K's Learning Diary

This has to be one of the coolest jobs, and how extremely specialised! (only 10 of them in the US? Talk about skill scarcity!). It is a lot of fun, and thanks to these artists, film characters get all sorts of different eye designs. Are you thinking about a different artistic/ creative career?

Languages can be pretty fun, not just for communicating with the natives of that spoken language when we go on holidays but to get a feel of the history and traditions that influenced and culminated in the different expressions in their current use.  English has a wonderfully wide range of expressions, making it a very versatile language and a pleasure to work with.  My brain had long forgotten a small section of the English language since leaving school, which I was delighted to rediscover through a recent conversation with friends. The Collective Nouns used to describe a large group of particular 'things' are so much fun; who decided to develop these expressions? According to Wikipedia, they arose in the Late Middle Ages. So it is time to learn and put them to use. Here are just a few on Wikipedia, where you will find an A-Z list.

To be honest, I have no idea what an antelope is, as I have never seen one (which is why I decided to do a little search and document it here). According to Differn.com the main differences between an antelope and a deer are: The most prominent difference between antelopes and deer is that male deer have antlers which they shed and grow every year while antelopes have horns that are permanent.  Another difference is that deer antlers are branched and antelope horns are not. Antelopes belong to family Bovidae (as do sheep, goat and cattle), while deer belong to family Cervidae. Both are even-toed ungulates (hoofed animals) and ruminant mammals. Learning something new everyday :)

This happened to me just as I was about to finish the previous post. I accidentally switched the input language when typing on my Bluetooth Keyboard. There was no obvious ways of switching the input mode back without going into settings and Ctrl +Shift or Alt and all those possible combinations did not seem to work as in Windows. It took me a while but I found the solution. If you are using an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard on an Android device like me, you can try pressing Space + Shift simultaneously to switch the input language.   I hope this will prevent some of you out there from having the same problem. Let me know if it works for you! Recommended Book

We have seen quite a few big movie releases this year, and in some cases (such as Xmen Days of the Future Past) some of us actually went to see it twice!  From The Hunger Game, The Hobbit, Captain America, Spiderman, Xmen, to Gravity and Transcendence, the movie theatre has been packed full of action for the Sci-Fi fans in 2014. However, this is only June and there are undoubtedly more fun movies to look forward to.  Here is a nice summary video clip with a few entries that I didn't even know about. Really looking forward to these!

I was in this mall the other day, reading my book, watching people- a typical relaxing day. It was quite busy in the mall and interesting things tend to happen when lots of people all walks around the mall in autopilot mode, using only their instincts to avoid oncoming obstacles. There was this family that walked passed where I was sitting. The father was carrying a small child on his shoulders and the mother was pushing the pram. A little girl was trailing behind clearly excited to see the colourful shop displays.  The wind casually blew a waste paper bag across the floor to the front of the little girl, as if posing a question to the girl. The girl looked at it and hesitated as she considers what she should do next. After a short few seconds, she decided to follow what she probably had learned at school or at home, the fact that you should pick up rubbish and keep tidy. Holding up the bag, she called towards her parents who turned to see what was delaying her. The look of disa

I have been looking around for a good App that would allow me to read and edit my Excel/ Word files...etc. There are quite a few out there to choose from including Apps provided by Microsoft or Google. Surprisingly, I found that quite a few of these Apps can't actually read Excel Tables. The best one I found was Kingsoft's WPS (red one above) which seems to provide all the functions I need including editing Excel files and can open quite a lot of different documents without problems.  The Apps provided by Google or Microsoft were a little disappointing. Hopefully they will improve in future updates. For now, I will recommend Kingsoft.

I love the passion and the enthusiasm that the speaker has for her projects. Those are wonderfully simple ideas but ones that can really make a difference. It goes to show that technology does not need to be highly advanced, complex, or expensive to have a wide impact. They should however, be practical and can be easily transferred to be used and accepted by the people that need them. I wonder what happened to these projects and if they managed to create local businesses out of them. It also makes me wonder if there are other teams or charities out there that are unaware of these products and are instead working on their own versions of the solution. Diversity in approach is good, but on the other hand reinventing the wheel can also use up valuable resources if suitable solutions are already out there. Wouldn't it be nice if there is a Comparison Website for sharing and searching for these type of products and ideas?