tin_the_fatty: Working Tools

Tue, 28 Jan 2003 22:54:44 GMT

Signing Off

I am retiring my Radio weblog. You are invited to visit my new MovableType weblog.

Mon, 20 Jan 2003 13:12:04 GMT

Hobson's Choice

I went to a school play "Hobson's Choice" when I was in Sixth Form. It was the first time I came across this play and this story. It was good performance and I liked it. When I said to my schoolmates that Hobson didn't really have much choice, they told me that the whole idea of the story was that Hobson had no choice.

thttpd is working really well on my OpenBSD gateway machine serving up my weblog and a few other under-utilized small sites for friends, It is run chroot()'ed, meaning it is reasonably secure. Virtual hosting is so easy to do. Throttling is also a cool feature, althou I have no use for it at the moment.

I need something more. I want to run MovableType, which means perl w/ CGI. thttpd has a CGI interface, but to run it chroot()'ed I would have to reinstall perl in the chroot()'ed environment, which I have yet to figure out, and it looks extremely messy.

Apache running chroot()'ed has one advantage: with mod_perl, since the module is initialized at startup before entering the chroot jail, there is no need to install perl within the chroot jail, and this makes setting up much easier.

I could run thttpd listening on port 80, and Apache listening on another port. This would enable me to run MovableType on the backend and still let thttpd serve my weblog. The weblog search script however still wouldn't work.

Apache also does one thing which thttpd does not. Apache has this great mod_proxy module which does reverse proxying, so I can run Apache on my gateway machine, and let it connect to another server on the intranet, thereby exposing this other server to the outside.

Maybe it really is time to upgrade my gateway machine?

Sun, 19 Jan 2003 14:46:24 GMT

Fight Spam

Some very smart people met up on fighting spam. Slashdot, as usual, has a follow-up This comment is most interesting. I use a few DNSBLs, and althou this blocks most of the spam houses from my mail server, there are quite a few false positives (the so called collaterial damage). I use services from godaddy and paypal, and both are blocked from my mail server because their IP addresses appear in some of these DNSBLs, meaning that I would have to manually put their mail servers into my accept list before I could receive email from them, and I won't know about such rejects until I look into my maillog.

Something worth investigating.

Sun, 19 Jan 2003 07:46:20 GMT

TODO List

Finalize draft letter to be sent to hkgolden.com for Po.
Finish Rico's workflow program.
Look into setting up MovableType to replace my Radio weblog. Radio is good value-for-money for what you get: software plus update plus web space. However, I am cheap, and have no use for web space provided by Userland. Radio have problems handling double-byte Chinese characters with grace. I also don't want to devote one good computer to run Windows just to run Radio, nor do I want to run Radio on my Tibook. I am therefore looking for something to replace my Radio. MovableType is powerful and looks good. It is free as in free beer for non-commercial use.

Sat, 11 Jan 2003 10:06:22 GMT

Speed is Important in Usability

I only used Apple's new browser Safari for a shortwhile when it first came out. Apple has just posted an update, so I downloaded it and played with it some more.

Safari is FAST. The more I use it the more I appreciate its speed. I have to admit it now, that its speed makes the Internet more pleasant to use.

Althou I am tempted, I doubt I would use Safari in its present state as my default browser (which at the moment is Chimera). With tabbing under Chimera, I normally Apple-click on all the links in a windows, and those links will be loaded in a different tab in the background for me to go check later on. This is so cool because I don't have to wait for the new link to load and it does not interrupt my flow of reading the orignal window. Safari lacks Mozilla-like tabbing, so when I Apple-click on a link to open a new window, the new window is opened all over the place. I also have to try to find and restore the original window, which is a bit of a pain.

I don't doubt for a second that Safari will get tabbing shortly.

Thu, 09 Jan 2003 03:42:43 GMT

Product vs. Service: VoIP

Interesting story about some big corporation trying to charge a premium for a cheap service. Analogues of telephone companies and WiFi-service providers were drawn. I am wondering whether charges of the various local companies are too high, and why they claim to lose money over local voice lines.

Thu, 09 Jan 2003 01:29:39 GMT

Macworld Expo Comments Continue

Safari breaks single day download record for Apple. The browser war is not concluded!

Thu, 09 Jan 2003 01:06:01 GMT

Macworld Expo: Exciting Times

The media have been saturated with information on new hardware and software from Apple just announced in Macworld Expo.

Apple's new presentation software Keynote is very interesting. I look forward to playing with it and using it.

I like the form factor of the 12" Powerbook G4, althou I am not comfortable that it lacks a PCMCIA card slot. I admit that the PCMCIA card slot on my 15" TiBook is unoccupied most of the time, so it is quite possible that Apple's decision not to put the slot in the new machine is sound.

The Airport Extreme is also very interesting. This piece of equipment could serve as an access point and a bridge at the same time, meaning that one can form a mesh WiFi network easily. There are access points, and there are bridge, but I believe this is the first one which does both. Pity to use the Airport Extreme card (for the high speed) I would have to upgrade to a new machine, which I won't be able to do until next year.

The new Safari browser will replace Microsoft Internet Explorer as the default browser on new machines. It is based on the KHTML core, and is lightning fast. It beats Chimera on speed by a comfortable margin. However, it has problems handling tons of CSS stuff. Web developers will have to support an additional browser from now on, which is of course bad news.

Sat, 04 Jan 2003 02:14:03 GMT

Apple may charge for iApps

The rumour is all over the place on the Internet. Apparently Apple will starting charging for the now-free iApps.

I use iPhoto and iMovie, especially the former, quite a lot. If I had to pay for them, I probably would, but then I would also look at alternatives, such as the excellent iView Media Pro. As long as the iApps are reasonably priced, I would say it would be good for the platform in the long run, as this would push the users to try and evaluate the iApps as well as 3rd party offerings.

Sat, 21 Dec 2002 00:16:51 GMT

These folks need your help. I have just upgraded my membership to Silver and thereby given them US$60. I am running a Mandrake 9 workstation. I have just played with their new Multi Network Firewall and like it a lot. Their software has always been excellent and available for download for free. US$120 a year is a good price to pay for top quality software. Oh BTW Silver membership entitles me to Sun's StarOffice officue suite.

Highly recommended.

Sun, 15 Dec 2002 13:09:54 GMT

MandrakeSecurity Multi Network Firewall

Very cool.

It is a dual-license software, being proprietory or GPL. It costs USD1990 (if you want full support), but also available for free download. The price is kinda steep, but definitely something I would recommend to clients.

Mon, 02 Dec 2002 10:00:18 GMT

Then I found this, which is a good guide for setting up any blog client.

Mon, 02 Dec 2002 09:40:28 GMT

Getting Newz Crawler to work w/ Userland Radio

I couldn't find the documentation to enable this. There are bits of information around but they are sketchy. I spell everything here hoping that Google would pick this up, for the benefit of other bloggers.

On the Radio side you need to enable "The Blogger API in Radio", then on Newz Crawler you enter the name of the machine running Radio as the url, and "/RPC2" (and not "/api/RPC2"!) as the directory. Enter "80" as the port number. Do a refresh, and you should see your blog as an option on the pull down manual on the right.

I couldn't do a screen dump as I have really uninstalled Newz Crawler from my Windoz workstation. It's nice, but not that nice.

Sat, 30 Nov 2002 02:49:04 GMT

Test post using Newz Crawler. Baby in hand, so typing w/ only one hand now.

--
Composed with Newz Crawler 1.3 http://www.newzcrawler.com/

Sat, 30 Nov 2002 00:34:40 GMT

3G Network: The Future is Bright, the Future is Hello Kitty.

Slashdot has a piece here.

The problem I see about 3G is that, it is not a disruptive technology, yet what we have right now (2G or 2.5G) are more than adequate. Bearing that in mind, all the 3G opeartors are talking about grabbing more money from their subscribers. I am paying HK$200 to HK$300 a month, and I am a fairly heavy voice user, totaling about 800 to 1200 minutes a month on average. Hutchison/Orange has been talking about HK$500/month for a typical 3G user. Unless there are really overwhelming reasons, I don't see myself doubling my mobile phone bill anytime soon. In any case, most of the features promised by 3G are already avaiable (more or less) on present 2.5G networks.

It is entirely possible that operators are thinking that if we are paying HK$200 a month for voice, then we would want those data services, thereby doubling our monthly mobile phone bill. Unfortunately it doesn't work exactly like that. The mobile phone is a communication device. It doesn't matter what form of media be it data or voice we use, we use it to communicate. Noone will take a doubled phone bill easily.

Mobile operators talk about MMS these days, 'cos it's the big money spinner. HK$5 for a short movie clip, HK$10 for transferring photo etc. is good news for the investors and shareholders, but not so good for the users. MMS in its present form is pretty much doomed in Hong Kong.

There is a network connection problem right now. The various mobile operators are ganged up into two groups. MMS sent from an opertor in one group could not be received by a user on an operator in the other group. It's like the old SMS interconnection problem between all the operators on the network, and everybody suffered.

Interesting movies and short clips, containing voice and images, are very difficult to make. It's a bit like DVs. A lot of people have them, but there aren't that many who do it as a hobby. Editing is hard, and the equipment for doing it used to be expensive. Much of the software for video editing were any good or particularly easy to use. The novelty of moving images wears off rather quickly. The Hong Kong people aren't a particularly expressive bunch, and that doesn't help MMS to become popular.

For the small amount of data going thru the network, MMS is far too expensive. The operators may see a tiny spike in its usage, but the novelty will wear off rather quickly.

One of the comments on Slashdot is very interesting.

Thu, 28 Nov 2002 09:34:44 GMT

Yes, this is currently now served by thttpd.

Thu, 28 Nov 2002 00:09:32 GMT

A Lighter HTTP Server

I have been playing with the thttpd web server. Apache (which comes with the standard OpenBSD installation) is the world's most popular, and probably most powerful, web server. It is however too bloated for my wimpy Pentium MMX 166. I am very tempted to switch over to something lighter.

This article talks about Boa, another light web server. This somehow triggles my desire to switch. I looked at thttpd before, so naturally I pick thttpd to experiment again.

thttpd is fast and highly responsive. Its throttling control is easy to use and effective. I capped one of the websites it serves to 500 bytes per second, and the download rate hovers around this figure. Cool!

The switch is however not without problems, and there are pieces of puzzles which I need to solve before it could replace Apache on my server for good. It doesn't have PHP support, but this is okay with me at this stage, as none of the websites on my server needs it. I would like to run Movable Type on this server, but have yet to figure out how to setup a chroot environment with perl.

Updates to be posted.

Wed, 27 Nov 2002 14:18:32 GMT

Mozilla 1.2

Rejoice! It really is better than IE.

FWIW, I use Chimera on OS X, which is based on Gecko the rendering engine behind Mozilla but lighter.

Mon, 18 Nov 2002 02:05:42 GMT

BBEdit version 7.0

It is out. I really like the new CVS support.

Sat, 02 Nov 2002 01:59:30 GMT

Why PDF sucks

Keep reading, 'cos the real juice (IMO) starts from the 10th paragraph.

How true: Interleaf has been dying for years. Ventura Publisher has been dying for years. PageMaker is a deadend and last time I mentioned it I was laughed at by some designer-wannabes.

Sat, 26 Oct 2002 09:56:52 GMT

For no good reasons, my trusty Ericsson T39mc died last week. I like this phone a lot. It has a solid metal frame, and has survived quite a few drops. Battery life is very respectable, and it works with the Address Book on my TiBook via Bluetooth. I have a backup of all the contact on this phone.

The SonyEricsson local agent took HK$100 to check my phone, and then called me up and said that the motherboard of my phone needs a replacement and that would be HK$1,200. Consider that a new T39mc is around HK$1,600, this is insane. I told the gal on the phone that I bought the phone only last year, and the one year warranty has only expired for two weeks. I expect them to come up with a deep discount for fixing my phone and if she couldn't authorize such a deal she'd better talk to her managers and then call me back.

Understanding that the chance of a happy ending is rather poor, I started shopping for a new phone, with the following criteria:-

It has to be relatively inexpensive, e.g. say under HK$3K.
It has to be relatively small and light-weight.
Bluetooth. And I mean a sensible Bluetooth implementation.
GPRS.

It turns out that there aren't that many choices. Not that I care much about Bluetooth headphones, but for some unknown reasons the Nokia 7650 doesn't do voice Bluetooth. It's also too big and bulky, not to mention expensive. The only other Bluetooth-capable Nokia available in Hong Kong is the Ti Nokia 8910, which unfortunately doesn't do SyncML, so can't sync its phonebook via Bluetooth with most other devices, and is also one of the most expensive phones out there. The Nokia Communicator is way over the budget and far too big. It's also a bit out-dated. I have had excellent experience with a 6150, so I really wanted some kind of a cheap Nokia phone there...

I did look at the Alcatel OT715. It does SyncML and GPRS, and the price is right. Pretty good looking as well. However, it doesn't do Bluetooth.

Then I re-read this, and decided on another Ericsson, and bought a T68i yesterday. iSync really works rather well, and now I have my contact list and my calendar all nicely sync'ed up. Sweet.

Oh I bought the phone from some chain shop Wilson Telecom (no website), which gives a total of 15 months warranty for my phone. The price is also cheaper than Sunday, where I got my T39mc.

Tue, 15 Oct 2002 03:07:21 GMT

Follow up to Microsoft's Switch advert: Microsoft PR Rep is the Switcher. Here's a followup to our earlier story about Microsoft's "inverse switch" ... [Slashdot]

A very quick down-turn of the story. Here is how they managed to track the person down. Are you sure you still want to use Microsoft Word now?

Fri, 11 Oct 2002 07:11:30 GMT

Follow up to the upgrade of Mandrake Linux 9.0: totally unremarkable. It went as smoothly as silk.

Thu, 03 Oct 2002 01:06:01 GMT

Mandrake Linux 9.0. I am upgrading my Linux workstation right now.

Fri, 20 Sep 2002 17:23:53 GMT

Discovered this gem yesterday. Works fine with the Win32 and Linux versions of Mozilla, but under OS X, the "Save" button was missing, so there is no way to use this. Bug has already been reported, so have faith that it will be fixed.

Which also means, I am typing HTML right now on my TiBook under Mozilla.

Wed, 18 Sep 2002 13:44:27 GMT

Hong Kong tops mobile internet league table. Finland marked down on broadband [The Register]

The head of OFTA only just went thru crap this week, for the slashdot-like effect on our lane-line and mobile network during the day of typhoon. Nonetheless he should now be pleased. Still much to do thou.

Broadband Internet access is cheap, reliable and highly available. Wifi is getting there, althou I don't see it being utilized as much as I would like. Really can't complain.

Sat, 14 Sep 2002 01:50:13 GMT

According to some research, Hong Kong has the third highest percentage of broadband internet access users in the world. This should be something to be proud of, but no. The research also says that most broadband users use the Internet to do email, ICQ, download MP3s and surf. Basically, mostly for entertainment and amusement.

One doesn't need broadband to do ICQ or email. Web-surfing is much nicer with broadband, but one can survive with a 56K modem dialup. Basically, most folks are just not using broadband to its full potential.

Po stopped using Radio since his copy expired. He said he was too cheap. Different priorities, fine. (But then one doesn't need broadband to do weblogging, especially w/ Radio.) I must say I am a bit disappointed thou.

The fine folks at Netvigator offers this value-added service . Knowing that most folks have nothing to say and even less to express, I wonder how popular this service is.

Broadband has become a necessary tool for software development. I have linked to them before. Check out these folks.

Sun, 01 Sep 2002 15:31:05 GMT

The latest IBM Thinkpad. 8 hours of battery life, super light, optional built-in WiFi and Bluetooth. I want one.

Fri, 30 Aug 2002 00:00:11 GMT

Called up HP yesterday for a replacement battery for my Omnibook laptop. The old one would only take about 45 minutes of charge. I was given a number of an authorized parts dealer to call. Althou the whole process was handled professionally by the two parties (meaning, friendly, knowledgeable people on the phone) I was not impressed with the high cost of the replacement battery.

A new battery is ~HK$1,800, while a replacement battery is ~HK$1,700. It used to cost ~HK$1,200 when I bought the machine two/three years ago. In comparison, a replacement battery for old IBM Thinkpads is ~HK$1,000 (you have to ask for a spare part, not a new item, otherwise it's ~HK$1,200).

Guess what my next Wintel laptop will be?

Sun, 28 Jul 2002 17:35:03 GMT

The rumour of my death has been exaggerated

It has been too long since I last updated my weblog. I run my Radio software on my HP Omnibook laptop. The HD died the second time since I bought this machine two years ago, so I go through one HD each year. I can't say this is good. The thing is, the HDs in my desktop machines aren't doing much better.

Anyway, I bought a cheapo 10G to replace the old 5G. Fortunately, the old 5G failed only partially, and with some mucking around I managed to pull most of the files off it, and the Radio software came back to life on the same laptop, which is nice.

But then when I installed the 10G new HD, I put in two partitions: one for Windows 2000 and another for something else. Mandrake 8.1 came up with minimal fuss, and was in much better shape than the upgraded Mandrake 8.1 on my desktop machine. Sound, X, KDE2/3, network, etc. all worked fine. Couldn't be happier, except I really wanted to put those cool OpenBSD stickers on this laptop, and to do so, I needed to run OpenBSD.

OpenBSD actually installed and ran fine. My two network cards (one 3COM PCMCIA 10/100M ethernet card, and one Buffalo 802.11b WiFi card) came up and were talking to the network with minimal fuss. The problem was with getting X to work. xf86cfg wasn't working anywhere as smoothly as it does on Linux, and I had to edit the X86Config file by hand. Losing text mode after launching X is a long-known yet unfixed problem. Mind you, KDE2 works fine. I didn't spend enough time to get Mozilla to work (the port tree is still only at 0.9.3 and appears to be broken). I want to run my Radio software, and need to test my websites with IE, so am pretty much stuck with running Win2000 on this laptop. Sigh...

I tried before to run Radio on my TiBook. Migration was straightforward, well-documented and problem-free, which is nice, but for some strange reasons response of the Radio outliner was rather poor (unresponsive) compared to my much slower PII laptop. I have therefore given up this idea.

Radio is nice, but lacks some features which I would like, e.g. site-wide search. I am considering whether I should "eat the dog food" (which means a programmer using one's own program) by using WebCM. To be able to do so, I'd have to add a new feature: paragraph objects being displayed in chronological order. Auto-expiration would also be highly desireable. Outputting to a static site is also something nice to have. Hmmm... something to think about in the next couple of weeks.

Sat, 15 Jun 2002 16:21:53 GMT

Tourist-friendly London

There is a reason why London is one of the most tourist-friendly cities in the world. Doc seems to be enjoying it. I am talking about this.

Broadband Internet in Hong Kong is cheaper than anywhere else in the world. 802.11b equipment are selling like hotcats in Hong Kong. Yet of today I have still not heard of any local community wireless network efforts. Is it because we just don't stay outdoor for very long, and would rather stay in air-con'ed buildings?

Mon, 10 Jun 2002 07:42:45 GMT

It's cheaper on a CD!

An article/weblog on physical object vs online distribution.

When I wanted to install Mozilla on my old man's computer (no broadband access, only 56K dial-up), the solution was so obvious: download it to one of my computers via broadband, and burn a CD. The blank CD costs about HK$1.5. Okay I waited about 10 minutes for the CD to burn, but that was all. Couldn't imageine how I would do it otherwise.

Sun, 09 Jun 2002 01:35:58 GMT

I got the replacement loaner G4/800 TiBook, plugged it into the dented (but working) one, started it up holding down the T key, and it came up as a firewire drive. Then I ran Dantz' Retrospect on the dented one, and duplicated the entire contentss of the dented one into the new one. Now I'm on the new one, and it's like I'm on the same box. Amazing. [Doc Searls Weblog]

This is how a laptop's firewire port should be implemented.

Sun, 09 Jun 2002 00:28:18 GMT

I send this in order to have your comment.

Good read about the fun that comes with Windows viruses.

Fri, 07 Jun 2002 14:37:54 GMT

A good friend Faikee emailed and asked me about picking a new laptop. Here is my reply.

Good timing that you asked. I have just bought a new laptop to replace my two years old HP Omnibook XE2 (14" screen, 192M RAM, 3GB HD, PII 450, DVD, weights a ton, battery only lasts 1.5 hours on a full charge), and I looked at nearly all the laptops on the market.

The Portege 2000 is nice. However, it it relatively slow, and the standard package at $16,xxx has no CDROM, no FDD and no WiFi. On the Toshiba website there is a slightly newer model with WiFi built-in, but I have not seen it in H.K. The package comes with the additional long battery, giving it an impressive 8+ hours of life. Keyboard is standard size, but because the machine is so thin, key travel is shallower than normal, which is a negative point for me. It is *VERY* light, and the screen is excellent.

I really like the IBM X22/X23. X23 is the current model, with WiFi built-in and a special security chip built-in, which is supposed to help you track it down if it is ever stole, *if* the next owner is stupid enough to surf the net with it. I *REALLY* like its keyboard. The screen is very good, but not as good as Toshiba P2000's. They are going for $18,xxx from PCCW. And I *REALLY* like the keyboard. IBM laptops last ages and are extremely well-built. The X23 is very light (not as light as the P2000 I believe), and battery life is quite respectable at ~3 hours. Oh world-wide 3 years warranty. Did I mention I *REALLY* like its keyboard? We are negotiating for a new project and if it materializes then I'll be needing another laptop. I'll definitely get one if so. Absolutely the best keyboard. Oh the standard package comes with a mediabay/whatever, which is an extension base that fits under the computer and houses a CD-ROM reader and a floppy drive. The whole thing together is still quite portable.

I also looked at the ASUS S1000. Nicely made, good screen, reasonable keyboard, *GOOD PRICE*. Apparently there is a model with WiFi built-in but I have not seen it. Battery life is a bit over 2 hours (marginally enough I'd say), and the machine is quite heavy. I wouldn't mind getting one thou.

Compaq has a few very good-value-for-money models, but they are not ultra-portables. The ultra-portable Evo is quite nice, but I'll pick the IBM over the Evo anyday.

Fujitsu's are supposingly quite nice as well. I don't know much about them and didn't really look at them when I was looking around, but I noticed their Lifebook P1xxx and P2000 running on the Transmeta Crusoe CPU. The latest models burn CD-Rs, and have respectable battery life. The keyboard I believe is however not full size, and the screen size is also weird. Small and light, but compromises on a few important aspects.

Eventually I bought an Apple Powerbook G4, two weeks before the latest new model came out. Good thing I am fast approaching half way thru recovering the cost of the purchase.

I must say I am biased for the IBM X23. The keyboard is much nicer than the Toshiba P2000's. The IBM also feels more solid (althou the Toshiba is also extremely well made).

A bit more on the advantage of built-in WiFi. Models with built-in WiFi are supposed to have the antenna running along the screen, which then provide superior reception to the horizontal antennas in PCMCIA cards (not only because of the size, but more the orientation of the antenna). It sounds very convincing, but the reception of my Buffalo (a Lucent clone) is better than the reception of the built-in WiFi in my TiBook.

If you do have to go with a WiFi PCMCIA card, most cards stick out from the PCMCIA slot. My Buffalo sticks about 1 inch out from the side of my HP notebook. This may or may not be a problem to you. In any case you could always go for the 3Com one, with an extendible XJACK antenna.

The prices above are most likely out-of-date. Laptops tend to drop price very quickly. You can also expect to knock about 5% off the price if you pay cash (most folks would pay with credit card interest free installment plans).

Wed, 05 Jun 2002 23:47:11 GMT

I only use IE to test websites these days, and have been browsing the web with Mozilla for quite some time now.

Mozilla is more standard-compliant, more featureful, more stable and far more secure.

Highly recommended.

Wed, 05 Jun 2002 23:39:14 GMT

Mozilla 1.0 has been released! Rejoice! Get it here.

Thu, 02 May 2002 22:21:45 GMT

Good argument for Open software. Blind faith on a black box is not the way to go for high reliability.

Thu, 02 May 2002 15:14:59 GMT

I received a call from a Netvigator (one of the two ISPs I use) salesperson about half an hour ago, about my ADSL broadband subscription (HK$298 for around 50/100? hours a month).

It appears that my commitment contract has expired. I am now free to discontinue the service. They would however be glad to sell me another contract of 14 months for HK$298 per month unlimited usage. In additional, it will be free for four of these 14 months.

I told her that I thought 14 months of commitment was just too long, and other ISPs were doing much better deals (I was pulling her leg of course. i-Cable and HKBN are both cheaper, but as a part-time SOHO I wouldn't want to be with them), and she immediately went on to another option: 12 months contract, HK$198 per month unlimited usage, also with some free months thrown in.

I immediately complained that it wasn't the right way to do business and I felt cheated. I have been with Netvigator BB for over two years now, and since it goes onto my credit card, I haven't missed a single month of subscription, so I consider myself a good customer. As a part-time computer consultant myself, I value customer relations highly. I am more willing to give my good old customers special deals and bend over backwards for them than newer customers who are not as committed. Quite the reverse with Netvigator. If I had accepted their first offer, I would have accepted the less-favourable offer.

So I called up the fine folks at HKNet (the other ISP I use) and signed up for the special offer of a 12 months contract for upgrading my line to 3MB.

Wed, 01 May 2002 16:45:30 GMT

I have been checking out the website of the Hong Kong Public Libraries. The Chinese version of the website has one major problem: it doesn't contain the proper encoding type, so non-Chinese browsers would see lots of garbage on the website unless the character encoding is manually set. Silly mistake. However, I'll leave the general layout/organization and usabilty comments for another time.

The library system itself is quite impressive, and is a very valuable resource for self-improvement. In the Tuen Mun Public Library there is a computer room with about a few dozen Internet-connected computers for public access. This is a good thing(TM). However, it is so popular that the room is always full.

I think the Chief Librarian should consider installing 802.11b wireless ethernet in all public libraries. Laptops are getting cheaper these days and the cost for a 802.11b wireless ethernet card is very reasonable. A lot of people could afford them. It would not be unreasonable for someone to walk in a public library with his/her laptop and start working, taking advantage of all the resources the public library has to offer. It would be good if this person could access the Internet from his/her laptop.

A good reliable access point with an omnidirectional antenna is around HK$2.5K to HK$3K. I suspect that 2 access points would be good for covering the whole area of one floor of the Tuen Mun Public Library. We can have as many as 253 computers attached to the library wireless network on each floor, and the total cost for the installation should be no more than HK$10K for the two access points for each floor. HK$10K would buy two new computers, but we all know that the maintenance for public-access computers are expensive: keyboards don't last very long, and they go obsolete relatively quickly. OTOH maintenance for the wireless network should be easy and inexpensive, and the network itself should have a much longer life.

A wireless ethernet network at the Public Library would no doubt strengthen it as a centre for self-improvement.

Public access computers should of course still be available for those without laptops, or under-privileged folks.

Who do I speak to for this?

Thu, 25 Apr 2002 03:39:55 GMT

Althou I have always been aware of the fact the Aqua (the OS X GUI) is based on Adobe PDF, the idea hasn't really sunked in until the last few days. The Acrobat Reader is free, but one needs the Acrobat software to generate PDF documents. There are free (as in beer) and Free (as in speech) Postscript to PDF convertors around but they are complicated to use and hairly when dealing with Chinese.

With OS X, since the whole display is based on PDF, what you see on the screen can become a PDF file, and it's just as easy as send print.

Mozilla 1.0RC1 has problem doing print previewing within the application itself, but previewing in the system print manager works perfectly. No problem with Chinese either. I am pleased.

Oh course I don't get all the fine controls as in the real Acrobat software, nor do I get the form features, but for distributing documents PDF is useful.

Wed, 24 Apr 2002 13:58:37 GMT

Excellent story about a 5 year old kid here.

It's not that this 5 year old kid of Doc is a super-kid. It's that Google has become a part of people's life. When you need advice or knowledge, ask Google.

I told the Lady this story. She asked, "What's Google?"

China might have the 2nd biggest population of Internet users. However, most of the juice is in English. We could put in a lot of resources to translate all the knowledge old and new into Chinese and bring it to the masses, which won't work very well because of the gigantic effort required to hit a forever moving target, or get the people to learn English, which a lot of the Chinese are doing it anyway.

Fri, 12 Apr 2002 11:15:14 GMT

802.11b Hitting It Right

This is pretty cool.

I obtained a pamphlet for this 802.11b (aka radio ethernet) service yesterday while I was at a PCCW shop checking this out. The pamphlet mentions no price, but here it is. HK$18 an hour is actually quite expensive, consider that a commercial ADSL line is around HK$600/month for unlimited access (I think), and those Pacific Coffee places all have Internet-connected computers there for customers to use anyway. A reasonable access point is just under HK$2K, so if response is good, it shouldn't take long to recoup the investment. HK$10/hour would be much easier to swallow I say.

The Wharf folks were far more forward-thinking. They have been offering a similar service in Ocean Terminal and Ocean Centre for well over a year now. It doesn't say how much the service costs, but wants your credit card information. Weird.

Mon, 08 Apr 2002 22:47:12 GMT

Interesting application. Hotmail on steroid. Would you pay US$30 a year for reliable webmail that doesn't suck?

I use Mozilla as my main browser, so Oddpost is a bit useless for me (note the claim that 90% of Internet users now use IE). I have to admit that the IE widgets are very well done.

Maybe I should adjust our development target.

Fri, 05 Apr 2002 03:44:07 GMT

I have not written lately. Been busy doing other things. I even missed the excellent tutorial on macro photography the fine folks at NPC did.

A weblog is supposed to be a continuous journal. The theory is that the weblogger would be putting all thoughts and idea along the day. This is obviously not happening with this one you are reading. I average about a few entries each week. It's not that I have been idle. In fact, normally I only find time to sit down and do the writing when I have some spare time and free from other engagements.

I did consider doing the weblogging on my Palm. It works, as previously demonstrated on this site. I even found a place where they are selling a Palm III keyboard for HK$600, which is a reasonable deal. The problem is that I have some doubts about this investment. The Palm III form factor is near obsolete. This Palm III keyboard will only fit my Palm IIIx and the Handera 330. In view of the existing Palm PDAs Sony have been bringing out, I have doubts as to whether the replacement for my trusty IIIx will be a Handera, and I do not intend to replace it unless it is somehow destroyed. So the IIIx keyboard is likely to be useless for the replacement machine, and I'd have to get a new keyboard at a higher price.

(Which reminds me to do a HotSync for my IIIx.)

Anyway, weblogging with my IIIx is unlikely to happen.

The iBook is too big for lugging around for weblogging purposes. I am planning to buy a Powerbook for real work anyway, and I don't want to take this HK$30K machine with me everywhere.

I checked out a very portable IBM Thinkpad at the PCCW shop. It's nice looking, battery life is reasonable (nowhere near the battery life of Mac portables thou), and the price is okay, but there is only one problem: the keyboard is very small. I couldn't touch-type on it.

I think the keyboard of Sony Picturebooks are bigger, but they are also expensive and I am not sure I would like their tiny screens.

Oh well. The search goes on.

Sun, 24 Mar 2002 16:03:30 GMT

Got my Jabber server running again. The Windoz client I am using is quite nice. There are a whole bunch of them.

It's a bit like ICQ, only you don't (yet) get any spam messages and it's all Free Software. My Windoz client winjab does Chinese reasonably well.

If you like to try it out, connect your Jabber client to rollingegg.net, and open an account.

Wed, 20 Mar 2002 16:06:20 GMT

Virtual Keyboard a Reality [Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters]

Great news, great product! Cool.

Mon, 18 Mar 2002 15:37:02 GMT

Writing Tools

I have been toying with the idea of outliners recently. A lot of the bloggers like the idea. Dave Winer, who wrote my blogging tool has been doing outliners all his career. In fact, everything he does involves outliners.

Americans are taught how to organize their thoughts and summarize a topic or information with outlines. I remember having been shown outlines, but do not recall having spent any significant amount of time practising it in school.

At university I played with a package called PC-Outline. I never really grew into it, gave up and switched to WordPerfect for good. The file format of PC-Outline was not really compatible with any other decent wordprocessor. Printer support was lacking. Image support was not there. It could export to plain text, which meant that I'd have to redo all the formatting in another wordprocessor and was a total pain. WordPerfect had a reasonable outlining mode anyway. The main reason was that I never grew into the habit of writing outlines.

Last week I started playing with outliners again. Microsoft Word 2000 has a fairly decent outline mode. At the office I tried to put an advice letter to client into outline form first, and use this outline as the skeleton of my advice letter. The advice letter was straightforward, so the outlining worked out reasonably well. However, I wasn't too impressed, as the outline looked quick different to the actual letter. I could have written the outline w/o using any of the fancy "outline" mode features, and just let it grow from a very draft outline to the full letter.

I wasn't convinced either way, so I tried to experiment with something a little bit more complicated. I had some notes on a CRM proposal for a client, so I tried to put the proposal into an outline, and hopefully that would turn into a meaningful presentation. The problem this time is that a lot of the points are inter-related with each other. The structure of the proposal is quite a bit more complicated and contains a lot more content than my previous advice letter. I am not entirely convinced that an outliner would help enormously in this situation.

For your interest, I am actually writing this with UltraEdit, a Windoz editor. I could easily have written using GNU Emacs, only that I do not have it installed on my laptop. Oh actually GNU Emacs has an outline mode as well which, from experience, would do the job adequately, but not brilliantly.

I am considering whether it is the way I work that renders outliners useless for me. On one hand it doesn't make sense to change how one conducts work to suit a tool. On the other hand, an outliner may be useful for making the user slow down a bit and organize the information in a more logical way. If this is true, then maybe I should put some thoughts into it.