fashion beach

I've never tried asking for advice here before, and I don't even know how many people actually read this, but does anyone have any idea which smartphone is best for someone with poor eyesight?  I have vision problems and even after 2 operations on my eyes and with glasses, small print and fine detail remain a problem.  At home I use a 27-inch computer monitor; when out and about I've been using an unsmart Nokia phone for years for voice calls, but I rarely use SMS as the screen is too small for comfort.

Now my phone is showing signs of dying on me, plus I really need to be able to access my email when I'm out for meetings or whatever; it would also be nice to use WhatsApp.  I don't care so much about photographic capability, as I generally carry a neat little Canon S100 everywhere with me.  Music capability is not a deal-breaker either.

So, time for a smartphone (several generations behind everyone else!), but which one?  After a bit of Googling, which mostly uncovered recommendations for already-obsolete models (isn't it time everything on the Internet carried a "use by" date?), I have reached a few conclusions:

• A big screen should help, but is not always better if the resolution is not good enough.  Contrast and brightness are important, not just size (and other factors, too).
• Most phones made specifically for those with poor eyesight appear to assume that the user is a senile centenarian who's deadly afraid of technology.  I'm not.
• Both Apple and Android operating systems offer some features or apps which can help (e.g. by magnifying text or reading it aloud), as does Windows Phone, but none has a definitive edge over the others in this area.

Does anyone have any comments on the following, which look like the best possibilities?

• Samsung Galaxy Note 3 or Galaxy Mega 6.3
• HTC One Max
• Nokia Lumia 1520
• Sony Xperia Z Ultra
• Huawei Ascend Mate
• LG G Flex

Experiences and alternatives welcome.  Incidentally, I have big hands so a relatively large phone is not a problem - in fact, smaller phones tend to be too fiddly for my fingers.

By the way, am I the only one who wonders why, in a world where the proportion of elderly people is steadily increasing, with the inevitable deterioration of visual functioning that comes with age, we are nevertheless being expected to read ever smaller print?  (Shrinking screens, bank terms and conditions printed in 6-point type - not to mention the teenage website designers, probably descended from Douglas Adams' telephone sanitisers, who think that pink on purple is a really cool colour combination.) 

Hong Kong, 1 January 2015: the Hong Kong Beggars' Union today announced the signing of an agreement to equip its members with Octopus smart card terminals.  Commenting on the deal, the Union's Chairman said "Since the launch of the Octopus card, local people are no longer carrying much small change around in their pockets.  This has hurt our members' income, as they generally rely on the odd coin being dropped into their begging bowls.  This agreement will bring them into the hi-tech era and make it easy for donors to give with a simple wave of their card."

It is believed that the new terminals will also benefit Hong Kong's buskers.  However, it is feared that it will do little to improve their woeful lack of musical ability.

In his Not the South China Morning Post blog today, George Adams takes the opportunity to promote one of his books: Le Retour de Suzie Wong (The Return of Suzie Wong) in French.  My schoolboy French being pretty rusty, I put the linked review through Google Translate.  The sentence " Il tient aussi un blog satirique, The Not South China Morning Post, où il chronique l’actualité locale." is saying, I believe, that his blog chronicles local news (when not busy sniping at other local bloggers) - according to Google, however, "It also takes a satirical blog, The Not South China Morning Post, where chronic local news."

Many would agree that the local news is indeed chronic these days, but I think if I'd turned in that translation, my old French teacher, the diminutive but formidable (say that word the French way) Miss Adams, would have marked it "must try harder". 

The government continues to talk obvious nonsense about its decision to deny a TV licence to HKTV.  According to TVB news a few days ago, Exco Convenor Lam Woon-kwong "said a consultant's report showed that approving all three applications could have forced other stations to shut down, resulting in havoc in the television market".

Deconstructed into plain English, what this means is that if we allow a potentially more popular TV station to open up, it may attract so much advertising that it drives a less popular station out of business.  Imagine this absurd logic applied to, say, restaurants: "if we allow a new restaurant to open up and serve better food, people may stop eating at an existing restaurant which serves less tasty food".  That's not havoc; it's how markets are supposed to work.

Then there's Chief Executive CY Leung's convoluted statement yesterday, which I won't try to deconstruct because it makes no sense at all.  What he seems to be trying to say is "We've already told you the answer, so I'm surprised you don't get it.  Now stop asking the question"  This could represent a whole new tactic in keeping the public uninformed.

Credit to the Hong Kong government where it's due: watching the Legislative Council TV feed this morning, I noticed that they now show a sign language interpreter in the corner of the screen.  My memory may be at fault, but I think this is new - long overdue, of course, but welcome all the same.

Unfortunately, the government's limitless capacity for ineptitude is on full display in another matter: the granting of TV broadcasting licenses to only two of the three applicants - and one of them the notoriously incompetent PCCW.  What makes this unacceptable is the government's refusal to let the public know the reason for the decision.  They have hinted that it's because they don't feel the failed applicant, HKTV, can succeed financially, but in a supposedly free market, why not let all three have a go and fight it out in the marketplace for viewers?  "Let the market decide" is supposed to be Hong Kong's credo, isn't it?  If one fails, it won't be the first time - remember CTV?  (And it won't necessarily be one of the three newcomers - though the mighty TVB is probably unruffled, ATV will certainly not welcome increased competition.)

At the same time, Commerce Secretary Greg So (who seems increasingly intent on competing with Paul Chan and Eddie Ng for the "minister least trusted by the public" title) argues that the government cannot release the reason because some of the information supplied by the three companies is confidential.  Why?  They are applying for a share of a public resource - the limited bandwidth available for broadcast television - so why doesn't the public have a right to know on what basis that resource is allocated?

Scanning some very ancient black & white negatives recently (possibly 50 years old), I was reminded of the camera that produced them.  I have taken pictures with my Dad's Brownie 127 and my grandfather's old Brownie box camera, but the first camera I remember owning for myself in my teens was this little beauty:
The specification was somewhat sparse: fixed aperture, no focus control, no exposure control, certainly no autowind or zoom.  A viewfinder (of sorts) took the form of a foldout metal frame that offered all the accuracy of a Hong Kong government budget forecast.  The lens, though proudly proclaiming itself "bloomed" (apparently this means coated so as to increase its light transmitting power) gave all the fine resolution of a transparent shirt button.
However, this simple piece of equipment did have several advantages:

• It was dirt cheap (from Woolworths, then still a mighty name in retailing).
• It took 16 half-frame shots on 127 film, making it economical on film as well.
• Very little could go wrong with it (though with advancing age mine began to leak light around the edges and needed to be sealed with black tape after changing each film).

Thinking about it for the first time in decades, I Googled "Woolworths camera" and with only a few minutes of research was amazed to find not only these images, but the original instruction sheets (which I don't remember ever possessing, not that they were really needed) and the history of the camera - apparently it dates back to the 1930s, though mine appear to have been the 1950s "updated" model.

And the results: about as good as you would expect, and sometimes better - this is one of the more acceptable examples (not too bad considering it's from a very old negative):
By the way, does anyone have any idea where this is?  I wasn't systematic about keeping photographic records back then, and many of my old shots are a total mystery now.  I only know it's in the UK somewhere.

Anyway, after a couple of years I graduated to a more modern Instamatic and started getting better pictures, though it was still a few more years before I got my first SLR (once I started working and could afford it).  Now we have cameras that do almost everything for you, but don't necessarily give better pictures - just more accurately exposed and sharper lousy ones!

I was planning to start the day with some remarks on the obnoxious Margaret Thatcher, who died yesterday - an obituary I've ben writing in my head for several years.  But when I opened Firefox to get into Blogger this morning, instead of my usual home page - set to Google - I was greeted by the Chinese version of this:
After my initial WTF reaction, I tried opening my other two browsers, Chrome and IE, only to find the same thing - appropriately labelled "PCCW Force Portal" - in all of them.  Attempts to bypass it by closing and reopening, and by opening new tabs, proved fruitless, with each new tab just popping up another copy of the same screen.

Finally I was forced to respond to the offer from PCCW (declining it, of course - I am not giving these clowns any additional opportunity to mess with my system; in fact I didn't even read the details of whatever scheme they were trying to push, I just wanted them off my screen) in order to get rid of the damn thing, and eventually got a screen graciously permitting me to go about my usual online business:
So why did this happen?  PCCW's subsidiary Netvigator is my Internet Service Provider, and while others have good cause to hate them, I've generally found their service OK.  But I don't recall ever signing anything that gave PCCW boss Richard Li the right to override my system settings and hijack all three browsers on my system with his unsolicited advertising.  If PCCW want to contact me, they have my email address.  This is outrageous - contrary to all the rules of netiquette and totally unacceptable - in fact I shall look into making a formal complaint to OFTA about it.

And while I'm bashing PCCW, I received a letter from them recently (they know where I live, too, if they want to contact me) using all the standard meaningless PR buzzwords: "Thank you for choosing HKT as your telecommunications partner [i.e. phone company]. We constantly strive to provide the best customer experience through service excellence." before going on to say: "In order to cope with increasing costs and continue to offer high standards of service quality, we would like to inform you that the monthly service fee for Local Business telephone Services will have to be adjusted with effect from May 1, 2013."

Why can't businesses (not just PCCW) just be honest and say they are "raising" their fees, instead of always using the weasel word "adjusted".  When was the last time you saw a fee adjusted downward?

Am I the only one to notice that Norton 360's email filtering seems to have become less aggressive lately?  Message headings like the one above used to be nearly all swept neatly into my junk mail folder.  Now quite a few of them are slipping through into my Inbox.  I've had a whole bunch lately trying to interest me in a Facebook Dating App, something I don't think my wife would approve of!  I keep flagging them as junk, but Norton doesn't seem to have got the message - are the folks at Symantec losing their grip?

CNET used to be a pretty reliable download source for a variety of software.  Like many other download sites, it encouraged you to install various toolbars and other crap with each download, but I just unchecked those options and had no problem.  (If I installed every toolbar I'm invited to, my whole screen would be filled with them.)  But now it seems CNET has sold out completely - when you download anything from CNET now it installs the Blekko search bar without warning or advising you in advance.

Now Blekko - a name which sounds like someone throwing up - may or may not be good software, but that's not the point.  I want to select my own software.  It is totally unacceptable and unethical for anyone to install anything on your PC without your prior consent.  I may still look at CNET for its user reviews, but I will never again download anything from there.

I got rid of the Blekko toolbar by uninstalling it via the Control Panel (taking the opportunity to clear out the unwanted Bing toolbar, which had somehow crept into my system earlier, at the same time), but found it had also changed the home page on all my 3 browsers to Blekko search.  Then, having been angry with CNET, I also became annoyed with Google.  I tried to reinstate google.com as my home page, but Google kept detecting my IP location and redirecting me to google.com.hk - something that a Google search tells me is also annoying many others who want to use the version of their chocie.  I sorted this out eventually, but I shouldn't have had to.  Software should do what you tell it to and respect the user's choice, not impose the provider's choices on you.

So, black marks for CNET and to a lesser extent for Google - why don't they go to the version you specify but ask if you want the localised version of the country you access it from? Instead they do it the other way round - take you to the one they think you should want, then offer google.com as an option in inconspicuous grey letters at the bottom right corner.  If I ask for a mango I don't expect to be given a strawberry then asked if I want to switch to a mango.

I've just been playing around with Blogger's template options, so this post brings a new look to the blog.  In the conversion process, Blogger somehow lost my list of blogs and quote at the right side, but they were overdue for an update anyway, so I'll work out how to restore them later.

Apart from the colour scheme, the biggest change you'll see is the picture above, which is of the beach I think of as my private beach.  Of course I don't actually own it, but it's far enough off the beaten track in Hong Kong that relatively few people know of it.  And no I'm not going to tell you where it is - if I did, it wouldn't be private, would it?

Try this: Google "Epson scanners" and see what comes up first.

Now if I type in "scanners", I don't mind Google taking money from HP to place theirs ahead of others. But when I specifically search for Epson, I don't want to see HP at the top of the list. In fact, Epson only comes 4th. True, Google identifies the first 3 entries as ads, but still...

It doesn't feel right to me. What do you think?

From a BBC story about the Korean robotics industry:

The South Korean defence company DoDAAM is also developing robotic gun turrets for export which can be programmed to open fire automatically.

Does this sound to you like the beginning of Skynet? And who are they exporting them to?

Have these people never sen Dr Strangelove?

What is this craze that some people seem to have for changing their names in Facebook? You log in and suddenly find you have a whole lot of friends you never heard of. Weird.

Q. What's the definition of stupidity?
A. Building nuclear power plants all over one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world when you're sitting on a vast reservoir of free geothermal energy that you could use instead.

And a really bad joke:
Q. What do you call a tiny tsunami?
A. A microwave.

Yeah, I know, it's not funny. And incidentally, why is Iran so insistent that it needs to develop nuclear power when it's sitting on the world's fourth largest oil reserves? I think we can guess the answer to that one.

I use Firefox as my default browser, but I also use Chrome quite a lot (and IE only for those few sites that insist on it). This morning my PC crashed. When it recovered, all my Chrome bookmarks had vanished - many of them marking sites from which I planned to download files. The backup bookmarks file (.bak) was also empty and therefore useless.

When I went to the Chrome help page for a clue on how to recover the bookmarks, I found that this problem has been repeatedly reported by users for more than a year, but Google appears to have done nothing about it. Their corporate motto may be "Don't do evil", but it seems there is a coda to that: "... or much good either." Maybe I should stick to Firefox in future.

Has anyone else noticed that every time a mobile phone rings in a TVB drama series, the ring tone is always the same? Can the TVB props department really only afford one phone?

I added the Hong Kong Observatory to my RSS feeds a while back, then forgot all about it because it never actually fed me anything. Suddenly yesterday it's woken up and started actually feeding me local weather forecasts.

Perhaps this is a sign that there is hope for the Hong Kong government yet. Now I am waiting eagerly for other government departments to similarly stir from their slumbers and get on with what needs doing around here: rein in the big property companies, extend recycling, move quickly towards full democracy, fulfil the long-delayed promise to extend the North Lantau Country Park, clean up the air, reform the widely abused village house policy, conserve what little is left of the city's architectural heritage, spend police effort getting dangerous drivers off the roads instead of giving out unnecessary parking tickets, and a million other things.

Dream on...

32 years on, it emerges in a legal case that Belgian singer Plastic Bertrand did not actually sing on his big hit "Ca Plane Pour Moi". Never mind, it's still a fun record.
These days, of course, it makes no difference who actually sings on a pop record. Today's over-processed production style makes every song sound computer-generated anyway.

Disclaimer - I get a small commission from Amazon UK if you buy the CD through the picture link here.

The media have made much in recent weeks of the apparent spate of suicides at the Shenzhen factory owned by Foxconn, the world's largest maker of computer parts for such leading brands as Apple and Dell. 13 of its employees have attempted suicide this year, 10 of them successfully.

Now if Foxconn were a typical Pearl River Delta factory with a few thousand workers, this would indeed be an alarming figure. But it is in fact a massive enterprise, with the Shenzhen plant employing 300,000 people according to Wikipedia. Today's South China Morning Post puts the figure even higher at 420,000. Either way, this makes it the size of a small city - larger than Taipo, for example.

Now let's look at the figures again. According to World Health Organisation statistics, China's suicide rate in 1999 [the last year listed) was 13.9 per 100,000 per year. Now extrapolate the 10 successful suicides at Foxconn this year (2 per month) to an annual figure of 24. Taking 300,000 as the number of employees, Foxconn's rate is therefore 8 per 1000,000 per annum. Far from being unusually high, this is little more than half the national average.

A more detailed statistical analysis would look at these figures in greater depth to compare them by age group - most Foxconn employees are in their twenties or thirties - and gender - China is unique in being the only country where more women than men kill themselves. And I do not intend to suggest that the 10 suicides are not tragic for those involved. But just the basic analysis I have given here suggests that, not unusually, the statistically illiterate media have blown up a problem out of all proportion.

An honourable exzception here is The Times. After I worked this out, I found their article drawing the same conclusion.