August 2013 – VILIC's Blog (Legacy)

August 25, 2013

Windows 8 Earlier and Recent Start Screen Color Comparison

Every time when comes to Windows 8, I feel sad… The reason is simple, I want the latest version, but I feel better with the earlier one. So even though I was the first group of people out there who started trying Windows 8 since Developer Preview, then Customer Preview, Release Preview, and RTM. But finally I degraded (several times) to Windows 7, which is my favorite so far.

Some people might think I am not a fan of Metro UI, but they are wrong. I am a big fan of that, and I started using Windows Phone since Mango (7.5) is still in test version. I love Metro, but as well as Aero. I have posted about this and wrote Windows 7 along with VS 2010, Office 2010 etc, as well as Windows Phone 7.5 are the highest level Microsoft had reached on UI design (of course in my personal opinion).

It was not my plan to write this post actually. I made a comparison image of the start screens on early Windows 8 concept image and Windows 8 released to public a long time ago, and I have never thought that I might be wrong. Here’s the image:

I like the earlier one (which in my opinion uses more reasonable colors) much more than the released version. No matter the color gradient or hue. But I was so confident and thought everyone will agree with me, until I sent this image in a group chat and get punched just now.

I always think I am person gifted on many, including some aesthetic feelings, and I don’t think this is negotiable. So I begin to wondering, how do most of the people judge the beauty of everything? One word I heard today was bright. So I started to thinking about all the facts that might bring visual impact just like bright colors, but may need more time to figure this out.

As far as I know, most of people just don’t care about the arrangement of colors. For Windows Phone users, a messy start screen is a proof. Also, most of them don’t care about the proportions of the elements (including text elements and images, no need to mention colors), and a proper margin between them just doesn’t matter to most of the people either, if it doesn’t make the features harder to use.

It is good to find that many IT industry leaders in China still have the first class designers so far, like Tencent, Alibaba. Actually even many start-up companies do. But what happened to companies like Microsoft and Apple? I still remember one of the reasons why I kind of liked Microsoft was that they had the best designers…

One of the reasons comes to me is, they might have valued the marketing researchers too much, and letting them manipulate designers and developers. Or maybe a much simpler answer, they just have lost the best people they had and that’s all.

August 22, 2013

HowTo: Add Facebook Account on a China Country Variant Lumia

Before we start, there’s something you may need to know:
1. It has to be Windows Phone 8.
2. Twitter account can’t be added this way.
3. When come to flashing ROM, I refer the WCDMA model (for China Unicom).

And the technique here is simple, though not very easy to be done. We’ll need to add the Facebook account somewhere else first, backup the settings and then restore it on the China Country Variant Windows Phone.

I was lucky because I got a Hong Kong CV Lumia 920, so I simply restored the backup data on my new Lumia 1020 and the Facebook account showed up. However for other people who don’t have an older Windows Phone runing WP8, they won’t be able to add that account at the first place. Luckily, we get Vietnam CV Lumias sharing the same models (you can check the RM-xxx code to see if that really matches) as Lumias for Mainland of China. So we can flash the Vietnam ROM and then get Facebook account added.

Actually if you are cool with that Vietnam ROM, you can just get off the bus here and enjoy the social network, or you may want to flash back ROM for China as what I would do.

Some photos here by Lumia 1020.

NOKIA Pro Camera – Auto mode:

NOKIA Pro Camera – ISO 100 / 0.8 seconds:

And a bonus by Lumia 920 (Edited by Fireworks CS6).

August 9, 2013

Dust

I have spent my whole life thinking about everything. And like many doing the same, I might be closer to the answers, however, never less confused.

But some people like me just hate being confused, so they choose to believe something, or to get themselves crazy (joking), like that I choose to become a determinist as well as an atheist. My father has become a Buddhist since I was still a little kid, and actually I was always afraid of other people knowing that my father believed in that thing, which in my little eyes was stupid. I don’t know much more about Buddhism than I did, but I get to know more answer-like opinions which help me look into the world from better angles. And it turns out things I believe don’t seem to be much wiser than those religions.

We are dust in the universe.

I should be counted as an admirer of the nature. I stop everywhere to feel it, to feel the beauty, the strength, the details and everything that makes me feel that I am there. And of course, sometimes I just can’t help thinking about death, after which I would never be able to feel anything. Because I believe at that time, my consciousness would have again become part of the mind of the universe, and that amazing thing would never be able to feel myself any more. That’s sad, but the same time I am so curious about the mind of the universe. When I start dying someday, I hope I would get a second or two to take a glance at that great mystery.

But no, I don’t think I would get that chance, and that’s really a pity of choosing what I choose to believe.

One of the opinion I believe is that the universe is nothing and can’t even be defined by nothing, as no word can be used to describe it. Actually it makes people even sadder comparing to thinking about their consciousnesses being just illusions. And it brought me depression for a quite long time, but finally I became able to separate it from my real life and continue the meaningless everything. 🙂

Dust. But still amazing.