No. 1 Killers?
A fun afternoon and evening for some. A boring day for me. Good thing I went late and missed all the speeches and traditional Lion Dance.
Funfair - good for the kids. African drumming session - not bad for most. 2 Samba dancers danced for 1 song! And then played with the kids! Karaoke - passion for some. “Tea Dance” singer that wasn’t any good. Buffet for locusts. Ballroom dancing for oldies.
About the coolist thing would be those guitar playing duo looking like they came straight from the Kung Fu Hustle set.
And yeah, the Samba dancer on the right is gorgeous - when she doesn’t smile like the Joker from Gotham City.
The All-in-one HP6110 printer I have has two slots for ink cartridges. One for a 3 color cartridge, one for either a black cartridge or a 3 photo color cartridge.
The problem is, M does major black and white document printing and photocopying, and I do mostly photo printing. We also have a black and white laser printer at home that in no where near the computer desk where M gets to work all the time now, and the laser printer in on the dinning table where I do “gorilla computer warfare” with my PB17. I could in theory buy two print server devices to hook-up the router one wired and another wirelessly, but that is neither inexpensive nor allowing full printer functions.
Dad has a HP printer which use the same ink cartridges as my HP all-in-one and it excels in having three cartridge slots where all 3 color, photo color, and black ink cartridges are being used at the same time. I could “liberate” it from dad and make good use of it but then two months ago, I realized an older and discontinued HP model, the 7960, uses all 3 of the have exact same cartridges as well as a forth optional photo grey cartridge that makes awesome black and white photo prints just as good as the HP8450 and HP8750 do. Jumbo has the HP7960 still listed at full retail for HKD$2388 but I just found out one of the Fortress has it for $1680. Which is still a lot of money for just the extra B&W printing capability but a feature which would have been very nice to have.
The Fortress also have the discontinued HP8450 for $2388 which uses new type of ink cartridges that also have an optional photo grey cartridge and which I was tempted to buy last year before I found out the 7960 could do the same with the same cartridges I am using. The HP8750 does the HP8450 in A3+ format which would also be nice to have; but at $4288, the damn thing is also humongous in size.
Here comes the HP Photosmart Pro B9180 Photo Printer. It is everything the HP8750 is with the new ink saver kind of cartridges as in the no B&W photo grey HP8230. The B9180 being priced at USD$699 is somewhat comparable to the HP8750’s.
Before I read this news I was all ready get the HP7960 at the Fortress this afternoon, but now, I think I’ll just liberate dad’s HP7550 for now sans the B&W photo printing feature and wait for either the HPB9180 or the possible A4 version of it. After all, the cost of the ink is paramount and the ink saving feature of the HPB9180 hopefully helps a little in this regard.
In a recent Naked Scientists podcast, where all sorts of people phone in to ask questions and also enter in a quiz for a prize, one audience mailed in an commented on how British kids have such good manners compared with American kids; when being asked whether the called in kid wanted to have a go at the quiz, British kids would jump in happily and say “Yes, please!” while American kids would have a lazy tone of voice saying “Whaeverrr~”.
As much as I keep Alec on his toes, so to speak, on keeping good manners and politeness, there always remain a side of laziness in his tone of voice. From other teenagers in Hong Kong I have seen, most of them are like that. Not only are their tone of voice lazy, their postures, both sitting and standing, are also lazy.
I wonder if it has anything to do with much homework and not enough sports for kids in Hong Kong at large; however, kids from International schools where there are no homework are like that also. It may also be a factor while most parents in Hong Kong are too busy making money, they make no time to teach their kids. Maybe the parents themselves get so tired from work they lay around their houses with utterly lazy postures.
A relatively lack of discipline at school compared to the old days may also be a factor. But I do feel this is a responsibility of the parents rather than the schools’.
Dup Layer, Gaussian Blur large amount, Set Layer Blending to Difference, Layer Merge Visible, Adjust Contrast large amount, Sharpen to taste.
Before the above procedures, blend in a Hard Light Layer of a Black and White dup of the image, and then do the above procedures with much less amount of Gaussian Blur instead to create a much finer definition of the lines.
Cousin W bought an IBM R40 notebook computer at PCCW back in 2003. The package was bundled with 2 round trip tickets and 3 day 2 night hotel room to Singapore, a case, a mouse, a webcam, and 2 HKD$100 PCCW cash vouchers for a mere HKD$10,980.
The motherboard needed replacement once under warranty; covered.
A couple of days ago, one of the 2 USB ports on his R40 died, and Lenovo repair service said the motherboard needs to be replaced and at the same time, the battery no longer holds charges which also needs to be replaced. The estimated repair costs…
Replacement motherboard HKD$5,872.
Replacement battery………HKD$6,225.
Labor………………………….HKD$700.
———————————————————————
Total…………………………..HKD$12,797.00
Naturally, short from living with the dead USB port, buying a new notebook computer with a full warranty is the obvious option over repair. Buying Lenovo, however, is not. But if you must buy Lenovo, fork out the premium for the full coverage 3 year warranty/insurance and expect to use it not much longer after that.
In the mean time, my older (than cousin W’s R40) Fujitsu P5010 is still ticking with a would-have-been battery replacement cost of about HKD$1,600 should I deem it necessary. Which is still way too expensive compared to the HKD$900 one for my 17″ PowerBook.
NDNoise. For both WindO$ and Mac OS X.
Enjoy.
They emulate Velvia, Kodachrome, Tri-X, Infrared, as well as Cross Process.
Have fun.
WhaUSay?!