Monday, December 19, 2005

Ting-hao Yang's ASP.NET blog : Cross page navigation techniques in ASP.NET 1.x and 2.0

Ting-hao Yang's ASP.NET blog : Cross page navigation techniques in ASP.NET 1.x and 2.0

If you found the loading speed of your pages is slow, you would probably need to do some performance tuning on those pages. You may most likely think that the database query is slow, the page computation is too complicated, or the page size is too large. However, it may also be the case for long client-server round trip time (propagation delay). Here is a blog post from Yang on the details of page navigation scenerio. It may give you ideas on how to fine tune the loading time of your pages.

Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Project Tutorials in C#

Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Project Tutorials in C#

I don't know when will I need to work on some migration project from dotNet 1.1 to dotNet 2.0. But I do think this will happen some days later, and this tutorial will be helpful.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

To lead, or to be led?

It's just a very simple question. To lead, or to be led? I think most of the people thought of times that they're in the leading position. However, how many people reach there? How to get there? I don't have a concret idea. But standing behind someone and tracking their path obviously doesn't work.

Be more active, or even proactive.

Friday, December 09, 2005

Ken's Goodies Blog

I'm not sure how many of you recognise that I've established a new blog, named Ken's Goodies Blog, for new product alert (or may be there's nobody reading this blog). It seems that the new blog is not very popular, perphaps it's because I've not put much effort in promoting it. I think I need to promote the blog in more public channels. Let's see what will the situation be in the early January.

Friday, December 02, 2005

The Dilbert Principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I found out his Wiki article today, when I was finding information on Bottleneck Bill. All I can say is that this principle is really something.

Cell phones outnumber PCs in China | Tech News on ZDNet

Cell phones outnumber PCs in China | Tech News on ZDNet: "Cell phones outnumber PCs in China"

This remind me of my Final Year Project in CityU, entitled "Online Game in Mobile Phone". When will this idea really come true?

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Vodafone is leaving, but who's next?

As reported, the loge of some high-tech companies may be on Mancehster United shirts next year. What will that be? Google? IBM? Or Yahoo? I think I'll then buy a new MU shirt the coming summer.

Saturday, November 26, 2005

George Best 1946 - 2005

Keane, Vodafone... And then MU lengend George Best has also left MU, and the world.

Friday, November 25, 2005

Google Video of the Day

What a collection of the Google Video entries. This blog is like the "Google Map Tour" blog few months ago, but much more interesting for the rich of media.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Create a simple file transfer Web service with .NET - Techguides - ZDNet Asia

This situation is really interesting. "Creating a file transfer Web Service" is the topic of a girl's final year project last year. She also won in the Imagine Cup by Microsoft with that project. My friends lost in that competition and argue that the topic is too simple and not useful. Well, yes, it's simple to implement. But perhaps they're on the wrong track. In that competition, as shown in the name, creativity seems to mean everything.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Opera goes mobile with AJAX - ZDNet UK News

It's nice to see AJAX everywhere, especially for mobile platform. I really hope to see my mobile phone running responsive web application for ordering some products from my company.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Implementing Ajax.NET-based Lookup Server Control - The Code Project - ASP.NET

Recently, I'm working on some AJAX stuff, since I've found AJAX.NET.

AJAX.NET is great except that it can only apply on pages but user controls. Fortunately, there're guys trying to make things done. This Code Project article shows you how to make the user control more integrated with AJAX.

Implementing Ajax.NET-based Lookup Server Control

Friday, November 04, 2005

Business Opportunities Weblog | How Much Is My Blog Worth

This applet is really interesting. It evaluate the relative value of your blog comparing to AOL-Weblogs Inc deal.

Vincent Cheung: Alarm clocks are bad. How to wake up and feel better.

Well, this is something I've been doing for several years. Since I like the radio programs in the morning, I normally schedule the radio to turn on every morning, before I actually wake up. I don't know whether this method work, but I think this method really remind me of what the time is, since there will be time and weather report every 30 minutes.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

My blog got spammed

Kind of funny. My posts will get spammed with bot reply whenever they're published. Really funny.

Dictionary.com/idempotent

All of a sudden, I thought of the term "idempotent". This was a term I heard in university life, but I have forgotten the meaning of this term. Then I look it up in dictionary.com and got its meaning. Well, quite mathematical and computer scientific.

Friday, September 30, 2005

Keano is going to leave MU?

It's a bit sad to hear that Roy Keane may leave Manchester United after this season. But just as what Roy said, "Players come and go - that's football." I'm looking forward to see Alan Smith playing as a midfielder in MU and Roy sitting on the bench as a coach in the coming seasons.

Friday, September 23, 2005

Nokia pushing mobile development at Eclipse - Builder UK

Nokia pushing mobile development at Eclipse - Builder UK

I can still remember the time when I was working on my FYP. I had to search for tools for J2ME development. Finally, I got some tools from Sun, Borland and Eclipse. But since the Sun J2ME WTK isn't developer friendly, and Eclipse didn't support J2ME 2.0 at that moment, I picked Borland JBuilder.

Now, Nokia said to support mobile development at Eclipse. How would the situation be? It links me to the tales of HTML. HTML doesn't require any expensive development tool at all, and it finally became a basic unit in the web. For mobile development, even though it's as easy as writing HTML, a good and free development tool will definitely helps in the spread of technology.

Will there be some mobile applications that we use daily in the coming two or three year? Will there be publications on the problem of mobile game addict? Well, may be.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Google Blog Search reach my blogs deeply

The search result is impressing. My blog entries get dominated in the result list even though I didn't quote my search pattern. The link above is on a quoted search pattern, which I assume to contain really mostly my blog entries. And I'm gonna try some other search patterns in a couple of hours.

TechCrunch � Top Ten Things You Can Do To Get Blogged

This may be a list to help u make you get blogged.

Thursday, September 08, 2005

The Code Project - Implementing Ajax.NET-based Lookup Server Control - ASP.NET

Well, AJAX again. There is a library on AJAX for .NET developers, named Ajax.NET. And this article in code project describe how to work with that library.

Cross Domain Cookie Provider

I've been working on some sort of authentication and authorization module recently. I use .Net encrypted cookie, copied from a MSDN article, but I found the authentication cookie can't go across different applications. Then I try to create the cookie on my own. This time, it works, but it still doesn't work across doamin. Therefore, I googled "cross domain cookie" and reached this article. I've been hearing stuff about single sign-on, things like server and token. This design pattern seems to be similar to what I heard before.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

YesAsia.com: Customer Support

This is my second product in the current company. It looks good, but it can be great.

Monday, August 22, 2005

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

TheServerSide.NET - The Fallacy of the Data Layer

TheServerSide.NET - The Fallacy of the Data Layer

This is not a very new article, but worth reading. This would be particularly useful if you're working on data access classes everyday.

The Code Project - ORM, Code Generation and a bit about MDA - .NET

The Code Project - ORM, Code Generation and a bit about MDA - .NET

The article is not a very informative one on either ORM, code generation or MDA, but it contains a list of tools and reference links on articles about the above 3 topics. I'll comment this page as a good summary of these 3 technologies.

Computation consumption for exceptions handling in.NET - .NET

The Code Project - Performance implications of exceptions in.NET - .NET

Exception handling is a common task in practical programming. To employ the exception handling feature of a language, you have better have a clear view on their effect on the system performance, which is also an important issue in the real world.

Monday, August 01, 2005

Monday, July 25, 2005

unmaintainable code : Java Glossary

unmaintainable code : Java Glossary: "unmaintainable code "

This is interesting. I've heard that programmers need to make their code unreadable or unmaintainable, in order to keep themselves in the companies. But then, in CityU, I was taught to write code in term of qaulity (including maintainability). So, to make my job easy to lose, or easy to do?

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

blinkx video search

blinkx video search

This media search is really cool as it combines voice recognition, searching in 30 media channals and RSS into a rich media search base.

Saturday, July 16, 2005

ASP.NET Home: Life Without Refresh

ASP.NET Home: Life Without Refresh

"Microsoft like reinventing technologies." This is heard from one of my fellow in CityU. I don't care if the stuff is a pure invention or reinvention. All I'm interested in is whether it works. I think I'll look for the possibility of this JavaScript RPC (reinventing AJAX?).

Friday, July 08, 2005

Enterprise Library

Enterprise Library

Note that the new version (06/2005) of Enterprise Library is released. I've not try it yet, I'll try it in the near future for sure.

Google Maps Transparencies

Google Maps Transparencies

This page is really good. It integrate the map view and satelite image view of google maps with adjustable transparency level of the map view.

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Google Maps API

Google Maps API

Few days ago, Google released their Maps API for external use (required registration). I've just taken a quick look on the Google Maps API web site. It's great that the API can be accessed in JavaScript. But since I like developing windows application, it'll be even better if it can be accessed in .NET or Java.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Google Earth - Home

Google Earth

The integration of satellite imagery, maps and search. This looks really cool, especially for integration with GPS in the paid version.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

ISV Community Center: Microsoft Smart Client Application Promotion

ISV Community Center: Microsoft Smart Client Application Promotion

This is a good chance for some independent software vendors on smart client applications, for them to promote their product as well as smart client technology.

Monday, June 27, 2005

Longhorn Developer Center Home: RSS Support in Longhorn

Longhorn Developer Center Home: RSS Support in Longhorn

For normal users, be noticed that RSS is going to get into your daily life.
For developers, get ready for fully utilize RSS.
For business people, make your steps on the road of RSS integration with your business and do not let yourself behind.

Saturday, June 25, 2005

MSDN TV: A Brief Overview of Visual Studio 2005 on 64-Bit

MSDN TV: A Brief Overview of Visual Studio 2005 on 64-Bit

When I was still in my placement job 2 years ago, I heard 64-Bit from a IT eassy competition for high school students. 64-Bit is now a really hot topic, especially when you're talk with some system engineers. The above page is a brief overview of Visual Studio 2005 on 64-Bit. That is the IT fundamental - "Software Application, OS and Hardware".

AFI's 100 YEARS...100 MOVIE QUOTES

AFI's 100 YEARS...100 MOVIE QUOTES

If you like watching movies, u'll be interested in this.

Friday, June 24, 2005

The Onion 2056

The Onion 2056

This is a cool site! Enjoy.

WSJ.com - Marketers Scan Blogs For Brand Insights

WSJ.com - Marketers Scan Blogs For Brand Insights

The power of blogs is still begin neglected in the business world (at least this is real in Hong Kong). However, there're already some smart ones utilitising the power of blogs in their market research. When will this happen in Hong Kong companies? Or will this happen in Hong Kong? I just have no idea on it...

Browser makers warned against ad-blocking: ZDNet Australia: News: Software

Browser makers warned against ad-blocking: ZDNet Australia: News: Software

An interesting view on ad-blocking.

This Blog Is Full Of Crap: The Carnival of the Vanities #144

This Blog Is Full Of Crap: The Carnival of the Vanities #144

I was attracted by the name of this blog actually.

50 Coolest Websites 2005 - TIME.com

50 Coolest Websites 2005 - TIME.com

Being a member of an e-commerce company, I'm sad that my company web site isn't in the list and look forward to see my company's rapid and quality improvement.

Friday, June 17, 2005

EFF: Legal Guide for Bloggers

EFF: Legal Guide for Bloggers

This is one of the most interesting passages I read in the past year on blogging. Remember to respect others' intellectual property.

Who Will Google Buy Next? || kuro5hin.org

Who Will Google Buy Next? || kuro5hin.org

Interesting passage with a list of Google sub-company.

Apple to Use Intel Microprocessors Beginning in 2006

Apple to Use Intel Microprocessors Beginning in 2006

Will the Macintosh® still work fast with multimedia tasks? Let's see.

Advice for Begining Your Ph.D Career

Advice for Begining Your Ph.D Career

I hope to count this advice in my life.

Online Marketing Blog: RSS for increased search engine rankings - Daily Search Marketing News

Online Marketing Blog: RSS for increased search engine rankings - Daily Search Marketing News

I've been being noticed the impact from new technologies (blog, wiki...) on the society and business world. And now, this post told me how RSS increases the search engine rankings of my sites. By the way, this blog looks cool and worth subcribing.

Thursday, June 16, 2005

Heinze: I Feel At Home

Heinze: I Feel At Home

As you may know, I'm a fans of ManUtd. This year, they failed to win any trophy, it's sad. But I'm still happy that I find really good new players in ManUtd, Rooney, Ruud, C. Ronaldo, Rio, and finally Heinze. I really admire Heinze veyr much, before he played in the first match for ManUtd (I watch his play in Copa America and Olympics). He's not only a good player in terms of technique and performance, but also mental.
"I’m the sort of person who likes to make continuous progress"

"Tiredness is not a big issue"

After reading the interview in ManUtd Official Site, I've found the above reasons why I like Heinze much. I hope ManUtd will improve far much from this season, to avoid losing good players like Henize. If I were a soccer player, I'd also leave the club if I've already given my best but the club is under archieving.

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Visual Studio: Microsoft Developer Tools Roadmap

Visual Studio: Microsoft Developer Tools Roadmap

Are you waiting for VS 2005? Take a look on some screen shot and know how M$ re-invade and integrate those 3rd-party plug-in into VS 2005.

Visual SourceSafe

Visual SourceSafe

This is again on VSS (obviously, I'm currently working with VSS). This is a blog on VSS, and I found that there are a list of helpful topic on VSS application, even though they're a bit old.

Example VSS Framework for Source Code Management

Example VSS Framework for Source Code Management - Part 1
Example VSS Framework for Source Code Management - Part 2

Source code is one of the most valuable property of a IT development team. Managing your source code is an important task and worth doing some studies on the topic. The 2 links listed above are web pages introducing Source Code Management with Visual Source Safe (VSS). If you're currently working with VSS, do take some time to read though them and don't let your team keep playing with chaotic source code flow. Enjoy.

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

The Code Project - Refactoring to Adaptive Object Modeling: Entity Relationships And Accountability - Design and Strategy

The Code Project - Refactoring to Adaptive Object Modeling: Entity Relationships And Accountability - Design and Strategy

After a year of post-college working life, I realise that requirement is one of the most unstable elements in software development. This is particularly obvious in business IT development. But today, we've got the Adaptive Object Model to tackle those ad-hoc creation and modification of program workflow.

City of Heroes

City of Heroes

Wow, this game looks good!

Friday, June 10, 2005

(WHAT A) WONDERFUL WORLD

(WHAT A) WONDERFUL WORLD
(Cooke/Alpert/Adler)

Don't know much about history
Don't know much biology
Don't know much about science books
Don't know much about the french I took
But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you loved me too
What a wonderful world this would be

Don't know much about geography
Don't know much trigonometry
Don't know much about algebra
Don't know what a slide rule is for
But I know that one and one is two
And if this one could be with you
What a wonderful world this would be

Now I don't claim to be an A student
But I'm tryin' to be
Oh maybe by being an A student, baby
I can win your love for me

Don't know much about history
Don't know much biology
Don't know much about science books
Don't know much about the french I took
But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you loved me too
What a wonderful world this would be

------ lead guitar ------

But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you loved me too
What a wonderful world this would be"

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

News! Your Storage Increases by End of August

While I was checking my 99% full Hotmail account, I found this annoucement.

By end of August, wel increase the storage capacity of your MSN® Hotmail® account at no cost to you. It part of our on-going commitment to improve our customers?experience. Here is some more information about the free upgrade:
  • Storage capacity will increase from 2MB to 250MB

  • Attachment size increase from 1MB to 10MB

  • Keep more of your e-mail for longer

  • You can share larger files like photos, music and video clips

  • Upgrade happens automatically---you don need to do a thing
  • Saturday, June 04, 2005

    TheServerSide.NET - Testing ASP.NET Applications with NUnitASP and NUnit

    TheServerSide.NET - Testing ASP.NET Applications with NUnitASP and NUnit

    This article is not new but really worth reading, especially for those ASP.NET developers who want to produce better quality artifects by doing more unit testing.

    Wednesday, May 25, 2005

    Tuesday, May 24, 2005

    A Gamers' Manifesto

    A Gamers' Manifesto

    This is a good passage and I really agree with the arthor's opinion on game industrial. The current game market is really filled with guns, meaningless high resolution animation and graphics, new version of old games without any really enhanced feature, and the flopping DDD breasts... Hope that we can have some really good games in the coming years.

    FeedReader, RSSOwl and RSS Bandit

    I was doing some research one rss this afternoon. And then, I found my current rss viewer, FeedReader, is not that functioning when handling RSS from Xanga and Gamer. This is bad that I have been using it for months (and I actually have the tolerent, horrible...).

    After that, I started finding rss viewers in sourceforge and reach another 2 rss viewers, RSSOwl and RSS Bandit.

    RSSOwl is good as it allow users to reach the rss in a url bar and display it as a subscribed feed. RSSOwl is good aslo because it can handle Xanga RSS.

    RSS Bandit is also good and can act as a complement to RSSOwl. It is able to handle Gamer RSS, which RSSOwl is not. Another feature from RSS Bandit is that it allow user to display all unread item in a list.

    Try them out! They are just cool~

    Tapestry - Your Favourite Comics by RSS

    Tapestry - Your Favourite Comics by RSS

    This is amazing! I got RSS on Dilbert and Alien Loves Predator~!

    Feed Validator for Atom and RSS

    Feed Validator for Atom and RSS

    If you're a maintaining a copy of rss, try this out to check if your rss is valid.

    Monday, May 23, 2005

    robinho.org - The next soccer superstar

    robinho.org - The next soccer superstar

    A web site of one of the favourite soccer wonder kid - Robinho. Check out in the multimedia section, you will find him very amazing.

    Friday, May 20, 2005

    My most hardcore project after college

    I've spent the past week on a hardcore project. The project is raised by the incompatibility of Microsoft Enterprise Library with Oracle 10g. I have to modify the Data Access Application Block with Oracle Data Provider(ODP).NET. The project is difficult than all of the projects I did after my college(it's just because those I did before are too easy), but I really enjoy that.

    Thursday, May 19, 2005

    Blog Refactory

    Well... sometimes, I do think my blog needs to be refactored, and hence, I did it this morning.

    Chicago crime database | chicagocrime.org

    Chicago crime database | chicagocrime.org

    This is really a good thing by means of management (as taught in college, we need some measurement for quality management). Will we have a HongKong Crime Database from the HK Police Department?

    Blogthings - Your Linguistic Profile

    Blogthings - Your Linguistic Profile

    Your Linguistic Profile:

    50% General American English
    35% Yankee
    10% Dixie
    5% Upper Midwestern
    0% Midwestern

    Wednesday, May 11, 2005

    sloyd^3 (change the colors of all 3 sides - addictive puzzle game, like a rubix cube) - games

    sloyd^3 (change the colors of all 3 sides - addictive puzzle game, like a rubix cube) - games

    Any one solved this?

    Web Test Tools

    Web Test Tools

    This page is particular useful for web test. It contains a huge list of web testing tools, covering areas like load test, link checking and security test. If you have ever found there're still dead links in you web site product in live environment (after UAT), try those tools. They worth trying for relieving your blood pressure. XD

    Monday, May 09, 2005

    Software Engineers are like Soccer Players?

    If you ask me to give a job which is the most similar to Software Engineers, I would say Soccer Players.

    Short Life
    Playing sports as a job is normally short life(although there are exceptions). Typical retirement age of soccer players is around 3x years old. Stamina of people normally start decreasing when they reach 30 years old. For a soccer player, it is difficult for them to play throughout competitive matches with they decreasing physical ability.
    Programming is also an engery-consuming task. A simple class often occupies a programmer 1 - 2 days for producing a release. Within this period, programmers are going to work intensively with the classes. Developing a class will make developers exhausted like after taking several successive exams. Older people (>40 years old) often fail to endure such stressful tasks.

    Creativity
    Have you even seen how C.Ronaldo and Ronaldino play their soccer games? They combine their creativity into their dribbling skills, and these really make them success.
    Similarly, programming require developers to create some sort of solution design in terms of data structures, algorithms and system architecture. Creative programmer often think out of the box to provide some new features and improved solutions to old questions.

    Speed
    With the fabilous dribling skills, soccer players still need to run quickly so that they can really pass through they opponent.
    Information Technology is probably one of the fastest changing industrial in the world. In term of speed, developers need to be able to develop in a high speed and catch up with the current technology rapidly and repeatedly. Especially with the new trend of dynamic software process, software engineers have to provide releases in short iterations. We often need to provide a release with few changes within several working days.

    Power
    Sports are usually linked with the term "Power", as sports are really some sort of physical competition. The term "Powerful" will link me to some strong soccer players like Vieri, Cantona, Rooney, Stam, Batistuta... They are strong and powerful and hence they are able to do that work (shot, dribble, pass and tackle) against their opponents' pressure. This is really important in the modern soccer games since the games is getting more physically competitive. To be successful, you have to work as usual even if under opponents' challenges.
    The term "Powerful" also applies to developers. Powerful developers can solve their problems as usual, no matter the level of difficulty of the problems. They may work slower with more difficult problems, but they will not feel very bad when they meet some difficult problems.

    Efficiency
    The whole modern world talks about "Efficiency", including soccer world and IT world. It is obvious that we prefer a worker to do more successful work rather than fooling around.
    Soccer player can be efficient in various way, with various role in the team. While we are watching soccer games, there are often some statistics on particular players showing their efficiency. The goal-to-shot rate is obviously the most important parameter to a striker, while percentage of complete pass and successful tackle are that of a midfielder and defender respectively.
    Developers can also be efficient. This can be archieved by practising high quality software development. Known from our experience, the development bottleneck is in Testing and Maintenance. To improve the efficiency of a software process can be easy archieved by cutting the resources for Testing and Maintenance by means of providing better quality releases. High quality system require less resources for Testing and Maintenance. It therefore actually make the whole software process more efficient by cutting a large fraction of resources in Testing and Maintenance (which is reasonable).

    Vision
    Some top soccer players in the world are not very strong and can't run very fast (e.g. Zidane and Beckham). However, their vision in the matches make them an indispensable member in the teams. Their vision allow them to clearly understand the complete situation of the match, and hence make some good tactical decision. This make them become the master players and commanders within their team. As a result, vision is the key to be a top soccer player.
    When the term "Vision" is applied to development, it means the prediction in various areas like system requirement, technology and system limitation. This particular important in designing systems and components. Vision is a essential criteria for software engineer unless you want to be only a code generator.

    Blue-Collar
    Some weeks ago, I heard that Chelsea's midfielder Makelele said that professional soccer player are blue-collar workers. Well, that's true, and I totally accept that. As a soccer player, you most likely will not do management things. Even if you are the skipper, all the management tasks you have to do are within your small team, instead of the whole soccer club.
    Software engineers are also blue-collar workers(At least at the entrance level). Sofwrare engineers typically starts that career in development jobs. At this stage, they would not have to do much management, except management themselves and their product quality.

    Teamwork
    Soccer requires quality teamwork, as it's a 11-vs-11 sports game. There's no way for you to play it without any teamwork with other players. A team with quality teamwork is obviously better than one without.
    "Many hands make light work."

    At the same time, software engineering is also a demostration of importance of teamwork. Even though there're lots of heroic programmers in the developers world, teamwork is recognised as invaluable assert for a software engineering team. The performance on good co-operation often out weight the communication overhead (which can be reduce time by time). If you ask me to choose between developing alone and developing as a team, I'll definately give you the answer, "Team!"


    I don't whether you enjoy these paragraph or not, but I really enjoy the time when I was thinking for ideas and writing this whole passage. Hope you enjoy. Happy blogging.

    candygrlgrl's Xanga Site

    candygrlgrl's Xanga Site

    Well, I've found a webLog from a fans of my favourite female singer, Candy Lo's Xanga(Blog) Site. That's cool to see everyone's blogging. Suddenly, I thought of "do I need to set up a xanga (I've got an account)?". Well... in I think I still stick to Google's Blogger at the moment.

    Blogger Help : On the Go with Blogger Mobile

    Blogger Help : On the Go with Blogger Mobile

    Currently, "I'm Blogging It" on the web. Later on, it may be in mobile.

    Friday, May 06, 2005

    Antivirus programs, protection guide, virus info and removals, antivirus tests, free support!

    Antivirus programs, protection guide, virus info and removals, antivirus tests, free support!

    Here comes the Anti-virus software ranking 2005. Enjoy!

    3D Load Packer - Multi Container Loading Optimizer

    3D Load Packer - Multi Container Loading Optimizer

    While I was thinking about some efficient stock usage problem, I found this tool - 3D Load Packer - Multi Container Loading Optimizer. The tool make use of their own algorithm - Astrokettle Algorithms. The photo at the bottom of the 3D Load Packer - Multi Container Loading Optimizer also interests me much!

    By the way, there's another gain for me. I found that the problem I think is a 3D Bin-Loading Problem, instead of the 3D-Knapsack Problem I initially thought.

    Tuesday, April 12, 2005

    A cool web based slide show system

    S5: A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System

    I've previously experienced a web based slide show and video conference system in my placement job. However, the system is not very completed even though it's good looking. The slide show in flash format is difficult for user to prepare, and of course a flash editor cost some money. The video conference part......

    Here is another web-based slide show system, - S5. It only require simple XHTML, CSS and JavaScript. All these are free, easy for preparation and lightweight for server load. Although S5 doesn't provide video broadcasting function, I still think it worths our study and further development into a more enhanced system.

    Friday, April 01, 2005

    D Programming Language

    D Programming Language

    A few days ago, I referenced a blog post from Dr. Chun's Blog on dotNET languages. He give me another amazing post on programming language today. This time, it's for another new language - D.

    Reading the comparison between D and C, C++, c# and Java, you will find that D has the combination of practical functionality in C and C++, as well as programming flexibity in C# and Java. Let see if D will be as successful as those 4 languages.

    City University of Hong Kong Undergraduate Student Project (2003-2004)

    City University of Hong Kong Undergraduate Student Project (2003-2004)

    After reading a news in newspaper that Nazir Usman (one of the mentor teamate few years ago) had win a prize for his FYP, I start searching for some other news with his name. Finally, I reach the CityU Library for our FYP report (I almost forgot this web site). If you are CityU Student, you may go there to download and read their report.

    Honestly, some of the FYP were well done with full feature which is written in the report, but some weren't. As I know, some of these FYP claimed to have some features that not yet implemented. As some of my fellow reported, "It doesn't matter if the feature has be implemented yet, just write it down into your report". Some cases are even worse. I noticed that some "FYP" were not implemented with any feature. However, these guys can still pass the FYP and some even got a high grade. They just made a demostration on a fake product, do a bit smooth presentation and wrote an impressive report.

    It sometimes gives me a feeling that Presentation Skills outweighted Analytical and Practical Skills in the world nowadays. Is the world on the right track? Some people said that the success of humanity came from their communication skills. However, without some real workable stuff, what are we communicating for? Should we keep a better balance between this area for evaluation? I just have no idea. I don't have an "A" for my FYP and my report haven't been published. Am I jealous? Well, may be... I do appreciate most of the projects in the list, however, I do think some of them doesn't worth it.

    After sharing with Rick, he point out an interesting issue - "Working outside school for 1 year is much better than playing inside school for 3 years". It's true. I played too much, and now have to learn back some of the important skills, like communication. I'm learning, and will be learning. I don't know when will be the most shining moment in my life. Years ago, I want to do some big and memorable things, e.g. big and success software or systems. How about now? I still dream of producing a system the make everyone remember me. But can I do it? When will I do it? Will I do it with my friends? When I change my target? Well, I've got too many questions that I failed to answer...

    Anyway, Congratulations to Usman. Nice to hear about your success.

    Wednesday, March 30, 2005

    Phalanger - the PHP Language Compiler for .NET Framework

    Phalanger - the PHP Language Compiler for .NET Framework

    I used to write programs in PHP when I was in my placement job 2 years ago. Hence, I was surprised when I was reading Dr. Chun's Blog and found that PHP can run on dotNet platform. That's a very cool feature for PHP developers.

    I still remeber that I had time that I want to find a way to run ASP pages in Apache server. Here, someone comes up with an opposite idea. That's cool~!

    .NET Languages

    .NET Languages

    Here is a of dotNet Langauges for you if you want to know more dotNet Languages. I also gain a more clear image on the long list of dotNet Languages. It surprise me that dotNet is not only C#,VB.NET and ASP.NET, but also PASCAL, PERL, F#, S# and a lot more. Perphaps I still have a long way to go...

    Game Fries - videogame commentary up the wazoo: How to get E-books on your PSP

    Game Fries - videogame commentary up the wazoo: How to get E-books on your PSP

    One of my friends has bought a PSP recently, and brings it out for playing almost every time we go out. I'm not very interested in PSP actually. However, the blog above , teaching you how to read e-book on PSP, really interests me. It reminds me that there were some guys pluging keyboard and mouse onto the PS2 machine and make it into a PC. Hacker? Well, anyway, it's fun.

    Tuesday, March 22, 2005

    Gmail Going Live April 1st?

    The SEO Blog: Gmail Going Live April 1st

    Will it be a live? Or will it be a further beta stage? As I see it, Gmail server still not very stable, i.e. down for about 30mins once a week. Although Gmail provide new and attractive features, it still have room for improvement.

    Saturday, March 19, 2005

    Rainfinity Puzzle Database

    Rainfinity Puzzle Database

    This page was found when I was searching for the puzzle question "Duck and Fox" raised in the dinner with my colleagues last night. Enjoy the puzzles!

    Friday, March 18, 2005

    Yahoo! 360°

    Yahoo! 360°

    After the competition in Web Search Engine, Email Services, and Desktop Search Engine, Yahoo! is going to setup a new battle line, Blogging Services, with Google. It is still in a very early status and now accept registration for waiting list. If you are interested, go and register and look forward to see how powerful Yahoo! 360° will be.

    Blogarama - The Blog Directory - Blogs and Blog Resources!

    Blogarama - The Blog Directory - Blogs and Blog Resources!

    Like BlogWise, you can search for blogs with Blogarama.

    Google Code

    Google Code

    Google's place for Open Source software. It also provides feeds for their publications. Enjoy!

    Another ExtremeProgramming Page

    On top of Extreme Programming: A Gentle Introduction, I found another web site on XP today - XProgramming.com - an Agile Software Development Resource. Unlike Extreme Programming: A Gentle Introduction, XProgramming.com - an Agile Software Development Resource provides a list of resource, like articles, software and community, on XP. It would be a "must bookmark" web site for XP users.

    Thursday, March 17, 2005

    What Gender Is Your Brain?


    Your Brain is 33.33% Female, 66.67% Male
    You have a total boy brain
    Logical and detailed, you tend to look at the facts
    And while your emotions do sway you sometimes...
    You never like to get feelings too involved

    Tuesday, March 15, 2005

    Fifth Annual Weblog Awards

    Fifth Annual Weblog Awards

    Here is the result of 2005 Weblog Awards. Learn from the best, and then you may get more excited for blogging.

    Video games can improve performance in vision tasks

    Video games can improve performance in vision tasks

    Check this out for the reason to persuade yourself to play video games.

    An Extensive Examination of Data Structures Using C# 2.0

    An Extensive Examination of Data Structures Using C# 2.0

    I seldom blog MSDN. However, this time, the article is really interesting and usefule for me, as and .NET developer. This article throughly discribe several data structures, especially Array and List, on their structure and performance. I used to use ArrayList (and probably overuse). But now, I think I need to start use List more for performance concern.

    By the way, this is again referenced from Dr. Chun's blog.

    Provision your IT career requirement

    An Evaluation of the Current Technology Job Market: Updated

    I found this article while I was reading Dr. Chun's blog. It may give you some idea on what to learn for being an IT professional.

    Monday, March 14, 2005

    Boing Boing: Game developers' amazing rants on the state of the industry

    Boing Boing: Game developers' amazing rants on the state of the industry

    The last time I read some articles like this on game development is when I was doing my FYP. Well, about an year ago. This is an interesting comment on game development job as a developer. Take a look, and find your way.

    Feedster RSS Search : ken choy

    Feedster RSS Search : ken choy

    Here is a powerful feeder search engine. This will help you when you need to search for a blog. How powerful is it? Well, at least it reach this blog. ^^

    Blogging Beyond the Men's Club

    Blogging Beyond the Men's Club

    It seems that today we got more news on blogging itself.

    As discussed in a recent Harvard conference, the main stream of bloggers is white males. This contradict from the original purpose of blogging. Blogging is invented so that everyone can express themselves. However, it turns out with a white male domination in the blogging world.

    It's sad to hear this fact, as I think blogging can be global. I enjoy reading blogs, no matter it's from white or black, male or female. We may need to promote blogging to all out friends, I think.

    Blogs Not Yet in the Media Big Leagues

    Blogs Not Yet in the Media Big Leagues

    What do you think about blogging? Is it very common? Is it very useful? And is it very successful? The link above is a survey on Americans' blogging habbit. After you have read through the survey, you will notice that blogging still has a long way to run, even in the US.

    Friday, March 11, 2005

    VB.NET and C# Comparison

    http://dev.csdn.net/article/4/article/25/25324.shtm

    For me, a C# developer, may seomtime need to read VB program code (when I have found something I wanted except it is in VB). Well, here is a page that could help someone like me to read through VB program code. It provide sytatic comparison on VB.NET and C# in a point-by-point manner, which will help us to understand more clearly.

    Thursday, March 10, 2005

    Business schools redefine hacking to "stuff that a 7-year-old could do"

    Business schools redefine hacking to "stuff that a 7-year-old could do" from Philip Greenspun's Weblog

    Just like what Philip said in his blog:
    'In the 1960s the term "hacking" meant smart people developing useful and innovative computer software. In the 1990s the term meant smart evil people developing and running programs to break into computer systems and gain shell access to those systems. Thanks to Harvard Business school the term now means "people of average IQ poking around curiously by editing URLs on public servers and seeing what comes back in the form of directory listings, etc."'

    MT-Keystrokes

    MT-Keystrokes

    Spamming is one of the most annoying internet behavior. We got email spamming, web site guest book spamming, and now blog comment spamming. How could we avoid this for our blog? Try MT-Keystrokes. It basically works by detecting keystroke events and allowing blog comment submission only if keystroke events exist.

    Wednesday, March 09, 2005

    Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications

    Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications

    Have you ever experience the instantenous response from pages Gmail, Google Suggest and Google Map? I think you probably have lots of experience on it and highly rated them on their performance. So, how do these sites works? And what is the architecture of these kind of web application?

    This article gives you an introduction on definition and structure of a brand new web application approach - Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript + XML). For developers, I high recommend you to take a look on the article and keep yourself up-to-date.

    The Baby Name Wizard's NameVoyager

    The Baby Name Wizard's NameVoyager

    Search out your name and know how popular your name is.

    Saturday, March 05, 2005

    The Yau Yee League

    The Yau Yee League

    The league was established in Hong Kong about 30 years ago, with only 8 soccer teams. But nowadays, the 48 teams in the league are divided into 4 divisions. Some teams even hire professional coach for a team training and management.

    I admire this league.

    Monday, February 28, 2005

    OSCAR.com - 77th Annual Academy Awards - Oscar Night: Winners List

    OSCAR.com - 77th Annual Academy Awards - Oscar Night: Winners List

    Aviator and Million Dollar Baby were the big winners in the 77th Annual Academy Award. While Jamie Foxx won the title of Actor In A Leading Role, Leonardo DiCapio has to wait for his title for some more years.

    Friday, February 25, 2005

    Winning Eleven 8 Liverware Edition

    Winning Eleven 8 Liverware Edition

    The XBox version of Winning Eleven was said to be XBox Live compatible. The exciting news stimulate the price of XBox console machine at that days. However, the connectivity function was cut in the released version. It let everyone down.

    Here comes to you another exciting news. Konami is going to put PS2 Winning Eleven 8 online. The new Winning Eleven 8 Liveware Edition will allow players to connect to each other and play with various game mode like Cups, League, Friendly and Division. All also support player ranking to identify who is the best. With the most update-to-date soccer player transfer information, you will definately enjoy the head to head matches with your friends.

    The only concerns to me will be the need of connectivity problem and it seems the game only support Japanese local players.

    TokiMemo-Online

    TokiMemo-Online

    Konami is going to release an online version of a famous AVG game - Tokimiki Memorial. Preliminary press has been released just yesterday. While the game world comes to everything goes online, let's see will this successful offline game still be that successful in online version.

    Sunday, February 20, 2005

    My New Job

    Tomorrow will be the first day of my new job - working as an Analyst Programmer in an online store. Get ready for new stuff and archievement!

    Wednesday, January 19, 2005

    P2P Manifesto

    P2P Manifesto

    In contrast to the negative comment on P2P applications (BT, WinMX, eDonkey) currently, here is some positive comment on P2P. Well, the concept of P2P itself is good. However, P2P applications nowadays seems to be overly used.

    Friday, January 14, 2005

    Hong Kong BT Arrested

    Yesterday, Hong Kong Customs take action to arrest an unemployed 38 year-old man for illegally upload 3 movies via BT. This is the first case in the whole world for a person to be arrested because of BT upload. Will he be successfully accused?

    Some said that accusation will not be successful if appellee refuse to admit that he is the only user of that computer. This is shown in a previous case in Hong Kong that a man was arrested because of holding over 100 child pronographic photos in his computer. The man was released at a latter stage as appellor cannot provide sufficient evidence to provide that the appellee is the only user of the computer.

    At the same time, some people suggest BT user to use special software to protect them from being traced through their IP address. The software change the IP address of the computer every second. Whether the software works or not? I really don't know (but I don't think that software works with BT concept).

    So, will this the end of BT? Will this be the end of illegal network traffic? Will there be any other new software to do the same thing? Technology is going very fast (this is very sure). It's really difficult to exactly answer the above 3 questions. Then how can the Government and copyright holders really solve the copyright infringing problem? Probably, the oldest answer, education, is the only answer.

    Thursday, January 13, 2005

    20 Year Archive on Google Groups

    20 Year Archive on Google Groups

    Google has fully integrated the past 20 years of Usenet archives into Google Groups, which now offers access to more than 800 million messages dating back to 1981. This is by far the most complete collection of Usenet articles ever assembled and a fascinating first-hand historical account.

    Enjoy your trip back to the golden age of Usenet.

    Mac Mini and IPod Shuffle

    Macintosh is getting mini and give out the new Mac Mini
    IPod revolute to give us IPod Mini. And now, IPod Mini get even smaller to give us IPod Shuffle.
    Suddenly, I think of "Mini Me"...

    Yahoo! Desktop Search Beta

    Yahoo! Desktop Search Beta

    Google Desktop Search
    MSN Desktop Search
    and now, it come up with Yahoo! Desktop Search

    Wednesday, January 12, 2005

    High Calcium, Low Sugar, Low Fat

    I a thin person, but I'm not proud of my body. I just feel normal for my body shape. Nevertheless, some people around me often comment on or make joke of my body...

    "So thin", "You got lots of quota for the food", "What?! You play soccer?", "You should do more sports and train you body(muscle)"... Oh god! Am I wrong for being thin? Or do I look like that I only play computers and TV games all day, without any meal and sports?

    Ok,I TRY to get fatter. Hence, I start having breakfast every day, since I start my working life after graduation from cityu. And today, I start drinking chocolate milk for my breakfast, instead of apple juice or orange juice before. Oh, the problem then comes scaring me.

    I was in 7-Eleven to buy my breakfast today. "Bread, ok. Choose a drink then." I try to choose a box of chocolate milk. "Oh, high calcium. It's cool, and healthy...Oh...It's low fat", "Low sugar, low fat...", "High calcium, low sugar, low fat...", "low sugar...", "low fat...", "low fat...", "low sugar..." Finally, I bought a box of cheap, simple and non-healthy chocolate milk.

    The situation nowadays is that people seems to want a thin, fit and healthy body. Originally, they go for gym and take some healthy meal(low fat, low sugar). However, the situation was getting to the extreme. Fat people want to keep fit. People with normal body shape think that they are fat. Thin people(not only women, but also men) think that they are not thin enough. And eventually they all get thinner. What a wonderful world!

    I have friends who have normal body shape, what I label normal body shape obviously means that I don't think they need to lose weight. I also have thin friends, and in my opinion, they don't have room for losing weight. For my fat friends, let's play sports, and get you fit.

    Wednesday, January 05, 2005

    Long time no see, my soccer game.

    After 3 weeks of suspension of the team practice, my team eventually have a chance to play together (although we got 5 people appeared only) tonight.

    I really enjoy the games tonight. It's not because I make lots of score (and in fact not so many). The main reason is that I haven't play any soccer game in the past 3 weeks. Even though I was very tired because of the bedminton game last night, I love the time when I was running at the front of my team to find opportunities for scoring. Catch the ball, pass, dribble and shot. All the moment is so enjoyable that I can forget my tire (although it came back right after the game).

    By the way, I think I have over 10 shots but I got only 3 goals. Perphaps I need to improve my shoting skills.

    Tuesday, January 04, 2005

    Online Game is only for guys?

    Yesterday night, I was in a dinner with some friends in secondary school. One of my friend, a girl, said, "Well, if Ragnarok Online is not for killing, I would continue to play". Is online game a male-only stuff?

    As you may know, I'm a Ragnarok Online (RO) fans. I agree that RO major focus is on battling, i.e. monster-killing, player-vs-player and guild-vs-guild. However, I would also tell you that RO also provide non-battling environment to provide a alternative environment for players' communication. In fact, cute graphics design in RO already shown the development team want to also target female players. Other then killing monsters, players can acting as a merchant to do trading, targeting to be a billionaire. In conclusion, online games nowadays are much more than monster-killing and item-picking.

    Actually, online games nowadays are not only a game, but also a virtual society. You can meet friends and chat. Your friend list will grow as you team up with new faces, or trading things. To think out of the box, you can exchange IM or email contact, and then you are really making some closer friends. To share my experience, I mainly sit on the floor and chat with friends when I'm in RO, recently. Monster-killing is getting less important, while the community in RO is more valuable to me. I have ever acting as a merchant and doing very frequent trading every day. I also have the time that I kill lots of monsters for one level up. And now, I'm in the phrase to sit and chat.

    Unfortunately, RO, just like some other online games, has been abused by bots, hacked client programs and system bugs. RO is getting less enjoyable now. Nevertheless, I'm still in RO, since I can still get happiness in it.

    Monday, January 03, 2005

    PCWorld.com - Risk Your PC's Health for a Song?

    PCWorld.com - Risk Your PC's Health for a Song?

    What things really harm our PCs? Virus? SpyWare? Or Adware? Well, it may be simply media files. Ad-laden or virus embedded media files are common in the current situation. No matter how you get the file (HTTP, FTP, IM, WinMX or BitTorrent), you do have to carefully scan it before you actually play it. Do you want you PC die for a song or video?