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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.

An update to my music problems

I mentioned that after I upgraded to QuickTime 7.5 the music cannot be played correctly both by QuickTime and iTunes. Turns out it is logical that they couldn’t play these files—these MP3 music files are corrupted. I don’t know why they go corrupt as over the last few days I have been testing some programs, many of them music related. I don’t know which one of them is the culprit. It could be the QuickTime update itself, the RealPlayer 11 that I installed recently or some Windows music converter software that I run in VMware.

After I restored the music from the back up (not through Time Machine, but rsync), everything seems fine now.

Apple’s keynote and the consumers

Every now and then someone will say that the keynote from Apple’s WWDC is boring. There is no doubt that expectations are high towards any keynote speech of Apple—Steve Jobs is an excellent speaker and his reality distortion field transforms even the most simplest feature to become state-of-the-art innovations. Too high the expectations can lead to disappointment, especially for consumers viewing the WWDC keynotes. The target audience for WWDC keynotes is clearly the developers, and lay-persons might not feel interested in, if not bored by, the content.

Consumers generally like to hear key points with a high WOW factor—iPhone with 3G+GPS capabilities or thin MacBook Air with MultiTouch trackpad—which are also the points which the consumers can understand and talk about. They are happy to hear this and they expect to hear these things in any Apple’s keynote. On the other hand the consumers won’t understand a bit of “Oh! Apple’s announced the Push Notifications Service!” Even if the keynote is all about these innovative technical details, consumers won’t feel interested in any way. The consumer is ignorant (which is a bliss) of the technical innovations that will benefit them in the long run. This is why the WWDC keynote is often “boring”, but in fact, they just lack the WOW factors.

Of course, Apple wants more hype and rumours before the keynotes to generate higher expectations and attention to their keynotes. In fact, they are believed to intentionally leak (fake) product features. The rumour mills are, well, okay at expecting what will be announced next. But they aren’t necessarily correct. There are numerous times do they predict that the (then) Apple phone would be announced but these rumours turned out to be false. And Apple sometimes release something entirely new without the rumour mills saying a word about it before the announcement.

To me, watching the WWDC keynote is like watching a football match (some friends may point out that I never watch football matches, but anyway I’m just making an analogy here). I watch it because I want to know how Apple announces their new products, not what they will announce. If I only want to know the results I could simply skip the keynote and read the news afterwards.

People are always anticipating new gadgets. But how about the software? I believe that good software is a large contributing factor to Apple’s success, though the general public seem to direct their attention to somewhere else. This is why I like to ask people why they buy an Apple product—it seems pretty shallow to me if “being cool” is the only reason. I like Apple because I like their way of working with computers, and this is software related.

Apple: Hong Kong is the New Territories

Source: Apple WWDC Keynote 2008 video.

Problems with QuickTime 7.5

Since yesterday Apple started pushing a new update to QuickTime which bumps the version number to 7.5. Though there seems to be issues with this release that makes MP3 music to be played incorrectly. iTunes won’t even play some MP3 music (iTunes uses QuickTime to play media files, it seems). So I advise people to skip this release and wait for another update.

It’s amazing

When I thought I have gave up, something amazing just happened—the connection went back to normal. Absolutely no problem with 0% packet loss.

In the mean time I watched When Harry met Sally, and I love it.

豈有此理！

今時今日仍用電話線做寬頻。

本來問題不大，但今日的上網速度比正常慢很多，不穩定的情況由今早黃雨開始直至下午仍未好轉，嚴重時資料流失率超過 60%。

每年總有一次半次因為天氣而影響上網，要打電話到網上行的熱線派員維修，上年雨季甚至有一部電腦和解碼器在雷雨天後報銷。

我家的電話線是掛在電話線桿上的，十分兒戲。上網服務由出問題，是不是要考慮轉用別的服務？不過家住村屋，選擇甚少，較合適的服務就是數碼通流動寬頻，連同所有不合理收費要 $408／月，又好像太貴了，而且不可以用點對點檔案共享。

更新：我決定放棄垂死掙扎，是日休息。

四川地震

關於四川地震，我沒寫個一字，我一向認為無到好過遲到，因此不打算寫些甚麼，不過我從其他網誌引述下閱讀了一些報導或文章，或可用以代表自己的想法。

梁文道著《浩劫中見希望　傷痛裏有慈悲》

「然後，我看見了我心愛的成都，以百萬計的市民露宿街頭，令人神傷。可是我要說，這次災劫中最叫人感動的還不是雖然負傷流血卻仍趕赴災區的士兵武警，甚至也不是親臨前線的溫家寶總理，而是這些可愛的成都人。這麼大的一座城市，不只沒有發生災後常見的趁火打劫，更沒有商舖乘機抬價，幾百萬人就這樣秩序井然地守在街頭，照樣過自己的日子。有人譴責部分市民在這當頭仍不忘露天打麻將是幸災樂禍。我卻想起伊朗導演基阿魯斯達米在《春風吹又生》中那最動人的一幕﹕強烈的地震摧毁了無數人的家園，但那些災民在野地上架搭帳篷時仍不忘豎好天線，因為世界盃就快開鑼了，逃難固然要緊，但並不表示世界盃就不重要了！這不只是苦中作樂，這更是人在浩劫中奪回自己尊嚴的努力。天災可以帶走我們的財產、親人以及生命，但不一定帶得走人之為人的起碼生趣。」

明報《紅會行政籌款支出比例最低》二零零八年五月二十日

「社會服務聯會業務總監蔡劍華表示，慈善機構均有不同理念、服務對象、宗教背景、運作方式，市民捐款前應先了解它們的工作重點及財務，然後選擇個人最認同的作出捐獻。『成熟的捐款不是即興、不是在街頭放低 100 元便了事。』」

我（至）系音樂

Nokia 最近推出的新廣告，以手機聽音樂作主題，雖然不太喜歡，甚至認為有點恐佈，但我頗喜歡那口號——「我系音樂」，因為它可以有兩個意思。

誰不知 Sony Ericsson 推出另一系列的廣告「我至系音樂」，明顯衝著 Nokia 而來，敏銳的觸角和快速的回應確值得一讚，可惜那個「系」字不搭，但我又想不出更好的點子。

武倉頡碼

唔怪得我打極都打唔到呢個字。

呆咗。

係咪有啲似曾相識嘅感覺呢？

來自：應該是世界上最多人聽過的旋律

參考：Wikipedia: Gran Vals