Hong Kong Pics, Part 3

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(Part 1 here, Part 2 here)

1. Yet more pics of Hong Kong:

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Hong Kong Pics, Part 2

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(Part 1 here, Part 3 here)

1. A few more pics of Hong Kong:

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Hong Kong Pics, Part 1

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(Part 2 here, Part 3 here)

1. A few pics of Hong Kong:

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Hong Kong, Day 1

1. On the last installment I was flying over North Sulawesi, I’m currently tying this in the living room of my Aunt’s apartment in Hong Kong.

2. The rest of the flight was fairly non-eventful, landed safely in Hong Kong. I wish I could have recorded the view from the belly camera of the plane as we landed, the approach lights for the runway looked like a disco dancefloor Saturday Night Fever style, it was Way CoolTM.

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Big ‘Ole Jet Airliner

1. As I’m writing this it is Wednesday the 22nd, 9:25 Sydney time, I’m currently over the Banda Sea in Indonesia, and I’m roughly 3299km away from Hong Kong. Looking at another 3hrs or so of flight time.

2. I was rather nervous at the prospect of leaving for such a long time. I always was, but when reality struck on the eve of my departure the Dam of Self Denial couldn’t hold the tide, and so I copped it for most of the morning. The Replacement Flatmate (a lovely Brasilian Dentist that I wish I had more time to get to know) told me when he was leaving Brasil he felt like he was just about to go bungee jumping — you know it’ll be great, but the whole thing is so scary right now. I guess everyone gets the jitters.

3. Farewell was hard. It’s hard to leave family, so many friends, and so many comforts behind. Harder still to leave your partner of nine years. But regret hurts more, and poisons relationships, so with an injection of spine I leapt off the cliff.

4. And so begins my tale.

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Update 20/3/06

1. 2 days to go!

2. So far all my stuff I’m storing has been packed, with the exception of stuff that I may or may not be taking with me. There’s still a little bit of that. I’ve started packing my bags which is a huge relief, as I really wasn’t sure where to start, and as such had procrastinated with the bag packing. I’m worried I’ll go over my luggage weight allowance, but I don’t want to leave some of my books behind… a no win situation there. And I’ll only have one bag with me in Tokyo, with the rest of my luggage sent directly to Hiroshima, and I need to pack with that in mind too. I’m discovering a latent talent for logistics.

3. I’m happy to say I’ve been more up beat about my trip over the last couple of days — not even my flu has beaten me down. Well, too much. The flu’s been a pain (literally), and with it came the dehydration, which then brought on the mouth ulcers… I’ve got some killer ulcers right now. K-I-L-L-E-R.

This Essay Breaks the Law

1. An Op-Ed piece by Michael Crichton about ludicrousness of the US Patent system, specifically about a case about to be heard by the Supreme Court where the claimant contends (amongst other things) that merely thinking their “patented fact” is infringement, and liable for royalties. Hmmm.

I wanted to end this essay by telling a story about how current rulings hurt us, but the patent for “ending an essay with an anecdote” is owned. So I thought to end with a quotation from a famous person, but that strategy is patented, too. I then decided to end abruptly, but “abrupt ending for dramatic effect” is also patented. Finally, I decided to pay the “end with summary” patent fee, since it was the least expensive.

2. Oh dear.

Update 15/03/06

1. Well, only 7 days to go before I leave for Hong Kong, and I’m feeling the pressure now. Right now, the sadness of leaving so many people behind has overtaken the excitement of leaving. I’m a bit bummed, to be honest. The now-obviously monumental task of packing is also weighing on me — hard to know where to start with the packing. And then there’s my dog, well, my parent’s really; I’m gonna miss him a lot. Anyhoo, the packing continues….

Google Mars

1. Following up on Google Moon, we now have Google Mars!

MacBook Pro Update

1. A few points about my MacBook Pro:

  1. Hooooooot. And that’s hot, not hoot. I’ve read some people bitching that the MagSafe power connecter blows because you knock it and it comes off (duh!), but no one ever mentions that the computer would cook your knees if you had it charging on your lap.

  2. It’s faaaast. That’s a hoot. I put another 512mb RAM in mine (bringing it up to a total of 1Gb) and it’s snappy. And fast. Wow.

  3. That. Screen. Damn, it’s a nice screen. Hurt-your-eyes bright, no dead pixels, crystal clear.

  4. A few nice touches that I didn’t have on my old PowerBook: there are two volume settings, one for internal speakers and another for headphones, which is nice considering how many times I’ve had my ears blasted because I’ve got the speakers cranked and plugged some headphones in. And it no longer burns your palms when typing like my old PowerBook did, so ventilation under the front part of the laptop (by that I mean the part closest to you when you’re using it) has been improved dramatically.

  5. Few things I’m not liking: the Superdrive is slow. It’s less super, more like an okdrive. I know they couldn’t fit the faster drive because it’s 12mm thick rather than 9mm think like this is, but I’d still like a faster drive. This drive also seems a bit twitchy, a couple of DVDs have turned coaster because of some unknown reason. And, lastly, there seems to be an issue with copying from one firewire drive to another firewire drive; for some reason it copies really slowly, but if I turn one of the processor cores off it copies normally. I have yet to really dig into this, I don’t know if this is an Apple bug or whether I’m doing something weird.

  6. Photo Booth is the best program evar. Seriously, there’s nothing funnier than a bunch of pissed guys making stupid faces in front of this program.