Finally NZ as well...

Following the fraud crisis in the US last week, it also happened in NZ yesterday (from NZ Herald). According to the news, it is announced that (only) MasterCard and VISA are attacked; however I wonder if other bank services (cashpoint, eftpos, blah blah blah) would also be affected since there's no so-called "international" on Internet...

It's really a big deal

All credit card holders should aware that up to 40m credit cards are hacked. Although the fraud happened in the US, breaking out in the number of victims in other nations must merely be a matter of time.

The UMF of Manuka honey

Searching for some information about Manuka honey on Internet, I found some articles: "Harnessing honey's healing power"(BBC News), "Doctors turning sweet on healing with honey"(CNN News), "Honey may take the sting out of the NHS superbugs"(The Daily Mail), and "Raising spirits"(The Guardian) accidently. According to them, the exact component of the UMF is still unknown. I really wonder what the factor exactly is. (But I also wonder how long it would take to unveil the mystery...)

Stupid...

"Microsoft censors Chinese blogs" on BBC News

Dragon Boat Festival

In Taiwan and China, today is Dragon Boat Festival. Actually I'd have forgotten the festival if uncle Yeh hadn't brought those glutinous rice dumplings. So, finally I can eat them today (it doesn't mean that I can't eat them the other days though). At first I expected that these should taste light light and mild (as uncle Yeh is a vegetarian), but alas actually they're quite spicy. T_T By the way, today is also Philipines Independence Day. To celebrate the independency, Charito and Hilary (and Yuuki !?) joined a party this afternoon. However, they came home quite early because of Hilary's cold. At night Hilary's cold looks getting serious; she shouldn't have gone out for the party as long as she'd got sick.

Finally Yuuki comes out to the city, but...

I never know that he doesn't know how to borrow book from a library! Actually I've told him to borrow some story books from city library right after he came to New Zealand, and now I know that what he said - he'd borrowed some books from the library – is a lie! He even doesn't know how much he should “pay” for borrowing a book. What? Does this mean what he said he knew how to borrow a book in a library is also a lie? Now I find I can't believe him at all. He's really driving me nuts! It's not all. He's also forgotten his library card's password, thus he couldn't see any information of him on the library's website. Oh, dear...what a nuisance!! By the way, we also went to the new Warehouse before having our dinner at Burger King. It is now a two-floor building, but basically the products are the same as before. As with the prices...they're not much cheaper than the old Warehouse (as far as I observed).

The new Warehouse

will be opened tomorrow. According to the Bonanza, there might be some big bargains from tomorrow to Sunday. Hm, I might be looking for a new watch then (as my old one seems to be dying). "The Warehouse! The Warehouse! Where Everyone gets a Bargain!" ...so, what should the K-mart do??

Finally find the old friend !

I tried to telephoned Robert, one of my old friends in Taiwan. Actually I wasn't too sure if I could contact with him before I telephoned to his house. Fortunately I did this time. As I've thought, he's finished his army duty for about 2 weeks. According to him, he's going to take Chinese medicine exam and currently is preparing for that. We talked about many topics, such as our graduate research, our teachers, some of our friends and so on. Unfortunately, the battery of my phone got flat and I had to cut it off. Make sure that he's using Email, we cheered each other,"Have a good sleep!"(It's 10:30 pm in NZ) "Have a good dinner!" (It's 6:30 pm in TW). Yahoooo !! Nice talk with you again, Robert!

Blender 2.37 released just now.

Blender hasn't been updated since 2.36 for over 5 months. According to the release news, it looks like some interesting functions such as softbody and transformation tools are added. Now I wonder when the new version of YafRay, POVRay and Terragen will be released...

Suzana's missing report

CAEL Lv 7 students have to accomplish their research report by next Tuesday; however, somehow Suzana's report files always disappear. At first she thought it's her diskette's problem and changed another new one. Unfortunately, it still kept happening. Actually, today would have been the 3th (or 4th?) time. Not to mension she's getting mad. She didn't know what to do and even thought that shd'd like to buy other diskettes in the campus (mind you, today's windy, rainy and freezing). To know what on earth happen to her report, I asked her to show me what she had done and what had showed up on the monitor before the report disappeared. Finally, we got the reason - the diskette had been full! No wonder... Gave her another new (and emply, of course) diskette and made sure her reports no longer disappeared, she finally calmed down. I had a feeling after that. IT class might sometimes be essential to IELTS or research class for someone. In Suzana's case, even a simple matter such as a filled diskette might drive those who are not computer-savvy nuts. Actually, I've ever seen a guy majoring in information management compressed BMP files (a common yet uncompressed graphics format) into ZIP format rather than into JPG, GIF or PNG format...I still remember how he wondered why he couldn't pack a simple PowerPoint file and 4-5 "compressed" graphic files into a diskette. Of course this "zip and jpg/gif/png" problem is a silly story to most of us, yet these cases point out that actually many people still don't know how to use computer properly. In Suzana's case, how could she hand out her report if her files keep disappearing? That is, no matter how well her report is written, it'd be in vain if everything's gone. I wonder if it's necessary for LI to add some basic computer courses in their class...