Windows 10 Preview

Microsoft released their Windows 10 Preview video talking about their core experience. Within a day, there are several videos on YouTube already regarding this, and I guess no one has been invited to have his first hands-on experience, so what those vloggers can do is merely repeating what Microsoft has to say, and no further detail could be included other than speculations.

And I'm just going to do the same, and I feel the need to do so, as a regular ordinary user.

First, it is ok to skip a major release number (Windows 9), but please give me a good reason to, or at lease give me some acronyms that I can't possibly understand even if you give me full names. Well, I am joking, but you get what I mean. Virtual desktop is so 20th century to me. I am not a tech savvy person, but back in those days when I was interested in network administration stuff, and spent lots of time on Linux from 1999 to 2001, virtual desktop was already there. Premature looking, according to how we see things today, maybe, but it is definitely not something to brag about to have this feature in the new release, and that is exactly how I felt when Apple included this feature in their MacOS few years ago, and Apple's version was already an elegant design at that time.

Microsoft also talked about what is known as Mission Control in MacOS, and I sincerely hope they can do better than MacOS. My problem with MacOS is that if I open too many applications at one time, and when I click Mission Control for look for another application that is buried so many layers under, the arrangement of Mission Control is elegant, but it takes time for eyes to roll to the right one, like few seconds, which may not seem a long time, but certainly an eternity when concentration is needed, and interruption would be devastating in creative works. I found it much quicker to click on the application icon in the Dock, since I know exactly where it is, like a knee jerk, which renders Mission Control useless to me.

I am not sure I like the start menu to come back or not. I feel the ability to move the mouse horizontally is a prerequisite to browse through start menu successfully, and I am having some difficulties in this field. Not having many applications on my computer, and having a Dock to include all the applications I run most of the times seem suitable to me. Personalizing the tiles is definitely welcome and desired feature, and so is dynamic update of contents.

It seems that there will be one version of Windows 10 for all devices, and I sincerely hope that is the case. No more confusing Home Basic, Home Premium, Enterprise that makes decisions hard to make in the 3C stores. And lastly, I checked my Terminal in my MacOS, copy and paste has already been implemented. 

How to Burn Down Your Kitchen

Ingredients:

• Oil
• Fish fillet, or whatever that may seem work for you

Preparation:

• Adjust the temperature of your refrigerator so that the temperature on the top shelf is enough to freeze water.
• Put the fish fillet on the top shelf. The fish fillet I used for this experiment is thick on one side, and thin on the other. When I took it out of the refrigerator, the thick side was very firm, but the thin side was hard frozen, with a thin layer of ice attached.

Procedure:

• Heat a small pan and put the oil in.
• When the oil is very hot, put the fish in.

The thin layer of ice quickly melts and splashes feverishly, carrying oil into the air in droplets. When the pan is small and the stove is turned on high, the flame could be large enough to go around the edge of the pan, and ignites the oil droplets to cause the flame. 

Q and A:

A: My flame was huge enough to touch kitchen ventilator above the stove.

A: Terrified. During the few seconds (or eternity in my very own experience), I just stood there petrified and mind blank. Now that we are talking about it, I believe (and am not sure) I did not even try to turn off the stove.

A: I do not have a fire extinguiser at home, so I think if it ever happens again (I sincerely hope not), the first thing I need to do is to turn off the stove, and then to fetch my blanket, and be ready to yell to the neighbors for help and call 911.

A: Just some black burn marks on the kitchen tiles, and splashes of oil everywhere on the stove.

A: Thanks for having me.

Practice Love

This is JJ Lin's latest song. I saw his live performance at the company's year-end dinner 2 years ago, loved it, and could not wait to tell friends how good he was, only to find out he had been famous for several years already. This is what happened when I did not have a TV and cable. What an embarrassment.

 

Practice Love                 by jj lin

Why are you disappointed?  Why are you hiding tears in your heart?
Reminiscences won't lie. Don't give yourself a hard time.
We really don't have to do this between us, I think.

The bitterness of practicing love, makes us learn to put down our desires.
How hard it is, to forget what we believe in.
Admiration from the distance, confusion from intimacy.
Who said the sun would eventually find its moon?
We can never reproduce the love that others have.

Sadness and happiness from practicing love, the efforts we went through were not easy.
Having happiness turned into tears, is a kind of braveries.
Fascination from few years ago, forgiveness from few years later
I've been so hurt by a pretty face.
Don't tell me you miss me. I won't be able to stand it.

Memories are intimidating. Street lamps turn on the pain.
How many times have lovers seen the moon together?
How many times has the moon seen people forgotten?
How many times the panic?

The bitterness of practicing love, makes us learn to put down our desires.
How hard it is, to forget what we believe in.
Admiration from the distance, confusion from intimacy.
Who said the sun would eventually find its moon?
We can never reproduce the love that others have.

Sadness and happiness from practicing love, the efforts we went through were not easy.
Having happiness turned into tears, is a kind of braveries.
Fascination from few years ago, forgiveness from few years later
I've been so hurt by a pretty face.
Don't tell me you miss me. I won't be able to stand it.

We laughed saying love drivers people crazy
We cried saying love makes people nervous.
If you can't forget that person, you've gotta surrender.

The bitterness of practicing love, makes us learn to put down our desires.
How hard it is, to forget what we believe in.
Admiration from the distance, confusion from intimacy.
Who said the sun would eventually find its moon?
We can never reproduce the love that others have.

Sadness and happiness from practicing love, the efforts we went through were not easy.
Having happiness turned into tears, is a kind of braveries.
Fascination from few years ago, forgiveness from few years later
I've been so hurt by a pretty face.
Don't tell me you miss me. I won't be able to stand it.

Blog Tool

My eyes probably are getting old. I used to be able to play game all day, but now I can only use my iMac for around 2 hours. After that, I would start to feel the screen is so bright, and I can barely keep my eyes open.

So is it time to blog on iPad? I tried, but there are not many AP available. Can you believe that? I tried blogger's web based tool, but unfortunately the button for uploading picture is always greyed out, and I really like to have a picture or two here and there.

After a few googling, I decided to buy something (and I thought there is some free AP available), blogsy, that cost me 5USD. I'm going to publish this one, and we'll know if it is worth the money.

 

Long break

It has been a year since I last updated my blog. Many things happened, but when I looked back, everything seemed so trivial. The reason I stopped blogging is that I found another source to share. It was plurk and then google plus. Plurk is quick and small. I can just post a sentence or two to quickly share what I see and how I feel. No hassle to reorganize information in my head like blogging. then I don't feel like writing the second time on blogger. But why do I come back to blogger? Maybe I am just tired of those tiny information. There is always so much to keep track of, so many people like to pretend, that I start to get weary of it. But how am I be different now? A failed romance, a new TV, a new iPad for most computer work, and a year older, getting notice from my landlord that she is not going to renew my lease this year. Ouch. Moving again. I can feel my life tumbling now.

Milestone

There are so many milestones in each life, kids learning to walk, first kiss, first heartbreak, first job, wedding. We remember those things, but more often than not, it is not dated.

A friend sent me a link to 1000 No.1s. The web page shows all the No. 1 songs on the billboard across decades. Out of curiosity, I tried to search the very first English song in my life, and it is Diana Ross & Lionel Richie’s Endless Love.

Why is it the very first? Surprisingly, I hardly know any of the songs before it, and I pretty much know EVERY single song after it. Some of the songs are so familiar that I can just close my eyes, and the song starts to play automatically in my mind. It was like, I heard Endless Love, and decided I liked English songs, and started to track Top 10 on billboards for a few years to come.

The date on the song is August 15, 1981. I was 10 and barely knew any English. That tells me how music affects me. I could love it without knowing what it is. Even now, I have songs in my iPhone that I love dearly but do not have a clue what the song is talking about, some Spanish, some Russian, some Thai.

My All-in-one Computer

My computer has been too much of an entertainment center, or more precisely, the center of my life, to a point that I felt I did not have a life. Well, the problem is about the computer desk. When I bought it, it was meant to be “something that I could use temporarily before I figure out where I want my life to lead” that kind of thing, but then ‘temporary’ becomes a year, 2 years, and now 2 years and a half. The computer desk is now battered, and I have not yet found anything else, or I have not even tried.

I could pretty much sit at the computer desk all day, day after day, browsing the internet, chatting with friends, reading wikipedia, watching some videos, playing games. Because the desk is small, the computer was always in the way when I wanted to do something else, so few minutes into doing what I was supposed to do, I found myself using the computer again, mindlessly clicking. In early March, I decided it was time to make some changes.

First thing that had to go was the TV. It was an old 20” CRT TV. I used to watch news in the morning, but when I moved out to live alone, I could not justify spending around 20 USD for the cable and only watch the news occasionally in the morning. I chose to spend a bit more on internet connection for faster speed and do without the cable. The TV sat in the living room for the whole time I am here, well taken care of, dusted and all that. I realized it would probably sit there forever if I did not do anything about it; however, if I removed it to free up the space, then I could have a better idea how to re-arrange the space.

Surprisingly, after the TV was gone, everything seemed to fall into place automatically. I moved the computer and the speaker system to the living room, and put them on the original TV stand. I started to watch some streaming TV shows on the computer in full screen mode. Thanks to the technologies that have improved over the years, streaming video is mature, and I really have a good time watching the shows on this 24-inch ‘TV’.

Now I spend more time  in the living room, watching shows or reading, and less time on the computer. Gaming has been given a much lower priority due to space restriction of where the computer currently sits. Computer desk is free of clutters, so when I’d like to do something , I can do it without being sidetracked. The apartment is still very empty and full of potentials. I love it.