Adopting a Cat

A friend is leaving for China because of job change, he found us to be the trusted friends to take care his beloved cat. When he brought the cat, who is a girl named DunDun, to our home, the cat showed no fear and started exploring the house right away. However, after we put the flea-control collar on her neck, it seemed that she suddenly realized she’s got a new host, so she rushed to the back of the couch and didn’t want to come out no matter what tricks my friend played with her. For the whole night, she hide either under the table or behind the TV, watching us anxiously and vulnerably.

The friend explained to us it’s normal and it could last for a few days. To his disappointment, it only lasted one day. Last night, the second day she’s been in our home, she started wooing my wife by rubbing against her legs. Today, she already trusts us enough by constantly pushing her head against us (head butts) or even showing her belly.

One thing concerns me is that she almost hasn’t eaten anything for the past two days. I hope that’s just because everything is too new for her.

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Photoshop turns 20

Photoshop turns 20 as of today. The measurement of its success, similar to ‘google’, which is not achieved by many other more popular products, is that ‘photoshop’ has become a verb, although often time with a negative meaning.

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Spring Comes to Lake Elizabeth

The following pictures are taken by iPhone, at Lake Elizabeth, one of the most beautiful scenery in the Bay Area. It was still winter in most of the country, but spring has sprung in California.

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Avatar

Avatar not only won the best picture of the Golden Globes, it has surpassed Titanic and is setting the new world-wide box-office record every day. Looks like it will conquer the Oscar as well. James Cameron will stand on the top of the world again.

It’s a spectacular movie to watch when you put the 3-D glasses on. It is first movie that truly delivers the photo-real computer graphic. The world of Pandora is stunning scene by scene. The interaction between the characters and the environments are so believable, and you don’t realized the their world only exists in the computer. Besides the technical supreme, the film is brilliantly directed. It’s tight, balanced and fills the two and half hours with ceaseless actions.

However, it is also lucky for Cameron that there is no other movie this year can really challenge him. Putting Avatar in recent 10-year’s competition, its advantage would be pretty much diminished. (although I never thought Crash as a good movie, the nominations of 2005 was not bad). In terms of novelty and creativity, The Matrix challenges the audience visually at the same level and physiologically more. You can also see many similarities of other movies in Avatar. For example, both Titanic and Avatar can be divided into the first half of perfect and romantic theme, and the second half of conflicting and action theme. The turning points are exactly same, the two main characters make love. More creative people even merged Avatar trailer into Pocahontas. Comparing them side by side, it is really a piece of work.

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Zenfolio’s Updates on Theme Design, Slideshow and SEO

Zenfolio‘s latest mega update sets itself apart from the competitors. Zenfolio has been good at well-organized configuration pages, but some complained that it is not that customizable compared to Smugmug, especially at advanced account level. With this update, the theme customization feature is hugely improved . The best thing is that you can inherit an existing theme and start tweaking the look-and-feel for all components and save it as your own theme. It is a great feature by itself, and Zenfolio’s engineers made it so easy to use, so beautify to look at and it is available even for basic account level.

Another big improvement is that the home page can be customized with new layouts and new slideshow. It gives users great flexibility to create elegant, professional and gorgeously looking site. I am really thinking of upgrading to Premium level.

Please also read my earlier review and visit my gallery site.

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Sydney – Royal Botanic Garden

2009.12.31 Flying Foxes It’s our last day in Sydney. At the morning, I had a walk in the Royal Botanic Garden in the area we didn’t visited last time. The garden is very big with a lot of exotic plants, and it’s free. I was frightened when I stepped into one corner of the garden. Hundreds of Flying Foxes hanging on the tree. They are the largest bats in the world. Although they are necessary for spreading seeds for plants, many palm trees have been destroyed by these over-populated bats. The Garden is planing to use noise disturbance to drive them away.

Half of the garden was blocked to prepare for the New Year Eve event. At 10AM, a lot of people have already waiting there in order to get the best spots. Too bad the following video is not shot by us, but the video is a good way to conclude my travel log of Sydney trip.

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Sydney – Blue Mountains

2009.12.30 Utzon Room Opera House We took the Essential Tour to get into the Opera House. Besides showing music halls and different function rooms, the tour also focused on the story of the designer, Jorn Utzon, his creation, resignation and re-engagement.

Left: Concert Hall Back
Right: The Utzon Room

The Three Sisters Demon's Leap 2-hour train took us to the rural side of Sydney. Blue Mountains is one of the nearest national parks to Sydney. The best-known landmark of the region is the Three Sisters. Compared to the national parks in North America, Blue Mountains is less impressive in terms of majesty. It is a good recreation area for families.

Train Station Top Left: The Three Sisters
Bottom Left: Leura Train Station
Right: Demon’s Leap

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Sydney – Bondi Beach

2009.12.29The sky finally cleared up. We got chance to take some photos we have to take, around Farm Cove and using the Opera House as the background.

Panorama
Royal Botanic Gardens Royal Botanic Gardens After taking pictures of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, we walked through the Royal Botanic Garden.

Town Hall QVB We walked to the city center to have a lunch at a Japanese noodle house and shopped around Queen Victoria Building.

Bondi Beach Bondi Beach is a popular beach in Sydney suburb. A lot of people were surfing, playing soccer or simply getting tanned.

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