Just a quick note to let you all know that I am still around. 🙂 For the first half of this month, I was in Australia to attend the Machine Learning Summer School held at the ANU. Well, should see some action here soon when I post some photos I took on the ANU campus and also of Sydney – including shots taken while (walking not climbing) crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Author: Louis Page 53 of 115
Despite the obvious religious connotations in the title, it seems the term ‘Holy Grail‘ has taken on slightly different meanings over the years, as seen from this list: List of Holy Grails. Accidentally stumbled across this list while reading about a new attempt at the Holy Grail of CSS formatting: (Geek-speak) a three-column layout with fluid centre and two fixed-width columns.
Since it’s probably kind of obvious that I have been spending much time diagnosing and ensuring some stability in my Windows PC, I may as well mention that I have also been looking to get my hands on a cheap Mac system to play with. In fact, I was close to spending some money on a second-hand Mac Mini until the buyer backed out at the last minute. 😡
Anyway, here are some links (likely to add to as I find more) I have found useful while doing the research.
- MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh (the original Mac news and information site according to the site slogan and with lots of performance comparisons)
- Mike’s Mac OS X Management Software and Tips (at least there’s the Carbon Copy Cloner which allows you to have a complete, bootable backup of the hard drive)
- Think Secret – Apple Mac Insider News (full of advance announcements, so much so that Apple is seeking legal action for some news items! Update: unfortunately forced to shut down by Apple…)
- Low End Mac: How Much Mac Do You Need?
- Mac users group, Singapore (there’s a nice buy/sell section in the Forum but requires registration just to browse)
The problems (as I wrote here, here and here) I have been having lately with my PC at home seem to be finally over! Finger crossed…
My theory is that when I removed a faulty harddisk recently – the time when all subsequent instability issues seemed to have started – I had inadvertently left hanging a ground(ing) cable that was secured to the PC casing using the one of screws which secures the same harddisk. This naturally can lead to unexpected fluctuations in my system, or even burn out key components in the worst case. Two incidents seem to back this up. Two days ago, I tripped the power at my unit as I was merely plugging in the power cord of the PC. Secondly, I noticed quite by chance that the ground lead of the front panel Firewire port was touching the metal case. I have since unplugged the Firewire cable from the motherboard just in case. It just goes to show that when tinkering inside your PC, don’t leave anything hanging!! 😉
In fact, I have managed to run OCCT (apparently even more stressful than Prime95) overnight without crashing – although CPU temperature was raised to unusually high 52C. At the moment, I am putting the system through the rigours of Burnin Test. Another tool that I have used extensively over the past couple of weeks is the Ultimate Boot CD, mainly for checking the integrity of the harddisks.
Saw Jet Li‘s new movie Fearless last Friday. Fearless is a story about the Chinese martial arts guru Huo Yuanjia (1869-1910), played by Li, who founded the Chin Woo (also known as Jing Wu Men) martial arts school in Shanghai in 1909.
Apart from the breathtaking fighting scenes and dedication that we have come to expect from Li, this movie to me was quite different from any of his previous movies. For a start, there was much more raw and brutal violence, but this also gave the movie a better sense of realism. After all, real fighting is not necessarily suave and pretty. In those days, it was often a matter of life and death.
While much of the movie’s plot is fiction, so what was depicted is definitely not the true life story of Huo Yuanjia, in the movie we get to see many of the vulnerable, imperfect and therefore human aspects of a hero. This is where I think Li’s Buddhist beliefs and personal life experiences are most apparent. In particular, I found the exchange over tea ceremony the most illuminating: whether a type of tea is good or bad, we as bystanders are in no position to proclaim this. Who do we think we are to be able to judge and place a label on something which we cannot know fully? Similarly, it’s unnecessary and presumptuous to rank different schools of martial arts because there are no absolute truths.