This year, birthday celebration with Li Xiang was pretty simple, we just had an early dinner at Jones The Grocer located at Mandarin Gallery did some shopping at Orchard and have an early supper at Ramen Santouka located at Cuppage Terrace!

Soup Of The Day (Tomato) (SGD$11.50)

Beef & Blue Cheese Burger (SGD$26.50)

Mushroom Risotto (SGD$25.50)

Macadamia Chocolate Chip Milkshake (SGD$7.50)

French Earl Grey (SGD$5.50)

All Her Presents!

My Present For Her, iPhone 4S (32GB) With Case-Mate Waddler Penguin Case

Looking Back

• 26th Birthday
• 25th Birthday
• 24th Birthday
• 23rd Birthday
• 22nd Birthday
• 21st Birthday
• 20th Birthday
• 19th Birthday

OS X Lion
Mac OS X Lion is finally released, it cost USD$29.99 in the Mac AppStore. I was downloading this at 11MB/s (megabytes not megabits) yesterday night! If you have a slower Internet connection, Lion will be made available on a USB thumb drive through the Apple Store (Singapore) for SGD$88. Mac OS X Lion is the eighth major release of Mac OS. It has more than 250 new features such as new Multi-Touch gestures, system-wide support for full screen apps, Mission Control, Mac AppStore, Launchpad and a new re-designed Mail app.

It seems that Xcode 4.1 (AppStore link) is free (usual USD$4.99) for OS X Lion only and FaceTime is included in OS X Lion (AppStore Link) (usual USD$0.99).

Website: Apple (Singapore) – Mac OS X Lion
Mac AppStore: Mac OS X Lion

MacBook Air
MacBook Air now includes the Intel Sandy Bridge Core i5/i7 processor, Thunderbolt I/O and backlit keyboard. It also seems that the white MacBook is phrased out in favor of the lowest end MacBook Air which starts at SGD$1,288. MacBook Air supports Bluetooth 4.0 with Bluetooth Low Energy.

• 11-inch: 64GB – SGD$1,288
  • 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor
  • 2GB memory
  • 64GB flash storage
  • Intel HD Graphics 3000
• 11-inch: 128GB – SGD$1,588
  • 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor
  • 4GB memory
  • 128GB flash storage
  • Intel HD Graphics 3000
• 13-inch: 128GB – SGD$1,688
  • 1.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor
  • 4GB memory
  • 128GB flash storage
  • Intel HD Graphics 3000
• 13-inch: 256GB – SGD$2,088
  • 1.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor
  • 4GB memory
  • 256GB flash storage
  • Intel HD Graphics 3000

Website: Apple (Singapore) – MacBook Air
Shop: Apple Store (Singapore) – MacBook Air

Mac Mini
Similar with the MacBook Air, the Mac mini also receives the updated Intel Sandy Bridge Core i5/i7 processor and Thunderbolt I/O treatment and it seems that the optical drive got ditched by Mac mini. The death of CD is sooner than you think! Also Mac mini supports Bluetooth 4.0 and Bluetooth Low Energy. In the higher end Mac mini (SGD$1,088) discrete graphics (AMD Radeon HD 6630M) is being supported for the first time.

• 2.3GHz: 500GB – SGD$788
  • 2.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i5
  • 2GB memory
  • 500GB hard drive
  • Intel HD Graphics 3000
• 2.5GHz: 500GB – SGD$1,088
  • 2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i5
  • 4GB memory
  • 500GB hard drive
  • AMD Radeon HD 6630M
• 2.0GHz: Dual 500GB – SGD$1,348
  • 2.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
  • 4GB memory
  • Dual 500GB 7200-rpm hard drives
  • Intel HD Graphics 3000
  • OS X Lion Server

Website: Apple (Singapore) – MacBook Air
Shop: Apple Store (Singapore) – MacBook Air

Thunderbolt Display
Looks like Apple rebranded Cinema Display to Thunderbolt Display. It now supports Thunderbolt and acts as a docking station for MacBook Pro/Air with a Thunderbolt cable and MagSafe connector. It is a 27″ monitor (16:9 – 2560px x 1440px) with LED backlight and IPS panel. It has built-in FaceTime HD camera and microphone to make video calls and ambient light sensor to adjusts your screen brightness accordingly. It is going for SGD$1,348!

Website: Apple (Singapore) – Thunderbolt Display (27-inch)
Shop: Apple Store (Singapore) – Thunderbolt Display (27-inch)

I am Twenty Seven today! Damn, looks like now I can be classified under late twenties!

Li Xiang got me there when she ordered 2 cakes from Pine Garden to be delivered to my office. I was shocked when I received the cake. My colleagues even lighted up the candle and sing a short verse of the birthday song, making it even more embarrassing! Suddenly the whole office knew my birthday!

Had a simple Thai dinner with Li Xiang at Coffee Stars By Dao located at Wisma Atria. Food was good!

Birthday Cake Surprise From Li Xiang

First Present From Li Xiang

Second Present From Li Xiang

Third Present From Li Xiang

First Present From My Brother & Huimin

Second Present From My Brother & Huimin

116 Wall Posts on Facebook!

This is truly a very memorable birthday! Thanks for all the wishes through Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and even SMS! Thanks guys!

Looking Back

• 26th Birthday
• 25th Birthday
• 24th Birthday
• 23th Birthday
• 22nd Birthday
• 21st Birthday
• 20th Birthday
• 19th Birthday
• 18th Birthday

I have upgraded lesterchan.net to WordPress 2.7 alongside with all my updated plugins. Please let me know if you find any bugs on this site by dropping me an email or posting it in the comments. Thanks a lot =)

The update is smooth and it only takes about 30 minutes. Not much compatibility issue here except I have to uninstall my WP-Sticky as WordPress 2.7 has already a sticky post feature built in.

I will create another separate post to highlight the updates to my plugins.

WordPress 2.7 has been released after being delayed for about a week.

Here are some of the features according to the blog post:

Next you’ll begin to notice the new features subtly sprinkled through the new interface: the new dashboard that you can arrange with drag and drop to put the things most important to you on top, QuickPress, comment threading, paging, and the ability to reply to comments from your dashboard, the ability to install any plugin directly from WordPress.org with a single click, and sticky posts.

Digging in further you might notice that every screen is customizable. Let’s say you never care about author on your post listings — just click “Screen Options” and uncheck it and it’s instantly gone from the page. The same for any module on the dashboard or write screen. If your screen is narrow and the menu is taking up too much horizontal room, click the arrow to minimize it to be icon-only, and then go to the write page and drag and drop everything from the right column into the main one, so your posting area is full-screen. (For example I like hiding everything except categories, tags, and publish. I put categories and tags on the right, and publish under the post box.)

WordPress 2.7 also introduce the Automatic Core upgrade which unfortunately do not work for me. I am still very skeptical after automating web script upgrades. I prefer to do it the manual way so that I can control what I want.

I will release the updates to my plugins shortly and if I have the time, I will upgrade this site to WordPress 2.7.

Download: WordPress 2.7