Category: Friends

I saw the angel …

Had a good chat with some friends the other day about types of boss in our work life. There was a theory that there are two types of boss – one is a control freak who keep yelling to their staff, and one is with mentor style that helps the staff to develop themselves.

I wonder what type of boss I am, but I am a firm believer of the quote from sculptor Michelangelo:

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

One-click greeting

Ages ago I was told sending a letter to your friends in festive seasons were better than just sending a greeting card. And since the dawn of Internet, people told me sending my greetings electronically via emails or e-Cards to my friends was the better and trendier way.

Then in recent years, we just sent out short messages via our mobile phone, or messaging software.

But just a couple of weeks ago, we didn’t send short messages, emails, and letter. All we did was just forward a tiny picture of (310 x 230 pixels), to a bunch of friends. We didn’t even need to enter the names of our friends, as we just did a “Select all” from the tool – Facebook.

From letter, to card, to e-Card, to short message, to one-click forward … it’s a lot easier, it’s effortless, but are we getting closer ?

Happy New Year

Merry X’mas

I made a set of slides as X’mas eCard (3 Mb) and sent to my colleagues and friends. Many wonder how I made those slides and here are the details …

  1. First, I took a lot of photos from shopping malls, those with X’mas decorations [Tool : Olympus E-1, E-300, E-510]
  2. Picked 6 to 7 photos, processed them (i.e. resize, sharpening etc.) and prepared a set of B&W version, then a set of colored version [Tool : FastStone, PhotoImpact]
  3. I then searched for the X’mas song Little Drummer Boy from the Net in WAV format (i.e. a format that supports by PowerPoint)
  4. Processed the song to find a right spot to fade out the song (as the original is too long), and to find a right compression bit ratio (as the original is too big) [Tool : AudaCity]
  5. Sampled the song again to determine the best time to advance the photos (i.e. find some good spots to in-sync with the slide transition)
  6. Searched a good X’mas poetry from the Net to fit the slides
  7. Last step – created the slides, inserted the B&W photos, then the colored photos, added in fade-in effect, added the background music in the first slide, timed the slide, added in transition effect, added in the content, saved as PowerPoint Slideshow … [Tool : PowerPoint]

Not bad, I believe …

Merry X’mas 2007