Daily // August 2006
August 30, 2006
Martina fights through
After losing the first set, Martina regrouped herself to win in three sets today at the US Open. Her peach orange outfit is a stunning choice, those I prefer a combination with black instead of white. She'll be in action again tmr night in primetime, before Agassi steps on court.
Well, since I have so much packing left to do, this might be the last entry for this summer holiday. I never wrote a summer-wrap-up in the past, so it is unlikely that I do so this year, especially with so little to talk about. It is not the most memorable summer, but the memories I had with my family is difficult to forget.
The next few days (and the next week) will be filled with changes and surprises as I make another step forward in the journey of life. May I have the power to handle everything with calmness and serenity.
August 29, 2006
US Open has once again started (yesterday). Some great matches were scheduled for today, but the rain dispersed throughout the day only allowed less than an hour of playing time. Martina will be back in action tmr as well.
Reading my previous entries, it seems that my personal life has been somewhat concealed. One old news is that I've obtained my driver's license with ease. The road test was extremely easy actually..as long as you know what the examiner is expecting.
Btw, I've finally updated the feature music. I usually don't enjoy Fiona's singing, but this song's melody covered her shortcoming. Enjoy.
More..
Look at Martina practicing in the rain! She really is soaking up her experience in the US Open after a three year layoff.
August 26, 2006 TV Shows - Part 2
Well, firstly, sorry for this sudden disappearance. You would have seen me disappeared longer, but somehow our trip to Kennedy Space Center was canceled because of a special event occuring there this weekend. Maybe there're launching autodeploy-units to Mars? Or maybe satellites to the delisted-planet Pluto?
Anyway, I think I ramble too much nowadays. I could have thrown in the links to the forums and call it a day. So, here are the forums as I mentioned earlier:
"友人論壇 / 28Talk Forums - Mostly HK shows and movies, very up-to-date; be patient with the points system though"
"HK MTV - HK shows/music again, relatively up-to-date, very organized; hassle-free membership"
"EZTV - Shows aired in US, updated within hours after the show; no registration and fast"
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with these websites or endorsing them. Use at your own risk.
More..
Meanwhile, do you want 3D mouse cursors such as those appearing in Vista's beta versions? Go get them! (for instructions, read the file no-one reads: "readme.txt")
August 23, 2006 TV Shows - Part 1
Are you an international student or will become one soon? Are you studying half-a-globe away from home? Are you from HK? Do you crave for HK tv shows? If your answer "yes" for all of the questions above, you're about to find out great resources in getting what you want. Let's begin.
I never expected myself to appreciate local tv shows in HK, especially those 無聊劇集 shown in 黃金時段 (i.e. 8pm-10pm). After all, I lived in HK most of my life and consider them to be crude, uninformative and addictive to a point that is time-wasting. Naturally, I switched to channels that show foreign programs, such as The Apprentice. These shows are informative and entertaining; they are also great topics starters among friends. Thus, out of the minimal time I spend on watching tv, I almost never follow the HK tv shows/series.
When I arrived in the US, my cravings changed. Shows that I enjoy watching in HK, such as The Apprentice, seem to jade. One reason is that students in the US hardly watch shows like that; instead, they enjoy watching shows like The OC. You can't sit on a table and start babbling how well Mary* lead her group in T.A. The other reason is that, when you're living in a foreign country, you start to appreciate things from your home.
Now I watch a variety of tv shows, some from the US and some from HK. How and where do I obtain these shows? What shows do I watch?
To be continued..
*Mary: a fictional character
August 22, 2006
Shockingly, Martina lost to Anna in the finals yesterday. She was ever so gracious in her speech though - such a classy champion.
In the past few days, I've been preping for my road test, which is supposed to be taken today. Yet some missing documents forced the delay and I will take it tmr morning. Summer is running short and for now, I'm scheduled to travel to Hopkins next Friday. May the packing begin..
August 20, 2006
For all those tennis fans out there, you may know that the US Open series is going hot on track. On the woman's side, Martina Hingis will play Anna Ivanovic tmr in the finals in Montreal, Canada. If she wins this, she'll obtain her second title this year and climb up to the first spot in the series; which means that if she actually win the US Open, her prize money would double. She must feel like she could touch victory already..
Meanwhile, I'll be taking my road test on tuesday. Fingers crossed. Lastly, how does this magazine styled quote look?
August 19, 2006
Transition completed
After days of coding and recoding, I'm proud to announce that the transition to a more accessible and understandable web page is complete. If you compare the old and new source codes, you'll see that the former one contains a mass of meaningless tags. As time went on, the entire site, especially its layout, becomes so complicated it was almost impossible to edit in fear of breaking the code. When I decided to start a new layout back in March, I was perplexed by how much manipulation I needed to do with tables in order to get the result I want. I ceased the project midway in frustration.
Now, what you're seeing is structured by a meaningful markup language. Elements are used for what they meant rather than how they looked. Presentational tags such as the font tag are abandoned, and tables are used as a way of displaying data. Thus, it is always a good idea to use meaning language markup when possible.
Another advantage is, most certainly, cross-browser support. You no longer have to submit yourself to the hands of IE when you visit. In fact, among the new features you'll see, some of them are only supported by more advanced browsers like Firefox, Opera and Safari. Consider this as a stimulus to switching to a more secure browser.
Login U will continue to evolve. For now, I hope you enjoy (looking for) the new features and this "new" site.
P.S. Special thanks to Thomas for giving some invaluable help and ideas as I trotted along the steep hills of coding this website.
August 16, 2006
Many people are interested in seeing how this current <!-- bizzarely --> coded site transform into a cleanly coded, xhtml page. It turns out that xhtml is too strict to code everything into. It is unpractical to spend days converting tags of semantic code by ten fingers and a keyboard (and a mouse). Now I'm settling with html transitional, which is far more lenient compared to xhtml strict. If the progress goes well, it can be up and running as soon as tmr night.
Oh btw, does everybody know that you can stop the music by clicking the 'now playing' button? I thought everyone knew that..
August 15, 2006
We've decided to travel to the Kennedy Space Center for a two-day holiday at the end of this month. It should be another 'highlight' of summer before college kicks in. Oh, and maybe I should start organizing/packing things now?
Lately I've been addicted to tv shows in the likes of CBS's Amazing Race, such as Treasure Hunters on NBC. I enjoy watching how contestents respond to or face those unknown challenges and it always amazes me how they keep their mind calm and temper cool. But it's equally entertaining to see a team struggle frantically over a clue or an answer we can see clearly as outsiders. These are probably the only reality tv shows I truly enjoy watching.
August 14, 2006
Besides telling everyone that transforming almost 36 pages of entries requires much time, I'm here today to introduce a song - composed, written, arranged and sang by LeeHom.
I used to put him aside as a singer who sells more looks than songs in their cds, but now I realize he's also a good musician. The cd of his latest 蓋世英雄 concert is already out, and the live version of Kiss Goodbye is great. Maybe he even played the piano himself. But I still prefer the non-live version, which is what you're listening to now.
August 13, 2006
Pr1me Outlets
In Pr1me Outlets, Ellenton, we were surrounded by rows and rows of outlet stores. But instead of buying clothes from Tommy, jeans from DKNY or shoes from Nike, I bought a puzzle from a home decor store called Bombay. "What the hell is it?" you ask. Well, when assembled, it becomes a small art piece.
Actually, I did buy some clothes. All outlet stores already have price cuts from the normal retail prices, but some even had summer sale and further discounts. Shouldn't this be the prime way to shop?
August 12, 2006 from table hacks to css
In the past two weeks I've been reading extensively into css layouts. What are css layouts? Well, for one, I encourage you to read my entry on May 14. I've also started to reconstruct everything here through css, and so far I'm able to strip down 100+ lines of coding per file.
What does this mean to you, my readers? Performance-wise, pages will load much faster because of smaller file size. Accessibility-wise, now firefox and opera users can browse my site with zero hiccups. It should come out in the next few days..
August 10, 2006 Lara Fabian
Today a catchy tune passed my mind and I immediately recognized the song as I Will Love Again. But I also falsely recognized it as a Celion-Dion song. It turns out to be Lara Fabian's, and my dad actually played her cd to us a few years ago (which is why it's somehow implanted to my mind). My intuition is only normal, because Lara is often compared to Celine. They're both french-speaking singers, and both have big, strong voices. Enjoy her song.
I'm experimenting with dotted links. Change is good, right? I'm still looking for ways to bring my site up a notch.
August 9, 2006 Catching up
Today a few miraculous things happened. Firstly, I'm finally able to type chinese again. Why wasn't I able to do so? Well, as you may know, I use 拼音 to type chinese. Back in march I reinstalled windows, and since then 新注音 stopped working. Maybe it's because of office 2007 beta; maybe it's because of something else. But today I installed it again and it suddenly worked.
Then, around noon, I msned one of my long lost, abandoned friend. Playing catch-up is a bitter-sweet experience. In one hand you exchange surprises with each other, but in the other hand these surprises cast doubt on your commitment to the relationship. But it seems that we still have many things to talk about..and gladly none of our tongues were dry like sand paper. Is that a good thing? We chatted almost till dawn (hk time).
珍惜眼前人! >.<
August 8, 2006
Just want to say..congrats to the 25 10As and 47 9As. Bye.
August 7, 2006 WWDC 2006
Have you watched Steve Job's keynote address at the WWDC 2006? Honestly, I've had enough with all those "I'm better than you" messages Apple constantly throws at Microsoft. Steve tells us that Vista is copying Mac OS X's iCal, Safari RSS, Spotlight and visual effects. But I think these are simply features that Apple introduced earlier than Microsoft. Apple also likes to repackage not-so-new techonology into a new, glamorous looking thing and say it's new. Say, "Spaces". It's totally an improved version of Virtual Desktop. And "Stationery" in Mail? I think those are called templates in Outlook, and they resemble the functionality of Publisher in Office.
Despite all this, it is amusing to witness this "war" between the two companies who like to emphasize their OS as the better one. But Steven and Bill are still good friends, right? Watch the keynote here.
August 6, 2006 Vincy
We haven't had a canton pop song here lately, so let's bring something up. I usually dislike the newcomers, but Vincy's album shows much potential and the overall quality is really quite high. While she does remind me of Faye's voice, I hope that she establishes her own style instead of being "the little girl who sound like Faye". Enjoy her song.
August 5, 2006
The biggest encouragement and motivation I get for this website is from my readers, but ironically, the worst discouragement and demotivation are also from my readers. One day I may write a well-written entry, and the trend of visits bends upwards. Then not long after, they get tired of visiting, or just become bored of what I say, and the number of visits drops dramatically. Being both a 'blogger' and a reader myself, I think this is unavoidable and difficult to address..
Of course, I could write good entries each day to keep my readers. That's my goal - to maintain a level that lures readers to stay.
Anyway, today I'm going to show two hilarious posters:
August 3, 2006
Martina doing well in Acura Classic tournament
Martina returned to action on Tuesday in San Diego, CA. After a first round bye and two easy matches, she ousted Flavia Pennetta just now by 6-2, 3-6, 6-1. She plays her grand-slam nemesis, Kim Clijsters in the quarter-finals tmr night.
August 2, 2006
I've finally gotten some driving lessons today and yesterday. Still need a few more..then maybe my parents will be confident enough to put their cars on my hands. Haha......
August 1, 2006 Start of another month
Well, I swear I planned to write something last night..since its the last day of july..but eventually I didn't. It's just so lame, right? Missing two dailys contributed to a big dip in the monthly visits department. The average daily visit is 16.29.
As for the last month of summer, my plans are varied. But definitely I'm going to finish all my readings first. Then, maybe I could spend sometime working on things that need improvement here. Enjoy the song for now.