Posted on February 18th, 2009 by admin
As is well known, Hong Kong is a shopping heaven in the world. You can find everything you are longing for with very good price here, especially consumer electronics, clothes and make up products, since Hong Kong has no sales tax. Last year I went to Hong Kong and bought a HP laptop which was 300 Euros cheap than in Ireland, not only cheap, I also got many gifts from this buying, such as, a bag, a mp3, a card reader, a word processing software(although it is useless) etc. By the way, there are many good areas for shopping at Hong Kong, such as Tsim Sha Tsui, Causeway Bay, Mongkok etc, but I think Mongkok is the best places to go if you want to do a big shopping. The shop that I bought the laptop is a store named 3C which is located in the Mongkok Computer Centre. You can even bargain with the sales man. If you don’t want to bargain and want to buy good electrical products from a reliable seller, I would like to recommend Fortress which is one of the biggest retailers of electrical appliances in Hong Kong.
Mongkok is a relatively old style area compare to others in Hong Kong. It is said that Mongkok has the highest population density in the world. There are several featured streets in Mongkok area, such as, Ladies’ Street, Sai Yeung Choi Street South etc. You can find any popular electrical goods in Sai Yeung Choi Street South, and if you want to buy good and cheep clothes and cosmetic products, Ladies’ Street is the place to go. So please bear in mind, if you got chance to Hong Kong, you are sure to take a look at Mongkok. Here is two good websites about Mongkok: Mongkok, Photo Tour of Mongkok. If you want to stay here for nights, there are several good hotels around the area, such as, Metropark Hotel Mongkok, Langham Place Hotel, Mongkok. But please be advised, you need to book your accommodation firstly since Mongkok is very popular area. Sometimes, it is hard to find vacancies in these hotels. To save some cost, you can check a website named hotelscombined.com to find a good rate for a hotel before you decide to book it, as this website can compare 30 major hotel booking websites.
And the last advice but not the least is that if you happen to be in Hong Kong, don’t forget to try the delicious Cantonese food.
No Comments »
Filed under: China, Eastern Culture
Posted on February 16th, 2009 by admin
The following pictures are showing a unique fishing way at Ahangama, South of Sri Lanka. Many people sitting on the pole are enjoying sea fishing there. What bait are they using? No bait, just hooks but works!
No Comments »
Filed under: Eastern Culture
Posted on February 15th, 2009 by admin
According the report of Sina.com.cn, Google China is developing a new MP3 search technology which will support voice searching i.e. Users can find a MP3 song via singing it themselves.
Sina.com.cn reported that this project is one of very important products for Google China in 2009. It will be on the market in late this year. According to the normal developing speed of Google new products, it could be available in half year.
This product would be a breakthrough in music search area. Users can find the song that they want by just singing it instead of type the name of the song.
But this new MP3 search engine maybe needs some human interfering at the first phase, for example, users may need to set some parameters manually.
Good started the mp3 search project in China last year. Aug 5, 2008, Google decided to invest in Top100.cn which is a Chinese music website. They are working on providing free MP3 search service. Top100.cn provides music content, and Google China provides search technology.
No Comments »
Filed under: China, IT Technology, Web Technology
Posted on February 12th, 2009 by admin
Feb 8 2009, many chocolate enthusiasts took funny hot chocolate bath at Kanagawa in Japan to celebrate the upcoming Valentines Day.
Happy girls in chocolate “soup”
Kids like chocolate, so do adults.
See who got more chocolate on the face.
Would you join us, it is nice!
3 Comments »
Filed under: Eastern Culture, Life
Posted on February 9th, 2009 by admin
Posted on February 5th, 2009 by admin
Recently, I have seen many old colored photos from the internet which obviously should be black and white in terms of the time when they were taken. Although the first color photo came up in 1861, most of photos taken in early 20 century are black and white. I am interested in how these black and white photos were turned into color pictures. After a detail research, I found we could do this in the following methods:
Firstly we need to scan black& white photos into our PC. Then next things would be use some tools to colorize pictures. So far I know there are three ways to do that.
1: Photoshop is the most well known option, but it is too complicated for amateurs like me, it is a big headache for me to colorize a picture with it.
2: Use a software named “Recolored”, it said that only few steps can turn black& white photos into color ones. The official site is: www.recolored.com .
3: Use a software named “BlackMagic”. It not only can be used to colorize Black & White photos, but also Sepia, IR (infrared) photos. Like “Recolored”, it is also simple to use and can make the colored photos looks pretty natural. The official site is: www.blackmagic-color.com.
After colorizing a photo with these tools, you can print out the photo if you want to show them in a frame. It is cool!
If you know some other ways or software, please put them into the comments box below.
The followings are some oldest color photos in the world(From the wikipedia):
“Tartan ribbon“, the first permanent color photograph, taken by James Clerk Maxwell in 1861.
An 1877 color photo by Louis Ducos du Hauron, a French pioneer of color photography.
Early color photograph from Russia, created by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii as part of his work to document the Russian Empire from 1909 to 1915
No Comments »
Filed under: IT Technology
Posted on February 4th, 2009 by admin
Ice fishing festival takes place in January every year at the north of Seoul, Korea. It said that over one million people attended the festival this year.
Thousands fish men drill holes for fishing on the frozen river.
1 Comment »
Filed under: fishing, Uncategorized
Posted on February 1st, 2009 by admin
It is said that it is the birthday of the God of Wealth on the fifth day of Chinese New Year. About 300,000 people went to the God of wealth on that day in Wu Han, China. People certainly hope to get some help from the God of Wealth in the current economy circumstance.
About 300,000 people went to Guiyuan Temple to pray for prosperity on 30th Jan, 2009–The fifth day of Chinese New Year. Photos come from People’s daily.
No Comments »
Filed under: China
Posted on January 31st, 2009 by admin
I graduated from University College Cork, Ireland with Msc degree in 2006. Since then, I have never touched my thesis again. It is useless to only keep it in my hard drivers. I would like to take it out and hope it can help some one who may need. The thesis is put on the following page: http://www.joehe.com/my-thesis/. Some simple introductions are as follows:
A Multimedia Ordering System for Restaurant
Hu He, Department of Computer Science, University College Cork, Ireland, December 2005
Abstract:
This thesis is about a project which is developed as a multimedia ordering system for restaurant. The project includes two parts: Website Ordering System and In-restaurant Ordering System. In the Website Ordering System, customers can check the dishes, make their orders, and pay their orders through a website which has rich information (pictures, text etc) about dishes. In restaurants, PDA can be used to present the multimedia information of dishes to customers, as well as deal with the orders which can be transferred to kitchen and be recorded into database through the mobile devices and server. Also, this system provides a PC client which also can deal with orders and present the multimedia information to staff for training purpose.
Technology involved:
1: JVM on PocketPC
I use the PDA with Pocket PC system as the wireless mobile device for the ordering system, There are many JVMs which can run on the Pocket PC. Such as IBM’s J9 JVM [1] or NSICOM’s CrEme JVM [2]. There are several other JVMs on the market, but they all suffer from these problems: not supported anymore (Sun’s PersonalJava), not fully Java compatible (SuperWaba), not fully Java compatible (EWE), on sale to OEMs only (Esmertec JBed, formerly Insignia Jeode), or out of date (Insignia Jeode). Because the price for IBM’s J9 JVM is very good at $5.99/each., so I choose the J9 JVM at first.
2: JVM and JDK on PC
3: RMI server-client mechanism
4: MySQL Database
Please go to this page for the details.
No Comments »
Filed under: Java
Posted on January 27th, 2009 by admin
A real Chinese New Year cannot be there without fire works. The following pictures come from fireworks show in Guangzhou on 26 January for this Chinese New Year.
People are watching the fireworks show in Guangzhou although it is raining.
Bazhou, Guangzhou, 26 Jan 2009
Beautiful fire on the sky, Baietang, Guangzhou.
The fireworks last for 30 minutes. It is reported that 20,000 fireworks had been fired during the time.
No Comments »
Filed under: China
