One of the largest blogging site in HK, mysinablog, recent published a book called “Why we blog?”.  The book invited the top ranked bloggers in the website write about why they write blogs.  It also has some samples from their blogs.  I visit those blogs quite freqently and I admire how well the articles are written in those blogs.

I think I had wrote about why I blog a long time ago.  At that time, I just want to capture some of my thoughts that would otherwise be forgetten.  Now, I think my motivation of writting is changed.  Not only I want my blog as the grabbage dump of my brian.  I want to write articles that can attract and retain readers.  I am aspired by those highly ranked blogger who turned their blogs into publication.  In order to archive this goal, giving my website a pretty interface is not enough.  I have to improve my writing skills, refine my writting and type faster!  I definitely don’t want blogging consume most my time, ideally I can finish an article in under half hour.  My reviews on anime, movies, books, CDs will still make up a large portion of the contents.  I will also write articles about computer, as I progress in setting up my linux server and website.  Philosophy and religion interested me most, but I can only afford to write those articles once a while.  Since those writtings are very time consuming and require lots of research.  I am still thinking about whether should I write comments on news I read from newspaper.  First, the news, usually from HK newspaper, may not be very interesting to most of my readers.  Second, I need to comment the news in a way that differtiate me thousands of the columnists out there.  I don’t want to just merely repeat what other says.  However, writing news commentary would force me to think creatively and probably can most numbers of readers if my writing is good.

I suddenly have a weird idea, I am thinking about writing a book about skiing in chinese. There is no books on this topic exist in HK, so I can fill the niche market. I have this inspiration when I just came across a really crappy book written by somone with merely a private pilot license. I am a ski instructor, although only the lowest level, but good enough qualification to sell the book. There are many misconception about skiing in HK public and introducting this sport to them could be quite interesting. I will first write about why I love skiing in the introduction. In the main content, I can start with how to select equipment, from clothings to boots, binding and skis. The next chapter will be tips on skiing, this section is probably make up of half the content of the book. I can recycle what I have learnt from my instructor training and my skiing lessons. I can also write an appendix on snowboarding, breifly touch on the difference between these two sports. I can insert some side-bars about history of skiing, famous skiers, trivia knowledge etc. I can easily search up those information can from google and wiki. The final section introduce famous ski resort around the world. Too bad I can only rely on 2nd hand information, it would be great if I have first hand experience on those resorts. That maybe an easy way to become an author.

My Seagate SATA harddisk was broken last month and after a few weeks of wait, the replacement is finally arrived.  I am very impressed by the warranty service offered by Seagate.  No recipt is required, which otherwise could be troublesome since I may have lost the recipt.  The warranty service is completely self-service online.  All I have to do is enter the serial number of my harddisk﹐ check whether it is still under warranty.  If the warranty is not expired, I can open a service ticket and then send in the old harddisk.  No question asked.  It is probably the best warranty experience I ever have.  Unlike other warranty service which attempt to repair the problem, which may take up a few months, Seagate just send me a replacement unit, which works just like a new one.  Here you have one happy customer.  When I buy harddisk in the future, I will consider Seagate first.  I think this should be the standard for all warranty services.  Warranty should be covered by the manufacturer, not the import agent.  As long as each product has a unique serial number, there is no need for the proof of purchase.

In the plan of creating a wordpress theme for my website, I decided to take this opportunity to learn the nuts and bulbs of the web2.0.  The essence of web2.0 is AJAX, which stands for Asynchronous Javascript and XML.  This acronym sounds quite complicate, but the idea is very simple.  In short, web2.0 has two major aspects.  First, update a portion of a web page on the fly by fetching new data from the server using the XMLHttpRequest object built into the browser.  Second, using the graphic user interface javascript to create windows-like applications that runs inside the browser.

There are many AJAX libraries out there provide nice interfaces that handle most of the low level functions.  I won’t consider any commercial packages since they don’t justify the cost.  Microsoft, Yahoo and Google offer free proprietary packages, but I won’t consider them.  Microsoft Altas is so retarded and you can only use it inside visual studio.  Google web toolkit is a bit odd, first you have to write java code then compile it into javascript.  The Yahoo library is in pretty good shape, but it still can’t beat the dojo open source library.  Dojo seems to be the most all rounded AJAX library.  It has over 3MB of source code!  Scriptaculous comes in a distant second, lacking many useful features.  Dojo have all the bit and pieces required to assembly a web application that rival the functions of a windows-based application.  The only thing that still need a native windows application is number crunching jobs, such as drawing 3D graphics or processing huge data files.

Web2.0 is still in early development stage.  There are many competing AJAX libraries and everyone is reinventing the wheel.  It is very important to beg on the right horse early on, so later on I won’t stuck with a dying technology.  Dojo is the current leader in the game with support from IBM and other big players.  I am going to pick Dojo as the primary AJAX library for my new website.