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And another Merry Christmas
25 December 2008, 11:47 am. 14 Comments. Filed under Holiday, Web-related, Work.
I never expected taking up two jobs in the Christmas period to be this tiring! I've been working eight days straight but I finally got a break on Christmas day! 
Because of that I had some trouble getting the Snark Secret Santa present done on time but I got it in yay.
Trip to Asia
Sorry for the immense lack of updates! Right after my last post I took a great 18-day trip to Taiwan and Japan for seeing friends and relatives and maple sight-seeing in Japan.
It was terribly tiring touring with a tour group in Japan (waking up at 6am and getting back to the hotel at 10pm), and I ate like a pig in Taiwan for the love of cheap and godly foods. It was also crazy how the Taiwanese Winter was hotter than our New Zealand Summer. I walked around with sleeveless clothing in Taiwan and people looked at me like I was mad. No, they were the mental ones wearing scarves and huge coats under such heat!
New MacBook
My lovely new baby. With the low New Zealand Dollar, New Zealand was probably the cheapest place in the world to get the new unibody MacBook. But I bought it in Taiwan during the Info Expo because they had slight discounts and some 'deals'. I also spent a fortune to get it upgraded to 4GB RAM. However much I spent on it, I feel like every dollar was worth it; fast, pretty and awesome new trackpad 'moves'. I don't have a lot of Christmas presents (only two or so because most friends are overseas), but this is the best Christmas present I gave to myself.
Yes I now have my stubbornly PC-loving friends jealous. 
End of 2008
I've had a year of mad up's and down's, and I'm ready to take on a new year of challenge—I think. I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year. 
A little contrast to my daily life
7 September 2008, 2:58 pm. 11 Comments. Filed under Holiday, Miscellaneous, School, Web-related.
First, let's define my daily life:
But for an anomaly of a past week, I was allowed to go to four parties in a row—big big contrast to my 5pm curfew last year.
- Law Stein: with a "90's Rave" theme, this was the last of our four annual steins. (Although I hear of a fifth coming after the final exams.) The most un-sober I got on this night was at the pre-drinks party hehe.
- Opening Night Dinner: a great event for a chat with random new people. Fun, but I was extremely red and tipsy after one glass of chardonnay. Couldn't take more, or I wouldn't have been able to get to my bus home.
- Pub Crawl: Arrived at the city with my outfit ready, full-on with a stethoscope and all, I was planning to attend the event as a "zambuk" (kudos to you if you know what it means). But I didn't sleep well the night before, so after timekeeping for a mooting competition I wagged the event and went home. This day marked the failure of my party marathon. Sigh.
- Cocktail Party: free cocktails, interactions with lawyers at a large law firm at the Auckland Viaduct, what could go wrong? Well, a vodka-champagne mix pushed me over the edge and I couldn't stand straight for an hour afterwards. I suck at alcohol. Period.
So I trotted along to those parties in the name of "social network building" within my future career field. The last three were special events held by the NZLSA Conference, which I was invited to for building their website (together with Tim).
Now that also explains my lack of blogging. There, I've fulfilled my dream #1 of attending a classy, civilised cocktail event like those in movies and novels (except not as grand but still). And now, I'm back to reality:
*sulks*
Update: Added some photos of the party events!
Not-so-recommended Firefox extensions
5 July 2008, 1:55 pm. 29 Comments. Filed under Web-related.
Most of you would've seen blog recommendations of Firefox extensions anywhere and everywhere. And from anywhere and everywhere you would've heard of the all-time-famous Adblock Plus, Web Developer, FireFTP and so on; so there's no need for me to redundantly talk about them again. In fact, most of the "famous" ones which I use can be found on my list from last year. And funnily enough, what I said from last year is true now:
If I haven't had what I would call a decent level of self-control, this list would be doubled the length.
From last year's 21 extensions, I now have exactly 41 dammit.
So this year I'm presenting a handful of extensions I love which (1) aren't on my list from last year and (2) I don't see in blog recommendations anywhere and everywhere. In alphabetical order:
- Codetch: I only installed this morning so I haven't had the chance to test it out. But it's a code editor with functions including validation, FTP, JavaScript debugging and what-not. It looks promising.
- FireGestures: having had Opera as my default browser for over a year before, mouse gestures has become second nature to me while browsing.
- FireShot: the most advanced screenshot-taking extension I've come across. Allows screenshots of selected areas, annotations and drawings. No less than "godly".
- Full Fullscreen: clicking F11 used to keep the toolbar and tabs bar (I think). But now you get to use the entire screen. Used especially when taking full screenshots.
- Google Notebook: Firefox extension for Google Notebook. I use it to save code snippets or random notes.
- GooglePreview: adds thumbnails to Google and Yahoo search results. Useful to see if the websites look legitimate enough. You shouldn't judge a book by its cover but hey, whatever.
- Picnik: easy for importing images into Picnik for quick editing. I really don't like opening Photoshop just to resize or crop an image.
- Smart Bookmarks Bar: I have so many bookmarks in my bookmarks toolbar they just don't fit in the "default way". So I display them as favicons with title appearing on-hover. I find it easier to recognise sites by their favicons and it looks prettier that way too!
- Undo Closed Tabs Button: I just can't stop clicking this button.
All the above are compatible with Firefox 3. Just shoot me if you have heard of all of them before from other people's blogs because it would mean I have failed my purpose of introducing not-so-recommended extensions.
And if you haven't already, check out Appassionato's Winter Competition 2008!
