation. I always went to her school on Sundays where she worked in the last months, we went shopping in supermarkets, climbing on the hills around her school, or going to parks in her city… That’s the most happiest time for me working in this city during the last years.

For quite a long time, Linda was my best female friend, yes, only her whom could accompany me. I was a stranger of the city, and I was always busy on working in my company, almost sitting everyday at front of my office computers except on Sundays. Linda has plenty of time, and we could gather together.

Eveything had changed since last month, because he went back home to Shaanxi. Her boyfriend came here and took her home. On the previous day when she left, she came to my company and saw me, she told me she didn’t want working outside any longer for so long a distance. She already planned to do something to make a living with her boyfriend.

They will be probably get married this year or so, that’s great, but I will be lonely again…

Some fans of my blog took to the streets in San Francisco, and spelt out “I ♡ CHARLES” with Google Latitude. Thanks them, please click here for their video: http://services.google.com/latitudevideo/view.html#n0BGZQKDR5m0H-GDZQS5z0BGZQKDR5s0BgZqkdr-Odmf5s0BgZqkdr-Odmf

Frankly speaking, my blog is writen in English, so most of my blog visitors come from the United States, and Europe (especially United Kingdom), and some other English-speaking countries (Except China).

According to another of blog statistics, it also says most of my blog fans come from the North America. That’s why they gathered together in San Francisco, and spelt out their feeling with their mobiles.

Oh, this video is only for fun, you can make your own here http://services.google.com/latitudevideo/ , thanks Google Latitute.