Uncle Su’s Got Some.

One week I am away from my computer, and I hear the new model of iMacs and Mac Minis are out, Fake Steve Jobs has been caught (I still love you, Dan Lyons! Much peace and love), I have 2000 posts awaiting to be read in my feed list - or to be deleted, and wait for it, I am still stuck with a dial up connection. Arg!

Better focus on getting moolah for a new iMac and some lenses. And maybe reorganize the files in this piece of junk they call laptop.

Update: There are security loopholes in Safari for Windows. Just don’t use it, yet!

Like they claimed, Safari is faster than Firefox or IE.

What Jobs forgot to mention are the things that still keep me rooted to Firefox. No versatile bookmarking (as in, drag tab to bookmark bar, not in Safari). No password manager. No extensions. No performancing (hehe).

Safari is just a speed up IE for now. Speed alone is not enough to win me over, yet.

I say “WTF What the hey!”

And I was already drooling for weeks now before they released this. Imagine how much chicken teriyaki I can eat with $179!

OMG!

Buy your Mac for up to $200 in student discount, and get another iPod for up to $199. Total of $399 in savings!

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I really have to stop posting Apple stuff!

Just read the whole thing here already. Kevin?

Haw haw…

Dell is offering the mouse for a minimal price of $80, even when it comes with a E1505 Inspiron. At this rate and spec, a Macbook will be waaay cheaper.

I bought mine a year ago and even then I bought it for $50. Thanks but no thanks, Dell!

Check out their new ads here.

After all the due anticipation, Zooomr Mark III is finally out.

On initial review, I feel that the site is still a tad buggy with minor features lacking here and there. Marketplace feature is not out yet. Signing in with myopenid is a pain in the toosh. Site browsing is slow but that’s just probably everyone else is trying it out too.

Looks promising for the future, but definitely not convincing enough for now. Zooomr might be good enough for me to switch over from Flickr when my Pro subscription ends come next year. Maybe.

You know I’m a sucker for shortcuts and lazy efficient work-smart-not-hard attitude. I’m a sucker for keyboard shortcuts too, So I tried everything on the keyboard just for my browsing pleasure. Can’t seem to find it anywhere else on the net. You see it first on unclesu’s!

Keyboard Shortcuts:

Left/right arrow: Shuffle between photos, left and right respectively.

Top/bottom arrow: Toggle photo information on/off.

I: Toggle photo information on/off.

Spacebar: Start/pause slideshow.

F: Favorite current photo.

P: Go to current photo’s page.

M: Go to user’s photostream.

Please let me know if there’s more! Free kisses!

我真得太久没写华文了！怎么自己好像觉得好兰好兰。。。 天哪，我花了五分钟时间写那句话！有没有稿错？！ 哈哈哈。。。 满好玩的，呵。

My mandarin is so bad its a crime!

Where I am now the average temperature throughout the year is like this:

And then I got an offer from a school with a climate of a paradise, UC Santa Barbara:

And another from a not-so-paradise-like place, UMich Ann Arbor.

Should I be worried?

I have just received the news I have been waiting for. Its April 30 and UC Berkeley indeed has an answer for me. My application has been declined. They claimed that the acceptance rate this year is 29%, with 7% for business school and 23% for the college of engineering. Now now, I have expected that from them, and frankly I am not the least bothered, so friends please keep your consolations to yourselves. =) Its only sensible that I reflect on what I have learned from all this madness on school application. Maybe I can share a tip or two for my sister.

Procrastinating killed me.
I could have provided more information, wrote a better personal statement and met more deadlines if I have had planned my time properly. Most of my application are submitted towards the last days of the application process, and many documents were sent on the last minute. I was so desperate at times that I sent through express delivery. Lesson learned: Do not procrastinate, plan my time properly and do what matters first.

All it takes is desire to apply.
Back at square one, everyone is equal. When it comes to applying to schools (and everything else you want from life) is the guts to go for it and the commitment in following it through. The guts to apply to the school and THE COMMITMENT IN FULFILLING ALL THE REQUIREMENTS.

I could have applied to more schools. My dream school was CalTech but I backed out on the last minute because their track record of 36 transfer students accepted in 5 years intimated me and because I couldn’t commit to their requirement of 3 letters of recommendation, a personal statement and 2 standardized test spanning over 7 hours. CalTech has a high reputation for its engineering departments, a small but engaging environment and a rigorous course. Plus its in Pasadena, CA (Hollywood, beach, great food and everything else the nightlife has to offer). I chickened out on the very last minute and now I shall live to regret.=) Advice: Stay the course. If you planned on applying, don’t think on it for too long. Just. Do. It.

Documents
Different schools have different requirements and documents that the want to see. They have specific deadlines for these documents, so don’t you dare bank on the chance that the school will be lenient on you. Because it’s not gonna happen! My advice is if you’re running out of time, send your documents first, then complete your online applications and statements. Why? Because documents take time to snail mail, while online applications can be submitted on the last night. Don’t submit your application on the last minute either. Chances are the school server will be in a bottleneck and your application will have difficulty being submitted through the web. Some documents (test results, official transcripts) are required to be sent by the institution/school, so send them what they want.

Make up your mind.
I should have spent more time researching schools and their strong points instead of following the crowd and applying for schools because a friend of a friend did the same. I should have had a master plan, a ranking system for the schools that I should apply to. Some factors to consider include reputation and ranking, quality of education provided, research opportunities, proximity to industries related to the major, accessibility, environment eg. if its urban/suburban/ulu, proximity to nature parks, seas, lakes, recreational areas, hardware/clothing/food stores, climate/weather. This is so that when you’re accepted to multiple schools, you won’t be faced with the dilemma of WHERE YOU SHOULD GO.

Subscribing to US News’ prime account ranking database should help. They even have organizer where you can organize your schools of your choice. I made something like “Top top elite everests”, “west coast parties”, “Midwest so cold they build character” and “spare tires”. Anyhoo. Since I’ve found out that the everests don’t want me in, should I go to the midwest to build my character or party in the west coast?

OMG! OMG! Whoa liew how come whole family only I 没人爱！

…Very very comforting, kwa kwa.

I’m the shortest boy. Hmm too bad the sound is not synced to the video. Job well done, nonetheless.

Apple Statement

iPhone has already passed several of its required certification
tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait
until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what
a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the
most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and
finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow
some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team,
and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developer  Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard’s
features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality
release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show
our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give
them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and
ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life
often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we’re sure we’ve made the
right ones. [Apr 12, 2007]

Fuck. There goes my plan of getting myself a MacBook this June when I visit Apple’s Manhattan Store. I’m not purchasing a Mac with Tiger on it.

Maybe I’ll get an iPhone instead this June. =)

link [via Gizmodo]

I was reading Steve Pavlina’s latest post covering self-help cynics. His description of cynics just make me nod in agreement:

• Cynics are often in denial about parts of their lives they lack the courage and/or ability to change.
• Cynics attempt to make themselves feel more secure by surrounding themselves with others who are in the same boat, i.e. people who are stuck and who don’t appear to be growing much.
• Cynics find safety in numbers.  They don’t feel secure on the inside,
  so they try to create artificial security on the outside.  This involves discouraging and dissuading others from new pursuits that might succeed.  The cynic is terribly worried about being left behind and feels threatened by others attempts to advance. The cynic in your life will take a keen interest in your maintaining the state of mediocrity as much as possible.
• By resisting change the cynic will only delay it, and often when the change finally occurs, it will be overwhelmingly strong — a massive disruption instead of a mild shift.

I thought that, wow, he’s right. Not only that, these people are EVERYWHERE. I can really relate to the 4 points above.

Point #1 is basically myself and my lack of enthusiasm at times, which I blame mostly on Thalassemia Minor and lack of proper nourishment.

Point #2 is probably what best explain the complexity behind my dearest ex-housemate, and also explains the bickering and eventual cold war between us. As of now I’m not planning of initiating any closure, even though CD is still spending a lot of time with him.

Point #4 is probably the feeling I have about CD. CD is passive, playful, irresponsible, have minimum initiative (if any, it it because of others’ expectations of him, friends etc.)

And last but most importantly, I think point #3 describes pretty much EVERYONE I HAVE MET at some point in time or another. I have SOOO much to say about these cynics. I won’t mention that most Indonesians in my college are cynics (but oops, I guess I just said it, tralala).

They are the people who ridicules you for reviewing for the exams much earlier than everyone else. The people who discouraged you from participating in any organizations, doing community service, or even from attending a particular event (that they are too self-conscious to attend anyway). They are the ones who collect friends to prove you that your path is wrong, and my aren’t you lonely walking your lone-ranger path? They are the same people who laughed when I wanted to get a DSLR or dance hip-hop for a particular event. They make it look like I am such a joke, I am a funny parody to be ridiculed, that I will never make it and I will only rock-bottom from that point on. And they will be the first to say “I told you so!” and spread the rumor when you do fall.

I have had friends like that. I have had people putting me down like that. And from what I have learned, no one has the right to judge me like that and if anyone ever does, they are never worthy of my friendship. These are the cancer of your lives, folks, so avoid them at all costs.

And since I have noticed that they are everywhere, I take it as a personal mission to offer as much encouragement and advices to the people I have met as possible. Like the girl who wanted to join the student government. Like the guy looking for work on campus. Or the other guy having trouble in his linear algebra class. Why, because if I don’t those fucking cynics will get to them first, and then these people will feel discouraged and down, and then EVENTUALLY board the mothership of cynics. I find it really amusing that maybe these cynical comments are the main reason most comrades I have from the same 2 year college go into the same  4 year college (and god safe me, most of them only applied to that one 4 year college to start of with, oh god forgive the lack of effort and motivation to excel in these cynics). Oh and I won’t mention that the particular college goes by the same name as yours truly (but oops again I guess I just did). No offense to my friends in the college, because I am not attacking you. I’m after the people who could have done better, applied to more schools but refused to because they are such cynics.

I’m being a bitch and these are my 2 cents worth, of course. But seriously, the world can do with more encouraging people and less cynical parasites.

Be a Fool Montley Office Jester!

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I had this meaningless debate with my fanatic ex girlfriend on being gay. Basically I let her win.

If we’re still together I’d show her this episode from South Park. Eat that!

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