September 12, 2006
Looks like the birds are back to my little garden looking for food now that the summer is over and that natural food is becoming scarce. Once I hung a suet ball in the summer and it wasn’t until months later before it was eaten. I was hoping to see how the bird can acrobatically eat that ball, but it was eaten while we were away recently to Lake District!
For the past few days I’ve been spreading bird seeds in my garden, and they have been consistenly cleared up. Apparently many birds are creatures of habit and will probably make a special visit to my garden once they learn there is food there. Which means that once I start feeding, I should continue through the winter. This is because seeds, fruits and insects become harder to find as the winter progresses, and so the food I put out becomes steadily more important. Especially when the weather is bad, a wasted journey can potentially make life even harder for them!
Posted in Hobbies 
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September 6, 2006
This security device has been given to HSBC customers in the far east (at least Hong Kong and Malaysia) for a while now, at least a year, for more secure online banking. Yet, in a lunch time conversation with my colleagues when we so happened to chat about the different authentication methods used by the banks, none of them are aware of such security system. In fact, HSBC are already rolling out this in the UK, but only to business customers. I know because I’ve just opened a business account with them recently. The way you use this device is everytime you want to log in to your Internet bank account, you need a username, a password and a 6-digit number from the device, which you will get everytime you press the button on the device. That number is time-sensitive, as in it only lasts for a few seconds, after which you will be given a different number when the button is pressed. Presumably the sequence of numbers, which is unique to the device, need to match the same sequence stored in the HSBC authentication server in time. But how this device can be time synchronised to the server is rather intriguing. My initial guess was it must have a very stable clock that drift very little, hence allowing it to remain closely matched to the server’s clock for a long time. But after experimenting a few times, I have to say that this little device is not as sophisticated as I first thought. Although the numbers on the device keep changing every few seconds, it does not mean that the old number are no longer valid for logging in. I would say the number has a useful timeframe of about at least half a minute, althought I haven’t really stretch-test it :).
To sum up, rather than relying on customers to change one set of their passwords every so often, this device changes for them periodically, which is certainly a step forward in terms of securing their login details. But I won’t say I’m overwhelmed by this gizmo.
Posted in Technology 1 Comment »
September 2, 2006
I have never heard of inheritance tax until I came to England. To my horror, this is apparently rather common in Europe countries. It was not till I work in the tax industry that I feel so outraged about the whole tax regime revolving inheritance tax. Honestly, why should someone be made to pay tax just because they have been left some hard-earned wealth by their parents? To make matters worse, the tax rate is at a whopping 40%! To put things in context, if you inherit a house from your parents after they passed away and don’t have the money to pay the tax, you are likely to end up selling the house to pay the inland revenue!
There is no inheritance tax at my home country and I really hope that it remains so. It’s bad enough that you have to make arrangements for your death when you grow old. Imagine having to make tax planning at the age of 60 to make sure that your children don’t suffer a huge amount of tax. With the house prices surging and showing no signs of lethargy, it is likely that more than half the people who inherit a property will have to pay inheritance tax. The current nil band rate at a meagre £275,000 is unlikely to be sufficient to exempt inheritance tax for most households without adequate tax planning.
Sometimes, I am not entirely sure if I am in favour of a welfare state. True that you get certain service for free, for example the healthcare. But it’s not really ‘free’ as you still need to pay sky-high fees to have your annual body check for example or even getting a test on cholesterol can be pricey. Anyway, that’s just a little whine based on my tax knowledge.
Posted in Sophie's World 1 Comment »
September 1, 2006
It’s getting really annoying now. There’s been holes consistenly appearing in my herb pots and flower pots everyday for the past one week, dug up by a mystery creature which we still have no clue what it is. Initially we suspected that it is a naughty bird, but a bird probably is not strong enough to topple our rectangular shape herb pot. My colleague suggested that it could be a cat, as this kind of incidence happened to him before. I have toyed with the idea of setting up a surveillance camera using a webcam and remotely monitor it over the Internet while I’m away at work. But monitoring live video is too involving while storing half a day’s worth of pictures is going to take too much hard disk space, and requiring me to scan through the pictures. My colleague came up with a yet better idea, that is to use motion dection software to only snap up pictures when motion is detected. This is brilliant, the mystery creature will unveil itself in no time! But, before getting all too excited, I need to first get myself a webcam, ‘doh!
Posted in Hobbies, Technology 1 Comment »
August 30, 2006
UNITED NATIONS SECRETARY: Gentlemen, silence! (to Dr. Evil) NOW, MR. EVIL
DR. EVIL: (angry) Doctor Evil! I didn’t spend six years in evil medical school to be called ‘mister’.
Interesting isn’t it, in the United Kingdom, surgeons are distinguished from physicians by being referred to as “Mister”. This tradition has its origins in the 18th century, when surgeons were barber-surgeons and did not have a degree (or indeed any formal qualification), unlike physicians, who were doctors with a university medical degree. By the beginning of the 19th century, surgeons had obtained high status, and in 1800, the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) in London began to offer surgeons a formal status via RCS membership. The title Mister became a badge of honour, and today only surgeons who hold the Membership or Fellowship of one of the Royal Surgical Colleges are entitled to call themselves Mister, Miss, Mrs or Ms. [Development of modern surgery]
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