Today during lunch, we had talked about the trouble of burning CD to play in car. The topic naturally extended to the iPod adapter come with the latest BMW models. Somehow Ray Woo pointed out why can’t we simply have a audio system takes compact flash of SD cards? There are already audio players with mp3 decoder that can read data CDs. It shouldn’t be too hard to add a memory card reader, which only cost $15 for PC used version. Downloading songs to memory card is much more convenient than burning CD, and a 1GB memory card is big enough for any trip. I feel about disappointed about myself that I didn’t think of this idea early. Anyways, now after I had gave it a second thought, I can figure out why no one made such device yet. It’s purely economical reason, a 1GB memory card will cost as much as the audio system. Unless the price of memory cards drop significantly, using them in car is still not very feasible.
Category Archives: Daily Scribble
My random thoughts of the day.
rapture
Tonight’s Simpsons episode is really hilarious by making fun of the concept of rapture commonly believed among evangelist Christians. In the episode, Homer walked into a theater and saw one of those left below (mocking the left behind series) movie. He got scared by the apocalypse and some coincident (yet funny) signs of the end is near. Homer then derived the end time using some weird calculation and convinced everyone in town with yet another coincident. However, the end of world didn’t come as he predicted, so the crowd ditched him. It turned out that he forgot to count Jesus himself in the number of people in the last supper, thus his previous calculation is wrong. This time no one believes in him, and it turn out he is the only one raised to heaven. In heaven, Homer found himself not happy because he missed his family very much. He bring out one of philosophical dilemma of salvation in mild way. How can a person have eternal happiness in heaven if he see his family and friends are suffering in hell? In the end, Homer made God turn back in time and cancel the apocalypse. This episode has many in-jokes of many common mis-concepts in Christianity. The conversation between Homer and God about Jesus never be the same after he came back from Earth has a really nice touch humor. I don’t like the idea of rapture personally, and always think that it is the work of the devil to mislead innocent souls. However, I couldn’t realize the idea rapture is so ridiculous until it is portrayed by the Simpsons. This episode is highly recommended to the evangelist christian as a mind opener.
article debts
I had so many article debts, and I finally finished 3 articles in one day to repay some of them. Now all I still own is two articles to review a book and an anime. Since I had re-establish my website, I made promise to myself every time when I finish a movie, a TV series, an anime, a book or a CD, I will write some feedback before I start something on new. I figured out if I don’t write my feeling down, my time spent on those things will simply be wasted as I tend to forget them eventually. Although my writing is very slow and the thoughts not very organized, I found that writing reviews are very enjoyable. It forces me to view those stuff from a new aspect.
hacked again
Arr… Arr… My website got hacked again. The hacker exploited a security hole in phpBB 2.0.10. I should have upgraded my phpBB once I got the security warning. This time the hacker has a bit more conscience, he only defaced the front page of my forum, left a message tell me to patch my version of phpBB. Since it is partly my own fault not patching the files immediately, I not as mad as last time. Last night I spent quite some time installing the latest version of phpBB to fix the security bleach. I’ll just have to leave with my current setup a bit longer, once I had more free time I’ll get a new computer to setup a more secure server. My grand scheme is to integrate phpBB (forum), Word Press (Blog), Coppermine (Album) into a coherent website. I’d also like to add databases to display random quotes, facts about myself and interesting background pictures. The crowd jewel of my site will be an on-line version of my mp3 archive completed with sorted catalog and search features.
PC Magazine
I have been a read of the PC Magazine since grade 9. It was the most popular computer magazine back then. Another computer magazine I used to read is the Byte Magazine, which flopped a few years ago. In Hong Kong imported magazine was expensive and hard to find. Being a poor student, the only place I could read PC Mag was at the central library, which close to where I had my math tutorial. I remember after the tutorial lesson, instead of going home straight, I used to spend an hour or so at the central library, checked out the magazines every week. Among the columnists in PC Magazine, I had been a loyal of John C. Dvorak, whose articles have good insight into the trends of the computer industry. I think my opinions on high tech related issues more or less had been influenced by him over these years. When I was waiting for my prescription at Safeway this evening, I browse the magazines section to kill time. To my surprise, I couldn’t find PC Magazine on the shelf. How can PC Magazine not carried by the biggest supermarket chain in Canada? The only logical conclusion is that it is not selling well, and Safeway decided to drop it. I have a bad feeling that PC Magazine is going to disappear soon, when its parent company ZD publication decided to cut the lose.