Tonight after meeting with my supervisor at SFU Harbor Center, Pat came over pick me up to have dinner together. I always drive by that area but rarely slow down and walk around the blocks. The restaurant we went is by the water front of False Creek, on the other side of the noisy crowded Yale Town. Although it is a bit cold today, we sat on the outside and over look the ship yards. Haven’t had time to enjoy a romantic dinner with Pat for quite sometime, so tonight is pretty relaxing for both of us. After dinner, Pat suggested we walk along side the water front. I observed that there are so many dog owners walking their dog in the area. I wonder where all the dogs come from, there are only apartments in the area. I feel sorry for the dogs who has to locked up in the small apartments for the whole day. We also went to check out the Urban Fare, which is one of those upscale supermarkets. It seems that this kind of organic food stores are so hip and trendy these days. However, as an engineer myself, I couldn’t understand why people would fall for those over-priced fancy items. Why would someone pay $7 for a bottle of water from Norway or $10 for a canned Salmon Chower soup? That hippy image is so skin deep, those high income urban people are all brained washed by the corporate marketing campaign to accept that particular style of living.
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cheap computer
I’m still struggling whether should I take the advantage of the computer bundle from Microsoft and AMD. The deal is part of the Tech Road Show package, with sell 64-bit AMD CPU, Asus mother board and 64-bit XP for US$250. The hardware alone already costs $500. The catch is that you have to attend the show in person to pick up the package. My linux box is running on an old P3 733MHz and it’s about time to upgrade. So on top of the MS/AMD bundle deal, I only need to shell out another $200-$300 for a case, RAM and harddrive. The whole new computer would cost less than $600. My only concern is that I don’t have much time to setup the new server.
Follow this link to register.
People’s Radio Hong Kong
Today I come across an interesting on-line radio station. It has been operated for quite some time, and apparently ignored by the main-steam media in Hong Kong. I get to know about it because a forum I often visit is introduced by one of their programs, with a link provided to download the recording. The name of the radio station is very grass-rooted, even a bit misleading. It is not a communism party mouth piece, rather it is organized by a group of enthusiastic independent minded in Hong Kong after the last year’s shutting up of famous talk-show hosts incident. The programs has a lot of variety, but mainly focus on different kind of talk shows. Among the hosts of the programs, there are some well known names like council members or writers on newspapers, usually the name you can associate with those who represent the less fortunate to fight against the unjust authorities. So far I had only sampled a few programs, the quality varies. I would probably give follow it a while and if time permits, I may could become a loyal listener of some programs. The radio station is a non-profit organization and its operation expense rely solely on private donation. There is no commercials in the programs and refuse to accept money from business or political groups. If I like the program, I’d probably donate a small amount via paypal to show my support.
Please follow this link to visit their website.
Apple and intel
The only big news for all the geeks around the world happened today is that Apple annouced it will ditch IBM/Freescale and switch to Intel processors in the future. That could means the Macintosh strike back after it lost the OS war to Microsoft. Every analyst said there will be a hugh risk for Apple to migrate its the software which is the major differentiating factor between a Mac and a Windows machine. Those guys defined lacks technical insight of how OSX works. OSX is just an UI layer sitting on top of the a FreeBSD kernel. It is not that complicate to port OSX to x86 machines, probably it only have recompiling all the libraries. I can already sense that Steve Jobs is trying to get even on Bill Gates. Here is my prediction, somehow the OSX for x86 will be hacked to work with non-Mac Intel machines. There will be a version someone leaked into all major peer-to-peer download sites. Once OSX for x86 had gathered enough momentum in the underground world, Apple will launch it as an alternative to replace Windows. The battle of OS is getting interesting once again. Windows, OSX or Linux, who can domain the desktop market?
dog in house
Today finally Charlie conquered my home. I was sick last night and slept for 16 hours straight skipping dinner. This morning Pat prepared some chicken rice soup for me and came to visit me with Charlie. It was Charlie’s first time taking an elevator, it was so scared that it refused to get inside. I have to kick its butt to get it moving. Charlie went into my place and sniff around. We put Charlie in the balcony while we were having brunch. After lunch we walked Charlie at the park next to the golf course near my place. Charlie was so happy that it can visit so many new places. Lucky that I wake up early this morning, or Pat was planned to have Charlie to use its licking attack to wake me up.