河國榮, An Aussie in Hong Kong

This is a heads up for those of you who might want to leave comments in Chinese. It's not a problem. I can comfortably read Chinese and even reply in Chinese if necessary.

A few days ago, I began looking at the way my blog was styled and considered methods of improving it or at least making it look nicer. I'm a perfectionist in many ways so placing style information within the actual web page was not the way to go. Instead, I used style sheets (technically known as Cascading Style Sheets or CSS for short). They're similar to the way text styles work in word processors. They were developed by the World Wide Web consortium as a way to simplify and centralise the visual design of web pages but took a very long time to be fully embraced by the web community at large. These days, we're looking at version three of the CSS standard and other than Internet Explorer, almost every browser is on board to fully support the standard soon.

I've just spent the better part of two days working to make some of my blog available to people with 'handheld devices'; ie, mobile phones.

People could already view my blog from their mobile phones just the way it was but it would be expensive and slow because the blog is large.

Some people have smaller screens than others. My screen is 1440 pixels wide. Many people only have 1024 pixels to play with. Someone once commented in my blog that the centre column was too narrow. When hopefully that's been solved now with a new layout option.

There are now two layout options: a 3-column layout, and a 2-column layout.

To switch, scroll down until you can see the XHTML and CSS buttons in either the right or left column. Just above the buttons, you'll see a simple statement: "Switch to 3-Col layout" or "Switch to 2-Col layout" depending on which layout you're currently looking at. Click on the statement and your layout will change instantly.

Enjoy.

Hello friends.

Just a reminder that you can always the read the latest eight articles in a skinny inexpensive format from your handheld device (ie, mobile phone) by surfing to http://www.hokwokwing.hk/handheld/.

Commenting from handheld devices is not possible yet but if anyone wants it, I'll try and add it asap.

My apologies to those of you waiting and hoping for new articles from me. I've been very busy over the last few weeks with computer upgrades and developments. I've also spent considerable time watching Dragon Ball Z and am currently spending every night at TVB working on a new series in which I only have a few scenes but because of the martial arts involved; I'm not the one fighting; require an exorbitant amount of time filming every night from five or six in the afternoon through to five or six in the early morning.

It is quite normal for me to require a rest after a period of being very busy. The computer upgrades and work I've done over the last few weeks took a lot out of me and I've not had the mental energy to write anything for the blog. I'll place more articles here soon. I promise.

Some of you may have already noticed. I've now added captions to my images. I think it's far superior to relying on Image Title parameters (ie, the Tool Tip text popups you usually see) and adds value to the images. I've been developing them for quite some time but couldn't get the images to centre on the page until today when a couple of nice people on the css discussion list gave me pointers. The web community is truly a great and helpful place.

I don't know how they look in IE but they look great in Opera, FireFox, Safari and OmniWeb.

On Wednesday, I did an interview with the folks over at moShow where they specialise in podcasts and mocasts (I'm not sure if they're the same. Podcasts are supposed to be audio-only because current iPods; where the podcast name comes from; cannot play video whereas mocasts; ie, Mobile-casts; can be played on mobile cameras where video is possible.).

Anyway, I talked my head off and they had enough material for three episodes. The first episode is already available so if you're interested, head on over to moShow and listen in. The other episodes will become available on the coming two Thursdays.

Note. The interviews are in Cantonese.

A week ago, I had finally decided on what I wanted in my online photo albums. I wanted a design that was simple to use and simple to look at, a design that would show off my photographs rather than distract from them. In html terms, to me, this meant a single page with controls to view the thumbnails and navigate between photographs, a single page without the flashes of multiple page reloads. I knew exactly what I wanted.

So I sat down and began on the design. Structure first; i.e., html, or in my case, xhtml. There was no style information in the structure. It was pure structure, the way xhtml is supposed to be. It looked good and straight forward. Then the style. CSS. I've done a lot of css work over the past year while I've worked on my blog, changing, improving and developing the blog's design. I've become quite familiar with css but I refuse to bow down to tweaking my css for the sake of arrogant egotistic non-compliant browsers. Writing the css for the photo album was not a piece of cake, but it wasn't difficult either.

Ok. The blog is back on line on its new home in a new server.

I had to move the blog. There were one or two functions I needed which were once available on TypePad and then taken away; too complicated to discuss here except to say that if I didn't write anything for awhile, the main blog page would gradually shrink until nothing showed except for the sidebars. That won't happen now.

Additionally, I'll be setting up two new blogs. One will be specifically for bird watching so that those of you not interested in my bird photographs won't have to look at them; something akin to being forced to look at a friend's huge collection of baby photos. The other blog will be the story of our pets.

Both blogs are NOT online yet. In fact, I haven't even begun to design them. I've had trouble contributing to this blog recently (busy and sick) so I hope I can find the time to contribute to all three.

In the meantime, feel free to look around as usual and email me if you find any errors in the blog; eg, bad links or missing photographs.

Regards,
Gregory

As some of you might be aware, the notification system I was using before wasn't working very reliably. I personally had two different email addresses registered with the system but rarely received a notice whenever a new article was added to my blog. Not good!

So I did some searching and found a plugin for MovableType that adds notification capabilities. The plugin is called MT-Notifier and while it's not perfect, it's still very good.

After installing MT-Notifier and testing it a little, I copied the email addresses from the old Bloglet subscription list and added all of those addresses to the new notification system. If you were on the Bloglet list, you should have received a new Notifier confirmation email sometime today. Simply click on the confirmation link in the email and you'll automatically receive www.hokwokwing.hk update notices in the future.

One of the nice things about MT-Notifier is that you can now subscribe to a single article and get notices every time someone (including me) writes a comment for that article. I think those of you who like to comment or question my articles will like this function. To get notices whenever new comments are added to an article, simply turn on the Receive notices whenever new comments are added to this article checkbox at the bottom of the comment form before you submit your comment.

If any of you have problems or suggestions regarding the new notifications, please email me.

For those of you who find it difficult to remember my web site's domain, I have registered another one. You can now use either www.hokwokwing.hk or www.gregory.hk. Both domains work equally well for web and email (although the RSS feeds will always refer to hokwokwing.hk for the time being).

I have applied for yet another two domains. I'll let you know when they've been confirmed; quite possibly next week ;-)

After finishing "They're Playing Our Song", I needed rest. My vocal chords needed rest. More than a week before the show began, my chords had begun to inflame. I had worked them too hard with strenuous vocal exercises in the mornings followed by rehearsals every day for 8 weeks. When my chords began to feel tight, I consulted my doctor and was informed that my chords were inflaming. I halted the morning vocal exercises but it was too late. For the entire week that we performed "They're Playing Our Song", my chords were straining through every single show. I was only able to perform successfully and get through the ordeal by not speaking between shows, taking anti-inflammatories at night before sleep and using a Japanese powder known as 龍角散 'Dragon Horn Powder' before each show. Still, my vocal chords suffered tremendously; especially during those shows when our microphones weren't working; and they needed rest. I needed to shut up.

The week after the show, I couldn't completely abstain from talking. My parents were here and I don't get many opportunities to be with them so chatting with them was a blessing not to be ignored. Only after they had left Hong Kong and returned to Australia could I really allow my vocal chords to relax; no singing and as little talking as possible.

No talking meant no going out to eat and chat with friends. It meant staying at home.

My blog is a MovableType blog developed by Six Apart Ltd. They also have other blog systems. They're a very smart company. You can read about their products on their web site. Like many other systems, MovableType allows you to add functionality via plugins.

One such plugin designed to implement threaded comments is called MTSimplyThreaded which I installed and experimented with. It could link comments to other comments but it couldn't produce a hierarchical comment scheme so it wasn't what I wanted.