May 10th, 2009
Yahoo! mail has been posting this ad on the left side for weeks:
Go to the website, you’ll find it is an auto renewing monthly cell phone service of $9.99/month – in the small prints. But most people who don’t read small prints will be scammed into signing this up by providing their cell phone number in order to read the so called “IQ test results”.
As for the IQ test itself, it is 10 questions of the “who wants to be a millionare” sort, at the “$250 dollar” question range. Again, the small prints tell you that the test has no scientific base whatsoever. Basically, whoever naive enough to sign up for the IQ results by giving away their cell phone number should have their real IQ checked.
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April 23rd, 2009
The Gmail preview widget has been broken on Yahoo! page for a few days now. I’m sure it is Google who has caused this in order to wrestle more users to its own iGoogle platform. The spot where Gmail inbox preview is now shows a “coming soon” error message from Yahoo, quite sad.
On the other hand, entrepreneurial people never cease to capitalize on business opportunities on anything. If you search for Gmail module in Yahoo, one of the two things come up is cunningly named “Gmail Inbox”. It is actually someone’s blog.
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April 12th, 2009
What a great finish of this year’s Masters.
There’s the great charge by Phil and Tiger. Phil’s brilliant front-nine of 30. Phil’s mental errors and misputts at the back-nine that cost him again another chance. Phil and Tiger trading punches at the back nine. Then there’s the 3-man playoff. And Kenny Perry’s costly collapse at the end of regulation and playoff. Kenny deserves to win the way he played. I’m sure most people felt for him. It just shows how great a pressure major championship can put on people in a sport where nerves play such a big part.
But I love seeing Angel Cabrera’s win. He doesn’t come from a “blue-blood” background. He started by caddying for rich people. He is nice and always smiles. He is very casual and plays fast on the course. He used to smoke and said that smoking calms him on the golf course. He quit smoking after he won the US Open in Oakmont in 2007. He grinds out every shot towards the end to survive and win. What a way to win in playoffs – he hit into trees in the 1st playoff hole and saw his second shot bouncing off a tree trunk to go on to survive.
Maybe by winning his second major, he will hire someone to brush up his English and play more often in US. I’d love to see that.
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April 9th, 2009
Really? The new 24inch is 30% larger?
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April 9th, 2009
Turbo Tax has always been doing a great job of minimizing the pain of filing for tax. But it is a pain nonetheless. And this year Turbo Tax has started more nagging about upgrading to premium version whenever I navigate to the stock/investment section.
In places like California, most people have decent jobs will be subject to the pain and humiliation of AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax) again this month.
The outlook isn’t better either. If some of the president’s proposed changes to the tax code go through, tax burden will become even higher in high cost of living areas next year.
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February 25th, 2009
Tiger woods is back. No more Buick on his bag, but rather the “at&t” and blue globe logo. Will we see future iPhone commercials featuring the world #1 athlete? You betcha.
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February 25th, 2009
From PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, re leadership:
1. Do it now.
2. Communicate, communicate, communicate.
3. Seek consensus, but recognize when to sacrifice unanimity for decisiveness.
4. Remember that, as a leader of a team, you are also a member of that team.
5. Take what you do seriously, but not yourself.
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February 24th, 2009
Apple made the latest version a public beta today. It is quite sleek especially with the cover-flow history. It also is the first browser to pass the acidtest 3, I noticed – which means it truly conforms to known standards.
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January 27th, 2009
The moral of this story – find out the panel type before you buy that cheap LCD monitor, and avoid TN type at all cost.
I tried out a new 24-inch Dell LCD monitor at work: the model name is S2409W. For some reason I just don’t like it as my eyes hurt. So I switched back to my old 20-inch 2005FPW. While the 2005FPW is smaller in size, it is much more expensive at new than the S2409W. Other than that, nothing else provided by Dell would indicate there’s something wrong with the S2409W. But,
Now I know the reason, thanks to these two wiki pages:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_monitors;
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TFT_LCD;
The first page identifies the panel types of various Dell LCD monitors. The S2409W uses the TN type, while the 2005FPW is of the S-IPS type.
The second page explains the difference between these and other LCD panel types. Apparently the TN type is the cheapo type. It stands for Twisted Nematic. It has limited viewing angle and only 6bit true color resolution. Because of the latter reason, it uses a dithering method to simulate true 24bit color used by most modern UI. This dithering method apparently produces bothersome viewing experience to some, myself included. The S-IPS panels are much more expensive and have much better viewing experience. Dell calls these LCD products the Ultrasharp series.
While my lovely 24inch iMac uses the latest greatest of IPS – the H-IPS panel, the 20inch version is being sued for the cheapo TN type panel it uses. H-IPS is the next evolution of S-IPS. From my experience using it, I have no complaints whatsoever. If you want to see the true colors of your family picture, this is the best. In fact, I was pretty shocked to see how much worse my digital pictures looked on the LCD screen of my Dell Latitude laptop – particularly the color range is atrocious.
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January 7th, 2009
Just found out that I’ve always been a lucid dreamer – I knew that but didn’t know there’s a name for it. I always thought subconsciously that everyone does that and it’s not a big deal.
But aparently there’re groups and information about lucid dreaming and dream control. Internet is a great place to find any peculiar topics and like minded people.
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