Hailin's Weblog

Mathematicians use WordPress quite a bit for publishing math research and notes.  In fact today I just helped to fix some LaTeX issues on Terence Tao (陶哲軒)  math blog.  I’ve always regarded math as the highest, purest form of human intelligence.  Tao is one of the most famous young mathematicians in the world today, so when Matt asked me to help him, I was more than pleased and worked late into Friday night to fix those issues.

Note: LaTeX support is available on WordPress.com blogs.

On your self-hosted WordPress blog, you need to install LaTeX plugin.

Chinese News Digest, the premier site for overseas Chinese scholars, published a short prose I wrote.

The idea is that something as simple as a cabbage leaf is actually a master engineering piece – together with my fond memories of it.

The video bloggers on WordPress.com will notice a new section called “Video Plays” on the Blog Stats section of the dashboard.  I just put together this handy section to report the detailed statistics on the videos you uploaded to your WordPress.com blog.

Note that you need to purchase space upgrade in order to upload videos to your blog. 

Below are a few screenshots:

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One principle that everyone at Automattic cherishes is open sourcing.  WordPress is 100% open sourced product, and thanks to the tremendously supportive community, it has risen to become the leader in the blog software space.

Automattic just open sourced the video framework which is used to power wordpress.com.  The package contains video solutions framework, including transcoder and administration interface utilities,  written in PHP.  It supports multiple formats including standard, DVD and HD.

If you are looking to build your own video solution for your WordPress MU installation, or even start a video company to compete with Youtube (eg, in a niche market), you should definitely check this out.

Read a few papers presented at last International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media.

Some interesting findings:

“web-based knowledge market” – monetary award is not a significant incentive for people to participate in a task on a knowledge sharing market.

Competing to Share Expertise: the Taskcn Knowledge Sharing Community - In general, forums in Yahoo answers tend to have broad
out-degree distributions. In the Programming category this represents a few highly active individuals who consistently help others with their tasks and problems, but do not necessarily ask for help themselves. In the Marriage category, these could be users who regularly offer advice, or are there for the fun of discussion, as is the case in the Wrestling category.  Note that this separation of roles is evident even when one considers whether a user posted a single question or answer.  For instance, in Programming, about 57% of the users who asked questions did not answer any during this time period, and similarly 51% who answered questions did not ask.  Overall, YA is very broad but not very deep.

And you can decide whether you can befriend with one or not by  looking at his or her Facebook profile in 6 seconds.

Change has been a hot topic in the past presidential election.  Americans are tired of the failed policies and perennial inertia. Obama saw this and seized the moment to win a historic election.

Companies win or lose according to their ability to adapt to changes.  Those who survive are not necessarily the fittest, but are the quickest to adapt to changes. In the early eighties, Intel saw a losing battle with the Japanese companies in the memory chips business. It exited its familiar turf completely and refocused on microprocessors – opportunity brought forth by the PC revolution, and has reined in the new arena ever since.  On the contrary, Yahoo failed to react quickly and decisively to the enormous changes in Web search field, and resulted in losing the race to Google.

Entrepreneurs and even ordinary engineers need to adapt to changes as well.  It was a big change when I came to U.S. for a graduate education, leaving behind familiar culture, language, and connections.  Before moving to the Web field, I was one of a few experts in the silicon valley who know how to design SSL in the kernel.  Change is hard as it can make all your previously possessed knowledge irrelevant, and force you to start from zero.  Change is good because it is when you pack your old stuff, move forward, and enter a new promising land.

Keep your mind open, maintain high level of curiosity, and happy sailing.

Playing ping pong using my left hand, right hand, and both hands, with a ping pong robot

I’ve always liked gardening since when I was a kid. I remember in early spring time every year, when the first rain starts pouring, my mom would rush to the field to plant potato, yum and vegetables.  I can still vividly remember her sense of urgency more than 25 years later – when it rains, we’ve got to plant, otherwise, we miss the chance!

Here is my little lovely garden:

Matt and I traveled to China to attend WordCamp events in Beijing and Shanghai two weeks ago.  China has advanced in leaps and bounds during the last decade, one of the driving force being the Internet, which is a great vehicle for information and democracy.

Sadly, wordpress.com is still blocked by the “Great Firewall of China”.
Despite that, I see a thriving WordPress user community growing everyday.
Chinese blogggers love WordPress, for its functionality, usability, and openness.

I gave a speech at Tshinghua University and Fudan University.

The speech is also published at creaders.net, one of the largest overseas Chinese portals with over 100 million monthly page views.

I took some videos during the fantastic WordCamp  event last Saturday.

Matt’s welcome

State of the Word – part 1

State of the Word – part2

State of the Word – part3

State of the Word – part4

Three Ladies who helped out the event

Edith, Maya, and Marianne.