Before the advent of Profile 2.0, it was easy to block someone on Myspace. There was a convenient link placed just under the profile picture of his profile (see image). This is actually still true of those who have not switched to Profile 2.0.

Blocking someone who has already switched to Profile 2.0 requires a bit more work. Here's the procedure:
1. Get the profile URL of the person you want to block. It should be in the form of "http://www.myspace.com/XXXXX," where XXXXX is either digits or the nickname this person has chosen for himself on Myspace.
2. Click on the My Account link near the upper right corner of your Myspace home page.
3. Click on the Privacy link in the menu.

4. Near the bottom, just above the Save All Changes button, there is a section called Block Users (see image).
5. Click on the [view list] link there.
6. You will get a new page. Near the bottom of the page, there is a blank field with a label "Block a user via profile URL:." Input in the field the URL that you found in Step 1.
7. Click on the Block button.
8. Congratulations! You're done!

A friend of mine, A, shared this with me: "What is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and How is XMRV Related?". This is probably the very latest in the development in the research of CFS. There's an entry on XMRV on Wikipedia.

However, I am not sure that's the cause of my case. For one thing, I do not and did not seem to have any enlarged lymph nodes. I "score" only two or three of the six criteria in the original article, thus "failing" in the test.

Recently I have been a big proponent of foam rollers. I researched foam roller exercises I could do for myofascial release, and I have been doing these exercises periodically in the gym.

The New York Times recently ran an article that basically vindicates my view: "Becoming Your Own Massage Therapist." R from the gym shared this with me.

I once lost a great deal of form data that I created over hours for a spreadsheet on Google Documents. I tried to postulate how that happened, first in "Beware of the Form Feature of Spreadsheets on Google Documents!" (Friday, December 18, 2009), and then in "Google Forms Revisited" (Thursday, December 24, 2009), but further experimentation seems to disprove my theories. I am giving up this kind of attempt for now.

In this article, I am going to write down what to watch out for when you create forms, for my future reference. More specifically, I will discuss the relationship between the columns in a spreadsheet and the questions in the associated form.

Rule 1: Add questions to the form and have corresponding columns automatically created in the spreadsheet to maintain the correct column-question relationship. See Rule 3 if you are a perfectionist.

Adding a question in the form will automatically create a matching column in the spreadsheet when the forms data are saved. In contrast, adding a column will not automatically create a matching question in the form. This means you need to add questions in the form and let corresponding columns created automatically to maintain the correct column-question relationship, not the other way around. The column-question correspondence can be established only in the question-to-column direction. This is the only way to establish a column-question correspondence.

There is an exception. The only case in which propagation goes the other way, i.e., from the spreadsheet (columns) to the form (questions), is when you newly create a form from a spreadsheet already filled with columns (even if you have a form, you can delete it by choosing the "Delete form" menu item in the "Form" menu).The newly-created form will come automatically populated with questions created from the existing columns, in the order those columns appear in the spreadsheet.

Rule 2: While you can safely change the order of questions in the form, you cannot change the order of columns in the spreadsheet.

If you move a column, the correct column-question association could be lost. Consequently, the question which the column was originally associated with may be considered to be a widow (no matching column), and a new duplicate column could be created automatically at the end of existing columns when you save your forms or when there's data entry by the forms.

Moving questions will not trigger any change in the spreadsheet; more specifically, that will not change the order of appearance in the matching columns.

Rule 3: If you want the columns in the spreadsheet to appear in the exact order you want them, and the questions in the form to appear in the exact order you want them, then perfect the spreadsheet first and create its form afterwards.

The order in which you want the columns to appear in the spreadsheet and the order in which the questions appear in the forms are typically not the same. You want the first order to reflect what's important to you as the person who will view the spreadsheet. You want the second order to cater to the convenience of those who fill out the forms.

Considering that you can safely change the order of questions in the forms but cannot change the order of columns in the spreadsheet, the best way to design your spreadsheet and its accompanying form is to design your spreadsheet first and make sure the columns appear in the order that is convenient to you; and then create the form from the spreadsheet by populating them automatically and recorder the questions for the form-fillers' convenience.

This should work really well in scenarios where you have already been using a spreadsheet, which is already set up exactly the way you want it. However, if you're creating the spreadsheet and the forms at the same time in an exploratory manner, it might not work that well because you cannot get the spreadsheet perfectly right the first time.

If you have not started collecting data, you could populate the spreadsheet columns by deleting all the columns while the form editor window is kept open, and then saving the form data. You will get a spreadsheet with columns exactly in the same order corresponding questions appear in the forms. This is indeed what I ended up doing this time. The resulting spreadsheet was not exactly what I wanted; the columns are not in the order I wanted to see them, but at least they appear in some logical order, as opposed to an almost completely chaotic order.

If I had wanted to create exactly the kind of spreadsheet and form I wanted, I would have had to start building the form from scratch, and I did not have such time. Once you start moving the columns, the correct column-question correspondence will be lost (Rule 2), and the form as it is becomes useless, so you will have to re-design it from scratch.

Rule 4: You can safely insert new columns in the spreadsheet as long as you do not need their matching questions to appear in the form.

If you need the matching questions in the form, you have to create questions in the form and have them automatically propagated to the spreadsheet (see Rule 1).

Unless you started with a perfectly designed spreadsheet and then created its form, it's likely that the columns in the spreadsheet do not appear quite in the order you like. These spreadsheet-only columns could be used to compensate for this situation by the use of formulae.

You can, for example, insert a formula into each cell of this column that references the value of the cell of the same row that appears far back in the column order. Then this column will act like a copy of that far-back column. You can insert this "copy column" anywhere you want it, without worrying about messing up the form.

Note: This page shows a way to re-associate the form to a different sheet in the same spreadsheet.

When I started writing this article, I did not have time to finish it. Now I am halfway through, but additional experiments seem to indicate that my theory is yet again wrong.   I am leaving this as it is, though.

Probably the article I wrote later, "How to Create Forms for Google Spreadsheets" (Friday, December 25, 2009), is more useful.

First, these are facts:
F1. You cannot undo your change (not even one) to the forms in the form editor.
F2. The spreadsheet data are auto-saved whenever there is a change to them (i.e., addition/modification/deletion of rows or columns and changes to cell data). However, changes to the forms data, even when the form editor says "Saved," do not always trigger this auto-saving.
F3. (This is not relevant to the rest of this article, but it did trip me.) The last document modification time shown near the upper right corner of the spreadsheet editing screen does not match the time you see in the document list screen (the default you get when you log in to Google Documents).

Second, I am still reasonably sure of the following:
S1. Your forms data could inadvertently revert to an old version against your will for some inexplicable reasons, as many people seem to have experienced (I did!).
S2. A revision history is kept for the spreadsheet data, which allows you to revert to any previous version. However, you cannot recover the lost forms data this way; the forms data are apparently not included in this revision history.

So here's what I suspect:
1. Unlike other spreadsheet data, which are saved with a revision history, only one instance of the forms data is maintained.
2. Autosaving occurs only when the spreadsheet data themselves are changed. Not all form editing operations change the spreadsheet data themselves.

If the above is indeed correct, it follows:
- The only way to make sure you won't lose your forms data is to resort to the old-fashioned way, i.e., make frequent backup copies of the spreadsheets.

John, a friend of mine, is visiting here from Taiwan. I was fortunate enough to meet his Silat master D. He gave me a quick tour of Silat.

The diagram on the right shows the basic footwork in Silat. The same diagram applies in dissecting the attack area of a human body, where the center point corresponds to the belly button.

D had me do some basic footwork practice following the beats of some rhythmic music. You start with a neutral stance, where feet are parallel with each other. For each movement, you move your right foot in the right direction, in the left direction, and then again in the right direction; then you move your left foot in the left direction, in the right direction, and then again in the left direction.

The movements were:
1. straight forward
2. diagonally forward
3. (variation of the above) diagonally forward, lowering the body, with the knee of the hind leg touching the ground; then from there, without lifting feet, face the opposite direction, with the other knee now touching the ground; then go back to the original bent-knee position.
4. diagonally forward, with the farther foot going forward (as in oblique kicks)
5. with both feet planted, rotate the upper body to one way, and then the other way (evading the straight-line attack)
6. diagonally backward

In Silat, you look at the upper body and the lower body separately. To make your opponent off balance, you make his upper go one way and his lower some other way.

When the opponent's upper body is bent downwards (i.e., the head lower than the hips), then you have him.

D has his students practice sinawali with short (~8 in) paper sticks, so they will get used to fighting in close quarters. He has them does that in a hallway; if your stick hits the wall, then your movement is too big.

I hadn't done sinawali for years and just as I had feared it, I had lost the Six Count (Heaven and Earth). Took me a while to get it back. Here's a reminder for myself:

D says he also has one side have his knee down, sit, and eventually lie down. Something like this video, but in D's way, the lying part clamps onto one of the legs of the other person with his legs. The lying side then slowly gets up and the roles are reversed.

text

Postscript: Looks like it is working the way it should be. My theory below does not seem to apply. Now I am completely confused.

Postpostscript: A revised theory in "Google Forms Revisited" (Sunday, December 20, 2009).

I was excited to learn that Google Documents has form feature for their spreadsheets. Now that I have to do recruiting once again, I thought I'd create a form so I can have applicants input their data by themselves. Their data would be collected in one spreadsheet, and it would give me a bird's-eye view of all the applicants at once. It would make the selection process much more efficient.

Good idea, right? But its execution became a problem. Earlier today, I lost most of the form data that I painstakingly created over 6-7 hours. This is the first time I ever hated Google since I came to know them circa 2000. I am not a swearer usually, but this deserves a copious amount of swearing.

A little research quickly revealed that there are many people who experienced the same problem, but there does not seem to be a solution. When I observed closely how Google Documents handles forms, I began to understand why this happened.

Spreadsheets on Google Documents are saved automatically whenever you make a change. They retain a complete revision history, which allows you to revert to any previous version. This gives you a great sense of security, but this is what ultimately led to this disaster.

Form data are part of the spreadsheet it is associated with. Whenever the spreadsheet data are saved, the form data are saved as well. However, changes to the form alone are apparently not considered to have changed the spreadsheet itself. No matter what changes you make to the form, unless those changes trigger changes in the spreadsheet itself, the form data will not be saved.

Every time you add an item in the form, a corresponding field (column) is created in the spreadsheet. Once you have all the necessary items on the form, though, the spreadsheet itself will not change. Any change you make to the form from this point on will thus not be saved, unless you intentionally make a change to the spreadsheet itself. This is very counter-intuitive.

You get a separate browser window/tab titled "Edit form" to edit your form. There is a Save button, and whenever you click on it, its label changes to Saved. This is very misleading. Even if it says Saved, unless you somehow change the spreadsheet itself and have its data saved, the form data are actually not saved at all. From a common sense point of view, this is clearly a bug.

You cannot even undo your most recent operation in this form editing window/tab. No revision history is kept. It goes so against the otherwise fairly straightforward and common-sense design principles of Google products.

Didn't know Google Documents has forms feature for its spreadsheets. Had I known that, I would have used it in collecting applicants' info in this round of recruiting.