Here we are on Qantas flight QF77 from Singapore to Hong Kong, about 45 minutes before landing.
The view tonight from our apartment. Tall buildings going up everywhere. Directly in front of us, a 40-story office building is going up and our "open" view will be no more. Also in front of us but further out toward the left, another massive building is coming up (green scaffolding and 2 giant cranes). We no longer see the distant mountain on the Kowloon side and we'll probably no longer see the fireworks on special occasions. Heck, by the time the buildings are complete, I hope we can see the sky. How sad. I only wish the Hong Kong government had planned to build shorter buildings near the harbor and taller buildings further back. That way more people from more buildings could enjoy the nice skyline from either side of the harbor. It's really just common sense. This recent development of new tall buildings at the edge of the harbor is certainly sad.
Early this evening we got back from an 8-day vacation in Singapore. Was fun and a bit hectic! Justin enjoyed all the attention from loads of relatives and friends. In particular, Auntie Kee, Auntie Choo, Auntie Lim, Auntie Phoebe, Cousin Hui Hui, and Grandma ("Ah Ma") just showered Justin with love! We've got lots of photos to share (to come!). While we had a super time there, it feels good to be back home. Just now we just got back from a quick and nice Chinese dinner at Steam and Stew Inn restaurant just down the street (well, 10-minute walk). Tomorrow, Gwen and I took the day off and the following day is a public holiday (China National Day) so we've got a few more days to relax before heading back to work on Wednesday! Well, we do have some errands to run (i.e. gotta take my Ericsson T68 to Mongkok for repair) so it won't be 2 totally leisure days. More to come...
The gorgeous evening scene of the ocean from "Curry on the Bay" Indian restaurant (6th floor) at Stanley Market. Panorama was created using 3 (poorly shot) photos and Canon's PhotoStitch (Mac) software (auto settings). Photos were taken on Saturday, September 14, 2002 at around 6:30pm.
Recently, I noticed the "spare tire" around my waist getting more inflated! So last night at around 9:30pm I popped down to our apartment's small gym and got on the treadmill. (Last time I was on the treadmill was about a year ago!) I started out at a speed setting of 7 and kept that up until around 15 minutes. I then bumped up the speed to 8 and then 9 till around 23 minutes and then slowed down to a brisk walk pace for two more minutes (25 minutes total). When I got off the treadmill I couldn't even tell that my legs were moving but I was moving forward! My legs were in "auto" mode and were quite numb. I was exhausted and dripping wet — just what I wanted. Of course, today my legs are totally aching, especially when walking down stairs.
Now let's see if I can keep this up at least 3 times a week. I've been struggling trying to eat less too... Gotta shrink that stomach!
After several days of stormy weather, constant rain, and flooding in some areas, the sun has finally come out and we've got blue skies again — yippee! Oh, and the haze that we had for weeks has cleared as well. Hope it stays this way!
Oh, I replaced a 128MB SO-DIMM with a 512MB one for a total of 768MBs of memory in my (company's) PowerBook G4/500. Cost: HK$1,100 (US$142). PowerBook is noticeably faster.
Now if I can only get Mac OS X versions of Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office! I actually have company approval to purchase Microsoft Office v. X so I'll hopefully be placing an order on Monday.
32 new photos in almost 5-and-a-half months album in the gallery section. Sorry, captions to come later (Gwen's job!).
TGIF! Gosh, it's Friday the 13th!
http://www.macintouch.com/mosxreader10.2pt13.html
Selecting/deleting single file in List view is problematic:
Let's say you want to delete a file (or folder) and you are in List view. You click the name of the file you want to delete and hit Command-Delete. File does not move to Trash because the filename field, not the file, is selected (filename is highlighted for renaming).
In Mac OS 9, if this happened, you'd simply click Command-Delete once more and the file would move to the Trash. In Jaguar, not so: Command-Delete (multiple times) does nothing if the filename is selected.
This is very frustrating because in List view it is actually much easier to click on a file's name than to click on the file's tiny icon — filenames are almost always bigger targets to point at than the icons.
I'd prefer that clicking on a filename select the file, not highlight the filename for renaming. Clicking a second time on the filename should then highlight the filename for renaming. I believe this is the behavior that most people — Mac OS 9, Windows, and Linux users — are used to and just works better.
Typhoon signal number 8 was hoisted at 2pm today, cutting short our work day. Caused by severe Tropical Storm Hagupit (what a name!). I left the office at around 3:30pm.
9/11 — a sad day today. Lots of coverage of commemoration ceremonies on TV. Am watching the ABC News special containing real coverage of the terrible event filmed by a French guy who was making a documentary on one of the NY fire stations. Very sad stuff.
http://www.macintouch.com/mosxreader10.2pt12.html
Carlton Hogan wrote in reply to my post:
But Derek Tom wrote in about his frustration over lack of a path backward display in panel view. I can't say whether this is the case in Jaguar, but in OS 10.1x, if you go to finder preferences, there are a number of new icons you can drag to the window bar, including a path pull down. Hope this helps.In reply to Carton's feedback, I'd like to thank him for his suggestion but clarify that the pop-down path menu is not what I was after. Here's what I said:
This is not the same as Jaguar's "Path" pop-down menu item (or Command-clicking a window title) — with that, you can't just type in a path you might know (e.g. /docs/work/jobs), you can only navigate backwards, and you can't copy any part of the path you're in.If there were some instructions that said to go to the following path and delete a few files there, wouldn't it be nice to be able to just copy the line of text, paste it into a field in a window toolbar, and hit enter to go directly there?
/Library/Application Support/Coco Doodle/Candy Dandy
This is just like pasting a URL into a Web browser's location/address field. It's much more efficient than double-clicking folders one level at a time, particularly when some of the folders have tons of files that make moving to the next level down very slow.
Likewise, if you were giving some instructions to a friend and wanted to tell him to go to a certain folder that was several levels deep, wouldn't it be nice to just copy out the path from a text field in a window toolbar and then paste that into your email to your friend?
With a pop-down menu you can't copy and paste paths and you can only navigate backwards. With a path field you can copy and paste paths and you can navigate both backwards and forwards.
Both Windows and Linux GUIs have this feature (in Windows it's the "Address Bar" and in Linux's Gnome it's the "Location Bar").
For the past 2 weeks or so Gwen's been swimming every day after work. I'm impressed! Now if I could only get off my lazy butt and keep up with her healthy new routine!
Kerman is an old friend whom I hadn't seen in like 5 years! He was a colleague at my very first job in Hong Kong, at a company called Quicksilver (no not the surfing/outdoors clothing company!). Well, he, his wife Cindy and nearly 5-year-old son "Tiga" came by for dinner tonight. With Pina helping to make fish stock, chop up vegetables, and wash the seafood (okay, Pina did do most of the work!), I cooked up some bouillabaisse (Italian seafood soup)! Turned out pretty well, I think. That said, it's pretty hard to mess up a soup made up of loads of seafood — fish, shrimp, clams, crab, and scallops — and a bunch of fresh vegetables and Italian herbs! Pina also made burritos, soy sauce chicken wings, sauteed mushrooms, and steamed baby lobsters (yes, Pina works hard and cooked up quite a storm!). Gwen also helped out with the cooking but mostly took care of our precious baby Justin. Oh, the baby lobsters were interesting. They were each around 3 inches long, sold live, and were quite inexpensive. I was thinking that they were just freshwater crayfish that resembled lobsters but after having tasted them, I was convinced that they were indeed baby lobsters. Taking lobsters that young can't be good unless they're somehow aqua-cultured. Okay, enough about food! Kerman's got a real nice family and another baby on the way. Little Tiga is handsome and well-behaved. I don't know why Kerman and I never kept in touch. Sad when I think about it but the main thing is we're still good friends and I hope to keep in touch with him and his family from now on. We had a good time tonight! Next time we'll visit them at their home in Tai Po.
Yes, unbelievable but true!... Here's what I submitted to the famous Macintouch site and thankfully it got included in their Mac OS X Reader Reports: Jaguar Part 10:
What drives me nuts is that with the new column view used in all Open/Save dialog boxes, I can't type the first few letters of a file I want to go to. There doesn't seem to be a way to select a specific column to work in. And even for experienced Mac users, seeing only 2 columns at a time and not knowing that you can scroll to the left is frustrating. At this point, I'm thinking Windows Explorer is more user-friendly. Apple needs to improve this.Also, why no path field in window toolbars? This would make navigation both down and up the directory structure more efficient. Most other GUIs have had this for ages - in Windows it's the "Address Bar" and in Linux's Gnome it's the "Location Bar". This is not the same as Jaguar's "Path" pop-down menu item (or Command-clicking a window title) — with that, you can't just type in a path you might know (e.g. /docs/work/jobs), you can only navigate backwards, and you can't copy any part of the path you're in.
I sure hope Apple is listening and does something about it. I know many others have complained about this same thing.
Check out 40 new photos in the justin at around 5 months album in our gallery.
This new video (progressive QuickTime, 915K) of Justin dozing off is pretty funny too!
On a note related to the one below about working with digital photos, I have stopped using Resize! X which I mentioned previously. The reason is that I discovered that files processed with Resize! X lose their EXIF information.
Here's an example of the EXIF info that gets lost:
File size: 78767 bytes
File date: 2002:09:02 03:04:41
Camera make: Canon
Camera model: Canon PowerShot G1
Date/Time: 2002:08:14 19:50:18
Resolution: 800 x 600
Flash used: Yes
Focal length: 7.0mm (35mm equivalent: 36mm)
CCD width: 7.06mm
Exposure time: 0.017 s (1/60)
Aperture: f/2.0
Focus dist.: 0.82m
Metering Mode: center weight
Jpeg process: Baseline
File Upload Date: 09-02-2002 03:04:41
Item Capture Date: 08-14-2002 19:50:18
Another reason is that I prefer to have sharpening applied to all downsampled photos and the author of Resize! X, Cedric de Jacquelot, politely informed me that he is not planning on adding any new features.
So what I do now is use a Photoshop Droplet that reduces the Image Size 39.0625% (with Constrain Proportions) and applies the Unsharp Mask filter (Amount=70%, Radius=1 pixel, Threshold=5). This scales my original 3-Megapixel photos (2048x1536) down to 800x600 and sharpens them. (Since it's scaling by percentage, it handles both portrait- and landscape-oriented photos.) I then drag and drop the folder containing my photos onto ExifRenamer and I'm set to upload my photos to my Web gallery!
You can see the results by going to this latest album, clicking on an individual photo, and clicking on "full" for the View Images option. To see the EXIF information, click on the "photo properties" link.
You own a digital camera and use Mac OS X? Well, if so, check out ExifRenamer. Basically, it's a drag and drop application that renames your digital photos using the date and time that each photo was taken. In the Finder, this allows you to easily sort your photos chronologically and see the actual date and time each photo was taken — without having to open the file. ExifRenamer gets the date and time information from the EXIF data that is stored within each digital photo by digital cameras.
As an example, it renamed a photo named "839-3920_IMG.JPG" to "20020814-075018pm.JPG". So this photo was taken on August 14, 2002 at 18 seconds past 7:50pm! ExifRenamer is speedy and its naming format is highly customizable too.
The author, Stefan Robl of Germany, very politely asks for a donation if you like the program. I'm certainly donating!
