At work, I and a group of friends share an external hard drive for downloaded movies, mp3, TV series, etc.  We take parts in downloading torrents off the web.  Some download TV series, some other download movies.  I take care of mp3 and movies sometimes.  Last night it was my turn taking the hard drive home, copy new stuffs off from the disk and update the disk with my latest download.  Most of time, I contribute to the disk more than using the disk.  There is just not enough time to watch all the downloads.  I have a very bad habit every time I take the drive home.  I like to sample the new downloads.  I would start the new TV series in the disk, trying to get a feeling in what’s on TV in HK these days.  Once I started the first episode, it is hard to stop.  I keep watch one episode after another.  I have to blame this on TVB’s script writers.  At the end of each episode, they always leave a cliff hanger to keep the audience watching.  The TVB series are mostly soap operas, plots are built from the usual few templates.  It is just a waste of time, yet I wasted my time watching them.  I guess I should refrain myself from my curiosity, don’t open the first episode next time I got the hard drive.

Demonoid.com is probably the best torrent download site out there in the internet.  It is very resouceful, it has lots of latest music, movies, TV eposides, books and especially audio books.  Unlike other open to all torrent sites, demonoid.com keep tracks of the download/upload ratio of the user.  It will enforce the sharing rule that you have to give back your bandwidth to the torrent community.  As a result, they limit the number of users to avoid infrastruture overloaded  Thereforethe site does not open to registration most of the time.  Unregistered users only allow to download the torrent files from the past few days.  Like the early days of gmail, new registration is allow only by invitation.  Although the website policy forbid selling of invitation code, but the code is selling $15 a piece on ebay, and they are sold fast.  Today, I am so lucky that I came across the rare occassion that demonoid.com opens for registration.  I seize this chance at once, create an account and start downloading.  It is like entering a gold mine of digital information.  Probably they will close the registration in a few hours once the quota is used up.  If you like downloading torrents, go there and register before it is too later.

It seems photography is becoming the default hobbies of many guys as well as some girls.  Tonight I met with three old friends, all of them got digital SLR cameras and all quite into taking pictures.  Digital SLR turns photography from an expensive hobbies into an hobbies affordable to the mass.  You don’t need to spend hundreds dollars on films and developing the negative.  An entry level SLR and a decent computer with a large harddisk can get you a long way.  Photo sharing website let people show off their pictures, which satisfy man’s desire to express himself.  There are some skills involved in photography, but most of it are just experience and a spark of creative talent.  Since the judgement of a good photo is subjective, everyone can please themselve by self proclaim to be a master photographer.  You can always pick an aspect that makes your photos better in comparison.  Photography is a convineint way to satisfy ones ego.

My question is that out of the thousands and thousands of photos taken, how many of them will never see the light again?  If most pictures are just sitting in the hard disk without any purpose, what’s the point of taking all those pictures?  A picture may worth a thousand words, however a man can cognitively receive so much information at a time.  Overload the visual senses of your viewers with hundreds of pictures not as efficient as a few dozens quality pictures each with their own stories.

Today, I am very honored to learn that one of my friend is a dedicated reader of my blog. She read it every day. She can even recall details in my blog entries that I forgotten myself. One of my intention of writing this blog is keep in touch with my friends, so they know what’s going on in my life.

Every week, my blog has over 500 readers with over 1000 page hits. 25% of them are returning readers, the rest are new comers channel from the search engines. I figure most of the returning readers are my friends. The new comers mostly linked in to read my reviews of books, movies and animes. My reviews usually ranked quite high in Google search in Chinese. Probably there ain’t many people like the titles I like, so mine are one of the few out there. The high page rank is partly contributed to the links I posted on inmediahk.net, which is one of largest independent news website in HK, so it will bump up my page ranking in Google.

The topics in my blog is very diversified. Other than interesting things happening around me, I tend to write on whatever topic interests me. I could enhance the banding image of my blog and attract more returning readers by focusing on one topics like other bloggers. However, I don’t want to write for the sake of getting the eyeballs. Having 500 readers or 5000 readers doesn’t make a difference. I know I won’t make it to be a celebrity blogger, so the extra eyeballs won’t turn into real fame or money. I rather enjoy the freedom of unleash my thought and rationalize my anti-mainstream controvesal arguments.

Actually, having a steady 500 readers per week is not bad already. Provided that I did zero cross promotion and didn’t join any blog ring, blogger group chat via the comments to give a boost to the number. If I count the number of the mirror posting at inmedia and ttf, I have about 200 eyeballs per article.  I wonder out of the forty thousands blogs in HK’s blogosphere, what’s my blog’s ranking?

My schedule for this weekend is packed solid.  My flight touched down in Vancouver airport on late Friday evening.  After resting a bit overnight, I have to wake up early to attend the full day event of my cousin’s wedding.  I have attended many weddings.  It is the first time I can just ring the bell and walk straight into the bride’s house in the morning.  Since this time I am not the “brothers” of the groom, rather I am the “sisters” of the bride, my cousin.  It is interesting to see the “get the bride” game from a different perspective.  Usually, I am among the brothers group, who have to go through all the hoops to make the sisters open the door for the groom.  Although I belongs to the “sisters” group, I didn’t give the “brothers” of the groom a hard time.  I just watch quietly at the back all the time.  I believes in the the teaching of the Golden rule, “do not unto others what you don’t want others unto you.”  Actually, the “sisters” is way to easy going this time, no harsh games except the “brothers” has to wear Chinese style ladies’ underwear.  Probably because the maid of honor, my other little cousin, is too gentle.  The “sisters” didn’t even bargain enough for the open door red pocket. The “brothers” offered them a chance to bargain harder.  Seeing things from the other sides give me insights for my own wedding.  I have to screen the “sisters” of Pat and make sure all of them are gentle.