Sky

Yao Done for Season with Stress Fracture in Left Foot

From ESPN.

HOUSTON -- All-Star center Yao Ming is out for the season with a stress fracture in his left foot, a stunning blow to the surging Houston Rockets.

"It is not an injury we feel he can play with," Rockets team doctor Tom Clanton said. "I've made the recommendation that it be treated surgically and we are working with him to get other opinions just to be certain that that is indeed what should be done."

If Yao chooses surgery, Clanton said, it would involve placing screws across the bone to hold it together. The second option would be to treat it with a cast and crutches. Both options involve a healing time of about four months.

Clanton would not say when Yao could play again, but said he doesn't expect the center to miss the Beijing Olympics in August.

That possibility is weighing heavily on him though.

"If I cannot play in the Olympics for my country this time, it will be the biggest loss in my career to right now," he said.

This is Yao's fourth major injury in the last two years. He missed 32 games last season with a fracture in his right leg and 21 games in late 2006 with a toe infection that required surgery. He missed four games in April 2006 after breaking his foot.

"I really feel bad for Yao," Adelman said. "It's just such a shocker. Yesterday morning he was OK and then four hours later, he wasn't. It's tough on everybody, but we've got to move on."

"This is something that can be treated," Clanton said. "We are catching this at a very early stage."

Jon Barry projects Houston's descent in the West.

Hollinger: Hope for Houston.

The fickle finger of Deke: Rockets 94, Wizards 69.

Injured Yao gives Rockets' Mutombo reason to stay in game.

ON BASKETBALL: Yao bringing America, China closer.

Tags: nba, basketball

Posted in Sports

Posted by skyleecm at 00:07 AM 34 comments

Losing Our Lakes

From Newsweek. (photos)

Scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego say that Lake Mead, the largest man-made lake and reservoir in the United States, which supplies water as well as hydroelectric power to tens of millions of people throughout the Southwest, could be dry in just 13 years. But Lake Mead is just one of a number of lakes throughout the world that are imperiled. Large and small bodies of water from Australia to Chile to China to Kenya to Central Asia to South Carolina are sadly deteriorating because of drought, global warming, chemical pollution, increased water demand, excessive fishing and other factors.

Tags: Photos, environment

Posted in Photos , World

Posted by skyleecm at 22:57 PM 1 comments

Sky Explorer Supports Unicode Filename

Unicode filename and path are supported in version 1.0.3

The symbian python os functions can accept utf8 string and will also return utf8 string (eg. in os.listdir). It does not use unicode string like in other native symbian functions.

Since the Sky Explorer code uses path.join to get the full path in a lot of places, I modified path.join to always return in utf8 string regardless of its input. In places that use python os functions, no other changes are needed to allow for unicode filename and path. In places that use native symbian functions which expect unicode string, a conversion from utf8 string to unicode string is needed. -- unicode(fname, 'utf8')

(in dir_util.py)
# this replaces os.path.join (encode p in utf8)
os_path_join = path.join
def path_join(a, *p):
    return os_path_join((a and type(a) is unicode) and a.encode('utf8') or a, 
        *[(type(d) is unicode) and d.encode('utf8') or d for d in p])
if path.join is not path_join:
    path.join = path_join

It will now support searching for unicode filename and can also search for unicode text in utf16 files.

Zip and unzip can support unicode filename and path, this is done by encoding the unicode filename in utf8. Though if you unzip such a zip file in windows OS, the filename and path will remain in utf8 string.

Unicode sms is supported using

messaging.sms_send(to, msg, 'UCS2')

Application tagging in unicode is also saved and restored correctly in the new version.

(The source codes are released in http://skyexplorer.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ )

Feb 12, Download from http://skyexplorer.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/sis/skyexplorer_2ndEd_1.0.3.sis

or

http://skyexplorer.googlecode.com/files/skyexplorer_2ndEd_1.0.3.sis. (We're sorry page)

Tags: Nokia, Sky-Explorer, unicode, Python

Posted in Open-Source , Mobile , Sky-Explorer , Python