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Ads desperately in need of attention

At mingpaonews.com, Ads are desperately in need of attention. In the middle we have the usual flying ad of Lufthansa, blocking the view of my latest headlines in a periodic basis. Then we have another CX ad that features a credit card image actually flying to the computer cursor, exactly underneath it, hence preventing clicking of any actual content. In fact, if you use browsers other than IE, you cannot click any content at all because the flash animation is overlapping on the HTML content.

I’m forced to conclude: 1. Ads are more important than content now at Ming Pao news, with the news actually being driven to the background; 2. Airlines like flying ads.

係咪未瞓醒？

舉步維艱

無線新聞派者往尖沙咀採訪，了解風神襲港時的風勢，除了拍攝了記者和巿民在街上的狼狽，也有白鴿舉步維艱的情況。（無線《午間新聞》約 1 分 05 秒。）

風球除下後香港人要趕着上班，紅隧巴士站排長龍，巿民投訴天文台太早太遲除下風球，這些畫面我們都熟識，只是久違了。

李氏力場、颱風。

To be focused on the Mac

Almost every Mac OS X application has these two options under the application menu: “Hide Others” and “Show All”. I never have a good reason to use these, but now, I know what they are for. I figured when I watched Scott Forstall demonstrated Interface Builder for iPhone in the WWDC keynote video—he hide all windows from other applications to make the desktop uncluttered.

One of the inconvenience of using Mac OS X to me is that the desktop seems always cluttered by all the opening windows. In Windows, a window can be made maximised to make it occupy the entire screen and it is then locked in place. This thing doesn’t exist in Mac OS X. Mac just works this way. Some even go so far to proclaim that Mac users are more likely to multi-task. I have always believed that there is no native solution to this, as people have written many applications to free user from distractions (none of them is entirely for this purpose).

It turns out that when you want to work inside a single application, just click the “Hide Others” option, and click “Show All” to go back. There is a hack to make the Dock dims hidden applications’ icon.

Now life now goes on as usual, till another 364 days.

(Im)patiently waiting.

本網誌三週年誌慶

多謝各朋友的祝賀。我對未來沒有甚麼計劃，只希望除咗找到一個真命天子以外，一切都不要變。

呀，務求各位可以找我吃飯，我空閒得很，而且要多啲見人。

Text kerning in Firefox 3.0

I think this article covers some aspect of typography that people is not well aware of... especially if you are not sensitive to pixel level differences.

Just scroll to “Kerning”, Firefox is clearly better in that particular comparison.

I can finally see your status (and you can see mine too)

Holy Crap! I have finally waited the shit out of me long enough to see others’ status messages on MSN and I can have the whole world (well, my contacts) see my status too! With Adium, I can now forget that there existed something called “Microsoft Messenger” which has a hideous, non-Mac interface.

The unofficial Adium build I am running now has these for me to play with:

• Contacts Search
• IM’ing to Facebook contacts
• Setting my status message and seeing others’ status messages
• Sending and receiving offline messages
• Have a message box pops up before a buddy sends the first message

All Mac users rejoice! But maybe a little bit too early though... the build is unofficial and unstable and whatever—read and understand everything before you start testing. I warn you: all data can get wiped clean by this.

Coffee Thinking

I originally planned to go to see a movie in Broadway Cinematheque when I was taking the trains from the University station, but I soon realised that I would certainly have missed the opening by then. So I threw away the whole idea and alighted at Shatin and headed back home.

At a Starbucks enroute, I saw a young woman heading my way when I was waiting for my decaf iced tall latte. The woman’s clothing reminded me that it is hot sunny summer despite it was cold and rainy outside. The way she walked to me was what I hate the most. I’m not particularly sure why girls have to walk like that as if they were models in the Shiseido commercial, besides the idea that they are trying to induce male hormones. Well... after all it is pointless—she wouldn’t be able to induce any sex hormones anyway. And I’m speaking this on behalf of the general male population.

Luckily she was approaching her companion behind me. Then it kept me thinking while I was still waiting for my cup: if she genuinely enjoys walking like this way it wouldn’t be a problem. I walked awkwardly, sometimes on purpose. However I think she wasn’t genuinely enjoying it by the look of it.