Computer Knowledge. Gadget. Anime. Design. Dance. Hong Kong Life. Stuff like that.

7.30.2004

(2004-07-29)

Still devoted a lot of my time learning 3D Studio Max. So far I find this tool awesome. And I can see that this is an essential tool for all graphic artist, just like every graphic artist should know Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash and some video editing like Adobe Premiere.

It happened back when I was using 3D Studio Max 3: when there��s any rendering problem, it��s most probably the Direct 3D driver. Using OpenGL will always solve the problem. It happened today again. I mean, what��s the problem of Direct3D driver most of the time, dude!

7.24.2004

Have you seen the US sitcom "Seinfeld" before? (Or maybe you are a big fan of it?) If so, you are familiar the kind of humor that make fun on daily life tiny tiny stuff which id so common that you ignored it. Like for instance, there was an episode about making sausage, and then there's another episode dedicated to finding a car after shopping in a mega mall. NO one they called "Seinfeld" "a sitcom about nothing".

Well, welcome to the Japanese anime series Galaxy Angel S3.

This is Japanese animation response to Seinfeld. In this seemingly cute looking action heroine, the theme is not really about fighting evil. It's mostly about poking fun on the clich? of other action hero anime, stupid moronic mission, nonsense conversation and response, and 10x all o f the above. If you are want a good clean fun stupid animation to laugh at, this should be the one.

7.19.2004

I woke up very early this morning (around 5:30 am), and there's nothing better to start my day than watching the MSDN Online Webcast for the Visual Studio 2005 C# Express IDE (http://www107.placeware.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032254466&pw=webcast). Yeah, I know. I am such a geek, but heck, this one of those things that I am interested in at the same have positive impact on my career.

And within minutes of trying out C# Express while watching the webcase, I experienced some problem and found that the so called SQL Server 2005 Beta is just a new version of MSDE, meaning that I still don't have all the fancy new Query Analyzer to play with. I can only manipulate the database within the C# Express IDE. That's a tiny little bit blow, but I quick regain my interest on the beta testing and just move on.

Bad stuff happened to my Palm again. The Flashcard freak out and was totally need to reformat. Now after losing tons of stuff my from crashed SATA hard disk, I lost all my stuff on my compact Flash card. Actually, it's very annoying that very once in a while I have to remember to back up this, back up that.... darn...

7.14.2004

2004-07-14
 
I completely forgot when and how I got to bed last night.  That was scary.  It's almost like I got hypnotized.  On the other hand it's cool that I feel at sleep exhausted.
 
 
Oh, I remember it now.  I was listening (test-driving) to a Sci-Fi eBook and then I fell into sleep.

7.13.2004

(2004-07-13)
 
Second day of being unemployed.  Still feeling good.  Yee ha!!!
 
But frankly, it was not too productive yesterday, as I only did a few things.  I know I shouldn't always judge my life by the tasks I accomplish, which is a common pitfall among men, but ... the heck.  If don't watch out, I may watch the best moment of my life in some wasteful activates.
 
And as a second thought, it was really not that bad.  I mean, I picked up my plane ticket, brought 2 power extension chords for mom, had praise team B band practice, shopped around Golden Shopping Center for Emily's 256 Mb MP3 players and taught my nephew Ho On some alphabets.  That was not too bad for the first day.
 
Speaking of my nephew Ho On, he's so cute but can be distracting when he's around you doing work.  Like right now he's in my room messing with my guitar. 
 
I figured out that if I grow mustache, I will look more like I am wasted.  Must keep that in mind when needed (to get sympathy from others for whatever reason) :-E
 
 
Video and audio codec on Windows can be very messy these days, particularly when there are multiple variation for even a single codec like Divx.  And recently I found some very mysterious about video codec of videos that I downloaded from BT: somehow the Divx codec I downloaded from the official codec site is NOT as good as the Divx and Xvid Codec that come with the Nero 6.3.1.13.  In fact, the official Divx codec gave me some strange JPEG compression error kind of problem, while the Nero codec (kicked in after I removed the Divx official codec) doesn't seem to have any problem.  Strange indeed.
 
 
Things that I couldn't do for a long while can now be done!  I finally spent sometime to watch a Japanese animation called "Paranoia Agent".  It's from the same director of a nice animation "Perfect Blue",  And just like "Perfect Blue", "Paranoia Agent" has some strange and interesting character, with the same suspend and weird atmosphere that made "Perfect Blue" so juicy.  I got 13 episodes from BT, and very much looking forward to consume all of them very soon.  (I am still watch the Episode 2 by the way).  You can find more information about this animation at http://www.mousou.tv/ .
 
Today's theme my day seems to be "play, play, play" (hey, sometime I just have to loosen myself, right?  I've been too uptight with my schedule for too long anyway).  I just spent sometime (1.5 hours I guess) trying to figure out how to make the GameBoy Advance ROM "Mario VS Donkey Kong" to work with my GBA Flash card.  I was stuck for almost a month, but then when I read the Emuboard (http://www.emuboards.com/invision/index.php) a while ago, I found that there's tool called sRAM-it 2.31 (http://gbatemp.m4d.sm/index.php?act=ST&f=13&t=17695), I tired it and it worked great.  And it's also very easy to use.  After download and install it, run the application, select your ROM and select "Auto Detect" from menu.  Finally, save the patched ROM.  Now the ROM will have the "[P]" mark on the file name, and it will totally work on my F2A GBA Flash card.  The key here is to pick the right Save type, and so far the Auto Detect Works pretty well.
 
 
I did do something productive today.  A lot of time I was spent on trying to find some education software for my 2 year 4 months old nephew.  I found a freeware that teaches him alphabet with voice.  He seemed to like it a lot.  The only problem is that he kept randomly slamming on the keyboard, and that caused the education application to either quit or hidden by other windows and applications that my nephew accidentally triggered.  The worst part was that he might hit the power or sleep mode key on the keyboard, and suddenly the system went to sleep mode.
 
After exploring a while, I found a simply solution: I pull out all the special keys like Power, Windows, Sleep, ESC and so on from the keyboard.  That way, no matter how randomly he hit the keyboard, he will stay in the educational program.  Based on my observation in the last half an hour, it worked out pretty well. 
 

7.02.2004

(2004-07-02)
 
A lot of things going on with me these days.  For all, the most important is probably the approaching of the end of my current contract.  It's not like I really hate this work, although I must admit that there's so much challenging moment all along and sometimes the cranky side of me just suddenly show up and kick the dirt in front of every colleague at work.  That was a scary. But most importantly, my full time job combines with my crazy band practice schedule (Praise team A, team B, 5 PM and Heart Production special events) and dance practice/performance sucked up 98% of my time.  And I was not a happy person when I don't have some spare time to do my personal stuff, including song writing, updating my weblog, do a little bit sketching and creative work, or simply layback.
 
Just recently I found my physical limitation.  After being totally frustrated by playing the newly setup electronic drum set during the Sunday Service (you tended play extra hard on a electronic drum set) and lack of sleeping the night before (have a night band practice), my mental and physical was exhausted to a point which I walked like a living zombie.  The worst part was that I had to rush to a dance practice and then rush back to another band practice.  So there I was walking around in the dance studio doing something so called dance when in fact was just doing the routine.  Chow sir was pissed and I was frustrated.  It was after then that I was serious consider quitting Chinese dance. 
 
I am trying to think of a strategy to solve this problem, but I really couldn't.  I am not quitting playing drum set on Sunday service, yet at least I don't want to quit Chinese dance now.  So I guess I only option left is to have a great night sleep on Saturday night, and have a relaxing Saturday in general.  Hopefully that would give me enough energy to get by the busy Sunday.
 
And that was, once again, why I was so thrilled about the end of my contract.  I can finally get a chance to realign my life and do a trial run of my stuff as if I were leaving Hong Kong right now.  This may seems like a strange, but consider that I will leave Hong Kong sooner or later; this is an essential exercise for me to remind myself not to get too kin on accumulating possession.  As much I tried to keep myself from unnecessary purchase, there's still a lot of stuff accumulating at the upper deck of my bed.  And after the reconstruction of room, that upper deck is getting pretty messing.  I am sure if I leave it along for a few more months, it will be just matter of time that the upper deck will be like a dumpster. 
 
Because of my friend Galena��s computer was infected by virus, and that I need to crank out a virus cleaning solution which I non-techky person can execute without minimum of my assistance, I spent sometime to figure a easy 1-2-3 kind of steps for cleaning virus.  And thru out the process, I figured out something:
 
            (1) Bootup up from a self-boot anti-virus doesn't work too well on XP
            Self-Boot up OS (from DOS to WinME) cannot handle NTFS, and thus even though I can boot up a Norton Anti-virus CD, it doesn't recognize all the NTFS partition, which is the default partition type for XP.
            (2) DOS (16-bit) based anti-virus tool doesn't work on XP
            I also tried running the 16-bit version of the Symantec Antivirus 9 with latest virus definition directly from a CDR once I booted a machine in XP Safe Mode.  Turns out the DOS version weren��t able to cure the infected files even after the application found it.
 
            So the only solution left is to:
            (0) Unplug the Internet connection.
            (1) Boot up the machine at XP Safe Mode.
            (2) Run that standalone virus removal application (I have 5 collected).  These are the notorious one which keep you from installing or running Antivirus application.
            (3) Run those 2 MSBlast & Sassy OS loophole patch.
            (4) Turn on XP build in firewall.
            (5) install Norton Antivirus.
            (6) Connect to the Internet.
            (7) Update the Norton Antivirus definition. And the scan and clean the machine.
            (8) Do all the Critical windows Updates.
            (9) Use Adaware 6.0 to clean all the spyware.
 
            That's it.  Man, a lot of work.  But at least these steps are proven working for many times.