M.Y. Lessons Learnt

I saw the angel …

admin — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:45:01 +0000

Had a good chat with some friends the other day about types of boss in our work life. There was a theory that there are two types of boss - one is a control freak who keep yelling to their staff, and one is with mentor style that helps the staff to develop themselves.

I wonder what type of boss I am, but I am a firm believer of the quote from sculptor Michelangelo:

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

11 billion dollars’ hope

admin — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:52:51 +0000

All a sudden the story of one million people is no longer trendy in our city, instead people keep arguing whether they shall get their cut from the recent 11 billion dollar plan to combat inflation. Seriously, can this plan really help those in need ?

SSP old lady

ssp rental advertisement

Wordpress 2.6

admin — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:29:19 +0000

Just couple of hours ago Wordpress released the latest version 2.6, and what you seeing now is the upgraded version !! Yes, I cannot stand the previous two versions because of the slow load time. And I am pleased to tell you all that this version is FAST, with a lot of new features as well.

Good stuff !!

Google Lively

admin — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:22:20 +0000

Other than the Apple iPhone 3G, the launch of Google Lively is indeed one of the hottest news this week. So just three days after the launch of the beta version, how is it doing ? Here are some good and bad things I found so far.

I managed to download the Lively plug-in, installed it, set up my avatar, designed my first “room” and got hanging around the room within an hour. It’s better than my Secondlife experience on this.
The plug-in runs pretty fast in Firefox 3.0 and Internet Explorer 7, and feels faster than Secondlife.
I can set up “gadgets” easily to feed my own photos and a video feed from Youtube.
You can embed the room into your own website, blog or Facebook account (yet to be tested, but the application is here).
The chat messages and avatar expressions appear in rooms you visiting almost instantly.
I can easily embedded to my Wordpress blog.

Here is a screen shot of the room I created - 80 Days Cafe.

As you can see, I added …

An avatar with new hairstyle, t-shirt and jean …
Two red colored sofas, a coffee table, a standing lamp and one potted plant.
A wall mounted picture frame that gets a feed from my photo album and a click to the picture will link to a website selling my photo album (neat !!)
A LCD TV on top of a bench, with a feed from a selected video (Wicked Game guitar solo by Greg Reiter) from YouTube (neat neat !!). The sound is great as well …

Check out the problems and the Google Lively trailer after the jump …

And the problems I encountered are …

Whenever I click the objects (avatar or furniture), a dialogue box pop up to let me edit the properties. However, the dialogue box keep “flashing” and I have to drag the box outside the room estate to stop the flashing. Interestingly, it happens only on my XP computer, but works perfectly in a Vista computer.
One of my rooms disappeared after login, but reappeared later on. I suspected it is caused by the fact that I ran Lively sometimes in Firefox, and sometimes in IE.
I don’t think there is enough items to dress up the avatar and not enough styles of furnitures. However, I believe the situation will improve later.
There was one time the avatar “locked in” with other objects in the room, I have to use another view (toggles in the upper left corner of the room) and move the avatar away from the object.
There is no way to stop, adjust the volume, and mute the video feed in the LCD TV gadget.
There is no way to resize the photo frame gadget, and in fact other furnitures as well.
[Update] Google disabled the gadget function …

All in all, not bad for a beta version. And just in case you wanna know more about the application, here is a video trailer …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YbwfOucET8

Hold on

admin — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 03:53:25 +0000

I think it will be called the greatest final ever in history of Wimbledon, in fact it may be one of the greatest final of any sports. Imagine you’re still in the Centre Court after 4 hours of fighting, I think in your mind there would be only a few voices … like “Focus, focus, focus” and “Hold on”.

You know what, the last thing any players will see before they enter the Centre Court is an inscription above the entryway:

If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same

These two lines are extracted from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If”; but in fact, the other few verses of the same poem pretty much described the situation of the final:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”

Next Idol

admin — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:50:12 +0000

Zheng Jie is a real fighter and we all enjoyed very much her playing in Wimbledon 2008. Only 25 years old, she is brave, kind, working hard, and humble. I hope all Chinese youngsters can learn all these characters from the new idol. Best wishes to Zheng Jie.

It is now for sale

admin — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:10:45 +0000

The first copy of the photo book is good looking and beautifully printed, so I think it is time to make it public and available for sale online in Blurb.com. One can pick up a copy of the book with soft cover, hardcover with or without dust jacket.

Frankly, I don’t expect to sell any, but the experience in learning how to publish a book on demand is great.

“Twitter is over capacity”

admin — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:11:28 +0000

I think most of us, Twitter users, are fed up with Twitter’s performance and reliability … but at least they show a good graphic with the error message. Is that the ROR performance issue again, or the Database, or just the architecture ?

Photos behind the news

admin — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:02:47 +0000

Even after 5 weeks and countless hours of video footages, the photos of the tragedy are still very shocking. A photo exhibition that not to be missed … but only last to 22nd June in APM shopping mall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWQ51Ux1LVI

My first photo book

admin — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:07:58 +0000

This beauty finally arrived from the mail and it looks absolutely gorgeous. It took altogether 4 weeks to finish and here are the details:

Day 01 - download the free software BookSmart from Blurb.com
Day 02 - starts the “design” of the book … and it lasts 15 days, as I needed to select the photos, add some, remove some; and searched the information of the place thru the web. It took a long time !!
Day 15 - upload the finished book to the web site and place order
Day 28 - it’s here !!