tin_the_fatty weblog

Yes the browser is the OS. I have just installed Opera Unite, a new and special version of the Opera browser. It contains some P2P features which are very cool, and it has an API for developing your own plug-ins. I have only played with it for a few minutes but the initial impression is [...]

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I checked out the HTC Magic at the Tuen Mun Smartone-Vodafone shop. It was obvious that SV has its own agenda on what phone models to push, ‘cos I had to ask one of the sales people there, and he had to go to the back of the shop, and pulled out a working sample [...]

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The Lady needed to submit her Master’s Thesis in PDF format. She couldn’t get her thesis all in one Word file, so we had to do some PDF acrobatics to put together this one single PDF file.
I found PDF reDirect, which is rather neat piece of free software. The idea is, it is a PDF [...]

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First officially supported Google Andriod phone in Hong Kong. Smartone-Vodafone is the sole supplier. The shop in Central (near Central market) has exactly ONE working sample lunch time today. I couldn’t be bothered to wait for my turn to play with it so I left.
No hard keyboard.
Update (23:00): It seems Hutchison 3 has it too.

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and you are as good as your last piece of work.
I have personally paid and bought 4 of the excellent Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 wifi routers, so when my old Linksys died I went for another Buffalo. The local importer was no longer importing the old 802.11g models, so I went for the WHR-G300N, which was cheap for a [...]

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Review記事本，方驚覺2008年尾山西河南之旅的資料，包括隨團「史官」的日誌，幾位團友和自己所拍的照片和錄像等等一大堆，完全未曾整理！事實上，在河南二里頭和偃師兩地招待我們的兩位中國社科院考古專家，亦已到港在掃管笏工作了幾個星期。之前與他倆相聚，幾星期之後又會再聚，甚善。
這個河南山西之旅十分之有意思，因為此地為夏商周三朝政治中心和統治階級的主要活動範圍，有極大量考古資料和出土文物可供研究。上次行色衝衝，所以很希望可以再到當地一遊，作一專門考古之旅，由西安一路向西，經三門峽，洛陽，鄭州，安陽等地，行程十日左右，定必快哉！
另外，在五月的粵東之旅前夕，我覺得有需要為每次考察在旅途上所收集的資料作一個比較有系統的處理，並加入適量的文字記錄及其他的metadata（例如GPS資料｝。
如果能夠設定一個workflow，在每次回來之後，應該不需要花很多時間就可以將資料處理。

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News of the Amazon Kindle 2 is everywhere. It uses the mobile 3G data network as its main data transfer link, so in theory may be deployed in Hong Kong, provided that Amazon could strike a deal with one of the 3G operators. The more complicated issue is however software. Does the Kindle 2 do [...]

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Google Earth 5.0 is out! I am downloading the new version and the plugin. Pretty big files.
Update (7/2): I have just realized that Google Earth Plus, which I am a subscriber, is no longer available. The main difference between Google Earth and Google Earth Plus is that the latter can grab data directly from a number [...]

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My iMac got so slow that there was certainly something wrong with it, so I did a check disk using the Disk Utility, which gave a “Invalid ken length” error and just plain refused to do anything. Booting to Single User mode and doing a “fsck -y” didn’t help at all. A Google search revealed [...]

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We connected to James last night using the Google Talk web client. WOW! Decent video and excellent sound. When I say excellent, I mean it’s better than on the phone (mobile and land). All from the web broswer. I am really impressed.

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New. Killer. Content. Delivery. The Amazon Cloudfront. Stick your media files on S3, create distributions, and now you can serve you media files to anywhere in the world with great performance.
Go global!
(Althou it doesn’t solve my problem of uploading contents to Amazon S3 taking too long thru my puny ADSL line.)
Update (23/11): Performance serving Flash [...]

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Just received info from the fine folks at Boinx on their new wicked software, BoinxTV. Simple description is, “TV station in a box”. A decent iMac or MacBook Pro, a couple of Firewire-equipped video cameras, a big green screen, some lighting, and you are in business.
Pity the system software on my ancient iMac Core Duo is too [...]

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Firewire is nice, but getting rarer on external hard disks, and they all have a USB interface anyway.
The only usable digital interface on the DV is the Firewire port, but these days the selection of SD (Standard Definition) DVs is very limited, and almost all the HD DV cams are big machines meant for professionals, [...]

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I have been playing with video encoding tools to try to turn the HD video files (in AVCHD format) I shot during my trip to Mongolia to video files good for general consumption, i.e. watchable on the standard personal computer (e.g. DivX or H.264).
Apple iMovie and Final Cut Express both work very well for DV [...]

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My old man has managed to chip it, at two spots on the sharp edge. One bit came off while in the storage box, and the other bit came off while cutting… bread.
He’s made the call (phone number printed on the blade) and should be getting a replacement (for under HK$100) soon. Update to follow.

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When I first bought my CX7 videocam, only 8GB Memory Stick Duo Pro was available (and more expensive than SDHC cards of the same size too!) The package came with 2 4GB cards, each only good for shooting for half an hour on the highest quality setting. They are probably okay for shooting SD movie, [...]

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I checked out the new iPhone 3G at a Hutchison 3 outlet in Tuen Mun yesterday.
I loaded Google News on Safari over the 3G network. Performance was quite agreeable, and the gorgeous screen! I could read it all day!
It is not cheap thou. HK$4,680 and HK$5,640 to take the 8GB and 16GB models out respectively. [...]

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The download was fast (over 300KB/s!) and the upgrade was pretty much seamless. A few plugins are not yet compatible with Firefox 3 and have been automatically disabled, pending update.
A total non-event, which is the best kind of upgrade.

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Updated entry. The first words are in. Mum and dad said the Chinese-made ceramic knife is much better at cutting bread their special-purpose bread knife.

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I have attended two field trips in the last few weeks and took my GPS with me. I created two Google Earth KML files from the GPS data and emailed the Guangzhou file to fellow member of the travel group. Except more than half of the group have absolutely no idea what Google Earth is [...]

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