My website has been essentially dead for many months now because I’ve been too damn lazy to write anything.

However, lately I’ve been inspired by my friend Amanda. Her website has become quite popular and even though it’s mostly about women’s fashion, I still check it out quite a bit. No homo.

Amanda is on her way to becoming the next big name in design and style, so keep your eyes peeled. And go check out her work at her blog: amandalee-x.blogspot.com/. Go! Now!

And oh by the way, I’ll be starting to write again on here. Or at least that’s the plan. I’ll at least give this website a fresher look with some redesign.

Continuing on with trying to keep this blog alive I have decided to post a short little entry here. I am now officially a year 2 student at HKUST, double majoring in Information Systems and Marketing. I’ve actually already been in uni for 4 weeks and the work has already piled up and I have less and less motivation to write here. My courses this semester are a lot more interesting than they were in either semester last year; two IS courses (VB Programming and Systems Analysis & Design), two Marketing courses (Marketing Research and Global Marketing), Intro to Mandarin, and Financial Accounting.

So far it’s been good grades-wise… that’s always important… but no big assessments have been assigned yet. It’s amazing that midterms are just a few (like 2 or 3) weeks away, totally looking forward to that…

I actually have my first major Marketing Research test tomorrow so I better get back to reading the uber-boring book for that.

I promise that someday I will actually post an interesting entry here…

Over and out.

I’m sure a number of fellow Facebook users have seen this as their friends’ statuses:

FACEBOOK has agreed to let third party advertisers use your posted pictures WITHOUT your permission. Click on SETTINGS up at the top where you see the Log out link. Select Privacy. Then select NEWSFEEDS and WALL. Next select the tab that reads FACEBOOK ADS. There is a drop down box, select NO ONE. Then SAVE your changes. (REPOST to let your friends know!) [Firefox users with Adblock plugin: turn it off temporarily]

Sounds awful doesn’t it? But it’s simply a very sensationalist viral message. The sad thing is so many people believe it.

Now I know not everyone is a geek like me and knows what’s going on on the net, there are those of course who actually read through chain mail and forward crap to 50 people in their address book in hope of “finding their true love”, “saving a baby burned in a fire”, “earning $5000 from Microsoft”, or having their “penis grow by 3 inches”. Yeah, I’m serious.

This new viral Facebook message is no different. Some” e-hick” read something somewhere, completely misinterpreted it, intentionally or unintentionally, sent it to all his friends, then a large enough proportion of his friends sent it to theirs and something we in math call exponentials did the rest, in turn allowing you and me to be exposed to it.

I’m not one to believe every piece of information I see on the internet, especially on a social networking site, so I instantly read up on this after instantly realizing it’s not even logistically possible for Facebook to do what is described in the message. Within a matter of minutes, I found an article on the official Facebook blog which confirmed my thoughts of what was ACTUALLY going on.

So basically, you know how you on the right side of the Facebook page, there is an area for sponsored links? And you know how you sometimes see some product, say for example a beauty products line, and then underneath that ad it says “one friend likes this” and when you click on that you see your friend’s profile picture? Yeah. That’s it. That is ALL that Facebook is doing with your “pictures”. And most importantly of all, Facebook doesn’t secretly make you “like the product”… no… you yourself do that. So unless you actually see one of these ads, and click the little thumbs-up button next to it, your profile picture will never be used in this “advertising”. If you don’t understand what I’m saying or still don’t believe me, please take the time to read about the issue on the official Facebook blog.

But ultimately, it scares me just how much trust people hold in viral and sensationalist messages. Common sense and Google are your friends, folks. Use them.