A quarter of my face is still numb! I got my first root canal treatment just a few hours ago. Well, actually, I just had the first step done; I have 4 or 5 more visits to go. I think (and hope) that today's treatment was the most painful of all the steps since it's over and done with now! We'll see. My next appointment is next Tuesday at 6pm.
Oh, I'll be going to Shanghai on Thursday to sort out some Internet connection and/or worm (self-replicating computer virus) issues in our office there. Will be back in Hong Kong on Friday evening.
For the record, I'm American and I declare that I am totally against war with Iraq. It is unjust and immoral and would certainly result in the deaths of thousands of innocent people. I also don't see the urgency of war. How can Iraq be a threat to anyone right now with intense UN inspections and arial surveillance going on in their country? I also don't see Iraq as a threat to the US or its people. Ironically, the actions of the Bush administration toward Iraq greatly increase any threat to and hatred of Americans by muslim extremists and terrorists angered by this US aggression.
Here's Justin (a little over 9-1/2 months old) at Lauren Ho's 3rd birthday party on January 11, 2003. The party was held in the function room of our apartment complex. I believe Justin's wearing a gift from the Lam's (Corrina, Alvin, Alex, and Katie).
About a month ago I added over 100 photos (in 3 or 4 new albums) in our Photo Gallery. Check 'em out!
What follows is something I wrote up for and emailed to all our staff in Asia just yesterday. I hope this is helpful to you as well!...
Smaller pictures = Smaller PowerPoint files = Benefits
PowerPoint files are often overly large in size because the PICTURES embedded in them are much larger than they need to be. In most cases, reducing picture sizes results in PowerPoint files that are 50-75% smaller than the originals (e.g. 30MB => 9MB). Benefits of smaller PowerPoint files include faster emailing, uploading, downloading, printing, playback, and saving of your presentations.
Pictures too big?
You can tell if you should reduce the size of a picture if, when you insert it into PowerPoint, it extends way beyond the boundaries of the slide. Or you find yourself scaling down pictures more than 10% (scaled picture is less than 90% of original size). (Often, the large pictures are photos taken from digital cameras.) Generally, no picture's file size for PowerPoint should be larger than around 300KB.
You should resize your pictures down (reduce their resolution) to get rid of excess data while maintaining adequate detail and clarity. Your pictures must be resized before inserting them into PowerPoint. If your pictures are already in PowerPoint you're going to have to resize the original pictures and then reinsert the resized pictures — sorry!
Use Resize! to downsize your JPEG pictures
If your pictures are in JPEG format (most are), you can use a free software called "Resize!" (PC and Mac versions available) to resize your pictures. Download it here:
http://mapage.noos.fr/cedricdj/re.html
(Much thanks to Cedric of KStudio for creating such a helpful program and releasing it for free!)
Basically, here's how you use the software:
Size Guidelines:
Full page picture = 700
3/4 page picture = 550
1/2 page picture = 500
1/4 page picture = 420
1/8 page picture = 300
smaller picture = less!
Example:
pictures <= name of original folder
pictures (B500) <= name of new folder if you entered 500 in step 3
You can quickly resize your pictures at various sizes all at once by repeatedly entering in different numbers (e.g. 420, 500, 550, 700) and clicking Go!. This helps speed up the process of getting just the right size for all your pictures. When inserting pictures into PowerPoint, if the picture is too small or too big, just navigate to the appropriate folder and insert another size till it's right:
Desktop
|----- pictures (B420)
|----- pictures (B500)
|----- pictures (B550)
|----- pictures (B700)
If you're finding that you're losing too much picture detail or sharpness, I've found that inserting the picture at a size that's 10-15% larger than you actually want it to appear, then scaling it down in PowerPoint gives you that higher quality picture. In the Resize! program, you can also try increasing the JPEG Quality setting (default is 80 out of 100).
Another thing: I emailed my tech tip to most of the IT managers in our multinational company, BBDO, and Franklin from our Pages/BBDO office in the Dominican Republic had this to add:
We encourage our executives to do the following, after the presentation has been made, the first thing we do is go to One picture in Powerpoint and select picture properties and select COMPRESS and CROP ALL pictures, and powerpoint will convert all pictures in documents to 72 dpi and crop pic areas. This is Powerpoint XP only and will lean the PPT a lot depending on Picture usage.
We're still using PowerPoint 2000 in most of Asia but when we do purchase Office XP, we'll be sure to take advantage of that new feature.
Marcin Gos of our NoS/BBDO Warszawa office in Poland also offered these helpful tips and links:
For optimizing of existing presentarions on pre-XP Powerpoint there's 99$ RnR Presentation Optimizer http://www.rdpslides.com/pptools/FAQ00013.htm It's great tool, with many options — it works on pictures, OLE objects, allows you to ungroup charts and sheets... For creating new presentations from jpgs I personally prefer PPTImport — it's cheaper and allows batch inserting of slides (that's the tool that created mentioned earlier 168 slides presentation) http://www.consumerdvreviews.com/pptimportLinking http://www.powerpointbackgrounds.com/powerpointlinking.htm allows us to use two color templates instead of Powerpoint's one (AFAIK PPT XP allows you to use more templates, but we run PPT 2000 in Account Dept.)
And for Flash movies we use Swiff Player for PowerPoint http://www.globfx.com/products/#swfplayers — it must be installed on the computer that will run the presentation, that's the only small disadvantage, otherwise it runs fine.
Excellent PPT FAQ: http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq and set of useful tools: http://www.rdpslides.com/pptools
Just yesterday I praised Outlook, Microsoft's integrated email and PIM (Personal Information Manager) client for Windows PCs, and I mentioned Microsoft Entourage as being the closest thing to it for the Mac. At work for several years now, I've been considering switching to using Microsoft Exchange Server (the server component for corporate environments) for our email (and groupware) but mainly because of its high cost, security concerns, increased administration, and poor Mac support, I have shied away from it. (We are currently using Mac-based EIMS as our email server.) Apart from cost concerns, I'm not yet convinced that Exchange server is the way to, but news that the next update of Entourage X (for Mac OS X) will incorporate Exchange server connectivity in summer 2003 is defnitely welcome. I first heard about this in the February 11, 2002 edition of the Lockergnome Tech Specialist e-newsletter.
I love and use both Macs and Windows PCs but my primary computer is a Mac. So when my PowerBook went into the repair shop I was forced to my Windows PCs (at work and at home) for my everyday work for 4 days! Everyday work for me is mainly emailing, Web browsing, network troubleshooting, and referencing info I have in a notepad-like database I have. I realize that these 4 days without my Mac was a good thing. It made me realize what key programs and data I have on my Mac that I really depend on and it also forced me to become more intimately familiar with key programs like Outlook Express and Outlook.
I really like Outlook. Even in IMO (Internet Mail Only) mode, Outlook has some impressive features like integrated and full-featured calendar and contact modules, and support for IMAP. In a typical corporate environment used with Exchange Server, it boasts an incredible feature set including shared calendaring, scheduling, shared folders, and shared global and personal address books. In my opinion, its user interface is top-notch too. I much prefer how Outlook has one main window with multiple window panes (objects such as Inbox, Contacts, Calendar on the left; list of selected object's items on the top right; and detail of selected list item on bottom right) over how Eudora — and really any program on the Mac — has multiple windows that can overlap each other and get really messy. Apple's solution in Mac OS X with separate programs (never mind multiple overlapping windows!) for email (Mail.app), contacts (Address Book), and calendaring (iCal) seem to me to be a step in the wrong direction. Oh, and Palm's PocketMirror conduit that allows Palm handhelds to sync contact, calendar, notes, and to-do data with Outlook is very nice too. Microsoft's Entourage for Mac (bundled with Microsoft Office for Mac, versions 2001 and X) offers a feature-set that is the most similar to Outlook.
More time on my PCs also encouraged me to explore and have fun with these PC-only utilities:
Well, despite all of this, I'm still sticking with my Mac and Eudora (for now, at least)!
I picked up my PowerBook from the repair shop just yesterday, Tuesday. The PowerBook hasn't yet been repaired but I'm typing this on it by using an external USB keyboard. Everything is functioning as normal except for the built-in keyboard but as it turns out, keyboard-related circuitry on the logic board has been damaged. So the repair will cost HK$3000 for a new logic board and HK$700 for a new keyboard. We already paid a HK$600 inspection-only charge as well. Although unrelated to damage caused by the coffee spill, I'm also going to try and get a crack in the headphone jack area of the "top case" (the titanium and plastic top enclosure that includes the palm rest, trackpad, power button, and slots for the DVD drive and PC-card) fixed. Well, to fix that means replacing the entire top case which costs a whopping HK$2000+! Our company's insurance covers anything over HK$3000 but the insurance company will have to approve the claim first, of course. Tomorrow I'll need to take a photo of the cracked top case and submit that to them. So just to get the built-in keyboard working again (excluding the cracked case) will cost a total of HK$4300 (~US$550) — ouch! Yes, it kind of doesn't seem worth it for a 2-year old machine and considering prices and performance advantages of the latest PowerBook models. Still, given the insurance, our company shells out only HK$3000 out of the HK$6000+ repair bill.
To avoid future coffee spills on my PowerBook, I have already purchased a new, spill-proof vacuum flask for my coffee and I am going to purchase and install a "keyboard skin" — a protective latex membrane that waterproofs the keyboard. I saw one of those on another customer's PowerBook G4 at the repair shop. Hmmm... I wonder how it affects heat dissipation.
First day back at work after a 5-day holiday and what do I do first thing in the morning?... Colleagues excitedly pop into my office to collect "lai see", I get a bit nervous and then, yes, topple my coffee thermos right onto my PowerBook G4! The coffee drenches the keyboard and I quickly hold the PowerBook upside down. For about 15 seconds the PowerBook still runs but then goes out. I disconnect the power cable, take out the battery, pop off the keyboard and start wiping down the keyboard and try to absorb the coffee from underneath the keys. After the keyboard's exterior is dry I take off the thin titanium base plate of the PowerBook. The mainboard and most everywhere else is pretty dry. I leave the exposed PowerBook resting open and on one of its sides like an open book. I discover that the keyboard's ribbon cable easily disconnects from the mainboard and I start popping off keys, one by one to try and soak up the coffee from inside the thin membrane-like keyboard base. The keyboard is well designed because it protects the mainboard from spills and the keys pop off and back on easily, yet firmly. I want to blow everything dry with a hair dryer but none could be found in our office. I let everything air dry for about an hour while I go off to sort out another emergency — a PC that had a power supply that had blown. In the end, many keys on the PowerBook's keyboard don't work and so now in order to do any work I need to plug in an external USB keyboard. Thankfully, my company insured the PowerBook for accidents like this and so soon I'll be taking it in to a repair shop. I understand that they need 5-6 days to fix it so I'm wondering how I'm going to get much work done without it for that long! Well, I'm definitely going to try and rush them.
On the way back home I stopped by the Wanchai Computer Centre and picked up a cheap, HK$55 (US$7) Genius-branded USB keyboard to use at home. It works but the Command (Apple) key is the key with the Windows logo on it.
A nice thing that happened today was Nancy, who now lives in Tokyo and is visiting Hong Kong for just a week, dropped by to see Justin and ended up joining us for dinner. It was nice to catch up with her!
KUNG HEI FAT CHOI ("Happy Chinese New Year" in Cantonese)! GONG XI FA CAI ("Happy Chinese New Year" in Mandarin)! Today is the start of the Year of the Goat. I've also heard people calling it the Year of the Ram and Year of the Black Sheep as well so I'm not entirely sure which is correct!
Anyway, this is probably the most celebrated season of the year here in Hong Kong. Practically everything — offices, retail shops, supermarkets, and most restaurants — shuts down for at least 4 days and locals spend time with family and close friends. Children and any unmarried folks go around collecting "lai see" (red packets containing money) from the married folks and elders.
We had Christina and Pattra over for dinner last night. I baked some ham, Christina made some curry beef brisket (delicious Thai style!), and we had Pina make some garlic, soy-sauce prawns. Yes, it was kind of a weird combination but we enjoyed all of it. We also had some "lin gou" (Chinese rice cakes) that Pina fried up for us with taro and a bit of batter (apparently, Singaporean style). After dinner we watched the "Catch Me if You Can" DVD that Pattra brought over.
Gwen and I are just enjoying the extra time off with Justin. We've also been catching up on watching movies. Since last Wednesday, I've rented a bunch of DVDs from Blockbuster and we've seen "Minority Report", "The Sum of All Fears", "A Beautiful Mind", "Signs", and "Star Wars - Episode 2". Tonight I returned 3 DVDs and rented out "High Crimes" and "Austin Powers Goldmember". We also bought an ex-rental copy of "Monsters, Inc." for Justin!