[This is my diary post to record what I had done during my PhD life.]

You cannot be always aware of something is coming. In my case, I got a shot during my Ph.D final defense. The question was thrown out by my friend, a Ph.D student, let’s call him A, as the first question after my presentation. His question was about the “critical state soil mechanics” and its discussion about the settlement caused by liquefaction.

Well, I admitted that I had no idea, totally blank in my head, about this question. I 100% forgot the meaning of critical state soil mechanics. I believed that my face turned pale in few seconds. My advisor and other committee members tried to recall me the definition of critical state soil mechanics and guided me through the point my friend A was interested.

I finally remembered the detail and interacted with my advisor to answer the question. Whoooooooo. It was close, and I was kind of lucky. Because this question cost almost 45 minutes, not much time was left for other questions. Therefore, I didn’t encounter any more serious “accidents” in the meeting. God bless me!

Although my friend made me worry about the defense at some degree, I really appreciated for his support and the effects of his shot. Thank you, A.

[posted with ecto]

[This is my diary post to record what I had done during my PhD life.]

It was a great moment when I was told that I passed my final examination for doctoral degree. It was Friday, July 18, 2008. After almost three hours of presentation and Q & A, I achieved my final goal. Yes, I became a Doctor of Philosophy since then.

Actually I was not as nervous as I expected. I had rehearsed my presentation three times with my advisor. I was worried about my timing of presentation because I spent too much time during my rehearsals. However, it was miracle, as my advisor said later, that I spoke fluently and presented my slides smoothly like a movie. Yeah, I was kind of proud of this. This is my precious memory of a graduate student in UW.

I would like to share the glory moment with my family, especially my wife. Without their support and believing in me, I wouldn’t overcome so many difficulties and achieve my goal. I Love You All, FOREVER!

[posted with ecto]

Great news! Dev-team had released their long-waited Pwnage tool, a brand new way to unlock iPhone. Read news at iPlus Pwns and Dev-Team’s Pwnage Announcement.

Pwnage Tool is really a powerful tool for unlocking iPhone. It uses iTunes to unlock iPhone. Yeah, you read it right. Pwnage Tool uses modified *.ipsw file (firmware) and restore your iPhone with the “hacked” *.ipsw file via iTunes. When restoring finished, you get a jailbroken/activated/unlocked iPhone. Oh, Yeah!

Tutorials for Pwnage Tool can be found at

• iClarified
• ModMyiFone

Enjoy~

[posted with ecto]

[This is my diary post to record what I had done during my PhD life.]

Dissertation, dissertation,…,DISSERTATION!!

The program I was working on had been finished. The client, Washington Department of Transportation (WSDOT), was satisfied with the liquefaction-induced hazard evaluation tool. The job left is the writing stuff. Yeah, my PhD dissertation. I found that it is painful for an non-native-English-speaking person like me. I have outlines of my research and EIGHT chapters to be done in my dissertation. OMG! When will I finish the writing?

Luckily, I had finished Chapter 2, 3, 4, and most of Chapter 6. I need to add new material in Chapter 5 (almost re-writing it, God!) and revise Chapter 7. The first and last chapters are usually prepared when the major chapters of a dissertation are done. Not a problem. Now, focus on Chapter 5.

My boss is getting busier in the following months. I am kind of worry about if he can revise my papers on time. Hope we can catch the schedule to “kick me out” by June. Fingers crossed.

[posted with ecto]

Ihave an OTB 1.1.2 iPhone and I had upgraded it to 1.1.4 and unlock it without any problem. I found several GREAT websites with detail tutorials and useful tools to help iPhone Lovers to unlock their iPhones. Here is the list of websites I usually visit.

• Hack that phone
• iPlus Pwns (must visit)
• Hackint0sh
• iPhone4 TW (the best Chinese iPhone forum)

From a beginner to an “expert”, I learned a lot about iPhone. It is fun and exciting experience for me.

iPhone ROCKS!!

[posted with ecto]

[This is my diary post to record what I have done during my PhD life.]

OK. I need to update my current status of my PhD program. I almost finish my programming and I am working on my dissertation. The best hope now is to finish my PhD degree within this quarter. So, the next steps are:

1. Don’t fool around in Internet. Get back to work!
2. Write the dissertation piece by piece everyday.
3. Push my advisor to “kick me out”.

OK, enough nonsense. Get back to work.

[posted with ecto]

[This is my diary post to record what I have done during my PhD life.]

I bought my first iPhone last November. I really like this shiny elegant gadget. I think every Mac user should have one iPhone to “complete” his/her collections. I had spent a lot of time on my new toy. How to jailbreak it, how to download new apps, how to upgrade to new firmware,…etc. I am really addicted to iPhone. I wrote a lot of posts about iPhone at iPhone 4 Taiwan under the name of “Niner”. Visit it if you can read Chinese.

Anyway, I will keep working on tuning my iPhone. I love it so much. Go Apple! Go iPhone!

[posted with ecto]

I just upgraded my Macbook Pro from Tiger to Leopard. Super Great!! Leopard is the latest Mac OS X released by Apple on Oct. 26, 2007. I really like the change brought by Leopard. The working flow speeds up a lot. It makes my daily work more easier and efficient. Now I plan to boost up my RAM to 4GB. Then I should drive the Leopard in full excitement. Oh, Yeah ~

[This is my diary post to record what I have done during my PhD life.]

Recently I received some feedbacks about the on-going VB.Net program. This program is a part of UW-WSDOT project. I had worked on this for one year and half. The feedbacks commented on some issues I expected in my old version program. Right now I had polished the program and made a lot changes. It is close to the time to announce the Beta version. I am excited to see that happen in few days. Cheers~~

[This is my diary post to record what I have done during my PhD life.]

I use VB.Net to program my liquefaction-related seismic hazards evaluation system. I use statistical computation a lot. I found that VB.Net cannot perform statistical estimation directly, such as computations of normal and lognormal distribution. I have to find the mathematical expressions, then try to compute them by VB.Net. There are many well-built third-party softwares providing excellent accuracy and efficiency of statistical calculation for VB.Net. But, they are expensive too. As a student, I can’t afford it. These commonly used statistical computations can be found as functions in Excel. I wonder how Excel computes these statistics and so fast. I wish I can dig out the VB scripts Excel uses for statistics. It is not hard to perform statistical computation in VB.Net, is it?

[posted with ecto]