Sunday, December 12, 2010

Photo Story 3 for Windows

When making videos from digital photos, I always find that the file size is too big. Hence I have been searching and testing with some tools, looking for a way to make the video file smaller in size.

Last week I found a free progam from Microsoft, i.e Photo Story. The result video file has a very good image quality and a much smaller in size, compare with what I get from using Windows Movie Maker or Picasa 3. The Photo Story is a simpler tool, comapre with the other two, but it does serve my purpose most of the time.

Two things I found not very flexible about the Photo Story 3 are:
1) I have to do it photo by photo if I want to change the display duration for each photo display in the video.
2) If I want to make use of my own selected song, there is no option to make the song fits the whole video length. I have to manually calculate to make sure the number of photos with my desired display duration and the music/song fits well.

To resolve the first problem, I found a tool to help. It is the Tweak P S - Photo Stoy Tweak Tool.
For the second problem, I have not found a quick fix as yet.


If you are interested in the above tools, they are available at:

Saturday, December 04, 2010

Maxwell Hill (Bukit Larut) - Nov 2010

Maxwell Hill (it's called Bukit Larut now) as I preferred to call it, is a hill resort situated in Taiping, in the state of Perak, Malaysia. It is at 1250 metre above sea level.

I was there with some old friends for a 3 days 2 night stay. It rained in the afternoon and hence it gets quite misty. This is a good place to get away from the city for a quiet and close to nature break. The last time I was there was many many years ago. Without TV, shops, and commercial facilities, I enjoy the stay much much better than I had with other travelling trips of which the places are usually too commercialized.

There were talks about cable car project to be built in this hill. I hope it won't happen so as to preserve it's natural and tranquility ambience.











Thursday, September 30, 2010

Madness of investors

Long ago, Sir Isaac Newton gave us three laws of motion, which were the work of genius. But Sir Isaac's talents didn't extend to investing: He lost a bundle in the South Sea Bubble, explaining later, 'I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.' If he had not been traumatized by this loss, Sir Isaac might well have gone on to discover the Fourth Law of Motion: For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases.

Quoted from:
Berkshire Hathaway 2005 Chairman's Letter
Warren E. Buffett
Chairman of the Board

Monday, September 27, 2010

Disk defragmentation tool

Last weekend I was preparing to defragment my computer's harddisk. I first tried the tool that comes with Windows Vista, and found that it does not show the animated progress status anymore. That means I can't see how much the harddisk is fragmented and what is the analysis anymore and I don't feel comfortable with that.

I then searched for a 3rd party tool that would serve my need and found the Auslogics Disk Defrag. Downloaded and installed it. Tried it and it works fine! And I actually find that it works quite fast.
So if you are looking for a defragmentation tool, you may want to take a look at this one at:

It is one of the free tool provided by Auslogics. They also have other utility programs such as for finding duplicate files on your system, clean up the registry, and for recovery. Some are available for free and some needs to be purchase.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

A relax and peaceful Sunday afternoon



A cup of Chinese tea, and a piece of crispy sesame seed/red bean paste pastry. Made my afternoon! Somehow I just enjoy this nothing to do, and a very peaceful afternoon, and the pastry is much much better than I have expected.

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?


How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four--- calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg…
Abraham Lincoln


Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Error 8100030d , can't sign in to Windows Live Messenger

Today I encountered problem in signing on to Windows Live Messenger, clicking for details shows me the error is 8100030d.

I googled for solution and found this:
http://messenger-support.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!8B3F39C76A8B853F!13937.entry

It suggested to determine if version of Messenger is latest, or try to clear cache files for Messenger. Since I have the current verion of Messenger, so I follow the following steps to clear the cache files:

First of all, you need to enable hidden files and folder, else you can't see the cache files.

I am current using Windows Vista, so here's what I did:
1) Exit from Windows Live Messenger
2) Go to C:\Users\App Data\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts
3) select all files in this folder and delete them.
4) Open Windows Live Messenger and sign in again

The above solved my problem. Hope it helps others who finds this entry here.