Loading ...Archive for July 23rd, 2003
digital camera hunt
July 23rd, 2003
my dad has persuaded me not to send my camera back to fix coz he’s gonna buy me a new camera *hehe*. so i’ve been camera hunting for a while. hmm i had my eyes on the new Sony Cyber-shot DSC-V1 since I saw it in a local store. its night frame and night shot ability and ‘Carl Zeiss’ lenses are quite attractive. it’s selling for $699.99 but i found the cheapest online for $521.09. i was gonna buy that one from the local store and try it out and see how i like it. then return it and get one online if i really want it. but what a bummer, everyone charges at least 15% restocking fee on digital cameras. so no such cheats for me *=P* after talking to the guy at the local store, i found out that smart media card is obsolete. no new generation digital cameras will use it any more 
my poor smart media cards and smart media reader *sniff*
after browsing thru yahoo’s most popular cams, i have my eyes set on another one. i really like Nikon Coolpix 4300 because annia’s review on Nikon Coolpix 885, i just LOVE the vibrant color of her picture. but it’s 4 mega and 3X optical zoom compared to 5 mega and 4X optical zoom of the new Sony Cyber-shot DSC-V1. i wish it could be better. Nikon Coolpix 4300 does have manual focus tho. that’s one thing i really really want!! maybe i should just go with Nikon Coolpix 5400. that’s not one of the popular ones but it looks so cool! i need to make a decision. sign.. it’s so hard.
Some people are just bitchy
July 23rd, 2003
And they teach their kids how to be nosy and annoying too. I don’t usually rant about people because I hate gossiping but some people can manage to get on my nerves and piss me off so bad.
This mid-aged chinese woman who comes to the lab everyday is loud and rude. more over, she takes her 10 year old kid here everyday as well. Her IQ is probably pretty low too because every time she needs to use our electronic stapler, she would yell oh i don’t know how to use this, can you help me? i wonder how she’s able to stay in school if she can’t even use a stapler. all these would not matter to me if she didn’t try to get on my case.
yesterday the guy who was supposed to work the morning shift with me didn’t show up. so from 8am - 1:30pm I was the only monitor at the lab. I didn’t have breakfast so i was starving at noon. i decided to warm some Budget (microwavable food) up and eat it quickly in the lab. While I was eating the woman came up and used the trash can right next to me. and soon after that, her kid came to me and questioned why i was eating in the lab.
kid: why are you eating in the lab?
me: because i’m the only monitor here and if i leave, there won’t be anyone here. and if i don’t eat, i might die.
kid: how come we are not allowed to eat in the lab?
me: because you don’t have to stay here all day long.
kid: ooooooh… i get it…
during the conversation i was confused how this kid was able to see me from where she was sitting. because she should not have. the only way she could have known was from her mom telling her. more likely her mom directed her to interrogate me. that very thought just made me sick. so before the kid could leave,
i asked: btw, why are you here? are you a UI student?
kid: no, but my mom is.
i left out a contemptuous laugh
and said: These machines are paid with UI students’ tuition and are meant to be used by UI students not to babysit their children. You should be happy I didn’t kick you out. I do have the legitimate reason to do so.
It was rewarding to see the expression on the kid’s face changing from “:) hey hey hey I got you” to “:( ouch, she’s mean” and ran away. I probably would not have said the last part to her if she wasn’t directed by her mom. I didn’t want her mom to think “she won”. if she wanted to use her kid as a bullet, i was happy to return it back to her face.
but she probably wouldn’t care anyway. watch her with her kid here again today. but if she gets on my case again with such a low style, i will probably kick her kid out.
on the other hand, microsoft has finally kicked netscape completely out of the competition. here’s a newsletter i got from sitepoint titled “NETSCAPE GONE… CAN MOZILLA SURVIVE?”
In a long-anticipated announcement last week, Netscape owner AOL-Time Warner finally put a stop to new development on the browser. The recently released Netscape 7.1 [1] will be the final version of the Netscape browser.
Ever since Microsoft settled its legal problems with AOL-Time Warner [2] late in May, ensuring that Internet Explorer would remain the basis for the AOL online service for years to come, Netscape has been living on borrowed time. Though a good browser, thanks to the efforts of the Mozilla project [3], the latest versions have basically been cluttered variations of the austere Mozilla browser attempting to push services from the company’s online portal, Netscape.com [4].
That said, Netscape developers made a significant contribution to the Mozilla project themselves — a contribution that will no doubt be sorely missed now that those developers are looking for new jobs.
Possibly more important to the long-term survival of the Mozilla browser is establishing a higher profile among the general Internet community. Open-source projects like Mozilla aren’t renouned for their advertising budgets, and if the only people who know about Mozilla are developers like you and I, the corporate sponsorships that make it go won’t last for long.
[1] http ://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/default.jsp
[2] http ://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/30942.html
[3] http ://www.mozilla.org/
[4] http ://www.netscape.com/
and last nite i found this lovely kangaroo picture 
