Hot Blog

When my very fist clamshell iBook showing its age, I was starting to hunt for new notebook.

My primary requirements were fairly simple:

Runs Adobe Photoshop, GoLive, Macromedia Dreamweaver, MetaCard, a decent mail client, browser and a technical word processor.

Any Windows based notebook has that. UltraEdit has been superb. Right?

My secondary requirement:

apache, psql, MetaCard cgi environment so that I can test my development work locally on the machine when internet is unavailable.

Any notebook capable to do so, as Linux and Windows can be easily installed as dual boot.

Problem is — dual boot.

Switching between 2 operating system is no fun, I don’t even feel comfortable to switch between OS X and OS 9.
Due to my work habit, a graphical HTML editor and apache has become an unavoidable combo – I must have them running together to be able to do something.
The rest of the tools that I’ve been using can easily be replaced by Windows/Open Source counterparts.

So I have 3 choices:

• 1. all the way with Windows XP, get apache2 working, mimic the Unix environment.
  • a lot of tweaking, compatibility issues.
  • needs cygwin and extensive list of tools that perform rsync, ssh, psql etc.
  • can’t really get everything going, at least my specialized Unix socket agent wouldn’t compile on Windows.

• 2. all the way with Linux, try Mozilla html editor.
  • but Gimp is no way near Photoshop, even I have been using only 1% of Photoshop functionalities.
  • I don’t even comfortable with Dreamweaver, how Mozilla html editor going to feed me?
  • booting into Windows to get things done still unavoidable: my digital camera refused to talk to linux!

• 3. get a Mac, no compromise on anything.
  • not to mention features like bluetooth to hand phone, iMovie, iTune player, full Microsoft Office.
  • I can have best of both worlds: any *nix application will just run, any Mac applications will just run
  • Java is well treat.
  • I can even “boot” into Windows XP for some testing requirement with VirtualPC.

So I ended with a PowerBook, and I couldn’t be more comfortable. My only complaint is: hard to move around with the 17″.

So, if you are a very comfortable Linux user, you’ll be feeling right at home with Mac OS X.
Yes, I’ve spent most time in the terminal window, the word processor and the browser, but having everything else a few clicks away – even if I may only access them once in a month – is just no brainer.

Got a call from a stranger asking for Apple iPod – some 220 KM away last month. I’ve pointed her to the local Apple Store, and now got a call from the same remote town asking for “second hand” Acer notebook.

Maybe I should start a small business (probably online store) to fulfill these callers?

My video camera refused to show anything in the viewfinder 2 months ago, my digital camera taking haunted photos last week, and my hand phone refused to ring days ago.

How ironic. Now I have a video camera that will not takes video, digital camera that will not takes photo, hand phone that will not ring.

Oh yes, did I mention I have to send my Disco for inspection this morning due to some irregular idling problem?

I am going to start backing-up my files everyday now incase my PowerBook chicken-out on me.

That is about ALL the gadgets that I have – what’s next?

I happened to drive around in two of the very extremed vehicles – in size.
My first tiny Kancil (not mine in the pic) and a two tons bulky Land Rover Discovery (Aka Disco).

The one major advantage of driving the Disco is nobody dare to come close – it is bold, ugly and fearsome.

I can see people behave better (much better) around me while I am driving the Disco. People attempting to cut into my lane without first looking at their mirror usually panic and rush back into their own lane when they’ve seen me finally.

Now, if I was driving in the Kancil, there is no way these people will avoid me. I was the one that have to hit my break and give way to the person trying to cut in – posing unnecessary risk cruising on the highway, where the cars behind did not expect me to break.

Maintenance for the Disco isn’t cheap and not very eco-friendly due to its thirst on fuel and leaking six different oils – but for the sake of safety, it is well worth the hassle.

As I write better in Chinese (pretty obvious if you have read my blog here), I’ve just started a new blog as “shuo – to tell”.

Feel free to click away, there isn’t much there yet though.

Detail link here.

I don’t really like GoLive and Dreamweaver – although I have to wrestling with the spaghetti codes generated by these “HTML editors” almost on daily basis. I didn’t expect Adobe to swallow Macromedia too.

The news was like “Microsoft buys RedHat” (not linux mind you) – a rather shocking moment for me.

Come to think of it, we have some bizarre buying sagas running recently, like the Lenovo vs IBM.

So, who is going to buy who next?

After 9 years with my faithful Kancil (not mine in the picture), I have captured this image on the odometer.

[ Enlarge ]

Now, what am I going to do with these numbers?

I was getting the following page instead of the nanyang.com standard news portal on 16 April 2005 – around 11 pm. Is the domain really expired as claimed by webnic.cc or it was a mistake somewhere?

While I think the victim can always blame the DNS Cache Poisoning in case it wasn’t really a mistake

[ Enlarge ]

Update: Things were back to normal on the next day.