Grasshopper – Sydney09 草蜢25 Anniversary

草蜢悉尼25周年演唱会

On 1 Aug 2009, we have been Sydney Entertainment Centre enjoying the Concert – 25 Anniversary of Grasshopper. It was pretty good except that we cannot understand Cantonese very well. 90 percent of their songs were in Cantonese.  Their manager Madam Chen (陈淑芬) also there, who is a great manger for a lot of bands and singers in China, or more specifically, in Hongkong SAR.  It is really amazing that Grasshopper can last 25 years and three singers keep such a close relationship. Surely they did a good job. Wish they have more promising future.

 I have also uploaded some vedio clips to Youtube. See below, which was performed in Mandarin.

Over one quarter of Australians were born overseas – (ABS)

Interestingly to know today’s media release from ABS. Among minorities, population of migrants from China is 3rd largest, only less than those from UK and NZ.

Figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today reveal 5.5 million migrants from over 200 countries living in Australia were born overseas, as at June 2008.

People born in the United Kingdom remained the largest group with 1.2 million calling Australia home, followed by those from New Zealand (495,000 people), China (314,000), India (239,000) and Italy (222,000).

Error – You are attempting to open a file type that is blocked by your registry policy setting

I had this error today when I tried open Lotus file 1-2-3. Found solution from Microsoft website. (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922848/). But you have to create the folder to which exemption will apply.

In Excel 2003, there are no trusted locations. You can create an exempt location to override the registry policy settings. To create an exempt location, follow these steps: Exit Excel 2003. Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK. Locate and then click to select one of the following registry subkeys:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common Point to New on the Edit menu, and then click Key Type OICEExemptions for the name of the key. Point to New on the Edit menu, and then click String Value.

Type a string name, and then press ENTER. For example, type ExemptDirectory.

Right-click the string name that you typed in step 7, and then click Modify.

In the Value data box, type the path of the directory that contains the file, and then click OK.

Note You must create the folder. Any subfolders are not automatically exempted. For any additional folders that you would like to make exempt, repeat steps 6-9.

Canon IXUS 110IS (SD 990IS in US)

Have bought this camera in early April as I deadly want one for my Easter holiday. Paid AU $399 for it (Digital Fun Stuff price, $15 more expensive than MSY, but much cheaper than Ted’s). Really like its looking, a little bit girly but beautiful. Widescreen also is attractive which is matched to my wife’s mobile, even though a little bit wierd without a viewfinder. As SDHC card in Digital Fun Stuff was so expensive than our suppliers, I did not buy SD card when I bought camera. Instead I used my old 512MB normal SD card, which was used for our Nikon CoolPix camera. It would get full very quick as I set picture to 12M pixels maximum. Lucky we brought my wife’s Asus laptop with us. There is only a single battery coming with camera, sometimes it is really annoying. A few weeks after we returned from Port Macquarie, I have bought two 1500mAh NB-4L batteries from ebay. And ordered a VERBATIM: 16GB SDHC PREMIUM CARD (VBM7022) after that. Ingram Micro was doing a promotion for this Class 6 premium card when I bought it, so it was cheap, only costed me about $46. Sandisk class 6 card 8GB (Extrem III) even more expensive than this. Class 6 [minimumWrite and Read speeds of (60X) 9MB and (133X) 20MB/sec respectively] is designed for large file transfer, for instance HD movie. My 110 IS also has function of HD movie recording, it is pretty clear. But there is a shortcoming for HD movie function, i.e. only support file size less than 4 GB no matter how big your SD card is as its format is FAT 32? A 16GB SDHC card can record more than one hour movie, that is more than enough for normal use. Basically with 3 batteries and 1 16GB card, we never need ask more.

Last weekend, I just found it was not very good to use Auto mode to take some photos. People in the corner of picture was used to be transformed a little bit. Except for that, I like this camera.

Excel ALT + Left Click

In Excel 2003, if you press ALT key and left click on a cell, it will look up the content of that cell in dictionary for you. Very easy. Just realised that.

Police Car parked on Disabled Parking Space

Below picture was taken on 13 March 2009. Firstly we were just feel abnormal that a police car was driven by a disabled person. Then we saw the policeman did some shopping in Woolworths, Campsie. A little bit curious that if a police car really has priviledge to park at disabled parking space without any special reason. As on that day, that police car just was used for shopping rather than special public service.

Post Office Open Hours

Australian Post

 

 

 

 

A lot of people may have difficulties to find Open Hour for each post office or post shop in Australian Post website. It is actually very easy.

1. On the left-hand side of Post.com.au homepage, Click Find a postal outlet.

2. Tick Post Office, select State, enter optionally street address and suburb, or just enter Post Code. Then click Search.

3. In the page of search result under the map, there is list for neareast Post shop or Post office. Click Identifier number or Outlet name.  Then it will show Opening hours and Service Available etc.

Easy actually.

Ubuntu 9.04 Released on 23 April

Canonical announced that Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition is free to download from Thursday 23 April. Ubuntu 9.04 features OpenOffice.org 3.0, which gives users a complete office suite that is entirely compatible with Microsoft Office.

There is also a new notification system.  It seems 9.04 is not a great leap from 8.10. There are three versions including netbook version.

P.S. During update from 8.10 to 9.04, I forgot to keep my old menu.lst, which includes boot from my XP. Currently I only got Ubuntu 9.04. Have to edit menu.lst to add it.Testing result of 9.04 was pretty good. At least all popular video format were recognised by 9.04.

26/04/2009 p.s. again. fixed menu.lst and my XP appeared again. I start to like Ubuntu very much now.

13/05/2009 p.s. more. got a bug which seems usual for old Asus P4800 motherboard. Invalid PBLK Length 5 etc. Do not know how to fix it. But it does not matter when boot up system. Found very useful Instant Messenger tool in Ubuntu 9.04, which combine QQ, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, you name it. Amule and BT also my favourite tools.

Gmail inbox use lower case i

Today when I logged into Gmail, I suddenly found that except inbox other link all use capital letter for the first letter (inbox instead of Inbox). See below.

After 1 day work, I found so many people now realised this annoying or interesting phenomenon. There is a thread in Google forum, there you will find that when you compose a new email, to and from also use lower case letter.( http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/89ec2d34aa580d2d?pli=1 ) And someone even noticed that his/her Friends folder in Contacts now also turn to be friends, but Family etc still the same.

Solution for this: change your language settings from English UK to English US. Feel like this is kind of discrimination. People who noticed this issue will definitely ask why it is like this. Anyway…treat it like a April fool’s joke.

Zoho testing

Today I registered Zoho which is an online bundle service provider. It provides you with email, online docs, online chat, etc. They use below – Mahatma Gandhi’s words as their moto:

A customer is the most important visitor on our premises.

He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him.

He is not an interruption in our work – he is the purpose of it.

We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to serve him.

- Mahatma Gandhi