Month: July 2005

What Are The Settings ?

This is probably the most popular question in all photo forums – “What are the settings?”. You know, whenever someone posted a good picture, forum goers will then post that.

  • What are the aperture setting, shutter speed ?
  • What is the ISO, what is the zoom range, what is the flash setting etc. etc. ?

I am always puzzled by that kind of questions. You know, we shall ask “Why” questions instead of “What” questions, such as why you took the picture this way, why you set the aperture to F4.0 etc. etc. ? You can learn from good pictures only if you know the Why’s …

I mean, will you take a good picture if you know the setting, even though you’re in the same spot at the exact same time ?

Lesson Learnt: Why ? Why not ?

Lung Set

Yeh right, you don’t understand what is “Lung Set”, and I did not understand that either, especially it was from a waitress in a Japanese restaurant … “Would you like to have a Lung Set?”

But of course within a split second, I understood what she was talking about … she was trying to introduce us the “Lunch Set”. Obviously, I could not help but kept giggling when she’s talking …

I eventually ordered, “Lung Set C please”.

Lesson Learnt: Should I revisit that restaurant again ? I don’t know …

Travel Planning

May be I am blind, or may be I am not Googled enough … but where can I find a good Travel Planning tool / web site ?

As far as I can tell, most of the so call “travel planning” tools or sites only let you plan your flight schedule, car rental, hotel stay etc. etc. And in M.Y. term, they are only “how you gonna transport” and “where you wanna stay” planning tool.

What I want is a tool to let me plan out where to go, how / when to get there, what to explore, what to wear, where to dine, where to shop, how much shall I pay etc. etc. – i.e. a tool on how to utilize all my time in the destination. That will be a bonus as well, if we can link in photos, reviews, shopping list, forum etc. etc.

Some friends asked me why I have to cram my holidays and yes, they are right … but I want options !!

Lesson Learnt: There are thousands of travellers like me out there and please someone develop such a web site for us – or else, I will develop one 😎

IT Episode 3 – More Flowcharts

So in the good old days, flowcharting was the mean to save punch cards and therefore money. But I soon found out that it saved me time as well …

Somehow in year 1 the professors in the university had a strange habit – that was to distribute the assignment, first thing in the class. In other words, they distributed the previous assignment results, then the new assignment, only then they started teaching.

That was great, you know. I could then draw up the flowchart for the new assignment in the class … after all, I knew all the stuff the professor wanted to teach the class. By the time the professor finished his teaching, I already completed the flowcharting, desktop coding, compiling and testing. The only thing outstanding for that assignment was to punch the cards and ran it …

You see, I just saved an hour or two of designing, coding and debugging as I had finished all, virtually in my mind, by the elegant flowcharting.

Lesson Learnt: Save more time, and mistakes by proper planning.

Maintenance Hours

After weeks of heavy rain and finally we had a sunny weekend. Other than going out for some work-out, I decided also to fill up the day with a good movie, so I surfed to one cinema web site in town.

Fired up the FireFox, entered the URL and I was greeted with an ugly message – “The system is under maintenance”.

Oh great, a cinema web site is working on something new, but in a Saturday morning ? Are they crazy ? What kind of IT team they have ? Do they understand that they develop the web site is for doing business ?

Lesson Learnt: Fit your maintenance hours with customers’ schedules, not yours.