Maybe the joke is on me for writing a usability and user interface design critique on something as convoluted as emacs, but I found this dialog so ridiculous I could not resist.

I commend the efforts of the Aquamacs group in making an emacs that can integrate with OS X in a relatively painless fashion, as well as look much nicer than something using X11.

However, I question the UI design choices that led to the creation of this dialog box that popped up when I tried closing out of the program:

Powerful, maybe, but elegant? Not to mention the fact that, despite being familiar with all of the options, it took me a good thirty seconds to finally choose the appropriate response.

I read on MacRumors that Amazon had a DRM-free mp3 store. The first major issue (by comparison to iTMS) I saw was the added hassle of downloading the songs and then manually adding them to your iTunes. It turns out that they have a little downloader program that handles the downloading and importing automatically. It even handles the album art. The songs are in VBR 256kbps. That’s actually higher than I encode, normally, but the file sizes are still manageable. The prices are really good, too, the albums I looked at were all under $10. They even have a few free songs available for download.

Being someone who really cares about DRM, I’ve been very reluctant to use iTMS. Friends have populated their libraries with these non-portable songs, and I always opted not to. With Amazon, I have no excuse. I immediately bought an album. The process was completely streamlined and painless, including the use of one-touch ordering.

I give the mp3 store a thumbs-up. It is still rough around the edges compared to the Apple experience, but the DRM-free mp3s more than make up for it. For those interested, I bought Thom Yorke’s The Eraser.

I love reading, so when I got to Taiwan the first thing I did was look for the best English language bookstores. I did this in Hong Kong also (if you’re wondering, it’s Swindon Books in TST). After meeting with a friend from Rice, she told me that she thought the Page One in Taipei 101 was the best.

I was skeptical, seems as how the Page One’s in Hong Kong are all pretty limited in their selection (though good for new books, I suppose). I immediately went there that evening and found that she was right, the selection at Page One is quite impressive. I would recommend checking there first for general English books.

I had a special interest in finding a computer book store, seems as how I’m an electrical engineer and I was at least planning to work on some other non-Chinese skills over the summer. I was a bit worried, thinking I’d have to order things and have them shipped. That is, of course, until I found a topic addressing this problem on Forumosa.

Here’s the information from that post: Ten Long Computer Book Co. Ltd. Massive selection of computer books in English. They have a store on the bookstore street near Taipei Main Station. http://www.tenlong.com.tw (02) 2331-8868

台北市重慶南路一段107號1樓

I had some trouble finding it (because I was at the wrong station…but that is another story), but it shouldn’t be that difficult. You just get off at Taipei Main Station, walk towards the train station and turn left at Chongqing street. Then you just walk a few blocks along that road, reading the addresses until you find number 107 and the name 重慶南路.

Anyway, upon entering this book store I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of computer books. Even split fifty-fifty between Chinese and English computer books, the selection was better than any bookstore I’ve been to in the US. They had all the obscure computer books I was looking for and even a few new ones I’m interested in. I was quite impressed, and I recommend that any computer scientists, engineers, or programmer go have a look.

This is just the O’Reilly section

I’ve been in Taiwan for about four weeks now. After a bit of confusion getting to the apartment, I had no major issues. I’m here for just the summer, learning Chinese at ICLP at the National Taiwanese University (台大).

Classes didn’t start for two weeks, and I spent most of that time just bumming around and sleeping, recovering from finals period (I spent the previous semester on exchange at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology).

Tyler Blog’s new domain home is www.divergio.com.

You may have wondered why the site went down for a long time. The answer is simple: I let the domain name expire and then was lazy. Neocaridina.com was going to expire, and I felt that it was too long and complicated a domain name for most people to type anyway, so my plan was to switch the site to divergio.com.

Read on for a rant about web hosting…

Sorry about the downtime, I was down for almost a month because I switched webhosts and ran into some unexpected problems. It took three hours of troubleshooting, but I think I am mostly up, now.

Hearing Chris’s descriptions of Sendai early on in the program, I had always thought it would be fun to visit him and see some of the beautiful sights there. Still, shinkansen tickets as expensive as they are, I didn’t know if I would be able to do it. After discovering the JR East pass, a Sendai visit became the clear choice for my last two “flex days.”

This half-week or so I went to Osaka. My Japanese teacher is from Osaka, so so many times she would tell me about how great Osaka is and how the people in Osaka are so nice and how it is a great place to visit. So, when my research advisor invited me to visit his lab at Osaka U (Handai) while the rest of my lab was away at a conference in America, I jumped at the chance. What better pretenses for a visit to Osaka than an interest in “touring a lab.”

“To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy’s First Law of Equivalent Exchange.” Alphonse Elric

Well, I had such an amazing weekend last week that I suppose it’s natural that this one wasn’t as good.

It’s hard to believe that this all happened in one day.