M.Y. Lessons Learnt

Yesterday, Google released some themes for their Gmail platform … in fact, 30 new themes. Many of them are simply new color schemes but some include beautiful backgrounds. It really spices up my “email world”. I picked the “Mountains” theme as my default Gmail theme for now, but I have to admit the “Terminal” theme is really really cool for old dogs like me. 

It reminds me the good old days back in 1990s when the Pine (Program for Internet News & Email) from University of Washington was my favorite Internet tool.

Try it out !!

Something never imagine before, play Ocarina with your iPhone …

Tap on the globe icon and you will see and hear other Ocarina players throughout the world !!

Can your phone do that ? Yes, we can.

There are non-stop news on TV about the historic U.S. presidential win by Barack Obama. And I am still figuring out how to make my Sony Vaio and the new MacBook work hand-in-hand. After days of evaluation, I decided to buy the VMware Fusion, installed the aged XP, and start all over.

So, while the election offices in U.S.A were counting votes, I was checking the outdated VMware installation guide (even though it was downloaded fresh from their web site), installing, testing, failing, reinstalling, twisting etc. etc. I finally made it work … it feels good … Yes we can. Following is a screen shot of the Windows XP running within the MacBook OSX, via VMware.

I think most, if not all, computer geeks’ dream personal computer is one with an apple logo stamps on it … they may use a Windows PC at work, on the road or at home but in their dream they want to buy an Apple computer. Windows PCs are good machines actually, but they just don’t have the style, personality and cult. 

I am the same as any other geeks except the fact that I bought mine 26 years late. Because somehow, 26 years ago, I bought myself the Commodore 64 insteal of the Apple II / III. Anyway, no matter it’s a Windows PC or Apple MacBook, I still have the same question - why is it so difficult to make these all work together ?

A spaceman came travelling on his ship from afar,
‘Twas light years of time since his mission did start,
And over a city he halted his craft,
And it hung in the sky like a star, just like a star…

He followed a light and came down to a bank,
Where an old man and housewife were yelling to a staff,
A bright light of silver shone round their heads,
And they had the faces of a victim, and they were afraid…

Then the stranger spoke, he said “Do not fear,
I come from a planet a long way from here,
And I bring a message for mankind to hear,”
And suddenly the sweetest music filled the air…

“Sell, sell, sell … stop dreaming … back to work, back to what you’re best at …”

It’s really not easy.

May be I have not spent enough time in Beijing, or I simply didn’t know where to look for. It’s not that easy to find the old Beijing, in the post-Olympics days. But still there are lots of places that I wished I could spend more time and took more pictures. What I managed to do was to keep taking photos, and selected some to process it with Virtual Photographer plug-in … and here is my old Beijing.

Click the picture to jump to the gallery in Facebook, and hope you like it.

To prepare for the 2008 Olympics, Beijing has undergone some massive changes. Therefore, even though it’s not my first visit to Beijing but the modern Beijing is still very new to me. 

What surpised and touched me most about the city was not the high-tech buildings, excellent highways, impressive Olympics games venues, and renovated tourist spots; but instead, it was how I felt about the people there - they are confident, happy, proud of themselves and their motherland. In addition, I can tell they are very determined to build a better country for their future and next generation. Isn’t it one of the reasons why we wanted to host the Olympic games ?

Click the photo to see some more Beijing photos, hosted in Facebook.

As blogged in one previous post, I was one of the 50 winners of the Bring Back That Brand New Blogging Event. To enter the contest, I submitted a screen shot of my first blog post back in 2002 and the following winning line was selected by the organizer - “I kinda believe that web blog is the future”. The organizer also compiled those 50 winning lines in a set of presentation slides titled “This is the story of why we blog…”.

Following is my part in the set:

Check out the whole set here in an interactive fashion.

17th Floor - the Smokeless floor.

Today the China astronauts retuned to earth safely and completed their 3-days space-walk mission. I think no matter how you see China, we have to agree they did a great job in year 2008 so far. And no doubt there are also a lot of problems along the way, but seriously, they are improving - in a pace that no other countries in the world can ever dream of.

No doubt the Government needs to find ways to produce better goods, and quality food. And the Government needs to help the poor and unfortunately people.

Give China some time, and give China a chance. Go, China, Go …