The False Blog

I started blogging before most people knew what it is, and I dropped it before most people do. Ahead of the curve, I am. Well, OK, that’s a result of going to tech web sites, so one knows the latest trends. And I’m not saying the trend is people will drop blogging, no. Just my bad writing.

I have started quite a few blogs, most of them I just stopped writing very soon. I have clearly no readers. And nothing interesting to write about. But I do read blogs, good ones with some insights and funny ones.

Blogging is such an easy way to publish people’s writing online. Now it’s not just writing, people post photos and videos too. I don’t think blogging will go away at all, because it’s easy and everyone’s doing it. But since everyone’s doing it, the quality of blogs generally is low.

I have not found a need to blog now. Writing for no one. That’s so pointless. I’ve got a journal now, though, if I do want to write, and I can write anything because only I can read it.

Today I stumbled upon this online file storing website called Box.net. It offers 1 GB of free storage. It’s 1 GB, and that’s a lot of space! For free too! Perfect for backups and file access at different computers. Say like yesterday I have to store our Beatles presentation PowerPoint somewhere. I used Gmail, saving it as a draft. Gmail offers even more storage, but the downside is every mail is limited to 10 MB. So for bigger files, I’m stuck. Now I have a solution.

Now you’ve read up to here, you know the benefits of this. You can sign up by clicking this button. You never know when you’ll need it.

First, to write a bit of news here. Yesterday (or I don’t know what day; depends on the time zone) Google had four new products out: Desktop 4, Notebook (not out yet), Co-op, and Trends. Trends is the one I’m going to talk about. It shows popularity of certain search terms.

Today I’ve heard too many people talking about Xanga, in the English lesson, and after the cell group. I wonder really how popular Xanga is in Hong Kong. I remembered this Trends thing, so I decided to do a search of that.

Here is a comparison of the most famous blogging services I can think of. They are Xanga, MySpace, MSN Spaces, Blogger, and Wordpress. MySpace is not mainly about blogging, and Wordpress can be an open source program or a blog host, but they are just for comparison, so I included them.

We can examine the results now. In the Cities tab, Hong Kong is number 6, showing Xanga is far more popular than all others added up together. Next, Regions, wow, Hong Kong is number 1 this time, still showing Xanga is immensely popular here. You can also note that MySpace is indeed extremely popular in the US. Finally, Language. Hm, only English and Chinese? English represent most of the US people I guess. Chinese, we can assume it’s the Hong Kong people. It’s not important anyway.

Although I can’t conclude only with these Google Trends results, as I think most people in Hong Kong use Yahoo for search anyway. But with this we may see the “trend”, yeah. It definitely shows Xanga has a buzz here. My final belief: Hong Kong people use Xanga.

Most of us here use MSN Messenger. Most of us use the MSN Messenger program from Microsoft, not knowing we have alternatives.

Let me tell my story first. I used to use that program too, (before I switched of course) and after like 10 months of not using it, I’d forgotten how many ads it has in the contact list. Last month I had to go to the PC to work, so I used that MSN Messenger. OMG, look at the ads.

We have:

• a banner ad at the bottom of the contact list
• the MSN search box (that’s advertising the search service, if you’re wondering)
• numerous “useful” tabs at the side of the contact list that are obviously ads, and they can’t be disabled
• a little message that sometimes appears below conversation windows
• links to Zone.com (a Microsoft website) when you’re playing the games
• I guess there are many more, but I don’t want to list any longer.

So why do we still use it? No reason, it’s just that it’s the official client, and it’s pre-installed in Windows. I bet most people don’t know there are many other choices.

Next, we’ve come to the choices, and this is the point of this post: boycott the official MSN Messenger client. Because we need something better.

1. Trillian – Honestly this is the only client I’ve used. It doesn’t only handle MSN, it does Yahoo, Gtalk, AIM, ICQ, Jabber, and IRC too! There are more, but these are all that I care about. Trillian handles all at the same time, meaning you can remove all other clients and use only this. It has other features like customising its appearence.
2. Gaim – The features are similar to those of Trillian. But it’s open source. Some geeeks seem very enthusiastic about it.
3. Miranda – Again, the geeks are quite keen on this one too. It’s open source and multi-protocal, and it’s “smaller, faster, easier” according to the website.
4. Adium – Sorry, it’s Mac only. But I won’t forgive myself if I don’t mention it. (This is the one I’m using.)

Now, of course there are more, but these are the popular ones, and three options is enough for you to make your own wise decision. BTW I bet all of them don’t have ads. Please consider them. You won’t look back.

At the end, I still have to say it – use Gtalk please. I understand it’s not an easy change, but it’s not that impossible, is it?

OMG. Someone searched for "ut result" and you know what, my post here is the very very first result. I’m shocked, honestly. Number one result, you know. But I sort of feel dangerous. What if it’s Anthony who searched? Hmm, but that seems unlikely. Anyway, let’s celebrate the number one spot. Yeah! I got searched by my favourite search engine! Number one!

As everyone knows, today is April Fool’s Day. I got fooled when I was wandering in the internet. It was iLounge. I didn’t remember the date when I was reading that article. I was shocked and disappointed when I read that. So foolish of me! lol

Another good joke is from Google. Click around. It’s so funny. It’s the best I’ve seen. Of course by this time I didn’t fall for the joke. And they have linked older jokes. Those are funny too.

Today I check the "referers" to this blog. I found a link from a Yahoo search of "myit-school" which links to my second post about the "hacked" IT-School. It’s result number 53 on page 6. That’s so interesting! My blog is cached by Yahoo! Maybe it’s not that cool but it’s fun to know.

And then there are links to every page of my blog, so it looks like the person who found my blog looked through all of my posts. Indeed, I knew something like this could happen! So in my very first post, I said hello not only to you girls, but also boys, in case some boys stumbled upon here and I won’t piss them off.

Found an article on Digg: The Secret Lives of Fonts. It’s about a student finding out that if he uses Serif fonts in his papers, he gets higher marks. For san-serif fonts he gets lower marks. Even the standard of the papers are similar. [Examples of serif: Times, Georgia. Examples of san-serif: Arial, Helvetica.]

Important discovery for all of us students. So bad if you deserve an A but you get A- just because you use san-serif. Not the teachers do this on purpose, but serif is more readable. So we all have to learn this for typed documents. Georgia is the best to the person who wrote that article.

How about Chinese fonts? As a Chinese, I’ll investigate this.

(Classifications according only to me. Screen shots taken from Font Book.app.)

Examples of serif:

Examples of san-serif:

So you see them. You use serif most of the time, in fact. San-serif looks so heavy. It’s much less readable especially for teachers who have a lot of things to read. Use serif for printed documents. San-serif is only for titles. [Remember them for your Chi reading report!]

Finally, English san-serif can be used for on-screen viewing – use them for your website. I’ve got Verdana for this blog. Pretty good.

Last time I said the IT-School was hacked. I still think so.

Today it is hacked again. Do you want me to post the codes? Yes? Here, unedited: (Skip if you don’t want it)

dc9

<HTML>

<head>

<title>迦密主恩中學內聯網系統</title>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=big5">

<style type="text/css">

<!–

.fieldtext1 {  font-family: "Verdana", "Arial", "Helvetica", "sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt}

.messagetext {  font-family: "新細明體"; font-size: 9pt; color: ##FFFFFF}

–>

</style>

<script language="Javascript" src="/it-school/js/md5.js"></script>

<SCRIPT language="JavaScript" SRC="/it-school/js/roller.js"></SCRIPT>

<script language="JavaScript">

<!–

function MM_preloadImages() { //v3.0

  var d=document; if(d.images){ if(!d.MM_p) d.MM_p=new Array();

    var i,j=d.MM_p.length,a=MM_preloadImages.arguments; for(i=0; i<a.length; i++)

    if (a[i].indexOf("##")!=0){ d.MM_p[j]=new Image; d.MM_p[j++].src=a[i];}}

}

function MM_swapImgRestore() { //v3.0

  var i,x,a=document.MM_sr; for(i=0;a&&i<a.length&&(x=a[i])&&x.oSrc;i++) x.src=x.oSrc;

}

function MM_findObj(n, d) { //v3.0

  var p,i,x;  if(!d) d=document; if((p=n.indexOf("?"))>0&&parent.frames.length) {

    d=parent.frames[n.substring(p+1)].document; n=n.substring(0,p);}

  if(!(x=d[n])&&d.all) x=d.all[n]; for (i=0;!x&&i<d.forms.length;i++) x=d.forms[i][n];

  for(i=0;!x&&d.layers&&i<d.layers.length;i++) x=MM_findObj(n,d.layers[i].document); return x;

}

function MM_swapImage() { //v3.0

  var i,j=0,x,a=MM_swapImage.arguments; document.MM_sr=new Array; for(i=0;i<(a.length-2);i+=3)

   if ((x=MM_findObj(a[i]))!=null){document.MM_sr[j++]=x; if(!x.oSrc) x.oSrc=x.src; x.src=a[i+2];}

}

//–>

<!– Script by David Laui 8-18-2000 –>

function show_itschool() {

        document.forms[’form1′].submit();

}

</script>

</head>

<SCRIPT language=’javascript’>

function validate(){

    thisform = document.form1;

    v = true;

    if (thisform.userloginid.value == ‘’){

        v = false;

        thisform.userloginid.focus();

    }

    if (v && thisform.password.value == ‘’){

        v = false;

        thisform.password.focus();

    }

    if (v)

        thisform.elements["password"].value = MD5(thisform.elements["password"].value);

    return v;

}

function login() {

    if (validate())

    document.forms["form1"].submit();

}

  function cancel() {

    var form = document.forms["form1"];

    form.elements["userloginid"].value = "";

    form.elements["password"].value = "";

  }

  function setLanguage(lang) {

    document.forms["form1"].elements["language"].value = lang;

    if (lang == "zh") {

      document.images["B_" + "2"].src = ImageOn[’2′].src

      document.images["B_" + "3"].src = ImageOff[’3′].src

    } else {

      document.images["B_" + "2"].src = ImageOff[’2′].src

      document.images["B_" + "3"].src = ImageOn[’3′].src

    }

    return;

  }

    function moveWindow(){

        var winWidth = (self.outerWidth ? self.outerWidth : document.body.offsetWidth);

        var winHeight = (self.outerHeight ? outerHeight : document.body.offsetHeight);

        self.moveTo((screen.availwidth - winWidth)/2, (screen.availheight - winHeight)/2);

    }

</SCRIPT>

<body background="/it-school/images/login/bg.jpg" leftmargin="0" topmargin="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" onLoad="MM_preloadImages(’/it-school/images/login/login_button_login_on.gif’);moveWindow()">

<center>

<form name=’form1′ method=’post’ action=’login_do.php3′ ONSUBMIT=’return validate()’>

  <table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">

    <tr>

      <td><img src="/it-school/images/login

45

/login_01.gif"></td>

    </tr>

    <tr>

      <td><img src="

a78

/it-school/images/login/login_02a.gif"></td>

    </tr>

    <tr>

<td background="/it-school/images/login/login_username.gif"><img src="/it-school/images/login/trans.gif" width="130" height="35" align="absmiddle">

        <input type="text" name="userloginid" class="fieldtext1">

        <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=’javascript’>

            document.forms[’form1′].elements[’userloginid’].focus();    

        </SCRIPT>

      </td>

    </tr>

    <tr>

      <td  background="/it-school/images/login/login_password.gif"><img src="/it-school/images/login/trans.gif" width="130" height="35" align="absmiddle">

        <input type="password" name="password" class="fieldtext1">

      </td>

    </tr>

    <tr>

<td background="/it-school/images/login/login_fieldbg.gif"><img src="/it-school/images/login/trans.gif" width="130" height="31" align="absmiddle">

          <input type="radio" name="language" value="zh" checked>

          <img src="/it-school/images/login/login_zh.gif" align="absmiddle">

          <input type="radio" name="language" value="en">

          <img src="/it-school/images/login/login_en.gif" align="absmiddle"></td>

    </tr>

    <tr>

      <td background="/it-school/images/login/login_message.gif">

        <table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" background="">

          <tr>

              <td><img src="/it-school/images/login/trans.gif" width="30" height="8"></td>

            <td valign="top" class="messagetext"><img src="/it-school/images/login/trans.gif" width="232" height="10"><br>

</td>

              <td valign="top"><a href="javascript:login()" onMouseOut="MM_swapImgRestore()" onMouseOver="MM_swapImage(’Image1′,'’,'/it-school/images/login/login_button_login_on.gif’,1)"><img src="/it-school/images/login/login_button_login_off.gif" border="0" name="Image1"></a><img src="/it-school/images/login/trans.gif" width="22" height="1"></td>

          </tr>

        </table>

      </td>

    </tr>

    <tr>

        <td><img src="/it-school/images/login/login_footer_01.gif" usemap="#Map2" border="0"><map name="Map2"><area shape="rect" coords="175,9,317,32" href="http://www.myit-school.net" target="_blank" alt="科訊網" title="科訊網"></map></td>

    </tr>

    <tr>

        <td><img src="/it-school/images/login/login_footer_02.gif" usemap="##Map" border="0"><map name="Map"><area shape="rect" coords="166,11,231,30" href="javascript:window.close()" target="_self" alt="關閉登入視窗" title="關閉登入視窗"></map></td>

    </tr>

  </table>

<INPUT TYPE=image SRC="/it-school/images/trans.gif" BORDER=0>

</form>

</center>

</HTML>

</webprint>

0

But, well, this time I think it can be an accident. Someone like Leonado uploaded this old file.

I still can’t log in to IT-School. Irritating.

This evening I went to IT-School, but found the login page was a bunch of source code. Something fishy. There were random numbers and alphabets everywhere. I forgot to read the "real" source, I just read those appeared in the loaded page. Maybe things are quite different there.

Some minutes later, it worked again.

Who did that? The first person I thought of was that boy in 4C. He’s the best in CIT, isn’t he? And that day, when Sarah and I went to 4C to ask him about CIT, he was doing something about modifying posts in IT-School’s forums. He’s really suspicious to me.

Wonder what the teachers will do about it. We’ll see. Maybe they’ll ignore it completely or they want punishments.