The economy is pretty bad, but we can all dream. So here is my Black Friday wish list:
Just got my Nikon 18-200mm VR lens. It replaces the 18-70mm and 70-300mm so that I only need to carry one lens. The 70-300mm has 1.5X more magnification, but switching lens is a pain not worth the extra zoom.
Furthermore the VR lens promised to reduce hand shake by as much as 4 stops. I’ve tried it and it worked very well especially in the “Active” mode. This works really well for scenaries and eliminates the need for a tripod for most cases.
Both of these reasons are time saving reasons. For me, saving time is everything. That’s how I justify all my purchases.
The Olympics in Beijing is arguably the biggest of its kind, funded by a staggering $40 Billion budget from the Beijing/Chinese government. It is the first time for China to host this historical event. Of course it is the most important thing for China on so many levels. So much so, the Chinese attendees of the games are instructed/encouraged to cheer for foreign athletes, even if they are playing against the host team. This is even more evident when the foreign team is one of the powerful nations such as the USA.
For example, I was watching the final between China and USA in women’s beach volleyball game. The chanting of “USA” from the energized Chinese DJ is unbelievable! US teams throughout the games have admitted that they feel like host nation in this Beijing Olympics games. And this beach volleyball game is no exception, the #2 seeded team from US beat the #1 seeded Chinese team in two closely fought games, thanking partially I’m sure to their “homefield” advantage.
Now you may ask, as a gold medal crazed host nation, why would the Chinese do that??? The answer in my mind is that there are things more important than gold medals. After learning from previous diplomatic PR stumbles, and most recently happened in the Olympics torch relay around the world, the Beijing government is becoming smarter. The cost of a few medals are nothing compared to the improved xoxo relationships with the most powerful nations in the world. The gushing praise from the NBC broadcasters alone is worthy of a gold medal!
As for the beach volleyball match, I shouted my voice out and cursed “traitors” throughout the game. But in the end, I have to salute the Beijing government for an attempt to get the ultimate PR gold medal. Very well done indeed.
I run a WinXP virtual machine on OS X host. One day I figured the disk allocated for WinXP VM was too small. Here are the steps to grow that disk size simply and painlessly:
That’s it. I now have a newly expanded VM disk.
My outlook suddenly gave me the stern warning that I need to shutdown and scan my message boxes with ScanPST. I have a corrupted mailbox file, or files. It didn’t tell me which/where the mailbox file is and where the scanpst.exe or scanost.exe is located.
So to help me and others remember how to locate these files:
“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12″ is where ScanPst.exe and ScanOst.exe located. I think these two programs are merely links to some other core utilities. You can launch either one and it can scan both types of mailbox files (*.ost or *.pst).
“C:\Documents and Settings\
Wouldn’t it be great if Outlook simply launches this tool or provide this functionality as a right-click on the mailbox itself? We should ask Bill that question.
reader.google.com does a good job of adding RSS feeds to your browser friendly iPhone.
So now you can read many news feed on your iPhone.
Adblock is an optional plug-in feature for Firefox users who don’t want to see online ads. However, because of that technology websites may lose advertising revenue. Yahoo! Mail seems to have figured out a way to defeat Adblock. I noticed that lately whenever I want to send an email in Y! Mail, it waits until the large ad unit is loaded before it finalizes the delivery of the mail. If for some reason the ads is not successfully loaded, you’ll get an error message that your mail has not been delivered.
This tactic is similar to other advertising websites where an intermediate advertising step must be completed before the process user is engaged in can continue. For example you must view a short video ad clip before the online streaming TV show can move on to the next segment; or before your search results can display, you must click or skip a page dedicated to advertising. While slower and annoying to some users, this tactic proved to be very effective in advertising as for that moment the ad gets people’s attention like a car crash right in front of your eyes.
Once again, Internet proves nothing is really for free. Well, for now Wikipedia and Craigslist still are, but for how long.
This blog has gone hiatus for a while. I lost and regained the domain name in the process. After some headaches and trial and errors with two domain registrars, I finally got the domain back.
I tried to use superscript/subscript in my Powerpoint presentation with Powerpoint 2007 - you need that often for any technical presentations. The keyboard shortcut for superscript(Ctrl+Shift+=) and subscript(Ctrl+=) still work, however pressing the shortcut key combo again doesn’t cancel the super/subscript as they do in Word 2000, 2003 or any older versions.
This is deeply inconvenient as all subsequent lines of typing all turned into subscript until you reformat them with slow menu-driven commands. Searching Microsoft help leads me to the training on “Ribbon” - the new name Microsoft dreamed up for very (in)flexible toolbars.
The problem becomes worse here. Microsoft stated clearly upfront in FAQ, the first thing you couldn’t do is customizing those ribbons like adding, removing or rearranging buttons. So you are stuck with what Microsoft thinks you should use. Superscript/subscript buttons are only available in Word 2007, not in the same ribbon in Powerpoint. And there’s no way to add them in place of the Bold/Italic/Underline (which I can live without since Ctrl+B/I/U easily takes care those) buttons for example.
So to recap,
So, why is this a better UI? It feels like the Republicans are running Microsoft these days.
Hey I just got a new shiny aluminum iMac 24inch. Now my desk has become the picture of Apple commercial: space-age quality aluminum/glass iMac with no extra box, almost no wire next to the PC with a dozen wire hanging out from the back of the ugly black box to underneath the monitor. In fact, the entire iMac looks thinner than the 24 inch Dell monitor.
Well, you pay a high price for such beauty, unless you know a few tricks. For example, the base system is actually priced very competitively against similarly equipped PC systems. However, Apple charge a huge premium for any upgrade especially memory upgrade. For example to go from 1GB to 2GB costs $150 extra and to 4GB costs an additional $850. I bought a 2GB memory stick and put it in the bottom of the iMac. The whole process takes less than 2 minutes:
1. Disconnect iMac (3 wires) - 10 seconds;
2. Flip it around on my bed - 10 seconds,
3. Unscrew the bottom panel with one screw (last year’s iMac has 2 screws) - 15 seconds;
4. Put in the memory stick next to the original 1GB stick - 15 seconds;
5. Put everything back in and reconnect - 25 seconds;
Boot it up, it shows 3GB of memory, very happy. The total cost: $75.
DIY not only is satisfying, it also saves money.
ThinkSecret