另類中文輸入法

我愈來愈相信我有中文書寫障礙，因為要我寫（或用電腦打）中文時常常忘記個字形（只得個字音在腦中蕩盪來盪去），但閱讀就沒有問題。

另一方面，由此英文是拼音，我英文spelling也沒有問題，所以以前我曾有英漢字典來找出我想寫的中文字，真有點諷刺！

其實中文輸入法有廣東話輸入法，但是最大的門題是：除常用的姓名外，我發％稅有多字我都不識其廣東話拼音。例如不知「賺」是"jaan"等。

後來，在網上download了廣東話輸入法的dictionary，不過我沒有安裝，反而我將它轉成html而在browser內search！方法如下：

• 如果我知道廣東話拼音是"hung"，我可直接search到「空」、「 雄」、「 紅」、「 控」等。


• 如果我不知道廣東話拼音但記得另一同音字，如我忘記「賺」，但記得「讚」，我也可用 「讚」來search

有興趣的朋友可參考！網址如下。

Internet - a world without friction

When I study physics in my junior secondary years, my teacher asked me what the world would be without friction. While I was told that friction causes energy loss and reduced the efficiency of the systems, I was also aware that friction has also a place in the world to make us live better - when we saw the cars skied on an icy road!

At the time, I have made an internal conclusion - friction is good so long that it is not too strong. I draw an analogy with inflation, which most of us thinks it is good if it is, say, below 3%

When internet grows more popular, I find this "second world" is a world without friction. We can use copy-and-paste to replicate information, instead of photo-copying or hand jotting. We can search information by googling instead of browsing the catalogue in the library. We can send mails to friends and they can nearly instantly receive them instead of waiting for days as in the normal postal paper mail.

However, in a recent news report, I heard parents complaining about their lack of control on their kids how they use internets. The parents urge the government to take a more active role to make the internet "safer" to use.

While I have no kids and cannot comment on the difficulties of a parent, I try to view the problem in an alternative way.

The root problem is that in this world, there are bad guys. In a world with friction, there are hurdles for bad guys to contact us or vice versa (actually the hurdle also applies to good guys). Worst still, with the anonymity in internet, we cannot easily identify whether a guy is good or bad.

I try to draw another example. If a bad guy wants to fool somebody in the non-internet world by saying he/she is a banker, he/she may have to waste some effort to set up a fake office with a XXX bank logo. Because of relatively higher setup cost (friction), the bad guy will not make it easily unless the target fraud is a much higher amount of money!

On the other hand, in the world of internet, setting up a fake bank web site is much easier and cannot be easily trapped. Therefore the bad guys will easily spread the net to trap some innocent victims.

I consider this is just a problem of awareness. For instance, even in a phone call, we should not tell a caller our personal details, even though he/she is indeed from a famous (but foolish) university conducting a survey.

When one speaks loudly in the public transport on a phone call about his/her personal life, phone number, address etc, please do not say the pubic transport has not protected his/her privacy!

我撐馮禮慈：不要消費

看2009年2月19日第248期【溫暖人間】，馮禮慈在《一望無際》講「救市……不要消費」。

他擔心在主流媒體這樣講會被罵到狗血淋頭，覺得【溫暖人間】的讀者想法會比較接近。

無錯！我十足同意馮禮慈的見解。

自從西方凱恩斯理論流行，（其實中國的保８的現在政策也不是一樣？）政府的有形之手被期望成救世主，但其實效果如何？（君不見日本經濟衰了多年？）

我覺得這好比我們感冒就去看西醫叫他開抗生素！而不會自行休息休息，以致身體缺乏抵抗力決越來越差。

人倒容易將問題外圍化而忽略自身的問題！

馬多夫騙案與生育

知道外國有龐大的種金式的金融騙案【馬多夫騙案】爆煲，其實自己一直以為更大的案例就是社會保障系統，不過覺得無o麥人講，終於看許沂光才知香樹輝也發表同題的評論（連結）

由於有名人出聲，也不用再多題。今次論生育。

生活了幾十年，自問還未了解生命的意義，所以對生育問題也是不了了知。聽過有父母講育兒的過程就可發現生命的意義，大概是繁衍論人云云，但講不到具體內容，只是說感受其中過程就可體驗，好似好宗教性，甚至像引誘人嘗試吸第一毒一樣！

最不恥的就是聽過有父母講育兒的目的就是以便自己老來可以有仔養，所謂「養兒防老」，這不何嘗不是另一種馬多夫騙案？

其實也想談談馬多夫騙案與婚姻，不過想來想去，還是覺得用錢鍾書的【圍城】比較貼切！

Level of Excellence

這是我喜歡的一幅圖畫，是從財富雜誌2006年10月剪下來，它描述了不同層次的能力。

一般來講，是用四分法，可分為：

財富今次最有趣是加了兩項：
- 知道自己醒
- 太知道自己唔醒（然後跌落河，重新開始過！）

大家共勉。

我的計算尺

這也許是古董，是執拾是「發掘」出來的。

未正式用過，而是廿年前有次在書局大平賣時買回來的（約$20），當時其實電子計算機已經流行，買的原因只是作收藏（貪其size小）。

現在用計算機的朋友，可能不知計算尺的原理，（其實電子計算機如何運作的原理也不知！）發明計算尺的人很聰明，用logorithm的方法，將乘除赤裸裸地變成加減：
log(A x B) = (log A) + (log B)
log(A ÷ B) = (log A) - (log B)

如計算1.5乘2，在A尺度set 1.5，即將B尺度的1移到A尺度的1.5（如圖），再用紅線方在B尺度的2，便可看到在A尺度的答案3。

除了乘除外，計算尺還可在其他尺度計算sine/cosine/tangent/平方/立方等等！

單看其複雜但精細的尺度也是美感！

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.