complicated

everyone's workin' on this basic, "faster, better, cheaper", motto from former nasa administrator, daniel goldin. but what actually happens is shown the comic strip on oct 26 dilbert. and finally the things are made complicated.

eason's moving on stage 1

they gave fluorescent sticks instead of floated sticks which reduce the noise & stay bright in the stadium. but the fluorescent sticks are fragile...

the time for changing clothes is too long and the screens block the upper side of stage...

but he knows how to sing

24 s7 trailer

actually it is the logic for tony almeida to be terrorist in again. he could help terrorists in order to save his wife michelle dessler. And now he lost his wife and nearly lost his wife, everything can be done but how about in heart?

becoming jane

if not suggested by a friend, i think i don't watch this kind of movie. and this is the first time to watch movies there.

for the film, it is developed on some facts on romance between jane & tom lefroy. the story is not as boring as normal british film we think. but the introduction of tom is a bit too odd/long which makes me think for a moment. anne looks a bit too old to be young jane so her old makup just fits.

extinction

somethings missing from last two

1. small venue in first film made tense while large population in second one was impressing. but this one most people are dead and those alive are in small groups making biting activities are in smaller scale
   
   
2. maybe protecting milla, fighting scenes are a bit simple but she's still beauty.
   
   
3. the film is a bit too short
   
   
4. (spoilers) characters from last one are dead, a bit sad...
   

stuck into parallel import us products

one is beyond the sword. it should be the only one on the shelf when 1st round officially import are sold out. drawbacks are it's a bit more expensive and some texts are not shown in my non-english pc but it filled up my addiction.

and now is house soundtrack. finally the only copy was found in central hmv and i paid for it at once. why there is the us version? the original theme music cannot be used outside north america. anyway nice work hmv, bring me a great album.

halloween bash 2007 @ hk ocean park

didn't join for few years but luckily this year a friend can get tickets thru her employer.

good: priority pass; little shows outside "ghost house" to relieve queuin' people

not so good: continuously allowin' people to go inside those houses instead of groups... although that's great for park's income, scary is reduced; upgrade works everywhere but only few are matchin' the theme

glorious & all the lost souls (update on Oct 7)

got them from hmv last sat after work. as said before, i don't think i need to think about glorious. for the one from james blunt. i think all songs are ok the album is great while i like carry you home most.

so damn bad that house ost is sold out in causeway bay hmv. i will check it out in central one later (out of stock in central & admiralty either...).

'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)

cartoon movies

1. ratatouille
   for disney cartoons, i will only watch those from pixar in the future!
   
   
2. simpsons movie
   
   • yeah, we are idiots to watch the movie. lol
   • how come those craps from homer & pig (even is massive) can make the lake dead?
   • how come homer can feel nothing when his dad is still inside springfield city?
   • how will springfield look like in coming season?
     

watching localized version is a mess

new lego city

7990 & 7991, gotcha

no more free lunch for manhattan id card holders

after standard chartered bought it from chase manhattan bank for few years, they finally take actions to promote the brand. to cover some loss from promoting, they cut some offers for current customers. the most important is annual fee waiver. formally the waiver is for entire life. starting from next year, waiver is only available by fulfilling either one of belows:

1. retail purchase of HK$12,000.00 or more each year (counting from card issuance date)
   
   
2. retail purchase at least once every month (statement period)

but no amount of annual fee is mentioned in the leaflet included (Aug 6 - HK$216.00 from press release).

some other things that may need to take care:

1. the responsibility of bank for activation of renewal/replacement of card is reduced
   
   
2. points earned cannot be combined with other manhattan card
   
   
3. maximum interest fee free repayment period is shortened from 60 to 59 days

as offers from other cards are similar to id card provided, and products for points redemption are not attractive to me (mainly local artists performance), that seems like i will cut the card in coming future.

fixed: problem of google analytics report in firefox

my problem is: cannot get data from specific keyword in analytics report

ie:
in network location, clicking any location like "america online", it can show other details like pages/visit, bounce rate or choosing segment

firefox:
just go to top of page. extension firebug shows error.

so damned clever excel 2007

finally finds out why my vba is ok in excel 2003 but not in 2007. when a field format is set already, and you use vba to set the same format again, excel terminates. but this does not happen in 2003. cool? thx microsoft.

beyond the sword

i've tried the one i expected. new features are so really cool (especially navy part finally fulfills current situation, no more battleship as end of development, and using missles!).

but one drawback is i cannot use these into my old saves in original civ 4 or convert original saves into new one. if this is supported, that's awesome (finally find some tricks to send original saves to bts).

forgot to say is if your pc is not running in english, pls set to english in country settings before initial running main programs or mods for core and bts. otherwise xml cannot be fully converted and some texts cannot be shown.

hk book fair '07

1. very suck arrangement for travelling from hall to another hall
2. not steady air-conditioning
3. most booth design not quite good. people got struck. better at pageone (book price has been raised before the fair so only little money is saved), publishers brand name also promoted.
4. not much computer books
5. most successful promotion besides books: anobii
   

four books bought are:

temp fix for zonealarm

to fix the crash, don't click the bubble for allowing the program to access internet. rather than clickin' it, open zonealarm and allow that program to access inside. then click deny on that bubble, 80% of problems can be fixed.

but sometimes poppin' bubble also crashes the machine. either you click n-time ctrl-alt-del to shut the program makin' bubble comes out and log out your machine; or reset your machine

recent films

watched:
shrek 3 - ok as expected
hooked on you - suck; quite loose storyline

missin':
die hard 4 - no one accompanies me

waitin':
simpsons
ratatouille

zonealarm got crappy again

actually it goes crappy since last version, 7.0.337. it doesn't allow me to update from 7.0.302 to it. but as far as it works, i don't care.

recently another update is out, 7.0.362. and it makes crash when installing. even i backward install 7.0.337, it prompts not enough admin rights. so i checked the official forum and said that's a problem from active virus shield (avs). at last i really remove avs in order to install zonealarm but crash still happens when they both run. maybe i should use 7.0.302 which doesn't crash with avs.

i remember same crappy thing happened few years before and actually was a problem of zonealarm instead of other programs. even zonealarm is one of best firewalls, it's kinda crappy with other programs and the supplier doesn't take care it. using windows default firewall is better then.

To the hk guy in Globe Trekker Sweden & Denmark

1. don't think no body watched it in hk (thx atv)
   
   
2. gals in hk also wear low cuts & short skirts (maybe a bit less hot than those in denmark
   
   
3. how was ur gf/wife who is next to you thinkin'? i feel that first was supportin'. later she was embrassin'

maxim's mx

even how they did for rebranding, i still believe they are the weakest among the field.

the menu is not popular, only strange stuff shown; the price is not competitive; not all stores are modernized completely; the food quality is much worse than other two, dry egg, not nice looking fried fish, and not well prepared tomato sauce...

latest feature of adsense cannot be found in blogger template

latest entry of adsense blog said new shape is available but i cannot find that yet on blogger template. so when will it be implemented into blogger template?

five little pegs

even the book was written in 60 something years before, but the description of elsa greer by cecelia williams still suits today.

"... Miss Greer had had, I presume, a proper education, but she never opened a book and was quite unfamiliar with current literary allusions. Moreover she could not sustain a discussion on any intellectual subject.

She was entirely taken up with her personal appearance, her clothes, and men."

p.s. season two of marple will be shown on atv world from july 4.

ten feet high

as a hardcore fan of the corrs, news for the solo album from andrea corr is attractive to me. even music company works so hard on promoting the album (from myspace to youtube), i think this album may not be as success as those corrs' albums.


the song style is different from working with her siblings, they are a bit sensitive to political. the first single, shame on you, is not the right one to be the single. other songs playing in acoustic in youtube suit more. that was just like waht they did for borrowed heaven (actually i think that also happened in avril's best damn thing). even they are produced by celebrated producer and executive produced by her friend bono, lyrics are too simple, you cannot believe that title is kept on repeating continuously.

it's may be wise for warner music hk that they don't promote the album at this moment.

medieval ii: total war & civ 4 bts

swasted weekends of few months concentrated on medieval ii: total war. but i think this one is not as good as rome: total war and its first expansion. there are two things making it less lovely even patch 1.2 is out already.

turns are too short which the faction is not fully developed to gain enough resources to build massive armies to fight around.

and timurids are too damned strong. same amount of army in western world cannot win the war against same amount of timurids' army. that's why papal states are not lost to them.

the latest expansion pack of civilization 4, beyord the sword, sounds quite promising while comparing to kingdoms, expansion from medieval ii. despite the lead programmer of civ 4, soren johnson, has left firaxis to ea (maxis) for spore, the hand-on previews shown (extracts on civ fanantics' center) show very good response, some even call it civ 5. if it comes out with few bugs, it should be a big hit.

lemon grass = lemon + grass?

p&g hk recently promotes new shampoo for head & shoulders. but from packing they really mix up lemon grass & lemon which are so distinctive even to the kids.

p.s. anyone got that ad online?

white notebooks & beta software

recently one of my friends wanna buy a notebook in white, but in the market only few choices can be chosen, like benq, toshiba, fujitsu, and apple. if you don't care about where it was made or what os bundled into the book, macbook is the best for price over performance and design. but obviously my friend is a normal user, she won't choose mac anyway.

but as usual, not all apple products are as cool as you think. like ipod, you may suffer from battery time, poor bass, or not supporting radio directly. and recently apple pushes their own broswer, safari beta, to windows. i think i will never use beta programs on windows again (except boot camp which my friend is using on his macbook). maybe it can only be run on english interface. it's missing stuff. please don't ask it to save and open bookmarks...

on the other hand, those open beta products from windows live are ok. from messenger to writer, they perform normal and can run nearly all functions. and they are kinda stable.

some betas from google are ok, like toolbar for both browsers. those web applications are also cool, like reader (still far from graduation, like more options for starred items, some keyboard shortcuts bug for IE. but better than those desktop ones).

microsoft surface

the coolest thing from microsoft recently must be microsoft surface. and i think it suits the environment of hk. it can serve all kind of things, from table, computer and tv. this saves a lot of space with a tiny house in hk! you cannot afford the thing yet, but pretty soon you can see it inside the property companies' sample flat.

google gears = dead of desktop rss readers?

i'm using google reader since it showed up. at that moment, all desktop readers loved taking memory for their own and ran so damned slow.


current one is the second beta version and i quite like it. and the recent upgrade is groundbreaking. a minor one is putting reader trends (specialized google trends) on top left column.


while another should be desktop readers killer, the first application to integrate latest product from google, google gears. just ignore the background of gears, it allows people to read 2,000 items offline. 2000 entries, that need you some time to read and normally your desktop reader needs a lot of time to load. and your don't need to worry when your computer is down, you lose all subscribed feeds.

movies

pirates of the caribbean: the curse of the black pearl: the story is a bit too long to describe background so that the movie is a bit hard to understand. and i think disney only uses chow yun-fat for chinese market.

btw how can the kid being killed at the start have dental braces? that's not matching with the story time.

sims becomes a movie! omg, that's just the truman show only. i don't think this's a pretty good idea.

24

season 6 is over (hk just played episode 5).

nonsense things:

• how come a couple to find a room for an affair when jack is in the embassy?
• jack's mental stat changed too fast...
• script for this vice president is a bit weak

future:

• no more ctu? so how about chloe & morris, karen & bill? will their end be same as tony & michelle?
• who will be the president? palmer or daniels?
• so will cheng get away easier than jack?

beta of google analytics

i'm using it (you've got tracked) but don't use all the functions it provides.

and it's renewing and i'm using the beta one.

but obviously they will say goodbye to another stats tool, measure map. the stuff of measure map is integrated into the newanalytics now.

how about feedburner? the deal is done and it also contents stats tool...

latest music attraction

that must be the song by manic street peachers featuring nina persson of cardigans, your love alone is not enough. wonderful chemistry they made. it rocks!

but still the same, when to have itunes music store here so that i can buy and put it into my ipod?

cartoon/comic

1. dilbert book in downtown pageone. but i still read it online.
   
2. 400th Simpsons Goes 24. anyone can send me the clip, or give me a feed, or put it on youtube?

return of blogs

1. 迷失中環
2. 港燦再生

no more CTU?

in the us, miko is dead already (not yet in hk). and in the interview said there will be no CTU in future seasons. so,

1. next season where the scene is?
   
2. which bureau will handle anti-terroist actions?
   
3. how about bill & chole (especially chole, the long term teammate for jack)?

You're cursed, Jack

everything you touch, one way or another, ends up dead

2 things about flickr

1. today is 24 hours of flickr, do some photographing & be shown in the book for médecins sans frontières (maybe take a shot of lemon tea is a great idea)
   
2. its uploadr for windows updated to support flickr's related vista.

bug on excel 2007 macro?

below codes (simplified a bit) are ok run in excel 2003 but not in 2007, why?

Private Sub Workbook_SheetChange(ByVal Sh As Object, ByVal Target As Range)
Cells(Target.Row, 7) = Cells(Target.Row, 2) * Cells(Target.Row, 4)
End Sub

run-time error -2147417848(80010108) is prompted (Method '_Default' of object '_Range' failed) and closed.

latest favorite

must be mika. so attractive

maybe i'm getting older, i think the style of latest album from avril is a bit too young.

too much h&m around?

after hk & shanghai, next frontier is...

the sims 2!

monster astri

latest report from audit commission shows another proof how good our former chief executive tung is. how come an organization for scientific invention trusting feng shui. based on market economics, this kind of organization should be elimated.

good chance to test your vocab

as said here, google image labeler is set for increasing accuracy for searching photos. but i think it's a chance to test your english vocabulary. if you and your unknown partners know more, it's faster to get a match and another pix is shown. more are shown means your vocabulary is brillant.

warning: adult content may be shown

nice work, house

hugh laurie's house is now rated 3rd in states' tv ratings, just behind original csi & grey's anatomy. nice

er + 24 + house

what will it be?

from hq, robert "rocket" romano aka graem bauer (played by paul mccrane) will direct an episode of house. what will be that episode be? mixture of robocop, er, 24 & house?

america's army 2.8.1

even some of the latest maps by graduate students from the guildhall at smu are cool, the laggy / packet loss problem arises for most of the maps, especially locating in america, europe. And the problem is much worse than the period optical cables were broken by earthquakes at boxing day last year.

Is the new version making problem, or the latest pb beta function (to solve vista tightened security) making problem?

cheung chau

the latest one night trip destination: cheung chau

we queued for over half an hour to have a walk in the cheung po tsai cave. is that the cave used by pirate cheung? i don't think so. it's too damn small, hard to store or stay for a longer time. but the boy renting flashlight is a special. he walked outside the rusted railing and the path is just only a foot wide next to the cliff with slippers only!

the house is really crappy, the worst among the years. small, insecure, dirty toilet, damn a/c. we could not control the temparture, wind speed. and there were water droplets coming out. later on, the machine sounded mad and made us awake. so we needed to turn it off!

shares: flickr, youtube

p.s. cheung po chai = cheung po tsai? which one is correct?

atv rocks

they played the 2nd crossover of csi: miami & csi: new york together. that's great

house season 2 promotion trailer

at this afternoon, pearl played a full season 2 promotion trailer of house. from hugh laurie's house, foreman, chase, wilson, carmeron, to hair weaving cuddy, that's so cool.

but i cannot find one on youtube/google video...

update (Apr 29): finally someone put it on youtube!

janice's concert & the pursuit of happyness

saturday night watched janice's first concert on her career. a bit short but worthy. she has talent but the equipment used is a bit suck. this is wise for leon to stand back & find more talented people to save fading hk music.

today watched pursuit of happyness. will smith is older and his kid has a talent in acting. actually if i'm chris gradener, i think i cannot face this challenge. so my tears were nearly out of my eyes when he won the internship.

merger of flickr account to yahoo

the merge this time is much better than last. at least i don't need to log in every time. btw don't know what the hell i need to log in every time for blogger after coverting to new blogger with google account.

retreating from battlefield

1st hard week had gone. the body is exhausted after increasing workload, annual dinner at the middle of the week, and catchup what missed after training.

and this weekend was for gathering with friends. had a bbq on saturday with university schoolmates. it's a bit long time to meet so many friends. it's nice to see every body's in good shape.

really wanna hope easter come faster & stay longer. secondary schoolmates are organising a short trip but it's not sure to have enough people to go. but 1st we watched 300. something is different from what i think. a bit of time is used to build the background so a bit bored when comparing with the war scene. but what makes me feel many including me miss a bit of duty, andscarify.

red packets

this year income from red packets is not bad (btw thx new couple).

here are some packets designs i like:

from icbc (asia)

from dbs

from hsbc

from unknown

be inspired

is another sales from hmv hk. i got one with very nice price, it's o from damien rice. just around 2/3 from original price for '04 edition. cool.

night at the museum

another film from ben stiller and with other famous celebrities. this one is ok for holidays but not as good as meet the fockers. that one really makes me laugh.

search with translation in google

seems that google added the auto translation for simplified & traditional chinese search results.

see this:















and also english translation!

book & red packet

although i start loving reading books since my university, i don't expect someone i know will be a author. a high school senior is becoming a author (of course there are other celebrities from the school) and got a preface from famous author. what in my memory was he just stood like a Queen's Guard when he was the head librarian. anyway library is still stuck to his life.

first red packet was received before chinese new year from the company. the company just reported with the best annual result it ever has, but the amount in the red packet is only... better than few years before i heard from colleagues but seems too few as a big company.

life in the middle

obviously my body and my mental wish are making me stay away of city life. basically i can live healthier in countryside in the country like new zealand, ireland, denmark or even japan. staying in a nice house, working in a field, working books in front of field, seaside, or even a roadside, taking a dog to walkaround, and making own meal is kinda wonderful thing.

or i can be a priest or a monk and lived in monastery to learn to inspire how the real person should behave.

and i'm too naive compared to normal city guys. it's hard to live with them.

but this kind of thing cannot be happened in forsee years! living in city too long, i even cannot sleep in too silent place. i cannot live without friends. and there is too much temptation to make me stick inside a city.

the most important is money. i need to work harder to get financial freedom and buy a house at my dream place.

the world is so small

the latest entry of dilbert is so damn funny. lol

good & bad for flickr

good thing is microsoft found flickr users to provide few desktop wallpapers for vista. anything m$ can save some buds to get wallpapers from other sources (but not corbis, bill gates started it)

bad is all old accounts will need to merge to yahoo accounts before mar 15. i've also done this once and reversed because i hate to log in every 24 hours! now this is forced to do...

flickr is so far i see the best for all of yahoo services. maybe it's time for microsoft to buy yahoo. (after allowing yahoo id used in messenger & finding flickr members for desktops)

my best friend's wedding

some nice guy put it on youtube. cool



p.s. one of classmate couples married last sat. a bit unexpected as they didn't contact us often in these few years. anyway god bless them as loyal christians

happy birthday the movie

good.

24 & iPhone?

24 is now on fox again (tvb pearl will show on April 25 from unconfirmed source) and first four hours have already made many viewers excited.

this season ctu has replaced their dell displays into apple cinema displays. is there any chance to further using apple products in the series? like bauer using iphone? (o... is year 2012)

but the timeframe setted is after n years (few presidents have been replaced but in real world is still bush). so iphone used by bauer should be n generations later. and can power of apple portable products support 24 hours continously operations...

anyway someone did this in flickr

crappy undersea cables

kinda bad news that the cables crapped by earthquake nearby taiwan just after x'mas cannot be fixed until mid of next month... so how can i play america's army smoothly?

wed is kinda important

1. i will start job rotation starting from that day for coming two months. will know the products much deeper from different angles.
   
2. apple will deliver new products in macworld, maybe new ipod/iphone, new software, or upgraded mac mini (any chance for core 2 duo?) / mac pro (quad core?)... if new product line is out from ipod/iphone, i need to think to have one since my shuffle is gonna pass its peak. (hk time)
   
3. it's last microsoft's patch tuesday before windows vista & office 2007 selling to general public officially (hk time)

p.s. 2nd book from that series also sucks. obviously the author wants to have more money for marriage!

google talk update

how about chinese version update?

measure map

seems like google does not give up measure map yet even analytics is their core. check "I like big charts and I cannot lie", at least reader is using tech from measure map. but will there be a chance to allow new user to join measure map again?

ocean spring

my friends got a two-day trip organised by hong thai (yeah again) on x'mas day. total 43 were in this tour (nine were us - seven wests & two girls from a west). and one of west's colleague also joined the trip with her family.

first was to a jewellery factory called italia to visit & a try to make jewellery. but as far as i know, no one is interested and we wasted an hour there. we took lunch in a restaurant (worse than those in guilin) and we went to a small playground. we played kart, fishing, & archery there.

we headed to the spring directly and got the rooms. first played snooker and we took the dinner (this one was ok). after the dinner we played table tennis & badminton for a moment. some then went to spring while others were back to rooms. before sleeping, we shared local-made chicken which was ordered during dinner.

we took our buffet breakfast next morning (not bad) and we played snooker again. we had a brief guide about the spring before we took a bus to ferry terminal. we were cheated by our guide that there are lots of restaurants nearby and we nearly missed the ship. and i finished one, two, buckle my shoe in these two days



back to hk, we seven were still together and had karaoke buffet before back home.

travel agency: 3/5 - price a bit too expensive

ship: 3.5/5 - a bit slower

tour guide: 3.5/5 - a bit cheating us on last meal

hotel: 3.5/5 - some parts are fixing while some i cannot play...

coach: 3.5/5 - nothing special

food: 3/5 - a bit worse but the chicken order for supper is good

view: 4/5 - a bit smoky, the hotel view is ok, the laser shown at the night was seen when i was in sky

weather: 5/5 - fine

qe stadium vs hk coliseum

on x'mas eve there was a concert in qe stadium which the performers had sung in hk coliseum too. it's a good chance to compare both

convenient: qe is a bit better. at least located closed to hot spots
traffic: coliseum locates just next to train station
other design: qe has a lobby to allow them to sell stuff!
theatre: qe is smaller but has better sound system & less restrictions to performers to contact audiences

hsbc atm dead

luckily that's not happened to me & took my card. that lady is poor and she phoned the hotline in atm centre but her card cannot be back until next week...

what i saw is already after the machine was stuck in the machine. the screen last active is requesting pin. and the machine didn't respond after entering pin and 6 asterisks were on lower right hand corner.

after she had left, the machine started to reboot. first showing is machine was down. shut down window of windows xp pro was shown then. and what a surprise cpu of atm is P3 850MHz. after the reboot, the machine was still showing down. maybe card was stuck inside.

p.s. windows xp was installed to replace aged os/2 just within few weeks

flickr updating

obviously more and more cameras with higher pixels mean pix size is larger and larger. and flickr is adjusting their limits for all users. pro user can get unlimited uploads while free can get 100mb. but for free users other limits are not changed so that increasing upload limit makes your old pix disappearing faster and pushes you to upgrade account (earn more from flickr to help it's parent, yahoo!).

how to upgrade account easily, they modify a bit so that you can send and use gift accounts easier! even you can make a card for the this.

o... service change

just talked about joining stocks monthly investment plan, it says the change in service.

1. not supporting payment thru credit card. this is one of selling points of the plan, but obviously the cost is too high: bad debt; card service fee; rewards points.
   
2. eligible stock list up to 88 securities. many are h stocks. some are ok but i don't have extra money to get more...

nan lian garden

the garden is built in tang dynasty style and maintained by chi lin nunnery.

it is a bit different from other parks owned by government. 1st it's not maintained by government itself and full of guards there. you cannot either smoke, eat or drink (except water)inside. and it has a bridge to connect to nunnery.

but the garden should be put aside for years before opening to public. for this kind of gardens, our feeling should be a bit aging, but it is too fresh for everything, from stones, trees, structures... & with too much concrete without plants covering.

and hong kong is contaminated so that there are so many guides and clumsy narrations from speakers breaking the silence...

some pix are here

iTunes Music Store @ New Zealand

how come only a country having 3 million people can have iTunes Music Store but not in HK? learnt from macgrass, apple opens music store & online shop together.

but hk has lots of advantage compared to nz in online market area. 1st is population. 7 million vs 3 million, more people means more chances to have business. many hkers are owing ipods and using apple products.

2nd is cost for internet, hk is smaller, more choices to get online. in nz, land is too big compared to population size which means setting up online is not so efficient. besides only 2 monopolies (xtra, telstra clear) provide online service there compared at least 4 here (monopoly had been gone in hk in early '90s).

for those saying trouble putting local categories into the store, japan's store can kick their ass from everywhere. From technical supporting asian characters, getting local music industry support...

hk already has online shop, why don't we deserve a music store?

x'mas pick

another x'mas pick is out and that one is still shining among the others. this one and that one have talked what most stock owners thought.

i also thought that before, like i bought karrie international at a quite high value within a month after webb had picked it in 2004. and now i'm losing and the company management said the business needs to consolidate and expand so that the dividend policy has been changed after the profit and turnover were fallen. btw my friend who was staff said it becomes a property company but its annual report denied. so if thing's going worse, i need to get rid of it.

i also bought another pick few months before as i think kingmaker is much below the value after the big hit of timberland stopping the cooperation with it because of EU tax. the company is making effort to compensate and there is a future.

but this year his x'mas pick article is a bit different from previous years',

1. "Stocks can go down as well as up. One day, one of our picks will blow up in our face", which stocks he means, 1170, 1050, 684?
   
2. only talked last year's pick but not more as what he did in past years. 1050 has past the peak; he had blamed management of 684; 1170 is also blown... but i think 927, his last year pick will still go strong for one or two years only as xbox 360 will complete its cycle before the end of this decade. then fujikon needs to choose to be still OEM or go to high-end more.
   
3. he used a part for market overview and said new accounting standards misleading market's P/E, making the market bear all around.

except buying those picks, in order to increase my fortune, i subscribe to stocks monthly investment plan and choose hong kong electric. and with this decision, the bank upgrades my account (i need to get consent from my employer!) and gives me a financial plan. and i know i need to do more in this area!

something before day 6

check 24's HQ and you can see latest from 24.

1. show off toyota's new car
   
2. chinese are still so cheap in the eyes of americans
   
3. jack is cheated!

dirk müller goy kicked?

bmw have signed augusto farfus as their new driver for wtcc and said that "Within the ranks of the BMW drivers, Farfus is going to replace Dirk Müller, who was a BMW works driver from 2002 to 2006...." in their site.

it seems a bit odd to write that on the site, i've never seen that kind of words in manufacturers' statements. so dirk needs to find a new job.

dreams - the ultimate corrs collection, the corrs

obviously record company wanna earn more when they are not working together! but as a naive fan of the corrs. so bought it

x'mas

in hong kong, there's no thanksgiving so that x'mas is now the main theme everywhere.

even in our work place, ladies had bought decoration and i needed to help to put them on more than a month before.

ahh, but i'm thinking what i will do that day. most likely stay at home.

P.S.
step back from pacific coffee's irish cream latte because of starbucks' holiday special, toffee nut latte.

1st book from the series may not be worth. looking for second one

even without much promotion, it is now on hmv chart and got one there.



update on 2/12:

i have some sorts of luck and got a quite good prize from the draw!

guilin

travel agency: 4/5 - good in this price range

airline: 3.5/5 - too full even in this period

tour guide: 4/5 - a bit too many phone calls

hotel: 3.5/5 - a bit old; breakfast not too hot; but tv played friends season 9!

coach: 3/5 - too many insects inside

food: 3/5 - nothing special; taste is ok

view: 4.5/5 - a bit smoky, river is a bit dry; but best were being shown

weather: 5/5 - fine, not cold, not hot, no rain, not too dry

special: 6/5 - a korean workin' in hk picked his parents to join the tour. and celebrated his mon's birthday on the last day. cool!

some pix here

if

1. 瞓覺唔會嚇醒我
2. 唔怕我笨&悶
3. 唔好男仔頭
4. no smoking

sad cypress

finally complete the book after watching twice on tv.

the big difference is how to end the story. book version uses the logical way thru court interactions. but tv version shows how poirot pushed nurse hopkins for the truth while poirot were in danger.

seems that tv version is more attractive

looking for pc game of murder on the oriental express

congratulations

賀朋友女MPhil畢業

賀師兄PhD論文pass

賀十幾年舊鄰居兼西仔MSc畢業

仲有另一西仔MA畢業

where can jean alesi go?

former formula-1 driver jean alesi quits dtm. where can he go? in the announcement on dtm site, he will maintain good relationship with mercedes.

in wikipedia, some traces can be found. back to f-1 as a driver for future team, driexiv? as a team manager of the team? as a test driver for mercedes? fully concentrated on his vineyard? retire completely and active on show business in japan as he has a japanese singer wife?

seems he quits dtm is not a bad choice...

Technorati tags: jean alesi, formula-1, dtm, mercedes, wikipedia, driexiv

google is a bit late

or too busy on blogger beta? their blogger web comments didn't support firefox 2.0 until now. and does the new update support blogger beta?

Technorati tags: google, blogger, blogger beta, blogger web comments, firefox 2.0

lamma island

1. waves are too high in victoria harbor; ships are faster and with a/c
2. only chained store except government service
3. is hsbc?
4. dogs is major population other than people
5. my home is much better than that boarding house! (even motels in NZ are better)
6. local & foreign snacks, bars are better than local chinese seafood restaurants
7. played too much winning eleven with too less sleep

Technorati tags: personal, lamma island, hong kong & kowloon ferry, hsbc, boarding house, motels, new zealand, seafood restaurants, winning eleven

so close for Blogger & Xanga

as founders of these two competitors are working together!

Technorati tags: blogger, google, xanga, odeo, obvious, twitter

another update for Google Reader

few things marked are good move:

1. items are not read when just movin' scroll bar
2. keyboard shortcuts in IE are fixed
3. labels can be added when subscribing feed

Technorati tags: google, google reader, feed reader

Another Medival 2: Total War demo

just a new demo is out. at the page you download, you can find the mini spec needed for the game.

the speed control is workable this time, but screen rotating is too fast. sometimes cannot catch up the which part of field is being watched

Technorati tags: medieval 2: total war, demo, computer game, sega