June 09, 2008

the chronicles of narnia: prince caspian

far after the first of the series, the second is showing now.

the movie presented is much tighter than the first one but aslan is a bit fake compared. the story seems composed of other famous novels but writers of screenplay did put efforts to make the film more modern way. the fight scene is so roman (use of legions & testudo formation) and i like that. it also shows the dark side of soul. At last it's quite lotr feel (as author of both series were quite closed). is it good to leave peter and sun not back to narnia?

anyway rulers of humans are devils (maybe this is influenced by their ancestors as per aslan). those humans are with romance ascents which are quite funny.

some google stuff

google is busy changing its icons; giving tests to gmail. but some are more interesting for me, like taking more care of local adsense community.

another is improvement on translation. typing "fy" before the keyword you wanna translate in search box now shows more than before. besides dictionary shows basic definition, there's a link to take you into google translate to show you more in details like dictionary.com. other features in google translate are attractive too.

but the most important thing is the support of hkex in google finance (so i now subscribe its blog in my reader). i love the layout, simplicity, and the chart function. but for long time it didn't support hk stocks which was a pity. it's cool to have support now but something can be improved.
  1. stock history is too short, just around a year.
  2. information is not completed, like interest rate...
  3. news sources, which now are from bloomberg or reuters, are not enough
  4. a bit personal - i don't wanna capture so much data in excel which gets all numerical information. i just want current stock price.
P.S. former googlers' products are also in big interest. twitter from former blogger owners seem steps back the way the old blogger walked, instability (link 1, link 2, status). google wasted time to rebuild the blogger to increase the stability and flexibility. so what will twitter act? or friendfeed from former team to make gmail, reader... takes over the shine?

necessity for ngong ping 360

after the heaviest rain in record, many parts of lantau island cannot be accessed by road covered by landslide, including ngong ping & nearby po lin monastery. even ngong ping 360 is not opened for public to travel due to damage of fiber optic cable, it still provides emergency services for people living in ngong ping to get stuff at tung chung.

finally it shows the need to be built further on boosting tourism. people can use cheaper methods to stay connected after traditional ways are blocked. if it is not existed, airlift thru copter may be needed and resources cannot be used in other places.