As it is now 4:40 a.m. where I am, this is going to be a very short entry 
. I’m so sleepy but I just have to let you all know that this is available at Ztamp!Shop now .
And here are a couple of layouts I did with it (click for larger view and detailed information):
Hope you like the overlays!
Monday is here again! How was your weekend? Mine was pretty fun! We had dinner over at our best friends’ place with some other friends. We haven’t met any of them for a while so it was extra fun. Not to mention how delicious the meal was. You see, it was called the “Garlic Feast”. Mei Ning and Josh have just been back from their summer trip to Pender Island in Canada and they brought back various types of fresh, organically grown garlic from local farms there! Mei Ning is a terrific cook, she cooks mean dish – especially chinese food. But she also cooks delicious western food or anything in between. Too bad I forgot to bring my camera with me that evening… so no photos to share with you on how great the food was! Well, you’ll just have to take my word for it: the “Garlic Feast” was a huge success! We came home very well fed and feeling content with the world . Oh and she gave us smoked salmon and ‘candied salmon’ as well as a whole piece of garlic to take home. Yummm! And she gave me a pair of pewter earrings in traditional native motif of an eagle head! Thanks, Mei Ning!
Any of you are Mac users? Do you back up your files often? Well, I have a weird experience in backing up this weekend. My new LaCie EHD came with LaCie SilverKeeper backup software. I’ve used this software a few years back and was pretty pleased with it. It’s free to download from their website and made for Macs. So I made a complete backup of my entire laptop’s content to LaTjie – the whole Macintosh HD. When I’m done, I deleted the Applications folder in LaTjie since I won’t really need it and it took up plenty of space. And then I worked with EmB (my laptop, do you remember?) as usual and performed a Sync Backup between EmB and LaTjie. Naturally, EmB is the Source/Data and LaTjie is the Destination/Backup. The expected result, logically speaking, would be: LaTjie should then have the same content as the updated EmB.
But what happened was: the files that I have deleted from EmB which were still on LaTjie from previous backup session were then copied back to EmB after the SilverKeeper Sync Backup! This is ridiculous! But what’s even more ridiculous… although I’m still not 100% sure what really happened here is that I’ve lost all the entry in my Address Book! Now, this is just too weird. I didn’t do anything that warrant such result. So the suspicion fell on the SilverKeeper Sync Backup which after all has done a ridiculous thing by copying back deleted item to the Source from the Destination – which it shouldn’t do. I was bewildered! It’s so distressing if backing up your files messed up your files instead! So far looks like it’s the only thing that was affected. I hope it will stay this way.
Anyway. So I have to look for alternatives to smartly backing up my files properly. And I found this site: http://maczealots.com/articles/backup/. Looks very promising and helpful. The entry is recent – which is important for stuff like this. I’m now trying to choose between SuperDuper! and Synk Backup. I’ll download their trial versions and decide from there, I guess. Synk seems to be more powerful with a lot of customization/control features. The best part is that Synk “offers a technology called ZeroScan, which eliminates the need for Synk to scan your entire hard drive for changes before running your backup. ZeroScan works by running in the background while you are using your Mac. Each time you make a change to a file, ZeroScan makes note of it. When your backup is run, Synk is able to read the information gathered by ZeroScan to make a backup of only the files referenced. The benefit is a faster backup experience compared to other applications, but it only works on the local machine.” And then there is this CrashPlan – it’s a unique off-site backup system that I have yet to study further in order to fully understand how it works (in practical terms, of course!). Well, I’ll definitely keep you all updated with what I found on these .
Next. Facebook. Yup, somehow I’ve gotten into the Facebook world. I was skeptical at first. I already have a Friendster and a Multiply – I’m not very good at keeping them updated. But Facebook is different in many clever ways. I love how they make it easy, fun and quick to connect with others and to update things. Everything is delivered in neat little parcels that flow nicely bewteen each other. It’s so easy to get absorb into it. So be warned 
. Warnings aside… I would like to invite you all to join me at Facebook: find Lie Fhung and add me if you would. I have also set up a Ztampfans Group there. I think it would provide a fun alternative to keep in touch and to exchange news, discuss things, suggestions, ideas, etc. between us all. I plan to host some fun stuff there too! So have a look – there are already a lot of digiscrappers there. You’ll find some familiar faces there for sure .
Yeah! Finally managed the re-organizing of my files! My filing system is not perfect – but I think it’s pretty efficient. Anyhow, I’m happy to get back to designing some new stuff again . It’s funny how I’d get the violent itch to create if I haven’t been making anything even for just a couple of days. It’s not about work, it’s about creating. So it’s no wonder that my motto is “I create therefore I am“. Hmmm… I should find out how to say this in Latin .
So I have tidied up my work space a bit. Have set up my new LaTjie EHD – placed it neatly beside the old Maxsparkz on the IKEA’s Racken trolley beside my desk. Here… I’ve made a couple of layouts on them (click to get the credits detail):
Of course, I used my new PS CS3 to create them . I haven’t really explored the new features but so far so good. I really like the new Bridge though, the improvements and new features are so obvious and so useful! Except that for a while it kept on crashing whenever I quit the application. Turned out there were some updates that I had to install – you’d think such a clever program like that would automatically notify you on such matters huh. But anyway it’s closing down properly now.
So… what have I been designing? Well, I finished my contribution for SBB September’s Elements Team Kit. As you might have known, I’m a member of SBB Elements Team. The E-Team collaborate to create a big kit unified by a certain theme and color swatch that each of us is taking turn to create. I really like the Sept. one – watch out for the kit to be available at SBB in September!
And then I made a new kit that I’m quite pleased with. However… this kit won’t be available for sometimes because it’s created exclusively for a very special project that I’m not allowed to disclose yet! This project involves many other designers too… but that’s all I can say about it for now .
Now it’s 2:41 a.m. here… I should go to bed, don’t you think?
