Scott Yang's Playground

Apple has Just unveiled the latest aluminum iMac. It is an all-in-one just like all the previous models, but thinner, faster and (more importantly) cheaper. Starting from AUD$1,698 for a 20 inch 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo, to top spec AUD$3,339 for a 24 inch with 2.8GHz Core 2 Extreme with 4 logical CPU cores. It [...]

I have been using both ReviewMe and Text-Link-Ads to monetise some of my websites and blogs. However two recent discoveries made me re-consider whether I should continue to go with them. 1. Text-Link-Ads Not Google-able Text-Link-Ads is one of the biggest text-link broker. Site-wide text-links cost my advertisers around $25-$30 greenbacks a month here, and [...]

Both Vivian and my Nokia phones were stuffed up, but in two different ways. Fact 1: They Do Not Swim Yesterday my Nokia 1100 which I bought 2 and half years ago was discovered inside the side pocket of my cargo pants. Except Vivian found it after the pants visited the washing machine, and was [...]

Got this on our iBook which we bought more than 4 years ago. Basically when we boot it up, there is the familiar Mac boot up chime. Then the screen greys out for half a minute, and then the flashing question mark inside a folder appears. If you see a flashing question mark when you [...]

10:20am this morning — touch down at the Coolangatta Airport. Welcome to the sunny Queensland. Vivian, Anna, Elsie and I will be here for a week of holiday, and will be back to Sydney next week. Oh. Holiday + Wifi connection at home = very good :)

On my bed side table there are two DVDs from Bigpond Movies — Casino Royal and The Dreamers. Got them through this deal where you can get two months Bigpond Movies trial for free, but that’s besides the point. They have been sitting there unwatched for more than half a week. Why? Anna has been [...]

Big thanks to Teresa at The Freebie Blog who sent me an invite to Pownce, the Twitter-killer web application that was created by none other than Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg.com. Signing up is a breeze — clicking on the link from the invitation email, choose a username, password, fill up a few more [...]

Just read this read feedback in this month’s CPA In the Black magazine: I have been looking for a position as a graduate accountant for more than six months, and have been seeing employers who demand experience in an accounting practice. Experience, that’s all they want. Do they not consider other values? We need to [...]

Got back from Melbourne on Saturday night but only managed to write about it today. It was my first visit to the capital of Victoria that was not work-related. I used to just fly down there, taxi’ed to the office in CBD, taxi’ed back to the airport and fly back. My two days stay last [...]

Went to Dominic Steele‘s talk on Matthews 7 at City Bible Forum on Wednesday. Dominic told a joke on residential colleges at UNSW, which I had not heard of before. Here it goes: Shalom College. Run by the Jews. No pork. New College. Run by the Anglicans. No beer. Warrane College. Run by the Catholics. [...]

最近這幾天常常在我的　Gmail 帳號下收到奇奇怪怪的電郵，而且還是繁體中文的。大部分的時間我都把它們直接丟往垃圾筒裡，但今天心血來潮就打開了幾封看看裡面賣的到底是什麼葯。 結果發現這幾封都是寄錯地址的！我的 Gmail 地址是 scott.yang at gmail dot com，所以我懷疑這幾封信真正的收信人也叫 Scott。信裡的對收信人的稱呼為「楊大哥」！而他的責任是－為一個婚禮做主持人！基本上這些信都是有關那婚禮的，而寄信人分別為某某婚姻顧問，與一家台北上市公司的總經理！！！ 由此可證寄電郵前一定要把地址打對，不然很有可能被無聊人士貼在他的部落格上。 還好那收信的楊大哥只是在 CC 裡面，然後他的另一個郵址也在 CC 裡，所以他應該沒有漏失任何郵件…

How many pairs of hinges does your laptop need? You know what a hinge on the laptop is? Yup, that thing which holds the LCD screen from the base of your laptop computers. Usually you just need one pair for each computer. Then why is someone trying to sell 5 pairs on eBay? Probably because [...]

6:45pm. Elizabeth Street outside Martin Place. Waiting for bus to take me back home. On my right is a young Asian girl in her twenties, talking to her mobile phone in fluent English. On my left is a slightly order Caucasian bloke in his early thirties, talking to his mobile phone in fluent Mandarin. Formal [...]

Guido van Rossum: Python 3000 Status: A schedule was first published around a year ago; we were aiming for a first 3.0 alpha release by the end of the first half of 2007, with a final 3.0 release a year later. (Python 3.0 will be the version when it is released; “Python 3000″ or “Py3k” [...]

I was wondering why the font rendering on Safari for Windows looks so different. Actually I’ve used a Mac for the last 4 years, but seeing Apple’s anti-aliasing rendering engine working on Windows does feel a little bit strange. Joel Spolsky outlined the differences between two camps: Apple generally believes that the goal of the [...]