'07 holiday

finally is the last day for my block leave and time was wasted on...

1. america's army
   
   
2. civ 4: bts
   
   
3. 唐朝十講 (readin' 平民資本家)
   
   
4. lego 7990 (7991 is not yet built)
   
   
5. taipei
   
   
6. house season 3 & season 4 episode 1
   

taipei

we, four boys & a girl, started our journey on 23rd by takin' cathay's b777-300 near noon (boys only) and used an hour and a bit more to land on taoyuan airport there. nt$200 was used to get visa and another $140 was paid for shuttle bus.

the hotel is just next to sun yat-sen memorial hall (but we didn't go there until the last day). after unloading our luggage, we went to taipei 101 for sightseeing. there was a package during mid-autumn festival so we could go to 91/F (89/F originally) without extra ticket. took few shots there, we went to flagstore of eslite books nearby as one of us needed to buy things there. due to rain, we took our late dinner at shilin night market (the only one with cover) before back to hotel.

second day was away taipei city and went to northeasy side by train. we dropped off at rueitang, then took a taxi to jioufen. there were so many people as that was a public holiday in taiwan (the day before mid-autumn festival). we bought some souvenirs there. later we took a public bus to keelung under "nice" driving skill. we had a look at miaokou night market before we took another train back to taipei. this night we went to ximending for our dinner.

next morning we took metro taipei to have hot spring in beitou. few hours later we went to tamsui which is nearby. but we were a bit late, we didn't have enough time to take a look of hong mao cheng before the lovely sunset down in front of fisherman's wharf. dinner was taken at tan tsai noddle in downtown taipei and we continued to hunt for taipei night markets for rest of night.

the last day was credited to museums. first was chiang kai-shek memorial hall, but interior was under maintenance. so we quickly moved to another spot, national taiwan museum, to get some basic information about ecosystem and taiwanese aborigines. in bad luck that miniatures museum of taiwan was closed after public holidays, so we moved to din tai fung to take our last lunch in taipei. before going to the airport, sun yat-sen memorial hall which is next to our hotel was the last site we visited.

more: flickr gallery

new update of zonealarm

finally zonelabs provided a new update for its product. the update was fine compared to the last one. but it shows how trouble the program is. this program controls default output volume of speaker (don't know how the hell is related). before the update, i need to tune the volume every time i log in my windows... and now active virus shield (avs) is down. even aol has given up avs (should be the deal between them & kaspersky is over), zonealarm should not get rid of my avs which still has valid license. now i need to use back avg.

don't force me

hey classmate

i know you feel you have wasted time to study master of philosophy and now pursuit your future in another field. we are now your potential clients in order to support you surviving in this field. please don't push us too deep and hold your action a little bit to give some space for us. if you are still working so hard, we will scare you more and we are going to be further and further away. we will find you when we feel unsecured.

take it easy man

google reader in chinese

finally one of lovely google apps is in chinese (but it has no choice to choose other languanges yet)! o... it's out of labs!

lego city 7990 concrete mixer

finally have time to build it after bringing it to home. in order to bring enough details, it's a bit too long i think (as long as a bus) and much larger than other old one which is same for the current series. maybe using computer design, the position doesn't quite match. many parts are tailor-made, but some are quite brittle if it was left alone. stickers are used instead of painting on bricks which is common in this series but not the old one. but it's a bit long time to have another mixer sold in hong kong, so that many have bought it once it came out just like me.

link: my 7990 gallery in flickr

late april fool?

he just wrote an article criticizing about latest actions of government:
transport fare adjustment mechanism (fam), merge of railway, and buy hkex shares

windows live suite

the latest one is out and supports traditional chinese finally

windows live messenger 8.5 beta 2: no big difference to 8.1 except it doesn't show personal messages when mouse pointer is on your friend's name

windows live mail beta 2: can read windows live hotmail on desktop (open it when clicking messenger mail button instead of opening ie) again; separate screen for newsgroup, support feeds (but i use google reader!); more options on account settings

windows live writer beta 3: can download it again in hk market (quite good support to blogger) but no spell checking for non en-us interface; design for labels/categories is not as good as blogger web interface

windows live photo gallery beta: fundamental photo organizing; support upload to windows live spaces / msn soapbox; can kill other paid applications for normal users

america's army 2.8.2

an update is out. some updates are cool (like dressing, scoreboard).

2 new maps:

rummage: i like urban assault more. but this one is with auto m4a1 instead of m16a2

sf hospital se: harder than original one. ai are moving which block doors, stairs; and run across line of fire. and you need to prepare chopper before letting vip in.

but i hate every time update installer freezes my computer. and also previous settings are gone.

expected new albums (updated)

lookin' for below three:

1. glorious from natalie imbruglia - i love some of her songs but not enough to buy all albums, so compilation is the choice
   
   
   
2. all the lost souls from james blunt - as good as first one or...
   
   
3. new album from dido - must buy
   
   
4. one more forgot to mention: ost from house - cool taste
   

btw, get 9 from latest "simply the best" from local hmv ($99 vs $150)

date fixed

annual leave: sept 12-28
taipei trip: sept 23-26

blogger not work completely well in firefox

the thing is cannot show add page elements! in order to show it, first need to do is clear edits (but no edit was made)

but ie doesn't work much better, cookie got messed and need to login everytime (even other google stuff and toolbar are ok)