Category: Ashes of Time

#22

I reckon, first and foremost, take good care to yourself and your family. Health is the most important ingredient of your life, so treasure it.

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  • It’s quite an eye-opening trip to Tokyo as it is my first DIY trip to Japan and the last trip to Japan is ages ago. From the trip, I found that 99% of the Japanese are using Clam-shell style mobile phones (J-Phone, FOMA, DoCoMo) and most of them have a camera on it. They use the phone to browse web pages (yes, SMS is too low tech to Japanese) and to take photos. After that 7 days, I am pretty convinced that my next phone will not be a Nokia.
  • The other things you will be amazed is how they can improve everything they produced. Just a short visit to Tokyo Hands (Department Store) and I found numerous products that are simply an old idea but with a little enhancement – it then make the “new” products a lot useful. It is a proof that they make everything one step further, even before the consumer think about it. It reminds me the great quote by Henry Ford – “If I had asked customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse.“.
  • And lastly, I was deeply impressed by their service attitude. An attitude to provide good and quality service, but not because for the tips and compliments. We have a long long way to go.

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  • 50 years ago, Menga (animation) master Tezuka Osamu created the character Astro Boy and predicted that he will born on 7th April 2003. If you are a fan of Astro Boy, surf around the net around that week.
  • 10 years ago, Wired magazine was published. Are you a fan of the magazine ? Yes I am and I still think it is a must read for most of us. Get the anniversary edition if you can.

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You see things and say, “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say “Why not?” – George Bernard Shaw

Yes, why not ?

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I finished one book during the Tokyo trip and it was a very good read. If you like coffee and dreaming of setting up one coffee shop, check it out. It’s the best book about coffee business since “Pour your heart out“.

The book I am currently reading is The elements of user experience – and I suggest all designer shall read it.

#21

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you. – Leo Tolstoy

Yes, look around you, step back a bit, …. and see what you have achieved in the past two or three years. There is a lot. A hell lot

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It is never easy for me to write an email without acronyms such as BTW (by the way), IMHO (In my humble opinions), AFAIK (As far as I know) etc. And in my casual mails, you will probably see OIC (Oh I see), ROTFLOL (roll on the floor laugh out loud) and YMMV (your mileage may vary) ….

I just learnt a new one – W?BIC!

It is Why ? Because I can !

Probably a geek thing, but if you asked me why I wanna work late to go through those tricky Internet problems with you all, and why set up my own web site to appreciate what’s going on in the Internet development world … W?BIC!

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Are you a fan of Blogger ? It storms the Internet world in the last two year and became a cult by itself. Yes, I had a blogger account and created a blogger site for myself as well a few months back (W?BIC!). Therefore, the biggest news to me in Internet (in February) is the Blogger’s parent company, Pyra Labs, was purchased by Google. Good news or bad news ? Who know ? Check it out … http://www.blogger.com/

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Life is tough, but we all can handle this gracefully with some “attitude”. And I am sure this “attitude” thing can help us on facing everyday problems as well. Enjoy …

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What is Internet Community ? Forum ? Ecard ? Newsgroup ? To me, community is a much broader thing … here are my favorite communities.

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AFAIK, most of you are not frequent book readers … but still I would like to recommend the followings:

#20

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. ~ Charles Darwin ~

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What about visiting a few web-sites to see how the other people created their masterpieces ?

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As a faithful follower of Bee Gees for so many years, it was hard to accept that there will be no more songs from the original Bee Gees. But let me share with you a lyrics from their song …

We changed the world, we made it ours to hold. But dreams are made for those who really try.

#19

Many times, friends of mine (whether they are in the Internet industry or not) asked me one same old question – “how to develop one web site ?”. In most cases, I ask them to check out the following web site … on how to develop a site in simple 25 steps.

http://www.2yaks.com/funpages/funpage2.html

And most of the time, they followed with a question “how long will it take to complete a GOOD web site ?” My answer was ask them to refer to the last step in the above web site – Eternity.

Keep up with the good works … the best is yet to come.

#18

Eight years ago this month, I bought a magazine in a computer store and it’s the first issue of that magazine. Since I was / am a collector of Premiere issues of magazines, I bought it without skipping a heart beat. Themagazine is called “NET”, the magazine talked about how to buy a 14.4 Kbps modem for US$ 200, about how to connect to a thing called “Internet”, aboutinstalling a new kind of software called “Browser”.

I learnt something new from that magazine, and dumped my Compuserve account (the de facto standard about bulletin board eight years ago) almost immediately and got an Internet account. One year later, I developed my first homepage … well, the rest is history.

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Indeed, another reason I write this newsletter earlier because today is the Thanksgiving Day. Just in case you don’t know, the Thanksgiving Day has almost 380 years’ history (http://www.calendar-updates.com/Holidays/US/thanksgiving.htm).

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Saw a big sign posted just above the entrance of Tunnel :

No one can recall what you said, just the impression you left behind.

Very true indeed, as you will not have second chance to leave a good first impression – so, try your best in everything you do.