2005/02/28

Beyond 解散


聽到
Beyond 解散的消息,沒有太大感觸,畢竟自從家駒離世後,Beyond 己經潰不成軍,除了前期的作品外,這十年間沒有任何精彩佳作可令人回味。

論功行賞,Beyond 貢獻良多,他們曾將最好的搖滾音樂帶給香港人,我覺得香港電台應該頌一項最高榮譽將項或終身成就獎給予Beyond,以慰家駒在天之靈。

2005/02/26

Picasa 2

Google has released Picasa 2, an easy-to-use simple photo management tool. I have tried it and found that the photo editing features are not rich compared with other commercial off-the-shelf products. Just simply red-eye removal, quick fixes and a few special effects. Of course, the attraction is Picasa 2 is free of charge.

For bloggers, there is an added benefit that Picasa is integrated with blogger.com for uploading pictures to blog. This requires Picasa and Hello working together. No good to me at all as pictures and photos seen in my blog are not stored in the blogger.com, but are redirected from my web server.

2005/02/24

入票易

今日往 HSBC 入票,發現一台支票入票機,名為「入票易」。原來這類支票機安裝了掃描器,完成入票過程後,支票機將整張支票的樣貌印在收據上,方便用作參考及保存,這真是個很棒的鬼主意哇!

2005/02/23

pdf reader plugin in Linux

To view pdf documents while browsing on Linux platform, it is common to install the Acrobat Reader plugin for Mozilla or Firefox. I tend to think that the whole process is complicated, especially one needs to copy nppdf.so to the Mozilla plugins directory, and make sure a copy of or symbolic link acroread program in the directory path.


There is a much simpler solution. In Fedora Core 3, Gnome pdf (gpdf) is already bundled. According to my experience, after clicking on a pdf document, Firefox will ask you what program to invoke. Just simply key in "/usr/bin/gpdf" and check the box " always use the same program for such application" will do.

2005/02/22

Wikipedia down



What happen to Wikipedia today ?

It is reported that Wikipedia is down due to a power failure in the data centre. This has triggered a backup of 170 GB database on several servers and running recovery.

I can imagine that the same kind of situation will probably not be experienced by CNN, Google or Yahoo. To avoid a single point of failure paralyzing the whole operation, I don't quite understand why Wikipedia does not deploy site diversity in its network configuration. Time has come for Wikipedia to re-consider a more robust setup !!

2005/02/21

Firefox 25 million downloads

The no. of Firefox download hits 25 million 99 days after the official release. Also, spreadfirefox.com estimates that the number of web sites that have created links to Firefox is 500,000. These are no doubt thriving records in the history of IT and computer industries.

To celebrate the 25 million downloads, spreadfirefox.com has created a commeroative image for display at a prominent position by other web sites.

2005/02/20

FTP client

In the past, WS_FTP LE (Limited Edition) client was offered to the Internet community as a shareware. Those who used it for personal use would not be charged. I had used it for over 10 years. But, from now on Ipswitch decide to charge US$34.9 for a single copy of ws_ftp home, a lower version of the ftp client family. I feel sad to hear the bad news.

As I can no longer use the ws_ftp client, I have switched to Aceftp 3.0 freeware.

For those who are using Firefox, there is a Fireftp plugin. Actually, Fireftp functions exactly as a common ftp client. No need to bother around in getting a free ftp client from software companies.

2005/02/19

林百欣


林百欣是一位出色的工業家,他那份永不言休的勤奮功作精神,值得年輕人學習。毫無疑問,他是一位智者,他的離去對香港是損失。

多年前,亞視一套電視劇 “他來自潮洲”,便是介紹林百欣生平及其白手興家的事蹟,主題典 “勝利雙手創”我覺得是勵志歌典的代表作。



勝利雙手創
~~~~~~~~~
唔願信命前生早注定
離愁夢裡仍思家鄉
要將今生改變
共你牽手風雨行伴你一生一世 不悔情義長*
前路那怕是掀起萬丈浪 挺起胸往前勇闖
敢愛敢恨 死挨死慳膽粗氣壯
從未怨過命一生都打拼 我是潮州郎 (勝利雙手創)*

2005/02/17

Hard disk crash

Shit..what a bad luck. The IBM 40GB hard disk in my Windows XP box suddenly crashed. I am using my Linux box installed with Fedora Core 3 to blog.

No hope to recover the HD. It has worked for over 5 years non-stop. Its time to retire.

Plan to purchase an IBM 80 GB Serial ATA drive next week. I expect Serial ATA drive with 8M cache can boost the overall performance and faster read/write speed.

Some guys say 80GB is not large enough. Frankly, before I can use up 30GB storage, the hard disk will have already crashed. The remaining storage will never be available to me.

2005/02/16

Yahoo Firefox Toolbar

Another great news to Firefox fans. Yahoo has released a tool bar for Firefox browser, download at http://toolbar.yahoo.com/firefox.



Anti-spy feature will be added by Yahoo in later version. Hmmm..., as far as I can remember, Firefox is spyware free. Why do we need this feature ???

2005/02/15

許願樹


許願樹折斷樹幹後,現在只餘三成生命力,樹身上有超過千處傷痕,主要是被市民所拋寶牒的尼龍繩割傷。我們要珍惜這三百年的古樹,請善信們積點福,不要再不理性地亂拋寶牒到許願樹上,樹木畢竟都是有生命的。

2005/02/14

Google logos

Today is Valentine's Day. Google presents a Valentine's logo in its web portal.


Still on logos, 2005 is the year of rooster. I am attracted by the Google rooster logo in www.google.com.hk or www.google.com.tw.










Both logos are lovely and nicely designed.

2005/02/13

Intervideo WinDVD

I have tried the trial version of Intervideo WinDVD 6.0. The screen layout looks stylish and fantastic.



Frankly, this is the best media player I have ever used. Almost all kinds of video formats can be played, no matter they are VCD, DVD, Windows WMV, AVI, mpeg, quicktime mov and realplayer rmvb. Other attractive features are screen bookmark, capture and playlist which are not commonly found in other media players.

2005/02/12

水仙花



家中的一盤水仙花開得非常燦爛,有超過百枚花朵同時盛放,花香四溢。

心想,如果這盤花在年宵市場售買,可能都值三佰元。

2005/02/11

Tour to Korea

My family went to Korea for 5 days during the Chinese New Year festival. The temperature there was damn cold, on average below 0 degree Celsius, the lowest went down to – 7 degree Celsius. My son learnt skiing quite quickly. We also went to Everland, a new tourist attraction spot developed by Samsung. A lot of new facilities are under development there.


Everland in Korea

I hated the tastes of Korean foods, roast pork and Kimchi were most terrible. I would never go to any Korean restaurant again in Hong Kong.

2005/02/05

Google Search

Great news to me today !!! When doing a Google Search on my name "Warren Kwok", Google returns my Blogger's profile as the first in the list of result. Well done, Google.

2005/02/04

Adding Yahoo Search to Blog Template

Tried to add a Yahoo Search Box to my blog template.

The HTML codes are simple and straight forward:

2005/02/03

Babel Fish Translation

Apart from Google's language translation service, Altavista starts a language translation site called Babel Fish. The designs and layouts of two web sites are very similar.

2005/02/01

Bind 9.2.1

Shit.... a security flaw was in Bind 9.1.0 bundled as a standard package with Redhat 7.1 which caused my DNS to experience occasional failure. I tried many different ways to do a rpm upgrade to the secure version Bind 9.2.1 without success coz file dependency was a total mess. I thought downloading the source and re-compiling would also scare me!!!

At last, I used "up2date" tool with redhat network. Everything was smooth and successfully upgraded to the latest Bind 9.2.1 version. Great to see that redhat network resolved file dependencies for me. In future. I will use up2date to upgrade packages as much as possible.