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山頂

2007-04-29T06:12:00Z

星期五食完飯後就去左山頂。

由紅隧出發，用右線出隧道(左線絧纙灣及北角，中線金鐘及中環，右線香港仔及跑馬地），沿香港仔方向行駛，上橋後繼續中線，第二個落橋位（跑馬地）落橋，靠右。斜右前會見到 Metropolitan Hotel。右轉，keep 左，第一個路口轉左，就到司徒拔道。司徒拔道往山頂很容易，沿路有充足指示。

到後見到山頂廣場 $40/hour 即刻標冷汗，行返轉頭原來有錶位。 $2/30mins，兩個鐘，真係夫復何求（有冇用錯？！）。當日係星期五晚上十點，仲有幾個錶位，錶位無可以泊錶位前後空位，當日無人食牛肉乾。由錶位返山頂廣場五分鐘腳程。

凌霄閣頂樓唔駛錢可以入，必到！

沿原路返到跑馬地，轉到皇后大道東，如想行紅隧（西隧則應由馬已仙峽道落中環），記住行中間！否則不能上返堅拿道天橋入紅隧。我就係中招，去到堅拿到西先上到橋，為時已晚。所以去左西隧，貴左 $20 !

之後，由中環去到天水圍，經西隧及大欖隧道，全需 m+10km 行駛…只係半粒鐘！ :)

記住有腳架就帶腳架，同埋天氣好先上去。帶多件 jacket 比D小姐們。

路線圖

火炭津津大排檔

2007-04-05T15:33:00Z

從今天開始加一個新section，記底所有我揸車去過既地方，同大家分亨一些揸車既好去處，連埋路線圖，等大家唔駛搵地圖。今次去左沙田火炭津津大排檔！

今日公眾假期我七半十五分到，泊車搵到位（因為去錯車場..去左一個無得免費泊車既場-__-!)。搵位食飯亦易。但食到八點左右開始多人。伙記聲稱食滿＄１６０送一個鐘泊車，只限私人場，千奇唔好手快快入左果個工廠大廈車場（＄１１／小時）。四個人食左＄２９０，Ｄ小菜勁正。雞粥同乳鴿最出名。

as this driving section is specific to Hong Kong only.. so no english translation is available… but you can still check the google map and see the route! this time i will introduce a place where you can taste some really good chicken congee!

路線圖

Google map arrives Hong Kong

2007-02-20T10:11:00Z

OMG! Just tried to play around with google map and discover that Google map has actually arrived Hong Kong!

However searching is not working yet, I tried typing in some names but no good. I believe when the search works.. there should be a bunch of interesting mesh-ups appear!

how not to pronounce "skype"

2006-12-19T16:08:00Z

according to skype official faq

”Skype rhymes with ripe and type.”

Not “sky-pee”.

Computer Science

2006-10-31T17:26:00Z

I wish people would respect computer science more.

I wish people would call me a “IT people” less. I studied computer science and what I know are more than simply information technology. I know many technologies with give neither you nor me any information.

Computer science is not something that you could understand just by working in so-called “IT industry” for over 10 years. Computer science is not something you could bluff. Computer science is not something you could handle just by buying few C# or Java books from Amazon or Golden Arcade Center.

Computer science requires training. Training not necessarily be given in universities or schools. Many 1337 in the field do not possess a degree in computer science. However, the amount of time they spent on coding is more than many many computer science graduates. Training in computer science are carried out in terms of either coding, or mathematics.

Computer science requires effort, time, hardworking. Our culture based on credits, kudos and appreciation.

Computer science people do coding most of the time, but, coding is not all we could do. Some of them paints, some of them dance, some of them sleep (or do not sleep). We’re technical not because we could only be technical. We’re technical because we like and we want to be.

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art. - Will Durant

Computer science is art. Computer science is philosophy. What is thinking? Can computer “think”? It falls into the area of Computer Science.

Computer science deserves respect from everybody.

愛屋及烏

2006-10-22T15:51:00Z

昨天和細妹行經LCX，看到幾張Monchhichis 的 poster。以下係我o地當時o既對話。

妹：「你鐘意呢隻o野嘛？」

我：「如果我鐘意既女仔鐘意，可能我會鐘意o既。」

妹：「乜你咁無主見o家。」

我：「呢D叫愛屋及烏嘛，係你教我呢四隻字既。不過，睇下D 咩啦，電腦牌子果D我咪唔會跟佢囉。」

妹：「咁你鐘意o既女仔，佢鐘意另一個男仔，你會鐘意個男仔嗎？」

我無言以對。-___-

Versioning

2006-10-07T12:55:00Z

Since computers become part of our life, versioning numbers invade everything around us. People start to put version number to most of the things. The 1st girlfriend is now known as girlfriend 1.0 (aka GFv1). Then she improves (less bitchy, less shopping, more care), become GFv1.1.

The beauty of versioning is that we could refer all changes in the history. “The 1.5 of you doesn’t make me feel good, could you please rollback to 1.4 of you?” Simple, clear and easy. Just say the numbers out and people will understand what you’re trying to say instantly.

The common mistake people makes is they make the next version number of 0.9 as 1.0. This is totally wrong. The ”.” in a version number is merely a separator, not a decimal point. You don’t change the major number (notes: <major number>.<minor number>) unless there is really a big change, or you swapped in something entirely new. As your girlfriend improves, from 1.0 to 1.1, 1.1 to 1.2 so on so forth, she won’t one day become girlfriend 2.0 because she is still the she. After GF 1.9 she will be named as GF 1.10, not GF 2.0.

The funny thing is that in software world, we rarely see version larger than 10. Maybe number bigger than 10 is pretty hard to memorize and give people a impression of old. Microsoft office stop marketing with version numbers since v7.0.

So when you’re having BF 10.0, GF 12.0, or even Wife v14.1, it’s time for you to consider changing the version number system, putting in something more meaningful like Boyfriend XP (eX-Playmate), Girlfriend 2006(be sure not to change her name to Girlfriend 2007 unless you have an entirely new girlfriend) and Wife 1.1 Tiger.

how to blame users

2006-09-19T17:50:00Z

Websites are not 100% available all the time. No web developer will deny this. But users (including other programmers, lik e me) expect some services should be available all the time. Otherwise, we blame the programmer.

To make the world a fair place, software developers devised a way to blame back the user: Service Status checker (some people call it heartbeat page).

Whenever you had problem with a piece of software (i.e. can’t login to MSN), they provide you a link to check the system status. When you see something like: “All systems are stable and running”. Ouch! What does it mean? It means “it’s your fault, not ours, idiot!”

What a amazing feature! So, I’ve spent some time creating a tiny page to report application status. Feel free to download and modify it to fit the look-and-feel of your application.

<html>
<body>
<div class="status"><img src="okay.gif"> All systems are stable 
and running.</div>
</body>
</html>

Copy and paste the above code into a page (e.g. status.php), this code should work on virtually all platform (PHP, ASPX, ASP, JSP) and application of any kind.

Feel free to comment on my status reporting snippet.

new toys

2006-09-12T13:29:00Z

my new toys this month, two of them!

等

2006-08-22T01:33:00Z

什麼是等待？

等，咪就係等囉。

我很喜歡英英字典，它令我的思考能力高了很多。因為英英字典裡的解釋，不是純粹不同語言的轉換，而是在同一語言上，用另一堆文字去解釋一個字。聽下去好像好像好容易，但對於一些意義簡單得不可再簡單的詞語，要用另一堆文字去形容，就好像要去解釋 1 + 1 = 2 一樣，很難深。

說回正題，什麼是等？Collins Cobuild 有這樣的解釋： When you wait for something or someone, you spend some time doing very little, because you cannot act until that thing happens or that person arrive.

曾在清晨接過一個電話，友人哭著對我說：「我諗我永遠都等不到佢（她的前男友）啦。」矇矇矓矓的安慰了兩句，我就說：「等不到一個人只有兩個可能，一係佢永遠都不回來，即是”死左”。一係你死。」等人，從來沒有「等不到」這個情況，有的都只是都是「放棄等待」這個結局。只要一日這件事或這個人出現既可能性還存在，一日都還有等到既可能性。

跟著她說:「而家好似乜都做唔到咁，咁仲應唔應該等落去？」等，就好像字典裡說的一樣，你是沒有什麼可以做。如果你可以做些什麼去駒使呢件事或者呢個人既出現，咁就唔叫等。正正就是因為你什麼都唔可以做，所以就出現了「等」呢個情況出現。

要令一個人停止去等你，無論你說什麼都無用。最終要靠的，還是要那個人「自動棄權」。

感情上，等人從不是一件輕易既事情。天天的想著心裡沒有你的一個他。每天為著一個無動於衷的人去付出。又有何用？沒有太多人會支持你，自己更要每天去尋找支持自己的理由。

等，就是你無論做什麼，都是未必有結果的一個過程。與其說是等，不如說只是心理上的騎牛搵馬。你會為一個可能不存在的機會而去放棄一個眼前的機會嗎？你可能會因為等一個人而放棄去尋找機會，但是機會不會因為你在等一個人而避開你。等，有時只是一個感情的避風港，好等自己心裡有個人去擠下所餘的空間。當有另一個 Mr/Ms Right 出現時，無論有幾風高浪急，都會勇往直前。真正會等待的人，真的會犧牲很多很多。有誰會做到？

Don't love what you work on

2006-08-09T02:01:00Z

Steve Job’s Stanford Commencement Speech is definitely one of the speeches which inspired me most. (Another one would be Steven Colbert’s speech at 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner)

“And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

I can’t agree more on this quote from Job’s speech. This is certainly the first step to be successful in the area you love. If you don’t love what you do, how could you put enough time on it? But many people shared a misconception (at least I’m one of them) on this, that is, what you do does not necessarily mean the thing you do for living.

Most of the time when I look back at my life, I cannot see that I have achieved any single thing that I love. I was invited to study Master degree; I outperform a dozen of students and got into CMU as an exchange student; I was generally regards as a competent computer science guy. But I can’t see any single thing (website, awards, etc) that is remarkable. What’s wrong with my life? I am too good on what I do for living.

When you’re good at something and that something is useful, you become popular. You will be invited to do a lot of amazing stuff. If you’re a responsible person and do feel hard to drop out of tasks you’re working on, you’re in a worse situation. Most of your time will be drained by all these tasks. I’ve try so hard on “injecting” my idea into my work. But some people just can’t understand what you’re trying to do and keep on twisting your idea into their ideas. Too bad.

“To love what you do” does not necessaily mean “To love what you work on”. Not many people could actually do what they really love for living. The right way is to find some job which paid enough to live your life, and do “what you love” outside the nine-to-six (yah, we work nine-to-six in Hong Kong!). Or, love to do something else, but not your work.

Please buy me this

2006-08-01T01:42:00Z

Or at least give me the money to order it myself.

Update: Optimus Mini Three is out!

It's hard to get over

2006-08-01T00:52:00Z

今晚和一位朋友食晚飯，講到大家的前度男／女友。

我說：「差不多一年，但係久唔久都仲諗起佢。太多野令我聯想到佢。見到空姐，又諗起佢。見到國泰飛機，又諗起佢。見到D高高地既女仔，又諗起佢。唉，我仲要住係青衣，地鐵站特別多國泰空姐。唉。。」

朋友即刻回應：「我咪仲慘。出街又諗起佢。打開個銀包又諗起佢。出糧又諗起佢。連買野都諗起佢。。」我問點解，佢話：「佢係匯豐做既 _! 」

好彩，我同佢個 ex 都唔係做百佳，惠康，同 7-11 .. 如果唔係,以後都唔駛去買野啦.

xanga hacking

2006-07-31T17:04:00Z

Ever wonder why you need to type in your username and password again when you try to change your “Look and Feel” in xanga?

As xanga stated in the head of that page, it’’s for enhanced security, especially against XSS.

In a simpler and less-technical terms, that means without that extra login, I could put a script(worm) in my xanga, which inserts the same script into your xanga when you view my xanga. So, when another person looks at your xanga, the injected script will further infects the next people who view your xanga.. so on so forth.. until when? until xanga engineer discover this and take action to stop it..

These worms could do things more than just propagate the infection. It could also do other stupid things like comments booming, helping you to write a silly entry in xanga etc. A smart dude hacked MySpace (something like friendster) using similar technique and successfully got 919,664 friend request in 5 hours.

What if I tell you now that your xanga is now having some scripts already installed? Don’‘t panic, scripts have its good side. I have a lot of freinds’’ xanga which have a hit-counter installed. Those hit counters usually require you to insert some text inside your xanga. Yeah, that’’s a script, but not a evil one.

Found interestings? Come and study computer science then.

Aardvark'd

2006-07-31T16:56:03Z

I finally had time to finish the Aardvark’‘d DVD.

This is a documentary about four interns working in Fog Creek Software, which cofounded by Joel Spolsky, on a project code-named “Project Aardvark”.

The whole process from kick-off meeting, development, usability testing, demo in expo and final launch was all recored in this roughly one and a half hour DVD. Problems like dealing with different persons, bugs, socialize were faced by all these interns. Interns were interviewed on expressing their own ideas on software development, as well as personal adoptation to new working environment.

What interests me was the appearance of Paul Graham in the show. In the interview, Paul briefly expressed his view on hackers and ideas on start-ups. He also talked about Y-combinator, the startup incubator which offer funding to very-early startups.

In Hong Kong, I could hardly see any software(I don’‘t really like the term “IT”) internship that could attracts really great geeks’’ resume like Project Aardvark did. The first reason is probably there is still don’‘t exist a tech-firm which is good or wide-known enough to attract all good resumes. The second reason is, international tech-giants don’‘t usually have tech-centric position in HK, most they offer are sales positions. Contests or awards are probably remained opportunities to dig or train good hackers in HK.

The most popular software-related contest/awards in HK is probably the HSBC Young IT Entrepreneur Awards. This program attracts hundreds of new ideas every year. The werid thing is, seems students in Hong Kong are not so interested in studying computer science, so where were all these ideas came from? Also, from what I heard, reports and presentations totally outweighted technology factors in the judging process. Plus, throughout the years, I can’‘t see there is any real product coming to market from this awards. So, I really doubt how many of the participants are real geeks that could really make things.

Most founders of highly successfuly software companies are really good hackers. They all definitely have some “presentation” technique to ask for seeding fund from CVs, but they are all able to hack tough problems and make things that really work.

And the fact shows us that, in the world of software or so-called “IT”, hacking and working out something solid is more important than proposal and presentations which required by most IT awards/contest in the territory. Just as a statement from the frontpage of Y-combinator,

We care more about how smart you are than how old you are, and more about the quality of your idea than whether you have a formal business plan.