Which way are you looking at?

Susan Boyle you gave me energy

I can't deny that as years go by, I become worried about why I am still doing what I am doing. I should be big or famous or rich or successful and already got what I dreamed for at this age. Well, life is not that easy anyway. So, sometimes I just try to give up hope. Thinking to live on easy and comfortable, perhaps hoping for chances on the way but this is more like winning lottery instead of trying to do some real investment to reach my goals.

Today, I was writing some work when I tumbled upon this. Susan Boyle is 47 years old when she joined Britains Got Talent 2009. And she is really good. I think she is a good example of as long as you are living on doing what you believe you should and you like, you might be successfully some day, no matter how long that will take. Or well, even if you failed to be successful, you should have no regret.

While writing the above, I can imagine many would say that, if she has fought and tried harder before, she might be successful even at an earlier age. Well, I do not know much about Susan so I do not know whether she had tried hard before. But I do believe that everyone has a place or role in life, that you can perform in the most optimum way. Get out of that and trying to be someone else will no doubt gets in your way to be anything in life.

Again, writing the above leads me to another incident that I met a while ago. On my way back home from the train station, I saw a man running to the station in the hope of catching the train which was reaching the station. This made me thinking that, there might be two types of people in the world. One type, like the running man, would rush to their goals in the fastest way they can, and do not mind taking up some risks on the way. (If the train was gone when he reached the station, he wasted his energy and need to wait longer at the platform, now that is a risk you see...) And then there is another type of person who does not mind taking some time relaxing on the way. The goal is just something which motivates them to go on and enjoy the process. Put in the exact same situation, I think they would be still walking towards the station, being happy that if they keep this pace of walking, at the time they reach the station, the next train would be just there so they don't have to wait on the dull platform, can enjoy their way there more :-) (Now guess which side I am on...)

Of course, in different situations people react differently. I just mean as a whole there are easy-going and don't mind some waits type of people and totally purpose oriented people. Perhaps most of us are somewhere in the middle of the two extremes.

How to use ImageMagick convert

convert -size 1920x1080 -depth 8 rgba:source destination.bmp
convert source.bmp rgba:destination

Sorry if I bored you ;P

How to enable the wireless rum driver in FreeBSD 8.0

In /etc/rc.conf:

wlans_rum0="wlan0"

ifconfig_wlan0="WPA DHCP" # using WPA

In /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf:

network={

ssid="myssid"

psk="passphrase"

}

Run "kldload if_rum" to load the driver while plugging in the wireless adapter.

Then, it should be connected!

How to enable FreeBSD/Xorg on iBook G4 with ATI Radeon card

This is just for my personal notice but if it can also help the others configuring FreeBSD/Xorg on the old iBook G4.

Please refer to this page and this page.

The important thing here is:

1. Run sysctl hw.ofwfb.relax_mmap=1 as root.

2. Add the "AllowEmptyInput" "off" option in the xorg.conf generated by running Xorg -configure (after running the above command).

The best singer ever

Long time never post, and what just made me feel the urge is not new year, not tech gadgets, not programming and not work or future or career. It is just a song. A song all know and love for so many years.

我只在乎你 - You are what I care about

時の流れに身をまかせ - Let yourself loose with the flow of time

- by Teresa Teng

So many times I listened to this song, but this is the first time I actually paid attention to the lyrics. Besides the perfect singing performance by Teresa Teng, tribute should be sent to the music composer and the lyrics writer, too. If you happen to understand both Chinese and Japanese, you will soon find that the lyrics are in sync, they have the exact same meaning no matter it is Japanese or Chinese. This is very rare in translated cover songs afaik. And the lyrics are so soft and so full of subtle feeling that perfectly expresses the feeling of women when in love. Everything blends in so nicely and perfectly.

Then, I went on to listen to the same song covered by other singers, but no one actually reaches the same level. Personally feel that they paid too much attention to showing their good voices and singing techniques, but forgot the fact that this song gotta be sung from their hearts.

Lastly, I would like to quote the Chinese sentence appears first on the Japanese version of the video above.

There is this sound that you do not need to deliberately remember, because you never forgot.

Create PDF Forms with OpenOffice

Emm.. it has been a long long time since I last posted so I guess most of my readers has left this site already :P So have to write something to pull them back.

Well, the title says it all. Did you know that you can actually create PDF forms, the ones with interactive fields that your users can fill in Adobe Reader (but cannot save), with OpenOffice?

The fact is I have been looking for a cheap, or free solution (Adobe Acrobat is costly, my friend). I didn't expect it to be so near. All the while I know you can create PDFs with OpenOffice but never thought that you can create fillable PDFs with it. So, in my quest for the cheap solution I found out that Adobe actually opens up the specifications of the PDF format online for free. While reading through the specs I was wondering why nobody has ever made something for it. And it suddenly got into my mind, would OpenOffice have already supported this?

And YES!

Here is how you do it. Not something difficult but I think OpenOffice should advertise on it more :)

Hope this helps.

Enjoy!

Happy New Year!

I don't care what day is it now. I just want to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

New Year often gives us hope. But what about a New Day? Isn't that as important as a new year? Or perhaps it is more important.

I remember reading an article that said, we should live each day through as if that is the only day we need to live. Just imagine, how often do you decide to do something in the beginning of the year but quit a week later? If it is just one day, perhaps everyone can do it then :-)

New Year! New Year!