Snippets of Hendrik Christian Daily Life

Last night, I went to Microsoft for a seminar on the upcoming Windows Longhorn. We were shown the pre-beta build 5054 of Longhorn in soon-to-be-released IBM Thinkpad T43. There are few features that were shown last night, from the latest Longhorn Display Manager, which can zoom and shrink windows into any size in your screen, to the new index-based search and filtering.

You can have a notepad or calculator so small that you can put it on the corner of your screen, or so big that it fills your entire screen. For the search capability, it is nothing new, as I am using Copernic Desktop Search to fulfill the same purpose in Windows XP. But having this capability built directly into the operating system means we will get better performance, accuracy and result. What the speaker showed us last night was that Longhorn can search your document faster than you can blink. It is that fast.

It is certainly a much welcome addition if you compare with the search built into Windows XP now that may take minutes to return search result.

For the eye candy, there was semi-transparent, glassy title bar, dropshadow all around, and few more things that will justify your purchase of high-end video card next year.

A word from me, if you can wait a year, do wait until next year to upgrade your current PC. It'll be rather sad if you decided to upgrade now, and realized that the hardware you bought is not optimized for Longhorn experience. For Longhorn, there are a lot in the pipeline waiting which I believe will get everyone excited when it is released mid-2006.

Lastly, as much as I wanted to, I can't post any screenshot, sorry about that.

Posted at 05:34 pm by hendrikch
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Opera Software CEO Jon von Tetzchner said last week that he would swim from Norway to the United States if Opera 8 browser was downloaded a million times in its first four days of release. Because this target was exceeded over the weekend, the executive has agreed to keep to his promise.

I really don't know how he is going to do that, but we'll see. FYI, approximate distance in miles from Minneapolis United States to Oslo Norway is 4036 miles or 6493.92 kilometers. What do you think of this "crazy" stunt?

Read on from CNET ...

Posted at 02:49 pm by hendrikch
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I realized that there are too many features in Opera 8 browser for me to review, so I will better let you read reviews by professional reviewers. Try Google for Opera 8 reviews or CNET reviews. I have been using Opera for the past few days, and I am truly happy with it. The interface can be so minimal to provide maximum viewing space in your screen (see below). If you are really interested to try it, follow 30 days to become Opera 8 lover where Tim will discuss each and every feature found in Opera. However, I realized that Opera 8 is not for everyone. There are still a lot who prefers Internet Explorer, for the simple reason that they don't know that other browser exists and they are not willing to try new things. Then there are those who prefers Firefox for its compatibility with most sites and mainly because it's free. Opera, however, I think suits advanced web surfers since it can be complicated, highly customizable, and full of features that neither IE nor Firefox provides. I have seen enough people who said Opera was not good only after 10 minutes of using it. Given time and chances, I believe those people will find Opera features very addicting. In conclusion, which browser you use depends very much on your daily usage of Internet, and how sophisticated you want your browser to be. For me, it will be Opera, because I can browse, I can read my Gmail via POP3, I can read websites by RSS all in one place. Firefox can't do all those, never mind IE.

Opera is not without its flaw, it doesn't support rich text formatting in Gmail or Blogger, Starhub doesn't work well in Opera (this one is Starhub's fault), Opera Ad filter not as easy to use as compared to Firefox's Adblock, etc. Mainly because of websites which does not support Opera instead of Opera's fault, so I hope with this advances, websites will start to provide support for Opera. However, these instances are very rare, and there's always IE to fall back to when websites starts to play nasty with Opera. Overall, to me Opera features far outweigh its drawback, and to me, Opera is way better than Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Posted at 04:34 pm by hendrikch
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After last month outing in Zouk Wine Bar, this month we had a BBQ last night somewhere around Clarke Quay. Satay, sausages, chicken wings, fried rice, fried bee-hoon, string-ray, prawns, corn, garlic bread, and such are on the food menu, and a lot of varieties of alcoholic drinks and fruit juices for the drink menu. Last night, I virtually had most alcohol in one night ever, in my whole life. I started with what we called

Avanade plus, a mixture between Sparkling Wine and Sunkist, followed by Tequila Shot, Jack Daniels, Whisky Cola, Vodka with 7 Up, closed by Red Wine with 7 Up. Wow ... that was close to my maximum already. Amazingly, I was still quite sober last night, albeit a bit high. hahaha...

Sorry, I don't have any photos since the one who took the photos is now overseas, will post as soon as I have it.

Today, for lunch, we went to Amara hotel for $50++ buffet

, I had a lot that starts with "S": shark fin soup, sashimi, salmon, sushi, scallop, shrimps, salads, and those that doesn't start with "S" like lobster, beef, chicken, mango mousse, etc. etc. A very filling lunch indeed.

But today, they didn't have a discount for Citibank credit card holder, which they usually have, just because this week is the so-called Secretary Week. yeah right ...

However, this week may still not comparable to what I may have next week. As of now, there are three dinners and one lunch already arranged for next week. Hahaha... so happy ... Bring it on ...

Posted at 04:24 pm by hendrikch
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I have been waiting for its released for a while now, but finally Opera 8 Browser has been released.

It's a browser, it's an email client, it's a RSS newsfeed reader, and it's an IRC client, all packaged in a 3.6MB size that's smaller than Firefox browser alone. It's the fastest, most standard compliant, highly customizable, most secure (compare with IE or Firefox), works in Windows, Mac, Linux, you name it, and the most full-featured browser we have now (unlike Firefox, in Opera, everything is built-in). Opera also received PC World's Best Browser Award in 2004.

No kidding, no exxagerating, it's just something good, and something good, like Bible, must be shared, right?

I will post my review in a few days, but in the mean time, compare Opera with Internet Explorer (Browser 1) and Firefox (Browser 2), read all the buzz about Opera

, or 30 Days to become an Opera8 Lover (a very good article to highlight all Opera features), or check why Adobe chose Opera for its latest Creative Suite 2.

So, download the browser now, and try it for yourself.

Posted at 01:15 pm by hendrikch
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Think I would share this, especially to those who are having their exam right now. All the best!!!

Posted at 03:03 pm by hendrikch
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Does Adobe and Macromedia sounds familiar? They should, coz every Internet user should more or less have used their product, be it Acrobat Reader, or Macromedia Flash. Adobe has just announced that they are going to acquire Macromedia for $3.4 billion, and it will be very interesting to see what the new company can come out with, given the resources, technology, and money these two companies have.

Quoting from Gizmodo, "it's a safe bet to say that soon, we'll be able to generate PDFs from Flash movies with a ColdFusion backend that plays back video edited in Premiere wrapped in an interface laid out in Dreamweaver, designed in Fireworks and colored in Illustrator. All within a single company's product lineup. Get ready for a productivity suite that leaves you winded, for sure."

Posted at 12:02 pm by hendrikch
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It so happened when I went to Novena Square, there are people who are doing line dancing. And it so happened that I brought my camera with me, so I took a quick snap of them. Kinda reminded me of the time when I organized the longest line dancing in front of Takashimaya few years back. Any of you know how to do a line dancing?

Update: The longest line dancing in front of Takashimaya few years back I was referring to was Dance Fiesta 2001. It was four years back, but it is one of those unforgettable memories. Thanks Dian. See media coverage from Channel 8.

Extract from WorldRemind: Dance Fiesta is Singapore largest dance extravaganza ever organised by a student body. The event was held at Civic Plaza on 21st of July 2001 from 10am to 10pm and was jointly organised by NTU Cultural Activities Club - Modern Jazz and The Next Stage, School of Performing Arts. Programme for the event includes dance performance put up by schools and charitable organisations, dance classes for public, a largest friendship dance (mass dancing), skits and open air bash (Jam and Hop).

Posted at 04:20 pm by hendrikch
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Yeah right, yesterday I received quite a number of links from my MSN Messenger buddies, giving me a link to a picture of me, with a link to download an executables. Knew straightaway that this was a virus/worm/trojan, whatever.

I searched through Symantec's website, but the information was not there yet. So, being a curious bit, I downloaded a copy of the executables, and scanned it using Norton Antivirus. Clean, it said.

Never mind, I copied the worm to a separate system running in Virtual PC, ran it, and see what it did. Nothing much I could discover except that the virus kept spawning msnsched2.exe every 2-3 seconds which I presume slowed down one of my friend's friend's machine. After satisfied with seeing what the virus/worm/trojan did, I closed the virtual PC and discarded all changes. Being a virtual PC, so no harm was done. One of the thing I love about Virtual PC

If you happened to click on that link yesterday, please help yourself and your MSN buddies by cleaning your system. Get the removal tool from Symantec. You can also read further information about the worm from Symantec.
Now, who's so, forgive me, DUMB, to click on that link yesterday?

Posted at 11:48 am by hendrikch
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Date: 02 April 2005. Time: 0900 hours.
Plan A: Go to Pulau Kusu. Status: Cancelled. Reason: Late and Raining
Plan B: Arcarde at Harbourfront. Status: Cancelled. Reason: The arcade was not there anymore.
Plan C: Play pool at Harbourfront. Status: Cancelled. Reason: Pool is located at the same place as the arcade. So...
Plan D: Go Sentosa. Status: ON.
Here are the pictures when we went for outing at Sentosa. We started early in the morning, went there to play beach volley ball, some went kayakking, then played pool, had chips and brownies for lunch, and went to Magic Wok at Novena Square for dinner. Weekend well spent, despite it being Plan D. Nuff said.

Gathered in Harbourfront Tower.

Arrived at Siloso Beach at Sentosa. It's a nice beach now, though the sands are imported.

Kayakking, burning some calories.

Enjoying themselves.

Now, who's at the other end of the phone? hehehe...

Aftermath from Sentosa, though it was not the end of the day, yet.

Posted at 11:14 am by hendrikch
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