香港回歸十周年

大家一齊去遊行慶回歸啦

Please join me, and thousands of others, to the yearly protest today, 2pm i think, starting from Victoria Park

18th Anniversary of Tiananmen Square Massacre / 六四事件十八周年紀念

A special news report by TVB, shown early morning on Jade Channel, 4th June, 1989.
1989年6月4日清晨, 香港無線電視翡翠台的一節特別新聞報告


May those who died that day Rest In Peace


Extended Reading / 申延閱讀 :
Wikipedia - Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
維基百科 - 六四事件

...and now it's time for the COOL WALL!!!

Click on the image above to visit my cool wall.

or make your cool wall here

you'll definitely be wrong anyway

Panorama - Scientology and Me

An investigation report by BBC reporter John Sweeny

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_4120000/newsid_4124500/4124514.stm?bw=bb&mp=rm

It's about whether Scientology is a "brain washing cult"

Just to be fair, here is the point of view of the Church of Scientology

http://www.bbcpanorama-exposed.org/introduction-to-bbc-panorama-exposed.php

Not that I believe any of the bollocks they're talking about

I just find it really interesting how the Scientology people can "recreate" a different story.

I'm not a reporter, but from what I see, John Sweeny is totally fine (apart from the yelling), and I'm totally backing BBC for this.

And all I see from the Scientologists' video are edited clips that show only what they want you to see.

If you guys are serious. Publish ALL the video footage, not just the edited ones.

I'm totally not convinced at all.

Not even the slightest.

Also, I think I'm right to say that a lot of the accusations the Scientologists make are not right, because, and this is important, SCIENTOLOGY IS NOT A RELIGION IN UK.

I may be biased, but, I'm afraid I've read enough about scientology that I just won't believe them.

John Sweeny, if this you just happen to be reading this, I enjoyed this episode of Panorama so much, I actually bothered looking around the web and also sat through the whole rubbish made by the scientologists. Keep up the good work.

Furthur Reading :
By John Sweeny:
BBC man says 'I was wrong to lose it. But these scientologists are truly scary'
(Source: Daily Mail, 14th May 2007)
Row over Scientology video
(Source: BBC News, 14th May 2007)
Other Reading:
The BBC man, the Scientologist - and the YouTube rant
(Source: The Observer UK, Guardian Newspaper)
And here's the clip that caught my attention
(Source:BBC News 24 via YouTube)
A script on the same subject from a similar investigation program (Source : ABC, 20/20, 20th December, 1998)
The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power
(Source : Time Magazine Cover Story, 6th May, 1991)

09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63

sorry, after reading this i can't stop myself

TAADAAAA~

A What?

A quote from a recent email from the warden.

I also should have mentioned the OC incident when a rape alarm was pushed under a bedroom door and disturbed most of the residents on the 2nd floor in the middle of the night. Please refrain from any such infantile action the future!

OC is Old Clifton, a girls-only part of the residence; but there's a rape alarm?

20070322

Time sure hell files. It's nearly end of March now, exactly 2 months away from my first exam. However, in the past few weeks I seem to have lost the interest to do any school-related stuff, e.g. write programs... etc. I few like I'm struggling with the programming mainly, occasionally not understanding what the hell's going on in the lectures. Not a terribly good start then. That said, I don't seem terribly bothered to spend more time revising or writing programs. I guess I really need to polish up my academic computing skills this holiday. The computing stuff that I'm good at doesn't apply to the academic side at all. Bollocks. Ooh...and there's the accounting stuff as well. Duh.

OMG EXAMS

22 May 2007 14:15 3 COMS-11101 /Introduction to Computer Science 1a
23 May 2007 14:15 2 COMS-12200 /Introduction to Computer Architecture 1 a
24 May 2007 09:30 2 COMS-12100 /Introduction to Software Engineering 1 a
25 May 2007 09:30 3 EMAT-10702 /Discrete Mathematics 1 a
30 May 2007 09:30 3 ACCG-10052 /Introduction to Accounting

In that case, I really really need to polish up my programming skills.

On a happier note, I can come back early June!

20070120

I've been back in Bristol for slightly over a week now, and I'm still working on the programming coursework. I barely did any till today. I must say I'm a bit disappointed about a friend who promised to help me over a week ago, and I haven't heard from him since. He's not even replying my IM messages. (Not you, T. It's that guy I mentioned in your blog comments. I know you're very busy, so don't bother unless you have the time.)

Anyway, just finished supper, and should get back to work now.

p.s. Started playing su doku these days. Rather fun.
p.p.s Happy Birthday Steve!

My thoughts on iPhone

Unless you're living under a rock, you should know by now that Apple Computers Inc. has released it highly anticipated iPhone. After over two years of speculation, and various "iPhones" wannabies/knockoffs and one that's not even a mobile phone, Apple's iPhone is probably the most hyped Apple product in recent years, and now that it's announced, it seems a bit over-hyped to me.

Firstly, sources say you can't install softwares on it. Now, Apple says it runs OSX, so why not? This severely limits the potentials of the iPhone. For example, that nice screen would make it quite a good ebook reader. I know a lot of people, myself included, uses their Smartphones/PDAs to read ebooks. I wonder if it has an ebook reader. Another example would be GPS. iPHone does have Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR (Enhanced Data Rate), but can it be paired with a Bluetooth device? Even if it could be paired, I don't think there's a map to go with it. Google Map does have driving directions, but it's easier with GPS realtime driving directions, so you could still get to you destination if you missed a couple of turns. In Google Map you'd have to key in your new location to plot the route to your destination.

Speaking of "key in", this brings me to my second point. I have doubts with the onscreen keyboard. Obviously with the new Multi-Touch screen and this being an Apple product, it may become the kest keyboard ever, but from past experiences (not that I had a lot of it), onscreen keyboard usually sucks. Personally, the feedback from the keyboard while typing is very important, which is why, in this respect, I like my Treo180 more than my Treo650. But for an onscreen keyboard, you may have "clickety" sounds, but you don't have any feedback at all. It would be like typing on a table. Your fingertips hit something hard, and that's about it.

Thirdly, remotely related to the first point of the inability to install software, is that the built-in Safari browser is just plainly weird. I hope there's a "normal mobile web browser" mode, because, from the keynote, and this animation, viewing a webpage "the way it was designed to be seen", is just ridiculous. The full sized screens on real computers are for that. For mobile devices, especially a Quad-band GSM with EDGE device, which has a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 473.6 kbit/s, you want to keep the webpage as simple as possible. Loading all the graphics and animations would be nice, but slow. What's more, needing to zoom in and scroll around is just annoying. It might be fun at start, but i bet it gets annoying afterwards.

It's also rather expensive, US$499/$599 for a 4GB/8GB version with a 2 year Cingular (AT&T Mobile?) contract. That's roughly HK$3892/$4672, which is quite a bit for a so called "smart" phone without much expansion capabilities. Comparing this to a similarly priced PalmOS smartphone, or, heck, even a WM5 smartphone, they have virtually unlimited expansion capabilities. Yes, it doesn't look as nice, and that the most important thing to some people, but it isn't to me. As I'm a PalmOS fan, I'll quote Treonauts' comparison, Treo680 vs. iPhone. Quote from their conclusion on the comparison,

It's funny that the iPhone should so clearly have helped me to better recognize the terrific accomplishments that Palm has delivered with our Treo. It may not be immediately perceived to be quite as 「cool」 as an iPhone but the fact is that the Treo clearly deserves the praise and success that it has already achieved.

I have no doubt that the iPhone will be an extremely successful device in its own right – one which will continue to help grow the smartphone space with an even younger generation – but for now at least I certainly don't believe that it will be a Treo-killer.

At the same time I am delighted to see Apple enter the smartphone space as the increased competition will certainly help to bring even more and faster innovation to our Treo as all players battle it out to attain the leading market position.

I do agree that the iPhone keeps Palm on its toes, but, it's just not as good as it could be. The onscreen keyboard might be ok, but IMHO, the biggest drawback is the inability to install software. I, too, believe Apple will be highly successful, but it's just not the iPhone that could've been. At least, they certainly did not reinvent the phone.

Update : Shortly after I published this commentary, I stumbled across the initial thoughs from David Pogue, Tech Journalist of the NY Times. His short hands-on session with the iPhone confirmed one of my worries. "Typing is difficult". Also, he seems to like Safari. Click to Read

Another Update : Michael Mace, who used to work in Palm, published his thoughts as well. It's a great, and much more informed article (compared to mine). In it he reveiled that the Visual Voicemail feature was actually discussed in Palm 4 years ago. Pity...

p.s. My first commentary on these topics, so if you did read it, let me know how I could improve. Thanks for reading. Cassio.