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It’s an official holiday here in Hong Kong today for Dragon Boat festival, also known as Tuen Ng Festival. The main attraction of the festival is the fierce dragon boats racing. We woke up early this morning and headed to Stanley beach for the Stanley Dragon Boat Championships. It was cloudy and raining in the morning but as we reached the beach it stopped raining. We could see the excited crowd and racing boats colourfully decorated, with dragon heads and tails. Each boat had a drummer and 20 to 22 crew paddlers. We enjoyed the day watching dragon boats race, had some delicious Chinese food, did some shopping in Stanley Market and went to Hong Kong Maritime Museum. Here are some photos I’ve taken.

A dragon boat
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June issue of GQ will have a feature story THE INCREDIBLE BUDDHA BOY by George Saunders (the author of In Persuasion Nation). First portion of the story is available online which describes Saunder’s journey to Nepal. It should be very interesting to read the first hand experience of an author who went in search of a miracle. You’ll have to get the June edition of GQ for the full article.

GQ.com’s Ben Phelan, George Saunders and photographer Jeff Riedel were in Nepal to see the meditating boy before his disappearance and to capture him on film. Here is their interview.

Is the Buddha Boy a hoax?

RIEDEL: My first thought was, This kid’s made of wax, like a Madame Tussauds wax figure. And then I thought, Wait a minute, how could they do that?

SAUNDERS: These people couldn’t pull that off. And in a way it wouldn’t even come into their radar. I’m a pretty sarcastic person, and it was interesting to see how that simplicity of life, or poverty, or whatever you want to call it, also has a component of real sweetness and earnestness that was almost unimaginable to me until I saw it—this real gentle surface-level earnestness. I don’t know if you felt that, Jeff, but they were so guileless, the people we met, which made them believe in this boy more, because the level of deception you’d have to practice to pull off this hoax would even be a lot for us, in upstate New York.

You get the feeling there that if someone did something dishonorable, there’s nowhere for them to disappear to. The people in the communities know everything about each other. That’s why I thought, “In this Village Committee, you think about them trying to pull a hoax. If there’s even one person in the community that was onto it and skeptical, or felt dissed or pissed off about it or something, that’s all it would take to blow this thing up.” But you know, we’re out there five days, six days, whatever. Nobody pulled us aside to say, “Hey, you know…” And now he’s gone. Wherever he is, they can’t find him, which convinces me even more—he just got up and went deeper, to someplace where nobody can find him. And now he’s presumably happy, I guess.

Our MacBook Pro is back from the Apple repair, with their usual response - "heat is within apple spec". But after updating MBP with this SMC firmware I feel it’s slightly cooler than before and fans are kicking more often. I used CoreDuo Temp to measure the CPU temperature; before the update max. temperature during my normal use was 72 °C but after the update 66 °C is the max. I’ve seen. (Normal usage means; turning on for 2 to 3 hrs and using few daily applications like browser, email client, etc..)

With 100% CPU usage temp. goes as high as 78 °C

I found a web site intelmactemp.com, which is collecting intel Macs temperature. They’ve a nice step by step instruction on how to measure the temperature of your Intel Mac. I’ve submitted mine here, with the 100% CPU usage the max. temperature goes as high as 78 °C which seems to be the average load temperature of MBP. There are notebooks as hot as 93 °C. So, I think our MBP is not the worst one.

I’ve a five and half year old boy who loves to play PS2, computer games and watch cartoons. Almost every time after watching a cartoon he’ll draw his favorite character, colour it, cut it and play with it for a while. This is a small collection of his art work, mainly super heroes on his wall.

Click for larger picture

I found this hilarious article Girlfriend 6.0 vs. Wife 1.0 Comparative Trial via del.icio.us . It’s a must read for married geeks

Last year a friend of mine upgraded from GirlFriend 6.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that it’s a memory hog leaving very little system resources available for other applications. He is now noticing that Wife 1.0 is also spawning Child Processes which are further consuming valuable resources. No mention of this particular phenomena was included in the product brochure or the documentation, though other users have informed him that this is to be expected due to the nature of the application.

American war correspondent Kevin Sites is currently reporting from Nepal writing about his personal encounter with maoist rebels. Traveling with him as a translator is Nepalese blogger and journalist Dinesh Wagle of UWB who has written about Kevin in his blog article Backpack Journalist Kevin Sites in Kathmandu.

In his Hot Zone, Kevin Sites have videos, photos and interviews with Maoist rebels of Nepal.

From time to time I feel a pain in my neck and upper back. And I know why! It’s due to the prolonged use of computer, not giving proper attention to my posture and not taking regular breaks. A Cnet story Your computer may be a pain in the neck explains postural syndrome which is a from of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) to the neck and thoracic spine.

Despite the differences in terms, all doctors and physical therapists agree: The human body was not meant for sitting or working in one position all day, and prolonged work at the computer can eventually cause the body to short-circuit.

"It’s not a life-or-death situation," Palmer said. "It just sucks to have to live with it."

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Microsoft has announced the hardware requirements for it’s new operating system Windows Vista set to be released on Jan 2007. They’ve launched the Get Ready web site to help users choose the right hardware. The requirement are divided into 2 categories. The first one is a "Vista Capable" that fulfills the minimum requirement to run Windows Vista. The second is "Premium Ready" which can enjoy the high end features like Windows Aero graphics.

This is the Official Windows Vista hardware requirements:

A Windows Vista Capable PC includes at least:

• A modern processor (at least 800MHz).

• 512 MB of system memory.

• A graphics processor that is DirectX 9 capable.

A Windows Vista Premium Ready PC includes at least:

• 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor.

• 1 GB of system memory.

• A graphics processor that runs Windows Aero.

• 128 MB of graphics memory.

• 40 GB of hard drive capacity with 15 GB free space.

• DVD-ROM Drive.

• Audio output capability.

• Internet access capability.

You can download the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor Beta, to find out if your current PC is ready for Vista.

This is truly a historic moment for Nepal and Nepalese people. The proposal that was unanimously passed by The House of Representatives today brings army under the parliament, King will have to pay tax and Nepal becomes a Secular Country. This is a great occasion to celebrate but we always need to remember that the main problem is still there to be solved. MAOISTS! This is a step towards right direction and I hope the leaders will continue to work as per peoples aspirations. If they don’t perform, people will surely punish them. They didn’t spare a King so, why would they leave corrupt leaders?
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With the release of MacBook, now Apple has complete line up of Intel Macs. If you’re planning to buy a new Intel Mac here is a good Apple Mac-Intel Simplified Buying Guide.

I want to buy a MacBook Pro for myself but with the first hand experience of heat…I’m not sure. I’m tempted for MacBook now. The price is right for the power it offers, just want to wait a week to see if it is plagued with same heat problem. BTW, we’ve sent our MBP to repair for the third time yesterday. It was returned back from repair center saying that the "heat was within apple spec". I called the tech support and talked to them for around 40mins. so, they’ve asked to send it to another repair center where another very qualified professional will take a look. I’ve written a message to the person who’s going to test:

"Pls turn it on, use it normally for 2 hours and put your finger on top of the function keys. If you can keep your finger there for 2-3 mins. without having blisters then return it back to me".

Frankly, I don’t expect any good news. I found this article End the Whine - May 20th 2006. Hopefully Apple will take this matter seriously. If the May 20th campaign is successful then I can decide which Mac I want to buy.