你值的擁有！

這是一化妝品牌在廣告中的motto。坦白講，我覺得這句話是很不順耳的。雖廣告目的是叫人購買，好像無可口非，但問題在於「值的」的意義！

現在很多人，已分不清「想要」的「需要」，導致很多人在物質化社會中泥足深陷。如果我們更加用「值的擁有」來合理化「想要」：如工作那麼辛苦，便值得用私人貸款借錢去歐遊；如讀書成績好，便值得有要求父母送一部PSP以作獎勵等等。

其實，我們要認真思考一下何謂「值的」，思考一下自已得到和已付出的。希望大家可長養一份「感恩」的心！

我聽「馬怡靜」

馬怡靜Eugenia Ma的《給我最愛》CD Album，是我2005年逛旺角某一閣樓CD舖時聽試播聽到的。她唱是全是舊歌，但演繹方法令我耳目一新；她的聲線就叫我著迷。我就買了這隻CD。

RIP成MP3後，馬怡靜一直是我的MP3機播放率最高，她有少少磁性聲線，有點Jazz的味道。尤其是《Masquerade》，配合「一粒粒」的鋼琴配樂，好像是在酒廊聽歌那般relaxing。其他歌曲中，音樂的敲擊部份最叫我驚喜，有一點隨意，但又和歌唱部份協調得到。

我是有介紹給我的朋友聽，但他們的feedback不算好：唱功麻麻，有點粗。我亦有在forum看到不好的comments。但是自己想想，聽歌可是很個人的，我始終喜歡Eugenia那份raw的感覺！

Easter Day Calculator

Triggered by the question why the Easter day in each year is different, I find an algorithm at the U.S. Naval Observatory website at http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/easter.php. I then write the calculator using VB.NET and Excel as follows:

• Easter_Calculator.xls (Excel)
• Easter_Calculator.exe (VB.net)
  

Installing a DVD writer on my old WIN98SE PC

My home PC is running at WIN98SE, with an old P3 grade Celeron 850MHz CPU and 256M RAM. Frankly speaking, I am still satisfied with its performance (fast boot up and power off time) because I just mainly use it for Internet web browsing. I even recently install GIMP to touch those photos taken by Canon CHDK hack (See my Yahoo Blog in Chinese)

I used to have an old CD writer (model: Philips PCRW1208) but it has been faulty for more than 1 year and I do not use it any more. Recently, I got an impulse to install Ubuntu (a Linux distribution). Since the old BIOS does not support booting from USB flash drive, I need a working CD-ROM drive to proceed.

Although I can buy an old CD-ROM drive (about HK$50), I think if I can use DVD disk to my hard disk backup as well, I will feel better because my recent digital photo file sizes grow at nearly 1GB per month.

After gathering information from Internet, I confirm a DVD drive can be installed in my old PC via IDE without any additional drivers. In order to minimize the risk, I just bought the cheapest model (LG GSA-H54N) which costs just HK$190. Although it is cheap, it still supports all prevailing DVD formats (DVD ± R/RW as well as Double Layer). However, I cannot use the bundled software (Nero Express, PowerProducer and PowerDVD) because they all need at least WIN2K or above. Worst still, the original Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4 (now acquired by Roxio) bundled with the old Philips driver does not recognize the new drive.

Fortunately, I can find free burning software on Internet which still supports WIN98SE. I downloaded ImgBurn Version 2.3.2 as well as InfraRecorder version 0.44.1. Although both applications can recognize my new drive, InfraRecorder still disables the OK button in the BURN dialog (though the revision history stated that 0.44.1 did solve this problem!)

Finally, after some trial, I successfully use ImgBurn to burn DVD-R and DVR+RW on my new LG drive. (Just one comment, the User-interface of ImgBurn is quite technical and I need to take some time to get along with.)

Back to my Ubuntu installation. After backing up my important files in the hard disk, I start the Ubuntu installation (on the same hard disk with my WIN98SE but in a separate partition). Everything is fine except the following:

• my FAT32 partition is mounted with UTF encoding, though actually it should be BIG5 (in order to minimize risk, I unmount this partition, but it also disconnect the bridge between the Windows world and and Linux world)
  
• the SIS 630 Video driver is not installed properly (I need to boot back Windows and reconfirm the hardware configuration and go back to Ubuntu to manually install the driver)
  
• my soft modem is not working (Oh!, there is still no solution yet.)
  
• SCIM Chinese table is not installed by default, though I have selected Chinese as the default locale. ( I need to boot back Windows to download the relevant SCIM package only a flash driver and install it in Ubuntu.
  

So far, I am very satisfied with my recent adventure with my old PC.