换护照：洛杉矶领事馆

申明：此文为在下原创，如有雷同，实在万幸。版权全无，欢迎盗用。

在下为UCLA的本科生，护照发于2008年，今年五月过期。乘春假无所事事，就屁颠地换护照去。

FAQ：我需要换护照吗？(adapted from China Consulate website：)
　申请人具有中国国籍、持有中华人民共和国普通护照，且有下列情形之一者，可申请换发： 　　

　　1、护照有效期不足一年的； 　　

　　2、护照签证页即将用完的； 　　

　　3、护照上有携行儿童，需单独持用护照的； 　　

　　4、容貌变化较大的； 　　

　　5、中国驻美使领馆认可的其他情形。 　　

(顺便吐槽一句：这个网站实在是不敢恭维，the funny <font> tag in the html source code inside <title> tag for example)

FAQ：我需要什么材料？（对于学生来说）
       1，护照及复印件（照片页，签证页，出入境的小卡片。过期的签证不需复印）

       2. I-20及复印件（在下因CPT，有两份I-20，只用了那个新的I-20)

       3. 照片两张（注意申请表上写得是三张，而领事馆墙上的公告写的是四张，但实际上只需要两张。建议到领事馆这儿照，10刀两张，立等可取，不必担心尺寸引起的搅屎问题。若是在外面照相，则应为2x2)

       4. 申请表：http://losangeles.china-consulate.org/chn/visa/forms/P020110315088498961554.pdf 注：请直接到官网查询。此文件中的照片尺寸不正确，应使用上述尺寸。

(忍不住还要吐槽，这都是神马文件名呀?P020110315088498961554搞得和产品批号一样）

有 意思的是，领事馆证件组与领事馆的工作时间不同。前者为为周一至周五，9am-2pm，而领事馆的工作时间为9am-12pm, 2pm-5pm。在下估计一个原因是办证的人太多，使得证件组必须在2pm闭关拒客，这样才能保证能给当天取号的顾客办妥。实际上证件组2pm后仍在工 作，故来得晚的话，或许会等到两三点。

在下从UCLA出发，坐Wilshire/Westwood的Rapid Metro 720往Wilshire/Vermont,一路无事。下车后，需再向东行(同车行方向），至Wilshire/Shatto，左转沿Shatto Place行百二十步，到500 Shatto Pl. 此处注意证件组与领事馆的地址是不同的，前者为 3rd Floor, 500 Shatto Place, Los Angeles, CA 90020
而领事馆的地址为 443 Shatto Place, Los Angeles, CA 90020
可以参考http://losangeles.china-consulate.org/chn/intro/dzjbgsj/

在 下赶到领事馆时为11:45左右，坐电梯去三楼，出电梯正对入口。入口的安检基本为摆设。向右手处的工作人员取票。在下看到了四种票 号，A1xx,B5xx,C7xx,D8xx,开头的字母与所办业务有关。在下的号码是B58x,而是时排到了B54x。四周一瞟，座无虚席。时有五个工 作窗口，其中第一个专为领取证件所开，其余四个按照取票时间处理（没有专门办理B类业务的）。

若此时尚未填写申请表，请在到申请 窗口之前填好，以节省他人时间。由于在寝室便已填好表格，在下无事可做，四顾，发现美女无数。不幸在下不是花痴。算来少需75分钟方可到在下，恰巧领事馆 处于韩国城附近，便先溜达出去觅食。不幸全无方向，乱绕了约一个小时，无所获，不得已空肚而返。

约2pm终于排到在下。递上复印件，照片以及护照。给了一张付款取证凭据。凭据上写了取件日期，约为一个月后。取件时付款，为55刀。All set。如同签证，排队需数小时，真正花在办手续的时间可能还没有一分钟。

如是而已。


Ao Mar 25. 2013

I am fine, thanks--a joke on China Education

Long time no blog! :)

This post is not intended to be anything serious, as it is labeled as a "scribble", but hopefully, readers may think a little on the education of China.

Recently, I heard a joke: a Chinese student was driving in the US; suddenly he fell off a cliff and got badly injured. Fortunately, there came a policeman, who said:"How are you?" Without thinking, the student responded:" I am fine, thank you!" So the policeman left, and the poor student soon died because of loss of too much blood.

This joke may not make any sense to a native speaker, but probably many English learners in China (and maybe in other countries as well) may find it funny: in junior high schools, Chinese students, me included, were required to learn and recite a list of (rigid) daily English conversation. In this list, there was a typical one--as you may guess:
  --How are you?
  --I am fine, thanks/thank you, and you?
...
As a result, it is sometimes amusing to greet a Chinese, "How are you?"--you can expect the response.

Teaching style of other classes is usually non-different. I graduated from a stereotypical senior high school, which is a so-called 省级示范学校 (Province-level Exemplar School). The head of my class teaches physics. One of his motto was "多做题，做难题，规范做题！"("Do more exercise, solve difficult questions, and answer in a standard way!"). Under his instructions, my class always got better physics grades than any other classes did, but are those differences really worth the effort? No problem should ever have to be solved twice, and study is neither all about doing exercises, nor memorizing "I'm fine, thanks". Study ought to be fun, and contents ought to be useful.

MInt 13: volume control doesn't change volume

This article involves choosing a non-default sound device.

Description:

1.When Adobe flash player 11 played online music, it went too fast. As soon as a certain point was buffered, the player jumped to it; in other word, if at this time the player was playing at 1:20, and the media was buffered till 2:30, then the player skipped the music between 1:20 and 2:30, and jumped to the 2:30 point. (I hope I have made myself understood) This is similar for local music player Banshee, though it did not buffer the music.

2. When a music or a video was played, pressing volume up/down button on the keyboard or directly using the volume control on desktop did not change the volume at all. 

Solutions: 

I first suspected that the flash player was not working properly. However, while I was re-installing the plugin, I happened to download a music, and realize that it didn't work properly in my disk as well. Then I opened the control center, and realized the cause related to the sound device. I had two listed sound device, and the default choice was the HDMI one, as shown below. I chose the built-in one, and it worked sometimes, but after reboot, the device in work became the HDMI again.

Then this thread worked out.

And here's my output

 $ sudo cat /proc/asound/modules 

[sudo] password for ao: 

 0 snd_hda_intel

 1 snd_hda_intel

Yes, there were actually no difference between these two; I believe if you get this output as well, you may refer to the index of item in your Sound Preferences in Control Center, (i.e. the first= index=0)

Follow the instructions in the link, and hopefully it will work fine.

Install MInt 13 via USB

Yes, I knew that this topic has been mentioned in many places. And here is a good example (installation along with Win7) However, maybe it does not hurt to provide some tips. So here we go!

Create a Live CD/USB

Here is a nice place to start. I have tried all three ways, but it seemed only the first one work: ImageWriter crashed in Windows XP for no good reason (I "successfully" burned the USB, but it turned out that no booting medium was found when I booted through it). In Ubuntu 11, this software caused an error when it tried to unmount USB disk before finishing all the work (I am still unable to figure out why it needs to unmount it). Then I moved on to terminal. As for this method, here is a note you may want for finding USB disk under command line: In terminal, type in sudo fdisk -l. You may get similar results like this:

Here, I got
Disk /dev/sdb: 3918 MB, 3918495744 bytes
whose size is equivalent to my USB's. And
Disk /dev/sdb1: 941 MB, 941621248 bytes
is a partition of my USB disk (since I have made it a Live CD/USB). So /dev/sdb should be used as the path, that is
sudo dd if=~/path_of_linux_mint_iso of=/dev/sdb oflag=direct bs=1M
Notice that the device is refered to as /dev/sdx instead of /media/xxx. The first one is the device node assigned for your device, the other one is where the device is actually mounted (so that you can browse your files). Also note that your USB type could be FAT if you are using Windows.

Install Mint

This step is easy yet time-consuming. Insert your USB, reboot the computer and set USB to highest priority in BIOS boot option. If all work as expected, you should see a menu asking you to choose installing Mint (which is the first choice). Press , and you will enter a desktop, in which there is an icon saying "install Linux Mint". Double click it, and you should be all set.

Two tips here:
1. If a booting medium cannot be found when you boot via a USB, the reason could be that your USB lost connection to the computer. In that case, it helps just to reboot the computer and reinsert your USB. My Kingston USB worked well that way.
2. If the estimated language package downloading appears unreasonable (e.g.several hundreds/thousands minutes), you can skip it by clicking the bottom triangle and then click the "skip" button appeared.

Keep patient, and you should be fine.

Experiencing Linux Mint 13 (Maya)

Finally I made it to complete the installation of Mint 13 with Cinnamon and done a lot of configuration.

I have to admit that Mint is quite easy to use for a CS newbie who wants to advance to Linux tech from Windows. However, there are still lots of stuff (and lots of fun too!) to do for Mint to work as you want. That said, I am going to post some of the problems I met and solutions (search, improve, and share) in the hope that I may save some efforts of the public and some of mine in case I may need to re-solve some.

Anyway, thanks to the development team of Mint!

Hello world!

This is the first post of my first blog (hopefully not the last). As written in the blog title, I am a newbie in CS, but still, maybe it is not a bad idea to share what I find interesting and useful, even if I am the only reader.

Thanks for taking time to read this post. Hopefully, you can expect something fun in coming days.

Cheers!

Ao Z.