My project went pilot yesterday (finally!), and the long-waited New York summer is here. Work is not so pressing any more and I can use some spare cycles to renovate this site and write a bit more about interesting stuffs. will come back soon.
New York snows a lot in winter time. Coming from Beijing, where there was no snow for 108 days into the winter, I love this weather. Many of my colleagues don’t share my enthusiasm, they said this weather sucks, especially when they had to spend 2 hours on road comparing to the usual 1 hour trip to office.
Snow/rain is the emotional expression of weather god. There is a famous Chinese traditional drama that it snowed in mid summer because someone up there was angry about a judge’s wrong death sentence to a young lady (Dou Er). Anyhow the snow in NY never made me think the god was angry, rather I felt it always bring peace, playfulness, beauty, and sensation.
It snowed again today. This is an occasion to put this piece of snowstorm javascript on my site - I had always wanted to do so, since the first snow in NY. and before coming back to China in another week, I also felt the urge to write something about my 4 months life here.
First, I worked a lot. I have learned a lot and I have yet even more to learn.
Second, I have been pressured to realize that just working hard is simply not working, I must find ways to work faster and more effectively.
That’s about all I have learned - or at least struggling to learn.
At the moment I am obsessed with web development. The work I have done here just made me realized how much more I could do and only my limited knowledge and imagination is holding me back.
According to a real New Yorker, the spring will be here in another month or so. Hopefully today’s snow is the last snow of Winter 2008? When spring is here, I must go out walk around the city. I have literally spent this winter in office, in front of my computer - though I like it this way.
Sadly I still haven’t got any real friends in this new city, all my friends are back in China. Can’t wait to see them soon, in another 1 week.
I had experience of using eclipse on Linux platform for a small python project but I had never used it on Windows platform in the past. Anyway, I must set up a perl IDE on Windows thes days, and I chose to use EPIC with Eclipse.
To start with I did a lot of google search, as I always do, to find technical documents. There are a lot of documents avaiable, but most of them are actually on Linux platform. People who don’t have linux experience are likely to get confused, as platform were not even mentioned in many documents. Some documents even give wrong information… I am a bit surprised on how incomplete and inaccurate these documents are when it gets to Windows platform.
I put together this document for users like me, who prefers Linux environment but has to run open source applications on Windows for mysterious reasons. This is how I implemented the Perl IDE with Eclipse on Vista:
I downloaded Eclipse Ganymede here: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/. There are several different package availables, considering JAVA is required by EPIC and J2EE is widely used, I downloaded the first one on the list: Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers
The installation is not to install. Just unzip the downloaded file to a file folder will suffice. Double click the Eclips.exe under Eclipse folder will start the engine. I put a shortcut on desktop to make things easier.
Next step is to install Active Perl, the perl intepretor on Windows. Installation file to be downloaded here: http://www.activestate.com/store/productdetail.aspx?prdGuid=81fbce82-6bd5-49bc-a915-08d58c2648ca
Type perl -v in Windows command console, you should be seeing this if the installation is successful:
This is perl, v5.8.8 built for MSWin32-x86-multi-thread
(with 12 registered patches, see perl -V for more detail)
Copyright 1987-2007, Larry Wall
Binary build 824 [287188] provided by ActiveState http://www.ActiveState.com
Built Sep 3 2008 11:14:55
Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic License or the
GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 5 source kit.
Complete documentation for Perl, including FAQ lists, should be found on
this system using “man perl” or “perldoc perl”. If you have access to the
Internet, point your browser at http://www.perl.org/, the Perl Home Page.
Now we have got Perl interpretor, we are ready to get EPIC now.
The EPIC website http://www.epic-ide.org/download.php looks like a creditable site and I trust what it said on its download page is all true:
After starting Eclipse select Help > Software Updates... from the menu and switch to the Available Software tab. Click the Add Site... button and enter:
http://e-p-i-c.sf.net/updates for the stable 0.5.x, older version of EPIC
http://e-p-i-c.sf.net/updates/testing for the most recent 0.6.x version
Unfortunately I believes the repository is only made for unix like platform - it worked on my Linux but not for Windows. For offline installation the plugin can be downloaded here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=75859
After finished the installation, start Eclipse, go Window->Open Perspective->Others, if you see the blue Perl camel on the list there, the installation was successful.
The last thing is to get PadWalker - the debugging module for EPIC. It can only be installed through PPM. PPM comes with Active Perl, it stands for Perl Package Manager - obviously the name explains what it does. As a linux user I have used CPAN in the past, which is also availble on windows plaform. The major difference between CPAN and PPM are (learned in my experience):
1. Different repositories. PPM has windows-specific repository called ActiveState: http://ppm4.activestate.com/MSWin32-x86/5.8.824/package.xml, while CPAN doesn’t.
2. Different compilers. PPM doesn’t use perl compiler on Windows. To make CPAN work on windows, I must install NMAKE.EXE in order to make install a perl package in CPAN reponsitory. You can download NMAKE 1.5 here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q132084
3. CPAN can detect proxy automatically to download package/package list, while PPM can’t. If you connect internet using a proxy, then an environment variable must be added in Windows: HTTP_Proxy = proxyaddress:proxyport. I must say this is a bit annoying, as when I changed to another network environment I always found PPM not working… figured out it was the HTTP_Proxy variable problem, changed variable, then must restart computer to take effect - some precious time is wasted this way.
Anyway, start ppm from windows command line by typing “PPM”. If you have got the windows repository configured right (as in above), and the internet configuration is right, you should be able to find PadWalker package by typing “padwalker” in the search bar. Once found the package in package list, mark it for installation, and commit. The package will be installed in no time.
Voila! Now you can write some serious Perl code in Eclipse IDE, all on Windows.
I have had the most exciting first several working days in the HQ here. Before the excitement worn off, Imust jot down this experience to future reference on people’s good will.
I had my doubts before coming here. There are rumors about how difficult the job in the HQ could be… The truth is yet to be found, while I completely not prepared for the warmness and friendly treatment I have received in the first week here.
Don’t get me wrong. My office is no kindergarden - though there is a guy who offered unlimited supply of gummybears and I had some after he fixed my email problem. What intrigued me most is the wonderful diversity of UN staff and the working atmosphere here.
Again nobody raised a single eyebrow to my arrival, most of the staff work here are foreigners too. My boss sent out an email introducing me to all office staff on my first day, so it felt like everybody has already known me when I was walking around the office. Some people came up introducing themselves, and some others talked about their own experience of arrival and offered tips for newcomers. If New York is an international city with people in different color and ethics, the UN office is more than twice as diversified as the New York city. I felt so at home here as I have no problem to blend into this international crowd.
The most exciting time is to pick tools - namely laptop, desktop and PDA. I was offered with all options available on market - a lot of cool stuff! Tony made some recommendations based on the website listing, then he took me went around the office asking for people’s opinion about their machines (obviously geeks are serious about picking their computer models, hence people use all sorts of machine here). We even stopped the department head to ask for having a look at his PDA, and he did give it to me and shared his user experience! After all, this is an IT department, and I guess technical people don’t have much bureaucracy built in their bones.
I could go on talking about the technical lectures I received these days and how grateful I am to the selflessness sharing from my colleagues… but that’s beyond the limit of this public blog. I come to New York for this job, and so far I thought this is the best decision I made in years - I must write this down so I could look back at it in 1 year’s time. : )
Love to the UN office and my kind colleagues.
Hyeon-Ju told me New York is especially easy to its strangers, we found it’s international by all means. No one even raised a single eyebrow to our rather ponderous arrival - we brought 5 huge suitcases and 4 carry-on bags. I kind of expected to see the “Newcomers HUH?” look in some people’s eyes but surely New Yorkers have seen it all and we are no difference to other 4 million foreigners who came to here not long ago. (for people who love statistics: there are almost 20million people in this city, and about 20 percent are foreigners - which means foreign born rather than anything else, as 17 percent of New Yorkers are black, and 7 percent are Asians.)
The city is stunning. We came in the season that all trees are changing color from yellowish green to flamboyant red, and many streets are paved by a layer of fallen leaves. My favorite time of the day is to walk through Central Park in the morning on way to office, where I see the city’s richest autumn colors in the trees, young kids running in the morning with their dogs, squirrels and pigeons come by friendly with people. It’s wonderful to see the nature so vividly fresh and alive in the center of metropolis.
Brian, my new colleague, said when a person arrives Manhattan, he or she will soon realize that there is no reason to leave this place for the rest of one’s life. I can’t fully agree but I start to see what he meant now. Despite the fact that Manhattan is very crowdy and the tension of life here, for instance it’s very hard to find a seat in any of the cafe in my neighborhood given any time of the day, the city’s charisma is irresistible to new comers. Among many things I fell in love with Chrysler Building next to my office. I love seeing it after finished a day’s work and got out the office, as its beauty is distinctive at night. For me it is a poetic icon of this legendary city.
I have left Beijing but I am not missing it - leaving it is the most resolute decision I’ve ever made. I am awed by New York but this is early time in our relationship as we knew little about each other. Everyday I walked by a lot of New Yorkers on street, I noticed that though in different colors and outfits, they all seem confident and having a somewhat cynical look in their eyes. The same look are in the eyes of children here, as I heard New York kids are precocious. I am hoping to understand a bit more about the people and culture of this city in days to come, and someday, when the city has become part of me, I will know that I have become part of the city.