A break in the Greek islands

Santorini. Last year, I spent ten days in Greece to escape from the gloomy air of England. This picture is one of the best view of Santorini. The white buildings accompanied with the beautiful blue background under blistering sunshine. These are the best elements of the holiday (of course you need a good accompany).
As I have said, I love white snow and sunny whether, but I think I love sunny days in the beach even better. I wish you are the same fans of sunny beach like me, don't forget to spread the cream on your skin though, the sun index is not as friendly as the beutiful view.

Sore eyes...

These morning I always woke up with sore eyes. Winter is coming here in England, or, north hemisphere.

Therefore I bought a humidifier to increase the humidity of the room, which seems helpful, but there are still several concerns; like, I am starting to worry about over-humidity, and, how is the interaction between my heater and humidifier: when should I switch on the heater and when should I switch on the humidifier.

My gf always says I am worried about too much. It is indeed. I am such a worry-like person. And I often sigh, which is not so good as well. It is said ppl sigh too much are usually unhappy and unlucky. I have already started to change it.

Thankfully, my eyes are getting better, not as sore as yesterday, as the humidity level has been raised by the humidifier.

The last two days in Torino continue...

Just drop by here to cast a new thread. :P (Thanks for Kate asking whether these pictures are all taken by my camera. Yeah if you don't count that dancing plant in. I have just found my ASUS wireless mouse having some sort of problem so that I think I will not post too much pics and articles today. Does anyone know why my mouse trying to keep in the state of "selection" sometimes, and I have to click it again and again to deselect the things it selected. It is a little frustrating.)

Allow me come back to what I wanna say about this picture on the left.

Before I went to Italy, I had no knowledge about this river. Maybe I've learnt it maybe not but I'm sure had no memory about it.

It's Po.

It is the largest river across Torino just near its centre, lying beneath the small mountain. We had spent three days before today (the day I took this picture) in Torino but I had no time to have a closer look of it. Everytime we were on the coach quickly passing it leaving us a glance with a little sorry not having chance to take a picture. It was nice to have chance at the last day I stayed in Torino as long as we were not trapped in the conference therefore we can hit the street of Torino.

I am good at taking night views this stands without saying. Especially with my old Minolta DiMage X. You can check the series of this camera here. I like the function of long exposure time since I can hold the camera to capture the night view even in a very low light source condition.

The first night in Torino after conference we (me and Faik) walked all the way through the river Po and found a place in the city side of Po for dinner. It was a little bit expensive but at least I think it worth spending it. A clam spaghetti with a drink cost both of us about 13 Euro.

After the dinner we dashed into the old city centre where filled by the students and locals. Night views of Torino gave me a very warm (apart from the chilled atmosphere of England) feeling. I feel homesick at that time because the humid air mimic the air of Taiwan somehow, but it's bit different. I found I like Torino not from the feeling of the air but from the feeling of the ppl there. I felt they were all very good in enjoying their life. Most of them are friendly and helpful. Polite and warm-hearted. Maybe I didn't see the dark side of here but I rather like to believe what I believed.

Dancing Plant

I have just read a news which was about a kind of dancing plant they claimed it was discovered in Southeast China. Then I started to find the relevent news in google in English, and here it is, the dancing plant where first discovered by Darwin in 1855. An article about this plant can be found here and there is another article tells a more detailed story.

It is interesting that I didn't know a plant can dance and I somehow a little bit ashamed of myself as I studied biology in my under.

This dancing plant is certainly dance with sound waves according to the posts. I wonder how it dances and how fast it can move in its motion. It is really a intriguing question "Why does a plant respond to sound waves and how?".

This plant is named "Desmodium gyrans". I guess the last word has a gyr- prefix in its name becuase it moves somehow clockwise and anti-clockwise in its dancing behavior.

If anyone has seen this kind of plant could you please tell me more about it. I would like to hear your description. Thanks.

How life goes with emotion?

Today after I took bath I sat on the carpet blow drying my hair by a hair dryer. I started to think about the peaceful life of these days. There were several episodes in this week. Some of them are disturbing, some of them are amusing.

I remind when I was a youngster (I am not already) I was always getting irritated easily where I felt my right was violated. These days there were several occasions which made me unhappy but at those moments I held myself and thought about what have I done to incur these misfortunes?

If there are two ppl against each other in a very event. Most of the time ppl get angry and they start to defend for themselves. When one of the persons at the scene make a start of the defend, the other will find other ways to fight it back, and then there will be no end.

I think I did very good in these occasions these days at least I didn't think into bad directions when I was accused for something. I then complied with the person's opinion and do the way what he/she think of. In this way I persuaded myself I am not the smartest people in this room when another is trying to dominate it. And then, in the end, I found it very useful. The reasons are below:

• when I persuaded myself to do something I found it is obviously easier then persuade the other
• the opinions of others are not necessarily bad enough to make me uncomfortable
• if there is something wrong with it, there is always a solution later to solve it
• I don't have to be the source of trouble in this case

Sounds a little irresponsible huh...?! But it is truly hardy dame it right. I am gonna keep it in my mind. There is always a solution when you are trying to deal with "reasonable" people and the solution has a crucial point which is do make people think you pay respect to them. Then, things are mostly going to be fine.... :-)

LCD Monitor

"What is this????"


You may ask if you didn't read the title of this post.

This is a LCD monitor of my imagination. No company is producing this kind of monitor unfortunately.

It has three sucking plates on the end of its arm. Just like what the octopus does in its usual days. It can either suck onto the glass surface if the weight of the monitor is light enough and its three sucking pods are capable of sucking on the surface in a certain period of time, or it may attach itself on a solid wall with various apparatuses.

The most important point of this monitor is not its resolution, contrast ratio or refresh frequency. It is the shape of this monitor. I like the monitor to look alive and vivid. I wish it can have several functionalities other than performing visualization. I mean, it may have ability to dance in some simple ways within your office if you are NOT looking at it.

Anyway, it's only in my imagination.

wanna be a fish...

I drew this picture several years before. I remember it was the first time I got a Wacom tablet.

I love drawing. I believe I have certain sense as an artist. At least, drawing for me is not a difficult task to make anytime.

In this picture you know I am a person who loves marine fauna. Fish are very beautiful livings although some of their beauties also mean they are malicious. But, I am still loving them.

Sometimes I think, if I am going to die someday after I would like to be burnt into ashes and thrown into the sea. Therefore I would be able to become fish someday.

Finding a shadow.... 

Dumpling matrix

These are a kind of dumpling where we eat in the middle of the winter.

Chinese food has many dumplings where they have different names but are all named dumpling in English.

Dumplings are often made of various ingredients but this one is only made from rice flour. It is the simplest dumpling you can think of and amongst the best snack list of the children. Simply cook dumpling in boiled water which sweetened by brown sugar.

As long as this flavour is fed in winter so it's best served hot; otherwise you may get cold. However, you can still have this in deadly hot summer and serve cold and shredded ice within.

Snow of the beginning....

27 of January a very peaceful night one of my housemate yelled that there was snow outside. We all went out to take the view of that snow.

The winter in January this year was said to be a "mild winter". News expects the winter in the end of this year will be a hard one.

Many say there will have snow in November. I like snow and cold weather but I don't like days without sun. It is a contradiction but sunny days are always welcome for sunny boy like me. Sunshine combined with white snow all over the ground will also do.

Can we have a white Christmas this year?

Sunday afternoon in Manchester City Centre

Sunday afternoon in Manchester City Centre:
These days I was busy because I have a new job in uni and several events happened this month. It is not easy to sort out these as I am not a person that pushes myself so much. I often require one to two days to settle down my emotion to accept another timetable.

Why did I take this picture? It's only because I think it's cool. Even in Greece on the street in Athena, I was staring at the road signs made out of various purposes. They are certainly cool because they tell a lot of stories; for example, their shapes are quite different in different countries. They have different liners, were made out from different materials, were marked with different customs. Haha, I think I am dull.

Last day in Torino

The last day in Torino was a good chance for me to look around this city in detail.

I feel this city is very suitable for living due to its warm weather, people, living quality and cheap expenditure. I even think it is better than Venice. Venice is a place for tourism but it is probably too much over to be a place for a fair living.

However, I told myself I will come back this city someday after.

I like some characters of Italy as well as some qualities of Italians. I feel they know how to make their life better. Things can be seen in their industrial design all over the domestic products. Their designs not only make life easier in procedure but also better in quality.

Torino Train station Porta Nuova

The architecture style of Torino impressed me.

I enjoy taking pictures especially at dimmed light source. The low luminous condition makes all the bodies in the scene look more distinguished with each other and has a feeling of softness.

This is one of the train station, Porta Nuova, of Torino. It sitting on the end of the rails where I found many European stations prefer to sit the station at the end of a bunch rail threads. Of course they are often large stations. In Taiwan I often see railstations crossing railroads. Perhaps it is because Taiwan has fewer railroad branches.

Grand Canal night view

On the second night of Venice trip we had some time roaming near the Grand Canal. I have to admit that at night this is a fairly beautiful city especially if you have a good camera you can take many fantastic picture here.

A short break in Villa Gualino

I was sitting on the ground of balcony and chatting with Faik. He is a Turkish, a devout Muslim. Faik pray many times a day. During the trip to Venice with Faik, he had to make different number of pary for different day; for example, Sunday is likely more prays. So we did many praying breaks where he did his pray and I did my looking around or napping. 

This is one of the pictures Faik took for me when we were in Venice. I was crouching in front one of the little canal of Venice giving a posture of victory. Venice is a beautiful city but unfortunately the price of the some restaurants near the Grand Canal was too expensive for their service. However, I thought I should remember all the good points of my tour in Italy and not the bad points. Maybe it was only because I wasn't traveling with my lover that made me not really enjoyed the place? Or maybe it is really some point that the Venice ppl have to think about improving. 

Eating the C++ standard library pancake

Talked with Pary I've got some hints of further C language self-training. I have to get more of C in order to make my code tidier and more efficient. Hey! Who will care about my programming skill when they read my thesis? It's me that care.

I have made myself committed a series of crimes eating evil programming flavor pancakes. >_< I feel a little stuck in my neck already. In the beginning it was perl, then became Fortran, and then C, and whatever. What is my major actually?

Although it looks a little bit silly but finally I posted one of my picture on my blog. It is interesting to have a personal blog. I've started to think about what possibilities this weblog can have. It is a truly amazing thing.

Test if this blog accepts picture

Hi, this is me, Alvyn. I have started to talk to you all today. I wish you can give me some feedback no matter you want to expose yourself or not.