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By admin, March 6, 2013 12:26 am

之前知道只有Wilson網球拍有美版和亞洲版的分別(在於重量)。最近跟其它師兄人討論這個話題後，得知原來L是美版(一般最重)、SL是歐洲版、USL是亞洲版，但在日本市場並無此種分類。

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By admin, March 3, 2013 10:06 pm

延續昨天的靈感，太太將所有的材料再次Rearrange過成為了她的第二次創作。

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By admin, March 1, 2013 11:43 pm

兩星期前收到了邀請函後馬上報名，竟然給我抽中，於是今天和太太一齊去了中環的Club Wheelock。

二樓門口幾張天然木台加上週圍的各種鮮花(今天的主題)猶如步入一間不經意佈置的歐洲小花店，CW的職員們也很熱情招待，令到每一位到訪的客人都有種賓至如歸的感覺。

來自Tallensia Floral Art的資深導師Lowdi Kwan很快就令到整個氣氛活了起來，她說第一堂Floral Jamming原來是十幾個老外男一齊來主動報名，原因很簡單就是想給女朋友一個驚喜，鬼仔的確比較浪漫些，哈哈。

Lowdi簡單介紹了Floral Jamming的真諦和4個插花的基本元素，分別為:

1. Line 提供空間感，如何挑選顏色和Shape比較特別的花，很驚訝的是Rose竟然不屬於Line的種類。
2. 主次關係，沒有特定幾種，不過最好要有主題，要注意的是Focus/Form整體佈局以及比例。
3. Mass是指以陪襯的花朵營造出一個突出的形狀，如結婚花球很多時候都是呈圓形狀。
4. Filler提供填充的效果和質感，如綠葉和那些小草等。

然後Lowdi分享了自由插花的基本技巧，如要注意花朵分佈的角度、Radiation般散開。插花的時候要花和葉子一齊插，如果先後分開的話最後未必能顧及整體創作。

最重要的一點就是Floral Jamming要的就是隨心所欲，Follow Your Heart，因為每一個人的創作都是Unique的。

我可能受Tiffanny Flowers的影響(多年都是光顧這間)，所以心裡一早就有一個大概的構思，就是要法國田園式，比較Soft和浪漫的那種。

經過了兩個多鐘頭，我的第一次自由插花創作終於大功告成，然後大家去了隔壁的Gallery Cafe，環境好Chic，而且那杯TWG Silver Moon Tea的確帶給我驚喜的感覺。

今天整個特別的節目真的很輕鬆，we enjoyed it much!

Thank you Lowdi and your team for sharing your passion!

Of course, also thanks to Club Wheelock for your warm hospitality!

後記: 太太今天正在忙於二次創作，稍後更新。

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By admin, February 28, 2013 4:38 pm

跟這位比，原來身邊的都很正常，哈哈。

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By admin, February 26, 2013 9:52 pm

So who’s next﹖

荷李活女星柯德莉夏萍（Audrey Hepburn）優雅動人，是一代美人典範。她雖逝世20年，但竟然「復出」拍朱古力廣告。

在 1950年代的意大利南部名勝阿馬爾菲海岸，柯德莉夏萍坐在擁擠的巴士上，往窗外望若有所思。原來她正躊躇甚麼時候能品嚐手袋中的朱古力。她困惑的臉龐， 讓旁邊開篷車司機吸睛了，後來她轉乘開篷車，在公路上吃着朱古力遠去。

電腦技術重塑主角

這是瑪氏食品旗下的Galaxy朱古力廣告，長約一分鐘，前天在英國首播，不忘以經典口號反問觀眾：「當你可擁有絲綢，為何還要棉布？」廣告以電腦成像技術，將柯德莉夏萍的臉孔，活現觀眾眼前。

演過《金枝玉葉》、《窈窕淑女》等經典愛情電影的柯德莉夏萍，氣質舉世無雙。廣告花逾一年時間製作，參考大量影片及硬照，務求準確拿揑她的輪廓神情，以電腦成像技術塑造主角。柯德莉夏萍一對兒子授予廣告商肖像權，他們說亡母會對新角色引以為傲：「媽媽常說愛吃朱古力，又說朱古力怎樣令她愉快……廣告完美捕捉 媽媽調皮一面。」

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By admin, February 25, 2013 1:39 pm

剛剛看完Oscar頒獎典禮，Argo救參任務奪得最後的大獎: 奧斯卡最佳電影，第一次做導演的演員Ben Affleck講了以下好有感觸的一段:

It doesn’t matter how you get knocked down in life because that’s going
to happen. All that matters is that you got to get up.

今天獲獎之前Ben Affleck已經霉足近12年，之前記得應該已經是2001年珍珠港那套戲了。

所以請千萬不要輕易放棄，Life is a Miracle!

全文:

“I was here 15 years ago or something and you know I had no idea what I was doing. I stood out here in front of you all, really just a kid. I went out and I never thought I’d be back here and I am because of so many of you who are here tonight …. I want to thank what they taught me, which is that you have to work harder than you think you possibly can, you can’t hold grudges. It’s hard, but you can’t hold grudges. And it doesn’t matter how you get knocked down in life because that’s going to happen. All that matters is that you got to get up.”

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By admin, February 23, 2013 5:27 pm

I googled around and couldn’t find any thing matching the error message.

Checked vCenter physical DVD-Rom (Drive Z:) is closed BUT NO CD/DVD, all VM does not have anything attached to this phyical DVD-Rom.

I am pretty sure this error message is related to starting of the vCenter server instead of the individual VM, somehow VC is trying to communicate with the physical DVD-Rom.

Anyone?

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By admin, February 23, 2013 12:58 pm

I’ve encountered a small problem when installing Chinese Language Pack (Simplified Chinese) on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. Basically the downloaded exe won’t install, later I found out you need the exact lang. pack for your exact version of W2K8 (like SP1, SP2, R2, R2 SP2), for me, it’s R2 SP1, so all you need to do is to download the correct version and simply install.

Cool thing is you can change the Windows UI to Chinese completely now. No wonder there are users from Mainland using W2K8/W2K12 as their desktop OS. (ie, a SLP thing)

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By admin, February 21, 2013 10:46 pm

這個年輕的加拿大球手Really Rocks!

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By admin, February 18, 2013 4:26 pm

Update Feb-20

Just received the latest promotion for Hong Kong customers, well, not exactly attractive as I don’t want any series E, option 3 & 4 has to buy something I don’t need.

This only leaves with option 2, but it’s Near-Line SAS, which is different from SAS (as NL-SAS is basically a merging of a SATA disk with a SAS connector), so Nope I don’t want any SATA, same reason as for series E.

Hey, somehow I think Option 2 is a cheat!

How SAS, Near Line (NL) SAS, and SATA disks compare

By Scott Lowe
February 7, 2012, 10:20 AM PST

Takeaway: Scott Lowe breaks down the differences in reliability and performance between SAS, Near-Line SAS, and SATA drives.

When you buy a server or storage array these days, you often have the choice between three different kinds of hard drives: Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), Near Line SAS (NL-SAS) and Serial ATA (SATA). Yes, there are other kinds of drives, such as Fibre Channel, but I’m focusing this article on the SAS/SATA question. Further, even though solid-state disks (SSD) can have a SAS or SATA interface, I’m not focused here on SSDs. I’m focusing solely on the devices that spin really, really fast and on which most of the world’s data resides.

So, what is the real difference between SAS, NL-SAS and SATA disks? Well, to be cryptic, there are a lot of differences, but I think you’ll find some surprising similarities, too. With that, let’s dig in!

SAS

SAS disks have replaced older SCSI disks to become the standard in enterprise-grade storage. Of the three kinds of disks, they are the most reliable, maintain their performance under more difficult conditions, and perform much better than either NL-SAS or SATA disks.

In reliability, SAS disks are an order of magnitude safer than either NL-SAS or SATA disks. This metric is measured in bit error rate (BER), or how often bit errors may occur on the media. With SAS disks, the BER is generally 1 in 10^16 bits. Read differently, that means you may see one bit error out of every 10,000,000,000,000,000 (10 quadrillion) bits. By comparison, SATA disks have a BER of 1 in 10^15 (1,000,000,000,000,000 or 1 quadrillion).  Although this does make it seem that SATA disks are pretty reliable, when it comes to absolute data protection, that factor of 10 can be a big deal.

SAS disks are also built to more exacting standards than other types of disks. SAS disks have a mean time between failure of 1.6 million hours compared to 1.2 million hours for SATA. Now, these are also big numbers – 1.2 million hours is about 136 years and 1.6 million hours is about 182 years. However, bear in mind that this is a mean. There will be outliers and that’s where SAS’s increased reliability makes it much more palatable.

SAS disks/controller pairs also have a multitude of additional commands that control the disks and that make SAS a more efficient choice than SATA. I’m not going to go into great detail about these commands, but will do so in a future article.

NL-SAS

NL-SAS is a relative newcomer to the storage game, but if you understand SATA and SAS, you already know everything you need to know about NL-SAS. You see, NL-SAS is basically a merging of a SATA disk with a SAS connector. From Wikipedia: “NL-SAS drives are enterprise SATA drives with a SAS interface, head, media, and rotational speed of traditional enterprise-class SATA drives with the fully capable SAS interface typical for classic SAS drives.”

There are two items of import in that sentence: “enterprise SATA drives” and “fully capable SAS interface”. In short, an NL-SAS disk is a bunch of spinning SATA platters with the native command set of SAS. While these disks will never perform as well as SAS thanks to their lower rotational rate, they do provide all of the enterprise features that come with SAS, including enterprise command queuing, concurrent data channels, and multiple host support.

Enterprise/tagged command queuing. Simultaneously coordinates multiple sets of storage instructions by reordering them at the storage controller level so that they’re delivered to the disk in an efficient way.
Concurrent data channels. SAS includes multiple full-duplex data channels, which provides for faster throughout of data.
Multiple host support. A single SAS disk can be controlled by multiple hosts without need of an expander.

However, on the reliability spectrum, don’t be fooled by the acronym “SAS” appearing in the product name. NL-SAS disks have the same reliability metrics as SATA disks – BER of 1 in 10^15 and MTBF of 1.2 million hours. So, if you’re thinking of buying NL-SAS disks because SAS disks have better reliability than SATA disks, rethink. If reliability is job #1, then NL-SAS is not your answer.

On the performance scale, NL-SAS won’t be much better than SATA, either. Given their SATA underpinning, NL-SAS disks rotate at speeds of 7200 RPM… the same as most SATA disks, although there are some SATA drives that operate at 10K RPM.

It seems like there’s not much benefit to the NL-SAS story. However, bear in mind that this is a SATA disk with a SAS interface and, with that interface comes a number of benefits, some of which I briefly mentioned earlier. These features allow manufacturers to significantly simplify their products.

SATA

Lowest on the spectrum is the SATA disk. Although it doesn’t perform as well as SAS and doesn’t have some of the enterprise benefits of NL-SAS, SATA disks remain a vital component in any organization’s storage system, particularly for common low-tier, mass storage needs.

When you’re buying SATA storage, your primary metric is more than likely to be cost per TB and that’s as it should be. SAS disks are designed for performance, which is why they’re available in 10K and 15K RPM speeds and provide significant IOPS per physical disk. With SAS, although space is important, the cost per IOPS is generally just as, if not more, important. This is why many organizations are willing to buy speedier SAS disks even though it means buying many more disks (than SATA or NL-SAS) to hit capacity needs.

Summary

At a high level, SAS and SATA are two sides of the storage coin and serve different needs — SAS for performance and SATA for capacity. Straddling the two is NL-SAS, which brings some SAS capability to SATA disks, but doesn’t bring the additional reliability found with SAS. NL-SAS helps manufacturers streamline production, and can help end users from a controller perspective, but they are not a replacement for SAS.

In an upcoming post, I’ll talk about SAS commands and why they help cement SAS’s enterprise credibility.